etherslide (etherslide) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-07-29 10:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | helena, rowan, z - 1st tribe - day 30 |
Somewhere Between Dr. Who and Star Trek
Who: Helena and Rowan, the sexiest ladies of the land
Where: Helena's house
When: Morning
Rating: Probably G
Between stupid dogs spilling her hard-won flour, and having had to find somewhere to store it where it wasn't going to turn to goo from rain or dew or whatever, Rowan had discovered that she was really bloody proud of herself. She'd made flour. Or a rough version thereof. It wasn't perfect but she'd done the best she could, and it was definitely better than just chewing on ripe grain. And Rowan knew the perfect person who could use the first sample.
Of course, finding Helena was another matter completely. Rowan was starting to wonder if she'd gone off with Cross for some Cross-lovin' good times.
Oh no, Helena hadn't strayed from the path of utter tribal devotion. That isn't to say it wouldn't have been nice to sneak off with Cross to some remote portion of the island. They certainly hadn't had any opportunities to..ahem...do that...since the first time. Well, they'd had the opportunity but not really the energy. They usually got about as far as a few kisses and squeezes before one of them apologetically fell asleep. Still, there were plenty of people to feed and so she was trudging back up the beach after having laid in some more clams to bake. She shaded her eyes and easily recognized the swaying waddle on the woman headed toward her. "Hey you! Done pounding sweetgrind for the moment?" Rowan had been pretty occupied with the task for the past few days.
"Helena, my dearest darlingest woman, I have a gift for you." And Rowan held up one of Ryan's creations, filled with the aforementioned roughly-ground flour. "So come and get it. Because I'm fat and I want to sit down."
Helena shook her head but she came further up from the beach anyways, "What is it?" she asked, curious. It was clearly one of Ryan's pots with a well fitted lid, and she'd seen Sophie helping Rowan pound flour and so she had a fairly good idea that it was something related to the grains. "I have some presents for you too! No sitting, follow me." She easily plucked the jar (noting it's weight) and set it against her hip to carry it as she looped her free arm through Rowan's and lead her along the outer ring of lean-tos. "Just finished them before I went to put the clams on."
Rowan linked arms with Helena. "Well, yay! Presents are awesome. Isn't it cool how we're so in sync we manage to make presents for each other at about the same time? Damn!" She laughed, happily waddling along with her. "So... I think... and I'm hoping I'm wrong... that my due date is about three weeks from now. Ish."
Helena nodded. "I was thinking that you might be right. I can't believe I've been here for a whole month. Sometimes it feels like forever and other days it feels like it's been incredibly fast." She shook her head as they reached the front of Helena and Cross's very nice lean-to with it's clay and straw mudded walls and thickly thatched roof. "Ok, you seat yourself here on my front porch," Helena set down the jar of flour before she took both of Rowan's hands and helped the woman lower herself to the ground. "And I'll duck in and grab your gift." She emerged just a few moments later with two wool bundles. "Ok, two things for you!" Helena said, excited as she knelt down, both arms curled around the gifts. "Do you want the big one or the little one first?"
"Oh! Little one! I wish for the little one first!" Rowan, of course, never objected to gifts. In fact, she happily accepted gifts of the random variety on earth, too. Well, sort of. She was reasonably sure that she'd never accept candy from a stranger, but it never really came up. Anyway, she patted a 'seat' next to her, so that Helena could sit too. "You're too high up. Come down to my level. Physically. Not mentally."
Chuckling, Helena sat and handed over the rolled together long stockings she'd made her friend. They were stripped like witch socks, emerald green and palest seafoam. "Here then. Those should pull all the way up to your thighs. It's sort of for sleeping or if the weather gets too cold. My toes are always freezing here."
"SOCKS!" Rowan had, quite literally, yelled with delight. However, she didn't put them on. "My feet are dirty right now. I'mma put them on later. Oh, man, maybe I should make some grass sandals, and start a new fashion trend." She cuddled the socks, obviously adoring them. "This is awesome. I love these. And the colors are so pretty! It's hard to imagine these just appearing in nature!"
"I know, but there's still this!" Helena presented her with the rolled up mottled blue poncho. It had started out as a sweater for Rook but when he disappeared, it had become a waist length poncho with nice big hood and arm slits. "Something to fit over your enormous stomach!" she grinned at her friend as she handed it over.
"Oooo!" The socks weren't forgotten, but they were temporarily ignored when she took the poncho and snapped it out, then started putting it on. The hood nearly swallowed her face, but Rowan loved it. "Helena, it's so soft! And it has so many shades of blue!" Rowan was definitely happy with her presents. "What I made for you is nothing in comparison to these!"
Helena shook her head. "Not true at all! You have no idea how happy Cross'll be to have some sort of bread in his diet." She wrapped one of her arms around her friend's shoulders. "Thanks so much for the flour, hun. It's fantastic and I know how hard you worked to make it!" She still couldn't help the pleased smile that had welled up in her though. It was nice to make something for a friend and have it well received.
"Well, I think that with Sophie's help we can definitely get some flatbread made for tomorrow. And we can make scrambled eggs in the cauldron again, and carved out some melon. We could have a really good breakfast for once. Almost like toast." Rowan threw her arm around Helena, face still mostly hidden by a hood. "I mean, it's a bitch of a thing to make that much flour, but I'm sure that if we all took turns we could have bread maybe three times a week..."
Helena nodded. "Alright, I'll talk to the guys," by whom she means the other two people on the council with her. "And we'll see about making flour pounding one of the work detail jobs. It's something that everyone can do," she finished. She'd even take a turn herself, she decided. If Sophie could pound out a few liters of flour, so could she.
"It's not as if we have to do it all alone." Ro pointed out. "If we all found something to pound grain in and with, we could do a lot at once. It would take maybe two hours. Then we'd have enough for the next day." She offered the idea with a slight grin. "I'm not saying we should do it every night. But it'd also be nice to have some extra around."
Helena nodded. "I agree." Her gaze turned out toward the fields of the sweetgrind. "In fact, other than the building of a permanent and secure shelter, stockpiling some flour is a really good idea. It's getting stranger, weather-wise. That has to mean an impending shift in the seasons, right?" She shrugged. "And don't the plants have to, I don't know, go to seed and die off for while? Sometime soon?" How long did it remain good harvest for sweetgrind?
"They're already gone to seed, basically. Flour doesn't come from fresh wheat. They haven't fallen off the stalks yet, of course, but..." Rowan squinted, looking off into the distance. "Personally, I think we might regret it if we don't start stock up. But that Jasper chick might know more about it than me, so you might want to ask her opinion." Ro grinned. "I think she's still pouring over that map that Adnan guy gave her to look at."
Helena gave Rowan a baffled expression. "Who could possibly know more about the life cycles of alien grain than you?" Considering Rowan was the only botanist on the planet as far as they knew. Then again, there was nothing saying any hypothesis she put forward would be correct. It was alien grain, after all.
"I meant the season change, silly!" Rowan laughed, then winced slightly and patted her tummy. "Yes, baby, I know you're there. Thank you for reminding me." She hesitated, then looked at Helena. "Hey. Um. You know the statistics for women who died in childbirth before the advent of modern medicine, right? ...if something happens, you raise my baby, okay? I mean it. Especially if it's a girl. Thorne and Ryan will help, but... babies need mothers."
From laughing to jaw dropping, it was instantaneous. "Don't talk about it like that. Think positively and relax and you'll do well. Besides, I think there is a distinct correlation between unclean tools and people with the death rate." She patted Rowan affectionately. "I fully plan to scrub everything and everyone with scalding hot water and soap pods if they plan to come anywhere near you during the birth and while you're recovering. I promise." She was amazed that she kept her tone positive for her friend's sake. After all, she hadn't done so well with babies even in the most sterile environment. "But if it'll take some weight off your mind, you know I'll take care of Nameless." Helena wasn't sure how Cross would feel about it, but she would do her best.
"Pft. I expect to live for forever. But, on the off-chance something annoying like hemorrhaging happens, which can, that's what I want." Rowan paused. "And if something happens and I'm not alive but the baby is, there's a really good life insurance policy for the future. There. Now you know my will, just in case something, which probably won't, happens."
Helena huffed and nodded. "Alright. Well you've told me so now you can go back to not worrying that it might happen." She knew that Rowan would, though. Pregnancy did all kinds of strange and wonderful things to the body and mind. Helena herself had experienced imaginings so clear that she could nearly classify them as hallucinations. She'd developed so many fears and worries. Never in her life had she given a thought to the cleanliness of her baseboards and yet, six and a half months pregnant she'd been down on her hands and knees, trying to scrub the baseboards between her fridge and the wall. Fun times. She could only imagine how much Rowan must be going out of her mind, living in the dirt and sand as they were.
Ro was less concerned about the dirt and things so much as the whole 'no modern medicine' bit, but she wasn't going to let Helena know that. Abruptly, Rowan felt very alone for some reason. But she smiled at Helena anyway. "You know, I don't think I've ever had a best girl friend before." And she laid her hooded head on Helena's shoulder. "I kind of like it. Remind me to take you home with me if I figure that one out."
Helena just chuckled at that. She'd had girlfriends. The other Park Avenue Wives. They deserved the capital W since that's all they were. Married women with powerful and wealthy husbands. They'd all vanished out of her life immediately when she'd moved across town to a less than trendy area and took a job doing something that they couldn't even imagine - teaching preschool. It wasn't even a private preschool! Then she'd bonded with the other teachers at the school and been much happier. She thought of Rowan much the same way she thought of those other women. "Oh I'll remind you!" she vowed.
Ro smooched Helena's forehead, regardless of any smoke smudges or mud smears or anything else that might've been there. "We could make a killing in the sci-fi story market. Right under Dr. Who and right above Star Trek, in terms of not-bloody-idiotic."
She had to chuckle at that. "I think all of this is pretty idiotic." She gestured around them, taking in the entire camp. "I mean...alien abduction without the aliens? It would never sell." She giggled at the thought.
"Yeeeah, but we don't have the green alien sex of Captain Kirk." Ro pointed out, and laughed. "Come on, let's go show off your awesome poncho-sock combination you made for me to people who can't move around much and therefore can't escape. Like Kenneth!"
Helena rolled her eyes as she stood up and, using both hands, helped Rowan get back to her feet again. "I don't know if Ken will be all that impressed with the stylish striped witch-socks I knitted you." Still, she looped arms with her slow and waddling friend, steering her toward the spring and the convalescing colonel.