windandstorm | Wandering

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Wandering

Welcome to downtown Atlanta. It is currently 95 degrees and sunny on this bright, beautiful, hot as hell afternoon, and that heat doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon, let alone by the end of the day. Which is probably at least five hours away anyway. It's summer, after all...

Despite the heat, Abe was grinning ear to ear. There's so much to do in a city, why shouldn't he be excited? Never mind he'd seen most of it before, that didn't matter when you took into account the amount of new attractions that could be around here somewhere if you just knew where to look. Somehow, he'd gotten his cousins to join him on this journey through the city, park to park, looking for things to do. He was glad for the company, but they could be a little more excited about this at least, couldn't they?

He turned to give them a mock-put-upon look, trying to get them to stop lagging behind. He then made a show of tapping his foot and waiting on them to catch up. One of them could see it fully well. The other would just have to pick up on the act from his very audible, very exaggerated sigh. The next park was only another block. Couldn't they go a little faster? They could stop then. Really. Ignoring he'd promised that the last two parks...

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"It's too hot to be outside," Markham said, still dragging his feet. It wasn't necessarily relevant to the come-on-let's-go attitude his cousin was giving off, but he had faith Abe would figure it out. Agreeing to go on a madcap adventure and being as enthused as Abe seemed to expect were two very different things. "You could just go on ahead."

"What are you sighing about?" asked Zachary with an almost-incredulous laugh. Much as he agreed toward the heat, he still seemed to be enjoying some of the run around. At least he had latched on to Markham for the day, instead of being directly dragged around by Abe. "We're the ones who should be sighing."

Abe rolled his eyes, but smiled at them nonetheless. He didn't dignify either of them with a response, other than to quit pretending to be aggravated until they caught up... ... but when they caught up, he may as well have been gone again, he was moving just that fast.

He had been right - this park did have something new going on. One of the usual performers had been replaced with a completely different crew, and this one was pretty good, if Abe had anything to say about it (ha ha). With an even bigger smile, he turned to hastily sign at Markham that he really was running off ahead this time, and rushed over to watch.

"He went ahead." It wasn't exactly a mutter, but at least it was quieter than when he had been talking at Abe. "Bet it would take him a while to notice if we left." He wasn't seriously considering it (okay, maybe a little), unless they were just stepping into a nearby storefront for a few minutes of a/c. And honestly, it wasn't so bad. That didn't mean he was going to let Abe talk him into it again anytime soon, and heaven forbid he admit to it, but there were definitely worse ways to spend a day.

A light thwap to the arm was Markham's reply. Also, hopefully enough to gather his attention. "Left for where?" he asked in amusement, assuming Markham would have turned to regard him.

The band playing onstage wasn't enough to keep one girl's complete attention. She was situated a little ways back on a park bench. A thick book of medical terms lay open on her lap. The most noticeable thing was that she hid beneath an umbrella— in the middle of summer, and in a park, no less. Her backpack, a binder, and a tall plastic cup of lemonade from a nearby convenience store took up the other half of the bench. She was dressed in as little as she could manage without coming off as provocative: a thick-strapped sky-blue tank top and denim shorts, with Birkenstocks.

Hidden in the grass by her feet were a pair of crutches. One of them happened to stick into the path more than the other, but so far she hadn't noticed.

Abe noticed. He especially noticed when his knees and hands hit the ground. Were he capable, he probably would have made a noise to accompany the fall, but he was glad he couldn't. The fall itself was embarrassing enough...

He sat back on his feet, brushing the dirt off of his hands, and sighed. He looked behind to see what he'd tripped over. A crutch? Unfortunate. He turned to who he assumed was the girl it belonged to, sitting on the bench, and gave her a sheepish, sort of apologetic smile.

He might not have been able to scream, but the colors and shape of someone crashing onto the pavement in front of her certainly caught her attention. She shoved her book aside and stood up, ignoring the funny way her right leg shook when she stood on it. It would pass.

"Oh, geez, I'm so sorry! Are you okay? Here, let me see." She pushed the crutches underneath the bench and out of the way, then knelt to make sure he hadn't broken anything. That meant reaching for the boy's hands to check them for scratches, regardless of how he felt about the subject.

She was kind of cute when she wasn't covered by an umbrella, with rosy cheeks and a more mature face to balance it out; her blonde hair was long and pulled back at the top, with the rest hanging loosely past her shoulders.

He didn't really know what to do with the sudden amount of girl in his personal space, reaching for his hands, so he just let her take them with no resistance. He did, however, shake his head, trying to reassure her that he didn't hurt himself too badly aside from some sidewalk-burn on his palms and probably some holes in his jeans. (But wasn't that still "in"? Whatever.)

He noticed the shaking a little before she'd knelt, but he couldn't exactly ask about that, now, could he? He just gave her a vaguely concerned look of his own... if she would even notice such a thing.

"Ice cream?" Markham shrugged, turning to see what Abe had gotten himself into. He cocked his head to the side when he saw him on the ground. "I think he fell. A little faster?" he asked before lengthening his stride (but not too much, and ready to slow back down if Zachary didn't speed up as well). He wasn't so much worried about the fall as he was about the girl who was with Abe, and he would feel much better about it all if he could get a closer view.

"He fell?" Zachary parroted uselessly, easily keeping pace with Markham. He had practice measuring Markham's different sort of strides, and this one wasn't particularly urgent so much as cautiously curious, so Zachary chose not to be alarmed by the news. "Hey, Abe!" he called ahead. "What are you doing?"

Edited 2010-08-27 02:13 (UTC)

She was a bit occupied with the boy in front of her, and too busy to notice his cousins running up. "You're not bleeding. That's pretty lucky." Something felt very off about him though, like something was missing... Or was it complete?

She didn't linger on the feeling because it dawned on her that he hadn't said a single thing. She met his eyes for a moment— too long— then let him go, moving to get up instead. She used the bench for support though not overmuch, simply a prop as she offered him her hand. "It was my fault you fell. Sorry again." At this point she wasn't sure he could hear or understand her, but that was okay.

He shook his head - there was no need for her to apologize. He signed Thank you (he found most people understood that one, even if they didn't know sign language at all), and smiled at her as he stood. He was concerned about her wobbling and needing support, but took her offered hand anyway, gratefully.

There was something lingering around, though - a feeling of something... siphoning. Destructive, but potentially not. It wasn't potent, just an inkling, but it was puzzling nonetheless. Was it her? Was it someone or something else around them? Maybe the other two would pick up on it, maybe they'd know better than he would...

He waved to Zachary and Markham, then gave them a thumbs-up before turning his attention back to the girl with a friendly smile and a nod.

"Now, now, Abe, use your words," Zachary teased, figuring Abe must have signed something or other, but spoke before Markham could translate. He had heard a girl speaking when they got closer, but couldn't quite tell if she was still there or not. That was fine with him, as long as she didn't stay entirely silent.

Oh. That was the sign language equivalent of "thank you", wasn't it? Watching TLC came in handy for that, at least. She gave him a nod and slipped back onto the bench.

It was only when the boy turned to gesture that he was okay to his ... friends? brothers? that she noticed them. They didn't look particularly pleased but she hoped it would pass, so she offered them a friendly little wave and a smile.

Abe huffed, and gave Zachary a very particular sign that wasn't exactly a part of American Sign Language, but... well, pretty universal. At least he sent it with a grin, right? He wondered just how Markham would translate that one.

Markham did look pretty unhappy, though. Abe tilted his head and gave him a questioning look. Was everything not okay?

Markham couldn't help a laugh at Abe's response. It seemed like everything was okay. Maybe. Enough to relax somewhat, anyway. "Not nice." He reached to tap Zachary's middle finger as an explanation, of sorts.

Zachary's brows furrowed, then the confusion cleared and he laughed, unintentionally ignoring the girl. "Love you too, bro. I guess that means your hard head saved you from the fall?"

She straightened a bit as they came into hearing range. They did look very much related, but she was quiet about that part. "Hi there. He's okay, no broken bones or anything. He just tripped." She tilted her head a bit. There was something between the other two that she was missing... Maybe one of them was disabled in some way?

Ah, well, it wasn't any of her business. She started putting things into her bag so that she could clear room on the bench for at least one of them. That would be the nice thing, right? However, the giant umbrella stayed propped up behind her, and so she sat perfectly underneath it so that the sun only touched her ankles.

The girl seemed... off, but Markham couldn't put his finger on why. Being Markham, of course, this meant he was staring, as if that would somehow give him more information. He forgot, sometimes, that just because everything was quiet on his end, it didn't mean he was excused from verbalizing.

To keep from being rude, he replied to the girl with an absent, "Yeah, hi."

More importantly, Zachary's brows furrowed in amused confusion. "The music's not even that good," he finally said, directing it to a nice patch of air. He honestly didn't know where Abe was standing at the moment, which meant he didn't know where to pretend to look. "Tripping over your own feet should be saved for special occasions, you know."

Life is a special enough occasion, he answered Zachary, And I'm not the clumsy one anyway.

Abe gave the girl a smile and slid into the cleared space on the bench. This was as good of a place as any to hang out, and he could get up and move closer if he really felt like it. But for now, he had the opportunity to make a new friend, and that was a higher priority for him.

He spelled his name for her, with a smile, and then pointed to her, asking for her name in return. If his brothers wanted to stand over there and be quiet, then good for them. He'd just have to pick up the slack.

She was aware she was being stared at, and her eyes met Markham's briefly. She blinked, and there might have been a little frown involved, but then her focus moved back to the boy at her side.

Judging by the way they all spoke to each other, the boy she'd tripped was at least mute. Not deaf, though. "A-B-E. Your name's Abe! I get it. I'm Rebecca." Her smile was bright, even as she hid in the shadows of the umbrella, and she gestured to his cousins. "Who are they?"

Markham repeated Abe's response to Zachary, forcing himself to watch his brother for a possible response instead of continuing to stare at the girl.

Snickering, Zachary replied to Abe, "And you're certainly not the elegant one." Not that he or Markham were, either, but that strayed into semantics, which he felt didn't have a place in his ribbing.

"They," he answered Rebecca, wondering if she realized they could hear/see what she was saying, "are his brothers. Name's Zachary, he's Markham. Nice to meet you."

Oh, great, Markham's tension was contagious. Not that Zachary was exactly tense, but there was still... something, there. Perhaps confusion or a measure of protectiveness covered by his usual sort of attitude.

Abe had been just about to tell her that, but when Zachary answered first, he shrugged with a smile and nodded. He then glanced at them and motioned for them to come on closer, with maybe a subtle hint of "Geez, you guys, she's not going to beat me down with one of those crutches, calm down." Sure, he still felt something a little off, but that wasn't going to stop him, why should it stop his brothers (if they even felt it)?

She gave a little shrug. "I was going to give him a chance to spell it out." Was that a hint of poor attitude she got from Zachary? She took it in stride. "Nice to meet you, too."

The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up now, and she wasn't sure it was the music anymore; slightly puzzled, she took a drink of her lemonade and glanced around at the crowd before returning to Abe.

"Did you come to see the band? I got here while they were setting up. I didn't think it was that big of a deal to see a band playing in a park, but there's a lot of people."

Markham moved a little closer, his focus widening to include the other people in the park. He still wasn't okay with the girl, but it wasn't worth starting a fight with Abe (at the moment), and he knew someone would get his attention if he needed to be paying attention to the conversation. If Abe hadn't been so obviously set on being open and friendly, he would have asked if he was the only one who thought there was something off, but for now he would wait and see if some kind of reason presented itself. For all he knew, it was just the heat messing with him — there was certainly enough of it to go around.

Zachary tugged Markham's arm, gently, then nudged it forward. Go closer? He didn't like speaking over the distance, as if there was some sort of wall between them.

"Usually you don't ask somebody else for someone's name," he replied to the girl. That was something of a sore spot for Zachary; being spoken about like he wasn't there, as if being unable to see meant he could no longer carry on a simple conversation. He wasn't particularly mad about it, hadn't been in a long time. He simply liked to nip that preconception in the bud when possible.

She looked from Markham to Zachary. He couldn't see the way her eyes narrowed, but there was a hint of a flat tone in her voice. "I wasn't trying to depersonalize you. You were standing over there and it looked like you were more interested in admonishing your brother than introducing yourselves properly." She dusted off her knees absentmindedly. "Maybe it's too much sun that's making everyone snippy, hm?"

Zachary blinked, her small outburst momentarily throwing him off. Then, he let the smile curve back onto his lips. Now that he was closer, thanks to Markham, it would hopefully be easier to smooth this out. He had never heard of too much sun making somebody snippy, except maybe when you were stranded in a desert, but he kept that particular comment to himself.

"You have to admit, admonishing him is pretty fun," he replied.

Abe made a childish mimicking face in Zachary's direction, then gave a little indignant huff. He was grinning nonetheless. Hopefully things would calm down and take a turn toward the civil soon. It seemed that way, at least.

He wasn't sure how much sign language Rebecca actually knew, so he took it easy. He pointed to Zachary, and covered his eyes. He then pointed to Markham, tapped his ear and shook his head. He shrugged a shoulder, waiting for her reaction. It was always interesting to see what people thought of three brothers with entirely different handicaps.

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