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| Scene Title | Home Is Where Your Rump Rests |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Snippets from the days after the big move, as Dee and Sable settle into the creature that is Eltingville. |
| Date | April 2, 2011 |
Eltingville Blocks - Trafford Residence
March 29, 2011, Evening
A couple mornings ago, Delilah and Sable were being disturbed in the wee hours by a plain-as-paper young woman with a clipboard. A couple afternoons later, they are suddenly bequeathed a small house on Staten Island. If it weren't a relocation, getting a whole house on behalf of bureaucracy might be considered a miracle. They didn't even get proper photos of the place where they are going, leaving the driving of a squat moving van to one of the people helping in this mass relocation. They follow behind, all squashed into Dee's Volkswagen. Moving has been interesting, if harassed. Sable was just getting settled down, and Delilah was just getting over really not having Else there with her. Perhaps leaving the Octagon was a blessing in disguise, as there has been quite the imprint left upon it. Now, in a sense, they are going to be able to start over with only themselves and Dee's bubbly baby boy
It is late afternoon when the truck finally crawls along Holly avenue, wandering along until it reaches number twelve. It seems like a quiet little road, with the neighborhood made of families, parents, and otherwise generally gentle people that are also moving in or have done so over the last month of the effort. Number twelve is a quaint little place, sitting between houses a bit bigger, though with a certain pride that only a dignified cottage may have. The van in front of them pulls its way into the cement driveway, leaving them a space to park in front.
"Oh, would you look at this." Delilah is driving, with Sable made to sit in back with Walter. Samson? He's sitting up in the passenger seat. Sable has thumbs with which to watch the baby, nothing personal. Honest.
To tell the truth, it's been hard to get Sable to shut up about the new place, photos or no. Up late, chattering about what it might be like, what they could do there, living days ahead of herself.
Understand her position. If the blessing is disguised, Sable considers the disguise a shoddy one, at least from her reckoning. A house, by God, a house! And with the lovely Miss Trafford and her maternal-domestic entourage, no less. With unabashedly rosy glasses she views the their little moving caravan as a royal procession, herself Prince Consort to a resplendent queen. It's a castle she expects to rise up before them as they pull up at the address.
And when she looks at it, as Dee bids, she is - thanks to the grand distortion of her vision - in no way disappointed. Sable, head poking through the space between driver and passenger, grins huge as she sees the quaint little structure that is now - dare she think it? - theirs.
"Hot damn!" the girl in the back seat exclaims, then looks over at Delilah, "y'all got th' keys, right?" Because Sable didn't bring them. That kind thing is for responsible folks.
Samson responds with a tongue all over Sable's face. Delilah parks the car and pushes him out of the way, laughing brightly. "Yes, they gave me the keys earlier today, when some paperwork got finished…" Like was said- responsible folks. The dog stays in his seat while Delilah pops open the driver's side door to push the seat back and start unhooking Walter from his own seat. When she pulls him up and out, the redhead directs his short attention towards the house, and she whispers something into his ear before motioning at Sable. "Get Samson's leash and open the door, he refuses to get out one that isn't on his side. Don't ask, cause I'unno why."
Trusting Sable to drag the canine companion out of the Bug, Dee takes a look around the street, holding Walter up so he can lean on her chest, fingers in his mouth. In her dress and colorful hair, it seems like she stepped right out of some kind of Stepford advert. Even down to lifting a hand and waving at a woman across the road studying the new vehicles with her son, only about nine and probably giving Sable a weird look by now.
Sable gives a disgruntled noise of disgust as she gets slobbered on, but it's one that soon betrays itself to laughter as she gives Samson a rough scratch between the ears and pulls her head out of tongue's reach. "Finicky f'r a bugger 'is size," Sable says, heckling Samson as she tends to all boys in her acquaintance, species not considered. She swings back, unbuckling the belt like she has to when Delilah's around to see to it, and then pops out the door, opening the way for Samson and grabbing his leash as he hops out onto the curb. "Come on," she says, leading him around to take their places at Delilah's side as she surveys the surroundings.
Peculiar or not, Sable seems pleased as anything, giving their neighbor opposite a big grin and a wave as well. "Jus' lookit all this," she says, swiveling her head to glance down the long suburban streets. "Y'all got one hell 'f a lot 'f ground t' cover, dawg," she confides to Samson, "think 'f all th' hydrants need pissin' on."
The dog lets out a decisive snort, as if he were answering Sable in the affirmative. Delilah holds her car keys in one hand, the chain also holding the ones for the new locks on the house. She jingles them at Sable as she steps forward to make her way to the front door, taking in the little hood of the porch and the dried up flowerbed under the front window.
"It needs a lot of work, doesn't it?" She muses, waiting for Sable and Samson to come up behind her so that she can put the key in the door and open it up. "I'd ask you to sweep me over the threshold, but I think I'd squish you if you tried it…" Dee trails off a bit in this, and though there is really nothing special inside the empty house to be smiling about, she has the biggest grin on her face, which she now gives her companion.
"Best move ever."
March 30, 2011, Evening
Every box says 'Trafford', sharpie marker on brown cardboard declaring the new reign at 12 Holly Ave. Piling in corners, clustering around furniture that isn't yet quite where it should be, a van's worth of stuff is sinking gradually into living place as hands push, pull, carry and jimmy into place. For all her smallness and her questionable work ethic, Sable has been applying herself with remarkable energy and verve. Never without music playing (though never with headphones in case she Walter has requirements), the diminutive rocker works with the fairy tale industry of a folkloric elf, a changeling creature coasting from room to room, trying to recall where Delilah said she wanted this to be, making her best guesses when she can't quite remember.
Some jobs, though, are made for more than one, and thus Sable has left an armchair wedged in an awkard convergence of doorway and corner, the poor piece of furniture standing crooked on two legs after Sable tried to angle it up and slip it through. No dice.
Embarrassed, but too worried about chipping or scuffing it if she tries again without assistance, Sable has instead switched to broom duty, and already has whole hutches worth of dust bunnies, congregating in the kitchen. Some dusty pawprints and a little mess mark where Samson investigated to his sneezing mistake, and Sable gives them a dirty look before calling out into the house - "Y'all don' make me tie mops t' yer paws, put you t' some use, dawg!"
For a dog, an empty floor is the most awesome. Same for kids, though Walter is not nearly old enough. He's probably been napping the entire time Sable has been sweeping up, quieted down after his own dinner and only waking a little when Samson hurumphs or when Sable barks. To his ears they can make similar noises! When Delilah gets home, the first thing she notices when she gets inside is the odd placement of the chair in one of the doorways, eyebrows knitted puzzledly as she navigates around it to the kitchen.
"You do know that the chair goes in the living room, right?" She is carrying the gift of two large pizzas from Panucci's across the water, still in a thermal bag. Knowing the guy helps with- you know- borrowing things. "I needed to go see Magnes, and I knew you wanted pizza! Mister Panucci always deserves our business, he's such a nice guy, he told me to bring this bag back whenever I passed through."
"Wow, that is some pile of- dust." Dee squints down at it, then at the pawprints, letting out a scoff. Her hair is still windblown, that telltale sign of where Magnes has been.
The rogue bits of dust are corralled back into the corner by a series of sweepings, Sable muttering mixed threats and encouragements down at the aggregate yuck. Mostly this place has clean mess - nothing smelly, rotten or crumbling - but dirt is still dirt and while Sable has made her piece with grime, she will not stand for it in a nice family home.
Delilah's just at the doorway when Sable looks up from her work, yellow eyes wide and blinking as she discerns the two packed pies. Nostrils dilate. With two senses checking in, she can be reasonably sure - "Dinner? Aw, bless your heart…" She props the broom next to the pile, and darts over to Delilah, reaching out to take the thermal bag and rising up on tiptoe to plant a kiss on the redhead as she does.
"I dunno where th' plates are. In some box, somewheres…" she sets the bag on the counter and slips the boxes free, her first reach in aborted by the still rather considerable heat trapped within. Ouch! A more careful and quick clasp gets the out and onto the countertop, and Sable flips the top box open, letting steam rise in a glorious curtain from the freshly baked pizza.
"How's my boy?" Sable inquires, going to wash her hands in the sink, "figure we could get 'im past th' perimeter? No one more helpful f'r a move." She grins, rueful. "I know where the' chairs s'pposed t' go, but I'm only one woman, much as I try t' give otherwise impressions."
"Just making sure you weren't experimenting." Delilah sing songs, knowing immediately where the plates are, but hesitating in going to fetch them. "He's good. I was right about him not taking the news about our moving very well. He said if we have any kind of trouble he can be here in a snap, but I don't want them to like- shoot him down, so." Eesh. That would be something else, wouldn't it? "He dropped me at the border station, I dunno if we can sign people in or what. We'll have to find out, won't we?"
Now she does go get a couple plates. "Walter's asleep, still? He could nap through an earthquake sometimes, really…"
"Surely we have t' ask," Sable says, nodding then cracking a smile, "God knows y'all got 'nough friends, if yer gonna keep up with yer, like, social calender, they gonna have t' come here some 'f th' time, lest you never be in. And I'd feel a real fool havin' busted my ass haulin' furniture 'round if y' ain't gonna grace none 'f it with yer derriere."
She turns back towards the boxes. "Yeah, th' liddle prince is snoozin' 'way, eventempered 's always. I checked in on 'im pretty regular, jus' in case, but either he was sleepin' honest or foolin' me good 'n' up to mischief unimaginable when I walked out."
Plates are something Sable can manage without, oft times, but when she attempts to jump the gun, she ends up nearly losing the piece of pizza, fumbling it back into the box as hot sauce drips on her hand, causing her to yelp in pain. "Fuckin'- thing tryna kill me!"
Delilah's imagination runs away with the image of Walter getting up to mischief when Sable isn't looking; enough of an entertaining thought that she is only brought out of it by Sable's apparent rivalry with the pizza slice. When she comes back with a couple of plates, she gives Sable a little look of vaguely mothery disapproval before handing one over. No patience at all! Seriously.
"That was its defense mechanism. I think you do that every single time I see you with a pizza, honestly." She shakes her head and also picks up the end of the paper towel roll they have out primarily for cleaning. A couple sheets get torn off for napkins. "Do you need me to kiss it better?" The noise brings Samson back around to them, back from his study of his new home for whatever reason. Expectant wagging of tail signals his coming into the kitchen.
"It ain't my fault all th' pizza y'all got in this Yankee-est 'f cities is molten lava hot!" Sable yowls as she douses her hand in cold water under the faucet, giving the now-crumpled piece a murderous look. She is going to chew extra hard on that one, teeth gnashing in tomato-bloody predator's victory. It's time would come, oh yes. When it was just a bit cooler.
Her visual daggers are put down, though, at the sound of Dee's voice and the soft rrrh of perforated towel tearing. Sable shakes her 'injured' hand dry, then cradles it in her other hand, stepping up towards Delilah with a fawn-eyed supplicant's look. She offers her hand up then, in a last moment reversal, reaches up to catch Delilah's chin. Her fingers, just a little cool, tilt Dee's head down so Sable can place a kiss on her lips. A good three seconds, yellow eyes closed throughout, and then she tips back, the gesture always an extension, a reaching up.
"Better," she confirms, smiling up at 'Lilah with just a little smugness. She steps back, but her hands reach out to clasp the redhead's. "And keeps gettin' better. All th' time."
March 31, 2011, Night
It is the middle of the night when the relative quiet that is Staten Island gets disturbed from its personified slumber. Eltingville may be under literal lock and key, but that does not prevent things from occurring within its boundaries, curfew or no curfew.
Delilah is brought out of her sleep by a disturbance in the distance, one that she is instantly able to recognize as the telltale 'pop, pop, pop' of a handgun. It cries out in the New Moon night, sky blackened and inky above the streetlights. The stars peek through out here on Staten, though the night as it turns towards April is cloudy and chill. The bedroom is still in boxes, save for the actual bed and Walter's crib, for the moment staying in the adults' room. The bedding is the same familiar stuff from the apartment, so when the redhead is roused there is still that same feel and scent of something she knows, as well as Sable balled up nearby like some sort of creature in a burrow.
It's for warmth, you see, a minor mammal's instinctive self-curling - it's the only way a creature of the field, or an urchin of the city, can survive the winter! Though it's hardly winter any more, not that you could tell, some southerners would say, what with it still being so chilly. Painted in deep grays by the low light of evening, her hair is a dark nest crowning the shadowed paleness of her face, scrunched in concentration - as if she has things to do while dreaming, in dreams, and she's taking care of it. If only she could be so focused in waking.
Somewhere in those dreams, a ghost of the shots must echo, because she shifts, stirs, mumbling something incoherent - 'fren deble fren damai' - with what is almost a 'let's be reasonable' tone. She starts to curl a little tighter, rejecting intrusion from the outside world.
Delilah unceremoniously drags a heavy hand over her face as she shifts and props herself higher on the pillow. Her eyes are watery in wakefulness, tongue feeling fat and mostly in the way of things. The satin chemise she has on lets her at least move without dragging the quilt with her, and there is another long silence as Lilah sits there peering out the dark window that she has yet to fashion curtains for. Waiting for something else, perhaps, to come after the distant noise. There comes over the air what might be one of those patrol trucks, but she can't really tell without it coming closer- which it does not, and so the doppler rumble remains faraway.
When she finally peers over to look at Sable, there is a bit of a squint to it. A study of the smaller woman gives her enough to know that Sable isn't as light a sleeper when it comes to new places.
Every place is a new place. The question is if it's a safe place. The warmth emanating from Delilah is the subconscious - preconscious, unconscious, whatever - basis for the depth of her slumber. And the moment it begins to ebb, that's when Sable snaps away with with speed of a camera shutter, yellow eyes wide if unseeing in the dark.
"Dee?" isn't a name that should be said by a voice with the consistency of gravel. But Sable is croaking in the throat and cruddy in the eyes with waking. The diminutive woman, a scraggly ghost in an oversize white t-shirt, pulls herself into a meercat sit, quilt bunching her middle. The only light comes through the window, and so Sable is not long looking for Dee, beholding her satin-draped silhouette. "Wha's goin' on?"
Delilah's hand finds the ruffled back brush of Sable's hair, nudging her back towards the bedding. It's fine, really. "I thought I heard something. Not in here, somewhere. Go back to sleep." She manages to have wet her mouth a little, now stifling a yawn. "I am probably imagining things. New place an'all." Samson hasn't started barking, so she figures that if he finds it safe, it's fine. His light snoring is still coming from below the foot of the bed.
"It's not that late, we can still get a whole night." The redhead smoothes her hair over and swivels to flip over her pillow, squashing it into puffiness.
Sable topples backwards, as if Delilah had shoved her, falling back half against the pillows. She looks up through the dark at the backlit woman - if she squints enough, the city lights burn a pale red halo around Delilah's head. "Naw, hold on," she says, lifting her fingers and thumbs to frame her, "jus'- jus' hold right there," she cracks a smile, "jus' a moment. I wanna get a look atcha."
The dark haired girl scoots back up against the pillows, back braced by the headboard, fingers twisting, elongating the portrait she's framing. "Whatall didja think y' heard, darlin'? Nighttime brings portents, y' know," said with the utmost seriousness. This might be important!
"I'unno, mighta been a truck going through." Delilah is unspecific, sitting on her elbows to peer at Sable, chin tucking. "Come on, no you don't, I look like poop, it's the middle of the night." The redhead shifts and lies down, half burying her head into the cool side of the pillow.
Delilah looks over the curve of the cushion under her face, arms coiling up to wriggle one up under, and the other going out to tug on Sable's shirt. "Come on back to sleep, you get like a ten year old at a sleepover if I let you…"
A truck? That's no portent. That's just Delilah being a mother, surely, stirring at the smallest of noises. Sable is satisfied, and apparently Dee's not going to let her ogle her so… she slides back under at the bidding of the tug, sliding under the quilt to slip both her arms around Delilah. Another way of surviving the winter.
"Y'all look beautiful, darlin'," Sable insists, "all light flocks to y', loves t' gather 'round." She leans forward, bumping her nose against Dee's. She squints again, though this time not to see her, but for her to see. The crinkle of a smile around her eyes, a certain mischief in her eyes. "An' since when you been so hung up on a little somethin' like sleep?"
"Since I have to get up tomorrow and prank the shit out of you." Delilah wriggles her way into a firm cling, arms around Sable's waist and head at her shoulder instead of the pillow. As good as. She won't mention that she really thought that she heard the sound of distant gunfire; it is not something that she wants to worry over so early, but eventually it will probably need addressed. If it happened once, it is bound to happen again. Hopefully not terribly soon. For now, Dee is going to concentrate on the supplicant warmth, closing her eyes and burying her head onto limb.
April 2, 2011, Late Afternoon
By late afternoon on Saturday, 12 Holly Avenue has begun to truly look like a home rather than merely a house. No more furniture jammed in door frames (though a few scuffs linger), no more boxes in the hallways (those that remain are safely hidden from view in rooms), and no more of ordering, picking up and taking out every night. Displacement gives way to placement, then just to the place itself, and the first, fine roots of memory settling into the substance of the place.
Still one thing remains, however - the windows lie bare, the world outside peeking in unobscured. And while the neighbors have been perfectly friendly - however confused some may be, at first, about the precise arrangement of the Trafford household - there are some things a proper family dwelling place cannot reasonably be without. Sable has proved quite useless when it comes to assisting with the actual sewing - the machine seems to freak her out with all its whirring and spooling and the steady stabbing its needle - and after some while of futzing around pointlessly with a thimble while trying (and failing) not to distract Delilah with chatter and irritation-affections she was finally sent out to be of some friggin' help.
When she returns, shouldering the door as she slips inside, she has to call over arms laden with cloth. "Couldn't quite recall," she says, meandering to where she left her seamstress, "which blue 't was y' wanted so," toddling over and letting the ripples of cloth cascade onto the couch cushions, "I picked a few. That groovy?"
There is a pile of fabric strewn over the other end of the sofa, curtains fashioned with a practiced hand. They are not the most complex things- simple tie-back curtains, for the most part, save for a couple special for on the insides of the front and back doors. Right now, Delilah is working on maneuvering a gauzy sheer fabric into something to go under them on the windows, hemming it up to match the length and width of the heavier curtains. She is so into doing it that she doesn't notice Sable until the other girl speaks, causing her to start and peer up through her little leopard print glasses- she doesn't need them, no, but magnification is magnification.
"Goodness. Ah- yes." She told Sable to find navy blue gingham; she returned with an array of saturation, but luckily there is some that Dee can actually use for the upstairs. "Get that darkest one up, lemme see it?" The redhead leans away from the steadily chomping sewing machine, shaking out the stretch of sheer white so that she can fold it over to the side, a pile of these same ones on the floor nearby.
Navy blue? Is that like sea blue? Or ocean blue? Or is it specifically a color worn by the navy? Just the US Navy? All navies? Do different countries consider different blues to be navy blue? Sable wondered on these details - cosmic mysteries, no doubt - as she made her way to the store, and by the time she was there she had no clue what she was supposed to get anymore, save for blue. Just blue.
By sheer luck (okay, and some help from the staff at the shop) Sable has managed to bring at least one sizable sheet of the dark blue fabric, the gingham a Manchester special and thus quite picture perfect. Sable tugs this bolt free and offers it up to Delilah, expression hopeful. "I went 'head, asked f'r help 'n' everythin'. Said I wanted- uh- sea blue? Or, like, sailor blue?" playing Chinese telephone with herself, "hope it's what yer after."
"Navy. You almost had it." Delilah laughs and takes the end of the bolt, pulling it closer to get a feel. At least Sable is good with touch- no pun intended. The fabric feels much like the other color does. There is an almost distant, high-pitched giggling from under the pile of sheer curtains. The pile also starts moving, rustling around as if it had come alive.
"This is good, I think. I can use th other stuff you got for other things, probably. Provided you can't take it back. That light blue would make a nice sundress." And a matching outfit for the little noisy monster under the white undercurtains. "Did you see the other new neighbors? I think they lived on the first floor at the Octagon- the man and woman, they seem about thirty? She seems nice, I saw her while I took Samson out for a quick go around." Sable knows how he gets when he really has to pee.
"Aw, see, thass what they said they thought I meant, and I thought it sounded familiar so-" Sable beams - she did it right! At least the important part. The extra cloth… "Don' see why they can't take it back, eh? Though I ain't sayin' one word 'gainst 'nother sundress 'f yers," her fondness for just such garments on Delilah is, at this point, effectively a matter of public record.
Sable gives a slightly bashful smile at the mention of neighbors. "Dunno," she admits, which doesn't mean 'no' so much as it's a general statement of avoidance, "get a little shy when you ain't 'round, make it clear I ain't jus' hangin' 'round," as if Delilah were some necessary force of legitimacy, by whose sole grace alone Sable remains.
The sudden giggling draws a penetrating look from Sable, who eyes the mirthful pile of cloth. "Sounds," she says, brows lifting at Delilah, "like we got some sorta infestation." Sable lifts a finger to her lips, then prowls over to the chortling curtains, giving it a few experimental sniffs before reaching to part the fabric and expose the beastie hidden beneath.
Walter, of course, is perfectly happy where he is, entertaining himself with the presence of a fluffy world rather than hopping around like most days in the wheelie-seat. Sable gets a weird little snortgiggle from him when she peeks down into the pile at him. The sound gets a rise out of Dee, and she starts laughing too. "You heard that, right? Jeez, you'd think he'd found nirvana." The baby kicks his feet around, grabbing fistfuls of curtain and shaking everything up.
"Whassat, Wally, is there someone bothering you?" Delilah calls out, starting to find her pins and scissors. "You better show her, or she's gonna get nosy!" Not that she isn't already, but. Samson has been sleeping on the other side of the sofa, and only now slowly crawls his way out from behind it, dragging himself into view. What's all this ruckus?!
"That so?" Sable says, peering at Walter with her weird eyes, a searching expression on her face, like maybe if she applies herself to know wisdom, as well as infant folly, she'd find herself some slice of the joy this little fella's having. "Nirvana, huh? Got any tips f'r us worldly-bound?"
Maybe Walter's giggle is the answer, some profound and sublime secret, but sadly Sable doesn't have the means to interpret it. She smiles anyhow, setting a kiss to the gentleman's head and then (rather politely) re-covering him, plunging him back into fluffy white paradise.
Sable looks up at Delilah with a certain suddenness. "Any 'f these done 'n' done 'n' really honest t' God done?" she asks, gesturing at the folded and drawn out fabric that has been the fruit of Delilah's hard work and Sable's honest if limited attempts to assist, "wanna put 'em up, see how they hang."
"Go ahead. If you can't reach I think I put the stool in the closet." Delilah tries to be subtly mindful about Sable's smallness, though there are always going to be times when she puts something up too high or tells Sable to do something that it takes scaling cupboards to accomplish. And Sable would probably do it, too. "I think greens and yellows for the downstairs, that blue for upstairs."
Walter sounds like he agrees wholeheartedly with a short snigger, though he will be severely disappointed when someone has to take his curtains to put them up.
There are, occasionally, times when Sable doesn't mind being small. When she's not blustering and attempting to make a grand show of herself, when she's comfortable with being wee and maybe even being taken care of. She is, at such times, also fine with using a stool, which is good, because if she tried to hang a curtain by jumping up at the window over and over, we can be sure she'd meet little success and likely get a curtain rod in the face as well.
She spares herself this ignominy, zipping off to the closet and returning with the stool in question, which she plants by the living room window. Peering down at the three options - green, white and yellow - she leans down to take the shade closer to daffodil. Walter is giving a very serious look. "All good things, chum," she informs him, apologetic but still 'facts of life', and then dares to intrude again on his world, pulling off his tent covering and trying to sort the curtain layers in her arms as she trundles back over to the window.
We shall be spared the details of the trial and errors, the majority being of the latter, Sable goes through to get the window hung. When she's done, however, the sunlight suffuses the white sheer and the soft yellow, simultaneously shading the room and giving it a warmth of color. Sable beams as she steps down, drawing one of the curtains and tying it in place, giving them a framed view of Holly Avenue beyond.
"Never had no place like this," Sable admits, her high watt smile turning back upon Delilah as she moseys over to plop down next to Samson, settling a hand on his head and scratching between his ears, "figure, wisdom goes, that makes it home, eh?"
"Ahhh- that is so much better…" Delilah sits up and turns to watch Sable as she fixes the sheafs of fabric to the window. "Really brightens things, doesn't it?" The dog beside Sable yawns wide, showing off his mouth full of teeth before he flops over to put his chin on Sable's leg. "I go byt the old addage that 'home is where the heart is'. Or you could argue 'home is where your rump rests'. A pig taught me that one."
Delilah starts rooting through her box of spools, yet to be put away in drawers, for a blue to match the navy gingham fabric, smiling wide as she does so. "Even if this was a hole in the wall, it'd be home. And I'd still be decorating with maximum effort, crappiness is no excuse for shoddiness."
Sable lifts her dogless hand to tap her chest, the spot right over her heart. It beats back. Accounted for. Home, then. Good.
"A pig?" Sable echoes, presuming Delilah hasn't adopted her retro slang for New York's Finest and their sadly-no-longer-recent military cohorts, "well, sounds wise 'nuff, whoever." And, acting under advisement from Delilah's porcine compadre, Sable settles in, wiggling her own God-given rump further into the couch cushion, thumb worrying Samson's ear, an activity she'll keep up until the dog gives her a warning look and she knocks it off - just one way in which Samson has been training Sable.
The dark haired woman lets her gaze remain on that framed pane of window, out at the house across the road with the nice people she should probably stop acting skittish around - no way to seem like you belong, always acting like people will notice you don't belong. The glare off the windshield of a car burns green-red distortions into Sable's eyes, and she lets them shut, confining her senses - as she sometimes does - to the under-appreciated four.
It may be that, when Delilah next addresses Sable, she will find her avid little partner has slipped into a light doze, dreaming in tandem with her canine companion. Observe the idiom - let them both lie. If needs be you can always wake them with the pull of a curtain and the welcoming of the sun.