#feminaferitas t4

[ashesrebirthed-a]

Only one week left.

Rutgers couldn't be that different, right? Sure, it meant packing up and moving her whole life, but only an hour or so away. She had a single room lined up, thank god, so there would be no adjusting to a stranger's idiosyncrasies, no break needed to be had in her own routines. The work surely couldn't be any harder than high school, either - especially with no team left to captain, no more applications to constantly have to put every single best foot she had forward for.

Still... no matter how much Jackie had longed to get away from this house, this town... it still felt wrong, seeing half her room packed away into boxes like this.

Half her life, at that. Nearly everyone she'd known had up and left already. If they hadn't, they'd fallen away without high school to keep them all glued together, to keep Jackie rotating in the center of Wiskayok's orbit. Familiarity was slipping away through her fingers alongside the sands of time, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

But there was always one person left that she wouldn't lose. One figure that nothing - not moving, not college, not even death itself - could ever take away from her.

"Shauna!" Jackie called out from where she laid splayed across her bed, one of the last things left that was preserved as it always had been. She didn't bother to sit up or yell too loud; if Shauna was lingering, she'd hear her. "You there?" // @feminaferitas + plotted starter!

[ashesrebirthed-a]

Jackie, meanwhile, had no clue just how special a touch from Shauna's hand made her. She simply basked in the weight of it, the comforting familiarity it brought - safer than even her own mother's touch had ever felt, despite coming from a being that should, by all rational lines of thought, completely terrify her.

But Shauna wasn't scary. Not really. Not to her.

To want something and fear it at the same time... Did it make sense? Was there more out there than just Rutgers that it could explain? Swallowing heavily, Jackie did her best to push away sudden thoughts of lips softer and gentler than Jeff's, of her own body still and cold. She clung desperately to Shauna's next words instead: You don't have to have all the reasons figured out.

So figure it out she wouldn't. Not tonight. "Yeah, of course it is," Jackie said, tugging insistently on Shauna's hand in an effort to get her to sit down beside her. "Right. Rutgers is boring, anyway - I know something totally better we can do." Smile growing conspiratorial, Jackie nearly bounced on the bed as she turned to face Shauna fully. "I know you've seen, like, unspeakable shit I can never imagine and whatever, but... have you ever gotten a makeover?"

Jackie did ask, yes, but Shauna was hesitant to provide any specific details. For one thing, she only ever saw the aftermath and whatever the dead were willing to tell her. Often it was begging and pleading for things she couldn't provide. Other times it was fear and terror, for death and the unknown. But there were others, like the old man, who were more at peace with everything. Jackie had come close to dying when she was younger, but something about her told the psychopomp that she had life yet to live.

She tried to give the girl a reassuring look as she saw the downturn of her eyes. Change was never easy -- to a mortal life, a moment like this could feel massive, a rock thrown into a calm pond sending surging waves to the shore. But to Shauna, time was as deep and as wide as all the water beneath the surface. Change was constant, and the scope of it was so small it could be hard to notice at all. But she wasn't unsympathetic to the feelings of the living -- in fact, seeing this moment stirred within her some urge to help, even if she could not.

"It does seem like a lot," she echoed. Shauna reached out and grabbed one of Jackie's hands, gently running a thumb over it. It wasn't that this emissary of death was a ghost, but she only really existed on a different plane, one that most mortals didn't reach until finality. But Jackie crossed that boundary long ago and created a touchstone, a lightning rod to a moment of mortality. "I think it makes sense, to want something and fear it at the same time. You don't have to have all the reasons figured out."

Still holding her friend's hand, Shauna gestured back to the boxes. "I might not be able to help with any of this but... I just happened to be in the area when you called," she said, her tone a little light and teasing. "I can't stay forever, but I can stay for a little bit. Is that alright? We don't have to talk about Rutgers if you don't want."

[ashesrebirthed-a]

"Oh." Jackie frowned a little, patent pout downturning glossy, bubblegum pink lips in a manner that would've nearly looked innocent, were it not for the flare of dark intrigue lingering beneath. She couldn't help but wonder what it would be like: final moments coming in so quick and violent, so young, Shauna's face being the last thing they ever saw. Technically it had happened to her already, but they hadn't actually been her last - clearly - and she was so young back then, she only half-remembered it at all.

Still, an ending with Shauna there couldn't be so bad. Could it?

Nevertheless, the motion was only followed by a shrug. "I mean, it's fine. I'm the one who asked, right?" Jackie pointed out, but let it go, moving on when Shauna did.

"I... don't know. Kinda? It's cool and all, I guess, but it's also... a lot of change all at once," Jackie admitted quietly, gaze dropping to her lap. There was no one else she could tell that to, not really. She always had to play the part of her parents' perfect little princess, especially her mother's. No one at school would have ever asked either, not even Jeff, and she wasn't about to be the one to bring it up first.

"I still want it. I mean - I want out of here, but..." Shaking her head slightly, Jackie finally looked back up. With a smile slowly returning, she professed, "I don't know. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. I'm just - I just know I'm really glad you're here, Shauna." And wasn't that at the heart of why she'd called out for her in the first place?

To be met with recognition and a smile wasn't something she experienced every day. Even those who thought they knew what Shauna was -- the grim reaper, death, occasionally a guardian angel -- never quite got it right. But she was whatever they needed her to be in that moment while she did her work. But there was no work to be done here with Jackie, and yet she could just be herself, in this strange sort of existence that usually eluded the mortal mind.

"Moving to Rutgers," she echoed. These words had some significance, she remembered Jackie mentioning them at some point in time. But Shauna's time moved differently -- was it already the start of a new school year for the girl? "Right... I guess I didn't know that was so soon. That's... a lot of boxes."

Was it? Shauna saw lives that could be reduced to yard sales and those that just seemed to spill over in excess, across houses and generations of material wealth. None of which could be taken with them when they passed. She didn't know if Jackie's belongings were few by comparison -- perhaps it was just a matter of perspective from the mortal's own experiences.

"I have... but usually they've had a car accident, or they were drunk... or didn't want to keep on living. But you... you don't need to hear about that," she said, moving closer as Jackie sat up. "Is this... are you excited?"

[ashesrebirthed-a]

Head turning towards the sound of her own name, Jackie's face split into the the most genuine grin she'd shown in weeks when she saw that Shauna was watching her. "Hi," she greeted her sudden companion, twisting to face Shauna until she was on her side with one arm propped under her head.

For a moment, Shauna's confusion echoed over Jackie's features too, before realization set back in. Right. Sometimes she forgot that despite how normal Shauna looked, she technically wasn't actually a real teenage girl. She never did any of this. Never would either, Jackie supposed, though with how many souls she must have picked up over the years it was still a surprise that anything at all was a mystery to her.

"Dorm packing. I'm moving to Rutgers in like, a week, and that means overhauling pretty much everything here," Jackie answered, sitting up fully as she did. Head tilting and eyes roving up and down Shauna's distinctly young form, she couldn't help but pry further. "Never picked up a high school grad before? Even though you look like that? It's not exactly uncommon these days, you know."

Shauna had never really formed much of a bond with mortals. It wasn't because she didn't love them, in fact she hoped what waited beyond was as kind as it could be to their souls. But her job was one of transition, a temporary stay as what remained of their lives became prepared for eternity, the afterlife. And most that met her were rightfully afraid, confused, forlorn -- and fewer still, angry. She didn't blame them, but took it all in stride. Her work wasn't particularly mercy, but simply inevitable.

Except in the case of one girl, whose brush with death had been that -- just a brush. Nothing final, not yet. Still, Jackie Taylor didn't seem to fear death. Nor did she fear Shauna, who was not death, but the closest thing she had ever known to it. The reaper had known others who longed for death and courted it closer, and some were left changed by their actions -- others, left to her care, as she prepared the soul to leave the body. But Jackie had something different about her...

Shauna had been near. An elderly man just a mile away had departed peacefully, telling the girl stories of his wife who had gone on before him as she slipped the knife between the flesh of what was and the essence of what always would be. He was excited, even, to see her and dance as they once did when they were newlyweds. While Shauna couldn't promise him what lied beyond, she wished him well on the journey. And while other lives came to their ends across the world, she found herself called instead to visit this girl... this one who was becoming like a friend, if that was possible.

"Jackie," Shauna answered, appearing in the corner of her eye, in the guise of a young girl about Jackie's age. Standing in a room filled with boxes. Usually, boxes like this contained the life of someone departed. Gentle confusion creased the entity's features as she saw the other girl's name across several. "What's all of this?"