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 Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:04 pm
Morning dawned. It crept over the boil sleeping in the desert, like the creeper that a pumpkin sun should be. For a moment Roch was happy. Sure he was a bit cold, but he tugged the blanket around him a bit more tightly--and cursed as someone nudged him in the side.
"How the hell do you sleep out here?" Austin asked, looming over him and blocking the sun.
"Wha--" Roch jerked awake, sitting up and looking around--then he groaned. Vegas was cooking over the fire, Austin was packing up the stuff. Family vacation? Not so much. "I gotta call Amrita," Roch said as he stood and walked to one of the ratty looking bushes to ah... use.
And then he called Amrita.
Only to curse as he realized it was probably too early. Whoops.
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:16 pm
Luckily for Roch, Amrita was undead. That meant she rarely slept, and considering the way she had been piling on the work for herself, it only made sense she spent more time awake than passed out. The sound of her phone coming to life made her cry out in surprise, and as she scrambled to answer it, DC thought she was trying to play with him.
"Hel---OW NO STOP THAT I'M NOT---" The phone cut out for a minute with a series of very angry growls, the sound of a brief struggle, and then a try at silence. "STUPID DC BAD BOIL Augh holD On---Sorry. Um. Hello?" Clearly, she hadn't looked at the caller ID in the skirmish, and was unaware of who was on the other end.
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:18 pm
"You alright?" Roch asked blankly. "Who's there with you? DC--oh, your pet," he answered before she could. He headed for the fire, taking the plate of food his granddad was offering. "Hey, Amrita, sorry for calling so early," he added a bit belatedly.
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:21 pm
"Roch? ...Oh, hey, Roch!" At first her voice was tentative, and then outright joyful as she did recognize his voice. "Nah, it's fine, I was just going over the---wait." Suddenly, her bubbly voice came to a complete halt, falling with suspicion. "Roch never calls me. Who are you, and/or what's wrong?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:24 pm
"Why would you say that?" Roch asked, trying to sound injured. "I call you! Sometimes. But..." He was silent for a moment, gobbling up the food on his plate in a few seconds before he stood and walked away from the other two. "Did you go to that field trip? The trance thing?" he asked.
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:31 pm
"Do not, especially not this early." The suspicion was clear in her voice, and as Amrita stood in her room she even looked the part, her free hand rested on her hip, her weight on one leg. But as the trance thing was brought up, her gaze fell, her voice dropping sadly to match. "...Y-yeah. Why?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:35 pm
"I don't know if you saw Tex," Roch said quietly. "He was the guy I was watching. He... ah... well..." He took a deep breath. "They never told me I had an uncle," he said abruptly. "So now I'm makin' them deal with it. Look, I know you start panickin' whenever I disappear for a couple of days, maybe a week, so I figured I'd call you now and get that problem taken care of. I'm gonna be gone for a couple of days--I'll be back in time for prom, though."
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:53 pm
"Yeah, I saw him." She confirmed quietly, leaving it at that, since it seemed important to Roch to keep going. While she didn't understand why they had to deal with it, she imagined Roch knew what was best for them, so she stayed quiet for the time being. That was, of course, until he told her his reasoning for calling; that teased a giggle out of her, a rare noise for sure.
"Thanks, Roch. I appreciate it. You're a good boil no matter what you say. Now I don't have to hunt you down!" The giggle continued and then quieted; what he couldn't see was the way she shook his head. "Look, Roch, don't push yourself or them. Grieving isn't something you just get over, and you can't force it either...I kind of...learned that the hard way. Push them towards it, but you can't force someone to get over it." She was assuming he meant 'grieve' when he said 'deal with it', but she couldn't imagine a scenario where her advice wouldn't work.
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 8:59 pm
"They've had twenty years, Amrita," he said quietly. "Me, it just happened yesterday." He ran a hand over his face. "I'm not as... I'm a bit more... Look," he said, slowly, "we're gonna go someplace that's supposed to have some of his old stuff. I want to see them. I want to see pictures of him. I want to--I want to feel less jackin' lost and angry than I am right now. But I gotta tell you something, Amrita. Somethin' really important. They never saw Quibble again after that day. He just up and disappeared."
Would it make any sense if she hadn't been seeing through a DETH member's eyes?
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:15 pm
"You can't put a timeline on that sort of thing." Amrita replied easily, quoting from a book she'd read on the subject; she never grieved before, it was alien to her and she wanted to know what was normal or not. "Take your time, but you know...friends are important to. We're here to help. Please remember that, Roch." He had a bad habit of forgetting, and that always tore at her unbeating heart.
At his something important, the Vetala on the other end of the line fell silent, listening to him. Quibble disappeared after that day? He didn't come to their rescue and she wasn't aware of a Quibble on the Teaching roster. Somehow, she wasn't surprised. But there was a larger part of her that didn't want to believe it because of the implications; either he was taken, or he was one of them.
"Are...Are you sure...?" The simple question proved that she had in fact been watching through a DETH member's eyes.
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:20 pm
"I didn't trust the horsemen," he said quietly. "I figured they could have lied about that happening--they did something similar in the death trial. So I went to Moira. Tex saw her during that time, she knew what had happened. I asked her about Quibble. She said he never showed up again. I trust her, Amrita. Plus, I don't know why she'd lie about something like that."
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Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 6:12 pm
"Wow, that's...huh." The Vetala sounded troubled, listening to what he had to say, and how much he trusted Moira. "I don't even know what to----NO, DON'T YOU---" Her end of the line went fuzzy again, the loud keening and ever-angry sounding cries on the other end near deafening. "Look, Roch, I gotta go. We'll talk about this when you get back, okay? Thanks for the call, Be careful! I just---DC, BAD BOIL! ---I gotta go okay? Bye!"
She hung up in a hurry, but would text him again later to apologize.
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Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2012 6:22 pm
For a long moment he stared at the phone, wondering if he should feel guilty about skipping out on people like this all the time. Then he realized that they needed to get used to it. He had no plans on getting a job that tied him to one place--in fact, the more places he went, the better.
Then he summoned his guitar again. He wasn't done destroying the terrain.
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