clara llewellyn set fire to the rain. (claraty) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2012-09-27 12:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, clara llewellyn, mikael eiriksson |
WHO: Clara Llewellyn & Mikael Eiriksson
WHAT: Clara bothers Mikael.
WHEN: Tuesday, 25 September (backdated!)
WHERE: Boys tower and then grounds and then convenience store. AKA, ~IVI~.
WARNINGS: Mentions of spider burning, otherwise none.
STATUS: Complete!
As the heavy metal doors of the elevator slid close with a mechanical grunt, Clara glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was frazzled and out of place, a stray blue biro mark inexplicably drawn on her cheek, ink stains all over her fingers, the page she was working on half crumpled up and straining against the spirals that kept it bound within her notebook, her handwriting now barely legible between all of the scribbles. At the top of the page read in block letters, “A FEW WORDS FOR THAT TARANTULA I TORCHED!” She thought it was a very accurate working title, if not exactly a very poetic one. Ding! said the lift, as it completed it’s journey to the fourth floor, before sleekly opening it’s doors once again. Clara frowned. This did not look like her floo-- Oh, she realised, as she witnessed a boy dash from his room to the bathroom. Wrong tower. Pretending that this wasn’t an actual mistake, she slipped back into the elevator and pressed the button for the sixth floor instead. Writing eulogies for spiders she’d murdered seemed to have an effect on her sense of direction, apparently. When the elevator dinged open once again, this time at its proper destination, Mikael happened to be on the other side of the doors. He was hungry, yet again, and currently in the set of mind to make a trip to the general store and make some junk food purchases. Hey, he wasn't living at home anymore, so he didn't have his mother's delicious cooking to eat. As far as Mikael was concerned, it was like being at university and having roommates, exciting and interesting (albeit ridiculously easy) classes, and making new friends all the time. When the doors opened, he saw just one of those new friends. If Mikael was surprised to see Clara standing within the elevator car, with penmarks smeared across her cheek as though she had written upon her hand and fallen asleep upon it, and with her hair all messed up as though she had not found a hair brush to run through it, Mikael did very little to express it. "Hello, friend," he said as calmly as he ever did (it must have been the Scandinavian blood in him, as he so rarely displayed a temper) and stepped into the car with Clara. "Are you going up or down?" “Mikael!” she returned brightly, pleased that (a) she didn’t have to go knock on his door only to discover that he wasn’t even in his room and (b) she didn’t have to drag him out of his room. “I was coming to see you. Well. Kind of. I was going to my room and then I realised I was in the wrong tower, and then I thought I’d just use this as an opportunity to come see you anyway and--” She paused for a breath and glanced at him. “Um, I guess wherever you’re going? Unless you’re doing something important? Oh, and can you do me a favour?” Like he so often did whenever Clara spoke to him, Mikael first listened to what she was saying, digested it and then thought out an answer before he said anything. So there was a heavy pause as he thought about whatever Clara had just said. (Or really, asked, as she had asked him several questions in a row.) "Perhaps," he said, as he pressed the "ground level" button on the elevator to take them down. The doors took their grand old time closing and, as the elevator shuddered to life once again and began to descend, he turned to look at Clara. "I'm getting food. What do you want me to do?" Relieved that he wasn’t doing anything important -- although, food was important, but not necessarily to the exclusion of her company -- Clara relaxed and prepared to prattle on, sucking in a deep breath and pocketing her pen. “Well!” she began, thrusting the notebook in his direction. “I’m supposed to say a few words at this memorial Mira invited me to for that spider I accidentally but not really murdered. But I don’t really know what to say? Could you read what I have over for me because I’ve honestly never been in a situation like this before and it’s kind of. Absurd.” The last time she’d attended a memorial for a pet was when one her brothers’ goldfish passed away one evening, presumably due to being overfed, and the father, step-mother, step-siblings and half-brother had gathered around a toilet bowl in a solemn flushing ceremony. All that she’d recalled of the evening was that stench of cleaning products. In retrospect, this was preferable to the alternative of a lack of lemon-scented cleaning products and bleach from within the toilet bowl. Though Mikael had no genuine idea what sort of favor he expected Clara to ask him to do, he knew it most certainly did not involve proofreading a speech commemorating a recently deceased spider. Even if that spider happened to be the pet (or something) of a fellow classmate. A flicker of surprise registered on his features, quickly replaced with an expression of bemusement. "Absurd," he said like an echo. "Yes, absurd covers that rather well." Mikael accepted the proffered notebook and gave it a look-over, but found it a bit hard to discern complete sentences between all of the crossed-out words and scratches. "I think I need a magnifying glass to read it." Shifting closer to peer over his shoulder at her own handwriting, Clara nodded. “Sorry, my handwriting gets messy and this is, like, a really, really rough draft. Maybe I should practice it out loud and you can listen to me? Ugh, but it’s all so terrible.” She sighed a little dramatically. “What do you even say about a spider?” She’d thought about googling information on whistling tarantulas or whatever it was that Mira had said it was called, but there’d just been so many other exciting things to do between the initial invitation -- and not to mention, an aversion to the prospect of looking at images of tarantulas on her computer screen -- that Clara hadn’t prioritised the matter during the hours of internet accessibility. Why learn facts about spiders when you could look up One Direction interviews instead? "I am at a loss," Mikael answered her. What do you say about a spider, indeed? Mikael had never attended a memorial for a human being, let alone one for a spider whose life span was probably nearly up already. But he had seen plenty of memorials in movies. "Say something like 'This spider weaved webs for most of her life but none so important as the web she weaved around Mira's heart.' And then talk about how much Mira loved it. Don't mention that you killed it. That will just remind her that she's only having this memorial because of you." Because that would be bad. Very bad. Mikael didn't particularly want this Mira girl sending Clara threatening letters like she did to Lilja. Handing back the notebook, Mikael made a mental note to ask Lilja if she had received any more of those letters. “Oh, that’s great!” she replied, enthused by this fresh perspective. Pulling her pen back out of her pocket, she pressed the nib against the page -- only to make an unintentional scribble as the lift rudely halted to a stop. A few seconds later and the doors opened, leaving Clara trailing behind her friend as she struggled to jot down his suggestions and walk simultaneously. For those who knew Clara, it honestly wasn’t a very peculiar sight. “Very poetic, Mikael. Have you ever considered writing poetry?” Though Mikael was observing Clara as she scrawled down what he had offered her, he was not so totally wrapped up in it that he walked in such a concentrated daze like Clara. He held back until he and she were side by side, at which point Mikael touched Clara's elbow and steered her, lest she run into something or fall down a step. "No," he said, finally answering her after some deliberation. Mikael was smart but he was also lazy which suited him just fine. He was content to play his violent video games instead of reading and writing. "I wasn't a very good student." At last! Her notes were complete, and she’d tacked on an extra dot point that she’d thought up herself! Pocketing her pen once more, Clara belatedly realised that Mikael had assisted her narrow escape from a painful encounter with just about every potential obstacle in her path. She smiled at him gratefully. He really was a lovely person. “But I bet you could be! I mean, if you wanted! Not that you need to be a good student to write good poetry? I mean, didn’t like Einstein or whatever drop out of school or something?” "Something like that," Mikael agreed as the duo meandered along the way to the general store. Now that Clara was paying more attention and he didn't need to look out for her as far as where she was walking, he withdrew his hand from her elbow and shoved both of his hands deep within the pockets of his faded jeans. Even though it was September, Mikael could hardly believe how warm it still was. He thought that even the jeans were too much. "I don't think I'm deep enough for poetry-writing," he added. It was a lame excuse and Mikael did not even know why he was making excuses for not being a good student or not giving serious thought to writing poetry. Clara was just being sweet and helpful. She nodded, sensing that she had probably -- in the mere span of a few moments -- become more invested in the idea than he had and decided to let it go. “I’m just saying, you’re good with words. Which is kind of funny because I talk more than you do! Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s fine, it’s just funny.” That observation made Mikael smile, a rare sight indeed; it was not all that often that Mikael smiled or laughed aloud. He was exceedingly quiet and Mikael knew it was a bit strange to other people, especially the more talkative types like Clara and Lilja. "It is funny," Mikael said. He could spy the general store just a little ways off. "Do you want me to get anything for you?" He asked Clara, gesturing toward the store. At the sight of his smile, Clara positively beamed, extra pleased that she’d managed to elicit such a reaction considering how rarely she saw it on him. “Oh! You don’t have to! But I wouldn’t mind, like, chocolate, maybe? They have a fair trade one I quite like sometimes.” Without a word, Mikael nodded. He figured fair trade chocolate wouldn't be hard to find. And maybe the chocolate would help Clara feel better about killing that stupid spider. Mikael secretly hoped Clara would make him go, however, since he had never been to a spider memorial (or even heard of one, really) and wanted to see if it would be as theatrical as he imagined. Mikael held the door of the store open for Clara, allowing her to go first. "You first," he said. Crossing the threshold of the store, Clara made a beeline for the chocolate section, searching for a familiar brand. These Australian chocolates weren’t as good as the ones at home, they tasted different! She’d read somewhere that they used a recipe less likely to melt in the hotter temperatures, which made sense, sure, but didn’t forgive the poorer quality of taste. Stupid Australia. “You’re going to come, right? Because I’m going to need moral support because what if, like, Mira decides that it’s too painful to have the person who killed her spider there and then gets mad at me -- or worse, if her spiders turn on me?” She’d given this matter a great deal of thought late at night. It wasn’t entirely unreasonable, though Spidergirl had seemed to want to be friends even if her letter was a little rude and how had she known where Clara lived? Picking the first fair trade bar she saw, she straightened up and turned to Mikael. “Please say you’ll come?” A pause. "Sure." Why the hell not? Mikael spied the chocolates that Clara had had her eye on and snatched two: one for himself and one for her. He grabbed some other things, too, mostly potato chips and sweets and a carbonated beverage that he favored, before he decided he had enough for a while and made his way to the register. "I'll go. But if Mira goes mad and turns her spiders on you, you'll have to fend for yourself." He was joking, of course, but it was hard to tell. Mikael was just so deadpan. Clara usually reacted to Mikael’s deadpan in one of two ways. Either she understood he was just joking and didn’t mind, or was entirely oblivious to it and rolled on regardless. In this instance, she assumed he wasn’t actually being serious. She couldn’t imagine him leaving her to fend off spiders herself even if, truth be told, she had a much better chance of defending herself considering her powers. “You wouldn’t leave me,” she replied confidently. “And anyway, I don’t think Mira would want it to be the Spider Massacre of 2012 if she’s invited me to come so hopefully everything will be just fine.” "No, I wouldn't," he agreed. "I'm sure it will be fine." He handed over the money for their goods, accepted the bags and rooted around for the chocolate bars before handing one to Clara. "You can come back to my room if you want. We can play a video game or something." “Sure!” she wasn’t great at video games, but it would be much less stressful trying to push buttons in the right order than it would be words, she figured as she collected the chocolate from Mikael. “Thanks for this. You’re really lovely, you know that?” Mikael looked at her again as they headed out of the store, back in the same direction from which they had come. "No. But thanks." |