white_oleander | Room 210: Wednesday Afternoon. [07/21].

Astrid only had the one class that day, early in the morning, and then she was done, which meant she found herself once again with too much time on her hands and not enough things to fill it with. She hadn't slept well again last night, those nightmares slipping in again, rendering her depressed and moody. She didn't even feel like drawing. She laid in her bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about possibly redoing the painting on the wall, it'd been a while since she switched it up, she would do gray this time, like a foggy morning, with shadows of trees, and one large, bold, black one in the foreground, in the corner where she laid her head, reaching up and spreading its branches over the ceiling. Embrace the thing that was scaring her the most now, because how much worse could it be when she was already obsessing about it night and day?

But she couldn't find the motivation. She'd honestly been surprised she'd been motivated to go to class, but she went right back to the room, lied down, stared at the ceiling for hours now. At one point, she'd gotten her Captain America sock puppet, held it up, looked at it, and had a conversation with herself and the puppet in her bad Captain America voice, where Cap tried to give her punchy PSA-like advice on feeling better, but it didn't seem to work, and she sighed, dropping her hand again, staring at the ceiling again, thinking that it was kind of weird to attempt to encourage yourself with self-made puppets of the superhero personas of one of your teachers, anyway.

She was starting to get hungry, too, but even then, she just didn't want to move. Not unless that moving involved getting on an airplane and flying back home. Hell, she'd even take a bus, at this point. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea, actually...

And at least she'd managed to keep herself from crying. That was something, too.

[[ for the roomie, mostly! I certainly wouldn't object if anyone else wanted to pop in on her, either, though, and there will most certainly be SP]]

[[also, it said Wednesday all along. You can clearly see what kind of week I've had, holy crap]]

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Wednesday was Sabine's busy day, and apparently at least a couple this week were going to make her Think About Things. So afterwards she'd gone for a little walk rather than bringing all that back with her, stopping off at Mooby Land before coming back to the dorms.

"I brought lunch," she said as she stepped into the room.

It took Astrid a moment to come back from wherever she had gone in her head, back into the room where she was, and it was more the scent of food wafting over that reeled her in rather than Sabine's voice. The scent, as well as a rumble of a reminder from her stomach. She blinked a few times up at the ceiling, turned her head. She still didn't seem all quite there for a moment longer before she said anything.

"Oh, hey," she said, spell now completely broken and dispersed, and she pushed herself up, folding her legs underneath her as she sat and turned toward Sabine, "cool. I...was kind of thinking about some lunch..."

"I have good timing then," she said, offering Astrid the bag to go through first. "How are you doing?"

Which, living in the same room, she knew might be a loaded question.

Which, living in the same room and getting to witness firsthand all the evidence contrary to what Astrid was about to say, yes, maybe a little.

"Okay, I guess," she said, taking the bag with a small nod to show her gratitude before fishing out a sandwich and handing it back. It was funny, she was hungry, it smelled amazing, but she couldn't see herself actually wanting to eat. She had too much experience with being actually hungry and not just peckish before, though, to turn down and ignore free food. "How about you?"

"Okay." Could be better, was literally years from ever getting into the reasons why. She took the bag back and sat on her own bed across from her. "Doing anything interesting?"

She knew better, but was curious what the answer would be.

Astrid peeled back the wrapper to the burger, taking a bite and chewing it before she answer, turning her head to look over her shoulder at the wall, the corner where her new design might start, noticing that she always seemed to paint things that overpowered her, loomed over her, diminished her. The boat, the tree...

"Thinking of a new painting for the wall," she said, turning back. "New semester, new look, that kind of thing."

Okay, that sounded hopeful. "Oh? What are you thinking?"

"...trees," said Astrid, after a long moment where she mostly just regretted having said anything, because it was one thing to think about it and entirely something else to actually have to talk about it. "Particularly one in the corner, really big, with the branches reaching over across the ceiling." She pointed up, letting her finger draw the waviness of the branches she hand in mind, crooked tendrils reaching toward the center of the room.

She hesitated to add more, but something compelled her to offer out at least a little bit. "I've been thinking about trees a lot lately."

"Because of the time in the woods?" she asked gently.

Just because she'd rather die than deal with her own trauma didn't mean others should keep it in.

Astrid breathed out a small sound, a dry laugh. Did she mention it because she figured it would lead to a question like that? Did she actually want to talk about it? Maybe, now, with some time. She didn't think she wanted to, and yet there she was.

"Yeah," she said softly, then sighed, and took another bite of the burger. As she chewed, she leaned back so she was lying on the bed again, so she could look at the ceiling against instead of Sabine. It was much easier that way.

"You know, I thought at first maybe I wanted to do the trees because they're all I've been able to think about, sort of a face your fears sort of thing, but maybe it's not that. I think about it, and I realize the only time I felt even a little bit safe in the was when I was hiding in a tree."

It...almost felt a little good to talk about it. It didn't seem very fair to Sabine, that she should have to listen to it, but it was too late now.

"I mean, that actually makes sense," Sabine said, unwrapping her own burger. "Nothing's going to get at you, you're in charge of where you are... I can see it."

This coming from a girl in literal armor the vast majority of the time.

"Then you're out in the open again..."

"Yeah," Astrid said after a long moment and another bite. "Definitely painting some trees."

And, because she felt that was as deep into that as she was going to get right now, she asked, "How're your classes so far?"

Sabine would let it go. Astrid didn't seem like someone who would appreciate pushing.

"I feel like it's going to be an interesting semester," she said, frowning a little. "I'm not sure if that's good or bad yet. What about you?"

"Nearly every single one of my classes has something completely normal at its base," Astrid said, grinning faintly to herself, "so that's promising. My cooking instructor seemed a little too surprised that I didn't burn eggs, though, so that's...probably going to be interesting. Still have two more to go. 'Mad' Science and Civics, with good ol' Captain America."

Which she mostly mentioned to give her a chance to pull out the puppet and her Cap voice again. "Just wait until you see my PSAs on immigration, voting, and littering!"

If there weren't PSAs, she might revolt. The prospect of them was one of the few things actually getting her through the week.

Oh, she was so glad Astrid kept that thing.

"You should bring that little guy to class," Sabine laughed.

Room 210: Wednesday Afternoon. [07/21].

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