Kiss-Drunk, Earth-Deep
Posted on Fri Oct 17th, 2025 @ 4:33pm by Maeve MacKenna
1,363 words; about a 7 minute read
Mission:
Episode 7: Pathogens and Contagions
Location: Maeve’s Room
Timeline: Late March 1992 — very late, edging toward dawn
Maeve eased the dorm door open with her shoulder and slid through sideways, breath held like the knob might squeal. The corridor was dark and soft with sleep: radiator ticking, old floorboards breathing, someone’s distant radio hissing static where a tape had run out hours ago.
Her palm was still warm where his had been. Stupid, how a hand could feel full after letting go.
She padded barefoot past the creaky plank—she knew the bad ones by heart now—and slipped into her room. The moon made a square on the floorboards; her scarf went over the chair back with a sound like a sigh. She leaned against the door a second and just… grinned. Couldn’t help it. It rose up in her like a kettle coming to the boil.
The photo strip was in her pocket. She took it out carefully, like it might bruise, and sat on the edge of the bed. The first four frames were daft—her hair everywhere, his shoulders crowding the shot, the two of them trying too hard not to laugh. Then the last one—her thumb brushed it once—caught them like a secret. She felt the echo of it in her chest and the room tilted, not in a scary way, but like a wave lifting.
“Get a grip, MacKenna,” she whispered into the quiet, but she was smiling when she said it.
The floor hummed under her heels. Only a little. She hadn’t meant to. A sprinkling of grit near the skirting board trembled and two tiny flecks lifted the barest breath, like dust motes that had ideas above their station. Maeve laughed under her breath, half-scandalised, half-delighted, and eased them back down with a brush of her fingers. “Alright, alright. Keep your hair on.”
She crossed to the sink, ran the cold, and washed the salt from her lips and the chip-shop smell from her hands. When she looked up, the mirror gave her a girl with pinked cheeks and a hopeless grin. It didn’t look like the kind that faded fast.
Back on the bed, she reached under the pillow for her battered wallet and slid the photo strip into the hidden pocket behind the coins. Not for the wall. Not for show. For her.
She lay back and stared at the cracked plaster, listening to the house settle. The night felt bigger now, like the air in the room had opened another window she couldn’t quite see. She thought of his ridiculous height, the way his laugh sat low in his chest, the careful weight of his hands—careful, always careful—and something in her loosened that had been tight for a long time.
“Okay then,” she breathed to the ceiling, to the moon-square, to no one at all. “Aye.”
The floor gave one last, tiny, contented shiver under the bed—no more than a heartbeat—and stilled. Maeve turned onto her side, hand resting on her pillow, the faint outline of her wallet tucked safely on the bedside table. The house went on ticking. The night held.
And for the first time in longer than she could remember, sleep came easy.
Maeve drifted down through it like falling through slow water — weightless, adrift, wrapped in the fading warmth of the night just past. She could still feel Desmond’s lips ghosting over hers, the echo of his laugh buried somewhere in her chest. The dorm was quiet, soft breaths and moonlight filtering through the curtains, the hum of the world a lullaby she knew by heart.
She dreamed of earth first — the deep, safe hum of it, like the low heartbeat of the world. Soil under bare feet. Wind tasting of rain and salt. Somewhere far off, the sea murmured against stone. She knew this place before she saw it. Ireland. Or what her soul remembered of it.
Mist curled low over green fields that rolled like sleeping giants. The air shimmered faintly, as though charged with something alive — the quiet presence of the Tuatha Dé Danann, her mother’s stories whispered through the bones of the land.
Maeve smiled faintly. “Home,” she breathed.
But the echo that came back wasn’t her own.
“Home,” said a voice — soft, melodic, the kind that slipped beneath thought before you realised it was there. “Is that what you call it, little one?”.
Maeve turned. The mist parted like a curtain. A figure stood where the land met the sea — cloaked in shadow, yet rimmed in starlight, her face obscured by the glint of silver hair and the shimmer of a gown that moved like ink in water
“Who’s there?” Maeve called, her voice small against the vast hush. “Show yourself.”
“You called for strength,” the woman said, stepping forward though her feet left no mark on the grass. “You asked the old gods to guide you. And so I answer.”
Something in her tone coiled through Maeve’s gut — familiar, comforting, and wrong all at once. She felt the pulse of the earth beneath her toes thrum a little harder, as though unsure whether to welcome or reject what had come.
“I— I didn’t call for anyone,” Maeve managed, though the words sounded uncertain even to her.
The woman smiled. It wasn’t kind.
“Oh, you did. Every time you trembled, every time you raged and the ground rose to answer you — you were calling. And I was listening.”
The mist shifted again, and suddenly Maeve’s hands glowed — bright green light curling like vines up her wrists, the air alive with her own power, magnified beyond reason. The land bent to her will. Stones floated. Trees leaned in. The sea stilled. For a moment, she felt godlike.
But the feeling came with something cold. Like roots growing too deep, too fast. Like being swallowed by the same earth that obeyed her.
“They never told you the truth,” the voice whispered, now beside her, though no footstep had bridged the space. “The gods you honour — they are long gone. But I remained. I watched this world fall to ruin. And I can make you more than mortal.”
Maeve turned, her pulse hammering. The figure was closer now. Eyes like cut glass. A smile too beautiful to trust.
“You fear your gift,” the woman murmured. “I can take that fear away. Show you how to master it. All you need do is stop resisting what you are.”
Maeve’s breath came faster. The air tasted of iron. The glow around her hands darkened from green to a gold so sharp it almost hurt to look at. The cliffs around her trembled, stones floating higher, the sky fracturing into a thousand mirrored shards.
And in one of those mirrors — slick and silver like water — Maeve caught her reflection. Only it wasn’t quite her. Her eyes shone a molten green-gold, her expression fierce, cruel, divine.
“No,” she whispered. “That’s not me.”
“Isn’t it?” the woman asked sweetly.
The reflection smiled — and Maeve felt the world tilt. The air split with a sound like a scream swallowed by thunder. She stumbled back, the sea rushing up to meet her, cold and endless.
She fell—
—and woke with a gasp, clutching her sheets, heart pounding like a drum.
The dorm was dark. Still. But the air carried a faint scent of ozone, sharp and unnatural. On the floor, her wallet lay open — the photo strip half-spilled from it, the last image glinting pale in the moonlight: her kiss with Desmond, frozen in white.
Maeve pressed a trembling hand to her chest, willing her heartbeat to slow.
For a moment, she thought she heard it again — that voice, faint and honeyed, somewhere deep in her mind.
“You can’t hide from what’s already inside you…”
And then it was gone.
Only the whisper of wind through the trees answered her — and the soft tremor of the ground beneath her bed, like the world itself was dreaming too.
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