Logs:Wyrd-o

Wyrd-o
cn: fosse don't look
Dramatis Personae Alestair, Gino, Joshua	2024-06-16 "Bruh."
Location <NYC> Queens Botanical Garden - Flushing
Less sprawling than some of the botanical gardens in other boroughs, this is nevertheless an intimate local gem, its fountains and ponds and plant life designed to be a quiet escape from the city's bustle. Usually. Today in the arboretum area there's a boisterous drag brunch performance as part of the city's monthlong pride celebrations, conveniently timed to coincide with the garden's few hours of free admission on Sunday. Joshua, perhaps, had been watching the performances at some earlier point, but he's since gotten distracted and wandered off. In jeans and red kippah embroidered with a black flag, black tee with the Hebrew characters חַי written in a kind of thorny death metal font, he looks far less colorful than most of the attendees still over in the grove. Though the music is still perfectly audible from here it's less noisy than actually in the performance space; still, it's enough that he's bopping his head lightly to Robyn's "Dancing On My Own", one finger tapping lightly against the stem of the plastic mimosa flute he's still holding. His other hand is drawing a finger lightly against the velvety branch of a staghorn sumac, and he's scrutinizing the Informational Placard near the plant -- this one is marked boldly as part of the Indigenous Heritage Plant Walk, with notes that the red fruits have been used to add flavors to Indigenous foods. He's frowning at the placard, or, maybe he isn't; it's hard to tell given the default frowny expression of his jowly face. Gino is dressed a little more like he intended to go to a drag brunch, in a halfway-unbuttoned pink-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt, cutoff denim short-shorts, aviator sunglasses with tinted purple lenses -- but who can say if he's actually coming from or going to the event as he strolls jauntily down this path, also bopping his head along to the music. He, alas, does not have a mimosa. He is strikingly hydrated today, his skin a pasty white-person white rather than its more usual chalky barnacle-person off-white, and he's already starting to look a little sunburnt. In one hand he has a long driftwood walking stick, sort of randomly peppered with pretty rocks or tiny seashells or beads, which he's swinging jovially around without much regard to how impossible this makes it for anybody else to walk near him. He waves when he sees Joshua, redirects his path -- "Ey, doctor man!" he says; as he approaches he stops swinging his stick around so vigorously. He pulls up by the staghorn sumac as well, giving the informational plaque a cursory perusal -- "Staghorn sound kinda dirty to you?" Alestair has been flitting around the crowd, for once not really standing out. He’s dressed in a flowing silk cloak with a vibrant rainbow pattern over a soft pink button down and black trousers. He doesn’t have a drink but he is holding an old looking journal, taking notes on the flowers he passes, eventually stopping next to the pair. “Reminds me of a deer, but I suppose if your thinking is flexible enough it could be.” Joshua looks up from the placard, and even if his face still looks long, the upward lift of his chin is amiable enough greeting. "Get flexible enough, anything's dirty. Tulip. Goldenrod." He's waggling his flute towards a couple different nearby placards: "Staghorn and berries, s'low-hanging." Gino along nods with thoughtful approval, then half-snorts when he echoes, "Heh, goldenrod." He glances from Joshua over to Alistair, taking in this colorful outfit, spiky-rimmed eyes going wide behind the glasses. "Well well," he says. "Where did you find that cape, did you thrift it? That is sweet, dude." “I’m partial to the Venus slipper.” Alestair says with a slight nod before flashing Gino a warm smile and twirling once, the pattern on the cloak almost seeming to move for a moment. “Thank you very much. I bought this one from an wyrd old woman a long time ago. Made a few alteration myself, like the pockets.” "Shit. S'got pockets?" Joshua takes a swallow of his drink and turns. He's scrutinizing the cape with more interest now than he had for its flamboyance alone. "Want your weird grandma hookup." "Pockets?" Gino is also saying with interest; he tosses the walking stick from one hand to the other back to the first, cocking his head. "Damn, I should learn how to sew for real, all I know how to do is patches. Respect." He punctuates this with a sharp thump of one fist against his chest, probably a bit harder than he should have done with his currently humanoid skin and still-spiky knuckles -- he immediately winces and frowns down at his hand like he's seeing it for the first time. “They’re usually friendly. Think she ate a man one time for disrespecting her though.” Alestair is probably joking about that. “I do sell similar pieces at my shop if either of the two of you are ever in Greenwich.” "The fuck." Joshua's voice is flat, but then, it's been flat this whole time. He's examining Alestair himself now with the same heavy-browed frown that he gave to the sumac's information card. "Prefer my capes cannibal-free." "Oh!" Gino sounds much more mildly surprised than such an announcement might have warranted, his brow shooting upward with a slight grinding sound. "Well! None of my weird grandmas have ever done anything like that." He grimaces, flexes his fingers on the walking stick (that hand has only its thumb and first two fingers still attached, though Gino has put googly eyes where the other two should go.) "Mm, yyyeah," he says, his tone fairly apologetic but also obviously insincere. "That seems like it might be a little bit cursed, I'mma pass on that one." “Nothing to worry about then,” Alestair assures Joshua and Gino, “she’s not human. I’m mostly sure it’s not cursed.“ He shrugs slightly, taking a few notes in his journal. “This is my only piece she’s made though, you wouldn’t believe how much gold she wanted. Then again I imagine it’s hard for her to make those tiny stitches with her big troll fingers.” "Bruh." Joshua lifts his hand to rub his knuckles against his eyes. Now he isn't looking at Alestair, but rolling his neck slow and a little creaky with the pop-pop of spinal joints, to end kind of sideways squinting at Gino. Maybe squinting at the googly eyes, because he's huffing small and amused. "Think we," a clear waggle of finger between himself and Gino, "got lucky, grandma-wise. -- Happy Pride." And then, silent and instant, he is gone. "Yeah, none of the cannibals I know are human either," Gino says, rolling his eyes, "but that's still not great, right?" He looks at Joshua as if for backup, tilts his head with another eehh grimace, and echoes "Happy Pride!" just a second too late, "Nowait --" he is talking to thin air, and after a moment he grimaces yet again at Alestair before he seems to decide that no, Alestair is not his desired eye contact right now. "Yeah, uh, handmade... troll clothes aren't really in my budget anyway," he says, still in that faux-sorry tone, now somewhat awkwardly backing away. "But, uh, you keep doing you." “Fair enough.” Alestair closes his journal and sticks it into a pocket that looks much too small to hold it and turns away, starting to wander back the way he came. “Happy Pride. Apologies for intruding.”