Entry #14
From The Archive: A Fictional Account of Memory and Myth
If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is an entry from my on-going serial fiction experiment “The Archive.”
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Day 80 - Morning
The shed air hangs thick with possibility and warning as Demi guides my hands through the morning’s first lesson. Dried herbs crumble beneath my fingers while glass vials catch early light, transforming mundane measurements into something almost sacred. The work requires a surgeon’s precision – three drops, no more, no less. A gram’s difference between healing and harm.
My fingers shake as I hold the dropper—not from fear of the poison, but from the terrible understanding that I want this knowledge. After months of running, of helplessness, of watching the world strip away everything I thought I knew, here’s something I can control. Something that could make me powerful instead of prey.
The thought should horrify me more than it does.
“Steady,” Demi murmurs, adjusting my grip on the dropper. “Foxglove doesn’t forgive mistakes.”
I think of the leather-bound book I found in her shed last night, The Compendium of Deadly Gardens. The pages had been soft with age, annotations cramming the margins in different hands – generations of knowledge passed down. Each note a bridge between past and present, proof that others have stood where I stand now, choosing between safety and power. The entry on foxglove had caught my eye: Digitalis purpurea, known to the old ones as fairy’s glove. The fae gifted it to mortals as both blessing and curse. In their hands, it could stop a heart or keep it beating.
“The old stories say it belongs to the fair folk,” I say, trying to keep my hand steady as another drop forms. But what I don’t say is how the fairy tale comforts me—that there’s precedent for this duality, this gift that cuts both ways.
Demi’s lips quirk. “Good to see you found my library.” She doesn’t sound angry about the snooping, just amused. Maybe even pleased that I understand the weight of what she’s offering.
Atlas whines from his post by the door, his usual confidence replaced by restless pacing. He hasn’t settled since we started, like he can smell the danger in what we’re doing. Freya refused to even cross the threshold this morning, her ears flat against her skull. Only Bastet seems interested, perched on the highest shelf like some Egyptian deity passing judgment.
“They know,” I say, watching Atlas’s nervous dance. “Don’t they? What we’re doing here?”
Demi smiles, but it doesn’t land as genuine. “Animals are smarter than us. They understand power without needing to name it.”
I envy them that clarity. They sense threat and respond with pure instinct—stay or flee, fight or submit. They don’t have to navigate the space between necessary and unforgivable.
My focus slips for just a moment – the third drop falls heavy, fast. Demi’s hand shoots out, catching the vial before it can tip. “Too much,” she says, her voice tight with controlled fear. “That would have stopped a heart.”
The words freeze me in place.
But underneath the terror, something else stirs—a dark curiosity about that power. What would it feel like to know you could stop someone with three extra drops instead of two? To never be helpless again?
The thought tastes like copper and shame.
I think of you, Finn, of how thin the line is between saving and destroying. How easy it is to cross without meaning to. How maybe some of us were always meant to learn this crossing.
“Again,” Demi says, replacing the vial. “Slower this time. Remember – we’re not just mixing medicine. We’re learning to carry death in one hand and life in the other.”
Her words settle into my bones like a benediction and a warning. This is what survival has taught me to become—not just capable of violence, but comfortable with it. The question isn’t whether I’ll use this knowledge. It’s whether I’ll still recognize myself when I do.
I watch her return the foxglove to its designated spot, each movement reverent as a prayer. “These books,” I say, curiosity finally winning over caution. “Are they family heirlooms, or did you collect them yourself?”
Demi’s hands pause over the herb jars. “Both, I guess. Some belonged to my grandmother… she was what folks politely called an ‘herbalist’ back when that was code for something else entirely.” Her fingers trace the label on a jar of dried hemlock. “The others I found over the years. Estate sales, used bookstores, that dusty corner of antique shops where people dump things they don’t understand.”
“Things they were afraid to understand,” I correct, and she nods with something that might be approval.
“Your grandmother sounds like she knew her way around dangerous knowledge.”
“She did.” Demi’s voice carries something between pride and wariness. “Ma always said Grandmama could cure anything or kill it, depending on her mood that day.” She meets my eyes. “The gift tends to run in families. Though I’m still figuring out which side of that legacy I want to claim.”
The word ‘gift’ hangs between us like a question mark. Is this what I’m inheriting—this knowledge that feels like both blessing and curse? A lineage I never asked for but somehow always belonged to?
The answer comes to me as I stare at my first successful tincture in front of me. Bottled and labled with shaky cursive.
It’s just a simple pain reliever made from willow bark and feverfew. Nothing complex, nothing deadly. But I’ve created something that can heal.
And now, I’ve also learned how to make things that can kill.
Day 80 - Evening
The pounding on Demi’s door came as the sky turned dark, urgent and desperate. Atlas was up before either of us, his hackles raised as he pressed against the window. Through the glass I could see a figure hunched against the porch rail—young, maybe early twenties, clutching their side like they were trying to hold something in.
“Help,” they gasped when Demi opened the door. “Please, I heard... someone said you might...”
The words died as they collapsed forward. Demi caught them before they hit the ground, and I got my first clear look at their face. My breath caught in my throat.
It wasn’t that he looked like you—not really. But something in the way he held his jaw when fighting pain, the stubborn set of his shoulders even while collapsing.
Together, we pulled him further into the living room, laying him down beside the fireplace.
The dogs stood guard, cautious but curious. Bastet jumped onto the mantle above the fire place and scowled over us.
“Infected wound,” Demi said, her fingers already probing the angry red gash across their thigh. The edges were swollen, weeping, with red streaks beginning to radiate outward. “And he’s dehydrated. Look at his lips, his skin.” She pinched the back of their hand—the skin stayed tented. “When did you last eat? Drink water?”
The stranger’s eyes fluttered open. Brown eyes, like yours. When he tried to speak, he licked cracked lips first, the same way you did when your mouth went dry from fever.
“Can’t... hard to breathe,” he panted, each word an effort.
“Ari, I can’t... it hurts to breathe.”
Finn’s voice, from that last night. But this time I knew what I was looking at—the rapid, shallow breathing of someone whose body was fighting on multiple fronts. Pain, dehydration, the beginning stages of infection.
“Panic response,” Demi murmured, checking his pulse. “Racing heart from dehydration, but the breathing... that’s fear and pain making it worse.” She looked at me. “Remember this morning’s lesson? The willow bark tincture?”
My hands moved before my brain caught up, already reaching for the bottle we’d made. “For the pain.”
“And I’ll start cleaning this wound. The infection’s still localized—we caught it before it could spread.” She was already moving toward her supplies. “But first, we need to get fluids into him. There’s chamomile tea in the kitchen, and honey. Start there while I gather what we need.”
The stranger’s eyes tracked me as I worked, frightened. When I knelt beside him with the tea, he tried to sit up, wincing.
“Easy,” I said, the same gentle tone I’d used with Finn. “Small sips. The honey will help with the electrolytes.”
As he drank, color began returning to his cheeks. His breathing slowed, deepened slightly.
“Better?” I asked.
He nodded, managing a weak smile. “Thank you.”
Demi returned with her arms full—clean cloths, a basin of steaming water, bottles of tinctures I recognized from our morning lesson. “Goldenseal and witch hazel,” she said, noting my recognition. “Natural antiseptics.”
“And this…” she held up a dark bottle, “is calendula oil. Help me clean this properly.”
Working together felt natural, like we’d been doing this for years instead of hours. I held the stranger’s leg steady while Demi cleaned the wound, applied the herbal treatments, wrapped it in clean bandages. His breathing continued to ease as the pain medication took hold, as his body rehydrated, as the immediate crisis passed.
Somewhere in all of that, he’d fallen asleep.
We left him to rest, while Demi brewed us more tea.
“You okay?” Demi asked, her eyes searching mine.
I found myself turning the evening over in my mind. “You didn’t hesitate,” I said to Demi. “When he showed up at the door. You just... helped.”
She looked up from reorganizing her supplies, something vulnerable flickering across her face. “Would you have expected otherwise?”
“No, I just...” I paused, trying to find the right words. “It reminded me of what happened with Finn is all.”
“Sometimes the hardest wounds to heal are the ones we carry from not being able to help someone before. But you used that pain tonight - turned it into something that saved someone else.”
I thought about how quickly she’d moved to catch him, how sure her hands had been. Like muscle memory. Like she’d done this before. “You’ve helped others. Haven’t you? That’s why he knew to come here.”
Demi was quiet for a long moment. “Word gets around. About places that are safe. People who won’t ask too many questions.” Her smile turned wry. “Funny thing is, the same knowledge that makes people fear you can make them seek you out when they’re desperate enough.”
The truth of that settled deep in my chest. This morning, mixing deadly tinctures, I’d felt drunk on the possibility of never being helpless again - of having the power to make others fear me. But tonight, watching life return to that stranger’s face, I’d wielded that same knowledge differently. Both were forms of power, yes. But one felt like armor, keeping everyone at distance, walking away from who I really was. The other felt like opening a door, letting people in, coming home to myself.
Maybe that’s what Demi had been trying to teach me all along - that knowledge itself isn’t good or evil. It’s a tool, like any other. And every time we use it, we choose which path to walk: the path of fear or the path of healing. The path that isolates or the path that connects.
I looked at the sleeping stranger, at the fresh bandages on his leg, and knew which path felt right.
Updated Ration Log
1 pocket vibrator (is it really worth keeping?)
1 water bottle (R.I.P. — Freya thought it was a chew toy)
1 granola bar (still here, clearly the cockroach of apocalypse food)
1 plastic baggy with seeds and seeds and more seeds (the most expensive thing I own now)