fandomhigh | Library; Wednesday [ 10/02 ]

A good portion of Adah's flippant cheerfulness dropped, heavily, into her stomach like she herself had dropped to the floor Monday morning. There was still a bruise, now turning shades of purple with yellow tinging the edges, on her right hip from the incident. The REM ember of walking was the one part of the whole loosely lucid dream sequence that she disliking having to recall Being able bodied enough to do something like that, like walking, or even using her right arm, which twitched, just slightly, at the attention in her head. Twitch like a lich, like a bitch, and anything more was just pain. Dancing called up thoughts of being able bodied; River knew she couldn't dance. River knew that the last time there was something like that, it had just ended up stretching her out. Why would River mention dancing? It hurt and was frustrating that she seemed so insistent on bring up something she knew Adah couldn't do...

She started to draw the returned book in closer to herself, as if that somehow would make it better.

River's eyes widened when she realised what she had done. Of course, to her Adah could dance, did dance constantly, only Adah herself couldn't see it. "Words!" She tried. "Poetry like rhythm, floating, changing, moving. Different kind of dancing." There were so many different kinds of dancing.

That might not be enough to comfort Adah though, and River nervously spun around in a circle, trying to think of something better. She jumped up on to the desk and sat down cross-legged, biting her lip and looking at Adah.

Adah had to close her eyes tightly for a moment; after that, after walking through her head all weekend, or so it seemed, she couldn't handle spinning, twirling, whirling. She felt bad for it, too; part of her was convinced that moving like that was just as natural for River as it was for the sea lion to swim. But she needed a moment without it, and, when she opened her eyes again, she blinked at where River was; it took a moment to relocate to where she had shifted.

Too quick. Too fluid. Too River.

Adah floundered a little in attempting to center herself again; River sitting on the desk disrupted the balance. She tried to focus, focus, but her mind was leap-frogging from all the stacks of books, River, herself, books, River, pen, straighten the pen. The pen was crooked, ti neth giarts!

Adah, gulping something down her sore, rough throat, straightened it and, as calmly as she could, let herself make a speculation about her doubtfulness of a party that would allow for such dancing, outside of anything more than what they were doing now.

Again River sensed the impact she had on Adah, this time by moving. She hid her face in her hands, her uncombed hair falling over her head and on to the desk, waiting for Adah's mind to settle. Straighten the pens? "Pens are as straight as they need to be," she whispered from her hiding place, then looked up, peering at Adah through strands of hair. "Not a kind of dancing that would offend people." Although thinking of dancing that would offend people in public made her blush. "Could bring No Snikcidy Lime." Perhaps she should leave the subject, as it bothered Adah. River smiled a little, then spoke quietly:

"Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place."

Adah drew in a deep breath. Of course she knew the poem. She released the air, clinging to her lungs, and, with it, brought the next verse to mind.

Ourself behind ourself, concealed -
Should startle most -
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.

Least horrors be apart, meant hours in, hid, assassin, most startled should, concealed ourselves, behind ourselves...An interesting choice. River, warning her about the dangers of too much solitude. She looked over at the other girl for verification, although she wasn't sure if verification would answer anything.

Or so she told herself, but anyone who could plainly see her thoughts as she knew River could, would be able to tell that Adah felt she already assumed why River would warn about something like that. At least, she had an assumption.

"The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre
More near."

River smiled at Adah, eyes glittering. "When things come back to haunt you it doesn't matter how well you shoot." And she could shoot quite well. She pushed the book closer to Adah, into her hand.

Well, that was certainly comforting, considering Adah probably couldn't shoot at all. She looked over at River again, lingering slightly as if trying to read her face, read her mind as River did so easily with her, to see exactly what the other girl was getting at, but the efforts were proving futile. With a sigh, she opened up the book to the first string to read which poems River herself had marked for her.

"Definition of dancing. Company of two. Responding to each others movements, whether of mind or body. Intimate connection." River spun a strand of hair around her finger nervously. She wanted Adah to understand, but sometimes words were troublesome.

"Sometimes words are troublesome. Different connections for different people."

The corner of Adah's mouth went up into a little grin, her body moving slightly at a slight, silent and wry laugh; her eyes were kept on the book. Different meanings for just the same word, as well. Kilanga. The same word for something beloved was the same word for something that gave you a rash. The same word for hurrying up was the same word for bowel disease that will have you draining yourself to death. Dancing, by River's definition, could be dancing. It could be intercourse. It could be a virus and body, company of two, responding to each other's movements, intimate connection of one sucking the other dry...

Words were troublesome, because even in cultures with a supposedly agreed upon language, they could mean so many different things. And they, the both of them, seemed to be in the incurable habit of using them to twist endlessly around a single point, circling, circling, closing in, but never reaching that center point.

River nodded, beaming. Adah finally understood. "Dancing," she said. But Adah had been about to read the poems marked by threads, and River had interrupted that. She poked the book with her fingertip.

But what was the point of all that circling?

Although perhaps that Adah chose to focus on the poem instead of answering herself that question was answer enough.

She pointed to one particular line. She never really thought about that line much before, but now she found it a wonderful contradiction. She certainly did not relate June to innocence after the last three years in Africa.

And, of course, she also knew that she was focusing on that because it brought up the most distant associations.

"Evading the subject." River gave her a playfully stern look. "Emily Dickinson might not have been to Africa and learnt of June's secret nature." She giggled. "The point of circling is the point of life. What is the point of life? The important thing is who you circle with."

Well, River did say she liked dancing, didn't she? Adah was willing to prove with determination that, while her limbs were lame, she could mentally dance circles around the most stubborn of those who could read such choreography. And, really, she reasoned to herself (although, really, not to herself at all...there was no simply Adah with River around), River was giggling, not at all exasperated with Adah (despite Adah's best subconscious and fully conscious efforts), so she allowed herself a wry grin as well. She leaned down a little, against her arm on the desk, looking up at River. People had been trying to figure out the meaning of life since she had it; Adah mostly just wondered what the meaning of figuring out the meaning of life was.

So Adah had agreed to dance! River looked pleased and turned around, stretching out on her belly on top of the desk, wiggling her feet in the air and resting her chin on her hands. She looked back at Adah, grinning. "Question to be twisted and turned. Perhaps impossible to answer but assumptions are necessary for creating strategies." Unconciously her voice trailed off as her eyes fixed on Adah's lips.

Strategies? Seige tarts? Adah smiled doubtfully into her arm. Most humans tended to function mostly to live. The strategy behind strategies was possibly just to make up a meaning to an otherwise meaningless existence. Humans had a disease; they were chronically susceptible to believing that they're above the basic functions of living. Because I could not stop for Death,he kindly stopped for me. Giving Death manners! As much as she loved the Lime, so many of her poems proved so completely how much Emily was just another victim of the human disease called rational.

"Strategies need not be conscious," River persisted, her mind returning to Adah's words from watching the curve of Adah's shoulders. "The directions chosen all based on something." She frowned, her mind leaping to the point in time when the only path she wanted to follow was the one heading towards the Academy. "Even if they're the wrong ones." She shook her head, smiling again. "Death doesn't come with good manners," she agreed. "Blood flowing to fast or not at all."

And River, true to her nature, which meant that Adah was glad for it, sure seemed to jump a lot. The babbling rapids of her disjointed thoughts had Adah's own brain bouncing everywhere but Adah, who liked to walk a straight, balanced path when she could, tried to capitalize on one, grab on as tightly as her one hand could, and go with it. She clung, of course, to Death. Death was certain, solid, inevitable. Rooted in a basic occurrence that few could ever escape. She idly thought that Death must be like what she read about in a psychological study, bipolar, completely rampant and unruly one minute, striking left and right like a child with a tantrum over a toy he thought he wanted merely because he could not have it, to a soft, gentle, coddling sort of thing. Death of a sister, serpent suddenly lashing out with a blue tongue, against the death of an elderly Tata, with the dust of a full life clinging to his black as midnight skin, curling up in the corner of his home one day and never even realizing that Death had even visited, so silent was his arrival and departure.

River looked down, studying her outstretched fingers. "Have killed," she said quietly. "Protecting my friends." And because others wanted her to, before that. "Insane cannibals. I'm a secret weapon."

The words came easily, and it surprised her. It was a secret, one she rarely told, or one she hid in plain sight. Part of her mind had obviously wanted Adah to know. "Want to know if one day you'll turn your head away in horror." Blair had, after all.

Adah's eyes went up and rested on River's face for a moment with her mind relatively quiet for a rare moment, piecing together the words carefully to make sure she was understanding them correctly. She blinked. Despite herself, she thought of the newspaper brought in by the Underdowns when they made the futile plea to her parents to take the family out of Kilanga before it was too late, the caricature of the bone-nosed Afrikaan cannibal, but, somehow, she knew this was nothing like what River was referring to. Not even the pygmies and their sharpened teeth for tearing meat would fit the image she way striving for. She'd seen the pygmies with their children; they were more human to her than most civilized people.

Which brought her around, finally, to her conclusion. Why would she turn her way in horror at someone protecting something, when she had to spend three years of her life watching a man blindly leading his family into danger without even realizing they were there, trailing on his shoestrings.

He hadn't even considered leaving after Ruth May died. After Ruth May died because he had carelessly made an enemy of a man who knew how to set a trap. Adah's throat was tight, but it had nothing to do with her affliction now, her eyes filling a little. She'd seen horror; her sisters called him Father, and his disease was blindness not of the eyes, but of the mind. One thing she felt certain River would never be afflicted with. And the whole notion that she would think that Adah would ever even consider her on the same field as that man just boggled her.

There were many reasons to kill; death was just another part of life. Kill micro organisms by bowling water, so they don't kill you. Kill chickens so that you can eat them, so hunger doesn't kill you. Kill insane cannibals, so they don't eat you and kill you.

...It was when death was senseless that Adah felt like she might need to turn her head, but not in horror. Just deep, crippling sadness.

River looked up then, meeting Adah's eyes. "Government did that. Killed them all and tried to get rid of the evidence." Including River. "Senseless." She wished Adah could feel how important her understanding was. Maybe, some day, she could tell her the darker stories, but not today. She reached out her hand and lightly brushed Adah's, wanting to convey how she felt.

Funny how that worked, that those were were supposed to be protecting us are left hurting us the most. Even wit hthe ants, her mother, not without her guilt, leaving Adah to be completely consumed if it weren't for Anatole...

Adah drew in a breath, trying to cut off the flow of thoughts; her fingers twitched a little under River's light touch, and she hoped that River didn't take her lack of response as anything against her. She had a habit of closing herself down over things like this; it demanded a lot of her mental facilities, and so her energy almost transfered entirely to it, and then it left her exhausted, mind, body, and soul. If she even had one of the last.

"Recurring pattern," River agreed. Her own parents had abandoned her after all. "Exceptions become important." She suddenly wanted Adah to meet Simon, imagining they would get along quite well. She kept her fingertips against Adah's hand, prepared to pull away should Adah want her to.

Adah didn't really move hardly at all at this point; she knew what had happened, understood it perfectly. Her anger, disappointment was so sharp that it took all the juice out of her half brain and left it quiet, dormant, simple. No more dancing; they'd hit a center. An unexpected one, like a nail on the head, driving it into the coffin of her brain functions.

She felt bad; she didn't mean for this to happen, to suddenly become just dead flesh when River expected more from her. She was tired, and she missed Leah, for the first time since leaving Africa. At times like this, she needed her other half to do what she no longer had the energy for.

"Find a book to rest in?" River tilted her head, slowly pulling away her hand. Most people got tired of dancing before River did, and it didn't bother her. She sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the desk.

Adah made a soft, small noise into her arm. She had Japanese homework she should be working on. The jumbled structures of their sentences might help her feel a little back in her crooked place again.

Library; Wednesday [ 10/02 ]

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