burns_so_brightly | First Stanza: [Action/Written]

[The gentleman walking out of Community Building 1 does not live there, and in fact didn’t even walk in there in the first place. He’s dressed in a suit, tie, and trench coat and is tossing a fedora between his hands. Julian Bell walks through Luceti with a smile, as if this is nothing more than an exceptionally lucky day. He’s keen to explore and peers into every shop, sometimes actually going inside. The library holds his fascination for some time, and he’s delighted to find his own published books of poetry there (even if he’d admit it’s a faintly narcissistic pleasure).

He eventually sits down at the tea shop to read, looking for all the world like this is a vacation day and not the day after his death. That part, he’ll address once this actually sinks in.

At night, he’s at Cloud Nine, enjoying a Scotch on the rocks and a cigarette and listening to the music. For a crappy oppressed town, this place is doing very well!

Eventually, he works past an unusual (for him) nervousness and writes over the journals.]

Am I allowed to take any empty flat, or is that supposed to be assigned?

-Julian Bell

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The most important lesson of all! [He's trying, anyway. At least she's intelligent. It's too much to expect most women, even ones as intelligent as men, to have a high education.]

You don't know how right you are.

[ and look at her go, holding the door open for him! ]

[He tips his fedora to her.] Why, thank you!

You're very very welcome.

[ she points at a building not too far off. ] Seventh Heaven. They have coffee, there.

[He walks beside her in that direction.] So. California. I had a friend who used to say it was permanently the nineteenth of February in Cambridge, I can imagine you had quite the opposite trouble.

[The small talk is becoming slightly efforted, but once it gets off the ground again, it'll be okay. He is sure of this.]

...Trouble? Nah. I loved it. I'd only seen snow once, before I moved out of Cali. I'm still not used to it. Brr. You can keep your nineteenth of February.

I said it was a trouble, didn't I? It was bloody cold.

Though...if you're around long enough? Here's not so bad, in the Summer. Warm. We've got a beach. Do you swim?

I swim. Never did it in the ocean, though.

Well, then...Jules? You haven't lived. If you make it to June, you'll see what I mean.

If I make it to June.

[What a sombering thought. The world ripples just a little, or really only his perception of this perfect, hazy daydream. He knows it's wrong to shove the thought, any thought that proffers enlightenment, aside, but the loveliness of it is so nice to bask in for now that he forces a smile back on his face.]

[ she mistakes his pause for confusion. ] I mean -- come May? I'll be a three-year vet of Wing World. Not everyone stays so long, though.

No, I know, I just... [he blinks.} ...wasn't thinking about it.

[That's the problem.]

Don't worry about it. [ desperately, she tries to recapture the fun. playing off the horror of being here; missing the point completely. ]

Here's not so bad. Once you get past the Shifts.

The Shifts are the...

[He shakes his head a little. It was hard to take it all in.]

Experiments. Almost monthly. The big catch to getting everything for free. I guess you might call them the real cost -- amongst other things.

Other things like...?

Like war, vital-to-your-health wings, homesickness, and the varying pains of getting to know people only to watch them get their ticket punched by chance.

[ all described rather flippantly, of course. ]

[An uncertain laugh.] I just left a war, actually. I doubt it could be worse, and...and for the rest, I don't think I can think of it right now.

...I thought you said you were a teacher, not a soldier?

...I drove an ambulance in Spain.

Like...with lights and sirens and everything?

[ army ambulances aren't really a known thing to her. ]

Not exactly. Carrying soldiers to the hospital, there wasn't very much traffic on the roads that were being bombed.

So you didn't actually...y'know.

[ she mimes a gun with one hand. points it at the sky. ]

I learned how, in case I needed to. Never did.

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