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Feb. 8th, 2004 01:48 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsDeath by hot chocolate
(Or, the Devil Woman strikes again...)
As always, the kitchen. Friday, late evening.
The bag of chocolate chip cookies went back in the cupboard, the closing door revealing the luminous time on the microwave's clock. 2:13 am glowed back at Alison in with a faint green light, and she winced at the late hour - and how awake she actually was. With a shrug she put the milk away as well, unable to repress a low chuckle as she turned around and spotted the late night snack she'd scrounged for - the same one she tended to go hunt for in the wee hours of the morning. Unceremoniously setting a cookie between her teeth, to nibble on as she climbed the stairs back to her room, she picked up the milk in one hand and the plate in the other, and headed for the exit leading into the hallway.
The sound of a door opening and closely stealthily pulled her up short. Turning, she pinned the culprit with a stern stare, much less effective than usual due to the cookie still in her mouth. Her target, a skinny, pale girl with too much makeup, an abundance of facial piercings and partly-dyed blonde hair, froze anyway. Possibly because she was covered in snow and in the process of actual freezing. "Um, hey," she said, her accent as thickly British as Jono's.
Alison blinked once slowly, then rolled her eyes and gestured towards one of the kitchen chairs, nearly sending the cookies flying about, tilting the plate to keep them there at the last second. "Mmfmhgmm!" She paused, looked down her nose cross-eyed at the cookie still neatly held in her teeth and rolled her eyes again, this time clearly at herself, and tilted her head towards the chair once more. "Mrf!"
Amanda (because that who it was) looked at her bemusedly at the first muffled instruction. She was feeling very, very good, having spent the last half hour lurking outside the boathouse which Cain was still in the process of renovating, working at night to do so. She felt so good, in fact, that she was having trouble remembering why'd she been so upset earlier that day. She looked at the chair Alison was nodding at and realised. "Oh! Sit! Yep, I can do that!" Which she did, although it took two tries.
Alison raised an eyebrow slowly at this, tilting her head to the side as she watched Amanda trying to negotiate the concepts of "chair" and "sit in chair" as a possible single action. She changed expression before walking into Amanda's line of view however, and instead plopped the plate of cookies in front of her and then used the free hand to remove the lone cookie from her mouth. "Eat," she said sternly, turning around to pulls out a mug and pouring some of the milk into it before plopping it in the microwave and rummaging about for the cocoa. She set the tin on the counter and walked back towards Amanda, stopped a few feet away from her to look her over once more, carefully. At the same time she concentrated slightly, calling up a glow strong enough to generate heat as well, to help Amanda warm up.
"Ooh, shiny!" Amanda exclaimed. "I can do that do, y'know." She flicked her fingers, but only managed a few green sparks. "Oops, spell must be on the blink," she muttered. Then the plate of cookies in front of her registered and she pounced on them, stuffing two into her mouth almost whole. "Wmmf rmmmf mmf?" she asked, her mouth full, barely noticing the shivers that were setting in.
Alison sniggered at that. Tit for tat, only fair after all. "I'd say don't talk with your mouth full, but that'd be the pot calling the cauldron black, mmm?" Oh, bad pun, calling the witch a cauldron, she chided herself. The microwave dinged and Alison walked back to the counter, fixing up a hot chocolate and grabbing the bag of cookies on her way back, stuffing it under her arm as she juggled the glass of milk and milk carton as well. "Here, drink." A pause. "No, chew, swallow the cookies, then drink. And careful, s'hot." She set the mug down in front of Amanda, letting the bag of cookies drop on the table soon afterwards before hooking another chair with her foot and dragging it closer. Glass of milk and carton were set in front of her, and she sat down, watching Amanda with a calm expression - making a snap judgment as to the way she was acting, considering the fact that it was the first time she even saw the girl, would be a mite hasty. she thought.
Amanda managed to swallow most of the cookies and washed the rest down with a gulp of cocoa. "I said, 'Who are you?'," she repeated, a bit more clearly. The combination of warm air and warm food was bringing clarity back, although light was still refracting oddly, casting haloes over everything, and the Cookie Woman seemed to be glowing with a variety of colours. She took another gulp of cocoa, smaller than the first this time.
It was, Alison reflected, all in the timing, when one was in show business. "Alison Blaire," she said innocently, at the same time making damn sure there was a fair amount of distance between the two of them by angling her chair to the side, saving her glass of milk at the same time.
Her caution was well-founded and her timing perfect - an arc of brown liquid sailed past as the gulp abruptly reversed itself. Spluttering and coughing as cocoa got up her nose, Amanda managed a strangled. "What?"
It is good, to be the Devil Woman. Alison smiled benevolently at the confounded young girl, enjoying all of this tremendously. She hiked up the glow slightly, generating enough heat to do away with the rest of the snow and start to work on the damp clothing - she'd yet to manage to make an intensely hot low light, although she had every intention of achieving that soon. "Alison," she repeated, tilting her head to the side. "Need a napkin?" she then asked solicitously.
"Um, yeah, that'd be good, thanks." Through the pink haze, Amanda's brain was working overtime, aided by the fact she was slowly getting the feeling back in her hands and feet. She took the offered napkin and wiped chocolate off her face (also wiping off the black lipstick, which Alison considered an improvement), and tried to focus. "Um, I'm Amanda," she said, trying desperately to remember some kind of shielding spell should things get violent.
"I know!" Alison chirped with maddening composure. "The piercings alone kinda gave you away. There's the accent too," she added as an afterthought, ruthlessly keeping a straight face. She nudged her chair closer and stretched out her legs under the table, still keeping up the warming light, not a drain on her reserves unlike generating a laser would be. "Need more hot chocolate?" she asked innocently enough.
"See, this is where it's unfair - you lot all know me, I dont' know you, an' then this kind of stuff gets sprung on me..." Amanda realised she was babbling and reined herself in, with effort. "Um, yeah, chocolate's good. Really good. It's bloody cold out there." As Alison moved to make another mug, Amanda screwed up her courage (and her actual working brain cells) to ask: "So, um, why're you being nice t' me?"
"Why shouldn't I be?" was the agreeable enough response, the sound of the microwave door being shut punctuating her statement as she stopped emitting light, letting the heat in the house and the hot chocolate finish warming Amanda up. She then turned around, and gave Amanda a far less innocent look than before, lips quirking slightly in amusement. "And sorry about that," though she wasn't all that much really - it had been innocent fun, really. "Couldn’t resist. Don't get to do it often, what with being somewhat recognizable and all."
"Recog... oh, right, that Alison Blaire. Someone told me you lived here, only I forgot, what with... everything happening," she finished lamely. "I figured you was pissed off at me, with all that journal stuff."
Alison leaned on the counter as the microwave whirred, the sound pleasantly soothing and automatically used to replenish her reserves. "Why did you think I was pissed off at you specifically?" she asked, observing Amanda and waiting for her response, noting that the clumsiness seemed to have faded - at least as far as she could tell while the girl was still sitting. But she wasn't fumbling with the mug or the cookies...
"The stuff you were sayin', it was a reply to one of me posts, so I figured it was aimed at me. An' since I was one of the people sayin' I didn't feel safe, it made sense that it was for me. An' t' tell the truth..." Amanda gripped the mug in her hands tightly, making sure it didn't slip through her fingers. She avoided looking at Alison directly because the colours swirling around her were way too distracting. "T' tell the truth, I don't read that good. School was... sorta optional for me when I was a kid. So I might have gotten meself mixed up, what with everything bein' said. All I wanted t' say was I didn't want people t' shoot me. That's all. I haven't been here long enough t' hate you lot."
"Assumptions, kiddo, are the bane of communication." Alison shrugged, absently waiting for the microwave to finish before bringing the warm milk over along with the chocolate mix and a newly acquired spoon, letting Amanda mix it up as she pleased. "There's being angry at people themselves, or being angry at their words, or what you think they imply, or all of that put together. But that doesn't mean it's all three together all the time." She sat down and leaned back lazily, reaching out to work the bag open and get a cookie for herself. "I was angry at what was being said - and what I perceived as being implied. And at people too." She grinned faintly. "Probably will be again, too. Doesn't mean I'll be all about kicking everyone out, using them as punching bags or throwing myself out the window." Her lips twitched as she remembered the look on Jake's face as she was throwing him out of the window, however.
Amanda tried to formulate some kind of answer to all this, but it was getting hard to think again. "If it helps, I like it here," she managed. "Just been a weird couple of weeks, is all." Without realising she'd levitated the spoon into the chocolate mix and was making up a new batch of cocoa by remote control. Normally something like a metal spoon took active effort, but her power was running high enough she could do it without even thinking about it. "I wanna stay, help, if I can. Already helped Lorna an' Angelo," she offered, hopefully.
Used to Lorna doing that sort of trick, Alison didn't even blink at the sight, nodding slowly at Amanda's words instead and taking a bite out of her cookie as she listened. "Important thing is, Amanda..." she waved the cookie about as she gestured, "is that you want to stay. Some of us here have to, for various reasons. Among those, some could leave but - wouldn't be easy, or any kind of way to live." She paused, then shrugged. "Talking is fine. Differing opinions is fine." She grinned. "But people yell at me, I'm likely to yell right back. Nothing more," she raised an eyebrow, "nothing less. See what I mean?" Hoping Amanda would ask if not, really.
"Better 'n the smack around the ear," Amanda said, managing to switch mugs without a major mishap, although the empty one was close. Seeing Alison's raised eyebrow, she explained. "On the streets, there's not so much of the talkin' an' more of the giving someone a ding 'round the ear if you think they're talkin' shite. Think I like this talkin' thing better, even if it's all in writin'. Words an' words an' words..." She trailed off, momentarily hypnotized by the reflected light in her chocolate. Then she glanced up, remembering she wasn't alone. "Sorry, you was sayin'?"
"Mmm. Wasn't. I was listening." She couldn't manage a smile however, Amanda's words reminding her only too much of what Miles had been through for most of his short life, some of the reflexes he'd acquired still very much ingrained in his behavior patterns. Yeah, better than a smack around the ear, she thought with melancholy. Shaking off the mood, she leaned forward on the table. "So. You yell, someone yells back, things are kept at yelling. We talk after. Or we can skip the yelling now and then if you feel like it. And if the writing doesn't do it, you just go find the person and talk. Or yell then talk." She nodded to herself. "Fair?"
"Fair enough, I s'pose." Looking up at Alison, Amanda was again distracted, this time by the colours swirling around the woman. They were oddly familiar, reminding her of something Manuel had said about emotions having colours. Honest trust, he'd said, was a nice sparkly gold colour. She was seeing that same colour now, combined with others, mostly warm yellows and oranges, with some harsher, more angry reds and some dark blues. "Weird," she said, blinking rapidly until the colours disappeared again. She realised Alison was looking at her with that unnerving look again, the one that said there was a lot going on in the head behind it. "Um, yeah, talkin's good. I get it, I think. An' I'll be sure t' yell at you first, or talk. Um, I think I should go now, I'm... sleepy. Yeah, really sleepy." She staggered slightly as she stood, and paused, swaying gently.
"Steady on," Alison murmured, noting the swaying and filing that away for later. Perhaps for a talk with Pete about it, really - just maybe. Since talking to Amanda herself about it would only be fair, so for now she settled for promising herself that she'd keep an eye out to see if the behaviour happened again. "Off you go then, and sleep well." She watched as Amanda tottered off, hearing the shush of a hand leaning on the wall as she went down the hallway, and she grinned to herself. Why kick them out, when you could keep them near and torture them with being nice and pleasant to them?
(Or, the Devil Woman strikes again...)
As always, the kitchen. Friday, late evening.
The bag of chocolate chip cookies went back in the cupboard, the closing door revealing the luminous time on the microwave's clock. 2:13 am glowed back at Alison in with a faint green light, and she winced at the late hour - and how awake she actually was. With a shrug she put the milk away as well, unable to repress a low chuckle as she turned around and spotted the late night snack she'd scrounged for - the same one she tended to go hunt for in the wee hours of the morning. Unceremoniously setting a cookie between her teeth, to nibble on as she climbed the stairs back to her room, she picked up the milk in one hand and the plate in the other, and headed for the exit leading into the hallway.
The sound of a door opening and closely stealthily pulled her up short. Turning, she pinned the culprit with a stern stare, much less effective than usual due to the cookie still in her mouth. Her target, a skinny, pale girl with too much makeup, an abundance of facial piercings and partly-dyed blonde hair, froze anyway. Possibly because she was covered in snow and in the process of actual freezing. "Um, hey," she said, her accent as thickly British as Jono's.
Alison blinked once slowly, then rolled her eyes and gestured towards one of the kitchen chairs, nearly sending the cookies flying about, tilting the plate to keep them there at the last second. "Mmfmhgmm!" She paused, looked down her nose cross-eyed at the cookie still neatly held in her teeth and rolled her eyes again, this time clearly at herself, and tilted her head towards the chair once more. "Mrf!"
Amanda (because that who it was) looked at her bemusedly at the first muffled instruction. She was feeling very, very good, having spent the last half hour lurking outside the boathouse which Cain was still in the process of renovating, working at night to do so. She felt so good, in fact, that she was having trouble remembering why'd she been so upset earlier that day. She looked at the chair Alison was nodding at and realised. "Oh! Sit! Yep, I can do that!" Which she did, although it took two tries.
Alison raised an eyebrow slowly at this, tilting her head to the side as she watched Amanda trying to negotiate the concepts of "chair" and "sit in chair" as a possible single action. She changed expression before walking into Amanda's line of view however, and instead plopped the plate of cookies in front of her and then used the free hand to remove the lone cookie from her mouth. "Eat," she said sternly, turning around to pulls out a mug and pouring some of the milk into it before plopping it in the microwave and rummaging about for the cocoa. She set the tin on the counter and walked back towards Amanda, stopped a few feet away from her to look her over once more, carefully. At the same time she concentrated slightly, calling up a glow strong enough to generate heat as well, to help Amanda warm up.
"Ooh, shiny!" Amanda exclaimed. "I can do that do, y'know." She flicked her fingers, but only managed a few green sparks. "Oops, spell must be on the blink," she muttered. Then the plate of cookies in front of her registered and she pounced on them, stuffing two into her mouth almost whole. "Wmmf rmmmf mmf?" she asked, her mouth full, barely noticing the shivers that were setting in.
Alison sniggered at that. Tit for tat, only fair after all. "I'd say don't talk with your mouth full, but that'd be the pot calling the cauldron black, mmm?" Oh, bad pun, calling the witch a cauldron, she chided herself. The microwave dinged and Alison walked back to the counter, fixing up a hot chocolate and grabbing the bag of cookies on her way back, stuffing it under her arm as she juggled the glass of milk and milk carton as well. "Here, drink." A pause. "No, chew, swallow the cookies, then drink. And careful, s'hot." She set the mug down in front of Amanda, letting the bag of cookies drop on the table soon afterwards before hooking another chair with her foot and dragging it closer. Glass of milk and carton were set in front of her, and she sat down, watching Amanda with a calm expression - making a snap judgment as to the way she was acting, considering the fact that it was the first time she even saw the girl, would be a mite hasty. she thought.
Amanda managed to swallow most of the cookies and washed the rest down with a gulp of cocoa. "I said, 'Who are you?'," she repeated, a bit more clearly. The combination of warm air and warm food was bringing clarity back, although light was still refracting oddly, casting haloes over everything, and the Cookie Woman seemed to be glowing with a variety of colours. She took another gulp of cocoa, smaller than the first this time.
It was, Alison reflected, all in the timing, when one was in show business. "Alison Blaire," she said innocently, at the same time making damn sure there was a fair amount of distance between the two of them by angling her chair to the side, saving her glass of milk at the same time.
Her caution was well-founded and her timing perfect - an arc of brown liquid sailed past as the gulp abruptly reversed itself. Spluttering and coughing as cocoa got up her nose, Amanda managed a strangled. "What?"
It is good, to be the Devil Woman. Alison smiled benevolently at the confounded young girl, enjoying all of this tremendously. She hiked up the glow slightly, generating enough heat to do away with the rest of the snow and start to work on the damp clothing - she'd yet to manage to make an intensely hot low light, although she had every intention of achieving that soon. "Alison," she repeated, tilting her head to the side. "Need a napkin?" she then asked solicitously.
"Um, yeah, that'd be good, thanks." Through the pink haze, Amanda's brain was working overtime, aided by the fact she was slowly getting the feeling back in her hands and feet. She took the offered napkin and wiped chocolate off her face (also wiping off the black lipstick, which Alison considered an improvement), and tried to focus. "Um, I'm Amanda," she said, trying desperately to remember some kind of shielding spell should things get violent.
"I know!" Alison chirped with maddening composure. "The piercings alone kinda gave you away. There's the accent too," she added as an afterthought, ruthlessly keeping a straight face. She nudged her chair closer and stretched out her legs under the table, still keeping up the warming light, not a drain on her reserves unlike generating a laser would be. "Need more hot chocolate?" she asked innocently enough.
"See, this is where it's unfair - you lot all know me, I dont' know you, an' then this kind of stuff gets sprung on me..." Amanda realised she was babbling and reined herself in, with effort. "Um, yeah, chocolate's good. Really good. It's bloody cold out there." As Alison moved to make another mug, Amanda screwed up her courage (and her actual working brain cells) to ask: "So, um, why're you being nice t' me?"
"Why shouldn't I be?" was the agreeable enough response, the sound of the microwave door being shut punctuating her statement as she stopped emitting light, letting the heat in the house and the hot chocolate finish warming Amanda up. She then turned around, and gave Amanda a far less innocent look than before, lips quirking slightly in amusement. "And sorry about that," though she wasn't all that much really - it had been innocent fun, really. "Couldn’t resist. Don't get to do it often, what with being somewhat recognizable and all."
"Recog... oh, right, that Alison Blaire. Someone told me you lived here, only I forgot, what with... everything happening," she finished lamely. "I figured you was pissed off at me, with all that journal stuff."
Alison leaned on the counter as the microwave whirred, the sound pleasantly soothing and automatically used to replenish her reserves. "Why did you think I was pissed off at you specifically?" she asked, observing Amanda and waiting for her response, noting that the clumsiness seemed to have faded - at least as far as she could tell while the girl was still sitting. But she wasn't fumbling with the mug or the cookies...
"The stuff you were sayin', it was a reply to one of me posts, so I figured it was aimed at me. An' since I was one of the people sayin' I didn't feel safe, it made sense that it was for me. An' t' tell the truth..." Amanda gripped the mug in her hands tightly, making sure it didn't slip through her fingers. She avoided looking at Alison directly because the colours swirling around her were way too distracting. "T' tell the truth, I don't read that good. School was... sorta optional for me when I was a kid. So I might have gotten meself mixed up, what with everything bein' said. All I wanted t' say was I didn't want people t' shoot me. That's all. I haven't been here long enough t' hate you lot."
"Assumptions, kiddo, are the bane of communication." Alison shrugged, absently waiting for the microwave to finish before bringing the warm milk over along with the chocolate mix and a newly acquired spoon, letting Amanda mix it up as she pleased. "There's being angry at people themselves, or being angry at their words, or what you think they imply, or all of that put together. But that doesn't mean it's all three together all the time." She sat down and leaned back lazily, reaching out to work the bag open and get a cookie for herself. "I was angry at what was being said - and what I perceived as being implied. And at people too." She grinned faintly. "Probably will be again, too. Doesn't mean I'll be all about kicking everyone out, using them as punching bags or throwing myself out the window." Her lips twitched as she remembered the look on Jake's face as she was throwing him out of the window, however.
Amanda tried to formulate some kind of answer to all this, but it was getting hard to think again. "If it helps, I like it here," she managed. "Just been a weird couple of weeks, is all." Without realising she'd levitated the spoon into the chocolate mix and was making up a new batch of cocoa by remote control. Normally something like a metal spoon took active effort, but her power was running high enough she could do it without even thinking about it. "I wanna stay, help, if I can. Already helped Lorna an' Angelo," she offered, hopefully.
Used to Lorna doing that sort of trick, Alison didn't even blink at the sight, nodding slowly at Amanda's words instead and taking a bite out of her cookie as she listened. "Important thing is, Amanda..." she waved the cookie about as she gestured, "is that you want to stay. Some of us here have to, for various reasons. Among those, some could leave but - wouldn't be easy, or any kind of way to live." She paused, then shrugged. "Talking is fine. Differing opinions is fine." She grinned. "But people yell at me, I'm likely to yell right back. Nothing more," she raised an eyebrow, "nothing less. See what I mean?" Hoping Amanda would ask if not, really.
"Better 'n the smack around the ear," Amanda said, managing to switch mugs without a major mishap, although the empty one was close. Seeing Alison's raised eyebrow, she explained. "On the streets, there's not so much of the talkin' an' more of the giving someone a ding 'round the ear if you think they're talkin' shite. Think I like this talkin' thing better, even if it's all in writin'. Words an' words an' words..." She trailed off, momentarily hypnotized by the reflected light in her chocolate. Then she glanced up, remembering she wasn't alone. "Sorry, you was sayin'?"
"Mmm. Wasn't. I was listening." She couldn't manage a smile however, Amanda's words reminding her only too much of what Miles had been through for most of his short life, some of the reflexes he'd acquired still very much ingrained in his behavior patterns. Yeah, better than a smack around the ear, she thought with melancholy. Shaking off the mood, she leaned forward on the table. "So. You yell, someone yells back, things are kept at yelling. We talk after. Or we can skip the yelling now and then if you feel like it. And if the writing doesn't do it, you just go find the person and talk. Or yell then talk." She nodded to herself. "Fair?"
"Fair enough, I s'pose." Looking up at Alison, Amanda was again distracted, this time by the colours swirling around the woman. They were oddly familiar, reminding her of something Manuel had said about emotions having colours. Honest trust, he'd said, was a nice sparkly gold colour. She was seeing that same colour now, combined with others, mostly warm yellows and oranges, with some harsher, more angry reds and some dark blues. "Weird," she said, blinking rapidly until the colours disappeared again. She realised Alison was looking at her with that unnerving look again, the one that said there was a lot going on in the head behind it. "Um, yeah, talkin's good. I get it, I think. An' I'll be sure t' yell at you first, or talk. Um, I think I should go now, I'm... sleepy. Yeah, really sleepy." She staggered slightly as she stood, and paused, swaying gently.
"Steady on," Alison murmured, noting the swaying and filing that away for later. Perhaps for a talk with Pete about it, really - just maybe. Since talking to Amanda herself about it would only be fair, so for now she settled for promising herself that she'd keep an eye out to see if the behaviour happened again. "Off you go then, and sleep well." She watched as Amanda tottered off, hearing the shush of a hand leaning on the wall as she went down the hallway, and she grinned to herself. Why kick them out, when you could keep them near and torture them with being nice and pleasant to them?
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Date: 2004-02-08 02:10 pm (UTC)