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.

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"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too much other stuff in it, they've got wide-framed glasses even if they don't need glasses, they like stuff that's outdated so they can seem better than everyone else.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."

"Which world are you talking about? Pandora, or Earth?" It could apply to both.

"Earth, I was figurin'."

"Yeah, Earth is a mess. Overpopulation makes it real hard to care about too many people around you."

"Yeah, I'd imagine. Just another mouth breathin' air and eatin' food. That's gotta be hard."

"What passed for food, anyway. Definitely not gonna miss Earth rations."

"Definitely. I think you'd mentioned it before. I love alien cuisine, myself. I mean, the sort that's safe to eat, of course. I don't wanna blister my mouth. Again."

"Yeah, I wish you could try Pandora food. It's awesome." Not that he has a lot to compare it to - pretty much anything is better than reconstituted seaweed protein.

"That'd be really cool! What does it taste like?" She knows that's a hard question to answer, but she's so curious.

"Well, it's fruit and nuts and worms. And meat. One talioang will feed a dozen adult Na'vi, so it's real good hunting if you can take down a few."

"That's neat! It must be great to live in such a land of plenty."

"Eywa provides, for sure. The clans near the sea get a hell of a lot of fish, but we haven't traded for any since I've been on planet. Normally they only meet up in passing or at special festivals at certain times of the year."

"What kinds of festivals do you folks have? Trading for fish would be pretty cool, especially 'cause I'm sure you have stuff they don't, too."

"The usual. Good harvest, end of the stormy season, stuff to do with the sun and 'moon,' that kinda thing." He puts fingerquotes around the word 'moon,' as Pandora itself is actually a moon orbiting a gas giant, but it feels too weird to talk about it as a planet in the sky.

"Not any fertility festivals that I know of," he adds with a grin, waggling his eyebrows (one of his avatar's few human-only features) at her.

Victor giggles, and blushes, hand pushed to the side of her face as her skin heats. "Oh dear, dear me. You'd like to give me blushing fits all day, wouldn'tcha. What about the moon?"

"Well there's something like fourteen moons total, and Pandora's one of 'em. The planet's the big one though."

"Wow! The sky at night's gotta be seriously glorious."