#sienna&rick

[elpida]

@wrathfulmercy She wasn't fully sure she could do this, stand before a King and pretend to be royalty herself. She had to give it to her Father, the plan was fantastic... she didn't approve of it, but it was fantastic. Women, Princesses to be specific had been paraded in front of the kind year after year and never a success in sight so as he said, was there a harm to trying to enter his court and become a part of it? He hadn't given her much choice, she either did this or she was disowned, destined to live her days out shovelling the local farms dirt, lifting heavy bags of feed, struggling for a hot meal. She had done that for the last two years now, ever since the florist went out of business. The lady that owned it couldn't afford to keep it so she was out of a job, simple as that, and the only thing was hard graft.. that was fine to Sienna. She wasn't scared of hard work but it was tiring. As her Father put it, what did she have to lose by doing this as he put it, for them. For him, he'd guilt tripped her into this.

The double doors swung open and she took all of two steps before she was stumbling forward over the longer material of her dress. There were a few laughs and sniggers from the court folk when she stilled after stopping herself from falling. Sienna breathed in, took a breath, deep and steady, slow. Slow down Sienna, she thought. Take a moment to breath.

She continued, walking down the path created for her, slow and steady with her shoulders back and her head held high. She had hair that flowed in dark waves, the depth of the night sky in soft silk, the same as her eyes but each reflection was a new constellation to learn. She was stood before him in moments, lowering herself down and extending the length of her dress. Just how she'd practiced, formal and polite. "Your highness." her voice was just as lovely but of all things Sienna kept her gaze lowered. Heaven forbid she seem rude looking him in the eye. "It is a great honour to be before you my liege. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to step foot in to your court, your castle is magical." there was a fascination in her eyes as she looked around, taking in all the finery. "I- I umm.. My name is Sienna, my king. Princess Sienna Venri."

[elpida]

Sienna had made herself irresistible, a vision of delight and desire all spun into one person. Realistically she should have thought about her boyfriend, she should have considered how he'd feel about her throwing herself at Rick but truthfully? It didn't matter. She couldn't resist him, there was a pull to him and who was she to deny the want. All her mind could focus on was that squeezing grip on her thigh, she had to take a sharp breath in because christ she needed the rough of his hands everywhere, pressing into her flesh, tainting her flesh to know what it needed. It wasn't featherlight, it was firm and assertive and she simply needed it, everywhere, all the time. A drug, that's what it felt akin to.

His mansion was shocking but she wanted him more than she wanted the luxury, sure that was a bonus but it wasn't where her desire lied, there wasn't any velvet or silk, nor diamonds and pearls that would have her focus more than he would. The envelope would be a nice touch, it wouldn't embarrass her, it'd feel discrete, professional in some way.

"Carrying me?" she giggled only to squeak in those light hearted giggles more when his arm wrapped around her to lift and carry her. "Aren't I heavy?!" far from it, she was pushing into his body, holding her arms around him like he'd drop her, he wouldn't, he'd not drop her, she had faith in that. Home. He said home and for once, that word felt correct, she did feel like she belonged here, near him. She pushed her head against his, forehead to forehead, lightly nuzzling herself against him and filling his scent with her, light florals and a deeper musk of jasmine.

Her hands were fumbling with his shirt and starting to reach for the buttons before he placed her down on his bed. She looked like a vision in silky satin, clinging to her curves. She reached for him as he lowered, her hands pushing into his hair and stealing breaths between the heat of their lips tangling together, her soft and utterly addictive lips. Her legs shimmied together in a wiggle to let him slide down her underwear, wondering briefly if he'd know how wet she truly was with those leather gloves on. Her head arched, her lips seeking out his, reaching and wanting and she wanted like she never had before, like she needed him close just to breath. Her breath however hitched audibly the moment she felt his gruff run against her folds. Her legs were resting over his shoulders, one leg moving up just enough to keep him there, right where she wanted him. This time her back arched, pushing her aching folds against his mouth with more firmness, her fingers finding and fisting the sheets beneath. The same hands let one release and reach down to push into his hair. "Oh gods.." she spoke breathlessly, a hint of a more elated and raised pitch, pleasure that was coursing through her body in waves. She hadn't been worshipped like this before and she was relaxing into it so easily. "Gods, please don't stop."

She was beautiful. So damn fucking beautiful that even her lightly ridiculous choice of amount didn’t do anything but making him chuckle. He would have paid a million to have her. He would have killed anyone that would have stood in their way or tried to keep her apart from him that night without hesitation, but that wasn’t something he mentioned. Only that amused chuckle left his lips before he leaned in and nuzzled with his nose against her ear so she could hear him whisper. “Anything. Anything you want, darling.”

Rick barely even noticed that they had stopped in front of his mansion already, his eyes still closed while inhaling that sweet scent of hers in her neck while his gloved hand slipped further up under her dress to squeeze the skin of her thighs in a desperate need. Sienna couldn’t know the rules he made up many years ago to never cross a line again, cause after saving so many women it shouldn’t have been surprising that some of them grew fond of him and if he let them come too close, they would only become attached in an unhealthy way. Boundaries were important and so he never touched a single woman again of the ones that lived in the quarters of his mansion reserved for them, only the escorts he usually saw once were allowed to have sex with him. But only once. No strings attached. Thinking about how this would be his only night with Sienna was heartbreaking, but why did he already consider to break his rules for her when he had only ever met her on this day?

Dixon stopped the car and stepped outside to open the door for them, but only as he mumbled that they’re there, Rick fell out of his trance and pulled away from Siennas neck to take her hand instead. “Come.” Rick got out first and murmured the amount of money she asked for into Dixons ear so he would prepare an envelope, but even he furrowed his brows in confusion cause he had never expected a girl like her to ask for so much and him to pay it. Luckily he wasn’t here to contradict and nodded, while Rick waited for Sienna to stand next to him, looking at the main entrance of his mansion. “Hold you. What about… carrying you?”

A smirk crossed his lips before he suddenly wrapped his arms around her to carry her, Dixons brow raising behind her back as he noticed where his boss was heading. No, Rick wouldn’t bring her to his usual open wing where business was made and guests could sleep, he right away headed to his private wing where the door opened by a simple scan of his eyes that allowed him to get into the hallway. “Welcome Home, Darling.” he said softly against her head, as if it hadn’t been the first time she entered this place and saw the mainly black master bedroom they now arrived in. On the way to his bed he managed to slip out of his boots and placed Siennas back on top of his bed before following her down and crawling over her.

“You’re the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in this world.” he hushed in amazement and let his lips sink to hers to feel her hands in his hair again while his own would travel where they had left her thighs before. Without a word he let himself fall into that kiss until his gloved hand found her underwear and pulled it down her smooth legs just to finish with taking off her heels on the way that landed on the ground. “Stay.” he begged in desperation not only for her to not move away, but maybe with a secret wish of her staying as long as she wished for even if he wouldn’t mention it. Instead he tried to cover up the truth by shoving up her skirt, his scruff brushing along her folds before he let his tongue slip over her entrance, legs resting over his broad shoulders. “I wanted to do that all night.” he reassured her with a grin before his eyes closed to focus only on the taste his tongue now explored with every nerve while his hands hold her in position. Damn, how should he only manage to let her go again?

[pulchral]

@libertycities / sienna said: oh, i’m no innocent. but evil? you tell me.

“you want the god-honest truth?”     in a world such as theirs, honesty had become a privilege, a luxury that few could afford…   and even then, rick grimes made sure that he could say it how he meant it, without a hitch, and without any sort of smokescreen hiding the true intent of his words.   there was no need to lie, not about this, not when the outcome was hardly going to be favorable.   sienna was a wild-card, at least to him, so, weighing his words, rick shifts his weight from one foot to the other, resting his palm atop the gun holstered at his side.     “i think yer’ not here to be best pals with noone, especially someone like me…   hell, from the look n’ your eyes, y’probably hate me on principle.”     brows furrow, head tilts to one side, upper lip quivers in an attempt at biting back the poison that was threatening to spill from his lips.

“but i don’t care.   i don’t.   ‘s long as you respect the boundaries we set, i’ll give you my word that i’ll make sure my group respects yours.”     good, evil, these were all things that had lost meaning a long time ago…   survival had taken ahold of morality, skewered it to a point of no return.   men like him and her returned to the basic instinctual need to survive against all odds, to thrive where nothing blossomed.   even if it meant forming shaky alliances, such as this one.     “now, are you with us?”

[sinceileftyoublog]

Small Isles Interview: A Blurry Ecosystem

Photo by Dustin Aksland

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Sometimes, dreaming big pays off--literally, in Jim Fairchild's case. The former Modest Mouse and current Grandaddy lead guitarist and now prolific film composer has been releasing music with collaborator Jacob Snider over the last few years under the moniker Small Isles. The project's debut LP, The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea, was a score to something that didn't tangibly exist: an imagined Rick Moody-written sequel to The Ice Storm adapted into a film by Ang Lee. When I spoke with Fairchild and Snider in 2021, they mentioned collaborating with string player Sienna Peck on an upcoming EP. What I couldn't have foreseen was Fairchild's ultimate endgame: for his imaginary film scoring and real film scoring to develop a symbiotic relationship.

That is, at this point, Fairchild is able to use what I called "filmless music" as a starting point. He'll imagine a film, score it, see where it takes him, and either scrap it, use it for the Small Isles record he's currently working on, or even use it for the real film score he was hired to do. Other times, his professional film scoring will yield sounds that are appropriate for the heady universes he's conjured with Small Isles. Last year, Small Isles released two EPs. The first, which was the Peck collaboration the duo spoke to me about a few years back, was Out in The Sunset, a score to an imagined follow-up to Joe Talbot's The Last Black Man in San Francisco. And the latest, Everything on Memory (Modern Recordings/BMG), released last month, was truly wild. Fairchild dreamed that Donald and Stephen Glover--the creative team behind the TV show Atlanta--wrote a movie in response to Modest Mouse's classic The Moon & Antarctica track "3rd Planet", directed by none other than Christopher Nolan.

As neither Fairchild's dreams nor his creations are hyper specific, the finished Small Isles products often resemble their inspirations more in vibes than anything else. Such is the case with Everything on Memory, a sonic collage of guitars, synthesizers, strings, and wordless vocals. Some songs, like "This Much I Know" and "The Rest is History", sound like your schema of what a film score is, juxtaposing plucky guitars with dramatic, sweeping strings, and in the case of the latter, solemn-sounding piano. Others are more experimental, like the pulsations of "Sure I'm Happy", the bubbly bass thuds of "Dewdrop Daybreak", and the rounded bass and sinewy synths of "Unfulfilled Potential". The EP, and Small Isles songs in general, however, reflect their increasingly hyper-specific touchpoints by juxtaposing moments small and big, giving them equal emotional weight and importance. Last month, I spoke with Fairchild over the phone about Small Isles to date, including Everything on Memory, the project's first live show at Hotel Cafe in November, the formative nature of Modest Mouse, and Terrence Malick. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: All Small Isles material so far is scores to imaginary movies. At the same time, you've done actual film scores. Do you take what you learn from film scoring and apply it to these imaginary works?

Jim Fairchild: I've been into film scores since I was a teenager. I scored my first film when I was 17 or 18. It was a student film. Jason [Lytle] from Grandaddy brought over his 4-track, and we assembled a bunch of music one day, and it ended up being a score for his student film. I did a bunch of work in the early 2010s as we were writing Modest Mouse's Strangers To Ourselves. I really had a taste for it. I loved doing it. Once our son was coming along, I set a challenge for myself to figure out how that could become the majority of my music-making life. One way to do it would be to imagine a movie you want to score. The first Small Isles record was me imagining Rick Moody had written a shadow/companion piece to The Ice Storm, which Ang Lee directed. I imagined it taking place in early 2020s California. I started picturing what that would look like.

With the Out in The Sunset EP, I was scoring a follow up to The Last Black Man in San Francisco. I imagined the same team who made that, making this movie about kids from different backgrounds in San Francisco realizing they had more similarities than what societies would suggest to them. The objective was always, "I'm going to start sending this music to directors, and they'd hopefully see this music could accompany visual mediums, and maybe I'd get hired." It worked.

How do those two relate to each other? I have a lot more siloed approaches to music. I could see how Modest Mouse bled into the stuff I was making for TV in the early 2010s, but it was fragmented. But making the Small Isles stuff, I'll start assembling samples and think, "That could be really handy for this type of mood." And as I'm scoring things, I'll think, "That's a great sound that could appear on Small Isles tracks." I want it to be an ecosystem where the lines get blurry. Where do the roots of the tree stop and become another tree? As much as a gift as it is to be in a band like Modest Mouse, it starts to have less to do with making music. I want to make music, to be in the studio investigating that process as much as possible.

SILY: At the time we talked about your debut album, I didn't fully realize subsequent Small Isles material would follow the same idea. Now, with Everything on Memory, you're scoring a film you dreamed up, a Donald and Stephen Glover-written film, directed by Christopher Nolan, in response to Modest Mouse's "3rd Planet", a song from before you even joined Modest Mouse!

JF: Dreams are absurd, right?

SILY: Right! How vivid was this dream?

JF: There was a lot of the movie in the dream. It's gone now. All of this is impressionistic. I have two albums that I'm going to make next year sort of "dreamed up." I don't know where they came from. I have them outlined.

In the dream, it was pretty real. Donald and Stephen Glover were giving DVD commentary, and maybe [Modest Mouse lead singer] Isaac [Brock] was also weighing in. [laughs] I don't remember much of it, but I remember these small, intimate moments that felt Terrence Malick-like, but also these massive celestial moments that dealt with the bigger shit Isaac is talking about in that song.

SILY: "3rd Planet" is a world-building, impressionistic song, the type that makes a teenager have an existential crisis. I was a teenager when I first heard it, and I remember the lyrics blowing my mind.

JF: It still does, dude! I was talking about that song with a friend who is making a video for this EP. I've played that song, I don't know, certainly no fewer than 300 times live, and I was still getting choked up at the enormity of it. He's written many great lyrics, but that one is like, "What the fuck?!?" It's truly existentially magnificent.

SILY: I remember seeing some of the lines scrawled out on a paper-covered wall in my college dorm, just being like, "What the fuck?" A lot of millennials probably have that sort of relationship with that song. I want to ask, though, what has been your relationship with the work of the Glovers and Nolan?

JF: I don't really know Christopher Nolan's work that well. I'm more familiar with the Glovers, particularly those first two seasons of Atlanta. Shortly before our son was born was when those seasons came out. My wife and I were watching it, and I was thinking, "I guess this is the best TV show ever made." A big part of all of this is the suspension of disbelief. Life is fucking surreal. And a lot of times, when you ingest surreal media, whether movies or music, it's constantly reminding you how surreal it is. The thing about Atlanta I loved so much is that it was fucking crazy but not constantly raising its hand saying, "Look how crazy we're being!" You get dropped into these moments that are totally fucking surreal.

Where Nolan came into play is his willingness to collapse the conventional constructs of time. There's a relationship between the way I think about Atlanta and his movies. The bigness thing, too. As I get older, this contributes to the way I think about music and make it. I'm an older dude with a young kid, and now I realize those big moments are real. Getting a #1 song is a tremendous accomplishment, and you should soak those moments up. But the moments where you're holding your kid's hand walking down the street are as big. The collapse of relative scale. I realize how lucky I am to have made it this far at all, to be alive still. A lot of our friends and contemporaries didn't. I really appreciate that. I want to bask in that. It sounds so dumb coming out of my mouth, but life is beautiful. Once you start realizing that all moments can be fairly profound and great--even the bad stuff--the flimsy nature of the relativism of time creeps in.

SILY: You've already mentioned Malick, and I feel like you just described The Tree of Life to a tee, small moments having the same ripple effects as the creation of the universe. On the surface, it might seem absurd, but it's very real even if technically different in scale. Is there anywhere specific where any of these touchpoints, from Modest Mouse to cinema, manifest on Everything on Memory? Or is it more a general vibe?

JF: The way Small Isles works is with the illumination of narrative, to get away from lyric and conventional song structure, even though these aren't crazy song structures. It's meant to capture vibe. The first thing that happens in "Sure I'm Happy", I start going [plays a whistle melody] on this keyboard right here, then I put it in a guitar amp. What settings did I use? It's probably something like [plays synthesizer]. So I have the whistle. I put that down. The whole song is two chords. That's the vibe. You just start chasing it. It somehow fit within the movie I was picturing. From there, you're asking, "What else is happening with this world?" And then you get a little chord sequence. That's the most fun thing about making this music and scoring, to me. At this point in my life, I kind of want music to be a job, and that job is solving a riddle. There's an answer to this question. It might not be the only answer, but there is one. How do I flesh this vibe out? You just start going down these paths.

SILY: What were you just playing?

JF: It's this old Yamaha keyboard I got for The Sophtware Slump. I got it at Circuit City for $300. I use it all the time.

SILY: Did you use it on this record?

JF: There's some of that, tons of soft synths, tons of guitars. I really love using sounds incorrectly: pulling up soft synths and reversing them, or going in and making them something they're not intended to be. I'm far from the only person who does that--tons of people do that, but I love that interrogation of sound. Sometimes, you know you're within spitting distance of what you want, so you re- or deconstruct it to make it unique to a piece of music, to match to what the aesthetic is.

SILY: Tell me about the core group of players you've been working with.

JF: First, there's my collaborator Jacob Snider. [String player] Sienna Peck, who was on all of Out in The Sunset, plays on one song on Everything on Memory. I had never met Sienna in person until we played this show last month. She played a lot of stuff on the Common Ground score. Laura Andrade played the rest of the strings. My friend Keith Karman, who came into Modest Mouse on the last tour and is now kind of in the band, played bass on a song. Mike Cresswell, my collaborator forever, mixed and mastered it.

SILY: How did you come to work with Temme Scott?

JF: I had this project called Grace Meridian, the last song-focused thing I did on my own. Taylor [Broom, the real name of Temme Scott] and I sing everything simultaneously. I was really into this idea of trying to eliminate the gender perspective. I thought a way to do that would be a man and a woman's voice always singing the same damn thing. We made this EP called Clover to Clover, and I love singing with her. She also sang live and assembled a choir when we did the [Small Isles] show last month.

SILY: What about the engineering?

JF: I engineered tons of it. Jacob engineered tons of it. Andy Petr did some stuff at the last minute. He's someone I want to do more stuff with. I love what he does.

SILY: It seems like there's generally a lot of contrast on the record--for instance, on "People Come Down", the sharpness of the synthesizers with the fluttery strings. Can you talk about the role of contrast throughout the whole EP?

JF: When you say that, the first thing that comes to mind is Atlanta. My intention is not to make outside music. Rather, it's interrogating this general concept of how much can we fit inside that I wouldn't ordinarily turn to. Can a contrasting element be intubated into this composition in a way that's somehow beneficial? It doesn't have to be always harmonious, but beneficial to the vibe. It took a long time to get the horns to exist as a contrasting element in "People Come Down", in a way that felt like it flowed to me.

SILY: When I last spoke with you, you were planning a Small Isles show, or at least thinking about it. You finally played the first Small Isles show last month, as you mention. How did it go?

JF: It was super scary. I had never done anything like that. I knew I needed to get myself the actual challenge to do it, not a hypothetical looming in the distance. So I booked a show. I hit up Sienna and asked, "Can we do this? Can you put together a string section?" She took care of so much. I sent her all of the isolated parts, she recruited SUUVI, this incredible cellist, and they played a lot of double stop stuff. She contracted this copyist to do sheet music. Taylor assembled a choir. I asked her whether she knew any piano players, and she recommended Debbie Neigher, who was amazing. There was no money or rehearsal space or practice space. It's so much different than playing a rock and roll show. With Modest Mouse or Grandaddy, you practice a lot. You get familiar with the material. This band, doors were at 7:30, and there were 10 people on stage, and nobody played a note of music until 6. It was the first time I heard this ensemble make sound together. They just knew how to do it.

Joel Graves and Matt Costa, both of whom I've known for a long time, played guitar, so I felt comfortable. But a lot of these people I never met until that night. The show wound up being really good. It's totally all bound to them. They came in and knew the stuff. They seemed excited about doing it together and potentially excited to do more.

For "The Rest is History", the final song on Everything on Memory, I had to have sub-tracks there, because we didn't have a drummer. I had these Pro Tools sessions I had made. It was a crazy amount of work. We worked for weeks. Part of it was in 3/4, and there was this piano melody in 5/4 against the 4/4 of the song. I played it one time and had to go through and adjust everything in MIDI to make it make sense for the rest of the ensemble. I played it on loop because I thought there was no way anybody could possibly play it. During practice, we started to play it, and Debbie says, "Hey Jim, I can play that part. I learned it!" I was super apprehensive. In my head, I thought, "There's no way she can play this." It was me geeking out for a day in a half to construct a piano part. And she fucking nailed it! It made me certainly happy and expanded my concept of scoring these imaginary movies. There's so many places to go from here. I've been doing this for so long now that in the worst moments, you think, "What am I gonna do now?" But you haven't cracked open even a fraction of what you can do musically.

I didn't really get to talk to any of Taylor's choir. I had this crazy intense experience with these people musically and then said, "Thanks guys, later!"

SILY: Where do you go from here?

JF: I want to play more shows. Matt Costa recorded the show, so we're looking to send it to some booking agents. I hope people didn't tell me it was good just because they were my friends. A lot of folks seemed really taken by it. It was a unique show, with rock instrumentation but a choir and strings. As I'm working on some additional film scores right now, I have the kernels some imaginary scores. One is a summer movie, and one is a December sort of release. I have them in my head, so I'm starting to make the music for those. I want to get the team assembled for what those will hopefully become, and record them so they're done by the time spring rolls around.

SILY: I'm glad to hear you finally played live. That's where "music as problem solving" usually comes into play, but it seems like your show was the more seamless endeavor than your studio recording!

JF: It was, all down to them. They just fucking knew it. We played three songs from Out in The Sunset and five from Everything on Memory, and we only sound-checked each once. [laughs] It gave me a lot of optimism. I have this idea in my head that there's a lot of places to go musically, and sometimes you're just telling yourself that as an aspiration, but it turns out it's actually true. It's amazing.

[elpida]

@wrathfulmercy

[elpida]

[ JACKET ]:          sender notices the receiver beginning to shake after an immensely distressing incident, and removes their own jacket to wrap it around the receiver’s shoulders. (For Sienna)

Sienna Venri always looked tired, because she was. She was constantly in this state of being prepared and exhausted, just how they liked her. Before the world went down she'd had basic training, and that in turn meant she'd had value when the whole world ended and became this, but at least this was.. something. She barely knew the outside but she did know damaged people, how to fix them, how to try to keep the ones that were still alive, breathing.

It was late, most people had gone to their homes but not her.. she'd barely been off shift an hour and fresh air seemed important. She'd sat quietly on her own, staring up at the night sky with a mug in her hand, perched on a log off to the side of the community area. She didn't really mingle with them too much and above all else, she was just incredibly lonely. She sat beside people and nursed them either to health, or to their death. Those were the harder nights, ones where she felt a pressing responsibility and guilt resting on her, like tonight. Nights where that guilt made it impossible to close her eyes and relax so instead she sat star gazing until the rest of the world was somewhat silent in her absence.

The thing is her hands wouldn't stop shaking, and in the cracks of her knuckles, under her nails, remained blood that she had scrubbed her hands raw trying to rid herself off. Someone had bled out on her tonight and there was.. nothing she could do about it. Right in her hands... her hands... the thought kept circling and then rather than staring up in a daze, she was staring at how her hands trembled. The mug in one hand was shaking so bad that the tea in it spilled out and onto her hands and sleeve until she dropped the mug. She was going to start to panic, it wasn't enough, her hands hadn't helped, her hands, her hands-... there it was again, circling in her head that her hands had not helped, they had hindered.

She was panicking, they'd mock her for it ridicule her, she was meant to perform great under pressure but now.. now that she had a moment to breath she was seizing. Her chest wanted to constrict and cave inward, someone died in her hands... it was all starting to go wrong, and then came the warmth. A gentle weight around her, a toasty heat to lean her shoulders into, a little comfort around her that let her lungs expand and the air flood in. She didn't know who it was until she turned her head and saw him. Rick Grimes. Now she helped a lot of people but she had never forgotten him. They wheeled him into her in terrible shape, god he'd been so week and all they'd ordered her was to 'keep him alive.' She wasn't meant to speak or help any more than medically required but when they weren't looking she'd speak calm words, hush well wishes.. and calm down each confused nightmare. Sienna didn't need to know him in order to break the rules just to offer him her compassion and now when she needed that same scrap of care from someone, she'd got it but what did it matter? He wouldn't remember her, he'd been unconscious for the most and all she had been was a silent, fleeting thing at his bed side.

"Thank you... Thank you, I'm fine, just umm..." she wondered if he recognised her voice, wondered if maybe he recalled how she'd take his hand and whisper that he was safe in her hands. It was starting to come back to her, now that her hands had slowly started to calm from their vicious shaking. She swallowed thickly, reaching down for the pieces of mug that had shattered and shuffled herself across a little. "Sorry I-.. I think my head was more in the stars than I realised." a nervous laugh left her when she looked back up to him and then to the little space beside her that her eyes gestured to. "Do you.." she wasn't meant to, they wouldn't like it. Friends that knew nothing, that's what they'd instruct her, keep them all oblivious to the things she knew. "Do you want to sit with me for a while? I'm not the best company but.. I do try to be better than four walls and silence."

[fakesmilesallaround]

𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞

SHORTLY AFTER GLENN pulled up to a small campsite, Rick and the others inside the truck did too. Willow glanced out the front window, peering through the driver and passenger seat, seeing a decent amount of different people obviously from different backgrounds. Sienna laid in Willow's arms, still asleep. She was thankful that even with the bumps and shakes of the truck as they climbed the mountain, Sienna stayed asleep for the whole of it.

"Come meet everybody." Morales said happily, patting Rick's chest and peeking back at Willow. He hopped out of the truck, T-dog opening the rear end of it and hopping out too along with Andrea and Jacqui.

Willow looked down at her baby girl before glancing back up, her stomach twisting and turning. She still isn't used to being around others again and is still hesitant about inserting herself and Sienna into a group. But she pushed those feelings aside, grabbed her bag and slung it onto one shoulder, carrying Sienna in the other hand, and hopped out of the truck, approaching the others.

Andrea immediately started crying as she ran to another blonde girl, yelling out. "Amy!" The two embraced as they reunited, bringing a small smile to Willow's face, thought a pang of jealously hit her too. She'd do anything to reunite with her brother like that.

"Papi!" A small boy and girl ran up to Morales. He immediately picked them both up into his arms as another woman came over to him as well, embracing him tightly and kissing him.

Willow's eyes grazed over her surroundings and the people within it, taking notice of a woman crouching down in front of a little boy who had tears trailing down his cheeks. Glenn trailed over to Willow, nudging her slightly. "I know it's not much, but it's home." He smiled weakly at her. She appreciated his kindness. Though she didn't have anyone to return to like they did, she was happy to see that others found that solace.

"How'd y'all get out of there?" A man said from across the camp. He held a shotgun close to him.

"New guy- he got us out. Brought back this gal too." Morales said, pointing towards Willow. Everyone greeted her with warm smiles except for the man who asked Morales the question. His eyebrow raised in suspicion before he spoke again.

"New guy?"

"Hey, helicopter boy!" Morales shouted back towards the truck. "Come say hello."

The truck door opened as Rick climbed out, hesitant to come forward and meet everyone.

"The guy's a cop, like you Shane." Morales said to the man before trailing away with his wife and kids.

Shane stood tall waiting for Rick to come forward, but his face fell flat. Willow glanced at the both of them, trying to understand what had happened, but she heard Rick mutter under his breath.

"Oh my god."

Rick started to trail forwards past the group, his feet gradually speeding up as the little boy who had cried ran towards him screaming. "Dad!" The woman followed behind the boy immediately. The boy crashed into Rick's arms, the two of them fumbling to the ground in an embrace, tears spilling from both of their eyes.

"Wow." Willow whispered, tears pricking at her own eyes.

"Small world, huh?" Glenn smiled, heading off to talk to an old man in a fishing hat.

The rest of them stood around, admiring the reunification of the family. A smile tugged at Shane's lips, finally, taking in the sight before him.

"Amy, this is Willow."

Willow's head turned to her left, Andrea holding out her arm towards her.

"It's nice to meet you." Amy smiled sparingly, looking at the baby in her arms. "Who's this?"

"Sienna." Willow grinned, pulling back some of the cloth that shielded Sienna's face. Amy clicked her tongue with an adoring face.

"Why don't you introduce yourself to everyone, get to know them?" Andrea asked, still having an arm around Amy. "It'll be getting dark here soon, we'll start a fire and get things rolling."

-

The fire was warm and had a homey feeling to the heat it emitted.

The group sat around it, hugging those close to them, sharing little whispers and laughs.

"What was it like?" Dale asked from across the fire. "Waking up, not even knowing what the world has come to?"

Rick let out a sigh. "I felt- disoriented. I guess that comes closest. Fear, confusion, all those things. But disoriented comes closest."

"Words can be meager things." Dale responded. "Sometimes they fall short."

The group nodded in agreement.

"What about you, Willow?" Dale turned his attention to the girl cradling her baby. "What's your story?"

"My story?" She questioned, not quite sure how to begin or how much she should share. "I lived out in Augusta my whole life, I guess up until now. Came to Atlanta to find my brother. I found him, but we got separated a few days into finding each other." She cleared her throat, trying to not think about it too much.

"And her?" Dale looked at Sienna.

"Had this little devil about a year ago. She's a trooper." She smiled down at her daughter who was now wide awake staring back at her. Her smile faded quick as she saw Dale raise an eyebrow, about to open his mouth. She knew what his next question was going to be. "Her father isn't around now. Didn't make it that far into this new world." It made little to no difference for her or Sienna. Sienna's father would never have been good with them. Even in the world before this.

A loud crackle and bang was heard behind the group at a separate fire. A burly man tossed a large log into it before sitting back down next to a woman and a little girl.

"Hey, Ed. Wanna rethink that log, man?" Shane called over.

The burly man responded. "It's cold, man."

"The cold don't change the rules, does it? Keep our fires low, just embers so we can't be seen from a distance."

The man grunted. "I said it's cold. You should mind your own business for once."

Shane grew tired of the mouth on that man and stood up, ripping the log out of the fire and throwing it aside before sitting back down, muttering. "I appreciate your cooperation." The sarcasm dripped from his tongue.

"Have you given any thought to Daryl Dixon?" Dale asked, nobody in specific. "He won't be happy to hear that his brother was left behind."

Willow adjusted herself on the log she sat on, uncomfortable at the thought of another Dixon walking around. If Daryl was anything like Merle, she might just consider bolting out of here as soon as possible.

"I'll tell him." T-dog answered. "I dropped the key. It's on me."

"I cuffed him. That makes it mine." Rick said in return.

"Guys, it's not a competition. I don't mean to bring race into this, but it might sound better coming from a white guy." Glenn side eyed Rick who nodded in agreement.

"We could lie." Amy said, between her sister's arms.

"Or we could tell the truth." Willow added in, picking at her nails beneath Sienna. "Merle was out of control. Something had to be done or he'd have gotten us all killed. Surely Daryl would understand that."

"That's what we tell Daryl? I don't see a rational discussion to be had from that, do you?" Dale asked the group, but mostly Willow.

She shrugged in return. "I don't know the man, but I guess if he's anything like his brother, maybe you're right."

"Daryl Dixon is the spitting image of Merle Dixon." Glenn scoffed.

"Word to the wise- we're gonna have our hands full when he comes back from his hunt." Dale stood up, brushing off his pants as he grabbed for a canteen of water.

"He hunts?" Willow asked, earning a nod back from the whole group.

"Why?" Lori asked, looking over at Willow from Rick's shoulder.

"My dad used to take me hunting when I was younger." She glanced over at Shane. She felt like he's been making the calls for this group for a while now. "I could hunt if it would help out. It's the least I could do. You guys saved my ass back there."

Shane stared at her for a couple seconds, trying to study her. She didn't look like the type to hunt. "I think that would be unwise considering that lil girl you have there." He pointed at Sienna.

"I've made it this long on my own. Didn't always eat canned beans and fruit. Had to hunt eventually." She looked back at the burning embers of the fire, hoping they would take it into consideration.

"I locked the door to the roof." T-Dog broke the awkward silence. "Put a chain and padlock on that thing."

"What are you saying?" Andrea asked.

"Dixon's alive."

-

Glenn and Dale had showed Willow to a spare tent they had set up amongst others. It wasn't much, but it was better than anything she has had in weeks.

"If you need anything, I'm in the tent over." Glenn smiled at her before exiting, zipping the tent closed behind him.

Two sleeping bags were on the floor with a couple of extra pillows. She set down her backpack and pulled out a small diaper, changing Sienna quickly in hopes to not wake her. She had managed to fall asleep towards the end of the fire.

She swaddled Sienna in the fabric she had been carried in and laid next to Willow on top of the extra sleeping bag, a pillow underneath her. Exhaustion pulled at Willow's under eyes, and eventually she fell asleep.

Out of habit, her hand remained on the Bowie knife that stuck to her side.

-

Willow woke up to birds chirping throughout the leafy woods that surrounded the camp and she couldn't help but smile at the sound. In a world that had gone deafly quiet, it was comforting to hear the birds sing.

She stretched out her legs after throwing on some new clothes; a thin black tank top and some old jeans. Her clothes from the other day were missing and were replaced with new ones, nicely folded and fresh.

Cradling Sienna, she walked up a short hill to the base of the camp.

"Morning." A sweet voice rang next to Willow, the woman she knew to be Carol.

"Good morning."

"They're still a little damp." Carol felt the clothes that hung on the ironing board. "The sun'll have them dried in no time." She smiled kindly.

Willow shifted slightly. "You washed my clothes?"

"Well, best we could." She began taking a hot metal iron to some other clothes on the board. "Scrubbing on a washboard ain't half as good as my old Maytag back home."

"That's very kind, thank you Carol." Willow smiled back at the woman.

She began to walk off but Carol called out to her. "Willow?"

Willow turned back around.

"I've got a little girl of my own, Sophia." She glanced over at the little girl who sat on the ground playing with Carl. "I know a thing or two when it comes to babies. If you ever need help, I wouldn't mind stepping in."

Willow wasn't sure about many of the people at this camp, but something about Carol warmed her and told her she was one to put some trust in.

"I'll keep that in mind, thank you."

-

"Look at 'em. Vultures." Glenn huffed with crossed arms, watching the men loot and pull apart the Camaro he drove back from the city. "Yeah, go on. Strip it clean."

Dale passed by. "Generators need every drop of fuel they can get."

"I had a car like that." Willow said lowly, Glenn jumping, not knowing she had came up next to him. "Not nearly as modern."

Glenn eyed her, wanting more details.

"1969 Camaro, bright red with some white stripes down both sides. First it was my grandpa's, then my dad's, then it was mine. Best piece of metal I've ever had." She watched the men too. "It was like an heirloom."

"Wouldn't have taken you as a car girl." Glenn chuckled.

"I'm a lot of things people don't expect me to be."

His eye brow raised in curiosity.

"Guess you'll come to figure that out soon enough." She smirked.

A blood curdling scream carried through the air from back in the woods, immediately pulling everyone into action to follow it. Lori screamed from beside Rick, running towards the scream. "Carl?!"

Willow ran through the low branches, nearly tripping over stray tree roots, hanging not too far behind Rick and Shane. She pulled her knife from her side, rushing ahead while Lori enveloped Carl. Shane, Rick, Glenn, and Willow slid to a halt at the sight of a gnarly walker gnawing on a deceased buck. Willow noticed two arrows in the back side of the deer, and as her memory served, none of the group used any archery equipment. Her eyes darted around them, trying to catch a sign of someone else that may be lurking in the woods around them as Shane, Rick and Glenn took care of the walker. Squelching and blood splatters echoed around them as the men continued to beat on the walker, only to their dismay it continued to kick and groan.

Finally, Dale ran up behind them, chopping the walker's head clean off with an axe. "It's the first one we've had up here. They never come this far up the mountain."

"Well, they're running out of food in the city." Willow grunted, taking a look at the decapitated walker.

A twig snapped in the brush of the woods ahead of them, causing each of them to jolt up. Shane raising his shotgun, and the rest of them having their weapons out. The men stood ahead of her, blocking her field of view.

"Oh, Jesus." Shane scoffed, rolling his eyes and lowering his gun.

"Son of a bitch." A thick southern accent came from in front of the men. "That's my deer."

The men backed off, revealing a sturdy man wielding a crossbow.

"That explains the arrows in it." Willow said to herself.

"Look at it, all gnawed on by this filthy, disease-bearin', motherless, poxy bastard!" Between each word, he kicked the headless body of the dead.

"Daryl Dixon I'm assuming?" Willow whispered slyly to Glenn beside her, him nodding in return.

"Calm down son, that's not helping." Dale tried to ease his tension, but Daryl walked up into his face.

"What do you know 'bout it old man? Why don't you take that stupid hat and go back to 'On Golden Pond'." Daryl backed off, returning to the deer, ripping out the arrows stuck in it. "I've been trackin' this deer for miles. Gonna drag it back to camp, cook us up some venison. What do you think? Think we can cut 'round this chewed up part right here?" He used one of the arrows to outline the ruptured neck of the deer.

"I wouldn't risk that." Shane said, resting his shotgun on his shoulders.

"That's a damn shame." Daryl sighed. "I got some squirrel, 'bout a dozen or so."

Willow's attention was torn away from Daryl and to the head of the walker that started to snarl and groan again. "Oh god." She grimaced away.

"Come on people, what the hell." He raised his crossbow and shot the walker's head right in the eye. "It's gotta be the brain. Don't y'all know nothin'?" He retrieved his arrow again, shoving past them all and walked towards camp.

"You're right." She told Glenn. "Spitting image."

-

"Merle! Get your ugly ass out here!" Daryl called as he approached the RV. "I got us some squirrel."

"Daryl," Shane called after him. "just slow down a bit, I need to talk to you."

Willow trailed behind with a twist in her stomach. She knew this wouldn't end well. Glenn found a hint of amusement in it all.

"Piece of squirrel says that Daryl punches someone." He glanced over at Willow.

She shook her head, finding it hard to joke about it, but gave in. "Deal."

"About what?" Daryl finally stopped, looking back at Shane.

"About Merle. There was a problem in Atlanta." Shane stood in front of the man now, hands on his hips.

Daryl glanced around to those that were on that run to Atlanta, waiting for someone to speak up. "He dead?"

"We're not sure." Shane said with some disappointment in his voice.

"He either is or he ain't!" Daryl pushed forward towards Shane, Rick then inserting himself.

"No easy way to say this, so I'll just say it."

Before he could finish, Daryl cut him off. "Who are you?"

"Rick Grimes."

"Rick Grimes." Daryl mimicked. "You got something you wanna tell me?"

Rick spit it out, straight and simple. "Your brother was a danger to us all. So, I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there."

In the distance, Willow saw T-Dog approaching the camp with firewood laid out in his arms. He looked worried seeing Daryl back.

"Hold on, lemme process this." Daryl turned, kicking some dirt. "You're saying you handcuffed my brother to a roof and you left him there?!" Daryl screamed in Ricks face.

"Yeah." Rick groaned.

Daryl took another step closer before throwing the string of squirrels at Rick. Rick had ducked just in time to miss them, but Daryl came full force towards him, only to be knocked to the ground from Shane charging at him.

Willow whispered to Glenn. "No punches yet." She smirked before returning to Shane and Daryl rolling on the ground.

Daryl fought and got Shane off of him as he pulled out a knife, swiping it in Rick's direction, but Rick and Shane weren't having it. The two men grabbed Daryl by his arms, slamming him back into the RV.

"You best let me go!" Daryl shouted through gritted teeth.

"Nah, I think it's better if I don't." Shane said, struggling to control the man.

"Choke hold's illegal!"

Shane chuckled for a second. "You can file a complaint."

Rick crouched down to level with Daryl. "I'd like to have a calm discussion of this topic, you think we can manage that?" Daryl still fought, not responding.

"Do you think we can manage that?" Rick said again with more irritation bubbling inside him.

Daryl finally gave up, Shane releasing him from a choke hold.

"What I did was not on a whim." Rick said, still crouched down in front of the man. "Your brother does not work and play well with others."

Willow trailed forward a bit, standing next to Carol now. She felt bad for the man who was so upset about the group leaving his brother behind. She knew that if it were her brother, she'd be pissed too.

"I had the key." T-Dog finally said, laying down the wood. "But I dropped it."

"You couldn't pick it up?" Daryl shot his eyes at T-Dog.

"Well, I dropped it down a drain." T-Dog replied, a hint of embarrassment in his voice.

Daryl grunted, getting up from the ground, throwing a handful of dirt down at T-Dog's feet. "If it's supposed to make me feel better, it don't." A quick sob escaped his mouth before he rubbed his eyes, throwing his hand out to the group. "To hell with all of y'all! Just tell me where he is, so I can go get him."

"He'll show you." Lori spoke, standing at the entrance to the RV. "Isn't that right?"

Rick lowered his head at the tone of Lori's voice, full of disappointment. She had just gotten him back after he was presumably dead, and now he's running back out there.

"I'm going back." He finally said, Lori storming into the RV following his words.

Daryl spit on the ground before trailing off back to the tents.

"I'm gonna go talk to him." Willow said to Carol.

"I don't know, maybe it would be best to give him some space." Carol said. She knew him better than Willow did, and maybe she was right, but T-Dog had left out an important detail that may just give Daryl some hope.

"Would you mind holding Sienna for me?" She asked Carol shyly, but Carol was more than happy to.

Following his trail, she stood behind Daryl who had already thrown his crossbow down into his tent.

"Daryl?" She said softly. "My name's-"

"I don't care what your name is, woman." He kicked his sleeping bag and pillow to the side.

"Okay." She said quietly. "Well, you should know that T-Dog locked up the roof before he left. There's no way those walker could've gotten to him."

Daryl turned around quickly, his eyebrows furrowed. "You were there with 'em?"

She nodded slowly.

"And you didn't try to get him outta there?" His voice boomed but she didn't waver.

"The walkers were already swarming the place and had already broken in." She crossed her arms. "I did what I had to do to keep myself and my daughter alive, and so did everyone else."

He scoffed, turning back into his tent. "Yeah, forgot that them people don't give a shit 'bout anyone else."

She sighed with defeat as she realized there was no getting through to him. "That padlock won't budge. Point is, your brother's alive."

He scoffed before zipping up his tent and Willow retreated back to the camp, leaving him to sulk.

-

Word count: 3,488

[justwannasin]

"Sienna, time for you to serve your big brother again." Rick told his sister, having made her his sex slave after she came home drunk one night and fucked him.

sienna was a good little sex slave now. she'd do anything to keep him from telling the rest of the world (their parents especially) that she was so horrible, so she did as her older brother said.

"you wanna fuck me or let me suck it?" she said, looking up with a sultry gaze at him.

[wrathfulmercy]

@forelysiiium

Andrew Garfield and Michelle Dockery Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974 (2009) dir. Julian Jarrold

[aelove]

do you have any book recs? or any books that you've enjoyed in the past?

hi nonnie 🫶 this is rlly embarrassing bc ngl im very much in illiterate era ... idk when was the last time that i read a book of my own volition (it was probably in elementary school lol) & not for school, but here are some books that i've read in the very distant past & remember enjoying!! im terribly sorry if this is not what you meant bc this is basically just books that i read in elementary school 😭😭

singular:

the count of monte cristo - alexandre dumas

blackberry winter - sarah jio

echo - pam munoz ryan

mirror in the sky - aditi khorana

heartless - marissa meyer

series:

the frog princess - e.d. baker

my sister the vampire - sienna mercer

the lunar chronicles - marissa meyer

harry potter

percy jackson & heroes of olympus- rick riordan

trials of apollo & the kane chronicles - rick riordan

the selection - kiera cass

his dark materials - philip pullman (i've only read golden compass)

warrior - erin hunter

goddess girls - joan holub & suzanne williams

[refleter]

smash or pass for julian -> sienna rick halsey

thee halsey!? hard pass. he just doesn't fw her like that, i'm sorry. rick? also pass. not into blondes /: sienna? smash. mean women <333

[sinceileftyoublog]

Small Isles Interview: Filmless Music

Photo by Dustin Aksland

BY JORDAN MAINZER

It’s rare that you find a record with a genesis as specific as The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea, the debut album from Small Isles. The new project of guitarist Jim Fairchild (Grandaddy, former Modest Mouse) and songwriter/composer Jacob Snider has its basis in film scoring. The catch? The films don’t exist. The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea is presented as an imaginary score to an imagined sequel to Ang Lee’s 1997 familial drama The Ice Storm, itself based on Rick Moody’s 1994 novel. And the band’s upcoming, unfinished EP, with strings arranged by Snider and recorded by collaborator Sienna Peck, is, according to the band, a distillation of the concept of the band, one that consciously combines film scoring motifs with traditional songwriting. In a way, you could say that Small Isles is music about film scoring as much as scores itself.

Fairchild and Snider hold the belief that film scores should hold their own as a piece of music independent of visuals, and on The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea, they announce themselves convincingly. Opening track “The Concept”--essentially the prototype for the band--combines vaguely harmonic deep bass sounds with pristine, echoing string plucks, and wordless vocals, building up like an Explosions in the Sky tune. Other tracks, too, juxtapose the ambient with recognizable structures. “Fort Wayne” shimmers atop a drum machine, while the vocal samples of “Maybe We Will” cut in and out among the beats and arpeggios. Each track also has a pristine sense of place, as much of the album was written while Fairchild was on tour with Modest Mouse, tracks like “Fort Wayne” and the washy, atonal “Lake Superior” started in those locations.

I spoke with Fairchild (calling from his home in Ojai, California” and Snider (calling from near Philadelphia) last week, a few days prior to the release of the album via AKP Recordings. (The album comes out on vinyl next month). Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity, about the band’s artistic process, The Ice Storm, adapting the songs live, and what Small Isles has in common with Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour.

Since I Left You: You’ve called this record an imaginary score to an imaginary film. Did you think of the sequencing of the record in a narrative arc?

Jim Fairchild: Kind of, but honestly, there’s a sequence that originally existed, and I don’t remember what it was, and it would have been more aligned with what I pictured from the movie, but it didn’t work as well as a comprehensive piece of music. The last song on here, “The Plot to Take Clover”, that was earlier before. “Life at One”, the first single, really kicked off me and Jacob’s partnership. It was designed that way; it’s not the way the record plays out. I wrote all of the principle themes, the underpinnings of all the compositions, as an imagined score to some sort of a sequel to The Ice Storm. I don’t know exactly how it would play out with Rick Moody. The first one was really successful. I have this idea for a similar type of movie that takes place in contemporary California and all these cues I can use as a mood board. Like, let’s sit down and figure out what this palate is. Let’s write a movie around it. That’s what I was thinking.

SILY: You wrote a lot of this while on tour. Had you conceived of the idea before then and wrote while on tour because of your downtime, or was the downtime the launching point for the idea?

JF: I was totally inspired by the idea. I started some of the themes that popped up, but once the actual Ice Storm Ang Lee idea came to mind, it was really generative. It’s how a lot of this stuff works with me. It kind of floats around for a while, reaching out this way or that. Once the real kernel appears, it’s like, “That’s it!” It all happens pretty quickly. That was definitely the case with this. It was the real fine-tuning that’s the most time consuming. That’s what Jacob and I have experienced. The EP that we’re releasing later this year, basically how it’s worked so far is I send him a sequence of chords and basic rhythm, which happens pretty quickly. Then--and we’ve only done it on Zoom with the new EP, though it was the same with “Life at One”--there was this theme. Jacob came in, we were gonna write some other stuff. He came in with a mic and sang some stacked harmonies. Then it’s carving out all the other elements around that to make it. 

These are unconventional compositions. They’re meant to accompany visual ideas. With that in mind, cues and scoring music doesn’t always work in recorded music, traditionally speaking. There’s all these lengths, sometimes time signatures shift, a melody might exist in an unconventional way to fit what’s happening visually. I really wanted to embrace that. With “Life at One”, Jacob did all this stuff, and there’s this really interesting sound I don’t know how to describe. He asked, “What are those over there?” [My partner Natasha Wheat] had made these ceramic bells for me, and that’s the most fun part about working with Jacob. A lot of the people who are trained as Jacob is--and I say this with great admiration for his abilities--are stuck in certain modalities. This is a perfect example. He looked at the bells and said, “Let’s do that.” He grabbed a drumstick and played the edge of these bells and processed them. That was a big feature in the composition of “Life at One”. This all happens very thematically and reflexively, but to then carve it up and get it to have purpose, meaning, ebb, and flow and make it work visually--that’s where the dirty shit happens. [laughs] I also look forward to when Jacob and I can be in person more. We’ve made a lot happen over the past 7 months, but it’s hard when you’re not in the same room. Plus, I’d like to show off. If he’s sitting right next to me, play some fast guitar...[laughs]

SILY: The title of the record refers to various aspects of topography, and there are song titles that refer to specific places, like “Fort Wayne” and “Lake Superior”. Do these aspects exist within the narrative of the film?

JF: “Lake Superior” and “Fort Wayne” were just started in those places, literally. I picture the Ang Lee movie--the new Ang Lee movie that is inevitably gonna take form because he’s gonna hear me and Jacob’s music and think, “You’re right, we gotta do this,”--in this zone a little bit east of Berkeley. It’s the West Coast equivalent of the Connecticut zone where The Ice Storm exists. It’s this affluent, green place. But the reason I chose to keep the others as titles is like, Fort Wayne, that’s pretty grand and has Batman implications. And Lake Superior, what a fucking great name for a lake, you know? I like the power of those, and if I were sitting down and writing a movie, those titles could be at least generative of a conversation.

SILY: What about the other song titles? What inspired them?

JF: “The Concept” is literally the concept for our band. The concept has expanded since then, but out of the ordinary--no sounds are out of the ordinary in modern production--but in the film scoring landscape, out of the ordinary, ambient, or textural sounds. But then big, beautiful melodies. Jacob’s voice. All that stuff. Synthesizing our two strengths. Jacob’s also a songwriter and makes amazing songs, but my background’s in bands, and so I treat our relationship as if it’s a band. Taking our two strengths. Jacob’s more conventionally trained, schooled, and knowledgeable than I am. He has a richer depth of knowledge in theory and orchestration. I can arrange that way, but he knows what’s going on. Mine is more reflexive--I don’t want to say auto-didactic because that’s kind of an arrogant term--but learning through mistakes. I think Jacob’s made fewer mistakes than I have.

SILY: What were all the instruments used on the record?

JF: There’s a lot of found stuff. 12-string guitar. I was writing it using this Rosewood Fender Stratocaster that Fender made for me. The 12-string is prominent on “Life At One”. There’s a piano Jacob played. There’s a lot of me coming up with drum beats. A lot of the initial stuff was in the box. I’d roll in my portable studio backstage, I’d have a guitar, Universal Audio space, whatever drums and synths I had.

SILY: What is your background in film scoring?

JF: I don’t have a specific background. From a very early age, I’ve been into film scores. I’d buy them starting when I was 15 or 16. CDs. Pretty obvious releases, but things like Danny Elfman’s Batman score, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Sort of getting into Jerry Goldsmith. Elfman, Morricone. I like some of the Bernard Hermann stuff. I started studying it from the way I study everything: figuring out chord sequences, the way the melodies work, to the degree I was able. In the early 2010s, I was making a lot of music that was getting licensed for TV. Once Modest Mouse really started touring [2015 album] Strangers to Ourselves, I let a lot of those pursuits wither a little bit. But I’d always longed for a collaboration. A lot of that stuff was done in a solitary way, so I felt very fortunate when Jacob and I met. He was into that idiom but has a range of skills I don’t have. We also really work well together. All the reflexive stuff that happens, the melodies, it’s easy for us to go back and forth and see what we’re into and where to keep going. Neither of us get upset when the other person isn’t feeling whatever the direction is.

As I get older, I realize the value of stimulating multiple senses. I look forward to Jacob and I doing more of this stuff in collaboration with people. The Riley Thompson video for “Life At One” was him responding to a finished track, but in an ideal world, filmmakers would come to us and, in the way Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross work with David Fincher, where he says, “This is the concept for the new film,” and Jacob and I come back and say, “This is the sonic and melodic landscape we’re thinking of, and here are some character cues. Let’s take it from there.” I love being in conversation with people collaboratively and am attracted to the idea of it across media.

SILY: Do you think the idea that the music might not be responding to a finished film would make the score stand on its own more as a piece of music?

JF: The scores that I like totally stand on their own as music. When Morricone passed away, I read that John Zorn had a quote when they were hanging out in the late 80′s or early 90′s, Zorn said, “Don’t do it unless you’re thinking about what the soundtrack record is gonna be like.” The music needs to be cool enough to just be music.

SILY: Tell me about the album art.

JF: Natasha and I sold our place in Los Angeles last year and moved to Ojai. We thought it was a temporary transition, and now it’s somewhat permanent, because we bought a place here. We’ve been in this guesthouse next door since November. I like taking pictures at night with whatever ambient light [there is], so I took that picture from our place. I wanted there to be contrast with this technicolor paint and silver border on the upper and lower parts of the image. Homes are very interesting to me, and there’s a lot of that in The Ice Storm. There’s that shelf people look at from the outside and think, “It could be dilapidated, it could be beautiful.” People think of it as a thing. But there’s this whole other world that only exists inside of there. It’s always fascinating to me when walking by the place. Stories in the shell. I like the idea of a structure having implications. I don’t have an agenda for what those implications might be, but I like the idea that there could be implications there.

SILY: Jacob, when Jim came to you with this idea, how aware were you of The Ice Storm?

Jacob Snider: I had seen it. I don’t know if in our first meeting, it came up that specifically and clearly that this is where the music was going. In fact, it started more as a casual meeting of creative types. When I came over to Jim’s studio, he just showed me the latest thing he was working on without any huge idea behind it expressed to me in that moment. Jim might have been thinking it in that moment, but that day was more, “Alright, I’m working on something, what do you hear and is there something you think you could contribute to it?” It was really organic. Like Jim mentioned before, the best thing you can do when making something is show it to somebody else, because they’re gonna hear it in a different way or they might suggest something if you’re open to it. People can make amazing solitary music, but it will always be just their thing. You bring in someone else, there’s a different energy, a different perspective. 

As it stands, I do love that film. It’s really haunting. Jim and I talked before that it’s not a movie you can watch every week. It’s heavy, and the themes are deep: family, loss, grief, betrayal. It’s a great one. I think it’s a movie that’s cinematic but also has a lot of depth. I think that’s what we’re going for with Small Isles. It has shades of film music but also shades of rock and roll and romantic string writing from the orchestral traditions. I think we’re trying to combine a few things at once, and we’re really curious how it starts to strike people and how some filmmakers respond to it.

SILY: Are you both generally Ang Lee fans?

JF: I haven’t devoured all of his work. There’s plenty I like. But I’m so in love with [The Ice Storm]. I was in love with the book before the movie came out. He treated it so beautifully. As high in the sky as it is for two nascent film composers to say, “I want to work with Ang Lee,” it’s very important to know where you want to go. It may take a long time to get there, but [it’s important] to have a place where you’re headed. That was definitely the case in the early Grandaddy days, and having watched [Modest Mouse lead singer] Isaac [Brock] for as long as I did, I think it was the case there, too. It may not be as specific knowing that I’m traveling in this direction, but that direction can totally change. There can be diversions that knock you off your course positively or negatively, but thinking about how beautifully he treated that material, that’s where I want to go.

SILY: How are you adapting Small Isles to a live performance?

JF: We’re gonna play at least some of this, maybe all of this live. I’m really looking forward to it. Jacob’s only on half this record, and the 5-song EP we’re releasing later this year, he’s on all of. That’s a straight-up 50/50 collaboration. I’m looking forward to the stuff Jacob didn’t contribute to on the record, hearing what he does with strings. We’re still figuring out how we’re gonna approach it. Jacob will be on keys and vocals, and I might sing a little bit. I’ll be on guitar. Our friend Sienna who Jacob went to school with, who’s doing the strings, we’re talking about having her lead a double string quartet. I would like to have a drummer doing some electronic drums and maybe a kit as well. I definitely don’t imagine we’ll totally nail it on night 1. There’s a lot of stuff we have to work out. There aren’t many antecedents in this zone, but something like Explosions in the Sky mixed with Johann Johannsson. I saw [the latter] in 2010 in San Francisco; there was a little bit of strings, various electronics, and he was on piano. That was a very striking performance. So the explosiveness of a big arena rock show with lots of subtleties and nuance that can come from strings and orchestral.

SILY: What else is next for Small Isles?

JF: We wanna finish this EP. I also really love the way a lot of rap and hip-hop people have gotten it right over the years. Using current listening habits and technology to get out as much music as possible. I definitely have the seeds for at least another EP behind this. Once we get this EP done--there’s just a little bit of tinkering to be done over the next month before going into the mixing stage--I want to make as much music as possible and release it. With the spirits of the world willing, I want to get off the ground live and collaborate with filmmakers, dancers, artists, people in the visual medium. I just love making music with Jacob and this type of music. I’d like to have a few releases a year. EP length [or] album length. I have a number of concepts written down. The seeds that Jacob and I have been playing with to make the EP. I was thinking about The Last Black Man in San Francisco when making this EP, and I’d love to collaborate with those filmmakers. Even just being in person, to tell Jacob, “What do you think of this sequence?” and have him respond without dealing with latency issues and dodgy DSL.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

Jacob Snider: I’ve been listening to a lot of pop. I’ve been listening to the Olivia Rodrigo record [Sour]. I think there’s great writing on there, great production. Watching, I’ll just piggyback on The Last Black Man in San Francisco. It took me a while to finally see it, but I had a filmmaker friend tell me I had to, and I loved it. Also the other film Emile Mosseri did the score for, Kajillionaire, the Miranda July film. Reading-wise, I’m about to jump back into Louise Erdrich’s The Round House.

JF: I’ve been digging the Olivia record, too.

JS: There’s some cool strings on there too from the guy who does a lot of the strings for Portugal. The Man, [Paul Cartwright]. They created a string orchestra sound with just one guy layering violin and viola, which is really cool, and that’s what we’re doing with our collaborator Sienna Peck. There’s totally room for that now, the way the world has been so remote. We can’t put 16 players in a room right now due to public health restrictions, so let’s get one person. It’s really hard to do--you can be a great violinist and not be able to layer yourself in a way that makes it sound like a string orchestra. You have to change your position in the room, the way you’re playing slightly, pretend to be three different people sharing a stand. That’s what you’ll hear on the next record.

JF: I just got into How to Change Your Mind, the Michael Pollan book about psychedelics, which I really loved. I just started a book called The Magic Years, which is about child development. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old son, and I’m very fascinated by what’s going on in his brain and what makes him make the decisions he makes. Just how to be a better dad. I am always a religious reader of The New Yorker, every week it comes out. Natasha and I watched The Kids, a documentary [about the making of Larry Clark’s Kids]. When that movie came out, Grandaddy were skateboarders, so it was important to us. But even as a young kid, I felt that it was really exploitative, and the documentary verifies it. It’s heartbreaking. Larry Clark is a really derelict dude. Truly lecherous. But [The Kids] is a beautiful movie. We’ve been watching Los Espookys. I’m really excited about Vince Staples’ upcoming record. My friend Nik Freitas put out a new song. My musical diet’s gotten really regressive in a way because my son is very into the Super Furry Animals record Radiator. It’s all he wants to listen to in the car.

[wrathfulmercy]

@elpida

It wouldn’t mean anything. Then do it.

[elpida]

"I know I should leave, but I can't stay away from you." (For Sienna)

Sienna turned her head to Rick, considering what to say, what to do.. they shouldn't even be together right now but he'd walked her back to her room after they met on that rooftop like they did most nights now. It was something to do, a place to just breath and relax and be themselves, in her mind.. it was a place to be near him. If they were spotted? It'd mean terrible things for her to be spotted and reprimanded but they needed her, either way they looked at it they needed her working hands.

She wanted to challenge the crm, surely they'd not rid themselves of one of the most intelligent medical workers they had at their disposal over seeing one of their lieutenants. Plus, what if nobody saw? What if nobody saw them at all and it was perfectly fine, and that he didn't have to stay away from her so much? Her hand lingered on her brass door handle and rather than wish him goodnight she clicked open the door. Of course she had some plants inside, little pots she'd bought from the market and painted to look a bit brighter.

"If you mean it, then don't stay away from me?" she suggested softly, her eyes looking up into his and her brows raising. Sienna pushed the door open and waited, curious to see what he'd do, her breath already feeling caught in her throat. "I'm not telling you to leave, if that's what you're hoping I'll do.. so stay."

[fakesmilesallaround]

𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫

"SO YOU AND DARYL?" Lori watched Rick heading towards camp, getting ready to go back to the city for the lost Dixon. "That's your plan?"

Willow and Glenn stood beside each other, Rick shooting Glenn a look. "Oh, come on." Glenn sighed.

"You know the way, you've been there before. In and out, no problem. You said so yourself."

Glenn took off his hat, rubbing his head anxiously.

"I'll come." Willow spoke up. "I've been in Atlanta for a little bit now. I may not be as familiar with it as Glenn, but I can help." Not only that, but it was another chance for her to possibly find her brother.

Rick looked over to her, a glimpse of doubt in his eye for a second, but he nodded.

Daryl grunted off to the side, wiping his arrows with a red cloth. "My day just gets better and better, don't it?" Willow glared at him.

"That's just great, now you're gonna risk three of our people, huh?" Shane said with a disgusted look on his face, glimpsing towards Willow and Rick. "You're putting every single one of us at risk, just know that Rick. You saw that walker." Shane pointed out into the woods. "It was here. It was in camp. They're moving out of the cities, we need every able body we got."

"Seems to me what you really need her is more guns." Rick responded, tilting his head.

"Right." Glenn stepped up. "The guns."

"What guns?" Willow questioned.

"Six shotguns, two high-powered rifles, over a dozen handguns. I cleaned out the cage back at the police station before I left." Rick answered, turning his words back to Shane. "I dropped the bag in Atlanta when I got swarmed. It's just sitting there on the street waiting to be picked up. 700 rounds, assorted."

Shane finally eased up at the thought of having more guns to protect camp.

"Got any bolt cutters?" Rick asked Dale and Jim who sat against the open front of the RV. Rick was able to bargain the bolt cutters with a gun for Dale and the radiator hose from the truck once they got back. Sudden honking from the truck made everyone jump, Willow looking back to see Daryl kicking the horn of it.

"Come on, let's go!"

Willow let Sienna fall into the care of Carol until she got back from the trip, kissing her little head lightly before heading to the truck. She felt like she could puke, leaving her daughter behind, but it would happen eventually.

Glenn sat behind the wheel and Rick in the passenger, leaving Daryl and Willow in the back of the truck. They sat awkwardly, Daryl muttering curses under his breath as they made their way toward the city.

"You take that thing everywhere?" Willow asked daryl, nodding her head toward the crossbow by his side.

He didn't answer, just a subtle nod as he picked at the skin around his fingers.

"I have an older brother too." She spoke softly, trying to loosen the tension between everyone. "His name's Ashton, but my father and I called him Ash." She smiled at the memories that popped into her head. "I found him a little bit ago, but got separated again back in Atlanta."

"And?" Daryl scoffed, obviously bored and not wanting to hear any of it.

"I'm still holding onto hope for him." She scooted her knees into her chest. "You should for your brother too."

He glared at her. "Ain't got no hope for nothin'."

-

They left the truck on some abandoned railroad tracks a few blocks out from the building Merle was left at, walking the rest of the way, but taking notice of where they had left the truck so they can return.

Willow pointed to an overpass ahead. "There. We can cut through the fence. Much faster that way." They followed her word, Glenn using the bolt cutters to cut through the fence.

"Merle or the guns first?" Rick asked the group.

"Merle! We ain't even havin' this conversation." Daryl muttered at the man.

"Merle's closest." Glenn jogged ahead. "The guns would mean doubling back. Merle first."

Soon enough, they were walking through the broken glass doors that once closed off the small retail store, the glass crunching beneath their boots. To their surprise, only a few walkers were left wandering around it. Rick held up a hand to them as he heard the shuffling of their feet. Willow held her knife out, but Daryl took lead.

"Damn, you are one ugly skank." His arrow whiffled through the air quickly, the walker dropping to the ground.

Another one had snuck up behind Daryl, clawing at his sleeveless shirt from behind. Willow being the closest, jabbed her knife into the top of the walkers head, the skull crunching beneath the blade. She ripped it back out, Daryl turning to her. She kicked herself for expecting a thank you.

"This way." Glenn announced, heading towards the back of the store and up the stairs. The group ran up the stairs, Glenn cutting the padlock and chains, Daryl kicking the door open yelling for his brother.

The four of them ran to the spot they knew Rick had cuffed Merle, but the only sign left of him was his hand which laid on the ground next to a hack saw and beneath a dangling hand cuff. Willow's stomach dropped as Daryl yelled.

"No!" His voice wavered as he paced around. "No!"

-

The group followed a trail of blood, leading to another door on the roof.

"Merle! You in here?" Daryl called out, Willow cringing at the echo his voice made.

"Quiet down!" Rick sneered at him.

The trail continued down the stairs and into a room cluttered with stray papers and desks along with a few walkers that were taken down.

"Had enough in him to take out these two sumbitches." Daryl pointed to the two decayed bodies. "One handed."

Willow trekked around the room, picking up a wrench that laid next to the head of one of the dead, remembering that Dale complained earlier to Rick about his missing tools.

"Toughest asshole I ever met, my brother. Feed him a hammer, he'd crap out nails."

"Any many can pass out from blood loss, no matter how tough he is." Rick continued on, following the trail.

They entered another room in which Daryl called out for his brother again.

"We're not alone here, remember?" Rick hissed in Daryl's ear.

"Screw that. He could be bleeding out, you said so yourself."

They heard a sizzling that came from deeper into the room, and as they continued, it revealed a kitchen, and the sizzling came from a stove burner that had been left on with a bloody belt draped across it.

"Must've used it as a tourniquet." Willow said, shutting off the stove.

Rick picked up a flat metal tool that sat beside the stove.

"What's that burnt stuff?" Glenn asked in disgust.

"Skin." Rick examined it. "He cauterized the stump."

"Told you he's tough. Nobody can kill Merle but Merle."

"Guys." Willow stood by the window now, the glass shattered around it.

The three men trailed over.

"He left the building?" Glenn examined the window sill that had drops of blood on it. "Why the hell would he do that?"

"Why wouldn't he? He's out there all alone as far as he knows, doing what he's gotta do. Survivin'." Daryl began to climb out the window, only to be tugged back in by Willow and Rick.

"He can't get far with that injury, Daryl." Willow sighed. "We can check a few blocks around here." She glanced over at Rick to see if he'd agree, and he did.

"Only if we keep a level head." He added.

"We need to get those guns first." She saw a few walkers shuffling down the street outside. "God knows how many walkers we'll be facing out there."

-

"No way." Willow shook her head, Rick agreeing. "You're not going out there alone."

Glenn peered up from the drawing of the streets he made with an expo marker on the tile. "If I'm alone, I can move fast."

The group still wasn't convinced.

"Look," He directed them back to the drawing. "Daryl and I will hit up this alley, the one we found Willow in."

Daryl glanced over at Willow who stood above them, arms crossed watching Glenn explain things.

"While Daryl waits here in the alley, I run up the street, grab the bag." He finishes.

"You got us elsewhere?" Rick asked.

Returning to his drawing, Glenn placed an eraser between two lines. "You and Willow will be in this alley here."

"Two blocks away?" Willow asked, confused.

"I may not be able to come back the same way. Walkers might cut me off. If that happens, I won't go back to Daryl. I'll go forward instead, all the way to that alley where you guys are. Whichever direction I go, I got you in both places to cover me. Afterwards, we'll all meet back here."

Looking back at Glenn, Daryl asked. "Hey, kid. What'd you do before all this?"

"Delivered pizzas. Why?"

They all looked at each other, nodding, as it made sense.

-

Rick and Willow cleared the alley while they waited for Glenn. Only a few stray walkers stumbled around, easily taken out by Willow's knife.

"So, you were a sheriff?" Willow asked Rick as she wiped the blood off her knife.

"Yeah." He nodded, eyeing around the corner of the alley. "You?"

"Wasn't much before this. Just living day by day." She leaned against the opposite wall of the alley across from Rick. "You're a good leader."

He glanced at her in confusion.

"You may not see it, but I know the others do. I can tell already you're gonna be the glue of this group." She smiled, but she could tell he didn't seem to fully appreciate what she was saying. "I know I'd be happy to have you lead the way. Lord knows my daughter needs it."

"When I woke up in that hospital," he began, "alone and confused. I immediately went home looking for them, Lori and Carl. I thought for sure they were gone. Don't know if I had considered them dead or if they had just left, but when I saw them in that camp." He shook his head. "That was it. I knew I needed to be there with them. Keep them safe."

"You can and you will." She said. "If they got you, they will be just fine."

"I'm selfish." He grunted out. "The moment I had them again, I knew I wouldn't give a damn about anything else. That's no leader."

"Well you're here now, aren't you?" She questioned him. "Looking for a Dixon out of all people." She laughed lightly. "That doesn't sound selfish to me."

They looked at each other, and she could tell she was getting through to him, but their conversation was cut short. Glenn came barreling into the alley with the bag in his hand, yelling.

"We've gotta move!"

Without hesitation, Rick and Willow did exactly that, groans and moans getting louder behind them. She regretted looking back for a split second to see nearly hundreds of walkers chasing them.

The alleys they ran down were slim and cluttered with debris and junk. It was a surprise to them all that none of them had tripped. They stood outside of the building they agreed to meet up at, but Daryl was yet to come.

"We've gotta go, now!" Rick sneered, just barely audible over the walkers that weren't too far behind them.

"Daryl isn't here yet, we've gotta wait." Willow spun around, looking in every direction for him.

"Willow, come on." Glenn tugged at her arm but she stayed put.

"We already left one Dixon brother out here, we aren't leaving another."

Rick and Glenn shared looks with each other, conveying they both knew this was damn near suicide, but they stood with her.

"We've got the guns now, we can handle this until Daryl gets here." She said, grabbing at the sheriff bag Glenn held. They rummaged through it, grabbing a hold of whatever they could find first.

Willow held tightly to a pistol, checking the magazine to see that it was already full, the men doing the same.

"Head count, Glenn?" She looked over at him, noticing his slightly anxious face.

"Maybe 80 to 100? I'm not sure."

"Gotta be less now, I know we lost a good bit of them taking all those turns back there." She reassured him.

The first walker came around a corner of one of the alleys they just left. Glenn aimed his rifle at it, but Willow pushed it down.

"Not yet." She walked up to the walker, kicking it backwards onto the ground before plunging her knife into its head and removing it. "Lets hold off on firing until absolutely necessary. We don't need to alert more of them right now."

A few more walkers had trailed towards them from different directions, Glenn and Rick taking on a few while Willow did the same.

"There's more coming, Willow." Glenn called over his shoulder. "We really need to think about-"

"About what?" Daryl grunted, jogging out of the alley, firing an arrow at the walker Glenn was struggling with.

A slight smile played at Willow's lips.

"Alright, let's go." Rick tossed the bag over his shoulder, leading the way back to the truck.

It didn't take long for them to reach the tracks they left the truck at, but there was no truck where they had left it.

"Where the hell's our van?" Daryl swung his crossbow over his shoulder, ducking through the fence they cut earlier.

"We left it right there, who would take it?" Glenn started to panic.

Willow looked at Rick, knowing they both thought the same thing.

"Merle."

-

The sky was dark and their feet ached from the long hike back up the mountain to camp. The moon barely lit the road enough to keep them from stumbling and telling where exactly to go.

But the gunshots that went off told them exactly how close they were.

Rick and Willow took off into a sprint as did the rest of them shortly after, kicking up rocks and dirt beneath their feet.

As they got closer and closer, screams and more gunshots were heard louder. Willow's legs burned from how fast she had been running, swearing to god if anything had happened to Sienna.

Willow was the first to break through the trees, immediately cocking her pistol and shooting multiple walkers in the head, their bodies cluttering around the camp ground. Rick, Glenn and Daryl finally showed, firing off rounds from their shotguns. With every walker that dropped, more seemed to come.

"Baby! Carl!" Rick stepped over all of the bodies, running towards his family. Daryl smashed the head in of the final walker with the butt of his shotgun.

Willow's eyes darted around frantically looking for Carol.

"Where's my daughter?" She yelled, rushing throughout the camp looking for her. "Carol!"

"This way!" Jacqui yelled out to Willow, swinging the RV door open for her.

She ran inside, pushing through the others that gathered in as well, finding Carol and Sophia.

"Sienna? Where is she?" Her eyes welded with tears.

Carol stepped aside, revealing Sienna bundled up, laying on the small couch in the back of the RV.

"Oh my god." Willow sobbed, picking her daughter up and holding her close. Sienna's little bug eyes looked up at her and also started crying. She held her tight.

"Thank god. Thank god." She whimpered, tears streaming down her face.

Carol stroked Willow's back before returning to her own daughter, crying about her deceased husband and Sophia's father.

Willow sank into the dirty couch, rocking back and forth with Sienna in her arms, trying to calm the both of them down.

At this moment, she didn't care about anything or anyone else.

Maybe she was the selfish one.

-

Word count: 2,575

[elpida]

“When you laugh like that, it just — you’re so beautiful, you know that?” (For Sienna)

"You know, I used to have pizza so much, I really took it for granted... I mean like, god every few nights, pizza. I was young but that seems like lifetimes ago, now I'm grateful for even this slice!" Sienna paused, softly smiling until it turned into a laugh. "It makes me feel stupidly young again, who'd have thought I'd get so excited for pizza again? I remember thinking I'd never have a life again."

The period of time that Sienna had been stuck on the outside, she'd lost her voice by the time she came here, she didn't remember the sound of it when she spoke her name, a name she barely remembered but... in the end she did. Sienna Venri. She only survived for knowing her way around vitamins really, that's how she'd got a lot of what she needed. She'd been drastically underweight when she got here but the thing was, Sienna had talents they needed desperately, that any community needed.

"Do you think people would still argue whether pineapple goes on pizza?" she giggled, properly giggled, the type that scrunched her nose and pushed up her cheeks. She'd leaned into his side when she giggled. Then he said that, said that she was just beautiful and Sienna was... well honestly, she was floored. Her cheeks instantly started to turn red hot. Beautiful. He called her beautiful and she didn't know how to take a compliment like that these days.

"Do you.. mean that?" appearance stopped being important for a lot of people but she did wander if anyone... still noticed that she tried, or if it mattered at all. Then another thought came. "You're not just saying it because I saved you once?" she still had warmth in her cheeks, warmth that flattered her skin tone. "Do you want to walk with me?" so they could spent more time together, so she could keep this feeling safely with her, even a little longer. "How about I show you that spot I told you about?" when Sienna stood she turned and held her hand out to him, with a smile that showed so much care, so much gentle nature.