Chilly Boulder, Sunday Afternoon

[okteiviakom]

Octavia had taken Vanessa out around the island for a bit today. She wasn't very comfortable with either leaving Duke on his own with Jean or dealing with this on her own without his support, but at least it gave them both a respite from listening to Vanessa and Jean's arguing. For two girls that insisted they were not sisters, they sure had the art of sibling-like bickering down, though at least it'd gotten somewhat less shrill since yesterday morning.

The preserve had been an obvious first stop, to blow off steam and burn off some energy, and if there were people out there who didn't think an 11-year-old should have been trying her hand at throwing knives at a target, well, Octavia didn't want to hear about it. (Also, judging from the accuracy? This was hardly Vanessa's first time at it.) Afterwards, they'd stopped by the apartment, where it had turned out Vanessa was a highly enthusiastic, if not particularly skilled drummer.

And yes, Octavia had taken some video of both the knife-throwing as well as the drumming. And yes, she'd already sent them to Duke. And now they were at Chilly Boulder, getting ice cream in a quantity they would later come to regret.

Or at least Octavia probably would.

"So, you -- well, I guess we live on the Rouge, huh?" she asked, as they took a seat at one of the tables. "What's that like, do you like it?"

[ooc: In which I see whether I have the brain to talk to myself. Open!]

Comments

[seingeda]

"It's the best," Vanessa enthused, though a little mumblily. Because she had started eating her ice cream on the way from the counter to table, because waiting even a second longer was for chumps.

In fact, she stopped by the table for a moment to scoop up a big ol' spoonful and stuff it into her mouth before she actually sat down.

"It's like we live in a house except we can take our house with us wherever we want!"

[okteiviakom]

Octavia couldn't help her tiny smile. "I kinda figured," she admitted. "That's what Duke says, too."

She felt like she saw a lot more of him in Vanessa than she saw herself. And that was a good thing.

"You also get a little weirded out about sleeping off the boat?"

[seingeda]

"Well yeah," Vanessa replied immediately. "Everywhere else is so still, it's weird."

Another big spoonful of ice cream went down. Come on, all the preserve excitement had left her hungry!

"But, like, you think that too."

[okteiviakom]

"I do?"

She shouldn't have been surprised, and yet.

[seingeda]

"Yeah! Every time we stay at someone's house or something, you complain you can't sleep because it's too still and 'the wrong kind' of quiet."

There were air quotes, yes. But only on one side, because Vanessa was not letting go of that spoon.

"Then nontu says he can rock the bed for you, and you always laugh even though --" And here came an exaggerated eye roll. "-- it's the same joke eeeevery tiiiime."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia snorted, her gaze dipping down to the ice cream in front of her. She was almost comfortable, here. But not so much so that the urge to hide a little didn't bubble up to teh surface.

"Sounds like me," she admitted. "Sounds like him, too."

[seingeda]

Vanessa shrugged. "Yu otaim ste biyo em ste krei leyos," she said, not entirely sounding like she agreed because come on, dad jokes? "En non fis yu op shanen bilaik em."

[okteiviakom]

Oh, there it was again. The part of Vanessa that did feel like it came straight from her. Every time the girl spoke in Trig, Octavia felt the same happy ache in her chest she had the first time Duke had spoken it back to her.

She lifted her gaze slowly, though only after she'd swallowed down a lump in her throat that had nothing to do with the ice cream.

"Kos em bilaik ridiyo," she said. "Bilaik ridiyo kom nau. Yu nontu fis ai op krei shanen."

[seingeda]

Vanessa scoffed like that much was obvious.

Still: "But you don't live on the Rouge yet."

And boy, had it been weird to see her mom having an apartment, even one with Uncle Bellamy.

[okteiviakom]

"No," Octavia agreed wryly, "I don't, even though that might seem weird."

[seingeda]

"Not really," Vanessa replied with another little shrug, scooping up some of the whipped cream from the edge of her cup. "I know you didn't always live together 'cause there was Lucy too."

Honestly, tales of Larceny had been some of her favorites when she'd been smaller. Being obsessed with noodles had seemed like a thing to aspire to.

"But, like... Why not? Hasn't he asked yet?"

[okteiviakom]

Octavia let that question sit there for a moment.

Then she said, "Think that's something you can ask me when you get back home."

[seingeda]

Vanessa pulled an offended face. "But you're here now!" she protested. "And that sounds exactly like when Dad tells me to ask you about something I asked him, and it's toootally obvious he's doing it 'cause he's not sure what he's allowed to say!"

[okteiviakom]

Snort. "Well, maybe I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say."

[seingeda]

"But why?" Vanessa replied, with a distinctly complain-y tone. "You already love him!"

[okteiviakom]

Okay, sidenote: it was really good to hear a child of hers and Duke's talk about love that easily. They'd done something right.

Anyway:

"I love your uncle, too," Octavia pointed out. "And right now... I'm living with him." A beat. "Most of the time."

[seingeda]

"... You were already there when we showed up," Vanessa relented, slowly. Shush, okay, maybe she'd suddenly felt a little worried about this whole thing. She wanted her future to be the one they were headed towards, thanks.

(Sorry, Jean.)

"Okay. I guess it's okay that you haven't moved in yet." A beat. "But you gotta stay over a lot!"

[firstofitskind]

Okay so it looked like a lot of Liam and Verity's plans for this weekend were kind of scrapped on account of being 'kid stuff'.

But you know what wasn't kid stuff? Ice cream.

Hence why Liam was making his way into Chilly Boulder, two teenagers and a preteen in tow.

"You got one too, huh?" he asked Octavia, as he spotted her and Vanessa.

"'Got one'?" echoed William. "Way to make us sound like we're something you fished out of the river."

[okteiviakom]

Octavia huffed out a rough, quiet laugh, even as her chest felt weirdly tight again.

Next week, they really needed to finally do that extra relaxed, drifting under the stars thing they'd been talking about for a while. After this, she was going to need it.

"I do, and I will," she said, sounding faintly amused before that fell away, and all that was left was softness. "Ai swega klin, Vanessa kom Floukru."

[seingeda]

"Os," Vanessa replied with an approving nod. So, guess she was appeased, at least for now.

And with that settled, it was on to more currently pressing things:

"Can we get pizza later?"

[okteiviakom]

"Mm-hmm," Octavia confirmed, something subtly wry about her tone. "Well, technically two, but... This is Vanessa."

The kid in question waved her free hand vaguely. Sorry, so far this wasn't worth stopping her ice cream binge for, so that was where most of her focus was.

"That's Liam, he's a friend of ours," Octavia added to her. "And...?"

Yeah, no clue who the kids were.

[foundgeneration]

"William," the one who'd spoken before introduced himself.

[nextoftheirkind]

"That's Tyrus," Hayley said, jabbing a thumb at her other brother. "I'm Hayley and Dad, I want that much ice cream too," she added with wide eyes, looking at the bowl Vanessa was currently demolishing.

[firstofitskind]

"We'll see," Liam said mildly.

(He was totally going to let her gorge herself on ice cream, because he was a pushover like that.)

The presence of Price genes was fairly obvious in both Tyrus and Hayley, and although William didn't look much like Liam at all, there were still little things- his cheekbones, the shape of his nose, that belied a shared ancestry.

[okteiviakom]

"And I'm Octavia."

"Octavia kom Floukru," Vanessa cut in, around a mouthful of ice cream and sprinkles and who knows what else.

"Octavia kom Floukru," Octavia agreed. (Even though she felt weird about it. It was a good weird, but... Weird.) "Hi. You have a full team happening, huh?"

[firstofitskind]

"Yeah," Liam said, grinning. "I'd like to say we were prepared, but that's only half true." He and Verity had been prepared... for grade-schoolers. Not anyone who was basically old enough to be going to school here.

"What's 'kom Floukru' mean?" Tyrus asked, echoing the unfamiliar words carefully.

[okteiviakom]

"It means 'of the Boat People'," Octavia told him.

So if Liam somehow hadn't had a solid guess regarding who Vanessa's other parent was before...

[nextoftheirkind]

Yeah, that pretty much answered that question.

"Huh," Tyrus said thoughtfully. "That's cool. So you live on the ocean?"

"Aren't you worried 'bout being eaten by finfolk?" Hayley demanded.

"Don't be silly," Tyrus told his sister. "They probably live on a really big boat. Finfolk wouldn't go near it."

"Plesiosaurs, then," Hayley sniffed.

"Mostly freshwater," her brother reminded her.

[seingeda]

"What's finfolk?" Vanessa wanted to know. Apparently that was interesting enough that she'd even swallowed before asking. "'S that like sharks?"

She had a particular fascination with sharks. Because of Reasons.

[nextoftheirkind]

"Bigger'n sharks," Hayley informed her. "Well, the old ones anyway. They're like, the size of trucks, and they have all these teeth!"

The younger ones looked human. Or like what a lot of people thought of as mermaids (though given how long her parents had spent in Fandom, yes, Hayley was aware that some worlds actually did have really-for-real mermaids).

[seingeda]

Vanessa also knew of actual mermen because of tales from Haven. But she hadn't thought those had anything to do with finfolk, and this just solidified that theory.

"But sharks have lots of teeth, too!"

There was still that, though.

[nextoftheirkind]

Haven’s mermen were probably a good sight less bloodthirsty, honestly. Though in the finfolk’s defense, by the final stage of their life cycle they’d lost all higher brain functions, and if you went near one when it was hungry, well. That was your own fault.

“That’s true,” Hayley conceded. Then she frowned. “You don’t hunt them, do you? The sharks, I mean.”

Because some of them might be Ukupani! And unlike the late-stage finfolk, Ukupani were nice, mostly. Unless you were trying to hurt them, obviously.

[okteiviakom]

"Of course not," Vanessa scoffed, and looked at Octavia. "Right, Mama Finrona?"

That was a new one. Not finrona, but the combination. Octavia would've bet money on it being one of Duke's, too.

She snorted. "I mean, I can't see us doing that, no."

[nextoftheirkind]

“Good,” Hayley nodded. “Hunting things is stupid. Well, ‘less you need to to survive, then it’s okay, but doing it for just fun is wrong.”

Tyrus, again, was going to ask about the unfamiliar word. “What language is that, anyway?” He’d inherited his grandfather’s fascination with languages, apparently.

[okteiviakom]

"'S Trig," Vanessa replied, her voice already considerably more mumbly than before, as her interest in this conversation lost out to her interest in her ice cream.

"Trigedasleng," Octavia clarified. "It's from... where I'm from."

[firstofitskind]

"I've never heard anything like it," Tyrus said. Which... if he had the chance to hear more of it, he'd probably start to pick out some of the English roots, but for now, that was true.

"Is that what you were speaking that day in the flower shop?" Liam asked her. It had been over a month ago, he wouldn't be surprised if she didn't remember.

[okteiviakom]

Octavia didn't remember. But that didn't actually matter.

"It's always what I'm speaking."

[nextoftheirkind]

"But you're speaking English now," Tyrus pointed out, a puzzled frown lighting his features.

[okteiviakom]

"If I'm speaking anything other than English," Octavia pointed out, with a touch of wryness.

[nextoftheirkind]

"Hm," Tyrus said thoughtfully. "Well. If you're the Octavia Dad talks about, then you're from the future, so Trigedasleng could have just been English but with some words that hadn't been invented yet," he pointed out. "Like, if I went to go talk to someone from a hundred years ago they'd have no idea what 'just google it' means."

Tyrus, you absolute nerd.

[okteiviakom]

"It's English twisted up on purpose by people who didn't want to be understood by outsiders." A beat. "Well, started out that way, anyway."

So, it was a good theory. Just missing crucial context.

[nextoftheirkind]

"That's really cool," Tyrus enthused. "And super useful, I bet."

[seingeda]

"She says," Vanessa piped up again, only narrowly avoiding spitting sprinkles everywhere in the process, "it makes us special."

Which saved Octavia from saying anything potentially depressing about how isolated she'd felt with her 'super useful' language until Duke had come along. She knew he probably meant it the way it had been used on the ground, anyway.

[nextoftheirkind]

“Dad says the same about him and me and Ty,” Hayley said, though not without a slightly guilty glance at William.

Who, for his part, looked wholly unbothered by that statement. Yes, his biological relationship with Liam was different than that of his siblings’, but when you were raised in a family that routinely claimed others as their own as a matter of course, blood definitely wasn’t the be-all-end-all the way it was for some families.

Tyrus, however, was gonna elbow his sister sharply, because you didn’t just talk about that stuff with strangers, she should know better.

“What?” she scowled at him. “We’re in Fandom, Tyrant.”