A Picnic in the Sun

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Alice Ripley

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Mar 29, 2009
100
Alice looked out to the water, considering. An all-too familiar pressure built at the thought of actually going out there. She took a long drought of the filtered water in her cup. No difference? She remembered the wave pool and felt she answered her own question.

"Y'know, I haven't done it once. Hmmm," she finished, glancing at Alex with her playful smile, laced with a mischievous hint. Alice absentmindedly resumed her sweep of her food, imagining her feet on the rough grip of the board, hanging onto a speeding island in a sea of doom. Even if she tried such a thing with a life-jacket on, there were definitely sharks and jellyfish, and they would say something like 'serves her right' or maybe something more poignant, like 'it suits a bird to drown, silly bird.' She almost shook her head. As long as she was above water, she had control. More ideas trickled to the fore of her attention. Her sand-covered toes wiggled with the torrent of fun thoughts.
 
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Alex Monroe

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Mar 25, 2009
257
“Haven’t done it once you say?” Alex said with a wide knowing grin on her face, “How about twice? Or three times hmmm?” She added with the joking tone of a country prosecutor who just got the defendant to admit their guilt on the stand. With that she shoved some of her food into her mouth and chewed on it with an ear to ear grin on her face. The fettuccine was okay, the cheese good, the chicken war, and the noodles were not stale. But there was something about the way the way it tasted wasn’t warm but it wasn’t cold, it just tasted like food cooked in a microwave and not in a proper kitchen. Her pallet had been spoiled by her mother and her grandmothers cooking, she concluded, nothing cooked at this school ever really tasted right to her.
 
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Alice Ripley

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Mar 29, 2009
100
"Welly, I almost did, in a way...without much of a board." She put the pasta down to her left, a few chilling shells left. Two hands around the cup of her water, she drank from it, washing the accidentially-rushed meal down. Hopefully, she thought, with all the spices as well. She put the cup down next to the remnants of her food and flopped backwards, her upper back finding the fine sand.

"Ooph, ouch." The umbrella still hid the glare of the sun where Alice lay, looking up at the thatch-appeal of the umbrella. She glanced up at Alex. A few strands of her hair at the back of her head moved in the very slight breeze. Looking at her in the steady sound and bright light coming up off the sand, Alice felt as though she were looking at Alex in a memory, or maybe like she were in a memory.

Down the beach to the left, Alice observed the condos bunched up along the beach, a woman having a conversation on a portable phone on a patio. Further down, the low sound of boat motors, the slight movements of small sails, the still hulls of houseboats and fishing boats. It all looked so expected, so normal, that Alice had to remind herself that deeper into the city and furthermore, into the school, there were technologies and feats that were anything but normal.

"Ah, it's so nice out here....Sometime, we should catch th'sunset and th'twilight, oh, and th'night too. It's just...nice out here."
 
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Alex Monroe

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Mar 25, 2009
257
“Oh?” She said cocking an eyebrow and watching Alice as she lay down. “Don’t think you’re going to get away with not telling me that story.” Alex added with a playful smile.

Taking a sip of her lemonade she realized the ice in it was almost completely melted now. Was it really that hot out right now? “Yeah,” Alex agreed as she looked around the beach it really was a really lovely place, and isolated from other people while not being too far from civilization. Alex could actually be alone with her thoughts out here. She regretted never coming here before now.

She was starting to regret a lot of things she had been doing the last couple of months. The walling herself off, the thorny personality, the driving people away. She’d been justifying the behavior with her powers, and her other conditions, that she couldn’t let anyone close to her. Her powers would hurt them, or by someone being near her it would be too much for her to take. But now with Alice she could see that was at least in some way over worrying.

“I bet it would be.” Alex finally added. “I’ve never seen it from here but I have watched it from up at one of the school. In the towers, everything looks so, golden...” She silently added the word cage. Like it or not and no matter how nice this place was and the company she kept, this place was still a prison for her.
 
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Alice Ripley

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Mar 29, 2009
100
"Golden," she said remotely.

Alice's mother told her that there was no convenient transport to the island, that it was sealed perfectly from the world at large. Alice had to find her way from the Midwest US all the way to the island from scrawled directions. Naturally, she would have chosen not to go, but the door of her home was closed firmly behind her. Her journey to the island made her fly for two days - one for the country, another for the Pacific.

She remembered how the water looked in the sunset. To keep from losing speed and hurting her neck, she had to look down on those waters and the occasional cloud for all those hours. She had been trying so hard to keep her flight that she never got to truly see the flowing surface of liquid gold reflecting the lowering sun for more than a moment before falling. From her height, she glimpsed the roundness of the Earth. It was a ball, a marble, of that flowing gold.

Alice sighed.

"Windsurfin' is just 'bout a sail on a board. If a person, or two had th'wind without a sail, they could just surf without a sail...maybe even without a board." Her head being behind Alex's back, Alice's insinuating smile could go unseen though her tone might not.
 
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Alex Monroe

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Mar 25, 2009
257
Alex nodded along to Alice’s explanation o f windsurfing. Why would someone without a board and why would two… Then Alex realized what Alice was implying. She tried to picture what Alex was implying, and none of the scenarios she was running in her head ended with her dignity intact. Most other ended with a briny wet mess.

“Oh?” She said turning her head to face Alice, her flying in her face as she did so. Tucking it behind her ear to get it out of her face and let her actually see Alice she regretted not tying her hair back as she normally did. But something told her that her hair would look the best free, and she wanted to look her best for Alice, but now it was just bothering her. She needs to stop listing to those instincts. What the heck does she know about this sort of thing anyways? She should really stop listening to those instincts in her head and why hasn’t she just cropped it all off anyways.

“And how exactly would they be able to do that?” Alex asked, playing dumb on the whole subject even thought she had a pretty decent idea. She was just hoping Alice’s explanation would make it sound at least in some way more appeasing to her.
 
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Alice Ripley

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Mar 29, 2009
100
"Well," she began, suddenly realizing that maybe the idea was uncalled for. Even if her idea worked, steering would be an issue, and even then, maintaining a consistent wing would...and then the idea came on cue, widening her grin.

"Say that, somehow, they had two simultaneous currents of air flowin' under an' over them in a wing-shape...an' those winds were going at over one-hundred, then they c'fly on th'surface of th'water, or...other places." Alice sat up to be closer to Alex, and got the partially-blinding treatment of her windswept hair. The waves took a breath in front of them.

Could it work? If she set the wind pattern right, her thoughts would be formulaic, easily directed...partitioned. It could mean that she could loan out her control of the wind, or it could mean a fall into the ocean, followed by desperate apologies.

"Say that...both of them c'do this, fly th'waters on their own?"
 
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Alex Monroe

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Mar 25, 2009
257
Alex again listened to Alice’s explanation sounded pretty much like basic aerodynamics to her. Yet it was decidedly impossible for those principles to work without with a human body. Unless you have Alice’s powers of course. Aerokinesis? Air-manipulation? Wind making? What exactly do you call what Alice does, she would have to remember to look that up and also remember that she is not insane for even having to look it up. Truly her life has taking a turn for the surreal in the last twelve months.

“Well it’s too bad only one of us can do that isn’t it?” Alex said, not really considering too bad. She had always hated flying but whatever part of her still had manly pride refused to let her acknowledge that. Or she was just afraid of disappointing Alice. She wasn’t sure.
 
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Alice Ripley

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Mar 29, 2009
100
There was a sort of sharpness in Alex's tone that made Alice wonder if there was something she was not thinking of. Perhaps she had been right about not bringing up flight. Now that she thought about it, Alex seemed to act differently whenever Alice brought it up.

She shook her head with childish exaggeration, neverminding her curiosity. "Nope, not true...I think..." She backed somewhat. "I think that maybe you can fly. Just an idea though..."
 
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Alex Monroe

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Mar 25, 2009
257
“Oh really?” Alex asked her intrest piqued as to why Alice would think that. “What makes you think that?”

True in theory with her telekinesis she should be able to lift herself off the ground she hadn’t had that much luck with actually doing it. She wasn’t sure if it was just she didn’t have the proper subtle control over her powers to pull it off or just her own fear of flying holding her back. Either way her own memories of face planting on the floor of the tower at school in front of Galen a week ago were still fresh in her mind.
 
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