71. [Action/Video] Backdated to Sunday afternoon.

[foolishwren]

<sub>[You know when you wake up and you feel like there's a leaden weight sitting on your chest, stopping you from moving? Most of the time when that happens, it's because of sleep paralysis. Somewhat less of the time, it's a close encounter of the third kind. ... This time, however, it's a very large Furret curled up neatly in the middle of Heather's chest, taking advantage of the fact that her trainer both produces heat and is stationary and comfortable, AND of the fact that there is currently a brief moment in which nobody is looking over in this direction to shoo her away.]

[... Except that Heather's not going to be stationary much longer.]

[The first thing that happens that disrupts the vacant, sleeping stupor of Heather's face is a wince and a scrunched nose, because fluffy Furret tails are not the best things to have brushing up against your nostrils when you're coming out of a deep sleep.]</sub>

Nhngngnh...

<sub>[Ffffh what was-- what. Oh, ow. Opening eyes that haven't seen light in a good seven days kind of hurts. And trying to talk through a throat that hasn't made a single noise kind of hurts too, which is why all that Heather manages at first is a sort of croak.]

[But that croak is enough to get SOMEBODY'S attention.]

[From the foot of the bed, Cujo snorts into wakefulness from where he's been faithfully sleeping on his trainer's ankles. With a deep wuff, he surges to his feet and joyfully clambers over the blanketed body, stepping on Arty and causing her to vacate her perch atop Heather's chest with an indignant hiss, until he's standing over her with a great big doggy smile and a paw on either side of her.]

[Heather squints up at him, scrunching up her face. On one hand, the sight of those floppy orange ears and big black nose is one for sore eyes, but on the other... oh god does she not want to see a dog right now after the kinds of dreams she'd been having...]

[Coughing and lifting her arms weakly, she tries to shove him away long enough for her to get her bearings.]</sub>

Cooj, gimme some spac-- acklPHTHG OFF.

_{[No force in this world or any other could stop Cujo from greeting his favorite human being's return to wakefulness with lots of licking. Startled into a slightly more awake state, Heather makes a still-sleepy noise of disgust and shoves feebly at the Growlithe, scooting away.]}

Dammit, mutt, I mean i--

_{[Turns out, trying to slip out of bed after not moving for a week? Hurts, too. WHOMP. Face, meet hotel room floor. And possibly part of Henry's sleeping bag.]}

[VIDEO]

_{[A few minutes later, presumably after proving sufficiently to her father that she's not DEAD, the feed clicks on, revealing a very, very bedraggled Heather who looks like she went a week WITHOUT sleeping instead of spending the whole time unconscious.]}

Mornin'.... what'd I miss?



_{[ooc: Because the nightmare threads will likely affect CR pretty strongly, I'll tag them as long as anybody wants/it takes them to be finished! I'm also fine with discussing their outcomes, though, if anyone needs a conclusion right away.]}

Comments

[foolishwren]

_{[..... STARE.]}




... Yeah, uh, actually, I was just referring to the concept of a chestburster, not actual aliens. If you don't know what a chestburster is, though, that's okay.

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

Like... Dolly Parton?

[foolishwren]

<sub>[....]






[What]




[It--]










[okay you know what]</sub>


.... No.

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

What...? Your face is doing this... I wasn't that far off, was I? I mean, she has an enormous chest. She probably has to have all of her shirts specially made so that they don't burst.

[Video]

[foolishwren]

As much as I can see your point, I was talking about parasitic life-forms, not giant bazongas.

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

But Dolly Parton has never had children...

[Video]

[foolishwren]

_{[Oh god what is even happening--]}

Would you quit talking about Dolly Parton?!

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. It's true that many females are insecure, but you're not finished growing, right? There's time yet. You don't need to be insecure.

[Video]

[foolishwren]

_{[This had to be a dream. There was no way she was actually having this conversation in real life with somebody.]}

Wh-- I'm not insecure. Dolly Parton's boobs are terrifying.

Why are we talking about Dolly Parton's boobs again?

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

Because of chestbursters...

Is there something wrong with them? You say that they're "terrifying"; the sheer size isn't enough to genuinely instill fear in someone, unless signs of fertility are in some way repugnant to you and amplification of those traits is emotionally overwhelming...

[Video]

[foolishwren]

No, they're just--


.....


<sub>[... Oh.]

[... Oh, god.]

[Heather goes silent for a moment, staring at the screen, but not at L. No, she's kind of... staring straight past him with this sort of... blank, wide-eyed Cupcake-Dog stare of horrible, dawning recognition.]

[That had... never... consciously occurred to her before...]</sub>

...

<sub>[On any other occasion such a realization might have been worthy of an internal shudder, but not much more... but right now... after those dreams...]

[Quite abruptly (and visibly paler), Heather literally DROPS the 'Gear and disappears from the screen in a rush. ... The sound of retching can be heard faintly a few seconds later.]</sub>

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

[Socially awkward, blunt, and weirdly insightful are a really, really bad combination. L winces slightly as she drops her pokegear, listening to what sounds like she's throwing up from the next room over. At the very least, gagging horribly...

He waits for a moment or two before getting bored and restless. He sets his pokegear aside, leaving the video function on, and glances around for something to do with his hands.

Ah. There are some old snack wrappers. He can arrange them in so many different ways. By alphabetical order of the first ingredient, by alphabetical order of the second ingredient... by alphabetical order of the third ingredient, thrilling! He becomes pretty happily engrossed in this, and Heather will return to someone who appears to have all but forgotten the subject matter of their conversation. Not that he has, but... oh man L looks like an idiot better than most idiots.]

[Video]

[foolishwren]

_{[Eventually, Heather returns. Under normal circumstances, she might have been her usual half-weirded-out, half-amused self at the sight of L doing his eccentric thing, but when she reappears on the camera today, she just looks... sort of green around the gills.]}

... Having fun?

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

[He glances up quickly, halfway through organizing the wrappers alphabetically by the second letter in their fifth ingredients.]

I was, or something like it, but you look terrible. About consistent with how you sounded, actually.

[Video]

[foolishwren]

_{[Oh ugh, he heard that...]}

Guess being asleep that long must've made my insides all squeamish.

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

[Yep, he did. It's very fortunate that L's not a sympathetic vomiter. He's... not particularly sympathetic in any capacity, actually.]

I actually think it had to do with Dolly Parton. The timing suggested that my hypothesis was not incorrect...

[Video]

[foolishwren]

If you say another word about Dolly Parton, I'm gonna hang up.

<sub>[Her tone is flat and matter-of-fact. And probably confirming his hypothesis even more. But she can't really bring herself to care. She hadn't even realized that WAS what was bothering her until he'd put it... in those terms.]

[And now she'd never be able to look at unrealistically-voluptuous celebrities the same way ever again.]</sub>

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

[He opens his mouth, like he's going to find a loophole in that and find a way to say something without really saying it, but he seems to think better of this. His mouth closes around his thumb, and he sucks on it loudly for a few long, uncomfortable seconds.]

You know, you might like snails. They're gastropods. They reproduce by hanging their penes from trees, (http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/File:Limax_Long_Penes.jpg) hypodermic injection, (http://rydberg.biology.colostate.edu/seminarPDFs/Angeloni_February_13.pdf) and sometimes with traumatic-sounding shooting darts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_dart).

They don't raise their young...

[Video]

[foolishwren]

_{[... All right, that was... disgusting, but a far better conversation topic as far as Heather's concerned. Snails? Cool. GIANT HUMAN BOOBS? ... NOT COOL.]}

... They seriously hang their dicks on trees?

That's pretty messed-up.

_{[Good strategy, L.]}

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

Dicks...?

[He echoes it, and it sounds laughably odd and awkward.]

No, their penes. Sperm is exchanged at the tips in such species, and then fertilization occurs when it is retracted into the snails' bodies.

[He actually sounds like it makes more sense to him than ANYTHING humans do, in his opinion.]

They get what they need, take it, and use it to make other snails. That's not messed-up.

[Video]

[foolishwren]

Same difference...

_{[Not really, but in any case, the topic's been successfully changed.]}

And okay, not 'messed-up'. Still weird, though.

Snails are crazy.

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

Weird for humans! For snails it's normal. Our mating process would be repulsive to them, if they possessed the necessary cognitive array and the sophistication to imagine it from a humans perspective, the way we're imagining it from theirs.

[Video]

[foolishwren]

I guess you got a point, there.

Still, though.

Nature is awfully weird.

[Video]

[dead-black-eyes.livejournal.com]

Only if you've spent your entire life in a shopping mall, which I know you haven't.

[Video]

[foolishwren]

Y'know, you can find things weird even without having been totally sheltered.