The movement stops.
“I think this is it.”
She blinks awake.
He sets her down gently, careful not to jar the splints.
They dither & dally, respectively, as is expected of them: she adjusts herself, he shoulders his pack.
Both finally run out of meaningless actions to carry out- the stage directions have failed to specify further business- so they stand facing one another.
This is where she’d shuffle her feet, if she could.
Seeing nothing to be done for it, she clears her throat & begins the scripted dialogue.
“So. The parting of the ways.”
He sniffs, looks to the west & inclines his head.
“Well. Jolly good, then.”
...and neither move.
“Listen,”she says, & there’s cotton around the edges, “I appreciate, you know, the sack-of-grain thing. Now that I’ve got me this here pair o’busted gams, I’ma have to army crawl the rest of the way. So. Saythankya.”
He smiles, & she catches whiffs of knowing exasperation, affection, & a barely-detectable hint of a strange sort of sorrow.
“Next time, try not to jump off of the prison wall. There are other ways down.”
“Who says there’s gonna be a next time?”
Silence.
“Yeah, alright.”
More implied foot-shuffling.
That poor bush.
“Well then. Okay.”
“Okay.”
They have to have killed the damn shrub by now.
It sits, oozing sap, in the background.
As his form paints itself into the distant scenery, she catches a soundbyte on the air.
“I saw a mountain, & I saw a city, steadily sinking but suspiciously calm; it wasn’t an end, it wasn’t a beginning, but a ceaseless stumbling on.”
Grinning, she shakes her head & shouts after him,
“Applicable upstaging. Classy.”
Pivot.
The movement resumes.
A ceaseless stumbling on, indeed.
“I think this is it.”
She blinks awake.
He sets her down gently, careful not to jar the splints.
They dither & dally, respectively, as is expected of them: she adjusts herself, he shoulders his pack.
Both finally run out of meaningless actions to carry out- the stage directions have failed to specify further business- so they stand facing one another.
This is where she’d shuffle her feet, if she could.
Seeing nothing to be done for it, she clears her throat & begins the scripted dialogue.
“So. The parting of the ways.”
He sniffs, looks to the west & inclines his head.
“Well. Jolly good, then.”
...and neither move.
“Listen,”she says, & there’s cotton around the edges, “I appreciate, you know, the sack-of-grain thing. Now that I’ve got me this here pair o’busted gams, I’ma have to army crawl the rest of the way. So. Saythankya.”
He smiles, & she catches whiffs of knowing exasperation, affection, & a barely-detectable hint of a strange sort of sorrow.
“Next time, try not to jump off of the prison wall. There are other ways down.”
“Who says there’s gonna be a next time?”
Silence.
“Yeah, alright.”
More implied foot-shuffling.
That poor bush.
“Well then. Okay.”
“Okay.”
They have to have killed the damn shrub by now.
It sits, oozing sap, in the background.
As his form paints itself into the distant scenery, she catches a soundbyte on the air.
“I saw a mountain, & I saw a city, steadily sinking but suspiciously calm; it wasn’t an end, it wasn’t a beginning, but a ceaseless stumbling on.”
Grinning, she shakes her head & shouts after him,
“Applicable upstaging. Classy.”
Pivot.
The movement resumes.
A ceaseless stumbling on, indeed.
Intriguing.
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