hate_gettin_older | IC Inbox for Pumpkin Hollow

"Yeah, me neither. Keeping track of time got— hard." That's one word for it. Try utterly fucking impossible, on account of the torture. "Climbing to the summit wasn't any easier though, so, I guess it's peaches all around."

Carolina kneels down in front of Greta's pen. "Can you even eat peaches?"

"Meeh," Greta informs her authoritatively.

"She can eat fuckin anything if you ask her," says Edgar, and then "wait, you climbed?"

"Mm. Now I feel like an ass for cheating you out of fruit I don't have," said, regretfully, to the goat. Please, drill sergeant Greta, in all her grand and terrifying authority, spare Carolina a head-butt to the shins for this indiscretion.

"Want this?" She grabs a handful of hay, drops to her haunches and offers it instead.

"...Yeah, sure did. It was a nightmare going through the Buried. I think the only reason it didn't suck me in was because it doesn't tick any boxes for me. I don't care about getting stuck. I'm not claustrophobic. I knew I needed to check on someone, so I pushed 'til I got to the top. I was only there for... a day? Maybe two, before it all just— stopped. Before that, I remember being in the fields. Dunno for how long. Felt like... years."

Greta takes a mouthful of the offered hay, and does not butt Carolina. This time.

Edgar's quiet for a moment, then says "All I saw of it was the train."

Carolina stops mid-reach for another bale and turns her attention to him. It feels like the right thing to do. Then like the wrong thing as she realizes she wouldn't want to be stared at, especially now. She lifts the bundle, carries on. Pays close attention.

"What was it like?"

Edited 2025-11-21 05:51 (UTC)

He doesn't seem to notice when she looks at him, or when she stops.

"I dunno." Low, subdued. "Wasn't that bad. That's the worst part, that it wasn't that bad. 'F that makes any fuckin sense."

The last words are on a near-explosive grunt of effort, as he hauls up the bale.

"Yeah, it does. Parts of it I think I sort of... enjoyed? Which feels gross now that it's over."

Gross is the understatement of the century.

"I almost --"

Silence, for several beats.

"They fuckin put me in charge," he mutters, barely audible at this distance. "Still dunno why."

In charge is all Carolina catches, and all she really needs to hear. Remembers, like a photoflash, a thing he'd said at Dahlia's. Ah.

"Well, that's probably the last sort of person you want to be, right? In charge. Responsible for the safety of others. The person who promises one thing and never delivers it, either because they can't or won't. Am I warm?"

"I did though," he says, glaring up from under lowered brows. "Wasn't my fuckin idea but I did it, I got people up to where it was safe. If I'd seen you on the way I would've stopped for you, all right?"

Carolina knits her brows. "I didn't expect you to stop for me. I chose to go up there. If you got people where they needed to be, great. I was just saying—" a beat. What is she saying? "—I assume it wasn't a joyride."

He looks away.

"It wasn't. I thought, I was trying ... I was just trying to get people out. Din't even --"

His jaw tightens. "Din't even get what it wanted me for, til someone told me. Fuckin genius, I am."

Standing at the base of the loft, chin tilted up at him; "What did they tell you?"

"Said I was selling my soul to it. To the Fear of the world ending." His shoulders shift, like he's trying to shrug something heavy off of them. "Extinction."

The word extinction, despite Edgar's efforts to shrug it off, sits heavy and crushing in the hay. "Is that what you're afraid of?" She asks, not thinking. "The world ending."

"Not ... really? I mean, it'd be fuckin awful, but ... I dunno." He looks away again. "Used to the idea I guess. Maybe that's why it picked me."

"I know what you mean. When I got dropped into the farmland— when I realized what was happening— it almost felt like... going home."

Never mind that she had changed herself so irrevocably. From human being into greasy, kerosene-and-blood covered dog.

"And now we're supposed to pretend like everything's normal again."

"Because it is."

Except for the ways in which it isn't. But he's not going to talk about that.

"But we're not."

"As if any of us ever were to begin with," she says, inspired to pick herself up from her bale and lift it onto her shoulder. This one she tosses straight up to the loft. It fwomps against the wooden floor.

A little less icy; "Yeah, you're pretty low on my list of normal people I've met around here. Could be worse, though."

"Low on the list," he says, a bit flatly, "is that more normal, or less?"

"Less." She scans him up and down as he half-crouches in the loft, like checking over the answers to a test. "Definitely less."

Edited 2025-12-05 03:14 (UTC)

"And you'd be an expert on normal then," he says, the sarcasm giving him more animation than he's shown yet.

It's satisfying, watching Edgar come to life a little. Better than the stupor she'd found him in.

"Yep. Got certified a week ago. In my certification class, we had a lesson about guys with big ears and abrasive personalities who work on farms. Deceptively normal, on paper. In practice..." She pretend winces.

Lookin up into the loft, "Are you done yet, or are you barricading yourself in up there?"

He considers, for a moment, throwing the last bale at her. Not in anger, even; in something like appreciation.

(It's almost the kind of joke Curtis might have made.)

"Yeah, yeah," he says instead, "have some fuckin patience," and starts down the ladder.

Carolina takes a step or two back, watching him come down.

"You wanna, like, get lunch? Do something that isn't be miserable or work? It doesn't have to be for long. We don't have to small talk. Just to— do something. Pretend things actually are normal for once. I'll buy."

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hate_gettin_older - 2025-12-09 03:41 (UTC) - Expand