One Fish, Two Fish, Unfish, Blue Fish
Who: Rowan & Bazzer Where: Wandering along the river When: Week 1, Day 4, mid-morning What: Experimenting with eating stuff & discussion of ideas Rating: PG
When Bazzer and Helena returned to the tree they girls had been sleeping in, they found Rowan awake. After sitting down with a leafy bowl of berries, Bazzer gave his glasses to Helena to see if she could start a fire with them. He planned on staying put while she tried this, he couldn't even see his hand in front of his nose so it was just a better idea. Plus, he now got to meet Rowan who was pregnant. Or at least, he hoped so. He wasn't too fond of the idea of sitting there blind and alone.
Well, sort of awake. More sleepy drowsy because the beasties in the night? Kind of drove the point home, over and over that, Lo'dy Lo'dy, they weren't in Kansas no mo'. With the hokey accent and everything. Which meant that if they got hurt or sick here? There was all of jack shit to save them. Because the plant life was like nothing on earth she'd ever seen, and that left a conclusion that she honestly didn't want to think about at all. Ever. Instead, she pulled off her socks and stuffed them into a little knot-hole in the tree for the time being and climbed down the tree again before she even recognized that there was someone else there. "Oh. Um. Hello."
"Hi," Bazzer turned towards where the sound was coming from. While he could see colours and such without his glasses, where ever the girl was, he couldn't see her yet. "Rowan I presume?" he asked, not really waiting for her to reply, "I'm....new. Here. Where ever here is. I have berries?" he held up the little leafy bowl and made them sort of scrape around. He had no idea how pervy he sounded, trying to entice her over with the berries. "Helena's trying to make fire."
"I like fire. I approve of that. Thank you for the berries, though I think I'm going to see if there's anything else nearby that we can feed on. Berries and moss aren't going to cut it for long. Need something - baby, mommy doesn't like it when you kick important internal organs, thank you - more filling, y'know?" Rowan padded over to him and snagged a couple of the berries in question, popping them in her mouth.
"I should be more specific," he said awkwardly turning, "She's using my glasses to make fire. So I can't really see you," now she was a pink blur with darker brown towards the top. Whether she was pregnant or not, he couldn't tell. "You're sort of pink," he gestured in her general direction with one hand. "But something other than berries would possibly be good. If she can make fire, I'm hoping we can cook something. Maybe the novelty will mean the animals aren't scared of it and run right in," Bazzer was no hunter. Not at all.
"I'm sure they'd recognize fire. I'm pretty sure they have rain around here, and with rain comes storms. And lightning." Rowan said dryly. "So I doubt they'll be all that keen on running into the thing that is hot and bright and scary." She knelt down and picked up a couple of sticks. "Come on. You can be blind and still hunt the wild and wily vegetables with me."
Oh. Right. "I'm not really a hunter," he said, though it was obvious. He didn't want to go with her, being blind and going with someone he hadn't ever met or even seen bothered him. How did he know they weren't going to kill him somewhere? Then again, there were only the three of them there in this very odd place. "You'll have to lead me," he said, standing and fixing his sweatshirt. He hated not being able to see, "Helena said you are a botanist?" he asked.
"Yup. And I minored in environmental sciences." Sticks in one hand, and linking her arm with his with the other, Rowan started picking her way through the undergrowth towards the stream. That was a good a landmark as any, and she'd be able to find her way back to the tree from there. Presumably. "By the way, if you ever find a rather sharp or pointy rock, take it. They come in handy when you don't have knives or scissors. I haven't found one for myself yet. Now, let's see - I want to find something I haven't tried eating yet..."
"That sounds useful," moreso than library and information science anyways. He stumbled along with Rowan as best he could, except for when he had been in the hospital he had always had glasses and even then, they had let him have them sometimes. When they deemed it safe anyways, which wasn't often enough in his opinion, but that was long ago and far away. Bazzer was not comfortable without them really, but he tried to hide it. "Not like what I'm stepping on?" he asked. It seemed every time he missed the spongey moss with his foot he found a sharp rock or something, but he didn't think he was bleeding so maybe it wasn't sharp enough. "Are you sure you should just eat something to find out if it is safe or not?" he asked, uncertainly, though he didn't know of a better way off hand, "I mean, you're pregnant."
"Aye, well, it's that or starve." Rowan sighed. "You can test vegetation out tentatively, but without a lab or a computer or even just a field guide I'm kind of stuck. But so far I haven't felt any ill effects from either the moss or the berries, and the baby's as lively as ever. Now here's a plant I haven't seen before." Rowan decided, happily, growing around the base of a smallish tree or largish shrub. She knelt down and took his hand and let him examine it through touch. "So do you have a name?"
"Bazzer," he replied, taking a little of the plant and sniffing it. It didn't smell bad, but then, most plants didn't. "'Leaves of three, leave them be,'" he quoted, though she probably already knew that. "Don't eat anything sharp and pointy either..." he'd add something about funny colours, but everything here was sort of a funny colour. "I'm Bazzer, I mean. My name," well, it was Sebastian, but no one called him that. That was his father and he wanted to have very little in common with his father. Some things couldn't be helped, like genetics, but otherwise, they were about as different as possible.
"Right, well, you know my name. Rowan. And this is little Nameless, which may change in a couple months." Ro went down on her knees in front of the plant with a little 'oof' sound, and sampled a bit of leaf. And promptly spat it out. "Bleh. Don't eat that."
"I'll try to remember that," Bazzer was referring to not eating the plant. Standing, he offered her his hand. He could see her as a pinkish/whitish fuzzy shape, but there was no definition to it or anything. "How long have you been married?" he asked, making conversation. True, women had babies without being married all the time and sometimes it was on purpose and sometimes not, but he was old fashioned like that. In his mind, first came a relationship, then marriage and then kids. Despite the problems he had with his family, his parents had been married nearly 35 years so obviously they were doing something right somewhere no matter how bad they were as parents.
"Oh, I'm not." Rowan grabbed his hand and hoisted herself to her feet. "I decided I wanted a kid, and I was in a financially secure spot. So I went off and got myself pregnant on purpose. Took a couple tries, but third time's the charm. Nameless here's kicking up a storm right now, too. I think he says hi." Then, just for the hell of it, she took his hand and put it to her belly, where in he promptly got kicked for his trouble. "There, see?"
In all his life, Bazzer had never felt a pregnant woman's belly. He did have a sister, but didn't have kids and he had none of his own. He hadn't ever given having them himself any thought either. It felt...strangely hard. Not fat like he expected. That did explain why pregnant women looked pregnant though and not fat. Huh. He boggled at the feeling of the baby, he assumed his foot, against his hand. "Weird..." he breathed, poking the baby back. "That is very bizarre," sort of cool too, but mostly weird. "You should think of a name. Can't call him nameless forever."
"Don't know if it's a boy or a girl. I told my doctor not to tell me, so it could be a surprise. Isn't it neat how I have a factory for making more of me inside my body?" Rowan, herself, was pretty darn pleased about it, and found it endlessly fascinating. "Okay, point a direction and lets go that way until we find a new plant to poke at."
"Why don't we just keep following the stream?" that would be a safe idea. Privately, the idea of a woman making more of herself like that creeped Bazzer out completely. He'd never so much as been with a woman in bed or anyone else. "Oh. Well, then you should pick out a name for each. Or just one name regardless," he didn't want to think about what might happen if they were still here in a few months. "Um...that things going to stay inside you for a long time, right?" he asked. He knew that whatever the answer was, he wasn't going to like it. Babies took 9 months and she was pretty big at least, she was under his hand, so he doubted it could be too much longer.
"Another couple months. Then it'll be very Alien-esque. Chest bursting and everything." The teasing tone in Rowan's voice was interrupted by her need to giggle, but she calmed down shortly after that. "Don't worry, you don't need to watch."
Bazzer visbly recoiled at that mental image, even though he knew it was wrong. He had never seen a birth and he was okay with that. Really, "We need to get...not here by then," he muttered. "Preferably somewhere with lots of baby doctors and not head doctors," Bazzer had an aversion to doctors in general, but especially psychologists and psychiatrists. "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies!" he added in a very bad southern accent, mis-quoting Gone With the Wind. "See anything interesting other than berry bushes, tall trees, moss or stream?" he asked as they continued walking.
"Some rocks. Smaller trees. A squirrel thing." Rowan looked around. "Vines. Sky. Grass. The grass isn't any good for eating, either, by the way. The roots might be, I'll look later." They continued on a bit, and she nudged him. "A fish. A weird fish, but a fish. I think." She eyed the nasty looking thing that was recognizable as a fish only because it was streamlined and the fact it was under the water. Where, Rowan decided, it could bloody well stay until they found some way of catching it, cleaning it, and cooking it.
"Can you catch it?" Bazzer asked, then realized how stupid that question was as soon as he said it, "Never mind. Probably not," they needed a fishing pole or a net or a spear or...someone who didn't need glasses to see and wasn't pregnant. And perhaps any one of those tools. "Did you fall asleep and wake up here too?" he asked. It was bizarre. And why the three of them? Why not more? Why not awake? It just made no sense to him at all and Bazzer did not like things that did not make sense.
"Yup. To the waking up here part. Either wise I wouldn't be in my pajamas, I promise. Somehow my blanket and pillow came with me, too. I'm not sure how. Oh, and the baby came with me, obviously. You?" Rowan glanced over at him, then stooped down to examine some weeds at the edge of the stream. But they were thin and reedy, and probably wouldn't be very good for eating at all. She promised herself they'd gather a bit on the way back. She did, however, find a very nice smooth, round, oblong rock. She picked that up and plunked it into the stream, scaring the unfish away.
"Was that a rock you threw?" Bazzer asked, hearing the plop, "Rocks are fire resistant. So if Helena succeeds, rocks for a rock pit would be good to contain the fire," he hadn't really thought about rocks until right now. Hopefully, she threw a stick or something. "And...I read something once on making stone tools from rocks. Not sure how to actually do that, but I read it. I read a lot," not that most of it seemed remotely helpful right now. "But yes. I fell asleep on the couch," hence the clothes. "Didn't take the couch with me," that would be rather strange. Well, stranger.
"It was a rock, but I can wade out and get it. I just threw it to scare the creepy-ass fish thing away." Rowan didn't like the fish, and couldn't really pinpoint why. The closest she could come to an explanation was that it was utterly alien. The trees were different, but they looked like trees. The moss was different, but it was still moss. Berries were berries, rocks were rocks, water was water. But the fish thing was only a fish because of it's habitation, and didn't look a damn thing like a fish. "It's gone, though, now."
"Do the fish look like Blinky from The Simpson's?" he asked, referring to the fish with three eyes that had been found in the Springfield river because it was so polluted. He liked The Simpson's, then again, who didn't? It was an American staple. "Nah, we can probably find more. If there was one, there will be two. Not with potentially having your toes bit off," he had no idea if the fish had teeth or not or if there were bigger things elsewhere in the water. "I hate not being able to see," he muttered. Having to rely on what he remembered seeing from earlier and what he was told now. He couldn't make it blind, that was for sure.
"It actually looked more like a cross between a starfish - with the legs? - and a barbecue." Rowan decided, though that wasn't quite it at all. She just didn't have the description words. "But it was in weeds, too, so maybe it was different. I don't know. Water could've been distorting it, all sorts of things. What's this, then?" Rowan looked curious and examined some pods that were growing on a very thin crawling vine that was wrapped around the trunk of a shrub.
"Okay, that's strange," Bazzer agreed. Fish shouldn't have legs. That was why they lived in the water and not on land. "What did you find now?" It was fun exploring with Rowan, even if he would have preferred to be able to see while doing it. She was good company though.
"Looks like bean pods. Here." She pulled his hand so he could explore it without looking. "Feel that? I'm not sure if they're ripe, though. Or if they're even edible."
"Want me to try one this time?" no sense in making Rowan try them all. They were sort of firm without being hard or squishy. "Want me to try the whole thing or just the insides?" that would potentially change the taste. Bazzer was fond of snap peas and pea pods normally, hopefully these wouldn't be too bad. There were no spines or other oddities that he could feel, though they were that same not-right green of everything else.
"Oh, no. Beans need to soak a while - assuming these are even vaguely related to beans - to get rid of natural toxins. Then they have to cook for a while to even come close to being properly edible. And even if we did have a fire, we don't have anything to cook them in." Rowan pointed out. Though in the books she'd read, if you hunted an animal you could use the stomach as a pot. That was a highly unappealing but probably necessary knowledge for the future.
"Oh," Bazzer had no idea about these things. He bought and cooked green beans and snap peas all the time without a problem. Maybe they were pre-soaked? Or something. "We need to kill a...Laugher," saying that sounded sort of silly now. Laugher. It made sense with Helena had explained them, "Meat. Bones. Skin. All sorts of things. If we can figure out how," that was the key. If.
"Whoa! Bloodthirsty a bit, aren't ya! I'd rather try for something that won't kill me first, thanks. I wasn't a good sprinter even before I got pregnant." She thought it over. "But a pit trap might do it, if there were spikes on the bottom. Just a thought. Then no one's putting themselves in the line of fire."
Well, he had never seen a Laugher. "Okay, so is there something smaller?" he didn't think a Pesk would be big enough. "I've just got the idea. I don't know how to make them actually work," he defended himself. The pit idea could possibly work though. He had hoped the animals would sort of jump into their fire, but that was naive, wishful thinking. "I was a cub scout. Never did anything past that," his father had gotten too busy to do that after a year so Bazzer had quit.
"Not that I've seen." Rowan admitted. "But that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Or maybe there's something just as big and, y'know, friendly. Something like that."
Point. It was a lot hard psychologically speaking anyways, to eat fluffy than to eat a cow. Cows weren't cute, at least not to Bazzer. "Well, let take some beans I guess and head back? We can soak them in stream water or something," they didn't have any other water that he knew of, but there was a lot of this place he didn't know of, "And I can get my glasses back," he'd feel a lot better then.
"Oh! Sure. Um." She looked around and found one of those dried out leaf-bowls that were so awesomely helpful the day previous, and picked a few of the possible bean things, and put them in there. "We'd have to get them out of the pods before we soak 'em, of course. But if they're anything like regular beans, we might've just found a protein source."