Logs:A Different Shade of Blue

A Different Shade of Blue
Dramatis Personae Kurt Wagner 2.0, Sarah
In Absentia	2020-08-19 "Besides,” she grins. “it’ll give me time to get better shades of blue.”
Location <NYC> Central Park
Kurt glanced down at his map, then up, then back at the map again. Upon confirming that he was where he was supposed to be, he stuffed the map into his backpack. Currently, Kurt was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt with a white 'I LOVE NYC' shirt layered over it. As for pants, he was wearing baggy sweatpants that (for the most part) hid the unique shape of his legs and his feet. The hood was up currently, although a baseball cap stuck out which also had the iconic 'I LOVE NYC' logo on it. He had a blue surgical mask covering his mouth which also aided in hiding his mutation. The mutant kept his hands the pocket of the sweatshirt as he entered Central Park, stopping to read all the small plaques scattered around the various trails. Upon his tours, he spotted the Alice in Wonderland statue, and his eyes widened in awe. Quickly making his way to it, he reached into his backpack and took out a worn grey Polaroid One600, taking a picture of the statue. He took the polaroid once it was spit out and put both back in his pocket. Yellow hues went back to observing any other places he could explore before finding their way to Sarah. It took Kurt a moment to process what exactly she was doing, but when it did, he went right up to her in excitement. "Hallo! I see you do art?" He spoke with a thick German accent. The excitement suddenly left him and he stood more stiffly. "Do, uhm, d-do you draw... those that are not..." His brow furrowed in concentration. "Would you draw someone who is... ahh, not -- like you?" Set up underneath a blue collapsible canopy, Sarah sits at her little collapsible table with a cardboard sign taped to the front of it: ‘HAND-DRAWN PORTRAITS: $20’. (Taped to the bottom of the first sign is a smaller one: ‘WATER: Free w/ purchase or $1’.) The seat across from her is empty, though the mason jar used as a tip jar shows handfuls of change and stuffed in bills. It has not been an empty seat all day. Currently dressed in a white Chimaera Arts shirt that has been cropped and had the shoulders cut out and high-waisted black shorts, she idly swings purple booted feet while waiting for the next customer. She doesn’t wait long. Straightening in her seat at Kurt’s approach, she puts on her best customer service smile. “Hi, yeah! I love to do art,” she initially answers, cheerful. Her smile does not disappear as Kurt’s mood shifts, but the rise of her eyebrows is curious. “Yes? As long as they have twenty dollars and aren’t rude, I’ll draw pretty much anybody. Even tourists,” she jokes, smile turning into a crooked grin. “Thank you so much,” he spoke while nudging his backpack off his shoulders. He placed it on her chair temporarily before opening it. It wasn’t long before his digging around ended and he took out a crumpled bill. Seeing it’s condition, he glanced back at Sarah, making a small face. He attempted to flatten the bill as much as possible, but it was hard with mittens. He handed her the slightly-less wrinkled bill, pulling his backpack on his shoulders again. “Thank you, again, really.” Kurt went to sit in the chair, but he froze up, similar to earlier after asking his question. His eyes surveyed the surroundings, particularly noticing others passing by. “... do you mind if we go somewhere else?” Kurt faced her and nervously fiddled with his mittens. “Not so... open?” Scooting back to give Kurt some more space as he looks, Sarah pays no mind to the state of the bill. She folds it back into fourths and is in the middle of slipping it into the slot of a lockbox between her feet when Kurt asks. While her jovialness does not disappear, the wariness that joins it is. Obvious. “Um...” Sitting back in her chair, she scratches over her left ear, leaving a tuft of sticking up blue-pink-purple. “Sorry, I don’t think… No? Why?” Kurt’s eyes darted to the floor, thinking of what to say before looking back up to her. “Well, I-I want you to draw me properly, and, I don’t want others to see me.” A glance to the strangers in the park sealed this point. “You said that you draw people like me, jah?” His bright yellow, pupil-less eyes stared right into hers with a tinge of desperation. “If you have change your mind, I understand, a-and I am sorry for bothering you.” Sarah is not comforted; it shows in the way her smile dims, how her pupils dilate and eyes widen. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” She follows his glance with a darting one of her own. Freezes when she looks back and finds his stare. “I draw people here,” she offers weakly, tapping at the table. She doesn’t notice the figure smoothly move behind her chair, one of the public breaking away to become a person, until Angie is bracing a forearm on the back of her shoulders, leaning over her head to steal Kurt’s gaze. The weight makes her sag a bit, but relief floods over her face, out of her in a rush of breath. “Hey, man,” Angie greets, his smile wide and friendly. His words and gaze both carry a rush of warmth and familiarity. “Everything okay here?” Compared to his colorful sister, he wears worn and torn jeans, a black t-shirt that’s been splattered and faded with bleach. Kurt sighed in frustration, seeing how she was becoming more stressed about the situation. “I-I’m sorry, please do not feel scared!” He was exasperated now. “I’m not scary, I promise, I-I don’t—“ He was cut off by the new person, and at first, he felt his entire body stiffen in fear. He was tempted to teleport away, but, when the other spoke his shoulders relaxed almost instantly. He turned around to face the other, eyes widening. “Ohh! Oh, yes!” Kurt’s tone changed from pleading to jovial. “I do not mean to scare, I-I know my appearance is strange but I really am just a fuzzy elf.” He joked and took off his hood, revealing his face and mutant features very clearly. His hair was straight, with the tips being slightly wavy as they curled around the back of his neck and touched his shoulders. “See? Not scary!” Kurt faced Sarah again, giving her a thumbs up with his mitten. “I just do not want others to see me,” his hood went back up, “they are usually not so nice.” Sarah’s mood is not as fast to change. Her wariness drains slowly, leaves her previous cheerfulness dull. Angie is the first to answer him. “Yeah, people are dicks,” he casually agrees, before his gaze drops to his sister. “Are you good, Little?” “I think so,” she answers, quiet, after a long moment. The rest of the area gets another glance before she shrugs Angie’s weight off of her. “Do you think you could distract the public for, like, 20 minutes? Good distract!” The clarification is hasty. “No cops.” “No cops,” he repeats. Dutifully. If not somewhat sarcastically. He retrieves a pack of cards from his pocket, flamboyantly shuffling them as he steps back into the general public. Starts his tricks. Sarah watches after him, sighs, turns back to Kurt with a small smile she has pulled from somewhere. “Don’t worry, Angie is good at being the center of attention. If you want to…” She trails off, mimes pulling the hood down again. Kurt eagerly sat down in the chair, putting off his hood, mask, and cap for a clearer view of himself. He tucked his hair behind his pointed ears, although his shorter bangs fell back into his face. “Danke! I’m sorry—again—for all the trouble.” He shrugged his backpack off his shoulders as before and set it on the floor so that it was leaning against the leg of the chair. "You should get my good angle," Kurt had a mischievous grin now. He turned to his left side, putting both hands on his waist before dramatically turning towards Sarah as if he was at a photo shoot: blue steel look and all. Setting up her sketchbook and the mini-easel that holds it, Sarah hops her chair forward to get better into position. “Apology accepted. Sorry if Angie...” Her sentence remains unfinished. She instead begins to chew on her bottom lip, looks through her pencils, pulls out a few different shades of blue to hold up between them. It’s only because of this color-match comparison that she sees Kurt’s posing at all. Her teeth stop their attack long enough for her to find another smile, a small laugh. “If you think you can hold your pose that long, go for it,” she encourages. “Let me know if you need a break though, okay?” "I jest, let me pose a proper way now." He said with a small chuckle, thinking for a moment before sitting more comfortably in the chair, giving the other a wide smile. Without his mask, she could see his sharp fangs clearly now. Now that he was relaxed, his tail found it's way out from his pants, waving idly behind him. "A-are you sure this Angie can distract people well enough?" There was nervousness in his voice, fingers curling against his thighs. “Oh gosh, yeah.” While Sarah sounds certain, there is a tightness in her response that doesn’t sound pleased. It’s gone as she continues, replaced with customer service lightness while she focuses on the bones of her initial sketch. “He’s an expert in being the center of attention. And I’ve gotten pretty quick at drawing people since I set up here, so you want have to—be exposed—for long if it makes you uncomfortable.” Glancing up, she pauses at Kurt’s tail, her gaze following it back and forth before falling back to the paper. Draws in a silhouette of it behind the shoulder of what is, so far, only an outline. Adds a couple of points inside the blank mouth. He held still for her, eagerly fiddling with his mittens on his lap. "It is so beautiful here." Kurt's eyes averted to the Alice in Wonderland statue, smiling more earnestly. "Bavaria is beautiful like this too." A hint of longing is found in his voice. "But many more of mountains -- mountains for as far as you can see." He stops himself deliberately, turning back to face Sarah. "How long have you been doing art here? I-if you do not mind me asking." “Bavaria, that’s. Eastern Europe, right?” Sarah hesitantly guesses. Set into her work, any remaining tension in her posture slowly begins to drain. “I’ve never seen mountains in person. That must’ve been nice.” She spares a glance out at the park, its statue, and the small crowd continuing to gather around a slim, towheaded figure. Gets back to work. “Oh, maybe... a little over a year? Closer to two? Somewhere in that area. How long have you--been a not-tourist?" “It is in Germany.” Kurt confirms, giving a small glance to the steadily forming crowd himself. His head reels back slightly at her answer, eyes widening. “You’ve... never seen mountains?” He had assumed something like that was a universal experience. But, his attitude changes, looking excited. “You should really go sometime.” While he speaks, his tail reaches into his back. “Not to Bavaria — u-unless you want to, o-of course.” It wraps itself around a map, pulling it out of the bag and placing it in his hands. “Upstate, there are many hiking trails in the...” his brow furrows as he concentrated on the map. “Appalla-cheean mountains? I hear it is very pretty!” He smiles as his tail wraps around the map and places it in his bag again. Kurt curiously tilts his head at her response, taking another gander at their surroundings. “Ohh, uhh,” he paused to think, “almost one month, minus a day. But this is my first time tourist-ing!” Sarah shakes her head mournfully. “I want to see some mountains, believe me. But the place I grew up was--” She runs her free hand over the table, voice taking on a lonely undertone “Flat. Not even any hills. And empty for miles.” All at once, her spine straightens a bit, smile and pep returning. “But you’re right, the Appalachians are pretty close, huh? Maybe I should look into going.” The revelation that it is Kurt’s first time around the city does not come as any surprise. If anything, Sarah’s smile grows. “I can tell,” she says, nodding to his outfit. “You look very. Touristy.” Kurt leans forward with interest, his head tilting to the right as his tail flickered up intently. “Where is this flat place? I-I have never heard of anything like it before.” On the side, he makes a mental note of her pronunciation of Appalachian. Upon her comment about his outfit, he glances down to his shirt with a frown. “I got it for a discount.” He says defensively, a similar tone to a younger sibling whining. “It’s called ‘Nebraska’. Don’t ever go there, it’s. It’s not good.” Though Sarah’s smile remains, it isn’t reflected in her voice while she tells him that. It doesn’t last at least. She giggles for a second at Kurt’s whine, before stopping herself and biting her lip. “That’s something. It’s just...” She hesitates, tapping the flat end of her pencil against the table for a moment. Avoids his gaze. Speaks slowly. “Some people—not everyone, but some people!—might see your outfit and think you’re a good mark. Easy to scam, or... Some tourists just are, you know?” Returning to the sketch, now closer to a drawing, and the details of Kurt’s face, there is a small pause before she asks, “So what was the discount?” "Nebraska," he repeats for himself, putting a name to the desolate flat wasteland he was picturing in his head. But, his attention was brought back to her as she continues to speak, his tail raising in attentiveness. "Right, I know." He, truthfully, didn't know. "Ohh!" Kurt smiles wide. "I was looking around the store, jah? They had so many different things -- shirts, hats, bags, purses--" his nose scrunches in displeasure, "--underwear, too. I place the shirt the counter, and when I reach for my wallet my hood falls down. The cashier is terrified! He tells me, 'just take it and go. I do not want any trouble.' But I do not want steal it, and I try handing him the money but he take only the ten dollar, and tells me to leave now. I feel bad for scaring him, so I leave, but -- the shirt cost twenty five! Fifteen dollar discount!" He states proudly. “Hey, that’s not bad! I’ve certainly bought worse things for ten bucks. Still.” Sarah clicks her tongue lightly behind her teeth. “Rude of him. I’m glad he wasn’t worse.” A small round of applause comes from the group gathered nearby the Alice in Wonderland statue. “I think Angie might be running out the clock. I usually like to get farther than this…” She turns the sketchbook to let Kurt see. The drawing is bare of shading, but still outgoing and lively only in blue lines. 2D Kurt’s smile is wide, fangs pointy, tail curled into a wave. “If you can bring it back next week, I’ll finish it for you. Get some color put in, no extra charge.” Kurt shrugs, brushing off the interaction with the cashier. “I have dealt with many worse people, less nice than him.” He speaks optimistically. His eyes go back to the crowd at the cheer. Kurt doesn’t linger, turning his attention back to Sarah. Yellow eyes widen in awe. Quiet at first, he reaches forward with his mitten and feigns a touch — he doesn’t actually, fearing of ruining it. “This is... a-amazing.” A wide smile spreads across his face. “It has my tail! A-and my fangs!” He stands up, and in the same motion, picks up his bag. He reaches in and takes out his wallet, handing her another twenty. “Here — I would feel bad not paying for the color.” Kurt puts mask, hat, then hood on, tucking his dark blue hair into the hood. “So, next week, jah?” “Oh, no!” Sarah holds her hands up, shakes her head. “The color is included in what you gave me already! Just come back next week and we’ll get you set up, alright? I’ll be here. Besides,” she grins. “it’ll give me time to get better shades of blue.”