Re: #16: Juliet & Claire
Yeah, yeah, technicalities. The train-ride wasn't missed connections you could write into the newspaper about; hell, there hadn't been a newspaper for weeks. But leaving the train in the past, Claire lurked on the line of grass and bubbling black muck like gravity didn't apply to her. Newton's physics, that applied to everyone, no matter how sugar-sweet.
But that muck? Was riding her waist-line by now and as much as Juliet kicked? She couldn't feel the fucking bottom. There was some kind of metaphor in there, about never fucking touching bottom and she stifled grim laughter in the back of her throat, a cough.
Fingertips grazed her palm, but their arms weren't long enough, and her teetering precariously on the swamp's edge wasn't gonna make Juliet do anything but let go, for fear of yanking her in. But hey, alongside the nicknames, Claire had smarts -- and a goddamn arsenal, by the looks of it, in her jacket pocket. Maybe the half-dead look was something she was working.
"If it rips? You're out a coat. I'm screwed." But she grabbed one sleeve like a life-line and wrapped the other around her wrist. More likely to tear if stress on fabric was uneven. "Back up, I don't want to drag you in."