Meg Callahan (setinstone) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-08-15 21:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 19, bridget mackenzie, meghan callahan, | bridget and meg |
Week 19: Wednesday
Characters: Bridget and Meg
Location: The farmhouse
Summary: Bridget and Meg share more over lunch than just soup and bread.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Bridget sighed and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She’d been working outside for most of the morning, first tending to the chickens and then making sure the goats were taken care of. The young woman was ready to stuff her face and collapse on the couch for a few hours.
Meg was hard at work herself, attempting something she hadn’t been able to do since the collapse of the world--and even then, it wasn’t all that easy. Baking bread.
A Cost-Co sized bundle of dry yeast had been brought back with one of the raids, and remembering a basic recipe from her grandmother too many years ago, the blind woman stood bellied up to the kitchen counter, punching and rolling the large mass of dough with flour covered hands. It was extensive work, but rewarding (as long as the loaf turned out---this first one was an experiment), especially for Meg’s need for something to focus a little pent up frustration on.
She had let the thing rise in a loaf-pan found under the cabinet for hours in the morning, not hinting to anyone that she was attempting the surprise baked good, laden with a swirl of cinnamon and the raisins that came in an oversized Pringles can. After beating it to a figurative pulp a second time, it’d been closed in the iron belly of the wood-burning stove and had been baking for roughly a half hour.
The house was permeated by the sweet baking smell, and it was teasing Meg’s stomach to the point of growling. Sarge, who lay somewhere on the kitchen floor (she heard his tags clink against the hardwood), perked at the sound of someone climbing the porch stairs. Figuratively, so did Meg... who turned her ear toward the back door listening to the gait of whoever approached. No one else had that specific, slightly waddling step. Meghan grinned.
“Followed your nose, did you?”
“Whatever that is, it smells divine.” Bridget smiled tiredly at her friend as she entered the kitchen. They’d been baking bread for a while now, but the smell permeating the house was considerably more than just that of fresh bread. It made her mouth water just thinking about it, and she hadn’t had so much as a snack in more than two hours, which was an eternity for the young woman these days.
“How long until lunch? If it’s going to be a while I need something to tide me over.”
“Uuuh...” Meg made a face and ‘looked’ at the ceiling, wracking her brain for the small equations of added up baking time and how long it would likely take to heat up a smaller lunch of canned soup. “Well...” She turned attention in Bridget’s direction, leaning on folded arms on the table surface. “Maybe twenty minutes for the soup, ten for the bread to cool?”
Bridget nodded and reached over to scratch Sarge behind his ears for a moment. “Soup and bread huh?” It seemed a decent enough midday meal, especially since she couldn’t eat as much in one sitting as she used to, having to eat smaller portions in more frequent intervals as more and more of her midsection was taken up with baby.
She moved toward the pantry to find something to snack on until lunch was ready. Somebody had found a box of granola bars in a raid, and Bridget decided that one of those would work nicely as a head start on lunch. “I’ll be back down in a few minutes after I wash up and change.” The men's coveralls she had on kept her from getting too messed up and managed (for now) to fit over her belly, but they were still uncomfortable and she wanted something less restraining now that she was done working outside.
Fifteen minutes later found the young woman waddling back into the kitchen, having cleaned up and changed into a maternity dress. “So, have you been in here all morning?”
When Bridget’s footsteps lightly tapped the kitchen hardwood, Meg was busy carefully ladeling warmed veggie-beef soup into two separate bowls, using the curve of her thumb over the lip of each one to gage how full they were. Concentrating lightly on the task, she didn’t angle to face her friend, but welcomed her back anyway. “Perfect timing... and yes.” A curt nod went with the affirmation: both bowls plucked up from the counter (each sporting a spoon) and turned. Thre memorized steps to the table--until the edge pressed into her abdomen--she set the servings down and eased into the nearby chair. “In and out, really... between beating the bread dough and restocking the living room firewood.”
“Well it smells like you put the time to good use at any rate.” Bridget smiled and sat down at the table after pouring herself a glass of water. A spoonful of soup soon passed through her lips and she made an appreciative noise before dipping the spoon down for another. “This is good, Meg. Definitely hits the spot.” Though the truth was she was hungry enough and it could have tasted like shoe leather and she still would have wolfed it down.
The blind woman smiled genuinely. “Thank whatever label was on that can. Smells like Campbell’s.” Her own spoon lightly clinked on the side of the bowl before her first bite. Or slurp. The savory warmth slid down her throat, spreading a small amount of familiar comfort from a taste she remembered from childhood, and winter Sundays at home with Michael and Sarge.
“Bread’s on the counter. I’m not much of a slicer, though...”
“I can do that in a minute,” Bridget assured her friend, more intent on wolfing down her bowl of soup. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she’d inhaled the granola bar a few minutes earlier, and that had just taken the edge off.
Meg nodded, taking down her soup at a slightly less ravenous manner, but the first few bites had definitely reminded her as to why her stomach had been growling minutes earlier. “And how’re the Monsters today?” Softly inquisitive, as normal, though Meg’s voice weighed a little heavier, thanks to the thoughts and dreams that dragged her down like an anchor that week.
“Quiet, relatively speaking of course.” Bridget gave her friend a lopsided smile out of habit and patted her stomach with her free hand. “Growing like weeds, I swear sometimes I think I can see my belly growing rather than just waking up a little larger every day.”
“I hope they’re letting you sleep more.” Meg said in idle conversation, stirring her soup so it cooled a bit more. She ‘stared’ into it for a little while, centering her nose above the steam and savory aroma.
“I get my sleep when I can.” Bridget shrugged and stood up to go carve some slices of cinnamon bread. “You’ve been kind of quiet the past couple days. Something on your mind?”
Meg’s lips pressed together, rolling for a moment of pause. “Yeah, just-- lots of memories dragged up this week.” It wasn’t that Meg didn’t want to talk about everything that had happened, she just wasn’t sure how to go about dealing with it.
She sighed, leaning back in her chair. If there was anyone she could vent to, it was Bridget. That didn’t mean the words would come easily. They were stuck in her chest at the moment.
Bridget nodded, suspecting she knew the kinds of memories the other woman was talking about. She knew what it was like, missing your husband and family and not knowing for sure if he was alive or dead. “Any particular reason they got stirred up this week?”
The freckles on the blind woman’s nose wrinkled a little. “Maybe...” Her soup seemed to have lost much of it’s appeal, since the fluttering in her stomach had returned with the nearing topic. It wasn’t a good or bad feeling--just plain nerves. Maybe bittersweet.
“Yeah?” Bridget was more intent on slicing up the bread, but couldn’t help but be a bit curious. She waited until she finished cutting about a half dozen slices, three apiece, before following up. “C’mon,” she wheedled as she set Meg’s plate in front of her friend and then sat herself. “Spill.”
Normally Bridget would’ve gotten a hearty ‘thank you’ for the plate in front of her... this time, she just traced the table with a few fingertips to the plate, then nudged the bread around with them. Meg sighed again... slouching.
“Derek kissed me.”
Bridget’s jaw dropped and she stared at her friend in silence for a few heartbeats. “Derek? Mr. Grouch himself? He kissed you?! No way!”
Despite the uselessness of it, Meghan’s eyes closed tightly--a sort of elongated wince that ended only when she rubbed her face with one palm, propped by a bent elbow on the table.
“Yeah...” She nodded finally, swallowing a lump in her throat. “Imagine how surprised I was.”
“So obviously it wasn’t something that sent you screaming,” Bridget reasoned. “So what happened? Did you kiss him back?”
That was the part that was really twisting her stomach. Meg’s face scrunched up a little more, like it actually hurt to face the thought. “I-- I dunno, a little? I just--he caught me by surprise, and I... Fuck, I just froze.” Emotions started running a little higher now, stinging the back of the woman’s sightless eyes with what she’d felt every time she stopped to really think about the whole thing.
“Well, you were stronger than I was then.” Bridget gave her the cliff notes version of the party they’d had with the group of traders that had come through Las Vegas a few weeks before they’d left, and her night with Orlin. “So don’t beat yourself up too much.” It wasn’t like either Jake or Mike were likely to show up on their doorsteps, but she still beat herself up over her being unfaithful to her husband.
Bridget’s story was definitely not what she had expected, and was a thankful distraction from the issue at hand. At least, it seemed so. Meg was a little agape, both that Bridget’s encounter with the trader happened and the fact that she didn’t know about it. She was good at ‘seeing’ a lot of things, though there was definitely a lot she tended to miss.
Once again, her lips pressed in a straight line. She didn’t feel better or worse: she didn’t feel anything was resolved either--of course, she hadn’t gone into the conversation thinking that would actually happen. Now she could sense the subtle regret (or something like it) in Bridget’s voice, and sympathy for her friend was added on top of her already chaotic thoughts.
Meg sighed for the umpteenth time in the last five minutes. “Maybe if we avoid the whole thing, it’ll go away.” Said with a clear amount of rueful sarcasm, Meg rubbed the inside of one eye, then continued to slouch in the chair. “That’s the way it works, right?” Ignoring the situation sounded like the easiest path, at this point.
“At least he couldn’t get me pregnant,” Bridget sighed, with a pat on her stomach. “Ignoring it sounds like the best course of action. Unless you don’t want to ignore it.” She picked up her slice of bread and bit into it, waiting for her friend’s reaction.
She had a point, but the thought still didn’t sit well. The whole thing didn’t sit well, and Meg just wasn’t hungry anymore. She did nod, though, in reluctant agreement. “Do me a favor? This doesn’t need to be public knowledge...”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut.” Bridget promised. “We’ll see if Derek does the same.”