shatterverse | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

At the wall where the farmhouse is afforded the least possible visibility from the more crowded areas of the farm, a quarter-lump of brick falls pointlessly to the ground. Mel, nursing her knuckles, glares at it.

She's familiar with the practice, when you're so pent up with frustration and anger and hatred that you have to punch something, of finding an innocent wall and taking it out on that, and is annoyed to fins out that a) it's not nearly as satisfying as common wisdom holds, and b) it's much much less of a good idea when there's a possibility you might actually win a fight with a building.

She nudges the brick against the base of the house, deciding she'd better get Toph to reattach it later, and turns her attention back to her hand.

Frustration not satisfied, hand hardly injured, house probably not hurting that much from its loss. All in all, a completely no-win situation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sokka nods slowly, taking this explanation quite seriously.

Even if he glances at Mel with the hint of a smirk still on his face.

"...I want to talk to you about something," he says after a moment, sobering but not much. It's still just a normal conversation, to him.

Either way, it's cause for Mel to relax. The last thing she wants to talk about is how she's taking things.

Her fixed smirk relaxes slightly, and there's concern in her eyes but you'd have to know her to see it when she glances at her brother.

"What?"

"I think I want to go away for a while."

He leans up against the wall, hands slipping into his pockets. "Not forever. A few weeks. Maybe a month."

Mel nods. She can totally understand that; would've done the same herself; did the same herself.

"Take a comm device. You know where you want to go?"

"I have to talk to Lucy about that. I have an idea."

Somewhere cold, frigidly cold, with snow and ice everywhere and on the coast of water you could fall into without a chance of ever surviving.

"I want to know," Mel says simply. "Maybe O can stick a locator in the device.

"Call us every day, alright?"

Sokka blinks and then grins a little at her worry, head ducked. "I'm not leaving forever, Mel, or going off hunting. You're here, the girls and Steph are here. I'm coming back.

"I'm just... thinking I should leave some of the tech stuff behind for a while."

"Yeah," Mel agrees, and repeats, "but take it. Call us."

Her smile's gone.

So is Sokka's, after a moment.

And his nod comes after just enough hesitation for it to be awkward.

Once she has the nod, Mel blinks and turns her head away, breaking some of the awkward.

There's no need to talk about why this has to happen, but it looms there anyway; the two people they're not talking about.

"And bring something back for the twins. They've nearly burned up half their toys already."

That helps break up the awkward. Especially when Sokka sighs and rolls his eyes. "I'm going to have to stop making them things out of wood. It's so much easier to carve, though."

"I dunno, I think it's teaching them."

Mel's the only Mom ni the world who thinks letting her kids set fires around the place is a valuable learning experience.

"Loo doesn't do it for fun anymore, and Hana's control is really good, according to Iroh."

"That's something. I guess using glass or metal would be great, until they burned themselves on it."

"Or cut themselves on it," Mel points out, her mouth falling open.

Sokka winces and nods.

"Yeah, I'll stick with wood."

"Thanks," Mel tells him, her smirk returning. "No need to give them ways to inflict pain that doesn't come from their own fingers."

"Well, maybe they haven't figured out that fire equals hurt," Sokka replies with a shrug. "Iroh'll take care of that, though."

He has to, right? It's not like the Fire Nation is a country filled with people who abuse their own power at the expense of others.

...

"Loo knows," Mel points out, proud and defensive all at once. "Hana... only cares when it actually happens. They're doing well, Iroh's impressed."

Sokka smiles and nods, just as proud. "'Course he is."

Who wouldn't be impressed with his nieces?

No one, that's who.

"And Loo wrote her name in the dirt yesterday," Mel says proudly. "I'm going to see if I can get letter toys for them."

"Did she?" Sokka brightens for the first time in days, almost blindingly so as he grins. "Which language?"

"English," Mel admits. "They recognise their names in the Four Nations script, though."

"Well, I'll make letter toys for that. It'd be... complicated, though."

Since they'd have to piece together strokes of a word instead of letters that make individual sounds.

"I have no idea how you guys learned it," Mel admits. "What about blocks with words on them? Their names, your name, 'tree','house' and so on?"

"That'd take so long to make, and then you'd need a huge crate to carry them all in," Sokka points out with a wince, but looks thoughtful. "I could try it."

He needs the practice anyway.

As for learning it, he frowns and his eyes roll up to the sky in thought. "Uh... I don't know. Zuko probably had actual lessons. I just read whatever my gran told me to and practiced words in the snow."

(no subject)

slayer_fray - 2009-04-28 10:54 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only