milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

[OOM-but-not: Five days.]

Meg comes downstairs this evening, knitting bag in hand, considers for a moment, and then selects a comfortable chair not far from the fireplace.

She's working this evening on another scarf, this one a dark purple, worked in cables. It's a complicated pattern, which is good, as it leaves her mind with very little room to think about anything else.

She would not be adverse to company, so long as you don't mind catching her at a good stopping point.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

At some point, Elle wanders in from the grounds, her hair tied back and the definite air that she'd spent the day practicing outside. She stops by the bar for a bottle of water, and takes a seat by the fire.

Her eyes pass over Meg as she sits, but though she does have some surprising skills from her time at the Company, knitting is not one of them, and she has no clue about the etiquette of interrupting someone who's doing it. With most people, she probably wouldn't care.

As it is, she settles down in a nearby chair, and focuses on the bottle of water instead.

Meg looks up at the end of the row, and smiles.

"Hello, Elle.

"How are you?"

Elle chooses this time to take a drink of water.

If it's to give her extra time to think of an answer, it doesn't amount too much, as she offers a small shrug in response.

After what's possibly an awkward pause, "You're knitting."

She's very observant.

"Yes," Meg says.

"I'm making a scarf.

"Do you knit?"

She shakes her head.

A little dimly, "It's summer in my world."

Elle's not really sure why she said that. Other than that it means she wouldn't need a scarf.

"Oh," Meg says.

She thinks she can see how the two are related.

Sort of.

"What have you been doing lately?"

Elle takes another moment to answer this.

"Practicing," she decides.

Beat. "Here."

So on second thought, maybe she will need a scarf.

"How has that been going?" Meg asks.

"And have you been staying here, or just coming here to practice?"

"It's..."

Her first inclination is to finish this with the rather unhelpful word 'practice,' but instead, she goes with the marginally more helpful, "... okay."

There's another pause; she doesn't seem entirely sure about how to answer.

"Sometimes... I don't go back to my world for a while."

She shrugs, and thinks of something she figures might at least be relevant for Meg.

"Sometimes I stay with X."

"I haven't seen her in a while," Meg says.

Of course, Meg's sense of a while is a little skewed right now -- the last ten days have felt like a month.

"How is she? Have you seen her?"

She nods

And then seems to realize she should say something else.

"She - has baseball. With kids out there."

"Right, she mentioned a tournament, or something similiar."

Elle's quiet for a moment, though this time, not because she's searching for something to say.

"I think she gets -"

Rather than finishing that right away, she drinks from the water bottle again.

"... sometimes maybe - she's not sure she'll do it right."

Elle herself doesn't sound very certain about that.

Meg is silent for a moment, smoothing non-existant wrinkles out of the scarf.

"I think we all feel that way, sometimes.

"Maybe that's good.

"Maybe . . . stopping to wonder if you're doing it right is a good sign."

Elle scrunches up one shoulder, looking to the fire.

"I don't want her to think she's - doing it wrong."

She's not really even sure it's a problem. But it seems a little more fixable than the fact that the sound of children crying is annoying.

"No, I don't either.

"But . . . I think there's a difference in thinking you're wrong and wondering if you're right."

Elle's definitely not too sure about how to pinpoint that difference.

But after taking another sip of water, she murmurs, "She's okay."

"That's good," she says.

"It's always kind of unpredictable, who you see when, here."

Her eyes stay on the fire, for the moment.

"Sometimes it's easier if you have to stay," she replies, though she doesn't sound too sure about that, either.

"Sometimes," Meg says. "It makes it more likely you'll see them when they come in, instead of both having to arrive at the same time."

Beat.

Still without looking back, "Do you stay here for very long?"

"Not often," Meg says, easily. "I usually just stay a few hours."

Elle looks over again.

After a pause, she suggests, "Sometimes the Door isn't very convenient."

"No, sometimes, it's not. Coming or going."

But sometimes it is.

She stays silent for another long moment.

Then, for no obvious reason, she asks, "Do you need that/"