milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Edward is sitting close to, but not directly in front of, the Observation Window. Sketching the universe exploding, or imploding, whichever it really is.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Seras was sitting near the observation window her nose in a book. An old book that made her sneeze from time to time because of the dust and old book smell. From time to time she'd take a few notes.

It isn't the coal dust from his sketch. He isn't related to it, so maybe, that is why it's the second or third time, before he offhandedly says, "Bless you," calm and polite, without looking over from smudging a line with the very tip of his finger.

She nodded and sneezed again.

"Thanks," she smiled nicely, "What are you drawing?"

"The Window." Simple and to the point as he picked up the charcoal stick again, shading negative space that gave birth to light, starting the edge of what would eventually be a star.

"Oh," she said, "Why?"

If he has a heightened since of smell, she doesn't smell human.

He felt like it? Though it was beyond rare.

"No specific reason."

"Oh," she said.

"I'm Seras Victoria," she said putting out a gloved hand.

Edward didn't look over at the hand, since he hadn't yet once looked from his piece. But he made a a strategic point, of gesturing with his hand, that pointed out his hand was chalky.

The charcoal stick as a means conveniently not to touch.
But he still wasn't ignoring her entirely, as he tipped his head.

"Edward." Beat. "It's a pleasure."

"Same," she said.

She sneezed again and closed the old book.

"Hey, Edward."

Bonzo turns up by Edward at the end of his shift in the Forge: Face a bit sooty from the work, looking perhaps a bit tired, but otherwise normal.

Edward tilted his head, half looking up, half paying attention to his work. There's a tip to his head though and no tensing at all.

"Hello, Bonzo."

"Drawing?"

Pencil in hand, doodling in a notebook? With Edward, it's a pretty safe guess.

Coal stick, but it is quite the same logic.
His mouth tugged faintly upward on one side.

And he tilted the book, to give a look at the replica of before him.

Bonzo nods. "Impressive." Beat. "How do you handle it when something moves?"

Granted, the slowly-unfolding end of the universe is a reasonably still subject at the moment, but every-so-often something does explode behind the window.

"Eidetic memory." Edward sat back, looking at the window again, more than the sketch, briefly. "And the fact it'll return to the same moment in any number of minutes. The way it has over and over since I first saw it."

There is nothing new outside the window.

"What's it like, remembering everything like that?" The bit about Edward's memory sticks out more than the bit about the universe returning to a previous state.

His head tilted. But only about five or ten seconds later. As though he'd by passed the completely normal reaction and response someone else would have gotten.

He had his own eight decades. And then every life lived around him, too. Eighty years of all the lives around, plus his, plus all their memories they thought of at the time.

His mouth tugged faintly. "Crowded."

"I'm...surprised it all fits." Well, what else do you say to someone who has a hundred years of perfect memories when most folks can't remember what they had for breakfast yesterday? And he doesn't know about other people's memories.

And then there's a thoughtful pause.

"It seems...like a mixed bag, though."

"It is." When he admitted to it being worth it at all.

"Especially when most days are spent at a high school right now."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only