Repose

[call to cat c.]

[After a week in town, and with much delay and thought, ring ring to Selina's cellphone.]

[As Damian W]

A depiction is not an homage; nor is it proof of devotion. Especially not when it is done without skill and thought, as well as being entirely devoid of accuracy. I do not wish to see another fat, plastic infant in plastic hay on someone's lawn.

[The photograph was not particularly old. The year was 2000, and the image depicted was that of a man judging a science fair. It was not the type of photograph that Nimue was regularly drawn to. The photograph was much too modern, much too founded in the reality of everyday living. The girl was a magnet for antiquities, and she'd much more love for gothic romances than was healthy or readily admitted. Normally, she gravitated toward images that were firmly rooted in a time that was not her own. Perhaps 2000 nearly counted, as she'd been a child then and completely unaware of her own legacy.

In summation, the image was not at all what one would find in Nimue's personal travel collection.

The photograph had been found and donated to the Town Museum, as many such images were, and she'd handled it with the sole intention of classification. But something about the image sparked within the girl, and she attempted to climb within its edges.

She was no novice. This party trick had been performed since she wore frilled knickers and shoes of black patent leather. Her ability to do this single and solitary thing, it had led her family to believe she was destined for greatness. But there had been no greatness, and she'd never learned another a trick. A very wealthy one-trick pony, was Nimue.

But this image did not comply, and she spent the hours after her failure attempting to learn about the man reflected within. The search led her to the old inn, and it lead to the girl behind the counter there. Nimue was not particularly gifted in casual conversation, and she showed no exemplary skill or grace in this moment. Wearing a skirt that was a-line and much too dowdy for her age, paired with a sweater in camel, coat open and one stocking down, she held the photograph up to the girl's face.] I believe this man to be your relation.

If you didn't get a real Thanksgiving or you just really like leftover turkey and stuffing, let me know, I have lots.

My original plans were vetoed, but with the turkey finished and the leftovers packed away, it was time to get busy with decorations. I got to supervise this year and I think so far it looks pretty good.

( All decked out )

Who: Grant and Matt
What: Reunions and some light following around
Where: The woods
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: N/A


( He turned and looked over his shoulder. His gun was in reach, but he didn't move for it. He just looked. )

Who: Dahlia & Brett
What: In need of a Good Samaritan. And probably a hug.
Where: The trailer park.
When: After midnight.
Warnings/Rating: Cutting for swears. Rest TBD.

( Divine intervention couldn't come fast enough. )

Who: Leah and Hunter
What: Family reunion. With liquor.
When: Immediately post-holiday
Where: The Roadhouse
Warnings: TBD - language, maybe

No one in the bar at the edge of town was pretending this was just a pause in the familial celebrations, that they would shortly return to a table wreathed in people: laughter and candlelight and food and behaving exactly the way Hollywood told them to do. Leah loved Hollywood for its simplicity: she liked silver and gray screen sirens, the ease with which men and women fell into roles as clear-cut as glass, the neat way the script ran along its track and beauty and wit always won out. But she didn't like Hollywood's template for holidays. It made it even less true than Hollywood was already - cellulose tissue, fragmented and easily torn.

What Leah liked most about cities was that they didn't sleep. They didn't drowse into evenings, the sky seeping into pitch and the heartbeat sluggish. They didn't care if it was Christmas or Easter, and they didn't give a damn about church. Holidays were easily avoided in the city, or enjoyed expensively: a silk gown, a clutch, drinking a martini alone at a bar where she knew she wouldn't have to buy another drink herself.

This one had almost gone completely before she had forgotten how to breathe: she'd drawn the swagged, flowered curtains tight across the window of the B and B's prim and proper bedroom and watched (with determination) the television set until the holiday took over that, too. The walls were closing in, their determined, cheerful sprigged-flower pattern designed to drive her demented, and Leah crammed a hat over loose hair, shrugged into her coat and fled, the holiday music by the front desk spurring her heels.

The men in the Roadhouse weren't her type. Not that her type was likely to turn up anyway in a small town that was too small to show up on a map, because Leah's type was carelessly wealthy in an Upper East Side way. But the men in the Roadhouse that night were here to drink because they didn't want to be with their small-town families and that was somehow all the more depressing when they lived somewhere you were supposed to want that kind of thing.

Leah ignored all of them, slid onto a seat at the bar, and ordered neat whiskey over ice, kid-gloved hands wrapped around her glass, with her thumbs crossed over one over the other. They were thin, those gloves and they were shell-pink and they were incongruous with charcoal thin cashmere worn loose over the kind of denim that cost three hundred dollars in tiny boutique stores with snotty assistants. It was about as far from silk dresses and unobtrusive jazz music as it was possible to get, and she contemplated her glass with a grim set to the curve of her jaw that was lost on most of the men loading up before they headed home to their wives, kids, and turkey entrails.