I'm waving through a window, oh, can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me? [OPEN]

[thegreatexperiment]

WHO: Samantha Moon
WHERE: Various Locations (see below and put one in your subject!)
WHEN: First week of October
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Will update as needed, but just assume Sam's potty mouth

---

Kitchen at the Inn
It scared Sam a little bit that she was starting to develop a routine. But she was. And whether that meant she was settling down or giving in, she couldn't really say. And she wasn't sure she wanted to analyze it too much. At any rate, for the time being, she was just sort of going with it. Which meant that the first thing she did in the morning was swing by the kitchen. She always waited until after people had done their breakfast thing, so she wouldn't be in the way. Or, more accurately, so her Rube Goldberg-esque distillery wouldn't be in the way.

She usually made about three batches of potato vodka every day, at this point. As long as there were potatoes. She was always careful to cut out the eyes and save them for the botany freaks. Sometimes, she would experiment, trying to mix in different flavorings.

They usually all tasted vile.

But that was fine, since the vodka was strong enough to burn off a normal person's taste buds, anyway.

There was something calming about sitting on the counter, watching the way the diamond-like bubbles traveled through the tubes. Like one of those glittery stress-relievers on the corner of a professor's desk. Sam played little mind games, counting and following and observing. Anything she could do to avoid thinking.

Didn't help much. She still saw Avery's name, like a fucking neon sign on the inside of her eyelids, every time she blinked.

Spear Fishing
Sam decided it was pretty safe to assume that she'd never go down in history as a singularly spectacular fisher. But there was a gross, morbid satisfaction to spearing fish. Likely, it was a combination of factors, the most obvious being that what she really wanted to spear was the faces of their generous Overlords. At least fishing was more productive than hitting a tree with a lead pipe. Her hands still stung from all of the cuts and bruises she'd inflicted on herself. Not to mention the ones Danny had given her.

She wadded up to her calves in the water. The Overlords had given her a pair of black, short pants with laces up either side that, unfortunately, delighted her little Goth-loving heart. And they were perfect for getting wet. Sometimes she wore them with her scrub tops or some of the shirts she'd collected over the past year and a half, but today, she was just in a sports bra.

One thing she would absolutely never take for granted again was the way the sunlight felt on her skin.

Schoolhouse Library
Of the many gifts she'd received from the Overlords, the one Sam trusted the least was the large set of colored pencils. She'd watched one-too-many horror movies growing up. She kept expecting some bizarre plot twist. Every time she'd draw with red, someone would lose blood. If she drew monsters, they'd come to life. Somehow, drawing a picture of something might whoosh it into the circus. The usual tropes from her life before she was, in fact, the monster at the end of the horror movie.

But there was nothing.

Which wasn't to say she started to trust or anything like that. But she did start to draw.

And out of a desperate need to be useful to someone, she'd taken it upon herself to start decorating the library with headers for each category of books. Science. Sports. Mathematics. All of it. With perfect, neat handwriting, she labeled the sections, then drew little pictures around and through the letters. Spinning planets with rings of fire. The pennant over Wrigley Field (if only...). An elegant Pi, like a rusty shed with a roof curved by the rain.

The project was good for long nights, when Sam couldn't sleep. But sometimes, she'd be in the middle of drawing something that would remind her of...

She blinked and saw it again. Avery's name.

And somehow, on stolen bits of paper and old napkins, his face started to appear, thin and bony and redheaded. Just like she remembered him. Just like he'd been when he...

...no. There was no point in thinking about what he'd done to her any more.

Comments

[our_promise]

She had one very significant deal to which the vast majority of her issues could be ascribed. The laugh made her blush, but there was a stubborn set to her chin.

"I never realized. I assumed they came from seeds, like most plants."

[thegreatexperiment]

"Potatoes are tubers. They break all kinds of rules."

Which was about as technical as Sam got about botany, most of the time. It was a perfectly fine science, as far as the hard sciences went. But it moved really slowly.

"Watney could explain it better," she said with a shrug. "If you can put up with his particular brand of weird."

[our_promise]

She sighed. More things to learn. Though she wasn’t sure this one was strictly necessary.

“I think I’ll save my memory for the more practical lessons.”

[thegreatexperiment]

Now that just made her sound like a computer.

Sam smirked a little, remembering her first few months in the village, when the Overlords made her human. How fucking Pinocchio would that be?

...actually, she wondered if it had ever happened. There were those long lists to consider, still.

"Fair enough," she said mildly.

[our_promise]

She finished the potatoes, though it took a long time and the results were incredibly messy.

“There,” she declared, offering her sad, mutilated potatoes to Sam.

[thegreatexperiment]

Sam looked over and wondered if this girl had ever been in a kitchen her whole life. Sam herself was no cook, but she knew her way around a knife.

Maybe it was all those dissections she'd done in bio.

Clearing her throat to keep herself from getting snide, she nodded. "Okay, the next step is peeling the skin off the potatoes." A pause. "The brown part around the edges. You think you're up to that?"

[our_promise]

In fact, she had not ever been in a kitchen. Not for anything more than sneaking snacks before or after meals.

She considered the potatoes and their skin.

"That seems easy enough."

No, she was not up to that and should absolutely not be allowed to try to skin a potato unsupervised.

[thegreatexperiment]

Whenever someone said 'seems easy,' that generally was the first red flag. Sam turned the heat down on the mash mix on the stove, and walked over to Natalia, picking up a spare knife.

"Here," she said, "watch."

And she started to peel the potato, moving smoothly and slowly so Natalia could see the way she slipped the blade under the skin and rotated the potato itself, keeping her fingers at a self distance.

[our_promise]

Natalia watched closely, trying to discern if there was any special trick to it. Of course, keeping one's fingers clear seemed like the most natural thing in the world. What was interesting was how thin the resulting peel was. That made sense if you wanted to keep as much of the... inside potato? as possible.

[thegreatexperiment]

She finished peeling the potato, then set it down on the counter and started to dice it up. "Once they're all peeled and cut up into pieces like this," she said, "then they get boiled on the stove and smooshed up. Just like mashed potatoes."

Did she know what that was?

Somehow, she didn't strike Sam as the Thanksgiving type.

"Hey, Natalia, where are you from, anyway?"

[our_promise]

"Oh. Is that how they're made?" She had eaten mashed potatoes before on many occasions, but knew nothing about how to prepare them. They weren't exactly a campfire food.

"I'm from Baticul, in Kimlasca."

[thegreatexperiment]

Baticul?

Kimlasca?

What the actual?

Sam sighed. Every time she thought she was getting used to the multiverse, it reminded her just how multi it was. She supposed she had that coming. It was careless to forget about people like Benedict who came from realms way outside of Sam's schema of things.

"Huh," she said, "never heard of them. Sounds interesting."

[our_promise]

"It's the capital," she offered for at least a vague reference point. There had been disappointingly few people who knew where Kimlasca was. Though on the other hand, she didn't have to concern herself with 'your highness'es, or 'if it please my lady's.

"Where are you from, Sam?"

[thegreatexperiment]

"Originally? Chicago." Technically, she'd been born in Lincoln, Nebraska. And had grown up in Lake Forest, an affluent suburb of Chicago. But her heart belonged to the Windy City and always would. "But I've spent the last couple of years in Los Angeles," she added, with a nearly apologetic air.

She really didn't like LA.

But she had started to develop a certain affection for some of its people.

The not-pretty-people, the Kindred.

[our_promise]

She chuckled, picking up a potato to begin the work of further mangling them.

"I can't say I've heard of either of those myself. What's Los Angeles like?"

[thegreatexperiment]

Somehow, that wasn't the biggest shock of the day.

"It's a little like here, I guess," she sighed, going back over to the stove. "Just as many pretty people, anyway. Although the technology is a lot..."

A pause.

"Well, there's actual technology." At least, there was. Before the Rain of Fire and all. But Sam wasn't particularly moved to talk about it, at the moment.

[our_promise]

Natalia nods, but keeps her attention on the potatoes. Her 'skin' is about twice as thick as Sam's.

"I know the feeling. The lack of light is a bit unnerving."

[thegreatexperiment]

Well, there was a halfway decent common ground. It wasn't at all true what they said. Vampires didn't like the dark.

"It blows," said Sam, ever the poet. "LA is always lit up, even at night. A million different kinds of life, everywhere. It doesn't...it doesn't look like day. Not exactly. But it's a special kind of night."

[our_promise]

Natalia nodded again, so that Sam would know she was listening, in case the other girl was actually looking.

"Baticul is the same. At least, it always seems that way from the castle. It's called the City of Light, though that isn't really the reason."

[thegreatexperiment]

"Castle?"

Sam glanced over her shoulder at Natalia. Somehow, it didn't surprise her as much as she should have that there was a castle involved. And somehow, she didn't think it was a castle like the Excalibur in Vegas, built for the purpose of kitsch.

Call it a hunch.

[our_promise]

Her knife stopped for a moment and Natalia blushed. It was a silly slip. She began again, a note of careless pride in her voice as she refused to admit that she hadn't meant to talk about this.

"Yes. My home."

[thegreatexperiment]

Hello, plot twist.

Actually, Sam felt like she was beginning to understand why maybe Natalia didn't spend a lot of time in a kitchen. But she wasn't ready to assume, just yet. It wasn't scientific. And assuming tended to get her into a lot of trouble.

Of the undead variety.

"You...live in a castle?" she asked, turning around and leaning against the counter.

[our_promise]

“Yes.” She continued her work, focusing very hard on not cutting herself out of distraction.

“It’s only natural, as the heir to the throne.”

[thegreatexperiment]

Sam coughed. Not for any biological purpose, whatsoever. But she was still young enough and human enough to still express...well...a healthy dose of surprise in a very, very human way.

"I'm sorry, say what?"

[our_promise]

She sighed and set down the potato so she could turn to look at Sam. Now she stood straight and proud, as nobility should.

“I am Princess Natalia Luzu Kimlasca-Lanvaldear, heir to the Kimlascan throne.”