sixthiterationlogs | Skinny-dipping [OTA]

Entry tags:

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

Even if Bajoran cultural norms regarding female nudity were similarly restrictive as those of many human cultures (they aren't, Prophets be thanked, the last thing Bajor needs is neuroses), Nerys still wouldn't be particularly fussy about getting her clothes off around others. Spend enough time in close proximity to others in roughing-it conditions, and always being covered begins to seem like a moot point.

Besides, it's nighttime, she feels utterly disgusting without having washed thoroughly, considering the amount of physical labor she's had to do since the earthquake, and there's plenty of water, rushing clean from the ground. In due course anything they dirty will be washed away to the sides and down to silt, she figures, and it doesn't matter if her comrades see her or if any mysterious watchers from the sky, Gamemakers or whatever. She's going to get clean.

Nerys' scrubs and bra are gone (neatly set aside at a safe distance) way before she hits the water in a brief shallow dive, emerging and pulling herself up a little bit onto a rock to consider her next move. "Damn, that felt good."

Edited 2016-09-20 22:10 (UTC)

"I am so glad I thought of this," Veronica agrees. She's not dippy enough to get into baptismal metaphors, but it definitely makes her feel like a whole new person just to get the layer of grime and sweat off herself.

"Not that I don't appreciate our masculine compatriots, but it's nice to do something that's just us girls, too." She's missed that, more than she really understood before now.

"It's a damn good idea," Nerys agrees, turning and smiling a little at the young woman--Veronica, she's pretty certain is her name--over her shoulder. "The whole last week has been such a mess and so much work, it's good to at least feel sort of clean for once."

She laughs, almost inaudibly, and the smile grows on her face. "And yeah, I know what you mean when it comes to getting the guys out of the picture. Sometimes they just end up pushing themselves in the way of what needs to happen." It's a roundabout, sort of diplomatic way to say they need to sit down and shut up.

"I'm not trying to say I'm ungrateful, but I think if one more guy makes it his goal in life to see that my precious, delicate self is constantly protected, I might legitimately lose it."

At this point, she likes to think that she's actually doing pretty okay. If there's one thing Veronica has always been, it's a fast learner, and sure, yes, she completely and totally sucks at hunting or fishing or anything that requires killing another sentient being. The whole village is aware of why now. But apart from that, she's managing. Hell, more than managing.

"I live with two of them, I'm surprised they're not crashing through the bushes right now in an attempt to save my virtue."

Nerys tries to cast her mind back to the time (admittedly, she was younger then than her companion is now) when she was considered in need of protection--it had been absolutely infuriating at the time, because she'd wanted to help. "And they don't just expect that you won't be able to pull your weight," she points out. "They don't give you the opportunity to even try, even if you end up failing. It's ridiculous."

She smiles slyly and lifts an eyebrow at the last statement. "And hells, virtue? It's not like anyone's doing much to...besmirch anyone else around here, or at least not that I've overheard or seen. If they are, I wish they'd invite me along."

"God, right? Not that my virtue was ever in need of saving in the first place."

Veronica drifts closer, her bare toes propelling her across the sandy bottom of the pool, and drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

"I get that surviving is a priority, but it's weird that nobody's getting it on. I mean maybe they are and they're keeping it mega hush-hush, but you can't even sneeze in this place without everybody knowing about it."

"Mine never has been, either. It wasn't really much of a thing people worried about, back home." Nerys is pretty sure the only person there who might have had virtue at some point (that she can think of, anyway) is Margaery, but her friend seems kind of past the need to care about that. Humans are so damn confusing about these kinds of things.

She slips back down a little further into the water to meet Veronica halfway, so she can hear. "Unless people have gone out into the woods," she agrees. "And while yeah, I've had sex in the wilderness, I'd prefer somewhere indoors if it's available, which it is."

After a moment, she turns a little further towards Veronica. "Not to start any rumors, but hells, what if we're all being drugged?"

"It's definitely not beyond the realm of possibility," Veronica admits, her face going briefly pinched. She realizes even as she speaks that she really probably should be more worried about something like that.

"I mean, we're all definitely forgetting something, or were just out cold when we were snatched and dressed up and tossed in the fountain," she continues. "But..." she ducks just a little closer," it's not like my libido is suppressed, so I don't think it's that."

Nerys inwardly winces at the expression that comes onto Veronica's face--she doesn't want to ruin the tone of the evening with anything too serious, not when they already have so much to worry about usually. Fortunately, the conversation turns back to sex in general, so she simply nods in acknowledgement and agreement, leaning her head gently on the rock.

"Oh, I'm still feeling it myself," she agrees. "I think maybe it's also sort of...how do you even ask someone if they're interested, in a situation like this?" Being watched, possibly, and at close quarters, and from being from such incredibly different places and times. "My idea of a fun time might not be how someone else understands it at all, you know?"

"I don't know, what's your idea of a fun time?" Veronica asks with a little laugh and a sympathetic smile. "I mean, I know why I'm not getting it on, it's the total dry spell from everybody else that confuses me, so maybe you're onto something. Generation and culture gaps and all that."

Still, chemistry is chemistry, and you put enough people together in a place long enough, human nature invariably takes over. This seems like a weird time to be ignoring thousands of years of evolutionary impulses, in her opinion.

Usually Nerys would ask 'why aren't you getting it on', but she doesn't know Veronica well enough for that, and would like to know her further, so doesn't risk it. She can feel herself blushing a little at the question, though.

"Well, not being human, there's the whole erogenous zones thing," she points out. "Like, I guess humans like ears, though sure as hell not like some, but for me that's..." This is accompanied and explained by an unimpressed scrunching up of her face. "That's not for sex."

"So if things just start getting warmed up, you just say, not the ears," Veronica says with a shrug. "I mean, I get it, but I also wouldn't let it stop me from getting laid if I liked a guy. Plus, not that I've got tons of notches on my belt or anything, but I've never had a guy do anything to my ears, so maybe you're safe?"

Nerys looks Veronica over--well, sort of, not staring at her seeing as they're both undressed and mostly underwater--giving her a considering look. "I guess," she eventually agrees, then feels compelled to explain, a little. Explain for humans, anyway; it's the cheat sheet version as the nuances won't mean much.

"It's a religious thing," she admits. "The ear is...sort of the seat of the soul, kinda? So it's like something your priest would do, touch your ear. And kissing it's kind of weird." Not even with Bareil, ugh. The expression at the mere thought is probably a picture on Nerys' face.

"Sorry, it's just all really weird, you know? Being here with a bunch of humans, no offense, but none of my life is anything anyone here's ever heard of."

That's definitely a new one on Veronica, but to each their own, she guesses. There's still part of her that wonders if they're all remembering things the way they should, and people like Nerys always remind her of it -- The woman in front of her now is clearly human. But if her own memories seem bright and legitimate, who is she to question someone else's?

"What part of being here isn't weird?" she asks with a little laugh, but then shakes her head. "But no, I get it. Most of us have more of a basis of comparison. I guess we just have to look for the ways you're the same instead of different. I mean, we're here having a conversation, so it could be worse?"

Edited 2016-10-25 20:54 (UTC)

The reply Nerys nearly comes out with is basically a sincere 'yeah, we're having a swim and chatting instead of shooting at each other, this is pretty good for diplomacy', but she manages to catch herself before saying as much. Veronica probably isn't used to the idea of people turning up somewhere and things devolving into weapons fire. But that's less a Bajor thing and more a not-in-the-military thing, to be honest.

"We eat the same stuff," she says, nodding and continuing the train of thought. "And we're built pretty similar, as far as I know. Not to mention, uh, those other forms of general compatibility we were chatting about. A lot of stuff is the same across worlds, too, from what I've seen. People care about having their needs met so they can be happy, and for the same for the people they care about, for the most part. What that looks like can be different, but the basic drive is the same."

Even Cardassians, much as she was loathe to admit it, and once again, Nerys finds she's thinking of Ileana and her father.

"Where are you from?" Veronica asks with a curious little tilt of her head. "The name of it, I mean. Not that I'll have any idea of where it is, I literally never left Ohio before I came here," she adds with a self-deprecating chuckle. "I mean, you're from way in my future, right? I don't know if I'd even recognize Earth at that point, it's probably so different from what I'm used to."

Compared to Nerys' time, Veronica's thinking the 1980s might as well be as antiquated as the village they're in now.

This is the first time someone's come out and asked where she's from, so honestly and frankly, and it touches Nerys' heart a little, makes it ache in a good way. She clears her throat to stop her eyes from getting vaguely misty--hey, at least it's dark and no one will notice.

"Hey, you don't need to know where it is, that's okay. It's Bajor," she says, "my home planet is Bajor. I'm from Dakhur Province, but I haven't lived there in a long time, and obviously that won't mean much. But while the plants and animals aren't the same as Earth ones, it's a Class M planet, you know? Temperate, like this, in a lot of places, or subtropical. Really beautiful."

She's still not sure how much she should tell people about their future, so when she speaks next, it's with caution. "I've never been to Earth, but I hear it's really, really different. The same in some ways, sure, but...cleaner and happier, I guess."

"I guess you could definitely do worse than cleaner and happier," Veronica replies with a little shrug. "So like, is this really different for you, or more like... everything's just a little off from where it should be, like evolution just took a slightly different route?"

It's fascinating, really, the idea that there could be planets out there with the components to support life, and which could grow and evolve in such a similar way to Earth, and yet be just a little different because of the quirks of chance. And it's definitely a nicer thing to ponder than where her next meal is going to come from or if she'll have a toilet that flushes tomorrow.

"I should say that as far as I know, it wasn't easy to get to 'cleaner and happier', but most good things in this world take some work," Nerys says. She hopes like hell Bajor can get there...can get there again, to be honest. Things weren't perfect before the Occupation, despite what some people would like to believe, but generally it was pretty good, as far as she understands.

She shifts a little in the water, leaning on the rock as she thinks about Veronica's question. "Stuff here...it fulfills similar niches, in some ways, to what we have on Bajor, or at least in certain parts of Bajor. Fish are fish, and there are smaller animals and larger animals, usually mammals and reptiles. And we domesticated some that are similar, though nothing quite like sheep." She's still bemused when it comes to sheep, really. They're so very docile yet obstinate, she can't quite work them out.

"So that's close, though not quite the same, like...I know verdanis back home aren't anything like your horses, they're birds for a start, but they're similar in size and temperament. Plants are really the hard part. Like, you could take me anywhere on Bajor, and I could find you five plants you could eat, if you gave me an hour. But they all look completely different here."

Edited 2016-10-31 23:43 (UTC)

"No shit?" Veronica says, mouth turning into a thoughtful frown. "Like an ostrich? Do you even know what that is? Giant bird, runs really fast. I don't think they're really built for riding like you would a horse, but what do I know? I guess it's possible, but I don't think they'd be easy to saddle," she adds with a laugh.

She settles into the water, letting it lap at her chin. "I don't think there were all that many of us who would have known what plants were edible even when we are from Earth, so at least you're in the same boat there. Mark showed me some things, but I swear that half the time I end up coming back to him just to make sure I haven't picked something that will kill us all."

"I don't think I know about those," Nerys says, thoughtfully. "Ostrich, what a weird word for a bird. But I guess 'verdanis' sounds pretty damn weird if you've never heard it before. They have four legs, not two like birds, but they're really skinny weird legs..." She realizes she's not making a whole lot of sense and laughs at herself.

"The thing is, I knew the plants back home. Everything made sense, back home. So here, it's like I should know, but I don't. Like everything's a little bit wrong." Bizarro World would probably be the best explanation, but Nerys definitely doesn't know Superman, much less the intricacies of comic books.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Skinny-dipping [OTA]

OTA

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject