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Mark S. - Mark Scout, it's Scout, he had a proper surname - took a deep, full breath. The air was cold, and brisk, and burned his nose when he inhaled too quickly. He realised he had never experienced actual coldness before; sure, the Break Room was chilled compared to the rest of the Severed Floor, but nothing compared to this. His fingers ached. His nose threatened numbness. His exhale caused a visible cloud of fog in the chilly air, something he never could have imagined while sitting in front of his monitor in Macrodata Refinement.
Beside him, lips pursed, his sister watched him. And wasn't that something to wrap his brain around? His sister, and his niece - and indoors, in a familiar red sweater, was Dr. Ricken, his brother-in-law. His Outie lived in a full, fascinating world, where authors could be spoken to and the outdoors walked in. Where people were their full and authentic selves, at all hours of the day.
He took another deep breath and let it out slowly to the count of eight.
"Is it everything you dreamed about?" Devon asked him with a wryness that reminded him of Helly and he took a moment to ponder the question. He watched the cold grey light of the early morning illuminate the trees and snow covered ground surrounding her home.
"You know, I never really thought about snow before?" he said, faux-casual, trying to sound like this was something normal that a normal person would say. "I, uh, considered light, and smell, imagined what the sun would look like and what it would feel like to be warmed by something millions of miles away - I never put much thought into the opposite of the sun. The lack of heat. Cold light. It - I mean, that's not too crazy, is it?"
Suddenly he was desperate for that validation from a proper person, and what was Devon if not a woman with a full, lived, experienced adult life?
She smiled at him. Her lips were tight, the lines beside her eyes deep, but the warmth she exuded was the most genuine thing he could conceptualise, like the lack of warmth from the sun was redirected into the love in her face.
"Nah," she reassured, equally as casually as himself, which was to say not actually casual at all, "not too crazy in the least. It's, um, enrichment, right? It's something new."
He smiled at her. A broad, genuine thing, the type of smile that only Petey could draw out of him with ease, the type that made his face ache as if smiling was an under-exercised series of muscles he was overextending.
The sudden look of poorly hidden grief on Devon's face was telling.
"Yeah," he breathed, turning away from her to take in his first sunrise for as long as he could, before he closed his eyes once more only to open them to the sterile walls of Lumon, "it's something new."