Room 210; Thursday [04/18].

[white_oleander]

It was a little weird, really; it felt like Astrid still had all the time in the world, and then it was Thursday, with a portal date on Monday, and then that was it. She had no more classes; she had maybe one more shift at T&C if she wanted, but she probably wouldn't bother, and then the weekend, and that was it, and she'd spent some time yesterday white-washing the wall again (another layer, the room another fraction of an inch smaller), so that she could really focus and concentrate on filling it back up again with her very last painting.

She'd spent so much time trying to figure out what it should be, wanting it to be something rife with significance and importance. She considering going the route that Sabine usually did, a collage of various things that had happened over her year here, going through her strange journey from being convinced she was losing her mind to gracefully accepting things like being a lamb for a week or a Viking for a weekend, the people came from different worlds and different time periods, and very little of it made sense, and yet it all seemed to work. That her roommate was from space, she was in a self-made prison 'gang' that consisted of only one other person, and one of her best friends was a cat-faced girl who didn't see herself as a cat-faced girl. She'd had her first kiss here, she'd been a redhead, she'd been on homecoming court, she'd even been on the damn Student Council. She'd come a really long way from that quiet girl hunched over a sketchbook, hiding behind her hair and not wanting to talk to anyone. There would be no lack of things to paint in a collage like that.

But, ultimately, in the end, Astrid decided it really wasn't her style. Grabbing a ladder, so that she could start in the very top corner of the wall and work her way across and down, she had her palette of mostly greys and blacks and whites, with some dark, deep blues, pale hints of red, rich hunter greens. And she set to the task of painting out a wall full of oleanders, delicate little stars of five even, deadly petals in various sizes scattered from one end to the other, mostly in greyscale, playing with shadow and light, with little streaks of color here and there, on the way a particular petal turned, on the underside of a stem, little bursts to keep it from entirely fading into itself.

[[ door and post are open! ]]

Comments

[white_oleander]

Astrid glanced over her shoulder at Sabine and blinked.

"Wait, it's the house part you're caught up on? Or the phone at the house thing?"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"The second thing. It just seems so much... harder," Sabine explained. She'd gotten a little spoiled in being able to talk to anyone immediately, and to not deal with house rules over phone use. It'd be an adjustment.

[white_oleander]

"I...guess," Astrid allowed, thinking about it, but she shrugged again. "It's pretty much what I'm used to, though. They gave me a cell phone when I left, but I never really used it much. I think the most use it got was getting texts from you about sixth floor parties. I'm not sure if I'll have to give that back; it was only supposed to be in case of emergencies."

And it was definitely nothing like what everyone else was running around with, either, that was for sure.

She grinned faintly. "If I'm really lucky, it'll even have a really long cord so I can maybe go into another room for privacy if anyone calls."

A cord, Sabine. A cord!

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"I'm sorry, a what?"

Next she'd be saying other people could listen in just by picking up another phone, which was a huge security risk!

[white_oleander]

And, if you were lucky enough to have the internet, you couldn't even use that and the phone at the same time!

Astrid laughed a little, starting to wonder if it would at all be possible to ever have Sabine come out and visit her, or if that would just be mean to Sabine. "A cord," she repeated. "The phone has to be plugged into a line in the wall, and then there's a cord to connect the receiver to the base. Mostly. I guess they could have a cordless one."

And Astrid would know she'd hit the foster home lottery jackpot.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"What are the cars like?"

Because Earth's cars now were already weird.

[white_oleander]

"Four wheels? Two axels?" Astrid offered. "You know, I've never really paid much attention to any of the cars while we're off the island. They seem maybe a little sleeker? Curvier? Not that much different, though, from what I've noticed."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Okay. That makes me feel better. I'm not sure what I expected, but..."

But you could have shown her a Flinstones car and said it was from then and after the phone thing she might believe it.

[white_oleander]

"That maybe you'd have to plug those in, too?"

Which actually WAS a thing now, Astrid, so...

"And you could only go as far as the cord would let you?"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Well I wouldn't suggest that..." She'd think it, though.