tallyyoungblood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tallyyoungblood) wrote2024-02-03 08:02 am
tallyyoungblood) wrote2024-02-03 08:02 am
Entry tags:
interlude: falling
Tally waits until it’s dark, and most everyone else has gone to bed. The longer she’s been here, the more her day with Zane has felt like a hazy dream. She climbed a transmission tower? Really? And got a letter from herself that she didn’t remember writing? It all seems ridiculous, like a feed drama, but even drinking herself into a stupor most nights hasn’t stopped Tally from noticing that her new mansion-mates are more than just ugly in looks: they have ugly minds.
Despite being old, or responsible, or even almost pretty, they still fight and think like uglies. They never got the operation, and they really are different from every adult Tally’s ever known, besides the Smokies.
Tally’s been trying hard not to think about it, but the more time she spends around people who argue, and speak their mind, and seem to care about things besides conformity, the more she starts to wonder if her letter to herself was right, if Gideon was right. Tally had written that the pretty operation did something to people’s brains, not just their bodies. Maddy had said so, out in the Smoke. It’s hard to focus on, given that her memories of Maddy are so utterly tangled up with Tally’s memories of David, Maddy’s son, the boy she’d almost forgotten about.
The memories hurt. It feels trying to sprint through quicksand to try to access them, let alone focus on them. Shouldn’t she just go back to sleep? The mansion is in some ways even cushier than New Pretty Town. She still has as much food and champagne as she wants, and she doesn’t have to worry about the wardens. It’s been easy to be pretty-minded here. It would be so easy to just get a drink and sit by a fire, even find Tress or Georgia and spend the night chatting until they got too tired.
But, a little voice insists, Tally might have given herself the cure.
It’s come back to her in all her bubbly moments: in the cold at the party with Gideon, sledding down the hill, contemplating cutting her hand off. Her mind has tried to put a pretty veil over the truth of her last day at home, hiding from her until now, but the memory of taking the pill is slowly pressing through the fog in her mind.
Tally slips out of bed, throwing on a hoodie and stretchy pants and the grippiest shoes she can find. Her room in the mansion has a window, and it doesn’t take much work to push the screen out. The winter wind whips in, giving Tally goosebumps, but she knows what she has to do. She grits her teeth and levers herself outside.
Almost like at Valentino, the next window up is just within Tally’s reach, so she braces herself and begins to climb. At first, she’s not too high up, and it doesn’t feel that scary-making. But then Tally looks down, and realizes she’s several meters up, a totally bone-breaking distance. Her heart pounds. The unfamiliar stars in the sky suddenly glitter harshly. She knows her flash tattoo is spinning harder than it has since she’s gotten here.
She climbs higher.
By the time she makes it to the third floor, Tally’s shaking, her freezing hands struggling to grip the windowsills. Her thoughts are running as clear and fast as the river that separated Uglyville from New Pretty Town. She knows with absolute clarity that this is what Zane called bubbliness, the thing he’d been searching for by creating the Crims and doing heart-pounding tricks all the time.
When Tally makes to haul herself onto the roof, she slips a little, the snowy eaves proving frictionless. She falls for one icy moment, then manages to catch herself on a third-floor window, clinging for dear life.
When she looks up, the film has been lifted from the world again.
Tally laughs shakily. “Bubbly-making, huh, Zane?” she whispers to herself. She misses him so much it hurts. She misses David, too, and Shay, and the Smoke. She misses the feeling of her muscles hurting at the end of a long day of making hoverpaths in the wild, and the taste of homemade Smoky stew. The memories aren’t complete, but they’re suddenly obvious, like when she finds a lost outfit abandoned under a pile of other clothes. She stares out at the woods ringing the mansion, their almost-wild, and is stunned suddenly by its beauty. Not an operation-made, committee-designed beauty: real beauty.
When her arms finally start shaking too much to hold her up, she pulls herself into the nearest window, throwing the screen down onto the lawn and making a mental note to pick it up in the morning. She finds her way back to her room, heart still pounding even in the soothing warmth of the hallways. She changes back into her pajamas, but doesn’t close her window, letting the freezing wind keep her bubbly.
It’s undeniable, now. Tally’s taken the cure, or half of it. Zane had taken the other pill, swallowing it moments before Special Circumstances found them. It has to be why she’s been able to find moments of bubbliness. She wishes again for Zane, and wonders if the cure has worked for him, too. Is he keeping himself bubbly back in New Pretty Town?
Tally needs to get serious about bubbliness. She needs to feel the clarity she feels right now, the knife’s edge of adrenaline that only comes with really bubbly-making experiences, all the time.
Maybe Susan can show her how to kill a fish. Maybe the zombies will come back. Or maybe she can try kissing someone new.
She retrieves the bottle of champagne she’s been keeping by her bedside, and pours it out the window. It falls to the ground, then soaks into the snow. Finally, when she looks one last time, it's unrecognizable.
Despite being old, or responsible, or even almost pretty, they still fight and think like uglies. They never got the operation, and they really are different from every adult Tally’s ever known, besides the Smokies.
Tally’s been trying hard not to think about it, but the more time she spends around people who argue, and speak their mind, and seem to care about things besides conformity, the more she starts to wonder if her letter to herself was right, if Gideon was right. Tally had written that the pretty operation did something to people’s brains, not just their bodies. Maddy had said so, out in the Smoke. It’s hard to focus on, given that her memories of Maddy are so utterly tangled up with Tally’s memories of David, Maddy’s son, the boy she’d almost forgotten about.
The memories hurt. It feels trying to sprint through quicksand to try to access them, let alone focus on them. Shouldn’t she just go back to sleep? The mansion is in some ways even cushier than New Pretty Town. She still has as much food and champagne as she wants, and she doesn’t have to worry about the wardens. It’s been easy to be pretty-minded here. It would be so easy to just get a drink and sit by a fire, even find Tress or Georgia and spend the night chatting until they got too tired.
But, a little voice insists, Tally might have given herself the cure.
It’s come back to her in all her bubbly moments: in the cold at the party with Gideon, sledding down the hill, contemplating cutting her hand off. Her mind has tried to put a pretty veil over the truth of her last day at home, hiding from her until now, but the memory of taking the pill is slowly pressing through the fog in her mind.
Tally slips out of bed, throwing on a hoodie and stretchy pants and the grippiest shoes she can find. Her room in the mansion has a window, and it doesn’t take much work to push the screen out. The winter wind whips in, giving Tally goosebumps, but she knows what she has to do. She grits her teeth and levers herself outside.
Almost like at Valentino, the next window up is just within Tally’s reach, so she braces herself and begins to climb. At first, she’s not too high up, and it doesn’t feel that scary-making. But then Tally looks down, and realizes she’s several meters up, a totally bone-breaking distance. Her heart pounds. The unfamiliar stars in the sky suddenly glitter harshly. She knows her flash tattoo is spinning harder than it has since she’s gotten here.
She climbs higher.
By the time she makes it to the third floor, Tally’s shaking, her freezing hands struggling to grip the windowsills. Her thoughts are running as clear and fast as the river that separated Uglyville from New Pretty Town. She knows with absolute clarity that this is what Zane called bubbliness, the thing he’d been searching for by creating the Crims and doing heart-pounding tricks all the time.
When Tally makes to haul herself onto the roof, she slips a little, the snowy eaves proving frictionless. She falls for one icy moment, then manages to catch herself on a third-floor window, clinging for dear life.
When she looks up, the film has been lifted from the world again.
Tally laughs shakily. “Bubbly-making, huh, Zane?” she whispers to herself. She misses him so much it hurts. She misses David, too, and Shay, and the Smoke. She misses the feeling of her muscles hurting at the end of a long day of making hoverpaths in the wild, and the taste of homemade Smoky stew. The memories aren’t complete, but they’re suddenly obvious, like when she finds a lost outfit abandoned under a pile of other clothes. She stares out at the woods ringing the mansion, their almost-wild, and is stunned suddenly by its beauty. Not an operation-made, committee-designed beauty: real beauty.
When her arms finally start shaking too much to hold her up, she pulls herself into the nearest window, throwing the screen down onto the lawn and making a mental note to pick it up in the morning. She finds her way back to her room, heart still pounding even in the soothing warmth of the hallways. She changes back into her pajamas, but doesn’t close her window, letting the freezing wind keep her bubbly.
It’s undeniable, now. Tally’s taken the cure, or half of it. Zane had taken the other pill, swallowing it moments before Special Circumstances found them. It has to be why she’s been able to find moments of bubbliness. She wishes again for Zane, and wonders if the cure has worked for him, too. Is he keeping himself bubbly back in New Pretty Town?
Tally needs to get serious about bubbliness. She needs to feel the clarity she feels right now, the knife’s edge of adrenaline that only comes with really bubbly-making experiences, all the time.
Maybe Susan can show her how to kill a fish. Maybe the zombies will come back. Or maybe she can try kissing someone new.
She retrieves the bottle of champagne she’s been keeping by her bedside, and pours it out the window. It falls to the ground, then soaks into the snow. Finally, when she looks one last time, it's unrecognizable.