Given and Lost Something Infinite [Open]

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

Aside from her son, the thing Eva's most excited to find is that the media library has some of Jorge Luis Borges' classic works. Pulling Dreamtigers up on the pad, she sits in a corner of the media library and tries to unwind. Her conversation with Dani has made her wildly angry, and since there's no paperwork for her to attack, no people on the other ends of telephones to verbally battle, no Peter to listen to her vent and rage, she can only think of two ways to ameliorate the burn: literature and wine. And she doesn't have wine.

"'You suffer captivity, but you will have given word to the poem.' God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and he understood the reasons, and accepted his destiny; but when he awoke there was only a dark resignation in him, a valiant ignorance, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of a wild beast," she reads aloud to herself every few paragraphs.

A passerby might find her actions unusual or annoying, as she drums her finger on the table, taps her feet against the floor and speaks as she reads. Occasionally she talks to herself, "what do you think, Eva?" or taking the dead author to task over whatever statement catches her eye. She alternately scrunches her nose and bites her lip. Anything to remind herself, as always, how blessed she is to still be in motion, to have a voice again with which to say anything or nothing.

The familiar words she used to read, before Yeerks and wars and violence, before even parenthood and certainly before Stacy, are soothing. Even as the words nestle up and awaken the darker memories of her history. Even without wine or Peter or paperwork or purpose.

"Dante, filled with wonder, knew at last who he was and what he was, and he blessed his bitter sufferings. Tradition has it that, on waking, he felt he had been given - and then had lost - something infinite, something he would not be able to recover, or even to glimpse, for the machinery of the world is far too complex for the simplicity of men."

Eva smiles sadly and pretends to dog-ear the imaginary page.

Comments

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Dante, filled with wonder, knew at last..."

The words filter through the air as Renne alternates between walking and crawling his routes -- both types of movement have value to him, so he's endeavouring to keep both in sharp order. Well, sharpen his strange walking with its hip-rolling gait and keep up his fast crawl, more like. As it is, it'd come time for his studies in English and he'd honestly not expected to hear another voice.

Hence, the blue oddity drops into his crawl again and waits, listening with his head peeking 'round a doorway. Those big ears of his against the shock of still tangled hair might be hard to miss.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

Eva sees him in the periphery and startles, hand instantly reaching to the revolver at her hip but not pulling it out, just patting it to make sure it's there. It's a silly way to comfort herself, since she knows there are plenty of things on this ship that wouldn't even care if she was armed. And she's seen far weirder beings in her time, so it's really only the surprise that catches her.

"It's rude to stare," she says flatly.

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Eee? Haow yeu do tha-t?"

Stare? He's quite honestly confused by that.

With a chirp and a twitch of both big ears, Renne crawls through the doorway, sniffing a little along the floor. He's trailing the left-hand wall for a bit until it's time to square off. At which point, please don't be surprised if and when he runs face-first into something. Likely a chair or a terminal.
Staring is something he...can't really do.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

Well, Eva now feels embarrassed. At least the thing doesn't seem at all dangerous. "You face in the direction of a person and unnerve them. That's staring."

She puts the pad down. "Could I ask what you are?"

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Oooh. Rrrr-enne noh wahn-t do tha-t."

Chirp-trill. getting his bearings, the anomaly's skin gives a thin flash of pale indigo-violet. And then another, broader flashing stripe of bluish teal. Managing to find his way to a spot...kind of at her feet, he gives a quick sniff, then sits back.
Yes, his feet appear disproportionately large on him. As for answering the "What are you?" question, he's not trying to be a smartass. He just...finds it hard to explain in his limited English.

"Rrrr-enne be Rrrr-enne. Wha-t yeu is?"

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"I'm a human. Nothing more or less," she says, looking at Renne up and down. He's certainly not something she's seen in her times with the Yeerks, but with all the parallel universes she guesses that isn't a big surprise. At a loss for what to say, she simply says "I'm reading Borges. Dreamtigers. Short little philosophical prose and poetry."

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Oooh. Rrrr-enne kno-w 'lots Hew-mahns."

His ears give a flick-twitch forward. His one black eyebrow goes up in that Spock-like way.

"Rrrr-enne noh kno-w tha-t. Rrrr-enne do rrrread....Shakey-Spearrrr." Not that he understands much of it mind you, but Shakespeare had been the favourite of a very old, very dear and very dearly missed friend of his.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Shakespeare?" Well, that surprises her. Given Renne's diction she wasn't expecting to hear that. "I'm fond of Othello, if you've read that one. I spent a few years in very close contact with an Iago."

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Eey-ess. 'Chee li-ke Shakey-Spearrr 'lots. O-fellow? Rrr-enne noh kno-w tha-t. 'Chee teach Rrrr-enne Learrrr Kingh ahn-d Hen-rrrree."

Trill. His skin gives off another few flashes of that bluish teal. A stripe, then a mottling patch race across him.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Chee?" She can't quite tell if that's Chee like the dog robots, or Chee as in something else. She suspects something else, or Marco would have told her, but the Chee are masters at blending in. Or possibly it's just Renne's way of speaking. Not that she should be judgmental, given that she still has an accent, she reminds herself, then thinks how silly it is to consider political correctness when on a giant meatship in space with aliens. "I haven't read King Lear in years. That was the one with 'no angel saved you', wasn't it?"

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Rrrr-enne thin-k so. 'Chee teach Rrrr-enne it lon-g ti-me ago. 'Chee...Is...Ahrrrr-Chee."

It's a name in this case and as a flash of deep blue-black passes over his skin, Archie-the-Plushie emerges from Renne's bigger-on-the-inside britches pocket. The little inanimate toy shows some years of wear, but it's well loved and maintained. He'd even replaced the toothpick "saber" some time ago and the bent nail that represents a flintlock. It had been added to with a shorter bent nail, representing a more modern pistol.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

That makes the whole conversation much weirder, knowing that there's a likely inanimate object that Renne must consider sapient or something. Then again, she thinks back to the talking hammer. Who knows. She waves at the doll politely and asks, feeling a bit silly, "Hello, Archie?"

[governorkang]

"You've read that book before, haven't you?" Kang asked, curious. It sounded very interesting, and there was something about this woman that reminded him of someone else on the ship. A relative, probably; spending so much time around humans and other races, he'd gotten better at picking up on familial resemblances.

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

That actually earns a tiny giggle out of him. And a shake of his head, although he can't stop himself from playing.

"'Chee say hell-loww. 'Chee..." Hesitate. "Th-is 'Chee noh be...ah-live. Rrrreal-'Chee, he...noh be heerrrre noh morrre."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Oh. Is he...dead?" She feels a pang of remorse for that faux-pas if so, but at least Renne is giggling.

[riseupnchargem.livejournal.com]

Distracting himself with his own reading in a corner of the media library, Jamie is not entirely surprised to hear a voice penetrating the quiet; what he finds odd is that it's only one voice, rather than a pair or a group carrying on a conversation, as tends to happen in the library, despite the apparently multiversal rule designating such areas as quiet places.

Jamie peers as surreptitiously as possible around a corner to observe. Sure enough, it's a woman, alone; and though it does sound as though she's talking to someone at times, Jamie can't see who it is she might be addressing. She could very well be talking to herself.

...or to "herself." Spoken conversations with an invisible other are something Jamie is all too familiar with, though it's something he hasn't personally had to do for several years, and his curiosity - morbid though it may be - is piqued. He leans a little further around the corner, trying to ascertain that the woman doesn't have a (real, tangible) companion who's just out of sight - a pet, a mute friend - to whom she's talking.

He ends up leaning so far that he slides off his seat and into the aisle. Whoops.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

She looks up and smiles. "A few times. It was a favorite of mine back in college. I was pleasantly surprised to find your collection of Spanish literature here. Even back home some of these aren't considered classics like they should be."

She cocks her head, still drumming her fingers along her thigh. "I don't believe we've met."

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Rrr-enne noh kno-w. He say 'See lay-terrr', noh say 'goo-d bai'."

Yes, "goodbye" to him is a very bad, very final word.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

She looks up from the clatter, instantly on alert mode, but relaxes a hair when she sees it's someone who slid into the aisle. "I'm pretty sure you're meant to sit on those, not fall off them."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Oh. Well, that's not so bad then. And even goodbyes don't tend to be permanent."

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"In whe-rrre Rrrr-enne be...goo-d bai be fohrrr-everrr. So Rrrr-enne noh say it. Whe-rrre yeu is frrrom? Is frrrom Urrrff?"

[riseupnchargem.livejournal.com]

Jamie scrambles to his feet, clutching his reader to his chest like a shield. Clearly it will protect his vital organs in case this woman happens to possess laser-eyebeams or something.

"Uhhh, yes. Ma'am. Right, sorry," he stammers, and finishes with a conrite half-grin.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"I don't bite," she says, unimpressed but calm. "But don't think I didn't notice you peeking at me."

She didn't, but she can figure what happened based on the positioning of the seat and aisle.

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Earth. It seems there's a lot of those. And you?"

[governorkang]

That always threw Kang off a bit, when a new human on the ship didn't even blink at seeing him. Usually, they stared for a second or two before remembering their manners (if they even did remember on their own). It didn't show beyond a slight rustling of his wings, though, and he held out his hand, "Kang, ma'am. I run the tavern down in the City, and I'm one on the Council. And you?"