Life Continues
Who: Aaron and Rowan Where: Where the yarnballs live When: Mid-morning What: Gathering of things and information Rating: Disney-esque
Rowan was gathering. Not food, unfortunately, because there wasn't much around, well, anywhere, but there were yarn balls aplenty, and they needed to be gathered because eventually someone was, literally, going to wear out the seat of their pants. And when that day came, she wanted to at least have thread for it. Thank God that Helena had shown her where they were before she went off and disappeared and didn't come back. But she had a leaf basket, and she hand her hands, and she was gathering yarn balls - as many as she could, though she was careful to leave two or three on each plant, so that they could propagate.
Aaron was still lost in a bit of a daze. He'd climbed the tree and found a spot to hang his hammock. The tree was thick with them, once he'd gotten up there. It was more than a little bit amazing. Once his sleeping bag was swinging securely and his pillow, jacket and hoodie were stuffed into the middle of it, he'd climbed back down to see if there was anyone else around here who could shed some additional light on their situation. He'd wandered further and further afield of the camp, talking to people who's names and places of origin went out of his head as fast as they told him.
Eventually though, he wandered right into a quiet clearing populated by one person and a sea of fluffy blue and yellow. It took his breath away, mostly because most colours registered as dull brown to Aaron Ackles. He'd been partially colourblind since birth and didn't see red or green. It was one of the reasons why, then living in civilization, he lived in Toronto where driving and traffic lights weren't such a big deal. In the midst of all of this colourful fluff was a lady with dark hair and a tank top which barely stretched over her protruding belly. "Um...Rowan?" Ok, so that name came back to him, maybe others would too.
Rowan turned at the unfamiliar voice and spotted someone she didn't know. In such a small community of people, it would be extraordinarily difficult to not recognize him as a stranger. Still, Rowan didn't feel any particular fear from the fact she didn't know him and she was too far from anyone else to really do anything about it if he attacked her. And besides the tank top, she was wearing one of her more famous inventions, in spite of the fact no one recognized the fact - grass cord. It was not only keeping her hair back, it was looped around and tied on the opposite shoulder as her basket, thus allowing her to use both hands for picking.
Rowan shielded her eyes from the sun and waved to the stranger. "That's me! Hello!"
Aaron gave her a smile that was a couple of shades away from being bright but at least it was honest. He moved forward but not in a threatening way. He'd made that mistake while visiting a small tribe in South America. He'd come up one women gathering and moved forward to offer his hand, only to be half clobbered to death by the lot of them. He might be a smiling blonde haired angel but he'd still been a stranger and thusly not to be trusted. The strange fibrous plants slapped against his thighs as he moved into the clearing which was much deeper than he expected. "I'm Aaron Ackles. I...showed up today." Uncomfortable with the notion that he was abducted and placed here by aliens, he kept it simple.
"Well, welcome to wherever the hell we are." Rowan smiled at him, and offered him her hand. "I'm Rowan, and this is Nameless." She patted her belly. "Want to give me a hand? I have an extra basket and I need to gather as much as I can." Without really waiting for an answer, she pulled an extra basket off the bottom of the one she had and handed it to him. It was one of her favorites - it had inverted the opposite direction as the others, so that in the bottom of the leaf there were the definite ridges of veins running through it. Ro thought it was particularly pretty. "Leave a couple balls on each plant, and just gather as much as you can fit in the basket."
Surprised but willing, Aaron dropped her hand and took the offered basket. Locking eyes on the fibrous balls, he touched the silky strands before twisting the head off of the...flower? "What are these? They don't look edible..." There was no certainty in his question. For all he knew, they were. None of the plants were anything familiar here. His stomach gurgled and he sighed. Why the hell has he skipped over Janine's offer of pizza the nigth before?
"Well, the heads aren't. The seeds are, I think - at least, I didn't throw up when I tasted one. A bit on the bland side, and I wouldn't be very surprised if they had the nutritional content of cotton. Where was I going with this?" Rowan blinked, then shook her head. "Right! No, not the entire thing is edible, but..." she used her sharp rock to split open the skin of one of the fruit and showed him the fibers inside - in this case, a pale but lovely shade of yellowish-green. "To make thread from, y'see?" And she dropped the pod into her basket. "So what did you do in the great Before?"
Curious, Aaron used his thumbnail to split open the fruit and sampled some of the seeds inside. They were only mildly flavored with something he couldn't quite identify. It wasn't unpleasant but it was nothing to write home about either. He dropped it into the basket once he'd set it between his feet and stooped his shoulders to harvest. "Um, I was a student researcher. I was getting ready to defend my doctorate in the field of climatology. Specifically on the effects of climate change on the ground coverage below the frost line. My grant's through the University of Toronto." The little bulbous fruit came off with a smooth twist of the wrist and they thunked into the basket with ease.
"University of Alberta, majored in botany and minored in environment." She grinned. "Grants. Blech. I can think of quite a few good things about this place, and lack of having to deal with grant paperwork is one of them. But this is like my ultimate dream come true from a research point of view, anyway. How are you handling it?" Rowan gave him a sympathetic look and continued her yarn ball plucking.
His momentary pleasure at finding another Canadian here in the midst of nowhere was dissipated in the face of the reminder that they were someplace completely foreign. "Um, not well, I guess? Have you heard people saying we're on another planet? Do you believe that?" He canted his head slightly. Aaron was well traveled and granted, he'd never seen this kind of plant life before, but that didn't mean much. Ecosystems were so delicate and distinct. This forest could be anywhere undeveloped. There were still places like that on Earth.
Rowan nodded. "Absolutely. Smell the air. I've been in the rain forest, I've been on the ocean, and there is no where, absolutely no where, where you can't get the smell of car exhaust. You can't smell it here. The stars are different - I'm not an astronomer, but I know at least how to find the north star and the southern cross, and this place has neither. And the animal life... well, you'll see the Laughers tonight. And it'll be damn hard to suggest that this is still Earth with those running around."
He went very still as he listened to her, mostly because he was drawing his breath in through his nose. The air was...clearer here in a muggy forest than it was up in the peaks in B.C. That was odd. "Laughers." Bazzer had mentioned those, hadn't he? "They are why you guys sleep up in that massive tree?" He glanced at her as he bent back to continue picking. She hadn't stopped while she talked, so he gathered the urgency of getting this harvest done.
"Yeah. I mean, I work with plants. But it doesn't take a genius to see that they live so close by because we show up and people... don't have claws, don't have teeth, don't have armor or spines or poison and can't run quick. We're their main prey. For the pack here, anyway. It took Ken - he's our army guy - three rounds to put one down, and they were all good shots. I saw them. It's scary. In any case, we dare not be on the ground. You're just lucky you came on the right side of dawn. A few days ago a man and a woman got here before the sun came up and... yeah." Rowan broke open another yarn ball to check the color and found the butter yellow color that Helena had been so pleased with before she'd left. That made her happy, and she added it to the basket. "They're smart, too. They know exactly how to put out a fire. Lovely thought, huh?"
He was a subtly emotive kind of guy so Aaron's greatest response to that thought, smart vicious predators, was a drop in his normally ruddy colouring. He went rather ashy and took a moment to just pick some of these strange fruit. "Yeah, not good," he conceded. After a few minutes he picked up on something she'd said earlier. "You're excited?" he turned his face toward her, baffled. "I would think you'd be worried. There isn't a midwife in the bunch, is there?" His mother's best friend was a midwife. He'd grown up knowing that birth in a hospital wasn't really necessary as long as the mother and baby were healthy. He thought Rowan looked a little skinnier than she should be but she had a healthy tan, her hair was thick and shiny where it was pulled away from her face. She had dark circles under her very pretty eyes, though.
"Thorne - he's our medical guy - he's handled births before. I have to admit, though, I was really looking forward to things like painkillers and doctors - except Thorne - and nurses. It's really freaky thinking about giving birth on a completely different world without those things. I'm a wuss at heart." Rowan said, apologetically. "But, y'know, it'll work out, right? Just gotta think positive, all that stuff. Watch it, flying leech." And she pointed to the little butterfly thing that was fluttering up to him.
Aaron was was more than six feet tall and almost one hundred and eight five pounds. He'd lived in every type of place imaginable. That didn't mean he didn't drop the basket and flail like a little girl when the winged bug tried to land on his face. "Jesus!" he panted, blue eyes wide, as the slightly battered creature flapped off in a different direction. "Flying leeches?" He gave Rowan an incredulous look.
She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah. You know. Little things, tend to live in ponds, like to suck blood? Just... here they look like pretty butterflies. And birds swoop down and eat them. Sometimes they'll land on you to pick leeches off, so if they do just leave them to it, I guess." Rowan was fine with the stirpips, since they performed a useful function and were kind of cute, too. "What else. Oh, we have flying lizards we call pesks because they like to steal shiny things. Little bat things with clear wings we call glasswings, eleboars which will kill you, afluffs which won't..."
Both of his golden brows crept upward. "So it's a full range ecology then. All kinds of animal life." He hadn't actually seen any of these animals except for what he assumed were the pesk lizards and the glasswings hanging from the high branches of the climber. "That is kind of interesting," he mumbled as he dropped another couple of the fruit into the basket. "I guess that's why you find this place so exciting? All of the new and really weird plants to look at?"
"It's not just that. It's..." She hesitated and blushed, but grinned at the same time. "It's a second chance, y'know? To get it right this time. We screwed up so badly on Earth... we can try again, start fresh. We just got to figure out how to do it right this time around."
His face went blank at that. Well, she was right. He knew better than the most, effects of what they had done to their own planet. His face moved through a series of emotions and finally he sighed. "I've done a lot of work for environmental groups and through my research and stuff," he shook his head. "It's been nothing but frustrating and disheartening, the fact the governments and people are so slow to come around to the changes. It might be too little, too late, right?" He heaved another sigh. "To live in an completely untouched world would be something else, but...is it worth giving up my family for?" He shook his head but it was clear that he wasn't sure.
Rowan nodded. "I know. But we weren't given a choice, either." She offered him a sympathetic smile. "We're bad people as it is. We've basically stripped the area of food. We're going to have to move on soon, as much as I'm loathe to admit it."
Aaron looked surprised and shocked that that. "Move on? Is that really the, um, best idea? Leaving the area might mean we miss our chance to get out of here. Someones got to drop people off. Maybe we can like...storm the gangplank or something." There was enough of them, right? Maybe they could get off this rock with they tried. Hell, Rowan had even mentioned a military guy with a gun. That had to be worth something.
"This is about twenty days for me. I've watched every night it's been possible. And there's no one dropping people off. They just appear. Poof. And it's either move on and let the area recover from our predations, or we start starving." Rowan pointed out gently, even if it was an argument she'd dearly love to stomp into the ground herself.
Twenty days? Her words sunk into his guts like stones. "Oh..." Yes, even in that single syllable crackled in his throat. He cleared it and bent his golden head to harvesting more of this odd fruit. "So you said you were moving on?" He glanced at her quickly before locking his eyes onto his hands again. "Where are you gonna go from here? And is it really wise with people showing up in the field?" Unable to keep his curious and troubled eyes off of her face, he looked up again.
"You're going to have to come too, y'know." Rowan gave him a half-smile. "There's apparently an island east of here. The plan is to go there, camp for a while, and then move on again. We're going to be nomads so that we don't royally fuck up the resources in any given area, as far as I know. I'm not looking forward to it personally..." she patted her belly, and got a kick for it, "but intellectually I know it's one of our better options. As for the field, well, we could post someone here to drag people into the trees and keep 'em around until relief comes, then take them to camp."
Aaron nodded mechanically. Of course, intellectually it made sense. A part of him, the activist part, the well informed scientist part, breathed a strange sigh of relief. Finally. Humans that understood what it took to be the caretakers of a world rather than it's dominators and ultimate destroyers. Could that mentality be maintained though? Could people who'd been raised in a sedentary society with the certain knowledge of grocery stores and health care really manage an indefinite wander? He wasn't so convinced. It was...a nice hypothesis to consider a fresh world to attempt to get the experiment of humanity to restart. That thought struck him and he stood still, lost in his thoughts for a long while with his hand outstretched toward a plant. After a few long heartbeats, he shook himself out of it. "Do you think that's why we're here?" He asked her as though she'd been privy to all of his internal considerations just then. "To try to get it right a second time?" If that was so, he'd certainly shot himself in the foot back home with all of his insistence that he'd love a chance to do just this.
"Well, being honest my first theory was that I was comatose and this was a really screwed up but rather cool dream. And the second was this was a giant wildlife preserve and they had to feed their animals something not endangered, aka us. I'm completely incapable of understanding the alien mind. Or mine, sometimes, really. But even if we're here for another reason entirely, I want to try it over and do it right this time." Rowan nodded to herself, and picked another couple of the strange fruit. "Alex - the priest - is gonna teach the baby religion, too, I hope. I was thinking of maybe trying to convince him to teach that God didn't say people should be masters of everything, but caretakers instead. Make it a religious thing, and people tend to follow along better."
That brought a quiet nod from Aaron for a moment. "Well, on the bright side," he finally contributed, "I could probably teach the baby biology." He chuckled. "I'd off botany as well, but I think you've got that better covered than me. Physics, maybe?" So they had a botanist and a environmental scientist and a priest, as far as the learned went. And Bazzer. Mustn't forget him. "Any hope that we have any engineers in the group?" he asked. "Or architects?" They were going to have to figure out some very fundamental technologies. Sooner, rather than later.
"We had a smart-ass named Arlo." Ro offered. "If that counts."
Aaron chuckled and shook his head as he moved a little further into the clearing full of yarnball plants. "Not unless you want your kid to learn how to be like him," he pointed out. "I was just wondering if it would be possible to build something more permanent habitats than hammocks in the tree. Is it cold at night?" He'd yet to experience one but he wasn't too worried about himself. He had a thick winter weight sleeping bag and lots of clothing. Rowan's belly barely fit in her tank top it seemed.
"Not really, but it's been getting colder. I think I was right about this being the autumn season here." Rowan noted, looking up at the sky, towards the sun, but she didn't look directly at it of course. She pushed a few strands of hair out of the way of her face. "If that Jasper chick were here, she might know." Ro decided. "She's apparently into that kind of stuff. Real survival buff sort of thing, from what I understand. But she followed Arlo, as far as I know, and I haven't seen either of them since."
"Well, I know a think or two about survival," Aaron said as he dropped some more of these strange fruit into his now-full basket. "I've done all season camping since I was just a little kid." He shrugged a shoulder. "East, north and west coasts. I can tell you one thing. I've seen those guys walking around, no shirts, no shoes. If the weather shifts colder, maybe even in to a winter?" He shook his head. "No one could survive in that tree. We're going to need real shelter," it almost hurt to lump himself into that group. "Some sort of place where we can have fires for warmth and make some kind of shelter that will keep body heat inside. And I hope Bazzer's having some luck with that leather project of his. I'd hate to see you lose your toes." He offered her sympathetic smile. She wore filthy, holey socks on her feet and he knew that wouldn't cut it.
"I'm not worried about my feet." Rowan said, with a slight grin. "I'm more worried about keeping the baby warm when he or she's born. That's my first priority." She patted her tummy, and laughed when the baby kicked the spot that she'd touched. "If we were back home, I'd say I have a potential soccer player in here."
Aaron gave her a little smile. He liked kids. He thought he'd make a great dad some day. However, he didn't think this place was the best place to have one. After all, the didn't even have the technology to make cloth diapers for her child. Let alone the idea that just came to him. Something about insulated swaddling clothes made with an old blanket and some bird down. There were birds here. He'd noticed them and they could be noisy. He had noticed, though that they were typically quieter than the birds back home. He wondered why that was.
Rowan was one of those women who didn't mind random people touching her tummy to feel the baby kick, so she just randomly took Aaron's hand and pressed it where the baby was kicking to show off. She was proud of her little sprogling already. "There, see that? That's a hard-kickin' kiddo!"
He had to chuckle as she captured his hand. He nodded, his eyes lighting up a lot more than they had so far that day, feeling the insistent bumps under his broad sticky hand. "That's amazing. Bet it never gets old." He knew pregnant women complained about it sometime and he could see how it could become annoying, like someone lightly tapping you on the shoulder while you were trying to get some sleep. "I'm sure everything is going to be ok, Rowan." Aaron felt the need to be reassuring over and above what he actually felt.
"Depends on what he's kicking and when." Rowan grinned, and she nodded. "Yeah, I know. It'll all turn out okay in the end." Because it had too. It was just the way it was. "Come on, I'll show you the other edible stuff we have on hand, so you know what things aren't for eating at all."
Aaron smiled and bent to heft up his basket. The seeds of these fruit reminded him of pomegranets but they didn't have nearly as strong a flavor. Still, if they had nothing else, what they had gathered would feed them for the next couple of days. "Sure, show me." It was good to know. He watched her adjust the strap of her own over-the-shoulder basket and almost offered to carry that for her as well but she was off like a very determined shot and it was all that Aaron could do to keep up.