Survival Of The Fittest

“People keep on trying to call me ‘Bea.’ I have to be very firm with them and tell them that isn’t my name. But a lot of them don’t seem to understand, even when I say that.”

((Beatrice Briggs continued from Ordovician))

It was still little more than stilted small talk, the exact sort of stop-start conversations one would expect from near-strangers leaving a funeral. She hadn’t reached the point of being able to engage in the usual topics of conversation that she would with her friends; the Pokemon that she had caught, how last night’s raid had gone, how well she was doing in this year’s fantasy football. She had just about managed to venture into the topic of her family, and what growing up surrounded by three brothers was like.

But it was just as she had thought - the smallest start was still a start. She had already started to feel lighter as she had walked just behind Jessica - she hadn’t gone climbing with her just yet, so she would refrain from calling her ‘Jess’ - the burden of unfamiliarity slowly but steadily being lifted off of them. They were working together, and they had something to work towards. This situation was still nightmarish, there was nothing they could do to get around that, and very little they could do to stop it from being so. But they could do their best. They could provide as much relief as they were able to in these darkest of hours. They could do that much.

It should have been an encouraging, soothing thought to lull her off to sleep with.

And yet, here Beatrice was, eyes wide open, staring right at her backpack, lying on her side. Jessica was on watch right now. It was quiet, Beatrice’s ears having grown accustomed to the mountain winds over the last few days. She should have been alone.

The bag - or rather, what was inside it - gazed back at her, unblinking.

What had felt like such a good, honourable idea back at that roadside verge had gradually shifted into something uncomfortable, something wholly wrong. The blanket had been intended to be a memento, a source of strength and courage, the knowledge that Rebekah was always with her to share some of her bravery with Beatrice when she needed it most. A little bit of her friend that she simply couldn’t bear to let go of.

But then they had let her rest at the top of the mountain, unclenched their hands to let her go free. Did keeping the blanket in her bag invalidate all of that? It certainly felt that way, as though she had snatched one of the locks out of the air and stuffed it into her pocket. Where was the point in which refusing to let go went from understandable to pathetic? Maybe she wasn’t quite as brave as she had believed herself to have become.

Rebekah’s body, the other half of her brain argued, was still lying beneath the boughs of one simple tree among many. That hadn’t stopped the funeral from feeling real, from feeling right. What was the difference? The Snuggie wasn’t a part of her. Did it matter where an inanimate, unthinking object travelled? Where it ended up?

It felt as though it did matter. Just not in any way that Beatrice could properly describe.

This was all beginning to give her a headache. She had gone through the emotional wringer already, she didn’t need to add internal philosophical debates on top of that. She forced herself to roll over, screwing her eyes shut.

She still saw the bag in her thoughts, and eventually, her restless dreams.

Sometimes, when she was on the precipice of sleep, it momentarily changed into a mound of bloody snow.

((Beatrice Briggs continued in Permian))