ArchivedLogs:In Which Things Are Post-Apocalyptic But There May Be Some Faith Left Anyway

In Which Things Are Post-Apocalyptic But There May Be Some Faith Left Anyway
Dramatis Personae Scramble, Taylor
In Absentia	Seventh Day of Kwanzaa "{We'll dance in the ashes and sing while we work.}"
Location <NYC> BoM Safehouse - Lower East Side
Tucked away off a little-used side street in the Lower East Side, sandwiched between a youth drop-in center and a taqueria, this narrow three-story townhouse has very little to catch the eye. Boarded-up windows, a door peeling its paint, shabby grubby brickface; from the outside it does not look like much. Inside someone has gone to great lengths to renovate the building into something more habitable. It isn't glamorous but it is comfortable, old furniture dragged in, the place generally swept clean. The first floor holds a large living room, a smaller dining room, a spacious kitchen, a half-bathroom. There are three bedrooms and a full bathroom on the second floor; the attic is just a large empty space crammed full of boxes with a window out to the large flat roof. The basement, much like the attic, consists of a lot of empty space. A bare concrete floor, no windows, occasional poles running up to the ceiling. A tiny half-bathroom down here, too. Not a whole lot else. It's cold outside -- that much is clear when Taylor opens the door, letting in a sudden gust of chill. He is bundled, a heavy red shawl wrapped around his shoulders, black jeans, dark boots, a green tee shirt with an image of the Loch Ness monster reading 'Believe in yourself when noone else does', a thin red fleece cap on his head. He has a backpack over his shoulder, a pair of dark glasses shading his eyes -- he kind of /slumps/ back against the door to close it once he's inside, rubbing one slim arm up beneath the glasses against one eye. Not that this stops him from an /exuberant/ greeting as he (trudges) across the room. "--- Heyyy, Scramble, habari gani?" Scramble is sprawled on the couch with a book open in her lap, though she didn't really look all that focused on it even before Taylor arrived. She's decked out in a scarlet kaftan respledent with gold and black embroidery, and wears a large green jade disk on a black cord around her neck, matching earrings peeking out from the perfect curly black poof of her hair. "Imani!" she replies, setting the book aside (/Ink/, by Sabrina Vourvoulias) and hoisting herself up to meet Taylor as he enters. "Joyous Kwanzaa!" She spreads her arms wide for a hug. "{You look like shit, brother,}" she adds in rough Spanish. Taylor unslings his backpack, settling it down (with a quiet clink of glass) on the couch. His arms (several pairs of them) wrap around Scramble, curling in for a very tight and enveloping hug. "{Hey, not everyone can always look three hundred percent} on /top/ of their fucking game. {/You/ look like god/damn/, the fuck any of us even trying for. As usual.}" He is soon to follow his backpack onto the couch, releasing Scramble to flop down there with a small grumble. "{I brought. Food. Things.}" "{I gotta set an example, right? Be a /role model/ or something.}" Scramble leans into Taylor's embrace, and though she can't match him for strength, she holds him as tight as she can. "{S'good to see you.}" There's a tightness in her jaw that belies her casual tone. "{I got a giant pitcher of that ginger drink. It's almost exactly like a kick in the face.}" Despite that description, she's already wandering toward the kitchen. "{You want some?}" "{Think of the children.}" Taylor has wrapped one arm around his backpack, head rolling back against the couch. Rolling /over/ to let his gaze follow Scramble to the kitchen. "{Oh fuck am I the children. I need a kick in the face right now.}" He curls slightly inward, folding around his backpack to use it as a pillow. "{I brought pie. Berry. Or tarts? Jax... things. Shit, you been /living/ here?}" "{See? This me, thinking of the children.}" Scramble pauses by the Kwanzaa display she had set up on the dining table: an abstract treelike wooden kinara and a matching chalice surrounded by bowls of mostly fall-like produce (with the odd kiwi and dragonfruit thrown in). The arrangement elicits a twist of pain and loss -- a rapid-fire recollection of Kwanzaas past with her birth family -- there and gone. She disappears into the kitchen and returns with two tall beer glasses full of cloudy yellowish-white beverage. "{Sweet! Jax is biologically incapable of making anything not delicious.}" She sets one glass down in front of Taylor and keeps the other, sinking to the couch beside him. "{Here, Evolve, wherever there's space, really. My old place is fucked.}" << Fuck my old place, fuck the landlord and Uncle Sam, too. >> "{I accept your benevolence. On behalf of the youth of today.}" One of Taylor's arms snakes out, coiling around the glass to pick it up. "{You should go crash down at the Commons. Endless bounty of delicious food there. /I'm/ moving in, come graduation. Sleep in anyone's basement who'll let me.}" A few of his arms flex outwards. "{Everyone needs a dungeon monster, right?}" He lifts his glass, takes a drink from it with a wince. "{Serious though what'll you do now then? Half the city's fucked it looks like.}" "{I dunno, feel like they got enough of a job making space for everyone there right now, since the fire.}" << Not hard as it ought to be, though. Clarice and Daiki...fuck... >> Scramble breaks off that line of thought real fast. "{My dungeon monster game not on point, and crazy girl in the basement is so last decade.}" Takes a long drought of her drink without any visible signs of distress, though the ginger burns fierce and hard on her tongue. "{Oh, yeah. Tastes like my childhood, right there.}" Her fingers play idly along the plastic cover of the book set she had left on the arm of the couch. "{Anyway, I /am/ considering renting at the Common, when I get a paying job again. Old boss died, doubt the shop gonna open back up.}" She /tries/ to avoid thinking about the last day she went in to work, but turns out its /kind/ of hard to /not/ vividly remember stabbing your zombie employer through the eye. "{On the bright side, the city being fucked may make rent cheaper again.}" Several of Taylor's arms contract, coiling in tighter against his body, his grip squeezing in on the glass. There is a faint shiver in him as he unzips his bag, extracts a glass container with several (slightly broken and crumbly) tiny tarts inside. "{See? Silver lining. Maybe this is time to invest. Start something new. /You/ should go into business, this time. It is the thing to do, after apocalypses.}" He stops, here, huffing out a quiet laugh. "After apocalypses. Post-apocalyptic. {Such a different fucking connotation.}" His brows furrow, uncertain. Quieter: "Where /we/ at?" Scramble snorts. "{Chemical process design's a tough field to break into alone,}" she muses aloud. The part she doesn't speak is, << Hell, I can't even break into it as an entry level employee. >> Then, aware that Taylor probably heard it all the same, she adds, "{Mostly fucking old white dudes who want other old white dudes to design shitty plants for them.}" << But who knows... >> She frowns, looks at Taylor. "{You got a lot more faith than I do, brother.}" << Maybe. >> She sets down her drink and makes (very casual) grabby hands for the tarts. "Definitely post-apocalyptic. {Been living in a} dystopia {since long before the zombies showed up.}" Taylor's head turns aside, shifting now to face the table even while he deposits the tarts into Scramble's hands. "{Hasn't been easy to keep,}" he admits quietly. "{But we gotta. All this, we're strong enough to get past that bullshit. If the world's fucking ashes we'll just use that to grow a bigger garden. And if /all/ we got's ashes...}" Here he just trails off, though, and gulps from his drink again. For a long time he's quiet. One foot bobs restlessly against the ground. "{...gotta build a new world from somewhere.}" Scramble accepts the tarts and just looks Taylor for a moment. Shakes her head, but not to refute him. The anger and weariness in her remains, but something else stirs, as well -- a kind of hope. << Maybe even faith. >> "{Yeah, we are,}" she agrees, finally, slinging a long arm around Taylor's shoulder. "{More than strong enough. And we'll dance in the ashes and sing while we work, but most of all? We're gonna do it together.}"