2022-08-14: Floating at Sunset
- Log: 2022-08-14: Floating at Sunset
- Cast: Sayla Mass, Leina Ashta
- Where: Villa Mass, AEU Spain
- OOC - IC Date: August 14, 0096
- Summary: Sayla and Leina spend a rare day off together. These small, precious moments are the ones most worth fighting for, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
It's a warm summer evening, and Doctor Mass is having one of those most rare of activities: A day off.
Well, 'day off'. It's Sayla, she's never not working. But she had a rare opening in her schedule, and this time it wasn't because of a sudden schedule change. Things were earnestly... quiet. BAU all over. Even things on the Shuffle side had been under control. She spent some time in town, did a little shopping, and took some time to enjoy the sun.
Even though it's coming up on 7PM, the sun is setting slowly, and the orange of the sky is... weirdly relaxing. One thing the colonies never could match was a real sunset. And right now, Sayla is enjoying it from the comfort of the pool, resting at the the edge, her back to the pool wall and letting herself float. She's wearing a green swimsuit, reminiscent of the one she had in the One Year War.
She hadn't even minded Kai taking those photos. It was a rare relaxing day, lying on a deck chair on mostly intact beach, chatting with Mirai and enjoying the sun.
And while she can never go back to those days, right now, she can enjoy something similar. She reaches for a water bottle on the pool's edge, and takes a sip.
This is the state Leina found Sayla in tonight. In a rare state of relaxation, or as close as Sayla gets.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
The two can just be so busy, that perhaps it's an unusual day that the two have an actual day off to spend with each other. Certainly they always make time for each other, but both their schedules are always so packed. Leina, perhaps just has so much going on in her life, despite not having a job.
She's involved in so much, one might wonder if she's trying to jam her life full of such things to make up for lost time. To live, in all the ways she almost didn't.
Earlier, Leina had warmed up in the pool with laps. It's her routine, she can't enter into the water without doing it, the practice keeps herself sharp. A few laps of freestyle. A few of butterfly. Those are her two main strokes after all.
Eventually though she winds down, drifting towards Sayla in a backfloat. She's in a navy blue one piece swimsuit today. It's always one pieces with her, Sayla knows why.
For the longest time, there's just silence now that she's not swimming her laps. Sayla will feel Leina's intent upon her even though she's not talking right now. She's just floating, eyes in the sky above. It's easy enough to understand. She loves these moments where the two are just together, enjoying each other's company, relaxing as much as they can.
Even when they're saying nothing at all.
Then slowly she turns her head, immersing her ear fully, as she looks at Sayla out of the corner of her eye and...
...just smiles at her. Because little things, moments like this with family?
They are her happiness.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
And the only reason Leina doesn't have a job is because she won't accept payment. Otherwise her volunteering with the foundation would count.
Sayla watched Leina swim from the sidelines, not wanting to get in her way. Sayla's own approach is much more recreational, she wouldn't be setting any records (especially not in this pool), but she's capable enough.
But it's the moment of calm and serenity that Leina's having right now that makes her happiest, and Leina's smile earns one from Sayla in return. Soft, gentle and genuine. There aren't many people around who've seen that smile. For once, Sayla is as unguarded as she gets.
"You know, back when you started hydrotherapy, I didn't think you'd turn into an aloja." Sayla pushes off the wall lightly, floating out towards Leina. She's still smiling. "Now you couldn't convince me you hadn't been swimming all your life. It's wonderful."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
She wouldn't dream of it. She already has more than she's ever needed when it comes to money.
Her smile splits into a grin as Sayla says that, lazily back stroking a few more paces, then turning herself upright to tread, her normally fluffy short brown hair clinging to her brow. "Only swimming I'd really done before then was in microgravity." And that's not nearly the same thing of course. Her eyes twinkle, "Shangri-la wasn't known for its community pools on our side of town."
It shows how far she's come in dealing with her past perhaps that she can talk about such things as her therapy, Shangri-la without spiking any negative feelings. Right now she even remembers a time when she tried to swim away from Glemy out into space to get back to Judau.
Despite the tense situation at the time, she can't help but think back on it in amusement, of her sheer inexperience with moving around like that.
"Kinda amazing isn't it? All these dimensions of myself I only learned about because you helped give me the opportunity to learn they existed."
Perhaps that's a part of why she throws herself into so much volunteer and charity work. Feeling like the Foundation work gives them opportunities not to just, survive, but to potentially thrive.
"Anyhow, you should be grateful for mi metamorfosis." Leina says with that grin, winking at her with a single green eye, "As now you have a living example of proper forma de natacion estilo libre."
Oh it's like that is it?
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
"...True. Kind of a hard sell outside of a resort colony in the best of cases." Most people don't need to swim in space, after all. A part of Sayla wants to rebut that comment... but it's true. It's an opportunity Leina wouldn't have had this otherwise...
But the comment on metamorphosis earns an indelicate snort from Sayla, pulling her out of her brief fall back into her thoughts. "I certainly do now. But I also remember a certain someone staying out way too long, and having to pull her out of the water and put her in front of the heater with a blanket." She smirks. "Persiguiendo mariposas, no?"
The teasing is friendly, and Sayla's tone is jovial. "Besides, humiliating an old lady in her own pool is beneath you, pollito." Sayla too is treading water now. "You don't want me to break a hip trying to keep up, do you?"
Yes, even Sayla Mass can be a brat when she wants to be.
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
Perhaps she even saw Sayla's tumble into her own thoughts, before bringing that out. She tends to be good at spotting those kinds of things and trying to tug her right back out of them.
"Hey!" She flusters reflexively, but then actually starts giggling, "Low blow, picking on the Colony bumpkin like that, Doctor Mass. Given how they set Shangri-la year round I barely realized hypothermia existed!"
As she just needles her a bit, she knows Sayla would never target that side of her.
"Learned my lesson though."
However she then scoffs at the idea of humiliating an old lady in her pool, much less her breaking a hip to keep up. "Say~la~" She sing songs at her, exasperated at the brattiness, "As if I'd ever accuse you of not being able to keep up with someone, least of all me. Not that I'm ruling out a broken hip as a half decent option for the next time you schedule another three months without a single day off."
As Leina gives her the biggest grin, performing a quick spin in place as she treads, "I'm about, fifty fifty on it - harder for you to call up Kevin and try to reverse a broken hip."
She must still be bitter the last time she called up Kevin and told him to cancel everything so she could take a break, only for it to get countermanded. She likes Kevin, but Roger never would have let Sayla do that.
"Though I'd have to keep a close eye on you. You'd probably do surgery on yourself just to escape back to work."
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
"That you did." Sayla sighs. "Weather is a real adjustment, isn't it? Even when I came back from Side 7 it took some getting used to again. Not as much as those who'd never been to Earth, though. Rain, snow..." Sayla looks actually wistful. "Remember the first time I took you to the Paris office in winter?" Fond memories...
"Leina Ashta, I refuse to let you be modest about your prowess in the pool. You'd lap me and you know it. Twice, probably." Sayla pauses, and shakes her head. "...Really, if you're going to try that gambit, you'd be better off getting Doctor Bidan in on it. The medical certificate would force a few days off, and it's the sort of bureaucratic error that happens all the time." Sayla seems awfully calm about giving Leina a weapon.
And that's because she knows if Leina uses it, it's serious.
Once again, she doesn't refute Leina. "One time and I'm tarred for life. And it was only minor surgery." She reaches for her water bottle again, swimming back a bit, and taking another mouthful, before kicking gently off the wall and switching to floating on her back as Leina was. Watching the sky as the first stars start to become just barely visible.
"...We need to make more time for nights like this."
<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.
"Yeah." Leina grins in actually good humor over this, "I remember coming down dressed in - well there was a layer involved." Not enough for real winter weather, much less snow though, "And you having to show me that yes, all that winter wardrobe you purchased for me was in fact, not only for voyages to the North Pole."
Leina actually gets this sentimental look in her eyes, "Paris while it was snowing was magical."
Leina then gives a long sigh Sayla's way about her hyping up her prowess, "I wouldn't if you'd just correct your form a little. Maybe practice with me a bit more often..."
Leina though has the biggest grin when she hands her a weapon. "I'll have to remember that, though maybe I'll call Doctor Yuiry instead it it comes to that." Leina's grin vanishes, as she gives Sayla a super serious look that is of course not serious at all, "She'll keep her cool better if someone just happened to interrogate her about the clerical error."
The grin returns, though Leina then, brattily drops her voice to a sotto voce in plain sight with a little side to side of her head for effect, 'It was only minor surgery.'
As Sayla kicks off the wall, Leina simply watches her for a moment with a smile. Then does the same with a kick off the wall, until she has just enough momentum to float parallel to Sayla.
"Yeah." One could think she's trying to crow over her acknowledgement of the fact she should take more breaks, that concession, but no. It's just this agreement, like this one isn't a competition, and the two are just in accord. "I'd love that." Even softer.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
"I was panicking that you'd catch a cold or get sick, but the worst you got were chapped lips. I'm sure I was the most overbearing woman in the world for a few days." She sighs. "You're right, though. It was breathtaking. And the best winter I'd had in a long time."
Sayla shoots Leina 'a look' which is mostly 'I see what you're doing'. "We'll see." This is textbook Sayla, though. She doesn't want to promise something she's not sure she can deliver.
Bringing 'Doctor Yuiry' into it, Sayla laughs. "Well now I know I did my part of raising you right." Leina's mimicry gets Sayla to roll her eyes, before smiling again.
"Okay." Sayla says, quiet herself. "I'll see what I can do."