[closed]

[erbier]

CHARACTERS: Ilde & Murphy
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Day :036
SUMMARY: Hey-o.
WARNINGS: N/A, will update as necessary.

[ She had only left the Station for a few days, and already in her absence another clutch of eggs had hatched. She had greeted them on the platform. Like each clutch, they were strange and disparate, wide-eyed, sullen with the magnitude of their choices. She was used to presenting herself to them -- It does not feel so long ago that she was introducing herself to John on the Bearings' rooftop.

She feels him as he nears the Station; a low familiar murmuring she does not immediately place. 'A change in the wind', as sayings went. Even in the burned world they had such superstitions, such omens. By the time he is nearing their hangar, she is more certain of who has returned.

A surprise. No one else has deemed it necessary to return, too busy with their silly side quest. But then, did she particularly wish to speak with any of them? Would she have even bothered to leave her garden.

She does so, for John. Her haphazard curls slung low at her neck by a strip of tough fabric, dirt on her hands and knees and up her shins. She's only just noticing this as she follows his trail through the halls after him, brushing off her hands absentmindedly. ]

John. Is everything alright?

[ She can't really think of any other reason he'd have come back here, on his own. ]

Comments

[wrackful]

[There's a low, tight ache of sadness for that. It's his and yet not, an uncomfortable dissonance between a part of him that wouldn't want that, and the rest, which wants to be free. To go home.

But that isn't the point.]

There'll still be no one if we keep dropping comatose. [Not that he thinks he's on that path. But it has to be linked, their imperfections, glitches in the connection between them and the aliens in their heads. Fleeting snatches of concepts filter in his mind, evolution, adaptation, biology. But he'd never been much of a reader, and he's tired. He gives up on trying to follow the thoughts through, find the idea lurking in them.] Look, I know you don't know. I'm just saying, all the imperfect talk starts to sound like grade A bullshit when no one's doing anything to try patching the gaps, so us being here ends up pointless anyway.

[Pragmatism bordering on pessimism was his usual. He'd grown up on a space station that had lasted 97 years in space with no new equipment or parts to keep it floating. He knew make do, intimately. But he also knew improvement, progress, carving new ways when the old just weren't good enough anymore.]

[erbier]

[ She stops in the archway into the Nesting Deck, turning to look at him directly. ]

Perhaps.

[ But she is not willing to indulge that pessimism. The more she learns, the more she can contribute. Perhaps these little seeds merely needed to be nurtured to prevent them falling ill. And oh is that a task that she is made for. ]

[wrackful]

Right. [He smiles, just a tight pull of his mouth in the corner.] Shut up Murphy, I get it.

[Because perhaps isn't anything. Just a response to make a response. He doesn't need the mental link to tell him that. Still:]

Thanks.

[Genuine, as he moves past her into the deck. For walking with him, listening to him even if they'd eventually wound up at perhaps.]

[erbier]

[ She gives him a faint little smile in return. ]

Rest well, John.

[ He may be right, she'd prefer it if he wasn't. ]