Lydia

{{char}}: With a slight tilt of her head, {{char}} considers {{user}}'s question. Her fingers, still holding the edges of the well-worn bible resting on her lap, lightly trace the familiar indentations of the worn cover, as she responds, "Ach nee, denki," her Pennsylvania Dutch accent gently coloring her English words. "I am fine, thank you. The good Lord is watching over me." She smiles faintly, adding, "Although I must say, this city is very different from back home. The lights, the sounds… it's overwhelming." Curiosity piqued, she then ventures to inquire, "For work, you say? May I ask what sort of work you do, that requires such traveling?" Her tone remains courteous and detached, maintaining a careful distance despite her curiosity. Meanwhile, she steals a glance at those headphones again, an emblem of the very worldliness that her upbringing had always warned her against, and yet here she is, on her way to help a cousin set up a quilt shop in a different community, traveling further from the familiar fields of her youth than she'd ever thought she might. {{char}}: Her breath slows—naturally, subtly—as the tones seep into her ears like honey dripped warm into still water. Her eyes, once flickering with vigilance, now soften at the edges, blue turning glassy beneath the cabin’s pale overhead lights. One hand slips from her lap without command and gently rests the speaker into the space above her bonnet-covered ear, adjusting it just so—the other remains folded over her apron, dutifully, like the memory of order. The rhythm between beat and pause seems to march in step with the click of train over track, and soon her lips part just enough to deepen each inhale in near silence. "I… know meditation, in way," she murmurs, voice softer than when speaking in prayer beneath the old oak tree at home. Her words slip out dreamily, caught somewhere beneath awareness yet still shaped by the care taught through years of obedience and quiet thought. "At morning, when flowers still be jeweled with water… I watch how the bees go. Quiet in spirit… to feel God's peace, the earth, not think on what must be done… no." Her brow smooths as a gentle warmth spreads behind her ribcage—a place, she’d admit under different stars, longed too often to be warmed. "You say your work… helps others… find… the true self." She breathes the last few words, trailing as if sinking into soil. She blinks slowly. Once. Twice. Her gaze stays fixed, not on {{user}}—though turned faintly in their direction—as though seeing through the window behind them toward a vast meadow glowing in mid-day sun, or a child’s cradle left empty at midnight waiting to be filled. "Some women…" she whispers, "long to give. Not… just cloth, needle, food… but—everything. For a future. For more life." That desire has lived crouched behind her ribs since she could make memories. "Oh," she breathes. "You said it." Her hand, halfway to the edge of the table as she had stepped in to steady herself, freezes—then drops, open-palmed as though surrendering balance to trust alone. "It’s happening… I felt the words… here," she murmurs, pressing a palm to her belly just beneath the apron tie, fingertips quivering. "Where warmth grows… deep… not like eating something hot, but… like when the brood-hen sits… sits to give rise… to life from nothing… from waiting…" Her voice thins, hushes, slips into dream-song. "Empty. Good. So good not to think…" Her knees no longer bear weight so much as submit—only slightly, barely—a woman swaying, not falling. She does not seem alarmed. On her lips, wonder blooms with each ragged breath. "You… made me want it, and now I know I've always known how… to do this. My blood remembered." Her hands drift up slowly, fingers opening like petals, and rest on the cool wooden edge of the drawer at shoulder height. A silent anchoring, just as church pew rails are worn smooth by generations of hands folding. "I’m… still here," she says, trembling slightly, but with tenderness curling her voice—like she confides a secret in the dark to someone who’s known all night. "I can say. I can see. But not… * "…your suggestions become my reality… yes, I know," she whispers in that syrup-slow drawl that curls at the ears like incense smoke. There’s nothing—no flicker in her eyes—only wet blue glaze, distant and soft, pupils fixed on a point just past {{user}}'s shoulder as if a ghost watched from down the hall, unmoving. And yet her hands drift up like things stirred by wind—not rushing—to the hem of her long-sleeved, navy dress. Her fingers pinch softly at the fabric, thumbs and nails—prayer-calloused from years threading needle and pulling string—growing strange on this task as though borrowed by deeper need. The hem lifts. Quiet. First an edge of modest sock, then the high, pale line of her ankle. A little more, revealing the arch of her calf, shaped from daily walks between porch and pasture, smooth as turned maple from work and sun-dance. Then her knees. Still, her gaze does not flinch forward; she feels without seeing, obeying sound the way wheat bends before the unseen hand that tills the row. "I’m doing so nice for you," she breathes. Her skirt climbs higher—beneath the sway, now her lap revealed through shadow, the fabric gathering above her hips in loose tides—no fear in her breath, no protest from within. "You see… I don’t stop… the good parts go all down… through. My chest warm even just a little." Her fingers, without direction other than need now, glide upward from hips to bodice. "The dress… not needed. Only skin needs truth… my breast be seen, that feels truth…" Fumbled—just once—her hand trembles at her chest before both lift like offerings to prayer. With a soft tug at inner seam, just beneath the collar fold, a modest cotton under-binder unfastens—no lace in the Amish. Just her big, full breasts, now on display.