Story number 19 for the 100 SSSS-fic challenge, inspired by the word Gray, which was an awfully uninspiring word so I ended up just writing a little bit more about my SSSSona.
"Hey", Sara settled down next to one of the scientists. "We haven't really talked to each other. Why are you out here?"
The scientist looked at her, then returned to his book.
"I'm doing my job."
"Well, obviously. But couldn't you also have continued working in Mora?"
"I go where Direktör Borg asks me to go."
"So..." Sara tried another approach. "You've always been interested in the Silent World?"
The scientist passively aggressively turned to the next page of the book. Sara understood the meaning but ignored it.
"Anyway, I didn't really catch your name!"
"Of course you didn't."
The scientist got up, went back inside their truck-like tank. Sara picked up a blade of grass and put it between her thumbs, blowing through the improvised whistle. A sharp sound came from the grass and August rushed out.
"Vikander, what have I told you about unnecessary sounds?!"
"Are we back to using surnames?"
"Vikander..."
August's voice was threatening and Sara let out a sigh, let go of the grass.
"I apologise, Borg, I will not do it again."
"Good. Now, get back to work instead of disturbing everyone."
August went back inside and Sara stuck her tongue out after him.
"I know what you're doing!" he called.
She let out a sigh, got up and was about to head in, but landed on her arse in the grass again.
"I'm terrible sorry", a hand came into Sara's view, "I didn't look where I was going. Are you okay?"
"Yeah", Sara accepted the help, smiling at Janni. "You done with sciencying?"
"That's not a real word", Janni giggled. "Anyway, science is never actually done, there's always something new to discover."
"I know", Sara gesticulated towards the people in the tank, "but all those boring-pants are just so... so gray!"
"They can be a bit boring, yes. Want to help me? I'm studying some insects together with Sven, but he doesn't know the first thing about taking notes."
Sara lit up, hurried back inside the car together with Janni. Janni stopped her, tied her hair up and led her to the room next to their sleeping quarter.
"Here's Sven's study", she said as she opened the room.
It wasn't big, hardly enough room for three people, and Sara placed herself in the corner, grabbing pen and paper. Sven looked at her, nodded and turned back to the bugs infront of him. Janni settled down next to him, and he started talking about what he saw. Janni wrote stuff down, asked him to repeat when there was a word she wasn't familiar with, and Sara watched in silence as they worked. After a while Janni gestured for her to come closer and Sara peeked over her shoulder.
"Miss Vikander, nice seeing you in here", Sven said and grabbed a stick that laid on the side of the table. He carefully pushed the beetle onto the stick and held it so Sara could see it better. "Look, isn't it beautiful? Notice the legs, how it moves them when... ops..."
Sven quickly moved his hands, giving the beetle more room to walk around on the stick. Sara looked closely at it, trying not to shrug away as it moved towards her.
"See how colorful its elytra is? That's to scare off predators."
"Is it... dangerous?"
Sven shook his head.
"Not really. It can bite, look at its mandibles, but it's no danger to humans. Here, let me show you another one!"
Sven quickly put it back down into a transparent box, which he shoved to the end of the desk. Janni grabbed it and placed it on the shelf where it was supposed to be and Sven dove under the desk and reappeared with a much larger beetle.
"This is a Lucanus cervus. It's the biggest beetle we have in Sweden! At least according to records from before the Rash, but I am confident there might be new beetles out there, now that humans have left nature alone for so long."
"Beetles are immune, right?" Sven nodded. "Do we know why yet?"
"Not yet", Sven put the beetle down again and Sara let out a sigh of relief. "We'll be studying strings of the Rash on these beetles when we get back to Mora. I hope that will give us some more clues to it's nature."
"Do you specialize in beetles?"
Sven nodded.
"I've always enjoyed watching them, there was a lot of them around my parents' house when I grew up. I hold courses about beetles in the university normally."
The lights went out just as Sara was going to answer. The three of them crouched on the floor and Janni leaned closer to Sara.
"It's a beast."
"How do you... oh, mage-thing. I get it. Should we be...?"
"Yes, please."
Janni closed her eyes and Sara closed her mouth. Sven looked worriedly around and Sara patted his shoulder. Her eyes were already adapting to the darkness, but she was sure that Sven couldn't see that well. She wasn't sure about Janni, but since she was doing magethings in the other realm Sara didn't worry about it. The light returned after 15 minutes and they got up from the floor. Sara rushed outside, tried to spot any traces of the beast, but nothing.
"Vikander, if you don't have anything else to do than running around, maybe you could get started on preparing dinner."
Sara groaned at August's words, but nodded. She had been prepared to do whatever duties she was asked to as long as she could come along, and she would do that. She just wasn't very good at cooking.
"Make sure you do it right this time, we'll be heading out tomorrow and I need you fully functional."
Sara turned towards August.
"...We?"
"Yes, you'll be coming with me. We're going to collect some samples."
He returned into the car and Sara squeed quietly. She was going to go outside! Into the Silent World! She was actually going to see how it looked out there, away from civilisation. She started imagining the ruins they'd come across, how she'd handle the giant they'd obviously end up fighting against, how she'd save August from getting pulled under by a sjødraug.
Sara blushed, shooed all those thoughts away. They were silly and she wasn't a fighter anyway, and it was more likely that August would have to save her. Her blush intensified when she started thinking about him rescuing her from a bear beast. She quickly put up the roof over the kitchen area, pulled the stove out from the truck, put up a table to prepare the food on.
Karl came outside, waved to her, and she moved away from the table to give him room to work. Evert Borg had hired him from the cleansers, not to do any cleansing business though, but the cleanser captain had said he was good at all those important things that were needed to keep a group of people functioning, like dinner, dishes, laundry, cleaning. Sara ended up spending most of her time helping him, and he enjoyed telling her all about his work with the cleansers.
Truthfully, Karl wasn't that good at all those things. Sara noticed it the first day they worked together, and she figured the captain just wanted to get him out of the way. Karl often lost track of what he was doing, started doing something else in the middle of something or simply ended up too engrossed in the stories he was telling. Also truthfully, Sara didn't help much as she was just as good at getting distracted as Karl was.
The two of them worked perfectly together, except, of course, for the fact that there never was much of a result for their hard work.
This time Karl told Sara everything Emil had told him about the Silent World. Sara almost chopped off her fingers, too focused on the story and not focused enough on what she was doing. Karl told her about large, ruined cities, vast fields, and trolls and ghosts that no one could see. He told him about treasures hidden in old buildings and Sara started imagining what she would do if she and August came across an old library during the next day's sample gathering.
"I see the two of you are working hard."
Sara blushed when she heard August's voice behind her back and dropped knife and carrot onto the ground. August bent down and picked them up, placing himself next to her.
"Another story of the silent world? You shouldn't listen to Karl so much. We won't find any of those things out there."
"How do you know?"
"...Have you honestly already forgotten all the information we gave you before we left?"
"One can never be truly sure what they'll find out here, trust me, I've worked as a cleanser for 15 years, I should now."
"According to your captain you mostly had clean-up duty though", August answered and Karl got in a rush to stir the soup. "Anyway Sara, we're in the middle of a forest, there was no old civilisations around here even before the rash. Only thing we risk running into is a beast, but we should be alright as long as you don't make any sudden moves or high sounds. Think you can handle that?"
Sara nodded, her cheeks getting redder as she remembered her fantasies from just a while ago about them facing off against trolls. She was in no way a hero, and she would do her duty: help with whatever the scientists needed help with. And what August needed help with was collecting samples, so that's what she would do. Nothing more, nothing less.
August offered her the knife again, after having washed it off in water and she thanked him, continued cutting up vegetables for the soup. August grabbed the extra knife, helped them and she looked curiously at him.
"You're the boss, you shouldn't be doing these things!"
"I can't exactly trust the two of you to do it, can I?"
"Of course you can", Karl said, "it'll just take some time, nothing to worry about. We're doing great!"
"But we need the food today, not tomorrow. Don't worry, I've been lowest on the pecking order, I know how it is and what's required. I can make food."
They all fell silent, Sara cut up another carrot, Karl threw it into the soup and August added some dried meat to the mixture for extra energy. As Karl stirred the soup August and Sara put up tables for the scientists to sit by, put out bowls and cutlery for everyone. Soup got done and Karl carried it to the table, and August called for the scientists. Everyone settled down by the table, started eating. Janni, Sara and Karl sat together on one table, soon joined by Sven and the boring-pants Sara had tried to talk with earlier in the afternoon.
Mister Boring-Pants turned towards Sara, held out a hand and Sara took it, uncertain about what was going on.
"I apologise for earlier, I was reading up on vermins. My name is Lukas, I wanted to come along on this expedition to study other vermin than the rats we mostly see in Mora, and learn about the healthy and the unhealthy populations out here. And you don't need an introduction", he added as Sara opened her mouth. "You're the wild card Direktör Borg for some reason decided to bring along. How does it feel being out here?"
"Exciting. I've already learned so much and we've only been here for a week now!"
Something hit her in the back of her head and just after August settled down on the other side of the table.
"Not how to cook food though. It's a good thing you have Karl to teach you. I expect a better result for breakfast."
"Haha, yeah, I'll try!"
"Don't worry, Sara", Karl tried to cheer her up. "You should have seen my first time on dinner duty! Half of the cleansers ended up sick after that!"
"Only half?" Janni asked, but looked worriedly on her food.
"Yepp, the other half didn't have anything to eat that night because, and I quote, 'It looks like something you give to dogs'."
Janni pushed her bowl away and Sara patted her on the arm, before finishing her own bowl and made a move to grab Janni's bowl as well.
"You sure you don't want it? It tastes awesome!"
"I... I think I'll be alright."
"Suit yourself."
Sara grabbed the bowl, but August stopped her and gave the bowl to Janni instead.
"I promise it's nothing weird with it. Eat up, you need the energy. You've probably eaten weirder thing over in Finland anyway. Don't think I haven't heard about Mämmi!"
Janni muttered something about Mämmi being in a different league, but accepted the bowl and continued eating. Sven fell off his chair after leaning too far back to watch a beetle and Sara and Janni quickly got off their seats to help him back up, but he shooed them away.
"You'll scare it, get back to eating."
The two looked at each other, shrugged and settled down again, Janni keeping an eye on Sven while Sara started asking August about the next day's mission. August didn't share many details and instead asked Lukas about his work, leaving Sara to listen to more of Karl's stories about the adventures he had lived through during his years as a cleanser.
"You know he's exaggerating, right?" August asked as they finished dinner and Sara nodded.
"But I figured... some of it is probably true and it makes for terrific stories anyway!"
"Once an author, always an author?"
"I guess so", Sara smiled and gathered the dishes, putting them in the water. "There's not much time left for writing here, but when we get back I'm going to have ideas for at least 10 new books!"
August shook his head and went inside, leaving Sara and Karl to take care of the dishes. Janni came outside to help them after having helped Sven catch the beetle, name it and put it in the right place in his study. With the three of them working together the dishes was soon done. Sara yawned and stretched, looked at the sun that was still pretty high.
"Nothing's like a Swedish summer! It never gets dark!"
"It also means the beasts have more time to attack us", Janni said and ushered Sara and Karl inside. Karl said good night and went to his bunker, while Sara and Janni settled down with Lukas to play some cards. They hadn't played for long until Sara started yawning.
"I heard that, Vikander. Go to bed, we're leaving early tomorrow."
Sara rolled her eyes at August's words, but got up from the table and went to the room she shared with Janni and two other scientists. She yawned again, quickly changed out of her uniform and crawled down under the cover. She was asleep moments after her head hit the pillow.