Occams Razor

In the back of the Diner sat Norah hunched over on a stool rocking back and forth slightly as she hums to herself. She was drawing once again in her sketchbook with her crayons. The drawing was a rudimentary sketch of what possibly might look like one of the giant bugs (if you looked long enough) with little black stick figures laying on the ground. Norah picked up her well worn red crayon and started to scribble over the black stick figures.

♪ There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't know why she swallowed the fly, perhaps she'll die! ♪

Norah's humming finally turned into soft singing as she repeated the first verse of the children's song over and over. Her rocking began to grow a little more pronounced as she sang to herself while her scribbling her red crayon grew more erratic. A wide grin spread across Norah's face as she nodded vigorously at her "masterpiece".

♪ Perhaps she'll die perhaps she'll die perhaps she'll die perhaps she'll die perhaps she'll die ♪

Norah began repeating the last line of the verse over and over like a broken record as her rocking slowed down to a steady pace. She reached a hand up into her mussy hair and began scratching vigorously with her eyes squeezed tight still repeating the last line of the song, her voice turning into a croak as she tried to sing in one breath before stopping to take a deep, deep breath.

Suddenly she stopped everything she was doing and frowned. Norah looked to her lower left and began muttering. A few words could be heard such as "Lucie" "Not real" "I don't want to" and "leave me alone" She began rocking back and forth in her chair again.

Sally Lautner enters the AAA through the side door, only a few minutes after leaving from the Professor's Psych Box. JD is with him for a brief moment, before old Man Walker heads over to read the Professor's translation.

Sally starts to head that way, notices Norah hunched over the drawings and jerks to a stop. The Diner is bustling, yet the woman new to town is by herself and not a little bit reminiscent to some of the folks that, little over a year ago, were strangers, but he now counted as friends.

Clicking his teeth, Sally pulls out a stool across from Norah and sits down. He'd done the same thing on Saturday, warning her of that Olmstead reporter- to avoid his camerawoman.

"Hey there, Nor'," Sally says, looking down at the drawing. "An' here, I thought I'd be the guy paintin' with red all over the ground..." he probably was trying to laugh as he said this, but was unable to.

"So, I ain't got no clue who Lucie is, or what it is you ain't wanna do, but I figger leavin' you 'lone aint' the best course a' action. I'm jus' gonna sit here for a bit, maybe draw a pictch-ure a' my own. How's that sound?" His voice is strangely patient, his pace and tone well-practiced, as if he had a great and storied experience with such things.

Sally snags a loose copy of the Whisper Hill Herald, flips it over, and reaches for a spare crayon. Blue, perhaps. After a moment, it appears that he has begun to draw a not-half bad rendition of faces- Hana, Liberty, Maxwell, and Mellie from the looks of it.

[If the silence should continue, Sally takes a yellow crayon starts to get the thin shape of Leslie, then Rue & Ness and Dr. Zinc. Red brings Sally himself, Mr. Henry, Gabriel, and Hartighan. After taking a second sheet of paper, he moves on to brown- JD, Billy, Henry Gondorf, and Sheriff Winters. Purple for Victor, Harry, Eden, and Amelia. Green for Pandora and Brett and Gino. Gray for Alice, Mason, and Corvus. Orange for Ethan, Chloe, and Herne. Dude seems pretty content to keep drawing with crayons while JD reads about Cannibals...]

:: Showing a certain measure of uncharacteristic haste, Liberty moves across the diner from where she was sitting talking to Madrigus and slides onto a stool across the table from Norah. She tries for a tentative smile, its creaky, at best, then gently lays her hand on the paper Sally is drawing on. Unobtrusively she angles her shoulder so that she is partially blocking him from the line of Norah's aim ::

Sally, you should ask permission before borrowing someone's crayons.

:: That said she gives a pointed look to the crayons in front of Norah ::

Norah, may I use the blue crayon?

Norah stopped with her rocking and flicked her eyes up towards Sally before raising her head towards him. She stares at him without a word. She contemplated looking him in the eyes, but decided that wasn't the best thing for her to do. She slowly looked back down at her sketch book before letting a whimper out and snapping her head back up towards Sally as he took the broken blue crayon. She wanted to yell and scream at him for touching her precious things, but he wasn't quite a stranger and decided to let him slide and curiosity began to take over as she watch Sally draw. She remained quiet only twitching slightly every time he picked up a new crayon to draw.

As Liberty sat down. She looked over to her and tilted her head to the side and watched her put her hand down on Sally's paper and angled herself in front of him. Upon being asked a question. She nodded her head slowly and picked up the broken blue crayon, holding it with her thumb and index figure, not allowing any other finger to touch the crayon. She reached out her hand with the crayon towards Liberty before dropping it on the table in front of her.

"So," Sally says, finishing up with the black crayon (Bob, Hank, and Gus, with plenty of space left on that page), and sets it back to the table, "Yer right, Blue, I should remember my manners. Can't say I was rightly raised in a barn, but I was raised in a shack, so...."

"Norah," Sally chews on his words, "Ken I get you like, a beer? You seem to got a real hitch in yer getalong..." Sally, against his usual spazzy nature, slowly raises a hand, "Not that they's anythin' wrong wit' dat. But, things should quiet down fer a bit. We made a whole helluva racket, and that'll keep mosta the booginses 'way for a time."

Sally glances over as Liberty gets up to revisit Madrigus, Henry, and Victor, and says, his voice lower, "Folks say you came here lookin' fer somebody. You get a scent on 'em 'fore all the world went to buzzin'?"

As Sally said her name, her attention slowly turned back towards him. Norah's eyes observed his face, but avoided his eyes. She didn't like looking into people's eyes. Bad things usually happen. "Beer?" She stared down at his drawings before shaking her head vigorously. "No. No beer." Shaking her head again she added "Tastes nasty."

Norah's eyes trailed away from Sally's face, while her head slowly followed pursuit. Looking out the window, she stared at nothing as if it seemed interesting before she scratched her fingers into the tablecloth. "I did come looking for someone. Lucie. I couldn't sense here. I can't sense things anyone like I used to. But the voice tells me she's here. That voice sounds like her." She began to dig her dirty finger nails into the cloth.

A hand slowly appears over the edge of the window sill and carefully places a wee chocolate mouse on it.
The hand slowly descends back below the level of the window and the sound of someone humming "The Ride of The Valkyries" ambles away