Samantha Parkington (smparkington) wrote in expresslogs, @ 2012-04-18 21:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | !plot, {samantha parkington |
Characters: Samantha Parkington. Narrative, closed and complete.
When: Wednesday evening around 7 p.m.
Location: A compartment of the touring car.
Warnings/Rating: None, unless you count melancholy and angst.
Summary: Samantha tries to coax a jabberjay to talk to her.
Since her frightening encounter with the woman who'd been stung, Samantha had learned from the doctors in the infirmary that the bee nests weren't showing up in sleeping cabins - and so she'd barely left the room she now shared with Juliet ever since. She felt badly about it, in a way - she knew there were people out there who were getting stung and who likely needed assistance, but the practical piece of her (which had always been small, but was growing the longer she spent time on this train) told her otherwise. She wasn't physically strong and didn't have magic or advanced medical training on her side. In a way, it had been lucky that Rogue was so close to the infirmary when she got stung - Samantha didn't know if she'd have been able to do much for her otherwise.
But it got so tiring staying in one place. Though Samantha liked Juliet well enough, she also knew from dormitory life that living with one girl for too long could really grate on the nerves. So partly for a change of scenery and partly to ensure the long-term success of her new rooming situation, Samantha had braved the public cars for some quiet time in the touring car. It was rare that most of the compartments were empty, but then again, it was also rare that the train was infested with insects that delivered possibly-fatal stings.
Samantha had been settled in for a few hours with her sketchpad, contentedly fleshing out the forest landscape she'd begun a few days earlier, when she heard a high-pitched whine. She squealed and pulled her overskirt up, just as she'd done when she had been trying to rescue Rogue - but the noise never made it into a buzz. Cautiously, Samantha peeked up... and saw not a wasp, but a bird. She'd heard about these creatures. Samantha didn't ordinarily spend much time on the network, but there hadn't been much else to do when she'd been locked up in her cabin, and the reaction seemed universally negative. They imitated voices and repeated conversations, apparently. Yours and others' you knew. One woman had heard her last words to her father. Another had heard the words of an enemy. Another bird had -
All of a sudden, she sat up straight and smiled. "Hello," she said politely to the jabberjay, which just stared balefully back at her as it fluttered over to perch on the windowsill. It seemed to look out the window at the landscape, and so Samantha did the same for a time. But the bird didn't say anything. It occasionally shifted around on the windowsill, but it was silent. Maybe it wants to catch me off guard, Samantha realized, picking up her sketchpad again and turning to a fresh page. All right, she'd outsmart this bird yet. She began to sketch the bird, drawing its beak wide open. How she longed to hear it say something!
Samantha had few enough memories of her mother and father. A piggyback ride along the shore at Piney Point. Watching her mother get ready for a dinner at a friend's house. But they were flashes, a five-year-old's hazy glimpses, not fully-formed memories. She couldn't remember exactly what either of their voices sounded like, just that her father's had been musical and teasing. As she filled in the wing feathers, Samantha strained to recall something. Anything.
"Come on," she said irritably to the bird. "Why are you here if you aren't going to talk to me like you did to the others?" It blinked, then flew to perch on the doorknob.
"Nothing? Not even some dreadful fight they may have had?" she asked it indignantly. "Or the night they - " She stopped. Samantha realized it was insane to be talking to a bird, but it wasn't fair. Why did so many others get to hear their loved ones - although, she'd allow, often in horrifying ways? One of the few advantages this train could have given her - one of the few things that was good in how different it was, and it wouldn't even humor her by giving her that much. Not even in a way that would hurt her. It wouldn't even do that.
"Say something!" she shouted, tossing aside her art supplies. Then it dawned on her, and her face crumpled as she stared at her sketchpad, still turned to the page she'd been working on.
Maybe... maybe just as saying awful things drove others to distraction... this bird had been sent to torture her by saying nothing at all.