#xenoglots

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ONE VOICEMAIL. @xenoglots

       they’re exhausted. they would be until well after the sun set, until donnelly, marks, miller, and a couple of other straggling scientists and soldiers piled into a room for movie night, holding up their lit cigarettes and drinking cheap beer by the dozen. a garrison of men and women laughing at one-time cowboy actors and super-cops had been enough to attract the attention of the colonel. after a good speaking-to most had went off to bed, leaving a pile of empty bottles and bits of food in their path. ian had figured louise would leave with the crowd, return to her work or get a night’s rest.

       he had been mistaken. here she sits, across the sofa, eyes glued to the same film he’d lost track of the plot of an hour ago. he focuses on her, a blink for only a second that feels like an eternity. there’s something, something unintelligible in words -- like déjà vu, like a memory looping around and around in the same circle abbott and costello had once shown him ( but memories can’t just be coils, they’re rigid, they’re linear, they’re... ). 

"--------- am i ruining this? i'm ruining this, aren't i?"

      nothing ever ends like how you expect. to think that the arrival of the heptapods would have somehow disclosed itself by the time their work had finished would have been an insane thought, but ian still had treated it that way in his subconscious. he hadn’t gone in knowing that he would fall in love with a linguist and would marry her, propose to her in a state of nervous frenzy. he hadn’t gone in knowing that he would be grieving his daughter years before her death. nothing ends the way it should have, and yet it did.

       he has learned about louise. he has learned that his daughter took her final breath in the very same second he shook hands with colonel weber and agreed to take the job that would change his life. ian is aware of the possibility that hannah is still very much alive as he stands over her grave, and yet... he isn’t. he lives the sequence, once and only. never again would he return to this funeral ( only in the memories of the past ). to him, in this moment, hannah is dead. nothing more. nothing less.

       he conflicts himself. would his grief be spared ? would ian be able to see his daughter again, hold her again, sing to her ? if time was really non-linear, then perhaps he would never have to mourn, for she is always alive.

       but louise’s words remind him the price of it all. i never do well on this day. a growing pain inside his chest forms. he’s said this. they’ve had this conversation a dozen times, maybe more. the thought of living this over and over makes him want to leave, to stop invading her memories, her present, her future. it’s the same urge he felt when she first told him of hannah’s tragedy, the urge he’ll feel when being elevated into the unknown spaceship for -- there it is.

       he abandons the thoughts, takes a shaky breath. running now... it would only make the pain worse. that’s why ian takes a step forward, figuring he can no longer trust his timeline. for louise, she would see his face every day, every second for the rest of her life. 

       for him, this could be his last to see hers.

       he brings her into an embrace, a hug that to the audience surrounding raises questions. their lives pass by the same as his, like the blurry faces of strangers on a train, completely ignorant to the worlds they’ve seen. this hold between louise and ian forestalls the train. his fingers gripping around her shoulders are tipped with good intentions. a few tears drop onto the silk, disordered in such a way it could not have happened twice anywhere. and yet it has. and he feels that now.

( social media meme | accepting )

THREE TEXTS. @xenoglots

[ 5:15 AM | IAN ] Rise and shine. How’s your reception out in the middle of friggin’ nowhere ?

( ... )

[ 9:57 PM | IAN ] Okay. Mint chocolate ice cream grabbed. Pregnancy Craving #1 down

( ... )

                                                                     PRETTY WORDS aside, they dance along the edge of sincerity with a playful twirl; she long ago learnt the power of words, their shades of meaning, their tints of connotation -- you can say the same words & mean a handful of different things. And that’s just in one language - grasp the intricacies that come along with TRANSLATING anything and you’ve opened a door into vast universe of ... well. whatever you need it to be. That’s where the CHAOS enters the picture. And that’s where she can ply her trade: manipulating words into an act of creation, or imitation of. Unlike words, which form & dissipate & grow & die, humanity seems to cycle through the same ideas, the same concepts, the same gripes & grimaces & glories.