Have you ever moved so fast the world stopped?

Marinette had taken on so many tasks. Another dropped into the plate and she tilted her head at it. Of course I’ll do this. For the community. Nobody would run the beastwise–she’d asked aloud in every room, and directly to the one steward she knew of the animals… so she would do it.

‘If things go wrong, it’s your fault for making unilateral decisions for everyone!’

She stopped. She had asked. She always asked. She had been doing things that were asked of her. Being yelled at was new. She shrunk three sizes. She ran away.

‘I never seem to get to see you or speak to you anymore! I want to sit down with you and eat together.’ Isabel’s voice made her smile. Pere Clement, too. She had a moment with her friends… and then they turned their back to her as people came to speak to them.

Have you ever moved so fast … the world stopped?

Almost everyone appreciated her work. Almost everyone thanked her. But it felt like she had been forgotten. She was her work.

‘Thank you for the work you did.’

‘Thank you for your help. You’re so good at this.’

Marinette couldn’t remember when last she’d sat with someone she loved for a half an hour alone. Twenty minutes? Ten?

She felt untethered, but she didn’t know how to rewind the threads. When she went to braid the rope, it dissolved in her hands.

“Let me be a child. Isabel, you’d said you’d talk with me–I want that. Come away with me.”

She lead Isabel away. A brief moment, and then she was suddenly drunk. The moment dissolved into worry, concern and a crowd. The wall rose up again and separated her. She considered letting it go up. Perhaps this was too selfish. Maybe God was telling her she couldn’t have this.

No. Once more.

“Isabel, can I please?” The drunken woman nodded at her, and the eagerness with which she followed comforted Marinette in her selfishness. The tent. The tent might give her space.

They had five blessed minutes.

Then they were joined. And the tent slowly filled up once more. The walls closed in, and Marinette stopped winding the rope and let it dissolve.

The community is what’s important.

What she wanted was not.