capsicum

[katrea]

Katie settles in pretty well into the house, and later, when a bed has been obtained, into Lizbeth's room. She wears Lizbeth's hand-me-downs to start, then gets her own clothes; she doesn't have strong opinions about what she should be wearing, but the sizing on Lizbeth's old things isn't really right, and there aren't all that many still lying around anyway.

She has inexplicably tidy handwriting - inexplicably has handwriting at all; inexplicably can spell fifteen words in twenty instead of zero - which she uses, rather a lot. She makes a list of things that are food and magnetizes it to the fridge for reference, adding to it when she locates more things that are food, and when she is trying to tackle complex books she takes notes on who all the characters are so she doesn't have to page backward to remind herself, and she discovers journaling, even though she doesn't have that many events to record.

One day, the event she has to record is: Chris says to morrow she wil go to the DMV and shud not have us ther becas it may take six ours. We wil be baybe sat. If I hav ben baybe sat be for I do not remembre it.

She is curious about the imminent babysitter, and is up bright and early on the day when same may be expected.

Comments

[queensidecastle]

Chris listens.

Katie does indeed not thump.

She listens to herself, to double-check, and verifies that the stethoscope does indeed transmit appropriate thumping.

"Huh," she says.

[katrea]

"I am alive anyway," Katie reminds her, "so it's okay."

[queensidecastle]

"...In a sense," she says, "yes."

[katrea]

"In a sense?"

[queensidecastle]

"It's good that you're alive. But something weird is clearly going on, and I don't know yet if it's an okay thing or not."

[katrea]

"...Am I sick?"

[queensidecastle]

"Probably not. I don't know of any way to be sick that involves having no heartbeat and being otherwise fine."

[katrea]

"Then what am I?"

[queensidecastle]

"That's a very good question and I wish I knew how to answer it."

[katrea]

"What is thumping for?"

[queensidecastle]

Well.

"Short version," says Chris, "when people breathe, we get oxygen from the air, which is something our bodies need to have all over the place in order to keep working, and we have blood to take the oxygen from the lungs all the way around to everywhere else, and the heart is the thing that pumps the blood to keep it going around, and the thumping is the sound it makes when it does that."

[katrea]

"I looked up blood in the dictionary. It wasn't very helpful."

[queensidecastle]

"What did it say?"

[katrea]

"It said it was a fluid in animals that does - things, but we aren't animals, are we?"

[queensidecastle]

"Some people don't like to think so, but we are the kinds of creatures that have blood. At least," she looks at Katie contemplatively, "the rest of us are. I'm getting less sure about you."

[katrea]

"How do we find out if I have it?"

[queensidecastle]

"There's ways," says Chris. "I'd consider these a sign." She shows Katie the blue veins on the insides of her wrists. "They are veins. They contain blood. It's red when it has oxygen in it, blue when it doesn't. Let's have a look at your arms and see if we can find any."

[katrea]

Katie holds out her arms.

They are the same color all over. There are no raised lines for blood to travel through.

[queensidecastle]

Chris inspects them.

"No veins," she concludes. "But they could still be there; I don't think everybody's veins are the same amount of visible. Other ways to tell... well, under normal conditions people's blood stays inside of them, but if something pokes a hole in our skin, we leak."

[katrea]

"Ew," says Katie. "Does it have to be a big hole?"

[queensidecastle]

"Nope. Tiny ones work just fine. Better, actually, because if we leak too much that is generally considered very bad for us."

[katrea]

"I want to know if I have blood. The hole goes away later? Right?"

[queensidecastle]

"On people with blood, it does. Usually pretty fast, if it's a small one."

[katrea]

"What about if you make holes in other kinds of alive things, though?"

[queensidecastle]

"In any kind I can think of, the hole goes away. Maybe not as fast in some cases. And some kinds of alive things are too small to poke holes in very easily, so I wouldn't know about those."