A/N: Okay, to make up for the week-long wait, I bring you…almost 3000 words! (Yeah, yeah, there are some people out there who write chapters that are like… ten thousand words long…but at least pretend to be happy XD). Since people actually read these notes, I won't ramble or give you my life story; this time, I'm actually just going to shut up and let you read. Hurray for subtle plot and eye-clawing mass italics. Thanks to all the reviewers' feedback, and please keep telling me what you think. :D
Threshold.
--
Thump.
Chelsea groaned as her torso lurched against the hard surface of the floor. After gasping in shock, feeling projectiles of pain gunning through her body, she considered just laying there, flat on her stomach, going to sleep to find out whether or not she would wake up later.
But the little yellow chick clucked at her, taunted her. With one swift movement, the tiny beast leapt onto her head, flailing until her hair was strewn everywhere, and when she grabbed at it, it flung into the sky and out of her reach.
Thump.
She let out another frustrated groan and rolled onto her back.
"So…" Denny took his eyes off her for the first time, letting it wander the area beyond her shoulder. "What's up?"
She shrugged, nervous. What was she supposed to say to her opposite, this high-spirited, determined man? "I was just going back to the farm to water the plants." The boring, tedious truth maddened her.
"Oh." Just a simple, ineffectual noise. She almost expected him to bid her farewell, but of course, her second, more probable expectation was what occurred. "Would you mind if I came?"
"…No." But did he have to look at her like that?
"Got you!" Chelsea wasn't one to talk to herself, not even mutter or scheme under her breath, but she was so desperate to distract herself from the raw reality of everything that she found her voice rising from her like hot steam. She dived and clutched at what she thought was the feral baby bird, but her fingers met the invisible coals of the empty air.
Her slight back hit the wall of the sturdy chicken coop, which, ridiculously enough, was in better condition than her shoddy farmhouse. Her chest rose and fell as she glared at the chick from across the coop. It returned the same gesture.
They talked on the way back, Denny asking the questions, and Chelsea giving the answers, her face apprehensive, his looking calm.
"Do you like farming?" he asked colloquially after a while, glancing at her every now and then.
She wondered if she could lie. Better yet, she wondered if she could get away with lying at all. Those chocolate orbs in his skull seemed pretty all-seeing lately.
"No, I'm not very fond of it," she admitted plaintively.
"Yeah?" He peeked at her again, eternally curious. She hated the weak girl he probably saw, and her face must've shown it, since he looked quickly away. "So what were you, before you came here, if you don't mind me asking?"
She was quiet for a moment. Again, she was left to wonder what was going on through his mind, what he thought was going on in hers. Did he expect her to have been some brilliant scientist? An innovative artist, some bestselling novelist, somebody who could create a plane of indescribable beauty on a vacant white canvas? Did he think she would be some runway model, some film director, a NASCAR driver? Or perhaps his expectations for her were frivolous, which was more than likely.
"I've never really had a career…I'm a bit young for that. I mean, I've had some odd jobs, but they're mostly boring ones: babysitting, counterwork, nothing exciting…" She chewed on her bottom lip when he took longer than usual to reply.
"What did you want to be?" And his voice, his tone, it sounded like he already knew.
This time, she didn't hesitate to answer. "…You don't want to know."
"Actually, I do. You have no idea." She ascended her gaze and caught Denny staring at her again, his eyes bright, his lips stretched into a playful grin.
"It's not very exciting," she insisted.
"Chelsea, Chelsea. I'm a fisherman. Call someone else if you want to talk to someone exciting." Upon hearing this, she was troubled. She knew he had the willpower to be anything he wanted to be. For some reason, she was upset to hear him degrade himself like that…and she realized that was probably exactly what he was thinking about her.
"I actually wanted to be…well…a psychologist of sorts." She stared at her shuffling feet, making sure to avoid eye contact. "But later on, I realized I wasn't very good at discerning things, even if they were right in front of my face, much less the human mind. Sometimes I don't even know what's going on through my own head. But, I guess…I just wish…that I could understand everything a little more. To be able to know someone without really knowing them."
He was still abnormally quiet, so she tilted her chin to take a look at his face. It was not bemused or shocked, but contemplative. He was staring distantly at the dirt beneath his soles and she wondered briefly if he might trip from his lack of focus on the road.
"If it makes you feel any better, sometimes I wish I could understand everything a bit better, too," he finally spoke, and she felt like he was distancing them as he stepped a bit off centre. "When I feel certain things, I can't sort them into emotions or categories. There isn't just sad, mad, and happy. It makes me wonder if things were like this for a reason…if we couldn't handle knowing more words than we already do."
She shrugged at his modest epiphany, which was probably the worst response she could've given. But he remained faithfully, however distantly by her side, silent and thoughtful. She wondered reticently when this interview would be over.
At that instant, Denny cleared his throat, giving her one more gauging, perverse look. "So, a psychologist, huh?"
Before she could reply, his serious façade melted as his entire face lit up with an impish grin. "I was thinking runway model."
Chelsea didn't know what she did first, blush to herself - and the chick fluttering around, mocking her - or trip over her feet. Her breath caught as she landed on her hands and knees, hard enough to make them both turn red.
She let out a low, distressed moan. She was distracted for about five seconds before the foreboded blush crept back to her face. She remembered what she'd done the first time: let out soundless, disagreeing squeaks and then just shutting up altogether.
She looked down minutely at her body, repulsed. She was definitely too thin to be considered pretty, she thought. It might've been all those sleepless nights from shift working, or maybe it was genetics, or maybe she'd turned this slight when she arrived here, but she was just definitely too skinny. Too uncoordinated, too flimsy.
Her skin, which had never been too pale or tan to begin with, was losing some of its burnt-ness from neglecting her crops and spending the last eternity in the chicken coop.
Speaking of which…
She looked across the building at the yellow delinquent. It chirp-gawked at her, and her blood boiled hotly under her skin. "Look," she spat at long last, feeling delusional as she began to lecture the evil feathered friend. "I know you don't like me. And I don't like you either, okay? I didn't ask the old man to show up at my farm, talk some crap about how I hated my dumb job, and then give me a stupid bird: AKA, you. But the least you can do is cooperate with me here. I at least deserve some respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T…"
The longest silence ever breeched.
Chelsea's eyebrow twitched. "…Got it?"
The chick was calm for about a sixth of a second before it began squawking at her at the top of its tiny lungs, flailing around madly, making sure to rake its claws against Chelsea's hand in the process. Chelsea yelled out an immature curse word, threw a fifth of the birdfeed onto the middle of the floor, and stomped out of the coop, having appropriately decided to name her new farm-mate, 'Douche.'
--
"Stupid…dumb…bird…" Chelsea grumbled in an undertone as she strode down the path leading away from her farm, arms folded sulkily. "I haven't had a stupid…pet since my stupid…gerbil died…it was a class gerbil, too…stupid…I hate animals…and birds…I'm freaking allergic…"
A small rash had trickled down her forearm, but at least she wasn't having a sneeze attack. As long as she distanced herself from the larger livestock, she'd be okay…
Chelsesa rubbed her arm irritably when she suddenly noticed a building without a boarded-up door. Normally, in the city, the countryside, anywhere, a building wouldn't be very big of a deal, even one with the nicest, biggest door in the world. But on an abandoned, just recently re-inhabited island, it was. On an uneven rectangular board that slightly resembled a sign, etched into the wood, were the words…well, word: Shop.
Never very girly, and not a huge fan of shopping, she was still elated to see that the island was finally developing some kind of…civilization. She hurried up to the feeble wooden door, hesitated slightly, and then pushed it open.
"Welcome!"
She nearly fell over backward at the instantaneous greeting. Looking over, she could see a short man with ragged black hair behind the counter, looking rather exuberant at the very sight of her.
"Oh, Chelsea!" he cried unexpectedly, in a voice that could've hypothetically resembled a hug. "It's great to see you again! Come in! Have a look around!"
She nodded, feeling just a little bad for not remembering this man's name - or ever meeting him, at all. She had faint memories of her first week, Taro dragging her out of her dilapidated farm house to shake hands with newcomers, but all the introductions had been brief. After making up excuses about farmwork, she'd left shortly every time. Now she was beginning to regret it, wondering who else had arrived that she could've missed…
"Is that chocolate?" Her eyes widened when they located the sweet delicacy.
A neatly wrapped, brandless chocolate bar glowed from the simple panoply on the counter. It stood out among all the other incomprehendable items, and even if she'd never been an addict, she couldn't even describe how badly she craved for it right now.
"That'll be 100G!"
Her face fell drastically. The man, whose name she still couldn't remember, looked bemused. "You don't even have 100G…?" he questioned dubiously.
"Well…it's not like…I don't….no," she answered feebly.
She heard him mutter something in a voice that was no longer complacent and pleasant. Something along the lines of "I'll be in the back if you need me…and have money," as he lumbered behind a long, thick wall.
Chelsea sighed. She wondered, pettily, if anyone would notice if she took a chocolate bar. Just one little chocolate bar in that big stack that would be put to waste…
A light wind outside that shook the trees caused her to turn, her lips pulled down on the corners. There was no point in staying anymore, really. The last thing she needed was a heap of chocolate she couldn't eat and a manipulative storekeeper.
She had just reached the threshold when it caught her eye. A strange marking that couldn't possibly have resembled anything, carved lackadaisically into the doorframe. It looked kind of like a word, some deformed hyroglyphic…
Well, whatever, she mused, and left the store without another lingering thought in her mind.
If only she could brush anything off like that. Well, whatever. That would be damn nice.
She let her feet take her to the beach shack, just for something to do, and to her blatant annoyance, she found another odd marking inside. Perhaps it was vandalism, or an accidental, natural dent. She located the left-behind bed that was shoved against the wall on one side and sat down on it, surprised to find it oddly comfortable.
Compared to her itchy, straw-stuffed bed, though, anything else could be considered comfortable, really. She curled onto her side, a sudden drowsiness tugging at her eyelids and pulling them down, and she found that she didn't have the energy or will to get back up.
Not once did she notice the faded purple bandana strewn against the bedpost.
--
Denny was a bit of a drifter. Kind of like his brother Kai, or his cousin Ray. It wasn't that he wanted to pretend to be mysterious or romantic or however the hell some people liked to interpret it, but his attention simply could not be held for long. His main object was usually just to find a place with good fishing, and reasonable accommodations and friendly townsfolk were always a plus, too. The thing was, his expectations were never high; he simply wished to find a place he liked and stay there. Nothing was set in stone.
But all his life, he'd had trouble finding a sense of belonging. Even with his family; they'd all been either travelers or workaholics, so there was no point in really staying behind, trapped and bored in the unexciting suburbia. That had been his motto, at a time: there was no point to anything. The connotation wasn't meant to sound depressive, but rather, look-on-the-bright-side-ish. He liked the sense of freedom. He liked being allowed to do what he wanted.
And even though he'd thought he'd been hoping for it the whole time, he actually didn't really like the sense of attachment. When he'd arrived on the island for the first time on a meagre ship, he'd thought the beach was quite pretty, and that was it with his first impressions. When he'd gone exploring and foraging, he found that he liked the challenge of having no bridges to cross. He liked the frank wilderness and the whole fight-to-live mantra. And, lastly, he liked the people living here, with one obvious exceptions. There weren't many people to begin with, but he could see himself getting along with them. In time, the island would be filled with people, and he knew it.
"Hey, Denny! I caught one!"
Denny, broken free from his web of thoughts, looked over his tan shoulder at the child dancing around with his precious fishing rod. Well, it used to be of complete value to him. But now he just really…didn't care.
"Really? …Wow, nice…Nice! Damn - I mean, wow, Charlie! That's a good one!" Denny put his hands on his hips, half-admiring and half-resenting the large, flapping fish the boy had dragged onto the shore.
Mockingly, it flopped its silvery tail at him and splashed water onto his knees.
"…Denny?"
He'd only noticed now that he'd been staring blankly into the space, not even at the fish. "Oh, uh, yeah." He scratched the back of his neck absently. "Want me show you how to gut it, kid? Or is it too much for you to handle?"
"Bring it!" Charlie cried enthusiastically, and like Denny, turned his full attention back to the fish, beaming with pride.
"Uh…let me just go grab my stuff, 'kay? I'll be back in a minute." Breaking his gaze, he started for the beach shack. Fishing, for him, was another story. It was just a hobby, of the few hobbies he had, and it had merely grown on him. He felt no passion when he fished, no amazing sense of completion - he just liked it, and that was it. When he liked something, he tended to grow attached to it.
"Okay," he thought he heard the boy say as he sauntered off, and sighed as he arrived at the door.
Too attached. His liking to the island started to feel almost…possessive. Like it had some kind of grip on him. Regardless, if he had the choice to stay here, finally stay and not just go drifting off for the rest of his life, he…
His footfalls fell short and all movements ceased when he saw the tiny farm girl snoring softly in his bed, his bandana somehow having found a way around her waist, draping over her form like an old blanket.
A light chuckle left him as he tiptoed in, grabbed all the fishing gear he could get his hands on - the dullest blade, he checked - and then tiptoed out.
Nah, he definitely wouldn't be leaving for a while.
--
A/N: Haha, so Denny found out he has a roommate. Well, then. I'll leave the rest of the foreshadowing up to your lovely imaginations…