sixthiterationlogs | and the ground opens up

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and the ground opens up

WHO: Cougar Alvarez
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: Hours post-quake, September 6th (pre-aftershocks) / September 6th, evening
OPEN TO: OTA / Closed to Jake (cut content)
WARNINGS: Slight injury
STATUS: Closed

cougar's barbershop of necessity

Cougar's beginning to think the boxes that arrive are possibly saving their lives. He wants to pretend they're from a friendly, but he also knows plenty about being used when needed. For all he knows, the boxes are coming from someone like Max, who is keeping them alive because there are nefarious plans in place for them. Unfortunately, Cougar has learned that you use what you need to and if you have to take advantage, you have to turn the tables for yourself.

The barbed wire that he receives in a box is small, but it will do the job. He really only needs it to create a mesh on the ground to catch the eggs in the small coop he's built for the chickens. The chicks are growing by the day and he thinks with another two weeks, they might begin laying their own eggs, which will take him from a production of three a day to twelve. With a dozen eggs a day, he knows that the food situation can alleviate a little and he can hunt less, which is something he's been worried about as the population of animals is only so finite.

He's on the ground looping wire when he feels something beneath him that troubles him.

The ground had moved earlier in the month, he swears, but Cougar is currently precariously positioned under a wooden chicken coop built without much sturdiness and the quake seems to be getting worse and worse. Sharply exhaling, Cougar bolts upright without thinking, the side of his neck slicing hair and skin as it hits barbed wire and makes him roll onto his stomach, deciding to use the very wire he's been hanging for eggs to protect him from anything that might fall during the quake (which is worse than the last).

Palms flat to the ground, he prays to God that nothing too big falls on him, his quiet litany of words keep going until the ground is stable beneath him. Blood, tacky and dripping, is now pooling at his neck and he crawls his way out of the protection to glance in the first water he can find. He lifts up the other side of his uneven hair as he realizes that the wire has taken off most of his hair to the jawline. While he can patch himself up from the wound, he cannot fix the hair emergency.

Which is why, once he's stitched, he finds the kitchen shears and goes to the inn, plonking them down at a table firmly and sitting there, waiting.

Someone is going to need to help cut the rest off and while he feels like a boy in Mama's kitchen again waiting his turn, he knows he cannot keep walking around with a half shorn head. Best to cut it to the curls, again. It will be short and strange, but it will grow properly, then.

the picnic

Jake's birthday is September. Without a calendar, Cougar is left without knowing what day it is, but the weather and other things give enough indications to tell him that summer is fading into fall. The way the sun sets, the temperature of the air, and other clues tell him that either Jake's birthday is about to come or it's passed. Either way, it's a good opportunity for Cougar to try and finally mend the ground between them.

He intends to do more than just mend, of course, but he'll take the small steps if he can't take the bigger ones. He uses the eggs to make meringue cookies, makes a salad with the greens and strawberries, and cooks up a hare before stuffing it into one of the boxes that had brought his items to him. When those are ready and Baby is at his heels, Cougar slips up to collect Jake, trying to tell himself that this will not go badly if he doesn't let it.

With his hair newly shorn, he feels more like a civilian than ever. In the humidity of the wet air, it's already begun to curl the way he hates and the stitches along his neck aren't hidden the way his hair or hat would keep them. He settles, instead, for trying to hide it with the collar of his scrubs shirt, though he has no luck.

He finds Jake, eventually, and whistles for Baby to go collect him at a gallop, yipping away as Cougar closes the distance just a little slower.

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And the dratted kitten just looks so smug, doesn't she? She's a pretty little thing, Kate thinks, a grey tabby with pale green eyes. No tail except a bob of fluff, and that strange way of hoping when she runs, but a pretty kitten. A pretty little kitten currently nestled in Mr Cougar's hand like she has no intention of leaving.

Not that Kate particularly blames her, even as she scoops the kitten up and gives Mr Cougar a smile of thanks.

"I will," she says. "Come to the kitchen, it's easier to clean up."

He nods his head, patting the kitten behind the ears as Miss Kelly takes it away from him. It seems that there are more animals everywhere he turns, which he doesn't mind at all. It just means that they will have to ensure the smaller creatures are being fed just as much as the bigger ones.

"Thank you," he says firmly, meaning it implicitly. "It must even out. Or it will never grow right."

On that, Kate entirely agrees. She's too much a farmer not to see value in the dogs - and now, cat - who has appeared, and the same with the livestock found. If she worries about wintertime fodder, well...

She worries a lot, as people might have started to guess from her determined to Keep Everyone Fed.

"I understand," Kate says. "My oldest brother, he could be so particular 'bout his beard." It still hurts to mention Ned, but here... Here no one knows who he is, and maybe this will help. Talking about him normally. "And... you've seen me hair."

Long, thick, dark - and curly.

"How short do you want it?" she asks, gesturing him over to the nearest sink as she puts the kitten on her shoulder briefly and pulls over a chair for Mr Cougar.

(She understands, too, the trust of a sharp implement near someone's throat. She intends to show every possible care.)

Cougar isn't sure that he gets a choice. After all, the uneven cut of the wire will have informed how short it's going to be without giving him much options. He thinks that he might as well go just a little shorter than that, to allow it to grow a bit more. Sitting down in the chair and leaning back to keep his posture straight, he presses his fingertips to the midpoint of the shell of his ear.

"Here," he says. "It will curl, lots. Let it be short." He could crop it even closer, but he hasn't got the product to maintain a cut that he hasn't worn since he was a teenager.

"Aye, now, it will," Kate agrees. She knows curls, the shift in length between straightening out a lock between fingers and releasing it. She knows, too, the difference between wet and dry, recently washed or just brushed for a week.

And so, she concentrates. She can babble well enough, sparkle even, but when she works, she prefers either silence or singing. For this, she's silent. Concentrating. Working to get his hair neat and none too short.

For a comb, she uses a fork. To wipe away the dried blood, there's a soaking teatowel and her movements are sure but gentle. The pressure one would use on a child, or an injured animal. Not rough, in case the patient lashes out.

She's cut her brothers' hair, although not for several years. She'd like to think the cut is neat enough.

Cougar stays completely still and without moving. He's able to do this for days at a time, and even injured, he can sit there and not move though the pain throbs at him and tries to be insistent. The soft touch, though, is a balm. It's been a long time since he's had a touch like this be so gentle, and it makes him think of how he had pushed Jake away when he'd offered exactly this. Guilt and regret floods it, though only the slightest flinch shows on his face.

He'll make it right, he has to, he just doesn't know how to do it. "Now I cannot hide," he admits, because without a proper hat or the hair, he's going to feel like everything is there on display for everyone to see. "Unless you can also make hats and cut hair?" is his quiet tease.

Kate laughs softly at that as she brushes cut hair from his neck and shoulders with another tea-towel. Although he can't see it, she shakes her head.

"Sadly, Mr Cougar, you've discovered somethin' I can't do. No millinery here. Although I could try and repair a bonnet, if you find one. And I know how to angle flowers in hat-bands for the most stylish appearance."

In other words, if he needs to work out how to put daisies in his cap, she's his girl.

"I suppose you could slant the cap they've given us? Although it'd stand out a bit, which might defeat the purpose."

If he could find tarp, he could work a version of his old hat into existence now that he has thread, but tarp and tents aren't something that are easy to come by. Maybe, at some point, he'll do the same with a different fabric, but it's not key to their survival. It's just something he personally wants.

"I wear it, but is not the same," he complains, aware he's complaining about ridiculous things, but after the earthquake and his minor injury, he feels like he's allowed it, just this once. "I would look good," he decides, "in a bonnet."

She ties a belt around her waist, drawing the eye to just how narrow it appears (mostly optical illusion with her waist now circular instead of oval, but also years of wearing corsetry). The blouse she has made. The undergarments she has made. While she would argue she is more useful with the support the corset gives, the rest of it? The braided cord belt doesn't even serve any functional purpose.

But it makes her feel like herself. And from the smile she gives him, it is clear she understands. Doesn't judge.

"You would look divine in a bonnet. You could arrange the curls to frame your face most fetchingly."

He smirks when she offers him the praise she does about his hair and the bonnet that they're hypothetically making for him. He knows that he will do without a hat as long as he needs to, but it's not normal for him to feel so on display. For one thing, Jake (who already knows how to read him too well) has been able to read everything even better.

Well, when he's not ignoring Cougar, which has been happening for a month now. It's been very painful. "I think maybe, for now, only a haircut. I will look different enough, without the bonnet."

Kate laughs as she gathers up the shorn hair, puts it in a bowl. For the compost heaps, because waste not want not. Or want less, given their situation.

"If you insist, Mr Cougar. But there may come a day where we might need you in disguise. And then, then your time in a bonnet will truly arrive."

It feels good, this. To banter a little. To laugh and joke around about something as silly as this.

"There's mirrors upstairs, if you wanted to look at what I've done."

"I will let Jake tell me how it looks, later," he says, but as soon as the words are out of his mouth, he regrets them. They barely talk more than a quick check-in. Cougar doubts he'd be able to have a conversation about his hair with the man, not without it going poorly. "Or," he amends, giving her an easier smile, "I will use your mirrors," he promises.

He breathes out and can already feel the lightness of hair off his neck, knowing he'll have to get used to it. "My disguises were very good, you know," he shares. "I could blend in with all kinds of landscape."

"Probably best," she says, with a smile back. "I know how much mates can tease. Always best to be prepared. Second floor bedroom, fourth down on the right, it's got a big old vanity in it."

Mr Cougar's comment on disguises makes Kate pause, her smile turn a little wistful. "Me oldest brother was a bit like that," she says. She's not sure why. Maybe because she's trying to make talking about Ned, and about Dan, easier. More natural. Maybe as a reminder to herself as much as the world that they had lives, not just a legend.

"The, the local blacks, they said he was pretty good at it. At creepin' through the bush, not bein' seen. At least," she amends, "for a white fella."

He cannot say how glad he is that she takes his reticence to ask Jake as worry over being teased, because even though he knows his soul could use the chance to unburden itself, he also doesn't want to talk about what he's done, because it's his mistakes.

"Local blacks?" he echoes, shaking his head. "What does this mean?" Maybe his English is failing him, but he doesn't think he understands.

She hasn't had to explain about the Aboriginal people before, and it throws her a little. "Oh- The, the Australian natives? Like the Americas have Indians?"

She hopes that explains them.

"They live in the bush, mostly, so from them, it's high praise. They know what they're talkin' about with trackin' and just meltin' away."

Now that she talks about them more, the English clarifies what he had been missing earlier and he nods his head with understanding. It's more along the lines of what he would do when he was an advanced scout for the team, though it had helped that he was wiry and small, able to disguise himself with the natural resources around him.

"It means they are a dangerous thing," he says with a firm nod of his head. "They have skills I try and learn. But still, I cannot learn as well as they have." He's only been doing this for a few years when it's been their whole lives.

"The local ones are nice enough," she says, but she appreciates his point. Yes, anyone with those skills has the ability to be very, very dangerous indeed.

"I think you have to start when you're little. We do. Not to the same extent as them, but a lot of us out on the farms and rural huts in the bush, we can see things. Tracks, sometimes. Disturbed areas. Sometimes the glint of cans or a horse's tack."

She's not as good as the older people, but then, she's only young, and she knows it.

"It makes so strange bein' here, actually. Everything is... Different. Even the shadows are different. I'm still not used to it."

Cougar hadn't started, not really, until he'd been nineteen and he'd been seeking a purpose. He could have gone to school and become a professor of Spanish Literature or Art, but instead, he put himself to good use and fought for his country. He's glad, though, to hear that he's not the only one to have noticed it's different. "Stars, too," he points out, because navigating at night has been a problem and has left Cougar only hunting during daylight hours, when previously he might have stayed out through the dark.

He doesn't like feeling so out of control, but he can also study his elements and get better at them. It means time. And unfortunately, sometimes, time is not on their side.

In her own land, Kate would wager she could vanish from everyone here. She knows the land, she knows how to cover her and her horse's tracks. She'd spent two years leaving the spying policemen stumbling in the dark as she slipped from under their gaze to bring supplies, messages to her brothers, to Joe, to Hart.

But here, she feels lost.

"I expected the stars," she says. "I don't like it, but I sort of expected it once people told me this was somewhere in America. Different hemisphere, innit? But the shadows are opposites, and the... Sounds are different, and I can't read 'em. Are they different because I'm used to Victoria or are they different because this place is strange?"

Kate supposes that the shadows are like the stars, because of the different tilt of Sun and Earth and whatever else goes on to make that happen. But she can't be completely sure.

Edited 2016-09-29 19:23 (UTC)

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and the ground opens up

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