sunburned | (no subject)

Entry tags:

helen

(no subject)

If it doubt, he draws. It's always been the way. He first learned as a Midshipman, hanging around the covert, drawing his fllows first and then, when he got up the nerve, the dragons themselves. He must have been a sight, growing out of his coats every third day, sitting huddled into corners with a sketchpad balanced across his skinny knees. He's got passing talent as an artist (even if nobody can read the labels but him). He wishes he had his own folio, the sketches of Temeraire and Iskierka, Emily Roland and the odd one of William Laurence in a moment of relaxation.

But new pages will do, he supposes. In a pinch.

It's more awkward with only one hand, but he manages to get the pad wedged in his lap, solid enough that the lines don't wobble. He's sitting in the shade, watching Toothless bask in the sun. He'll talk to Hiccup and make notes later but, for now, he draws.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Is that so?" asks Granby, both eyebrows slightly raised as he looks at her with interest. "That must have been...quite the experience."

I wasn't sure exactly what Granby's expression meant, but it wasn't disgust, so I could deal. Gender was weird at the best of times.

"It was," I agreed. "But not completely unmanageable, at least for me. Some people may have had problems, but I did all right."

"I'm glad," he says, sinking into his thoughts for a moment. "I can't imagine that. I wonder if I'd wake up looking like my sister." His mouth quirks into a smile. "There'd be worse things, I imagine."

John would actually probably be really cute as a woman, I thought, and kept my smirk mostly to myself. "There are worse things. I think personality changes are weirder. Or getting younger or older...turning into a child."

"That would be strange," he admits, frowning as he thinks about it. "Childhood was not so enchanting that I'd go through it again by choice. Especially short-handed."

It's a weak jest; he barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes at himself.

I snorted at the slight pun. "I wouldn't think it would be either," I agreed. "Or, god, being a teenager again, that would be an absolute nightmare. Feeling hormonal and edgy and grumpy all the time."

It was only after I said it that I realized he might not know what I meant by 'teenager'.

He didn't, at first, know what she meant, but he managed to figure it out. "I was a midshipman by the time I was fourteen," he says. "Too busy to feel such things."

But not too busy to feel anything; it had been around that time that he'd first started to figure out both who and what he was. And how he felt about that.

"I suppose so," I said. "Maybe we just have too much time on our hands, at that age, in my time. But I think some things are probably the same--no one ever really understands themselves, I don't think, until later. And some of us never are quite 100 percent on it."

I'd paid the price for my own identity crises, both in high school and later.

"Some days, I still don't think I truly understand myself," he says, ducking his head. "Different pieces fall into place."

I wondered why he was a little embarrassed, then wondered if patting his shoulder would be considered patronizing. I decided against doing it. "How old are you, if you don't mind my asking, John?"

"Thirty-one years of age," he says, shoving untidy hair back from his face. "Or thirty-two, I suppose, depending on if September's past."

"It's not," I said, then thought about it for a second, realizing. "That's about how old I am, too. Considering I got here when I was twenty eight, I'm starting to feel like I've suddenly ended up an adult."

It was starting to feel like time could be running out, though I was still feeling pretty much okay. The PT regimen I'd put myself on had helped, I thought.

"I feel like that often," he says, smiling and shaking his head. "And then I argue with Iskierka and she's so like a tiny child that I feel as old as Methuselah, all of a sudden."

"Arguing with Iskierka," I echoed, trying to reconcile 'tiny child' with 'potentially huge dragon' in my head and coming up with a blank. "What...forgive my ignorance, but what kinds of interaction do people in your home have with dragons?"

"Most people don't interact with them at all, not in England, at least," says Granby, ruefully. "The Corps is the exception. I've seen societies in Africa and the Americas integrate completely, but not us. Though if Temeraire will insist on piping up about rights every time he gets a chance..."

"If they're sentient beings," I said, "then it would only seem fair. Though I have to say that integrating a society that segregated sounds like the work of decades."

Not to mention that they weren't exactly good on human rights in John's own time, much less dragon ones. I didn't even remember when England had ended slavery, sometime around then?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only