video and spam
Jun. 29th, 2015 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
witness_thisSpam
[Furiosa spends most mornings in the gym. Honestly, she'd prefer the Enclosure, but she needs to be moving long and often enough that she can't justify using more than her share of the precious time in the false environment. She works out quickly how to run on the treadmill, but most of the other machines remain a mystery to her. If the right person is using them, they may see her watching, or so may decide to approach.
Some mornings her prosthesis is on, and others it is off, tucked protectively and nearly underfoot, out of habit, though this doesn't seem like the kind of place where anyone is likely to get any ideas.
When she is done, she usually ends by slipping upstairs, showering quickly, and permitting herself what feels like the decadent luxury of putting her feet into the pool. It takes her until about the fifth time to get up the nerve to walk in to the water, to lower herself down in it until she feels it lap up around her neck, then to hold her breath and gingerly, cover her mouth and nose, and cautiously, gingerly slip under the surface and just let herself float, suspended.
She can be found in any of those places.
Still, a workout isn't the same thing as practice, really, and the conversation that has been going on here has weighed heavily on her, though she hasn't participated. So, finally, she takes a break one morning in the gym and turns on the feed.]
Video
[She has to clear her throat to start, and wipe the sweat off her face. She's sitting in the frame, bare feet apart, elbows rested on her knees, metal arm down at her side. Furiosa isn't comfortable, exactly, talking to a little plastic box that will take her words all over the ship, but this is important to her.]
My name is Imperator Furiosa. I'm human. No powers. I'm in the gym.
If you need, I've been teaching people a little about how to fight. If you don't need, but you're--
I could use the practice.
[Short, unceremonious, she disconnects.]
[Furiosa spends most mornings in the gym. Honestly, she'd prefer the Enclosure, but she needs to be moving long and often enough that she can't justify using more than her share of the precious time in the false environment. She works out quickly how to run on the treadmill, but most of the other machines remain a mystery to her. If the right person is using them, they may see her watching, or so may decide to approach.
Some mornings her prosthesis is on, and others it is off, tucked protectively and nearly underfoot, out of habit, though this doesn't seem like the kind of place where anyone is likely to get any ideas.
When she is done, she usually ends by slipping upstairs, showering quickly, and permitting herself what feels like the decadent luxury of putting her feet into the pool. It takes her until about the fifth time to get up the nerve to walk in to the water, to lower herself down in it until she feels it lap up around her neck, then to hold her breath and gingerly, cover her mouth and nose, and cautiously, gingerly slip under the surface and just let herself float, suspended.
She can be found in any of those places.
Still, a workout isn't the same thing as practice, really, and the conversation that has been going on here has weighed heavily on her, though she hasn't participated. So, finally, she takes a break one morning in the gym and turns on the feed.]
Video
[She has to clear her throat to start, and wipe the sweat off her face. She's sitting in the frame, bare feet apart, elbows rested on her knees, metal arm down at her side. Furiosa isn't comfortable, exactly, talking to a little plastic box that will take her words all over the ship, but this is important to her.]
My name is Imperator Furiosa. I'm human. No powers. I'm in the gym.
If you need, I've been teaching people a little about how to fight. If you don't need, but you're--
I could use the practice.
[Short, unceremonious, she disconnects.]
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 05:52 pm (UTC)It's made from beans. They roast them, then grind the beans down to little particles and let the water run through that so it gets its flavor.
Do you like it?
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 06:01 pm (UTC)[Fruit punch.]
But it's nothing compared to iced water. I've never tasted cold like that, even back when I was a girl.
[She hasn't passed blood in her urine once since she's been here, either. It's miraculous, as far as she's concerned.]
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 06:14 pm (UTC)[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 06:19 pm (UTC)[Swaddle Dog, the recitation pushes her to add, but these are details he doesn't need, and a mantra it leaves her throat a little tight to think of.]
I had a mother, MaryJo Bassa, and an initiate mother named Katie Concannon. We lived in the Green Place, which was then an oasis. A lingering stripe of green, nestled in behind a mountain range, while the rest of the world around us seemed to shrivel and wither.
When I was fourteen, JoBassa and I went out on bikes to trade food for what passed for medicine, and a raiding party nabbed us. We never told them where we came from.
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 06:52 pm (UTC)It's not his world, and he can't imagine being part of it, but one of the names is familiar enough that it throws him: makes him think, momentarily, that this might not be a different world-- just a future one. It doesn't bear thinking about for to long, and he doesn't want his attention to wander.]
And you bided your time.
[But he knows how it ended. She told him in the greenhouse: now the whole world is probably sand. She doesn't need his anger, nor does she need his sympathy, or his reassurance. But they are there if she asks for them.]
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 07:04 pm (UTC)[And many more lost to pain, disorientation, fever, infection, and the deepest, darkest weeks of captivity, in the bottom of that place.]
But it means that for me, there is a now, but there is also a before. I remember what trees are. The children do not.
[A shrug, and a nonchalant stretch.]
It means I'm lucky.
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 07:21 pm (UTC)[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 07:38 pm (UTC)[She explains, thumb drawing a circle around the rim of her coffee cup.]
You could see it. Or, for that matter, so could I. I want to know more about you but I can't quite-
[A frustrated gesture. She still has no idea what to ask, he's better at gleaning things than her.]
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 07:53 pm (UTC)He stands up, touches his fingertips to her shoulder and jerks his head in the direction of the door.]
Come on.
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 07:58 pm (UTC)Furiosa isn't precisely sure where he's taking her, but trusts it will be well-considered, important.]
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 08:12 pm (UTC)The door they stop at is simple, green painted wood. When he pushes it open they end up in something that she might recognize as a kitchen- a wood stove in the corner, a fireplace, a large wooden table. One wall is covered with small patterned tiles, and there's a large wooden cabinet with patterned china against one wall. The double doors leading to the next room are closed, but he'll open them after showing her this first.]
My family's house. I've lived here-- all my life. My brothers, my sister, aunt Pol- this is where we eat, sleep, do business.
[The whole room is old, with cracks in the ceiling and tears in the wallpaper above the door, but it's clean, and it's cozy. It's as close as he can get to showing her his family, without them actually being there. She needs to know: they are why he does anything at all.]
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 08:19 pm (UTC)She goes to those tiles first, focused, feeling impelled to touch. It's like the tile in the roof of the war rig, except flowers, instead of skulls.]
Pretty.
[She says, before turning to the stove. A critical glance and she guesses it must be for heat, but;]
It gets cold?
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 08:26 pm (UTC)Very cold. It rains more often than not, and snows in the winter.
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 08:40 pm (UTC)What do you burn?
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 08:48 pm (UTC)We keep it in there. We use it to cook on, and to keep ourselves warm.
[spam]
Date: 2015-06-30 09:06 pm (UTC)[Trying hard to picture it.]
Do you all get along? Do you trip on each other?
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 08:22 am (UTC)Yes. We trip on each other, and we fight, but we're a family. I'd be more concerned if we didn't argue.
[There were times, of course, that they hated each other- their father will never enter the house again, and Ada's period of silence had cut him deep. But that's not the story he wants to tell right now.]
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 10:49 am (UTC)It reminds her of her sense that Tommy had been a man in charge of a city. This isn't quite the kind of space you'd need for that, but it makes her own small quarters make a little more sense in context. She'd lived tucked away in a private nook in a hive, where Tommy had inhabited not just a family living space, but quarters from which he commanded soldiers.
Once she gets caught back up to him, the podium, the chalkboard, she gets a sense that it's a lectern, and sits expectantly down, with a little quirk to her mouth.
What did he do here? What did he lecture? What, she especially wonders, was written?]
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 11:04 am (UTC)He leans against the railing protecting the podium and smiles back at her.]
This is where we controlled the gambling. Over there-- [He points at the chalkboard] is where we write down which races we're taking bets on, which horses, the scores as the races proceed. The rest- [and he gestures at the tables, the safes in the offices, the papers hanging by the door] is where the best are placed. A horse wins, we lose money. It loses, we win.
[It's a small step from there to fixing races, but she might not even get the idea.]
Before I came here, we were on the brink of becoming the third largest legal bookmaker's in the country.
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 11:16 am (UTC)[She's curious to see if she can parse it, if they use anything close to the same language, same letters. She's curious about how the board works, honestly, she can't see the chalk from this angle.
She leans her elbow onto the table, and slouches into it comfortably, making herself perfectly at ease, watching him explain his space, his system. Hearing everything that's being said, and some of what isn't.]
How much did people bet? I mean, on the scale of it. A handful of bullets? A gun? A newspun shirt, a turn with a woman? [And then she realizes that commodity won't work, because betting an apple would mean a different thing to her than it does to him.] A day's work, or ten?
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 12:15 pm (UTC)He'll give it more thought later, because Tommy needs to know why people are in his life, so that he doesn't run the risk of being overtaken again.
For now, he smiles like he's at a fair and his job is to charm people into buying his wares-- he takes the few steps onto the podium and picks up the chalk from its little box to the side. He starts writing, quickly and methodically: Epsom, Ascot, Cheltenham, Liverpool; underneath each location, names: Monaghan Boy, Cobweb, Ormonde, Hurry on. There's numbers to the side, and he finishes off with a flourish.
With a jerk of his head, he invites her up there with him.]
Usually have a lovely assistant by me side, of course. [He leans against the stepping stool, watches her as she inspects his writing. He'd heard her say 'a turn with a woman' and he itches with questions and concern, but tampers the instinct.]
It depends on how good the rumors have gotten. A week's worth of pay, sometimes more. More often less. The men 'round here don't have much to spend, and their wives run a tight household lest they spend it all on whiskey and horses.
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 12:37 pm (UTC)Your handwriting.
[Helplessly, stepping closer, like she's never seen anything so dainty. Honestly, she hasn't; everything by her day has shifted to a blocky allcaps, with nary a flourish in sight.
She lifts a faintly snide eyebrow at lovely assistant, but lets him off the hook for it when she sees more chalk. Furiosa picks up a piece, and touches it carefully to the board, before commenting.]
There's that whiskey again.
[She keeps her hand still, as she thinks of what to write. Lowers the chalk, and glances back at him, to check first;]
This will come off? It's a kind of chalk.
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 12:46 pm (UTC)Yes. It will. Just some water and a sponge to take it all back off, clean slate.
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 01:02 pm (UTC)The man is a corpse, and a million miles and a universe away, but Furiosa has been thinking of him often since she was here, had his war-boy-whispers crawling under her skin. They're a kind of poetry, even if it's a sick kind, and they come back easily.
In neat, blocky little lines, under the race details, she inscribes;
RIDING TO VALHALLA
WITNESS ME! AS I DIE HISTORIC
FEED MY BLOOD AND BODY TO THE FURY ROAD
There's a power in the verse, and in getting it out, even if the indoctrination is probably still on the list of things it will be difficult for her to more than hint at.
She sets down the chalk, steps back, and dusts off her hands, satisfied. It leaves white dust marks on her legs, but that kind of grit is so far below Furiosa's radar. She puts her thumb between her teeth, to clean it absently, while she moves a little further back from the board and compares their writing a second time. Hers has jackknifed sideways a little, is badly askew, descending.]
You're practiced.
[spam]
Date: 2015-07-01 01:16 pm (UTC)It's not even nearly as violent as Furiosa's verse. He doesn't know about Joe, but the kind of ruler who makes up things like these seems like the same kind of ruler who would take a girl off the road and brand her.
He appreciates the writing itself with a nod, shrugs with one shoulder.]
You could be, too. I've plenty of chalk to practice with.
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