fandomhighdorms | The Roof, Sunday Afternoon

Entry tags:

The Roof, Sunday Afternoon

Katchoo lugged the easel, the paints and palette, and a couple of the blank canvases she'd bought earlier in the week up to the roof, setting herself up in the corner with the garden of spiky plants. It had been a long time since she'd had a chance to do any artwork, and painting was still something fairly new to her; now that she actually had her life to herself again (for however long that lasted) she welcomed the chance to try her hand at.

Acrylics. She'd never painted with acrylics before, either, and though she'd never admit it out loud as she squeezed generous daubs of various colors onto the palette, she had no idea what it was going to be like. Some classically-trained artist somewhere would probably have a fit if they saw her guessing her way through this, she thought, lighting up a cigarette.

Absently, she dipped her brush into a color at random and began to let it trail over the canvas. This was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, but it was soothing.

[OOC: Open like a roof is. Mind the temperamental artist, but she's a bit mellower today.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I've always figured it was the first thing she slurred after birthing me," he said with a faint smirk. He didn't mind the lack of a shake. The wave worked well enough.

"And I'd never met one before I came here. Nuns don't count."

Katchoo snorted lightly and stubbed out the cigarette she'd nearly forgotten about, before she got ash in the bag of cookies. "Yeah, I don't usually count nuns most of the time. Seriously, nobody nice back home?"

He shook his head.

"Not really."

The Gale Forcers at Red Windmill, for all that they'd spent time with him, had probably only done it to get information about the keep. And whether they had or not, taking the remains of Fiyero's family certainly would have disqualified them.

Glinda had had her own agenda, and her own conscience to quiet. And letting someone in to a prison wasn't exactly 'nice'.

Trism, well...

Trism was nice. But Trism probably had some alterier motive. And to be fair, he'd only really been 'nice' when they'd met after this place. Before then, they'd just been pathetic together.

"Know the feeling," Katchoo said briefly. "Well, except for Francine."

There had been her father, but after he'd died her mother had been too drunk most of the time to pay her much mind, and when she wasn't drunk she was yelling. Then there was Ace, and she hadn't been lying when she'd told Mr. Durden she'd fight him if she could. Terminally.

True, she'd been treated well by Darcy, but Katchoo harbored no illusions that Darcy Parker was anything but ruthless and calculating.

And then there had been Emma -- and once her time ran out Francine really would be the only one she had left.

"I've met a Francine here," he said. "Do you mean that one?"

He wasn't sure but he figured it was worth asking.

He shook his head and looked around for something to lean on and finding nothing, he decided just to sit. He'd fly in a few minutes.

"And I suppose I have one friend in Oz. I'm not complaining or anything."

"Tall, dark hair, curvy?" The closest thing anyone here had yet heard to open affection crept into Katchoo's voice. "Yeah, that's her."

"Oz?" she added after a moment. "You don't have an accent . . ."

"It's a different world," he pointed out. "Not here. We've had visitors, but it's no place like this one."

He scratched behind one ear before looking up.

"And yes, pleasant and friendly. Dark hair. I saw her at the buffet table during one of the picnics."

Katchoo actually chuckled at that; she wasn't surprised at all that Francine had been sighted near the food. "She's great, isn't she?"

"Different world, right," she said with a sigh. "I don't have the hang of remembering that yet."

"I still wonder why people don't know what an Animal is," the capital letter was rather specific, "and my sister has to correct me on the days and the months more often than not."

"And she was very nice. I've been a bit antisocial of late."

"Socializing's kind of overrated sometimes," said Katchoo, unaware of any persuasion to the contrary that she might be undoing. She could have mentioned that she didn't have much patience with people in general, but he'd given her cookies and done nothing to irritate her yet so, in what might've been a miraculous occurrence, kept that to herself.

"What's the difference," she asked, having gotten a sense of the capital letter, "between those and regular animals?"

"I have to say I agree, but my sister is insistent," he said with a faint smile at the mention of Ino. She'd been so happy earlier.

"As for Animals, well, they speak and think like anyone else on two legs," he told her. "Though the difference isn't as big as people might think. My mother was doing research to make monkeys into Monkeys when she died. She succeeded the once."

"Sort of like cartoon animals, only not?" Katchoo hazarded; it was the only point of reference she had.

"I don't know what a cartoon is, but you're probably right," he said with a shrug.

"They look like normal animals, but they're different. Supposedly, they were given the gift of speech by...

"Well, it was either Lurline or Kumbricia, but the myths all say different things so I couldn't tell you. A witch or a fairy queen."

"Witches and fairy queens." Katchoo picked up a brush again, dipping it into the ochre paint and tracing a few more seemingly random strokes on the canvas. "And talking animals. A week ago I'd've expected to only hear that in a conversation with people who were high, and now? Damn if the entire frikkin' world can't change when you just blink."

"Or while you're locked in the kitchen," he murmured, mostly to himself it seemed.

"And while I've never met a fairy queen and I think that's all hogswash, I can at least claim to have known a Witch. Anything more than that is religion and conjecture, even where I'm from."

"I used to live in Houston," Katchoo drawled, "so depending on who you asked on a street corner, witches could've been real."

"Houston? Where's that?"

He knew of New York, Sunnydale, and Kansas.

"Texas," said Katchoo, and the distaste practically dripped off the word. "Hot, noisy, and full of aging businessmen."

"It sounds like the Emerald City," he said with a faint smirk of his own.

"I was living there for a few months before I ended up here."

"Lived there two years ago, Houston, I mean," Katchoo replied; mindful of the new necessity for a cover story, she added, "Before I went to Columbus. Ohio. Midwest. Not quite as hot, but not much more fun, either."

"I lived at a mauntery until I was six, lived at Kiamo Ko in the Vinkus most of my life, and after the Witch was killed, I brought her murderer back to the Emerald City, where I lived on the streets avoiding the Home Guard until I ended up here," he said, succinct and matter of fact. If they were going to share histories, he might as well get it done.

If Katchoo was surprised -- in an oddly grateful way -- to hear that he'd lived on the streets as well, she didn't let it show, but she did let out a brief nonverbal sound of acknowledgment.

"Yeah, can definitely see how it's a step up, being here," was what she said instead.

[OOC: So many apologies for slowness; exhausted and keep drifting off. :/]

[sleep happens; if you want to SP is totally cool]

He noticed the sound and put it in the back of his mind to ruminate on before he went to sleep tonight, as he did with most things that he didn't understand yet.

"Room and board and education. Can't beat it, really."

"Ain't that the truth," Katchoo said, although she could think of a couple of things she'd prefer in place of an education. "And apparently a free trip to see icebergs up close and personal."