#alnwick1

365 - I let him find me. An anniversary gift to myself. Against my most fearful urges I have been living on the fringes of Granite Falls for a month. I could not bring myself to choose madness.

In that time I have seen him see me and slipped away, but today I didn’t. I wanted to be seen. To be spoken to. 

Sorrel knows more of herbalism than most I’ve met and was eager to share. I picked a daisy for him to explain to me, feigning ignorance to enable closeness. 

“An anti-inflammatory” he said “and edible”. He smiled.

I was taught to call it by an older name, “boneflower” and to know its true value; its potency hardly useful, its leaves a last resort for a meal that leaves bitterness in your mouth. A flower better left for other children to play at being chained by.

I bite my knowledge into a smile and aim it at him.

“And it’s pretty”. 

I have him

Day 10 - Traps. I haven’t been sleeping since I saw the man, and it came to me last night. I can run a perimeter of traps around the plot. Hidden, deadly, noisy things that will give me time to run or fight.

I should have thought of it sooner, should have brought more wire up with me. I think I’m going to have to risk going down soon, finding a town to supply. Maybe I can last a month. 

250 - Round numbers feel momentous but it hasn’t even been a year. 

It’s getting harder to stay busy, to fill my mind with safe, nearby things. The garden is planted, tended. Creatures know well enough by now that the temptation of my garden ends in the smoking shed and stay away. 

I have no reason to return to Granite Falls, no supply so urgent to justify the risk. The things I want don’t matter, living free is my luxury so I must live with lumpy, home made soap, darned clothes, until driven back to town by need. 

I know this.

I know this. 

I’m teaching myself to surface mine as a distraction. Perhaps I will find some ore worth a damn, that will get me further than 60 bucks and a wedding ring when I have to run again. If I have to run again.

I have no reason to return to Granite Falls. 

366 - I gave him a day, more than I had planned but less than my body wanted. When he started to ask questions it was over. 

In that moment, I quieted his questions with kindness. Kisses. But I saw his death in the firelight. Flickering, as yet uncertain, but possible if the path remains unaltered. He must not seek me after this.

I laced his drink with poppy, and as soon as he slept I left. I will take a winding path home. Lay false tracks to manufacture hope and keep us both safe from his reckless caring. 

Day 77 - I couldn’t write until I was safe back on my mountain. I’ve become so unaccustomed to seeing people that even the gentlest seemed a monster to me. Perhaps this is what becoming a killer does to you. 

Before, when I mixed tinctures, it was theory. This much wolfsbane for dreamless sleep, this much to wound.... this to kill. Now I have seen the killing, been the hand to kill and I know, I know, that the preparations I carry are weapons, not the innocent products of flowers and folk medicine.

What I no longer know, when facing others, is on who the weapon must be turned. Will there be time to kill and run, or will the taste of aconite be my only path to safety and peace. 

I have the seeds and some plants. The questions can wait until spring I suppose.

Answering this for Lupine because she’s currently absorbing most of my creative juices and has a more interesting answer than my other active characters. 

If anyone ever asked her where she was from, which they won’t because she lets nobody near her, Lupine Alnwick would shrug and lie. “Brindleton.” She knows enough about the area to sound like she’s lived there, but it’s just another place she’s been. 

When you’ve never known a life that wasn’t running, questions of “where” become meaningless. “Where’s home?”. Home is where the danger isn’t and that never lasts long. Dead men have living sons, and you can only get gas the same place a few times before they start to recognise your face... your scar.

Where is she from? Everywhere. Nowhere. Right here. 

Day 36 -  I know it by heart but there’s comfort in running over the familiar words, rosary-smooth and deadly. Split, trim, crush. Petals to poison. Maybe it’s slow banishment for unwelcome guests or a last escape for me. Either way, another option.

Living like I have, every extra option is an expansion of possibility, a life bigger than run or die. 

I gathered the parts of the lamp that made me forget I have more options now and repaired it without the time function, storing the extra pieces for an as yet unknown task. Then I took down my mother’s cookbook and remembered. Split, trim, crush. Making method of death.

Day 197 - Spring arrived restless... or maybe that’s just me. I didn’t need the vague companionship of a diary over those glassy winter months but as the snow thawed I felt the need to speak again, to someone. Something. 

Anything.

It feels like everything’s moved slightly since the snow melted. The gaps between things are bigger, sightlines are longer and branches crack louder. 

I’ve started waking long loops out from the cabin, checking for any signs of other people moving in with the thaw; hunter maybe, or builders hefting expensive boards to construct a cabin for use twice a year by bundled tourists who find extreme isolation charming in a weekend package. Nobody.

It occurs to me on the way back from investigating what I thought was smoke but turned out to be thrown up dust from a landslip that with each journey I am as disappointed not to find anyone as I am relieved to be safe. 

How is it that after a lifetime spent craving isolation and safety, of building imaginary boxes of untouchable space around myself, I am now wishing for someone to intrude at the edges. Am I lonely? Or do I simply long for an end to the suspense of waiting for an invader, a chance to test my traps and defences and relive that moment of victorious stillness when the fight is over?

I miss the simplicity of winter.