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 Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 6:40 am
Paris hated hospitals.
If it wasn't the bad memories that followed her through the hallways, it was the clean smell and the cold that got to her. Everything was so pristine and impersonal. Besides that, she couldn't help but think that somewhere in the building, even if it wasn't on her hall, someone lay dying or dead.
After her week of imprisonment, Paris's thoughts seemed to take even more morbid paths than before. That she had nothing to do hardly helped. She was allowed to see Chris a few times a day. And she had her own visitors, of course. Her mother hardly left, and her cousin came by regularly. Her in-laws made frequent visits as well. But they all hovered too much and asked too many questions she didn't think she was ready to answer.
There was a TV mounted on the wall of her room. Paris spent a lot of her time staring at it even when there wasn't anything of interest playing. Having it on, even when she kept the volume low, gave her some peace of mind. She could watch the news and know that elsewhere nothing had changed; she could leave it on a movie or a re-run and let the actors' voices fill the silence that often crept up on her.Ryuthulhu I'm so sorry it took me so long to get up a start!
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Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 3:33 pm
It had taken some argument to make her mother wait in the hallway, and she wasn't even sure this had been a good idea or not. Never the less, Quilla knocked on the door frame with one hand, the other awkwardly lugging a large pink gift bag with the words "Get Well Soon" emblazoned on it in glittering purple, with froths of pink and white tissue paper foaming out of the top and an 'get well' mylar balloon bobbing from a string that had been tucked behind her shoulder. "Hi?" She called, uncertainly. She had been slightly less prepared than she thought she was to see Ms. Gallo in such a fragile state, totally different than being delicate -looking- in dance, this was actual damage and frailty. "...I... brought stuff." This seemed like a somewhat pointless thing to say after she had said it, but else did you say? I'm sorry someone did things to you that aren't supposed to happen to nice people?.
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Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2015 6:47 am
Paris was not expecting many visitors outside of her family and close friends. The Gallos had made an effort to cover up the news of their hospitalization, considering she and Chris couldn't very well offer any truthful information as to what had happened to them. It was frustrating enough getting the doctors off their backs. The general public would no doubt be even worse. Plus, they didn't want to risk compromising their identities and give themselves away as ones who'd been tortured.
But there were certain people they could not hide their hospitalization from. Paris had been absent from classes and performances with the Destiny City Ballet for over a week without a single word of notice until she'd been found, and anyone who paid even the slightest bit of attention to baseball news would have heard that Chris Gallo had been injured during the offseason.
So it wasn't too surprising to Paris that one of her visitors happened to be a familiar face, though she'd not been expecting it at all.
“Quilla...”
She noted the brightly colored bag, and the balloon trailing behind the younger girl.
“Thank you, you didn't have to do that. Come in and sit,” she offered with a small, strained smile. “I haven't had a visitor in a while.”
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Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 4:18 am
"Mom said you'd probably be tired and... stuff." Quilla admitted. "But hospitals totally stink and they're boring and sad." She shrugged, at an uncomfortable loss for how to handle something that wouldn't change by mouthing off to it, edging forward to look for a place to put the bag within Paris' reach. "...So I brought some stuff to try and make it less awful. I hope you like it." She wanted to ask... no... demand... who had done this. She wanted to pull out her henshin pen and go super hero on them, like... Batman or... no... BatWOMAN or Captain Marvel might, but at the same time, there was a little voice in her head suggesting that she might not be strong enough to deal with the kind of monster that did this to someone. "The class misses you, we've been staying in practice though." She promised.
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Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2015 7:05 am
Paris kept a smile on her face even if it hurt. Her lips were dry and cracked, split and broken from too many beatings, finally scabbing over as they began to heal. The rest of her face was just as bruised and swollen, and her hair looked limp and mangled. Her mother-in-law had tried to brush it out, but it was no longer as healthy as it once was. It hung over Paris's shoulder in a messy braid.
She reached out for the bag with a grateful look upon her face, straightening in bed with a wince as the movement irritated her aching ribs.
“I am tired, but you're right, too. This place is boring. I haven't liked hospitals since...” she trailed off, not wanting to speak of her father. “Well, since forever, really.”
It cheered her to hear of Quilla's class. She brightened noticeably.
“I'll be back soon,” she promised. “Just have to wait for my bruised ribs to heal. And this thing,” she added, waving her broken arm in its light blue cast. Then she took the glittering bag into her lap and started to tear through the tissue paper, continuing, “but a broken wrist never stopped me before.”
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2015 2:36 pm
One of the first things to emerge from the package was an unused copy of ' Wreck this Journal'... a choice that had gotten considerable hemming and hawing from Quilla's mother, unsure of the nature of a book with such a title, and the second... well, the fluffy creature's bean bag bottom had caused it to settle a bit, but the uneven polymer clay horns would make it a quick object to find and retrieve, quickly revealing an strange mishmosh of fake fur and minky fabric in various shades of pink, a tutu, and an amount of bedazling that would have looked at home... actually it was sort of questionable where a pink, bedazzled, tutu wearing monster with large blue eyes and claws that had been painted in red glitter would be at home. In the bag perhaps. Quilla did her own set of hemming and hawing over it, tapping at the floor anxiously with the toe of her shoe and examining the walls. "I made it." She explained. "I like making stuffed monsters but I didn't have a lot of pink so it's kind of... um. Weird. I was gonna make her a Baku because i heard they ate bad dreams and stuff but Baku have elephant noses and that just looked.. you know... blargh." She didn't say it out loud but the mantra of please don't hate it was written clearly on her face.
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Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:27 am
Paris opened her present with a show of reverence in an effort to ease Quilla's anxiety. The purpose of the journal seemed apparent to her as soon as she retrieved it from the folds of tissue paper. She held it still for a moment to review its cover, then flipped through the pages and laughed quietly. For someone who'd attempted to keep a journal for years but failed to write in it regularly, this seemed to offer a few amusing solutions.
Carefully Paris set the journal aside and pulled out the second present—a colorful stuffed animal (if it could be called an animal when it looked more like a monster) decked out in a tutu. It reminded her of another time she'd been gifted a stuffed animal in a tutu. Her smile turned wistful and nostalgic as a result.
“It's very good,” she said. “Thank you. I love it.”
And as if to prove that her comments were genuine, Paris squished the stuffed monster to her and smiled brightly at her company.
“I know exactly where to put her when I get home. I still have all my old stuffed animals from when I was little. I keep them on a shelf in my room. This one'll fit right in,” she said, and then wondered aloud, “Where did you learn how to do this? I can dance my a** off but I was never this artsy.”
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Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 5:05 am
"My Grandma taught me." She offered, sheepishly. "She taught me some crochet too. We made a lot of dirty hooker jokes and drove my mom nuts for a while." She shrugged again, dismissive of the skills. "I... wanna quilt like she could, but monsters are littler. Quilts are so BIG I get cheezed off and quit. She made the best ones though. And she told me stories about a lady who had a really skeezy husband, and she made all these quilts and all the stitches were like these really mean curses she wished on him. That sounded kinda like something they should make into a movie. I dunno if it was real but it was kinda cool. I couldn't do that either. Make words so tiny you couldn't see them at first I mean... But I can't dance as well as you can either." Not yet anyway. Someday maybe.
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Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 8:33 am
“All it takes it a lot of practice,” Paris said.
She found that, with company, she was able to smile. It was difficult after what happened. While held captive she wondered if she would ever smile again. She'd not thought she'd have any reason to; she'd either be in that cage alone, or dead. Neither option was worth smiling over.
But familiar faces that hadn't been touched by those horrors? That was something, and Paris was grateful for the chance to feel normal again.
“The more monsters you make, the better you'll get, and then one day I bet making a quilt'll seem easier,” she said. “Same with dancing. Keep at it and soon you'll be better than I am even. Look at me, I'm a pretty poor role model to begin with. I keep getting hurt and missing out on practice. You'll catch up in no time at this rate.”
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