Logs:Keep Judging

Keep Judging
Dramatis Personae Ashlinn, Gaétan, Sera
In Absentia Naomi	2023-04-07 "So please take a deep breath and handle yourself, before someone else has to do it for you."
Location <XAV> Grounds - Xs Grounds
Xavier's School is situated on grounds as luxurious as the mansion itself. The tree-lined drive brings you up to the lush green sweep of front lawn and the wide front porch with its bench swing, often frequented by students studying in pleasant weather. The large oak tree in the front yard is home to a tire swing, installed long ago beneath the sturdy old treehouse. The lawn rolls out all the way down to the thin rocky pier at the edge of the glittering lake. The water stretches huge and wide off into the distance, the boathouse a small blip at its shore. Along its bank, forest stretches dense and shady to one side; to the other cliffs start to rise, high and rocky, providing trails for hiking or climbing, for the adventurous. School is out for the weekend -- if only just, the final bell recently sounded and kids flooding out to settle into their sports practices or rehearsals or video games in the rec room or skip all of that and head for the city. Gaétan has not quite fled for the city just yet, but it's probably a near thing. His bass guitar case and backpack are resting along the railings beside him where he's perched in the bench swing, pushing it with one leg in a slow and erratic rock as he intermittently taps at the screen of his Kindle. He doesn't look quite dressed for the chill the day has turned into -- more aspirational for the warmth it had promised much earlier -- in faded old jeans and a plain green tee shirt. He does have a sweatshirt, but it's folded over itself and draped over the arm of the bench. The lawn is still wet from an earlier rain, and though it's tapered off now, the clouds overheard hang heavy and grey promising it could start back up at any time. Sera slips out onto the porch, quiet and unobtrusive and also packed for the weekend. She's dressed a bit more sensibly for the weather in a pastel rainbow sweater, tights patterned like a starry night, and slouchy black ankle boots. No jacket, though. The backpack over her shoulder is fairly new and coordinates with her outfit, printed as it is with stars and wisps of colorful nebulae, and she she a hardbound copy of _The Atlas Six_ by Olivia Blake loosely cradled in one arm. No jacket, though. "Hey." She perks up a little at the sight of Gaétan. It hardly seems likely she's surprised to find him waiting for her, and she hadn't seemed particularly unperky before, but she does seem distracted. She doesn't ask before settling herself next to him on the bench, darting a not very surreptitious sidelong glance at his ebook. Her hands are flipping open her own book -- with barely any paging needed to find where she'd left off a fifth of the way in -- but only sort of absently. Ashlinn was already sitting quietly out there on her phone with her stuff from the earlier school day scattered out onto the ground around her, She lays down in a bored mood when she turns to see these two kids she has seen around but talked to. She thinks they’re siblings of a huge family around here! she knows that boy is about to leave for the city like he always does though. Ashlinn gets up and grabs her stuff and walks over to greet them, She fixes her messed up shirt to straighten it to face forward along w her baggy jeans that go to the ground and she picks the leaves out of her braids that go down to the mid section of her chest. She walks up to them and says “Hiiii how are you guys? I don’t think we’ve met i’m ashlinn, whats your name?” The Kindle is open to The Emperor of All Maladies. Gaétan nods absently to Sera but doesn't actually look up until, presumably, he has finished his page -- at least he's flipping to the next one and promptly adding a bookmark before he looks away from the eReader to Sera instead. "{You know if Matt's coming? Doubt anyone is coming to fucking... Classics Club on an Easter Friday.}" When Ashlinn comes over he plants his foot more firmly on the ground, briefly halting the swing bench's rocking, and switches seamlessly from the French he has been speaking with his kind-of-not-really-sister to a very mildly New York-accented English. "Yeah I know who you are," he tells Ashlinn with an abruptly keen earnestness that could easily be mistaken for cheer. "Gae." If this is an introduction it is startlingly hard to tell -- tacked on immediately after the end of his sentence, he says it like guy; quite easily mistaken for something he is calling Ashlinn. Sera's eyes linger for a fractionary moment on the title on Gaétan's screen, then flick up to his face, then out over the lawn. "{He's coming.}" The book, unread, remains open in her lap, and she fidgets at the edges of its dust jacket. "{I know it's a really long service.}" It's not exactly an apology, but her smile is a little apologetic. She spots Ashlinn coming and tucks away whatever else she was about to say, replacing the slightly rueful smile with a determinedly cheerful one. "Hi! I'm doing alright." Her sidelong glance at Gaétan this time is rather opaque, and delays her addition of "I'm Sera" just long enough to sound a bit hesitant. "How are you liking the school so far?" She smiles with suspicion of what they were doing before she came over “That’s nice and im glad you guys are doing alright. You’re name is unique, I like it! and sera is a really pretty name too” She turns towards Gaetan and says “Oh wow your accent is from New York right? I heard you go over to the city every weekend. What do you do over there? I would loveeeee to go to the city” She said dreamy eyed since she’s obsessed with the city since thats where she was raised. She was homesick and a bit envious of Gaetan for being able to go whenever he pleases. She looks back at sera and can tell she knows what her mood is, She then asks “I really like the school and all its accustoms but there are a few things i’d like to tweak with a little. I don’t have many friends and i’m pretty sure i just made my first enemy the other week so I was thinking maybe I could hang out with you guys?” There's a swell of incredulity sensible to Sera that ruffles Gaétan's mind, if not his expression, before he's replying pleasantly enough, "Queens." A beat of pause. "... is someone stopping you from going to the city?" He's flicking the leather flap of his Kindle cover closed, slowly starting to swing his legs to rock the bench once more. The incredulity in his mind is growing. "The other week?" His head is tilting curiously to one side. "How do you make an enemy?" "Oh, thank you!" Sera does not betray any outwardly sign of whatever she might or might not be picking up, though she does blink a few times rapidly. "Yeah, the commuter rail connects to the subway. Lots of kids go down into the city on the weekends, not just the ones who live there." Her brows furrow. "I'm sorry you're having trouble making friends. I think boarding school was a big adjustment for most of us, and it can take time. What would you want to change about the school?" “I don’t mind the school at all its just the people who have been a little aggressive but maybe I just got on the wrong foot with them. The person who I made an “enemy” of was Naomi when I had accidentally overreacted with my powers. She had thought I was insulting her when really I meant it in a harmless way.” She looks away and looks back at sera “About the traveling part its just that I haven’t had anyone to go with me and I don’t have any family there.” She inhales deeply and looks at gaétan Gaétan's incredulity is joined by a brief but sharp flicker of anger that, once again, is sensible to Sera but does not make it to his mostly-bland expression. In his voice there's a sharper note of amusement: "Overreacted with your powers like, I don't know, earthquaking the whole school because someone asked you not to be rude? Can we maybe clarify your meaning of harmless? Or aggressive, for that matter." "Ohhh, that was you, earlier." Sera's frown doesn't clear, though. "Power slip-ups can be pretty upsetting! And unfortunately, words can hurt even if you don't mean them to. But, yeah." She tips her head at Gaétan in agreement. "What did you say, and how was she being aggressive?" “I had asked her if she did any extra self care since I was explaining why I had so many perfumes in my bag and she had judged me for having so many so I asked her harmlessly if she did and she took it as an insult which I would never do!” She stays calm and looks at Gaetan “Maybe you didn’t know the situation and your completely misjudging me like Naomi did when she thought I was a bad person.” She exclaims anxiously! “Everyone keeps judging me and taking what I say wrong!” She becomes more panicked and overwhelmed "I gotta tell you," Gaétan answers lightly, "I do not care even a little what you said. I'm pretty sure attacking someone with your earthbending is pretty messed up whether or not you were misinterpreted. Like, how do you misinterpret that?" He is staying pretty outwardly calm in the face of Ashlinn's rising panic, though Sera can detect a tighter sharper alertness in his mind, the flick of his eyes between Ashlinn and his not-quite-sister not so idle as it externally appears. "A-a-a-anyway, if it's friends you're looking for, I'd suggest? Not? Doing that? Anymore?" "You think Naomi getting upset and telling you about it is 'aggressive'." Sera turns up one hand as if weighing that thought, then the other with, "But you getting upset and throwing a literal earth-shaking tantrum about it is 'harmless'." The gesture terminates in a shrug before she drops her hands. "Look, you can't control how someone takes what you say. You can explain what you actually mean, apologize for the misunderstanding, and accept that they might be upset anyway." There's a stark calm about her that goes beyond her serene expression or intonation, pulling around but not quite at the other teens. Or, not yet. "I understand having too many feelings, believe me I do, but you're not the only one who gets to have them and having them doesn't make it okay to put people in danger." Her fingers curl under to grip the covers of her book. "So please take a deep breath and handle yourself, before someone else has to do it for you." “I understand her point of view but I also did everything I was supposed to after argument, I apologized, explained, and then left her to calm down. I feel bad about it but I don’t think its gonna be good enough for everyone else at the school who felt my tremor.” She looks up and takes a deep breathe and calms herself down "Huh." Gaétan studies Ashlinn for a long and considered moment. Some of his internal hypervigilance is calming -- replaced instead by a slowly creeping bemusement. "Might be right. S'a small school, word travels fast when you... attack people. You wouldn't be the first, though, I dunno. I'm sure if you don't do it again..." He doesn't finish this thought, just pushes himself to his feet slowly, shoulders hitching in a small shrug as he collects his backpack onto his back, grabs his guitar case. Lifts his brows to his not-sister. "C'mon, you wanna go grab the train?" Is it even time? Probably he does not care. His chin lifts to Ashlinn. "Have a good weekend." As Ashlinn calms, Sera's eerie stillness bleeds away and she just looks vaguely tired and irritated. "I can't speak for everyone else, but if your apology is good enough for Naomi, it's good enough for me." She closes her book and tucks it under her arm as she rises and shoulders her backpack. Her "{Yeah, let's go,}" to Gaétan is in French, but she switches back to English to add, oddly cheerfully, "If you do feel the need to earthquake some more, please wait at least another couple of hours. Take care!"