sunnydalealum | (no subject)

"That's amazing." It's softly said, with a touch of what might be awe.

She looks up from the picture. "You could never be a monster," she says, with quiet and absolute certainty. "You care so much. About everyone."

"I work hard on it." Spoon says, "On caring, that is. It's...not easy. I can be a monster. I just...work on not being one. She's got a lot in common with me hunt-sister Christine."

"Who's she?"

Jordie has her chin pillowed on her upraised hand, now, watching him steadily.

There's some more flipping, until he gets to Christine's picture.

That'd be the Blooded Hunter Cre'hktdi, really. Actually it's the expression that suits Cora. She and the yautja have the same "What in the world are you doing, crazy man?" expression.

"She's the person who got me into the hunting culture that I've used to stay sane."

Jordie starts back at the picture.

"So, uh." Pause. "Is she a demon?"

"Nah. Alien. Race is called yautja. As are members of the culture, so I'm also yautja. She likes strawberries, and hanging from things by her feet." Spoon takes that in stride. He knows his friends are weird. He loves them anyway. "Christine isn't really her name, it's just that Cre'hktdi requires my level of shapeshifting or mandibles to say."

She tries to pronounce the name a couple of times, and then gives up ruefully and goes back to looking at the picture.

"She looks tough." It's said approvingly.

"She is." Spoon says proudly, "We head off on hunting trips whenever we can. Right now she's taking care of her orphaned nephew. His mum mis-judged sommat and got herself killed. Christine was closest, so she's watching the boy until her mum gets there."

"Cool."

A pause.

"I haven't got any family pictures to show you," she says, half-apologetically.

"Not everyone is as much of a shutter bug as I am." Spoon says with a shake of his head, "I've got pictures of bloody near everyone from home, trophies, everything."

He loves his family.

She's quiet.

"You can carry them with you, that way," she says after a moment. "The people you care about."

The ones who stop you from becoming a monster.

"That's a part of it." he agrees, "The other part is...harder to talk about." but he will, because she's Jordie. "When I was...captive. And being tortured. It took a lot from me. Including the faces of people. My birth parents, my fiancee, my friends, even myself. They...didn't care so much about what I could see. A man with night vision goggles can see in the dark like I can. But smell? That's what they trained me for. To smell things...people...out.

"Humans don't think of each other by smell. They think of the faces. So it's a way I can connect with humanity."

She remembers something he said to her once, about his sense of smell: I could pick out any one of you in a dark room filled with flowers.

His smell, to her own unaugmented sense, is pleasant. Clean sweat, and clean dog, and something like cinnamon.

"So do you think of people mostly by sight or scent?"

"Scent and voices." Spoon says instantly, "The sound of your voice, and the way you smell. It takes effort to remember that you've got green in your hair, or Ace has a square jaw, or da' has blue eyes."

Jordie twists a strand of her hair around her finger. "I've been thinking about changing the green, anyway."

"Don't ask me for suggestions." Spoon says, helplessly, "This is the second hairstyle I've had in me life. It was a buzz-cut until Dardania."

She giggles at that, muffling it with one hand.

"I think it looks good," she says, her eyes flickering down again. "With the beads, I mean."

"That's a bonus." Spoon says, rolling a bead between his fingers. It doesn't make the cheerful bzee! noise because he doesn't pop claws to do it. "Mostly it's just as close to yautja style braids as I can manage."

Jordie gives a small sigh, and stretches her shoulders.

"Time is it?"

"I have no idea." Spoon admits, "Last time I wandered past the Council meeting they were still talking."

"Not like we've got any classes today, anyway."

She's sober again.

"Yeah." Spoon says, "Fuck. Wish I could do sommat, Jordie. Half tempted to go drag me priest out here...he's good at listening to people."

"You did do something."

She leans a little forward and turns her head to look up at him.

"You came to find me."

There is a small part of Spoon that is wondering if this is what the goats feel like.

"Well, yeah." he says, slowly, "You're a really sensitive girl, lass. Didn't like to think of you trying to handle hurt alone."

Jordie ducks her head again, her hair falling forward.

"It's good to know you care," she says softly. "Even ..."