001; from the distance of passing cars.

[howaverage.livejournal.com]

Characters: Emilia Gorski & other people.
Date: Late afternoon, 5th March. Can be done in separate days, however? NOTHING TOO SPECIFIC, SO...
Summary: Emilia is being le French. I DON'T KNOW. She's just missing her people and home and everything. YOU ARE WELCOME TO BRING YOUR LADIES AND YOUR CHOCOLATES!?
Warnings: Huh, nope.

The emptiness of this place echoes against silence. The library is enormous, the kind that only comes out of fairy tales. Then again, animals talk in fairy tales too, so it's fitting for such a place as the Gardens. It creeps her out, actually. The whole fake perfection of the place. Even the sunset that drips through the tall windows of the library, filling the room with a gentle yet cold fading light, seems a little bit too perfect. The room itself is rather cold. Tall shelves of books and some couple desks so one could read carefully.

Emilia has chosen the one at the center - not the corners, to hide, but the center to see the outside. She holds a hand against her cheek, covering her mouth, her eyes observing the birds flying outside to their nests, their homes, and a little heart string is pulled pitifully at the thought. Home. She misses her own dearly. Misses her friends and her family and the normality of it all. Sometimes she thinks she even misses her boring job at the travel agency. Here, there is nothing to do. She has no schedule and no responsibilities. She can wake up at noon and just stare at the ceiling of the library once she wakes up. She doesn't have anything here. No nothing, no friends and she finds herself thinking often about them, wondering if they are safe and sound, if they miss her. If war was over. She wonders if they think she is dead. Sometimes, she wonders if she has slipped into a coma and this is all in her head, but the still unhealed wound on her shoulder seems too real to find this to be a product of her mind. She has never been this imaginative either...

Her eyes fall away from the window to the desk and watches as the glass of water is nearly finished, the wrapped chocolates laying still in the bowl. She doesn't touch those, she's afraid of the things around here since she was bitten by a flesh-eating rose. Next, to the book she is holding, a page between her fingers. She meets the passage she had last read.

It bothered her to have to stay locked up within these walls that stank of medicine and age, to be kept awake at night by the moans of her sick mother, always attentive to the clock so as to administer each dose at the proper time, bored, tired, and unhappy while her brother had no taste of such obligations. Before him lay a destiny that was bright, free, and full of promise. He could marry, have children, know what love was.*

She sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose, reaching for the burning cigarette on the ashtray - three cigarettes butts lay amidst the ashes. Her Lucky Strike pack is almost finished and she doesn't know if she can wish for a vending machine around this place. Everything is so Disney-like. Somehow, it almost feels wrong to be smoking. Sure, it may be the fact that she is inside a public library smoking, but is was past that one point. She hardly sees people here. It's the only place that she can be bothered to go, however, to occupy herself. Reading and thinking and doing nothing.

It's a depressing cycle.


( * "The House of Spirits" by ALLENDE, Isabel )

Comments

[contemptuous.livejournal.com]

Galatea still feels out of place, in buildings meant for humans. She has not stepped foot in a library in a very long time. Years, or decades, she's long since stopped counting. She's a little uncomfortable, surrounded by the high shelves. Everything smells of age, of forgotten things. She wonders if this library was created for them, as everything else was, thrown together haphazardly and mismatched, or if the building is older. It seems to be the latter.

Her footsteps echo loudly against the floors. It's so empty here. Not just this building, but all the others. Something occurred in this place, long ago, she thinks. There appear to be no natives, save the Queen and her compatriots, and even they might be fabricated. She trusts nothing here.

If she is honest with herself, this place makes her nervous. The environment here is unlike that of the Organization's. She was needed there, and valued despite her growing discontent. She was aware of her place. Here, she feels observed. Trapped. She is used to luxury, to going where she pleases, to disobeying orders and commands when she sees fit to do so. Here, she is caged, held at the whim of someone, or something that seemed to want to do nothing other than to use everyone as playthings. It was insulting.

She notices the woman sitting at the table, recognizes her from the Vine and spends a few moments idly perusing the shelves before she speaks.

"Have you gotten used to it yet?" The question is phrased politely. For once, there is no hint of mockery.

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It isn't a hard thing, to hear distant footsteps. It's not like in the movies where the loner in the library is caught off guard by the presence of another. The sound is distinct and loud enough for Emilia to tilt her head up and look to where the footsteps come. She distinguishes a tall blonde and she frowns a little. A fleeting thought touches her mind: the woman is almost exactly to what Emilia imagined knights to be, when she was younger and spent a lot of time curling under the blankets on Winter nights, reading a book.

But she catches herself soon after and becomes self-aware she is staring at the odd - in her opinion - figure of the blonde, so eventually she sets her eyes back on the book, but not the attention. No, she's still paying attention to Galatea, on sparse occasion stealing a glance or two as she comes closer, fiddling the books without much interest, but always careful to look away when she thinks she'll turn to her.

Emilia sniffs a little, rubbing her nose idly, before flipping the page of the book. She seems a little out of it, pursing her lips and frowning slightly, but she's trying to not to feel too bothered by another's presence. Of course, this is a public place and it's not Em's, but it seems that she only truly realised that when the space was occupied by someone else other than her. And the fact that most of these people seem to be people who are not freaking out over the whole ordeal of being kidnapped into another world makes her feel so very inadequate.

And just as she thinks about that, the woman speaks. There's an awkward moment of silence before Emilia realises she's talking to her. She looks up, blinks as if waking up just then, and then sighs through her nose as she registers the question. "No," she says, rubbing the corner of the book's page idly between her thumb and forefinger. "I don't think I want to, either." There's a small pause and Emilia reaches for her cigarette, rolling it idly against the ashtray. "I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that some people can." She looks at Galatea. There's a question there, Have you?, but she doesn't want to sound too accusing. And, as always, this means that she sounds exactly like she's judging everyone and their mother's for being comfortable in this place.

[contemptuous.livejournal.com]

Galatea is observant, and so notices the woman's interest, but makes no indication of such. It is likely she makes her uneasy, which she is used to. Interaction with humans is a rare occurrence, and although she has been trained to blend in, to act, to pretend, she chooses not to in this place. She is under no obligation to make people comfortable. It's a liberating feeling.

At the question, Galatea ceases her idle browsing of the bookshelves and glances at Emilia out of the corner of her eye. The implied accusation has not gone unnoticed, the judgmental tone, and she answers crisply. "I have adjusted, but I have not become complacent." As far as she's concerned, there is a difference. Adjustment allows her to accept the oddities of this place without losing her sanity. It doesn't mean that she has accepted being stuck in the Gardens forever.

She picks up a book, makes a show of flipping through the pages, and then pulls a face, putting it back down. "If the Queen expects the populace to roll over like good dogs, she may want to reconsider trying to pass off this trash as reading material."

[howaverage.livejournal.com]

Finger tapping at the cigarette rather idly, Emilia watches Galatea as she browses the bookshelves until she stops. She looks at her for a while longer before returning her attention to the book, although she is not really reading it by now, clearly listening to the warrior - her eyebrow raises slightly at her words and she nearly scoffs, but she can't help but to think that's not such a bad idea.

Still, Emilia will hardly do so, at least, not so soon. She tries not to think about the queer magic and the odd talking animals (which will forever bother her) and the whole thing. She frowns a little bit, mind travelling far already.

But she comes back to her senses when Galatea closes the book, looking up at her once more, watching as she puts it back on the shelf. She looks down at the book she's holding, looks at a distant bookshelf and shrugs slightly. She has been entertained so far. There are some author from home, some she has never heard and some that have a too weird name for her to dare to read, in fear it'll be an epic love story between an alien with a trunk for a nose and a creature with too many limbs.

"Some of them are all right, actually," she says with a shrug, picking up the cigarette. "At least they help me spend the time."

But it's not like she doesn't get a little tired of reading all the time.

[contemptuous.livejournal.com]

It is unusual for her, to chat with a human over something as mundane as literature. She is treated with fear in most places, revulsion in others. It's surprising enough that she finds herself relaxing, slightly. She doesn't sit down, she isn't comfortable enough for that yet, but there is a slight relaxing of her regal bearing, and her expression softens a fraction.

"Are they?" Her tone is lightly curious. "I have not had much time to read, in quite a while. However, there is little else to do here. What would you recommend?"

It would be better, she thinks, than killing small game for little reason outside of boredom, and watching the days go by, distracting herself by sparring. Or worse, listening to the humans bicker and romance one another over the Vine. She would rather watch paint dry.