Room 210; Thursday Afternoon [06/14].

[white_oleander]

After grabbing some lunch, Astrid found herself surprisingly antsy to get back to her room, where she knew the Fish would be waiting. She wasn't expecting to want anything to do with her, intent to just foist it onto Sabine to have her painterly ways with it, but she had thought of at least a few things she wanted to do before she bequeathed the honor.

Which was to take her mother's knife and crudely carve a Shakespeare quote ("A little water clears us of this deed.") into the underside of its belly. And then set it among her oleander and sketch it, for the backside of a letter to her mother that she planned to open with the line, The other day, I won a fish from the river of Babel...

Might as well try to get something out of it. And then it was a matter of whether or not to include the holographic images it apparently decided to project at random now without even being touched.

God. This place.

[[she's expecting a roommate, but door and post are open!]]

Comments

[white_oleander]

Astrid finished a few lines of its tail in her sketch, tucked her hair behind her ear, and looked up with the ghost of a crooked grin.

"I have the fish," she confirmed.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"What are you going to the fish?" she asked, immediately interested.

She was just fascinated by this thing she didn't actually ever want to win.

[white_oleander]

"You know," said Astrid, tilting her head to one side before looking up, squinting slightly, regarding the ceiling for answers, "I'm not really sure yet..."

It was so rare she had the upper hand in anything, even in something as marginally entertaining as the Fish, that she just maybe needed to revel in a bit.

"I mean, I've branded it, I've sketched it..."

But, of course, being unused to it, she released the hand pretty quickly, too, glancing over, figuring she'd at least built up a little dramatic suspense.

"...you don't have any ideas, do you?"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"I've had the paint for like two weeks," she said immediately.

She didn't want to win it, but at some point she was always going to end up with that monstrosity for at least a little while.

"I'm not sure you and I would have the same ideas."

[white_oleander]

Astrid held up her hands as if in surrender. "Honestly, it's yours," she said. "I didn't even know I wanted to do this," she waved her pencil at her little Fish-in-the-Oleander still-life set-up, "until just about an hour ago."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Have I mentioned lately that you're the best roommate?" Sabine asked. "You really don't want to make it more horrific?"

[white_oleander]

Astrid had never really been the best anything before; it was a new sensation, and she didn't entirely hate it, even if she understood it was coming from a moment of passion.

"I have no imagination," she said, repeating the words so often sighed at her by her mother. "I can't even picture it being more horrific. I'll defer to the true visionary in this case.

"Besides," she added, "I owe you one for letting me mooch on your supplies for so long."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Thanks," she said, smiling a little. "Because of you, they'll be able to see this thing from orbit."

That was the purpose of this whole thing, right?

[white_oleander]

"Oh, man," Astrid shook her head, smiling faintly. "I can't wait to see what this thing looks like when you're done with it. And then, maybe we can find someone to launch it into orbit, just to prove that."

Where, God willing, it would stay.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

Sabine thought about it. "I don't have the supplies to launch it..."

But people had ships.

[white_oleander]

"Maybe I could get my three dads teammates back together," Astrid said. "We could whip something up out of matchsticks, chicken wire, and pantyhose."

And macrame. So, so much macrame.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Who were you teamed up with again?" she asked, because that supply list was worrying.

[white_oleander]

"I think their names were...Hannibal, Liam, and..." Astrid bit her lip. "It was that guy who drove the bus, back when we first came here from Baltimore. But that Hannibal guy seemed like kind of a creep. He was looking over my shoulder at my drawings before the whole thing began, and then just disappeared without a trace once we won."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Kanan's the other guy," Sabine said helpfully. You know, the guy whose hair she was going to fix with a garden hose in a junkyard. "...He was looking over your shoulder?"

[white_oleander]

"Yeah," said Astrid, "when I was off to the side, trying to get a view of the whole park. Kind of weird, right?"

Granted, Astrid was already under the impression that everyone on this island was psychotic in some regard, and her perspectives on males in general were a little skewed to begin with, but she was pretty sure she wasn't too far off the mark in thinking it was a little strange.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"That just feels invasive," Sabine said, making a face. "Sometimes I don't want other people to see what I'm drawing, let alone some stranger."