white_oleander | Room 210; Late Friday Morning /Afternoon [01/10].

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Room 210; Late Friday Morning /Afternoon [01/10].

Leave it to Fandom to hand Astrid a welcome back like that. She'd spent most of her time since Tuesday just trying to sleep it off, too tired to even care about the oleanders on the wall watching over her, mostly just hoping that the next time she woke up, she'd be back in California, back in 1993...no, it would be 1994, now...back in her small room in a Hollywood bungalow, or even in the low bottom bunk of a rickety bunkbed in the Mac, watching the shadows of pine trees dance across the wall.

No such luck. Still Fandom, still oleanders, nothing but that stark heavy reality of her current situation.

But she'd gotten that morning, she'd gone to class, she swung by the store to pick up a few things, and she was ready to do something, especially about those oleanders on the wall. It meant a lot to her, that Sabine had actually left them there, but they had to go. She didn't want to think about them, or what they represented, or how, potent as their poison was, Ingrid didn't even need them to cast her deadly spells anymore. They had to go.

So she'd cracked open the windows and the door, pulled back her bed, threw down the tarps, and opened up the large bucket of black paint. And armed with a small paintbrush, she got to work, painting over the oleanders one by one, a single petal at a time, filling them in until they were nothing but formless, shadowless, bold black asteriks across the wall. One by one, one at a time, slowly erasing all the loving shadow and color she'd painted into them before she left. And then? Once they were all filled in? She'd go back and start painting in the spaces in between, until the entire wall was nothing but a blank, empty, fathomless black space, waiting until she figured out what should be there instead, or maybe if it should just remain that way for now.

[[ some work-related SP likely, but door and post are open! I just miss her so much XD ]]

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Sabine has actually been surprised Astrid had left them up this long, just because she would have probably wanted something new there. But when she came back to the room, all the black was maybe a little... worrying?

"Hi there."

Astrid had been mostly finished with the last petal on one of the oleanders when Sabine came in, so she finished it up...not quickly, taking her time with it, like it was more about the motion of the brush than anything else, and that motion needed to be careful and deliberate...before she stepped back as if to look over the work, and then turned her head.

"Hey."

And then she wanted to apologize for what she was doing, but it was more out of impulse than any actual remorse or bad feelings.

"I figured you wouldn't mind something different..."

She never had, Astrid, why would she start now?

"Not at all," Sabine said. Honestly, it'd been a little strange to have that side be the same thing for so long, but she also never would have changed it herself. "I knew you'd change it up at some point. What's it going to be?"

"I don't know yet," Astrid admitted, honestly, after a moment of looking back again at the slowly building collection of matte black flowers, though, in that moment, she was suddenly thinking tall, thin silhouettes of pine trees. But that felt too much like being stuck in a forest again, like that first summer...

She shrugged, setting her paintbrush down for a moment, figuring this was as good a time as any for a break. "I'm sure it'll come to me."

All she knew so far was that it just couldn't be this.

"Do you want help at all?" she asked, not bothered either way.

Astrid frowned for a moment, as if she didn't know how to answer. She knew what she wanted (to be left alone, mostly), but her immediate response was to say 'sure,' because she was so used to agreeing to things just because it seemed like what the other person...or what Claire, specifically...would have wanted to hear.

But she didn't need to do that anymore. And it hadn't done any good, anyway.

"No," she eventually said, slowly, "it's okay. It's kind of...relaxing for me right now..."

If Sabine knew that reasoning, she'd actually be really proud of her.

"Okay," she said. "So, how're you doing?"

Besides methodically painting the wall black.

Astrid shrugged a little, and she thought about leaving it there, since that was about as much as she felt like saying, but...she knew Sabine was just trying to help, and, underneath everything else, she actually did find it a little bit...comforting.

"I'm okay," she said, and it felt honest...enough. It was all pretty subjective, anyway. "Had shop class today," which, if it turned out to be stuff like what they did today, she was going to actually like a lot, "but my other classes are on Monday, so..."

She'd missed them. For obvious reasons.

"What about you? How's your semester shaping up?"

Just...normal conversations. Like nothing ever happened, like it was before. Or at least the attempt to make it seem that way.

"I'll know more next week." The bulk of hers had gotten missed for some reason this week. "I have one that's about making hats for birds?"

Was that normal conversation?

For this place, it definitely was.

"Hats for birds?" Astrid asked, managing to find a small smile at that. "Will you get to make them tiny little helmets?"

Please make them tiny little helmets, Sabine.

"It might depend on the bird. I don't know what we're getting porgs ever week," Sabine explained. "But an owl of course would need a Nite Owl helmet..."

Sabine looked cool, but she was not immune to being a giant dork.

"Of course," Astrid agreed, without even knowing what Sabine meant by that, but it made enough sense. "Is that a special species or design or faction or something where you're from?"

Whicj was space, a small voice reminded her. She was back to where people were from space.

"They're an elite unit of Mandalorians." Who had previously participated in some terrorist acts, but Sabine's family had a... complicated history there. "My helmet is from them. It might look better on me than on a bird..."

"Probably," Astrid agreed again. "Although, if you're making them, they're going to look good either way."

And, with that, she felt a big, heavy sort of awkwardness creep into her, like she just didn't know how to interact in these situations anymore. It had been just her and Claire, with the occasional Ron, the occasional art class, thrown in for so long. She didn't really talk to anyone at Fairfax. She definitely didn't talk to anyone at the Mac. Everything she'd gained while she was here, it felt like she'd lost. And everything she'd gained while back home...was definitely gone.

So she didn't know what else to do but pick up the paintbrush again, dip it in the paint, and get started on the next flower.

In a way, Sabine was glad there weren't followup questions to that.

"Is there anything you're looking forward to doing, now that you're back? Anywhere you want to go?" she asked. And that was because she figured Astrid probably wasn't up for talking after the weekend, as opposed to the narrated reasons.

The only place Astrid really wanted to go was back home, but she didn't even have one of those anymore. But, after she'd painted in another flower, she thought of a few good things that might serve as an answer.

"The pool," she decided, maybe a little wistfully. "I'll probably go down there this weekend. And I was thinking I might see about getting my job at the flower shop back."

She had...mixed feelings, about being among so many flowers and potential poisons again, but, when it came right down to it, she'd really missed the way they would sometimes sing.

"Anything...new that I should check out?" she ventured. "How are some of the new people?"

She'd already seen so many unfamiliar faces, but she wasn't sure how many of them were there to stay or were with the new students that came in with her this semester and were lucky enough to get out while they still could.

"I haven't seen any of the new people around since Tuesday," Sabine said, and she wasn't entirely sure she could blame them, even if it wasn't the school's fault. "Some of the people from fall seem okay, though. I haven't gotten to know them that well, but I'll see them around at Monday breakfasts."

It'd been a weird semester for her.

Well, that at least would help Astrid feel a little less bad about maybe not exactly rushing to meet some of the people who'd come in during the fall and the summer. Not that she would have felt bad, anyway, but it still helped a little to think that.

"Monday breakfasts?" she asked, wondering just how much of her first few weeks would be trying to work through the fog of her memory of the last year and trying to figure out what she should remember, if there'd been things she'd just forgotten about entirely because they just didn't matter anymore, it was in the ephemeral past...

"Oh, right. I think that was in the monster letter," Sabine said, getting up to go to her desk. "Wayne makes breakfast every Monday morning. If he's not there, someone else- usually Nina- does. It's become a thing."

For the record, Nina was not even in the dorms right now.

That did not stop Foomy from escaping her room and beebling his way into that open doorway.

A small pink blob… attached to a skein of midnight blue embroidery thread.

He burbled hopefully, and a touch sheepishly, as he rolled into the room, tangled all up in that thread.

Look, he'd gotten stuck.

In her defense, Astrid didn't exactly notice Foomy, because she'd been a little distracted by the painting, but it was quite. So it took a while before she really registered the odd burbling sound coming from behind her. She frowned at the flower she'd been working on before turning her head...and then her whole body...toward the sound.

Which seemed to be coming from a small little blob of something wrapped in thread.

She stared at it for a moment, before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes for a moment, not sure if she was ready to handle yet another one of Fandom's surprises.

It hadn't even been a week.

Foomy's rambling burbles—of which he'd gotten to the point of telling her his entire week, since she wasn't paying attention to him and couldn't understand him either—changed pitch, getting excited as she finally, finally noticed him.

Foomy flailed, becoming even more tangled in the thread.

Astrid considered just turning around, ignoring the thing, going back to her painting, but that seemed like an even worse thing to do, to turn your back on something unknown or uncertain. So she just frowned down at it, wondering how long she could just ignore it while looking at it without starting to feel bad, because those sounds were starting to feel indicative of its clear struggle with the thread.

Could she just stand there and watch something struggle like that? She liked to think so. But it actually hadn't taken long at all for her to say, "Hold on, let me get some scissors," and start backing up toward the desk.

"I swear to God, though, if you end up sucking me through a portal or biting me and turning me into a horrible monster or some other thing that I don't have the imagination to think of right now, I am not going to be happy."

Luckily for Astrid, Foomy couldn't do any of those things.

Well.

Okay, he could bite.

But he wasn't going to.

His beebling took on a vaguely injured sort of tone. He was Sir Foomy the Brave! He knew better than that!

Yeah, well, she was Lady Astrid the Traumatized, so she wasn't going to take anything for granted.

She was, however, now armed with scissors (that could turn very quickly into a weapon, if they needed to), and kneeling cautiously in front of the thread-wrapped blob.

"Now, hold still," she warned it. "I don't want to accidentally stab you, okay?"

That got a burble that could be easily read as 'okay!' since, once he'd burbled, he settled down, completely still.

And waited trustingly.

Foomy was good at patience.

And even though it was now still and waiting, Astrid hesitated.

She really wished she could have just made a quick snip and then back away quickly, but the thing had tangled itself so thoroughly, it seemed, that it wouldn't be that easy.

So she cut, carefully, methodically, strategically, to snip at the pieces that seemed to be holding it fast, until she could pull away the thread and free it, reminding herself that, no matter what might happen because of this little blobby creature, it wasn't like thing could really even get that much worse for her...

It really was amazing how well a squishy pink jelly demon could get himself tangled up so thoroughly in the thread, but he'd managed it. Partly because, really, if he hadn't then Miss Dozy would have gotten it and thread was definitely not for cats.

His was a noble sacrifice. Truly!

So he waited as she snipped and cut and pondered over where to snip and cut next until, victory, he was free of the evil skein…

… he was perhaps picking up some over-dramatic-ness from his human.

Foomy rolled himself free and gave a considering beep as he shook himself out, double-checking that yes, yes he was free.

Then he burbled happily at the girl.

Edited 2020-01-10 17:45 (UTC)

And Astrid released the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding the whole time and settled back, sitting on her heels, regarding the blob curiously as she brushed the thread off her own fingers.

"You really are pretty harmless, huh?" she asked. "For now, anyway."

And it definitely didn't seem to answer for her what it was even doing there in the first place, and she tilted her head, considering how to communicate with it.

"...are you hungry?" she tried.

Well.

That was a question, wasn't it? His human kept him well-fed, so he really could not claim with any true honesty that he was particularly hungry.

On the other hand, maybe she had peanut butter. Which he knew he wasn't supposed to eat. His human had been very clear… but, really, any sort of snack would do…

Foomy wheeled about in a few tight little circles happily then flailed his delight at the girl.

He could eat.

Mostly, he was excited that she'd offered.

Astrid frowned a little at that reaction, her brow furrowed, not sure exactly how to interpret it. It seemed...enthusiastic, if anything, but was it an enthusiastic yes? Was it just letting out some pent up energy and excitement after being tangled up in the thread?

Maybe if she just offered it food, it would take it if it was hungry and just leave it alone if not?

What did it even eat?

"Hold on," she told it, getting up and moving over toward the bags of things she'd picked up from the store, fishing out a box. "Do you like crackers?"

They were just regular saltines, nothing special, but they worked for when Astrid didn't have an appetite, but, remembering Claire's spine, her ribs, the hollows in her cheeks, knew she should eat something anyway.

Was Foomy's excited bubbling as he rolled over to where her feet were answer enough?

His human was pretty good at making the leap here, but he didn't really talk to many others, aside from his human's sibling now and then and the blue sister, neither of whom were super great at understanding him either.

He rolled back and away, so that the girl wouldn't feel stuck holding the snack in one place, and waited, doing his level best to beep a 'yes' at her.

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Room 210; Late Friday Morning /Afternoon [01/10].

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