4338.209 · July 28, 2018 AD
The Stitches That Didn't Hold
Everyone has somewhere to be. Jamie is hunting the thing that took Joel. Glenda is chasing a dead father's ghost. Beatrix vanishes through the Portal, leaving Kain bleeding and stubborn in her wake. And Karen? Karen is the one with the bandages. The one who notices Glenda's stitches don't look right. The one who stays—mediating, tending, questioning—when everyone else has already gone. Staying, it turns out, has a weight all its own.
The camp is emptying. Not all at once—but in waves, each departure pulling another thread loose.
Jamie leaves with Charity to hunt the Portal Pirate who took Joel. Glenda, seized by some vision she can't explain, follows them into the unknown. Beatrix steps through the Portal before Kain can reach her, and he collapses at its base—bleeding, immovable, refusing to go back.
And Karen watches it all unravel.
She doesn't follow. She can't. Someone has to stay. Someone has to tend the wound that won't stop bleeding, mediate the argument brewing between Paul and Chris, keep the fragile structure of this place from collapsing entirely. So she does. She fetches bandages from Glenda's meticulously organised supplies. She dresses Kain's leg with hands that don't shake—not visibly, anyway.
But as she works, something catches her attention. The stitches Glenda left behind are wrong. Rushed. Sloppy. Nothing like the careful, methodical work Karen had come to expect. And Joel's miraculous recovery—the one everyone accepted without question—suddenly feels less like a miracle and more like a mystery.
The camp is fracturing. And Karen is the only one paying close enough attention to see the cracks.
