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This Silence (Open)
The corridors, bathed in their chemical light, felt endless. Beauty walked them with unhurried steps, her fingers dragging invisible lines across the faintly textured wall at her side. There was no reason why she should be here, but there was no reason why she shouldn't. She simply was. She was. But.... behind the quiet that wrapped around her, something felt wrong. Beauty wanted to be doing something. Her calloused hands told her enough -- that she should be doing something, that she'd been working somehow. What she'd been doing... where she'd been... why she'd been there... These were questions that she barely asked before they dodged out of her thoughts again -- water cycloning, uncaptured, but a force that circled and circled and got her nowhere.
The chair she just passed looked familiar. She squinted at the upcoming metal grate. There should be a lady sitting behind it... Yes, there she was. She didn't look up from her reading, and Beauty didn't call out to her. The next open walkway was some sort of common room. She had bypassed this room before, choosing instead to explore first. But now she knew the corridors and the rooms she could access. Perhaps.... Perhaps these other people knew what she should be doing. Without much concern - although she felt like she should be concerned - Beauty let her tingling fingertips fall away from the wall.
She ducked into the common room, then stood against the wall and took in her surroundings. Chairs across the room, scattered. Divans, scattered. There were those boxes filled with pictures and light -- she knew them, somehow, even though she couldn't say why. They were certainly foreign. Weren't they? But they weren't, really... Swallowing, she took in the tables, the checkers and chess, the uniform that they almost all shared. She was wearing it, too. It should have made her blush; women should wear something far more feminine than this. It seemed to her that what she was wearing should be reserved for men only. But it didn't make her blush. It didn't make her feel anything. Plucking at the rough cotton fabric hanging from her elbow, she looked up again.
"Hello," she said -- apparently to no one in particular. But someone had heard her...
The chair she just passed looked familiar. She squinted at the upcoming metal grate. There should be a lady sitting behind it... Yes, there she was. She didn't look up from her reading, and Beauty didn't call out to her. The next open walkway was some sort of common room. She had bypassed this room before, choosing instead to explore first. But now she knew the corridors and the rooms she could access. Perhaps.... Perhaps these other people knew what she should be doing. Without much concern - although she felt like she should be concerned - Beauty let her tingling fingertips fall away from the wall.
She ducked into the common room, then stood against the wall and took in her surroundings. Chairs across the room, scattered. Divans, scattered. There were those boxes filled with pictures and light -- she knew them, somehow, even though she couldn't say why. They were certainly foreign. Weren't they? But they weren't, really... Swallowing, she took in the tables, the checkers and chess, the uniform that they almost all shared. She was wearing it, too. It should have made her blush; women should wear something far more feminine than this. It seemed to her that what she was wearing should be reserved for men only. But it didn't make her blush. It didn't make her feel anything. Plucking at the rough cotton fabric hanging from her elbow, she looked up again.
"Hello," she said -- apparently to no one in particular. But someone had heard her...