@blissflower: get going. you’re losing light.
the bliss is a haze; an unwanted hug. there’s a pinpoint in the far-off distance she tries to focus on, but it sways in her eyesight and has the budding start of making her feel sick. (faith does this more often than not now — she counters destruction with bliss, tells her there’s a place for her, strokes the side of her cheek and gently blows a smattering of bliss into each corner of her brain. they talk, one to one, about salvation and hope, remorse, guilt, overcoming the hurt you’ve caused and making amends. they talk, and for a moment, she listens. really listens.)
she’s not sure that faith is ever there. two bare feet, a tattered dress that abby’s not even sure fits her properly. (the closer she gets, two hands either side of her cheeks, and abby can see the way it hangs off her collars. faith is a jarring image of whatthefuckery and a nauseating spin of the goddamn horizon.)
“are you leaving? are you here?” this is what she doesn’t understand; faith lets her go. every time she plucks her from one corner of the map and leads her to another, it pulls two days from her and she wakes up elsewhere. where the fuck are you, faith? (bunker, that one conscious crevice of her brain tells her. she’s not here. she’s in her bunker. the world is going to fucking end in all-out war. more heights, more guns, more ammo.)
“jesus, i’m losing my fucking mind.” but she reaches, stupidly, like a tamed goddamn animal, to the mirage in front of her. she hears her giggle, hears her shhh and then —
she’s there. alone. on the side of a mountain. get going. you’re losing light.
Does it matter? Does it matter if Faith is in the bunker or in the trees or right behind her on her aimless wandering through the hills? Abby hears her. Abby sees her. Abby would feel her, if she could get her hands on her. If she could get close enough. Faith doesn’t have to be anywhere as long as her memory is carried by those who have been touched by her, who have heard her sermons. Faith doesn’t even have to be alive. She doesn’t even have to be a single person.
So: Faith-or-not-Faith stands beside Abby when she finally stops, when her heavy footfall drags against the mud and the sun is getting low, so low... When her hunger and her fatigue begins to catch up with her, she begins to whisper dissent into Abby’s ears before flitting away again.
Find shelter, you need to rest.
Perhaps Faith has become Abby’s conscience, her subliminal mind, tending to her needs where her quest for revenge has led her astray and forced her to abandon herself, her own very real needs. Faith flits in and out of Abby’s vision like a moth, a speck of dust catching in the light and disappearing. Faith points to the trees and speaks through the yowling of the cougars within it.
“There’s a house in these woods... You need to find it.”