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

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

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.

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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.

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.

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?"

"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."

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."

"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?"

"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.

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?"

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.

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."

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."

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."

"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.

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."

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.

“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.”

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?"

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.”

It wasn't that Sam wasn't used to hanging around nobility. There were dozens of Ventrue--her own clan--who loved to bore anyone who would listen with the long and complicated history of their blue bloodlines. No. It was the fact that Natalia was kind of the opposite of all that that seemed to throw her the most. She'd never met someone with royal blood who didn't let her know it in the first five minutes of conversation.

Just like people who went to fucking Harvard. They always managed to work that into a conversation, even if it was about the weather or fashion trends in the late 1700s.

"Huh," she said, folding her arms. "Should I be bowing or having honor or something like that?" she asked. Genuine question. Not that she was really prepared to do much bowing.

The smallest flicker of a smile crossed her face before she picked up the knife and got back to work. She didn’t want to be coddled, protected. She wanted to help.

“You could, but it does seem like a waste of time.”

"A little bit," Sam said. "Especially considering the fact that I probably have no honor to work from." She was technically a bootlegger. And, you know, a vampire. People generally didn't put those two occupations in the 'Good Guy' column of life. No matter how hard she tried to be an actual person.

She gave Natalia a small smile. "Is this something you want kept on the DL?" she asked. "I mean, you didn't mention it until I pried."

"On the... what?" She paused for a moment to frown at such an odd phrase. The intention became clear a moment later, though.

"I don't want to cause a fuss. And I've never had much patience for all that formality anyway."

"Then I won't tell anyone," Sam replied. She crossed her heart and held up three fingers in the Girl Scout salute.

...which probably meant nothing to poor Natalia.

She hoped, at least, the thought counted for something.

It meant absolutely nothing to her, but it was as amusing as it as mystifying. She tilted her head in confusion even as she smiled uncertainly.

"Thank you." Probably. She turned to her potatoes again.

"How am I doing?"

Sam knew what it was like to want to hide part of yourself. Or, in her case, most of yourself. Anyway, she wasn't prone to giving away the secrets of others. So she just wanted to do the right thing.

Actually, she always wanted to do the Right Thing. It was just that sometimes she didn't know exactly what that was.

And she fucked it up. Like, a lot.

But she gave Natalia a smile and an encouraging nod. "Not bad. I think you're well on your way."

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our_promise - 2018-10-19 06:21 (UTC) - Expand

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