The Park, Sunday Afternoon

[furnaceface]

There was nothing quite like a couple of days of reinforced muteness to get Jono feeling a bit introspective. The new artistic talents were fine and well, but he'd take the ability to communicate over being handy with an aerosol can any day of the week.

How that led to him sitting at a park bench with his flames in full view (all the better for getting across that he obviously wasn't going to be the most talkative person on the island) and a bag of bread in hand was anybody's best guess. Obviously he hadn't bought it for himself, no. There was just something... therapeutic about feeding the ducks around here. And if after a while that happened to turn into some quiet sketching on the little notepad he sometimes carried around with writing music in mind? The ducks were interesting artistic subjects, he supposed. And the person who was feeding them in the sketch...

Well, she was nobody that most people around here would recognize these days, anyway.

[OOC: All kinds of open, though Jono's obviously not going to be big on conversation today.]

Comments

[voiceoverdue]

After finally eventually managing to wake up a bit, Cecil - looking and feeling a bit more rumpled than usual - made his way to the park so Foucault could stretch his still-growing legs. He was pink and almost Cecil's height now.

It took Cecil a moment to see the flames, then a moment longer to realize what they were, then a moment longer than that to realize who they were. Shut up, he was tired.

Once he did, though, he hurried over to sit next to Jono. "Hi! Um. I guess you can't talk. Do you know what to do about..." he flapped his hand around as if catching the words, "this?" He pulled his knees up and huddled over them, half in exhaustion and half because it was still cold. "I think I kind of got your talking, but I'll give it back if you know how!"

[furnaceface]

Oh, Cecil. If Jonothon had the answer to your question...

... Well, he still wouldn't be able to give it to you very easily, would he? He glanced down at his notebook, gave his shoulder a shrug, and then flipped to the next page, putting pencil to paper to write, rather than draw.

Keeping you awake, is it?

Jono knew exhaustion quite well when he saw it, thank you.

[voiceoverdue]

"Maybe? I don't know...is that it? It's like," he screwed up his face trying to think of a good way to put it. "Noisy," he finally finished weakly.

[furnaceface]

Well, that got a slight raise of Jono's eyebrows. Not because of what Cecil said. He knew quite well just how 'noisy' all of the ambient thought around the island could get, particularly in the dorms. More because it had come out in a somewhat awkward, if succinct sort of way.

Noisy, he agreed with a nod. It'll probably fix itself before long. In the meantime, have you ever done any meditation, Cecil?

[voiceoverdue]

"Um...sort of. A couple times. Does that help?"

He sighed. "I hope it gets fixed, though! I feel mean." //I took your only way of talking! I didn't mean to, but still!//

Oops.

"I...um...said that, didn't I? I didn't mean to! Sorry." Hey, at least this time he'd realized he was doing it.

[furnaceface]

Jono blinked up at Cecil's voice drifting through his head, raised an eyebrow, and then shrugged his shoulders again. He was hardly going to blame the lad for using that power. After all, he'd had it for, what, a day and a half? The control it had taken Jon just to keep from accidentally yelling into people's brains and making their bloody ears bleed had taken him months to learn.

Going to think loudly at you. See if you can hear. Willing to give that a try?

It seemed less awkward than wasting all of his notebook paper, anyhow.

[voiceoverdue]

"Um. Sure!" Cecil nodded. And stared at the side of Jono's head like that would help. Hey, it might!

[furnaceface]

... Eh, whatever made the boy happy.

'Test, one, two? Can you hear this, mate?'

He wasn't quite yelling his thoughts, no, but he was definitely thinking them firmly, with Cecil as a focus. He had no damn clue whether it would work or not. But it was always worth a try.

[voiceoverdue]

"Oo!" Cecil blinked. "I heard that! You're good and loud." And focusing on Jono helped the other noise fade a bit, which was awfully nice.

[furnaceface]

Jonothon nodded, thankful, at least, that there was that much. He closed his notebook again and tucked it away into his pocket.

'Good. Keep your mind trained on this, then. I'm going to try to walk you through a few exercises I was taught to help keep some of the extra patter out of your head, if you're up for it.'

[voiceoverdue]

"I'll try. I'm pretty tired. But if I can't, I'll be more tired tomorrow! Um. Unless it...goes away. Or whatever."

[furnaceface]

'Wouldn't mind too much if it came back my way,' Jono noted, shrugging. 'Here, we'll start you off with an easy one. Close your eyes and clear your mind, mate. Just focus on my thoughts, and doing what I'm telling you to. Picture yourself in a white space.'

Walking through mindscapes with Emma and Cable and very occasionally Karla was hopefully going to pay off. Not that he'd doubted it would, but he really hadn't thought he'd be talking someone else through this, either.

[voiceoverdue]

"Me, neither!" Cecil answered decisively. He didn't really like telepathy much. "It's...kind of a lot. Plus, I can talk anyway. Um, usually." He rolled his eyes at himself before closing them.

"Can I make it gray? White is awfully bright."

[give-areason.livejournal.com]

Rosalind preferred the park during the warmer months, when life was more evident, but all the same, it drew her even in the middle of winter.

Jono's, and his flames, caught her eyes during her walk, and she sauntered over to nonchalantly sit with him on his bench.

"Bad day?" she wondered, having past experience with Jono's moods and when he tended to go and feed the ducks. It seemed a reasonable guess.

[furnaceface]

Jono lifted a shoulder, offering Rosalind a piece of bread from his bag. The loaf was half-gone, and the ducks were just as willing to eat it as ever, but he'd been sketching.

... The sketching part? Still new.

He would've said hello, but that bit was a little difficult at the moment. As it stood, the bread was probably confirmation enough that he wasn't having the best weekend ever.

[give-areason.livejournal.com]

"Thanks," she said, taking the bread and shredding it absently into pieces small enough for the ducks to eat without coming to harm.

She looked at his sketching for a moment before asking dryly, "New talent?"

Guess who listened to radio, Jono!

[furnaceface]

Called it in one, Rosalind! Jonothon even gave a bit of a nod and a shrug of his shoulders, reaching up one finger and tapping the end of his nose.

And then he glanced her way and raised an eyebrow. Was he alone in this situation, or was she tamping down a superpower or something that she hadn't had to deal with before?

[give-areason.livejournal.com]

"As far as I can tell, I remain as usual," she replied mildly. "Don't hate me too much for that."

[furnaceface]

Well, he really couldn't. Not too much, anyway. He portrayed that sentiment with an expressive roll of his eyes and shrug of his shoulders, and then waved vaguely at his face and looked grumpy about it.

Not that he suspected she hadn't figured it out yet, but it was really only polite to explain the silence.

[give-areason.livejournal.com]

Didn't he always look grumpy?

"I figured," she said, vaguely amused. "I'll try not to hold it against you."

When had she ever held silence against him?

[furnaceface]

Never, so far as Jono could figure. He was thankful for it, anyway. Even the look he gave her was something edging into relieved; it had been that sort of weekend, already.

He looked down again, gaze lingering on the sketch in his hand. Ducks, the pond, and a teenaged girl with wild dark hair, throwing crumbs to them with a smile. Nostalgic, yes, but then, he'd been feeling a lot of nostalgia these days.

He closed the notebook, and then reached for another slice of bread.

[give-areason.livejournal.com]

She saw the sketch, recognized the girl, and said nothing at all as he closed the book. His reaching for the bread reminded her to toss some of hers to the ducks.

It was a strange thing, sitting here, like this, years later from the first time (http://fandomtownies.livejournal.com/5418038.html) they'd done this. Rosalind wondered if the island really was repeating certain things. Though this bout of… melancholy nostalgia, she supposed, was no longer new--but old.

At least she did not have to ask about his drawings. Rosalind thought he'd appreciate that even as the silence stretched comfortably.

[furnaceface]

He did. He really, really did. He was feeling a lot of old aches these days as if they were new, trying to reconcile the different fragments of his head, finally coming to terms with the things he'd lost recently that he hadn't had so much as a moment edgewise to deal with.

If he'd been left long enough, the sketch of Didi might have been joined by a few others, ghosts of people he would never see again, lingering in the margins.

He tore off a few more pieces of bread and scattered them across the ground.

[give-areason.livejournal.com]

Eventually, her bread was gone and Rosalind made no move to steal some of his. Content, instead, to just watch, face calm and eyes thoughtful, as dusk slowly settled around them.

It was a quiet afternoon, broken only by the ducks and the creak of Jono's clothing as he tore up bread. By all rights, she should have been cold, but the heat Jono threw off was more than enough to warm her.

And even if it had not, there were some things worth the discomfort. This was one of them.

When Rosalind stood, it was full dark and the bread was long gone. "Come on, Jon," she said, in a gentle voice that her sister would have recognized, from nights spent soothing fears and nightmares away, but no one else would have. "Let's go home."

[furnaceface]

Jonothon nodded. He wasn't particularly tired - Cecil's insistence that he get some rest earlier had seen to that - but it was getting late, and the ducks were finished with them, and all that could really come from sitting in the dark here would be more shadows and an evening chill that even his flame wouldn't be able to shake off.

He pulled himself to his feet, taking one last long look across the park as though half expecting to see something familiar in the shadows. And then, after a moment stolen to briefly lean his shoulder against hers in silent thanks, he started to walk.