This Is Us Now (The La Stirpe Remix)
Remix of This Is Us Now by Kate Bolin.
She's soaked through and cold, knees to the ground, sinking through the dirt and hitting hidden tree roots. The air smells of burning and death, underscored by the clean-cold scent of falling snow. She's been shivering for hours, shaking as her stomach tries to work its way up her throat and out of her body. Wars end and the television shows people dancing in the streets. The newspapers have big headlines. No one tells you how empty you're going to be. No one has reminded you of how young you are in months, and so now here you are covered in dirt and death and you are...you don't know what you are.
She thinks about all of this and digs her fingers into the dirt and shuts her eyes. Not sure how long she's been able to do this; it happened one random day two years ago in the pumpkin patch outside Hagrid's hut. Filled her hands with rich soil and felt--thousands of years of students and teachers and wars. It was a feeling like a train running through her, and when she finally pulled her hands out of the soil, her heart was racing and her body tingled. She does it now, grasps black dirt and decaying leaves and presses her knuckles into a tree root. Insects are on her arms, in her hair, but it doesn't matter. Her eyes are screwed shut so tight it hurts. Takes a moment and then, a flash. Red light behind her eyelids, then white. Images form, and she can feel, far in the reaches of her brain, what had happened here last century, last year, last month. Today. She squeezes the dirt in her hands harder and begins to shake as it all sharpens and clears. It hurts, but she holds tight, needs it like she needs oxygen. To feel something other than so very, very lost and small. It is only when Ron grabs her and pulls her up and Harry brushes the dirt out of her hands that she begins to cry.