Chapter Text
You’re blind to all my warning cries
When I speak in dust devils, crop circles, flocks of mayflies
So I’ve no choice but to come down
Pardon my steps shaking the ground
Rabbitology ft. Sparkbird - Preybirds (The Watched Version)
There is an ocean in my head. I hear the rush of the current. Fast. Then slow.
Loud.
Nothing else exists.
I am lost in it.
At the same time, I am not alone. A thousand eyes perceive me from all sides, when I can barely feel anything but the rush of water. Or is that my own blood? What even am I if not the ocean itself, if I can’t feel anything else.
simon
It’s so soft I don’t realize it’s not part of the current, at first.
simon alive
With the voice comes a feeling. The true depth of what the voice wants to say. There is an underlying urgency. Simon needs to live. Simon needs to-
simon wake up
It repeats the last words again and again. For the longest time the only feeling I can send back, and I can send something back, is confusion. Simon. It sounds familiar. Yet I can’t understand. I can only listen. I can only float.
An eternity passes and it’s only me and the voice.
The ocean.
We are all the same one thing.
The transition from being everything. Part of everything to suddenly very clearly not, is even more disorienting.
It takes a decade for me to realize the everything is now fitted into a box, no longer having free rein as before. The box is…me.
I’m the box.
I’m the box?
A person.
That sounds right.
But everything is still so slow, I can’t understand too much at once.
slow
heal
Slow.
Slow.
Then
Music. Long melodies. The first sounds after the rush of the ocean.
Then
“-hat’s great.”
…
“Proably can’t hear-...be all right-...am here-”
The voice is not me and doesn’t come from inside me. That’s how I slowly become someone again. Between the melodies I hear the gentle voice. Rough, timbre. Nothing like the ghost-like soft sounds from the ocean inside my head.
I realize I have a hand when I feel warmth enveloping it. Another hand. Two hands?
It’s grounding.
I still can’t think but I can listen. I can feel.
Soft brushes against my cheek. I have a face. I can breathe. I am breathing.
The hands are almost always there. Accompanied by the low, comforting voice.
“-like Rocky a lot. He’s very curious about you but you don’t have to worry, I love the little guy to pieces.”
I know the ocean is still there. It’s not buried inside me, it’s part of me. Somehow it’s trying to keep quiet. And that’s how I start to think properly again. I don’t know how much time passed, but I can hear the outside voice more clearly. It’s a man, talking to me and expecting no answer.
There is such a deep-seated calm inside of me whenever I hear him, that I almost float again. It’s different, luckily. It grounds me instead. Makes me feel real. And I can pay attention for longer each time.
“When you wake up, you will wake up, okay? I can show you Erid. Or the dome, at least. You’ll need more recovery time to see Erid outside of our human climate. I’m sorry that I have to keep you with Mary, but we’re afraid you’ll destabilize if we move you right now.”
I understand each word separately but I don’t know what the guy is talking about. I know I should be annoyed. Or more like, somehow I know I would have been annoyed. Before. Before what?
“The Eridians made fake trees at first but! When we put our heads together we managed to grow some fruit trees. They’re not incredibly big yet, but it’s amazing they’re still alive. I don’t have the greenest thumbs, you know? I hope you’re better at it, if y’know, you decide to stay. You don’t have to! You can leave at any time. Well, after you recover, of course.”
Then I realize I have a heart, because it speeds up.
I have to leave? Did I do something wrong? Of course I did. I’m the butcher, I suddenly remember. Though I feel the heaviness around the name, I don’t have any memories. I only know I deserve to be thrown away.
“Heart rate is increasing. Their brainwave has changed,” a woman’s voice is suddenly clear, though it feels very far away. The man is close, still holding my hand, squeezing.
“Oh god. Is this good? Bad? What’s happening?” The man says, not to me. To the other person, far away.
Something moves uncomfortably in my chest. I feel my face move.
“He’s frowning!” the man says and then his hands are gone. The loss feels monumental.
“Mary, are they waking up?”
Feeling things is tiring, I realize, as I float away again. I want to cling to the man’s voice, stay present. But I’m gone before I can even try.