[ She notices his shoulder, remembers words circling back around a aspect of a job she finds ridiculous. Not sure if he can handle the stretching in yoga. Annie studies the small image of a man much larger than this phone through it's limited frame. She doesn't like this. Doesn't like the illusion of intimacy, the voyeurism video invites. Doesn't like losing another layer of protection against the shifting, changing factors of this world she's struggling to stay afloat in.
But she understands old injuries, even if none of her own stay. She understands bad shoulders, even if hers had been giant at the time, and healed as they must. Understands blindness, and how to fight on, regardless. Feels pretty blind now.
There's the dog. There's an offer. It's simpler than most the rest of things she's had arranged for herself. For once, she won't even need to eat anything. (Slurpees, ice cream, whatever the next thing is that someone decides she's as good as dead if she's never given it a try, without knowing that's the case no matter what she touches. As good as dead. As bad as alive.) ]
They shelter strays?
[ Animals, not even people? No, here, they probably do both. Here, they probably don't shove the refugees of lost lands into emptied warehouses, rationing out their bread day by day. Here they aren't just leaving the weak to die in the streets or fields. Or do they? She has a hard time imaging it's so clean as all that. She's seen the dirty alleys, the homeless faces, the thin sided cats and the rats they chased.
Yet this country shelters strays. If they're lucky. ]
"Cohabitation is possible if influence is exercised."
[ No comment. She finds herself almost smiling, a ridiculous urge - it's too true. Cohabitation is possible if influence is exercised. Influence and control. ]
I'd like that, I think.
[ What is fun? What's there to like? A funny furred animal that smells and moves and acts in unfamiliar ways; a man she knows better through his offers and words on this removed web of communications, crossed and sticky as any well-spun spider's, than in person; an honest sense of curiosity it takes her a moment to place. ]
If it's not an imposition.
[ One requirement. Have fun. Harder to do than it looks, like the gear she and the rest of those from her world strap themselves into to fight the impossible. People. It's always people fighting people. People devouring each other whole.
Even here, just much more politely. Only not now. She looks through the lens of the camera, head canting to the side, quiet, waiting. Not now. She hopes she's right about that. ]
no subject
But she understands old injuries, even if none of her own stay. She understands bad shoulders, even if hers had been giant at the time, and healed as they must. Understands blindness, and how to fight on, regardless. Feels pretty blind now.
There's the dog. There's an offer. It's simpler than most the rest of things she's had arranged for herself. For once, she won't even need to eat anything. (Slurpees, ice cream, whatever the next thing is that someone decides she's as good as dead if she's never given it a try, without knowing that's the case no matter what she touches. As good as dead. As bad as alive.) ]
They shelter strays?
[ Animals, not even people? No, here, they probably do both. Here, they probably don't shove the refugees of lost lands into emptied warehouses, rationing out their bread day by day. Here they aren't just leaving the weak to die in the streets or fields. Or do they? She has a hard time imaging it's so clean as all that. She's seen the dirty alleys, the homeless faces, the thin sided cats and the rats they chased.
Yet this country shelters strays. If they're lucky. ]
"Cohabitation is possible if influence is exercised."
[ No comment. She finds herself almost smiling, a ridiculous urge - it's too true. Cohabitation is possible if influence is exercised. Influence and control. ]
I'd like that, I think.
[ What is fun? What's there to like? A funny furred animal that smells and moves and acts in unfamiliar ways; a man she knows better through his offers and words on this removed web of communications, crossed and sticky as any well-spun spider's, than in person; an honest sense of curiosity it takes her a moment to place. ]
If it's not an imposition.
[ One requirement. Have fun. Harder to do than it looks, like the gear she and the rest of those from her world strap themselves into to fight the impossible. People. It's always people fighting people. People devouring each other whole.
Even here, just much more politely. Only not now. She looks through the lens of the camera, head canting to the side, quiet, waiting. Not now. She hopes she's right about that. ]