[Open] Dip, dip, and swing....

[in_summer_leaf]

Hisoka waits beside the canoe, which is drawn up in a foot of water with its bow on the sand. Two paddles are in the bottom of the boat. Friends and strangers, all welcome

Comments

[villageson]

11-12 has seen neither a canoe nor a river or lake before he'd arrived at the Mansion. But he sees Hisoka and offers him a wave.

[villageson]

"I never saw rain before I left the Village..."

[in_summer_leaf]

"It didn't rain in the Village?"

[villageson]

"No. I guess my mother wanted endlessly sunny days."

[in_summer_leaf]

"The place didn't dry up and become like a tinderbox?"

[villageson]

"The weather was always pleasant. Never that hot."

Comfortable enough that he'd regularly wear a long sleeved - if light - jacket.

[in_summer_leaf]

[Moved left to avoid post crush.^^]

[in_summer_leaf]

"It sounds like a place a person would love to go for a vacation! Say, you didn't have snow there, either, I guess?" Hisoka wonders how 11-12's first winter at the Mansion must have seemed to him.

"Oh, would you like to help me propel the boat? Your paddle's right behind you, in the bottom. Just reach back carefully and grab it. You can watch me for a minute, and then just do the same as I am doing." He adds, "Only if you like."

[villageson]

"No just sun and sand - with no ocean. I learned about oceans after I got out," he says.

Then he searches for the paddle. Getting it he waits, watching what Hisoka does.

[in_summer_leaf]

Hisoka grips his paddle with his left hand gripping the top of the haft, and his right hand wrapping around near the blade. He brings it over to the right side (as 11-12 will be doing) and demonstrates its fluid motion -- first dipping it into the water with a long power stroke -- and then the return motion, in which the arms stay almost straight and swing the paddle back until it is almost horizontal over the knees -- and then the left hand swings the haft of the paddle upwards so that the shaft is almost vertical again -- and dip one more time. "Try that? You paddle on the right; I'll paddle on the left, and steer us."

Apologies for long-winded description.

"You went to a world where there was an ocean?" he asks.

[villageson]

He attempts to mimic what Hisoka is doing, a little clumsily at first.

"I'd never even heard of such a thing in the Village, then when I got out I heard about it. Later I saw it too. In New York."

[in_summer_leaf]

Hisoka simply smiles encouragingly if 11-12 happpens to look around; once people have the basic stroke down, they tend to teach themselves how to get real power out of it. And with his height, 11-12 has a long reach, too. The boat is moving along nicely with the two of them paddling. Hisoka keeps them moving parallel to the shore for a while, traveling around towards the south end of the lake, where the surrounding land is the most level. The trees are gold and red and they mirror in the dark blue water.

"What did you think of New York?" asks Hisoka, who has never been there. "...And that's got to be one big ocean, off the east coast of the U.S.!"

[villageson]

He notices the colourful trees with a smile before answering Hisoka's question.

"It did seem vast. I didn't see all that much of it though. I found my parents there. My real ones."

[in_summer_leaf]

"Really? Tell me about that?" Hisoka has met Helen, and they talked a little about 11-12, but that conversation was back in December.

[villageson]

"It was just a little strange. I mean, they were the same people but different somehow. And my mother... was awake and it's the first time I got to talk to her properly without any of the pressures of the Village," recalling all of that gave him a melancholy but thoughtful air.

[in_summer_leaf]

"Was that a very different conversation?" Hisoka's paddle dips in a quiet, steady rhythm.