[accidental visual | location: twelfth floor] trust our deepest secrets to the artificial lake

[honoraryhobo]

The sun's scrambled high into the sky like a sure-footed kid climbing a tree-it's the itch under his collar and the sweat on his palms. He raises the hoe and swings it down into dry earth, sending up a puff of dust. There's always one weed left. Sun's baleful glare on his back, he drives the blade in again. He hears himself grunt (it sounds more

Comments

[visual] because I know you so wanted Long of my two chars

[imperial_long]

Oh dear. There is a child in Taxon. It hardly seems fair. Long tsks to himself before opening a reply; his habit is to stick to voice, but he supposes visual might be reassuring. Or perhaps not.

"Hello, young man. You appear to be new here. Has anyone else explained anything to you yet?"

[visual]

[honoraryhobo]

A face the likes of which Dick's never seen confronts him: black skin, slanty eyes. His mouth falls open and the meager assortment of facts he's collected scatter like dandelion seeds carried away on a puff of breath.

The voice doesn't--can't--belong to the face. It's rich and English.

He pulls back from the tablet and, still gawking, wills himself to nod.

[visual]

[imperial_long]

The child half recoils from him-- or perhaps the tablet, Long supposes; that's the thought that is less injurious to Long's ego. But he takes in the boy's clothes, makes a guess as to era which is probably not entirely wrong.

Very unfair. The child will be surrounded by things unknowable and bizarre, like Miss Ross. (Long mentally ignores the fact that many things were unknowable and bizarre to him at first too.)

The child also has the air of a student awaiting a chiding from a master, which Long has some experience with.

"You're not in trouble," he says with a bare hint of a smile. "Not yet, at any rate. I am Mr. Long; I'm not going to hurt you, lad. Are you hungry?"

In Long's admittedly limited experience, all children respond to food.

[visual]

[honoraryhobo]

Sometime during Mr. Long's introduction Dick recovers himself enough to shut his mouth. He can't help staring, though--the voice rumbles on, resonant and delicate all at once.

"I got no money," he mumbles, his own voice something small and stunted. He is hungry. He's always hungry, it's just a question of degree. He steals a glance at the bottle of whisky--maybe...

He lowers his eyes and shakes his head.

[visual]

[imperial_long]

Long smiles at the child over the screen-- not the smile of reassurance that an adult might try to give a child, but the smile of a man sharing a private joke.

"I am from China, originally. I don't know if you have ever heard stories of China, but there hospitality to strangers is taken very seriously. You are new here; therefore, I will be hospitable towards you. What is your name?"

[visual]

[honoraryhobo]

"Dick Whitman." He doesn't know what to make of the smile or how to respond--it's a smile intended just for him. A rare sight.

"I'm from America," he volunteers shyly.

[visual]

[imperial_long]

Long consults the tablet's map as he talks to the boy; from his rooms on the tenth floor, the child is only two stories up.

"I live in America now, so we are countrymen after a fashion. In San Francisco, right at the very edge of the world," Long sighs-- a wistful sigh, for he misses San Francisco, the hills and the mist and the familiarity and the knowing what was his and was not prone to invasion by absurd masked men.

But whatever his frustrations with Taxon, the child must be even more at a loss-- nothing is his at the moment, thrust into an alien space, where the rules are unknown and a number of strange adults could rain punishment down at any point.

What is it American children like to eat? Chips and cookies and other appalling salted and sugared things, Long thinks. But then, the boy is from an older time to judge by his clothes. Long is almost certain he saw some sort of fruit in one of the kitchen refrigerators.

"Where in America do you live, Dick? And do you enjoy watermelon?"

[visual]

[honoraryhobo]

San Francisco. The name stirs up a cloud of inexpressible yearnings, aspirations fine and formless as dust. And the phrasing, too--the very edge of the world. It brings to mind maps curling at the corners.

"Yes, sir," he says quickly, words nipping at the heels of the question. His mouth feels dry, his tongue thick. "Ford County, in Illinois."

[visual]

[imperial_long]

"Watermelon it is, then," Long says thoughtfully, and the visual shows movement now as he gets to feet and starts through the halls.

"I have never been to Illinois, I'm afraid. I won't ask if you like it there: at your age, everywhere in the world is better than home," Long says with half a chuckle to himself. "Better, and bigger, and the stuff of fantasies during dull lessons, I'm sure.

"Well, right now, we are both a very long way from our homes, Dick. But not all hope is lost, for there is watermelon; I'm going to bring you some."

[visual]

[honoraryhobo]

He clutches the tablet tightly as the image begins to move. The light fluctuates. Between sentences he can hear, faintly, the sound of Mr. Long walking.

If Long wants to see Illinois, he has only to look at Dick: that's Illinois under his fingernails, Illinois deep in the fibers of his clothes, a smudge of Illinois on his chin.

"You can find me?" he asks. He'll have to make the bed.

[visual--> Location]

[imperial_long]

"I have many talents," Long says, in the conspiratorial tones of a stage magician. He will explain about the tablets later, but for now...

"I'm going to turn off this little box for now, Dick. I won't be long." No pun intended.

***

It's about five minutes later when he reaches the room that the map shows Dick to be in. Long knocks at the door and listens for movement within; his ears are quite keen. His hands are full-- a bowl of watermelon slices in one, and several bags of odious 'snack food' in another. It is all the hatches are making at the moment. He eyes a bright orange bag with distaste as he waits to see if Dick will open the door.

Or if Dick knows how to open the door, the thought occurs to him with some bemusement.

"It's Mr. Long, Dick."

[location]

[honoraryhobo]

A precious minute goes to waste as Dick turns the tablet over in his hands, marveling at its sudden and absolute silence. Then, reluctantly, with a stern reminder to himself that he'd been borrowing the gadget, he places it with the watch and cigarettes on the other side of the bed.

The whisky bottle is trickier: even up on his tiptoes he scarcely reaches the bottom of one of the room's cabinets. He has to jump and pull it open, jump again and half-shove, half-throw the bottle into its depths. It lands with an alarming thud but there's no sound of liquid spilling out.

When the knock comes the bed's still in disarray. He smooths and straightens the sheets and yanks the bedspread back into place.

He answers the door short of breath.

[location]

[imperial_long]

Long arches a brow at the picture the lad makes when he gets to the door-- looking as if he'd run a race-- perhaps through a dust devil. He hadn't seen much of the room beyond over the tablet, focused instead on the child, and doesn't really register Dick's attempts to clean up. Poor Dick and his wasted effort.

"There is no fire worth running to spectate at; catch your breath, Dick. Now then, I am certain you have a thousand and one questions, but I think the first order of business among civilised people should always be food."

He moves to hand the watermelon to Dick-- then pauses. "...have we washed our hands?"

[location]

[honoraryhobo]

Panic seizes him in its clammy hands as the reality of what he's done sinks in. Mr. Long had seemed nice over the tablet, but now he's here blocking the room's sole exit--a stranger who can do anything he wants and Dick won't even know who to call for help. He takes an involuntary step back.

...but at the same time can't help sneaking a glance at the watermelon.

At the man's prompting--and because he has no choice--he obediently turns over his hands. They're the brown of a coffee stain. "No, sir." He risks meeting Mr. Long's eyes. "I was weeding."

[location]

[imperial_long]

"Ah, well. I suppose that explains the dust," Long says with a little sigh. He waves the hand holding the plastic snack bags towards the tiny sink that is set into the wall of the little room.

"Hands, please-- and it wouldn't hurt your face to have a good rinse. Heavens, you have dust in your hair." This is said more with a how on earth did you manage that tone than any real chiding.

Long almost steps into the room, but there's really no space. Instead he simply sits down on the floor in the hall, crossing his legs into a half-lotus, and opens the first of the bags with morbid suspicion while he waits for Dick to wash his hands.

[location]

[honoraryhobo]

His hands fly to his head; he slides his fingers through his hair then, with a shamefaced look in Mr. Long's direction, returns his arms to his sides. Head bowed as if prepared to throw himself at the mercy of a familiar foe, he crosses to the sink and scrubs his hands, flings some water on his face.

He walks back to the doorway and holds out his hands.