sixthiterationlogs | Skinny-dipping [OTA]

WHO: Veronica Sawyer
WHERE: The spring
WHEN: BACKDATED to the night of September 19
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Naked ladies?
STATUS: Open
NOTE: Skinny-dipping party post! Threadjack away! All village ladies will have been quietly invited. Brave men are also welcome to accidentally happen upon them all or try to spy.

The sky was filled with the most perfect, big, bright, shining moon. Mark called it the harvest moon, but tonight, she's just their gracious and beautiful lady to Veronica; their luminescent co-conspirator.

The idea had come to her mostly out of desperation. Hauling water back from the spring is tedious and exhausting, and there's never enough to have a real bath -- Although the thought of spending a whole day walking her happy ass back and forth solely to indulge had occurred to her. The spring itself is clear and clean and inviting, but with people in and out of the area all day long, it's not exactly private.

So what do you do? Go at night, of course, and invite all of your friends.

"I haven't done this since summer camp in sixth grade," Veronica admits as she whips her shirt off over her head and drops it beside the shimmering pool. She wouldn't have called herself an exhibitionist by any means, but feeling as gross as she has been makes a girl not care so much about who sees her topless. And after she shimmies quickly from her pants and slips into the water, any irrational, lingering embarrassment is snuffed entirely out: It is truly and completely bliss.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Raven stands ankle-deep in the spring, but doesn't go any further. Dressed in the briefs she'd been supplied, she wears her grey scrub top and doesn't make a move to remove it.

Skinny dipping isn't a concept that's foreign to her. A few of the kids at their first camp had found a lake without a monster lingering beneath the surface and had gone for a dip without their clothes. Raven hadn't been one of them.

She almost hadn't come, but being locked up in her own space in the inn, and after trying to be useful again, she finds that she wants to at least see what it's like, even if she remains on the outskirts. She can't swim, for one, and she doesn't quite feel comfortable going out into the water in the dark.

Raven Reyes can do almost anything, but she's not the careless risk taker some like to paint her to be. She can't swim, and she knows it. With the way this entire activity has been painted, that's a necessary skill to have to be able to enjoy oneself.

And when she decides to move from her spot, after wriggling her toes and relishing in how she can feel the water lap at her ankles of both legs, she begins to walk along the outskirts of the spring. She doesn't wade into the deeper parts of the water.

Ned had made sure all his siblings could swim. He was proud, so proud, of rescuing Dicky Shelton from that flooded creek, but he'd wanted to make sure that if any of his siblings got into similar trouble, they'd have a chance of saving themselves if no one was around to help. Kate proved a good swimmer, even in her clothes, although she's not swimming so much currently. More just...

Enjoying moving slowly. Walking along the bottom. Sitting on a rock.

But she sees how Raven's moving, cautiously and around the edge, and she swims over until the bottom is high enough she can stand. Like Raven, she's wearing her underthings - although in her case, this is the flimsy bra their captives have given her and a pair of drawers she's made herself.

"How you findin' it?"

"Wet."

It's a smartass answer lacking any bite. But that's how she finds it. Wet.

Raven had avoided any of the lakes anyone stumbled upon when she was based at the dropship camp and in Arkadia. There was something to be found in the tents with the weapons, or sitting around a dead campfire while the sun was beating down from its perch in the sky.

She suspects she'd been avoiding any water for the fear of what floating in it would feel like.

She's observed half the women here walking into the water, diving underneath it to reappear some distance away from where they started. It hadn't quite caught her eye until she'd realised she could float in it, and while her hair remains dry, Raven's been afraid of what floating in the water would remind her of.

Looking up at Kate, she gives her a small smile. "It's … weird." Sheepishly, she adds, "I don't know how to swim."

"I'm actually surprised so many here know how to," Kate admits herself. "It's not that common. And I don't really recommend learnin' in the dark."

She has faith enough in her own skills to rescue Miss Raven should she get into any trouble, but she has an idea it could be a frightening thing. Most people feel braver, more confident, under the light of the sun.

"But... But you know, if you, you can kneel down at the edge? So you're in the water, but not havin' to float or swim or anythin' like that."

"Where's the fun in that?" It isn't said with any acid. Raven's walked in space, been one of the only people in the original camp of delinquents to have ever felt the home they'd been born in wrap around her. She remembers how afraid she had been on her first ever space walk, and how confident and even reckless she'd began to grow.

She can see what the others are doing, and she petulantly wants to be doing the same. But she knows her own limits, even though she often believes she has none. She doesn't know how to swim. Jess had to pull her from the fountain when she first arrived here.

She looks out at the water and kicks her left leg in it. "How'd you learn how to swim?"

"Well," she begins, all dramatic and exaggerated, "this way does mean you get to miss out on the stage where you go in too deep, flail, I go on in after you, and you punch me in the face. I can appreciate how this'd be a downside? But I have such a pretty face."

Then she smiles.

"Me oldest brother, Ned. He showed me. There's a few creeks and that around where we lived. Enough of them flood, he didn't want us gettin' into trouble that we couldn't maybe get ourselves out of."

The Ark had restricted her experiences, and having an older brother to teach her how to swim happened to be two of them. She couldn't picture it on the Ark; there were no pools, and there were no siblings — or there wasn't supposed to be. She can easily picture Bellamy trying to teach Octavia how to swim, and his sister trying to drown him as a result.

Sometimes Raven dislikes how much she's lost because of where she's grown up. The decisions of others who had lived long before she'd been born had decided her fate for her. She envies Kate for what she has, and most likely takes for granted.

She remains thoughtful for a moment. Perhaps the idea someone else has done what Kate's suggested makes her feel more comfortable in entertaining the suggestion. "Did you squat in these creeks when you were learning?"

"We did. Sometimes it was perchin' on rocks, others we were just sittin' in the mud and sand. It's like learnin' anything, really. You do it in stages."

The Kellys have never reacted well to harsh lessons: Kate thinks if anyone had tossed one of them into water and hoped to swim, they'd long regret it. In her experience, moving someone too fast, or too cruelly, does nothing good at all.

It's just like the skill set she's acquired over the years. Learn bit by bit and then expand. Except Raven had never been good at that on the Ark, and she knows she won't be on the ground, either.

Pushing herself too hard with a leg that'll never become any stronger than it is has very much been a demonstration of her own stubborn impatience.

Looking out at the water, she nods her head in acceptance of that. "And how does going from perching on a rock to being out there take?"

Kate grins. Even in the moonlight, her teeth flash in the darkness of her mouth.

"Exhilarating. In that way where you're scared, but havin' all the fun in the world. You're not touchin' anything but the water, and it's just the water and yourself keepin' yourself up. I guess it's a bit like flying," she muses then. "Or as close to flying as you get for any length of time."

Any length of time that isn't that frozen moment when a horse and rider jump, anyway, she thinks.

That sounds a lot like walking in space.

Raven misses it more than she ever wants to let on. Trapping that feeling in a box and shoving it far from herself, she wonders if trying to learn to swim is the best way to cope with what she'll never have again. Will it bring up too many memories and make her yearn for what she wants most in the world?

Being in space hadn't hurt her. Being on the ground, living the dream, had.

She looks out at the water, then down by her side. She bends, just slightly, so her fingers can scrape against the surface.

"I know what it's like to fly," she says quietly, her expression pensive. Flicking water from her fingers, she watches as the droplets soar and fall and cause ripples in the surface of the water. She looks to Kate, brows furrowed slightly. "Is it really like nothing else exists?"

Skinny-dipping [OTA]

OTA

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