fandomhighdorms | Third floor common room, Friday afternoon

Entry tags:

Third floor common room, Friday afternoon

Mae was determined never to do anything properly in Seivarden's class -- and was so far doing very well at that -- but the assignment today, to write poetry about someone they cared about, was actually something that got her thinking.

Something that got her interested.

So after class, she grabbed her journal and a blanket from her room and went to go curl up on a common room couch and try to write a real poem.

"This house is haunted,"
you said.
And you died.
You were right.

You said
"They feared death."
You were right.
I'm afraid all the time.

"They feared death,
So they ate the young."
I'm afraid all the time
of what's eating me.

So they eat the young.
And you died.
What's eating me?
. . .
"This house is haunted."

It was probably terrible. She was sure it was terrible. It didn't even rhyme.

She stared at the page for several long moments, idly doodling her grandfather's face next to her poem.

She wished it would snow.

[tiny emo post is open! Mae's poem is an extremely rough pantoum, aka baby-creative-writing-major!Bella's favorite poetic form. . . .]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Astrid was taking her self-inflicted dedication to staying out of Sabine's way as much as possible seriously, right down to avoiding the common room on her floor. She wanted to be like a ghost--appearing every once in a while to change the wall, maybe, but beyond that, beyond perhaps some mysterious cries at night from the dreams she couldn't help, she could try to make it like she wasn't even there at all.

She'd discovered that she preferred the fifth floor--there was hardly anyone up there--but she just didn't feel like going up that far today, especially since she was thinking of heading down to the salle after she'd gotten something to eat, with her mind stuck on swords the way it was after shop class. So the third floor it was, with a can of soup and a sleeve of crackers in hand.

"Oh." She didn't even notice Mae over on the couch at first, taking her for just a shadow with that blanket over her, and practically already had the pan for her soup in her hand by the time she did. "Hi, Mae."

There seemed to be a hesitation, a battle in herself between the part of her that had vowed to stop apologizing for her own presence, and the part of herself that couldn't help it.

"It's cool if I use the stove in here, right?"

She'd have called that a compromise if it weren't for the fact that she knew it was fine, if she didn't already know that she didn't need to ask anyone's permission.

Mae looked up and shrugged. "It's not my stove," she pointed out. Her ear twitched as she looked Astrid over. "How's it going?"

With an answer like that, Astrid figured she had no choice but to resolutely set the pot on the stove like a flag staking claim to unexplored territory and shrugged. "It's going okay, I guess," she said, which was...surprisingly honest, and she gave Mae a faint smile. "We made hybrid weapons in shop class today and then tried to fuse them all into one big mega-weapon."

It seemed like the sort of thing Mae would appreciate, although she really wasn't so sure anymore.

"How's it going with you?"

Edited 2020-01-31 20:15 (UTC)

"That is so much cooler than my stupid 'how to be civilized' class!" Mae said, sitting up a little from her couch slouch. (Heh, 'couch slouch'. She should write that one down.) "I'm alright. Just messing around with my journal. . . . Have you ever tried to write poetry?"

Not all common rooms were created equal, it would seem, because the can opener was not in the same drawer that it was in on the fifth floor, and Astrid was glad for it. That meant her head was down as she was shifting through the utensils looking for it, so she didn't have to worry about what expression her face made when Mae said poetry.

"I'm not very good at poetry," she said, after a moment that she hoped seemed like she was just distracted by the missing can opener. But she found it now, and lifted her head, tossing the curtain of hair back. "Why? Is that what you're working on right now?"

"Uh huh. It's probably really bad. I never tried one before." The couplet she'd written in class didn't count.

And yeah, she somehow stumbled into an esoteric, carefully regimented poetic form by accident. These things happened.

"I don't even know if it's really a poem. It doesn't rhyme. It's just, like. A bunch of weird words."

"Actually," said Astrid, "most literary poetry doesn't actually rhyme. It's considered amateurish and out of style..."

She hesitated again, in part to shake off the echoes of Ingrid's voice in her head as she said that and because she wasn't sure if she should ask what she was about it.

"Can I read it?"

She knew art was personal, after all. Or could be. She could think of a few sketchbooks under her bed right now that she'd be mortified if Mae ever saw. But she couldn't help being curious. And even though Ingrid was the last thing she'd want to bring up right now, she found the words leaving her before she could even stop them.

"My mom's a poet, actually, so I grew up reading and listening to a ton of it..."

As if her expertise could perhaps sweeten the deal a little.

"Oh. Um." Mae looked down at her poem. She hadn't thought about sharing it with anyone. ". . . You have to promise not to freak out."

They'd had conversations -- or at least brief exchanges -- about therapy, once upon a time. She guessed in anyone would understand that a poem could be true and not the total truth (but also kind of extra true because of that), it'd be Astrid. . . .

A statement like that did absolutely nothing to satiate Astrid's curiosity, either.

"Why would I freak out?"

It was the sort of question that, once asked, sent a rush of morbid and terrible possibilities rushing through her like an electrical current. The kind that made you almost want to touch the fence again.

"You don't have to," she added. "If you don't want to. I mean, I get it. I don't let people see some of my drawings, either. I'm sure it's good, though."

"I don't know," Mae said, looking down at her notebook. "Because people freak out about stuff."

Things like 'I'm always afraid' and 'they eat the young'.

She hesitated, then offered her journal to Astrid.

"It's about my granddad."

"I won't freak out," Astrid promised, setting the can of soup and the can opener on the counter with the crackers, deciding to abandon her lunch for something potentially tastier. She moved closer to take the journal, wondering if it would be worse for Mae if she sat down on the couch with her, but deciding to sit anyway because she wanted to.

She didn't even know her dad, much less her granddad, so she wasn't sure it was anything she'd relate to, but she tucked her hair behind her ears and started to read.

Then she was quiet, and she went back to read it again. Especially certain lines.

This house is haunted.

I'm afraid all the time.

So they ate their young.

"This is really good, Mae" she said, but it didn't feel like enough, so she tried to think of something else before handing the journal back. "...were you and your granddad close?"

Edited 2020-01-31 22:29 (UTC)

Mae looked up, surprised at her assessment. It was? Mae almost never made things that were good. She blushed a little and kicked her feet against the couch.

"Yeah. He lived with us when I was little. Used to tell me bedtime stories. We liked the spooky ones best. He used to say that being a little scared was good. Because you knew you were alive."

Ingrid would have probably torn it apart, ruthlessly, and she probably would have had very good points, too, but Astrid liked it, genuinely, and, most importantly, she wasn't Ingrid.

She brought up one of her legs, so she could lean into it a little, wrapping her arm around it. "It sounds like he would have liked it, too."

"He definitely would have said so," Mae said, nodding. "After he said that poems were a silly way of communicating when you could tell stories instead."

"Poems are just a different way of telling a story, though," said Astrid, though she felt she was probably a little biased; there'd been times where she craved that moment when Ingrid would finish a poem, because then she would read it to her, and even though Astrid didn't understand them most of the time, it would sometimes be the most Ingrid interacted with her that day. Or even that week...

"Drawings and paintings, too. They're all stories."

A slight, thoughtful pause.

"All the good ones, anyway."

"I guess. Yours definitely are." She looked up, kicking her feet against the couch again. "I got your postcards. I'm sorry I only wrote one back. I'm sometimes really bad at, like. Doing stuff."

"No, it's okay," said Astrid. "So am I."

Which sounded much better than admitting that she'd stopped sending them because things were going well and she thought she'd never see any of them again.

"There wasn't ever anything interesting to write about, anyway."

"Guess your old-timey Hollywood wasn't old-timey enough to be interesting?" Mae asked. "There was kind of a lot of stuff around here this summer, but the fall was quiet. I turned into a squishy cat toy with no mouth for a week."

Astrid's brows furrowed slightly. "A squishy cat toy?" she asked "Was that when everyone turned into toys? Because I think...I think I was actually here for that. Or ot was a dream. I remember it, anyway, and I called Sabine and she said it all happened, just like in my dream...

"It didn't really make a lot of sense."

Just imagine how much weirder it would feel when she found out that there was still a recording from her doing radio that week, too.

"But what ever does, about this place?"

"Right?! And yeah, it was that week. I got so upset when I dropped a breakfast plate. It was literally a piece of plastic with a breakfast sticker on it." She shuddered. "I liked the vampires better."

"Well, if I remember right," said Astrid, with an unpleasant twist in her stomach that made her feel glad she hadn't actually gotten to her soup yet, "that would have been a pretty serious offense."

That she would have jumped on in a heartbeat.

All the more reason to just ask, "What happened with the vampires?"

She would have thought that you knew it was bad if the vampires were better, but she also figured Mae would have thought vampires were better in a lot of cases.

"I hit them with a stick."

Her toy-hands had been all soft and squishy and squeaked when she hit things. And she'd barely even managed to hold a plastic plate, much less a stick!

Okay. Astrid probably should have expected that, in retrospect, but she hadn't, and it made her laugh.

Well. It caused her to let out an amused snort that was as close to a laugh as she'd had in a long time. When even was the last time? Fishing in Mexico. Moments before Claire begged her not to kill the fish.

But she killed it anyway.

So the mirth softened, just a bit, but Astrid tried to keep it there, practically clinging.

"You're pretty good at that, huh?" she said.

Edited 2020-02-01 01:18 (UTC)

"Oh yeah. I can beat the shit out of anything."

To a fault, sometimes, but Astrid didn't need to know that part.

"I was actually thinking of going and hitting things with sticks later," Astrid admitted. " Down at the salle."

Because she remembered, all of a sudden, that she'd once learned how to use a sword. At least, she thought she remembered, and she just wanted to make sure, because reality seemed a particularly fragile thing right now.

"Well, the practice swords, but those are pretty much just glorified sticks."

Edited 2020-02-01 01:36 (UTC)

"Wait, there are practice swords down there?!"

Mae had no idea what a "salle" was, no.

"There were back when I had my sword class," Astrid said, "but I haven't checked yet to see if they still are. I don't see why they wouldn't be, though."

Then she hesitated. It seemed a pretty safe bet, really, as far as gambled went, to ask Mae to go hit things with glorified sticks with her, but that also meant it would feel even worse in the event that she said no.

Then again, nothing could hurt worse than what she'd been through. Not even the volcano had been worse.

So she asked. "Want to come with me?"

Edited 2020-02-01 02:02 (UTC)

"Um, yeah," Mae said, still too excited to learn there was a whole room of practice swords to notice her hesitation. "After your lunch?"

Astrid glanced over toward her abandoned soup amd shrugged. "I really wasn't all that hungry in the first place," she said, which was ever true. She really didn't have much of an appetite these days. She mostly ate because she knew she should, it gave her something to do, and it got her pit of the room. "I can just bring the crackers with me."

Mae looked at her sideways. Astrid had been extra weird since getting back, enough for Mae to notice and start to worry about. "Are you sure? Hitting things is less fun if you're hungry."

"I'm sure," said Astrid, even though now she wasn't. Not about not being that hungry, but maybe about Mae, that she'd probably want to go hit things with sticks with her, by herself, and she stood up from the couch, as if to prove it, in defiance of her doubts. "Hitting things can also help work up more of an appetite, too, right?"

"Oh, totally." Mae could eat pretty much any time that wasn't right after she'd just eaten too many things, so she had no real idea. "That sounds legit to me."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Third floor common room, Friday afternoon

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject