cache_coeur | INBOX

It’s quiet in the hotel room. It’s their second, actually; it’s a much smaller building this time, boutique they call it, and it feels a little bit more like a home than last time. In some aspects, anyway. The art on the wall and eclectic combinations of furniture styles seem special. The empty drawers and uniform linens not so much. It’s a strange combination. Who wants a place that pretends to be home?

It’s just after dinner time. Though Sciel couldn’t imagine putting anything in her stomach, she wasn’t about to send Maelle home to Gustave with an empty stomach, either, so she’d picked up three plastic tins of noodles and beef and broccoli. One for her, one for Maelle, and one for Lune, whenever she gets back from her stroll. (This has not happened yet, so the remaining container sits on the coffee table, getting cold.) It had been a quiet meal, other than a half-hearted laugh about the cutlery situation; chopsticks make for eating a slow but novel experience. They finish somehow. Sciel finds herself glancing down the couch to Maelle multiple times, wondering what’s going on in her head, but she decides to let that breathe for a little before she probes.

Truthfully, she needs a minute to put her own thoughts in order. They keep pressing on the soft parts inside of her that fear they’ll never be in order again.

Why did she go?

But she knows she’s tired. It’s been a long day. It has been for a lot of people.

She looks sidelong at Maelle, smiling gently.

“I’m going to lay down for a bit,” Sciel says. “Maybe meditate a little. Would you like to join me?”

Maelle is quiet. The joy of having Lune finally with them is there, somewhere, but it's buried beneath the silence of unread messages. Verso is Verso, and he tends to disappear when one's back is turned, but she feels like this is something different. More. Then again, it could just be her nerves. The same nerves that always insist Gustave will be nowhere to be found if she lets him out of her sight for any significant amount of time.

It's been so hard to be anything but his little shadow, but now she finds herself worried about how easily he'll pick up on her displeasure. She can't tell him she's upset because Verso has been quiet. That she cares enough to be upset about such a thing. It will make him uncomfortable, she's sure, and she doesn't want any more of that.

Sciel is just as perceptive, though.

She's slow to respond, a slight frown on her lips as she considers. There's no way she doesn't just get sleepy.

"How is that different from a nap?"

Sciel rises from the couch, stretching her arms up over her head as she goes, testing if any of this malaise is soreness from all the concrete. It isn’t. Damn. Oh well. She drops her arms again, looking down at Maelle with some distant, faraway amusement.

“Well, you don’t go to sleep, to start,” she says. “Come on! We don’t have to tell Lune I let you on in your street clothes.”

Lune will probably figure it out, anyway. Maelle gets to her feet, arms loose, and crosses over to the bed to sit down heavily.

She has to resist the urge to check for a missed message. For the hundredth time.

Maelle sighs and flops onto her back.

"Like this?"

Sciel follows, crawling into bed and finding a place for herself on her back. The mattress is much softer than she’d like, and the pillows so plush they just collapse under weight instead of cradling her, but the comparisons to camping on dirt and rock haven’t fallen out of vogue just yet.

“However’s comfortable for your body, Maelle,” she says, patiently. “And if we’re not comfortable somewhere, we’ll figure out why.”

Legs dangling off the bed, this position is... fine. It could be better. With another sigh, she rolls and squirms, eventually ending up on the bed proper, on her belly. She rests her head on her folded arms.

"Then?"

Sciel turns her head to look at Maelle briefly, at the squish of her cheek against her own forearm, her gameness even if Sciel suspects she will roll her eyes before long.

“We’re going to go through all our body parts one by one, and see if how they are feeling. No need for solutions –– just getting to know ourselves as we are right now. Sound good?”

"Are you serious?" Maelle asks, and there Sciel goes again, distracting her from the heaviness in her chest. At least for a moment, as her eyebrows pop up. "All our body parts? Head to toe?"

She idly kicks her feet behind her. Don't worry, Sciel, she only has her socks on. No shoes on the bed.

“Yes, I’m serious!” she replies, a bit of a laugh on her breath, and she closes her eyes. “Toe to head, it’s easier.”

Her body comes into focus as she exhales slowly. There is tension in her hips, her silly short socks are digging into the back of her ankle, and head hurts. Probably more, too, but this is the point.

“Close your eyes or let them unfocus. Think about your feet, then your ankles, then your calves… what you notice, what you feel.”

Maelle breathes out, red hair around her face ruffling with the rush of air.

"A very tall man stepped on my foot at the convention and my toe still feels tender," Maelle announces. "Oh. Was that supposed to be kept to ourselves?"

She knows. She just thinks this is silly.

Absolutely nothing about Maelle’s response surprises Sciel, who opens her eyes and turns her head just enough to look at the girl with a faint smile.

“I hope he apologized.”

And then back to the ceiling with a long, comfortable exhale.

“Travel up your legs, and notice everything in them… your muscles, deep to the bone, outward to the skin…”

"He didn't."

Another sigh, slower and quieter, before Maelle buries her face into the fold of her arms. Her eyes are open, but it's dark enough to only focus on Sciel's voice.

Her legs feel like her legs. Like they always have. She can feel the very slight shape of her last wrapped Jolly Rancher kept in her front pocket (red, because that's the best flavor whether it be cherry or strawberry or watermelon), and she thinks she should get another bag tomorrow.

Maybe Verso will pop up by then.

“Up your knees and thighs… notice how your clothing sits against your skin, any physical feeling at all, without feeling the need to change anything...”

She can feel her heartbeat slowing down, and the gentle spreading sensation of relaxing into the mattress. Her thighs are a little sore, actually. She’d been tense at lunch for too long, on a hard seat.

“Breathe in and out slowly.”

Knees and thighs? Maelle is ready for hips and lower back. Too fast. She breathes in slowly, exhales slowly. The little pocket where her face is becomes too hot and she turns her head, looking over to Sciel with a frown.

Is this really what she does in her free time? Is this why she's so... relaxed? Must be nice if this works for her, but Maelle wants to roll off the bed and onto the floor.

Even with her eyes closed, Sciel can feel Maelle’s impatience like a miasma. The tension in the other body in the bed creates a hard divot in the mattress that spreads over to her, and she could ignore it, but she chooses not to.

Sciel’s chest rises and falls, evenly.

“I’m glad you’re trying, you know,” she murmurs. “Up into the hips… just think about your body, and leave the mind for later.”

"Think about my body using my mind and ignore my mind? Oh, sure," she says, not really understanding, but she'll take the credit for making the attempt. She closes her eyes. Hips. Yep, they're there. She can feel the waistband of her jeans.

The hip bone's connected to the... lower back bone? Belly? Maelle tries to guess what Sciel will say next.

“Midsection, next,” Sciel says.

She can always feel that one when she listens for it, the subtle tug of the scar roped across her belly, the way it doesn’t stretch quite as much as the rest of her. She never likes it but she doesn’t have to.

“You can let go of tension just by breathing, you know.”

Deep inhale. Deep exhale. It does kind of feel good, but she can still feel that weight, threatening to crush her lungs.

"If it were that easy, wouldn't everyone be free of tension?"

She opens her eyes just a crack, looking at the wild tangle of Maelle’s ponytail.

“So this feels easy to you, then?” Sciel asks, a little cheeky. “It takes time to learn how to sit with discomfort.”

And it’s still not easy then, either. Even with caution, she feels the past few weeks weighing on her, and it’s becoming difficult to keep up with.

"I hear that happens in older people."

Not old, but older! And perhaps she's being purposely obtuse, sighing again and squeezing her eyes shut against the urge to yawn. This is not easy. This is torture. She's uncomfortable and tired and worried and the quiet just makes her feel more wound up.

Her eyes open a little bit more, with that sigh. Maelle being stressed and tense is common, but the energy radiating off her is different. The potential upcoming conversation with Gustave, maybe?

“Is there something you’d rather talk about, instead of doing this,” she asks.

Does she want to talk? Maelle opens her eyes, looking over to Sciel once more. She feels too exposed, and so she rolls onto her back, hands clasped over her stomach.

"I don't know. Maybe? It's probably nothing," she mutters. Again, the urge to check her messages feels like an itch she needs to scratch. She's sure the moment she confesses what's bothering her right now, Verso will send her a stupid text.

“Doesn’t sound like nothing,” she says, shifting up a little and propping herself against the pillows. “What happened?”

Maelle has to tip her head back a little to glance at Sciel, and does so before returning her gaze to the ceiling with a shrug.

"Nothing, really. Verso's just been quiet." A different sort of quiet, and it feels off. But a lot of things have felt off, lately. "Like I said, it's... you know, probably nothing."

“I’ve been having trouble getting in touch, too,” she says, looking down at the top of Maelle’s head. “I thought we’d all have a talk about that tonight, too, when Gustave comes to pick you up.”

For Maelle

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