I apologize in advance for the awful Irish slang or accent or whatever, I wasn't sure how to represent her speech patterns.
Moira stops just sort of hitting the girl, skidding across the icy pavement. It doesn't seem to register with the girl that she's narrowly escaped death, instead she wanders back and forth, her thin gray clothes iced to her skin. It's never this cold in this part of Ireland, never.
"Oi, mate! You okay?" The girl stumbles and falls to her hands and knees on the road. "You're from the school way up there?" The girl doesn't seem to hear her and keeps on muttering to herself, something about Mila, and birthday.
There's a blanket in her car, she still keeps it on the backseat, even though her dog died years ago. The girl quiets as Moira takes the waterlogged pack from her shoulders, and wraps the blanket around her. She doesn't resist the seatbelt around her, but her face is blue, and she's shaking all over. Moira turns the heat up as far as it can go.
"Where y' from?" The girl doesn't respond, but glances up to the hills, where the spire of the castle is barely visible. "Name?"
"Caraphernelia." The girl mutters after a long silence. The name hits Moira like a brick. It's the name of a song, the song her brother had listened to so much in the final months of his life.
"Yer steamin', aren't ye." The girl doesn't respond, and Moira realizes that she's fallen asleep. She has the look of someone on death row, the plain gray clothing hanging loose on her thin frame. At a long stoplight, she goes through the girl's knotted bundle of sheets, the clothing knotted up in it terrifyingly familiar, almost exactly the same as the clothes her brother had worn. Tithe clothing.
By the time she gets home the girl has some color back in her face, but is still out. Moira picks her up and carries her inside to the couch and pulls a quilt over her. She doesn't move, and Moira wonders how long she's been running. Not long, her clothes don't look as if she's had to sleep on the ground, but her feet have blistered and soaked through her thin shoes.
In another hour Moira has a pot of stew going, and is cleaning up the tiny room off the kitchen. It used to be a walk in closet, but she has a cot somewhere around, and the girl can stay there temporarily. Her brother had stayed there once, making a room for himself. He's been unwound only a month after she'd moved out, but he'd still left his mark on the house. A pile of letters in a shoebox is in the corner. That was the strangest thing. He hadn't asked her to save him, or never to forget him, like most Unwinds did. Instead he'd given her a shoebox full of letters, and told her that more would be on the way. They were from someone named Mila. More letters had come soon, and now they were piled in other boxes and sometimes bags, stacked against the walls.
She'd only read one of them, a letter not addressed with her brother's name, but with the word Caramia. The phrase rings a bell, it means my beloved, or something to that effect in old Italian, but isn't used commonly. The letter had been short and seemed to be written quickly in indecipherable handwriting. It was rather sad, and she hadn't had the heart to write back and tell them that their beloved had been unwound. It would end in heartbreak either way, for whoever it was.
There's a burning pain behind her eyes, and a sharper pain in her right shoulder blade. Cara tries to sit up but something tightens around her neck, and she panics, throwing off the blanket that someone has tucked around her and falling to the floor. Something large and metal crashes to the floor, and she gasps in pain, the pain in her head spiking. It feel like someone is shoving a steel rod though her head.
"You aright?" A tall woman with dark red hair kneels next to her, the thick glasses on her face reminding her of the headmistress.
"Get away!" The girl flings herself across the room, trying to get as far away from this person as possible. The lady follows her, cornering her in a tiny, dark room. The lack of windows reminds her sharply of the electric shocks she has received less than twenty-four hours before. Her hands are shaking, and she realizes that there's words coming out of her mouth, quiet snd fast.
"Don't shock me, no electricity, no electrics, no. No. Don't unwind me, please, don't unwind me. Don't unwind her either, she killed herself, don't unwind her."
"Ag-you plastered?" Cara shrinks back as the lady steps toward her, but instead of holding electrodes she's holding out a mug of tea. "This'll help."
"What is it?" Cara asks, the hot mug scorching her hand.
"Yeh-old it by the 'andle, so yeh don' get burnt." Cara sets it down on the floor, and cautiously picks ut up by the cool curve of glass coming off the cup. The drink isn't anything like from the Institute, instead of water for hydration, milk for calcium, or some sort of fruit drink as a source of vitamin C, it's dark and steaming, with a little bag floating in it. It looks like dirt. "Yeh' neve' seen a tea 'fore?"
"No. What is it?"
"Yeh drink it." Cara crunches even further into her corner, but she lifts the mug to her lips, and takes a sip. It's hot, and burns on the way down.
"It's good." She relaxes a little, almost against her will. She's still suspicious, but this woman doesn't seem threatening, and the walls here are all painted in warm shades of red and orange, unlike the sterile walls of the institute. Such a simple thing shouldn't be so comforting, but the adrenaline is fading, and the blinding fear is draining away.
"Yeh be one of the ones from the institute?" Cara hesitates before answering, but the woman seems kind. There's something about her that no one in the institute had. Cara can't put her finger on it, but there's something apart from the strange accent that she's never seen.
"Yes."
"So yer' a tithe, like me brother." Cara frowns in confusion, and her gaze lands on an envelope poking out of a box. It's white, like paper from the institute, but someone has taken the time to draw an intricate pattern, like the ones Mila was fascinated by.
"What's a tithe?"
"Yeh' get picked special' a' birth, te' get tangled."
"Tangled….unwound?" Cara makes the connection, a remnant of memory from the few visits to town, and the whispers she's heard floating after them.
They'll be tangled, those ones will.
"Me brother was tithed, two, mebbe three years 'go. He liked the song Caraphernelia. Sat in the coffee shop evry' day, just listnin'. Came home on night with a bee in 'is bonnet, started getting letters from a girl. Shure was strange, neve' been much of a lidies man, an' al' a sudden, here ee's getting all these lovey letters. Addressed to Caramia, my beloved. It's italia'." Cara's eyes drift back to the letter poking out from the box, and she tugs it out.
"Mila." It's her, the god-awful handwriting couldn't be anyone else's. The designs, the beautiful Celtic patterns she had loved so much. Cara opens the envelope, and the woman doesn't try to stop her. "Caramia." She pulls the sliver of wall out of her pocket, and sets it on the paper. The handwriting is an almost exact match.
"The' letters be' comin' regular for two years, mebbe more. Me brother been tangled a month since they begen' comin', so I been saving em. Boxes and boxes." She waves her hand, gesturing to the boxes of letters stacked against the wall. "M'name's Moira, by 'away, but I go by Ira." Cara picks up the next envelope, the comforting letters making it seem as if Mira is still here with her.
"Thank you." She whispers, barely loud enough to be heard. "Thank you."
Please review, especially on the Irish slang stuff-I'm awful at it. Information on Ireland in general would help, actually. Also, my mom found out that I write fanfiction, and now she wants to read it. I AM NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THIS. Sorry for the caps lock, I just had to vent for a moment.