Stitches Come Undone

[Thalia Tait]

Thalia looked at the outfit she had been able to scrap together. It was made from scraps of clothe she had been compiling from bargains and trades for a while. It was sort of hard to leave it alone though. She never quite felt like it was good enough, always undoing something or redoing something or adding to it. But to think that there was a dance! She didn’t know whether or not she was excited or a nervous wreck. Her heart felt like it was beating right in her ears.

Putting her sewing to the side, she got up and stretched. Roma Bragg would be coming over any time now. They had lived in the same station, so they had practically grown up together. But then again, it must feel like that for all the stations kids. Everyone was close with everyone. They had to be. It wasn’t as if they had the luxuries of the elite and could isolate themselves or keep anything private. Nibbling on the inside of her cheek, she wondered if maybe Roma would be able to help the current situation.

Thalia just couldn’t figure out what the dress needed. Maybe more sequence on the hem? Or maybe more sleeve? Less sleeve? What was it? Holding it up to herself, she frowned. Her mother’s mirror, the one she used to let people see their mended clothes in, stood stoutly, tarnished, chipped and cracked in a few places, but hold her reflection none the less. Then she realized it wasn’t the dress. It was her! She didn’t look like someone who was going to a dance! She looked like a awkward girl with overly wild dark hair and a plain face. No wonder she was so dissatisfied. Her reflection grinned wryly at her.

A average looking girl for Farming Section, she was thin, like most poorer people, with dark brown hair that went to her shoulders. Her pale cream skin was sprinkled with the lightest of freckles, her dark colored eyes, like sea tempests at night, framed with dark lashes. Her brows were angles of permanent question and intrigue, her mouth a small bow of partial suppressed smile that alway made it look like she was smirking mischievously. She didn't have soft and tempting curves, or rosy features that innocently drew people in. She was just typical of Farming Station: an average looking girl with dark hair. 

“Well, it’s too bad I can’t change my face so I can actually look not awkward for this thing,” she laughed shortly, before sighing deeply and touching her almost-curly mess of hair, “...What am I even going to do with this mess...”

[Roma Bragg]

How cute. Earth Skills. As if I will ever need to know any of that. We aren't going to Earth for another hundred years, so me learning some pointless tricks on how to make fire is only wasting my time, and I have more important people to do.

Roma

Roma Barnes looked damn good and she knew it. She knew it the way everyone knew it. She looked good, and she wore it well. Roma walked down the hall in farm station, and was in a good mood today. There was a dance coming up, and Roma loved dances. She liked being the center of attention, and making a screen. Alice and her always were the center of attention. As she walked down the hall with a hitch in her step she saw one of the younger men walking toward her, clearly just off the farming lands as he was covered in dirt. 'Roma,' he greeted with a bright smile and she tossed her hair back giving him a half smile (because she did enjoy his attention) and half an eye roll (because she knew she'd never look at him twice). Roma wanted OUT of this plant covered hell. She didn't like plants, she didn't like the heat, she didn't like the dirt, and she damn well didn't like the work.

When he moved to stop and talked to her, Roma pressed toward the wall, and complained "Don't get me dirty, Erik!" before walking past him, and forgetting about him once he was out of sight. AND that was Roma, that was who she was. She was the pretty girl, who everyone knew was going to get so far away from Farm Station one day. She rapped a light knock on Thalia's door, and waited for it to open before walking in ans starting talking right away. "Do you like my dress? I went up to factory and found it there, and it's been used but not a lot. Clearly an Alpha stationer needed it mended and it got lost." She twrilled a bit for her friend to admire. Roma didn't have a lot of money, but she knew how to get it. She would sell some of her food and people would buy. She didn't eat much, and didn't mind going hungry once and a while if it meant that she could have nice things. While not illegal, her parents would KILL her for it. Reaching up to toy with Thalia's hair she thought about how it would look best while at the dance while asking about the dress. "What are you going to wear?"

^{template by Sammy @ Adox 2.0}

Thalia Tait

[Thalia Tait]

Thalia looked up and smiled warmly as Roma came in, closing the small dented door behind her. The girl was slender and elegant and almost intimidatingly beautiful, no matter the condition. It was just so natural for her to be unearthly gorgeous that even space with all its dangling stars and blazing sun and pearly moons could pale in comparison. The other girl had long deep colored hair and eyes people often found themselves delightfully drowning in, till they were all but putty in her hand with just  a small smirking smile. The way she moved through the stale filtered air, it was as if you could hardly find breath, and if you could, you'd want to give it all to her. That was Roma. She was striking and being effected by her was as unavoidable as being struck with the awe that videos of lighting gave you deep in your soul. Enchanting... Amazing... Completely disarming...

Thalia felt a tightness in her chest. Would that she were just as close to Roma as her equally entrancing friend Alice was. But...she was grateful to just be Roma's friend at all. Really, there wasn't much rhyme or reason to Thalia. No beauty to behold. No electric personality to intoxicate on. No overly stunning actions to enrapture the adventurous mind. Thalia just was a most things were in their faded Ark. She was alive but not saturated with it. Just breathing, eating, sleeping, existing alive. Like the plants she grew, she was too diluted. And she knew it to be so. And accepted it. Maybe someday she'd be lucky enough to get preposed to, but a child? She wasn't remarkable enough, her skills common found and her station too average. But she could make it work. Just like her dad made it work now. Faded without her mother. Fading without health. Fading stars dying slow and sterile lives too far away to be noticed...

Blinking out of the thoughts that were like the empty void of space outside windows of observatory rooms, Thalia smiled warmly, like the melting filter sunshine through those precious glimpses into the vastness that hung the Ark like a tarnishing jewel amidst nothingness. Pessimistic thoughts would be rude towards her bright and shining guest. Taking in the sight of her, she realized how well-suited she herself was for Farm Station life. Roma was too blinding and brilliant to have to settle with delicate plants and suffocating humidity that farming was. She was elegance and beauty. Everything that Thalia thought the other girl would find a better match in one of the higher stations. And Thalia believed completely that Roma would get out of Farm Station. It was just too natural for her to ascend into better things. Ah, she was lucky to call her friend now.

"Roma I really don't know how you get your hands on such amazing things!" the nettle said to the rose, clasping her hands in front of her chest, "It's stunning! You'd think it was completely Earth Made!" But that was impossible for their generation. Perhaps it might have been more possible in their parents' earlier years, to have some heirloom dress almost completely untouched by mending and patches and additions and subtractions. But only higher stations could even reach the possibility of having such luxurious clothing. Someday Roma just might own true and complete Earth Made items, but Thalia... Thalia was content with her clothing all made of strips of rejected cloth and patches. It was her station in life after all, and it would do her no good to dream of anything more that she could obtain. But she meant it. On Roma anything could look amazing. It had the gracious honor of being chosen by her after all. 

"It looks better on you anyway!" Thalia waved off the idea that it might belong to some Alpha twig, "And I bet whoever she was doesn't even notice it's missing from the mending, they have so many things just laying around. Not that she could make it work like you do, anyhow." Alphas always had too much anyway. They should be honored to give the beauty of Farming Station a single dress. Roma's slender fingers toyed with her wild dark hair and Thalia felt her face heat up a bit. Wait. She had been asked something. Right, right! What she was going to wear!

"Oh!" Thalia flushed as she held up the dress she has put together herself, "Just this... I managed to scrape up enough for something simple. I...I dunno, I just threw it together..." The plain faced girl shrugged nonchalantly, though in all actuality she had spend almost all her free-time at home as of late working on the dress. She had worked extra hours anywhere she could, mended neighbors clothes for chump-change and even sacrificed a few of her normal clothes for the knee-length dress. A knee-length dress! Sure it didn't have sleeves, but it was longer than any dress she owned! It was a marvel to her. Cinderella must have felt the way Thalia did when she had seen her neighbors hand her the marvelous dress of her fairytale dreams. A dress to meet Jack the Prince in before the beanstalk fell... She sighed a bit softly, an almost dream look in her deep eyes. 

"I love it, but I have no idea what to do about the rest of me," she murmured and then smiled up at Roma, "So it's sort of amazing timing, you showing up now!"