analiese (anableue) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-07-06 11:50:00 |
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Current mood: | contemplative |
Entry tags: | analiese, coop, z - 1st tribe - day 27 |
A Lack of Coffee and Camp Gossip
Who: Analiese and Coop
When: Early in the morning
Where: In the camp
What: Discussing all of the fascinating things about pesks.
Rating: G, I expect.
Mornings were never Coop's favourite thing. Not by a long shot. She was slow to wake and it usually took a healthy quantity of coffee to get her feeling anything like human. Being cold and sleeping on the wet ground hadn't improved matters and when Tripper had finally forced her out from underneath the cart that they had shared with Adnan, she'd blearily stumbled after him into the nearby bushes. He was so used to being on a leash in public, the poor guy hadn't been able to sneak away to tend his own business without his usual look out.
Somehow, Coop had managed to not get them lost and had returned to the center of the camp where she procured a big handful of dried grazer strips. They were salty but savory and tasted heavily of smoke. It took some coaxing but she managed to get the finicky dog to eat the jerky, all the while Tripper looked at her with one guilty eye. He knew darn well he wasn't supposed to eat people food but sadly his hunter instincts were atrophied by a lifetime of domestication.
Without the blessed ambrosia that was coffee, Coop sat dully, blinking miserably at this fantasy world-come-reality, nibbling on a strip of jerky herself. As she became more aware of her surroundings, Coop noticed the blonde girl with the cardigan sweater (jealous) was stripping a nearby bush of leaves. One of the branches, anyways. These, she deposited into a basket before returning to the main portion of camp. She made her way over to a small stack of cages and Coop became aware that there was a chittering sound coming from that direction. A pet of some kind? Curious, Coop got up and hugged Adnan's jacket more tightly around herself before wandering over to investigate.
Analiese had decided to take the pesks on as a project the previous day, after the storm had ended. Someone had thought to cover up their cages, but when she'd wandered past and began uncovering them, she'd seen how skittish and miserable the little creatures had seemed. They were trapped in cages; of course the storms would have been scary for them since they had no way to escape. They were actually sort of cute even though they had scales instead of fur. She knew that everyone was hoping they'd breed and produce more eggs, but once she'd started looking them over (and it had been very peculiar to lift their tails to try to get a look at their junk. Very invasive) she'd decided that a couple of the cages were same-sex, which wouldn't be very effective for breeding purposes. She'd asked several people who'd been at the other camp what they'd seen the creatures eat, and she was currently working on gathering both food and nesting materials for them.
The newest arrival approached, and Analiese smiled to see her wearing Adnan's jacket. What a nice guy he was to be loaning out his clothes to people who needed them instead of keeping them for himself, she thought. "Hi," she said to the brunette, who looked partially asleep still.
Coop managed a sleepy smile and a little wave. Her big ol' mutt was practically hiding under her skirt and she dropped her gaze to sigh in resigned frustration at him. "Hi, don't mind him. Something he heard last night spooked him." She shook her head as though that hang dog routine was the saddest thing she'd ever seen. "I noticed these cages. I was just wondering what was in them." Bending at the waist, Coop blinked sleepily at something that appeared to be halfway between a squirrel and a lizard. To her surprise, when she got close, the little creature's colouring started to change to match his background. "Holy crap, it's changing colour," she pointed out stupidly, as though this was news to everyone.
Analiese would have loved to pet the dog, but he didn't look as if he'd welcome her attentions right then, so she didn't. "I don't blame him," she said with a smile. "It can be creepy around here." Vast understatement, that, but she didn't need to work herself or Coop into a fit of paranoia. "They do that," she said when the other woman noticed the pesk's color change. "I guess it's a defense mechanism. People call 'em pesks... they brought these guys from the other camp." She'd finally gotten their cages like she wanted them, with pieces of wood for them to hide behind, lots of nesting material and some of Ryan's discarded bits of clay to hold water for them to drink. To her delight, one of the pairs of pesks had already started to build a nest in one corner of their cage.
"They're...oddly cute, aren't they?" Coop smiled and straightened up as she looked at Analiese. "My name's Coop. He's Tripper. Are these little guys your pets?" she asked, grabbing Tripper by the collar as the dog came to realize there were interesting little animals in the cages. Coop couldn't see that the pesks were good for eating. There couldn't be much more meat on their tiny bones than you'd find on a chicken wing. "Why are they called pesks?" she wondered, bemused by how these tiny creatures got saddled with such a disparaging name.
"I'm Analiese," she introduced herself. "They're not my pets really... but I need somethin' to do, so I thought I'd take care of them. They were brought from the other camp for their eggs, 'cause apparently the eggs are good to eat if you boil them. These haven't been layin', though, and I think it was because they're stressed out and I found one boy-boy and one girl-girl cage." She giggled. "I'm not sure why; that's just what everyone who was at the other camp was calling them." She knelt down and offered a hand in Tripper's direction, just to see if he'd take her up on it.
"Nice to meet you," Coop said, her smile still very bleary and blinky as she ever so slowly eased into the socially capable setting of her personality. She nudged Tripper with her knee when Analiese made her overture - a motion he was very obviously ignoring in favor of everywhere else. He looked up at his mistress though, the moment he got the nudge. "Be polite," she told him. Tripper huffed in a very human manner before stepping out from Coop's shadow and nudging his cool moist nose into her hand.
Coop's attention moved back to the little creatures in the cage. "They don't seem so bad." They had a faint chittering noise which seemed almost conversational between them but otherwise they weren't moving around too much. "And they eat those leaves there?" The pair in the nearest cage were inching ever so slowly forward to investigate what Analiese had slipped into their cage.
"Aren't you pretty?" Analiese cooed to the dog in the same sort of voice that many people used when talking to animals. "Yes, you are!" She rubbed his head and then straightened up to move closer to the cages again. "Far as I can tell, they like leaves, bark, berries... I think I've seen 'em eating bugs, too," she said, her nose wrinkling. "Couldn't tell for sure, because by the time I got close enough to see for sure, they were done." She shrugged a shoulder. "I keep waitin' for one of them to bite me when I stick my hand into a cage, but they haven't yet."
"So they're nice pesks," Coop said as she bent further over to examine the nest that was being built in the corner of one of the cages. "And egg layers too, which is a very awesome thing." They needed more eggs in their diet. It was a nice change from red meat or fish. "I hope they adjust to life here. You know, in captivity." She offered Analiese a smile as she straightened up. "A thriving pesk-house full of eggs would probably be a great help." She gave Analiese a sheepish smile. "Sorry, I'm not the most thrilling conversationalist in the morning. Didn't sleep so well last night."
"No need to apologize," Analiese told her. "I don't know if anyone sleeps all that great on the ground. At least I've got blankets, but it's not the most comfortable thing ever. Like bein' at camp, but you never get to go home." She made sure she'd put leaves in each cage and checked all the latches, making a mental note to come and check on the small creatures later on to make sure they weren't getting too much direct sun. "So where're you from?" she wanted to know.
"Ah, originally? Waaay up north in Ontario. It's a place called Elk City. It's barely on the map, it's so small." She chuckled. "Mostly a mining town. My dad was a foreman." Seeing that Analiese was done with the little animals, she moved back toward the fire at a conversational pace. She ladled some spring water out of a bucket with one of the cleaned out mugs Ryan had made. "I'd give anything for some coffee," she sighed, before continuing. "But I was a trucker, lived out of my tractor. Tripper and I were taken from a truck stop outside of Roswell, New Mexico. What about you?" She sipped the water, warm near-black eyes fixed on the girl she was strolling with.
"Aaron's from somewhere in Canada!" Analiese exclaimed. "I think somebody else is too... not sure who, though." There were so many different stories, so many places even with a relatively small group. She watched Coop getting her water and chuckled when she wished for coffee. "Seriously. I'm finally not havin' headaches in the morning." Caffeine withdrawal was a bitch; she'd have to feel for anyone who smoked or had a major craving for alcohol, too. There was no way to get any of that here. "I'm from Tennessee," she said in response to Coop's question. "Pigeon Forge. It's near the Smoky Mountains." A lot of people had heard of the Smokies even if they hadn't heard of her small town.
Coop's face lit up. "I know the area," she said. "It's lovely country. I really like most mountainous areas. They're a challenge." Coop could thread a needle with just about any vehicle but when she was sporting a full load hairpin turns and steep inclines could bring beads of sweat out on her brow and her heart up into her stomach though. Still, despite the fear, Coop liked the thrills. Her gaze turned to the north, to the distant and hazy blue peaks. "I guess there are no roads up in those mountains. Probably some amazing views though."
"Maybe." Analiese looked in the same direction Coop had, but her tone sounded doubtful. It wasn't so much that she doubted the potential loveliness of the view, more that she was having about as much adventure as she could comfortably handle. The thought of having to travel all that distance in sock feet made her want to collapse in a heap and never get up again. "Views of a lot of purple." She smiled, trying to lighten up her mood. No point worrying over things that might never happen, as her mother had always been prone to say.
"Yeah, that's weird, huh?" Coop squinted out across the camp to the purple leaved bushes. "I never thought I'd miss the colour green so much from the landscape. Especially considering we're not in the city." She'd been known to get a little crazy when stopped over too long in the urban jungle. Coop needed wide open places and sweeping swaths of sky to feel at ease. Born and raised rough in the woods of northern Ontario, she just wasn't cut out for pavement and glass.
"I feel like I'm in some kind of Disney movie," Analiese said. "Everything's strange colors, and even the animals and plants aren't what they should be. Either that or a Dr. Seuss book. Did they have those in Canada?" She tucked her hair behind her ears and then shook her head. "Sorry," she said with a sheepish sort of smile. "I have this bad habit of babbling sometimes." It was something she kept thinking would improve as she got older, but it hadn't seemed to yet.
Coop smiled. "Yeah, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. The Cat In The Hat. Green Eggs and Ham? I know what you mean." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Funny thing though, since I brushed my teeth with one of those twigs you gave me last night, I can't taste diesel fuel anymore." She flashed the blonde woman a swift but bright smile. Obviously, Coop was coming around to the idea of wakefulness. "That's a first in the last six years."
"Those things are incredible," Analiese said. "I was just dying inside at the thought of never getting to brush my teeth, and really they're just as good as a toothbrush. So far anyway." It made her wonder what other things were out here to be discovered. She needed to talk to Delilah again, maybe get her to read some more of the notebook to find out.
Coop smiled. "Seems amazing, doesn't it? Pods with hand soap inside them. Minty flavored twigs? Almost like we're in some bizarre version of our own world where everything is nature instead of machine." She drew in a deep breath as though savoring that nature and letting it out again. "I could live without plastic and exhaust." She smiled at Ana but diverted from telling her that she'd grown up drawing her baths from a well. That she'd done her first math homework via candle light in a cabin her father had built with his own hands. It occurred to Coop that she might be able to help these people some. Help them to accept a simpler life. That thought brought an uplifting feeling inside her.
Analiese giggled. "It's not Bath and Body Works, but I'm grateful to have soap. Just to be honest, I'm not sure I'm gonna like livin' without makeup." She'd always been a girl who didn't like people to see her without it... not that she had any choice in the matter these days. She was the girliest of girls ordinarily, and catching fish with her bare hands and wrangling small rodent/lizard creatures was quite a departure for her. "People were always talkin' about global warming and about how we were killin' the environment," she mused. "This is such an extreme opposite to what most of us are used to, though."
Coop nodded in agreement. "It sure is. I can't imagine life without...well, wheels. Sure, I drove a diesel truck but I tried to minimize in other ways. I didn't keep a house, so I never used up too much water or electricity. I recycled just about everything. Up in Canada they even have food waste recycling in the big cities. You could find the bins at truck stops. Never noticed anything like that in the States though." She smiled and shrugged. "I used fans where I could have used A/C. Drove with the windows down, you know?" She sighed and shrugged. "But I still drove a diesel truck. Maybe this place is some kind of punishment for not being observant enough." She shook her head sadly.
"I lived in the mountains, so we kept our windows open a lot instead of usin' A/C," Analiese offered. "It was usually cool there at night even if it was summer." They'd even had a compost bin in the back garden, but that had been about as far as the recycling went. Analiese had just started using cloth shopping bags when she went to Wal Mart or to the grocery store for her mom sometimes. She smiled weakly when Coop said maybe they were being punished. "It kinda feels like it sometimes. A week ago, my worst problem was my boyfriend dumpin' me."
"Aww, I'm sorry about that," Coop said with genuine feeling. She even reached out and patted the other girl on the shoulder. "I haven't had a boyfriend in ages. I move around too much. But my brothers have probably already noticed I'm gone." She frowned. Her mother, May, bless her, was far too much of a free spirit to have noticed her daughter gone right away. Rye called her almost daily, though. And if he hadn't been able to reach her for a day, he'd have called Shale and Forrest.
Glancing around the camp though, her eyes settled on plenty of broad shoulders and bare backs and shaggy bearded men. "Though there's plenty of guys hanging around here," she noted. "Maybe you'll meet someone new." One never knew!
"He was a jerk," Analiese said. Although she had to wonder what it said about her that she hadn't noticed that Luke was apparently dissatisfied. It had been a crushing blow from out of the blue when he'd told her he didn't want to see her anymore. "But yeah, there's some cute ones if I was lookin'. Which I'm not." She pulled the cardigan more tightly around herself almost defensively. How would it be possible to maintain a relationship out here with no hot water, no way to shave her legs and armpits, no makeup? "It's so weird to think about that stuff out here. An' I think some of the guys might be gay." Her voice lowered on that word, so nobody would overhear. She had no problem with people of any orientation, it was just that she'd grown up in a rural area where that sort of thing wasn't common at all. "Like the two guys that sleep with the pregnant girl? I kinda wonder about them. And another guy told me he was, so..." Her voice trailed off. Bazzer hadn't acted like it was any secret.
Coop had also come from a rural area. More than once her brothers had all gotten into fights because their mom was a hippy and their dad was just another broke Native mining foreman. It was their mother and the way she'd named the boys that did it. She still remembered Shale coming home from his first day in high school with 'queer' written on his forehead in permanent marker. Their mother had wrapped him up in a big hug and told him that gay or straight, white or black, purple or green, she loved her kids and would support them in anything. George's response had probably been more useful to the boys. He'd taken all three of them out into the back yard and taught them the basic elements of brawling. "Maybe," she mused, looking off toward the area that that trio shared. "The doctor and the potter, right? They seem pretty close." There was no judgment in her tone.
"Yeah, they do," Analiese said. "I heard someone say that they're gonna share a lean-to when they get one built." Which really, she didn't have a problem with. Not that it was her business anyway, but the trio was definitely a curiosity. "I bet the crying's going to be hard to get used to once the baby's born." She felt incredibly sorry for that poor girl that she'd have to give birth with no modern conveniences, and she was just glad it wasn't her. She glanced around before she spoke again, because yes, dammit, she was gossiping, but there had to be some small pleasure left in life, didn't there? "The great big guy who's been buildin' the lean-tos, the one who never says anything? Him and Helena are, you know--." Her eyebrows lifted. "--hooked up?"
Coop frowned slightly. Cross hadn't been easy to miss, he was easily the largest of several large men in their group. Scarred and yes, silent and grim, he might be blonde but he was certainly a dark horse in their midst. "Helena's the tiny Asian woman, right? One of the, um, council members?" She hadn't met her directly yet but she always seemed to be around, flitting here and there with people. Or sitting by the fire at night and knitting, of all things. It was hard to imagine that big scary guy going to bed at night with a knitter.
"That's her," Analiese said. "She's so friendly, knows how to do things-- we were fishin' the other day." She was embarrassed to say that she hadn't known how to kill a fish in front of Coop, who didn't look like she'd ever had a useless moment in her life. The woman was a truck driver. That said it all in Analiese's opinion. "Anyway, she told me they were together." She couldn't see it herself, but she supposed she didn't have to. Maybe he was a lot different in private than he was in public. "I'd be afraid he'd roll over and crush me." She giggled and then stifled it with a hand over her mouth.
Coop giggled a bit at that as well. "I dunno, I tend to like big guys too." She took up some more water in her mug and had a sit down on one of the log benches. "You know, tall, broad shoulders." She nodded again. "I'm not really tall myself," which wasn't any fast breaking news. In her bare feet, Coop was only about five foot four. "I guess I just like that feeling of being all wrapped up in a hug." She chuckled. "Plus, in a place like this, it's probably a good idea to have the biggest guy on your side." Strange wild animals and tough wilderness.
"My last boyfriend was only a couple inches taller than me," Analiese said idly, "but the one before that was like, 6'5". He's the one I should've held on to." Not because of his height but because she'd been crazy about him. He'd been the one she'd finally given her virginity up to at the advanced age of twenty-three. She sighed and stretched, carding her fingers through her hair, which hung loose around her shoulders. "I dunno about men... what I really want is to find some shoes." She was concerned for what might happen once she wore holes in her socks.
Coop had to laugh at that but she smothered it quickly with her hand, her laugh tending to be a bit lusty when she let it go. "That's pretty funny, but I can understand that." She wiggled her bare toes at the hem of her long skirt. "Something on my feet would be a real blessing. It's not like there's a shoe store just down the beach though." She was resigned to the fact that she was probably going shoeless. That is, until someone figured out how to make moccasins. It wasn't a pleasant thought for Coop, given she liked to keep on the move.
"There isn't," Analiese sighed in agreement. She was lucky she had socks; she couldn't imagine having to make a walk like the one they'd undertaken to come here with absolutely nothing on her feet. "I kinda envy the people who fell asleep in their clothes, with their shoes on." There were several of those, she knew. On the other hand, she was pleased to have soft and comfortable bedding and a pillow. There was no way to recreate the things they needed once they wore out, though. That was going to be a problem. She suppressed a mild flutter of panic at the thought of being here long enough for that to happen.
Coop gave her a pat. "If we could get some leather I could probably make...well, fairly okay sandals." She chuckled and shook her head. "My mom was such a hippy. She hated paying retail prices if she could avoid it. Giving money to the 'man'," she mimed the quotations even as her cheeks turned ruddy with embarrassment. It wasn't just her brothers that had taken all of the ribbing for their unconventional parents. Not by a long shot. However, she was starting to wonder if maybe there was a place for a truck driver in a world without engines after all. Especially one with her odd upbringing.
"The only leather I know of is the skins Bazzer's tanning," Analiese said. "An' I think they're supposed to be used for clothes. They're probably not hard enough to be shoes. Have you been over there? It's so nasty!" She leaned in as if about to impart some confidence to Coop. "They pee on those things. All the guys. If you walk too close, the smell just chokes you." She was glad it didn't fall to her to tan skins, because she'd lose her lunch every time she had to work with them. There were a lot of gross things about this new life of theirs, including stuff like no toilet paper and no way to shave, but that was just too much.
Coop's nose crinkled up in disgust. "No way." Her dad had hunted, all of her early life. She grew accustomed to sometimes during deer season having a deer hanging and draining from the tree next to the drive way. Usually only when her mother was away on one of her trips. Charlie Cooper took care of all of the real mess, though. He turned in his pelts at the reserve, so Coop never really knew how they went from being a horrific mess to a useful yardage of leather. "Hmm. Well I don't know if wood would be any good for sandals," she pointed out. "No flex, even if they would protect you from sharp rocks. Ugh, and they'd probably give you splinters."
"Promise," Analiese said. "All you'd have to do was get within five feet of 'em to know it was true." She smirked. "How would anyone cut wood for the sandals?" she wanted to know. "I think a couple people have pocketknives and things like that, but no way would that work. Adnan's tryin' to make axe blades, but you couldn't get much precision with those, right?" She didn't know a great deal about that sort of thing, but it stood to reason. "I think we're just out of luck unless we happen to find some like a couple people have."
Coop's brows raised in surprise. "People have found shoes? Like...where?" If this was gospel she'd start looking immediately. Leave no stone unturned, no bush un-peeked-under. The sandy beach was ok it was just that the island got stonier the closer to the creek. Not to mention it sucked to have cold and wet feet yesterday no matter what. And she was pretty sure she'd stepped in something unsavory left behind by a grazer the night before.
"I'm not sure exactly where," Analiese said. "Delilah found some the other day, but I don't know exactly where she was. I think Ryan-- the potter?-- did too, but that was before they moved to this camp." A little reluctantly, she added, "I guess it's stuff that people who were here before left, or people who... got eaten by those things." She meant the laughers, which she thought was a stupid-ass name for them actually. There was nothing humorous about them whatsoever in her opinion.
Coop's dark eyes were wide as pits but she nodded her understanding. "Do they really eat people? I mean, you can't really see them from this side of the lake and the noises they make are kind of...chilling. Someone mentioned around the camp last night that if a laugher had a choice between an armed human and a sleeping grazer, it would still take the human." She frowned, shaking her head. "How can anyone here even know that?" It was horrifying to admit that one wasn't at the top of the food chain anymore.
Despite the fact that it was daylight, Analiese felt as if they were telling ghost stories. She eased closer to Coop on the log without realizing she'd done so. "That's what people who've been at the other camp say," she murmured. "Someone told me they ate a couple people who woke up here, like we did. Like, one mornin'? And there was nothing anybody could do." She tucked her hair behind her ears and shivered, glad that she hadn't been around here then. That would have been horrible to listen to.
Coop, ever of a ruddy complexion, paled a few shades. "No way," she murmured. Her own arrival had been traumatizing enough, waking up half drowned in the surf. She couldn't even imagine the terror or waking up to being eaten by monsters. It brought back all sorts of terrible memories involving the closets or under the bed at night. She hunkered down into Adnan's jacket a bit further. "I guess we're lucky that they found this little island then," she said.
"Yeah," Analiese agreed. "Whenever I get to feelin' sorry for myself for being here, I think about stuff like that. I hope I don't ever have to see one of 'em up close." She was a little bit afraid of snarly animals anyway; she figured that came from being bitten by one of the neighbor's hound dogs when she'd been about four. Her daddy'd been standing right there, but he hadn't realized the dog had been about to go for her. Rabies shots were quite an ordeal when you were four.
Tripper was more goofy than snarly and as such he seemed to be making a bunch of friends in the camp. As other people emerged from where they were sleeping and started to move around them, Coop wasn't surprised that he seemed to forget about his nighttime worries and trot off to say good morning. Still, she nodded gravely. "Yeah, I bet. That's one thing to be grateful for with this place." She'd heard stories about sleeping in a tree in an uncomfortable blanket hammock. She thought she preferred the ground, from the sound of things.
"Yeah," Analiese agreed with a smile and a shrug. She could count her blessings all day long, but she was having trouble feeling truly blessed at this moment. She rose to her feet, stretching and then brushing off the seat of her leggings. "I'm gonna go get somethin' to drink. Talk to you later, okay?" She was feeling strangely restless; maybe the walk to the spring would do her good.
Coop nodded, both hands still wrapped around the rough-made mug of water. "Sure, be safe," she said to the blonde girl from Tennessee. "See you later." She watched Analiese head off toward the path that led to the spring and had the overwhelming urge to go walk with her. Instead, she just curled up a little more inside of Adnan's jacket and tossed a nearby broken bit of branch into the fire. Sure this place was dangerous, but Analiese had made it a few more days than Coop had. It wouldn't hurt her to cultivate a bit of a bravery that let people wander on down paths on their own. No, that would only do her good.