#mutt.

[vitalphenomena]

@guttersniper said: i read that in a library book.

HE DOESN'T SAY IT LIKE HE'S INCREDIBLY PROUD. He says it like it'a a simple fact—no. He says it like it's a joke.

Cain wonders if he is allowed to joke back without losing a few fingers. He cannot help himself—there is a need to be a little less serious than this dynamic requires, or else he will go insane.

"You are very generous," he says. "By showing so much support for your local library."

[vitalphenomena]

@guttersniper

LILA DRAGS MUTT WITH HER TO THE LAUNDROMAT 'CAUSE JUNI CAN'T MAKE IT. Laundry day is usually their day, hers and Juni's; she's in a foul mood due to the routine's interruption.

Therefore, she will not allow Mutt to be left to his own devices while accompanying her in Juni's stead.

She pokes Mutt's shoulder. Harris's lights are drying—dirty wifebeaters and t-shirts he wears to his line cook gig. She is bored of folding his darks—loose, flamboyant button-ups she's never seen him wear around the house.

<<Have you ever lost a fight you thought you were going to win?>>

[vitalphenomena]

@guttersniper asked for: a kitchen during a black out, surrounded by candles

"Some people might try and force you to hold a seance, under these circumstances."

Spirit just finds the candles appropriately creepy, appropriately odd and mysterious. Most people in a neighborhood-wide blackout (or did she forget to pay the power bill again?) just use their phone to navigate clumsily around the apartment, at this point. It seems Spirit wants to be a little bit more old-fashioned.

She sits with Mutt on the apartment floor, on her only (small) rug. Props to Mutt for being willing to lower himself to these conditions; fuck knows how long it's been since Spirit swept in here. All the same, he's attempting to teach her a simple card game.

"But you're just trying to gamble. Or whatever. Isn't all of this basically gambling? Isn't that, like, bad?" She squints.

[vitalphenomena]

@guttersniper said: those old stories have been around a long time. doesn't mean they're true.

<<Yeah, sure,>> Lila allows, a little annoyed to be giving him the space to be correct about something. Her signs are accompanied by a loose shrug—though she's really growing irate.

Really, she owes Mutt. Instead of acknowledging that, she just digs herself deeper into the contrarian hole she's dug for herself.

<<Old stories about people like me have been around for a long time, too. And guess what? They were right.>>

Ooh. Spooky.

[vitalphenomena]

@guttersniper asked: have you been to these mountains before?

"Once," Andy notes, because she's been to most places that there are to go at least once or twice. Mountainous areas can get monotonous, but most stand apart on their own merits. There are no comparisons between the American Appalachians to the Swiss Alps to Mount Narodnaya, not really.

"I've always wanted to hike Everest," she muses. "But there are certainly complications." She stretches her arms over her head. "Does it feel good? To get out of the States?"

[vitalphenomena]

@guttersniper asked for: [ jewelry  ]  mutt clasping a piece of jewelry

THIS ISN'T REALLY LIKE HER. She's gone through phases, decades and centuries ago, but indicators of wealth or personal style just—don't appeal to her. A certain resilience of her original nature, before it all, perhaps.

But a gift from Mutt is different, isn't it? A bracelet with a modest quartz embellishment—it's hardly an ostentatious indicator. It's perhaps thinner than the thick leather and metal bands she's used to—her own muscle and bone might break the poor thing—but what really stands out is the subtle quartz. She spent a long time admiring it before putting it on.

Then, sheepish as Andy gets, she beckons for Mutt to help her clasp the bracelet around her wrist. She's struggled with the delicate mechanism for about fifteen seconds, which is fifteen seconds too many.

"Thank you." She watches him fidget, equally baffled, for now, by the teeny-tiny pieces that must hook together.

"For this, I mean. It's perfect. How did your eye catch this without anybody noticing?"

[vitalphenomena]

@guttersniper said: so you’ll get a little wet. it’s good for you. 

“What?” 

She laughs, girlish, as in young, as in uninhibited, as in free. She has taken her shoes off, peeled off her socks. But her toes are barely submerged in the lapping water’s edge. 

“You don’t understand. I can’t swim. How do you, like, even learn?”