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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2016 15:03:30 GMT -5
 There was something poignant and evocative about the skeletal remains of the first spaceship that arrived on Petra Exterior. With her exposed beams reaching out towards the sky like weathered hands begging for mercy from her deceased creators a galaxy away, her bones were an eerie sight to behold. Having been gutted and stripped of her identity as a state-of-the-art transport, it was almost unsettling for Gareth to think of how the first settlers had carved into her as though she was a suckling pig. Years’ worth of research and development had gone into her creation and in an only a manner of days or weeks, the physical manifestation of man’s innovation to explore and discover was dismantled for survival. It was both disheartening and encouraging to see just how far self-preservation could push man to survive – even if it meant scavenging from an already plundered corpse.
His supplies had yet to arrive from Earth and with no news of when they would, Gareth had been scavenging for supplies to keep him and his idle mind occupied. The first wave of Earth’s refugees had made quick work with dismantling the spacecraft and had been relatively thorough in their foraging. They had salvaged whatever they thought would help them survive. From the smallest nut and bolt to the titanium aluminum bulkheads, Gareth would have commended them for their tenacity because he could only scavenge a few small items: a handful of screws, some wiring, a small circuit breaker, he had even managed to salvage a row of lithium ion batteries that powered the vacuum mechanism of the lavatory. Whether or not the batteries were still viable was something the Engineer would figure out later because he was currently engrossed with the task of reaching for a severed generator plug well above his head.
Hanging about five feet off the ground on one of the ship’s naked support beams, Gareth clutched at the weathered titanium tightly with his left hand and pigeon toed his feet on either side of the beam until they ached. He reached out for the bright red plug, his fingers trembling from the strain of being stretched out to their limit, and began to slow process of loosening the outer cap that secured the plug to its socket. Seconds to almost a full minute passed in silence as Gareth furrowed his brow in concentration and continued to work the cap, oblivious to how his left hand began to sweat under the strain of supporting his dangling weight and how his feet were slowly slipping. It was within the same moment of when Gareth felt the plastic cap fall into the palm of his hand that his mind also registered the sensation of falling. His descent back onto Petra Exterior’s surface was quick; a short drop and a sudden stop as he landed on his back with a thud that would have echoed throughout the spaceship had there been walls to keep the sound in. Instead, silence was quick to reclaim the area after the sound of his fall until a pained wheeze disturbed it again.
Gareth lay on the floor, momentarily stunned, before his face twisted in pain and another groan escaped him. His senses slowly returned to him and the Engineer slowly lifted his head to begin assessing the injuries he had obtained from his fall. Relief flooded Gareth as he watched his feet shift side to side and felt his toes move within his shoes before he glanced down at his chest where his right hand clutched the plug tightly. Pleased that his fall would not be for naught, his gaze traveled to his left hand that provoked a concerned frown as his mind registered the steady flow of red from his palm. Gareth quickly lowered his hand back to the ground to keep his blood from rolling down his forearm and staining the rolled sleeves of his shirt and let out a troubled sighed. He would need medical attention, stiches most likely, but it was a long walk from the outskirts of the Drop Zone back Exurbia where there was a makeshift hospital and at the moment, he couldn’t be troubled to stand. |
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Post by Riley Jones on Sept 16, 2016 20:33:13 GMT -5
The only reason that Riley had even left Exurbia and gone back to the drop point was because she was bored. Even with people milling about all over the two colonies there wasn't much for her to do. There were no shootings, stabbings, no car wrecks that produced mangled bodies and broken limbs. The only visitors she'd had were people complaining about issues that she couldn't help them with -- I have a headache. I'm nauseous. I have a rash that just won't go away. Sol is too bright, it hurts my eyes. Actually those people were the reason that she'd left Exurbia beacuse she just needed a moment's peace without someone bitching at her about some petty little problem that she didn't care anything about.
Several yards ahead of her loomed the remains of one of the ships, probably one of the first judging purely on just how many of the parts had been stripped from it. She paused long enough to light a cigarette -- her head lowered and her hands cupped around the end of it so the breeze wouldn't blow the flame of her lighter out because that would just be wasteful. When she looked back up she could see (thanks to the lack of walls) someone climbing in the ship. In just a few seconds she could imagine a dozen different possible scenarios of what would happen, and she stood there in silence, watching and waiting to see which one would come to pass. When he fell she scoffed and rolled her eyes. How surprising.
Riley heaved a sigh as she walked toward the structure and when she found the man he was still laying flat on his back. She stood looking down at him for a moment then looked up at where he'd been climbing. There was something up there, but she wasn't a tech guru, so she didn't know what it was, but whatever it was it had been important enough for him to climb up there and fall down trying to get it. "That was graceful." She commented offhandedly as her gaze fell back down to the man. Her eyes swept over him in a quick once-over-- his feet were moving, good. He was conscious, even better. He was bleeding...
She crouched next to him, grabbed the wrist of his bleeding hand, and held it up so she could look at it. "Hmph." She grunted and she took the cigarette from her lips with her free hand and tossed it to the side. Unfortunately for Gareth, Riley had left Exurbia in such a hurry that she hadn't grabbed any of her supplies, but..
"Take off your tie." She said when she noticed it.
"."
tagged: @gareth
notes: ty vetti
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2016 23:39:06 GMT -5
Gareth closed his eyes with a resigned sigh as he dropped his head back onto the floor with a soft thump and continued to lie limply on the floor. He almost resembled a corpse with how motionless his body was and the only thing that gave him away was the steady rise of his chest as he breathed. Waiting for the pain that radiated through his body to subside, Gareth quietly contemplated whether or not his life was in any immediate danger. It was a rather disconcerting fact that he was bleeding on what should have been a monument but after reviewing his vague memories from university about the human circulatory system, the academic concluded that there was no real risk of him dying. After all, in the words of Monty Python’s great Black Knight, it was just a flesh wound.
“That was graceful.”
A dark eyebrow arched up over the thick black rims of his glasses, expressing Gareth’s confusion about the sudden comment of how he had fallen. For a moment, he remained noticeably quiet as his brain processed the remark and searched for a hint of the stranger’s true meaning for it. Graceful? How was falling five feet onto his back graceful? If anything, his fall had been everything but graceful. Gareth opened a dark, hazel green eye slightly in order for him to steal a peek at the stranger and was mildly taken back at sight of how unnaturally orange her hair was. Overcoming his initial surprise, he searched the woman’s expression, searching for an answer to his unspoken question but found none. “There was nothing graceful about my fall.” Gareth finally replied, his voice flat and borderline inhospitable.
He opened his other eye and frowned slightly as he felt her wrap her fingers around his thin wrist and gingerly lift the injured limb back into the air. Instinctively, he tried to pull his wrist back, suspicious of why a stranger would suddenly touch him without permission, before he paused mid-pull as he noticed how she looked at the cut inquisitively. It was deep and bled slowly but steadily, a sign that his bleeding was venous and not arterial, and was just past a superficial wound. His eyes followed the half finished cigarette as she tossed it aside before commenting offhandedly, “How wasteful.” He propped himself up onto his right elbow, ignoring how his back ached and protested the move, before returning his attention to the woman holding onto his wrist.
“Are you… a doctor, ma’am?” Gareth asked quietly, his voice barely above a whisper as though he was afraid that if he spoke any louder, he would break her concentration. His lips turned down into a frown when she ordered him to remove his tie. “Why?” He asked, genuinely interested in hearing her explanation, before he obediently began tugging his tie free from his neck. “I’m not losing blood quickly. It’s not arterial. I don’t need a tourniquet.” |
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Post by Riley Jones on Sept 17, 2016 17:17:56 GMT -5
"There was nothing graceful about my fall."
Of course there wasn't anything graceful about it. Hadn't the guy ever heard of sarcasm? "Of course it wasn't." Riley replied. "If your were graceful or even remotely coordinated you'd have landed on your feet." She said, her head tilting as she looked down at the man. "You're lucky you didn't crack your head open, you know that? Didn't your mom ever tell you not to climb on shit?" Especially sharp, pointy, make-you-bleed, metal structures?
He tried to pull his hand away from her and Riley's grip on his wrist tightened so it would be harder for him. "Don't." She warned as she examined the palm of his hand. She didn't think it looked too bad, but she definitely needed to stop the bleeding... His comment about her cigarette made her finally tear her gaze away from his wound and look to his face. "Wasteful?" She asked, her brows arching. "This," She touched the tip of her index finger to the blood that coated his hand, looked at it, then showed it to Gareth. "This is wasteful." She said before wiping it off on the leg of her jeans.
"Heh." She scoffed at the question of if she was a doctor. "Not exactly, but I'm the closest thing you got on this planet right now, pal." Riley held her free hand out, palm up, when he asked why she wanted his tie. "Because I said so." Seriously, what was it with patients questioning her motives? Her next demand was right on the tip of her tongue -- give me the tie or I'll take it from you -- but when he finally did as she asked she smiled, though it was very obviously not genuine.
Her stance shifted so that she was sitting next to Gareth rather than crouching, which was the far more comfortable option, and she plucked the tie from his hand once he'd removed it. She, very quickly, began to wrap the material around his injured palm, but paused when he said that the bleeding hadn't been arterial. "Of course not." She said. "If it was you'd have painted the rafters a lovely shade of crimson." Once it was wrapped she pressed her thumbs against the cut in a continued effort to staunch the flow of blood. "But the blood flow still needs to stop."
"."
tagged: @name
notes: ---
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2016 14:34:45 GMT -5
Gareth inwardly winced at the mention of his mother and his eyes automatically began darting around the deconstructed ship in search for a familiar face. It was almost a trained response ever since he was a child to gauge his father’s reaction whenever someone mentioned his ever-absent parent and to respond accordingly although he, himself, had difficulty understanding and processing certain emotions. Over the years, Gareth had learned to recognize the pain that flashed through his father’s eyes and there was brief moment of relief when he could not find his father’s tired face nearby. He frowned again; the feeling of relief was fleeting and was replaced with an unfamiliar sensation of deep and resounding loneliness. “No,” Gareth responded monosyllabically, “My mother wasn’t much of the maternal type.”
He turned his head back towards the stranger and fixated his eyes on the junction where her neck connected to her shoulder. It was the closest he could bring himself to look directly at her before he furrowed his brow together in a mixture of disgust and disapproval as she waved a blood-smeared finger at him in almost a scolding manner. “No, it’s not.” The Engineer protested with a drawl, “We are on a previously uninhabited planet and have yet to establish one of the basic requirements for colonization. Losing a few ounces of blood is far from wasteful when our bodies are capable of replenishing it faster than we can grow crops.” Gareth ended his short tirade before his voice could take a frantic tenor from the thoughts that had plagued him since he left Earth.
The Engineer unconsciously shifted further away from the woman when she moved to sit down beside him. Her close proximity made his muscles tense in a flight-or-fight response but when she took his tie from him, Gareth submissively allowed her to tend to his wound. He watched as she wrapped the silk material around his palm and how the red material darkened further as it became saturated with his own blood. “In the long run,” Gareth murmured more to himself than to the medic as he became distracted by his thoughts. “Many of us will die from starvation and exposure before we die from blood loss.” As she worked to stop the bleeding, Gareth suddenly seem detached from his surroundings and he stared blankly at their joined hands. The gravity of the human race’s situation weighed heavily on his mind before he suddenly winced as a sharp pain ran up his arm from his hand. “Ow.” He said robotically with barely any trace of emotion. “That… hurts.”
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Post by Riley Jones on Oct 2, 2016 11:26:46 GMT -5
Riley's gaze rose to Gareth's palm to his face when he said that his mother hadn't been the motherly type. She very nearly snorted because her own mother hadn't been the mothering type and it was too weird that the first person she ran into on Petra Exterior was someone who had that in common with her. Someone else might have revealed as much to the man in an effort to make him feel just a little bit better, but Riley wasn't that nice. She'd left her past behind on Earth and had had no intention of dredging it back up once she got to PE. Gareth's admittance about his own mother had nudged that door open, but she wasn't going to open it any wider. "What a shame." She said with a shrug.
Sbe pressed her lips into a thin line as Gareth objected to her opiinion of his bleeding being wasteful. The man seemed to have an answer to everything and that annoyed her beyond belief. "That may be the case." She objected. "But then you could also pick up some weird alien bacteria that affects the way our bodies create blood." She raised an eyebrow and shrugged again as she pointed out what she felt was extremely obvious. "So yeah, bleeding is wasteful." And without a sterile way to conduct blood transfusions if it was needed or any way to store blood, for that matter, she would prefer it if everyone on Petra Exterior kept their blood inside of their veins and arteries.
Her attention had returned to Gareth's palm as she wrapped the tie around his wound, but she glanced back up as he said that many of them would die from starvation and exposure. That she did agree with, but she also thought blood loss was something that they all needed to be wary about. There were many creatures and obstacles on Petra Exterior for them to conquer and there would be a lot of opportunities for colonists to injure themselves gravely and bleed out. Then there were the Watchers, and some of them struck Riley as trigger happy morons, so there was also a good possibility that she'd end up with gunshot victims.
"It's not supposed to feel good." Riley snapped when he complained about his hand hurting. "Do you want stitches?" She pressed on. Personally, she thought just keeping his hand bandaged would be the better option over stitches. She felt that putting stitches in the palm of his hand would be extremely irritating, especially with the constant movement, but she would leave that decision up to him since he seemed to know everything.
"."
tagged: @name
notes: ---
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