milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Well, this is new. And that's OK! New is good. Unexpected is not, particularly, and that's why this particular young man's surprise at finding himself wandering strange corridors has quickly melted to suspicion, and then anger.

He schools himself out of it by the time he finds the stairs. He waits at the bottom of them, perfectly still apart from large, dark eyes that flit over the whole place, taking it all in with no expression on his face. Only the Window gets a second look, and when he's finished his surveillance he walks over to it and stands there, staring in mute wonder, one hand pressed to the glass.

He can investigate the room later. This is more interesting for now.

[OOC: Open all weekend! <3]

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James's face turns sullen, his lower jaw sticking out ever so slightly to unconsciously embellish his displeasure.

'What's your best subject?'

It's not fair. It's not fair that other people get chances to move on, and he's left to go out of his mind in classes filled with the most pointless people ever to exist.

Tess has no reason to think of the unfairness. Truth be told, it doesn't matter that much to her. Heck, she wasn't even in school until three years ago and she doesn't quite get the fuss about it. She could learn it all in books at home if they'd let her, just like she'd taught herself to read.

"I like science. History can be fun, too." She turns to him and he seems upset, though she's not sure why. He must be smart like her, too. "What yours?"

'Maths.'

But it's not like any of them are hard. You just have to think about them, and the answers are there. How difficult can it be to understand a book, or learn what happened in a battle, or draw a picture? Maths is different, though. Maths is like flying.

He sticks his hands in his pockets, and kicks a stone. He teaches himself all the time, but it'd be nice to get the recognition for being better than everyone else.

'Do you want to go the lake, or in the forest, or what?'

"Math is good," she adds, quickly. She has no idea why, but she wants him to like her. "Use it in science a lot and numbers come easy, right? Bet if you were at my school we'd be having classes together."

She ponders the question for a moment. Lakes are okay, she supposes, but not as fun as the bayou. "Forest. We don't got a real one back home but I bet we can still climb trees."

He glances over to her when she agrees with him about maths, more because of the way she speaks quickly than the words she uses. It surprises him, and he's very rarely surprised even at this age. People don't usually want his approval, or maybe they've just learned it's next to impossible to gain. So this is new, and he finds himself offering a quick smile in response, completely unbidden.

And then he's surprised at his own reaction, and looks away. It's reassuring when the thought comes to him that yes, if they were both in her school then he'd get classes on his own too, but he still thinks he'd be better.

'I've never climbed a tree. What's the point?'

This is not a no - he might be persuaded to try - but it seems a bit of a waste of time.

Another kid is hanging out with her. He's not trying to get her to go away and he's talking to her like an adult would. Of course she wants his approval.

"You get high and can see all over! I also got a tree back home I can read in and I don't have to be inside. Come on!"

She starts running toward the forest, long red curls trailing behind her as she goes.

Her enthusiasm is...odd. But she's running away, and she's all right to talk to, and he doesn't have anywhere more interesting to be anyway. So he takes the Game Boy out of his pocket in case it falls out, and runs after her. Why not?

Outside is where she can be alone and away from Papa. It's where critters run wild and she can chase them or read in her tree for as long as she wants. It's where she catches crawfish for dinner.

Outside is freedom.

As she approaches the trees she slows down, deciding which one would be the best to try to climb. Initially, though, she jumps up and swings from a higher branch, getting her bearings.

James just watches her, though he doesn't look unhappy about it. He wouldn't understand if she tried to explain, because freedom exists for him in his head. He can be free anywhere; all he has to do is cut people away.

She looks like she knows what she's doing with trees though, and seems happy enough about them, so after a while he tries to find a branch to jump up to as well. She's taller than him, so he has to look for something lower.

Being free in her mind is something else entirely and only when she absolutely needs it. Which is more often than she'd like.

Right now she's happy that he's joining in and he doesn't think this is stupid. She pulls herself up to sit on the branch, glancing over at his progress. "You can do it! Then you go for the next one."

He would point out that that's obvious, thanks, but he's busy lifting himself up over a branch. He's a small kid, but very light and lithe and it doesn't take much effort to swing himself up.

'What do you do when you get to the top?'

Ugh, there's a stain on his jeans now. Well, whatever.

"You look out at everything." Isn't that enough?

Tess is a mess herself, leaves in her hair, but she doesn't care about all that. She's messy all the time.

No. Nothing is ever enough. James rubs at the green mark on his knee, then abandons it in favour of jumping for a branch above his head and dangling off it.

'You can look at stuff from the ground, it's all the same.'

Tess is too busy climbing up further until her head pops up above the highest leaves.

"Non, it's not the same. This way better."

He drops back down to his original branch, and starts climbing. He's not going to stay low when she's all the way up there.

'This way is better,' he says, when he joins her at the top.

'If you're going to have classes on your own, you should learn to talk.'

The view is OK though, he'll concede. It just doesn't do anything, or gain him anything, so it's still pointless. But he looks at it, wondering what she finds so enjoyable in this and whether it's worth learning.

"I talk like everyone else, 'cept you." There's a bit of defensiveness there, because what's wrong with the way she talks? He can understand her, can't he?

Then she turns back to the view of the forest, the lake, even the mountains. "You can see all over this way. See places you might wanna go, see what's different and what's not."

'Everyone else is stupid,' he mutters, mostly to himself.

But fine, yeah, what does he care? she can sound like a hick all she wants. It's not like there weren't plenty of them back in Dublin.

'Well, do you want to go to them? We might never see the place again, so we should make the most of it. Unless you're too scared of your dad.'

He knows she is and she knows he knows it. But this place is really fun and like James said, they may never be here again.

"Yeah, I want to see. The lake?"

'OK.'

Now to get down out of the tree. Well, it's not complicated, but it is a bit messy. His hands smell like sap by the time he's at the bottom, and he wipes them on his jeans with a distasteful expression.

He doesn't know what to do with a lake any more than he does with a tree, but it's nice and big and maybe they can throw things into it.

Tess looks happy and messy by the time she gets down, swinging off the bottom branch and landing on her feet with a soft thud.

"Too bad we ain't got no lines, else we could fish. I doubt they got any crawfish to catch, either."

'You eat fish straight out of a swamp?'

Yuck. But he doesn't actually look judgmental, because he's looking over her happy expression with a calculating one of his own. How can climbing a tree and running about outside bring that look on to someone's face? It's weird.

"Sure!" What's wrong with that? "Crawfish, too. Eat them a lot."

Once lakeside, she starts looking for flat stones to throw. "You know how to skip rocks?"

'I've never done it, but I know how.'

He looks too. He's read about people doing this, and flat rocks just make mathematical sense.

''Isn't crawfish a fish?'

"Non," she giggles softly, picking up a smaller stone. "They like little lobsters, with claws 'n everything."

'They are like,' he says quietly, and tosses his stone up and down in his left hand.

Force, angle, trajectory. It's a simple formula, or should be. The variable lies in himself bending his arm and body correctly, so he spends some time considering it, getting it right in his head before acting.

'Don't laugh at me.'