Oscar
In the early morning of February, Francis Lloyd Estep was found dead, with his ribcage broken open like the carcass of a crashed ship. Immediately after the grim discovery, Marianne Wilburn had retired to her family home and completely immured herself inside.

Those were the dry facts. People made the connections. It was hard to keep the feelings like those Marianne had for Francis in something as small as Briar Ridge, especially when they burned this bright. People talked, and people gossiped, and people nodded solemnly and muttered their condolences under their breaths. No one seemed in a hurry to console her personally though. Ruth could understand that. She also utterly hated the stillness of the general population of Briar Ridge, the bitterest taste of death and void everyone seemed already accustomed to. She hated that she was one of them. Frogs on God's hottest plate.

When her husband died, Ruth did not remember welcoming people, nor did she remember wanting to be welcoming. She wanted to throw up, and bleed out, and cut herself out of her body like a lump of cancerous cells. All she wanted was to stop hurting, and all the things that didn't numb her pain felt like a mocking. Every person who asked about her was a senseless moron, each one who didn't was selfish and numb. She held a grudge against God. She was most malicious when she was at her most hurt.

Marianne should be as well. Ruth did not know what she would do if she found her and she wasn't.

*Not* Finding her was completely out of the question.

It seemed that no one if this damned town actually knew Marianne; not even the man she gave her drumming, bleeding heart to. And certainly, no one alive. Marianne was famous for her gardening and her baking; her features cast from marble and feather, her heart beating with fervor so delicate, so deep only the poets from the ink-filled pages could recognize it properly. Of course, no creature could hold her. Of course, the one that tried fell cold.

Ruth never baked anything. But she knew how to make bread.

Soft and balmy, with a well-baked crust, she liked the bread too much to deny herself the pleasure. Freshly baked bread well deserved the effort. Sometimes, in the middle of the forest, unkind to her worn-out feet, her heaving lungs, her fear-trained brain, she could pull out a piece of bread from her knapsack and feel right at home. 

Ruth knew how to make bread. She even had a little starter in the clay jar on the mezzanine. In was completely alive, that thing, with its thousand mouths, porous and breathing. She wanted to give it a name, but Jack was always the one who came up with those. Ruth tried, but she couldn't make the one that *Fit*.

She wanted Marianne to make bread.

It was impossible to believe someone could not like bread. If it wouldn't cheer Marianne up, - which it most likely wouldn't, - it would at least keep her fed. 

Ruth took a little piece of the starter and wrapped it in a cloth. She poured some of the oil she had into a cup. The flour she had looked too gray and lumpy, so she bought a bag from the store. She washed herself well and took a nice, clean shirt out of the wardrobe. It wasn't every day that she was a guest at the manor. Even if unwanted, so be it.

She would give Marianne a creature. She would give her something that lives. She would say: "See: you can do that too".

Nervously sweaty and a little too well-scrubbed, she approached the door of the beautiful old house. If Marianne wouldn't answer the knocking, Ruth'd scream. If this wouldn't work, she would break down the door. She could fix the door if she needed to, but she could never forgive herself for possibly giving up walking away from Marianne Wilburn's lifeless body.

Ruth brought her fist to the wooden door with deep crevasses, like wrinkles from old age, and knocked. Waiting. With her stupid oil in a cup.

||
Jennifer
Grief had taken Marianne Wilburn in its desperate, violent claws, and with them, it had torn her apart. It tasted like the very earth in which he was buried, salt and copper and dust in her throat, and it had nestled itself around her throat like the very briars for which this town was named, scratching and constricting until it seemed, most days, as though the very act of drawing breath was too much to bear. 
For why did she still wake each morning burdened with the need to expel air from her lungs, to have her heart continue to beat, when his had come to rest? It was his chest that had been cracked to pieces, so why did hers bear the pain? 

It was a question she would never know the answer to.

She had hung sheets over the mirrors. Taken down the cross that was nailed above the entrance door. Traded in her bright skirts for midnight mourning-dress that did not fit as it had a decade ago, but that could be made for her anew with the letting-out of waists and lowering of hems. The windows had been flung open to disturb the dust, and then, when the frames and floors were cleaned of the past, locked shut once more. The staircases had been swept, as had the hearth.

Marianne did not cry - for what would be the use in a cry that there was nobody left to hear? The house would lie quiet as a tomb for as long as she saw fit.

That was until there came a knock at the front door. 

She had not asked for visitors, believing that if she had, still none would come. What friends she had were few, not the kind she would expect to come bearing condolences and flowers (she would have enough flowers, when the spring truly came, when the beds blossomed beneath her hand despite it all). She had been prepared to return to her solitude of years gone by, and had come to peace with the fact that what progress she had made was not to remain with her. She was not unused to loss. 

She had merely hoped she might never have to feel it so sharply again so young. 

Still, the knock came, and she, in stockinged-feet and tumbledown hair, ran from the attic to the kitchen to answer to it. The door was pulled open, and though she had had no expectations as to who might be standing before her, Ruth Hansen's face still came as a surprise. 
"Ms Hansen. Why, it's a pleasure. Might I be able to do something for you? Please... Please come in. Excuse the place, I- I wasn't envisioning a visitor any time soon."

The fire wasn't even lit. The house was dark, and cold, and quiet. Entirely inhospitable conditions coming from a woman such as Marianne, who had once taken such pride in being a beacon, a welcome haven in the midst of the woods for anyone who might find themselves upon her doorstep. She was quite unprepared for company, having been on her own since the night of Fran's passing, and as she felt Ruth's eyes upon her she became painfully aware of the state she might have appeared, with her curls uncombed and a loose thread trailing from her skirt. She had not looked upon her reflection since covering the glass, for fear of not recognising what gazed back at her there. 

"Make yourself comfortable... Good Lord, you'll have to forgive me. Let me light the fire at once."
Oscar
Ruth let out a breath she well knew she was holding. *Alive.* Marianne was alive.

She wasn't in her best state, that much was obvious. It seemed that what little blood she had before now completely left her body. Her beautiful eyes looked dangerously huge on her delicate face. She was also barefoot, the lower parts of her stockings stained with dust. And yet, her aristocratic clothing taste still shined through. Marianne did not realize how well she was holding up.

Ruth's mouth twitched, suppressing a smile she knew would be completely unacceptable at this moment. For a long, long moment between her knock and the hurried tattle of Marianne's feet down the stairs, Ruth almost managed to convince herself that she... That something bad could...

No, she should not have thought that. There was no need to provoke God with such scary thoughts.

"Please, no need to worry," She called out to Marianne, who seemed to be engulfed in panic, the reasons of which Ruth, knowing the woman very little, could not presume, "I came to keep you company for a little while." She explained, wanting to somehow give Marianne a sign that she could be kicked out any time her soul so desires, without accidentally offending her, "I know losing someone close could be... Lonely".

It sounded obvious, but wasn't that what condolences were? Saying obvious things to each other until one of you could finally take a breath with their chest full. *"It's not your fault". "He was loved". "Everyone dies someday".*

At the moment, with Marianne so startled by her appearance, it was complicated to explain how bread integrated into the whole situation, so Ruth decided to put it off for now. She followed Marianne to the fireplace and took a stance at a respectful distance, not sure what to do with her eyes or her hands. Marianne was so well-mannered in the smallest details, it was impossible for Ruth not want to be on her best behavior. Offering to help with the fire, unfortunately, could be humiliating to the owner of the estate.

"You don't have to... Tell me anything." Ruth said, very carefully choosing her words. Insisting herself upon the woman who was already weak and so obliging was the last thing she wanted, "You don't have to trust me with your feelings. We can talk about the weather too. I heard the springtime is good for planting tulips." 

||
Jennifer
*No need to worry.* Lord above, Ruth Hansen was a diamond in her own right, but for Marianne, there was always cause for worry of some kind, for panic. Her nerves were nothing but tattered ribbons - echoes of the same fragility that had landed her in that awful place they'd called a hospital, so long ago now and yet still so fresh in her mind. Marianne Wilburn had been an unwell woman, and perhaps it were the fear of that unwellness returning to a degree that would be noticeable to others that brought her to this, to attempting to mask what feelings were buried in shallow graves below the surface of her psyche. She would not go back there. She would not let even a kind heart like Ruth's see what really lay in the troubled dirt. 
She struck the match and held it to the tinder, waiting until the flame caught and began to lick along the firewood. It would burn well given time. It was good wood, not rotting from the inside. 
Could a woman become kindling, fated for naught but to give warmth and comfort to anyone who might pass her by? Or would she find herself hell-bent on burning to ash in her determination to give and give until the light went out? 

She was aiming for a simple smile, to go along with words intended to reassure sweet Ruth that she was fine, that she were neither worried nor lonely, simply taking things at her own pace.
Instead, what bubbled forth was a laugh, and a laugh not half so genuine as she'd have liked it to be. It sounded somewhere between forced and bordering hysterical, even to her own ears, as she spoke.

"Worried? Why, I'm not worried. Why would I worry, hmm? What have I to worry about, after all?"
She had not said a word to a living soul since his funeral, and she feared it showed. "No, ma'am. Nothing to worry for. Nothing to fear. I ain't feeling nothing untoward, I- I... Tea! Let me make us some tea, and then... Yes. The weather... The tulips. I ought to see if the store has any bulbs, though I fear I've left it far too late to secure some..."

As she went on, a small voice in the back of her mind telling her to *Hold your tongue, Mari* Which she was powerless to heed, she rose from the hearth-rug and flitted to the kitchen, where she filled the tea-kettle with water and set it on to boil. 
She could see her own hands shaking. She only hoped Ruth wasn't perceptive enough to see it too. 

||
Oscar
The words came out of Marianne's chest dragging and heavy. Her voice was raspy, unused. Her laughter pierced the dusty air.

Ruth understood. She understood the cadence: the disoriented tone the voice gets when you have not spoken for a very long time. As if your tongue forgot its purpose, forgot how to move naturally, whipped off its instincts. As if the way your voice came out into the world was no longer under your control. 

It was so easy to slip, to stay silent for days and weeks when you lived alone. It was like a deep hole, undetectable, hidden under the thick layer of old leaves; but once you've fallen in, crawling out would not be pleasant. 

Ruth was glad she made Marianne talk. Even if for a shaky, shrill sentence.

First flames clung to the wood in the fireplace, and Marianne stood up; yet her hands shook all the same. She was sick with a cold the flames of a fireplace dared not comfort.

And then, she turned on her heels and ran away from Ruth.

Ruth's whole body grew cold. Marianne did not want to see her there. That was fine. That was... Expected.

"There is nothing untoward in grieving." Ruth called out, voice half-stuck in her throat, internally begging to be heard, "This is the most natural thing you can be feeling. Animals grieve too".

There was silence after that, deep and guilty, while Ruth contemplated what she should do. There was the longing for human contact and rejecting it all the same, like a bleeding body rejecting its essence of life. And then there was a woman who was too kind to tell her that she truly wanted to be left alone. There was a difference between these two notions. A difference Ruth could never see and understand. She was inept in feelings. She was just not that kind of woman.

Ruth remembered Marianne's trembling voice, her words which Ruth's aching heart absorbed immediately. "Why would I be worried?", unapologetically sharp. Was Ms Wilburn, so delicate and tule, being sarcastic? Did she think Ruth attempted to soothe the deep sorrow eating her alive by just telling her to stop, - the most hurtful thing imaginable, - and wanted to hurt her back? Or did her pain take the shape of hostility under the thin layer of a nervous hostess, barely clinging to her face? Lord, Ruth prayed, Please, Lord, give me the strength and the clarity to comfort this woman.

She crossed the room in four wide steps. She laid her hand on the door.

She did not open it.

Ruth did not want to follow Marianne Wilburn, breathe into her neck like a ghost, hang over her like an axe of an executor. Marianne clearly needed time to compose herself. Ruth wanted to give her all the time in the world. She wanted to stop its flow for her, to let her lock herself up, and then slowly, gradually, open herself again. But, more than all of this, more than anything else, she did not want Marianne to wake up one day and realize it had been years, and for the outside world, she might as well be dead. Ruth did not want the colossal weight of the need to rebuild her own little world crushing Marianne's delicate shoulders. There should have been another option there. She, Ruth Hansen, needed to become that other option.

"Please, stay in the kitchen as long as you need." Ruth asked sincerely, "I mean it. I will be there if you wish to talk."

||
Jennifer
She wanted to believe her. To take the words to her chest wholeheartedly and drink them in like the tea she trembled her way through the making of, and to allow them to bring her the comfort which she was sure Ruth intended them to give. But she could not - *Would* Not, for to allow the true weight of her grief to land upon her thin shoulders would be to accept that it was perhaps not one she could stand to bear, and she would not have herself be bent and broken by its burden. At least, not in the presence of a guest. It would be all well and good to nod, and to smile, and to agree with Ruth that all of this were natural and right, but should Marianne begin to cry, then she feared the tears may never cease their flow.
So, she would go on as she had started. Choke it down and bury it, as his body had been buried on the Esteps' great rolling estate.

The call through the door reached her ears, and she was brought back to herself with the realisation that she was being a rather dreadful host, retreating from her guest as she had and allowing the heavy oak to swing shut, to form a physical barrier between her and Ruth. Marianne had always prided herself upon the hospitality she showed to anyone who found themselves within the walls of her home, and yet now, she had shown Ruth Hansen so little hospitality that it simply would not do to go on like this. 

The water would do just fine alone for a moment. 

"Forgive me," Marianne sighed, as she pulled back the door from its frame, revealing herself to the older woman once more. She looked up to her where she stood. In her moment alone in the kitchen, she had taken a ribbon and pulled back her hair, using the reflection of the tea-kettle to make an attempt at appearing presentable.

That was the problem with draping the mirrors - one could no longer see what a mess she had made of herself. A part of Marianne simply did not wish to see it, for seeing it would only force her to face up to the wretched creature she had become. 
"I did not intend to shut you out. Please, come in, make yourself comfortable."

There was a familiarity in taking guests at the kitchen table, though it brought with it a formality too. Perhaps a woman of Ruth's kind would appreciate, or at least understand, that the living-room was for families and loved ones. Though Marianne held no ill-feeling towards her, she also did not know her more than as a face in passing, and thus the table would be a more natural talking-place for the two of them, at least to begin with. 

"Thank you," She said, as she turned back to tend to the water, to take two unchipped china cups from the cabinet and prepare them. The sound as each was placed upon the counter struck sharp in the still air. Marianne had been such a conversationalist, once. And now she felt almost lost for words. "For coming here. You- you are the first to come. I cannot imagine many more will follow. Truth be told, I expected none at all... I would have baked a pie, had I known you were on your way."

She was familiar with mourning, with grief. In her childhood, a death had meant visitors, and flowers, and relatives distant and close alike huddled in this very kitchen, and others long journeys away. There had been a sense of comfort to be found in the reunion of hearts after such a loss. 
As an adult, she had had no-one to share in her sorrow, and had grown accustomed to it in solitude.
But she could not deny that the presence of Ruth Hansen in her kitchen was welcomed, as much as she wished she had more fight left in her to protest it.

||
Oscar
Ruth was never the one to be defiant. She wasn't very polite, bending over backward to satisfy everyone she knew; but even as a teenager, she came to understand that it was so much easier to agree and follow. Other people usually knew more than she did, and nothing ever went wrong from listening to the advice of her mother, or her father, or Alma Cooper, the head of the dear to her heart Coalition. Ordinarily, she would not be defying Marianne, an owner of a great house, a great set of thinly painted cups, and a heart so huge it barely fitted inside her chest. And yet, a choice stood before her, the same way Marianne stood when she opened to door for her, - her hair pulled back adorably, a marble statuette of a housewife, - avoiding to look Ruth in the eye. She could play her role: Ruth was usually a horrible, crushing failure when it came to understanding her role, but what Marianne wanted from her was clear: sit and take. Follow her wishes and whims dictated by what Marianne thinks is "Correct" To do for a guest; try to influence her by being near, and pray that these tiniest steps would be enough to bring her back to life. Or Ruth could give her what she really needed.

In the silence interrupted only by the low whirling of the kettle, Ruth opened her mouth.

" I won't." She said, stubborn, "You need to give yourself time. At least let yourself boil the tea in peace."

Ruth knew she looked stupid, standing right in the open frame, but there was nowhere to move to. If Marianne needed her, she would see it and cross. If she didn't, she was allowing Ms Wilburn to slam the door in her face, and maybe, get at least some satisfaction from it. She couldn't always be good.

Ruth also realized how harsh her voice sounded when she tried to make it appear braver, more confident, like she actually knew a thing about battling the all-consuming army of grief. She tried to speak softer, tried to find an approach. Anything to make Marianne hear her.

"You're a great host, Ms Wilburn." Ruth said warmly, "I promise. I live in the forest, and even I've heard about the warmth you give your guests. And your famous tea, and your famous garden. But today, I am here for you. Not the other way around. I insist."

She stayed outside of the threshold, but for a second, she outstretched her hand instinctively, like you would do when you see an animal asking to be pet, or when someone's falling off a cliff and your brain still has the futile hope of saving them. 

"I will not think of you worse if you let yourself go. If anything, it will only ease my worries." Ruth took a sharp, much-needed breath. Her chest was tightened, as if all the oxygen suddenly left this lovely kitchen, "To tell the truth, I am worried about you, Ms Wilburn, worried sick. I am scared. And I am scared most because you aren't crying. People who aren't crying do terrible things to themselves, Ms Wilburn. Horrible things. Such is grief. It always takes, doesn't give back, and never teaches you anything. It is the worst failure because it isn't yours." Ruth couldn't stand still anymore. She crossed the doorframe and took Marianne's shoulders in her hands, firmly and carefully, looking her in the eyes, "You hear me? It isn't yours to bear."

Ruth spun around and returned to her former firm place of standing. She crossed her arms so they would stop shaking. It wasn't a surprise that someone else's pain forced so much on itself into Ruth's chest when that pain was so close to her own.

"I know how it feels," She confessed, this time struggling to raise her own gaze off the ground, as if it suddenly became as heavy as a boulder, "To lose a man who had your heart. I hope to God this is the last time you will ever feel such pain. Nothing in the world can ease it." She looked at Marianne again, trying to read something at her face, anything, anything at all; to see if the smallest part of her was starting to melt, or if Ruth had, once again, barking up the wrong tree, "But if you would like that, I can hold you."

||
Jennifer
*I won't*, said Ruth Hansen, and Marianne Wilburn froze where she stood, having taken only one step towards retrieving the milk from the icebox and finding she could not take another in its direction, rooted like the roses in the soil as Ruth went on. 

To give herself time would be to admit to the world at its widest that she had not healed as she had hoped to. To do that, she would have to take a long look at herself - not a look in a mirror at the side she showed to others, but a deeper one, inside her very self, a place she had not so much as glanced since the morning after Francis's passing for fear of what might be revealed to her from within. There was a heart in there that ached with every beat, with grief and longing and would-have, should-have, could-have, for a past she could not change. What lay alongside that heart, Marianne feared, would break her should it find its way to the surface, and that was a risk she could not take.
Could she?

She had thought that she could not live a life that did not have Francis in it, when she learned that his injuries were too great to lend him a chance at survival.

Almost ten years ago, she had thought that she could not go on without her ma, and days before that, without Pa and her beloved Julius, heavens rest their very souls. 
Twice now in her life, Marianne had been of the opinion that she simply *Could not* Do something, and she had done it anyway. She was still here, standing before the tea-kettle, listening to the hiss of the water within it and to Ruth's voice. For all that she had doubted her own abilities, she had surpassed all expectations set upon her.

So, *She could not risk releasing her heart*. But what if she did it regardless of potential consequence? If she gave herself the time that Ruth spoke of and let things take their course without complaint?
If she "Let herself go", to use Ruth's own words. 

If she cried. 

She was surprised, when the touch came, when Ruth's work-worn hands found themselves upon her shoulders and turned her so that she faced the other woman head-on. Marianne held her head high and slightly set her jaw, defiant, determined. She had only considered her options, and had no intention of caving in. It simply wouldn't be proper for her walls to crumble in company, no matter how Ruth insisted that she had already been a good host, and that she ought to be weaker to her emotions, to let them in. A great outpouring of sorrow was something to only be experienced in private. 

It seemed that Ruth Hansen, or Fate, or perhaps some amalgamation of the two, cared none for Marianne's intentions, for as soon as Ruth's touch had landed upon her and their two gazes had met, she was gone again, back to the doorway like a great portrait to a frame carved custom for it. The look with which the older woman regarded her would not have been out of place in art, either - Ruth's face, steadfast as it had been before, now betrayed emotion of her own, as she spoke yet again of the loss of a man who had loved her.

Marianne did not know Ruth's story. She did not know from whence she came or what had brought her here - whether *Here* Meant the Wilburn house or Briar Ridge as a whole. She would have liked to learn, and the Marianne of old would have grasped at tendrils of a story unspoken, led Ruth by the arm to the kitchen table and had her pour her heart out the way the tea poured to the cup. The Marianne of old had not been entrenched in fresh grief such as this with no way to numb the way it ached. 

"I have cried, Ruth," Said this Marianne, now, stood in the middle of the kitchen floor still frozen - a shipwrecked maiden marooned upon the deserted island of her sorrow, without a fire to send up a signal nor a raft to carry her away from it. "My tears were spent the night I lost him. You say the failure is not mine, but I was supposed to bring him *Home* And I could not. How am I to see that as aught but my own failing? I was too slow, too small, too weak. I pulled him from the thorns yet I couldn't do *Shit* To keep him breathing."

Her curse hung in the still air between them - an atmosphere that could have been sliced without a knife, with only bitten fingernails. 

"I have hurt like this before. I will hurt again. It is, perhaps, a curse tied to all those who allow themselves to be loved by my heart, to be stolen away by the mountains and their horrors. So I will not have you, or anyone else, hold me."

||
Oscar
Ruth Hansen's heart was beating in her chest loudly, rapidly, like a drum. She wasn't used to being mad at. She usually got nervous when that happened, nervous and lost. When she trusted the people so much, any stab, however small, felt childishly hurtful.

But Ruth tried to think deeper. She wasn't good with emotions, and the first layer usually was already a puzzle to her. But she tried nonetheless.

Angry didn't mean helpless, angry didn't mean "Giving up" And that was what mattered. So, what if she was angry at Ruth for saying the wrong thing? Ruth didn't know what the right thing was, - in her own time, she didn't want to hear anything at all, and she didn't heal, either, - but that was all right too, as long as she kept Marianne talking. Maybe, the anger was good for her, or maybe, it would mean that Marianne came closer and closer to throwing Ruth out of her house. As much as it would sadden Ruth, to lose a potential friend so quickly, the more important question came to life: would throwing her out make Marianne feel better, or would it only make the host's guilt worse?

"His chest was broken through, Ms Wilburn." Ruth said firmly, "God Himself couldn't have saved him then. It's not your fault."

"And no one in town thinks that either," She added. It was hard to say how much Mariann valued her reputation, but Ruth couldn't imagine this thought never grazing her mind, "The talk's about poor Ms Wilburn who locked herself in. They pity you; they miss you. They are afraid Ms Wilburn buried herself after him, but chose herself a bigger grave."

Not trying to prove her words, but following her thought, her gaze drafted onto the high ceilings of the cozy guest's room they came from. Oh, what a grave that would be. What a big, well-loved, beautiful grave.

"You may hurt again." Ruth agreed thoughtfully, with hesitation, "But the pain will only stop if you let yourself go through it. The rain cannot leave if it hasn't started. Otherwise, you'll have to go through life with one, two, more griefs hanging on your back. Ain't that a cursed fate for such a great young lady?"

"Tears are like rain, Ms Wilburn, they come and they go. You cannot ration or rule them; cannot decide when it's over. I'm sorry." She said, and the apology was the sincerest sound in the room. Ruth was apologizing for the world and for herself, for not being capable of holding it back, for barging into her house, for breaking her routine, for standing here and demanding her to do... What exactly? Ruth didn't know. She was secretly hoping Marianne would let it slip what she wanted and then do it herself. She could never guess: everyone grieved differently, everyone needed different things. Ruth wasn't even the right person to be here. But one thing was clear.

*No holding,* Ruth swallowed, *Sure, of course.* She regretted her previous touch already: her palms burned with shame. She should've stood where she stood. She shouldn't have come closer. 

"Anything I can do for you?" She tried to be direct. Maybe, thinking about her wants would lead Marianne to think about her feelings, "Is there anything you want?"

||
Jennifer
The anger, misplaced as it were, directed towards a woman who had done nothing but try to help, felt like the release of a long-held breath. It wasn't until it had left her that Marianne realised she had been keeping it within at all. And, to her surprise, the letting-out of it all did not burn her throat the way that swallowing it down did. It was as though the venom in the words had resided until that moment in her own body, and now, spat forth with curses and defiance, it found itself spilled upon the scrubbed floors, and then, falling lower still, sinking into the foundations, and to the earth below. 
It was the very ground beneath her feet that had placed bitterness in Marianne, that had tied it up in bloodied ribbons with shards of regret and guilt and shame. In her ribcage it had grown roots like an unwelcome weed, and of all people, a gardener ought to have recognised the blight.

Once, and only once, when Marianne was little more than a girl, her very first spring in the soil she now loved so, she had made the mistake of planting mint within her manicured beds. There had been nobody to warn her that mint spread in the ground like wildfires in the brush in the height of dry August heat. All her work had been ruined that year, her only crop being enough leaves to make tea for the whole town twice over.

Had she taken the guidance of the books upon the living-room shelves, she would have learned long before planting that her work would only lead to woe. 

She had told herself, that miserable summer, that when advice came to her, she would do well to take it in the future.

Here in her kitchen stood Ruth Hansen, stood a woman whose heart had lain among the thorns of loss in the way that Marianne's own heart lay. Beating, broken, bleeding. And Ruth Hansen held out understanding, extended an olive branch again and again, when the scythe of Marianne's biting words seemed hell-bent upon cutting it back. 

Marianne stopped.

The wrath in her very bones could not become the mint. 

"You've nothing to apologise for, Ruth."

Her voice was quieter than before. 

"Everything you say... It's all been true and right. And I... I took the hurt that befell me and I choked it down until it tried to suffocate everything else within me, and then I- I tossed it back at you like it'd hurt you too. Like I *Wanted* To hurt you. And I... Lord, Ruth, I don't. I never wanted anyone to get hurt because of me, and I'm here... *Cursing* At you and pushing you away and I- I don't- I just... *I'm* Sorry. You ain't come all this way to be spoken to like you're the Devil herself."

She bit her lip, hard enough to taste copper. 

"You've been holding onto something in your hands ever since you came to the door. Tell me what's in your hands - and *Please*, please, sit down and let me..." She gestured to the tea things, hopeless, helpless, desperate.

||
Oscar
Of course, Ruth had things to apologize for. She chose to carry the world on her shoulders like Atlas, on her chest like a mother carries a baby. And, just like for a baby, she was responsible for the world now. She was a representative of the outside world: invading Marianne's privacy, forcing fresh air into her weak lungs, tugging on her hands, whispering things impossible, painful: *"Wake up." "Come here". "Be touched by the hands that belong to everyone but the one you miss most".* She was sorry for putting Marianne through this, sorry for not having any other choice. But Marianne didn't think so. 

"It doesn't matter how much truth I say, Miss Wilburn," Ruth confessed. Now that Marianne finally spoke sincerely, honestly, from her heart, it was as if a balloon tore inside of Ruth, and the words it was filled with were pouring out, "Truth rarely does much good. Truth rarely makes people happy. I just want you to be happy, Miss Wilburn. I just want you... To be alright".

At first, Ruth didn't even understand where that pause came from, *What did she choke on*. But then she realized: those were tears. Ruth cried silently, her nose sniffing, her arms bent awkwardly, palms pressed close to her heart. She didn't know why she was crying, or what those tears meant; all she knew was that the tears were dripping and didn't want to stop.

Ruth looked down at her hands, almost surprised to find the cup still in them. In the rush of emotions and feelings, her and Marianne's, intertwined like the roots of a tree, she still hasn't found a moment to put it down.

"That's oil, Miss Wilburn," The tears were still going, so Ruth was forced to talk through them. Her voice was more hoarse and wetter than usual, "I also brought... To you the flower and the starter. I know you bake, and I like to bake too. A good loaf of bread always makes me feel better. I know we all sometimes forget to eat in our worry. I just wanted..." The tears intensified. What was with her today? Was it the house, was it Marianne, was it the garden, the teacups, abandoned, the way Marianne looked almost through them, through *Everything*, like she was a ghost trapped here, like she would leave as soon as Ruth would avert her eyes, "To make sure you were alright..." Ruth kept crying. She didn't know what it was, but she knew she couldn't bear it.

Sooner or later, the tears dried up.

"I will sit down, I promise." Ruth said, wiping the tears off, her voice soft and shaken like jelly, "Please, come with me. All of you, the rage and the pain included. Please."

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Jennifer
When Ruth Hansen began to cry, Marianne thought that that might truly be her end - that her heart could not take being the cause of another's tears, when she had been so careful to hold back her own, walking on eggshells so as not to allow her grief to infect others. As though she could spill salt into the creek and poison the water supply for anyone unlucky enough to find themselves downstream. It had not taken water, in the end. Only words. Words which Marianne could not help but regret, as she listened to the truth pour from the lips of one Ruth Hansen, and ached, and ached, and ached. 

She cared. 
Not only did she care enough to be curious, but she cared enough to come, at a time when Marianne's door was closed. She had come not for personal gain, but out of the good of her sweet shaken, damaged heart, and she had not come with empty hands and questions, but well-wishes and a gift. 

Marianne had read in her recipe books about the kind of bread one could bake with something small and alive, kept in a jar in a dark pantry until it was needed and brought to light. Her grandmother had had one, right in this very kitchen, when Marianne was little more than a babe. She remembered sitting up on the counter, watching Granny's floured fingers feed the starter with measures so exact she would laugh and lament that she was wasted as a housewife, that she should have been some mad scientist. To Marianne, she had been a witch, whipping forth life with such simple things as wheat and water.

Now, Marianne pictured Ruth Hansen, in a kitchen of her own, diligently dividing a jar of her own in two, to bring half to the door of a woman she had never met, never known. With it, Ruth had brought her trust - trust that she, too, would tend to the little thing, use it to provide - and not only that, but friendship.
What's more, Ruth Hansen had brought her *Hope*. A reminder that, no matter how dark it might seem, the door would open again, and the sunlight would shine, and much like the starter, Marianne would come alive again, with just a little help. Help she had been simultaneously too proud and too afraid to ask for, but help that had come all the same, in the form of a woman from the forest and a little cup of oil.

Marianne crossed the kitchen tiles in two, three quick steps. She took the oil from Ruth, and replaced it in the older woman's grip with her own two hands. To an outsider, they would have made an odd pair - Ruth's weathered fingers, callused from her years spent in the outdoors come rain, wind or shine, against Marianne's lily-white touch, the summer not yet upon Briar Ridge strong enough to give her her yearly freckles. But to Marianne, in the moment that they shared nothing more than a tight squeeze, Ruth was all she wanted. All she *Needed*. 
She had needed to be shown for a while now that she was not alone. 
With Ruth here, she now knew that to be fact. 

"You're a wonderful woman, Ruth Hansen," Marianne whispered, and only now did she lift her gaze and affix Ruth with grey-blue eyes, stony in their expression but, much like Ruth's own, shining with unshed tears. "I cannot tell you *I am alright*, for you and I both know that to be a lie plain as day. But I will be. I promise you, with all my mendin' heart, I'll find a way to once again be well."

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