InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Make us whole."

Sinéad Ní Shúilleabháin (nishuilleabhain) wrote in madisonvalley,
@ 2013-11-16 22:06:00

Entry tags:

!log, !open, ~2013 november, ~40 points, ~~sinead o'sullivan (nishuilleabhain)

WHO: Sinéad Ní Shúilleabháin and OPEN
WHAT: Exploring a new place
WHEN: Saturday
WHERE: A little cafe
STATUS: Open/Ongoing
WARNINGS: Possible talk of death/war, TBD

Sinéad was still in subtle sort of shock to find herself eighty years in the future. Everything around her seemed to confirm what they had said, but in her mind and in her heart it was just one more strange and terrible thing that had happened, and she wasn't quite sure how to process it all. When did it become too much?

It had only been a little more than a week since Teddy had come to her and told her about Damien's death. Teddy, who she'd known since he was just a lad. They'd grown up together, as near everyone in Clonakilty had, and she'd always been fond of him. He'd been a good man. And through the War of Independence, he'd been a hero, even. But then he'd decided to follow Collins and join the Free State Army. The Free State! Could anything have been more of a joke? It was little more than repackaged Home Rule, being celebrated as if it were something special and new. After everything they'd lost, after everyone who'd died, Collins had left them right they'd been to start with! And the six counties in the North, lost to the Orange forces that had the Tories by their balls. And they expected them just to take it lying down? England never seemed to run out of ways to insult the intelligence of the Irish. And Teddy had taken this tepid attempt at fooling them to heart, and had taken a position in the Free State Army. She and Damien hadn't. That wasn't what they'd fought for, and it wasn't what Mícheál had died for.

She never thought she'd hate Teddy O'Donovan, but she'd never hated a man more than when he came and told her that he'd personally ordered the firing squad to fire on his own brother. And the love of her life. She'd lost so much in the past few years, and Damien was the final, and nearly fatal blow. She knew she was strong. She'd always been strong, but just for once, she wanted to be happy too. And that didn't seem that it was going to be happening any time soon.

This morning, she'd gotten up early - not having been able to sleep well in the new place with all its strange sounds - and made her way out to the streets. There were so many autombiles here! They had them back home, of course they did, but they weren't so fast and there weren't so many. She was extra cautious at the crossings, certain she was to be mowed down by the things the second she stepped into the world. Wouldn't that be a grand way to go, after all the danger she'd been in?

After an hour's walking, she reached a little café that advertised breakfast specials, and stepped inside. It was quaintly decorated, and felt almost familiar to Sinéad as she smiled at the woman who greeted her and requested a table for one. It would always be for one now. Tears filled her eyes, but she pushed them back, concentrating instead on the menu. At least the food was rather normal, and nothing overly strange. Eggs, bacon, biscuits (she assumed they meant biscuits in the American sense, otherwise that would be terribly odd). She gazed out the window, not hearing at first when the person at the table next to her asked for the jelly that was on her table but not on theirs.

"Oh, pardon me," she said when their words registered, and she smiled slightly, handing them the jelly. "It's a strange place here, isn't it?"

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nishuilleabhain
2013-11-26 05:38 pm UTC (link)
Absolutely!
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cuthbertallgood
2013-11-30 10:32 pm UTC (link)
Cuthbert Allgood had been keeping a low profile. This wasn't, all things considered, the easiest task in the world for Cuthbert, who ordinarily participated in the community's network at great frequency and without a second thought. The time for that was past. He wasn't a boy any longer, and here he needed to act according to the years he claimed rather than those he actually possessed.

How did a fellow act nineteen anyway? However it was, he had to manage it. This place - well it wasn't Hambry and nor was it Cressia, no matter what he cared to say in moments of frustration, but it wasn't a bit like Gilead either. He had to look out for Roland. Neither of them would be winning any popularity contests anytime soon, and the few allies Cuthbert had thought he had gathered together turned out to be anything but. It was all right as rainbarrels when he did as they wanted, but as soon as he had ideas of his own he saw the truth of the matter.

He had Roland. He could count on Roland. It was easier, not being alone. It reminded him that this town wasn't even important, not a bit. That home mattered far more and if there was a purpose to their being sent here he didn't want to fail at it. So Cuthbert learnt what he could, but for much of the rest of the time he found himself with more spare hours than he knew what to do with. There were the evening patrols, the festival organizations, the sessions at the shooting range - but it still didn't fill his day. Today, then, he found himself taking breakfast at one of the town's - cafés, they were called, where he could get a decent, hearty meal. While they had both coped well enough with the basics, neither Cuthbert nor Roland were ever going to win prizes for cookery!

Before he began his meal, he had looked for the strawberry preserve that was, if not quite as good as the kind they had in Gilead, at least good enough for toast. There had been none at his table, none at all, and so he'd called over to the young woman sitting by the window, at a table just across from his. She was happy enough to share, and so Cuthbert smiled at her. 'Thankee-sai,' he said. 'It's good to put on the toast, so it is.' But he didn't immediately set about the task. Instead, he simply set the jar down on the table, and looked back at her.

'Aye, strange is a way of putting it,' he said, eyebrows raised in faint amusement. 'I'll never grow used to the idea, that a fellow can step between worlds without even planning on it. It's right peculiar, sai, that's what it is, and that's afore I even think on all the differences from home. Are you newly-arrived, then?'
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nishuilleabhain
2013-12-02 12:30 pm UTC (link)
"Aye," she said, smiling at him. He was at one of those strange ages that boys sometimes went through, where you couldn't exactly discern their ages. He was somewhere between fifteen and twenty, but she couldn't put a finger on where exactly in that spectrum he fell.

"I've come from Clonakilty, West Cork, Ireland, from eighty years ago, 1923. It's more peaceful here than at home, to be sure. We were in the middle of a Civil War, I'm afraid. We win our freedom, only to start fighting among ourselves."

There was sadness and anger creeping into her words; there had been too much suffering lately. Too much by far.

"Have you been here long? I don't know what to make of it. The superstitious talk about people being pulled into faerie, but I never put much stock on those thoughts, and this doesn't look like any place of that sort."
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