Fenrir Cerebellion

I love a river.

No research notes for this chapter :3
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Sometimes The Mountain Buries You is a queer novella about the things that threaten your attempt at a much-needed quiet life. Check out the about page here.

The river is mostly rocks most of the year—with the surge of snowmelt it is wide and deep and fast and cold. It's a tempting type of dangerous when bottomless melancholy is pervasive. You spend some hours in the quiet of where the raging waters veer nearest town—the backs of nearest cabins visible through the treeline—sitting on the round eroded sort of river rocks, before breaking the news to the cabin you live in—in the town that you picked for its quiet—that its occupancy will be three more frequently.

Murre takes the news in stride. They put a bowl of roasted chickpeas in front of you and start transferring the rest into a jar. "Concerns?" You've gotten pretty good at extrapolating the intent of Murre's shorter statements and questions. 'Do you have any concerns about the situation that I can accommodate?'

You look at the kitchen ceiling, the floor of your bedroom. "Keeping private the private time with Sheppard." It's not the smallest least insulated cabin you've been in but it's small and less insulated enough that most conversations are conversations for the whole cabin.

The majority of this chapter is in a 18+ repost, due to nsfw content. If you've come across the incomplete chapter, here's a link to the full chapter.

This chapter contains my favourite sentence c: Well, this chapter contains several very fun sentences, one of them is my favourite. —I've a lot of feelings about what it is and means to write smut as someone who doesn't have and isn't interested in sex, one day I might formulate them well enough into something that makes sense enough for people to read. In the meantime, what it is, is fun.
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Sometimes The Mountain Buries You is a queer novella about the things that threaten your attempt at a much-needed quiet life. Check out the about page here.

Sheppard looks not grim like you need to head back, standing at the service road, but grim as the bearer of not the worst news. He kisses you with hands on your sides that are only reassuring to you because you know him. "The mountain's getting busy." You pull your arms together holding hands and head towards his cabin.

"Is that usually how spring goes?"

He hums. "It's not tied to the seasons like that, but busy on and off is pretty the norm."

It's a long walk, he has the time to explain there's more activity from both the things he gets scratched up by and It. You have the time to tell him about the days since you saw him last, about Murre and the librarian doing more workshops, about a ranch hand flirting with you at the gas station general store. Between sentences, he slips in observations of the turn of spring, pointing them out as you walk. And silence, there's time for the silence that is why you live here.

In his cabin, you heave your backpack onto the tallest three-legged stool. You assure him there's time later to talk about the logistics of meeting only in town. The grin on his face lets you know he's skimming your intentions.

This chapter features my favourite paragraph. Genuinely curious if you can guess which—or just tell me which is yours.

EDIT: put the nsfw first four paragraphs in an 18+ repost.
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Sometimes The Mountain Buries You is a queer novella about the things that threaten your attempt at a much-needed quiet life. Check out the about page here.

You're on your way back to town when you meet what Sheppard saw after you brought that person to his cabin.

It's so tall and so hunched over that you're sure from the side it must look like a crescent moon. It has such long talons they could be mistaken for spindly tree branches. You second guess whether or not you could have maybe seen it when Sheppard had, blending into the trees but quite visible. You are pretty sure it's impossible for Sheppard to eat this thing alive.

You ever have a water tank that's controlled by two switches on a wall, one to fill the tank up and one to heat up the tank, and the switches can't be on at the same time? You ever go to take a shower after waiting for the tank to heat up and forget to switch the switches so when the hot water starts running out, the water starts running out? That. (also, no research notes for this chapter)
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Sometimes The Mountain Buries You is a queer novella about the things that threaten your attempt at a much-needed quiet life. Check out the about page here.

It's the next time you hike to Sheppard that Murre comes with, so you don't get to have a long conversation about It and being in the woods with Murre and what, if anything, to tell Murre. He gives you an 'ok' sign as you walk up the transition from packed dirt road to service road.

You know this from when you said you have an answer, but Murre has the same sort of familiarity with traversing the woods as you and Sheppard do. They step even lighter now, with their backpack empty of their entire life but their medkit, to fill with berries. They're younger than you and the juxtaposition with the woods makes you think of houses on fire. Sheppard doesn't say anything and avoids your gaze, retreating from a passive unintentional intrusion on trauma. If it were just the two of you, you might consider telling him. It's been a long time since you've had the chance to tell someone, regardless of whether or not you wanted to.