deercountry | those demons from which we all hide, OPEN

He's fine; he's got it.

Grumbling, he peers out over the rim of his glasses. "If you can get us towards a - a rock I can grab, I can lift you out of the water. Just not one in the middle of the river, that wouldn't help." Granted, he could probably toss her to shore, but then he'd be stuck.

That would be reassuring as she wasn't certain she had it.

"All right, I'll do my very best. I'm as eager to get out of this water as you likely are." Her, because it brought up too many memories of the North Atlantic, staring into a brilliantly clear, starry sky. She'd never seen so many stars here, or back home in Philadelphia.

But she's saved from further revaries by spotting a decent sized rock near the shore. She pauses briefly in her steering to point to it. "Will that do," immediately ready to do everything in her power to get them to that rock if it was acceptable.

"Uh - yeah! Sure! Let's go for that!" Michael will try to help, kicking his legs, but it's largely useless. He barely knows how to swim properly with this shape.

"Good! Will do," she manages to pant out, steering with her arms and fighting the current with her legs, kicking them furiously to bring herself and Michael close enough to the rock to at least let Michael get away. Herself? She's strangely accepting of the notion of the river carrying her wherever it was it wished to take her.

"Ugh! Shit - why don't humans have better claws?" Michael reaches out one arm and scrabbles for purchase at the rock. Eventually, though, he does catch hold of it, enough to drag himself a little bit closer. "Okay! Okay, I got it!"

He kicks his legs, trying to pull himself up, but it's a little difficult. Honestly, it's gonna be easier to haul Rose out first. He turns, frowning at her as he sizes up the raft - it's a door? - and her position on it. "This might get a little wobbly, hold on." He's far stronger than a human would be; with a little leverage, it's not too hard to lift the door, and her on it, up and out of the water. The balance is weird one-handed, though. Rose might have to be quick about jumping onto the rock.

"Claws--I'm--I'm afraid I don't know what you mean! I've already destroyed my fingernails clinging to this thing," She's elated to see Michael grab a hold of the rock. "Wonderful! I'm so glad! We're almost free of this wretched river."

"I'll--I'll do my best?" Though she was uncertain as to why she had to. She already was holding on as tightly as she could to that awful door. But maybe she let her earlier experiences with it prejudice her against it. "All right, I will!" She clung to the door as she felt herself being lifted out of the water, door and all. As soon as she saw a spot to jump onto, she did.

She was rather certain that her cable-knit sweater was now sporting runs and her jeans were rubbish, as were her boots.

"Okay, cool!" Once she's off the door, Michael just pitches the entire thing over onto the shore. Like a Frisbee! Now the only thing left in the river is him!

"That's what I'm saying! Fingernails are useless! You - " He struggles to get a better grip, and starts clambering up the rock himself. Dress shoes really weren't the best thing to be randomly dragged into the jungle with; there's no traction there. " - might as well not even have them. What's wrong with some, some good old-fashioned retractable claws?"

Rose had been shocked at the display of Michael's strength, though she supposed that she ought to get used to such things, that most people here were more than they seemed.

"They really seem to be! Claws seem far more useful, especially given the situation." And she reached out to him to help his grip. Her precisely beaded and embroidered sippers would have done her no good in a place like this and a dress would have simply gotten in the way.

Michael accepts her hand, and she's plenty of help in hauling him up onto the rock as well; for all his strength, he isn't all that heavy. He is pretty skinny!

"Oh! Boy, that was something!" He turns to look back down at the river. Terrible! Easing around, he hops from the rock back onto the shore proper, then turns to offer Rose a hand. "I'm really not dressed for this kind of thing. Probably should've known better than to mess with the weird board game." It had just been compelling. Of course he knows that compelling things are almost always bad...but that doesn't really help when they've got that kind of power already.

Rose doesn't want anyone getting hurt in that water, or worse, drowned. She began to tremble a little at the thought, all of those people doing their best to keep afloat in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, though she was doing her best to conceal it.

"Yes. It certainly was...something. I've never been in such rapid water before." And when he took her hand, he likely would be able to feel that she was trembling and her eyes were even wider than expected, given the circumstances. When he got her onto the shore, she sort of collapsed into sitting down in a heap. "I, um...yes. In the future, no more peculiar board games. They're more trouble than they're worth."

Michael's brow furrows as he takes in her condition. He may not be able to really tell when it's too cold for humans on his own, but he's learned to keep an eye out for the signs. Like shivering! Shivering's a big one!

"Are you cold?" he asks, lowering himself down to the ground next to her. It's muddy, but his clothes are already a huge mess; it doesn't matter now anyway. "I thought jungles were supposed to be hot?"

It's possible that he isn't always the best at picking up emotional cues.

She continues to shiver as she thinks back on everything, all of the terrible things she'd been through on the Titanic, the horror of being trapped in freezing cold water yet again, and her deep wish that she could see Jack again.

"I--I--yes? A--and no?" Rose's teeth were chattering from the force of everything. "Perhaps they are, but I'm terribly cold."

She's usually not shy about discussing her problems (at least not with Jack), but she doesn't know how to even begin to discuss the Titanic.

"Ah, okay. Here."

Michael leans over to place a hand on her shoulder and starts to radiate heat! He's like a walking space heater! "I can dry you off, if you want, scoot a little closer."

She wasn't sure what he had planned until he placed his hand on her shoulder and she felt something like a hot summer day in Philadelphia. She loved warm weather and it was like a balm to both her chill and her nerves. "Yes, please. I truly appreciate it." And she scooted a little closer.

"Sure." He starts radiating more heat - not from his hand, he doesn't want to burn her, but from the rest of him. It might take a minute. Michael sits back, leaning on his free arm and stretching his legs out.

"Man, I've used this power way more in the past couple years than I did for ages before," he says casually. "Hot and cold don't really matter for demons. Never really had to keep myself warm."

She was, quite frankly, amazed at the amount of heat he was releasing. Already, her hair didn't feel like such a soaking wet mess. Her cable-knit sweater and jeans would likely take a bit longer to feel normal.

"Then I'm glad you have the ability. It sounds as though you've been able to help a large amount of people with it. Unfortunately, we humans are all too fragile!" And she tried to laugh, but she was sure it sounded more like a hiccup.

"Man, you really are!" Michael laughs, an actual real laugh. "Like orchids with all these environmental requirements! Ah, but it's...it's no big deal."

It is, sort of. Now that he cares about humans, silly fragile little humans, the ease with which they break is worrying at best. But there's nothing to be done about it. Certainly, making them feel bad about it won't help.

"We might as well chill for a while, anyway. It's probably going to be hard to find the game board again."

"That's true. But orchids are rare and beautiful. Humans are all too common," she comments. She was including herself in the common part. There were great beauties and while her mother assured her she was one, it was harder to see herself in that light. Cal certainly saw her as arm candy.

Rose would absolutely put herself in the category of silly and easily broken. For all her reading, what had it actually accomplished? She'd wanted to go to university, but mother wouldn't hear of it, determining that she needed the Mrs. degree more than the B.A. degree. And Cal was perfect for the former.

"Oh, dear. Chill. Please tell me you were making a silly pun on purpose?" Because she knew the modern usage of chill, but she was chilled and it seemed funny that he'd refer to it from there and she was explaining the joke to herself.

Michael chuckles. "You got me." Puns are fun!

"Anyway, yeah, I guess you're pretty common. There's a lot of you." Way more humans, over time, than there's ever been immortals. They increase their numbers, after all! If anything, demons have winnowed down their population a little bit. "But you're fleeting, too. Every one of you's unique, and you die so fast. That's something, isn't it?" If, perhaps, a little inelegantly stated.

Rose released a burst of laughter, surprising even herself.

"So many. Fifteen hundred," she said by reflex. It was impossible to know how many men, women, and children went into the North Atlantic with no hope of rescue. Because only one lifeboat came and they were too late. It seemed like a nightmarishly large number, but she came from a time before World War I and definitely before World War II.

"Are we like candle flames? For those, too, are beautiful and unique and the don't last that long?" She'd heard that comparison before, that they were like candle flames. She'd also heard that they were like butterflies. She knew that both candle flames and butterflies were beautiful, but she hoped that humans counted for more in the grand scheme of things.

Michael looks faintly baffled. "It's like, a couple billion, isn't it?" He knows full well it is by the 2000s, at any rate, although he doesn't really remember what the Earth population was like in Rose's day. He hadn't been in charge of anything back then.

Regardless - he shrugs. "Sure, I guess? I like to think I'm better than the average demon at it, but poetic language is really a human thing." Frankly, he's never looked much at a candle flame in his entire life! "It's a little different from my end, of course. People die, but then they just come and chill with us. Not really the same thing - not right away, at least."

Rose blinked in surprise. "A couple billion? I suppose there could be so many on the entirety of Earth. It does make one feel rather insignificant in the universe." She remembers laying on that same blasted door as it floated in the ocean and she watched the stars. She'd never seen so many falling stars in her life, never dreamed it was possible.

"Really? It seems a little sad, to live without poetry." She couldn't write it worth a damn herself, but she appreciated those who could. "Of course, yes." It took her a moment to gather her courage to ask what she had to ask. "What's it like? On the other side. Is it...pleasant, at least?" She wanted Jack to be somewhere pleasant, at the very least.

"It's around seven billion by the 2020s," Michael confirms. "Big population boom over the past few centuries. But it's been in the billions for a while."

At her comment, he just shrugs. "Demons don't live a great life in general. By human standards, anyway. Not a ton going on there." He sighs. "Angels aren't all that different. I've been working on making the afterlife nicer - I think it's a lot better now, then it was. The Good Place is sectioned out into different neighborhoods. There's free travel between them, of course, but we do that so everyone can live in the kind of place they want to live."

"...seven billion people. That sounds impossible. Where do they all fit?" She'd seen some of the tenement buildings in Philadelphia and New York, thought they looked horrid with people stacked on top of each other like they were pieces of firewood.

"No room for friends or pastimes, or too much time that it leads to ennui instead? And I would like to think and hope for a better afterlife for everyone. But if there's a Good Place, does that mean there's a Bad Place, too?"

Michael shrugs. "I don't know. Asia? There's a lot of them there, that's a big place." Maybe in big apartment buildings too? He's not super sure; all the places on Earth he's actually been weren't that crowded.

He sighs and leans back. Talking about demon life is always a little weird now. He's not sure what the word for it would be - it's like nostalgia, but kinda unpleasant. "We never really did anything outside of work. No breaks, no hobbies - no friends, sure, but that's more because we're all assholes." He picks at some grass on the ground. "That was in the Bad Place. Demon HQ."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(CW: drowning, Titanic PTSD)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject