[OPEN] Water, water, everywhere and... oh... how does the rest of that go again...
Who: Anomie and any boggles (or non-boggles) who want to meet her
What: Anomie found an ocean!
When: Monday evening
Where: The beach
( The Professor told her about oceans once, but she thought it was a fairy tale. )
Comments 64
Not that she notices that. It's an ocean - not only that, but a clean one, not one dark with pollutants and silty from nanite resource theft. It smells fantastic, and it's beautiful, even if her leg still aches (and why does it ache? Phantom pains were never this bad).
She settles down on the sand, only now spotting the figure in the water - but she doesn't mind. And if whoever it is wants company, they can come over and talk to her.
Molly leans back, closing her eyes, stretching out on the sand.
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Anomie doesn’t know whether it is the ocean, or the different sky, or the lack of boggles around her, but she just can’t seem to but her heart all the way into Pretending.
She can feel the water, the current, but she’s not becoming it. So it doesn’t take her very long to get bored.
Anomie jerks back fully into her own awareness with a splash, and immediately dives back under water. When she comes back up for air, and looks around, she sees someone on the beach.
She swims over with frog strokes to investigate, stopping near where the waves break, her head and eyes and hair peering above the water.
Is it a boggle? Maybe. The last boggle wasn’t a boggle at all, but an adult. But this one looked different so maybe…
Anomie comes onto the beach and approaches Molly, hesitating a little bit away, her head tilted to one side.
“Are you a Boggle?”
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Molly opens her eyes, shifting back, sitting up. She curls up her good leg, wrapping her arms around it. "Maybe," she says. "Tell me what a Boggle is, and I'll tell you if I am one."
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Other boggles in the cube hadn’t known what the word was either. The City had lots of language problems; maybe she was forgetting and using the wrong word?
Anomie comes closer and plops down on the sand in a smooth cross-legged position, her various ripped skirts getting sandy. As she sits she pulls a thin piece of metal out of a pocket. It has words written on it in sharpie.
“Boggles are Boggarts,” She reads aloud, clearly and intently focusing on the metal, as if the words might change if she’s not careful, “Are Bogeymen are Brownies.”
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No, that would be the North, or something Northwards, and in dreaming and waking, his steps stray there of their own accord, but he can never bring himself to go beyond the border. And even though that way is Sari, and the other resurrected citizen with such wise counsel, if he dared to wander where his will so dearly wishes to go-
He wonders, he truly wonders, if he should ever return once he passes whatever awaits him there.
So he heads towards the water, as usual taking off his shoes and stockings at the water's edge. He sees a gi- well, a child, and his heart lightens for a moment before he realizes the distant shape is not at all familiar. He clasps his hands behind his back, cautiously, as the water begins to lap at his feet.
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Oh! Is that a boggle? She sees Hamilton near the water’s edge out of the corner of her eyes, and straightens and turns to get a better look at him, dropping down low to the water so only her head peeped above.
It hasn’t been one yet, but Anomie never did dwell too much on memories anyway.
So she swam toward him, stopping right around the point where it was too shallow to swim well but still deep enough to be mostly submerged and watched him, her head tilted to one side.
As a wave broke around her, she rose and came closer, and she called out, “Are you a boggle?”
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"No, but I almost wish I WERE one, that I might frighten you so badly!" Hamilton takes off his coat, wringing the water from it. "And if you're not a jumbie, which I doubt you are, you're horrid to creep upon me in such a manner!"
Hamilton strides closer, but keeps a cautious distance, his anger softening as he realizes she is but a child. His voice is softer as he regards the strange girl - has no one blond or ginger or brown hair anymore? "Do you have a name?"
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Which it was, to her at least, and grins at him. Perhaps not such a good idea since she's missing two teeth and several of the rest are chipped, giving her a warped and sharp toothed smile.
She comes closer as well, her various skirts and jacket dripping salt water, the mud mostly washed away for now. She's taller than him, tall and unhealthifully thin and ragged.
"I'm Anomie." She responds cheerfully, "Are you a child?"
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"Hello!" he cries to the immobile figure, unsure of exactly who, or what, it is. "I'm coming to help!"
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Boggle?
She treaded water and looked at the approaching swimmer with a note of confusion. She hadn't seen anyone else swimming in the ocean, and no one else ever swam in her ponds in the bog-lands. Alan said there was a big boggle hiding in her favorite one, but she can't recall ever seeing it. Alan was always paranoid.
"Hello!" She mimics.
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"What are you doing out here, pretending to be a corpse?" he asked of this strange woman, while still trying to keep some amount of composure.
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She cocks her head at an angle and asks, "Have you ever been an Ocean? Its alot harder than I thought it would be!"
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