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

"Totally. But it was hard to get back to normal. Especially since, get this, my 'hey guys, I'm dead' message had already sent out to all my friends."

"That sucks majorly."

"Maaaajor suckage."

"Most of 'em heard you weren't dead pretty quick, I hope."

"Yeah, I got on the computer real quick to let everyone know."

"That's good." He's glad that her friends didn't have to go through that awful time for very long, where you believe someone you care about is dead. He's never been so lucky as to have that reversed.

"Yeah." She looks older, somehow; her death is something she thinks about often, worries about, the afterlife (or lack thereof), the fact that one day she will die, permanently.

"So enough about the depressing stuff," he says, trying to get her off that topic that makes her look as old as she feels. "How're the munchkins?"

"They're darling, oh gosh. Two and a half now, so they're unstoppable. How do kids grow up on Pandora?"

"Beats the heck out of me," he says with a grin and a shrug. "Mostly raised by the clan, it seems. How they don't get eaten by nantang every day, I have no idea; they're curious little critters."

"I bet the kids're beautiful," she says, smiling wistfully, twirling her hair around her finger.

"They're about your size, actually. Except a bit more blue."

"Oh golly, how cute! In another life... I bet they'd think I was weird if I went over and played with them now, but, oh, I wish I could."

"They'd think you were weird-looking, that's for sure."

"Yeah, and we wouldn't speak the same language, and... they'd be more skilled and adept at movin' around in a dangerous area than I would."

"Actually most of them speak at least some English. Grace taught a lot of 'em at a school she built, before things got bad with the humans."

"Oooh, that's cool. I still have a sinking feeling that if we were playin' in the trees, I'd trip or something awful."

"Hey, ground level ain't so bad either. You miss out on a lot of cool stuff if you're up in the trees all the time."

"Yeah, playin' on ground I can do, probably with 78% fewer accidents."

"What about purposefuls?"

"Well with purposefuls you never really know."

He smiles, and looks away for a moment. "I'm not really a kid kinda guy. They're clan though, and that's what matters. Grace was special to 'em, though."

"Yeah, I bet. Grace sounds like a really stellar lady."

"She was. A hardass bitch in a lotta ways, but she had a soft spot for the Na'vi. I've never seen anyone get so excited over trees before. Well, maybe Norm. He started drooling on day one."

"A real botanist slash anthropologist. Man, I love people sometimes."