I had to be... I have to be..

[endlessdel]

Delirium closed her eyes and inhaled.

Well, I mean... what I mean is, what are you?She remembered... she remembered hiding under blue-green table cloths so dark that they were almost black but were soft and safe. Her secret place to hide under when all the stars looked at her with burning eyes and saw her, saw things she didn't want them to see.

Comments

[spd_green]

After the baseball game, a swim in the ocean sounded like a good idea. It was a short swim though, because Bridge didn't like moving only a certain distance in the ocean nearly as much as a liked moving a greater distance on the sand. He found Del before long and wandered over to say hello.

"Hey," he said with a little wave, realizing that her eyes had been closed. "Oh, were you sleeping? Or meditating? I don't want to bother you."

[endlessdel]

"Meditating and you're not bothering me, nothing really bothers me not even Asher's sister. I was just...trying to attain a deeper sense of relaxation but I can do that just as well with my eyes open as with them closed." Del said smiling thoughtfully, delightfully up at Bridge. "Did you bring me tribute or did you just come to talk to me?"

[spd_green]

Bridge grinned back, pleased that he was welcome. "Just to talk. I can go find some tribute too, if you'd like, but it might take me a while to find something good and you might be gone by the time I get back. So I'll just sit?" he asked, looking for permission.

[endlessdel]

"No, I never needed tribute but people thought I did and brought it to me anyway. And I always preferred words to jewels, words are warm and alive but jewels are cold and hard." Del said thinking about it before nodding at his question. She didn't know you should ask permission for things like that, she'd have to remember it instead of just inserting herself into places, conversations, beds. "Words taste nicer too. I bet you taste nicer then diamonds, more salty."

[spd_green]

"I've never tasted diamonds," Bridge said as he sat himself down in his still-damp board shorts. Green with silver piping along the sides, of course. He wrinkled his nose at the thought. "I don't think they'd taste good though. Like ice, but sharper. I like salty things, and warm food too. And things that are buttery." His fingers wiggled in front of his mouth as he explained.

[endlessdel]

"You'll get sand everywhere even if you don't want to, it secretly invades your clothes and body. I feel like I have a sandcastle between my thighs," Del said in warning as Bridge sat down beside her. Del touched the bottom of his damp shorts, before touching his knees with her fingertips. "You should go to the cookery classes, lots of different things to touch and to taste. Including things that are buttery and warm. I like teaching, it makes me feel happy and more delighted."

[spd_green]

Grinning faintly, Bridge watched Del's fingers, enjoying the simple, light touches instead of being made uncomfortable by them.

"That sounds like fun," he said, looking up at her. "I've more or less mastered toast, I think, but I should expand my horizons. And I love learning, more than I like teaching actually, but teaching's a lot of fun too, especially if you like your students. How are yours?"

[endlessdel]

"I had a student who would follow my instructions to the letter and her food would still come out tasting like armpit sweat," Del said with a fond smile at the memory as she traced star constellations out on his knee. Teyla's cooking had been rather bad but Delirium had given her a good grade for effort even if she hadn't gotten one for execution. "Well toast is a hard subject, you could spend a whole week just trying to make it land butter side up and that's before you even get to condiments."

[spd_green]

"It's true," Bridge agreed with casual emphasis. "I spent two weeks. It's a difficult matter of physics. And peanut butter's the worst because it's so dense."

[endlessdel]

"Humans don't realise that they affect the odds, it's interesting. Barnabas likes peanut butter and chocolate but they are so bad for him. I like it with jam and telephones but I'm not allowed to eat telephones anymore. They're bad for the babies," Del said tracing a pattern, the constellation with Rao, across his knee and down his leg. "They are so big now and I feel so small."

[spd_green]

"They're still small," he assured her, or thought he was assuring her. "Smaller than you. But we're all pretty small. I'll make you toast with jam while you're pregnant," he promised her. "Because jam's good for you. And if I see a telephone, I'll save it for after the babies are born. Do cellphones taste the same as regular telephones? What does a telephone taste like anyway?"

[endlessdel]

"Like whispered secrets and dead words. Cellphones taste metallic-y, like eating tin foil that burns you on the inside." Del said describing the taste of what she had eaten. It wasn't as accurate as she was like but it was like trying to describe a sunset to someone who had never seen the sun before. "I'll hold you to the jam and toast."