Gift Exchanges And Girl Talk
Who: Rowan and Helena What: Friend-time! When: Early morning Where: The Beach
She had thought that she would be too uncomfortable to share a habitat with Cross once everyone arrived and had somewhat dodged the question by offering the lean-to for Rowan to use, or anyone else who was particular road-weary. Her tall and quiet partner in crime had born this development without comment but she had to admit that she was still somewhat pleased when Cross had folded himself into his blanket at her back once the camp had settled down. Everyone had wanted to celebrate the night before but the truth was, they were all too tired to do so. By the time the carts and people were transported, all Helena and Cross had been able to do was offer them some of the delicious steamed clams and circle everyone around the stoked fire pit.
The movements of the grazers were louder than the distant laughing but still, Helena had slept fitfully, nudging Cross enough times in the kidneys that he'd shuffled a couple of feet away from her by morning. She flopped onto her back at dawn and blinked up at the many stars, feeling dizzy, as though she could feel the earth moving underneath her rather than view the stars turning above her. She had to get up and walk a bit, she decided.
Taking up her half full bottle of water, Helena walked aimlessly down to the beach, mindful of the wandering pairs or family groups of drowsy grazers and their leavings, she found a clear stretch of beach to sit and watch the sun come up. Maybe to dig some clams for the noon meal.
Rowan, on the other hand, didn't sleep fitfully due to laughers so much as having a baby making her want to pee. Again. For the umpteeth million time. But she managed to accomplish it, as she always did, and decided she was unable to sleep now because she had this feeling that somehow, just somehow, there was going to be some sort of grazing beastie licking her awake in the morning if she did sleep. So she meandered over to the beach.
Like the predator that humans (didn't really) evolved from, her eyes lit on Helena. And feeling capable of more than one-word-sentences today, she started sneaking up on her. Badly, but Rowan at least tried.
Hearing light bare footfalls on sand behind her, Helena peeked over her shoulder and caught sight of Rowan. "How did you get like ten times more enormous In just a week?" she asked, stabbing the dull end of the bottle into the sand and getting up to meet her dearly missed friend. Theyd barely had enough time for a fierce and brief hug the previous night before she was wading into the water to help the others onto the shore, getting people settled and being debriefed by Kenneth. It had been a whirlwind that she hadn't quite been ready for. Their group was so much bigger now.
"I'm not bigger! I'm more buoyant." Rowan laughed softly and reached out for a new hug from Helena. One that could be done while she was awake. That would be awesome. "Oh, lord, I've missed you so much. I was so worried that you were, y'know, not going to be around anymore." Rowan couldn't bring herself to say the word 'dead' and probably wouldn't ever in reference to her best girl friend here. "And I have a present for you."
She could understand the fear that she was gone and not coming back. Kenneth had the same look on his face when he'd slogged out of the unfathomable black lake and clapped eyes on her and the little camp. "I'm glad you made it. I told you that you could tough it out. And if you really want a hammock to sleep in I will build you one with a roof that's only like, three feet off the ground. I promise." She pulled back from the hug to give Ro a fond smile. "I have a present for you too, but it's back at camp. I can run and get it and then we can have an exchange. What do you say?"
"A gifting exchange. I like this idea." Rowan grinned, and smooched Helena's cheek. "That's a good plan." She paused. "I don't know if you saw last night, but Arlo came back." Ro shrugged a little with a rueful little grin. "Is it wrong to admit I kind of missed him because he could reach tall things?"
Helena had heard a little bit about Arlo's journey the night before and she patted Rowan on the shoulder. "We need everyone we can get. Especially the strong guys who can build things. I'll be right back!" She whirled and ran back to the camp, light on her toes. She had to slow down to edge around sleeping bodies but she made it to the lean-to and, leaning carefully over Thorne's head, plucked the massive roc feather from the depths and secreted away again. Returning to Rowan, she held the three foot long feather behind her back.
"What the hell Helena? Did you sprout a tail or sommat?" Rowan gave her a puzzled expression, and went over to the basket she'd left on the ground, and (with a bit of a struggle) she picked it up to present to Helena. "Here! Thread! A lot of it!"
Helena took the basket with one hand to help steady it, peering over the edge with enthusiasm. "Oh, wow! Oh that's amazing! I've managed a full spindle of blue and orange here but that's all I've had time for!" In the breaking dawn she could make out a creamy white spindle and a verdant green one. There was red and a much paler pink. "This colour will make great socks for Meredith," she said as she touched the pink one. "Well your gift is much better than mine." She lifted the gray and peach coloured feather to show her. "You'll never believe the story behind this feather," she told her.
"Oh my god that is so awesome!" Rowan was apparently delighted with the feather, because she took it and swooshed it around the air a few times. "Ha! Damn, this is like the king of all feathers! Pigeons would declare me queen, yo!" Then she perked up. "Tell me this story. I want to hear it."
Helena sat with the basket between her knees to inventory the spindles of thread. She eyed a buttery yellow that was particularly fat on it's spindle and wondered if she could use it to get started on the poncho she wanted to make for Ro. "Well Cross and I made it to the spindle tree camp just as the day was ending and while we were getting ready to climb the trees we noticed that there was a family of grazers stampeding toward us. It took us a minute to notice that there was something hunting the grazers, this enormous bird. So big that I had thought it was a plane at first because it was flying right out of the sunset. It just dropped into this steed dive and snatched a grazer right off the ground, not twenty yards from the edge of the spindle trees. It carried it off but left the feather behind."
"Crazy! For real?! No, no. I have a feather. I have proof. Goddamn this is an awesome feather." Rowan was obviously pleased with her gift, and whooshed it around a bit more for no real reason other than she liked to do it. "Good thing you guys were in the trees, because that is totally not be a good thing that there are giant-ass birds fluttering around. Like, at all. That's a bad thing."
"It's the only one we've seen," Helena pointed out as she unscrewed the cap on her water bottle and took a sip. "I keep an eye on the sky most of the time, if I can. My hope is to kind of make the camp built up enough that we can duck under thatched roofs if we spot another one." She shrugged her thin shoulders. "One other thing to toss on the pile of concerns." She shook her head and sighed. "There's so much to get done."
"Well..." Rowan said thoughtfully, "we could always start with building you a basic loom, if you want. Then we could have rough cloth to make more clothes from, and everything is better with pants."
Chuckling, Helena rubbed and the goosebumps on her legs. "I guess pants wouldn't be too difficult to make out of cloth, at least pants that could keep you warm, if not look awesome. But how do you cut the fabric? The knives won't work. And how do you prevent the cloth from totally unwinding when you cut it?" She was curious. She knew how a loom worked in theory, but not in pratice.
"Fine, fine. We'll make skirts and call them kilts or robes. But I'm pretty sure we could sew the edges all the way around something we wove to keep it from coming unraveled." Rowan looked at the sky, considering. "I mean, really, robes are just fabric that's belted around to be proper clothes..." Ro swept her feather through the air a couple more times before trying to puzzle this out.
Helena smiled. "I had this image of knitting long skirts and tall socks if the weather keeps getting colder. Then sweaters, mittens, scarfs and hats. Maybe even ponchos or shawls. Layering, I guess we'll really have to do that." She dug her bare toes into the cool damp sand. "I can knit really fast but not that fast. Can you knit?" She gave her friend a curious look. Soon they would have to do booties and layers of blankets for little Nameless. "I'll do my best to knit pants for the guys but they might have to do with skirts as well." She gave her friend a wry smile. "Can you immagine Ken walking around in a wool skirt? Or Arlo, for that matter?" She chuckled at the thought.
"I can totally see Ken in a kilt. Arlo... well, I'm sure he'll learn how to wear the bleeding hides of freshly killed animals to maintain his manliness. Or something." Rowan snorted, then shook her head. "I can't knit worth a damn, but I can weave grass and fabric's not going to be that far off to do, I'm sure. And even just trying to work my way through it will give me something to do. I can barely bend over anymore."
Helena chuckled and patted her friend's knee affectionately. "You haven't got too much longer to go, Ro. What are you now? About 28 weeks? Maybe 29?" She herself had never made it that far in any of her pregnancies. Just acknowledging that to herself gave her a twinge of jealousy which she put aside with a sigh of impatience.
"God, I don't know. Um. This would be about twenty days since I got here, right? So about forty more days to go, I'd guess. I could be totally wrong." Rowan thought about it. "It's not as if the due date has much meaning here; I don't think we have the same number of hours in a day, even if that's just a guess."
Helena frowned, musing. "Yeah, I feel like that's true. The days seem longer, even though they're shortening. The nights are getting longer and the days are getting shorter but even so, all together, there feels like there's more hours in the day." Quirks a smile. "Didn't we used to wish for more hours in the day?" She chuckled because she knew she had. She just never seemed to manage making it to the grocery, the doctors, the dry cleaners and work.
"Yeah. I got cranky if I didn't have time for my nap." Rowan laughed. "Here, show me what you were doing. I want to help. Me and the feather of awesome will help you hang out in the water, if you want." She grinned at Helena, and then suddenly swooped on her and gave her another hug that was squishy. "Goddamn I missed having you in my bed in a totally platonic way, Helena!"
Helena laughed and clung to her friend. "Oh I dunno, I saw you with Thorne and Ryan last night. Are you wedging yourself in with two of our goodlooking young men, Rowan?" she demanded to know in a mock-repremanding tone. "You Jezebel." She chuckled again. She'd heard some rumors about the cause of the upset between Bazzer and Thorne and Thorne's somewhat freeloving practices. She wouldn't hold it against Rowan if she had taken up with the boys. An extra pair of hands or two would only help her once the baby arrived.
"They, they've got this thing called 'body heat' which is nice and I like to exploit." Rowan still managed to say that with a somewhat smug look on her face. She thought the entire thing was rather funny now that she wasn't freaking out over the move. "I gots me a harem, yo. A temporary one, at least. I'm sure they'll get sick of getting kicked by baby and by me at some point. Besides, who came with you to the island? He's got the look, too." Rowan asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Cross?" Helena asked with raised eyebrows. "What look?" She actually laughed as she said it because Helena herself always found his face so inscrutable. He was still water running so deep he was definitely out of her reach. Oh sure, he'd share his thoughts as long as she didn't ask anything fanciful. "He's a good heater too, though. I really need to make myself warmer cloths."
"Tall, mysterious... not really dark, though. But tall, mysterious..." She nudged Helena playfully. "Shacking up with him? Helena, you harlot you!"
Helena rolled her eyes heavenward but the teasing did give her a secret little thrill. Shaked up with Cross? Well she was as close as you could get without actually being shaked up with someone. They slept in the same bedding at night, even when they didn't actually mean to. She could be stubborn and try to be strong all she wanter but at the end of the day, he was more so. Wherever she laid down to sleep, it was inevitable that he'd lie down at her back. He was...reliable that way. "Hardly. I'm not even sure if my first impression was right about how he felt about me. I could have sworn he was in to me but he's never given me a nod any time I've left him an opening." Except for that one sunny morning when they'd still been here alone, in the lean-to, when they were mostly still asleep...
Rowan leaned over, with some effort, and picked up a random leg bone. It was old and sun bleached, and the marrow inside had been scraped away by sand and time. She wasn't sure why she picked it up, but just because for now, she supposed. "Take your time with it, Hel." Ro advised. "It's more fun discovering all the bits and pieces of people, drawing it out, always leaving something to be discovered later on."
Helena nodded. "You're right. I know. I guess I'm just a little bit impatient for some sort of gesture." She frowned down at her hands. "Hmm, but he's given them I guess. Just not the kind I'm used to." She cocked her head slightly, thinking. Gathing up what she knew of Cross and their many conversations he was short on words but she'd never had much trouble really feeling what he meant. She'd stated out loud to him at least once that she knew he cared for her. He hadn't answered in words, but he'd insisted she not go out to this island alone. He'd suffered worse sunburns mostly without complaint to be here with her. He kept her warm at night, and all of that gathered up kindled a fresh warmth in her. She didn't have anything to worry about. In his own way, he'd already claimed her. Some day he'd get around to telling her. "Come on," she patted Ro on the knee and stood up with a groan before offering her hands to the preggo. "Let's go find your space heaters and get them to help us get breakfast going."
"Hey, they're space heaters that are awesome." Rowan protested with a laugh, and stood up slowly, with Helena's help, so that she didn't overbalance. "Oof. Helena, I'm so fat." She sighed and stretched, popping her back. "I'm like a damn beachball with legs."
Helena chuckled and put an arm around her friend. "It's only gonna get worse from here, babes." She said it with a grin, as the sauntered back in to what would become their village.