The girl from the mire

18

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Jane takes a deep, sore throat breath and her body shudders to life. She witnesses across her physicality at her bare feet and notices she's wearing the black patchwork Ghost combat pants and the rucksack reaper jacket. She leans herself up by her elbows and witnesses her nighttime surroundings. But it's dark, darker than she remembers. She's been laying on the concrete forest floor for who knows how long and her ass and back are sorely numb and probably imprinted with whatever uncomfortable stones and twiggy sticks are beneath her. She notices that the dark forest doesn't move, it doesn't breath. It's as deceased as Rist was. And Jane surmises that she's back where she was when her mind was dying and that she is all alone in a lonely place.

Judith's let her go from wherever she was; the downward spiral that left her naked in the gray born concrete snow of a summer's winter.

She tries to speak but her one word is a croaking, crinkly whisper, "Rrrrrrrist?"

The mire girl slowly and achingly stands like a marionette hobbling up and down attached to string lace limbs and witnesses photopsia in her vision and is placed in a trance by the foggy, apparitional workings of whatever's malfunctioning within her body. Maybe it's because Jane's fluorocarbon strings have been cut. And so she collapses like a wounded prey animal, like she's been shot on a bridge for a Hart's head on a hunter's wall. She feels like a cadaver hook is piercing her head and is dragging her out of the subconscious river. And there is no fisherman. And there is no hunter anymore and no shooting and she's not a Hart or a trophy or a jawless Terra Coal.

Jane barely crawls toward an opening in the four tree clearing that seems to unfold into a bigger, breeze touching loch. Her "stomach rumbles" poke her in places that she's forgot about. Jane stops to wonder in the way a person wonders for the first time in a long time.

I'm hungry. I'm woozy because I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. My throat is dry because I'm thirsty. I'm sore. I'm sore and I'm weak.

Jane drags herself heavily over a small embankment made of roots and her body tumbles down out of the four trees and onto the concrete beach that exists as a crumbling sand before the slumping lake. The waxing moon provides her with some light upon the dusty, sandy, root ending concrete.

She can make out a silhouette in the distance by the edge of the lake. Someone is holding their knees and rocking back and forth as if they're a crumpled human rocking chair. Jane can hear the softest of wailing and sobbing. Rocking back and forth. Back and forth. Again and again. Could it be?

She's becoming less conscious but she must try to get to the water, to the person that she's so excited to see again. But at this point, she needs help and she needs it promptly. Jane tries standing one last time before she passes out. It takes everything she has to get to her feet and all of her concentration to walk, step by step as a freshly risen corpse, woozy and slouching and wheezing.

Her voice cracks but it's her voice, not the monster, there's no monster anymore. She's not used to that yet. And she feels a great relief in knowing that horrible part of her is gone. And as she gets closer to the silhouette, she yells as loudly as her vocal chords will let her.

"Rist!"

The person in the distance stops sobbing and Jane can see movement. The mire girl collapses to her knees and almost falls over, except she hears running and then Rist catches Jane in her arms.

"Terra! Oh, Jane! You're alive! You're alive! I thought I lost you!"

"Water..."

Rist leaves Jane on the dull gray beach to get her rucksack. When she returns, Jane's still sort of conscious. The skull mask lady pours the sanitized water into the mire girl's mouth. It flows through Jane's body and quenches something. Little by little. It helps. She has a headache and probably a fever; she has a chilled sweat. But it's better than what she just was and has been for a long while.