Sun Kissed Innsmouth 101
"Felecia didn’t bother to respond; she already took into account what the outcome of further discussion would be. Jacqueline would quickly get tired of repeating her point and wave away dismissively, most likely following that gesture with yet another reminder that she didn’t need Felecia around and underfoot. Jacqueline had that same nasty streak that Nana had, but she didn’t have the follow through. Likely as not the old ruin would be pleading with her later, begging her as she dressed and gathered her gear for the trek. Unlike Nana, Jacqueline actually gave a shit what happened to Felecia, in the present yes of course, but also in the long run.
Jacqueline reminded her frequently that there had to be something beside the need for revenge, past the want to make right what couldn’t possibly be made right. Even if Felecia took it mostly for cowardice, she recognized that even if it meant hiding in the woods and being a lonely witch of the swamps, life, any life was preferable to swinging from the tree in the village. Any life had was better than a life taken away.
Felecia had already since recognized that stubborn independence was how Jacqueline rated her place in the world. Call it cowardice or just shrewd thinking, desperation or the choice to live outside the normal world, Jacqueline made her choice long ago and there was no shifting or changing the way her great aunt thought about the world, or herself.
That thing out in the water though, that malignant terror that used its bulk to cause awe like Felecia’s father had used his size to win an argument. The terrible sea anomaly that snuck into Felecia’s dreams and terrorized Jacqueline day and night into a state of unstable fervor, that was just a creature. Some massive squid or octopus, some terrible apex predator come to dwell inexplicably in the Narragansett Bay, it was alive, which means it had to feed and breath, which means it could die.
There was time wasted packing things carefully, no list of provisions made physically or mentally, no list of items to collect for the trip. Felecia didn’t want the confrontation of being met at the door by Jacqueline in the dead of night, those milky blue eyes pleading for her to think it through, to stay the course, to accept being a prisoner, an outcast, or both. Felecia learned patience with her mouth swollen and her lip sewn up, she learned patience laid out on that chair and ottoman in Phillip’s hovel so many months before.
Nelly wasn’t going anywhere, not unless the thing out in the bay decided to come for it then and there, and Jacqueline wasn’t going anywhere either until it was time to gather wild mushrooms once again. Once a week for a month or so, once spring got warm and then again once late summer started getting wet again, Jacqueline would don her odd mask and fill a few waterskins to make a trek to the west through the swamp into the grasslands and the drier woods south. The best mushrooms, the ones needed for all manor of food and well, magic, only grew farther afield. Some the old witch had managed to grow in captivity but not most of them. Jacqueline would be gone for an afternoon, a whole day, sometimes from dawn until well after dusk.
Still, Felecia had played her hand too fast and far too direct, a few days later when gathering time came Felecia had to volunteer to go with, the poor hen’s fate be damned. She half expected to find the entrance to the cave defaced when they returned. The old repurposed wardrobe doors smashed in, the obscene carvings above thankfully smashed as well or at least defaced. None doing.
A week and some change later and the old witch was weary but anxious to get her gathering underway. Felecia had never lied to Jacqueline before, not directly beyond the obvious obfuscation that most people tended to do around one another in close proximity or for the sake of impression. “You past the idea of going back to the big house for old mementos?”
Felecia had just collected two fresh eggs from Nelly, who had turned out to be a very friendly and prodigious hen given the right food and care, and she laid those eggs out next to the flour, tubers, fresh herbs and dried mushrooms that were to be the days breakfast as she nodded. “You were right, anything left there, no matter how buried, its all surely spoiled, or repurposed by now.”
As Felecia finished cooking their meal and sat the plates down Jacqueline waxed the quills on her curious mask and continued. “The only thing my sister loved more than her traps was her sabotages. Even if she never found what was left for you the little spiders she always hired would have by now. I come back with this haul and if some of the spade mushrooms stick, I can show you the recipe for speed it up like I did the recipe for rest it all. You make the right mix of those two and you can do what I did when I first showed you the mushie beds here. A few more years and you might know all of it, maybe.”
Felecia knew that would happen, pretty sure no matter what. She found her nod easy and her promise even easier. “I want old Nelly safe but if you know she isn’t then we should just take her back before our next trip to the meadow.”