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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When Raven laughs, it's low, but not without its amusement. She cuts at his hair, and tries to picture what a mullet — she's certain she's heard the word before — would look like on him.

There's so much she hasn't experienced, and it's all because someone chose to press a button or drop a few bombs from the sky. Sometimes Raven feels painfully envious of the people here who've experienced everything, and have the opportunity to take what she'd kill for for granted.

"I'm sure you could pull it off," she says, running her fingers along the back of his hair. She makes sure they're even, and when they're not, he'll hear a snip of the scissors. "Is it itchy because you don't take care of it? Or because it's long?"

"Because it sits there, but not the front. Only the back," Cougar says, but she's probably right. For all that Cougar doesn't want it, he could probably still make it work. Again, it's not something that he's willingly going to encourage, though.

"You're not giving me one, right?" he double-checks, because he only knows the little bird so well and he's not sure where her sense of humour lies. If it's in giving people haircuts they don't really want, he's going to have to retract any friendship he might have offered.

Raven smiles.

"For someone who doesn't trust me, you were quick to give me these scissors."

As creative as Raven Reyes is with her hands, haircuts are, unfortunately, not her forte. She likes to keep it simple. Her skill with hair belongs with braiding, as her own hair is enough evidence to show she's skilled at that, when given the time to do something with her hair.

Finn's always told her her haircuts were always a little lopsided. If he was here, he'd tell Cougar he's going to wish he'd never spoken ill of the mullet in his life.

"I think you're going to look great missing half your hair."

He doesn't say that if she truly thought she was going to stab him in the head with scissors, he could defend himself at least well enough to make sure she wouldn't walk away unscathed. And besides, the little bird has given him no cause to mistrust her. There are others here he will watch -- she is not one of them.

"Which half will be missing?" is his deadpan.

She makes it a point to hum in thought, looking over hair to try and pinpoint what may tickle his ego. With the scissors far away from him, she cards her fingers from the nape of his neck right up to the top in a straight line, suggesting what would be a reverse mohawk.

"Centre's always best, without a doubt," she says. "I think you could get rid of the hair here. Isn't that a cool haircut? Missing the centre part of your hair?"

He snorts at that, amused at what a sight he would make, and without his hat. "If you did that, I think maybe my shears would find your neck," he warns in a casual way, like he isn't threatening violence because of his hair. Without his hat, he needs something to be protective over.

"Curls will be embarrassing enough," Cougar assures her. "Voy a mirar de nuevo diecisiete."

Raven laughs loudly.

Pulling herself together, she tries to ensure her voice is stern, "Don't make me laugh, wildcat." The scissors are nowhere near him, uncertain of her own grip on them. Raven may be able to handle a bomb delicately, but a pair of scissors held to someone else's head gives her pause.

"I'll chop off an ear, and then you'll look anything but a handsome seventeen year old."

She doesn't resume her activity straight away, though. Uncertain if she can trust him to behave, all she does is run her fingers through the back of it, trying to match the ends and finding only a portion of it is uneven. She's come a long way since her days of giving Finn a patchy haircut.

"Y el cuello es demasiado bonito para sus tijeras."

He had wondered, with her last name, whether she spoke his language. It washes over him with ease and he takes a moment to feel like he's back home with one of his sisters, rather than not having seen them for years thanks to his own teenaged choices. "Then we have no sharp objects ruining either of us," he promises, switching over to Spanish because it flows easier and it's been so long. He sits increasingly still, his breathing going completely even as he steadies his heart rate. "If it's good, I will tell everyone around me that you're the one to come see."

Not that he's sure that's an actual incentive to do well or to do poorly.

Speaking this language is a little odd for her. The Ark's dominated by English, and she hasn't had the opportunity to slip into a tongue that she learned from her mother and some of her neighbours. She'd almost thought it was simply something her section of the Ark had made up.

She smiles. "No!" She laughs and shakes her head, and endeavours to make his hair even at the back. Just as she treats building bombs or taking apart generators, she treats Cougar's hair with the eye of a perfectionist.

Then, in Spanish, she scolds him, "Then you won't have me all to yourself, wildcat. And an awesome haircut."

He grins at her from where he's sitting, a sly curve of his lips upwards as he laughs in a soft huff at the implication that her wildly amazing skills with a pair of shears will somehow take her away from him. "So if I'm to be selfish, I should lie and say someone else gave me the haircut? Hmm? Who is it you want to inundate with requests," he insists, feeling himself already growing more secure.

Of course, he felt like this last time, right before the children on that helicopter were blown to pieces, after Cougar had told them to hang on for the ride.

Raven hums in thought. To not have something credited to her name almost goes against her very character. Raven Reyes likes to boast, and she likes to make sure she does so around those who deserve to feel inferior to her. If Wick was here, he'd never hear the end of how mean of a haircut she gives, and then denying him profusely for being too lame for her to trim his.

"You can tell them it's me," she says in English. "The great Raven Reyes. But they have to prove that they're as awesome as you." She leans forward to give him a pointed look, eyebrow arched and her lips threatening to curve upward.

"Mullets," she continues in Spanish, liking how it feels less dusty on her tongue now, "is the magic word they have to use. Or else no haircut. How's that sound?"

He smirks when she gives him the password, but doesn't nod (because the last thing he needs is to give himself more scars and stitches). "Yes, good," he agrees firmly. "I'm awesome, am I? And here I thought that I was a big cat that wasn't to be trusted, hmm? Isn't that why you wanted a weapon when you first met me. What made you decide you could trust me?"

He already knows that he won't hurt her, that he'll protect her fiercely, but it's not like he's sent her a letter or a missive that says as much.

"Not as awesome as me," she replies, puffing out her chest. According to Raven, no one can reach her level of awesomeness. Her arrogance has always been for show, earning herself a laugh from Finn and Sinclair and the others she worked closely with. It's all fun and games, but sometimes Raven wishes she was back to who she'd been on the Ark, the girl who believed in her own awesomeness.

She isn't the type to lead someone astray, either.

She shrugs her shoulder. "But you have potential." At this point, she's brushing her fingers through his hair, brow furrowed when she pays particular attention to it, as she tries to see whether or not it's all even.

"You should know a bird never tells her secrets. You'll just have to trust me."

He makes a show of sighing heavily, like this is a great thing to ask of him. Truthfully, he had decided he could trust Raven within their first meeting. She might have been keen for a weapon, but she didn't have that guarded and dangerous look in her eyes (not like Cougar does), and he knows that she's a good ally to have. She's handy, after all.

"I see how it is," is his knowing reply. "Well, so long as you keep speaking to me in Spanish, then I think I can learn to trust you. It will be good to keep someone around that lets me speak without having to think on words for thirty seconds or more per sentence."

Her hands drop from his hair, one still holding the cutters and the other moving to curl around his shoulder. She thinks it looks nice, even though Raven's always been hard on her work. It could be a little better. She suspects a portion of it may be uneven, but considering how dark his hair is and how it seems to curl and take on a life of its own, she doubts anyone would be able to spy the slightly different lengths.

Besides, she suspects Cougar's never let anyone stand at his back.

"We'll have to do it at one of those meetings," she smiles. He may slip into Spanish, but she remains in English. It's not necessarily any different than speaking a tongue she hasn't quite thought of for a good four months, but he knows she can understand him, and she thinks that's all that matters. "Make them paranoid we're talking about them. I think we deserve to have some fun, don't you?"

Cougar smirks at the idea, knowing that it will definitely make people paranoid, but at the same time, he kind of likes the idea of making people think twice about what they might be saying. He offers a firm nod of his head, seeing as he very much likes it. "Yes," he confirms. "We should do that," he agrees, his smirk wider as she finishes with the job.

"You should come by," he offers, "collect some eggs as a thank you."

Raven arches her brow. He may not be able to see it, but he may be able to hear the bemusement in her voice when she questions, "What am I going to do with eggs?"

Despite having landed on the ground, there hadn't been any chickens in the area of the dropship. She doesn't quite know what she's meant to do with eggs. She'd seen them in the nests of birds, but given the small size of them, they hadn't quite been acceptable food to share amongst ninety or so kids.

Cougar gives Raven a wary look, worried. "You don't know what an egg is?" he asks, not sure if she's saying this as a joke. He looks at her expression, trying to see any hint of a smile in her eyes or in the corner of her lips, but it doesn't seem to be there. Which means that she's serious.

It seems beyond strange that she wouldn't know, but this place is teaching him that even his wildest expectations can't be trusted.

"I know what an egg is," she says, rolling her eyes. They'd learned it in Earth Skills. If they happened across a nest filled with round shaped objects that were light in the hand and broke easily if dropped, that meant they'd found a nest of food for themselves. They'd never had the fortune of quite finding any chickens on the ground.

Had Raven ever touched one? That's another story altogether.

She lifts a shoulder, feeling slightly foolish. "I've just never had to use one before. It's not like there was a chicken farm where we landed on the ground. I think the Mountain Men scared them away."

He tips his head to the side. Now that his haircut is done, he stands and beckons that she follow him with a nod of his chin. "You have to come with me," he says matter-of-factly. "I can't let you go another minute without at least knowing what a scrambled egg tastes like. It's very sad to me that you don't."

He's on his feet, holding a hand out to her. "It won't be long. They are just at my house."

She keeps the shears in hand, unsure if she's going to need them to cut a mullet in a chicken's feathers or to defend herself from what Cougar has planned for her.

She easily follows him at his nod. "I've got all the time in the world, wild cat." There's nowhere important to be, no pressing issue to tend to. It's strange being without the tethers that kept her busy in Arkadia, but it's also freeing, too.

Good-naturedly, she pouts, "Are you going to cry?"

"I might if you don't at least come try some scrambled eggs," Is Cougar's wry response, because he thinks it's a sad thing when someone hasn't even tasted a simple, staple food that other people often enjoy without thinking too long about it.

"Let's go," he coaxes, leading him to the house he shares with Jake and Veronica. "I left some for dinner, but I can hunt game instead, to give you a sample."

Teasingly, she says, "You really don't have to feed me. I'm a bird; I scavenge for myself."

But she follows him. Raven's never done well with letting others take care of her. She'd always been embarrassed by Mrs Collins' kindness, and even Sinclair's extra tutelage and compliments of her skills. It's not something that's grown into a particularly good skill on the ground, despite having needed others to take care of her from time to time. It's remained as it is, leaving her feeling a little awkward, and very much like the bird she's named after, pecking at others to give her things when she's never learned how to accept it.

For once, it's not due to pride. Raven has an inkling as to why she bats away any act of kindness, but she refuses to dig deep and analyse it.

"But I don't want you to cry. You're too pretty."

While he's very much taken (or at least, he is in his mind), Cougar still has enough vanity to preen a little and enjoy the way that she calls him pretty, even if it's not crying that she's talking about. Lucky for them, they have only a short distance to go before they reach the house.

He knocks his boots off on the stairs, nudging aside bloody towels that he had used to stem the flow of blood. "If Veronica and Jake are here, please ignore," he insists. "They will only make annoying faces." At least, in Jake's case. It might be good for Veronica and Raven to meet, he thinks, but he can do that later when he is not introducing Raven to eggs.

She takes a good look at the house once they've approached it, completing a quick assessment so she can figure out which house is Cougar's if it's dark, which one is his when she's not particularly interested in taking her time in noticing the bungalows lined up outside of the town's main square. Raven's never quite seen a house before she'd come to this town, and she finds she wants to compare a lived in one with one thats been abandoned.

Following suit, she kicks off her boots, liking she can do that with her left leg. Looking around inside, she finds the inside of Cougar's house is much different to the ones she'd snuck into to raid for a few spare parts.

"Veronica doesn't have an annoying face," she says. She glances toward the bloody towels, eyebrow arching. She loses her amusement when she eyes him. "Did you see one of the doctors after you hurt yourself?"

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