Who: Helena and Rowan What: Tucking in for bedtime Where: The tree When: After sunset, after everyone gets back.
As she pulled herself up onto the wide lower branches of the climber, Helena sighed. She took a moment to press her fists into her lower back and stretch, her spine popping. She could see Rowan carefully maneuvering herself over to her forest green quilt hammock. In the half-light post sunset it was easy to mis-step in the tree and she was pleased to see that even when tired Rowan was very careful. Still, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret that Ro had to endanger herself at all in this silly world. That baby would have been safe as could be back in Edmonton. Kneeling on the wide branch in the shadows of the canopy, she watched her friend a bit surreptitiously. It was ridiculous and she knew it, but she was enjoying Rowan's pregnancy vicariously.
Helena had always liked being pregnant. At least, she had for most of them until they reached the point where things started to go wrong. She never was troubled by morning sickness or dizziness. Her fatigue always passed quickly and as long as she was able to take a nap in the afternoon she had still been able to put on the high heels and attend functions and dinners with Edward. The bloating was fine, her husband had doted on her so sweetly while she was pregnant, buying her designer maternity clothing. She'd had boxes upon boxes of it to give away when she had finally decided to have her tubes tied. When she'd decided that she had just plain had enough of failed attempts and heartbreaks.
In the dark, she sent a rueful smile Rowan's way. She wasn't exactly <I>jealous</I> but she did feel a little bit of regret, not something she would <I>ever</I> share with Rowan. Bracing a hand on the trunk she stood upright and picked her way along toward Rowan's nest. Cross had been industrious in the tree and had gathered dozens of vines, tying and weaving them into supports and nets, just in case anyone stumbled. From there, she could see the large and quiet blonde man settle into the hammock he'd woven for himself as well, rolling away from the conversations as people got themselves settled for the night. "Hey," she said to Rowan as she drew up beside her. The branch below Rowan's hammock was the widest. Holding the branch over head, the two women could stand side by side on it.
"Hey." Rowan smiled at Helena brightly. The baby was behaving and not kicking important bits inside of her, so she was hoping she'd get some proper sleep tonight - well, as much as she could with the laughers roaming around underneath them, just waiting for someone to fall out. Be snatched up and carried away. For some reason, the image of a wolf in grandma's bedding gown crossed her mind. She shook her head a moment, then grinned at Helena. "Come on, sleep here tonight." Ro didn't think it be odd, and she was sure the hammock would be strong enough. It'd be nice to have someone to sleep against, too. Warm. "How was your day, besides everything?"
Helena's brows arched upward, surprised. "I was just coming over to ask if you'd mind." She nodded to the hammock. It was made out of a queen sized quilt, more than wide enough for the both of them. "So many people showed up without bedding this morning. I offered my lovely bright coloured hammock to Annie when I noticed her eying it. So I'm homeless without you." Helena flashed her a quick grin in the fading light. She glanced away as more people settled into vine or bedding hammocks. She could hear Arlo muttering obscenities and a faint conversation between the priest and the detective woman which she couldn't make out from there. She looked back to Rowan and nodded to the hammock. "After you."
"Thank you, m'dear." Rowan crawled into her hammock, and scooched around until she was comfortable and leaving Helena lots of room at the same time. "I can still smell the lilac and vanilla rainforest or whatever smell those dryer sheets had on this thing. If we get back, we should tell them that. 'The scent that lasts through days in the wilderness and unwashed masses'." She yawned, lazily, and grinned at Helena again. "Come on in. The blanket's fine."
Chuckling and being careful not to swing the contraption too much, Helena climbed aboard and settled in with a shiver. She'd had a pillow but she'd left that for Annie as well, unless someone else nabbed it. It was fine. She found that in the hammocks she didn't necessarily need one, since most of them weren't very taught. "So," she said after everything had quieted down. She could still hear a bit of whispering somewhere but it hushed as the first distant peals of laughter echoed off the trees. The sun was down, it was time for the big joke, whatever that was. "You aren't upset that I asked you to stay behind, are you?" she had to ask. Helena was feeling a little bit insecure about the whole thing.
Rowan blinked at her, determined not to be the one person who freaked out when the laughers started. "What? No." She shrugged a little. "I would've probably refused to go, anyway. I can't walk that fast - I'd slow people down - and there are plenty of plants I haven't had a chance to explore here yet. We're practically sitting on a goldmine of food; we just don't know about it yet." Ro nodded and slung an arm around Helena, giving her a quick hug. "Food and medicine. We just need to learn about it."
Helena nodded, her brows drawing together in the virtual dark of the hammock. "I worry about a lot of that stuff. Infections, how do we fight them?" she queried. "Penicillin is made from the right kind of bread mold but we don't even know if that sort of mold would grow on the grains that grow here. We need tools and more food options." She sighed. "We definitely need meat and protein otherwise we'll all be in trouble." Helena took a deep breath. "I shouldn't worry about that now, though. I should just try to get through tomorrow with everyone out there."
"Actually, we don't need meat per say." Rowan said thoughtfully. "We found beans. There's ugly-ass fish in the stream - I don't count fish as meat, since, y'know, they don't count during Lent. And we could always comb trees for eggs." Not that, personally, she thought there was going to be any eggs this time of year, since she still thought it was autumn. "There's bugs, too."
"Eggs," Helena breathed, stunned she hadn't thought about it. "I hear birds all the time but I don't see them. Have you seen them? They aren't song birds, mostly. They sound big. I imagine that they live in the upper canopies. I bet you, if they are as big as they sound with their cawing voices, their eggs are big. Do you think it might be dangerous to try to steal the eggs? Don't big birds like eagles and falcons attack you if you come near their nests?" She just imagined those hooked beaks and razor talons. "Maybe we can get at the eggs in the Pesk nests as well. I've seen the shells, I know that they hatch and aren't born live." She chewed on her lower lip. "What if it isn't their laying season. Do animals lay eggs all year round?" Why hadn't she become a high school biology teacher instead of pre school?
"Every bird'll get bitchy if you try to steal its babies." Rowan grinned, then looked thoughtful. "If you've seen the eggs in the Pesk nests, then this is probably their laying season, if they don't lay all year round. I don't know about other birds, though. That isn't my field of study. I do know that some of the littler birds up there aren't birds, though. They're more like bats, because they're fuzzy."
Helena nodded, musing. She turned her eyes upward and she thought she caught the silent dance of black shadows up over head. "I think you're right. I've noticed them. They don't seem to have hind legs, do they? They just curl their rat's tails around the branches and hang like possums. They've stayed clear of us so far though. Have you noticed anything that makes them seem dangerous?" She worried constantly now. Now they had so many people to look out for. She didn't see how any extended stay in a strange world would ever let them get away with <I>no</I> injuries.
"Nope." Rowan looked up, watching the little things doing whatever they did for the night. "Seriously, I've never seen a more harmless looking thing in my life. Even birds have beaks; it doesn't look like these have any. Of course, not our world. They could have a defense that I just don't recognize." She tilted her head at the insane giggling in the distance. "Damn, they're starting early tonight."
"I think it's because there are so many of us here now," Helena said in a hushed whisper. "Maybe there won't be so little to fight each other for." They heard the growling, hissing and yet still laughing fights that happened under the tree from time to time. Like someone was overstepping some sort of boundary as they jockeyed for the best position beneath the dangling hammocks. She didn't like to think of 'when the bough breaks," ending with 'razor sharp jaws' at all.
Rowan considered that. "No. They haven't gotten any of us - that I'm aware of - for days now. I mean, have you heard anyone screaming or whatever since you got here?" That didn't mean they didn't go for throats or faces first, of course, but Rowan liked to think that no one had died a horrible death lately. "Maybe they're getting hungry. I haven't seen any large prey around here, personally."
Helena sighed. "I haven't even seen something the size of a cat. What can they be surviving on, really?" Her eyes were black holes in the darkness of the hammock. "Each other, maybe?" she suggested it almost breathlessly. Helena had decided that the creatures were almost certainly intelligent. Maybe the way that chimps were intelligent. After all, they had used those rocks as tools to attempt to scatter and smother the fire, to attempt to separate Bazzer from the rest of them. That showed some sort of problem solving ability. They had also managed to escape the ambushes and attacks from Clay and Thorne mostly unscathed.
"If they ate each other, that wouldn't say much for their species." Rowan considered. "...people." She blinked, tumblers falling into place in her head. "They eat people. We're virtually defenseless. All we've got going for ourselves is our brains, and when you wake up in a strange place in the dark, you don't use your brain. And they can run faster..." She looked down, out of the hammock, and the ground below. "And we're not following protocol."
Helena nodded. "I've been thinking along those lines as well." Her tone was musing and she shifted slightly, draping her own arm over Rowan's body. "I wonder if we're here <I>because</I> of them. They don't seem to have any kind of technology at all but how would we know? None of us have ever stumbled across their...village." She paused and decided to use some hope for society despite the fact that it didn't seem to apply. "And then there is the possibility of them being allied with...something else that <I>can</I> bring people from the world we know to this place."
"God, it could be just a zoo. Gotta feed the interesting animals some how." Rowan sighed. "This is so weird and random. I just don't understand it. Why us? What makes us special, comparatively speaking? It can't be because we're all really well educated. It can't be because we're all tried-and-proven survivors. It's like someone rolled a damn die and said 'this one shall be on a new planet when she wakes up' or some bloody nonsense."
"Yeah," Helena said with a slight break in her voice. "Almost all of us have someone who will miss us as well. It's not like we'd vanish unnoticed. Right?" She knew Rowan had family, friends. And as for her, Edward would miss her by now. Even though they had been divorced for more than a year and he had remarried, they still spoke every week. She'd talked to him just before passing out that first night. Something occurred to her. "I went to sleep sad," she said as the memory returned. "Not just sad, feeling sorry for myself." It wasn't easy for her to talk about. Helena had been raised by a Korean woman who'd staunchly observed the familial law that no one wanted to see Helena's tears and the only good kind of woman was the kind who accepted her lot in life with grace and compassion. Still, now that she had been ten years out of her mother's house and had suffered through plenty of weepy nights both alone and with company, she still forgot that she was entitled to talk about her unhappy feelings.
"I was tired. I was really tired." Rowan thought for a moment. "That's all I really remember. I was damn grateful to just curl up in bed and get some sleep. I don't even remember why; I think it was just a long day on my feet." She moved a little, so that Helena was properly cuddled up with. She was a tactile person; cuddling was something comfortable and familiar and she enjoyed doing it. "My poor houseplants..."
Helena chuckled. "I'm so glad I didn't decide to get a cat..." She was quiet for a little while longer. "What if our bodies are still there?" She piped up with another theory. "What if we've been found and are now hooked up to tubes in a hospital. Experiencing unexplained comas. Doesn't that happened?" She thought she'd read an article on that. Maybe in college. She was sure one of her school friends had gone into nursing and used to quip all sorts of odd medical facts. "Oh maybe we all died and this is some sort of..." she sighed bleakly. "Purgatory? It doesn't really seem like limbo, does it?" But then, maybe it did. There wasn't much here to constitute having a <I>life</I> here. There was a lot of waiting for the laughers, waiting for dawn and the new arrivals. In between the motions of the sun, she brought something up. "Have you noticed that there is no moon?" There was starlight, but no glowing orbes in the sky.
Rowan blinked. "No, I hadn't. Are there any constellations that look familiar to you?" Privately, she doubted there would be. As far as she was concerned, different planet equaled different stars (including the sun). "Heh. I wonder if we could see Sol here - not that we'd recognize it if we did... but I don't think we died. This is a... this is a clean world. There's no pollution, except for the things we brought with us. There's no reverse engineering of rapeseed to create canola. There's... just us. So I don't think we died. I think... it's more like a chance to start over."
Helena was quiet for another long minute before speaking up again. "Isn't that...sort of a lovely definition of Heaven?" she asked, her voice thickening with some kind of emotion that she herself couldn't quite decide on. Could she live without seeing Edward again? Or talking to him? Yes. They had made that decision together. The end of their marriage but not their friendship. It hadn't been as hard as she thought it would be. "I climbed up high above the canopy the first night I slept here," she told Rowan. "I looked for the Big Dipper since that's the only one I can recognize, along with Orion's Belt? I couldn't find them. I don't think they are out there."
"Did you know, in the last two generations, they've found twenty-two - I think it's twenty-two - highly toxic synthetic chemicals in the cord blood of newborns?" Rowan asked, looking up at the leaves, and ignoring the laughers. "If this is a chance to start over, or it's heaven, or whatever, I think this could be a real chance for us. A real, honest-to-god, starting-over chance. Miracle. Whatever." She put a hand on her swelling belly. "Something we need more than ever."
Helena nodded. "Yeah," she could feel Rowan's hand on the baby bump more than she could see it. "You're in such good shape Ro. I don't think you'll have any trouble if we're stuck here longer than we hope to be." Once more, Helena vowed to find a more child-friendly location for them to life. There had to be <I>someplace</I> that they could build and defend. She thought back to those children's storybooks that showed old forts and castles with pointy log walls. Wasn't that possible here? There were so many trees. Couldn't they <I>fence</I> the laughers out?
"If we can handle it... I don't know if I want to go back. This is... just awesome to me." She looked over at Helena. "I know most people want to go back, and I totally understand that. But I guess there's always a nutter in the bunch."
Helena <I>was</I> surprised. "Wouldn't someone miss you? And don't you want the safety of modern medicine and the benefits of education for your baby?" At the <I>very</I> least. There was so much she and Edward had planned to provide and show their children. She'd wanted them to be world travelers. He had wanted them to be artists. Very well educated artists. He'd bought the works of famous artists and stocked his library with books on painters and sculptors throughout the ages. Thinking like that made her sad so she turned it back to Rowan. "You wouldn't feel like your child was in unnecessary danger?"
"In comparison to the dangers of people on the street? Or insane drivers? Sick building syndrome, pesticides, drugs, cigarettes, superviruses, genetically modified everything? Over use of antibiotics? Everything? Educationally, I only use a fraction of what I learned in highschool for my job. Modern medicine is a joke." Rowan sighed. "Don't get me wrong, I'm probably going to howl for morphine before the baby is in my arms, but unnecessary danger, no. People on earth are in so much danger, they don't even register it anymore. If my baby grows up here... maybe he or she'll be in more physical danger, but at least they'll be aware."
Helena gave a rueful smile as she patted the pregnant belly on her friend gently. "They likely wouldn't give it to you no matter how much you howled." She fell into a long silence then, maybe even dozed off as she thought over the prospect. "We could weave a baby basket out of the vines. Even tie it shut. If the worst happened and the basket fell, maybe they wouldn't be strong enough to break it open." That was her worst fear. That for some reason as limbs grew, coordination would fail. Didn't they say it was always hard to put a child to bed and make them stay there?
"If the basket fell," Rowan said grimly. "I'd jump down there myself to protect it. I chose to have this baby, for better or worse. And that would definitely be worse."
Helena nodded. "It would. Ideally, we'll find clay, stone, logs, <I>something</I> to build a fence they can't push through." She sighed. "I almost wish the stream weren't rock bottomed, but clay." She hadn't come across anything but moist and sandy soil, fecund with decayed leaves. It was good growing in this part of this strange world. "Hopefully we'll find clay. And something to fire it in." She smothered a yawn. "And some kind of glaze..." She giggled softly as she rambled on.
"You just want us to make handprints in clay disks to hang on the wall to show our mums and dads." Rowan said playfully, but since yawning was contagious she did that too, and Helena was snuggled against. "Good night, Helena."
"Hey, that's always a fun class," she defended drowsily. "But good night Ro," It was amazing that it was becoming easier and easier to ignore the laughers. Exhaustion played a part undoubtedly but it didn't take long for Helena to drop off into one of the deepest sleeps she'd had in this place so far.