#thread: jude1

[jollytalkerollywalker]

Laughter bubbled from Olly’s lips as he stared down at his phone, cheeks sore from the cheesy grin that seemed to have permanently taken residence on his face. His eyes shone with glee as he pinched the screen, zooming in on the photo that Teddy had just sent him. It was an adorable selfie of his friend – were they friends? Was that really a suitable word to describe what they had? He wasn’t sure Teddy was ready to put a label on things, so he supposed it would do quite well for now! – stretched out on his sofa, his arm braced behind his head, the gorgeously plump ginger tomcat that he’d adopted plonked firmly on his tummy. It also hadn’t gone unnoticed to Olly that his positioning was also causing his shirt to ride up in the aforementioned selfie, giving him a glimpse of Teddy’s rather delicious midriff. His cheeks burned with the blush the blood that was rushing to them, his tummy suddenly doing somersaults. 

Remembering where he was – currently leaning against the rough bark of a tree, halfway along a hiking trail that he’d dragged Jude on at the crack of dawn – Olly's head jolted up, the bright smile on his face managing the near-impossible task of stretching even wider the minute his gaze landed on his best friend. Just a short distance away, Jude found himself firmly seated against what Olly imagined was the driest patch of grass he could find, leaves scattered around him, a veritable autumnal rainbow littered across the bank. Jude had insisted on the two of them taking a break, and Olly had delighted in the prospect of getting to soak in the sunrise with his best guy. Coming to a halt at the edge of a lake, he’d watched happily as June had planted his bottom down onto the grassy bank and kicked his shoes off, dipping his toes into the water below. That’s when Teddy’s text has come through, explaining that the stray cat he’d come to adopt had been pawing at his door at some ungodly hour, begging to be let in. 

Shoving the device back into his pocket after shooting off a few Heart Eye Emojis and insisting that they were both the most handsome boys in the world, Olly bounded towards his friend, dropping down into the grass next to him with absolutely no tact or sense of self care. With an ungraceful oof sound, he followed Jude’s lead and removed his hiking boots, placing them next to him before sinking his feet into the tepid water. They’d been lucky to avoid a frosty morning, the last remnants of summer clinging on for dear life. 

Content, he reached out and let his hand drop absently against Jude’s thigh, palm up and fingers wiggling cutely as they awaited the other man’s own. Dipping his head, he pressed his cheek to Jude’s shoulder and released another, softer giggle. 

“Don’t you think this is kind of romantic?” Olly teased, biting his lip as he stared out across the water, taking in the sights. 

It was all in jest, obviously. Olly had been harboring a crush on Jude for as long as he’d known he and Marianne, but it had never truly amounted to anything. Their friendship was a little unconventional, and they certainly got a lot of stares here and there, but Jude had always been comfortable in his own sexuality and hadn’t ever had any qualms about welcoming Olly’s affection, despite how open he’d been about being attracted to him. In fact, Jude seemed to embrace the fact, and that only made Olly adore him all the more for it. He was more than content to be loved unconditionally by Jude, even if it was only in the platonic sense. Besides; Now he had Teddy to daydream about. 

“Maybe we don’t tell Laney about this,” he joked, shifting slightly to look at the other man. His nose brushed Jude’s jaw and Olly allowed himself the freedom to press a kiss to his cheek in the process. “Or Teddy – I definitely don’t want him getting the wrong idea about us!” 

[nikaxrootless]

who: jude + nika ( @saintlcss ) where: the ranch

While there were many things that the settlement had done over the year to become rather self-sufficient, there were still aspects of sustainability that relied heavily on things outside of the settlement. A major provider of milk for example, came from the ranch. While they were able to host a few chickens, the settlement had neither the facilities nor the hands to maintain anything more intensive. Which was fine for Nika so long as Jude was the ranch hand. Everything in Arcadia was either rationed or bartered for, so when the rations weren't enough, the settlement typically bartered and traded for more.

And there were a lot of things that the settlement could afford to barter, especially when it came to people like Jude. Nika relished spending time around Jude on the rare occasion she visited the ranch herself. She loved things that were a little bit broken, they were easier to use, and the Tree liked that. Jude was broken but put back together in an... interesting way. She had shadows pouring out of the cracks of her aura that wrapped themselves around her like tendrils. Being around her was like inhaling the scent of a lily of the valley: floral, musky, deadly. Everyone was a part of the pattern of the tree, and everyone had the potential to alter its course. Even those that, on good intel, spent more time worrying about catching up the bottom of a bottle than the politics of town relations.

As of late, she had rarely left the settlement ground to go anywhere near the town, but the vision she had had while under the influence of the substance last night had pulled her to the ranch, and so here she was, ready to barter some pretty strong homemade spirits, or perhaps drugs in exchange for something to honor the upcoming winter solstice. Specifically, she needed a male animal to bloodlet. She'd return him alive of course, should he survive.

"I am always amazed to see the growth of this ranch every time I visit," she started as she found Jude, "amazing what one woman can do when provided with the opportunity. In that regards, we are more alike than one might think."

[nikaxrootless]

"Nothing goes to waste," she answered easily, vague by design. Nika wasn't one to make promises whose ability to be kept relied on specific circumstances, but she could guarantee that, alive or dead, the creature would serve its full purpose. Blood drained. Flesh consumed. Skin preserved. Bones boiled to a broth and then ground into powder for the earth. An accelerated cycle of life to be sure, but one that allowed life to thrive after it. Humans were never so lucky as to serve purpose after death, only able to decay slowly in the ground, unable to sustain the rest of the herd with anything but the grief of absence and the looming ever present threat of death.

"Do you?" she questioned, an eyebrow raising as if to say and what could you possibly know? Nika kept her eyes on Jude, levelled, unbetraying of whatever she might think of the other woman. "Maybe you should come see how much you actually know. Participation really the only price, steep as it may be for someone that hates being... bothered."

"But okay," Nika agreed, more than a fair deal in her eyes. "I'll get whoever comes down to bring you liquor as well. Would you prefer a man or woman?" Her eyes drifted down to Jude's attire and then back up. She tutted and then said, "Never mind, I'll have Amelia come give you a hand."

“Christ.” A staggered breath between gritted teeth. It was not shock but pity, perhaps, for the dear animal. “You’ll eat him, at least?” The final act of love: devour or let go. Starved creatures that ate each other. It’s what her herd would want for Jude, she thought. Every night, the animals survived that which hunted her. To be sacrificed was to be freed from torment. From the static. Her labour was for their life, she cared for them like no other—knew not to ask for the secrets they kept. Some punishments could only ever serve the cruelty of man. 

This was life now. Meagre sustenance was traded—animals were given to sacrifice. The night was fed. The tree sainted. 

Jude exhaled sharply through her nose, something challenging twisting into her lips. She had an offer to consider, a leader to sate. No respect for authority, it had always been her problem. Almost a smirk, then. It did not matter if she was driven by boredom or coldness, they often sounded the same. “Not a fan of my woodwork all of a sudden?” She gestured with arms littered with scars, thick with veins. The ranch was rustic but functional—a groaning patchwork. It had kept away all that it needed to. The occupant herself only known to be impossible. 

“One worker. I have enough people bothering me.” Jude settled out loud. It was bluntness or a humour that unnerved that she mostly spoke in. The two were not always distinguishable from one another but both maintained distance well. Even if, on an occasion as rare as this one, she was struck with a slight curiosity. An itch to pick apart, to know what was hidden in the dark recesses of another’s mind, the secrets kept in the deep of the forest. “And the liquor. I know what kind of parties you got going on over there.” 

Jude did not baulk under Nika’s gaze, though she figured it to be more knowing than most. A good leader would know the power of information.

[nikaxrootless]

Liza Minnelli. It was a name that pulled at the back of Nika's brain, familiar and yet entirely strange all at the same time. Things from the before were like that now, like runes in a cave, graffiti painted over on walls, tattoos faded in the harsh sun. They were there, and you could trace the outline, but time had erased their meanings and their power to evoke any memories. For Nika, there was only the tree. In 20 years she had been more than privy to the violence and cruelness of this town, so attempting to think of a world beyond the one she had molded with her bloodied hands, raw yet forgiving, was incomprehensible to her.

She observed the rancher, the micro expressions, the way their hands rolled their sleeves up. Jude was capable, strong, it was a shame her personality was as calloused as her hands. Nika had to appreciate the respect for both of their times in the woman's forward advance into the conversation.

"A male calf," she said as though she was asking for a sack of grain, or a bunch of carrots. "Preferably one that hasn't been reared. There's a chance it might not live so I won't pretend otherwise." Nika kept her eyes on Jude as she spoke, hands laced together at her front. "In exchange, I can offer two strong bodies for farm work, discreet, hard workers, good with their hands."

She looked around at their surrounding, the harsh ground, the freshly patched holes in farm buildings, carved from the precarious balance of one person keeping an entire town afloat with their bare hands. "One used to be a carpenter, if nothing else."

And then she brought her eyes back to Jude as she finished her offer. "If not I have tubers, grains... liquor that doesn't taste like over fermented potato juice."

With winter—or at least an echo of it—starting to set in, the rancher had already changed her approach. The earth under her feet, hard and unforgiving now, knew death even more than in the rest of its days. Jude plundered it like a corpse. With the light now fleeting, only meagre fragments of life could still hope to be pillaged. So small, so very fragile. It was a murderous season. She stabbed at the ground with a garden fork and scattered the looser dirt continuously like a ritual, always searching for the smallest signs of life in the mud. Something that could endure. Even here, in Arcadia, Jude had found the edge, an outskirt—a patch of unhospitable land to be all alone with.

Of course, still, Jude would not be blessed with endless solitude. An afterlife of the virtuous and subsequently rewarded was not one where she could be found. Covenants persisted. “What can I say, I’m the Liza Minnelli of ranching.” Jude muttered flippantly over her shoulder, grip tighter on the fork. She did not consider herself talented or blessed with opportunity. Like the folk she had grown up around, she was practical and nothing more. When others faltered, they did what needed to be done. Their work was not one of grace or philosophy—certainly without a grand plan in sight. Ghosts that sustained. She continued her work in silence and did not entertain any ideas of their similarities. Jude had never believed in anything. No Gods, no spirits, no impending salvation. The dogma of the settlement did not hold her interest. The tree had not provided but snatched what she had not been valiant enough to hold. 

The settlement leader lingered, Jude rested the fork against the barn. There, she clawed at the neck of her vest in search of relief from her efforts—just a little air. Nothing. A stagnant and suffocating limbo. She pushed up the sleeves of her open shirt as she studied Nika. Considered how often the leader had been at the ranch herself, regardless of the amount of trade there had been. She couldn't recall many times. Enough, certainly. 

“As much of an honour I’m sure this visit is, what exactly do you want?”