The Big Applesauce

Earth is earth, wherever he goes. That at least holds true.

It has been seven days now, and Castor has spent nearly all of them inside. It is safe inside, the small-walled home that ROMAC gave him, though for the first two nights he could not sleep for lack of the sound of the ocean, lying awake instead to cars and people and lights and the endlessly cycling impossible thought I am not where I was. He does not contact Daniel again, though he considers it several times - it is too frightening, the idea that he might make contact, lasting contact. This has to be a dream. It simply has to.

But he does not wake up. And gradually, instead, he learns to sleep again.

He rearranges his furniture obsessively, struggling to recreate his lighthouse room; he spends hours meticulously learning to use his strange little phone, and tentatively exploring the bizarre world of the internet, for which he's never before had much use. There was no source for it at the lighthouse, and though he certainly knew it existed, he had always found a greater solace in learning from books. Here, however, he has none, and he is reduced to learning about his world by curling his long body up to read exhaustingly small text from a sickly lit screen.

By the fifth day he knows he must go out, or he will go mad. He spends nearly two hours preparing himself, checking and double checking. What does he need? Keys. Train card. Spending money (how much??). Water, perhaps? How much can he carry? It is too warm for his coat. He was given a pair of shoes when he registered, but he knows he should buy more, new clothes, and new food. He hates the idea of this. Admitting defeat. Letting himself be a part of this world that shouldn't exist.

Groceries are a disaster. He barely recognizes most of the food, has no idea what to get. Clothes even more so: he makes it home after a panicked bout of petty theft, not understanding how on earth these simple garments can be so expensive. He spends the sixth day hiding out, certain someone will come knock his door down and demand retribution for the stolen clothes, but no one comes. No one had seemed to notice him at the time; he had evaded the one security guard with hardly any effort, which seems strange and lucky. He feels no pleasure in his fortune.

On the seventh day he decides he will make art.

He returns to the park - that at least is easy to find. This is a haven for him, yes there are many people, yes it is all very unfamiliar, but it is natural, and it is a landscape he has never encountered before. He has read about forests, and has very distant memories of grass and trees from his youth, but it is all still very novel. The smells, the feel of it. So many new objects, new supplies to mine.

Over and over again he creates his favorite shape, simple and soothing: a spiral. From leaves, from sticks, from wet rocks found by the water. He loses track of time doing this. On the days that there was no work, the days he was left simply to wander his beach, he always felt that this is what he had been made for. Reverently, he rests the head of a dandelion at the center of his latest work, and rests to study it for a time. For the first time in seven days he feels solid, secure in his own presence, having left his transient mark on this new world.


[ooc: Castor will be in various parts of the Park all day making neat stuff on the ground, so feel free to approach him and ask him what the heck he's doing.]