among her own kind
Jan. 21st, 2013 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
she_sells_seashellsShell Bell finds Milliways once when she is eighteen. She has been there for two days now, setting up her sign ten minutes out of every waking hour, wiping down tables for her quarters in the staff area, eating buttery potatoes (she has been told that this is a complete nutrient package, for humans). Her wand is holding a bun of hair in place on the back of her head. Her shells are stashed safely in her room; she's budgeting carefully and she'll pay her tab when she leaves.
No one's talked to her due to the sign yet. They don't always. She sets it up anyway, like clockwork, so everyone gets the chance.
No one's talked to her due to the sign yet. They don't always. She sets it up anyway, like clockwork, so everyone gets the chance.
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Date: 2013-01-26 12:15 am (UTC)He hands one to Bell, explains its functions, collects Sherlock, and goes home.
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Date: 2013-01-26 12:21 am (UTC)Sherlock told her she didn't need to live on buttered potatoes anymore. She doesn't splurge ridiculously, but she eats two - then three as she becomes accustomed - meals a day, and after a couple of weeks, she adds a dessert. She keeps scrubbing tables, because otherwise she'd have to move to a regular room; it doesn't take up much of her day and she can do it while she's still groggy after waking up in the morning. She reads. She watches video of things. She records hundreds of conversations of various levels of interest. She sits by her sign ten minutes of every hour. And she collects things.
When she finally peels herself away, not daring to let herself fill out any more lest her parents notice the combination of age and weight gain before she can run off to "Atlantis" and stop worrying about them, it's been four and a half months Milliways time.
She scans her recorder back to re-listen to everything she told it the day before she found Milliways, so she won't make clumsy mistakes with words like "yesterday".
She buys a crate that looks like it could have fallen off a cruise ship. She fills it with canned goods that look like they could occupy such a crate. And she buys a little bottle of sand to sprinkle on it because she's not going to have a chance to conceal this item's origin at the actual beach.
She opens the door, and lugs the box after her into her bedroom.