A/N: Trigger warning, Airplane Disasters, continued!
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My hand clutches the countertop edge. Panic and despair from the young woman who had... so much life left. It feels too real over the recording.
"I... I don’t want to..."
I’m very glad it is granite and not sothing that would crack or creak under my enhanced strength. Maybe it’s a good thing she ignored my offer to hold her hand. I might have just crushed it.
"Anise... I should have... I should have told you more often that I appreciated you. Like, I knew you were never trying to change . Not really. You’re just a fashion snob. I love you anyway."
With every word, I can hear her rebounding. Hear how she’s finding a purpose again.
"But all those tis you let crash at your place when Mom was being... you know. Of course you know, she’s your sister. You rember that one ti-"
She rambled. For minutes more. Clearly afraid. Clearly thinking that when she stops talking, stops rembering her life... that it would be the end.
I learned more about Anise and her family situation than I had since I t her. Even kind of figured out why she liked to drink a bit too much. Though I wished I hadn’t heard about it this way.
> I wish... I’m sure I can’t wish it more than the person across from . <
"We can all see our breath in the air now, Auntie. Pretty sure that ans we’re going to freeze before we land. Or the pilots... anyway, so people are digging out clothes from overhead and passing them around. Let ... let help them. I’ll be right back."
Shuffling, muffled voices. I think she left the phone in her pocket while she... futilely or bravely depending on your outlook, helped break into the overhead bins and get more clothes for people that needed them.
It allowed to hear a bunch of the other voices. To get a feel for what she went through. How many dozens of people faced this... scenario.
I wanted to praise her for it. For trying even when it looked bleak. But I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I’m not even sure I could get my throat to swallow any more of the water my host gave.
Especially not when she starts talking directly into the mic again.
"Aunt Anise. Listen. You always made feel like I had sowhere to belong. I love you. And I know. I know you loved , okay? Tell..."
Loud, pained sobbing groan tore over the speaker. Like she’d placed the device on the ground and curled right up over it.
"God, I wish I could hang up and call everyone else too, but I’m scared it won’t connect again. Other people keep dialing and not... it’s getting really, really cold. And I don’t think... soone said there’s big pieces of ice in this blizzard. That if we have to fall into the cloud layer..."
Another pause where all I can hear is her breathing into the mic. Growing ragged. Strained. Desperate.
She’d lost the opportunity to be doing sothing, is how I see it. Realized she had nothing to offer the others anymore and so had nowhere to hide from her thoughts.
That she had nothing else to talk about except the words she hasn’t said. Until she says them so quietly it feels like a shard of ice was stabbed through my ears and sohow pierced what was left of my deflating heart.
"I don’t want to die."
> I didn’t want you to die. <
The problem with my world’s mystical practice of making a mindscape within oneself is clearly this, if nothing else. When you lose control of your ntal state... you make what you *feel*.
Not just what you think. So now, I stand in my soul with a macabre daydream I didn’t ask for.
Looking down at how I rember Jessica when she was upset, but twisting it into the nightmare of hers on the plane. That so part of is trying to make my own.
To punish with it.
"I had so many things I wanted to do. I wanted to photograph the northern lights."
> I’ve never seen them in this world. I will. <
My head falls forward in reality. I can’t sit up straight anymore as she pours out her grievances like this.
She had so many specific things to take pictures of that she rattles off. They all land like sharpened icicles in my chest.
Especially as her teeth begin to chatter and she ntions that hoarfrost is growing over everything tal and glass.
"Was going to see if Ember would hire for a while after I completed my graduate. Until other people in the right circles knew for and the work I could do."
> Guess I’ve kind of done that part. Briefly. Sorry... sorry you couldn’t. This is your world and you would have deserved it. <
In this position, the tears just flow. Onto her countertop as I lay my face there. As my arms hug around the representation of the last monts of her life in my soul.
"Wanted... I wanted to get married. Kids, soday, probably. Didn’t have a guy in mind, but still. At least not died with Mom seriously thinking I’m a fucking virgin this far into college courses."
I chuckle through the sadness. It felt appropriate because of the tone she said it with.
Even I used to get those questions, though at least I could tell the Queen Mother with a straight face that I’d never lain with a *male*.
Must be a daughter’s prerogative to lie to the parent that is going to do nothing but yell at them without trying to understand.
"W-wanted to see you happy too. Not just s-successful. Sober. Happy. Wanted *everyone* to be h-happy. Not... n-not this. I don’t w-want everyone to have to c-cry over this..."
Her shivering beca too severe and my own breathing only began to be more anxious.
I know. I know that she doesn’t make it. But I just... I-
Screams roar and twist together. Human, tal, wind. Then nothing.
The voicemail ended.
For a few beats, I was... calm. Stood up from the chair. Sat my bundled son carefully onto the ground, because I didn’t want him to wake and roll off of the counter.
Then I fell to my knees, tore at the ornants in my hair to unbind it as is appropriate...
And keened. A wail so loud and raw that the guard at the stairwell burst inside her apartnt in hybrid werewolf form.
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