Rebecca and Isabella discuss the various travails of their lives

Rebecca strides confidently towards Isabella's place, an odd bounce to her step. Everything seemed so different now. She didn't seem so afraid anymore, so dependent, yet she knew that her newfound confidence was ultimately derived from her trust in Kieran, the one who could protect her. She didn't want to self-analyze, though; that sounded too much like work. No, she wanted to visit her friend, Isabella. Certainly interaction with her was a reasonable way to spend her free time. Free time! She was...using her free time! "Bella, you home?" she shouts, forgetting about how knocking works.

Bella is indeed home, dozing on the sofa with baby Aidan nestled in her arms. At the sound of Becky's voice, Aidan wakes up crying--which in turn wakes up Bella. Sitting up, the new mother cuddles her baby, and calls back, "Yes, we're in here!"

Rebecca barges in without so much as a warning. "Hello, Bel- oh!" She sights (and hears) the mewling Aidan and blushes deeply. "I'm sorry! I didn't know that...I mean...maybe I should go..." She slowly starts to slip out, her confidence suddenly shaken.

Isabella chuckles, though she has to roll her eyes as she bounces Aidan in her arms, making clicking nosies with her tongue to soothe him. "No, Becky, it's fine...though you now have to stay with me and keep me company till he falls asleep again." She winks, and motions for Becky to sit down.

Rebecca emits a tiny squeak at Isabella's command, tentatively padding over to the couch to sit down. Momentarily she eyes Aidan before settling into her seat, whiskers twitching. "So, eh, how goes?"

Rebecca smiles (!), glad to see her friend in chipper spirits. "That's...that's good!" she says. "I, well, that is, um....hm.....ah! I'm glad that you're well! I mean, it's..." She loses her train of thought rapidly, mumbling and muttering as always.

Isabella leans over, and kisses Aidan's forehead as he settles back to sleep. She smiles up at Rebecca. "How about you? Are things going well with Kieran?"

Rebecca squeaks. "Kieran! I mean, yes, Kieran...I...I'm putting my foot down with him!" She suddenly stands and stomps her foot. "He's spent so much time pitying himself and feeling sorry that he's such a 'failure'. Well...well, that's not enough for me! He has to act like a winner now!" She takes several deep breaths before flopping back onto the couch, exhausted. "Yes, I suppose they're going well."

Isabella chuckles softly at Rebecca's exasperation. She's found herself equally frustrated with Kieran at times. "Oh, I've been hearing /that/ for ages. It'll sink in eventually...but you know what he's like. Smart, but really, really dense at times. You know?" She gives Rebecca a sympathetic look.

Rebecca can only shake her head at Kieran's illogical behaviour. "Oh, I have experience with stubborn men at home," she comments. "But...what about you and Justin? He's been doing well, I suppose?"

Isabella shakes her head, still smiling. "Men...a mass of inconsistencies," she jokes. "Yes, I guess you do--probably much more than me, now that I think of it." She looks up, tilting her head. "He's great--loves his new job, and he's wonderful with Aidan, of course...we had a rough patch when Raganzi escaped, but we're past it now."

Rebecca nods. "It's...good that you two are having such a wonderful time." She hopes that one day she and Kieran might experience that same bliss...but not until he manned up. "Aidan's gotten a little bigger since I saw him last. He's becoming quite the ritten, isn't he?"

Isabella shifts the infant in her arms, scritching his fur gently. "Thanks...I feel relieved. We didn't exactly have a dream honeymoon," she replies, recalling their exile (or rather, Justin's) in the forest. "But it just seems like a distant memory now. And Aidan...he really does get bigger by the minute. He's trying to crawl, and soon he'll be mobile. I'll have to ritten-proof the whole apartment!"

Rebecca chuckles aloud. "Yes, that would be quite some trouble!" But as she watches Aiden in Isabella's arm she can't help but detect her own...longing? Yes...yes, she did want to have children on her own, one day, and they would be handsome, like their father... "Um...erhm," she stutters, blinking out of it. "You know, I could always lend a hand if you need, for that." She looks at Aiden again.

Isabella looks up in surprise, though she grins. "That would be nice, Becky. Just watch your whiskers--they're his favorite things to grab." She pauses, thinking. "Kieran's good with kids...he watches Gabrielle's kids a lot. Evie loves him to bits."

OOC> Isabella says, "Well, she loves to /chew/ on him"
OOC> Rebecca lols
OOC> Isabella says, "XD"

Rebecca becomes abruptly pensive. Eve. That child, with such blood and such potential power...No, Bella wouldn't like to here about that. "Ah, yes, so I've heard! Eh heh..." She scratches her head nervously. "I...um...how's your work been, lately? Same old, i suppose?"

Isabella's mood seems to sober a bit, and she looks away. "Give or take the mutilated corpse, you mean?" She looks up, troubled. "I suppose other than that it's been normal. Just...we've had more than our share of tragedy lately."

OOC> Isabella says, "Eve won't develop glowing-eyeness for awhile. She'll scare the other kids in daycare. ;) But she will have precognitive abilities to some degree"
OOC> Rebecca nodnods.

Rebecca noddles. "Yes...I've, um, noticed." Thoughts of the blood and death that was the recent trend floated into her vast mind, horrid imaginings of mutilated corpses scaring her from the depths of her imagination. She holds back a squeak as a particularly grisly image appears in her mind's eye. "Oh! I...hmm...work has been...very regular for me, as well. Seems like only Father has something worth worrying about." Not that she envies him, mind you. "But I did hear a story, once, about one of the great unsolved mysteries in the Colony? Uncle Santiago told me...it was the murders of these rat couple, a rather well-respected bunch. I think they were the parents of...Mandy and Edgar, yeah."

Isabella blinks, staring at Rebecca as she holds her baby son. "Hard not to," she replies. "I...I think I remember what you're talking about. Of course you don't ever really forget things like that. What did he say?"

"Not really much", Rebecca admits, "but it seems that the case has always been on his mind since he returned from the Wild. The recent murders just made his mentations more acute." She starts to squirm where she sits, highly bothered by their topic of conversation. "Goodness! Life has been either too exciting or too regular lately! It's quite surreal." She sighs and stands up, brushing aside her ponytail. "Do you have anything to drink here? I'm a bit thirsty."

Isabella nods a bit. "That makes sense. I'm sorry, I don't mean to try to make you betray your uncle's confidence. I...I think he has suspects in our recent killings, but of course he can't say so." She grins at Becky's abrupt change of subject. "I can make you tea, or would you rather have water?"

"Tea is fine," says Rebecca, having determined who one of those suspects might be thanks to Isabella's questioning in the library. "Can we...talk about something /other/ than murder? It's like we've become obsessive armchair investigators." Come to think of it, she /was/ wondering how much of her chemical knowledge might be useful in that regard. Maybe she could advanced their forensic methods? ...Nah...

Isabella nods once more. "I'm all for that," she agrees, standing up carefully. "Here, can you hold Aidan for a minute?" Without waiting for a response, she gently places the baby in Rebecca's arms, then turns to go into the kitchen. The baby doesn't stir. :)

Rebecca's eyes widen considerably when Aiden is entrusted to her care, even for the briefest of moments. She gulps and swallows, suddenly a bit nervous. "Um.....hello there," she whispers, moving an inquisitive finger near Aiden's nose. "So, you are...well?"

Isabella turns on the stove, and puts the kettle on to boil, getting out a cup for Rebecca. Aidan, nestled in Rebecca's arms, squeaks softly and promptly sneezes, putting Rebecca's finger in serious danger of a misting.

Rebecca emits a loud "Oh!" as Aiden sneezes, totally surprised, and flails her hand about for a bit. "Oh! Um...." She blinks and looks at Aiden...did he wake up?

No, Aidan is still fast asleep, though he's making little noises as all babies do. Isabella pours the tea, and brings it out to Rebecca. "Trade ya," she says, smiling at the sight of Becky holding her child.

Rebecca is more than happy to trade. Her own desires aside, the great escapade of motherhood was an uncertainty for which she has yet to prepare. "Thank you!" she says, a bit more happily than she intends. The warm, pleasant aroma of the tea provides the scientist with a degree of calm, precipitating her more rational thoughts on the matter of children and raising them. "How long do you think it will be before he's ready for school? I don't think we've really studied how long it takes for us to actually, um, mature."

Isabella happily takes her son back, snuggling him tightly. "Oh, awhile yet. I imagine sometime after the walking and talking. You know, I sometimes think that we have so much more to learn and develop than ferals--maybe that's why our infancy is so prolonged."

"That could be the case," muses Rebecca, glad to be discussing a topic which she often ponders alone during the most tedious hours of her own occupation. "I've always thought it had something to do with our prolonged lifespan, but we still develop faster than humans." She rubs her chin as a sign of deep thought. "You know, we could start keeping a 'baby book' or something, track his development. Would help us know a little bit more about ourselves."

Isabella nods, listening to Rebecca attentively. She chuckles. "Mom did give me one...I haven't really gotten around to doing much with it, though. But you're right, that would be interesting." Looking up from her baby, her eyes meet Rebecca's. "Have you and Kieran ever talked about...you know?"

Rebecca blushes like a cherry. "WHAT!? I mean, what!? How could...I mean...it's so..." She grabs the nearest cushion and kneads it violently. "I'm not ready to even think about that!" Funny, she was pretty eager about the concept just moments earlier. Perhaps the contemplation of the state was better than the active consideration of making it come about.

Isabella holds up her free paw as a gesture of surrender. "Okay, okay! Just wondering, that's all. For the record, if things did work out between you two, you'd be wonderful parents."

Rebecca stares at Isabella as if she's just praised her for her calmness. "I...I..." She has several grave doubts about her own suitability as a parent. How could she deal with such unpredictable little rascals? And Kieran! He might faint from exhaustion the very first day. But she knew he would be...such a good protector... "I don't want to think about this anymore!" she declares, wondering if her anti-estrus medicine was starting to wear off.

Isabella nods. "Okay. Sorry, I've sort of got babies on the brain right now." Aidan squirms in her arms, and she shifts him into a comfier position. "What would you like to talk about?

Rebecca blinks, and realizes quickly that she can't think up of anything else to talk about. "I...I don't know! It's like our regular lives have become so...regular that we have to converse about things like procreation and murder and procreation and babies. I can't even talk about my workmates (as if I even associate with them) or anything like that, or the family. Goodness, I'm even starting to get tired of watching Matthias stumble around!" She flops back onto the sofa. "Or we could talk about babies...and procreation."

Isabella tilts her head, raising an eyebrow at Rebecca. "Is that such a bad thing? And if you want to talk about sex, we can do that, too." she pretends to cover Aidan's little baby ears.

"Have you ever caught from behind?" Rebecca asks suddenly, much to her immediate regret. She blushes so deeply that her ears appear to morph into roses. "Oh f---!" she exclaims, grasping her muzzle and face. "I...I'm so sorry, Isabella! I think....I should go." She stands up and makes a beeline for the door, totally embarrassed by her own sudden outburst.

Isabella blinks, unsure of what Rebecca's talking about (though she has her suspicions). With Rebecca, you never quite knew. "I've /never/ heard you drop the 'f' bomb!" she says, laughing. "If you weren't Ben's sister, I wouldn't even think you knew it!" She shakes her head a bit. "Look, we don't have to talk about anything that makes you uncomfortable, okay? Sit back down and we can talk about how you're avoiding your mother these days."

Rebecca collapses into the sofa in great relief, extremely glad that Isabella hadn't totally caught on. She can't also be more thankful that Isabella is shifting the topic so abruptly; the Facts of Life never sat well with her ever since she had walked in on her parents one day. "Oh, Mother is...being Mother as usual," she quips, slowly regaining her composure. "She keeps worrying about Benjamin despite his weekly letters saying that he is perfectly fine, but I suppose that's how mothers, um, are..." She glances at Aiden; how ironic.

Isabella nods a bit, rather glad of the change of topic. It's not that she minds the discussion, just that she doesn't want to upset Rebecca any further. "I can understand that...though right now it's hard enough to leave Aidan with my family for the day. I couldn't imagine not seeing my child every day." She looks up at Rebecca. "I'm glad to hear he's okay--I was worried when I saw him at the feral colony. I mean the ferals he lives with are fine, but we witnessed a sewer rat attack on the colony while there."

Rebecca finds her Mother's position hard to empathize, at first, but then she starts to think...what would she feel like if Kieran was gone from the colony? She remembers, after all, the anxiety she had felt when Kieran departed with Justin to protect him, when he had been hospitalized... "I know about the sewer rats," she says, having read the letters herself. "He's, um, trying to teach some of the smarter ones how to perform simple first aid; they apparently think he's some kind of wizard, or something, so he's gotten a lot of students. He's wondering..." she starts to, amazingly, chuckle. "He's wondering if its any better than teaching rowdy kids like Matthias is!"

Isabella nods as Rebecca explains further. She cracks a smile at Ben's assertion. "He might be right," she admits. "Though I'm not sure if Matthias would agree." She giggles. "I feel that way sometimes about our interns!"

Rebecca snortles. "I can only imagine what it must be like. One of my workmates is in charge of teaching our young chemists how things work, but really, most of them can't tell a benzene from an imine if their lives depended upon it." She sighs and leans back. "It's so hard to find rats who are interested in chemistry as a subject in itself and not as a stepping stone to...um...medicine."

Isabella shakes her head, kissing little Aidan on the forehead. "How dumb can you /get/?" she cracks. As a doctor, she'd had to learn a good deal of chemistry. Though it wasn't her particular area of expertise (field surgery was where she excelled), she knew a fair amount. "I've always thought of medicine as being one of the practical applications of chemistry," she remarks lightly. "But you're right, there don't seem to be many who are solely chemists."

Rebecca actually gets that joke, and for that she gives Isabella a playful nudge. Yet the point remains. "I suppose that we don't need as many chemists as doctors," she states. "We can only perform a limited number of experiments and projects given our resources, and until we find a steady source of metallic ore I'm afraid that not much is going to happen with us. I mean, we can only make so many types of resin for wood..." She sighs and pouts, realizing that, for the first time in her life, she wants something exciting to happen. "Stupid Staggs! We can't even prospect for ore with them laying about. How I'd like to flush them all out, make some chemical weapons! Napalm! Agent Orange!" She flops back onto the couch again. "But...that's a tad noticeable from the human satellites."

Isabella rolls her eyes. "Yes, and it's also extremely toxic and dangerous! It's hardly worth the risk if it causes the colonists to get cancer and die, now is it?"

Rebecca almost answers by saying 'So what!', but thankfully she restrains herself. "I just wish there was something we could do, something we could /both/ do, about all this mess. Not just the Staggs, but this eye-gouger; all of them need a, erhm, solution. I mean, it's not like we could both find time off work to pursue a hobby of private detective work, can we?" She sighs and turns over on the sofa to face little Aiden. /He/ didn't have to worry about such things.

Isabella finds herself nodding her agreement, looking down at the child in her arms. /Her/ child, whom she'd do anything to protect. "Exactly. Though the last murder made it pretty clear that it was a Stagg...to do that kind of damage..." She shudders, remembering that horrible scene. 'Lasagna with teeth' was probably the most delicate description she could think of.

"But what about the first fellow?" Rebecca asks, trying to play with one of Aiden's tiny arms. "Cecil affirms that /his/ eyes could only have been surgically removed. Perhaps our murderer is switching MOs? After all, it would be the smart thing to do: make your kill look like a Stagg's kill so that the pesky detectives will be left confused. I mean, a large rock or two and some effort would do the trick..."

Isabella shuts her eyes momentarily, though that does little to block out the horrible images rushing through her mind. Instinctively, she holds Aidan close to her chest, her arms wrapped around him as he sleeps on peacefully. "It is strange...I saw the first victim, and he...looked just like he was asleep. Hardly any damage, except...the blows that killed him." She tries to blink that image away. "But Brian, he...trust me, Becky, a large rock couldn't have done /that/...he was...ripped apart...by something huge..." she shivers a bit at the nightmarish image that she didn't think she'd ever forget.

Rebecca rubs her chin, the facts of the matter complicating her theories. She waves her hands about, gesticulating randomly and muttering to herself as she works it out. "...But the eyes were still removed, too," she says, the images not bothering her in the least, even given her vivid imagination. "One had his eyes surgically removed, the other pried apart crudely. You'd think that there were two killers working together to gouge rats." She hmms...and hmms some more. "It's all so very mysterious," she admits, taking a big sip of her cooling tea. "If the killer really is Merick, then I must say this is an excellent mystery he's concocted for us. Ooh!" She clentches her fists and shakes excitedly. "I wonder how Benjamin would act if he found out. He'd probably neuter him!" Rebecca seems oddly excited by this.

Isabella feels a bit sick, wincing at this. "Becky, two people at least are /dead/," she points out through gritted teeth. "Very likely three--we never did find Oswald. I knew Merick was a suspect, but...." here, her ears flatten against her headfur, and her color goes pale--"I /work/ with him....I talk to him every day." She looks out the window briefly, her ears going flat against her headfur, a sign of her distress. "If...if he is guilty, I hope Ben does worse than that."

Rebecca presses a finger against her chin. "I suppose that would aggravate her situation, yes," she quips obviously. "Still, if you're in close contact with him every day, that would permit you to investigate him to a greater degree of detail. I mean, why else would Uncle have told you such sensitive information?" She shrugs, not exactly seeing much that could be done. "If you really feel uncomfortable, though, then i guess I can, uhm, keep you company every now and then."

Isabella raises her eyebrow at Rebecca. "You mean Santiago...wants me to investigate?" Somehow she doubts this. "And that..that would make me feel better to have some company. I mean, it's not like I'm ever alone in the infirmary, but at the same time..." she trails off, her expression afraid.

Rebecca places a comforting hand on her friend's. "Bella, you don't even have to ask me. Our projects are going rather slow, so I have plenty of, um, free time to visit you often. You don't have to face Merick alone." She smiles and then quickly reverts to her wide-eyed self. "Just...don't leave me alone with him, okay?"

Isabella raises her eyes to meet Rebecca's, flashing her a warm smile. "Thanks, Becky. I appreciate it." She blinks. "Okay, I won't--promise."

Rebecca chortles. "Okay! I guess I can trust you on that." Though, there is a part of her that seems not to, but that's just a Rebecca thing. "As for the question at hand...it /would/ be easier for an insider to investigate Merick, as all the Deputies are too well known to be able to do so discreetly. I mean, you have his schedule handy, and...hm..." She mutters and mumbles for several moments on the subject, pondering how one would spy on Merick, how to concoct a chemical to hide one's scent, and how to locate where he's hiding the eyes of his victims. "But it's all speculative, really." She takes a big gulp of her now lukewarm tea. "You know I wonder how we ever get this stuff. I mean, tea isn't native to this part of the world...is it?"

Isabella leans back with baby Aidan, feeling vastly relieved. "Yes...that does make sense." She seems equally happy to change the subject, at least temporarily. "Not really. They grow the plants in the garden or something, though most of the tea I have is herbal."

Cut-off endings, hurrah! :D But yeah, it's done n.n;