Enoch Crosslin (crossedwire) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-03-25 22:36:00 |
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Current mood: | mellow |
Entry tags: | cross, helena, z - 1st tribe - day 12 |
Who: Cross and Helena
Where: the forest, not far from the climber tree
When: Day 12, just before sunset
What: a reunion
Rating: PG (for deeply buried UST?)
Cross had not gone directly back to camp when he and the group that had gone East had arrived. He did not have a true explanation for that, and he didn't spend much time mulling it over in his mind, although there was a slight frown line between his brows. Maybe he should have gone all the way to the fire circle and the tree to help the others deal with the meat, but he'd had quite enough group togetherness over the past few days. He needed some decompression time, and he took it, finding a deep portion of stream and stopping there to wash away the dirt and sweat of the long journey. His skin was baked dark brown everywhere his clothing didn't cover, the warm color making his hair look even fairer and his eyes bluer.
He didn't know if they'd need to worry about skin cancer here, and he wouldn't have worried about it much, anyway. He never fretted about harm coming to himself. Cross took his time, finding some of the pods Helena had mentioned and scrubbing himself as well as he was able. He couldn't do much about his grimy clothing since he didn't have anything else to put on, but he felt much better just having clean skin and hair. Once he was finished, he gathered up the pillowcase with the few items he'd found and began trudging toward camp, walking in the forest to stay out of the sun.
He also wasn't going to examine the peculiar feeling he had that wasn't quite excitement, wasn't quite anxiety, nor was he going to ponder why he'd taken so long bathing himself. Cross could hear distant voices as he drew closer to the climber tree, and he slowed down, not willing to admit even to himself who he was actually going to be looking for.
Helena was riding on this utterly strange sense of euphoria. Everyone had come back! As the sun was sinking, the eastern scouting party had returned with whistles and cat calls and general fan fare. Just about all of them had been carrying hunks of bloody meat, leaf pockets of sweetgrind and little bits and bobs that they had found. Since then it had been chaos, quickly erecting a second campfire with a smoking hood made of leather for the grazer meat. She'd seen Kenneth bring the grazer hide to Bazzer who'd looked thrilled at the size of the heavy hide. Rowan had gathered up all of the sweetgrind and done something with it. She had thought she'd heard her hammock-mate say something about drying it from across the fire. Thorne had just looked pleased with himself, Alex had seemed tired but happy and there were questions and introductions and general bedlam around the fire. However, there had been no Cross.
Jasper had told her that he'd come back with them, but had peeled off a half mile before home, claiming to need some private time. That relieved and worried Helena. Worried her, because some childish part of her had wanted him to rush back and celebrate with the rest of them, maybe with her. Relieved because...well, that sounded perfectly within character for the stoic man in question. However, the fate of the missing women still tugged at her and it was getting dim and dark under the spreading leaves of if the climber. She bent her head over the yarnballs she was pulling apart and smiled, laughed and nodded as people told stories about the past few days both home and away. When she lifted her head again, she squinted. Was there someone standing back in the woods? She thought maybe there was, and she thought that maybe the last of the sinking sun had caught gold off of his hair. Setting the leaf pocket of fibers down next to the log she was sitting on, Helena got up and casually strolled his way, like maybe she was going to the stream for a drink of water.
Cross knew that he should go out and join everyone else. He was standing there alone, being antisocial, his calm, almost bland expression not betraying anything he might have felt, and he was finally stirring himself to walk the rest of the way to the fire circle when he saw a slim, short figure headed in his direction down the tree-lined path. He blinked once, as if to make sure it was actually her before he spoke, took one step forward and then another. The pillowcase dangled from his hand almost as if he'd forgotten its presence, and a faint smile etched his lips as she drew closer. Anything he could have said right then probably would have felt anti-climactic as he gazed down at her, and he finally settled for, "Afternoon."
Helena had to tip her head back a ways to look up at him, a smile of greeting on her face. "Welcome back," she said. Her dark eyes took in the big picture, wet, finger combed hair, browned skin, the way his t-shirt was stuck to his shoulders. Then there was that lovely clean fragrance of the soap pods, something she could only really describe as fresh and green. "How was the walk?" she asked. Were they standing too close? She wondered about that as she waited for his answer. Even in the failing light, and being wet, she could tell that his blonde hair had been sunbleached a little. The blue of his eyes leapt off of his broad cheekbones. It was funny because now that he was standing here, Helena knew she couldn't deny that she was attracted. She'd never in all of her life gone for the blonde and blue eyed type before. Wasn't her life just full of changes?
"The walk was long," Cross said, amusement in his tone. He could feel a couple of water droplets sliding down his neck, but he didn't bother to wipe them away. The dampness felt nice with as much sun as he'd gotten over the past couple of days. "Could've been worse though." He was just grateful he had the strength and energy to do it, though he couldn't say he was keen on separating the group like that again any time soon. He thought that presented dangers that maybe they hadn't considered carefully enough before they'd undertaken the trip. Helena was indeed close to him; he didn't think they'd been in such close personal proximity before. "You alright?" he asked quietly, his blue eyes serious as they held hers.
Her lips pressed together, not too firmly, but enough to show pressure and turn the corners of her mouth down slightly. She'd wanted to joke with him, keep it light. However, his question brought up a lot more than she had intended. "It's been...a good and bad three days." She sighed and shook her head. Suddenly feeling the need to move, she crossed her arms across her chest and paced away to a rock that was convenient for sitting. "Two new arrivals today but we've lost four people since you left." She shook her head. "First it was just Annie, Lauren and Nancy. They went off to forage the day you guys left and never came back. Then yesterday, Jeri went off somewhere as well and she didn't make it back by sundown. There's been no sign of her today." She looked up at Cross and shook her head again. "I took Ryan west to the clayflats yesterday to scavenge a little so I wasn't even here. Don't know what happened to Jeri or where she was even going." Her narrow shoulders slumped.
Cross' expression was thoughtful as he watched Helena pace a few feet away and sit down, and after he'd listened to her words and taken them in, he walked over and seated himself on the ground next to the massive rock on which she was sitting. His new position actually placed him just below her eye level, leaving him gazing up at her. "No evidence of trouble?" he asked. "They're just gone?" He hadn't really known the women in question, but that didn't make him any less mindful of their probable fate. He figured Helena would have said if they'd found ripped-up bodies, but he wanted to be sure he understood what she was saying. His brow furrowed when she said she and Ryan had gone to the clay flats. "You and the blind kid went out that far by yourselves?" His tone wasn't necessarily accusatory or even as if he was questioning her judgment, but he did sound mildly perturbed.
Helena shook her head as she watched him approach her perch. There was nothing about Cross that contradicted his capable air. She really liked that about him, and suspected that was why she was confiding in him. "Nothing anyone has reported back, but these woods are huge and we've barely explored them, really. Maybe they went someplace new? Found...something new." She sighed. It was hard to look at the truth head on - that these four women she had exchanged pleasantries with or stories about where they had all come from - we likely dead somewhere in the area. "Is it weird that part of me wonders if maybe they were yanked out of this world the same way that we were put in?" she asked quietly, drawing her knees up and resting her cheek on them as she wrapped her arms across her shins. She watched his profile, curious about what he thought about that. "Saying that out loud almost feel like childish hope."
"Not so weird," Cross said. Ordinarily he wasn't one for sustaining false illusions, but something about Helena's expression and the tone of her voice made him want to be particularly gentle with her. "It isn't any harder to believe." If it hadn't happened to him, he would have scoffed at the notion that one could wake up on an entirely different world than where they'd gone to sleep, with people from all over the world. "Nothin' wrong with hope," he added, turning his head to look at her. She seemed very fragile curled over herself like that, head down and arms wrapped around her legs, nothing like the eminently capable woman he knew her to be. She hadn't answered his question about going with Ryan to the clay flats, so he phrased it a different way: "Did you find anything at the flats?"
Something in his eyes when he looked up at her loosened all of the tension out of her limbs. She sat up straight and extended her toes back down into the forest mulch. "We brought back a few pounds of clay. Ryan and I have been experimenting with it today. He found a pair of shoes and I found another blanket that was dirty but otherwise in good shape." That was the good part of the days since he'd been gone, except for the part of having to be in the laugher's territory. "It's...every bit as bad as Arlo said it was. Not a place for the faint of heart, I guess." But she and Ryan had both made it! That made them courageous, as far as she was concerned. "We used Payne's radiator to try to distribute the heat evenly for baking the clay. Limited success today but we'll try again."
Cross was glad they'd at least found something. Her words about the place were light, but something behind them, some subtlety of tone or expression, told him that she'd found it deeply disturbing. "D'you think there's any need to go back there?" he asked. "Think you got everything useful from it?" If she said they hadn't, he was most likely going to try to suggest that he go with her the next time. Nothing against Ryan, but from what he understood the kid was practically blind. He didn't like the notion of Helena being out there with someone who couldn't really defend her if it became necessary.
She shook her head. "There's no way to know. We could certainly use more clay, right? Pots, jugs, plates. Maybe even make clay tablets to write on like the ancient civilizations did." She sighed. "At least clay bricks. We could, over time, just build a brick wall entirely around the camp." She offered him a smile. "Keep the beasts at bay. I swear, my imagination outruns my capability." She sighed heavily once again. "The other thought is that their land, the laugher land, covers a few miles of forest. It would take some time to carefully search it for useful items. And some planning." Plus there was also the fact that no one knew if they were still carrying people away in the mornings, arrivals that didn't get found before the rising sun sent the monsters back to their dens. Some of the blood had looked awfully fresh...
As tired as he was, Cross had to smile wryly at her ambitious suggestions. "Excuse my lack of enthusiasm," he said. "I'll get back t'you when my feet don't hurt so much." It was as much of a complaint as Cross would utter about the long journey he'd just been on. He could understand her need for a more secure camp than they had, though. He raked fingers through his damp blond hair, disarranging it even more than it had been as he listened to her words carefully. "I think," he said finally, "if you wanna go back out there, it should be with more than two people. And some weapons, just in case." He believed in being prepared. Just because they hadn't encountered Laughers during the day before didn't mean that they should get overconfident.
Helena looked at him, surprised, but after a moment her face relaxed into that of the understandably chastised. "I did worry, when the dens came into sight. After all, there they were, those gaping holes. And me and Ryan standing right out in the open." She shook her head. She didn't mean to make him worry, she was just relating her lack of forethought. "I thought, Christ, what am I doing?" She chuckled softly, not wanting to be heard back at camp. "I agree with you, Cross, on your thought about not separating so much. We'll probably never know what happened to those women. If we stick closer together, though, I think it's less likely to happen. People vanishing." She nodded back toward the group. "I wanted to speak to everyone now that we're back together again, about our options as a...tribe, I guess."
One thing that Cross found exceptionally likable about Helena was that she was one of the most rational and practical people he'd ever met. There were some women-- and men, for that matter-- who would have argued with him simply for the sake of not wanting to be shown up, because he'd had the nerve to question them going out to the flats alone. She hadn't. She'd listened and then, after considering it, actually agreed. He opened his mouth to say that he absolutely couldn't tolerate the thought of her being harmed and promptly closed it again. If he said that, she might take it as--. Well. "Camp meeting?" he asked instead, addressing her last statement.
Helena nodded. "I have something to propose. I think you'll like it." She gave him another smile. "Bazzer brought it up to me a couple of days ago and I've been mulling it over ever since." She tapped her fingers against the stone and decided to try out the idea on Cross. "What would you think if I proposed that we become a nomadic tribe? Kind of...like the plains Natives back in America? Or maybe like the African nomadic tribes Bazzer told me about who spent all of their lives covering the same hundreds of miles, never suffering from famines or droughts?" She watched Cross, curious. He so rarely showed anything that he was thinking on his face but sometimes, if she was quick enough, she could catch his first impression.
Cross' first impression was something akin to surprise. Pleased surprise. It flickered across his eyes and was gone, like a cloud traveling over the sun. "Makes sense," he said with a nod. "We can't stay here." That had become painfully obvious already. If various people had not found food sources either nearby or traveling away from the camp, they all would have already been in dire straits. He glanced down at the forest floor on which he sat, his brow furrowing as he thought about it some more. "'Long as everyone could keep pace, nobody too injured or sick..." He lifted his head again. "Might be a better camp out there for us."
Helena nodded. "I think we'll never find it, if we can't all just go. And even if we did send a long term scouting party out, we might starve or freeze to death here before they ever return. Or be attacked by laughers or something worse." Who knew what was in the woods? Payne and Quinn had nearly been trampled to death! "Quinn and Rowan are the biggest concerns for traveling right now. Rowan thinks she'll be fine and there is nothing that says that we can't stop someplace for weeks at a time. Stop for her when it's time for her to have the baby." She shrugged. "Quinn's bruises are healing but there was an incident with a large...animal...a couple of days ago and he's been slow moving since then. I don't think he'd be ready for a long walk for at least a week, if not more." Which was ok, given that they didn't have any way to carry water, no transportable shelter. No plan.
"An incident with a large animal," Cross said, his brows arching and his light eyes quizzical. "That kid seems like a trouble magnet." Quinn had arrived with the hell beaten out of him; the guy's face had been swollen and purple and he'd barely been able to get around, and now an animal had attacked him? "Well, sounds like we'd need to wait at least a week, so we can figure it out." He didn't like the idea of taking off to become a nomadic tribe without a plan, either. Cross firmly believed in having a map to get from Point A to Point B, and he figured that by putting their heads together, the more intelligent and rational of them could come up with something. It did give him pause to think about the pregnant girl and the fact that the baby she carried would eventually have to come out, but at least they had the benefit of having a doctor in the group, he thought.
"I think the animal was more intent on trampling Payne than attacking Quinn, to be honest." She chuckled. "But she still killed it anyway. It was sort of like a wild boar and it did taste just like pork." She smiled down at him. "Sorry you missed it. How is the grazer?" The meat was already being set up to be smoked in a secondary firepit. Hopefully it would be done well enough by nightfall and they could pull it up into the trees so the laughers didn't get it.
"Payne killed a wild boar." It wasn't really a question, but there was a bit of incredulity behind the words. "Good for her." For the most part, he was realizing that they weren't in quite as much trouble as he'd thought they'd be when he'd first gotten here. The majority of the people who ended up here seemed to be able to cope and even contribute, most of 'em. "Grazer's good, but then it's meat." That summed it all up for him. "Hey," he said, switching subjects as he reached for the pillowcase he'd set down beside him. "Brought you somethin'."
Helena, never able to resist the lure of a gift, perked noticeably. She'd taken note of her bright coloured pillowcase, a little bit worse for its wear but she could clean it without a problem. It was weighted down with something or multiple somethings and she was interested in what those might be. "What did you find?" she asked, watching as he pulled the case into his lap to stick his hand inside.
"Not as much as I hoped for, but maybe it'll help a little." Cross' large fingers closed around the damaged shoes he'd found. The main thing he'd noticed about them was that they were very small and actually might fit her feet; all she'd need was something to hold them on, some sort of top for them. They'd once been running shoes, the rubber soles thick and the portion of the white leather sides that were left reasonably clean; it was just that the tops where the laces had gone and the very backs had been torn off by sharp claws or teeth. "Maybe you c'n do something with these," he said, handing them to her.
Her hands reached out to take the stained white rubber soles and her brows raised. "Oh wow, they were running shoes! Ah, I'd be so happy to have these nice bouncy soles between me and the forest." She turned them over and examined them. "I bet you I could make some kind of straps for them, make them into sandals or something." She eyed the pillowcase he was still holding, thinking she might have to sacrifice it to the greater good. Beaming at him, she gently squeezed his shoulder in gratitude. "Thanks, Cross. You have no idea how happy these make me!" Especially if she was going to be walking miles every day with all of the rest of them.
"You're welcome," Cross said, his voice a soft rumble, his cheekbones flushing very slightly as she touched him. Probably, it wouldn't be noticeable beneath his tan and the mild case of sunburn he had. At least, he hoped not. "Didn't find anything else worth bringin' back." Carefully, he folded up the pillowcase and reached up to set it on her lap, wishing the east had yielded something more impressive than the soles of shoes and grazer meat. Not that he was ungrateful for the meat, but it really seemed as if there should be more leavings to be found in all this vast land.
Helena had been in this world long enough to know that any gifts, small like rubber shoe soles or large like meat, weren't to be dismissed. She stood up from the rock, the shoes-to-be set on top of her folded pillowcase, and smiled down at him. "We should get back, it's getting dark." The woods were getting dim. No sun caught his light hair anymore and his face was half hidden in shadows. "More good news is that at least there is extra bedding for you tonight. If you want it." She knew he'd been sleeping on a bare wicker hammock since his arrival.
Cross knew that her words were valid. Lingering around in the forest after dark was a sure way to encounter danger. He nodded and hoisted himself to his feet, absently brushing at the seat of his pants once he was standing. "Wouldn't say no to that, long as nobody else is without," he said about the bedding. After all, it wouldn't kill him to sleep on bare wicker. It hadn't thus far, anyway. He turned toward the path that would lead them to the fire circle, waiting for her to step in front of him. It was a move he didn't even think about, really; it was instinct, just on the off chance that something came at them from deeper in the woods.
Something like an eleboar? That had been known to happen. She stepped in front of Cross with a small smile and a warm brush of skin before she moved on down the way. She held the soles of the shoes like they were flip flops and this was the beach, her dirty old pillowcase draped over one of her shoulders. "Ok, let's see what everyone has to say." She tossed Cross a small smile over her shoulder and forged out of the trees toward the waiting campfire.