Second Floor Common Room; Saturday Night.

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

There was a television set in the common room. There was also a refrigerator, a stove, a table with legs that all seemed even, no comic books or coconuts wedged underneath merely to keep the surface somewhere near straight. It was genuinely level, made so in a factory of other things genuinely level.

Adah was avoiding these notions of perfect, smooth running as if they came bearing e.Coli and other such viruses, quite possibly even the black plague. Eug alp kcalb. She was curled up on the couch, tightly, creating a cocoon, surprisingly comfortable, in the corner, as if the arm and the cushions around her would protect her from capitalist conveniences of a nation free from the Heart of Darkness. She was reading, a giant volume of Poe, ridiculously huge and unwieldy, ironic to the work itself inside, unless she was reading that horrible novel. She wasn't, though. She was reading The Bells. Again. Backwards.

Ghouls are they.
Human nor brute, neither are they.
Woman nor man, neither are they.
Stone a heart, human, the on.

So maybe Eop rendered himself to backwards well every once in a while. It was enough to satisfy her so that that Adah was almost willing to forgive the television for being utterly useless.

Almost.

She was just hoping that her suspicion that most people would be out and about on a Saturday night was true to fact and that she wouldn't at all be bothered; she needed the change in scenery, though, just a bit.


[[ open, of course ]]

Comments

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

Lee found himself wandering the floor below his (mostly to avoid Harry and his stupid stick) and walked past the common room. He backed up and smiled before saying, "No park tonight?"

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

At first, Adah heard a voice, just a voice, and thought to ignore it. She did, drawing in a deep breath and trying to back into her cocoon a little further, not realizing that she'd already curled as far as she could. Her left hand gripped on the edge of the book. She hoped to be alone, perhaps that wasn't her fate, but it probably was what she deserved for coming here. She wanted to give the rec room space another try, though. Maybe it was inevitable.

But Adah found her attempts to be invisible thwarted by her curiosity. Damn that curiosity; she wasn't a cat, and interaction would hardly kill her, but it was a great annoyance. Her eyes darted up quickly, intending to steal just a simple glance, and then went back down to the page.

And then back up again, and her head tilted. The Eel. She...well, she hadn't expected that. Almost as if her mind had linked him eternally with grass, and there was no grass here. She blinked at him, once, and then her lower lip tucked under her teeth, as if unsure what to do now. She couldn't very well just say hi, after all.

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

Instead of stepping into the common room, he leaned against the door just to give her space she seemed to like.

"Me either," he said, shrugging a shoulder. "Feeling lazy, I guess. Doing okay?"

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

Releasing her lower lip from the bite, Adah nodded her head a few times. Okay was mostly relative, but, for the most part, she supposed it was applicable. She paused, her eyes dropping down to her book for a second. She closed the cover, passing her hands over the worn leather front, and, awkwardly, made the attempt to hold the too-large volume up slightly so that the Eel could see what she was reading. Edgar Allen Poe. Collected Works. Skrowd et cell oceop Nella Ragde.

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

"Good," he said and then tried to focus on the book, almost squinting to read the title and then frowned when he realized the words didn't mean anything to him.

"Never read that one," he admitted. He'd never read anything from Earth yet. "Any good?"

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

Adah shrugged her shoulder, looking down to the side a bit with an expression that showed that it was not much; she had her phases when Eop was everything, everything was Poe, but she'd picked him apart, read him from every angle by now that he was like an old coat: well worn and comfortably familiar, but nothing new and useless against the rain. She took a moment to decide how to solve the problem of Lee's own deprevation, though, because everyone needed a good, old, useless coat, and then she started to shift through the pages, with an odd quickness thanks to the dependability of her left hand, and found what she was looking for.

After realizing that she couldn't hand the book off very well with just one hand, she ended up just tossing it on the open space on the couch, its pages open to Annabel Lee (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/annabel-lee/).

And then she stared at the book like it was a viper. Better yet, a green mamba, staring at the last word in the title. How did that even slip under her awareness? Was she slipping, or was it just coincidence?

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

After hesitating for a brief moment, he padded into the room and crouched down in front of the couch to read the poem on the pages in front of him. It had his name in the title so he already liked it.

He hadn't read much poetry in his life so he read slowly, trying to comprehend as he went but had to stop and read a few lines over.

"That's a sad one," he said and frowned at the book like it was the book's fault.

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

Adah drew the book back into her arms, into the crook of her legs, not at all to console it for the Eel's accusation, but simply to don her armor again. She looked down at the poem, although she knew it practically by heart, and shook her head slightly. Only sad if the Eel meant pathetic, but somehow, she didn't think he did.

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

Instead of standing again, Lee sat on the bit of floor he'd been crouching on, arms behind him.

"I forgot to bring books when I left home," he told her, sounding sheepish. "Left them all in my room because I wasn't thinking. We don't have poetry like that."

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

Immediately, Adah wondered what the Eel's poetry was like, then. In fact, the question gnawed at her, nibbling annoyingly at her brain and making her head want to tic over the possibility that there were types of poetry out there that she was unfamiliar with.

Then, she frowned at Lee, not because of the poetry, but because of her silence. She hadn't brought her notebook with her, just her book, and she wanted to respond. She felt confused and torn when that happened; she wasn't used to being around people she actually felt like she wanted to talk to them. Because she wanted to tell him about her books, more arriving by the day it seemed, her roommate's books, and that the library had books; he should come Wednesday, that was when she was working...

But she didn't, looking over at him on the floor, deciding if it was important enough to waste words on.

[stupid-toasters.livejournal.com]

He was thoughtful for a minute, glancing at the spot on the knee of his pants before looking back up and saying, "A lot of the poetry I read was more...just surface, I think. Nothing really to the words but the words themselves. I was obviously reading the wrong poems."

[inthereflexes.livejournal.com]

Jack wandered in the room, torn between getting something to eat and sitting and thinking. The sitting won, but not yet into the thinking.

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

Adah against the arm of the couch stiffened slightly as the odd boy with the glitter took a seat, focusing on her book. As often with predator and prey in the wild, one wouldn't strike if the other stayed perfectly completely still. Perhaps that same would work for people and them leaving you alone.

[inthereflexes.livejournal.com]

It seems to be working so far. Jack gave the couch-lump a guy nod.

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

Luke hadn't exactly been up for a giant gathering last night, but he figured becoming a hermit was a little too Master Yoda for his taste.

He smiled when he saw a familiar figure in the second floor common room.

"Hi," he said quietly.

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

A small smile slipped onto Adah's face as she caught a soft voice and slightly lifted her eyes to confirm if the source was who she thought it was. She gave Luke a small nod in response, a good silent greeting back, and then tilted her head at him. Beto nki tutasala? What are we doing? Doing, we are what? Alas, atuti knot eb. Perhaps not beto, not what, but how. How are we doing? And since what and how were often linked in Kilanga, Adah decided it worked. Beto nki tutasala, Luke? What treats or fascination might you bring today, surely more interesting that the dry predictability of the drunken, incestuous Eop.

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

His face lit up as her emotions washed over him.

"I wasn't sure what you'd be doing," he said, moving a little closer and waving his hand towards the door, "but I thought you might want to meet a friend of mine."

Artoo rolled into the room, beeping cheerfully. "Adah, this is Artoo. Artoo, meet Adah."

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

Smiling crookedly, Adah craned her neck, surprisingly easily to the left, and wondered if Luke would ever run out of neat little robot for her to meet. She lifted a hand in a muted wave of a greeting, fingers wiggling slightly, toward this Artoo, her mind taking in thoughts of mailboxes and trashbins. Her head tilted back at Luke, eagerly waiting to learn a bit more than just a name and the fact that it beeped.

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

Luke grinned over at the little droid, very clearly fond of it. "Artoo helps me fly my starfighter," he said, patting it on the dome, "but can also do just about anything."

Artoo spun around in a circle again, tweetling proudly, then stopped and opened most of the hatches on his body, pinchers and drills and lockbreaking tools and a frying pan--Luke frowned worriedly at that one--popping out all over.

"He just can't speak Basic," Luke concluded.

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

It didn't take long before the display of all of Artoo's numerous abilities started to be too overwhelming for Adah; her brain saw movement, heard sounds, but very little of it managed to process, a flurry of sensory data blurring behind her eyes. She shook her head slightly as if that would clarify something, and, instead, it just ended up emptying it all out and she found herself wondering how much putting together something like Artoo would cost. Weakly, she gave Luke a smile, left shoulder creeping up slightly, and giving a worried look over at Artoo, as if half expecting the next feature would be her doom.

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

Luke gave Artoo a warning glance and the little droid immediately hid all of his innards and beeped apologetically.

"He can be a little much," Luke said quietly, moving to sit down in a nearby chair. "I don't know where the frying pan even came from."

He was hoping that giving her one part to focus on would help stop the worrying. He chewed on his lower lip and watched her with wide blue eyes.

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, Luke chose wisely, as the frying pan seemed to Adah, amid all the other strange appendages that she didn't quite understand, to be the most useful out of all of them. She gave Luke an apologetic smile as she watched his cheerfulness drop as he himself did into the chair. She had such an uncanny ability to do that; most of the time, she didn't worry about it, but she felt bad doing it to Luke.

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

Luke waved his hand. "It's fine," he said, responding to her emotion without really thinking about it. "Don't worry about it. I'm still learning." He smiled at her. "I'll get better, or at least keep trying to."

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

Adah passed a look over toward Luke that demanded to know why he was apologizing, because it certainly wasn't his fault. It wasn't even hers, it was this backwards body of hers, the fact that only one half of her brain could function, which lead it to overload quickly, beyond anyone's control. She smiled lightly at him again, shaking her head, and then she looked almost apologetically toward Artoo, as well. She thought a little of her 'conversation' with River on the roof last night; some of these things were just things she had trouble getting used to, but maybe she could still learn and get better, too...

She held out her left hand for Artoo, like one would a cat, head tilting. She figured a good place to start would be a solid place. Simple science. I can touch you, therefor you exist.

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

Artoo trilled softly and moved closer to be touched as Luke watched, smiling softly before he turned his attention back to Adah.

He was quiet for a moment, organizing his thoughts. "I don't like making it harder for you," he said finally. "It's already hard enough."