Mary Fulton
Aqua Student - Year 6
I just want everybody to get along
Offline
|
Post by Mary Fulton on Jul 28, 2015 16:26:26 GMT -5
"Even less honorable ... ? Oh! Oh ... yes ... best not to." Well, now her face was tomato red once again, and Mary couldn't quite meet Elsie's eyes. That was quite the thought: students going up to the roof to ... it almost made her shudder.
That was certainly the least pleasant aspect of the expectation that she should marry after school. If she married someone, he would be able to touch her whenever he wanted to, and they would have to share a bed, and he would be sweaty and covered in hair and his breath would reek of alcohol and then he would probably hit her because wasn't that just what men did? But certainly there were men who were less violent and repulsive than her father ...
Oh, if only she could just get on a boat to Australia with Elsie and be sisters on a great big magical farm for the rest of time.
"Oh, well, I would have to bring multiple pencils," she continued, latching on gladly to the change of subject. "And of course I would bring one of my books rather than loose pages. They're simple to make with a needle and twine and a stack of parchment. Maybe I'll make you a journal, and on the cover I'll put shimmery stones from the lake!"
Picking her way carefully across the rough shingles, Mary followed and sat near Elsie on one of the roof's spines. Sitting sideways, it was almost cozy, and the view it afforded was spectacular.
"What is the sky like in Australia?" she asked curiously.
|
|
|
|
Post by Elsie Beren on Jul 28, 2015 19:27:28 GMT -5
An amused smile played across Elsie's lips, but she fought it back. Mary's particular brand of innocence was very endearing, but she didn't want to make her embarrassed about it. The last thing that Elsie wanted was for Mary to have to filter what she said around her, she knew that there was no more sure fire a way to destroy a burgeoning friendship than to make someone self conscious about their words. Beyond that, it was kind of sweet that Mary still had something that she was naive about. From everything that Elsie had guessed, her friend had seen quite a lot of the everyday horrors that the world had to offer. It was good that something as freeing as sex was supposed to be, at least from what older girls at her old school had said, had not been introduced to Mary in a twisted, horrific form.
"There you go again, coming up with solutions to problems faster than I can think of the problems themselves! It's very impressive. Maybe you could also attach your pencils to the book with a piece of twine too, all you would have to do is bore a hole through the end of the pencil." Elsie liked the sound of the journal, she could already picture it in her mind. Though she hadn't a clue what she would actually put in the journal. She didn't have Mary's gift with words, that much she was sure of. But Mary was always so busy with, well, everything, Elsie couldn't figure out how to sound excited but not ask for it to be made. "What do your journals look like, normally? Do you just writes stories in them, or do you collect gossip and other things in there. Dreams, even?"
Mary decided to sit down, and asked her about the sky back home. "I'm not totally sure. It's like the sky back home is more tired than the sky here. It's closer to white than it is to blue, and it almost never has any clouds in it. Certainly not as big as those, anyway. Like it's been worn away by the sun."
|
|
Mary Fulton
Aqua Student - Year 6
I just want everybody to get along
Offline
|
Post by Mary Fulton on Jul 30, 2015 19:52:21 GMT -5
"Oh, perfect! The twine could be long enough to be a bookmark, and then the pencil would loll out of the bottom of the book, and if I dropped them from the roof, they'd all be simple to find on the ground. We could patent it. A journal specifically for writing in high places." Mary was impressed and comforted by the fact that Elsie always had ideas to offer. Ideas were so much more interesting and easy to respond to than observations about people or events. Observations often seemed to invite opinions, whereas ideas simply bred more ideas.
Hmm ... there might be something interesting to be found in that train of thought. She should write it down, fiddle with it, turn it into some sort of poignant idea for a character in a story to ponder. Unfortunately, she had left her bag in the classroom they'd used to get to the roof.
Perhaps that was all right. There was something special, anyway, about how private it was up here, and how the breeze seemed to steal words away right as they were spoken. Perhaps it would only profane what they said, to try to put it down with something as trite as ink.
"Mmm, well, I try to make them all look a little different. It's interesting to see what different substances will do to a piece of parchment. Once I made a cover by rubbing parchment in the grass, and it left these strange green and brown markings that almost looked like runic script. Another time I poured coffee grounds onto the parchment, and they left Rorschach blots all over it. The one I'm currently writing in is decorated with a snakeskin I found in the forest at home. I had to use shellac on the cover to protect the skin, or it would have crumbled away.
"Mostly they're filled with poems and stories, or strange thoughts that cross my mind. I don't usually remember my dreams beyond the way they leave me feeling in the morning."
Mary was amused by Elsie's description of the sky at home, since it was rather poetic and she'd gotten the impression that Elsie didn't consider herself much of a writer at all. "Hmm ... 'more tired' ... 'worn away by the sun' ... are you sure you're not a poet, Elsie?" She poked her friend's shoulder teasingly. "That's quite an evocative description, you know."
|
|
|
|
Post by Elsie Beren on Aug 1, 2015 7:33:07 GMT -5
"Are you a mountain climber with an obsession with diary-writing? A window-washer with a penchant for writing short stories? Always losing your pencils? No more! The Mary Fulton Peregrine Pencil And Paper is everything you've dreamed of!" Elsie giggled, grinning at Mary. It wasn't as good as her jingle, but she thought that she'd done a pretty decent job at it. The name could do with some work, but she'd never claimed to be brilliant with that kind of stuff. Mary could choose out a much more marketable name. "At this rate, we'll have the most diverse empire of strange goods."
Elsie could see Mary's fingers itching to write something down and wondered if she had ever had a thought that she hadn't wanted to turn into ink. She could see advantages to that way of being, paper was much less changeable than a mind. Memories could have physical substance if you wrote them down. Elsie herself had always eschewed writing whenever possible, her thoughts were far too fleeting and trivial to ever be worth reading back. That probably meant she forgot things quite often, without meaning to, but she had never believed that it would be a good use of anyone's time, including her own, to read her thoughts.
The endless craftiness that Mary seemed to possess baffled Elsie. How could she be so creative in so many different ways? It seemed like Mary had the creative allotment of at least five people, and it manifested in her bubbling over with ideas. She probably had Elsie's creativity too, you didn't need to be inventive to work with plants and animals. More preemptive, and good with thinking on your feet. Both of which she could do easily. But, Elsie reminded herself, some of the pranks she'd pulled off could hardly be described as uncreative. Maybe it wasn't that easy to pigeonhole the skills of people like that. "You must have the most varied bookshelf ever, with covers like that. Runic grass stains, Rorschach coffee and snakeskin bound books aren't exactly common."
"I am sure I would be shocked and appalled at the strange thoughts that cross your mind Mary," Elsie teased. If she was surprised by drugs, and the mere mention of sex, Elsie was fairly sure that she could handle whatever plagued the dark corner's of Mary's mind. If those were things that could be shared; that they were not Elsie was starting to realise was the point of a journal like that.
"Don't you start acting like I came up with a sonnet for you on the fly. It's your bad influence rubbing off on me already, Mary. Eloquence! Who'd have thought it was contagious." She couldn't help herself from teasing the girl, but it didn't seem like she had yet managed to accidentally offend her. Mary had a thicker skin that first appeared, something that Elsie could definitely appreciate. Caught by sudden embarrassment, Elsie looked down at the peak of the roof beneath them. "Sorry about stealing the stone, by the way. I just... wanted a piece of that day. In case we didn't become friends, I'd have something to keep of you." It was one of her worst habits, keeping inconsequential items to remind her of things. She had a whole box, this little roughly made wooden thing. One of the farm hands had made it for her, in a piss-poor attempt at flirting. She'd kept it, not him.
|
|
