pineslog | open ✧ moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars

Entry tags:

open ✧ moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars

Who: Jyn Erso & ???
Where: Around town
When: May 9-14
What: Getting her bearings, exploring, etc etc.
Warnings: Language?

[ Open ]

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✧ ꜰʀᴇɴᴄʜ's ɢʀᴏᴄᴇʀʏ

There is so much food.

There is, in Jyn's opinion, too much food. Well, not the quantity, she supposes for a full town there is just enough (still maybe too much), but the sheer multitude of the selections is mind-boggling. Why are there no less than fifteen different types of cereals? There are at least five types of Cheerios alone. How is anyone supposed to decide on which cereal they want. And then they have to decide which percentage of milk they want? What is the other 98% of 2% milk!! She had thought cereal would be easy. She thought wrong.

It's not like she's picky, Jyn has subsisted off protein cubes for six months, she'll eat literally anything so whatever she chose would be perfectly acceptable but the number of choices suddenly available to her has made her indecisive. It's going to be an equally sad story when she tries to decide on a juice to buy.

Softly, "What the fuck."

✧ ɢᴏ ᴀsᴋ ᴀʟɪᴄᴇ

Look, it's not that she's stalking Cassian, it's just that, you know, she has one friend and he's it so she's kind of stalking him. In a friendly, platonic way. Nothing to see here. It doesn't hurt, anyway, that he works at a tea shop and one of Jyn's indulgent comforts happens to be tea. (She's not even actually British.) It also helps that Cassian won't let her pay for it so she doesn't feel like it's so indulgent.

Which finds Jyn curled up at a table nursing her fifth cup of something amber colored and sweet and fiddling with some of the dried bits of violet petals she plucked free of the loose leaves before she let it steep. She's slowly making her way through a paperback copy of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but she's unused to anything not on a datapad so sometimes she sets it on the table and it closes itself, as books do, or tips right off the edge and Jyn swears in what is probably not an Earth language.

"I'm starting to see why people burn these." Jyn, no.

✧ ʜᴜʀᴛ's ᴅᴏɴᴜᴛs

And then there is the real indulgence. Donuts. Fluffy, fried dough coated in sugar and cinnamon and glaze and stuffed with jelly or lemon and probably not all at once. Jyn doesn't take her ridiculously large order to someone to share or eat inside the shop itself.

Oh no. Jyn takes her box outside and sits on the curb and eats them right there because that is the type of person she is. Once the hunger is abated, however, she will eat the rest of them while she is walking. The donuts never seem to make it to their intended destination before Jyn is disposing of the empty box in a rubbish bin and wiping powered sugar off on her pants.

Manners, what are those? She will probably not share, unless it is a child or a dog. She'll share with dogs.

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He gives her his most innocent face, which is like, the most transparently "innocent" face ever. "I was under the impression you weren't considering suitors."

"You fancying me doesn't mean I have to consider you at all." For the record. She opens her book again, almost pointedly, but she doesn't start reading it, instead just holding it open like she can force her hand to learn how to hold actual for real books. It's garbage and barbaric.

Casually, "What do you know about Saw Gerrera?"

Should she be talking about this in public? No. Does she care? No. Besides, maybe he is the town gardener. It could be a completely innocuous question should Poe's answer be that he knows zero things.

He opens his mouth to say nothing, but a moment later, that's not true. It's not much, but it's not nothing.

"He was a radical in the Alliance." Poe frowns, trying to squeeze more than that faint memory. "An extremist. Same goals, very different tactics. He broke away, I think, or they forced him out. I don't remember."

Cameras? What cameras?

"Why?"

"It was a mutual departure." They'd never really worked together, the Partisans and the Alliance, as much as Idryssa had tried to sway him, but they had always been on the same side. It wasn't hard, really, if you were against the Empire. Saw had so little trust in the world though and without Steela to temper his anger...

Her tone is still casual, though softer, quieter, lower. She continues stirring her tea idly and flexing her hand as it holds the book, listening to the way the spine cracks a bit more as she presses it open further. It's nothing unusual. Talking about the gardener. It's fine.

"He raised me."

There's about three seconds of silence as Poe just stares at her, his expression morphing from thoughtful to confused to something like shock.

Then, eloquently, he says, "Oh."

Give him another minute. It's one thing to know General Organa was the daughter of Bail Organa, that historical pillar and martyr. It's one thing to follow her with all her years and her battles and her wisdom. It's quite another to find out that someone he counts as a friend was raised by another figure of the Rebellion, one he knows (or remembers) far less about.

His reaction is not unexpected. Saw has that effect on people. The Partisans weren't a group a child should be raised in anyway, the words extremist and childcare doesn't mesh incredibly well, but Jyn knows he did what he could. It might not have been the best but it was what it was.

(She had her own room. She didn't share then, she doesn't share now.)

"It's not a secret." She was a secret, her second father was not. "But I wanted you to know because if you bring up the other night in public, I will kill you." She is probably... teasing. They were teasing but she wanted to make sure he will not bring up the nothing that is happening between her and Cassian because they're literally just friends. So she's probably definitely teasing.

Definitely maybe teasing.

Edited 2017-05-15 06:44 (UTC)

Again, the metamorphosis of his expression: the shock giving way to confusion, the confusion giving way to unbridled, startled amusement, and--

Well, this maybe definitely probably maybe wasn't the intended effect, but Poe is laughing his ass off.

It doesn't bother her, honestly, reminds her of Chirrut with a pang in her heart she can't quite place so decides to ignore entirely as is her way. Besides, they were just having a casual conversation about nothing important at all and Jyn is obviously droll as hell.

Poe cannot be blamed for his laughter and Jyn sips her tea silently, finally snagging a cookie to dunk into her cup. Look, if he really underestimated her he wouldn't dance away from her punch radius and even if he does, all the better for her.

"I would've believed you without the part about Saw Gerrera. You're very convincing, and I like being alive."

He picks up a cookie of his own and breaks it in half, eating part of it. "What's your book about?"

"I wouldn't have the same gravitas." Saw had a reputation, Jyn didn't.

"A land stuck inside a little girl's wardrobe, which is physically impossible, where beavers eat toast and jam and four children become kings and queens." Her mouth twists as if saying it aloud makes it more absurd but that is... because it does. "I like one of the boy characters."

"Maybe. But I didn't know him until you mentioned him. I do know you."

For a certain value of knowing. He knows her enough to imagine a tiny terrifying death machine, and now he has confirmation. He eats the other half of his cookie, considering her description of the book, and it's easy enough to follow except-- "What's a beaver?"

Jyn leans in conspiratorially, knuckles brushing against her lips so no one can read them when she quietly admits: "I have no idea."

What the heck are Earth animals!

"They sound like sort of rodent that lives on the water, they build their shelters out of sticks? And I can't figure out how they make toast in the forest in their den of highly flammable sticks." Clearly the books makes approximately zero logical sense and Jyn doesn't even have the concept of Earth religions to realize the whole thing is a Christian allegory because who the hell is Christ?

He has to remind himself that she grew up with Saw Gerrera, and thus probably did not prioritize nonsensical children's stories.

He also is gaining an appreciation of Jyn's flat humor, now that he's getting better at seeing it.

"Well. They have a den of highly flammable sticks. Maybe they use part of the wall."

It makes as much sense as beavers making toast in general. "Repairs wouldn't really make toast worth it, I would think."

"And set their home on fire in the process." Her nose wrinkles as she glances down at the book again, dunking the second half of her cookie. "They're also called Mr and Mrs Beaver, they haven't got given names."

This seems equally as absurd to her.

She huffs out a short breath. "Everyone's rubbish but Edmund."

"Why's that?"

That everyone is rubbish, that Edmund isn't. He's curious what her opinions on the characters might tell him about her beyond what she's said flat out. He copies her, dunking a cookie in his coffee. ...which turns out to be a good choice.

"Everyone is... good. They care about other people and have this irritating hope and compassion and none of them are selfish or unfair." She continues making a face at the book, even as she pops the cookie in her mouth, reaching up to push her bangs back from her face.

"Edmund's an arsehole and I love him." The only man she will admit she loves.

Edited 2017-05-22 01:01 (UTC)

Poe blinks. That was both more of an answer and more surprising an answer than he expected. Goodness, caring, hope, compassion-- he can't see the problem with any of those things. Characters in a children's story not being selfish or unfair makes its own kind of sense.

Growing up with Saw Garrera must give a person a very particular way of looking at the world.

He dunks a cookie and eats it instead of answering right away. He chews, considers, swallows.

"What kind of arsehole?" And, teasingly, he mimics her accent. Not well.

"A realistic one." She rolls her eyes into next Tuesday at the mangling of her accent, Poe is never going to sound like he's from Coruscant, but she supposes it's fair enough revenge for what she does to Cassian's native tongue. She wonders briefly if Poe speaks it, too. (Do they have a club with little Laura?)

"Edmund is seflish and a bit of a prick and he's acts like a real person, not some idealized version of what good is meant to look like." Cassian is Good and she can't find a child or animal version of him in this book. Baze and Chirrut are Good and they have no fictional counterparts.

Only Bodhi, sweet, kind, brave Bodhi could find himself in Narnia and fit in.

He does, though mostly at home with his father. Unless he hears someone else speaking the familiar language, he's unlikely to use anything but Basic.

"I don't think good looks like any one thing." Poe rubs his chin thoughtfully. "Which might be the book's problem. People think 'good' and they think nice, or gentle, but hope and compassion show up in places sometimes no one would expect."

Again, he's thinking of Finn. And of Jyn herself, really. Prickly, antagonistic, somehow still incredibly endearing.

"Exactly why I like Edmund. He's a little boy, there is no way they're going to make him a villain. Eventually he's going to be a hero and he'll be the only one of them that makes any sort of sense." She frowns at the book. "They're children in a war. Children shouldn't be in a war."

There's nothing glorious or romantic about wars, she doesn't even know why children or beavers are fighting in it. Especially since the whole reason they left was to escape a war.

Which is a fascinating idea to Jyn, being able to be sent away from a war. How tiny it must have been.

"No they shouldn't." There's no pity or sympathy in it. It's simple, a statement of fact. He's pretty sure Jyn would balk at sympathy and potentially injure anyone who tried to pity her. Children shouldn't be involved in war, but how often, he thinks, how often does it become inevitable? Whole planets held hostage or destroyed or turned into slave labor.

Poe picks up a cookie, reaches over, and drops it into her cup.

It is a distraction. For the both of them.

She makes a noise of surprise, half annoyed, as she scoops the cookie out of her cup with the spoon. "Just because you're drinking dirt water doesn't mean you have to ruin my drink too!"

Also she's going to kick him in the shins for good measure. It's not hard, she's not trying to cause any permanent (or even temporary) damage, it's more of a scolding sort of kick.

She'd have bitten him but he's too far.

He grins at her, eyes staying on her face as he lifts his cup slowly and takes a nice, loud slurp.

"Mm, dirt water."

The universe is sorry about Poe Dameron.

Rolling her eyes at Poe is already becoming a habit, she does it so often. She's going to hurt herself. This time she also pushes her cup forward so she lean her elbows on the table, closing her book and crossing her arms over it.

"Do you keep a tally of how many times you get punched in the face?" She thinks he probably does, but maybe he's lost count. Hence the need for a tally, honestly.

"In general, or per person?" He holds his cup between steepled fingers, watching her over its rim. "I definitely keep a tally of how many times people roll their eyes at me, and I'm pretty sure you're going to give Jess Pava a run for her money."

Oof. That hits with a wave of homesickness he should have seen coming. He takes another deep drink of his dirt water, trying not to think about it.

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realists - 2017-06-02 22:02 (UTC) - Expand

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