cassandra

[point_b]

The Swan girls have their evaluation appointment. It is largely uneventful. Alli splits and merges under various inoffensive conditions; Bella teleports to various other evaluation stations around the country and to one in a military base on the other side of the world (the evaluators call ahead about this) without incident. They have already - well, Bella has already - determined all the interesting wrinkles of the Swan girls' powers, but it's nice to have them on paper. They sign up for the Junebugs - the evaluator sniffs and says that it's the Gemini Guard, have some respect if you're going to join them! - with Bella as a solo bonus, junior grade, stratum 3 (she gets a badge and dog tags and a lollipop) and Alli as her optional/emergency support, junior grade, stratum 4 (she gets dog tags and a lollipop but no badge).

The evaluative office is crowded. A bunch of twins got their bonuses over the weekend and piled up on the Monday appointment slots. There's a pair where one can apparently conjure objects and the other wield telekinesis over them, juggling. There's a cryokinetic and someone who seems to cling to arbitrary surfaces, the one making a little ice sculpture and the other sitting on the wall (Bella supposes he can probably cling to his brother's ice). There's a set of triplets who don't seem to be doing anything, so she can hazard no guess as to what their powers are. There's a girl weeping into her hands while her brother tries to soothe her; she's crying about fire, ash, devastation, the menace lurking under the ground, and Bella hopes that's an overreaction to some TV show. But considering where she is -

"Er, what's her bonus?" Bella asks the brother.

"Not sure," he says. "Besides really upsetting. I just got a luck tweak, far as we can tell, dice and stuff..."

"So she doesn't pyro or -?"

"No, no, she's not dangerous," he assures Bella. "Not so much as a wisp of smoke, I don't know what the problem is, bonuses are supposed to help."

"I hope the evaluators can figure it out," Bella says, disconcerted, and she and Alli go back to school.

Spanish class is the next one they can catch.

Comments

[sundayfish]

Charlie shrugs.

[kindestgarden]

"I'm - I think I'll go make brownies. Even if it's going to get hard to buy food the eggs will go off whether we hoard them or not," says Renée.

[you_miss_it]

"Ooo. Brownies! I love brownies, you're the best."

[kindestgarden]

"Thank you."

[alli_oop]

"At some point we probably have to start going to the nearest Gemini school, don't we? Would that be Port Angeles?"

[point_b]

"At some point. If they don't give us a-at least a week then - then I'm giving me a week, anyway, but at some point yeah."

[blink_and]

"I think they're going to give us more than a week," says Adana, softly. "If for no other reason than for the - people in school who lost family members."

[point_b]

"They'd better. I'm - Alli, twine me when brownies are ready, I'm going to go - for a - run. I've barely taken a step all week."

And she lets herself out the front door.

[blink_and]

"I'm going to go sleep. Is the couch fine? I don't - want to deal with setting up the air mattress."

[sundayfish]

"Couch is fine."

[blink_and]

"Thanks," she says.

And then she flops on the couch and sleeps, and tries very hard not to think about the people she couldn't save.

[alli_oop]

Alli goes up to her room.

[point_b]

Bella comes back before the brownies are out of the oven and flops into a chair, softly out of regard for Adana's snoozing.

[blink_and]

She is probably not going to wake up for a very long time. So it's okay.

[you_miss_it]

Savannah's up and about, though. She's not zipping around, though, she's a bit more sedate. She is looking at her sleeping twin, silently.

[point_b]

Brownies. The occupants of the house can between them easily eat the entire pan less one saved for Adana for later. Bella goes to sleep too after she's had hers.

There's a call to the house the next morning from the Seattle Gemini school - it turns out Port Angeles does not have its own. They talk to Charlie, who confirms their report from the Junebugs about the Sanders crashing with him, and say that school will go back in session after what would ordinarily be the Christmas vacation and not before. The kids are encouraged to study on their own until then. When school starts again all four of them will have medals from the Gemini Guard waiting for them and there's going to be some kind of ceremony about it.

Charlie writes down all of this information and leaves it by the phone for people to read at their convenience.

[you_miss_it]

Savannah is pretty damn pleased that they're getting medals. She thinks that they kind of deserve more, though. A medal's nice and all, but Adana - and possibly Bella, Savannah's not sure - nearly died. What's a hunk of metal in comparison to that?

(She wonders, if Adana had died, if Savannah's only consolation would be a hunk of metal. If so, she thinks she'd leave the country. And possibly throw herself into the ocean.)

[blink_and]

Adana is a bit more sedate. She doesn't feel anything in particular about the medal. Just - sorry that she didn't manage to save more.

(She's done math, over how many people she saved. It's somewhere near three million, she thinks. Probably more, she's rounding down.)

[point_b]

(Bella's done math, too, and her total's about half that, and she could have been faster -)

Forks is more crowded than usual. A lot of families have people of their acquaintance one way or another staying with them, who managed to drive or fly or already be out of the danger zone when the news came.

There's ash falling, but everyone here owns an umbrella already. People bring in their produce gardens early and learn to can and pickle things. The stores are picked over, but they're open, for now.

There's ash in the sky and the sun is blocked even more than usual and it snows gray snow.

Bella runs her errands in Canada sometimes. If it gets bad in Canada she'll do the grocery shopping in Bangladesh, whatever, they're going to be fine, but she could have been faster -