white_oleander | Room 210; Wednesday Afternoon [02/06].

Good-bye, pinwheels. You were fun while you lasted, a blip in Astrid's amusement after a ridiculously long case of artist's block, and now she was so fueled with a new idea for her wall so soon after putting you up. Like flowers that wilted soon after plucking them from their life-giving stems, the joy of the bright colors and the unexpected moments when the light would catch them just right or a breeze from seemingly nowhere would push them to spin had faded, wilted, fell away, replaced b a vision she couldn't get out of her head since Monday. A memory, really, more than anything else, but the urge to get it out of her head and onto her wall was finally strong enough to pull her to drag out the tarps, pull her bed away from the ever-changing canvas, crack open all the windows, and get to work with white-washing the boxy geometric shapes that had complimented the pinwheels.

How much smaller would this room be by the time she graduated, shrunken by slowly building inches of whitewash and paint on this wall?

And then she'd get started on next vision, a blurry, somewhat impressionistic scene, cloaked in dark shadows. Dark blue background, bold black shapes in the foreground, stretching in a long line diminishing as it went to the horizon, but in the center, a sliver of bright, golden light. A burst of a star, the unrelenting sun, if not for the curves and lines to suggest the vague shape of a woman. She was already looking forward to figuring out how the light would cast itself against those shadows; that was always what intrigued her the most about a new piece, the distribution of light. And around the edges, starting in shadow, slowly growing brighter into a light pink at the edge, bunches of oleander, little bubbles of red dotting their petals, a bit like blood, a bit like dew.

In a way, it was nice to feel so absolutely driven and inspired again. But, considering the source, she wondered if it'd better if she wasn't.

[[open door, open post!]]

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Because despite having a cat face, Mae was pretty damn normal?

"See, now you've got me thinking I should be skipping class more."

She actually kind of liked her classes though. And there were only the two of them. . . .

See, and that's where they got you. You actually ended up enjoying some of them.

Some.

Astrid considered cat-faced Mae for a moment before offering, "I was thinking about skipping Civil Disobedience next week, if you want to join me."

And now that she said it, she'd have to do it, right? She'd officially tied her own hands on the matter.

Mae tilted her head. That one did tend to be more lecture heavy. . . .

"Were you going to do anything fun instead?"

"I was just going to hang out down in the pool," said Astrid.

To the cat person.

So she shrugged and added, "But I'm open to suggestions."

"Pools can be fun." Mae might just dip her feet in, but truancy could be its own reward. "I didn't actually know we had one of those."

"It's not...great," Astrid admitted. "It's down in the basement, which is kind of depressing, but useful during the winter. I'm from California, so I'm used to being out under the sun and the sky, but I was thinking of maybe one day asking if we can put some sort of sky mural up on the ceiling one of these days. But I still like it; I miss just being able to drift around in a pool doing nothing for a while."

Mae smiled a little at that. "I like to call winter the 'cozy months'. Great for reading books and indoor exploration. Not so much for being outside and getting sun."

Or for not slipping on an icy patch and falling off a roof.

Astrid found it a little hard to think of what might be interesting to explore indoors when one wasn't in a museum or something, but the reading part was definitely something she could relate to. "It makes me a little restless," she admitted. "This is the longest I've really lived in a climate like this, I think. Kind of makes me stir-crazy."

"I'm pretty much from this area," Mae said. "Just, like, in the mountains instead of by the water. So it's pretty normal."

A beat.

"Weatherwise, at least."

Possum Springs had no gremlins.

That very telling pause pulled a snort of amusement out of Astrid and she swirled her paintbrush in a jar of cleaning water for a moment, wiping it with a rag once she pulled it out again.

"What do you think about this place so far?" she asked, because, yeah, for someone who looked like a cat, Mae did seem pretty normal. She almost wanted to ask about what had brought Mae here, but she knew that question could easily be turned around, and it wouldn't be anything she'd want to reciprocate.

If it helped, Mae would quite possibly forget Astrid's story after she heard it.

. . . Well, okay, maybe not Astrid's story. But most people's.

"It's . . . interesting? It's kind of like home in some ways, but way different in others. Like. Bizaro-Home."

And that was why Astrid definitely like to keep her story as locked up as her mother was.

"Bizaro-Home," Astrid repeated almost thoughtfully. "I like that. It's accurate."

There was a slight, considering pause before she asked, "Are you from this time?"

Which was still a weird sentence that had somehow made it into her frequently used vocabulary.

"Technically," Mae said. "But my hometown is at least ten years behind the rest of the rest of the world, like, socially and technologically."

They didn't even get cellphone reception. And it was entirely possible that she and her friend Gregg were the only queer kids in the whole region.

"That's still better off than mine, then," Astrid offered. "Mine is actually twenty-four years behind."

Nope, still hadn't gotten used to being a time traveller.

She just shook her head. "Bizaro-Home."

"Wow. You're like . . . my mom's age."

That was helpful, Mae, thanks.

"If I had an ID," Astrid said, "I could even buy booze on the mainland."

Well, she could try, but she still had her own, very much not 42-year-old ~~math is hard, pretend I said 27 this whole time~~ face.

She might have better luck renting a car.

"Wouldn't they just assume it was a fake?" Mae asked. In her town, if they cared enough to check, they tended to check real close.

"Probably," Astrid shrugged. She knew she probably looked every bit of the fifteen year old that she was. "I haven't really tried. I mean, I could just buy it from Turtle & Canary if I wanted, and there I'd even get a discount."

But why would she want to waste art supply money on booze?

"You work at the Turtle? I love that place."

She had been in it once.

Astrid didn't think she'd ever heard anyone call it The Turtle yet, but she kind of like it, even if she did wonder what the Canary might think about that.

"I mean, it's okay," she said, though she looked a little amused. "It's a job Free Squishies are a nice perk...as long as the flavors aren't too weird."

They were almost always wierd.

Also a nice perk? Working there in exchange for the owner not pressing charges for defacing the store window.

And here all Mae had done was shoplift some snoballs. Poorly.

"It feels like home," she said. "I don't really understand food stores that aren't named after animals."

You know, like a Food Donkey. Or a Snack Falcon. Or a Ham Panther or Donut Wolf. . . .

Room 210; Wednesday Afternoon [02/06].

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