( coffee for clint, then, and a glass of water for gorgug. the glass is placed at the edge of the island, an unsaid invitation to sit down. etraya's a good place to start, he thinks, and his gaze shifts to one side, towards a curtain against the wall.
fine. fine.
the cup of coffee he's just poured is placed back down with a soft thud, a dribble running down the side onto the side. it's ignored in favour of the curtain, which clint draws apart to reveal a corkboard half-filled with newspaper cuttings, a handful of polaroids of buildings, mostly, a hand-drawn map, and sticky notes of what is, frankly, an atrocious, nigh unreadable scrawl.
(unless your name's 'clinton francis barton'.) )
Four months. ( give or take. one of the first things he's done on arrival was to search out a calendar — or something close to it — to try and figure out when he was. etraya had proven not to have a calendar one-to-one to earth, but close enough, a kind of off-brand, budget version of the names of the month. ) Arrived with the second group. They'd been here about a month, so Etraya's about five months old, I guess. Maybe six. Depends on how long it took Aurora to piece it together. It was pretty empty when we got here — the hospital, which is where most of us woke up, the apartment buildings near the hospital, the Kwik—. ( an abrupt pause. ) Kwik-Trip? ( kwik-save? whatever, it's not important. ) Roxx. The diner. That was pretty much it.
( it'd sucked. it'd been boring. clint has never done well with being left to his own devices, which in part is why he'd started to pull together the corkboard.
that, and the hope that it'd give some kind of information as to what was really going on. )
The rest of it, all the other buildings, are stuff that's familiar to someone here in some shape. Asked Aurora 'bout it one time, and it's one of two things: either she provides it, free of charge, to provide— ( clint gestures, broadly and vaguely with a hand. ) "Comfort", or else it's somethin' someone asks for, and that costs points.
( he pauses there, the question of 'do you know what 'points' are?' sitting unasked in the momentary silence between them. )
no subject
fine. fine.
the cup of coffee he's just poured is placed back down with a soft thud, a dribble running down the side onto the side. it's ignored in favour of the curtain, which clint draws apart to reveal a corkboard half-filled with newspaper cuttings, a handful of polaroids of buildings, mostly, a hand-drawn map, and sticky notes of what is, frankly, an atrocious, nigh unreadable scrawl.
(unless your name's 'clinton francis barton'.) )
Four months. ( give or take. one of the first things he's done on arrival was to search out a calendar — or something close to it — to try and figure out when he was. etraya had proven not to have a calendar one-to-one to earth, but close enough, a kind of off-brand, budget version of the names of the month. ) Arrived with the second group. They'd been here about a month, so Etraya's about five months old, I guess. Maybe six. Depends on how long it took Aurora to piece it together. It was pretty empty when we got here — the hospital, which is where most of us woke up, the apartment buildings near the hospital, the Kwik—. ( an abrupt pause. ) Kwik-Trip? ( kwik-save? whatever, it's not important. ) Roxx. The diner. That was pretty much it.
( it'd sucked. it'd been boring. clint has never done well with being left to his own devices, which in part is why he'd started to pull together the corkboard.
that, and the hope that it'd give some kind of information as to what was really going on. )
The rest of it, all the other buildings, are stuff that's familiar to someone here in some shape. Asked Aurora 'bout it one time, and it's one of two things: either she provides it, free of charge, to provide— ( clint gestures, broadly and vaguely with a hand. ) "Comfort", or else it's somethin' someone asks for, and that costs points.
( he pauses there, the question of 'do you know what 'points' are?' sitting unasked in the momentary silence between them. )