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Room 210; Sunday Afternoon [11/01].
Nov. 1st, 2020 04:47 amIt was November first. Astrid's birthday. Seventeen now, and she felt an odd compulsion to look back on all the different places she'd spent her birthdays over the past four years, starting with that first one that made any difference, with Starr and Ray and Carolee and Owen and Peter, because they knew when it was thanks to a piece of official paper, offical documents, and why wouldn't they have celebrated her birthday? She didnt' explain that birthdays weren't really celebrated before; Ingrid didn't really believe in them. Ingrid didn't believe in a lot of things. But almost everyone seemed to believe in birthdays.
Claire definitely believed in birthdays, and she'd made a big deal out of Astrid's sweet sixteen, and she thought she would have made a big deal out of seventeen, too. Where would she be, if what happened hadn't happened, and she was still in California? Another camping trip to Mexico? Would they be skiing in the Rockies? Ron probably knew someone with a timeshare or a condo in Aspen or something, Claire would be covering Astrid in real wool and cashmere; she might even laugh as the two of them attempted to pizza and french fry their way down the non-intimidating bunny hills, oblivious to Ron schmoozing it up with snow bunnies and boozy hot cocoa back at the lodge.
And it was that thought that inspired Astrid that day, to pull out the tarps and the paints and pull her bed away from the wall so that she could add some new paint to it. Just adding. She wanted to keep the black sparkly sky of ash and glitter, but she was going to paint new blue-white snowy mountains over it, add bursts of stars and snowflakes to the space between. She could imagine herself cascading down them in the safety of a nice dream. She could imagine herself lost among them, would she be able to survive? She could imagine a lot of things with those mountains, really, which wasn't so bad, was it, for someone with apparently no imagination?
[[ door and post are open, with work-related SP throughout the day! ]]
Claire definitely believed in birthdays, and she'd made a big deal out of Astrid's sweet sixteen, and she thought she would have made a big deal out of seventeen, too. Where would she be, if what happened hadn't happened, and she was still in California? Another camping trip to Mexico? Would they be skiing in the Rockies? Ron probably knew someone with a timeshare or a condo in Aspen or something, Claire would be covering Astrid in real wool and cashmere; she might even laugh as the two of them attempted to pizza and french fry their way down the non-intimidating bunny hills, oblivious to Ron schmoozing it up with snow bunnies and boozy hot cocoa back at the lodge.
And it was that thought that inspired Astrid that day, to pull out the tarps and the paints and pull her bed away from the wall so that she could add some new paint to it. Just adding. She wanted to keep the black sparkly sky of ash and glitter, but she was going to paint new blue-white snowy mountains over it, add bursts of stars and snowflakes to the space between. She could imagine herself cascading down them in the safety of a nice dream. She could imagine herself lost among them, would she be able to survive? She could imagine a lot of things with those mountains, really, which wasn't so bad, was it, for someone with apparently no imagination?
[[ door and post are open, with work-related SP throughout the day! ]]
