Happy little trees

[callada]

characters: Rosinante, Mary, OTA
location: The Invincible
date/time: All of December
content: The Invincible is boarded up and barricaded still after the spirit attacks. When Mary woke up, Rosinante came up with a plan to make it a little more cheerful. Time to get creative everyone, let's paint!
warnings: n/a

Throughout the month of December, visitors to The Invincible see a scene - or many, really - unfold. Barricades and boarded windows, scratched walls and bare ceilings, all begin to take on color. Set out on top of a table near the bar are multiple buckets of paint in a variety of colors, brushes, glasses of water, and makeshift palettes from dinner plates and scrap wood.

The place could stand to be a little more lively, couldn't it? What will you paint?

Comments

Rosinante | OTA

[callada]

Early December

Rosinante is no artist. That quickly becomes apparent. But he also seemingly has no real shame about this. He's thrown himself into this project because he wants to help people feel better after the violence and death of the last few weeks. Wants Mary, especially, to smile.

He quickly ends up covered in paint and the floor around him has fallen victim to dropped buckets and brushes, splattered with colors. But he's got something he's working on, there - one of the windows, covered with planks, has a scene unfolding of a sunny blue sky and long, rolling green waves. It's simple, it's clumsy, but he's smiling as he focuses intently on laying down blobs and spires of white and brown. A ship? Probably.

Mid-December

There's a howling wind outside and a crash of thunder. Snow is falling heavily, and going outside doesn't seem like much fun, so Rosinante picks up a cup of coffee at the bar and goes to see what others, stuck indoors, are working on.

"Is that something from home?" he might ask, as he studies the work of art being developed before him.

Early Dec

[worthallthis]

After passing through the room and pausing to stare a little at the work of, er, art on the wall and Rosinante working on it, the Soldier disappears upstairs. They come back down with a sheet. "When you paint," they say without preamble, but with a hesitant kind of tone that says they're not scolding or judging, just offering to help, "you're supposed to put down a tarp. So you don't get paint all over the floor."

[callada]

"Hm?"

Well, that's sensible, he has to admit. So after he looks Soldat and the sheet up and down briefly, he gathers up his mess of a palette and brushes and steps back to make room.

"Didn't really think about it, but go ahead," he says. "Thanks."

[worthallthis]

Spreading it out neatly over the floor doesn't take long. The Soldier backs up to let Rosi pick up where he left off, the floor now protected from additional fumbles from the painter's brush or pain jars.

They don't back up all the way, though, lingering to watch a moment. "You look like you're. Enjoying yourself," they say thoughtfully.

[callada]

He steps forward onto the sheet with his painting supplies and resumes his work. "Suppose so," he says with a shrug, and a little smile down over his shoulder at the comment. "Never done much painting before."

But it's kind of relaxing if he just tells himself not to worry about how it turns out. He's not trying to be an artist, after all. He's content with his amateur little scene, water and sky, a ship and its many tall sails. It's a little sad, thinking of things like this that he might never see again in reality, but the memories are good ones.

[pearlstrings]

Bruce doesn't consider himself artistic. Creative perhaps, but he would stop short of the adjectives that denote expression or intuition. They're admirable qualities in others and they enrich the world they become part of- so perhaps this is the reason he allows himself to come into town. To linger outside the Invincible with a thermos of hot coffee and watch the painters at work. His own world feels very bleak right now; he could use a reminder of this kind of vibrancy.

Mary's presence is a given. He expects to see her small figure chatting as she works, moving from color to color. But he finds that he's surprised not just by the others who appear and join her- but by the things they paint. The pictures they make. Like this one: the first hints of billowing white sails, a cloudless sky, endless waves. There's a kind of naked optimism to the image, perhaps mirrored in its painter's expression.

"Is it a fantasy, or a memory?"

[callada]

"Little of both," Rosinante murmurs around his cigarette as he focuses on keeping his brushstroke straight as he pulls a line of dark brown paint through that blue sky, forming the ship's bow.

"It's not anything specific. Just the kind of thing I'd see at home all the time," he explains. "I guess some people here haven't even seen the ocean before."

He pauses and looks back at the source of the voice, though he stays sitting so as not to tower over him. Even seated, his head comes around shoulder height for a lot of these people. It strikes him as odd that this is one of the few people he doesn't see around town often. He's not sure he's even caught the guy's name before. Maybe one of those network lurkers, his voice almost sounds familiar. "I'm Rosinante," he says. "Not sure we've met."

[pearlstrings]

Bruce doesn't make a habit of coming into town, this is true. When he appears it's usually to gather supplies to take back to the museum or to visit the lakeside, where the new arrivals appear. He doesn't look for familiar faces so much as he goes to retrieve the crates that have landed, to carry them into town; there are far more helpful, personable types to serve as a welcoming committee.

But all of that aside, Rosinante is a difficult man to miss. He stands quite literally head and shoulders above most of the others, and he seems to be perpetually doing something.

"I don't think so. I'm Bruce." He doesn't take another step closer, but he doesn't move away either- choosing instead to remain where he is and continue looking at the painting. It strikes him only now how familiar the darkness has become. Could the sky ever be that blue? A little of both he'd said. Who is he to fault someone for looking back with rose-tinted glasses.

The thermos remains between his hands, a still point.
"Did you live in a harbor town?"

[callada]

"Yeah, I've lived in a few. My world's mostly water, though, so I've spent just as much time at sea as on land." More or less.

"You come here to paint, or just to look?" Nothing wrong with either one, of course. Any self-consciousness he might have had about his laughably poor artistic talent has faded now that he's settled into a sort of rhythm and has begun to actually enjoy himself.

Re: Rosinante | OTA

[knifecollecting]

[Jo is more used to pencil and paper, she isn't used to painting anything other than one color on walls.

Still, it's a nice thought.

She's claimed one of the boarded-up windows and has a limited palette of colors set up around her. It looks like she's still working on a sky at the moment, mostly painting with blue and white.]

Kind of. Or it feels like home.

[callada]

Big open sky? You really do have a lot of land around you where you're from.

[No sea, no mountains. Of course, she's just getting started, but he gets the implication. He folds his arms across his chest as he watches for a moment, then decides maybe it's not great to stand and stare while someone paints. It would make him uncomfortable.]

Want a drink while you work?

[knifecollecting]

[Jo doesn't seem bothered by it, even if he is.

At the question, she turns her attention back to him.]

Do you have a suggestion? What's your favorite? [What someone likes to drink can say a lot about them.]

[callada]

Whiskey, usually, but I'm not picky. I wouldn't say anything they have here is high-class alcohol. The red wine's all right also, I guess.

[Shrug. He's just not much of a connoisseur and goes for the things that resemble what he liked to drink at home.]

How about you, what do you usually go for?

Early December

[onlyeverdoubted]

Bodhi Rook rarely spends any time at the Invincible and, more significantly, doesn't have an artistic bone in his body. But he is very good at everyone's least favorite part of any job, logistics. He doesn't enjoy tedious little grunt tasks, but he knows they need doing and handling it makes him feel better. It's close enough to enjoyable.

And so he's stationed himself to clean brushes, wipe up any spills, tidy the supplies. It's dull, but it's something. And Rosinante's bit of floor is providing plenty to keep him busy. "Careful, you'll get some on the wall by accident." He has a gift for the deadpan.

[callada]

"That would be a shame, wouldn't it?" he remarks back, chuckling under his breath. He's always had a sarcastic streak of humor, himself. "Think of it this way, I'm keeping you from having to sit and stare at the snow."

He genuinely appreciates Bodhi's cleanup, of course. Last time he tried to clean his brushes himself, he got paint-dirtied water across the entire floor in seconds, went to get a mop, slipped on the puddle of his own making and bruised his tailbone. He's just lucky he didn't break a table in the process.

[onlyeverdoubted]

"Yeah, you're a vital part of the system," Bodhi agrees, glad to fall into banter. That's one thing that's still easy, this place and his current five-feet-from-everyone status notwithstanding. He smirks a bit as he dips down to clear a spatter off the floor before it sets.

Bucky/Soldat | OTA

[worthallthis]

The Soldier actually knows nothing at all about art. But between Mary and Rosinante, and possibly various other friends, they managed to get talked into it. So with a sheet on the floor and some paint, they're... well, they're trying, at least.

There's nothing really in their brain that they want to put into visual media; every time they consider it, all that comes to mind are guns, knives, and blood-- or a certain floppy-haired skinny kid that they don't think they could render with any accuracy. So instead, their attempt is not anything specific. Just bright colors that look nice together, in a kind of swoopy-stripy pattern with occasional darker mark here and there, almost like a music note without the little dot at the end.

It's not unattractive, exactly, but it's the opposite of skilled and goes slowly, in pieces, between patrols and meals and naps. People can swing by and watch them stare at it and chew on the end of a paintbrush between color changes and quietly fret that it's not really nice enough.

Mary | OTA

[withsadness]

1.

Totally in her element, Mary can near-constantly be found hard at work spreading art throughout the invincible. But she seems to have a vision for this, because she isn't just drawing willy-nilly pieces of artwork. Instead, she decorates with purpose. Trailing around a bucket of green paint, she's brushing on blades of grass all around the Invincible's baseboards. She doesn't want to leave a single place untouched, so it'll take awhile. The meticulousness only seems to have a calming effect on her, though, as she hums on and on through the task, only ever stopping when she reaches someone's feet.

"Excuse me, please!"

2.

Or, maybe you notice when she steps out, sneaking a can of paint. It looks like she has more places she wants to paint, but she's trying to be sneaky, skirting around the edge of the building with her lifted supply. Being a super secret ninja means not noticing when everyone else notices you, right?

1.

[worthallthis]

The Soldier steps gently out of her way, letting her paint along the floorboard where they'd been standing. "Grass?" they ask curiously, following her path back along the wall. A lot of grass, apparently.

At least it's more substantial than what Rosinante convinced the Soldier to try painting.

[withsadness]

"Uh-huh! I'm gonna make the Invincible look like a big grassy meadow. Wouldn't that be just lovely?" She stops her grass painting so she can look up from her crawling stance, beaming at Soldat. "I think everywhere should be filled with lots and lots of color."

[worthallthis]

Her smile gets an answering one, albeit much smaller. "Well. You've got a good start. Rosinante keeps trying to convince people to help, too." Gonna share that, just in case she wasn't aware of how invested her roommate is in making her happy with this.

2

[knifecollecting]

[Jo tends to notice people who are sneaking around. It's something that has helped in the past. Here it isn't as useful, but it still helps her see Mary before others might.]

Do you need help?

[withsadness]

[Mary jolts. Caught! She looks around quickly, but nobody else is around, so she waves Jo over.]

Can you keep a secret?

[knifecollecting]

[Jo instinctively ducks to Mary's level, smiling softly.]

I definitely can. What's up?

OTA

[knifecollecting]

Jo picks a now boarded-up window near the booth where she slept when she first arrived in Beacon.

She's much more accustomed to sketching with paper and pencil, but this seems like a worthwhile project. It's a way to brighten their lives here.

Jo picks her paint colors carefully and starts with a broad swath of blue sky, dotted with faint white clouds. Eventually, she'll add a plain of grass, perhaps some wildflowers. A small piece of home.

She works carefully and doesn't really bother anyone else in their work, but if someone approaches she turns to them with a curious look.