#Bridger-Teton National Forest | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

quaranmine · 8 months

Text

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter Eight)

July, fireworks, and some insight into someone we don’t actually know much about.

Chapter Eight: 5,436

<< Chapter Seven | Masterpost | Chapter Nine >>

HEY Y'ALL! Those of you who follow me on tumblr have been kept pretty well apprised of this chapter's progress, but it's good to be back. I've struggled with this chapter a lot, not out of any fault of its own, just because real life decided to beat me over the head in July and August.

Anyway, this chapter has a few content warnings. CW for past injury, car accident, death, and as always…grief. Nothing graphic but it beat me over the head while I was writing it oof.

Finally, as a disclaimer—there is information in this chapter about wildfire survival. I’m not an expert, and some of these topics are quite literally life or death in real life. I’m an entry level environmental scientist whose only professional experience is in topics entirely unrelated to this. While I have done my research on this fic and done my best to always present accurate information, I am not a reliable source. This is a Hermitcraft AU fanfiction. Please do not take or substitute anything I say in place of information from actual professionals, lol.

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

»»———-　　———-««

July 1989

It’s July, and there’s a complete burn ban put in place for Shoshone and the other national parks and national forests that surround it. If you ask Scar, it should have been put into place two weeks ago. The scattered storms and rain in May and early June has done nothing for the landscape now, which is dry and still full of theoretical tinder from years of fire-suppression activities.

It’s July, and it’s sweltering outside. The main radio chatter during the daily weather conditions report says the temperatures have been record-breaking in the region. This is unsurprising to Grian—his cabin feels like less of a lookout and more of a greenhouse these days, with the inescapable sun taking great advantage of all the windows. He’s not really cut out for the heat of the summer. It makes the days feel listless and blend together, but at least it cools off in the evenings.

The fire season starts to ramp up in other ways too. There’s a fire reported in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, located immediately to their southwest, and officials seem concerned it will grow quickly with the hot, dry temperatures and wind. Elsewhere around the country the picture seems just as bleak: fires in the 1989 season have already burned hundreds of thousands more acres than the same time period in 1988.

Apparently, the Two Forks lookout had gone unstaffed for several years prior, before the Yellowstone fires last year caused the agency to consider hiring more staff. The fires last year also, coincidentally, increased the budget for this year’s activities.This seems to have been a prudent decision, because the season is shaping up to have a spark indeed. They’re keen to use Grian as much as possible.

Grian can’t see the smoke column from the Bridger-Teton fire on the horizon; it’s too far away. Instead he starts to notice that his visibility on the horizon is worse now, as the haze in the sky slowly grows. Distant mountains that were once brown and green are now wispy tones of flat yellow and gray. The Trout Fire still burns steadily in the distance. It’s a stubborn nuisance to the Forest personnel, but not a big enough fire yet to garner any worry. There’s more than enough worry to be passed elsewhere.

All of this would be enough on its own, but another contender has just stepped into the ring: Independence Day.

The 4th of July is on a Tuesday this year, which means Grian and Scar get the wonderful privilege of working overtime all weekend watching the mountains, and holiday pay for the day itself. In all likelihood, people will be just as likely to celebrate on Saturday or Sunday or Monday as on Tuesday. Mary, a lookout in a more northern section of the Forest, has already called in to report a few incidents in her sector. The extra pay is welcomed; the responsibility for idiots is not.

Fireworks are strictly banned, of course. The acknowledgement of that, however, requires campers to actually care in the first place. They do not.

And so the month begins.

»»———-　　———-««

Fire is, both philosophically and literally, one of the most important things humanity has ever been able to harness. It can be the difference between life and death, and yet it is both life and death. Fire fosters warmth and light and power and life. Fire caresses life and leaves behind destruction.

Shoshone National Forest exists as part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the largest mostly-intact temperate-zone ecosystems in the world. It’s part of a great chain of protected lands and wilderness spaces in the northern Rocky mountains. Shoshone is the second piece of that puzzle—just as Yellowstone National Park was the first national park to be established, the neighboring Shoshone National Forest was the first ever national forest to be designated in the United States.

It is also, like the other lands in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, fire-dependent. Plants and animals living in such ecosystems are often adapted to their local fire regime, which is the expected pattern, frequency, and intensity of the fires in their area.

Lodgepole pines dominate the middle elevations of the Shoshone National Forest, and are the poster child of a fire-dependent species. These trees produce cones that are sealed with a tight resin that relies on fire to melt it. Fire is, therefore, essential to the reproduction of the species. But fire is also essential to their life cycle in another way: just as fire is necessary for the baby trees to sprout, lodgepole pines are very easily killed by fire.

And if the fires kill the weaker Engelmann spruce found in Shoshone’s higher elevations, that’s okay too—it just leaves room for the much more tolerant whitebark pine trees to grow without being outcompeted. Fire similarly benefits wildlife in Shoshone by diversifying the forest understory, encouraging growth of new plants, and providing dead tree snags for shelter.

It kills, but it also supports life.

The history of Shoshone National Forest and fire has its bleak moments. In 1937, a lightning strike started the Blackwater Fire in the Absaroka Range, a range of mountains located predominantly in the national forest. Dry weather and high winds turned the fire into one of the deadliest wildland firefighting stories in American history, with 15 firefighters killed and 38 injured.

Labor laws are written in blood. Safety rules and best management practices are, too. Although no fault was assigned for the tragedy—a rigorous investigation deemed the situation was out of anybody’s control—the Blackwater Fire would ultimately change the landscape of wildland firefighting. It is remembered in the Ten Standard Firefighting Orders, a set of systematic guidelines developed by the US Forest Service afterward to reduce danger for firefighters.

These orders are still in use today.

So what is a lookout’s role in a wildfire, other than keeping watch for it? Historically fire lookouts were used as firefighters themselves—expected to hop on a horse and head straight to a fire after seeing it, tools in hard—but in modern times lookouts are primarily used for providing updates. A lookout’s job is not complete once a fire is spotted and reported. They are expected to provide constant updates on its size and location, as well as assist firefighters and smokejumpers from their position. This work is very important—so important that sometimes fire lookouts don’t evacuate the scene until a helicopter is required for their rescue.

And what if you’re a hiker? What if you’re on the ground? The prospects aren't good: hikers should just avoid being caught around a wildfire at all costs. Survival odds are, unfortunately, low.

But what if you can't avoid it?

Try to determine which way the wind is blowing and remain upwind of the fire. Fires also burn fastest uphill, so seek lower ground. Fires will burn cooler and slower downhill. Try to find a safe spot from the fire, something that would burn less easily such as a rock slide, a large meadow, or a lake. Crown fires burn tall and hot in the tops of trees, so even a meadow will be safer than a forest. Cover your nose and mouth with clothing to protect your airways. Huddle close to any large object that can buffer the ambient heat. Lay face down. Don’t attempt to outrun the fire.

Sometimes, setting your own fire is an option. Burning out an area large enough for you to lie in can allow the wildfire to move around the already burned spot—but this attempt is best saved for a grassland. Forests take too long to burn. And if the fire is close, and if you can see a safe, already burned spot through it, and if the flames are less than five feet tall, the best option might be to just run through the fire.

Jumping in water is an option, but that might not save you. Superheated air, smoke inhalation, and lack of oxygen in the area is a primary concern. Fires move faster than most people can imagine. Fires can create their own wind, their own weather.

Fire, above all, should always be respected.

»»———-　　———-««

“Draw something for me,” Scar says suddenly into the still blue air of the dusk. “And, dude, turn your light on already.”

“Huh?” Grian says. He frankly doesn’t mind sitting in the dark while there’s still a little light left in the sky to adjust to, but his hand reaches automatically for the lantern’s switch before he even really processes Scar’s words. With a soft click the cabin is bathed in warm tones. Really, the reflections on the windows only obscure their visibility now that it’s mostly dark, but it’s undeniably more cozy now.

“Ah, it’s good to see your little light in the way over yonder,” Scar says. “You’re like my little firefly in the mountains!”

Grian rolls his eyes at that. “What did you mean by ‘draw for me’?” he asks, blocking any spontaneous attempts at poetry Scar can make.

“I mean, I’m bored. And I know you’re bored. It’s been a long day.” He hums a little to himself. “Figured you might wanna do something to pass the time.”

Scar’s right, it has been a long day. It’s the 4th of July, and they’re in it for the long haul. Grian thinks they should have just been allowed to sleep and clock in later in the day—who sets off fireworks at 8 AM?—but the fire season doesn’t rest and neither do they. Now, it’s evening, and this is where the real monitoring begins: after dark.

Unfortunately, it’s also when the morale to keep sitting at the desk is starting to dip precipitously. Firewatching after dark is difficult and typically something they aren’t required to do. As a lookout, he primarily looks for smoke, not fire. Fires themselves are often too small or too tucked away for their light to be seen, and at night the smoke blends into the dark sky. But fireworks, fortunately, tend to announce themselves gaudily.

Mostly, it’s the sheer personal resolve to pay attention that takes the greatest hit. Scar’s idea isn’t a bad one, there’s just one significant snag:

“I don’t draw,” Grian reminds him gently.

“But you used to,” Scar persists.

“I drew houses,” Grian corrects, even though he knows that his drafting is far from the only thing he’s practiced over the years. “For work. It’s not the same.”

“Well, then draw your lookout,” Scar says and then seems to almost cut off his own thought with a—”Ooh, maybe draw mine instead!”

“I can’t do that.” It’s a black and white statement of fact, but Scar doesn’t agree.

“C’mon,” he says. “You definitely brought your materials with you, I know it.”

“You don’t have any way of knowing that.”

“You have to have a pencil and a notebook, right? How do you take your notes for the morning reports?” Scar says this in the sort of way where he knows he’s right. He says it playfully, like it’s a silly mistake right under Grian’s nose.

“Okay, fine,” Grian says, trying to imbue an eye-roll into his words. “I get it.”

He’s not really sure why he picks up the yellow legal pad from the corner of the table, or the pencil in the cup. He tears the top sheet off where he had, in fact, scribbled some notes earlier about temperature and wind speed.

The thing is, Scar can’t even see him. He could lie to Scar and say sure, of course, I’ll do it, and Scar would be none the wiser, miles away on the horizon.

He picks up the pencil. The notebook stares back, blank except for the faint lines.

He does try to draw his lookout first, from memory. He thinks of it the way he always does in memory—a snapshot, perfectly clear image his mind took one day. In his mind's eye, the lookout starts to rise over the horizon in the late afternoon sun while he hikes up the hill towards it. He doesn’t have a ruler in the tower, so he carefully uses the spine of one of the old paperbacks as a straight edge to run his pencil against.

It just…doesn’t look right. First of all, angles are off. He’s messed up the two point perspective somehow and he doesn’t have his usual drafting materials with him anymore. But it’s more than that. The lookout, despite being bathed in golden light in his visual memory, just doesn’t feel inviting. It’s just intimidating. A place where, despite its natural beauty, Grian just sees his worst days play out over and over again.

He crumbles the paper again and tosses it to the side. He grabs the radio again.

“Scar, you paint don’t you?” Grian says. “You’re an artist.”

“Well, I guess if you say so,” says Scar slyly, “one could refer to me as a bit of an artist.”

“Why?”

The bluntness throws Scar. “Huh?”

“Why do you do it?”

“Why am I an artist?”

“Yeah. What made you start?”

Scar is quiet for a long time. Not too long to be worrying, but enough to seem…contemplative. He finally replies, “You know, I always liked it. In school I’d always get recruited to help with posters and stuff ‘cause I was one of the better ones at art, which maybe said more about them than me because I wasn’t an artist then. I didn’t practice. I didn’t know anything.”

There’s another pause, but not as long. Grian doesn’t interrupt.

“It wasn’t really until after my accident that I started pursuing it more. It was somethin’ to do! And one of the nurses told me it might be meditative. Help me out a little.”

“Did it?” Grian asks softly.

“I think so,” Scar says, and then with a little bit of a chuckle he adds: “But I don’t think I have to tell you though that sometimes a drawing frustrates you so much you want to throw it across the room! It isn’t all meditation. But I think that’s the point.”

Grian flushes a little. Scar’s comment is truer than he knows; the crumpled evidence of his most recent drawing attempt still sits on the floor by his chair. He reaches for the pencil again, and looks at the page once more. Maybe he will try to draw Scar’s lookout. He won’t tell that to Scar, of course, because he’ll be insufferable about it, but maybe he’ll try.

Grian doesn’t really know exactly what Scar’s lookout looks like. It’s far away, and he’s looked at it in the binoculars a few times, but the details are always fuzzy and hard to make out; each shake of his hand jolts the image at that level of magnification. And it’s far too dark for him to look again, so—so he improvises. Scar’s cabin is not on a tower like Grian’s is. It's situated on a large piece of rock at the top of a mountain. It doesn’t need to be on a tower, because there’s nothing around it tall enough to block the view, unlike the trees next to his tower. He fills in the details as he remembers, and creates new ones in the place of things he forgot.

The soft scratch-scratch of the pencil is lost to the noise of the radio again. “I broke my arm pretty badly at the time—needed surgery on that—but it wasn’t my dominant hand so I still painted. I like doing landscapes, mostly,” Scar says. “Pretty things. I grew up in nature. My dad and I went camping a lot. I missed it. I…wanted to do that again. Didn’t know if I would do that again.”

“I would love to see one of your paintings,” Grian says.

“I don’t really think they’re worth getting excited for,” Scar says, doing a bit of regrettably predictable artist’s humility. “But I’ll mail you one, if you want. Oh! Maybe you’ll even get a little surprise. Jellie likes to help me sign a few pieces, whether I want her to or not…”

The idea of a painting signed with a paw print is so utterly charming to Grian that he almost suggests that Scar should do it with all his paintings as some sort of signature flair. Then it occurs to him that it might be hard to wash a cat’s paws, and starts to ask Scar about what he does—in his cabin in the middle of nowhere with no running water—when a sparkle catches the corner of his eye.

Grian whips his head around just in time to see the sparks die. “Ugh,” he radios. “I just saw a firework. Super far away though.”

“Well, I was surprised neither of us had seen anything yet. Go ahead and mark the general direction of it even if it’s out of your district. Hopefully if there’s a fire someone else closer will catch it, but you could always check on it in the morning.”

Grian wanders over to the firefinder in the center of the room. Conveniently reminding him of which direction it was, several more fireworks go off in quick succession—golden, blue, red. It’s too dark to take a real reading, so he just points the sight in the general vicinity of the celebrations and takes its azimuth. He’ll spend extra time tomorrow examining this direction.

As he takes the measurements, a thought drifts into his mind. It’s something about the convergence of this specific job, a job nobody’s ever heard about in a Forest overlooked because of its more popular neighbors, and the wistful quality of Scar’s voice when he spoke about the subjects of his paintings. He found this job advertised in a newspaper. How did Scar find it? Who trained him to do this?

He sits back at the desk, and starts to sketch in the mountains around Scar’s lookout. This, he remembers well. He knows the familiar fold of the hills and peaks like the back of his hand, even after a little more than two months on the job.

The question circles his mind.

“Scar,” he says finally. “You know why I came here. To this job. To this National Forest. I’ve…made that really clear, whether I wanted to or not. But I don’t think you’ve ever said why you came.”

“Oh,” Scar says. His voice is quiet. “I guess I haven’t.”

Grian lays the radio down on the table, giving Scar space to speak. There’s something about the way Scar acknowledged him that sounds like he’s been exposed. One thing Grian has come to learn about him is that he’s a smoothtalker, and an excellent actor. Scar has dramatic flair in spades, and if he really wanted to, he’d spin a captivating tale for Grian about the totally-true events leading up to his place in this forest. It’d be as truthful as his name.

He doesn’t, though.

“People come out here for a lot of reasons, but not every person can stick with it. It’s lonely, for sure. And, of course,” he chuckles, “the bugs are pretty bad. I’ll tell you right now, I’ve seen more than a few volunteers and new lookouts suddenly get afraid of the dark when it’s just them and no one else for miles,” Scar says. “But the people who stay tend to fall into two categories.”

“What are they?”

“People who are running from something and people who are looking for something.”

There’s no need to question which category Grian is in. Not when he’s already laid his whole soul open for Scar to pick through and deeply intertwined himself in this mystery.

There’s only this: “Which one are you?”

“It’s hard to say,” Scar replies. “But I think I was running away.”

And Grian wants to say from what? but he doesn’t. And he wants to be sitting in Scar’s lookout right now, or anywhere but here, but he isn’t.

He sets the pencil down, temporarily abandoning the drawing he’s been scratching this whole time. He looks straight ahead through the window, but the glare from the lamp on the glass just reflects his own face right back at him. In the shadow where his head is, he can pick out the faint outlines of the hills beyond.

“You can’t run from yourself though,” Scar says. “‘Cause it just follows you. And being alone with yourself just makes you face it faster. I think my mom was right. She was worried about me. That’s why she made me take Jellie to keep me company.”

“I think I need to meet this Jellie,” Grian says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Scar doesn’t typically sound so serious, and it’s a little jarring. “She sounds pretty fantastic.”

“She is, she’s—hey, what about meeting me?”

“Nah, I think I prefer the cat,” he says. Cheeky.

“Well, I can’t say I don’t agree,” Scar says. He sighs. “I guess I should just talk about it, right? You can ask me whatever you want. ‘Cause the more I ramble, the less I talk about it, and the less I actually answer your question. Which is the fun of rambling! If you say enough words people forget about what you’re distracting them from. Oh, but I don’t know why I’m telling you that. A true salesman never gives up any secrets. I’m only a salesman in the winter, though. What am I selling now? I guess I’m selling myself. Wait—no, not like that, don’t you dare be laughing over there, G-man!”

Grian says nothing, and he isn’t laughing. He just lets Scar’s words fill the space. He doesn’t ask anything else. It feels hypocritical to do so. He’s dying to know everything, of course, but he also knows what it’s like—that looming weight on your neck from the pressure of well-meaning friends who just want to talk when all you want to do is be alone. If Scar has come all the way out here, then he must really have wanted to be alone.

Scar seems to rattle himself out of it on his own. “I’m stalling again,” he says, voice like lead. “I’ll just start. It’s okay. It’s been 10 years. I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Grian says. “I was just curious. You know all this about me but I didn’t know anything about you. But if it’s a…thing then you don’t have to.”

“No, no,” he says. “It’s fine. I already told you a lot of the story. I just left out some pieces.”

“It’s a slow night,” Grian says. “Only a few fireworks. Plenty of time to talk, if you want…or plenty of time to just watch.”

“I appreciate that,” Scar replies. He takes a deep breath. It’s a funny thing, that. Grian can’t see Scar’s face—he has no idea about anything, even what color hair he has—but he knows the sound of Scar’s breathing.

“I told you about my accident,” Scar begins. “I told you about how it nearly killed me, about the hospital, about taking up painting. And I told you about the way I’m still in pain, even years later. I don’t think it’s ever going to fully go away. But that wasn’t really the whole truth, or the worst part. The worst part was that I wasn’t the only one in the accident.

“I should have been, though. I was the one driving. I was just running an errand, but I was living with my parents at the time so I asked my dad to come with me to help me pick something out. I don’t even remember what it was. And I don’t remember the accident, either. I only know what they told me. I read the accident report. But there’s a wall of glass between me and what happened. Apparently, we hit some black ice in the road and it spun the car into the other lane. We got hit by a truck. It happened so fast. He didn’t know what was coming either.”

Scar pauses there. Grian tries to take in the story. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That sounds terrifying.”

Scar’s voice breaks on the next line. “The doctor told me my dad was dead when the paramedics arrived. They think he probably died instantly. I don’t remember that, though. I don’t remember anything. I just—I just woke up a week later in the ICU. That’s what I remember. Everything was just so fuzzy and hurt so bad. I could tell something was up but I was too tired. I slept. They waited three days and made my mom break the news.”

“Oh, Scar,” Grian says. “I’m so sorry.” But everyone is sorry. They’re always sorry. It doesn’t do anything. So instead he adds, “You must have been so scared. It must have been confusing.”

“It was ten years ago. I’m fine,” Scar repeats, and Grian doesn’t comment on the way it sounds like a lie. Maybe it isn’t a lie on most days of the week, but it certainly is tonight. Scar continues to talk. “I don’t know why that’s what messes me up the most. That I caused it and I don’t remember it. That it’s my fault but I didn’t know for so long.”

“It’s not your fault,” Grian says gently. “It was an accident. That’s what accidents are, they’re not on purpose. So it can’t be your fault.”

“And you’re right, G-man,” Scar says. His voice wavers. “I already know that. It isn’t my fault. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I didn’t know about the ice. I know it’s not my fault but…it’s really hard to believe that, isn’t it?”

Grian swallows against a lump in his throat, and flicks his eyes down to the table. It’s the hardest thing in the world, just below staying alive.

“I just think about everything I could have done differently. Why didn’t I just go alone? Why didn’t I wait until the next day? What if I was driving slower? Would the difference of one mile per hour, or five, or ten have been the difference between life and death? What if I had reacted faster, or better? What if I saved the car from spinning? If I had left just one minute earlier, or five seconds earlier, there might not have been traffic in the oncoming lane. If I had left three hours earlier, maybe the temperature would have still been high enough to keep the ice from refreezing.”

He stops to take a breath. “It doesn’t ever stop. And it doesn’t bring anyone back. The worst is thinking about the things you did and the things you didn’t. Like maybe I would have told him I loved him that morning if I’d known that was the last day I’d see him. Or maybe I wouldn’t have stolen $20 from him and then lied about it when I was 8 years old. Or maybe I would have asked him again to tell me about his funniest story from when he was a teenager. But that’s just how it is, I think. It all comes back to you.”

“How do you deal with it?” Grian whispers.

“Badly,” Scar says, and for once he doesn’t sound like he’s on the brink of tears. “You go forward. And then backward. And then forward again. You live through it.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“You’re already doing it.”

“I’m not doing it very good.”

“That’s the only way you can do it.”

There hasn’t been any more fireworks since they started talking. The night outside is dark, with only the slightest sliver of a new moon. Millions of tiny stars glitter in the sky in nearly uninterrupted view. It’s a beautiful night out there, hot and still, but Grian stays in the four walls of his cabin. Enclosed.

Scar speaks. “One of my steps was coming back here. I think, in the end, it was a step forward. This place gives me comfort. I always liked this part of the state. My dad used to take me camping out here all the time, like once a summer. Sometimes we went to Yellowstone National Park. Sometimes we went to Grand Teton National Park. Sometimes we went to Bridger-Teton National Forest. And sometimes we went here. It’s the quietest here.”

“It sounds like you were close with your dad,” Grian says. “It sounds like fun.”

“It was,” Scar says. “My dad was cremated. It was a while before I was out of the hospital, and it was a while before traveling somewhere wasn’t an ordeal. We saved some of his ashes for closer to home, but we made a special trip out here and scattered a little in each spot.”

“That sounds nice…” Grian trails off. “Like he’s still here, somewhere. In a place he loved. In a place with you.”

“I think I fell a little in love with this place then, in a way I didn’t when I was just a child. Or maybe I was just antsy. I wasn’t doing very good, I guess I can tell you that. There was too much guilt and familiarity at home. I wanted out. I wanted to be anywhere else but there. It took me two years after the accident to make it but I came here.”

“So,” Grian says. “Running from something. I see it.”

“Yeah,” Scar says with a huff of air. “Not that great at running these days though! I mean, I’m barely a hiker anymore without being wiped out for a few days! My mom thought this job was a terrible idea. She thought the last thing I needed was to be alone. I guess you know what that’s like.”

“I didn’t even tell my friends or my mum I was taking this job,” Grian admits. “They’d freak out. The reaction from people I knew back in Colorado was bad enough. So I just sent ‘em a letter the first week I was here. A ranger told me I had mail at the main office but I don’t want to check it.”

“They’ll give it to you at the end of the season if you don’t come pick it up,” Scar says. “You can read it then, after you’ve already done it.”

“Was it what you needed?” Grian asks abruptly. “Being alone.”

“I needed it. I think—sometimes everything in your head makes you want to avoid people. You feel like you need the silence of an empty room to just let it all fall out and fix itself. It helps. But only for a little while, because it never really fixes itself. After a while it just eats you up.”

And Grian wants to say, I think it’s eating me. And he wants to say, I think I am not alone enough, I still need more space, I still need more time. And he wants to say, Everything will be fine, I just need to find him. And he wants to say, I don’t think I would have lasted this summer without you.

“I didn’t have anyone to talk to my first summer as a lookout,” Scar admits. “But you have me. And I think—Grian, I know you think you’re alone, but you aren’t. And I know you think nobody understands, but I do. I’m trying to.”

“Oh,” he says. Oh.

There’s tears suddenly welling up in his eyes, and Grian rapidly tries to blink them away. He sees it in the incessant chatter that had annoyed him on the first week. He sees it in their radio channel, the one just for them to talk on, the secondary channel that ensures the main frequency is always open for real emergencies. Scar’s been cultivating the perfect landing spot for Grian to fall into, before he even knew Grian needed it.

“It’s not actually two different things, is it?” Grian finally responds. “Running away from something, and looking for something.”

And Scar says, “I don’t think it is, in the end.”

<< Chapter Seven | Masterpost | Chapter Nine >>

#hermitcraft #grian #goodtimeswithscar #hermitcraft fanfic #hermitcraft fanfiction #hermitcraft au #hc_firewatch_au #quara fanfic

30 notes · View notes