[She leans on him a little bit more as they cross the room to the rack of antlers. It's nice. He's nice. Sharp-edged and dangerous, but nice, and she thinks he could probably hurt her if he wanted to, but it doesn't seem like he wants to. So it's okay to let him hold her. To be a little tired.]
[Last time she was in this room like this, she was dying. Again. So much dying, it's so silly. She's not going to die anymore. That's part of what makes her so confident, is that she knows that she just won't do it.]
[They're close now, so she reaches up, lets her fingers hover half an inch from the nearest tine before pausing and looking at Robin as if she's just remembered she's forgotten something.]
Oh. Before we start, you should know - Abigail. It means "father's joy".
[And then she taps the tip of the tine like a princess pricking her finger on a spindle, and the room melts away around them, all Dali-clocks-in-the-desert fluidity, walls sliding down to nothing like molassese or clotted blood. What's revealed in the absence of the sterile kitchen is an autumn forest, beautiful in orange and red, and a girl - Abigail, naturally - with a rifle over her shoulder. Next to her - hovering just behind her, really - is the same balding man from the room, only he looks much more alive now, quietly pleased with her progress.]
[He says something to her that can't be heard, and she cocks the rifle and shoots, just one shot. An animal falls; turn and you'll see it's a deer, a doe, young and healthy and looking very surprised to be bleeding out.]
[The woods are crowded in on all sides, then, by racks of antlers, and when the clattering commotion of their approach clears, they've been confined by a dark log cabin, a hunting lodge. Here is the same girl and her father, as well as the same doe, dead now and laid out on the table. The girl has a knife in her hand, and she's scared. She doesn't want to cut open the doe's belly and let her guts spill out. But her father takes her face in his broad hands and hushes her:]
Use every part of the animal. Otherwise it's just murder.
[So she steels herself and turns and slits the doe's belly bottom to top, and once she's reached the top of her slice, the doe's head falls back and she isn't a doe anymore, she's a girl with dark hair and pale skin and blue eyes . . .]
[Blood washes over the scene in a rush, although it never touches the onlookers; when it slops away like the ebbing tide, it reveals a train. The girl is sitting across from her father. He looks eager; she looks nervous. When he spots his prey, he gives her a look. It's clear they've done this before. Reluctantly, with horror in her eyes, she stands and slips past him - but once she gets into the aisle she's all sunny shy smiles, a girl who's not used to traveling alone but determined to make friends all the same.]
[She walks down the aisle like she doesn't have a target in mind, and when she sees the other girl, the one who looks like her, with dark hair and pale skin and blue eyes, she leans in slightly and asks:]
Is this seat taken?
[. . . And the scene fades, leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen again, save for the three speechless father-phantoms. Abigail lowers her hand from the rack of antlers and sighs.]
no subject
[She leans on him a little bit more as they cross the room to the rack of antlers. It's nice. He's nice. Sharp-edged and dangerous, but nice, and she thinks he could probably hurt her if he wanted to, but it doesn't seem like he wants to. So it's okay to let him hold her. To be a little tired.]
[Last time she was in this room like this, she was dying. Again. So much dying, it's so silly. She's not going to die anymore. That's part of what makes her so confident, is that she knows that she just won't do it.]
[They're close now, so she reaches up, lets her fingers hover half an inch from the nearest tine before pausing and looking at Robin as if she's just remembered she's forgotten something.]
Oh. Before we start, you should know - Abigail. It means "father's joy".
[And then she taps the tip of the tine like a princess pricking her finger on a spindle, and the room melts away around them, all Dali-clocks-in-the-desert fluidity, walls sliding down to nothing like molassese or clotted blood. What's revealed in the absence of the sterile kitchen is an autumn forest, beautiful in orange and red, and a girl - Abigail, naturally - with a rifle over her shoulder. Next to her - hovering just behind her, really - is the same balding man from the room, only he looks much more alive now, quietly pleased with her progress.]
[He says something to her that can't be heard, and she cocks the rifle and shoots, just one shot. An animal falls; turn and you'll see it's a deer, a doe, young and healthy and looking very surprised to be bleeding out.]
[The woods are crowded in on all sides, then, by racks of antlers, and when the clattering commotion of their approach clears, they've been confined by a dark log cabin, a hunting lodge. Here is the same girl and her father, as well as the same doe, dead now and laid out on the table. The girl has a knife in her hand, and she's scared. She doesn't want to cut open the doe's belly and let her guts spill out. But her father takes her face in his broad hands and hushes her:]
Use every part of the animal. Otherwise it's just murder.
[So she steels herself and turns and slits the doe's belly bottom to top, and once she's reached the top of her slice, the doe's head falls back and she isn't a doe anymore, she's a girl with dark hair and pale skin and blue eyes . . .]
[Blood washes over the scene in a rush, although it never touches the onlookers; when it slops away like the ebbing tide, it reveals a train. The girl is sitting across from her father. He looks eager; she looks nervous. When he spots his prey, he gives her a look. It's clear they've done this before. Reluctantly, with horror in her eyes, she stands and slips past him - but once she gets into the aisle she's all sunny shy smiles, a girl who's not used to traveling alone but determined to make friends all the same.]
[She walks down the aisle like she doesn't have a target in mind, and when she sees the other girl, the one who looks like her, with dark hair and pale skin and blue eyes, she leans in slightly and asks:]
Is this seat taken?
[. . . And the scene fades, leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen again, save for the three speechless father-phantoms. Abigail lowers her hand from the rack of antlers and sighs.]
Gross.