006: VIDEO | ACTION

[intheblanks]

[January first, and the new year's starting off with a beaut of a day. In case you missed it, the video display is tilted upward to a sky of perfect blue, then down, to golden sand and golden skin - winter has just about bleached him of a tan but his colouring has a natural aversion to pallor

Comments

[byweavinglives]

[She responds by meeting him at the beach in a bikini - the kind that is most commonly worn on Brazilian beaches. She has a beach bag and a chair while she's walking down the sand.]

[intheblanks]

[The wooden shelter casts a sundial line in the sand, marking out the progress of the afternoon. Stretched out beside, Chase's eyes don't open until a shadow falls over him.]

You guessed right.

[Although, he's not planning on eventually moving in to her brother's old residence. It just happens to have been included with the building he'd picked.]

[byweavinglives]

The Sydney Opera House.

[Saya looks at it for a moment. She's spent nights, here. She unpacks her chair and sets it down]

You're enjoying the sunshine.

[intheblanks]

[Not quite as grand, but as good a name as any. He nods.]

It's been the wrong kind of cold.

[saidrepent]

[It's the first word of Chase's little speech that catches Raymond's attention, but even after it's clear he doesn't mean the same kind of "timekeeping" he's accustomed to, he listens in.]

How do you suppose the ticking fits into all this?

[intheblanks]

Are you looking for the apocalyptic conspiracy theories? Try the city guide, half of it could have been written by medieval monks.

[It took Chase nearly three years of City time, longer including the return trip home, to get around to reading the thing.]

[saidrepent]

No, and I already have.

Just curious as to your opinion of whatever...biological impacts it might have. Or has been known to have.

[intheblanks]

The only remarkable thing about the ticking is that we're all still aware of it. Which, I assume, is the point. It's not a normal response, but there's no clinical term for something getting under your skin.

voice;

[dignity_misery]

[She had kept a calendar, fastidiously. Her most prized possession, getting up to mark out one of its days had often been her only motivation to get up out of bed. Listening to him now, she wonders if she should take it back up again. Maybe it would help.]

That's an improvement.

[Over the scruffy half-awake doctor look.]

[intheblanks]

[Maybe it would. There's little a disordered mind craves like routine and little it's less capable of. His own once meticulously kept schedule is in want of reordering: it's already seen him caught out once.]

It's the time of year for those.

[dignity_misery]

Superficial attempts at them, anyway.

[intheblanks]

But how we love a schedule.

[othersdie]

Is there a significant difference between going crazy and making something up?

[intheblanks]

That depends on your opinion of small children and fiction authors.

[othersdie]

Then no.

[intheblanks]

Awareness of the delusion is the difference.

[dulcisnuntius]

[Minutes after he finishes posting, an inflatable beach ball flies in his direction, aiming for the head. Nearby, an angel in a polka-dot swimsuit is laughing like a crazy person.]

[intheblanks]

[A beachball? It's not even a challenge. Try a vicodin bottle aimed at the back of his skull and you might see him ruffled: he puts a hand up to stop it dead before it so much as nudges a hair out of place, and sits up, raising an eyebrow.]

Get separated from the rest of your volleyball team?

[And its tossed back.]

[dulcisnuntius]

[She catches the ball in one of her wings and bumps into her hands. Darn it, she was going for his hair. It looks cute rumpled.]

Nope! Never played.

[intheblanks]

[Sorry, Dulcie, he should have been on a sports team, himself. And the wings are very cute. They're not entirely a new one on him, but the ones he's worked on in the underground tend toward the scaly.]

Shame, I was going to compliment the uniform.