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Post by Naomi Moriah Danforth-Ericson on Jan 25, 2013 0:02:06 GMT -5
There were books, and then there were books. This was one of the latter sort. Naomi delicately opened the volume, her fingers tracing over the frontispiece. As a lover of books, she couldn’t help but feel a rush of excitement as the smell of slow decay hit her nose and flooded her mind with endorphins. She had in her hands a first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She couldn’t even imagine how it had survived this far into the war and where it had come from. One of the scouts had thrown it onto the table that served as the makeshift desk for her makeshift library. Thrown. She’d had to take a deep breath and say thank-you, rather than calmly tell him not to throw the books around. The smell of old book had cured all of that, however, and now she was deep into examining the book, trying to determine what type of person had cared enough to keep this book safe for so long.
She thumbed through the pages, smoothing dog-ears out of the corners and tracing her hand over the pages, feeling the raised ink against her fingers. The edges of the pages were soft against her hand, worn and embedded with the grease and dirt that came from constant handling and reading, like an old dollar bill. Whatever someone had owned this book before her, it was clear that he or she loved this book. Perhaps it was a chain of someones, a book handed down from generation to generation, a cherished family heirloom, something that more than one person had loved. Whatever the significance of the smoothed pages, it showed a habit, a person or persons who always turned the page from the same place. That was part of the mystery of a book like this.
Although she knew the value of reading material and the importance of making sure that people had access to books, she was loath to put this one into circulation. Would the people reading it appreciate that this book had history. She turned it over in her hands, looking for the tell-tale signs of having been a library book. There were none on the exterior. She opened the cover again, looking for the mark of a stamp or where a tab had been stuck for recording due dates. There were none. Instead, she found an inscription on the inside front cover that she hadn’t noticed before. “To: Naomi. May your adventures be as grand and as inspiring. -- Grandmother Ross, 1900.” The name caught her off guard and made her question all the more whether it should be sent into circulation for the people to read. Surely someone would eventually find a newer copy. But she knew that wasn’t the case. For all she knew, this was the last copy and she would be preventing others from experiencing ti. Her training and her person were in conflict.
When she was in a conflict like this, there were only two things that could bring peace to her mind: reading with tea or doing katas. Given that she had already walked through her katas today, she chose to read and what was more appropriate than the book in her hand? She smiled and set it down for a moment, moving to the burner set far from the books, so precious to the camp for its increasingly rare white gas flame. She lit it and set a half-full kettle atop, lid closed so that the whistle would scream when the time came for the tea. She set a teapot next to it and spooned a few tea leaves into the ceramic infuser that sat just inside the top. Like white gas, bagged tea was becoming more and more rare. That, however, was of no concern to Naomi. She’d always been a fan of tea leaves and a big pot of the stuff to lighten the mood. She’d had the white ceramic pot since coming to the camp. It had its chips and its cracks in the glaze, but it was hers. It had character, like everything else in the camp.
Waiting on the kettle, she settled into the threadbare pea green easy chair that she’d managed to find, like all of her books, in a forgotten dark corner. More than a librarian, sometimes she felt like a curator of lost things, finding them and finding them a home with someone. She flipped to the first page, her eyes scanning the text.
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar--except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. …
By the time the whistle blew on the kettle, she was too absorbed in the book to even hear it. Her attention was fully focused on another girl in a land where she was strange and somewhat foreign. The idea resonated with her and pulled her in further. In the world outside the book, the kettle blew on like it had many times before.
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note: yay!
words: 818 of my own, IDK how many of Baum's.
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Post by sammy on Jan 27, 2013 23:34:39 GMT -5
| [atrb=border,0,true] And what could Sampson be doing but work, work, and more work. He felt it was his personal mission to take care of each and every person within the camp. Sure it was a task that couldn't possibly be completed, but Sammy believed that he had to give his all for these people, so many others had lost their life, it was the least he could do to help those still alive survive for as long as he can. Perhaps his intense desire to help others caused him to be a bit of a stick in the mud, a workaholic, but he was okay with that. Besides, if he sat idle he had time to worry about things, such as Tessa getting herself into trouble, or anyone finding out that his sister was not human, but in fact a vampire. That was the worst fear he had, because he was sure that the rest of the group would want Naomi gone, want to be rid of her, and he feared what it would do to the camp if he stood in the way.
Because he would. He would not allow anyone else from his family to die in the struggle against vampires. He wasn't foolish enough to believe that his parents had made it in the wars, he knew his father would fight for freedom, his family had fought for freedom for generations, and he wouldn't allow anyone to call him a pet. The chances that either his father or mother were still alive were slim, if he was being honest they were non-existent. It hurt, thinking about his father and mother, thinking of how they must have died, his father fighting valiantly, his mother trying to stay strong. He paused in his work, his gaze fixed on the gun he had disassembled and was currently cleaning, his face solemn and serious. It wasn't every day that he thought of them, most of the time he was busy enough that they stayed in the back of his mind, though there were a few times that they'd pop up into his train of thought, causing him to take pause.
He let out a sigh, finishing up cleaning the last few pieces to the gun scattered across the table before reassembling it. He took his time, making sure that every piece fit exactly right, that when the gun was reassembled that it would work correctly. He could remember his father telling him how important reassembling the guns correctly was, how important it was to keep them clean. He'd been a happy kid then, before the war, before boot camp, before his sister showing up, before, when the days were filled with no cares and things were so much more simple. He finally got the gun together, setting it down on the table and rubbed his hands on his jeans, glancing around the room. He'd spent almost the entire day in here, simply cleaning the guns, checking ammunition, going over other supplies they kept.
Finally he felt as if he could do no more in the little room he was in, picking up his jacket and shrugging it on before heading out into the cold. He glanced over at the house he occupied with Tessa before his gaze went to the makeshift library that he just knew Naomi was in. He frowned a bit before heading away from the house. He'd check on Naomi, make sure she was okay, visit a little, before he went back to the house. He slipped in quickly, immediately hearing the kettle whistling quite loudly, glancing over and seeing Naomi wrapped up in a book. He moved over, picking up the kettle up off the heat and setting it down to cool before turning to Naomi, raising an amused eyebrow. "Get caught up in those books again Nia?" slowly steppin' outta line 642. kinda short and he's being gloomy! |
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Post by Naomi Moriah Danforth-Ericson on Jan 30, 2013 22:37:23 GMT -5
Often, the best parts of her day were when she was checked out in that very chair reading a book. It wasn’t because she didn’t enjoy her life in the camp. In fact, that was far from the case. She loved life in the camp more than she could really say. It was a harbor from the world that she had no interest in being a part of. But there were still times when being trapped in the same area day in and day out got to her. She saw the same people and things every day. She wasn’t bold enough to go into the city like some of the humans that were in the camp. The idea frankly terrified her. Would it really be possible to be a vampire pretending to be human pretending to be a vampire? What would a human even stop at in their emulation of their favorite species to hate? She didn’t know. Some days though, the urge to experience something different overwhelmed sensibility. She’d long learned to control that urge by reading so long and so hard that it normally ended in someone being sent to make sure she wasn’t dead. She would drop into the worlds created by Tolkein and Jordan and others and not come out until her taste for something different had been sated. Or, as often happened, someone made the tea kettle stop whistling.
Even with eyes protected by the green spectacles, Dorothy and her friends were at first dazzled by the brilliancy of the wonderful City. The streets were lined with beautiful houses all built of green marble and studded everywhere with sparkling emeralds. They walked over a pavement of the same green marble, and where the blocks were joined together were rows of emeralds, set closely, and glittering in the brightness of the sun. The window panes were of green glass; even the sky above the City had a green tint, and the rays of the sun were green.
She looked up from the book, blinking a few times as her eyes adjusted to a field of vision that wasn’t directly in front of her nose. She paused for a moment before responding to her brother, closing the book over one finger and unfolding from the tight ball she’d managed to work herself into while seated. “A little,” she said, her feet finally back on the floor, “but then again, when am I ever not caught up in something to do with books?” She stood up carefully, making sure that she wasn’t moving too fast for her muscles to handle. Just because she was a vampire did not mean that she didn’t cramp or get weird cricks after sitting for a long time. In that regard, she wasn’t that much different from a human. She tried to hold on to everything that she had in common with them, a useful ploy for remaining undiscovered. And as much as she hated the lie, she knew that it was the one thing standing between her and the society that she hated. Well, aside from the brick wall better known as her older brother.
“So, how’s everything going?” she asked as she wandered over to where he was standing next to her poor, abused tea service. She grabbed the kettle and filled the pot, letting the hot water seep into the leaves. She quickly grabbed a pair of chipped cup where they hung suspended on the side of one of the shelves and set them next to brewing tea. The cups, like everything else, showed the same signs of a hard life but were still holding on, making it through one day at a time just like everyone and everything in the camp. As usual, this was a one handed effort as she was wroth to put down any book that she was reading for fear that she’d forget her place..
Necessities prepared, she turned and gave her brother a hug. Admittedly, from what she’d seen in the brief forays into their lives, the Danforth’s hadn’t been the huggiest family. But, she wasn’t really one of them, was she? She’d been raised an Ericson and although she had many of the traits that seemed to define the Danforth nature, she was also nurtured into a different kind of person than she would have been expected to be had she grown up with her father. Her mom and dad, although not permissive per se, had a very different take on the way to raise a child and she hadn’t been forged into a weapon. Sometimes it made her laugh when she saw Sammy with his guns or other weaponry. She had no more intuition about them than he did about thecepts of uke and nage. She tried not to compare too often, although as a tool for trying to understand his motivations. It really was a literary urge of highest order. She’d learned how to understand characters in books and sought to apply those techniques often, sometimes to her disadvantage and sometimes to her advantage. As with books, some people were easier to read than others. There were the ones that were easier to read and understand their motivations, like a C.S. Lewis novel, and then there were the ones who hid their purpose under layers of misdirection and reinvention, like a Tolkein novel. Her brother was firmly in the second camp.
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note: yay!
words: 800
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Post by sammy on Feb 22, 2013 14:02:25 GMT -5
He couldn't help the light chuckle as he interrupted her reading and brought her back to the realm of reality. Sampson himself had no patience for books, sure he could spend hours sitting in one spot, dis-assembling, cleaning, and reassembling guns without much thought to it, but read a book? He didn't have that kind of patience. He needed to be doing something, anything, even if he was merely running a rag over gun parts. It was good that she had something she was so passionate about, that she could delve into and forget the shit that was this current world they found themselves in. Sometimes Sampson wondered if he hadn't fought hard enough, if he hadn't gave enough to prevent the vampires from taking over. The Danforth's had always been very strong in their belief that you gave your all for the fight, no matter what, and he couldn't help, in that mind frame, but wonder if he hadn't given his all, if he could have done something more, given more for the fight.
Of course that was stupid and he knew it. What good would he have done for the camp if he'd died in the war? He wouldn't say these people needed him, he was merely a guidance tool, Tessa was the real leader, he was simply someone to offer up his advice and expertise, but he liked to think that he made some sort of difference in the camp. He chuckled lightly at her response, smiling soft, because he most certainly did adore his little sister, even if they weren't full siblings. Not that it mattered. The moment Sammy had found out that Nia was his sister he had welcomed her with open arms. Even went so far as to tell his parents to quit fighting and get their act together while bringing the poor crying girl into the house, immediately getting her hot cocoa, because that was always what made him feel better. "That is true. You know, one of these days someone isn't going to come in here to take this kettle off and you'll end up burning this place down or something" He smiled lightly, to show he was joking, though his kind of joking always had a bit of a rougher edge to it.
He was a marine, he had grown up in a military home where explosions and gunfire were what brought the family together. He stepped back, watching her prepare the tea with idle curiosity. He hadn't ever really been one for tea, he was more a cocoa man, but he knew that Nia enjoyed it. "Things are fine. I've gotten fire wood cut, I'll bring some more by for you a little later, otherwise things aren't much different from yesterday" Which was both a blessing and a curse. Boredom was something that ruled over the camp, despite the fact there was always something to do, and the monotonous days could wear on a persons patience. Yet the fact that nothing changed was good. No signs of vampires around, no deaths, no sickness, no accidents or injuries. No change. And things had changed oh so very drastically that the slow, monotonous days were just fine, at least for now. People needed time to cope, to mourn the loved ones they lost, the world they lost.
Sammy sure as hell hadn't quite gotten over the death of his parents. He'd shoved it down and away because he had so much to do, but whenever he was idle he always thought of them, both the good and the bad, sometimes he wondered what his father would do. And he wasn't quite sure he liked the answer to that question. So he busied himself, almost to the point of exhaustion, both because it helped him forget and he simply just couldn't not do anything. If anything he needed to do more, needed to plan, to scope out the city, to find others and bring them back to camp. So many things to do, things that he could do, so he couldn't sit around, he couldn't be idle. He blinked as she hugged him, having lost himself for a moment before smiling softly, returning the hug. Sampson had learned quickly that Nia liked hugs, and he'd learned quickly to just deal with them. He wasn't necessarily a huggy kinda guy, but that didn't mean he'd refuse a hug from his sister. "How are you Naomi?" Tag: Naomi Words: 751 Notes: Woot! good post |
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Post by Naomi Moriah Danforth-Ericson on Mar 5, 2013 12:31:17 GMT -5
“I normally realize when the noise stops,” she said with a shrug. She couldn’t say why, exactly, but that was typically the case. Maybe it was something about the quiet of the camp. Even after all of these years, she would still wake up to what she thought were the sounds of sirens, only to hear the wolves howling in the distance. Frankly, she’d rather hear the sirens some nights. She’d grown up in the city and lived in the city until the war came, at which point she’d found herself first on the battlefield and then waking up in the camp, under the eyes of one mildly over protective older brother. The shift had been a hard one. She’d never been the most vocal about being a vampire, even though those close to her had known that simple fact. But she’d also been spending time working on disguising herself with tattoos, scaring tattooists with how quickly she healed in between her sessions.
There were days that she wished she could just lose herself in a sea of people, but those were days that she didn’t get. The closest she got were the books. And although it was fine most of the time, sometimes she felt caged, being in the camp and needing to hide. Not that she’d ever say anything about it to her brother, but there were days when the memory of walking around, her tattoos there for the whole world to see, became tempting. But she couldn’t leave, at least not yet. Someone had to guard the books and while she was still in the window before people started realizing that she wasn’t just aging slowly, she wasn’t aging, well, that would damn well be her. She’d fought for this library since the day she had come into the camp and she wasn’t about to let it go, not on the life of her.
She grinned. It was just like him to make sure that she had everything that she needed to survive in the camp, whether that was something as simple as firewood or even the damn blood he insisted on bringing her, even after many protests about squirrel being a perfectly fine substitute for human (it wasn’t, but she wasn’t about to tell him that). And along with getting her own food, she could chop her own wood, which she did sometimes just to get some of the jitters out. Although katas and reading were good for escaping, sometimes the only thing that she really needed was a good exhausted stumble into bed and that was one of the few things that she could do in the winter to get to that point. “Thanks,” she said, her smile still in place. It was Sammy’s curse that he had to take care of everyone, something that she understood. Every time she saw one of her friends come through the camp wounded or in pain, it was all she could do to not run over and take that pain for herself. But that would give her away and she would no longer be able to do any good around here. And so, she limited herself to seeing them in the medical tent, easing whatever pain it was they felt. It was all she could do to ease pain and she hated that, hated her response to seeing blood that wasn’t neatly packaged in a bag. It was rather shameful for a vampire and the child of a doctor.
She released her brother from the hug, shrugging. “Bored, mostly, a little worried that soon enough, the people who’ve been here since I have are going to catch on that something isn’t quite right,” she said, returning to the steeping tea. It looked about the right color and so she put the lid on and poured. This one little ritual had much to do with keeping her sane. Coffee kept her conscious and water kept her healthy, but tea kept her in a calm place in her mind. She grabbed both cups and turned, holding one out to her brother. She knew that he preferred hot chocolate, but all she kept around was tea, and even that was hard to get her hands on some days.
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note: yay!
words: 707
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