Outside Luke's, Saturday afternoon

[vdistinctive]

After spending much of the morning flinging himself full speed up and down the stairs around the island with Val leaping after him frantically to keep up/probably yelling at him to be more careful, Eliot decided it was time to spend some time relaxing.

So he picked an awning he rather liked, shoved a battered copy of meta for Treasure Island down the back of his pants, and climbed up on one of the outdoor tables to get into reach of one of the supports.

He loved reading. He especially liked to do so in extremely awkward and hard to get to places. They made it way harder for Gertie to come bug him and get him in trouble for not playing with her.

He lost his grip trying to swing his legs up around the support beam, and barely managed to break his fall by grabbing onto one of the closed umbrellas leaning against the wall. Momentum carried him and the umbrella down to the cobblestones with a thud, and he lay there for a moment staring up at the awning.

"Ow."

Then he grinned, jumped back up, and tried it again.

[open!]

Comments

[vdistinctive]

Not that Eliot knew of. He'd never heard of a foster home before today.

"There's lotsa farms," he said instead. "They always need more help. Plus you get to work with animals!"

Which was way better than helping out in a hardware store. Or doing whatever Alec did in Chicago.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

The face Alec was making suggested that, no, working on a farm was not way better than doing what Alec normally did. "You mean dig in the dirt tryna get things to grow? An' get bit an' kicked by animals bigger'n me? That sounds terrible!"

He couldn't even drive a tractor with his eyes! No thank you!

[vdistinctive]

"Animals only kick you if you give 'em reason to," Eliot said. "If you're nice to 'em and feed 'em and don't sneak up on them, they're nice to you."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"I dunno." Alec still looked very, very dubious about the whole prospect. "Ain't never dealt with animals much. Or farms. Maybe I should just stay in Chicago."

[vdistinctive]

"There is NO WAY a farm is scarier than drug dealers or winos."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"You can avoid most of 'em," Alec said, shrugging. "Drug dealers ain't want little kids hangin' around drawin' attention an' winos just wanna sleep it off. Not like animals that are all big an' you don't know what they're thinkin'!"

Different. Worlds.

[vdistinctive]

"Animals are easy to understand," Eliot said. "All they want is food and safety. It's people who are hard."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"People ain't much different," Alec said. "But at least people can talk."

[vdistinctive]

"And lie," Eliot said. "And be mean on purpose. People are dumb."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Yeah," Alec said, because on that much they could agree. "But at least they can explain stuff. Animals can't, even when they sick or hurt. An' people ain't hard to figure out. Not really. You just gotta pay 'ttention."