Participants:
| Scene Title | Myopic |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | See title. |
| Date | December 6, 2010 |
Sable may have found a new passion.
Since Sable decided to emphasize the 'decent' in 'decent uses', she's been… a little off. The diminutive musician is rarely ginger, let alone purposefully discreet, but she's been close to both when she's around the house. Nervous, though trying not to appear so. There's something a little whipped dog about her affect at times, like she knows she's fucked up somehow, that she's worried the hammer's going to fall.
It's not a fun way to be, so she's found reasons to be outside, however chilly. Practicing her marksmanship, doing excercises and drills like a proper little soldier. As is her way, she spins it into a thematic, having herself 'check the perimeter', which really just means wander around in the woods while listening to music. Bummer music, mostly.
But, I was saying about her new passion…
At a certain point, Sable decides her newest outdoor duty to gather firewood. With the temperatures diving as low as they are, this is not a total waste of time, so in that way it's an improvement on her border patrol. An ambitious little critter, she manages to drag back a fallen tree, noting too grand, a young thing that didn't survive a cold snap. It's hardwood, and dry, but it's all of a piece. And that means Sable gets to use an ax.
!!!
It's already dark, and Sable's out there, swinging the blade and splitting the wood, little chips and larger slides lying about. The thock thock thock of her work has been reverberating for some time now, and she's not let up. Brow gleaming, hair damp with fresh sweat, Sable's shed her winter coat, finding it much too much at the moment. Hoodie too, which is insane, her arms bare in her perennial (and somewhat grubby looking) tank top. Her breath comes out in white puffs from between lips that are curved in a steady smile. There's a fixity in her eyes that suggests she's in a 'zone', and she sings low as she wields the ax. "Th' wolf came in, I got my cards, we sat down for a game. I cut my deck t' th' Queen of Spades, but th' cards were all th' same…"
"What're you doing?" Colette, like bad luck, is great at sneaking up on people. In the dim evening light, with a dusting of snow just starting to fall from the clouded skies, Colette fades into view like a charcoal sketch come to life, all blacks and whites and rough outlines until someone finally decides to add opacity and a splash of color; minimalist color, at least.
Leather jacket, hoodie beneath and hood up over her head, Colette's least warm accompaniment is possibly the scuffed up leather pants. However those likely do good to keep out the cold breeze that drives thorugh the tall border of pine trees surrounding the garden. "Yer' gonna' catch a fucking cold or something, put some goddamned clothes on."
Not that Colette cares, she tries to imply by dismissive body language. With hands tucked into the pockets of her leather jacket, Colette stays out of axe-swinging range, out of both practicality and a smidgen of good sense. Mismatched eyes have no such boundaries though, and they're hawkishly fixed on Sable.
For all that it is cold - and it is cold - the mercury of Sable's mood has seemed to have risen. Endorphins provide a high all their own, and Sable has always been susceptible to (and enthusiastic about) any and all altered states that come her way. When she looks up at Colette, her smile is broad and fierce. She's huffing out great plumes of white, and there's even a fine steam rising from her shoulders and arms. This is a terrible idea, Colette isn't wrong, but Sable's also always been up for bad ideas. At least, traditionally.
"I'm makin' sure yer ass stays cozy," Sable says, setting the axe against her shoulder like a real live picture of a lumberjack, "so don't y'all be turnin' yer nose down on this here sacrifice 'f mine. Anyhow," she swings the axe around, setting it on the ground by her feet, managing to avoid, thank God, the very real risk of stupidly hacking off her little toe, "we got chicken soup, eh? Y'all c'n tend t' me as I lie, sickly by th' fire made outta this here wood."
To complete the tableaux, sublimely ridiculous considering her size and the lizard-eye goggles she still has strapped high on her head, she wipes her brow with a her sleeve - which is actually just her wrist because she has no sleeves. "But how's 'bout you jus' help me carry thisall in 'n' I'll be good 'n' sweater up, eh? Sound fair?"
Mismatched eyes roll, and Colette shifts her weight to one booted foot, toeing a chopped piece of the fallen tree experimentally. "Least you didn't drag back a pine," she admits in a murmured tone of voice, dismissing the chicken soup talk entirely. "Got a wheelbarrow out back, I ain't haulin' this shit in by hand." Wrinkling her nose, Colette looks back to the cabin, brows furrowed and head shaking slowly.
"I'm taking off… day after tomorrow. I gotta go to the mainland, check up on my dad, let him know about…" Colette's eyes shut and her head shakes. "M'worried about him. He hasn't called me at all, I don't— I d'know if somethin's up or what." She, admittedly, doesn't look to be in a hurry to get that wheelbarrow though.
"You should've let me do this," Colette gruffly asserts, looking away from Sable, "you're lucky you didn't hurt yourself."
The wheelbarrow doesn't seem of enormous importance to Sable at the moment right now either. Her head tilts, lips dipping back into a level line of curiosity. "'course, y' gotta see t' that," she agrees, understanding familial duty better in the case of families of choice than with blood kin. She sets the head of the axe on her foot and wheels about, hobbling over to the wall of the cabin and propping it up there. Her walk back has the last of the steam rising from her, and as it rises, gooseflesh slowly prickles back into place as sweat makes her damp as well as cold.
She comes to a halt maybe three feet away from Colette, standing at her side, turning her head to view the other girl. "Wanted t' do somethin'," she says, rolling her shoulders in a shrug, then dipping over to pull her sweater, now flaked with wood chips, from the ground. She shakes it clean(ish), then starts to turn it in her hands, peeking inside to see where the label is. Few things as silly as someone with a hoodie on backwards.
With a tug and an extended wiggle, she's draped in thick blue fabric again. Adjusting the hem, unrolling it where its bunched a little, she glances over at Colette again. "I'm gonna stay here," is halfway between question and statement, "keep an eye on th' place, tend t' th' hounds?"
That surprises Colette, has one black brow rising and a look crossing her face that conveys her unvoiced curiosity. "I thought you had, like, shit." Not the most descriptive response, and when Colette's brows furrow it comes with one hand lifting up to the back of her neck, scrubbing there idly inside of her hood. "I mean like, you know— life shit. Don't you have like, a job, a girlfriend…" Colette's eyes narrow a touch. "Girlfriends." Pot, this is the kettle calling in, I am still black.
"Whatever, you don't have to stay here." It's a dismissive thing for Colette to say, which is perhaps par for course with how she's been these last few weeks — nearly a month in a couple of days — since the riots. "Look, I appreciate you…" Colette's brows furrow, and she takes a step away from Sable, turning in an abrupt manner to start walking away. Presumably her course is for wherever the wheelbarrow was last stowed.
Whatever she was going to say, she chooses not to.
"Can't very well leave those poor pups t' their lonesome," Sable explains, casually enough. The casualness isn't pointed so much as worn openly. Someone's unfazed, or doing a good impression of it. Sable's not great at hiding emotional reactions, but she can choose to perform, and right now she's playing it cool.
Though cool in that careless mode is something Sable actually has in limited supply. As Colette walks away, Sable toddles after her, a small incessant shadow.
"Aw, honey," Sable says, tugging her goggles free and sliding them into her marsupial front pocket as she lopes up beside Colette, "I don't see nobody's girlfriends here." It's not said sardonically. More like an intimation of conspiracy, though even that's pushing it. Those odd yellow eyes of hers flick across Colette's profile. "I appreciate y'all too."
"That's just it," Colette stops dead in her tracks, turning around to face her, "you don't fucking appreciate me! You don't appreciate anyone, because if you did there'd be no good fucking reason for you t'be here rather than with Elaine or Quinn or whoever the fuck it is you're sleeping with these days!" Thankfully the woods are vast, and thankfully neighbors are far beyond, because Colette is shouting loud and angrily. "I dunno what the fuck you're here for or why you give two shits about me, but you can take your fucking puppy and you can just fucking go! Because I know you don't actually want to be here!"
Both of Colette's arms flap around, wildly, her bangs swinging from side to side as her head shakes, face red with anger and sleeves of her hooded sweatshirt concealing gloved hands. "Go back t'whatever bed you crawled out of, an' just— fucking leave me alone!" Because then, she'd have more reasons to be miserable.
There's not even enough of Sable left standing after that particular onslaught to register real shock. Her face is blank, utterly nonplussed. It takes a solid two seconds for something like thought to start whirring back into life behind her wide eyes. In its protean state, it could turn into almost anything. But whatever it is, it's bound to be forceful. That's how Sable generally operates. A creature of powerful feelings, and also just a bit of a prima-donna, she is not to be upstaged.
Not usually.
"Don't you gimme that," is what comes instead. There is a rumble beneath her words, a sense that that tide is contained rather than absent, "y'all know how I feel f'r you. What I feel, Lord alone knows, but that I do and how much, that you know." She doesn't quite bark these words. not quite. The sense, growing, is not of anger so much as… wounded pride? "But so too, I know y' feel f'r me, 'cause why th' hell else wouldja give two shits 'f yer own 'bout who I may be spendin' my nights with?"
Touche.
Colette stares for a moment, that notion ringing in her head, brows furrowed and throat tight. "Whatever," is the dismissive fanfare of a victory as far as arguments with Colette past November 8th have proven. As she wheels around and turns away from Sable, Colette is storming across the crunching, frozen grass towards the upturned wheelbarrow laying alongside of the cabin.
She crouches down, gives a tug, and finds it frozen to the ground. There's a grunt of effort, leather-gloved hands gripping on the wooden handles, and then a crack as it comes prying out of the frozen dirt. Swung around noisily and turned over, Colette lets it land with a clatter of metal on its wheel.
She fixes Sable with an undeserved glare, and then begins leading the wheelbarrow on a direct path back towards her, treading footprints and a single tire track back towards the split logs.
The worst thing isn't when someone doesn't fight back. It's bad, though, and it tends to drive Sable crazy, giving her no further ante to up, making her emotional force dissipate, like a fully body sneeze that almost arrived, but then backed off. Frustrating, maddening, but draining. It's pretty bad. But it's not the worst.
The worst is when someone does that, and then goes on to do something else that, in your heart of hearts as a woman deeply committed to finding the beauty and romance of everything in the world, but womankind especially, you find adorable. In the fullness of the word, as in 'adoration'. It feels strange and awful and Sable is struck dumb against for the walk back to the impromptu wood pile she's created. But she still sticks by Colette, as if trapped in her orbit.
The wheel squeaks, that much Colette remembers from hauling brush last summer out here in the sweltering heat between shifts of working at Summer Meadows. When she reaches the cut logs, the wheelbarrow clanks down to th ground, and Colette bends over, hefting logs hastily inside. Each one lands with a drum-bang of wood on metal, and Sable can clearly see that she's in an emotionally frustrated spot from the haste of her work, the way she practically throws the logs with each fling of her arms.
"You know what your problem is?" Colette suddenly snaps those words out, turning on Sable just as she gets within verbal reach three logs in to her work. "You like t'pretend that you're so much fucking better than everyone, that you're so much wiser, so much more." Mismatched eyes narrow and Colette points two gloved fingers at her. "Why are you even here, with the Ferrymen? You don't give a shit about what we do, you never have. All you do is follow other people around, and then fuck off and play with your stupid band when people might actually need you for something that matters."
"Only reason you ever hung around with any of us— me, Tasha, Tamara— was because you wanted to get in someone's pants. You don't take shit seriously." Colette's words are harsh, cold, sharp — steel like a knife and just as lethal. But when she says that, she winces, relents, closes her eyes and looks away. Maybe finally, even Colette realized she might have gone too far with that.
Sable stands across from Colette, mouth slightly pursed, eyes ever so slightly narrowed, adding to the felinity of her appearance. Her hands rest, knuckles touching, in the pocket of her hoodie. There is a cant to her head, one that straightens out before she answers. Her voice is remarkably composed. And her accent has ebbed, remaining in slight dips but little more.
"I'm here, ain't I?" she says, with uncanny smoothness, "when you needed me, I came. And when y'all came on strong, I turned you down, didn't I?" Sable gives a slow, rolling shrug. "So looks like, comes to you, I take some shit serious enough. Funny, ain't it?" And its in the three last words that the surface cracks, and there is a slight waver in her voice, a slight wrinkle of her pale brow. Beneath, a glimpse of simple hurt.
Clunk, another log goes into the wheelbarrow, and Colette's at times myopic personality affords her a moment of clarity in the mix of things. Her jaw sets, brows pinch together and she can't make eye contact with Sable any longer. The remainder of the logs are slowly put into the wheelbarrow, and Colette is left standing still, a little breathless, wiping her mouth with the back of one gloved hand before staring up at Sable.
"Why?" Less bitter, but just as intense, Colette's questions are still wielded like weapons. "Why d'you give a shit about me?" Her jaw unsteadies, just so, and her brows furrow as she stares at Sable intently. The inverse of that question, of course, is why does Colette care so much about Sable. Enough to go back in time to save her from herself.
But Colette asked first.
Sable pulls a face, looking like Colette just said something offensive, obscene. Ironic that this would be the time for her to display such a reaction. When she speaks, it's in a similar mode, though more of shock. "Why?" she echoes, repeating the word not as her own, but as Colette's, "what th' fuck d' y' want from me, a list 'f yer virtues? A song 'bout yer beauty? A ode t' yer wit and wisdom? What th' hell would that even matter? I love you because I love you. Love ain't love 'nless it depends on nothin' but itself. Jesus!"
Sable moves forward, suddenly right across from Colette, parted by the wheelbarrow alone. Her own words are laced with aggression despite their alleged topic. "There ain't no why. There's how I feel. That is th' truth. Th' only thing that means anythin'."
Colette slouches herself to one side, resting her weight on one foot more than the other, then bends forward and reaches down to grab the wheelbarrow by both handles, picking the back end up and starts walking for the cabin. "If you say so," is just as dismissive as she was before, callously so but somehow lacking the heat of a truly delivered insult. Just shy of meaning to drive the knife into Sable's heart, metaphorically.
It wouldn't be the first knife Colette had driven into someone she cared about. Metaphorically or otherwise.
Squeaking wheel and clunking lumber comes with Colette's approach towards the cabin, boosting the wheelbarrow up the front steps and then dropping it down with a noisy clunk outside the door. She opens the front entrance, nudges the door open with her boot, and instead of letting all the hot air out just drives that wheelbarrow inside the cabin.
Misty, to her curious credit, darts into view, running circles around Colette, nose alight towards the smell of fresh split wood. Colette stops, turning at the door to look back to Sable, expectantly.
It's hard to say if the look back is a kindness or a cruelty to Sable. Had Colette simply walked away, Sable might have been free to make some clear break, to permit herself to leave the proximity she's maintained. But the pull, however interrupted, is reestablished with a glance. Somehow.
As punctured things tend to, Sable deflates, her aura retracting well past the bounds of her small frame. Slowly, she ambles up to the door and takes hold of it so Colette may step on through entirely. Misty gets a weary look, falling well short of a smile, but at least being acknowledgement. The door presses in against her back as she steps in, bumping once before the knob's bolt snaps into place.
At least they'll be warm tonight, even if only just.