The Laughers - They're Leaving...
Who: Helena, Rowan What: A noticing Where: In the tree, in Rowan and Helena's hammock When: night Rating: G
Rowan hadn't really slept that night, or if she had it was an uneasy, unrestful kind of sleep that was more of a relief to wake up from than it would be to have a chance to sleep in. Now, while Helena slept, she quietly scraped the soft bones Kenneth had given her with her teeth, getting a fine paste of calcium and minerals that her body desperately craved. But there was nothing to be had about it, she just had to make due with what she could.
There was something missing tonight, and Rowan couldn't put her finger on it. Or something uncomfortably different. It was like the theme music to Planet Terror. There was an... expectation building up somehow.
Rowan crept very carefully out of her hammock and sat on the branch, straddling it with her back to the tree trunk. The hammock wasn't that far away, and her eyes had adjusted to this midnight-lightless world easily enough, so she could see the branch and the trunk in twilight colors. She looked to the ground, expecting to see the ground swarming with semi-starving laughers again.
And they weren't there. Well, they were, but they weren't laughing and they were moving with purpose. There were even... babies? Ugly babies, definitely, with them. Rowan crawled rapidly, but carefully, back to Helena and gave her a quick shake. "Helena. Hel! Wake up!"
Feeling as though her sleep had been rather shallow herself, Helena jerked slightly but she had long since driven home the reminder that she slept high above the ground and couldn't flail too much. She blinked into the darkness and took a moment to register a few things. For one, Rowan was juggling her foot and not in bed. For another it was dark, windy and...quiet, other than the leaves in the trees. "Ro?" she mumbled into the darkness. "Are you alright?" Now thatshe was awake, she could hear faint murmured conversation in the other shared hammocks in the tree. Something was definitely going on.
"You hear that?" Rowan asked, twirling her hand up in the air to indicate the area. "It's quiet. The laughers are moving." She pointed to the ground, at the dark, hulking shapes and the little hulking shapes that were heading out and hauling ass in the doing so. She ran a hand through her hair in a worried-fretful sort of way. "Why, do you figure?"
Helena's breath hitched as her eyes trained on the ground. It took a moment to see them, they blended so well into the dark night but Rowan was right. It looked almost like family groups. Now that she was listening, she could hear their breathing, huffing like a long distance runner's might have. "I don't know..." she trailed off, her eyes lifted toward the night sky. The sky was vanishing as a sheet of clouds raced to cover the sky. Movement up above caught her eye and she focused on the canopy. "Ro, holy shit, the pesks are on the move as well." Her eyes followed them east. "They're all running from something. How bad could this coming storm be?"
"Those little fuzzy bat things, too - you can see right through their wings when they're gliding." Ro pointed out the much smaller flocks of them to Helena. Dark shapes with clear triangles on both sides, dipping and weaving. Slightly more northward than the pesks, but still heading mostly east. "I think we might be in trouble, Hel. ... That Kenneth has some survival training. Should we ask him what he thinks we should do? I don't have any real desire to follow those bad boys out."
Helena nodded. "Who knows what's the stronger drive for them, right? Running from the storm or eating." She frowned as she squirmed closer to the edge of the hammock. "Thorne and Quinn managed to get some very vague shelter up here for us," she pointed to the areas where they had been able to sew the leaves together with Rowan's grass cord. "But who knows if that will hold if the wind gets and faster." She glanced up again, following the glasswings in the fast disappearing starlight. "And I think it will."
Rowan let out a deep breath. "Well. Like I told Arlo on his first day here what we were going to do if it rained - probably get wet. I'm not afraid of a little water." Rowan sounded more reassuring and brave than she felt, and she would've bet her entire life savings that Helena, being the preschool teacher that she was, would've seen right through it. But what else were they going to do? "We'll just... make do with what we've got, I guess. At least we're above the floor, right? In case it floods."
Helena nodded. "You're right. That's all we can really do." She just hoped that the sodden hammocks would hold. They had strung plenty of vines beneath the hammocks now as a stop gap, to catch people if they fell. Those would hold, she was certain. Some of those wicker nets were already hardening. A gust of wind shook the tree and with it was a patter of raindrops striking the wide leaves of the climber. She heaved a sigh. "Would we be safer in the hammock or out?"
"Let's stay in, and just hang on real tight." Rowan decided. "If we don't, we'll probably lose the hammock completely, and that Jasper chick only game with two pieces of bedding." She chewed on her bottom lip - the last of the Laughers were gone, it looked like. She watched their retreating backsides with trepidation. "Yeah. We better hang on real tight."
Helena nodded and scooted back a little ways. She wished she had been able to keep her thick duvet as something for them to cover themselves with but there was a strong chance the wind would have whipped it away anyways. She hoped everyone would be ok. Quinn, and that new girl, Meredith. There wasn't anything they could do though. "Climb aboard then, before the wind blows you off the branch."
Rowan crawled back into the hammock, making sure another thick branch was easily in reach in case the wind picked up more than the hammock ties would take. "Sing something. Something fun. Y'know. Get our minds off this. I haven't heard music in days that I haven't hummed."
Frowning, Helena thought about what she might be able to remember well enough to hum. Finally, she chuckled and launched into a hushed version of Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Band. When in doubt, rely on the Beatles, apparently.
Rowan laughed softly and started humming along right along with her. Something familiar like that was so oddly soothing Ro immediately felt better. If they'd been on the ground and it was daylight, Rowan would've danced along with the music, and she rolled over to give Helena a hug once the song was done.
Helena hugged her back even as the hammock really started to sway. She could hear the rain rattling up above now in earnest. It hadn't make it's way down through the canopy but it was coming, no doubt about that. Her arms tightened around her pregnant friend and it was half about fear as it was half about comfort. "Oh god, I'm totally going to get sea sick. Let's hope it blows itself out fast, ok?" The absolutely worst place she could imagine being was in a hammock in a tree during a hurricaine's landfall.
Rowan nodded, and kissed the top of Helena's head. She doubted it'd blow over fast, it'd been building for days, to the point where the humidity had been so high during the evening that even her sweat wasn't evaporating. But Rowan didn't want to upset Helena, so she didn't say it. But that branch? Was always in arm's reach.