ArchivedLogs:Pulling Back the Curtain
| Pulling Back the Curtain | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2013-06-21 ' |
| Location
<NYC> Village Lofts - Rooftop - East Village | |
It tends to be windy, up here, but the presence of plastic table and folding chairs suggests that nevertheless building residents occasionally make their way out to this rooftop. With a good view of Tompkins Square Park less than a block away it's a good spot for city-watching. There's a railing around the edge, though it might be possible (if /unwise/) to climb over it to the narrow concrete ledges beyond and from there to the fire escape. Centrally, someone has broken down crates and constructed a small raised-bed garden up here, barren in winter but filled in three other seasons with a small assortment of herbs and vegetables. The concrete wall that rings the roof has been decorated, painted in vivid bright shades by some artistic hand to add colourful cheer to the rooftop. The mural shifts in terrain One wall sports a beach, flecked with grass and seashells and driftwood and shore birds. Beach transitions into meadow, colourful with wildflowers and butterflies and dragonflies; meadow shifts into snow-capped mountains, subsides into piedmont and sprouts into a verdant forest on the fourth, alive with animals. It's bright up here. Not just in the sunlight, though that's beating down hot as well. The dingy concrete wall that rings the roof has been redecorated, coloured by some enterprising artist in vivid-bright imagery. On the ledge by the garden it is painted like the beach, tawny gold with a clear blue sky overhead, grasses sprouting from the sand, shore birds walking among them. Seashells. Driftwood. Dusk is a drab dark spot against the warm colours, black shorts, no shirt but his enormous dark wings folded capelike behind him. He has a pack of cigarettes in his hand, sort of crumpled; he is frowning as he opens it. He's dragged the plastic table over by the wall, his laptop perched atop it; he closes the pack again without withdrawing a cigarette, turning his frown instead to the screen. In a loose, dire /slink/ like a world-weary feline, Parley situates himself at Dusk's table, not there one minute, suddenly /there/ as though he'd always been, draped over the table top behind Dusk's computer as though someone had come along and melted him with a hairdryer. He's all folded over, shirtless as well to coax a breath of wind through his fur, with his arms stretched across the whole surface of the table with chin placed indecorously on the tablesurface between them. He has on iPod earbuds. You might think he was rocking out if he didn't, at lengths, undertone-muttering, mechanically, in Russian, "{The potato.} Potato. {Butter. Butter.} Butter. {I would like butter on my potato.}" Sloooow, over-heated sigh. Heeeere's Shelby! The teenager is suffering a restless mood, her first shift at the tattoo studio over, sleep in short supply and the apartment's walls closing around her. It's hard to tell if she's bored, bummed or suffering from itchy feet, but whatever the cause, it's led her to the roof with her guitar. BAM, the door is kicked open and she emerges--breaking the trend by wearing a top, though a bikini top tied at neck and back isn't much of a step up from shirtless. Frayed denim shorts cover a little more down below. Freckly skin is already gleaming with an early coat of sunscreen. "...you know what we need up here?" she says as she ambles towards the table. "A sprinkler. One of those chick-chick-chick-whirr kinds." Hive also has a shirt. Even pants! Sturdy jeans, thick tough boots, a beige shirt with dotted outline of Zelda's protagonist reading '404 LINK NOT FOUND'. He will hold down Being Clothed for the group today. "-- what?" Emerging soon behind Shelby, he looks baffled at the mention of sprinkler. "If we had a sprinkler," he says, "some asshole would turn it /on/." He does not sit at the table. He examines the newly painted walls with a frown and then goes to sit on one, getting out his /own/ pack of cigarettes and actually taking one out to light it. "Jegus Christ," he is observing the shirtless and bikini-clad, the melting, the flopping, "you'd think it was fucking summer or something." Dusk glances up when the heavy roof door opens (and opens, and opens); its creaky hinges mean considerably less startlement when he is faced with a sudden!Parley. His chair drags back as other people seat themselves with a juddering loud scrape against the concrete. "It is," he says, "as of today. And there's a water tap around back from the access door. Could probably hook /up/ a sprinkler, if you had one. Are they expensive?" He gives Parley a nod, but given that the man is in the middle of practicing, no further greeting to interrupt him. He does stand; there's a restless note to his own pacing, fidgety-discomfort in the form of a dull persistent note of hunger as all the others arrive. He moves away from the table to the wall, taking out his last cigarette from /his/ pack and holding out a hand to Hive kind of demandingly for a light. "I would like," Parley states, grimly, "butter on my potato." He's plucking out an earbud as he says this, the activity through the doors sends his back fur not bristling so much as absent-spasming in a localized two-square-inch area like a horse trying to dispel a /fly/. He doesn't lift his head, but his eyes grow /interested/ on Shelby and her burden. He says to her very solemnly, "You could sing us a rain song, Ms. Shelby." Sliiiight grin forms - or you can assume it does, by the rise of cheekflesh below his eyes. With his arms all a'sprawl it makes only half of his face visible. His eyes rotate to follow Dusk's path leading away from him, and slips to Hive's mind, like a raveling train of silk. << (--how long)(has it been for him?) >> It's laced with a thin ribbon of livid red; a sentiment rich, it's presentation clinical. "It'd be awesome. We should do it, I bet we could find one cheap at a junk store. Don't you wanna see me all wet and sparkly, Hive?" An innocent question. Honest it is. Shelby takes a seat on the wall, hooking her knee up over the edge to serve as a ledge for the guitar. "You're weird, dude, everyone knows sour cream's better on potatoes," she tells the Russian-speaking Parley as she goes through the ritual of string-tuning. "And I think all we'd get here is like, acid rain. That's a city thing, huh?" Fucking /depressing/, augh. One side of Hive's mouth hooks upwards at Shelby's question. It does not get answered! He lights his cigarette instead, and then holds the lighter out towards Dusk. "Even acid rain cools shit the hell down. Besides, we're soaking in pollution all the time, I doubt any of /us/ would even notice it from healthy rain." << Too long, >> Hive cuts back, eyes flicking over his roommate. << Week? >> "Sour cream /and/ cheese," he says aloud. "And some chives. Fuckit throw the butter on, too -- shit," he grumbles with a rather superficial irritation, "now I'm hungry." "Always count on you to be a barrel of sunshine," Dusk says in a stream of smoke after his first pull. And, "Gah." He narrows his eyes at the others. "You're just saying all this to /torture/ me. All /I/ could have of that is the chives." Dairy allergies make for less loaded potatoes. Cigarette lit, he scoots away from Hive as well, his splinted-and-bound wing shifting with a restless itchy discomfort in its taping. "What're you learning?" He flicks a wingtip towards Parley's iPod when the earbud comes out. "I don't know how to say 'sour cream', yet." Parley sounds... /fascinated/ by this obstacle, sitting up. "{Hive-san wants ...cream. And cheese. And --butter.}" He's saying it in Russian; you can essentially hear it, the words aren't masked. But it may as well just be English, perfectly understandable, even 'cream' manages to suggest 'sour cream' instead. This is clearly a sign he should /give up/ for now, turning, "/Can/ we get a sprinkler? I'd forgotten it got so - hot out." Outside of the sweet, sweet, cranked-up air-conditioning in the /labs/. Why is he asking BigBrotherHive this as though the telepath was in charge of these calls? His eyebrows are raised? Hopefully? "Gh. It's Russian. Or... meant to be. It's slow progress." << (is it)(rude?)(to mention it?) >> He inquires of Hive, quieter. << (my)(roommate | |
