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aldersprigFor eseme's prompt, immediately after Further Exploration Reveals... (LJ)
Vas World has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ
The city was abandoned. Malia and Paz made their way through it, staying close, pretending they weren’t clinging to one another in a desperate hope for some normalcy, anything they understood.
It hadn’t been abandoned quickly. There was no sign of hurried leaving; everything was packed up tightly, the buildings weatherproofed, shuttered, the doors locked. Generations later, if they were right about the plant growth, most of the buildings were still safely closed. Malia felt like a burglar, picking the locks, breaking into people’s homes and businesses. She felt like more of an intruder when there was some small thing left behind, some human thing made strange by this planet - a teddy bear, its fur blue, with an extra set of arms. A wooden bowl, stained or grown neon green. An herb, long since dessicated, this with thorns the way the trees and vines hadn't had them.
She moved on quickly from building to building, locking up behind herself as if the owners would be back soon, would notice they'd been rifling through their empty houses. She tried not to feel like someone was looking over her shoulder - someone other than Paz who, in between his own readings and notes, was standing close enough that his breath moved the hairs on the back of her neck.
"Where did you learn to pick locks like that?" he asked, sounding as if he needed to be making conversation. She didn't blame him. This place was a graveyard, a mausoleum. It was creepier than the ruins on Tempest Four, or the empty city on Yancy Three, because of its strange familiarity, its familiar strangeness.
"A boyfriend in college taught me," she answered, as she worked on a more complex locking system on one of the bigger buildings. "Challenged me, actually. Paz, why do you think they left this place?"
"Do you think they left?" he asked, making the creak of the door as it swung open an ominous punctuation. He cleared his throat. "I mean, yes. The buildings are all packed up. There are no corpses. But where would they have gone?"
"And why?" She stared into the dark shadows of the building, her nose catching the ancient whiff of decaying paper. "Cross your fingers, Paz. We may finally be finding answers."
eseme's prompt, immediately after Further Exploration Reveals... (LJ)Vas World has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ
The city was abandoned. Malia and Paz made their way through it, staying close, pretending they weren’t clinging to one another in a desperate hope for some normalcy, anything they understood.
It hadn’t been abandoned quickly. There was no sign of hurried leaving; everything was packed up tightly, the buildings weatherproofed, shuttered, the doors locked. Generations later, if they were right about the plant growth, most of the buildings were still safely closed. Malia felt like a burglar, picking the locks, breaking into people’s homes and businesses. She felt like more of an intruder when there was some small thing left behind, some human thing made strange by this planet - a teddy bear, its fur blue, with an extra set of arms. A wooden bowl, stained or grown neon green. An herb, long since dessicated, this with thorns the way the trees and vines hadn't had them.
She moved on quickly from building to building, locking up behind herself as if the owners would be back soon, would notice they'd been rifling through their empty houses. She tried not to feel like someone was looking over her shoulder - someone other than Paz who, in between his own readings and notes, was standing close enough that his breath moved the hairs on the back of her neck.
"Where did you learn to pick locks like that?" he asked, sounding as if he needed to be making conversation. She didn't blame him. This place was a graveyard, a mausoleum. It was creepier than the ruins on Tempest Four, or the empty city on Yancy Three, because of its strange familiarity, its familiar strangeness.
"A boyfriend in college taught me," she answered, as she worked on a more complex locking system on one of the bigger buildings. "Challenged me, actually. Paz, why do you think they left this place?"
"Do you think they left?" he asked, making the creak of the door as it swung open an ominous punctuation. He cleared his throat. "I mean, yes. The buildings are all packed up. There are no corpses. But where would they have gone?"
"And why?" She stared into the dark shadows of the building, her nose catching the ancient whiff of decaying paper. "Cross your fingers, Paz. We may finally be finding answers."
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Date: 2012-01-23 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-23 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-23 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-23 10:04 pm (UTC)