Rae "Sunshine" Seddon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sunbaked_baker) wrote2020-11-11 09:54 pm
sunbaked_baker) wrote2020-11-11 09:54 pm
Entry tags:
OOM: Light shows on our foolish way, and darkness on our aftermath
The knot into which Sunshine had bound away all of her grief so she could focus on caring for A-Yuan, to be there for the sick child who had lost so much already, began threatening to unravel the moment the door had shut with Lan Wangji and A-Yuan settled in Abe no Seimei's room. Suddenly without immediate needs driving her actions, without some immediate threat to orient herself around, Rae had found herself truly alone for the first time in... weeks.
The silence upon her return to her room was nearly deafening.
Leaning with her back against her closed door - alone with only that knot of grief for company - the thought of undoing that intricate knot felt less like a good idea and more like a failure, falling apart, losing it. Sunshine wanted to resist, to hold herself together - grieving hurt, and if she let herself fall apart, who knew how long it'd take her to come back together again? But some part of her, remembering the false comfort of burning to ash and being nothing, of distancing grief with smoke and alcohol, knew that was what Rae had been doing all through these weeks. Adding new knots with every new pang of loss, bundling away every thought that threatened to undo her. Out of necessity, yes, but untenable, in the long run. Sunshine knew as much.
So she had made herself hear the silence of her room. Rae slowly lowered herself down to sit on the floor with her back to her door, just listening to herself breathe - unwinding the tangled, painful thoughts with care and dread until her breaths had become heavier, and uneven, and the first strands of the knot unraveled.
Like progress in undoing any complicated knot, like progress in solving a puzzle, the grief came in waves. Sunshine soon dissolved into mourning, sobbing hard, breaths ragged, murmured words unintelligible, unable to stem the flow of tears for a long time. But sometimes the tide would ebb. After particularly hard waves of grief, she would sit, her uneven breathing the loudest thing in the room, her forehead pressed to her bent knees, until some new painful thought would be released and the tears would rise again. She eventually moved from the hard floor to her bed, dampening her pillow with her slightly more muffled tears, but if she slept she doesn't remember it.
It is probably the next day when she comes back to herself, not-quite-waking in not-quite-peace. The pain is still there; there are still knots waiting to be undone, but the waves are gentler, and she is... more or less functional, for now.
She doesn't want food, doesn't want to venture out, but some parts of the brain don't take orders from her. Rae makes herself get up. Makes herself wash her face, and though it wipes away the salt-tracks from her face it does little for her red-rimmed eyes. She can't quite make herself change clothes, however rumpled she looks, so she ventures downstairs via the outside bypass stairs that lead more easily to the kitchen.
There, still on auto-pilot, she puts water on to heat for tea.
The silence upon her return to her room was nearly deafening.
Leaning with her back against her closed door - alone with only that knot of grief for company - the thought of undoing that intricate knot felt less like a good idea and more like a failure, falling apart, losing it. Sunshine wanted to resist, to hold herself together - grieving hurt, and if she let herself fall apart, who knew how long it'd take her to come back together again? But some part of her, remembering the false comfort of burning to ash and being nothing, of distancing grief with smoke and alcohol, knew that was what Rae had been doing all through these weeks. Adding new knots with every new pang of loss, bundling away every thought that threatened to undo her. Out of necessity, yes, but untenable, in the long run. Sunshine knew as much.
So she had made herself hear the silence of her room. Rae slowly lowered herself down to sit on the floor with her back to her door, just listening to herself breathe - unwinding the tangled, painful thoughts with care and dread until her breaths had become heavier, and uneven, and the first strands of the knot unraveled.
Like progress in undoing any complicated knot, like progress in solving a puzzle, the grief came in waves. Sunshine soon dissolved into mourning, sobbing hard, breaths ragged, murmured words unintelligible, unable to stem the flow of tears for a long time. But sometimes the tide would ebb. After particularly hard waves of grief, she would sit, her uneven breathing the loudest thing in the room, her forehead pressed to her bent knees, until some new painful thought would be released and the tears would rise again. She eventually moved from the hard floor to her bed, dampening her pillow with her slightly more muffled tears, but if she slept she doesn't remember it.
It is probably the next day when she comes back to herself, not-quite-waking in not-quite-peace. The pain is still there; there are still knots waiting to be undone, but the waves are gentler, and she is... more or less functional, for now.
She doesn't want food, doesn't want to venture out, but some parts of the brain don't take orders from her. Rae makes herself get up. Makes herself wash her face, and though it wipes away the salt-tracks from her face it does little for her red-rimmed eyes. She can't quite make herself change clothes, however rumpled she looks, so she ventures downstairs via the outside bypass stairs that lead more easily to the kitchen.
There, still on auto-pilot, she puts water on to heat for tea.
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The funeral rites are unfamiliar to her. If this were in her world, she would be coordinating with community members to provide food for grieving family members so they wouldn't have to go through grief while also having to worry about groceries and meals. But here...
At some point, she will have to figure out what to do with the food she had prepared for the Wens, which had been left with the Bar when Lan Wangji had brought A-Yuan to them. Some other time.
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At least in Christian funerals, as in Buddhist funerals, there are recitations of prayers. Muslim funerals are very quiet affairs.
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"I got rid of all of my funeral-appropriate clothes sometime around the end of the Wars."
She'd worn them far too often, and never wanted to wear those shades again.
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“I can provide you with something, if that makes it any easier...”
(Although they both know that’s not the issue here.)
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"I'll be fine."
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