"You're one sick puppy, you know that?" Piper questioned, rolling her eyes in disgust and cringing.
Nora was currently very diligently stacking mole rat bones in an intricate, miniscule structure that resembled some sort of tower. To be more specific, mole rat toenails.
Much to Piper's aggravation, the vault-dweller wasn't listening to a word that was said to her and she simply squinted her eyes in the utmost concentration, placing one of the bones inside the hole on the very top.
"I think I've finally finished, Piper," Nora murmured, staring intently at her creation. Piper huffed a bit with a humorless chuckle.
"Good. Now I can get you out of creep city back into the real world." The reporter folded her arms over her chest, bringing her Nuka-Cola to her lips and taking a long swig.
"Is this the same world that's crawling with gnarled feral ghouls that would love nothing more than to maul you? Or bloodbugs just waiting to jab their sucker into you?" Nora questioned, smirking a bit at the younger girl's expense.
"Indeed, but at least it's standard and overall expected. Whatever you're doing right now certainly does not meet the qualifications for normal," Piper retorted with a huff. Nora suddenly put a hand over the journalist's mouth, successfully covering it.
Piper scowled and seriously considered licking the brunette's palm, but she refrained. The temptation was very much still there, though.
"Don't breathe too hard. You'll knock over my Eiffel Tower," Nora told her, giving her a wide-eyed expression of worry.
Piper scrunched her nose in confusion, narrowing her eyes as she pried the golden-tanned woman's hand from her mouth.
"Your awful what?" Piper asked quizzically, completely befuddled.
Nora looked blankly at her for a moment, her jaw slack. After only a moment, however, she started laughing at the reporter.
"Eiffel, Pipes, not awful," she corrected, still chuckling. Piper raised an eyebrow.
"And just what is that?" Piper questioned. Nora shook her head, taking in a deep breath in an attempt to calm her laughter.
"The Eiffel Tower was a grand structure from another country called France," Nora informed, a gentle smile playing on her lips. Piper nodded, looking at the odd structure composed entirely of claws.
"Another country… Kind of like the Capital Wasteland as opposed to the Commonwealth?"
"Sort of. Except that France and America were divided by a great ocean. The Atlantic Ocean, actually. The Eiffel Tower was designed by a company owned by Gustave Eiffel, hence its namesake. It was exactly one-thousand sixty-three feet to the very tip of the structure. I would have loved to have seen it."
"You seem to be a real expert on it," Piper complimented, seeing the grotesque, gory replicas in a completely different manner now that there was an explanation behind it.
"Yeah. It was a hobby I had. Studying great structures and making popsicle-stick models of them. At one point, my house was so filled with them that Nate insisted we sell some of them. Incredibly, I made quite a profit off of them. I never would've thought that they would've been such a highly desired item.
"That was the way people were back then, though. They really liked things that were hand-made. I guess it's because we all were so used to looking at robotic things and electronics. We wanted something different to look at," Nora shrugged a bit, caught up in her reminiscing as she absently stared at her little model.
Piper reached over and put her hand on her shoulder. This seemed to shake the older woman from her reverie and she looked up at Piper as if she had just remembered where she was.
"But enough about the past. Where do you suggest that we put this?" Nora inquired, obviously attempting to shake herself from the painfully bittersweet memories of the past.
Piper eyed her with a soft expression, smiling softly as she removed her hand from the blue-clad woman's shoulder. She thought silently for a moment, contemplating the question presented to her.
Suddenly, the best idea occurred to her.
"Y'know, I could use something to spruce up my office. An Awful Tower would be something interesting to look at," Piper joked, grinning over at Nora.
"Really?" The hopeful look on the vault-dweller's face was enough to melt the journalist's heart.
"Of course. Now, how are we going to move it?" Piper asked, cocking her head to an angle to try to better perceive how she might grab the thing.
Nora stroked her chin with a hand, pondering for a moment.
"Well… I really don't have a clue."