The Whipping Tree

I: Charcoal and Cerulean

I 

Charcoal and Cerulean

         At Vera’s gentle but incessant prodding, Joan agrees to step outside for a walk.

         “You love walks, remember Miss Joaneveive? You love them.” Vera holds her smile steady though she mourns for what has become of the girl she just about raised herself.

         “I suppose so.” Her answer is quiet and if Vera hadn’t tossed a shawl over her bony shoulders, Joaneveive would have gone out in nothing but her nightgown.

         She nods automatically at all the curtsies and bows in her direction and her feet carry her along a familiar path: down the stairs, into the kitchens (more curtsies, less bows) and out the door onto the trio of steps leading to the field.

         She pauses there and looks around, waiting. Then she remembers and the pain hits her like the roaring tide off the coast of Mordellion and she rushes down the steps with her head bowed and fingers clenched tight around the ends of her shawl to keep them from shaking.

         There are flashes everywhere. A laugh here, a smile and a quiet murmur there. She sees them, hears them, but she knows they are from a time in her past.

         Her meandering takes her to a lake several minutes’ walk from the house. Though her mind drifted aimlessly, her feet had a purpose.

         Joan stops and slips her shoes and shawl off, inches forward until she feels the mud wriggle between her toes. The wind cards through her hair, whips it around her face so that she sees more flashes, more slats of images and emotions, happy ones alternating between the terrible ones, and she launches herself forward as she collapses inward and she screams and screams and screams because no one can hear her inside her head.

         She hits the water and it shocks her limbs. Her heart stops beating for a moment and then she surfaces.

         The cold is so painful she scrambles back to shore and in her mind she repeats coward, coward, coward because if she can barely withstand as base a sensation as cold, what can she hold her ground against?

         She fares no better on land, for her clothes are soaked and the marrow inside her bone quivers in tune with the chattering of her teeth and she realizes, not only is she a coward, she is stupid.

         Steeling herself, she wades in until moving her legs is like pushing boulders, and soon finds herself afloat, breath held as if preparing to blow out a candle.

         The numbing feeling does not surprise her this time; instead, she welcomes it, because it gives her mind and body something else to focus on.

         Her breathing is shallow from the ever-present cold and she allows it to surround her. She tilts her head back until her ears dip below the water and she hears roaring and sees the blinding white of the sun.

         Two alien paths of warmth slip down the sides of her face to her temples and momentarily, the feeling startles her. Then she recognizes it and acknowledges it with a small laugh and smile; it is an old friend of hers.

         The film of tears in her eyes morph the sky into something beautiful again.

(**A/N: Very short update. Call it a filler if you'd like.

I decided to take off the little ": The Blah" thingies in the title. I'd eventually run out of one-word nouns to describe the chapter. *sighs* The way I have it formatted on Word is simply through paragraph breaks. Unless it's a different season or large jump in time, I just slap a paragraph break in. Can't really do that here though because the chapters would get really...really huge later on.)