Member
Snowdrops
Damo021Daniel Rothschild
"Many Bothans died to bring us this information."
"Shut up, Mon Mothma, and listen for once."
No one missed Daniel these nights. Fridays were sacred. The Rothschild residence hardly noticed his absence, even in light of the fact that Daniel talked the most and the loudest of all of his siblings. He didn't mind, though, even the nights they totally forgot his existence. Finding a place to sleep didn't come too hard; the town knew each other and some of the parents didn't mind, as long as it wasn't a school night. Tonight, Daniel didn't care much either way how he ended up sleeping, if he ended up sleeping, at all.
Today sweltered, heat roiling through the pavement - despite the laws of physics, heat in the valley never felt like it rose. Instead, the entire town of St. Stephens felt like a sauna. Today was no different with the humidity rising and rain looking like a godsend in the distance. Daniel always logged how hot it would get before the rain soaked it all up. Right now, his journal read a series of 80's and a few 90's the last few weeks. Daniel flicked the window in his room, eyes squinting to read the numbers on the thermometer. 92 degrees Fahrenheit; 33 degrees Celsius. Daniel recorded it alongside the other numbers in the chart, his tongue sticking out as he plopped onto the bed.
Sitting at the top of the Rothschild home, Daniel's room refused to reflect his personality. At least, not to the obvious viewer. Controlled chaos didn't satisfy Daniel as much as near OCD levels of organization. When it came to his stuff, he liked the neat and orderly. It took a good eye and consistent visits to notice that Daniel's room changed at random intervals. He liked moving things around - organizing different objects using different categories. To keep him from hurting himself, his mother helped him install a sliding shelf on one side of his wall, allowing him to section off parts of it or combine them all to make one large platform. At the moment, his books went by a color code. He shoved them along the wall and ordered them in a gradient row and deemed it close enough.
The rest of his room held a bed, made and tidy if a bit wrinkled from constant flopping. A desk previously laid against the wall now sat at the foot of Daniel's bed, with all of his supplies and documents (read: journals) piled in squared groups across the surface. A white, wooden chair sat a good few feet away from it, nearly against his closet door. Everything else was in the process of rearranging, though not tonight. Tonight he had some place to be.
"Cap'n." He saluted, grabbing a copy of issue 308 of Captain America along with Iron Man #197 and shoving them into a backpack for the night. He had to get the newest Uncanny X-men from one of his friends and hope they also had the New Mutants to finish his tie into Marvel's new Secret Wars II. He danced lightly on his feet and giggled before grabbing a random book from his shelf and some of his summer reading settled on his desk - he almost forgot his journal and a pencil on his way out. Once ready, Daniel raced down the stairs to barely collide into Helena.
"Watch it, nerd," she scoffed, shoving him aside and stomping up to her room. Daniel could only roll his eyes as he looked off into the living room, seeing his dad asleep on his Lazy-Boy with the TV sizzling static in front of him. Their living room had been the reason they'd bought the house, with how large it spanned. They forwent a dining room purely for a family room able to fit seven kids and two adults semi-comfortably. A wall divided the kitchen and the living room, allowing two arching entrances from said room and the hallway beside the stairs. Daniel shuffled inside, where his mother focused all of her attention in creating cake for some kind of potluck.
Daniel poked through the fridge for an apple and then the pantry for a few twinkies to shove into his backpack. "Hey, no more than two, Daniel," his mother spotted him, flicking a chocolate coated spatula at her son, "take a juice box too." Rachel knew the day and didn't bother bidding her kid a farewell as he waved and rushed out of the house. He couldn't hear her swearing as she slammed the front door shut, already shoving the apple in his mouth and peddling madly toward the Delaney residence.
Arriving there hadn't been much of an issue. Daniel had to pass only two streets before he spotted Debra's house. The bike tires squealed, skidding the drive way as he shoved it against the side of the house. He found the back entrance easy and slid in to spot Debra already prepped and ready. The apple crunched in Daniel's mouth and he plopped down on one of the love seats with a wrinkled noise. Still smelled like moss and spores. He shoved a hand through his backpack to grab a twinkie and promptly tossed it at Debra.
After everyone piled in and listened in on Debra's laid out plans, Daniel jolted from his reclined position to stare at the map and then Debra herself. "That musta been a lotta work, Debs," he said, just now opening his twinkie wrapper and stuffing the whole thing in his mouth. He talked through the chewed bits, "What about the adults? Convincing even one of 'em is gonna be a camp-licated mission itself, ey?" He smiled, teeth white and yellow. He attempted a laugh but that only served to shove twinkie bits down the wrong pipe. Daniel keeled over in his coughing fit, covering his face with the back of his pack.
"Sorry," he mumbled, "but it's a good point!" Daniel pulled out his pencil, gesturing to the tip for emphasis, "I don't think anyone's gonna wanna let us out there alone and even if we get a supervisor to camp with us, we don't know if we're gonna get Cecil's hawk eye dad or my 'gonna smoke for 2 hours' mom. But, I'm excited! I wanna do this. Just how we gonna pull the wool over our parents to even get to Madcat?"