Max Caulfield

[little_pieces_of_time]

In the corner of one of the couches, over by the fireplace, someone is telling a story. It's an odd story, more about concepts and symbolism, technology and history than about a coherent narrative, but the cats hardly seem to mind. Max is content to be pinned in her place on the couch by the small collection of cats that have gathered while she catches up on her assigned reading for photography class.

They aren't a bad audience. Well, the big one is certainly asleep, the tabby is imperiously insisting on ear scritches, but at least the white one seems content to just exist nearby.

She figures that counts as listening. Good enough, anyway.

"'The inventory started in 1839,'" she reads, her left hand rubbing the ears of the nearest cat, "'and since then just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems. This very insatiability of the photographing eye changes the terms of confinement in the cave, our world. In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads -- as an anthology of images.'"

(no subject)

[behind_me]

On encountering a bar where she wasn't expecting one, the first thing she does is to step casually to the side, so there's a wall at her back. Another glance around suggests that no one here was expecting her or shows anywhere near the surprise at her appearance that she does on arriving.

No one attacks her. Which is promising.

She makes her way through the room to the Bar, where an explanatory brochure meets her, and after a quick scan of that she orders her first drink: low in intoxicants, in a tall glass so she can nurse it anyway.

So there she perches, one foot still on the floor, at the very end of the bar where she can see most of the room, and looking like she's been here several times before.

The deadliest woman in the galaxy waits patiently for the other shoe to drop.