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 Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:17 am
(This RP is backdated to April 3rd.)
Finn had waited until the last possible second to renew his license, so the four hour wait at the DMV sure served him right. If there was a hell, Finn was pretty sure it was populated by screaming children and road rules pamphlets - but he could see the light! He was only two numbers from being called! And now - only one number from being called!
And then, by the incredible grace of a god he was not certain he believed in, the electronic signboard told him he would now be seen at Window C. Finn gathered up his things and went as directed, like a pilgrim in the final legs of a long journey. All that was left, he thought, was to hand over his paperwork and take a new photograph, and he’d be out of here in a flash. It would be perfect. He’d go get a burrito.
(He had earned a burrito, he reasoned, by sitting here all day.)
“Ana?” he asked, approaching the girl behind the counter. The last he’d heard of Anabel Au, she was in critical condition in an intensive care ward in Colorado Springs after a skiing accident, the details of which he was vague on. (He’d been in Alaska and heard about it on the DCU Environmental Sciences department’s facebook page - not the nation’s #1 news source.) “I had no idea you were working here. How are you?”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:18 am
Anabel smiled at the old woman tottering away with her new license, and wondered vaguely how long it was going to be before she hit someone with her car. Not like all old people sucked at driving, but the old lady had been near deaf if her ear-splitting decibel level hadn’t been enough of a clue. And probably near blind from the thickness of the lenses in her glasses. It wasn’t a good combination when combined with any sort of two-ton metal death trap. She hit the button that would summon her next client, and checked the clock--just thirty minutes to go. Hopefully she could stretch this one out enough that she wouldn’t have to deal with one of the three clients she could see behind him, who all looked fairly irate and thus, unpleasant.
“Hey Derouen,” she said, holding out a hand for his paperwork. She couldn’t very well fake doing her job if she didn’t have anything in her hands to do it with, but, hey. If he wanted to hang on to his stuff… “I’ve had better days.” She took his paperwork and started to go through it, was a little dismayed to see that there was pretty much nothing out of order. She gave him a quick look, and said, “Want to help improve it? Let’s pretend there’s something wrong with your paperwork. I mean, there’s not, but seriously, I will explode if I have to deal with one of those three.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:21 am
Finn handed over his paperwork, stepping closer to the counter and bowing his head. He’d already been here so long that he was anxious to leave, but if he could escape here with Ana in tow then that was probably worth bonus points. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I was going to go hit Burrito Barn after this, anyway, and eating alone always makes me feel super-conspicuous.”
He eyed his paperwork as she went over it, curious what kind of error she’d decide to go with. Working at the DMV seemed… well, to be honest, it seemed awful. “So, uh, working for the government these days?” he asked, resolving to not ask her about her accident unless she brought it up - even though he was curious. He’d been working on his sense of tact lately, having been informed it was lacking. Besides, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing appropriate to bring up in the workplace.
“I started over at White River Outfitters a few months ago,” he said. “I can get you a twenty-percent discount on anything in the store.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:21 am
Burrito Barn sounded really, really awesome, actually. She was reminded that she’d skipped lunch that day--however bad that was for her health--by an alarming noise from her general stomach area; and if she’d skipped lunch she’d skipped her lunch pills. “Whoops,” she said under her breath, pressing her fingers together. “Anyway, if you don’t mind me tagging along, I’d love to,” she told him, “That’s like, one of the three places I can eat out at, but usually after work I’m so wiped, you know?” She smiled at him, and pretended to correct the demographic information on his form. When she didn’t think she could pretend any further, she started entering information into the computer to print the new state ID.
She shrugged. “Yeah. I need the health insurance and the pay is actually really awesome. You just take the civil service test and then, boom, you’re done.” Anabel hooked her hair behind an ear and leaned over her computer keyboard for a long minute, then sat up straight.
“I don’t remember if they sell wetsuits there,” she said. “I can’t really wear my old swimsuits, you know. Crazy keloid scarring and all. People stare. I thought you were in Alaska? I remember asking if I could swing by during my grad work.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:23 am
Finn shrugged, heaving a sigh. “Yeah, well, family tragedy,” he said. He couldn’t recall whether Anabel and Tate had ever met, and at any rate, he was beyond talking about this. “I had to come home and wrap things up, and it ran long, so I transferred back. I’m so close to finishing that it just doesn’t make sense to take a semester off at this point. I graduate in May.”
He leaned over, watching her enter his information into the computer. “Please,” he said. “I’d love for you to tag along. And we’ve totally got wetsuits. We’ve got literally everything.” The store was the size of a supermarket. Finn had personally secured a kayak to the ceiling yesterday. He had no doubts that whatever kind of wetsuit Ana had her heart set on, they’d have it.
“So I guess nothing worked out exactly the way we planned for it,” he said. “Alaska was - there’s nowhere like it on earth.” (It had kind of reminded him of Mercury.) “But it wasn’t the right time.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:23 am
“Well, congrats, you,” she said, cheerfully. She didn’t want to talk about tragedies, not with that kind of news. Not that she envied him. She totally didn’t. Things happened, and the best choice for Anabel Au had been to let go of wildlife conservation and do something else. What? She wasn’t sure, yet, but she’d come up with something once she’d done up her requirements for something more generally friendly to a sedentary lifestyle. “I’m sure you’ll go back out there someday. Save some bears, maybe.”
Ana smiled, and printed out the new form. “Check and make sure all that information’s okay? If it is, initial here, here, and here. So, working at White River, finishing up your degree… what else is going on?”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:28 am
“Yeah, maybe,” shrugged Finn. “I’m planning to stick closer to Destiny City for a while. There’s a fire watch ranger program out in the national forest that I’m going to apply to.” At least, he thought, feeling a little guilty, his duties as a knight hadn’t completely derailed him from his goals, the way Ana’s accident had derailed her from hers. Was it rubbing it in that I mentioned the ranger program? he worried suddenly.
He glanced at the form “Yeah, that’s all right,” Finn confirmed, reaching for a pen and signing off. He considered the question. “I mean, there’s not a whole lot of time for other stuff,” he said. He was still trying to do his weekend hiking trips, but saying so seemed like a whole lot of rubbing things in Anabel’s face. “Still dating the same guy,” he shrugged. “I mean, I’m keeping busy.”
There was more, of course. He could not really tell her about it. At least, he thought, she had not asked about the scar.
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:28 am
She nodded and gestured him over in front of the blue background for the license photo. "Maybe the doctor will give me permission for day hikes soon," she said brightly. "We could head out for a bit." No overnight camping for a while, though. It sucked, but she'd rather be bored and alive than excited and dead. And earlier experiments attempting to push her recovery without Dr. Mendelssohn's permission had actually set her back pretty far.
"I mean, if you want. Most of the old wildlife conservation crowd is pretty awkward around me now." Like, she was kind of hoping Finn could look past all that and wasn't just agreeing to have dinner with her for pity, but who could be sure? "Okay, if you smile we have to take it again," she said, in a transparent hint that he should smile.
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:30 am
Finn could take a hint, and he grinned for the camera. “Can’t imagine why,” he said after the flash. “You’re as lovely as ever.” They were awkward around him now, too, but for different reasons - spending three semesters away tended to make people assume you weren’t coming back. But he supposed not being able to participate in any of your old hobbies could drive a wedge between you and your old friends. “And I’m not being sarcastic, seriously.”
He held for her to take his picture again, with a straight face this time .”How are we doing for time?” he asked. He - he didn’t regret offering to help her stall, but he’d been sitting here all afternoon and he was starving - and he didn’t need her to say so to know that she was, too: he’d heard the noise her stomach made. “There’s a trail we could do when you’re allowed,” he offered. “Two miles in, two miles out, mostly flat, with a really pretty waterfall?”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:31 am
"No point getting sad about it," she told him. "I am where I am and I can hardly get pissed about an avalanche. To be honest, being alive is way cooler than skiing." The second picture turned out lovely, and she hummed approval to herself as she sent the file off for printing. All of the thirty seconds to her desk machine, anyway. "We've got five minutes. Just enough time to end my shift and get your license printed."
She started putting things away as the machine whirred, and just as her supervisor tapped her on the shoulder she passed the ID to Finn. "Meet you in front and we can talk about the trail?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:35 am
Finn took the new license, pleased to have an ID that no longer depicted him as sixteen years old and 5’5”. “Sure,” he said, giving her a quick wave. Ducking dirty looks from the people behind him in line, who knew their time had been wasted, he headed out of the DMV - free at last!
Out in the parking lot, he waved her over to his jeep. “So, uh, hey!” Finn said. “Can I hug you? And then we’ll get going, I’m starving and I bet the feeling’s mutual. I’ll drive, and then - do you have a car here? I’ll bring you back around after dinner. Does that work for you?”
Once they were settled in the car and on the road, he continued, “The trail’s about fifteen minutes out of town, in the foothills. It’s a really good beginner trip.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:01 am
“I can’t drive,” she said, “I’m on more drugs than--than someone on an awful lot of drugs.” But she hugged Finn in front of his Jeep, because she was glad to see him, and because he’d been a good sport about helping her waste half an hour of the government’s time, which wasn’t something she could say for everyone she was friends with. “I can hit the nearest bus stop to the Burrito Barn, no problem,” she told him, “the state gives us fancy paid transit cards. And, uh, because I’m technically ‘differently abled’ now, I can use the access transport when things are messed up publicly.”
She smothered a laugh between pursed lips at the idea of her doing a beginner’s trail, but if she did want to get back to hiking, that was how it had to be. “Sounds like a good time. Does it have cell phone reception? Because while I love getting back to nature as well as the next girl, if I have an attack I’m supposed to get help right away.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:02 am
“No, no,” said Finn, who realized he should have expected Ana to have lost her license as a result of her medical issues. “I’ll drive you home. Where are you living these days? I’m subletting in a place near DCU.” He was entirely certain by now that Vanya was charging him far, far below market value for his room, for reasons that were still utterly and completely mysterious, but as Finn was currently being paid about eight dollars an hour, he wasn’t really in a position to investigate.
Finn frowned, and tapped his fingers on the wheel while he waited for the light to change. “You know, I’m not sure,” he said, “But it’s so close to town - and pretty much everywhere has cell phone reception nowadays, you know? So it must.” Finn could hardly remember the last time he’d been somewhere without cell phone coverage, barring basements or places where building materials interfered. Probably before he’d come back from Alaska: Verizon was still getting its act together in the greater Fairbanks metropolitan area.
“But I’ll head up and scout it out when I get a chance,” he promised, and hesitated again, not sure what questions were and weren’t appropriate to ask. “Hey, uh, cut me off if I’m prying too much, but what kind of attack would you be having?”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:03 am
Anabel tried to remember the distance from DCU to her new place, and then said, “I’m off near the Village, so you really don’t have to if you’d prefer to save the time. I have a second-floor studio in one of those new super-green buildings.” She rented there because the environment was a cause she cared about, and also because there were laundry facilities literally six feet from her door. No stairs, and it was cheap enough that she could justify doing her wash once a week. Which, nice. She’d had enough of college bullshit the first time through.
She shrugged. “You’d be surprised. I went to a cookout in the state park like, a month ago, and there wasn’t s**t.” She hadn’t had anything more problematic than a splitting headache, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a possibility if she was doing more than sitting in a lawn chair for three hours.
“It’s no problem,” she assured him. “I am asking you to take a risk by going hiking with me, yeah? It’d be muscle spasms. They had to do some crazy work on my abdominals to keep all my insides where they ought to be, and when I over-work them, they seize.” It was a very, very fine line that tended to change by the day. Which didn’t mean she didn’t sometimes knowingly push just a little too far, but it did mean that sometimes she did it completely on accident. “A two hour hike might be too much for me to do without a half-hour break halfway,” she admitted. “But I’ll ask Dr. Mendelssohn if you can promise me cell reception.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 10:03 am
“Hey, a half-hour break’s an easy thing to squeeze in,” said Finn, trying to downplay her concerns. The last thing he’d want Anabel to think was that she was any kind of burden. “Like I said, the trail ends at a waterfall. We can take a lunch, take a break, and then walk back out. Easy.” The muscle spasms didn’t sound like a picnic at all, but he resolved to not ask anything more about her personal medical issues than he absolutely had to: that stuff was private, and he figured that if Anabel felt like he needed to know anything, she’d open up about it.
“I think I know what complex you’re talking about,” he said as he parked. “It’s not far from me, and I really don’t mind taking you.” Which, holy s**t, he was turning into his mother. “How are those buildings? I was interested in them, but I couldn’t find a unit in my budget and wound up finding a place on Craigslist. Anyway, here, I’ll get the door-”
And he followed her into the restaurant. “They don’t have Burrito Barn in Alaska,” said Finn, as they took their places in the queue. “I’d get serious cravings. It was one of the downsides of living there.”
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