What Do You See?

Participants:

tamara_icon.gif tasha_icon.gif

Scene Title What Do You See?
Synopsis Tasha comes home to a Tamara in the throes of her power and tries to comfort the pre-cognitive.
Date June 30, 2010

Gun Hill Colette, Tasha, and Tamara's Apartment


Late afternoon sunlight shines in through the windows, painting the main room and its furniture with warmth. The room itself is quietly empty, aside from the ambiance of its freshly painted walls and newly acquired furnishings; though those, of course, provide a presence all their own. The door to Colette and Tasha's room is closed, while that leading to Tamara's stands just a bit ajar. Just open enough that a pale-coated puppy can stand at the doorway, leaning against the doorframe, and peer within; ears angled slightly down, she shows no intention of actually walking through. A noise at the other door, the hall door, diverts her attention — Misty twists around to look towards it instead, the very tip of her tail dusting the air hopefully.

Shutting the door behind her, Tasha sets down her courier bag — books from the library, since she's now on the budget and can't just buy what she wants at Barnes and Noble. She checked out a small library's worth of books for the kids as well on their visit, and now they are hopefully all curled up reading about trains, Nancy Drew, science experiments and Sweet Valley High twins, depending on the child.

Noting the puppy standing in the hall, Tasha smiles. "Hey, Misty, whatcha doing?" she asks, striding through the living room and toward the hallway, turning to peek into Tamara's room as she bends to pet the puppy's head.

Misty sighs a soundless huff against Tasha's hand, transferring her weight from the doorpost to leaning against the girl's leg instead. The reason she's hovering outside the door begins to become clear, at least a little, as Tasha peeks within.

Not always so very far from childhood herself, it looks as though Tamara had been amusing herself with a coloring book — where, in her paradigm, lines are purely optional and only followed if it's a particularly good today. Today apparently belongs on the other end of the spectrum. The book is now somewhat less of a book, several pages torn jaggedly out; discarded crumples of newsprint, occasionally showing hints of color, litter the floor around their source. Her crayons are also the worse for wear, snapped pieces of various colors scattered about with the shredded paper; one fragment remains tightly clenched between Tamara's fingers, not yet cast out of her hand. The girl herself is curled up on her side, arms pulled up over her head. She's wearing the same blue tanktop and khaki shorts as yesterday, and her hair is if anything even more disarrayed despite its recently-cut length.

She doesn't seem to notice either Misty or Tasha, and a handful of muttered words are too soft for Tasha to make out.

"She won't let you color, too?" Tasha says quietly, teasingly to the dog (and to Tamara), as a way of alerting the other girl to her presence if she hadn't heard the door or Tasha's soft-soled footfalls down the hallway.

Not wanting to disturb her if she's in some sort of fugue state that is a part of her power (since Tasha's only seen her go into a somewhat catatonic state once before, trying to find Lynette in the future), Tasha crouches in the doorway, reaching to pick up one of the discarded sheets to look at it, see if there is any method to the seeming madness. She's come to realize there usually is, or perhaps Colette's faith in such is a touch contagious. Much like her affection. She lifts her eyes to study Tamara, waiting for the girl to respond, not wanting to frighten her.

The fragment Tasha picks up and smooths out is more or less half of a page, most of the bottom and the outer edge: clearly torn in an upwards sweep. It looks like a scene from Loony Tunes, the Road Runner's head almost intact near the side, bits of cartoonish bird anatomy and stylized desert vegetation along the torn edge. Streaks of yellow miss the bold black lines entirely, masking a patch of sky; there's aquamarine in the general vicinity of sand. Maybe coloring is exempt from methods.

Tasha's words don't quite seem to register on Tamara; or at least, she fails to respond. The fuschia crayon in her hand slips out as fingers unclench, running up over blonde hair and catching in it at the nape of her neck; two slender pieces of wax-based color drop quietly to the carpet, rolling about a grand total of an inch in divergent directions. Tamara's shoulders shake; and with Tasha crouching, ears not so far from the floor, her mumbling becomes comprehensible enough.

"stop stop stop; can't see, can't see"

Glancing at the coloring, Tasha sees nothing that gives her any insight, and turns her eyes on Tamara again. When the blonde's words become audible Tasha frowns, moving forward to put a hand on Tamara's shaking shoulder, her brows quirking in curiosity and worry as she takes her other hand to tip Tamara's chin upward.

"It's okay, Tam, it's okay. You can stop. You can stop. Look at me, can you see me?" she murmurs, voice soft and gentle, though a touch tremulous as worry and fear makes Tasha shake a touch as well. "Shhhh. I'm here. You're here." She drops her hand to touch her pocket where her cell phone is hidden, considering calling for help.

The muttering stops as Tasha touches her shoulder, the blonde's head shifting abruptly towards her as if Tamara was startled by the contact — but that never happens, right? Dark eyes look at the air over Tasha's shoulder, more or less; her pupils progress through several degrees of dilation, searching for a focus they don't quite appear to find. Her spine starts to uncurl a bit, thought not so much as for Tamara to rise; as Tasha fingers her phone, the seeress hesitates. She licks her lips, starts to speak — but doesn't, in the end, her eyes flicking erratically back and forth, unseeing. Or at least unseeing of the here and now.

"Shhh," Tasha murmurs, pulling out the phone but not texting or calling anyone just yet. She sets it to the side, then wraps her arms around Tamara, glancing with wide eyes at the strange change in those eyes. Colette had told her that the dilation occurs when the Seeress uses her power, so Tasha isn't too surprised, though it's still a little unsettling. "Shhh, it's all right, you're here, you're here with me." Like that's reassuring, right? Tasha's heart is probably audible to the other girl in the quiet of the room.

"Come here, Misty," Tasha calls to the dog, then reaching to pull the dog into Tamara's lap. "Shhh," she murmurs, again, a soothing sound not meant to actually hush the precog. "Do you want me to listen?" she finally asks, echoing Tamara's words from nights past.

There's less hesitation in the way Tamara leans against Tasha, although she still seems uncertain. As uncertain as Misty, who gives both of the girls a long and searching look before obediently padding over. She lets Tasha pull her in, and when Tamara sinks her fingers into the thick ruff of Misty's fur, the puppy stretches up to lick at the girl's chin. By her simple definition, everything is now all well and good in the dog's world.

Tamara's definition is more complicated. But her shoulders begin to sink down, some measure of relaxation creeping in; apparently the statement, or something of Tasha's presence, is reassuring. She turns her head to rest her cheek against Tasha's shoulder, and when she speaks, it's into the fabric of the younger girl's shirt. "Where?" One word might not be enough; Tamara swallows, then digs up four more with evident effort. "What… do you… see?"

Tasha's brows knit and she glances at the phone once more. Maybe she's not equipped to handle this herself. "I only see here, Tamara," she answers, for the first part of the question. "I'm here, with you, in your room. I see you. I see your coloring. I see Misty." She glances down at the white toes of her green Converse. "I see … green shoes and fuchsia crayon and the floor and your bed." She leans her head on top of the head on her shoulder, rocking Tamara slightly, though the motion soothes her as well. "What do you see?"

Tamara is slow to respond, for reasons that are deplorably opaque; but at least the rhythm of her breathing continues to calm, and her only action is to sink a little more heavily into the circle of Tasha's arms. "Concrete," she finally says, soft and inflectionless whisper. "Green. Glass. Metal. Blue green gray, rumble past; running, walking, walking more. Clouds sky sea fog; faces, faces, all the faces; all the feet. No stars," the girl adds, seeming briefly wistful. "White falling. Red. Red blocks. Stairs, cat, street." The words run out, or perhaps just her energy; leaning wearily against the brunette, Tamara falls quiet.

"Are you stuck?" Tasha says, frowning and stroking Tamara's hair, then reaching for the phone finally, flipping it open and scrolling through to start a text to Colette: Tamaras using power. seems upset. come straight home. She hits send, then sets the phone down again, wrapping her other arm around Tamara. "We're safe. I don't know where you are in your head, but we're okay here. We're in the apartment and it's safe and I won't let anything hurt you," she whispers, not sure how to reassure Tamara, but trying her best. She can't make sense of the litany of images that Tamara gives her — they don't seem too dangerous, at least.

"Hurts," Tamara echoes, although there's no weight to the word; it could be nothing more than an echo, though why that word would stick out of all the ones Tasha used, none could say. The older girl closes her eyes, sighing softly. Her fingers slip free of Misty's fur, though they have nowhere else to go; they just no longer grip. "Fuzzy," she murmurs; and that isn't an echo, at least, even if it is either cryptic or incongruous. "Waterfall," is the last of Tamara's quiet words; no others follow. Not soon, and not late, regardless of questions asked.

The younger girl holds the other, murmuring soft reassurances that are non-sequiturs to the non-sequiturs, stroking Tamara's hair and holding one of the pre-cognitive's hands once it slips from its grip on Misty's fur. Once Tamara stops speaking, Tasha fills the silence with a softly hummed song, some piece of music she doesn't know the name to that has a simple, sweet melody that she hopes is soothing. She will hold Tamara, stroking her hair and humming or murmuring, until Colette comes home to reassure her that Tamara will be all right— or as all right as possible in Tamara's spectrum, which is very different from anyone else's.


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