ph_logs | [OPEN] Moving

Who: Angel and Y'all
What: Moving Day and the Surrounding
When: Early December
Where: Yeah!
Warning(s):

1. So take your shaking bones
Eddie leaves on the ferry on a cold misty autumn morning, and Angel spends longer waiting for him to return to the farmhouse than it'll admit to afterwards, keeping a kettle warm on the stove for afternoon tea until the water's all boiled away and it's clear that how many lumps Eddie takes in a cup is irrelevant now, irrelevant ever again and Angel still doesn't want to admit it until it has to.

It has to.

And taking care of the farm, the bees and the temple all by itself just isn't going to be possible, it's not, even if its heart was hale and whole and beating in sync with Eddie's still, so something has to give.

Something has to.

Angel decides that it is going to move.

There are appointments with town hall to discuss possible new houses and apartments and townhouses (not homes, yet), and discussions of its beehives being transported into town, and paperwork to be filled out in a heavy, stiff, blocky hand as it figures out the work of transition, hoping that living in the city will be a replacement for the bustle of clucking hens and the nagging goat and it's going to need to get a stable situation set up for Arcadia, if the horse will forgive the relocation.

Angel is alone.

This is not work to be doing alone.

And that's before we get to the process of packing, of sorting through the debris of a life and a love and the twinge that reminds it that it can't cry every time it comes across a favored book or a shirt that still smells like Eddie, and that twinge is deeply painful enough to make it stop moving for seconds, perhaps minutes before it finds something to push it past inertia, even as it feels like some vital spark inside it is guttering and dimming.

This is not work to be doing alone.

2. And step out on your own
A sign on the bulletin board:

HELP WANTED MOVING. STANDARD PAY OFFERED: PIZZA AFTER WORK COMPLETE

3. Oh, the winter never stops
[This is your wildcard. It was meant for you.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Thank you." It doesn't really know what to do with condolences, pausing with a book in hand to look over at Zivia with the faintest confusion on its heavy face. It's never handled loss before at all, and doesn't have any measure for a right response.

She pauses, taking in what Angel is doing. Adjusting her approach.

"Can I help?"

"Probably? Yes. If you want to?" It's assuming she means with the books, scooting to offer her space at the shelf.

She settles in beside it, looking up at the shelves. "What's the project?"

"Trying to figure out what I'll be able to stand to read without him here to read with me at night."

No big deal.

Zivia breathes out, silently.

"Could I offer a bit of advice? From experience?"

"Please? Please."

He can't help but feel helpless here. "Though. I'm sorry you have experience."

"Just ... don't get rid of anything permanently in the first month or so, is what I'd recommend. Put it away somewhere if seeing it hurts, that's fine, but don't throw it out or burn it or anything. Because the way it feels now isn't the way it's going to feel forever."

"Oh. That makes sense. Yeah, I'll put it all away somewhere. But maybe not in the place I'm moving to. It's...it's going to be smaller. I'll be living alone. Which is fine, really. I'm used to that, living alone."

She breathes out. "Yeah. I've lived alone a long time myself. It works all right, so long as you've got other people to check in with you every so often. Helps to have a pet, I found."

"Most animals really don't like me. It's a large part of why I'll be giving up the farm."

Not the only reason, but a significant one. Eddie had been the one to love the dog and the chickens and the goat into being family. Angel had kept a polite distance from all of it.

"Well, that won't do, then. Let me see what I can do to help with the books."

She's hoping she can at least organize them in stacks or boxes as Angel does the sorting, since she can't be much help with the sorting part.

He nods and goes back to work with her aid. "Thank you, Zivia. It's...hard, handling this."

"Yeah. Packing up a house is hard even when you're not also dealing with a lot of heavy emotions."

She pauses, considering how to phrase this.

"The way we do this back home, you get to take some time to just have the emotions before you have to start on the work."

"Oh. Well. I'm not good at having emotions a lot of the time, you know."

He sheepishly scratches at the back of his head. "Or at. Taking time."

"Sometimes I think that's kind of the point of having the traditions. It makes it easier when you have a sort of process to follow. Even if you don't feel like you know how to have the emotions or what to do with them, you can at least like ... make a space for them, before you have to go back to. Everything else."

(She almost said go back to living, and caught it in time.)

"And the idea is, during that time people come to visit you and make sure you aren't alone with it all, and bring you food so you're taken care of."

There's a still-bitter part of Angel tied to the world that killed him that wants to ask if there would be people who'd want to visit him in this state.

But the rest of him already knows the answer.

"Oh. Well. I don't have the same needs when it comes to food that everyone does. But. People around would be nice?"

"I know you don't," she says, pausing with a book in her hands and looking a touch sheepish, "but ... I might have brought you some anyway. I'm also doing the follow-the-process thing, a little bit. If you don't want it I can always take it back home."

"...oh. Thank you, Zivia."

It is very deeply touched. Which might be the only way to get it to eat right now.

"I'll definitely eat it, then, if you made it and want me to eat it."

"One's to eat now, or within the next few days," she says, "heated up if you like it that way. The other will keep a good long while, so ... have a little whenever it might make you feel better."

And out of her bag she brings a large glass jar of the sourest mixed pickles she's been able to make -- cucumber, green tomato, carrot, and sweet pepper -- and another jar of her best local approximation (lacking some ingredients) of hot-and-sour soup.

"Pickles." His eyes do not light up, quite, but he does straighten his posture, nodding in lieu of putting in the effort to smile. "And...is that a soup?"

"Yep, that's the one that won't keep as long. Hot and sour soup, it's called -- it's not exactly like the way it's usually made, I didn't have all the ingredients, but the point is it's very tangy and spicy, and I thought you might like it."

Since she remembers him saying, the first they met, that strong sour and spicy flavors worked best for him.

"That sounds sort of amazing. Exactly like the sort of thing I'd be into. Thank you, Zivia. That's...truly thoughtful."

He's a little overwhelmed by how thoughtful, that someone would consider his wants while thinking of his needs.

"I'm glad you like the sound of it. If you enjoy it, I can share the recipe with you sometime."

And for now, the important thing is that Angel knows he isn't wholly alone in this time of loss.

"By share, you mean cook it with me so I can see the technique. Right?"

...and have an excuse to have company at some future point.

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tehilim127_1 - 2025-01-06 02:16 (UTC) - Expand