Logs:Quite Quietly Fierce

Quite Quietly Fierce
Dramatis Personae Dallen, Damien	2024-05-31 "Why would a star need gender, anyway?"
Location <NYC> The Ramble - Central Park
Aptly named, these scenic woodland paths were designed for rambling, and are designed so well they never feel heavily trafficked despite their popularity. Though in the heart of Manhattan, it's quiet here, the pulse of the City beyond softened to white noise by the cleverly arranged landscaping. Stately trees and majestic boulders abound, and there's a new delight around every bend--here a rustic bridge, there a quaint stone archway. It's a lovely place to picnic or birdwatch or exercise or follow the sound of trickling water to a quiet little spring just off the beaten path. It's a beautiful spring afternoon, and plenty of people are out here rambling in it. It's unclear whether Dallen followed the sound of trickling water to this quiet little spring just off the beaten path, but here he is, anyway. He's wearing a soft heather green ringer t-shirt, gray jeans, and green-gray hiking boots, carrying a sturdy black backpack. Sitting on a low rock, he's staring fixedly at the spring-fed pond -- or possibly, at the metallic blue dragonfly hovering above it -- rolling a bright yellow silicone band between his hands, over and over and over. There's a person rambling nearer -- Damien hasn't been on the beaten path, he's coming from further into the trees and kind of casually following the path of the water. He is dressed today in a faintly pearlescent white shirt with generous sleeves, its collar cinched with an emerald green cravat, a green velvet waistcoat with a silver watch chain tucked into the actual watch pocket, and deep black trousers tucked into tall gray suede boots. His gray top hat has a silver ribbon that looks almost like real metal, and he carries an elegant walking stick of some fine dark wood topped with a brass armillary sphere encased in glass in such a way that must surely render it nonfunctional. He's drifting around the pond's edge, maybe incidentally in Dallen's direction because his eyes, too, are on the dragonfly. He crouches by the water not far from the teenager, eyes fixing thoughtfully on the bright insect. The dragonfly doesn't seem to care about all the staring. It keeps hovering in place, then darts over to hover in a slightly different spot for a moment longer before darting off faster than the eye can follow, presumably after its next meal. Dallen blinks and looks across the pond at Damien, though it's hardly possible he could have missed that there was a whole extra person there before. "My teacher rides one of those," he says, then qualifies, "a much bigger one of those." "Quite a fierce steed." Damien's voice sounds dutifully impressed, as he watches the dragonfly wing away. "I'm not sure I've ever met one big enough to ride." Though now he is turning, slightly, examining Dallen with the same thought he'd given the dragonfly. "Well, big enough for me to ride. At your size, perhaps --" His brow is furrowing as he considers this possibility. "Will this teacher teach you to ride?" Dallen nods. Then frowns, too. Then after a moment's thought, nods again. "He would teach me to ride. Probably not a dragonfly." He considers this, then nods more emphatically. "Probably not. My brother could definitely ride a regular sized dragonfly, now. And also get eaten by one." He's frowning again. "But maybe not. He's quite fierce, too." There's a bright pride in this declaration, and he starts rocking back and forth, just a gentle swaying. "Quite fierce." "I imagine getting eaten is a risk one needs to accept, if learning to ride a dragonfly. I've known many poor riders who quiet their mount with fear and force and then, maybe, the risk is larger. A good one might quiet it with trust and it will be less so. What sort of steed would you have, then, for a companion?" Damien is leaning down, as he speaks, peering into the water where a froglet still caught in that awkward teenage stage -- tail a little too long, legs a little too short -- is lurking in the shallows making up its mind how it might feel about venturing out of the water. Very gently he pulls the grass slightly to one side so that Dallen can get a better view. Dallen nods very seriously. "If I'm going to ride on someone, I want them to like me, and not be afraid of me. Even if I'm sure they wouldn't eat me." He nods again, then transfers his rocking to more nodding, gentle and rhythmic, as if to music only he can hear. "I think it would be cool if I could ride a shadow. Like a living shadow. I thought my shadow was alive at first but it's just me. No actually they should be a living...light? But maybe they would be afraid of me. Because of the shadows. Even I'm afraid of them." His shadow slumps and stops nodding, but he just slips the silicone band onto his wrist and leans forward to follow Damien's lead, his eyes lighting when he sees the froglet. "Oh! Wow, I like that," he whispers. His shadow looks, too. "I'm like that. A little bit like that." "If it is a part of you, then isn't it alive?" Damien is looking down, inspecting his own shadow curiously where it ripples oddly against and through the water. "Oh! Unless you have died, and then -- I suppose it might be all the more free to wander. Is your shadow a wicked one? Mostly I think they are companionable enough, but I've met a few worth fearing." He doesn't look quite like he's currently fearing the shadows -- Dallen's or his own -- though he is inspecting the boy's as well. Then the froglet, when the shadow turns to look at it, which he clearly sees but evinces no particular surprise at. "What bit, do you feel?" Dallen tilts his head, only a little skeptically. "I guess it is part of me, kind of. It can come off and go back on, though." His shadow pulls free of his skeptical head-tilt and swims away into the pond like the shadow of an unseen fish before dissolving to reappear in the precise shape of the sunlight his body blocks from the water. "Can a steed be part of you? It does do stuff on its own but my mom says that's my imagination, so it's still me doing it. How do you know if a shadow is wicked?" He brushes his fingertips over the little beehive on his fidget bracelet. The boundaries of his shadow waver and fluctuate, sprouting and re-absorbing various kinds of extra features -- antlers, tails, extra limbs, winged and otherwise. "I don't know what I am yet." "Well," Damien is musing, "my seed-sibling once had a falling-out with their shadow. The field where they lived at the time is stained red with blood to this day. Most shadows I have known have not been so very ill-behaved." He's watching the fluctuations of Dallen's shadow as the froglet finally makes up its mind, venturing a little higher up into the mud near Dallen's rock. "Can a friend be part of you? A brother? I think it depends on the steed. What," he's pushing himself back to his feet, leaning slightly against his walking stick, "would you like to be?" Dallen's eyes go very wide at "stained red with blood", and then skate sideways to his shadow which is abruptly bristling with sharp teeth and claws. "I'm sorry about what happened to your sibling," he says, low, "I hope they got better." Still, he gives a small gasp of delight when the adolescent frog leaves the water somewhat. "It felt like a part of me was gone, when my brother went missing," he says this to the mud, slowly. Then he lifts his head and studies Damien. "I want to be a god." He sounds extremely matter-of-fact about this. "I think that takes a lot of work, probably." When he tilts his head this time it's not skeptical or started, merely thoughtful. "What do you want to be?" "Huh --" Damien stretches a hand out over the water until his shadow pokes a finger curiously at one of the sharp claws on Dallen's. "I do not know your brother, but your imagination seems fierce as well. It may serve you well, if you want to become a god. Some people chance into that by an accident of birth, but the ones who earn it, I think, must have tenacious spirits." He's drawing his palm idly over the smooth glass head of his cane and tipping his head back to look at the sky. "I quite enjoy who I am. I've been a very many things and have plans to be very many more. I think we might all be a little bit like that." He is lifting his cane, gesturing with the tip of it towards the frog. "Between a tadpole and a frog she still is what she is. A froglet is its own creature, and I hope she's enjoying the exploration." But it's Dallen he's examining, now, not the young frog. "Are you?" "Oh, our Heavenly Parents are gods," Dallen says, with some small relief. "But They want us to learn and strive for Exaltation." He smiles down at the froglet as she waggles through a few ungainly steps, tail waggling along, little though it helps her on land. "Kind of like she has to explore becoming a frog, I guess." Dallen's shadow remains prickly, but stretches out a claw-tipped finger to carefully meet the other shadow's. "Sometimes. Sometimes it's hard to tell because I'm in between so many things. But maybe I'm not...what I am. Not quite." Under his breath he adds, "quite fierce, quite quietly fierce." Some of the sharp spines protruding from his shadow fold away, then unfurl as a pair of (still kind of pointy) butterfly wings. "Sometimes I imagine I'm a girl. Sort of a girl. Oftentimes. But I also imagine I'm a star, or a forest, or a storm, or a butterfly." He shrugs. His shadow flexes its wings. "Maybe I'm a little bit like all those things. Except I can't actually turn into them like my brother can." He frowns at the water, his head nodding slow. "Well, he's stuck being a beetle right now, but when he gets better at it he could probably turn into whatever he wants. I only explore it in here." He taps the side of his head. The gesture looks a lot more alarming with his shadow's talons. "Does it make it easier, if your parents are gods? To become one yourself?" Damien's eyes follow the stretch of Dallen's shadow, his own fingers curling and flexing before he lightly pokes back at the claw. He turns his hand over after this, inspecting his actual fingertip as if he expects to have felt the shadow that poked his. "Would you like to be a girl? Or a star. Or a girl who is a star. I think people can turn into many more things than you sometimes give yourselves credit for." "I've always thought it must make it easier, but I don't actually know that." Dallen blinks at the question, then stands up, stepping carefully back from the froglet's new prowling grounds. "Oh yes, I would. Or, well. A star who isn't is a boy, at least. Why would a star need gender, anyway?" His shadow has gotten up with him, peering spikily from behind his shoulder, wings fanning gently. "I don't know how to give myself credit, but I'm good at learning things." "I don't know. Maybe a star likes to try on a bit of gender every once in a while. I went to a delightful party once where we all made up our own. Perhaps a star would like to try it, some day." Damien's eyes have dropped back to the young frog as it cautiously explores the muddy ground. "Would you like to try a new one? Becoming a star might take some time but --" He gestures towards the frog, and then rocks back on his heels. "I think spring is a perfect time for transformations." Dallen nods, his eyes huge. "Yeah, and it's such a nice spring. And I didn't plant as many things as I wanted since I was distracted with all the riots and aliens and falling in love." He bounces up onto his toes lightly. "Oh right, and it's also my birthday. I'm going to try a new gender." He nods again, more to himself this time, though he flashes a smile at Damien. "Thank you. You are very strange."