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Post by Thoroughbred on Dec 3, 2011 18:23:37 GMT -5
Summmer carried her newly-purchased, small christmas tree into her dorm room. I hope Cara likes it - oh well, I'm not going out to buy a new tree, she thought. Summer wanted to be a little more festive this year - holiday decorations were cheery and fun. She also carried in two small boxes of blue ornaments. They were spherical and different shades of blue. Some of them were sparkly. Summer set strands of bright white lights on the ground next to the 3 1/2 foot tree. She planned on putting some of the lights on the walls of the room. I'll wait for Cara to come back and we can decorate the tree together, she thought.
Summer also had bought some rubbery snowflake window clings - they were self-adhesive. She wasn't sure if anyone would notice them, but she stuck them to the dorm room's windows anyways.
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Post by Cara-Jean Kitchi on Dec 4, 2011 1:16:14 GMT -5
Cara walked into the dorm room, the tracksuit jacket was open to reveal the clean leotard she was wearing underneath, her hair damp from the shower she'd had before returning from the gym. In her hand she held her gym bag with a towel balanced over the top of it and a water bottle sticking out from the unzipped end.
Her eyebrows rose when she spotted the tree and rose further when she noticed the window clings. It took a couple of minutes before realization dawned on her face, of course it was coming up to Christmas! "Pretty tree." She finally said.
Blowing out a breath, she walked across the room and placed the bag on the floor beside her bed. After removing the bottle from the bag, she took out the dirty clothes that were inside and took them and the towel over to the washing hamper.
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Post by Thoroughbred on Dec 4, 2011 9:18:57 GMT -5
"Yeah, I know, right?" Summer said, jokingly hugging the white tree. She noticed that Cara was wearing her gym stuff. "How was the gym?" she asked. "By the way, what would you think if we hung some of the christmas lights up around the room?" she asked. She didn't want to be that annoying roommate that took complete control of the room.
She quickly surveyed over the dorm room to make sure everything was clean. Aside from her riding boots and chaps that were sprawled across the floor, the room was fine. Summer walked over and picked them up. She neatly placed them in the small closet's shoe rack.
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Post by Cara-Jean Kitchi on Dec 9, 2011 5:46:01 GMT -5
Cara pulled a face before any emotion vanished almost quick enough for it not to have been there. "The gym was good. I need more conditioning, so I'll need to work on that." At the mention of hanging up lights, the girl nodded her head. "Um, sure." She replied as she looked around the room. "You can do whatever you like. La mia casa è la sua casa, or in this case; la mia stanza è la sua stanza" She'd never done the whole Christmas thing, decorating or celebrating. This was normally her busiest time of the year as when schools closed for the break, she went into foster homes and all the rich families loved having a free servant for the holidays. But how did she explain that to someone else without making it sound like she needed to be pitied and woe was her?
As her eyes made a sweep of the room, she spotted that her bedside table and the bookshelves needed to be wiped free of dust, but knew that that would need to wait until a little later as she didn't want Summer to think she was a complete freak.
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Post by Thoroughbred on Dec 9, 2011 15:59:49 GMT -5
"Cool! Let's start decorating," Summer said excitedly. She opened the boxes of ornaments and began carefully and artistically arranging them on the tree.
"Make sure you spread out the ornaments and don't put the ones that look alike near each other," Summer said. She opened her laptop and started playing her Christmas playlist loudly - the first song playing was The Christmas Song by Owl City. "I'll spend my Christmas with you![/color]" Summer sang with the song. [/font]
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Post by Cara-Jean Kitchi on Dec 10, 2011 1:41:08 GMT -5
Cara took a box of decorations and opened it, looking at the sparkling blue orbs, crystals and crosses inside. She arched an eyebrow at Summer's instructions about how to place them, but she didn't say anything as she took each of the ornaments out of the box and artfully placed them around the tree her hips moving in time with the four by four beat of the music that was playing. She never got the whole tree decorating thing, but she wasn't about to put a damper on Summer's festive spirit with her own opinions - no one had ever cared about her opinion in the past anyway.
She chewed her lower lip as she stepped back and admired the tree with a critical eye. At least it wouldn't drop pine needles all over the ground. She then looked at Summer, unable to help herself. "Why do all of this." She spread her hands to take in the whole room. "People decorate their houses for one possibly two months of the year, spend millions of dollars, what for?" She knew that her question made her sound as young as she looked, but she wanted to know.
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Post by Thoroughbred on Dec 13, 2011 21:24:08 GMT -5
Summer was surprised with Cara's un-festiveness. "Doesn't it give you such a happy, christmas-y feeling to see decorations and actually decorate stuff? I mean, a lot of people like it for the fun family bonding, but," Summer shrugged and her voice became more quiet. She strayed off from what she was saying and continued decorating. Her family wasn't exactly....warm and friendly. Her best holiday memories were with her brother, not her parents. Summer guessed that Cara either didn't celebrate Christmas, or had a similar holiday history.
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Post by Cara-Jean Kitchi on Dec 14, 2011 3:16:38 GMT -5
Cara's eyebrows arched in concern as Summer's festive aura seemed to fade a little. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have said anything." She chewed her lip. "And there isn't a lot to feel happy about when you are running around like a scullery maid in someone's house." Her eyes flew open as she registered what she had said.
Since arriving here, she had worked her hardest not to talk about her past, or let anyone through the wall she had built up around herself, and now she had quite possibly ruined everything with one simple sentence. And, although she didn't want to talk about it anymore, she had a feeling that she had just opened a water-gate to questions, and as much as she'd rather just clam up, she would answer anything, be it as short an answer as she could find, but answer she would.
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Post by Thoroughbred on Dec 15, 2011 16:38:47 GMT -5
Summer was not shocked by Cara's comment, but didn't quite know what to say. "Um, it's fine," she said, awkwardly turning back to decorating the christmas tree and trying to think of something to say in response to Cara, or a completely new topic to speak of. But Summer, being a blunt person, couldn't help but ask, "What do you mean you're like, a maid?" She hoped to not upset Cara - Cara had only known her for a short period of time and wouldn't know how blunt Summer was. She had not meant to [possibly] sound rude.
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Post by Cara-Jean Kitchi on Dec 16, 2011 10:24:45 GMT -5
Cara let out a small breath as she traced a circled on the carpet with the toe of the socks she was wearing. "Maid, servant, slave. Whatever word you want to use, but the latter fits better then the others." She closed her eyes and cursed herself once more for getting herself into this mess. "My... I've been in foster care for longer then I'd like to remember, and until recently I have spent every school holiday in a foster home. Generally around this time of the year, a foster child is an unwanted commodity in anyone's home, so I would be set to work with all the menial tasks of making sure the house was tidy and things like that." She shrugged her shoulders and spread out her hands to take in the whole room. "A pebble in someone's shoe is not often given anymore thought then being a nuisance, something to put up with until you can get rid of it. So the decorating part of it is something that I was never a part of. As you said yourself it's time for fun family bonding."
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Post by Thoroughbred on Dec 19, 2011 22:09:40 GMT -5
Summer was at loss for words and felt slight sympathy for Cara. "Oh...I'm sorry. Yeah, let's get back to decorating," Summer said, trying not to be awkward as she finished setting up the christmas tree. She gathered some clear duct tape and christmas lights and began to slowly hang them around the perimeter of the room, in the corner between the ceiling and the wall. "How does it look so far?" she asked, standing on her bed to hang up the lights.
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Post by Cara-Jean Kitchi on Dec 20, 2011 3:55:17 GMT -5
Cara shook her head at the older girl's sympathy. "Please, don't." She said, a tiny amount of firmness in her voice, the last thing she wanted was for someone to pity her. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything."
She nodded her head to the suggestion to get back to decorating, and stepped back to let Summer put the lights up - her own vertical challenged form wasn't tall enough to stick them up where the other girl wanted them.
She stepped back to the door to have a look at the lights strung across the room. "Makes me think of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, they have a fairy realm feel to them." Now, it wasn't that the girl had a creative imagination, it was that she'd been a fairy in the chorus line of the ballet with the same title, and they had used twinkling fairy lights for the throne room of the Fairy Queen.
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Post by Thoroughbred on Dec 22, 2011 15:26:20 GMT -5
Summer giggled a little. "Oh, you're right," Summer said, partially lying. She knew that she had read the play in her junior year of high school, but her junior year was the blurriest year to Summer, for many reasons.
Summer continued to hang the lights around the room. When she had finally finished, her feet hurt from standing on her toes. She wasn't necessarily tall. She stepped down from the stool she was using to help her put up the lights and surveyed the room from the floor, making sure the lights looked normal. They did. She set the lights to the "twinkle" setting, which made look even more magical. The lights slowly twinkled; it wasn't nauseating to watch.
"What do you think? I mean, not to sound narcissistic because I hung them up, but I love it!" Summer said, happy with her work.
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Post by Cara-Jean Kitchi on Dec 23, 2011 22:58:40 GMT -5
Cara looked at the lights twinkling around the room and nodded her head. "You aren't being narcissistic at all." She replied. "They look lovely. Will you turn them off at night?" It wasn't the fact that she would be kept awake by the twinkling lights, but more the fact that they would cast shadows around the room for the time of the morning that she slipped out of their shared room to train. She wondered if Summer even knew how early she left their room in the morning, but shrugged the question off.
"Please tell me if it is none of my business, but do you remain on campus every holiday?" She was interested to know so that she would know if she would always have company, or if at times she could be the only student on campus, like she had been at previous schools.
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Post by Thoroughbred on Dec 24, 2011 12:21:36 GMT -5
"No, it's fine, it's not personal at all. I leave campus every time there's a holiday. The only thing nice about going home is seeing my high school and barn friends,", she said, her mind drifting back to fun memories of sneak out at night with her friends from home, "I usually bring Thunder home with me over break - my father would hate for me to loose my skills in the span of a few weeks," Summer said, rolling her eyes. "Why do you ask?" It was normal for students to leave campus over break, unless they were from China or something.
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