ArchivedLogs:All You Need Is Love

All You Need Is Love
Love Is All You Need
Dramatis Personae Nox, Micah, Corey
In Absentia	21 April 2013 Micah finds discount marigolds, which leads to a late night garden-trip with Corey. Where there is a Nox!
Location <NYC> Guerrilla Garden
This abandoned lot isn't much to look at right now. Next door to a construction site and ringed by a tall, rusting chainlink fence, the rumble of large machinery is a constant disruption. Equally rusty signs have been affixed to the fence warning passersby to KEEP OUT, that this is PRIVATE PROPERTY. Weeds are as plentiful as chunks of broken concrete but there is surprisingly little garbage to be found and what does appear seems to disappear just as quickly. Here and there stacks of scavenged truck tires have been filled with dark soil and some enterprising soul has begun to create raised beds to the rear of the lot using splintery wood salvaged from packing crates. It's dark! And abandoned! The construction site next door is long since deserted by the workers, and anyone who ambles by on the sidewalks around here is more likely to be up to no good than a resident or sightseer. The lot turned garden is quiet, however. A great deal of progress has been made towards fleshing it out, with several contained beds finished, spikes with labels inserted in dark soil to show where planting has been done. There are even a few young plants not grown from seed and supported by stakes or trellis. Come autumn, provided nothing goes wrong, the harvest should be an impressive thing indeed. And that is why Nox is here. Not that the woman is immediately visible but she is here, watching, ensuring that nothing goes wrong. Today several of the more day-loving Morlocks were out cleaning broken glass from thrown bottles near one of the chainlink fences. Now the shadows are on patrol to make certain those who threw them don't return with other mischief in mind. It would be easy to miss her presence altogether--the darkness is a /little/ darker than usual, the silence is a /little/ heavier. It is /late/ for gardening, but Micah happened upon a deal! Sad, sad marigolds that had not been loved well enough were /wilting/ by the pallet-ful at a farmer's market Micah happened past when it was already growing dark. But their sad state meant that they were available on the /extremely cheap/, particularly by the pallet-ful! A few well-aimed texts earned Micah a pair of strong Corey-arms to help tote off the flowery treasures to deliver to the Guerilla Gardens. For organic pest control! And also colour. So it is that the TARDIS-van pulls up near the garden and emits one Micah from the driver's side door. He scurries to the back of the attached AT-AT trailer and busies himself with opening the rear door. As he had been on the way to the garden, Corey was dressed for getting dirty, with holey jeans and an already stained brown teeshirt. Of course, he was encouraged here to act as haul monkey, and his haul was to be meant to discourage other pests to the place. With the trailer open and with pallets extractable, he inquired "Are you sure we'll have enough light for the planting? I just don't want you to end up tripping over anything." He'd had to deal with grumps earlier, so getting some time with happier sorts was nice, even in the darkness. And hey, those wilty pallets weren't nearly so wilty as before. It must be something in the night air. Nox knows that van! She knows it very well indeed and when it stops near the gates, the shadows beyond the chainlink stir and begin to gather thickly near that entrance. But lo, what is this? A stranger. Micah's presence might be something of an all clear but old habits are terribly difficult to break. They leave that clump of darkness to smooth out again--such a subtle shift, though if Micah weren't occupied he might recognize it--and she settles for observing. Silently. Spookily. /Ominously/. She just can't help herself. Micah’s green plaid button-down shirt and rainbow-patched jeans suit the task well enough, despite it being quite impromptu. He still smells strongly of petroleum products after a day of garage work, and there is a dark smudge across his nose that has somehow been overlooked. “Might not be able to get ‘em all /planted/ tonight, but they’ll be happier for stayin’ here than sleepin’ in my /trailer/. Even if they have to stay in their little containers. Oh, look! They already look perkier at havin’ had some attention.” Speaking of attention, Micah’s is being drawn to a spookiness that seems to be watching. “Uh…just a sec. I have to check on somethin’ before we carry these in.” He traipses over to the fence, seeking out the inkiest patch of darkness. “Nox? That you ticklin’ the hairs on the back of my neck?” He is smiling warmly, for all that accusation. “I brought a friend. He’s good people. Been helpin’ with the plantin’,” he explains and reassures at once. Things did seem a bit darker than they had been, but as Micah said he needed to check on something, Corey gave him a nod. "No worries then. I'll just look over the plants, see which ones are in the best condition and we can get them put into place." Giving him a smile, he nodded as Micah went off, and he set to work rearranging the various pretty flowers, glad to see that they were doing much better. Perhaps they did just need some love and attention. "I apologize if I frightened him." The whisper drifts from the other side of the fence, several seconds before the shadows resolve themselves into a Noxshape. Her fingers curl through the chainlink as she smiles at Micah--then slides a hesitant look around him at the young man puttering near the van. "Will he be all right with me here? I have had to stay below, during the day. The sun." There's a brief pause, and then in relatively brighter tones she adds, "Oh, you brought so many flowers!" "It's good to see you! Oh, I'm not even sure he noticed you're here. I just wanted to check that you were okay with me bringin' somebody y'don't know. Corey's very...mellow. Likes all kindsa folks. Don't think you'll trouble him none." Micah's hand brushes gently over Nox's fingers where they poke through the fence. "Scented marigolds! They are good for keepin' things that want to munch your hard-grown plants away. Bugs'n even rabbits. Not that I guess rabbits are as much a problem here as back home." He flashes another warm smile. "Lemme go help Corey haul 'em over here." Dash! Micah is off /again/, this time back to the van to help unload. Hefting up the pallets without concern for getting dirt upon him, Corey tilted his head into the flowers and breathed them in. "Ya know, Marigolds are kinda odd. You'd never really think that they have much use for other things than being pretty. But they are such good little guardians." He smiled as Micah returned to him. "Everything checked out fine? I thought I heard you talking to someone." He hadn't really been listening, but he thought he had. "If only there were plants that would perform the same function for bored teenagers." This is a joke, though it's hard to tell since Nox doesn't do "joke" intonations very well. Still, she's smiling again and seemingly reassured--else she probably wouldn't be moving to the gate to open it for the pair. It creaks as it swings open, rattling a little in its hinges before swaying to a halt. Then she stands close to the post and looks around it, observing the pair of them at work. Okay, so she's still feeling shy, that Corey is in need of an explanation, or she'd be over there helping too. Micah giggles at Nox’s joke, which blends right into a giggle at Corey’s observation. “Not just another bunch of pretty, colourful faces, these fellas.” He grabs the other end of the first pallet. Corey is obviously able to /heft/ it himself, but carrying it the distance to the garden might prove more awkward. “Yep, s’okay. M’friend Nox is here. I just wanted to let her know I was bringin’ you, ‘cause you’re new. She has…visible superpowers. Not everybody takes to her kindly on first meetin’.” Micah initiates a sideways walking sort of dance between himself, Corey, and the flower pallet, moving in the direction of the garden. "Ah, well I hope I have better luck with her." Shaking his head without adding more explanation, Corey avoided shrugging so he wouldn't tilt over the plants. "Did we bring any lanterns in the van? It might make it easier to get the planting settled." He was not worried at least about meeting the mutant, but he was running into grumps left and right. Inside of the yard, a stack of empty pallets is pulled smoothly aside to make room for the flats being carried by the young men. Just...zip, whoosh, swallowed up by darkness and well out of the way. Nox reappears beside that newly empty patch of earth, hands folded before her and edges only slightly foggy. If she's anxious about meeting new people, she does an excellent job of hiding it--but it /is/ dark in here, and difficult to see. "I think here?" she whispers. "And...and thank you. Micah says. You have been helping." Micah's head is shaking, too, in reply to Corey's question. "No lanterns. And...don't want too much light. Nox is a little photosensitive. I have a couple of those chemical glow sticks in the glove box; they should be dim enough not to cause harm." Micah guides the pair's little waltz to the spot indicated by Nox. "He's been a real happy helper so far. Come out in the middle of the night for a crazy guy with a pile o' flowers." He chuckles, bending to lower the flowers to the ground. "Corey, this is Nox. Nox, Corey." "Ah alright. That should be enough to do the planting then." Corey chuckled at the description bestowed upon him, and looked towards Nox. Offering a hand, he gave her a smile. "A pleasure to meet you, Nox. I hope we aren't putting you out any bringing in the flowers." He looked to Micah at that, then the plants. "He made it seem like the plants would be dead before morning if we didn't get ‘em in the ground, but they certainly do seem to be improving. Maybe these are just night blooming marigolds. Imagine that." Course just being near Corey was all sorts of healthy, but how was he to know. "If it is too dark, a small lantern would be all right. I can see in the dark, you cannot, and there might be glass about. Someone threw bottles last night," Nox reasons, drifting over to stand by Micah's side. Corey's hand is studied before she extends her own, the wispy black solidifying to a charcoal grey as she accepts the offered shake. Her skin is cool and gives more than it should; the shake is gentle as a result. "It is a pleasure, Corey. Sometimes all a thing needs is love and attention," she says with a smile. "Thank you, for helping." "Well, that wasn't very nice of 'em. Thanks for the warnin' on the sharp things, Nox. An' /yes/, thanks for your help, Corey!" The handshake summons an even brighter smile to Micah's face. "I swear, the little guys were startin' their long Shakespeare death speeches when I arrived. Got 'em for a /song/ they looked so sad." Speaking of which, his melodic laughter easily slides into singing the refrain from 'All You Need Is Love' at Nox's assessment. Micah bounces in time to the music in his head, back to the van to fetch glow sticks and the next pallet. "No worries with the help. I've had enough complaints about my words not being enough, so I guess I just need to double up on the deeds." Giving a shrug, he glanced back to the trailer. "Yeah, if nothing else we can get all the pallets inside, and see what we can do about planting ‘em." He wasn't sure how much they'd get in the ground with only two of them, then he thought and looked to Nox. "Mind giving us a hand with the planting? Three can get done sooner than two after all." Nox might not sing very well but she can /hum/. When Micah bursts into song, she hums the melody with him--and appears to divide herself, one shapeless swell of shadow moving to follow him to assist while the other remains with Corey. As she said--it's dark. She has many hands, as a result. "Of course," she whispers with a dip of her head, "I would feel terrible to watch the two of you working while I did nothing. The gardens are for--" Before she can say more, near the rear of the yard, harsher laughter is heard, and a few hoots and hollers. She'd mentioned teenagers, hadn't she? They appear to be back. Chain-link is rattling and...there it is, the pop and tinkle of breaking glass. Micah’s song fades into a heavy sigh at the sounds of shattering glass. Ugh, /teenagers/. “We’ll have to clean that up in the mornin’ when it’s light enough to see where it all went. Just keep any of your littl’uns out in the meantime.” He has settled himself in the passenger seat of the van and is digging for glow sticks. One…two! That should do it. Green ones! “Hopefully they’ll get bored an’ wander off.” "I can go have a talk with ‘em. If nothing else, seeing someone working here is bound to make them think twice." Corey smiled at that, and my he did seem the rather large and muscular sort. "It won’t be too bothersome, and you won't have to worry about them." He smiled to Nox at that. "Better not to worry about people being scared of something they don't understand after all." He nodded at that, and went to go look into it, good deedingly like. "Thank you," Nox tells Corey before he ambles off--and if she sends off some shadows to follow and observe, to make certain he's all right, then no one need be the wiser. The majority of her self remains by the van though, peeping through the window at the search for glowsticks. "It will be like a little...what are they called? The parties that are held outside with the lights." Trust Nox to have /no/ idea of the proper term for that one. "He seemed a nice fellow." Micah’s brow furrows a bit as Corey goes off to deal with the delinquent teens. “Hopefully they’ll just spook and not start trouble for him. He’s good people.” He strips the wrappers from the glow sticks and stuffs them in his back pocket, unlit. The wrappers are deposited in a little trash bag, doors closed and locked. “Maybe…lantern parties?” Micah guesses. Really, he has no idea either. “Let’s get the other two pallets over, shall we?” "I am there, he should be safe," Nox assures Micah, with a modest little head dip. When he exits the cab, she drifts around to the back of the van, losing her human shape as she goes. This time it is full tentacle monster, wrapping around the splintery wooden struts to lift and pull it easily out. Anyone looking would see the pallet trundling into the lot, low to the ground and riding on a cushion of darkness. La la la, nothing to see here. The gloom that still shrouds the van allows conversation though. She's buzzing at him, close to his ear. "How have you been, Micah? And Mr. Holland?" “You are full of all sorts of skills. I should stop bein’ surprised,” Micah remarks with an amused grin. He frees the last pallet from the trailer before closing it up, as well. /His/ attempts to carry his own pallet over are…more of a drunken toddle than Nox’s smooth trundling, the shape of the item more problematic than its weight. “I’ve been pretty good! Busy in the usual ways. An’ /Jax/,” he replies after a pause. As if he had to figure out whom she meant by the name she had given. “I think he’s okay. I mean…as okay as he could be with the twins gone AWOL.” Some additional support is offered for Micah's burden, little tendrils creeping over to lift and steady. Little ones. Nox wouldn't be so blatant as to take /all/ of the weight from him, that would be rude! "Which is to say not very okay at all," she sighs from beside and ahead. The pallet she'd been trundling slides onto the ground beside the others. "...Mister Tessier...Lucien...he has asked me to begin searching the water for the boys. I...do not need to breathe, after a certain point. Would it help him to know that I am looking?" Micah smiles at the assist. Nox is just so very /handy/! “He hasn’t been able to do much other than askin’ around after ‘em. Lucien thinks they’ve taken to the water, huh?” Toddletoddletoddle/thud/. The last pallet settles next to its mates on the ground, far less gracefully. “I think it would bolster him a bit, knowin’ somebody was makin’ headway on the search. D’you have any ideas where to even /start/, though?” "He seems to believe so. They are not in the sewers, as I would probably have found them by now." And better the bay than the alternatives? Nox has grace enough not to mention this, though as she reappears in person shape--kneeling and reaching to straighten a few shifted plastic pots--there is a certain fretting /energy/ to her motions. "I went earlier today. There is so much to search, so much area...it might take some time to be sure. But if it would help him, you can tell him I will continue to look." “I guess they are the fond-of-swimmin’ types.” Micah shrugs, not knowing the twins well enough to offer any other suggestions. “I’ll let him know. It’s good to know /somethin’s/ bein’ done. ‘Specially when there ain’t much y’can do, yourself. Oh! Oh, that reminds me. Y’might know this kid I ran into.” Micah tugs his phone out of a pocket, pulls up a still image out of a video clip, and dims the backlighting before passing it to Nox. “He looked like he might travel your circles.” The image is of an Anole, backed against a tree in the park. Nox rises and turns to look with some curiosity at the phone. It's handled cautiously--she's dropped far, /far/ too many of these to be comfortable with them--as she turns it so the screen can be seen. What she sees causes her eyes to widen. "Anole? What happened?" Poof, like that, /all/ of her is the dark charcoal grey, fully solid and heedless of the mild chill in the air. She looks up at Micah with too-large eyes. "He's frightened in this." Micah nods, unfortunately, in agreement. “He is… Got caught pinchin’ a guy’s wallet practically /in front/ of a cop a few nights ago. I sat an’ filmed the arrest to make sure things didn’t get out of hand, what with him lookin’ like he does, but… He tried to run. Cop only did what he had to, fortunately, but the kid did run into a baton full-tilt. I wasn’t able to see what happened after they put him in the patrol car.” The screen on the phone is thumbed off, the phone itself stuffed back into its pocket. “I didn’t have any way of followin’ up on it, to make sure he was okay. He’s prob’ly gonna need help findin’ decent legal representation.” Her fingers tighten around the phone. That's really the only sign that Nox is listening while she stares at the photograph. Then, again with care for a delicate object, she offers the item back to him. "Thank you for telling me, Micah. He is one of ours. And...very young. At times. You could say is still getting his legs beneath him. I will...perhaps call Ms. Basil, after I speak with him. Thank you for bringing this to my attention." She hesitates. "Would you...mind terribly if I were to go now?" /Someone/ is in trouble. Possibly grounded. Forever. “I’ll have to pass you a nice pile of cards on how to conduct oneself around police. Maybe a pile of those little pocket Constitutions, too. As likely as your folks seem to be to run into police trouble.” Micah sighs heavily at this. “No, please, if you’re able to check in on him now. The plantin’ part of this flower business is best left to daylight for those of us who can’t see in the dark so well, anyhow.” He offers her a smile and a hug goodnight. “Good luck. To you and the youngling both.” Nox adds in a soft touch of lips to cheek to the process of being hugged. "Those would be very useful, yes please. I apologize for rushing off. You are wonderful, thank you for all of this." Then, as promised...she rushes off. Or, rather, she just fades into the background and leaves the lot empty of that sense of presence it held before. “Welp…better go see what trouble Corey’s gotten himself into,” Micah announces to the air of the garden, before wandering off to collect one Corey.