Participants:
| Scene Title | You Killed Bambi's Mother? |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Three refugees find a huntress cleaning her kill. |
| Date | November 30, 2010 |
Pollepel Island - Bannerman Castle
Multipurpose surfaces are the best kinds of surfaces, but surfaces specifically put down for a project tend to allow one to get carried away. One can argue that those are the best, as it allows art. Well, maybe not so much most of the time. Early in the morning there was a small expedition out to the mainland, and out into where there was significantly bigger game than rabbits and birds. Last week was one of the successful trips, and another will certainly make enough room for it to be a regular excuse to hop-skip over to stretch legs and bowstrings.
There was a metal, edged table procured for exactly the purpose of bringing back kills that has only truly found use in the last week, thanks to the first buck. With a couple more people on today's outing, they brought back a couple of medium-sized deer with them. It's not that Huruma didn't want help in preparing them, just that most of the people that had gone had other things to get to as soon as they got back. Security and tending to families, mainly. She seemed perfectly contented to work on her own anyway, regardless of how much effort needs to be put into it. She'll have a spot of help later when she finishes the initial work, that much she is sure of. Field dressing really wasn't an option, so she is left to start it here. Aging is pretty much a no-go with the castle crowd as it is. This is going to be a simple job.
Unless, of course, You've already had to chase away children while wearing a bloody apron, gloves, and holding a sharp, curved knife. They may have screamed a little. A lot. Huruma enjoyed that, no lie. The kitchen smells like fresh blood, there really isn't any other word for it; one deer has been split open, skinned, and literally nailed to an empty wall, and the other one just looks to have gotten started, as Huruma is busy cutting it from groin to sternum, still wearing the bloody apron and really- making a huge mess of herself, and thankfully not turning the kitchen into a horror film.
Shannon walks in, only to pause and arch a brow as she glances from one deer to the other, and then to Huruma. "You're enjoying that entirely too much," she says, shaking her head and moving further into the kitchen. "Killed today?" she asks, rolling up her sleeves, preparing to jump in and help. Deer may not be her specialty, but she knows how to deal with animals for food. Dead animals for food anyway.
Independence comes with a price — Nora has found in recent days. Last time was a bruised tail bone and soup-stained pants. This time it's a nose full of the scent of blood and musky venison when the blind girl enters the kitchen; one hand trails along the walls as she counts her steps, very quietly murmuring them aloud so she doesn't lose her place as easily.
"Forty-five…" she murmurs softly, brows furrowing behind dark glasses. The bandages are off, though she's been told her eyes aren't a pretty sight, blood still in the sclera. The glasses aren't so much to protect but to keep people from screaming. Her nose wrinkles, and she takes a step back. "I… is there coffee?" She doesn't know what that smell is, coppery and metallic, not on the conscious level, but whatever it is, she doesn't like it.
There's a piercing shriek from behind Nora as Rue Lancaster makes to enter the kitchen and spots the carcass hanging on the wall. It's followed immediately by her stumbling back a step with her hand clutched to her chest and laughter. "Oh gawd, that scared me!" She gently rests one hand on Nora's shoulder. "You want coffee? How do you take it? I had the same thought. You grab us seats, and I'll grab us some joe?"
Rue's ginger head shakes with a quiet chuckle as she nods her greeting to Shannon and Huruma. "Ladies. Looks like you've been productive. …And I'm so considering vegetarianism now."
"Yes." Shannon is completely right. Huruma turns her head to look at the source of the emotions wandering in first, eyes on her when she does speak. Her lips curl up into a small smile, tongue running over them. "Maybe if I do a good job, they will let me do this all the time…" She purrs now, like a cat in the cream. Between the people she wants to trust her, and her business with keeping busy, there hasn't been too much time for things like this- especially Not-Deer. And there's another one. Not a kid. Huruma's shoulders sink a little, but she does offer out a wet cloth for Shannon to start cleaning off stray hide or bone from the cut she is making.
Huruma wrinkles her mental whiskers at the third one, eyebrows lifting when she shrieks. Her pupils, dilated, still seem to find Rue awfully quickly. Her lips close, and a mention is offered when her eyes go back to the deer. Girls. "Coffee? A cup or two… I don'know how old it is." Bzzzzzz. Is that a bone saw? A little one, dagger shaped. Huruma positions it below the sternum, slowly drawing it up through the bone, other arm holding onto one gangly leg. "Vegetarianism makes my day like Charlie Chaplin made th'first world war." Hilarious. So says the giant bloody sage with the bone-saw.
"I'm gonna highly suggest that they not let you do this all the time," Shannon says bluntly. "Anyone who gets off on butchering a once living creature should probably not be allowed to do it." She looks back at the other two. "Not coffee, but don't ask too many questions. Byproduct of dinner. It'll taste much better than it smells right now, I promise. I brought some herbs and stuff with me last time I came back from the mainland."
The blind girl jumps visibly when Rue's scream comes from behind her, moving instinctively against the wall to get out of the way or blend into the shadows, whichever makes more sense in this situation she can't see. But then laughter follows, and Nora's posture relaxes – slightly.
"Fuck, you gave me a heart attack, Rue," Nora tells the other girl. To Huruma, she adds, "I don't care if it's hot and has caffeine. Enough sugar, and burnt coffee tastes like marshmallows if you use your imagination."
She begins to count under her breath again to find the table she knows is there, but the bone saw earns another grimace from the teenager. "What is it you're hacking up, anyway?" she asks, curiously as her groping fingers find the back of a chair and she pulls it out, slipping into it and pulling her feet up to press her knees against her chest, arms wrapping around her thin knees.
"Thanks," Rue murmurs when Huruma confirms that there is coffee to be had. "I think it's a deer," she elucidates for Nora. "Or, well, it used to be a deer. Now it's lacking skin and hanging from the wall. I was just so not expecting to see that when I came in here." She glances over her shoulder to track Nora's progress after locating two mugs.
"I do such a terribly good job, darling." Huruma only lifts up the saw when it cuts the last centimeters of bone, eyes drifting down towards Shannon. "An'trust me, deer are not th'worst thing I've cut apart." A mild warning, intoned, but it also provides little Nora with an aside answer to her question. "Stocking venison. W'got two." Huruma sets down the handheld saw, long fingers digging down into the incision on either side and wrenching the animal apart with a further crackle of flesh and bone. That slim knife is picked back up, and she begins to cut apart various parts- the diaphragm, the throat.
Cutting the trachea apart gives Huruma a better- literally- handle on starting to pull out the various squishy bits. Considering she also literally gets up to her elbows in deer guts- yes, Shannon, she is enjoying this way too much. In this case, it is piece by piece getting its insides relocated to the rest of the metal table.
If Huruma hoped to intimidate Shannon, she failed miserably, because Shannon just shakes her head. "Right, and if a kid wandered in here to see you in serial killer/butcher mode? No, I don't think any responsible person is gonna let you deal with the butchering anymore." She looks back to Nora, head tilting. "Don't think I've met you. I'm Shannon."
Nora's nose wrinkles again, having to rely on ears and nose and touch to figure out what's going on around her. "Me?" she says, her head tipping toward the direction of the voices. "Nora," she offers, resting her chin on top of her knees.
"I think I enjoyed dinner better when I didn't think of it as Bambi out there in the woods or something before I ate it," she adds. "At least I can't see it. Hey, there's a plus side to being blind I hadn't thought of yet. Every cloud does have a silver lining, after all!"
The Pollyanna-esque words would be cloying if they weren't spoken with an acerbic and sarcastic tone.
"Oh man. When I was modelling, I knew this chick that got real sick and she was miserable and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with her because it wasn't clearing up like a cold, and it wasn't the flu…" Rue pours a generous amount of sugar into both mugs, then adds the coffee. "Turns out, she had chlamydia in her throat. So, ever since then, I've decided that's my silver lining."
Rue crosses the kitchen to set one cup of coffee in front of Nora and then takes a seat herself. "I may be stuck on an island," the legs of her chair scrape against the floor before she plunks down in her seat, "I may suddenly have no idea what my Evo-bility is, but at least I don't have chlamydia in my throat." Her tone is so nonchalant, like this is a totally normal line of conversation, that it almost balances out Nora's acid.
Huruma's throaty laugh is deep, almost mischievous. "Too late." She glances back to Shannon before coming out with a fistful of deer heart. "They came in here playing hide an'seek, not m'fault." If someone has a problem with Huruma, at this point it will do no good to bring it up with her. Try Ryans instead. "This one is Bambi's mother." Not helping. Then again, Rue is providing necessary ventures.
"…Chlamydia?" Huruma sounds dubious, her hands prying out the rest of the lower organs onto the table. She has a bucket for the sloppier parts, but it seems that she is keeping aside the more edible things. "Hm. That is- a specific silver lining." But it works.
"Right. Someone remind me to talk to everyone in charge and get Huruma kicked out of the kitchen except for bringing in deer," Shannon says to no one in particular, shaking her head and moving to check the food stores.
"Okay, then," Nora says, cheeks blushing a little at the talk of chlamydia and she focuses on reaching for her coffee mug and not knocking it over. It's brought very carefully to her mouth, the top surface of the sweetened fluid blown upon and finally sipped. After setting it back down, she stifles a yawn.
Shannon's words get a shrug from the blind girl. "I don't see anyone else in here helping her — I mean, besides you, and you got here just before me." The word see is not caught this time, or she'd snort in derision at her own stupid semantics. "If she's willing to butcher it, then more power to her. We gotta eat after all."
Her nose wrinkles again. "You killed Bambi's mother?"
"That's cold," Rue follows Nora's query with a shake of her head. "Poor Bambi." Though she's smirking a little at that. Nora can hear it in her tone. She takes a sip of her coffee, frowning a bit. It's not as strong as she likes, but it'll do. "She's got a point, you know," she remarks to Shannon. "I know I have not got the stomach to do that, and no one wants to worry whether or not I'm going to toss my cookies on our dinner. So I really think having her look a bit serial killer is just the price we're going to have to pay for having some meat in our diets. I'd rather that than cabbage soup."
"I didn't. But, I shot his brother in th'neck." Huruma at least makes this clear, taking her time to scrape connective tissue from the inside of the animal. It's time to water it out next, and that is simple enough when Huruma links her arms under the carcass to prop it up so it will run down onto the bucket. She's big enough to do this kind of maneuvering on her own. Anything that splashes off is easily mopped up when she finishes this. "Looking. Quite." That's all she has to say about that, otherwise grateful the two girls sitting there (mostly) watching care enough to chime in.
"I think tha'everyone would rather this, than cabbage soup."
"I could butcher the deer and I wouldn't be getting my happy on while doing it or scaring kids," Shannon says with a shrug. "Scare the adults all you want, but not the kids. But hey, whatever. You people want the kids traumatized by seeing her, that's all on you. Let me know when you want a less sociopath person in the kitchen," she says, abandoning her check of the stores to head for the door.
"She doesn't sound that happy about it. The kids are resilient. They'll be okay," says the youngest of the women, still a kid by some people's definitions. "I'm pretty sure I've seen worse in my time, and I'm not too scarred by it."
Nora wrinkles her nose again at the irony of the words after they tumble out of her mouth. "Shut up," she adds, reaching to hit Rue before the girl can say anything. "I meant before this month. It's still this month, isn't it? November? I'm kinda losing track of the days." She picks up her mug carefully again to sip slowly, this time keeping her hands wrapped around the mug, resting it on top of her knees.
"I think the kids have had a lot more to deal with than just seeing a deer get cleaned," Rue points out sombrely. She then snorts and opens her mouth to poke fun at Nora when she gets slugged in the arm. Coffee sloshes over the sides of the mug and onto her hands. "Aaahhh! I'm gonna wipe my hands on your shirt!" she threatens, but with a laugh to prove she isn't serious. In fact, the coffee gets wiped off on her jeans. "And yes, it's November. For another…"
There's a pause as Rue thinks, her blue eyes rolling ceilingward. "Thirty days has September… April, June, and— Yeah. Tomorrow it's December."
Huruma is patient enough to wait until Shannon is gone far enough to mutter something. "B'cause you are so friendly, I suppose…" Let's see Shannon nail a two hundred pound buck on the wall! Ho-ho. "Tomorrow is December first, yes." The dark woman remarks when the blind girl muses on her losing track of days. "Any kid living in this castle is going t'see some blood. I'd rather th'first time be an animal. And- if I scare them, they will learn to not talk t'strangers." A silver lining.
Huruma gets that knife again to scoop out the tenderloins on the doe, cupping them in one palm on her way to the counter where there is cheesecloth and paper to wrap them in. She makes a couple trips back for the edible organs to do the same.
"Like I care. It can't be worse than sitting in soup," Nora tells Rue. "Hell, I don't even know what I'm wearing. I'm probably wearing green and brown plaid with pink and purple polka dots. They should make braille clothing. Not that I can read it or anything."
The girl isn't in anything so ridiculous of course, but in jeans that are too baggy for her small frame, tan Ugg boots that are a size too big, and a gray hoodie on top of two layers of thermal shirts. Hardly stylish, but not clashing. "What's your name, Deer Hunter?" she asks Huruma. "You have an accent — where are you from?"
"Totally," Rue teases. "Your colour coorindation is so bad, I think I may go blind just looking at you." She nudges Nora in the arm gently, careful not to cause her to spill her coffee. "Nah. You look fine. Your boots are super cute. I mean, in so far as Uggs are cute." Because Uggs are ugly. She turns her gaze over to Huruma, awaiting the proper introduction.
Rolling up the pieces of deer is a welcome moment away from the open carcass on the table. Though the deer's head is tilted so that its half closed brown eyes are staring at Rue. Unfortunate. "You look like you are taking a sick day." Not entirely terrible.
"Huruma. I'm technically with… Special Activities, I am no'part of th'Ferry." Yet is the part that goes unsaid, because right now it could go either way. "I was born in Kenya, but I am no'from anywhere, really."
Nora would feel she's lucky for not having to see those doe eyes looking at her. Another silver lining. She nods. "Me neither. I mean, not Ferry, and not really from anywhere," she murmurs quietly, taking another sip of the coffee carefully before unfolding those thin legs and gingerly standing.
"I think my coffee is down to the point that I can walk without sloshing… maybe… and fuck, I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I want to get back to the infirmary." She has become infamous for escaping the infirmary in her determination to be independent, and not waiting for escorts of late. Howard being injured and in the infirmary, however, changes that.
"So I'm gonna head back. It was nice meeting you, Huruma. Good luck with Falina."
Rue is quick to rise to her feet. "I'll walk with you," she tells Nora. Not walk you but walk with you. It's a subtle difference that Rue hopes the blind girl notices. "I have got to get away from that thing. The deer, I mean. Not Miss Huruma." She flashes a quick smile to the woman. She then leans in to stage whisper to Nora. "It's staring at me. You can't leave me alone with it."
Her chair is pushed in and Rue straightens up to her full height. "Say, Nora. If I closed my eyes, do you think we could both make it back to the infirmary without me tripping over something or walking into a wall?"
"My pleasure, girls." Huruma offers in return, effectively reciprocating on her end. A good enough moment of. She passes a look over her shoulder when the carrot-haired one brings up one of the most terrible ideas ever- really? "As much as I may like t'see that- I can only warn you not to. These floors are not th'best navigated, it is a small wonder that Nora here can do it on her own without falling." Though, as she is saying that, she is also thinking to herself- don't fall.
"Let's not and say you did. We have coffee in our hands — I'd get forgiven if I spilled it on someone, but you have no excuse," Nora tells the taller girl, though a faint smile curves her lips upward.
Over her shoulder, she tosses to Huruma, "Oh, I can't, Huruma, but it doesn't mean that I don't try."
Rue closes her eyes all the same. "Hah. I walk runways. What's one hallw-" There's a sound between a crack and a thud when Rue hits the frame of the doorway forehead first and stumbles back, only barely saving her coffee. "Okay. Maybe you have a point." Shaking off the dazedness, she hooks her arm through Nora's, eyes decidedly open now. "You clearly had better lead me around."
Huruma just stares at their backs, now, eyebrows lifting higher. She really has no words, at this point, silently turning her face back to her hands and wrapping up the various pieces in a taut cocoon of plastic. "B'careful, girls." And don't go walking down any runways anytime soon. For your own good.