| The Last Flower on Picon |
| Summary: | A slice of life in the Viper Berths, between one crisis and the next. |
| Date: | 2041.04.14 |
| Related Logs: | None. |
| Players: |
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| Viper Squadron — Naval Deck — Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post Holocaust Day: #46 |
| Viper Squadron pilots call this home. Berthings line the walls with grey curtains to cover their sleeping areas. Lockers sit between each stack of berths and a round table sits in the center with chairs around it. A hatch at the end leads to the communal Head that the Raptor pilots share. |
| Condition Level: 2 — Danger Close |
The hatch connecting berths to corridor opens to admit one (1) Tisiphone, weary feet dragging the rest of her weary frame through the doorway. She's already lighting a cigarette as she steps in, the cancer-stick trapped between her casted fingers.
Clad in her sweats, Raedawn is seated at the table trying to digest a book on astronavigation. Actually eating it instead of figuratively digesting it might be easier.
She glances up as the hatch opens, having heard the dogging wheel turn. "Tisi? Wow, you look all in," she murmurs, eyes widening. Standing, she moves to help the injured pilot. "What have you been doing?" She does her best not to breathe more than absolutely necessary.
"Rae. How you doin'?" Tisiphone looks up from her cigarette through the thick puff of smoke, quirking her mouth to blow the smoke out at the ceiling. "Just- Sickbay. Temporary Sickbay. Whatever. Checking on- folks. I'm fine." Free of new injuries, at least. "What are you reading?" she asks, as she heads for her locker, shrugging a small canvas satchel off her shoulder as she goes.
"I'm glad it's nothing new, Tisi. You get hurt enough already!" Rae replies, sighing softly in relief and squeezing her friend's shoulder. "And I'm reading The Incredible Expanding Book. Every time I turn a page, it seems like it grows two more. How are things down in Temp-Bay?"
"Not often, just- lingeringly," Tisiphone mutters, pushing one corner of her mouth up a little. She looks down at her booted toes for a second when her shoulder's squeezed, then coughs dryly. "You know. Crap. Lasher's back on his feet. Temperance got shot up pretty bad. Heard Boots was in, but I didn't see him yet. Petrels seem to have come through okay. Saw Shiv checking in after CAP last night." She opens her locker, hanging the satchel over the edge. A few small items in it, as well as cutlery, by the sounds of it.
Raedawn nods soberly. "We were lucky. I know you regulars got hit pretty hard," she replies. "I haven't seen Lasher, but I heard about poor Temperance."
"Just luck of the draw," says Tisiphone, glancing down to her sidearm. It's drawn out and given a quick double-check — click-clack — before it's reholstered, then unbuckled and hung up inside her locker. "I think- all of them were in the hangar." She gives a tense little shrug and swaps her satchel from the locker door to her bunk, then shuts her locker again. "Cross-training as an ECO?" she wonders, turning her head sidelong to squint curiously at some of the text in Raedawn's book.
"A little. I'm hoping I can help out in some way besides flying Vipers, taking pictures, and looking pretty," Rae replies, her tone killing the joke. She watches Tisi prepare the sidearm and shivers faintly at that cold metallic sound of the slide. "I hope we won't need those. I'm carrying my old Dragon when I'm not in here, and it's behind my bunk rail when I am."
"Ought to be in your locker if it's not on your hip, Rae," Tisiphone points out as she parks her behind on the edge of her bunk. "Shiv'll throw a small fit if he finds out you're not-" She stops short, eyes unfocussed for a second as she re-plays her last few seconds of existence. "Bunk rail when you are here. Nevermind." She's got working ears, honest. "Reminds me, though." She looks at her cigarette for a moment, rolling it between her casted fingers before taking a long drag from it. "You've been flying with Shiv for years now, yeah?"
Raedawn giggles. "Long days, huh Tisi? I understand." She gives the wounded flier a hug. "Shiv? About three years now, actually. He was honcho of the Petrels when I came in from flight school." She cocks her head. "Why?"
"The other night," Tisiphone begins, scootching back on her bunk just a touch — enough that she can hook her boot-heels on the metal railing and stretch her arms forward across her knees. "A bunch of you- the Petrels- were sitting around talking." The preamble seems hesitant, though the meat of the question isn't, at all: "You always tease Shiv about being a savage with a bone club?" It's not an unfriendly look, per se, but it's level and very intent.
Raedawn blinks. "I /always/ tease Shiv. It's just how we are," she says, puzzled. "Shiv and I are very close, and his wife Yasamin was like a sister to me. But I can tell being away from her is eroding his manners, and /that's/ what I was teasing him about."
Evandreus arrives from the Deck 4.
Evandreus has arrived.
Daphne arrives from the Deck 4.
Daphne has arrived.
Pale brows quirk upward, just slightly, against paler brow. There's not much more of a reaction from Tisiphone than that, other than a faint nod. Her eyes flick away from Raedawn for a moment as she ashes her cigarette off the edge of her bunk, then return to the Petrel. "Yeah, I get that you guys tease eachother. You're all pretty comfortable. It's how you chose to do it that I was curious about. That's all." Bony shoulders twitch with a faint shrug before her attention returns to her cigarette.
Raedawn frowns thoughtfully, leaning a little closer to Tisi. "Um… why? What was so curious about it?" she has to ask, not remembering the occasion very well. It's been a busy week.
Down from the Hangar Deck at last, Evan's getting into the swing of the new cycle of shifts he's being subjected to. Rejuvenated to the point of looking at the very least alive and very nearly awake, he's half-out of his flightsuit and half-in his scrubs, looking like some light mulberry butterfly escaping a cracked cocoon even as he stops in to say hello, Gregor under one arm and a book in the other hand.
Daphne comes in fresh off of CAP and right behind Evandreus, though she doesn't seem to realize it. She's got her helmet slung under her armpit, which is as much as she's managed as far as realizing she's not in her cockpit anymore. She steps inside and announces to nobody in particular, "I'm going to dream I'm in the cockpit again. I just know it." This doesn't sound like something bad or good in particular. She places her helmet inside of her locker and shakes her head.
"You called your Sagittaran squad leader a savage with a bone club, Rae. If that's how your teasing rolls, that's how it rolls, but it shouldn't take rocket science to understand why I might want to ask about it." Tisiphone, again, gives a light and twitchy shrug, head tipped back a little as she blows a line of smoke out at the ceiling. "Get you some tea?" she asks, abruptly pushing herself back to her feet. "I'm-" -interrupted, by more familiar faces. "Tea call," she announces, raising her voice a little. "Daphne? Bunny?"
Rae glances up and smiles at the two new arrivals to the barracks. "Even, Daph, hey," she calls, waving, though she keeps an eye on Daphne. Cockpit dreams can get noisy. "Those long CAPS are a little painful, aren't they? When you're not out, you feel like you're getting ready to be out."
She has to laugh in surprise at Tisi's interpretation of that particular bit of teasing. "You thought I was calling Sagittaron savages? Tisi, my /mother/ is a Sagittaron! Straight off the homeworld!"
"No thanks, Cubits, but I'll sure be back to grab one after next shift, if you're feeling domestic around then," Evan smiles at her, then, quirking a brow upward, he shifts his attention to Raedawn, "Still, dude. That image -does- have some connotations. Not that I think everyone has to be all-PC all the time," he adds. "Heh, did you hear the one about the Leontinian who went to Caprica University? Oh! Daphne! I was hoping to catch you," he lets her know.
Daphne shakes her head. "Tea… no. Thanks, but I don't need anything keeping me up." She snickers, "Feel like I've got batteries bouncing around in my head as it is." Looking on at the exchange between the other two women simply causes Daphne to expose a knowing, almost amused smirk, as though she sees what's about to happen before it happens. Someone's been down this path before. "You know… there's nothing wrong with saying you're racist. Lots of people are." She smiles ever so sweetly, and gives Evandreus a nod. "Red handed, Bunny. What's up?"
"I didn't think anything, Rae," Tisiphone says, her words trailing behind her as she heads for the sinks, clean cups, and hot water machine. They're tired and fatigue-flattened. Her words, that is. Not the cups. "You said a thing. I was curious about the thing. I asked you about the thing. Now you've explained the thing. Did you want some tea?" She pulls two cups from the 'clean' stack, and immediately rinses them out. No trust in her fellow cup-cleaners, it seems.
Raedawn chuckles and shakes her head. "Pass. I think I'll go get some sleep before I have nightmares about astrogation, since I clearly must not be hearing right," she replies, picking up her flagstone-sized book and carrying it with her to her bunk, where she drops inside and pulls the curtain shut.
Evandreus holds up the book he's got in his hand. It's a small tome, old-looking, with pages browner along the edge than on the top or bottom. "From the library. A copy of the Georgics. A kind donation from a public library on Picon that… probably hasn't been read since it entered military collections upwards of twenty years ago." It's held in Daphne's direction.
Daphne slips out of her flight suit and hangs it up without much fanfare. "A kind donation." Her smile is bittersweet. "Guess everything's a kind donation one way or another, now." She puts on a tank top and shorts, then turns towards Evandreus, "That's actually really cool." She peers around the berthing, "The Georgics." She's simply at a loss for words, though her facial expression is uneven enough that it's probably difficult as can be to figure out what it actually means. "I don't really have… well…" On top of her bed it an awfully morbid, but terribly well done charcoal drawing of CIC in the middle of an attack. It's nice and greusome looking, with broken glass, bodies, and bulletholes. "I'm sort of in a disaffected stage." She glances back to the others, "My uniform has a frakking staine on it." THis time the frown is obvious. She accepts the book, though. "I'm… yeah." Disoriented.
Tisiphone glances back over her shoulder, watching Raedawn as she makes her way to her bunk. When the curtain scritches shut, she looks back to the two cups she has, and stacks one of them back into the 'clean' pile. "Georgics?" she wonders while filling her mug up with hot water. She brings the steaming and tea-less mug back to her bunk, sliding it onto the shelf at the head of her bed. She sinks down onto the edge of her bunk again, hooking her good hand around Daphne's knee for a moment. A moment of reassuring contact — I'm here, you're here — or a balancing-pillar as she sits. Or both. Once seated, she reaches for her satchel, rummaging inside. Several small items — including cutlery, apparently — are jostled there.
Evandreus looks from Daphne, to the book, and back to Daphne again for a brief moment after her acceptance of the tome fades into confusion. "… Open it?" he finally suggests. "Georgics. An ancient treatise on farming. Completely useless except as political propaganda two thousand years out of date. And pretty, pretty poetry."
Daphne doesn't exactly serve as a bastion of steadiness, though with Tisiphone's hand on her knee, she at least makes an attempt to stand a little straighter. "Sorry. I'm coming unglued. And I'm petrified that they're not going to give me another uniform. It's got a -mark-. And it's -right- on…" This is when she opens the book and finds a flattened yellow stem flower right in the book. She blushes and then turns towards Evandreus, "Where did you get this?" She points it towards Tisiphone, "Where did he get this?" A fingertip is pressed to the delicate flower itself, "I was going to hit up engineering to see what I could swing but then…you know. Suddenly, Cylons. Again."
The little stem with the zillion bitty beige flowerlets doesn't seem to have been moved from its spot. Maybe Evan was scared that if he tried to pick it up it'd all fall apart. But it's there, no less. "It was in there when I picked up the book. It's probably been in there since it was in the library on Picon."
Tisiphone looks up from pulling a small, lidded plastic container and spoon out of her satchel. She pops the spoon into her mouth, slurring and distorting her words around it. "What? Where'd he get what?" she asks, leaning forward to crane her neck up. Her tired expression gives way, just for a second, to a grin — the spoon rattles against her teeth as she does. "Spooky man-magic, Daphne," she theorizes, aiming a fond look up at Evan. "Spooky man-magic."
Tisiphone adds, slurred around the spoon, "Lasht flower in the Colonies, and itsh't all for you."
"Except.. the book still belongs to the library," Evan feels the need to pipe up there. "Not that I think people are going to be crawling all over one another to read about the chastity of the bees."
"If it's really the last flower, then it doesn't belong to me, him, or any of us." points out Daphne with a shake of her head. She frees up her hair, pulling it out of its ponytail, and then rolling up her drawing. "It probably needs to get put into a lab so they can clone it, or try to grow something from it.. something. Anything. We need a garden in here. Something about life, because everything -else- is about death, including the things we're fighting. They're not even alive."
Evandreus wiggles fingers, woojie-woojie style, at Cubits, then reaches down to push fingers along her scalp, parting the peachfuzz. "Anyhow. I gotta get into the rest of my scrubs and down to the Rec Room. Enjoy the book, Daph. See you guys later." And he lifts his hand to ruffle Daphne's more substantial hairstuffs, now that it's loose from its fetters, and, if he's let, he draws her head aside to smooch an exaggerated 'mwah!' of a kiss on her temple.
"It'sh a gift, Daphne, not a lab specimen." Tisiphone draws the spoon out of her mouth, deeming it well-cleaned, and drops it into her mug of steaming water. She leans forward into the scalp-fuzzing, eyes drifting half-shut for a second, then looks up to Evan to say, more quietly, "Say hi to Jesse for me, if he's awake? Tell him I'll- be by soon." The corner of her mouth wobbles slightly grin-ward, then sinks back as she rummages in her satchel again.
Daphne's hairstuffs are still a little damp with sweat, but not so bad. She responds to the kiss to her temple with a hug, and a return peck on the cheek, "Well, I guess what this means is you won. I don't have any dough for you yet." She smiles a bit, "And here I thought I was going to have the easy end of this game. So… name your reward, O finder of lost beauties."
"I get a reward?" This is news to Evan, "Um," he utters, to fill in the moment his brain takes to churn it over. "You can learn a passage from the Georgics there, and recite it to me one night for me to go to sleep to," he finally declares.
Daphne presses an index finger to her chin and makes like she's thinking really hard about this, "Huh. I don't know. That's a pretty tall order… but you -did- find a flower." She climbs up the stepladder behind her and lays on top of her bunk, "It would probably keep my mind off of things, too. Alright. I think we've got ourselves a deal."
Evandreus brightens just a little as the deal's struck, grinning even as he retreats backward toward the hatch. "Great! If you need help with the meter, just poke me, sometime. I can go over it with you," he offers, finally stepping back over the lip of the hatch. "See ya later, guys!"
<Fade for the dread RLbeast.>