Quote from Kaqurei on July 5, 2021, 11:27 am

"If that is what you want," Sabrina said. "Tell me about our quarry. What is she like? Why do you think she sent you that letter? What's her end goal, and, more pressingly, what is yours? Once we find her and you tell her she's an idiot, what then? How are you going to stop her?"

Quote from Indy on July 7, 2021, 10:36 pm

Jackie tilted her head and chewed at the corner of her lip.  It would have been easier if Sabrina asked her to perform a complex arithmetic operation than explain her sister in a few, concise words.  She rolled her shoulders and released the crick of tension that had built up in her neck.

"She sent me that letter because she's an idiot," Jackie sufficed simply, "Because she probably has a 20-step plan, but the last thing she accounted for was me. I think..."

The red-haired woman starred a while out the window before proceeding.  Trees were starting to recede.  Distantly, she wondered whether Sabrina drove anywhere with a purpose, or if they were just going aimlessly down the road. The flap of loose-hanging fabric on the ceiling dangled loosely with every bump.

"Did I ever tell you about what I was like when I was 16?" Jackie replied musingly, "I was probably what you'd have expected of me... in a car wreck every other week, starting bar-brawls just for the thrill of it, inciting international scandals like it was just another Tuesday. Me, I'm used to getting caught, getting kicked while I'm down, and picking myself back up so I can try again tomorrow.

Melinda, though... she'd never done anything messy even if it smacked her up the head.  She was tidy in everything she did, and if she ever did anything bad, she was smart enough to never get caught doing it. And that's the problem with people like that. Once they get the idea of doing something really stupid, to pick fights where they shouldn't.. they don't know how to get back up when they're smacked down".

Jackie exhaled, "I thinks he wants to protect me from whatever she is doing. I think she's in trouble.  I think if I don't get involved, she could get herself killed.  I don't want to stop her. I want to help her".

She glanced to Sabrina, seeing if she could catch her gaze from the hanging flap of fabric that nearly seperated them like a curtain, "The only thing I know is where she will be".

 

Quote from Kaqurei on August 29, 2021, 9:54 pm

Sabrina chuckled. It wasn't condescending, it wasn't dry, and it wasn't humor. A conversational chuckle, then? An interjection, perhaps? Something like that. She kept her eyes on the road and noted, "You describe yourself as chaos, and your sister as order. I've seen the former well enough for myself." A quick glance at Jackie, before her eyes returned to the road. "Don't take that the wrong way, though. I admire that in you. Your ability to get back up every time you're knocked down, that is. You do it without question. Like breathing. You descend to chaos like drawing the breath in, already with the expectation of getting knocked down so you can get up--letting the breath out. But that's the part I don't like. You fight like you're already defeated. That makes recovery easier. But it forbids the possibility of succeeding."

She paused a moment. A dimple appeared between her brows and her lips turned down a little at the corners. "What makes you so sure she's going to get caught this time, and that you know where to find her?"

Quote from Indy on August 29, 2021, 10:37 pm

Jackie gave a long weary sigh and a half-hearted shrug with a look on her face that said - what are you going to do?  Every scar on her body attested to the choices she had made in life, and one scar had always lead to the next.  There was an easy kind of symmetry to it all, tracing the story of her life just by the patterns on her skin. But maybe the first choice had been made so long ago, she couldn't remember the girl that had made them.

She took in a solid breath of air, pulling her fingertips away from the temptation of the curtain of fabric.  She wasn't interested in reflecting on the choices of the girl any longer.

"For your first question, it's a hunch," Jackie responded finally, "But asking for my help is a bad sign.  It means she's out of options...".

Her gaze lingered heavily on the road and smirked, "But in answer to your next question, that's easy.  Where did I make my biggest mark in this town? Melinda was pretty literal on that.  And she made it clear that if I failed to retrieve whatever it was by the 31st, she would be sure to collect it.  Whether she meant to or not, she gave me a date and place where she intends to be".

Quote from Kaqurei on September 4, 2021, 2:32 pm

Sabrina only nodded thoughtfully. The decision was made.

They rounded the bend. The skyline of Middle rest came into view...

Quote from Indy on September 15, 2021, 11:12 pm

"Stop the car," Jackie broke the spanning breadth of silence and tore her face away from the window.

She could recognize this road and patch of forest even half-asleep.  But there was something in the air too, a lingering memory of fire and twisted metal and pain that couldn't be forgotten.  Her entire body tensed and she gnarled her teeth together.  Jackie exhaled harshly.

The biggest mark she had ever made had been a literal one.  She glanced sidelong to the road, feeling the scar on the land before she saw it.  Imagining a thousand different images, of twisted cars and literal skeletons.  Yet curiously its presence was slight.  In the past several months, the greenery had begun to heal over the damage.  One would need to know where to look - the shattered glass of the windshield, the bits of debris that hadn't been worth the trouble to hall away.

"We're here," her voice was almost a whisper.

Quote from Kaqurei on September 16, 2021, 10:42 pm

Sabrina slowly eased on the brakes, coming to a gentle stop as she pulled to the side of the road. Tires crunching on gravel. The paved portion of this road was narrow. The shoulder sank and gave way to forest below.

Sabrina did not have to ask. She had not been there, but she recognized from Jackie's reaction and the subtle clues of the crash not so long ago what had happened here. Burning. Jackie's little fire ignited to a literal wildfire here. Down the shoulder and into the woods a ways, a chase had commenced. Sirens wailed and two women ran, ragged and bleeding, from the scene. Somewhere in those woods, along some creek or stream, a gunshot ripped through the trees like lightning and Officer Kimberly took her last breath.

How quaint that birds could still trill away their evening songs here, and crickets begin to chirp, as though none of it ever happened at all.

Quote from Indy on September 19, 2021, 7:52 pm

Her hands wouldn't move.  They gripped the side of the door until the pale white of her knuckles poked through her flesh, quivering.  She couldn't even lift her head anymore where Sabrina was standing, starring on the scene like an archeologist to some ancient tragedy.

She was stuck.  Trapped.  Every fiber in her being felt repulsed and sick at the realization.  In the same way how not even an hour ago in the safety deposit vault, all the walls had closed in around her and she couldn't breath because she couldn't find the way out.  Except this time, the only thing that she was trapped inside was herself.

Father stood outside it all, dangling the silver key loudly from outside of the box.  He laughed while she stayed inside the box, knowing how close her freedom was.  Except this time, the key was in her hands - but she couldn't open the box.  Not while he watched.. not while -

"Not this time," she clenched her teeth, swallowing the cold bile.

One by one Jackie cut the tension the tension that held her fingertips to the door, pulled back on the handle until it clicked ajar, and removed her hand like an injured broken thing.  She pushed the door,  mechanically arranged her feet just past the threshold of the car cabin, and steeled her eyes straight ahead towards Sabrina.

She could still smell the ash in the air, though the greenery had engulfed most of the damage.  She could still hear the twisting metal, the little bit of gasoline that had been used to ignite it all.  And she could see the picture they'd used in Kimberly's obituary in the newspaper.

One foot touched the ground.   Then the other foot - she slowly stood, slightly hunched. She could do this.

And she could be sick on the side of the road, too.  Suddenly she was on all fours, twigs and stones cutting into her knees as her own stomach turned traitor to her conviction.

Quote from Kaqurei on October 1, 2021, 9:08 pm

Sabrina watched, impassive, as usual. She was experiencing a similar churning in her gut, but for entirely different reasons. She'd known better than to get takeout at some burger place.

Physical discomfort. Emotional comrade. Of course the combination of the two would add up to a wall-like Sabrina. So she watched, and offered nothing to alleviate Jackie's suffering, except, perhaps, for the small mercy of averting her gaze after a moment to peer into the woods.

"I wasn't there that night," she mused. "Maybe I should have been. Maybe things would have been different. Maybe things would have been better."

A pause.

Then she looked at Jackie again and said pointedly, "Maybe they would have been worse. Can you not see that, Jackie? Maybe is a slippery slope. There are too many could-haves and would-haves. Focus on that and you'll go mad. The past cannot be changed. But you can learn from it. And for goodness sake, put it behind you where it belongs. You didn't fire the gun, and you didn't push Kimberly in front of it. She made that choice. She made a lot of choices that led to that night, same as you. Maybe she wouldn't have been out that night if not for the havoc you caused. Maybe, maybe, maybe. If the butterfly takes responsibility for every tsunami in China, she'll never fly again, will she? Get up. We've got to find your sister."