notverywise | (no subject)

There are days when Jenny doesn't know how she ever managed to like it here. She'd say as much, anyway, though the logic still makes sense. (Of course she would have liked it. The island is exotic, beautiful, about as far from Twickenham as it's possible to get, and it isn't as if she came from a particularly good time.) It's just that, while there are times it's easier to ignore the size and limitations of this place in favor of focusing on the atmosphere, there are likewise times when the exact opposite is true, when everything feels as stifling as it did back home, when she was still just a schoolgirl, before everything turned on its head. Here as well, there's nowhere to go and nothing to do, and no way of trying to put back together the pieces of the life she left behind. In that way, it's worse than home.

Were it not for the fact that half the things on the island are apparently bloody magic (and she'll never understand that, she thinks, not in a million years, not even if it fascinated her initially), it might not be an issue at all. As it is, though, this particular day, the jukebox and bookshelf seem to both be conspiring against her, the former singing you've got me wrapped around your little finger at her as the latter is at once filled with innumerable copies of Jane Eyre upon her approach. It's more than she cares to deal with, more than she has the patience for.

She heads out of the Compound after that, in the hopes that some fresh air will do her good. Anything, really, to get away from the notion that something here knows her, knows about the life she hasn't seen fit to describe in detail to anyone. It isn't supposed to matter here, and yet it follows her around anyway; the best she can do is try to put some distance between it and herself. Not caring enough to walk all the way out to the beach, she seats herself instead on the Compound steps, concrete warm under her palms and the backs of her legs, head tipped back slightly and eyes half-closed as she draws in a deep breath. It's far better than being inside, but it leaves her distracted, so much that she almost doesn't notice someone walking up. "Hello," she says absently, when she finally registers movement, probably a few moments later than should otherwise be the case. She lowers her chin slightly, then, just a touch more serious. "I'm not in your way, am I?"

Threaded | Flat

"Not at all," Cameron says, though she is. It doesn't especially matter when he has nowhere to go, nowhere to be, a fact that still rankles, some time after his arrival. It isn't like he can't take a break, enjoy where he is when he's there; he's been on any number of vacations with his family to places equally as lovely, if more populated and better supplied. When he was so close to accomplishing so much, with a great deal more waiting in his future if he could just stick around to grab it, however, and on the heels of so many disappointments, to be in a place where he can neither seek retribution nor do anything to move forward is indescribably frustrating. That doesn't mean he has to take it out on her.

He has no desire to anyway. She looks so at ease. It's not an outward appearance he's sure he's managed yet, though he has, up until recently, gone through life looking perfectly in place virtually everywhere he goes. That self-assurance does little here, at least for him, and he can't help admiring — envying, at least — her calm. "If anything," he says, "I think I might be in yours."