ataraxionlogs | someone left the cake out in the rain

CHARACTERS: Claire Bennet & yoouuuu
LOCATION: 5th floor and beyond
WARNINGS: Sprinkles.
SUMMARY: Cheerleader Bennet lurks around her new floor, and I finally post a log.
NOTES: Razzle dazzle!

Moving floors almost feels like going through the process of getting acclimated to the ship itself all over again. Everything might look similar, but there are new faces, new sounds, new habits to adapt to. For the pocket-sized blonde currently occupying 023, some of those new habits include lurking around and hiding out in the kitchen, which she feels is a relatively low traffic area unless something starts smelling good in that area of the hallway. She hasn't had time for it, much less the inclination, and it seems kind of trivial given everything that goes on both on the network and in the corridors themselves, but it's a monotonous task that she's good at, and if Claire is looking for anything at this point, it's something to be even halfway good at. Granted, she's had to make some adjustments with the measuring and ingredients, and there isn't like she's going to throw a bake sale or something, but sometimes she'll finish up and leave the plate sitting on one of the counters and consider that her contribution for the month.

Or however time gets measured here. If she's being honest with herself, she's stopped keeping track.

She figures she must have had a birthday by now, calculating how long it feels like she's been here and where she was when she was plucked out of her own subdivision in time and space. She also figures that it matters less and less for someone like her, doubly so when you're living somewhere in which the only span of time that matters is the distance between one jump and the next, or one disaster and the next. No one has managed to come up with a calendar for that, though, so Claire splits her time between the 5th floor's kitchen and the rest of its spidery hallways and sleek rooms. The holodeck still kind of feels like some sort of weird optical illusion, so between the kitchen, library, rec room, and Kate and Darcy's doors on either side of her, her time gets divvied up in a random, scattered pattern, including that time she accidentally walked in on someone in the bathroom.

All in all, she really needs to get a job. Or a hobby. That isn't pastries.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That's a common question. Always has been, whether it was girls fishing for help getting his attention, at school, or later what felt like the whole world wanting to know when it was Black had gone mad, exactly, and how no one had seen it coming. At least people on the Tranquility tend not to have motives for it, beyond sorting out who's from where (or when) and correctly placing everyone on the ship's weird, tangled social web.

So Remus nods and says, "We went to school together," with a grin that counteracts the understatement—not disingenuous, just private. British. He isn't generally given to one of the best friends I've ever had style effusion with strangers. With anyone. "Us and Severus and Lily Potter."

Leaving Hermione out. Rude. But that would take more explanation than Claire wants or needs, he imagines, so Remus skips over it with silent apology to Ms Granger.

"You know Severus, right?"

"That's right. I've met Lily a handful of times, too. And Sirius, back when I first got here and the hallways were going crazy as usual," she answers, still smiling that thousand watt smile, even though she would like to say something about what she knows about some particular interlocking relationships. It's not her place, though, and she doesn't even know Remus, besides, so she doesn't want to go barging in with yeah, that guy who basically broke my friend's nose why are you friends with him exactly? Someone could probably suggest the same thing about her, all things considered, and he seems nice.

Focus, Claire, stop acting like a lunatic every time someone breathes in your direction. It's going to get around that you're anti-social or something.

"In Scotland, right? School, I mean. Big giant spaceship going who knows where through time and space is probably a huge change of pace. I think I'm still adjusting, sometimes. Moving floors so abruptly probably doesn't help." She has to keep looking up at him, and vaguely she wonders whether or not he's as tall as her father. Noah could teeter between protective and imposing easy, but Remus doesn't seem to embody either of those two extremes in this moment, and that's sort of a relief. She finds it easier to relax.

For the record, Remus is exactly as tall as her father, but he loses an inch to slouching and makes a point never to impose. But he brightens and unfolds, just a little, in the face of her friendliness. She reminds him of Lily—and James and Sirius, which would be meant as a compliment, if he said so. All the people he knows who lit up rooms without trying. He likes her already.

Not that that's a particularly selective honor.

"I'd barely had time to get attached to my floor," he says, "so it could have been worse."

Maybe he should be more disoriented, but he hasn't lived in the same place for more than nine months since he was four years old, anyway, and almost everyone he's befriended is on this floor now. The only person he's farther away from after the move is Hank, and it doesn't matter much, as long as the lifts stay functional.

"Where are you from?" he asks—America, of course, but if she's being kind enough to specify Scotland instead of Britain (or England), he can try to return the courtesy. Speaking of which, he quickly cuts in at the end of his question: "Sorry, I'm not keeping you from anything, am I?"

She exhales, hard, almost as incredulous as her expression. "Hardly," she says, still looking skeptical, but it's more of a self-deprecating expression than anything else. What could Claire Bennet possibly have to do in this day and age? Her employment status is still technically pending - but she's looking into that - and there are only so many hours in a day that can be dedicated to trying to figure out how to manipulate the kitchen into giving her what she wants, let alone trying to create the illusion that she is not the one using all of her kitchen's resources. Sorry, guys.

"To answer your question, I'm from - " She makes a face. "Well, Texas, originally. Odessa. But I moved to California when I was sixteen, and then kind of... traveled. I go to school in Virginia. Or I did, before I came here. Now I'm from the fifth floor of a spaceship, apparently." Sometimes her voice still gets a little twangy, but neither of her parents had a traditional accent, save for her mother when she was feeling Super Southern Mom. Privately, she enjoys the fact that a lot of the people she has met are not American.

"Were you on your way somewhere?" she follows up, indicating over her shoulder with a thumb thrown down the hall. "I don't mind walking and talking."

"Just the kitchen," Remus says. "Last time I summoned something I nearly hit someone."

So no more of that, at least without checking the hallways first, and once he's gone that far there's no real reason not to just make the walk. He has more to do than Claire, maybe, but not by much. And if they're both only killing time—

He moves around her to keep walking, turned at an angle to keep facing her, for the first couple of steps, to make sure she's coming along.

"Those are two of the three states I could find on a map," he says. "Texas, California, and Massachusetts, with the..." He draws the hook of the Cape in the air ahead of him. He only knows where it is because of the Salem Witches' Institute. "But I could still probably draw America better than I could this thing." His hook-drawing hand raps an empty stretch of wall along the corridor: he means the ship. He has a vague idea which way the lifts are moving when he takes them, but he doesn't have much grasp of distance or angles at all.

She keeps up well enough, naturally adjusting her stride to make up for the difference between them. Over time, she's gotten used to having to keep up with people, especially given her father's height, never mind that he would slow down and stoop to carrying her if he ever felt like she needed it. Her hands find their way into her pockets, elbows tucked carefully into her ribs on either side.

There's no trace of the girl who has become wary of every social interaction that she's come across since the eleventh grade, but Claire has gotten good at hiding her over the years. She does laugh at that sort of self-deprecating humor, and does say to him, "As long as it wasn't a kitchen knife I think they'll find it in their heart to forgive you." Truth be told, she's more comfortable with herself on the Tranquility than she ever was at home.

"The Salem Witches' Institute?" Claire echoes, as she co-leads the way down the corridor. The idea of magic has become mostly normal to her now, but things still manage to catch her not paying attention or looking where she's going and trip her up a little bit. "You're saying there's a school in America? That is just not fair. Also I'd agree with you, about the map drawing thing." She says this as she turns toward him halfway, pointing at him for enunciation. "I think I've figured out my floor, labs, medbay... and that's probably about it. Sometimes I still get turned around going to the oxygen gardens."

Remus isn't shy-quiet, but he is quiet, relatively speaking: at the mention of kitchen knives he only winces--a wince that's still half a smile, one eye squinting shut like he's had something sour. (He isn't serious. It was only a cup. Still could have hurt, though, and leaving his room to fetch things by hand like a responsible wizard is apparently a good way to meet people. Who'd have thought.) And concerning the fairness or unfairness of the Salem school and the multiverse at large, he shrugs, elaborately, like I wasn't consulted.

Rounding around into the kitchen, though, he laughs. It's a sympathy laugh--he's been lost in the corridors, which isn't really funny, but he understands. The ship is a maze. "You'd think there might be some sort of welcome tour," he says, like welcome tours could really be anyone's priority on a nightmare-fueled starship run by a largely inexperienced skeleton crew, "or mentor system--have you been here very long?"

There's no telling anymore, now that everyone's shuffled around floors. Not without gawking at people's forearms.

someone left the cake out in the rain

don't worry, however slow you are I will inevitably be slower

we will have a slow off. last one to the finish line wins

unfortunately I'm a very competitive person

sadly i am not /waves white flag

now that I've won I can reply after less than a week's wait I GUESS (sorry)

joke's on you cause now i'm just taking a hundred years!!!

hhhhhh