Prompt# 268 - Bequest – Borders 1.2 - Tekia - original

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: Borders
Fandom: Original
Prompt: Bequest
Warnings: none
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When her life is utterly changed, Jessie finds that she has to change as well. In a world where society has collapsed, Jessie will find her bit of home.

They rode in silence for a few more miles, and then they were out of the wooded area and a small house was coming into view. The sky was lightening. As they drove down the path toward the house, Jessie arched her neck to see more of the land surrounding them. To one side was a field of tall green stocks. To the other was one of short green shrubs. Nearer the house was a barn still intact and a low fence that separated the farm from the yard, into which the truck pulled.
As soon as they stopped, and the engine died, Osiris jumped out and began handing out the bags. Jessie pulled off the blanket and bent her good leg to help move her body toward the tailgate. Before she even thought about moving her bad leg, pain shot up her body and she couldn’t hold back a cry of pain.
Sophia leaned over the side of the truck and Osiris was quickly at her side.
“Your leg,” he said, one hand hovering over the bandage. Jessie panted harshly, trying not to let her pain show. It was a futile effort. Her eyes were tearing up and the pain was becoming a steady throb in her whole body.
When she didn’t answer, Osiris took control. He looked to Sophia. “We’ll need to clean it and probably reset it, if it was ever set at all. I can do it, but I’ll need help.”
Sophia nodded. “We have clean water and some medicine. And liquor to help with the pain.” She shoved away from the truck and jogged into the house. Maddie and Miranda both leaned over the side in her place.
“What can we do?” Maddie asked.
“Maddie, get up here and hold her steady, this is going to hurt. Miranda, can you find me two straight sticks to replace these?” He held up the two that Jessie had tied to her leg days before and then tossed them aside.
Jessie opened her eyes and reached for her leg. “It’ll be alright. I just need some rest.”
He caught her hand, then her gaze. “It needs to be properly set. Let me do this.” She stared at him for a long, tense moment before she finally dropped her hand with a nod. This was too much for her, and that bond that they had between them was too much for her to ignore.
He returned her nod and began tugging at the bandages. Sophia returned then, her hands full of fresh bandages and medicine. The liquor wasn’t needed. As soon as Osiris began removing the bandage, Jessie passed out. He had to rip the bandage from the skin where the blood had dried like glue and the pain was too much for her. She slumped in Maddie’s arms and Osiris was grateful for the small blessing.
By then, Jack, Sophia’s husband had arrived with a pot full of hot water. He sat the pot at Osiris’ elbow, took one look at Jessie and stepped back in horror.
“What’s she doin’ here?”
The three women looked at him, startled at the venom in his tone.
“Jack?”
“I don’t want none of her kind here. Why are you even helpin’ her?”
“Her kind?” Maddie asked, her small hands tightening on the fabric of Jessie’s shirt.
Jack paid her no mind, merely shaking his head. “No, I ain’t helpin’ none of her kind. She’s sun tainted.”
Maddie froze, her fingers releasing the fabric as if it were on fire. She didn’t push Jessie’s head off her lap, although she wanted to. Miranda lifted herself higher where she was leaning over the side of the truck’s bed to better see Jessie’s prone body.
“Jack!” Sophia said, her voice full of reprimand. “She’s just a young girl. You can’t mean to think that she’s any danger to us.”
“She’s taint us all. Don’t touch her blood, boy, you’ll become just like her.”
“That’s not how sun tainting works,” Osiris said, spilling a bit of water over the hardened blood to make it release from the skin.
“What do you know?”
“He’s a duster.”
Jack frowned. “A duster, huh? Then you should be the first in line to rid us of her. Get to it, boy.”
“I won’t.” He finally pulled the last of the bandages free and paused to study the cut, bruising and the odd angle of the bone. She had clearly tried her best to keep the leg straight, but she must have walked to the city and done more damage to it than her initial fall. For her to have made it this far without succumbing to the pain was testament to her determination to live.
He adjusted his hold on her leg and prepared to fix the break. Jack still refused to come anywhere near her. He folded his hands over his chest and frowned mightily at them. “She’ll bring trouble, you mark my words. Look at how dark she is. The sun has had its hold on her a long time. Probably her whole life. She ain’t workin’ on my farm.”
Sophia sighed dramatically and turned to face her husband. “You know full well that this farm was bequest to my upon my grandfather’s death. It’s my farm, and I’ll have whoever I want working on it. I don’t care none if you don’t like her. She’s a strong girl and we need all the strength we can for the harvest. Now, I don’t want no more sass out of you.”
Jack turned up his nose and marched back into the house while Osiris quickly set her leg straight with a crunch. Maddie went green at the sound and Jessie moaned in pain.
With professional ease, Osiris rewrapped the leg and set the two sticks along each side. He jumped out of the bed of the truck and turned to Sophia. “Do you have anything we can carry her in so as not to jostle her leg?”
“We can use the old door plank. Let me get it. Miranda, come help me.” The two women walked away and Osiris reached out to touch Jessie’s brow. There was a sheen of sweat on her brow, and her skin was still hot to the touch.
“You knew she was sun tainted the whole time, didn’t you?”
Osiris looked up to find Maddie still sitting with Jessie’s head on her lap.
“Yes.”
“How? How do you know just by looking?”
His eyes went back to the unconscious girl. “You can see it in her skin. It’s red.”
“She said she was Mexican.”
He shook his head. “She’s red. The sun has fed on her skin. Even making excuses for the darkness of her skin, she’s far too red not to be tainted.”
“Is that all? She’s sunburnt? Why are people afraid of that?”
He smiled and looked up. “Because they’re ignorant. When the sun reaches out and taints a person, it can do some great damage. It can twist a person’s appearance.”
“Not hers?”
“No, I suppose not her.”
Sophia and Miranda returned with half a door and they eased Jessie onto the plank and then into the house. Sophia found Jessie a place to sleep and they left her there, tucked in on a cot.
She woke several hours later with the setting sun glaring through a window. Her leg was back to being a dull throb in her leg, rather than in her whole body. She blinked in the orange light and looked around her. The room was small, a set of bunk beds on one wall, and a fireplace in the other. The floor was bare save for a round rug in the center. The ceiling was low and there were herbs hanging in bunches off the rafters.
She was lying on a cot before the fire, a thick blanket over her body and her leg propped up by pillows. Osiris was dozing in a chair at her side. He wore his hat still, pulled down low over his eyes and his arms folded over his chest as it moved slowly with his slow, steady breathing.
She felt her heart flutter in her chest at the sight of him. Once again, she felt the urge to reach out for him. She carefully pulled herself upright rather than reach for him and looked out the window. The sun was going down now, and the sky was turning dark. There were stars beginning to litter the sky where it was turning purple.
The door creaked when it opened and she turned to see Maddie enter with a covered plate on a tray. “Oh,” she said, upon seeing her awake. “How do you feel?”
“Better, thank you. Is that for me?” Her stomach was tight with hunger and at the thought of food, her mouth salivated. Maddie nodded and stepped up to her, set the tray on her knees and quickly backed off. Jessie hesitated before reaching for the food. She uncovered the plate and steam wafted from the plate.
“You know now, don’t you?”
“That you’re sun tainted? Yes.” Maddie couldn’t keep her eyes on Jessie’s. “Were you always sun tainted?”
Jessie put a spoonful of hot soup in her mouth and took her time in swallowing it. “I was born with it. My mother was tainted. She gave it to me.”
Maddie’s eyes went wide and she suddenly forgot her fear. She perched on the bed. “You can be born with it? I thought you got tainted when the sun touched you.”
Jessie shook her head. “Sometimes it works that way. If you don’t keep yourself protected the sun can touch and twist and taint you. If you have children, they will be born with your tainting.” She quickly ate another bite of soup.
“It wasn’t always like this,” Osiris suddenly said, pushing his hat back, exposing his face. Jessie kept her eyes off him and on the plate and bowl before her. She could feel a flush coming to her cheeks.
He leaned forward and clasped his hands together between his knees. “Once, the sun wasn’t dangerous to us, but after it exploded, it ripped away our protection and left us exposed to its harmful rays.”
“I don’t understand,” Maddie said.
Osiris smiled gently. “Long ago, the Earth had a protective shield that stopped the taint from harming humans. When the star died, it exploded and when it did so, it took with it the shield.”
Maddie’s eyes were wide, and she was leaning heavily over Jessie’s legs to flutter her eyes at him. “How did you learn this?”
“My family remembers how to read.”
That got even Jessie to perk up. “You can read?”
His pale blue eyes returned to her. “I can.”
Jessie waved a finger in the air. “So you can read all the words on the buildings?”
“Most of them. I can read English, but humans of the past had many languages. I only know the one.”
The door opened once again and Sophia entered with a towel in her hands. “You’re awake. Good. Now, Osiris, you can get out to the field and tell that stubborn man to get in here for food.”
Osiris stood and nodded. “Right away, ma’am.” He left the room, his hat coming back down over his brow. After he was gone, Sophia ordered Maddie into the kitchen, and then she sat in Osiris’ recently vacated seat.
“My husband is going to give you trouble, but you pay no never mind to him. You’ve paid your dues and you’ve proved that you can hold your own. I trust you to keep up your end of our bargain.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jessie picked at the blanket over her knees. “Thank you, ma’am.”
The woman snorted. “It ain’t nothing. People are stupid to believe that those that have been tainted by the sun are any different than anybody else. You’re welcome here as long as you do your part.”
Jessie nodded. Her mother hadn’t ever been accepted and her father had warned her to keep her tainting secret. She had never expected to find people so willing to accept her so quickly. Her heart was pounding loudly in her ears and her eyes were filling with tears.
“I-I never expected anybody to ever accept my taint.”
Sophia waved her hand in the air before her. “People just have to learn that you’re not dangerous. You’re just the same as the rest of us.”