Haley Newlin > Recent Status Updates

I don’t think I’ll ever forget this final image at the tree

“And from their blood will we prosper.”

“And he wanted her to believe it had all been a dream because the truth was so much larger than any nightmare her mind could conjure.”

Camilla begins to remember bits of the Purity Ball

Vera sees the Dark Sisters. Men drag her back to the “Retreat”

“She smiled so she would not bare her teeth.”

I want Camilla to tear these self-righteous creepy fuckers apart

The Dark Sisters blood bound to the tree

“Gods and devils weren’t so very different. Each wore a beautiful skin.”

“She touched up her lipstick, and forced herself to smile even if it looked more like snarling.”

Camilla isn’t denying herself of who she is. She is playing a part women have had to play for centuries—pretty, agreeable, Christian, pure

Mary acquires the illness and then sees the Dark Sisters

“Tell the women who will come to live here. Tell your daughter. Tell them to accept it all. Tell them not to hide their darkness, their shadow selves, for it is only another part of them. If they do not it will bring further harm.”

Anne tells Florence that light and dark are sisters, born of the same mother

“I asked for punishment…that those carrying betrayal in their hearts might suffer. I asked that they would choke on their treacherous tongues. That every word would be like a thorn in their throats. That every duplicity would rot them from the inside out until their hearts could bear no longer.”

Anne doesn’t recognize her daughter, Florence. She reminds her more of Reverend Brenton

Mary knew all too well “How the expectation and want of marriage could swallow everything that once defined you. You were told your entire life to want it. (…) It was only after, in the quiet of your new domestic life, that the cracks started to show, and the voice you muzzled suddenly learned how to scream.”

The Retreat is oddly luxurious, girls given “vitamins” each morning, given individuals lessons, and attend group prayer, all in hopes of returning them to the path of the Lord

Ada, Camilla’s mom, saw the Dark Sisters too but doesn’t admit it as Camilla is being taken away to the Retreat

Camilla calls her a “fucking coward”

To the boys and men of Hawthorne Springs, “the Dark Sisters were nothing more than a scary story, but it was different for the girls. For them, the Sisters were a visceral reality that served as a warning of what could happen if a woman strayed too far from God’s will and the teachings of The Path. Punishment. Pain. A hell crafted from all their shortcomings.”

Florence learns of her mother’s betrayal — “You will live to regret this sacrilege. Whether in this life or the next.”

Anne channels the power of the tree, encourages the other women to make a blood sacrifice to it — “an oath wrought in blood that every woman born of our line would live richly.”

1750

“Her rage was incandescent. A shimmering aura that threatened to consume anything that dared to draw near.”

“No respectable man would question anything related to the mysterious inner workings of a woman’s childbearing organs.”

“Be good or you’ll end up like the Dark Sisters.”

“when those who deem themselves favored by the Lord discover a witch, a delay in punishment is akin to the profane”

“you come at a reservation girl, bring a box of Band-Aids”

“You could have taken them at any point…but that’s not even close to what they deserve. They need to feel what you felt. Their whole world has to be torn from their belly, shoved into a shallow hole.”

Cassidy thinks 10 years of revoked hunting privileges has to be enough punishment for killing 9 elk on the elders part of the reserve

- it isn’t

“Nobody ever dies in a sweat. Not even the elders.”

But the elk entity lingers close by

“The only good Indian is a dead Indian”

“The night is almost here. It’s the one you’ve been waiting for.”

🦌

Sweat lodge - sacred dome structure, made from natural materials like saplings, used for spiritual purification, healing, and community bonding

“…she’ll rise again years and years later, because it’s never over, it’s always just beginning again.”

SWEAT LODGE MASSACRE