instar: (g ~ shark)
Isabella Marie Swan ӝ "Butterfly" ([personal profile] instar) wrote2013-09-05 11:32 am

the alien

There are no more five-person meetings at the Swan household. They're a circle: Bella-Andi-Robin-Ethan-Trouble-Bella again. They meet in twos, threes, pass around information, get it all down in Bella's cipher in Bella's notebooks. They have a list of members of the Sharing, mostly procured by Ethan and to a lesser extent Trouble, but no safe way to learn if these people's behavior has changed; they have seen no more aliens, observed no more disintegrations, caught no one ducking into anything that is an alien hideout.

The twins try to behave normally with their father or his pod person, whichever the person who calls them is, for a value of "normally" that involves adamantly continuing to want nothing to do with the Sharing.

And sometimes crying and refusing to tell Renée what's wrong.

School proceeds. No one's grades see more than a minor downturn as a result of all the alien business.

Andi and Robin play music. Andi's getting pretty good on the drums, although her teacher moves away and she has to hunt up another one, who she sticks with for four lessons before deciding to go self-taught.

Bella tightens up her cipher. It began as a letter substitution and since then has evolved to include plenty of personal shorthand - she turns the ratio of shorthand to straightforward letters up as far as she can and still read the thing herself. She abbreviates, she leaves out spaces, she names things in roundabout ways, she refers to things many notebooks ago that she can find easily that anyone else could spend hours hunting for, if she has to record names she finds ways to describe the spelling without ever placing all of the characters in sequence. Maybe the aliens have super-cryptanalysis and super-OCR and can eat her notebooks in one bite and know everything they know; but maybe not, and maybe if she's careful enough she'll look like she's writing her paranoid diary and not like she's taking notes on the quiet invasion.

Trouble comes over a lot. He stays over a lot. Renée has a quiet conversation about him with Bella, in which Bella is vague, pretends ignorance, suggests that maybe he just likes it here, maybe his folks are allergic to gluten and won't eat his baked goods? Renée leaves it alone.

May begins.
aeskhyne: (⑤ okay boys)

[personal profile] aeskhyne 2013-09-06 08:11 pm (UTC)(link)
"Could be useful to keep it even squished," says Trouble. "In case one of us wants to be a Yeerk sometime for some reason. Can you acquire from dead stuff? I already know you can acquire from blood..."
aeskhyne: (③ smile on my face)

[personal profile] aeskhyne 2013-09-06 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)
"Sure," says Trouble.
pandion: (pearls)

[personal profile] pandion 2013-09-06 08:15 pm (UTC)(link)
"Well, at least he can't sneak out at night, I'd wake up. I mean, he can't sneak out without us knowing, anyway. I don't know what we do if he's trying to leave and we don't want to let him."
pandion: (smooth)

[personal profile] pandion 2013-09-06 08:20 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yeah, I remember."
aeskhyne: (① loves to light the fuse)

[personal profile] aeskhyne 2013-09-06 08:22 pm (UTC)(link)
"Sounds like fun," says Trouble.
pandion: (Default)

[personal profile] pandion 2013-09-06 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)
"And the bear might be mad. But when you acquired me I was kind of - sedated? For a little while."
aeskhyne: (⑦ i'll make you see)

[personal profile] aeskhyne 2013-09-06 08:37 pm (UTC)(link)
"He did seem pretty on top of things. You know, up until—" He makes a vague gesture.
aeskhyne: (⑧ nightly in the attic)

[personal profile] aeskhyne 2013-09-06 08:40 pm (UTC)(link)
"Good point," says Trouble. "Where the hell do we put it?"
palmofyourhand: (⑤ from our victory)

[personal profile] palmofyourhand 2013-09-06 08:40 pm (UTC)(link)
"And what did you just write down?" says Ethan.
palmofyourhand: (④ in heaven hell or earth)

[personal profile] palmofyourhand 2013-09-06 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
"Lovely," Ethan remarks. "Shame I missed the show."
hold_infinity: (④ the greatest show)

[personal profile] hold_infinity 2013-09-06 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
"Smart," says Robin.
pandion: (pearls)

[personal profile] pandion 2013-09-06 08:53 pm (UTC)(link)
"Do you think people will notice if the critters go all floppy and sedated when we touch them?"
hold_infinity: (⑥ wanna be my string)

[personal profile] hold_infinity 2013-09-06 08:56 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm interested in that pigeons versus crows thing now," says Robin. "I think I'll look them up, if you don't mind."

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