victormakesart | (no subject)

(no subject)

Vic's been spending time on the spa planet, not to do spa things, but to spend time barefoot with the birds people, to meditate, and try to be less miserable.

But everytime she sees one of the little feathered kids, with their round healthy bellies, she can't help thinking about a few nights ago, the rescue mission, what was on the floor.

She's been spending a lot of time helping them garden the greens and harvest the rocks that give them the calcium that they need. But she needs another perspective, needs to get out of her head.

So she invited a military man over, someone who might know what she's going through. She doesn't want to burden Cole, Clark's been through enough, and she's sure James wouldn't even know what to say to her.

Most of the swelling has gone out of her face, now there's just a purplish bluish blotch on her right cheek. She waits.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I just haven't seen him in a while. That's all."

Jake looks pissed off by that. "Tell me someone at least punished him."

"My husband's brother tied him to a chair and broke both his legs. I... disagreed, of course, heartily. I don't believe people should be hurt like that. He got a healer for him later."

"Can't say I disagree."

"Most people don't. I just, I can't cause someone else pain. I hate when people end up in pain because of me. If I wanted to be a judge, I'd be a judge."

"Sometimes you gotta come back swinging, or you'll get your own ass kicked. It's basic self-preservation."

"I get my, my--" She looks around, says, "My rear end kicked a lot. I've accepted that, though."

"Yeah, but most of the time that asskicking doesn't end in being dead."

"That's true. I've been on the wrong end of too many beatdowns to wanna cause that sorta thing myself. I guess it makes me weak, but, it's the only way I can be."

"I wouldn't say weak. Everyone's gotta be a skxawng now and then."

"Ha! Ain't that the truth. I'm hardcore skxawng."

"At least you're the paranoid kind. You might not get eaten in a place like Pandora, but probably only 'cause you've got the sense to not go running around in the forest."

"Besides, ordinarily I've got enough coffee in me to make any sized critter jittery. Believe me, I'm a meal to be avoided."

"Man, the last thing the nantangs need is caffeine."

"Ha! Can you imagine? But the lucky thing would be the caffeine crash that followed!"

"Unless it ends up, I dunno, permanently fusing to them or something."

"Oh no! That'd be terrible. Next thing we know, they'll be in line at this hipstery coffee joint, rolling their eyes at the music selection."

"What's a hipster?"

"Oh! They drink expensive coffee with too much other stuff in it, they've got wide-framed glasses even if they don't need glasses, they like stuff that's outdated so they can seem better than everyone else. And they dislike almost everything because they know something better."

He gives her a kind of odd look. "Why do they do that?"

"They want to project an image of being cool through being uncool. It's weird. Didn't anything like that exist on your earth?"

"Not like that, no. Coffee's something you only get if you're rolling in money. Same thing with real food. Lotsa people trying to act like they're all that, but it's more of a macho thing."

She figured something like hipsters would exist forever, the people who strive to be better than everyone else, people who try hard to seem like they're not trying hard. "Ah, so straight-up macho. That's fair enough. What about the other end of the spectrum? The people who aren't all that and know it?"

He shrugs. "Dunno. Never paid much attention to the intellectual types except Tommy. At least until I was on Pandora, and then it took me weeks to start listening to 'em."

"Yeah. I bet it'd be rough, in that kind of world, to give much stock to anyone who can't go out there and do it themselves."