ᴀꜱʏʟᴜᴍ :: ᴛ.ꜱʜᴇʟʙʏ

xv: poison ivy

"Ying-Yue . . . Ying-Yue!"

A hand shaking her shoulder pulled Winnow from yet another restless sleep. Reality crept in with all the itching, insistent discomfort of poison ivy: the thoughts of the day ahead, the knowledge of what waited outside the apartment, the sweat which stuck her hair to her forehead and her nightdress to her back, and the feverish, hot-and-cold duality of passing illness.

With a groan, Winnow turned over and buried her head between her arms, kicking off her sheets as she went. She could feel the hard edge of her thin mattress pressing against her arm, only an inch away from the wooden floorboards.

"Ying-Yue," her mother repeated, insistent. Winnow's whole body moved alongside her shaken shoulder. "Time to get up, now. You'll not sleep tonight if you keep on like this. "

"Not so unusual," Winnow mumbled, but—with another nudge from her mother—she somehow managed to find the strength to push herself up onto an elbow and open one bleary eye. Her temples ached with the beginnings of a headache, her eyes heavy from too little sleep and too many nightmares. The stuffy air in the flat was somehow too warm and not warm enough.

Satisfied, her mother rose from her knees onto her feet and moved towards the blinds, opening them with a clatter. Sunlight streamed from the small window into the flat's lone bedroom, and Winnow shrank back with a wince.

"You were mumbling a name in your sleep," Ru-Shi commented as she went, with an air of deliberate casualness which didn't fool Winnow for a second. As she sat up properly and rubbed her eyes with both hands, she sensed her mother glance towards her to gauge a reaction. "You have a boy, do you?"

A boy? Winnow could remember mumbling nothing, and for a moment only frowned in open confusion. Then she recalled seeing the wraith of Thomas Shelby in her sleep, a silhouette carved from the fog, who disappeared through her fingers like smoke when she reached out to him. All else she could remember was a gun pressed against her temple, and the shapes of figures at the edges of her vision, creeping ever closer.

She felt her cheeks grow warm.

"There's no boy, Ma . . ." she mumbled through her hands, shaking her head slowly. Her neck ached, her shoulders stiff and hunched, the headache growing in force with every passing moment. It felt almost as though she had aged fifty years in a night. "But is there tea?"

Thirty minutes and one cold wash later, Winnow sat at their tiny dining table with her knees tucked to her chest and her hair hanging in a damp curtain around her face. Though she lacked an appetite, she had eaten every morsel of the food her mother had given her, knowing that their meals cost Ru-Shi much of her wage.

Washing had cleared the cold sweat from her skin, some of the fog from her head, and traces of stiffness from her aching bones. For the first time in more days than she could count, Winnow felt as though she could move again, her thoughts just a little clearer. She wanted to move again. Bed rest and fever had begun to drive her spare; her nightmares had started to creep into the uncomfortable moments she spent awake, until everything felt blurred and heavy with causeless dread.