There's good things and there's bad things about Jackson County, that hydroelectric dam and it's assortment of temporary and permanent housing cobbled into something like a community. For one, Ellie officially doesn't give a single shit about going back to school but it's not like anyone's asking her opinion about that, now are they? But there's electricity and light at night and the when she's lying in bed if she closes her eyes she can make out the water as it growls through the dam. And mostly that's a good thing, except when it isn't. Except when she wakes up in the middle of the night and the sound grates on her - alien, like going to sleep without her shoes on (which she does now too. Fucking weird, right?).
She's careful about sliding her legs out of bed, kicking her feet over - eases her way into a pair of jeans and then boots before shrugging into a pullover sweater. It's well into summer, but nights in the foothills sometimes stay cold. Her fingers scuff across the raised scar tissue on her forearm, but she doesn't think about it because getting out of the bunkhouse quietly is at the top of her list. Which she does - she's had practice being quiet as anything and slipping out under the hum of the water and everything else is cake, though she lets the tension in her limbs ease out once she traipsing across the yard toward the barn nestled against one of the exterior walls of the complex.
It's dead night and still louder than it ought to be: the murmur of people high on the wall running the usual perimeter checks, the stray yap of a dog. But inside the barn (a proper one, built in the months since they'd been out to Utah and back) it's insulated against sound and cold - just the shift of a few horses in their hay and wood shavings, the faint smell of fur and dust, animal sweat and horse shit. She strokes the nose of one of the dozing horses in the half light. "Hey buddy," she murmurs, kissing his face. "I guess you're pretty used to all this noise, huh?"
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She's careful about sliding her legs out of bed, kicking her feet over - eases her way into a pair of jeans and then boots before shrugging into a pullover sweater. It's well into summer, but nights in the foothills sometimes stay cold. Her fingers scuff across the raised scar tissue on her forearm, but she doesn't think about it because getting out of the bunkhouse quietly is at the top of her list. Which she does - she's had practice being quiet as anything and slipping out under the hum of the water and everything else is cake, though she lets the tension in her limbs ease out once she traipsing across the yard toward the barn nestled against one of the exterior walls of the complex.
It's dead night and still louder than it ought to be: the murmur of people high on the wall running the usual perimeter checks, the stray yap of a dog. But inside the barn (a proper one, built in the months since they'd been out to Utah and back) it's insulated against sound and cold - just the shift of a few horses in their hay and wood shavings, the faint smell of fur and dust, animal sweat and horse shit. She strokes the nose of one of the dozing horses in the half light. "Hey buddy," she murmurs, kissing his face. "I guess you're pretty used to all this noise, huh?"