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Language is the Blood of the Soul [open]

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Post  Elias Ortega Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:30 am

Elias laid on the couch in the activities room, staring at the ceiling, his journal on his chest, unopened. There was no way to tell what he was thinking, what he was feeling; there was nothing, for once, on his face to belie it. He'd been trying for his whole life not to be such an open book, but thus far it hadn't worked. That had been his downfall during his childhood; his father could always play him like a piano, and the kids at school could always tell when they'd upset him. Staring at the ceiling, blank-faced, for a few more moments, Elias hoped that maybe if he just stared into space for long enough, the black that closed in on the edges of his vision would take over. This, of course, did not happen, and he was soon forced to blink by his moisture deprived eyes. Sighing, he picked up his diary, holding it above his face, leafing through the pages; his eyes flickered through the pages of scribbles, barely discernible from the words intermittently scrawled between the doodles. It was comforting, for some reason, to read back and see those days, each one with its own sorrows compartmentalized on paper. To know that he had lived through them and written about them and would ultimately leave something of a record behind when he died. The page after the one he'd written on a few nights before was stuck to its back; hardly giving it a second thought, he tried to peel them apart. He gave the pages a few tugs, and they slowly came unglued.

Elias sat straight up, looking with sudden horror at his diary. The page was filled with indecipherable words, smudged and blurry and written in what looked like blood. He hadn't done this, had he? If he had, then he didn't remember it, didn't have any fresh wounds that he was aware of. If it wasn't his blood, then whose was it? How had this happened? His every thought centered around getting the foul thing away from him, he flung the diary at the wall; it made impact with a thunk and a loud ruffling of pages, and fell to the floor like a wounded bird. He jumped up from the couch, staring at the book on the floor, shaking slightly. Elias couldn't help but think of the night of the blackout, when he'd been pummeled in the face by a seemingly inanimate train. That memory still drudged up an unbelievable feeling of dread. What was going on here? What was wrong with this place?

It wasn't until then that he remembered that there were other people in the room. It was safe to say that he had made a fair spectacle of himself, and that people were probably staring; he didn't want to look around to see, and furthermore, he didn't want to look away from the betraying diary, lest it do something else evil. He felt the need to explain himself, but knew words weren't coming out without a fight. Nevertheless, he stuttered out,

"I-it's...i-i-it's..." Elias gestured at the diary on the floor across the room, scared and frustrated and aware that everyone was just going to think he was insane. Well, more so than usual. "J-J-Jesus C-Christ!" He combed his fingers through his hair a few times in an agitated manner and shook his head violently. Was he finally losing it, had his strained mind given out on itself at last, or was it Highgrove Home for Children where the insanity lay? What was happening to him? There didn't seem to be a respite anywhere, no external or internal place he could go to be safe. His diary was the last straw, the last thing that was actually his. The end of this would not be pretty.


Last edited by Elias Ortega on Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Post  Laura Richardson Wed Feb 08, 2012 3:10 pm

Laura had been sitting quietly in a corner, drawing a picture. This particular one was of a parrot, one of the yellow, blue and red ones. She’d seen some on telly before and she’d woken up that morning and decided it was definitely a parrot day. Some days needed frogs or tigers or an elephant with three wings flying about, but today was a parrot day. She didn’t know what she’d do with the picture when it was finished, but she liked drawing it so it didn’t matter so much. What mattered more was that she was drawing it on the back of a completed worksheet that had been homework a little while ago and had been given back to her. She was still worrying about the paper situation. She knew she should ask someone, but… it seemed rude. And she felt all upset by being rude so she’d stick to this for now.

When the boy across the room spoke, she looked up and stared. After a few seconds, she picked up her pencil case and picture and went over to look over the boy’s shoulder. She wanted to know why he was upset. Maybe she could help, or something. Most likely or something, but she’d like to try and help. She frowned as she stared at the book. Was that blood? Laura had seen quite a bit of blood, so her first thought that maybe someone had dropped jam on it was quickly shoved away. “Did I do that?” She must have done. Weird and bad things happened around her. It was probably because she’d got that game wrong or accidentally touched someone or something. What did she do wrong? The fact she wasn’t sure she’d spoken to this boy before was pretty much irrelevant.

“I’m sorry.” She kept staring at it. “I must have done something wrong, like… I don’t know. Can I help? I’m sorry.” She tried to give him her parrot picture but sort of missed because her hands had decided they were too nervous to be hands any more and they didn’t want to do what she said. She picked it up off the floor and began to gnaw at a nail, trying to work it out. “Did I touch you?” She was fairly sure she hadn’t, but if she had that would explain it. She didn’t know what else to think. Her heart was doing the thumping thing that meant she had to do more deep breathing but she had to work it out. How had she made everything go bad?
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Post  Elias Ortega Sat Feb 11, 2012 7:36 pm

Elias didn't know what to say. He just stared at the nonsense-spouting girl, unable to formulate a reply to...whatever she was saying. What were you supposed to say to someone's assertion that the bloody, Satanic-looking writing that had suddenly appeared in your diary out of nowhere was their doing? Especially when it was a small, likely very crazy girl holding a picture of a parrot? He was ninety nine percent sure that she had had nothing to do with it -- when would she have been near his diary, for one -- but it didn't hurt to cover all of your bases. And at this stage, she was really the only base he had to cover.

"W-what are y-you t-t-talking about? D-did you d-do that? Th-the...writing?" he asked, gesturing to the diary, his voice more aggressive than he had intended. He wanted with everything in him to shake her as hard as he could. The part of him that held all the troublesome logic, however, told him that shaking her would just make her cry and get him thrown in seclusion, not that seclusion sounded like a bad thing. On second thought, it did; maybe the thing that had thrown the train at his face and left its graffiti on his diary would catch up with him in there. Elias was growing just the tiniest bit paranoid; who wouldn't be? Everyone in this general vicinity seemed to have taken a vacation from relative sanity, himself included; at least the crazy girl saw the bloody writing too. That was encouraging. At least he wasn't hallucinating...yet. That was probably next.

"S-s-stop that...d-don't apologize. J-just...j-j-just..." There was no coherent way to conclude that sentence, so he left it open ended, distressed sounding. What did she mean, had she touched him? He gave her his best skeptical, weirded-out look, hoping she would go away and leave him to dispose of his unholy diary by whatever method he saw fit. Elias thought burning it would be the best option, but as fire was a no-no here, maybe he could just flush it down the toilet page by page. That is, as soon as he could touch it. Right now, it was still physically repulsive to him. Maybe he would leave it where he'd thrown it until some poor staff member picked it up and got rid of it for him. That sounded more like Elias -- always taking the coward's way out. Never doing anything frightening for himself if he could get someone else to do it for him. There'd been enough horror in his life...couldn't he get away with a little cowardice now? Something told him that that ship had sailed, and that he should just be a man and pick up the fucking diary and throw it the fuck away. But that was his father's voice again, and he tried not to give it too much leverage over him these days. Just breathe for a minute. Maybe get out of the activities room, where the air had become stifling. As soon as this crazy girl was done saying...what was she saying, again?
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Post  Laura Richardson Wed Feb 15, 2012 7:19 pm

“I’m evil.” Laura presented this nugget of information as if it was completely self-explanatory and kept staring at the diary. Was this because she’d dropped that plate that time? But it fell in the water, it didn’t even break. Just made a lot of mess. And then people had tutted a little bit. “I didn’t do it on purpose. But if it’s my blood you shouldn’t touch it because you might die.” She couldn’t remember bleeding recently… Maybe when she’d fallen out of bed one night? But that would mean this boy would have had to be hiding under her bed with something sharp and a book. Laura was fairly certain she’d have noticed. She did check, after all. Ever since she fell out awkwardly onto a pen and almost got impaled while trying to get comfy it had seemed a sensible thing to do. She wished she could ask her uncle about this. He’d know exactly what to do and tell her what she did to make it happen and how to explain to this nice boy. “I didn’t mean to make it happen. I don’t know what I did.”

Just… what? Laura decided the safest option would be to completely ignore the elephant in the room and get onto a topic that didn’t involve her killing people. “Do you like parrots?” She did have one that was half coloured in anyway, and for all she knew this boy might be the world’s biggest fan of parrots in the history of the known universe. She was still looking at the diary curiously. Well, she could write to Uncle Kenneth about it. He might know. Although, come to think of it, for people to answer you actually had to send the letter and she still didn’t have an address. Addresses were usually helpful, at any rate. Especially when that address was to somewhere she could only assume was top secret because she couldn’t persuade anyone to tell her it. Not that she was very good at the persuading but never mind. She knew they didn’t want her to write to him, but they needed to know she was dangerous and not trustable and everything.

“Maybe I sleepwalked…” And wrote in her own blood? It wasn’t like any of the other people in here could have done it, she was the only one bad enough that it made any sense. She’d probably sleepwalked. Although where the blood came from was a mystery, it wasn’t as if she’d miss a gaping wound or anything. Well… probably not anyway. Unless her brain decided it didn’t hurt. That would solve it. “I’m sorry about your book.”
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Post  Elias Ortega Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:59 pm

Oh. She was evil, and if he touched her blood he would die. That definitely cleared everything up. Already thoroughly exasperated, Elias struggled to suppress the urge to grab her by the hair and knock her head off the wall a few times. How was it fair that evil, bloody writing appeared in his diary, and then exactly when he needed the guidance of someone halfway sane he instead was faced with a little fruitcake who thought she was evil? Was she evil? No, that was just paranoia again. She was just crazy, no more evil than he or anyone else here was. But the writing in his diary had definitely come from something less than holy, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know what. He wasn't sure of anything just then.

“Do you like parrots?”

...Did he what? No longer listening to anything the girl said, if indeed she kept talking, Elias stalked over to the diary and kicked it as hard as he could; it flew innocently for a few feet before falling again, its pages fluttering pathetically. Poor diary...it had never hurt anyone. It was full of pain and suffering and the wrinkled dots where tears had hit and maybe a little blood from before Highgrove, but it had taken it all with dignity and never divulged his secrets to anyone. Now he was kicking it across the room in anger and frustration and fear. This was about more than the creepy fucking writing in his journal; he felt more than a little violated by this invasion of the last bit of personal space he had retained. There wasn't very much you could take with you when you're always being put in and pulled out of mental institutions, jerked around by the somewhat faulty system, and that had been the last of them. It didn't seem like much, but it was to Elias, someone who'd hardly ever had a moment to himself, his own room, a place where people weren't watching him like a lab rat all the time.

"Sh-sh-shut u-up," he snapped at the girl, struggling to force the words out of an uncooperative mouth. Then he sat down on the couch where he had been laying just a few minutes ago and covered his face with his hands. Was it too much to ask that things could stay boring and sane here? Being bored would be a small price to pay to not have to deal with things like this every other week. Elias did not handle stress well at all; this was evidenced by the number of scars that scored his wrists and his medical records. But things always had to get worse before they got better...right? Maybe this was finally the bottom. Something told him, however, that he had not even begun to fathom the bottom of this pit.
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Post  Laura Richardson Tue Feb 21, 2012 6:11 pm

She watched the boy carefully. This wasn’t exactly going very well. He sounded a bit like the people at the other place had sounded when they thought she was being weird or something. Laura didn’t know how to stop being weird, it just happened, and they didn’t want to tell her. She thought he might not like her. She tried but sometimes it was like everyone else knew all the rules and she didn’t. Like they were playing a big game and she was a pelican who’d wandered into the middle of it all and didn’t know what was happening.

“Ok.” She watched him carefully. Sometimes people didn’t like talking if they were upset. They had to do worrying instead. She just talked a lot because that was what happened. The therapy person before here had told her that she might understand it after a while, but she doubted it. Other people had heads full of different thoughts and feelings and they had different things that had happened. And none of them were even a little bit evil, which was good but it made things complicated. And they said she was babyish. She didn’t mean to be, it just happened and Laura wasn’t sure what was the right thing. She’d asked some people before but none of them wanted to help. Laura didn’t really know what to do with herself now there wasn’t any talking. She felt like she should do something.

Wandering over to where the diary lay on the floor she peered at it, her nose millimetres from the pages. She didn’t think that maybe this boy might not want her near his book, but she was curious about all the blood. He didn’t seem happy. She lay on the floor and stared at it closely, as if she was expecting it to grow wings and fly. How did books just get blood in them? Even if someone did get hurt why would they just bleed in a book instead of going and getting a plaster? It was quite a lot of blood… The boy probably would have noticed a passed out bleeding person. So how did it happen? She didn’t touch it. She just wanted to know how it worked. Could it be red ink if a pen got broken?

“My name’s Laura. What’s yours? Are you ok?” There was a pause where Laura suddenly felt stupid. “Sorry. No talking. I didn’t think about it, but I want to help but I don’t know how.” She sat up and wriggled, still staring at the book. “Do… you want to come and talk to cows with me? They’re nice. And they don’t mind if you pat them or cry or anything, and they’re nice.” She had a feeling she’d repeated herself somewhere in there. Maybe she wasn’t helping…

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Post  Elias Ortega Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:44 pm

Elias was just starting to feel the tiniest bit bad for snapping at the girl when she started talking again. Anger rapidly abating, he lifted his head from his hands and saw her sitting beside the bloody diary. That, for some reason, struck him as an intensely bad idea; why would she want to get close to that thing? He wouldn't get that near to it if someone paid him. Motioning with his hand, he replied,

"M-my n-name's Elias, and g-get away f-f-from that th-thing." He didn't know what he thought it was going to do...grow teeth and bite her? He just knew that he would feel better if she got out of dodge in case it had opened a portal to hell or something of the sort. Laura was definitely a strange girl, annoying, confusing, but sweet and harmless enough. He felt bad for lashing out at her. Her offer of idle conversation with cows was actually tempting; Elias liked the animals at Highgrove. They just lived their animal lives with no care for anything except when someone was going to bring their food and water, take them outside, brush them. They were calm as long as you were, which was comforting in a weird way. He'd never had any pets; his father had never let him have any such creatures, and Carmela thought that animals were filthy and belonged outside. He was willing to do anything if it meant getting out of this room, and if talking to cows was what it had to be, then fine.

"F-fine. L-let's go p-pet c-cows. I j-just...I have to g-g-get r-rid of..." He gestured toward the diary. Leaving it on the floor had seemed like a good idea until he had remembered all the other entries, all the things written in there in felt-tip marker and not in the blood of some otherworldly monster. As much as he didn't want to touch it, he didn't want anyone else to touch it, either -- the thought of people flipping through it, reading his thoughts, was sickening. Standing up, he inched close to the thing, got it under his shoe, and leant down, swiftly grabbing a fistful of pages and ripping at them. They came away with a chorus of tearing noises, and Elias crumpled them up in his hand and ripped a second handful out. Something about it felt viciously good, and something about it felt sad. He tried not to think about it too much. There were other notebooks in the world; he could write to Carmela and ask for another just like this one. Maybe one of the teachers would have a spare composition book. The fear that one day the same thing that had defaced this one would come back for the next one would always haunt him, though -- the cloud of paranoia would likely never subside until he left this place. Stuffing the wads of paper into his pocket, excluding the bloody paper, which he let fall to the floor in disgust, Elias said,

"C-c-coming?" With that, he headed for the door of the activity room. Outside sounded like a great idea -- fresh air, albeit freezing, was exactly what he needed. If he had to bring Laura along to spare her feelings and pet the cows, well...it didn't really matter. Nothing really did, actually, not anymore.
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Post  Laura Richardson Sat Mar 03, 2012 5:46 pm

Laura shifted away from the book on the floor and watched Elias, a fingernail firmly in her mouth. “I like your name. They have chickens too, and they’re very feathery and soft, but they’re harder to cuddle. Cows don’t mind usually. I could help with your book, there’s a very secret place right up at the top and it has lots of things, so it’s good for hiding things in.” It had hid her for a whole night and she wasn’t even inside. Besides, you weren’t supposed to go up there for some reason. That might keep people away a bit. People didn’t like it when they were in trouble. “I wouldn’t look, I promise.” It was sort of an afterthought. Maybe it was a secret book, like her letters.

Staring at the crumpled pages, Laura decided it would be better not to mention them. Maybe Elias had a plan. “What’s your favourite animal?” It seemed a good question to ask when they were going to see animals. She had already decided she liked this boy. Maybe she’d draw him a picture. But she didn’t want to make him sad like Faith had been. Well… sad wasn’t quite the right word. But she hadn’t been hating her so much lately, which made Laura happy. Faith hadn’t talked to her, but she hadn’t shouted at her or anything. Maybe Faith was too busy to be cross with her or something. And now Kizzy slept where Faith had been which she liked because she could look over in the night sometimes and pretend they were having a sleepover like people who weren’t her did sometimes.

Following Elias, Laura wondered if she’d just made another friend. Maybe she’d ask him later. Did friends go and see cows together? She hoped so. Kizzy said they could go and see horses and her nice friend from when it snowed. Maybe Elias would as well, which would be nice. She bounced a little bit, cheered up by the prospect of animals and friends.
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Post  Elias Ortega Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:17 am

His favorite animal. Elias mulled it over with every degree of seriousness he could muster. He didn't know, really, because he'd lived in the city all his life, but he thought about what he'd seen in textbooks, on TV, read about in books. Finally, not pausing in his stride for a moment, he replied,

"I l-like owls." Why that had come out he had no idea; he'd never even seen an owl in the flesh. But they could fly, so that was pretty badass, and they could rotate their heads three hundred and sixty degrees. Elias liked that idea -- being able to see everywhere at once. Owls were cool. So what if saying that made him sound totally dorky and idiotic? Annoyed with himself now, Elias didn't give Laura's offer one moment of consideration -- he didn't trust her. He could tell she was a flighty little thing, sweet but vapid. Without a second thought about the matter, he pulled a few diary pages out of his pocket and began to shred them into the tiniest pieces of paper he could. When they exited the building, walking into the sharp winter air, he let the tiny pencil stained scraps go in the wind. Trying to sound nonchalant but failing, as he always did, he asked the girl,

"S-so, what's y-your f-favorite animal, th-then? C-cows?" He was trying to distract himself from the methodical destruction of the thing he had managed to hang onto the longest, in the corporeal sense, anyway. Another few pages were ripped to shreds and sprinkled to the wind, on the ground, white like indestructible snowflakes. He was purging the bad spirits, or so he hoped, even if he hadn't had the courage to take the page that had actually been defiled by the angry spirits.

He pointed himself toward the barn, trailing shredded paper behind him. Would someone freak out at him about littering? It seemed a stupid thing to worry about, but it came into his head anyway. There was nothing to do about it now. He was on the last few pages. The shredded remains of his thoughts would be forever drifting around Highgrove House, until they disintegrated in rain or snow, never again to be read by human eyes. It was comforting and sad at the same time, and he pushed away the desire to sit down by the barn and cry. Laura wanted to pet some cows, and dammit, that's what they were going to do.
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Post  Laura Richardson Wed Mar 14, 2012 4:59 pm

Laura half walked half bounced along beside Elias. “Owls are good! I pretended to be an owl when I got stuck in the tree, but real owls are better. They can fly and everything. And Athena has one.” She might be a bit hazy on who exactly Athena was, or exactly why she’d had an owl, but it was there in her head so she might as well say it. She giggled at the paper scraps. They looked like confetti, or snow, or blossom. And paper was made out of trees so maybe they’d go back to being trees if they were there long enough.

“My favourite animals are cows and beluga whales.” She jumped over a hole that might have belonged to a rabbit. “They look happy. And cows are warm and fluffy. Sort of.” Well, furry. But furry didn’t seem the right word either. Hairy didn’t begin to cover it… “And beluga whales all get together sometimes and rub the dead skin off on the gravel at the bottom, and they have fun. And they look like they smile a lot.” And the baby ones needed help swimming and breathing, which seemed a little peculiar from an evolutionary perspective. They had to rely on their mum to swim under them so they could move and not drown. Being a sea creature and drowning seemed a bit unfair. Like if people were allergic to air or something.

“That’s where the chickens are, but they get a bit excited when people come around because then they get fed and people take their eggs or try to cuddle them. They don’t always like people touching them though, and cows don’t mind. They just look at you with big eyes and chew some more.” She pointed at the barn. “Do you think cows like us?” They must think humans were very strange. Especially when they took their milk to drink it. But they didn’t seem to mind, and Kizzy said it was ok so that was good enough for Laura. Kizzy knew a lot, especially about chickens and cows and horses.

She waved at the cows as they drew nearer, as if she expected them to raise a hoof and wave back. “Hello! This is Elias. He’s nice, and he likes owls and we thought we’d like to come and see you. Is that ok?” None of the cows actually responded, but Laura didn’t seem discouraged. She pointed. “This cow’s called Delores.” Realising a little explanation would probably help, she went on. “Well, I asked her if her name was Delores and she sort of nodded. And she doesn’t mind me, I think. They’re all really nice.”
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Post  Elias Ortega Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:36 pm

Elias envied Laura. She seemed... innocent and carefree. He knew that she probably had as many distressing problems as everyone else in this place, but she didn't seem as miserable as the rest of them. Maybe he should try to take a page out of her book for now and try his best not to be miserable. Even though he had every reason and every right to be miserable right now, he would try; he didn't want to make the animals or this strange little girl sad.

Elias made a face at the chickens. He and they weren't particularly friendly with one another. He didn't have enough patience to tiptoe around them when the time came to gather their eggs, so he always ended up being squawked at by at least one furious bird. They were unrestful and annoying, but still preferable to most people, in his opinion. Cows and horses were different, quieter, more comforting. He imagined sheep and pigs were the same way. Maybe he could own a farm when he grew up. A peaceful little place somewhere in the country, far away from all the cities he'd ever lived in, maybe in rural Spain. That way he could just spend all his time with the animals and ignore other people entirely. Part of him knew that would probably never happen, but another part of him thought it was sort of possible. A lot of things were starting to seem sort of possible.

"I d-don't know if c-c-cows like us, b-but I think they k-k-kind of... u-understand us," he replied, immediately feeling stupid for even thinking that, let alone saying it aloud. The chiding little voice in his head that belonged to his father made its displeased apparent. Damn his uncooperative mouth. "I m-mean...I don't kn-know. Animals a-are k-kind of st-stupid, y-you know." He gave a half-hearted little wave to the cows when she did; they didn't look as if they noticed or cared, but that was alright by Elias. He liked that he never felt like she was bothering the cows when he came here. He waited while Laura formally introduced him to the animals and then said,

"Hi, c-cows. Hi, Delores." Elias stuffed his hands in his pocket and looked at the cows, asking, "D-do the rest of th-them have n-n-names?" May as well immerse himself in this; that way, he wouldn't have to think about his diary or anything else like that until later. He would have to face it at some point, but not now. Now he would talk to some cows with a weird kid, outside in the air where everything seemed a little better.
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Post  Laura Richardson Thu Mar 29, 2012 4:05 pm

It was funny really. Laura often felt sad, but somehow it rarely came out. She drew or chatted to cows and didn’t tell people she was sad and sooner or later it’d go away. She hadn’t even told Kizzy she was sad about Faith ripping her picture. Although Kizzy might already know, Kizzy knew lots of things. More than Laura, she was sure. But then everyone knew more than her, and they said it was because she didn’t go to school and weren’t happy when she tried to explain why school was less important than making people stay alive. People were nice. She didn’t want them to die.

“I think cows understand us too.” Laura bounced on the spot for a second and watched Elias. “Are you my friend now? Kizzy’s my friend. Faith isn’t though, she doesn’t like me.” She wasn’t sure about other people. Ira had been a friend but he wasn’t here any more which made being friends hard. “They’re not that stupid.” She was a little bemused by the sudden change of direction but decided it probably made sense, just not to her. “They know when it’s going to rain and they lie down and they know how to live off grass and they have lots of stomachs.” She thought for a second. “They know how to listen too, they’re really really good at that.” That was a kind of clever, wasn’t it?

Laura reached over to stroke the nearest cow and giggled as the hairs tickled her hand. She pointed, showing who was who. “Well, that’s Delores, and that’s Cara and that’s Mabel and that’s Hermione.” She stroked the cow for a few seconds before thinking maybe some explanation would be welcome. “I read that one in a book. Do you have favourite names? I think some people do. I talk to Delores most though, she doesn’t mind me. She looks all thoughtful. There aren’t any boy cows though, because they don’t have milk.” She’d almost forgotten the reason for coming outside. After all, it didn’t really matter so much any more. It was all gone, ripped up and everything. “Do you think cows are furry? I’m not sure. They’re more sort of… hairy. Is fur fluffier than this?”
Laura Richardson
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Post  Elias Ortega Tue Apr 03, 2012 9:57 pm

Was he her friend? Elias didn't really know how to define 'friends', but he didn't think he was quite on the friend level with Laura yet. Still, he'd agree just to be nice about it. He almost rolled his eyes when she said that Faith wasn't her friend; leave it to her to be a bitch to the nicest person in Highgrove. He'd hardly spoken to Faith since the blackout, but obviously time hadn't mellowed her. Elias thought that maybe he'd bring it up during chores sometime; he'd never really stuck up for someone before, but there was no reason for her to be mean to someone as guileless as Laura.

"Sure, w-w-we're friends," he mumbled, trying to smile. It looked more like a grimace, really, but at least he'd tried. Elias listened while she tried to prove to him that cows weren't stupid, and thought that he'd better just agree. "I g-guess that d-doesn't sound t-t-too stupid."

He reached out to stroke the same cow she was petting, and was almost immediately calmed by the soft warmth of its body. Apparently, the cows all had names. He wondered how much time Laura spent out here with the animals, and he wondered why. Had she lived some place where there were a lot of farm animals? Did she just like their mellow company, like he did? He decided that maybe it would be okay to ask. Elias felt at ease for once, in control of the situation now. It was a welcome sensation after the way this day had been going.

"I d-don't really ha-have a f-favorite name," he lied. If Elias ever had children, which was an extremely unlikely if not an impossible scenario, he would name one after his mother. Francisca, or if it was a boy, Francisco. But he did't need to tell her that, one, because it was personal, and two, she probably didn't want to know. Laura seemed to talk just to be talking most of the time.

"C-cows are...y-yeah, hairy is a g-good w-word." He paused for a moment before musing, "You d-d-definitely know a lot a-about cows. D-did you used t-to live on a f-farm or s-something?" He knew next to nothing about cowa, except what he had learned here. He imagined that it took a lot of experience or a lot of reading to know more, and who willingly read books full of facts about cows? Though from what he knew of Laura thus far, he wouldn't put it past her.
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Post  Laura Richardson Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:21 pm

Laura giggled and bounced a little bit. “I like having friends! I’m glad you’re my friend.” She would have hugged him, but it was a bad idea to kill your friends, and she was still worried about maybe accidentally hurting him by standing too close anyway. She gave the cow another hug instead. “I think cows are a different sort of clever than humans. Some humans know how to do fractions. I asked once, but she didn’t think it was important. I asked the goats too but they wanted to eat my homework.” Fractions were still one of Laura’s least favourite things about being here. The very worst one was not having Uncle Kenneth around, but that was much worse than fractions. Fractions was one she could tell people about. People got upset if she talked about Uncle Kenneth too much. Maybe it wasn’t normal to like your uncles, even if they helped you all the time.

She felt a little less giggly and bouncy around the cows, but in a good way. Like when you got to lie down when you’d been moving all day and you didn’t realise you hadn’t felt comfy until you did. She stroked Delores contentedly, asking if she was looking forwards to summer when she could be outside and not be cold and eat lots and lots of grass and things. “I don’t really have a favourite name either but I have lots I like. Like…” Laura took a moment to think hard, beginning to chew a nail until she realised she was and exactly how unhygienic that probably was. “I like Clare. That’s a nice name, it sounds like a nice person. And Gerald! Gerald’s a nice name too, it’s sort of a bit funny but good as well.” Laura tended to give names she liked to animals. She’d never consider having children herself, but it had never really bothered her that much. She was too dangerous anyway.

Giving Delores another hug, Laura smiled at Elias. “I used to live inside all the time. But I watched about animals on the telly and read books and things and I think I went to a farm once. But then I came here and they had lots of animals, which is nice. I used to stroke cats and that was nice but they all lived different places and I couldn’t find them all the time.” She giggled as Delores turned her head to stare at her and went back to thinking about cow things. “Where did you live before? I lived at a place a bit like this before, except there were no animals and I had to go to school somewhere else and before that I lived with some nice people but they said they couldn’t look after me right because I was challenging – they don’t know I heard that bit I think, because I was supposed to be asleep but I wasn’t – and before that I lived at the place like this again and before that I lived with my Uncle Kenneth.” She was quiet for a moment, patting Delores and wondering how hair was different from fur to distract herself. “I miss him lots. Do you like it here? Do you miss… not being here?”
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