themidnightson | (no subject)

The Back Door opens and closes.

Two people leave, one dressed for the weather and one decidedly not.

The snow is still covering the ground except for well worn paths that have turned slushy and gray-brown. But it isn't falling right now. And Edward paused, while the door swung closed, to look across the expanse. Would anything feel far enough here to him? Was it just another distraction from?

Except he could not chance these things;
And he did not trust the Front Door after all the things it had thrown at them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

noteful

Baseball is an odd game, if you compare it to the other major team sports.

The offensive team doesn't control the field.

The defensive team has no way to score.

And there is no clock. Things take as long as they take. A game could, in theory, go on forever.

There are rushes of activity, and then there are pauses. There's even a pause scheduled right into the game.

Meg waits.

Edward, she assumes, will begin the conversation again when it is time to do so.

Edited Date: 2010-02-01 02:35 pm (UTC)

From:

themidnightson

It doesn't take too long, but it does take some time.
To calm sensations that were not ripped open, but perused.

To go through too many words that might relate back to her last ones, whether grateful or dismissive, or even a combination of both to her and to the topic. But those words come and form and fade with the swirling snow.

She can't sit as long as he can stand there, but she's better at waiting than he'd given her credit for previous to now even. A plan-less and design-less acceptance of waiting for him.

Eventually he came over and sat dusted the snow off the bench next to her. A graceful settle, hands settling, criss-crossed on one thigh. "I don't always know what to make of you."

The connotation of the words is lost in the vagueness of its tone.

From:

noteful

It's one of those comments it's hard to know how to respond to.

I don't always know what to make of you, either?

I don't always know what to make of me, either?

I'm sorry?

Thank you?

You heard all that so I guess I just made all those responses, didn't I?

From:

themidnightson

One side of Edward's lips twitched faintly outward and upward.

Edited Date: 2010-02-01 03:05 pm (UTC)

From:

noteful

He gets an ever-so-prim (if completely put on) look in reply.

"And now I suspect you are laughing at me."

From:

themidnightson

There's a small tip of his head outward that might be the only sign of an agreement. Like it should accompany a shrug or a wider smile, but his golden eyes are focused on her and it is only that smallest movement.

"The answer is, not unless you want them to be. I haven't been at this such a short time that I take instantaneous reactions for them every time."

Though he did take them for the honest, unfettered, unguarded things they were and represented at times.

From:

noteful

"I think a lot of things that I don't say," Meg says.

Call her crazy, but she suspects Edward has noticed.

"And I don't always like the things I think. There's a reason I don't say them.

"It's . . . it's really strange that you've heard them all."

From:

themidnightson

Not for him.

But he says, "Understandably."

From:

noteful

She's very new to it all. And new is often strange.

(But strange is not always bad.)

"Do you all -- your father, your family -- do you all hear what people are thinking?"

From:

themidnightson

Edward shook his head. "It's only me."

There was a singularity that wasn't-quiet nor-wasn't-quiet-not solemnness. He is used to his life-- and his separateness. "Among them, and in the known histories of even the oldest of our kind we've come into contact with."

From:

noteful

And that surprises her.

She's not sure why, or at least, why is surprises her as much as it does. It's hardly odd for different people to have different abilities.

(Even within families. Kim, after all, is a Seer. And Meg most decidedly is not.)

"Why?"

And then immediately, "Sorry. That was . . ."

Too much to ask, maybe.

At the very least, too rudely phrased.

From:

themidnightson

Edward shook his head, short and tight, more as a point than rebuff.

"It's fine. It isn't a science," No one cares enough on this side, outside of wanting to collect them like cards, or use them like toys. "But the prevailing theory is that the strongest gifts people have during their human life is amplified when they are changed."

Alice would be another note in the truth of that.
Especially since James and the video tape.

From:

noteful

"So in your human life, you were . . . what gift manifests as hearing people's minds?"

From:

themidnightson

"It's a good question. I could have been empathetic to people, or" Edward's expression slips the seriousness, splitting for a wryness. "-perhaps I was very nosy."

Though he thinks of a memory that isn't his, while being him and not;

It's not your fault.

From:

noteful

Or perhaps you were both.

Things are not always either/or, after all.

From:

themidnightson

Maybe, the rueful twist of amusement on his lopsided smirk says, but Edward himself settles for. "Whatever it was, it was certainly quieter."

From:

noteful

"How do you hear yourself think?"

Such a trite, cliched phrase.

And not even really a metaphor here.

From:

themidnightson

"The same way anyone in a room full of talking people hears their self still."

Edward's hand rose making a shape like a box, only to turn it up as looking through the square instead of down through it.

"Only it's not a physical room and the volume of it can change or the numbers, or it's the same room while being just a slightly different version seen through each person, where everything about the room switches with the swings of each person viewing it -- except the actual physical reality, of course."

He has had decades to deal with it, after all.

From:

noteful

It sounds like being at a cocktail party.

In a funhouse.

Warped reflections from mirrors all around and voices everywhere.

"How close does someone have to be for you to hear him or her?"

Edited Date: 2010-02-01 05:23 pm (UTC)

From:

themidnightson

He looked over his shoulder, toward where they'd come.

"I can still hear them."

It's not as precise as it could be.

From:

noteful

She turns to look, automatically, though she can't see the bar from here.

"From here?"

It's not that she doubts him, it's just . . .

Wow.

From:

themidnightson

Edward simply nodded, a medium speed small bob twice.

He could have said I can hear all of them or beyond them.
Milliways was actually a blessing in it's limited populace in someways.

From:

noteful

Make that a really, really big cocktail party, then.

"Just . . . just conscious thought, or are you stuck hearing the part of my brain that does nothing but think inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale?"

From:

themidnightson

"I can only hear," See. Feel. "What you are thinking presently."

Though his definition of conscious and hers were a bit different.
People's awareness of their thoughts was not very clear.

From:

noteful

There is a part of her mind (Edward is probably more aware of it than she is), that finds it kind of remarkable to be sitting and calmly discussing all this.

But then, she's had a week to get used to the idea, to think of things she wants to ask.

And you hear everyone?

Or nearly everyone, he said.