InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I am all knowing!"

Sere Adams collects pretty straight boys. (seregeturgun) wrote in paradisolog,
@ 2016-04-22 20:27:00

Entry tags:

~briseis (prizeofachilles), ~chester adams (seregeturgun)

WHO: Chester Adams & ~~OTA~~ Briseis
WHERE: Waterfall
WHEN: Around sunset
WHAT: Introspective waterfall shower; talking to herself.
WARNINGS: Nudity, mention of graphic violence and passing implication of sexual assault, language. Mild PTSD.
STATUS: Complete

I do believe in the light. Raise your hands into the sky. The fight is done, the war is won. Lift your hands toward the sun.

While most people were probably turned off by the very idea of walking around in wet clothes, it was something that Chester had just learned was a part of life in the new, awful world that had surrounded her back home. She and Cassie had packed bags before they'd fled from the IU dorms, but they hadn't had time to grab them before they'd had to run again, leaving Chester's truck behind in an unmoving traffic jam of abandoned cars on the highway. Ches had time to grab her weapons bag that she'd had stashed in the back, more than likely against campus rules, but neither of them had time to get into the bed of the truck to grab their overnight bags stuffed with everything from their dorm room that they could fit into them. She'd lost everything but the clothes on her back and that bag of weapons that never left her side that day. Everything including Cassie.

So with one outfit, if it rained, she got wet. If she needed to wash the clothes in the river, she put them back on still wet and let the sun dry them on her body. Chester forgot what it felt like to have warm, clean clothes until she got to the island six years later and, a short while after that, she'd received four outfits that she distinctly remembered tossing into that bag all those years ago, all of a sudden, along with a few toiletries, apparently from the gods. The rain didn't bother her, here. She couldn't tell if they were being cruel or kind by giving her a pair of yoga pants with a big SEXY emblazoned on the ass in hot pink — a gift from Cassie their first Christmas as a couple — among the rest. Days later, she still hadn't decided, but she emptied the bag of weapons except for her buck knife — dull, but still dangerous in a pinch — and wrapped a pair of panties, a gray tank top, and those yoga pants from Cassie in one of the big towels and then wrapped the big towel up in the other big towel before shoving all of it, along with her shampoo, conditioner, one of the toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste, and a chunk of the soap that woman Ruby had been making into the weapons bag. Then, she made her way through the rain and down the path that led to the waterfall everybody, including herself, seemed to be using as a makeshift shower. Chester took out the soap, shampoo, and conditioner, and then stripped down to nothing and tossed her dirty clothes on top of the bag that she stashed under a little formation of rocks to try to keep it dry before stepping under the waterfall.

She was trying to be a part of the community here, she really was. The problem was that new people made her anxious and nervous and, admittedly, a little afraid. Back home, new people meant one of two things: more mouths to feed or mauraders against whom the group would have to fight to keep their shelter and food. The outbreak changed everything. Chester used to think about getting married someday to Cassie and adopting children, working in a hospital, maybe in the children's or maternity wings as a nurse when she'd finished her schooling. She'd always just assumed that when they graduated from IU, she'd be settling down with the love of her life in a cute little house in Bloomington, with a white picket fence, maybe a dog or two, and waiting impatiently for Indiana to legalize gay marriage so they could legally and "officially" start their lives together.

Instead, the outbreak snapped her into a new reality with the harshness of watching first a few of her classmates and then Cassie being torn apart right in front of her by things that looked like they were straight out of a horror movie, parading around in rotting versions of human bodies, literally eating every living thing in sight. It had felt like a nightmare when they'd fled the school after seeing the massacre on the quad outside their dorm, but when she'd heard Cassie's bloodcurdling scream from further behind her than Chester thought she would've been, and she'd turned in time to see one of those fucking things bite into Cassie's shoulder and tear away a chunk of flesh while Cassie reached for her, crying, it felt like the whole world stopped and it was like the universe flipped a switch. That was real...and there had been nothing she could do. Her only choice had been to keep running. Six years later, she could still hear Cassie screaming when she tried to go to sleep. Chester wondered if it would ever go away.

She wasn't actually sure how long she'd been under the falls before she realized she'd lost herself in her dismal thoughts and hadn't even started to actually wash herself in spite of the fact that she was covered in goosebumps and shivering. This world was not home. These people did not want to steal her shelter or rape or pillage. Chester pumped some shampoo into her hand and started to lather it into her hair. They didn't want to hurt her. These people were a group and she needed to integrate herself into it with less fear and more faith. It was easy to pretend she was comfortable from the safety of her shelter while using the little comm bracelet because that was a buffer zone; they weren't speaking face to face. Joining the efforts to build the medical facility was more difficult. Every time someone turned on a power tool or hammered a nail or even just reached for a supply that was too close to her, Chester stiffened and she was sure she'd seen at least one of them give her a pitying look at one point or another. She wondered if it was because they had happened to be a werewolf and it was true that wolves could smell fear or whether she was just that painfully transparent and jumpy.

"Get a fucking grip, Sere," she muttered to herself as she rinsed out the suds of the shampoo and moved on to the conditioner. "Just get a fucking grip. Nobody's here to hurt you."

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prizeofachilles
2016-04-23 04:36 am UTC (link)

Briseis had been here long enough to realize that this place wasn't perfect. It was very far from perfect. People were people everywhere, and they argued and bickered and made each other unhappy. That was something that hadn't changed in the thousands of years since she'd been born - people still had their drama. Human nature hadn't managed to change that much.

Still, compared to what she had come from, compared to what she had endured, this place was still a paradise. Even imperfect, it was so much different than home. Here, she could make her own choices. Here she could give her body as she would, at her discretion. Here, she had her own agency. Here...she could begin to rebuild her own self-worth. She hadn't been sleeping around like the others, because she still wasn't that comfortable with men. She'd been with Scott once, because she had to know if she could do it or not, and he'd been kind and gentle...but she didn't feel a huge urge to do it again any time soon. She needed time to heal, and here, she had as much as she needed.

Back home, she had felt so old at nineteen, partially because of all that had happened to her, partly because of the fact that most nineteen year olds she knew were practically old maids. She'd been married at sixteen, widowed at seventeen, and taken as a slave. Things like that tended to age you quickly.

Her thoughts were dark as she made her way to the waterfall to get a bucket of water for evening. She didn't like going out after dark. There were bears - and who knew what else lurked in the woods? Maybe it wasn't terrifying to the werewolves and stronger creatures, but Briseis was definitely not one of those.

When she reached it, she saw a woman there, bathing. And she heard her words, and they hit a chord inside of her.

She sat by the pool, looking at the ground sadly.

"I have to tell myself that almost every day," she said softly, in reply.

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seregeturgun
2016-04-23 04:01 pm UTC (link)

At the sound of the other woman's voice, Chester startled a little, not having heard her approach over the roar of the waterfall under which she was washing herself. She looked over at the other woman as she ran her fingers through knotted hair trying to work the conditioner through it and Chester stepped away from the falls a little — unfazed and unashamed by her own nudity because what was modesty when the world was a living hell; she'd lost modesty a long time ago — so that she could hear the woman a little better.

"Yeah?" she asked, frowning slightly. She could've done without the woman hearing her talking to herself, especially since she'd addressed herself with her real name which she didn't want anyone knowing, but that was easy enough to bounce back from. "I take it home wasn't so great for you either, then," she intoned.

The shock of blonde was lighter than Cassie's but the softness in the other woman's voice felt so much like home before it fell that it made Chester's chest ache. "Did you come for a shower? I can share," she offered. "I've got this shampoo and conditioner, like...if you want to use some. It smells nice," she added with a little shrug.

	seregeturgun 2016-04-24 02:31 am UTC (link)
	"Well...not children... I don't know, I was fifteen, I guess? Fourteen or fifteen when I was a freshman," she said. "So not little kids or anything." "Homer wrote the poem," she reiterated, looking taken aback. "...how? It was set like a bajillion years ago. In Greece...you're speaking English, though, modern English..." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	seregeturgun 2016-04-24 02:40 am UTC (link)
	Chester blinked rapidly and shook her head a little. "What the fuck? Holy shit, are you serious?" she asked, wide-eyed with surprise. How...what the... Literally what?! How would that even work? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	seregeturgun 2016-04-24 03:02 am UTC (link)
	"So wait..." Chester said, allowing for a suspension of disbelief for the moment insofar as Briseis's role in the story she'd had to read in ninth grade English. "...right now, when I'm talking, do you hear English?" she asked. "Or do you hear, like...Ancient Greek?" (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)