Thread: Preserved Pieces WHO: Bushara & Lucia WHEN: Friday afternoon WHERE: Museum in town
Lucia was overjoyed to be going to the museum. She had been watching her bird friend slowly decompose in the protected hole she'd placed him in after being hit by the car. She notated everything she observed. First the bird bloated, especially on that warmer day they had. Then it shrank. The smell was so horrible that she had to keep her distance or hold her breath before going in to inspect it more closely. That was when she noticed the bugs crawling among the black raven feathers. Bugs! Lucia took sampling of them, too. Only bits of wings, small things that wouldn't kill the insects. Mr. Cavanaugh had taught her that all life was important. Even bugs. Even the crow. That was why she was watching. She hoped its reaping had been done quickly and that the bird was not still suffering in its decomposing body.
But a museum. That was where they were experts at preserving things. It was a history house. There were things from the Native tribes who used to live in the area around Camden and Rockport. There were things about the settlers who came over in their big ships in the late 1700s. There were things from the Revolutionary War. It was all so fascinating and Lucia had trouble deciding which avenue to explore first. She got so excited that the temperature in the small museum dropped down and they had to turn on the heater, suspecting the spring weather to be changing.
"Look!" She exclaimed to Bushara, taking the girl by the hand - her own icy cold - to lead her to a glass case that had a girl inside, dressed in the traditional clothes of the European settlers of the time Camden was colonized. The girl's bag had a small butterfly resting on it in a whimsical way, almost looking lifelike. Lucia pressed her hand against the glass and breathed against it, mist spreading from her pale blue lips.
"She looks... she looks sad." Lucia cocked her head at the painted mannequin.
Lucia's appearance was barely passable as human. She was in her big form, she was dressed like any other teenage girl in a skirt with high socks and boots, a sweater that was too big for her petite frame but was comfortable and included dozens of handmade flowers pinned all over it. The collar hung off one shoulder, showing her white skin that matched her white hair and her icy pale blue eyes were probably too large to be human, but people generally just considered her to be albino and strange in general. The scarf that had been wrapped around her neck was now unraveled and dragging on the floor in her wake.