demonicbeauty | Deer Country Inbox

He uh.

[Consider your words, Sam. Like he doesn't care about preserving Anakin's privacy. He cares about preserving his own credibility.]

He's a pretty famous figure back on Earth.

Edited 2021-09-16 02:14 (UTC)

Famous?

[This catches her off guard.]

I didn't realize...

It doesn't mean much, I'm just saying I don't trust him. And ignoring people who feel like you owe them something never pans out.

I'm not gonna make any decisions for you but I'm happy to talk to him man to man.

Thank you, Sam. I'll...I'll have to think about it.

[This is a lot. Her mother used to talk about being feuded over by snarly males, but this is an entirely different story.]

But, um, why don't you come around and get some fruit?

[He gives a little shrug and accepts her decision. After all, does he super duper want to get in a slap fight with Anakin Skywalker? No. Not really.]

Right.. the fruit. Yeah, I will. Are you up to anything now?

Nothing that can't wait.

The orchard is near the border of the Willful Machine. I've hung a red banner from the cinnamon tree, to help people find it.

[He smiles]

Right, well. I will head your way, then.

Ariadne decided to head outside to the orchard to wait for Sam. The things he was telling her were troubling, to say the least. But she wasn't sure she wanted to make the situation even more complicated than it already was. She felt for Anakin, she really did. His heart was no doubt in a great deal of pain. Although she'd never been in love, she had a sense of what it was like, from watching others. And she knew how fiercely it hurt to be apart from the person who completed you.

In theory, anyway.

Better to set all of that aside, she supposed. Focus on the things she could manage, the familiar.

Which happened to include her orchard.

Forever eager to please, she grabbed a ratty, old basket she'd picked up in town and started filling it with the best, ripest fruit she had on the low-hanging branches. By the time she picked up Sam's scent, she already had several lemons, pears, and nectarines ready for him. She raised her free hand, giving him a small wave and a very big smile. "Over here!"

[Sorry for the delay I was away with work!]

A friendly, familiar face was never a bad thing to see, either. Someone safe, (mostly), and trusted. Things towards the end of Deerington had been heavy and tense and violent, but sticking together had made existing just on the other side of bearable until they could all pick up the courage to try the door go on to the next great adventure. Whatever that meant.

Turned out it meant Trench, which, in the grand scheme of things, wasn't all that bad.

Sam hadn't discussed it with his brother, or anyone for that matter, but he was sure there was a blip in the middle of the transition that brought him back to his own world. Things were different for him now, more different than they should have been, but he wasn't sure if something being wrong with him was an issue, or if saying something would be the actual issue, so for now it was best to carry on like business as usual.

And while his fruit mission carried an ulterior motive, here he was all the same.

Once she was in sight, Sam smiled and held up a hand in greeting, sauntering up with a cocksure aura he very rarely (if ever) held before.

"Ariadne, look at you right at home."

[<3]

The strange way he was walking didn't escape Ariadne's attention. But she knew that some people had a rougher arrival to Trench than others. Maul had been covered in lacerations and barely coherent. So she supposed it might just be some kind of limp. And she let it go.

"As long as there are trees, I'm always at home," she said. Which was partly true. And easier to say than expressing how difficult it was to reconcile the sense of permanence she was feeling in Trench, compared to Deerington. It was both a relief and...not. A guilt she was wearing on her shoulders.

But one that didn't alter her feather-light gait.

She trotted over to Sam, giving him a quick, one-armed hug. She was careful not to touch his legs, in case it might exacerbate his limp. "It's good to see you, Sam."

"Good to see you, too," he answered and returned the hug. It was brief but that was fine. He was never a touchy person and, to be honest, most of his physical contact with women was unwanted or ended horribly.

He didn't seem too bothered by that now. Maybe New Sam could move on from all that business.

"I hope I didn't stress you out earlier," Sam says as the hug ends and they break back.

"That wasn't my intention. That guy just rubs me the wrong way."

"I'm not sure he would ever have occasion to rub you," she said, figuring even as she said it that it was clearly an expression. She'd already made a fool of herself several times over with Sam alone, so she decided to push past it as quickly as possible. "Don't worry about him."

Smooth recovery.

Which probably explained why she was very, very quick to hold up the basket, bumping it lightly against his chest. "I've started putting together an assortment for you. Varian and Fern seem to think that there's something special about the soil around the trees that's making them a little bit stronger than the native ones, but we haven't figured out what it is yet."

And 'we' was being generous. Ariadne knew when soil was good or bad. But for the life of her, she had no means to determine why.

"The fruit tastes normal, though. I don't think there's anything unusual about it."

Very smooth. And moved over so fast he didn't have a chance to react.

Sam took the basket and looked at the fruit for a moment, noting their color and textures. They looked normal enough to him but the thing about the soil was interesting and tied into a few theories he'd already started to form about the transition from Deerington to Trench.

"Maybe it's not the ground that's making them strong."

"What do you think it could be?" she asked, tilting her head to one angle like a bird that had spotted something glistening. "Some sort of lingering connection to Deerington?" There was no denying they were the same trees. Every knob and knot was exactly as she remembered them. And they had the same scent of wood and chlorophyll and ozone.

She walked over to her nectarine tree--she called it "Jane"--and touched the bark, as if she could somehow absorb the answer through her fingertips.

"I never entirely understood why we'd sometimes receive gifts in Deerington. Someone told me it was probably Julia's doing. But she's gone, isn't she?" A fact that Ariadne lamented. It felt wrong to sacrifice her. Ariadne had strongly been opposed, but then...no one listened to her much.

"Yeah," Sam replied to both questions at the same time and followed towards the tree by a few steps.

"I mean, it's weird, right? That some things from Deerington followed us here? That was a dream and this isn't as far as we know, but things from there keep showing up. Our cabin appeared, my brother's car and horse. Your trees are living things and they're real now."

Which, okay, saying it aloud sounded more stupid than he intended but it made his point either way. Things that were created in a dream- whilst real to them- were actually real here.

"That doesn't sound like agriculture to me, that sounds like magic. And by all accounts there isn't much farming going on around this place."

Just in Feed and even then it sounded kinda dire.

Ariadne felt a little offended on the trees' behalf. To suggest they weren't real! But she understood what Sam meant. Even still, she patted Jane's trunk, as if to comfort her. It was all right. She was as real as she wanted to be. As real as she felt.

"A community can't survive without agriculture," she said quietly, a little line forming between her eyes. "Not with this many people."

Actually, she still wasn't sure how many people there were in Trench. It was so hard to keep track of people, given the way the streets were arranged and how the homes had so little in the way of markings.

Still. It was a lot.

Certainly enough for Sam to have questions about how people sustained themselves.

He gave the tree a look, briefly wondering if it, sorry she, could hear or understand him. Honestly, if the answer was yes he wouldn't have been all that surprised. Weirded out, sure, but given everything that was happening why not. Yolo.

"No, they can't. Which is weird, too, so how are they doing it? And, get this, the city is called Trench right, but the rest of this.. place? This world? It's called Deer Country. That can't be a coincidence. But what's the connection between here and Deerington besides the presence of Pthumerians?"

She shook her head. Although she'd very much enjoyed what little schooling she'd gotten, scholarship had never exactly been Ariadne's area of expertise. She could count the stars and wish for wings, but that wasn't the same as understanding the night sky.

Fortunately, Sam was a lot smarter than she was. "If anyone can figure it out," she said, bolstered by confidence, "it'll be you. And maybe that nice librarian lady."

Ariadne didn't know Evelyn well. But they'd been stuck in a house together. That had a way of making you believe in someone.

She leaned against the trunk of the nectarine tree. "Have you...seen any actual deer?"

Evelyn wasn't a bad suggestion, actually. She was incredibly clever, had access to most written records...somehow, and could be a real tiger when presented with a mystery.

A real tiger in general, including between the sheets, but that was neither here nor there.

Sam made a mental note to check in with Evie later and shook his head no to the question.

"Not yet, but I'm betting they're around."

It gave him an idea, though.

"Makes you wonder if Julia was here all along. She was half Pthumerian. Maybe this was her home world, or at least her mother's."

"It's possible," she said. "But then again, I like to think that practically anything is possible."

It was Michael who'd pointed out to her that the magic of her orchard derived from Julia. And he'd had an almost haunted expression at the possibility that she was somehow still around. Vaguely, Ariadne wondered if it was awe or guilt. Or some combination of the two. It was always harder to judge someone's reactions on a little screen. She much preferred what was right in front of her, what she could see and touch and smell, as needed.

"I never liked the fact that everyone wanted to end her life," she said. "It just felt so...pointless, I guess. But we're survivors, Alastrians. And I like to believe that as long as you're alive, whatever sadness lives inside of you can somehow be healed. You can find a way to happiness."

Sam nodded a little bit, feigning sympathy. He knew he should feel for the girl but right now he just... didn't. He didn't feel anything, actually. At all. He was just compelled to try to carry on as he was before and that old Sam would have given a crap about Julia Sodder.

"Well. She was already dead. It would have been worse to keep her in limbo without peace, right? Where I come from that's how you get ghosts. The dangerous type who go on to kill people."

She ducked her head slightly. "I suppose." Truthfully, she didn't know much about ghosts, other than the kind that occasionally showed up in Deerington, and she was quite certain they were different from the kind that lurked in the sacred places back home in Valeria. "But I like to think that if we'd awakened her, she could have returned to some sort of life."

Call her optimistic.

"It may have all been for nothing, though." She gestured around, encompassing the whole of Trench and her trees, herself and Sam. "If she's here now, in one way or another." Ariadne shrugged. "Or maybe I'm just desperate to find some kind of meaning in all of this."

Sam was under the impression that Julia had been dead for quite some time but he didn't make a point to delve into it. Julia sodder was dead, end of story, and he didn't care either way.

But he considered Airy's words for a moment. Her plea for purpose. That, he understood just fine.

"Well. I guess all you can do is try to honor her memory by making the best of being here. This is our home now and I'm okay with that.. It's all thanks to her."

"Exactly!" She was so glad that he understood. A lot of other people gave her optimism a sideways look of scrutiny. But having someone see things her way was something of a relief. "We have to make the best of things. The alternative is just feeling useless and sad."

Two feelings that Ariadne absolutely abhorred.

"And we need time to take pleasure in the simple things." She patted Jane's trunk again. "Like fresh fruit. Or whisky. If you're Dean."

Sam snorted. He'd heard about that and figured Airy was probably scarred for life.

"Well, my brother is a simple man."

Was that a cheap shot? Yeah but who cares, it's funny.

"And it's pretty much a tool of the trade. Most hunters are high functioning alcoholics."

But skipping right on along without giving pause for her thoughts on the matter. It's something the old Sam would never had said aloud despite his own long standing concerns.

"Speaking of simple pleasures, did Dean ever show you how babies are made?"

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Action?

[ACTION] (But not the kind Sam wants...)

But what if it waaaas

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