InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I fly like paper"

Samuel T. Anders (cbuck) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-05-09 20:47:00

Entry tags:

!dropped, !incomplete, day 07, location: gym, sam anders, shannon rutherford

Day 7: Grabbing a Bite
Who: Samuel T. Anders and Shannon Rutherford (and some unsuspecting deer, if they can find it)
What: Grabbing a friendly bite to eat... by hunting deer
When: Day 7, mid-morning
Where: Forest edge, nearby the gym & museum
Rating: TBA
Status: Active

The creaking and moaning of the foreboding forest that encircled their little town had lost some of its terror for Samuel T. Anders. Were this three or four years ago, he'd have made a fast get away back to his little corner in the gym, but he'd grown so much since being just a C Buc. The light covering of snow on the ground crunched under the tread of his running shoes. Thankfully the wind had subsided somewhat since the gusts that had howled him awake this morning.

It was nice to have the promise of some company. It wasn't that Sid wasn't good company, but he was nearly all he saw yesterday until his bizarre evening with the night brigade, which wasn't exactly a happy encounter. Anders had wanted to figure out a way to make up for yesterday morning all day, but couldn't figure out a way that wouldn't come off as a feeble attempt to get in her pants or a creepy infatuation. Either way, he wasn't going to become another part of her 'complicated' life. His own was complicated enough.

Sam held tight onto the paper-wrapped hunting knife in one hand, cursing himself for not having grabbed gloves. Perhaps today would be the day for those. While he waited for Shannon's appearance, he decided to try to scout the area as best as he could. He wasn't formally trained in it in any way, but necessity made a great teacher in the absence of that.

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-09 11:30 pm UTC (link)

Okay, it had seemed a little off the way Anders had invited Shannon to meet up that morning for food. In fact, if she hadn't known he was married, it would've sounded a lot like an invite for a date and considering the way they'd met...well. Shannon was just glad she knew better.

She didn't necessarily feel any better or worse for her talk with Sam when they'd first woken up, but she did feel like getting out would be a good idea, so she took up the offer however awkward it sort of felt. Not that she'd admit it to herself that it felt a little weird, and sure as shit not out loud to anyone else. She layered herself with as much as she could stand to put on and headed out into the snow, pulling on the hood of the over-sized men's sweatshirt.

Hugging herself tightly to block the wind - much calmer than it had been when she and Sam had been awakened by it, but still not completely ceased - Shannon made her way toward the gym until she spotted a figure. "That you, Sam?" she called out. Yeah, he'd been going by Anders, but it wasn't like the first Sam was around to be confused and Shannon hadn't ever really been a fan of using last names for first names. With the exception of John Locke. And she hated him...likening Anders to Locke was so not even happening if she could help it.

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cbuck
2009-05-09 11:41 pm UTC (link)

Anders, hooded, bundled, and startled out of his concentration on his scouting, turned around, a grin on his face. "Hey, Shannon," he greeted with an added head nod in her direction. Everything on her dwarfed what he knew of her real figure. Quickly, he fought to blink away the image of her naked and clutching the blanket. This was out of necessity if they were going to hold a conversation and in fairness to her.

"So," Anders mused as he glanced over the forest, remembering his first morning here, and trying to avoid the thought of weevils creeping around. "Where do you think these deer are hiding?"

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 12:09 am UTC (link)

"Hey," she replied amiably, smiling back as she approached him. Don't picture him naked, don't picture him naked, don't picture him naked... she reminded herself, because really...she'd had the blanket and he'd had a painting. After she'd knocked it off the wall. So, whatever he'd seen, unless he'd peeked under the blanket before she'd woken up, was nowhere near as much as what she had. Oh, God, this was so awkward and weird... Shannon forced herself to focus on the fact that this was about getting food and her stomach, as if on cue, rumbled to remind her of that.

At first, Shannon thought maybe his "so," had been his vocalization of her thought that maybe things were always going to be weird and uncomfortable for the two of them, since the first time they'd met in person, they'd been snuggling one another while completely in the nude and unwittingly so, both thinking that the other was someone else. Oh, my God, so embarrassing... she thought to herself.

But then he spoke again and Shannon craned her neck slightly to the side to look around him into the woods, tucking her hands into the sleeves of the hoodie and rubbing them up and down on her arms. "You ask like you think I might actually have a freakin' clue," she pointed out with a smirk. Rich girls didn't hunt...and neither did poor girls pretending they were still rich. Shannon didn't have the first idea about hunting and she wasn't going to pretend she did now. "Best answer I can give you is the obvious, hon," she replied.

Hon was a reflexive word she had been using a lot in the journals lately. And sweetie. It reminded her of when she'd been back in high school and things had been so easy and carefree. Life at home still sucked ass, but she'd had friends and there'd been Boone before she had realized the full extent of his feelings. Shannon hadn't always been so dark and jaded; once upon a time, she'd been bubbly, however hard that probably was for some people in her life to believe.

Only...it occurred to her that the casual use of the word could be mistaken as something else entirely and she just had to hope he didn't see it that way, because it was out there, now. Taking it back might make things even weirder or she might even be incriminating herself unintentionally if he had seen it for what it was. Wow...way to over-analyze the situation, Shan, she thought with a roll of her eyes at herself, behind his back.

"Have you ever been deer hunting before...?" she ventured, keen to change the subject rolling around in her mind. Back to business. Find the deer, hunt, kill, cook, eat. Simple enough, she thought, at least in theory. Hopefully Anders could follow through on the execution because this was something in which Shannon was positive she was completely useless as anything other than a spectator.

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cbuck
2009-05-10 12:38 am UTC (link)

The awkwardness between them was going to either eat their conversation alive or have to be dealt with, he accessed. Unfortunately, Anders couldn't figure out how to start them off in the right direction. Instead, he just held his tongue until he could think of something more constructive to say.

When 'hon' slipped out of her nice, soft looking lips, it caught him off guard. No one had called him 'hon' since Ellen Tigh had sat him down on New Caprica, and made he and Saul have a 'civil' dinner after they had nearly gone to blows over the organizing of the resistance. Every time he thought of Ellen after the general pardon, a sobering guilt settled over him. Not for what he did, as he felt it was the right course of action, but more that he had been so righteous about it. Just like how he'd been so righteous about Felix.

Instead of dwelling on those things that made him glad to be far away from the fleet, Sam decided to try to pick out objects within the murk of the forest. Shannon's implication that he might know how to hunt a deer with nothing but his raw hands and a hunting knife was flattering to his ego, but not really true in any way. The only time he'd ever killed a deer was with a fully automatic assault rifle, and that was after months of failing at exactly that.

"Not really," Sam admitted, beginning to thumb through all the methods he could think of. One of which involved a stick of dynamite, but if they had that, they may as well break out. "But I've got this," he added, pulling the knife out from its paper sheath. "As promised."

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 01:06 am UTC (link)

The fact that he was willing to admit that he'd never been hunting rather than give a false bravado lent Shannon the idea that Anders wasn't trying to impress her. So, she'd been right; not a date, just food. That was good. Although, it didn't really help the fact that they wanted food and had no idea how to get it.

She gave him a small smile and cocked her eyebrows once, impressed that he'd sheathed the thing, even if it was pretty primitive looking. "Nice. Where'd you find that?" she asked. "Sam said that they'd been given knives like a reward or something from the experiment when they were out there tied together and left for wolf chow..." She wondered if maybe he'd found it out in the woods; if someone hadn't found their knife or had dropped it in the process of fleeing. As far as she'd known, there had been three pairs and she didn't know if the third knife had been claimed, even though she knew River and George had theirs - it had been embedded in the lion's corpse at the church a few days ago - and Sam had his.

"I'm not really sure, like...what we're supposed to do. Just, like, track a deer and you throw that thing and hope you kill the fucker instead of it running off with your knife stuck in its side or something?" she asked. "D'you know how to track?"

Okay, this didn't have to be awkward, right? He hadn't called her out on the slip of casual endearment and she was actually managing to focus on the task at hand, so that was good. She was probably making it out to be way more than it was, anyway, she thought. At least one of them wasn't full enough of themselves to think that way; she was willing to give Anders credit for that, even if not out loud.

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cbuck
2009-05-10 01:23 am UTC (link)

The knife, which he had spent some time yesterday washing in the freezing showers in the gym, was his safety net. That and hoping that this really was all one drug-induced hallucination or a Cylon visualization that he had been forced into. The second two were more wishful thinking at this point than a real hope. For now, the knife would have to do. "I, well, Sid, found it in the wall of the gym." Sid had become one of the few parts of this place that had made it truly normal. Far more normal than life had been for him lately.

All her questions indicated a vast lack of inexperience, not unlike himself. Deer couldn't be too much different than tracking a toaster, right? They were just a lot quieter, and wouldn't ventilate you if you messed up, they'd just run. Anders wished the centurions were more like deer.

This morning, his thoughts were rather scattered. It had something to do with his inadequate sleep the night before and partly to do with how utterly confusing the situation was. After he thought himself into a knot, he addressed her question. "Sorta... I used to track Cylons. Not really deer."

All his time he could have been learning vital skills he could have used in the unexpected apocalypse he was, instead, training for the playoffs or basking in fame. His breakfast of chips, water, and a chocolate bar wasn't exactly filling. "I'm starving."

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 01:33 am UTC (link)

"Sid's the kid who showed up with Logan, right?" Shannon asked. She'd sort of made it her own unofficial mission to keep track of who was who and she liked to keep herself on top of said mission.

Shannon's eyebrows raised. "Cylons?" What the fuck was a Cylon?! Jesus, it was like talking to Jack about the Weevils or the Doctor about time travel. Made no sense to her, but it seemed to make sense to Anders, so whatever it was, it existed where he came from, clearly. He then went on to say exactly what she was feeling. She hadn't eaten anything yet because she'd had things on her to-do list already for the day. Plus, Anders had said he wanted to get food, so she figured it wasn't worth bothering to eat beforehand. That was, in hindsight, kind of dumb.

Their conversation was stunted and focused, which was fine, except...there was still a proverbial elephant in the room, so to speak, and Shannon had a feeling that very thing was going to keep them from talking like normal human beings. So, she took a deep breath and let it out in a succinct sigh.

"So, do we address the thing we're avoiding so we can get over it and move on like mature adults or do we keep pretending nothing happened and this isn't fucking weird right now?" she asked, a tiny ghost of a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth in spite of herself. The sooner they got over that hump, the better, either way he wanted to go about it, as far as she was concerned. Shannon had enough things making her uncomfortable these days; she didn't need one more over something stupid that neither of them really had any control over.

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cbuck
2009-05-10 01:42 am UTC (link)

Again with the questioning about Cylons. The lack of knowledge wasn't utterly alarming, but at the same time, it made him feel so alien. "Cylons... they're a biomechanical species. We made them. Long story short, they wiped us out." Every single time he told the story, he felt guiltier and guiltier. In his gut, he hated what it meant to be the Cylons that he was talking about. The toasters that killed his team. The frakking bullet heads and the skin jobs that dropped the bombs on the colonies. The twisted bastards that kidnapped Kara.

He was one of them, no matter how deep in his gut, he felt different from them.

Anders was mid-thought when the world came to a screeching halt. "Right to the point," his awkward laugh returned. "I, uh..." Don't think about it... "Well, like you said, we're adults. And we obviously didn't do anything." Did we? Doubts were second nature, but they really weren't helping right then. With all the awkwardness of a drunk gorilla, Anders tried to stumble his way through a way into the conversation.

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 01:52 am UTC (link)

A biomedical species? Shannon wondered if that was a fancy, futuristic way of saying "robots." It sounded like it, anyway. Rather than make herself look like more of a rube, though, she decided she'd maybe ask Kaylee later, since Kaylee was from the future and all. And Kaylee wouldn't think she was stupid for asking. Not that she thought Anders would, either, but then again, it wasn't like she knew him very well.

"Yeah sorry," Shannon said with the same awkward laugh. She never said she was tactful...and she never denied being blunt. He'd just gotten a double-shot. It was just that if they didn't talk it out and get the fuck over it, this was gonna be a really long, quiet, and uncomfortable outing together. It didn't really occur to her that there was a possibility that actually having the conversation out loud was going to make it worse instead of better.

But, even as uncomfortable as he seemed just then, he was confident that nothing happened. "Right," she agreed. Except the spooning. ...and the cuddling...right? Okay, maybe she wasn't that sure after all. She'd woken up feeling out of it. Not that she'd know from experience, but she had reflexively likened the feeling to being roofied. Maybe she wasn't accurate, but maybe she was. Still.

"I mean, we'd remember, if anything happened. Right?" She was pretty confident she would, anyway. "And besides, you thought I was your wife and I thought you were Sam, and so...you know, it's not that weird that we reacted the way we did and it wasn't either of our faults that we woke up all muddled and out of it, fucking posed or something," she added.

Although, maybe they hadn't been put there like that. Maybe they'd just been put beside one another and they'd done the spooning all on their own. Don't think about it... Going down that line of thought wasn't going to help anything.

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cbuck
2009-05-10 02:02 am UTC (link)

The intensity of the awkward feeling that ate him whole was akin to his first conversation with Lee Adama after figuring out he and Kara had been throwing down behind his back. It wasn't that he had been mad at Lee, much the same with Shannon, they were all consenting adults after all, but he really didn't want to think about the details of what he didn't know, or in this case didn't remember. The whole comparison made his gut twist. If he were a Cylon, did all Cylons feel so realistically?

Sam mulled it all over in his head, swallowing hard at the memory of how drugged he felt, and how it would be the first time that he had done something stupid under the influence. Drugs and alcohol were a vice, he chastised himself. It was something he'd know for a fact the next time he decided to slam back half a bottle of whiskey. "Yeah... We- we must have been placed like that... And... even if we weren't..." There he went, starting a stupid sentence.

"You know, neither of us remember anything and, to be honest, I don't think its going to come back to us..." This was a frail attempt at assurance.

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 02:15 am UTC (link)

Shannon furrowed her brow just slightly with confusion. Even if they weren't...? What? she wondered. Would that have been okay with him? Because it wasn't entirely okay with her. She felt guilty and she and Sam were only friends; Anders was married, he'd said. Maybe it was okay with him to cheat, but she didn't like the idea of unwittingly becoming a mistress. Again. But then, he didn't say that, she reminded herself, and jumping to unsavory conclusions wasn't going to help.

...but she was fucking curious what he meant by that and it was going to kill her because she was so not going there to ask. Anyway, he was right. They didn't remember anything and they probably wouldn't - she didn't remember how she'd gotten here, for example. "You know what? You're right. And it's not like they could force us into doing anything, so I'm pretty sure we'd have had to do that sort of thing all on our own."

And no offense, but I'm not really interested, she thought but did not say. "We'd have to want to and I dunno about you, but..." she let her voice trail off and gave him an apologetic smile as she shrugged. It was her way of saying it without saying it and apologizing ahead of time for the potential blow to his ego.

Then, she took another deep breath. "So, it wasn't our fault and they put us that way and that's all. Nothing happened and everything's cool. Right?" You're not, like, picturing me naked right now, are you, in other words? she thought because she was proud of herself, at least, for being able to nip that visual in the bud. Whether or not she'd be picturing it again if he moved just right or said something just the right way, she had no idea, but she didn't want to venture into thought with that just then, because it would be backtracking. Either way, if he wasn't doing it and she wasn't doing it, they'd just taken a giant step forward.

"Uh, and now my tummy's rumbling, so...we need to figure something out pretty quick. I can cook it if you can kill it and skin it," she offered, more than happy to move the conversation in another direction; it's original one.

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cbuck
2009-05-10 02:32 am UTC (link)

No matter how many times he concentrated on the dim visual of Kara riding him in the dead of night while they tried to keep it down in the communal officer's bunk, or the curve of her hip when she'd slip out of bed and sit on the side of the bed for a smoke after he'd had a rough night from being sick on New Caprica, or even her black underwear peaking out from the top of her green uniform pants from that first morning when they were surrounded by the remnants of desks, books, and other things in Delphi High, he couldn't shake the feeling of Shannon's skin to his. Why did she have to be so hot? Hot chicks made it far more difficult to forget incidents like that one, not that it had ever come up before quite in the same way...

At least she was starting to see it the same way he had: denial. "Exactly. We'd have to have done it while drugged..." Which was a possibility, but he wasn't going to say that one out loud. The implication that she didn't want him wasn't lost on him in her subsequent comment. It was livable. It perhaps even made things a little better. Unless he had done something and she just didn't react.

He made himself stop at that point. Just because hew as a Cylon didn't mean that he was like Leoban.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. We're," he swallowed, both spit and pride, "we're clear." Now he felt worse than he had before getting there. Before they had talked, he had assumed that things were cool between them after their, albeit brief, conversation directly after the incident.

Thankfully, she offered a way out. Sam's stomach agreed. "I can try. It can't be that hard right?"

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 03:08 am UTC (link)

There was something about the way he kept trailing off and - was he stammering? - the body language he was presenting that made Shannon uncomfortable in a way she couldn't quite place. Like maybe she was missing some part of the big picture and he was trying not to put it in place for her. What the fuck was it with untrustworthy Sams? But, she'd been wrong about the first Sam, so she was going to give this one the benefit of the doubt.

Still, there was a strange niggling in the back of her mind. Would he have it another way? Was he actually married or was that some bullshit line to keep people at an arm's length until he had a chance to see what they looked like in person? Was Sam Anders as shallow as Shannon Rutherford? ...this conversation was a really shitty idea. She should've kept her mouth shut, because now she felt worse than she had before. The awkwardness was liveable; this was a whole other level of uncomfortable and confused that she thought she could definitely do without.

But the line of conversation moved onward and she resolved to play it cool. Shannon was nothing if not a good liar, skilled in manipulating those around her at her whims. This was not that much different; if she pretended she wasn't weirded out by the weird feeling that maybe he'd have preferred things to go down differently, he'd never know she was uncomfortable. If she held herself together with her head high, he'd be none the wiser, they could get food, and after eating, probably go their separate ways unless some other force of nature felt that they weren't ready to part just yet. So long as Shannon kept her head, the situation was dealt with. For now. She hoped.

"No idea," she said with a small, impish grin. "Closest I've ever been to hunting is being within hearing range of Sawyer shooting that polar bear, so..." her voice trailed off and she smirked. "If you can pull this off, I owe you big. Like...fetching you shit from the gas station and bringing it to you every day kind of big. I'm fucking starving," she laughed.

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cbuck
2009-05-10 03:38 am UTC (link)

Now avidly trying to derail his self-deprecating train of thought, Anders pursued the situation at hand. "Lets just hope I can deliver, then." Mentally, he thumbed through all the tactics he knew, both trained and untrained, that might help them. Until this point, he had only half-considered the suggestion of chucking the knife. Just then, he realized how good of an idea that was. He could throw, and well.

With the added element of snow, Anders figured it would be a little easier to track an animal as well as any other traffic they might want to avoid. Gods, please no weevils... Having a name for the creature that lunged at him that morning didn't make it any better. Originally, he had hoped it might, but now, more than ever, concrete evidence was useless against instinctual fear.

Warily, he began to press into the forest. He had to not think about the weevils or what else might be around. "We just have to find one first."

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 03:46 am UTC (link)

"Well..." Shannon said reproachfully, "it's not a big deal if you don't, you know." She didn't want him to feel pressured to pull it off or more disappointed than necessary if he couldn't. And the niggling in the back of her mind pushed her to wonder if part of the appeal of being able to deliver was what she'd just said. Wow, self-important much? she thought and immediately pushed the possibility away. He was hungry too, he'd said, so maybe that was what he meant. Probably. Totally what he meant.

She followed closely behind him, hugging herself tighter as she moved, not wanting snow to make its way under her collar as it fell from the branches as well as the sky. "Maybe we should start by lowering our voices?" Shannon suggested in a whisper, grinning a little more smugly than she meant to. Okay, no, it was funny that he was the one with the knife and she was the one suggesting how to actually go about trying to hunt when she had no idea what she was talking about.

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cbuck
2009-05-10 03:52 am UTC (link)

Anders' intent stare kept sweeping the scenery as he walked, trying to be especially aware of movement or prints. Instead of speaking, he nodded in agreement to her suggestion of silence.

There was the sound of the wind. It rustled the branches and rushed through them with a soft whistle. The snow grew patchier as they entered the grown over area, making it more difficult to tell if anything had been there. Finally, he broke the silence.

"What do deer do when it snows?" Admittedly, it was sort of a stupid question by itself, but here it was quite legitimate.

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 04:03 am UTC (link)

The snow was already seeping into Shannon's sneakers and she was sort of miserable, but if she was going to prove herself useful, at least she could try to ignore the cold and keep moving.

When Anders asked what deer did when it snowed, Shannon paused momentarily. "Under normal circumstances?" she asked in a whisper. "Hibernate, I think, but I'm not sure and this isn't exactly a normal circumstance," she pointed out softly.

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cbuck
2009-05-10 04:09 am UTC (link)

"Yeah..." Sam answered, tugging the strings tighter on his hoodie to keep any more snow from drifting in. At least his feet were still dry.

As they crept along, he thought of all the mistakes he'd made lately. They were bigger than any he had made before, and certainly now that he knew he was a Cylon they were all put into perspective and he held every decision under a microscope. At the end of the day, however, he still generally felt like the same person. So many times, that was at least enough not to airlock himself.

Finally, there was a trail of prints, delicately pressed into the snow. It could have been anything from a cat to a deer. The one thing he did know is that they weren't human. Quickly, he pointed them out to her.

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-10 10:22 am UTC (link)

Following as closely and quietly behind Anders as she could, Shannon couldn't help but to wonder what exactly her purpose of being here was; why she was following him through the woods. Had he, like she, simply failed to consider that she would only get in the way? Or had he had a blind faith that she could actually be of some use?

The latter made her feel a little better about herself, so Shannon decided to stick with that. Maybe Anders, for whatever unknown reason, thought she wasn't worthless. It seemed like more and more people she met or talked to would tell her that or, otherwise, make her feel that way. It was a pleasantly unfamiliar territory in which to find herself, but she certainly wasn't complaining.

She was pulled from her thoughts when Anders pointed at a set of tracks and Shannon stopped dead in her own, scanning the area for sounds of life. The stench of sewage was in the air, but it seemed distant and Shannon wasn't afraid. After the discussion with Jack and the Doctor about the Weevils mourning, she had decided that as long as they didn't actually attack her or corner her again, she and the Weevils would be on a live and let live agreement. The thing smelled far enough away that it wasn't going to be an issue anyway, perhaps only an unpleasant sensory distraction.

"Do you see anything?" she whispered, leaning closer still to him, because the wind was picking up and if her voice was lost in it, it would have defeated the purpose of actually trying to speak to begin with. On the same token, if she had to speak over the wind, she might scare any deer that could possibly be around.

Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, Shannon spotted a small doe - maybe it was a fawn, for all she knew, actually, but it didn't matter; food was food, Bambi or not - through the trees a little to his left. She cupped his left shoulder gingerly with one hand and gave it a squeeze. Hopefully, when he looked over to the left - she assumed he would reflexively - the deer would catch his eye. If not, then she'd point.

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cbuck
2009-05-14 06:23 pm UTC (link)

When the small deer appeared, Anders realized that he had no idea what to do next. If he chased it, it would be faster than him. If he threw the knife, he only had one chance and it was too far for him to pretend to think that he could make it. Even if they crept up on it, they still ran the risk of spooking it.

"Over there," he muttered, trying to keep his voice as soft as possible. "Now what?"

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ballerinadreams
2009-05-14 06:37 pm UTC (link)

"Now what?" Shannon whispered back. "Are you kidding?"

She was the last person who would know the answer to that question; there was no way for her to know what to do next. If they snuck up on it, they might be able to get close enough for Sam to stab it, but only if the snow cushioned their footsteps completely.

"Can't you just...?" she breathed, miming that he throw the knife as she came up beside him slowly and quietly.

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