Shoulder of Orion

[General Goose]

((Chuck Soileaux continued from Having Fun With It.))

On the one hand, Chuck was happy that someone had had the foresight, the survivalist common sense, to think about backup locations. Chuck was normally all over that sort of bookkeeping stuff, but in the excitement, he'd let it slip his mind. So, yes, major props to Scarlett for keeping them all grounded.

But on the other hand, Chuck thought as he went about his business, was the Lake not a danger zone? Oh, he should have mentioned that at the time. But again, he'd forgotten. The excitement! Made him forget a lot of things. Made him become a one man toilet paper arson army. All other functions shut down. But, once the deed had been done (Chuck scavenging a few extra pieces that ended up being superfluous to the fiery ambitions, for future sanitary use), it made sense.

It was a central location. Likely to be "relieved" of DZ status as the island tightened. Easy to find backup locations from. And hey.

Lakes were beautiful.

This one was...

Well, if you judged lakes by this one, you'd be forgiven for not grasping the true degree of their beauty and magnificence, for wholly comprehending the marvellous geological tale each lake told. But hey, it would do. He sat down, started eating.

[Primrosette]

((Scarlett McAfee continued from Light The Fire))

Scarlett had been relieved when she had been walking towards the lake that it was not a dangerzone anymore. She was lucky to have even guessed that it wouldn't be a dangerzone. She had been afraid that she would have walked into a dangerzone and then that was that. She had no idea what would have happened to her if she did.

But now it was safe and the lake really did look so relaxing and calm. She wished that this had been a trip with her friends on a vacation. It would have been without everyone dying and killing each other. It would have been so different. But she couldn't dream about it now.

She felt a smile form on her face as she noticed that she wasn't the first one there. She could see that Chuck was eating by himself. And that make her realize that she was starving herself.

"Hey, Chuck!" She waved towards Chuck and she cheerfully made her way over to him. "You don't mind if I join you, do you? I'm pretty hungry myself."

And she had to talk to him about the announcements. The one person she never thought would be on there, had been on there. For killing two more people.

[General Goose]

Chuck had developed a coping strategy for the announcements.

Be hungry.

Selfish corporeal needs distracted from the now routine carnage and heartbreak. Made him more philosophically inclined. Instead of living in mortal fear and weeping over lost friends, he would muse on the horrors of the world at large, so callous and indifferent to strife and plight, collectively impotent even if acting with the best of individual intentions.

Maintaining some kind of...aloof, global perspective numbed the pain somewhat. Helped rationalise how quickly the daily litany of deaths and atrocities had become routine, as if something that had been part of his life for years. It was like the old Stalin quote. One death was a tragedy, a million was a statistic. If Chuck wanted to keep it together, well, best to imagine he was thinking about this as if he was some morbidly curious consumer of the Wikipedia article. Such...imagination, inexplicably, happened better when he was hungry.

So he had waited on his breakfast until after the announcements.

Maybe Scarlett was doing the same. Maybe not. Just as likely she hadn't been able to...relax. Attending to basic needs in this environment was impossible. But Chuck wagered that was part of the fun.

"Please," Chuck motioned at a random patch of ground, identical to any other. "It's not exactly a Michelin star restaurant, but it's the comfiest place to eat I've found all week."

He nibbled some more. "Ever find it weird," he pondered, unknowingly plagiarising a David Mitchell routine he had watched ages ago, "that it's okay to eat in public, but not to attend to other bodily functions? Like, you think that's solely because our mouths are near our eyes?"

[Primrosette]

"Thanks, Chuck."

Scarlett sat down near Chuck and she let out a small sigh of relief. She was just glad that she could relax for a while. Her feet had been killing her from walking around for a long time. She just needed some normalcy for at least five minutes or so. She wanted some peace and to talk to a friend without a lot of drama happening.

Scarlett unzipped her bag and she took out a bar, raising an eyebrow at Chuck's words. Which seemed a bit random to her but she rather have him talking to her than not at all. "I don't think it's weird to eat in public. Unless you want to do it in private, then that's a different story, right?" She said simply with a shrug of her shoulders and she started to eat. "....I don't understand that last part of what you said. I guess my brain is finding it hard to keep up."

She let out a chuckle to lightened up the mood.

"Strange, right?"

[General Goose]

Well, yeah. Of course she didn't get it. Chuck didn't get it. But...well, sure, time was precious, so there was no point in devising a perfect question when you could instead just be talking shit.

"Like, yeah, we all know it's not weird to eat in public. But why? Why is that bodily function somehow not taboo? I mean, what it is is me..." Chuck paused. Broke off a chunk of ration bar. Held it up. "Admitting my need to eat. Which implies a need for mortality. You're seeing me reveal my preferences, the strange tics and messy mannerisms with how I move my jaw and whatever."

"So my point is, if our bodies were arranged differently....then, eating would be taboo. Because it's only not taboo because it's too much of a hassle to make it so."

Chuck looked back at what he'd said.

God, he was talking a LOT of shit.

And then he remembered he was just butchering a David Mitchell video, and shrugged. "Anyway. Yeah. What's on your mind?"

[Primrosette]

Scarlett was glad that Chuck was asking what was on her mind after he had finishing talking about how eating could be taboo. She honestly had no idea where he had been going with his words. Maybe he was trying to make the conversation smooth with more ease. But that was okay if her mind was too fazed to know what he was saying for now. Her mind needed a break. A very long break from everything that had been going on.

"A friend was on the announcement again."

She paused for a moment, sighing as she shook her head as it was sinking in more for her and she was starting to think about what she should do.

"Wendy.... She killed two more people. I don't even know what to do. Should I still try to look for her? Should I continue to trust her?" She was asking these questions aloud as she wanted to know what Chuck thought. "What if.... if she's not the same as she was before when I was with her? I'm still feel like I want to find her but at the same time I don't."

She glanced at Chuck, looking for a bit of advice or guidance from her. She wanted to know his thoughts about this.

[General Goose]

Chuck scratched his head, the Boo hat audibly rustling against his hair.

A tricky question. A damn tricky question. Was that not the sort of moral dilemma the terrorists were seeking to inflict on the unlikely new denizens of the island? The sort of moral quandary this environment was designed to make them face? The sort of emotional torment, of internalised trepidation and normalised suspicion, that the terrorists wanted to nurture and champion? The sort that, with all this high-level metagaming-esque attempting to subvert and sabotage the game, Chuck had forgotten about.

Or more accurately, had pushed to the side.

He felt like a callous dick for that. For thinking everyone else had been so easy as to push past the trauma of the announcements as he was.

He sighed.

First, honesty. Pointless honesty - barely more than a truism - but honesty nonetheless. An admission of his own shortcomings. A mea culpa about his own inabilities.

"I don't know. I really don't know."

And now, an attempt at a useful answer.

"If I were you...I'd stay away. Or if you do end up coming across her, and she's not aggressive..." Chuck was going to give some advice that was bad from a survival standpoint, but true from the 'if I were you' hypothetical perspective. "Be willing to hear her story, but at this point...it's probably just that. A story."

[Primrosette]

Scarlett knew that Chuck's words made sense. Stay away from the girl who killed three people who could kill you as well. And if you listen to her story of what happened, there might be a chance that she is just lying to you and just telling you a lie. A story of lies....

"So I shouldn't trust her if I find her. I thought Wendy wouldn't be that selfish...." Scarlett said, shaking her head and she let out a small sigh. "I just don't understand some people. Like Bunny or Miranda or even Saachi.... How do they feel by killing people that they knew as friends or classmates?"

She stared at the half-eaten bar that she had in her hand. She suddenly thought of Tania. It really pained her to think about how she took the other girl's life. She then thought about Chuck. What did he think of being with a girl who had killed someone? Did he trust her? Did he hate her?

She glanced right at Chuck with a serious expression on her face. She had to ask him. "Chuck, do you trust me?" She asked. "I mean, after what I did to Tania.... She tried to kill me but then I...."

[General Goose]

Ever since the call for unity and forgiveness in the church, Chuck had let the spectre of Scarlett's kill be forgotten. Fade into the background, like so many of the harrowing misadventures and shocks of the island. Something that Chuck knew, but something he avoided, whether consciously or not, to reflect on.

Much better to reflect on trivial questions, such as the social acceptability of eating.

He took another bite, and let it sit in his mouth. Resting on his tongue. Exhaled and inhaled past it. Some crude approximation of smoking. Chuck didn't smoke, but he had always found something soothing, conducive to contemplation, about the motions of the act. He kind of wished he did smoke now. Not like his life expectancy could get much worse.

"Hey, self-defence is fine." Not the most...articulate way of expressing his confidence in her. But it'd do the trick. "I ain't Batman. Got no absolute 'no-killing' rule."

[Primrosette]

"It's still something that eats away inside of me. I still feel guilt over what I did to Tania. I know that I was protecting myself but I never thought that I would be capable of actually doing it. Taking someone's life like that." Scarlett said, shivering at the thought. "I had wanted to kill Bunny and Miranda for what they did to Everett and Sebastien. But now, I don't want to do that. I don't want to become like them. Seeking revenge on the people who killed my friends would make me no better than them."

Scarlett felt herself smile at Chuck's attempt to cheer up the mood for her. She let out a small chuckle.

"Sorry for being such a downer, Chuck. You're trying to cheer me up and I'm being all doom and gloom right now. I'm such a lame friend, huh?"

[General Goose]

Chuck had finished his meal, and still felt hungry. Had strictly rationed it all out, and felt that that was a pretty integral component to his survival so far. But he felt unsatisfied. A distracting, vexing dissatisfaction. Still felt a compulsive need to put something in his mouth and nope do not say that out loud.

He, for the first time ever, started to bite his nails. Tentatively, at first. But as he began to gnaw at the keratin, he realised exactly what the hype was about. How this could become such a damaging habit. Well, if there was a time and a place to embark on habits with long-term consequences, it was here and now.

After a few nibbles, leaving some marks of strain on his nails and chipping away some of the longer edges, he looked back at Scarlett. "Hey, guilt sucks, but it means you're still not...y'know. One of the psycho death machines the terrorists want you to be."

And then she apologised. "This whole place is a downer, you're making it slightly less so. Sounds like a pretty good friend to me." He opened his arms, offering her a hug. Hugs were good.

Chuck looked over the lake. "Ever thought it was weird that 'unsatisfied' is a word but 'unsatisfaction' isn't?"

[Primrosette]

Scarlett was glad that Chuck didn't think that she was a nuisance and he was offering her a hug. She really did need a hug. After everything that had happened, she just needed a friend that wasn't going to strangle her to death and loot her corpse. She trusted Chuck. As well as Kyran and Michael. She hoped that the both of them were okay and that they would show up in a safe condition.

"Chuck.... Thank you for listening to me. I really.... really needed to talk to someone about this."

She felt her eyes watering and she hugged him around his waist. She didn't cry as she glanced at his face and then at the lake as well.

"Hah.... I agree. It is pretty odd. You're not wrong."

Looking at the lake quietly with Chuck was pretty relaxing. It felt so normal for once.

[General Goose]

Chuck chuckled*.

At least she agreed with him that it was stupid. He held the leg, loosely, letting Scarlett remain in it for as long as she needed. It was for her, of course, but Chuck couldn't deny he was getting some solace, some alleviation for his own pain, out of it as well.

That she was humoring his rather esoteric pondering was even greater.

*He only just realised that piece of wordplay had been an option his whole life, why had he never done anything with it before?

[Primrosette]

Scarlett just sat there in silence for a while. She was feeling content with looking out at the lake and just resting there with Chuck. This was definitely a breather for her. This felt like a safe zone. A safe haven without any problems arising for the both of them.

It felt so peaceful.

"Chuck, tell me about Lance. I need to be here for you too. So I'll listen." She offered him to open up to her. He deserved the same comfort from her.

[General Goose]

"Not much to tell," Chuck replied, but that was a lie. A white lie, certainly. Some kind of modesty about his own experiences on the island. Chuck knew that he'd been rather blessed by the standards of the island, and didn't want to lose perspective on that.

"First person I met. While here, I mean. Barely knew him before. Was going around the tunnels humming video game soundtracks to myself." He tugged on the Boo hat ear, as if that jogged his memory. "Kinda started my interest in...unconventional methods of sabotaging this whole..." Game? No. "Shitshow."

"We saw Jasmine. Tried talking with her about it." Chuck grimaced as he remembered how wantonly he made shitty jokes at that early stage in the island experience. "Then Sophie came along." Chuck wasn't sure if he should add last names at this point. Oh well. "She was a killer. Had been called out on the announcements. Lance...I think it was Lance, got very accusative, I tried working out what happened, then Jasmine fired."

"Lance...I mean, he accidentally cut me a bit," and Chuck pointed to the now-healing cut over his eye, "but he probably saved my life, I think."

"Was harder to remember the details than I would have thought."