OPEN | ATTENTION

[JOSIE]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: helvetica; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 1.4;"]However strange the comparison may be, running Flintlock is sort of like herding livestock. You can know the personalities of the animals, the patterns they usually take, and what time they'll be back for dinner. But you can't quite account for the storms, the wild animals, or the plain ridiculousness of their occasional hysteria. Maybe it's a little mean of her to compare people to cows, but hey, Ellie's comparing them to bugs, right? They each have their ways of thinking, and neither are quite perfect. People are more intelligent than cows and (usually) not quite as sex-driven as bugs. They're something all on their own, and while Jo would love if it made more sense, life doesn't work like that and she's not sure that there would ever be a perfect pattern to all of it. She's learned to deal with the small parts of it, though. Flintlock is happy, but she wishes that she had an easier way to write home. Ellie — she knows that the other director hadn't had the best home life, but hers had been kind.

She blinks up at the other woman, almost startled by her appearance, and finds her face a little hot. "Yeah, they do. Kind of hard to come by these days," she admits, reaching up to rub the back of her neck. It takes a moment to straighten up properly from where she'd leaned over herself it. Then her eyes jump to Thea at her approach, straightening up farther. She was right to think of this place as a safe haven. Whatever else went on in the rooms, or outside, this one was the one that felt quiet. Peaceful. And apparently where all sorts of people get to mingle. She blinks curiously and ends up forgetting to speak for a moment. It was one thing for Ellie to offer, and another entirely for someone new to. Maybe she's never been that great at accepting help. "You know how to make one?" In the end, curiosity beats her pride and embarrassment. "Where'd you learn that?"

[JOSIE]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: helvetica; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 1.4;"]Life has settled down, isn't that such a funny thing? Human beings are such adaptable creatures — it didn't take too long for Flintlock to fall back into routines. Patrols, meetings, strangers at the edge of their territory. Territory is still such an unfamiliar concept, though she does her best to think of it like one would a property line. Theirs may be expansive and... Mostly filled with snow, but that's alright. It's a comfortable place once indoors. That's where Jo would love to spend her time, and the greenhouse too, yet there's still just as much to do outdoors. The great outdoors, right? More like the great reason that her face is red and she wants nothing more than to tuck herself into a big blanket and sit in front of the fire. But no, she knows that she needs to keep her hands busy. Slim, slightly calloused fingers are still numb and covered in dirt, so she blows hot breath on them and keeps moving. She doesn't have the right tools to finish the project she's chosen to start, something that causes some sort of internal ache, but even just repeating the first few steps a thousand times is calming.

Making metal flowers was something Josie had picked up early in her life, watching her mom do the same. It was always just scrap metal, spare pieces from old projects, but they were pretty. Eventually they'd filled her room, fake vases of fake flowers. It only feels right to do the same for her room in Flintlock — she hopes Ellie doesn't mind. Currently, she's sitting in the common room with a small sheet of scrap metal and some metal shears, a look of concentration making her nose wrinkle slightly. "This'd go much easier with a torch."

[ELLIE]

[align=center]
[div style="text-align: justify; width:490px;font-size:9.2pt; line-height:1.4"]Routines were dependable, and Ellie preferred structure over "winging it," though that wasn't to say she couldn't wing it if the need arose. It would just be an odd kind of improvisation, since she was prepared for most things and would still think out at least a brief plan for the scenario, and she wasn't certain if that qualified as winging it completely. Ellie didn't want to seem inflexible, especially with her current responsibility as Director alongside Jo. She had to work to be simultaneously organized and malleable, prepared for the known issues and able to tackle those that came by surprise. It was...a bit difficult, but she supposed it wasn't completely different from some of the work she would do with insects. Many of them filled roles, had very specific habits, and it was noticing when those small details of flight patterns and the like were deviating that led to the discovery of a new species, one barely distinguished taxonomically but separate behaviorally. Ellie had to know patterns as well as the break in patterns, and while people were very different from insects -far less organized, less devoted to the mating drive- she assumed it was enough of a foundation to work from. Things had gone fairly smoothly thus far, after all, of which she was very proud. Of Jo, especially.

She was thrilled to see she had taken up something for herself in the downtime, as evidenced by the metal flowers popping up around their room. That wasn't something she minded- far from it, actually. Ellie loved to see Jo engaged in a task, especially one she was clearly very enthusiastic about, and not only because her nose would wrinkle so adorably. "Maybe we can find you one eventually. They run on gas, don't they?" Ellie wasn't around tools as much as Jo was.

[thea]

[table]