Sketchbook of a Wayward Seer: Chapter 35
Different Kind of Celebration
Humans die really fucking easily.
They are fragile, weak, and surviving even the slightest trial is a miracle of epic proportions.
At least, if you measure all humanity by Jason’s nigh on tearful relief when I reached the top of the seam and climbed back onto the cliff.
He held me, one hand on the back of my head like he was shielding me from attack, keeping me tucked close to his chest as he whispered, “You’re okay. You’re okay,” until his own breathing slowed.
When he’d finished clinging to me like I’d just survived a death match with a vampire, I led him to the picnic blanket, wrapping my rage up in a tight little titanium bundle where it couldn’t seep out in Jason’s direction, calculating which baked good would have the best chance of keeping his body balanced when shock set in.
He’d already gone through the same reasoning for me.
Walnut cranberry tart and water.
A steady tone and distracting stories.
Have another snack.
Shouldn’t I eat a little more?
Did I need more water? He had some.
Jason worked as good a comforting routine as I’d have managed, putting so much effort into taking care of me, he successfully distracted and calmed himself.
I didn’t mind him doing the work, but I couldn’t figure out why he seemed so…fine.
The victim of horrific violence lay ten feet over and a hundred feet down, and Jason talked about the food truck fest like the world—especially Jason Archer’s world—hadn’t just tipped and cracked like the fucking Titanic.
But then he said, “—to be able bring closure to his family. If he hiked out here without telling anyone where he wanted to climb, his family might have spent years searching the wrong part of the mountains. Now they’ll have answers and get to have a proper funeral. That’s a huge gift.”
He wrapped his arm around me, letting me lean against his side as I picked at a scone and recalibrated my placement on the human knowledge to aitherion reality scale.
To Jason, I’d found the remains of a tragic accident.
Startling, sure. Traumatizing, possibly.
An automatic trigger for the realization of what an irredeemable ass his father was with a side of fear that the awful scar on his back hadn’t come from an animal?
Not so much.
I’d climbed down into the fissure searching for my shattered phone and come across the consequences of a tragic wilderness accident.
A macabre incident—and clearly one he needed to make sure didn’t traumatize poor Ella Dae any further—but nothing to cause life-altering fear.
Not a murdered girl. A tragic hiking accident.
Totally different things.
Murdered girl. Tragic hiking accident.
Murdered girl. Hiking accident.
Totally different reaction requirements.
Nothing worth the furious, seething need for violent revenge that made it feel like my nerve endings wanted to scream every time I let my mind flick toward the white-hot titanium bundle of rage.
Not just a scream.
A sonic boom fierce enough to destroy everything.
A world that could make such monsters didn’t deserve to exist.
But then Jason wouldn’t exist.
And the boy rubbing gentle circles on my back while he wove an unbroken string of stories, trying to distract/comfort the ass who’d led him here, needed to exist.
The want to swaddle Jason and protect him from all the awful kept me from screaming, “You fucking worthless fuck,” as a greeting when I heard Sheriff Archer coming down the slope.
He wasn’t alone.