006: VIDEO | ACTION

[intheblanks]

[January first, and the new year's starting off with a beaut of a day. In case you missed it, the video display is tilted upward to a sky of perfect blue, then down, to golden sand and golden skin - winter has just about bleached him of a tan but his colouring has a natural aversion to pallor

Comments

voice;

[dignity_misery]

[She had kept a calendar, fastidiously. Her most prized possession, getting up to mark out one of its days had often been her only motivation to get up out of bed. Listening to him now, she wonders if she should take it back up again. Maybe it would help.]

That's an improvement.

[Over the scruffy half-awake doctor look.]

[intheblanks]

[Maybe it would. There's little a disordered mind craves like routine and little it's less capable of. His own once meticulously kept schedule is in want of reordering: it's already seen him caught out once.]

It's the time of year for those.

[dignity_misery]

Superficial attempts at them, anyway.

[intheblanks]

But how we love a schedule.

[dignity_misery]

They make a good distraction.

[Hid the emptiness by filling the days.]

[intheblanks]

And they're repetitive. People always make changes on New Years and Mondays. It's reassuring, when they slip back into old habits, to know there's always another chance.

[dignity_misery]

Or is it in knowing they're just as stuck as you are?

[Of course that's what she says.]

[intheblanks]

I was speaking generally: reassuring for them, not me. I'll worry about people's vices when I'm paid to.

[dignity_misery]

[That actually coaxes her into smiling to herself.]

Very mercenary.

[intheblanks]

[Oh, he's always been that.]

If I wasn't, I'd be losing out to the first guy smart enough to take advantage.

[dignity_misery]

So you'd rather be that guy.

[Maybe she's just teasing. Only maybe though.]

[intheblanks]

Unnatural if I didn't.

[And, the vocal equivalent of a shrug.]

I used to care about it more.

[dignity_misery]

That's too bad, I like that guy.

[That woman too, if Facon was a precedent to go by.]

[intheblanks]

Fine line between ambitious and desperate. Look at reality TV.

[dignity_misery]

I'd rather not, and I don't think the line is all that fine. There are wolves and there are weasels, they don't resemble each other.

[intheblanks]

That's the kind of crap they sell you on posters in new age stores. Wolves know their place and they stay in it, one good meal away from being a dog. Weasels? Now they've vicious little bastards, and they don't need help from the herd.