Joan Dhar

she/her

lives in an old farmhouse with her gf, Mahrie Zaitseva. they raise hens and goats, have an herb garden, and sometimes grow larger crops

cis afab, sapphic, northern indian (family from uttar pradesh, lives in germany w partner)

skeptical, super curious, sarcastic,,, think of an anxious velma from scooby doo who was really into blues clues as a kid

favorite food: banana bread

favorite animal: goats and cats (feeds strays so they will hunt mice in their barns)

tried to learn to bike years ago and still doesnt know how. sort of knows how to swim

likes reading while sitting in trees in her free time,, not picky with books, will read anything (cheesy romance, gritty sci fi, jane austen, really shitty airport novels)

--- story ---

her story centers around the people of her town being lead out to the fields in a trance at night and disappearing one by one. joan and her girlfriend, mahrie, live in a farmhouse a little ways out from town, and they're the first to hear the sounds when they start at night--echoes of heartbeats across the fields. they don't remember when they started, only that they're getting harder to block out by the day. joan tries to convince mahrie and the townsfolk to leave, but they've resigned themselves to just dealing with the sounds, expecting nothing more of the situation.

the first few people to go missing aren't noticed. people wave it off as being too drunk and wandering off--"they'll turn up sooner or later". the third and fourth to go missing in a week starts to pick up attention. by the eighth person, the town is starting to panic. joan decides to follow where the sounds come from during the day, as they only show up at night; she thinks it will be safer this way. all she finds are empty fields. she returns home that night, hoping to find something tomorrow, and falls asleep with mahrie in her arms; the next morning, the bedsheets are cold and joan finds tracks leading out to the fields. she's gone.

joan, desperate to find a solution to the problem and retrieve the people she's lost, ends up trying out several methods before the final resort: following the tracks into the fields at night, lit only by the jade-tinted moon, when the heartbeats are loudest. she's tempted to bring tools, any sort of preventative measure or equipment, but something tells her it's useless anyways. she follows tracks through the tall fields of crops, splashing through water where the field has begun to sink. eventually she reaches a crest, able to see the fields all around her for miles. she has no idea where she is. the sound is deafening in a way that permanently seals it into her mind. silence will never be the same. the moon taunts her from the sky, now completely green.

it takes joan a moment to realize that the heartbeats are shifting the ground beneath her slightly, as if the sound is strong enough to bring motion with it. she traces her hand along the dirt, when she comes to something compact; it doesnt give way like the loose tilled soil. aching for answers, she attempts to push away the dirt to see underneath. she unveils the body of a missing person. they're still breathing fine, despite having been buried underground.

taken aback and scared, joan starts to rush around and find the missing people. with each person she unearths, the heartbeat grows. the thudding grows faster. she can't find mahrie anywhere, and no one is waking up. they sleep on, oblivious to the pounding noise and the whipping winds as the fields are thrown into a deafening, controlled chaos.

joan's search takes her back to the sunken waters where the field has begun to slip back into the earth, having not seen human maintenance in a long while. mahrie's face can be barely seen under the dirt and water, but she's there. as joan falls in to dig her up, she breaks the reflection of the emerald full moon across the water. the green light soaks into her as she manages to pull mahrie out, opening a connection to something in the field--a sound, a whisper, a voice. The fields fall still for a moment of complete silence; deafening, like ice sealing off an entire fjord in a moment.

The field whips back into motion as the presence darts across the tips of the plants, only barely visible as a quick green wisp. As joan turns towards it, she gets the sense that the light is only a small part of the entity, like the luminescent act of an anglerfish. Before she can breathe, the streak of light burrows into her eyes, and the world goes dark.

Joan wakes up in bed with mahrie the next morning. Everyone in the town is returned, and no one remembers a thing. Joan finds wheat stems in mahrie’s hair and dirt on her pillow. She wants to convince herself it was a nightmare, and she would almost manage to, if it weren’t for the green glint she can sometimes catch in the mirror.