Participants:
Scene Title | Lonely and Cold |
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Synopsis | Cardinal and Tamara together bring one lost soul home, around a conversation that sometimes approaches normal — underlining what they have in common. |
Date | March 19, 2010 |
Cardinal's (former) Rooftop Garden, Midtown
The snow on the rooftop would be almost as deep as its sole occupant is tall, if the surface hadn't been subject to scouring wind.
That wind is quiet now, no more than a lazily playful zephyr. For the girl whose hair is unbound and unfettered by any tie or hood, even that seems plenty to tangle the blonde strands. Dim city light reflects from the cloudbank overhead, offers faint definition to her outline — slender, perhaps a hair underfed; pale-skinned, to go with the blonde hair; dressed in dark winter-weight clothes whose condition is masked by shadow, for good or ill. There is a scarf; she wears no gloves.
Her footprints mark a clear, crisp line of progress from the stairway to where she now kneels, weight pressing cold dimples into the crusted layer of snow. It ranges from perhaps six inches to as much as three feet deep, depending on where one measures — the flowerboxes let some drifts build up, as did the rooftop's rail, while its open breadth facilitated the loss of more. Most of the boxes are but ill-defined shapes beneath their icy blanket — all but one, its frame excavated, snow cleared from the spindly little cedar tree, still somehow tufted with a bit of green, that rises out of the box's center.
Between the furrows in the snow and the rather blue shade to her fingers, evidence suggests Tamara dug out the seedling with those bare hands. Whether that act — that choice — has any correlation with the line of frost faintly etched down one cheek… anyone's guess.
A shadow passes over the snow, as if some night bird had swept across the evening skies to eclipse the light of moon and star and the subtle aurora of the city's own illumination. There's less of that here in Midtown, of course, but there's still some. The hand of man is not so easily wiped from the world, not even by the destructive power unleashed here.
Someone once compared humanity to cockroaches. Some would say the comparison is an apt one.
That shadow moves over the snow like a tattered shroud, staining the pale mounds with smears and tendrils of itself that lag behind and then writhe to catch up, flowing smoothly onward until it notices the girl. Notice, and recognize.
"Tamara…" Tamara…
A hollow whisper, as Richard Cardinal spills over the snow to splay himself over the white snow upon the dug-out box, "…you're going to hurt your hands doing this." Doing this…
She looks down at the moving darkness with a calm, unruffled expression, as if talking shadows were as common as the people who normally cast them (or at least the silent variety). There's no smile of greeting so much as a birdlike tilt of the girl's head, brow creasing slightly as she considers his words. "It was almost done," Tamara remarks, the words a simple statement, lacking affront or protest.
She glances to the side, to the other boxes that march in a row across the rooftop. "The only one. It was lonely, and cold. You don't want it to be lonesome, do you?" she asks, returning her attention to the shadow. Tamara lifts a hand to the tree, straightening her fingers to brush their tips against the evergreen's fledgling foliage; silver glints weakly in the diffuse light. "A little stiff," the girl allows, as she folds those fingers in towards her palm, against that inertia.
"No… I don't. Thank you." A quieter whisper even than usual, as a tendril of shadow coils about the seedling and its struggling life, brushing up over the prophet's fingers for a moment. "I was planning to move them, before the snows… or at least put up a tarp, or something. At least my hydroponics in the library have some roof to protect them." Protect them…
Tamara holds her hands still to watch the play of shadow over them with a moment's captivated curiosity, as if they were a fickle nightbird alit on a finger. After, the girl bobs her head once. "Trees are peace," she says, words that don't quite align with their conversation even as they continue in its spirit. "It takes that long to make them. Would you add this one?" Inflected as a question, and not a request.
"If I had hands to." There's a wistful, mournful twist to Cardinal's quiet voice, "I really am just a ghost… sometimes I wonder if I really am dead. Could you move it there, for me? If your hands are up to the task. I don't want you to get frostbite…" Frostbite…
She smiles now, expression ephemeral in its innocent, warm approval. "I could do that," the girl assures the shadow. "It wasn't too far." Tamara suits actions to words, unfolding her legs with accompanying crunches from shifting and compacting snow grains. She leans down to wrap her fingers around the ends of the box, a smooth jerk yanking it free of the ice at its base. Hefts its weight in her arms, soil and all, with what might be distressing unconcern for her own field of view — but the seeress turns unerringly towards the stairs and picks her way down them with steps as cautiously unhurried as they are sure. "Ghosts don't have shadows. Nor the dead," Tamara informs Cardinal. "That's what dead is."
"Thank you." An echo of an echo, as the darkness swirls up around the box, a tattered drapery over it being hauled towards the stairs, to let the precognitive carry him as well as the tree. He doesn't weigh anything. It won't be an issue. "Is it? I don't know what I am, then… just a shadow, I suppose." I suppose…
Down the stairs, and out into the street; a line of footprints break through the otherwise featureless white crust of snow as Tamara walks, breathing in the cold night air and the faint scent of cedar, hair fallen forward around her face and the seedling tree as if it were a blonde veil. "Is that a bad thing?"
"There are worse things to be, I suppose…" Rue paints those wistful, whispering tones, as the shadow tangled in the seedling evergreen admits, "…it's a very lonely thing to be, though. You never really appreciate the touch of the wind, or a lover's lips, until you can't feel them anymore." Anymore…
The shadow's bearer is silent for a time, aside from the rhythmic crunch of ice compacting under her feet; lifts her gaze enough to watch the crumpled silhouettes of broken buildings pass slowly by. Listens to the sound of something living scurrying away, light enough to move atop the snow's crust, its flight rousing no particular interest from the seer. "Would you rather not have them at all?" Tamara finally asks, inquiring gaze returning to Cardinal's black-within-black form.
"An old question. Whether 'tis better to have loved and lost…?" Than never to have loved at all… The echoing whisper trails and blends with the first part of the quote, a wistful sigh from Cardinal, "…no. It might be all that's keeping me from just… letting go. What about you, Tamara? What do you do when you're not playing the enigmatic prophet?" Prophet…
What about her? The lines that crease Tamara's brow, the purse of her lips, suggest as much bewilderment as consideration, the kind of uncertain comprehension that implies context came across much better than actual text. "If the mirror is broken, where is its edge?" the girl asks, softly, softly. "What is a prophet? Makes one. Makes one not."
Ah, there she goes again. Richard Cardinal falls silent for long moments, before venturing in an attempt to be more precise, "Do you… have anything like a normal life? Watch movies? Read books? I know I saw you with Demsky, that time…" Time…
Bereft of so much of his own humanity, he seeks a sign of it in another that he sees as all but consumed by her own power's potency.
Silence stretches between them, but for all that doesn't become strained; it's a gathering quiet rather than a tensing one, accompanying the darkness that collects in the sibyl's eyes. After another few steps, Tamara pauses, her faint smile both rueful and oddly affectionate. "Judah reads for me sometimes," the sybil says, her tone quiet, crystal-clear despite that — lacking the softer edges of the girl's speech, its tendency to the slippery. "Colette, now. Maybe someday…" Her voice trails off, and, as it does, her footsteps resume. "But maybe not," Tamara concludes, sorrow and resolution both.
"I've always loved to read, myself. Nobody ever expects it of me, but…" A verbal shrug, in that trailing pause, before Cardinal continues in quiet tones, reaching for connections, "…Judah's a good man. I don't know him very well, but I can tell, from what I've seen. Colette, I've only met the once… hopefully she'll listen to me, when I talk to her…" To her…
"And yeah. Maybe someday. Liz and I talked about that maybe someday, a few times…" Tahiti…
"Maybe you can ask Colette to read to you," Tamara replies — in the sybil's voice, inflected with a whimsical, affectionate humor. "I don't think Judah would." Her path winds between two buildings to approach the library from the side, the planter set down so that the girl might coax a little-used door open. It's cold, and the door is less than gracious; but it opens, snow sweeping in to litter the floor behind. It closes again after, leaving Tamara not quite alone in the dark; nonetheless, she walks across the room as if light were superfluous. "Little farther," the girl remarks, to no one in particular. "I stayed for a bit," she continues, more obviously directed at Cardinal.
"If I can ever actually get a chance to talk to her. The last time I'd made arrangements, apparently a car hit her…" A whispered sigh from the shadow, "…I was glad to hear that she was alright, though." As they walk along through the library, Richard notes, "You're more than welcome, Tamara, you know that." Welcome…
"Yes," the girl replies. She wasn't asking, in the first place, so much as telling; she knows she can get away with that. In the darkness, Tamara smiles. "Soon enough," she continues, threading her way down to the hydroponic garden, its fluorescent banks presently turned off to match the night outside. "Do you want it somewhere?" she asks, shifting the weight of the planter in her arms.
"Anywhere that… the lights can reach it. We wouldn't want it to starve, after all— once this winter breaks, if it ever does, we can transplant it somewhere…" Somewhere… The shadowy form of Cardinal slips away from the planter, sliding through the gardens' darkness without any care of the lack of light, "…it's doing well. We might have some fresh food growing in here, eventually. Almost self-sufficient…"
"In time," Tamara affirms, as she chooses a place and sets the planter down. "Now it has friends. Friends were good." The girl lays her hands together, after, tucking them between chin and collarbone — to warm her fingers, perhaps, in an unorthodox fashion. Blue eyes follow Cardinal's progress — or the movement of his voice — through the darkened room. "Not sufficient, here. But a good start," the seeress observes.
"Everything starts somewhere. A journey with a single step, a romance with a word or a look…" Cardinal finishes checking on his 'children' down here in the dark, slithering back towards the precognitive to settle nearby her; that echoing whisper of his doesn't carry very far, after all, and talking loudly strains him. "…but then, if my plans work out, we won't need to be self-sufficient. It never hurts to have a backup, though." A backup…
As Cardinal settles, so does the seeress; sliding down to sit in the dark, her back against a wall, legs stretched out on the floor. "I know," she says simply, a hint of fatigue beginning to creep into her words. "Keep walking," Tamara continues, somewhat ambiguously; her tone is musing, perhaps self-directed, but then they're talking about journeys and beginnings, so maybe it isn't. "Just — keep walking."
The shadow splays out across the wall behind her, like a halo of tattered shadows — or wings, perhaps, marking her as an angel, if a fallen one. If anyone could see, and if anyone was of a fanciful mindset. "It's better to keep walking than to stop," Cardinal agrees, quietly, "You haven't been… sleeping away from where we have the generators and heaters, have you, Tamara?" Cold…
She is fallen, in her fashion; in this era, few are those who aren't. "Silly owl," the girl murmurs, her earlier clarity — such as it was — receded, although the warmth in her voice remains. "The mirror sees to itself," Tamara continues; and if that isn't entirely true, it's true enough. She lifts her chin a bit, looking forward. "It's not cold."
"Tamara." The shadow's voice is dry, in its own fashion, "Your fingers were turning blue from digging through the snow. You could come to the underground levels and join the others, you know… not that many of them live here full-time right now, but there's warm offices and we have plenty of extra blankets and food down there…" Down there…
Crossing her legs at her ankles, Tamara tips her head back until her skull rests against the wall; not that this lets her see Cardinal, but in other circumstances that might be the intent. "Mm… I don't want to get up," she informs the shadow, half grumbling complaint and half declaration. The kind that is more formality than actual resistance.
"…and I don't want you to get hypothermia," Cardinal points out, dryly, "It's my house, so to speak, so my rules. And I'm not going to let you lurk like a phantom in the cold parts of the library in this weather." That's my job…
"I didn't," she assures Cardinal; and where the exact cause of that lack can be placed is open for interpretation. Tamara braces her hand against the wall and draws herself back upwards, letting her fingers trail along the surface as she walks out of the hydroponics room — and deeper into the library. Her parting words: "You might ask the tree if it has a name."
Yet even if it did, neither of them would know how to hear it.
"Why not," Cardinal laughs his whispering laugh, the shadow of his form twisting about Tamara's shoulders like a tattered shawl as she heads deeper into the library, "I'm about as likely to get an answer from it as I am some of the other people I ask questions of… and it's probably less frustrating to talk to…" To talk to…