ArchivedLogs:Shovelling

Shovelling
Dramatis Personae Hailey, Jackson, Spencer
In Absentia	2014-03-23 '
Location <XS> Stables
The distinctive smell of hay and sawdust and horses greets visitors to this large barn, kept well-tended by the stablehand and those who have a passion here for equestrianism. The horses at Xavier's are well cared for, stabled in comfortable stalls. The walls host a plethora of tack for those who wish to take a jaunt around the grounds. The stables are a peaceful place, especially on a quiet Sunday morning. It's late, ish, wearing on towards Sunday /noon/, but it's not there yet. Jackson's had time to go to church and get back; with his entire life destroyed in the explosion he doesn't actually have a lot of options for things to change /into/ and so his church-attire and home-attire don't, actually, have any difference to them; where he would normally change he just heads straight from the garages to collect a small exuberant boy from the playground and head out to the stables. Not that there's really any way to /tell/ what he's actually wearing; as he slips into the stables his crisp slightly metallic-sheeny suit ripples and /fades/: Where he previously had been dressed in church-crisp clothing, now he is, apparently, dressed in knee-high silver boots, tight black jeans liberally adorned with silver zippers, a red t-shirt reading 'All my heroes have FBI files' layered over a black fishnet shirt (beneath which a /wealth/ of tattoos can be somewhat seen against his arms), a black collar buckled around his throat with very faint pinpricks of red light dotted glowing around it. His smooth-bald skull is adorned with ink as well, a very intricately colourful chimera. Dragonfly wings, the body of a black panther, the triple-heads of a goat, a dragon, an eagle, a segmented scorpion tail. An /enormous/ wealth of piercings in a host of variously-coloured metal and some very thickstretched gauges plugging his ears decorate his face. Jackson slips over to a black horse with white star in her forehead, white socks, quietly rubbing at her nose. Beside him the little boy is far less decorated. Puffy black coat, boots, jeans. He skips the horses entirely, bouncing eagerly way-far-back with the cooler he holds in his hands. Who he is visiting isn't a horse at all -- it seems to be an enormous -- /dragonfly/? Metallic-blue in body and big enough to /ride/, but very much a dragonfly in the enormous compound eyes and veined wings. "Hiiii, Sugar! You're alive! I'm alive /too/." The way he says it, it sounds like a /triumph/. Hailey yawns a little bit, the morning was long and drawn out so far. She had gotten woken up early (for her at least) and had to look over some more papers, her eyes roamed the papers as she walks across school grounds, her hoody drawn tight as she mumbles. The sun was out and annoying her greatly, the heat and light making her grumble as seh walks along. After a while she finds herself at the stables. Her lavender eyes levy on the building, a horse stable, at least she thinks that's what it is, She'd only seen them in books or on class field trips. She looks it over slowly before shrugging, walking inside with a little sigh, eyes closed to block out the sun. Hailey's entrance to the stables is met with a pitchfork full of manure; Jackson has walked Ramiel out of her stall, along with moving her water and hay and manger out of the way down to the end of the barn. He's just turning around with a forkful of droppings when he startles, wide-eyed -- one eye, anyway, his other is covered by an eyepatch (black, with a metallic orange-red lizard that appears to be on fire embroidered in its center.) and lowers his fork with a wet splat onto the dirt floor. "Oh! Oh, hi." His voice is warm, a molasses-thick /Deep/-South drawl to his words; it's hard to immediately place his age; he looks near young enough to be a student himself. "Hi, miss, are you -- I don't think we done met?" Over behind him, Spencer is leading the enormous horse-sized dragonfly out of her stall. In contrast to Jax, he definitely looks far too /young/ to be a student here -- perhaps seven or eight at the most. "Can I take her /oh/ hello are you a who are you do I know you? Can I play with Sugar?" "I don't know, honey-honey, does Sugar want to play? You gotta /feed/ Sugar before anything else. Meat an' water," Jackson answers. "Oh oh /right/ I brought those!" Spencer sounds proud. He turns around /dutifully/ to open his large cooler. Hailey steps back quickly. "Hey watch it!" She says moving away from the manure. Her eyes flicker to the large insect before moving back to the two mutants. "I'm Hailey...No, I'm new here, I just got my room assignment actually. So...horses..." She says with a little blink, her eyes darting to the dragonfly once more before tugging at her hoody a bit to adjust it over her shoulders. "I'm Hailey, who are you guys?" "Apologies, miss," Jackson answers mildly, "you startled me a little, there. Though," he adds with soft amusement, "you ain't gonna be real comfortable bein' in a stable if a little manure's gonna bother you. It's kinda everywhere here, you know." He forks back up the pile that had just splatted onto the ground, turning it over to dump it in a wheelbarrow. Partially full of manure. "I'm Jackson." He gestures with his manure-covered fork towards the boy. "That's Spencer, he's my son." This despite the fact that Spence looks about eight and Jackson looks to be possibly in his late teens. "An' that," with a wave of fork to the black mare, "is Ramiel, an' that," gesturing towards the freakish large dragonfly, "is Sugar. I could make introductions all 'round, but," His teeth flash in a bright grin as his eye flicks around the stable towards the rows of horses, "there's a lot of folks here. -- Welcome, Hailey. How're you settlin' in?" "Do you like it here? What do you do is it /awesome/? Everyone here is awesome /I/ want to come here when I'm older, Pa says I can, it's going to be great they teach you like /seventeen million/ things and you can build /anything/ in the workshop," Spencer informs Hailey eagerly. He's pulling a raw bloody steak out of the cooler to hold it up towards the dragonfly; she chomps it out of his hand, devouring it eagerly. "You can build robots and probably /rocketships/, B's going to help me with that." "Spence, you're not supposed to ask folks about what they do. If they want to tell you, they'll tell you," Jackson reminds the boy gently. Hailey nods a little bit before nodding around ."I just kinda wandered here.." she adjusts her hoody a little bit, rolling her neck with a little sigh. "I do stuff with shadows." She says vaguely before looking around. "There are quite alot of....*horses* around here." She says eyeing the Dragonfly. She stretches a little and walks around carefully, her heavy boots clomping about, a small cloud of dust rolling each time she takes a heavy step. "I haven't gotten classes or anything yet so I'm not sure what I can build but I'm pretty sure I can't make a rocket." She smirks with a cocky glare. "I had a friend who did stuff with shadows," Spencer tells Hailey, taking out a wet gloppy mass of ground beef once the dragonfly has finished tearing her way through the first steak. "Can you turn into a /shadow monster/ and /fly/ and take over /all the sewers/ or," his eyes light up excitedly. "Eat /all/ the light on earth and make the apocalypse?" "We already had the apocalypse." Jackson spears another forkful of manure out of the stall, hefting it into the wheelbarrow. "We beat it though. I think we could beat a second one. Not really keen on /testing/ that theory, admittedly. Think we've had enough'a chaos for one lifetime. -- Probably gonna hafta settle in an' pick classes fair soon. Imagine someone'll be workin' with you on that this afternoon or tomorrow mornin', seein' as the term's already started." Hailey blinks a little bit and narrows her eyes. "Well....I can't quite do that...I don't think... I'll show you if you can set up some breakable stuff." she closes her eyes and stretches her back before sighing out. "Yeah I'm sure they will. I got a room assignment today." She lets out a breath before sighing. Hailey looks around slowly, rolling her neck a bit as she looks at the dragonfly and the two people. "So what do you do around here? I might not come around a while. Not sure horses are....my thing." "Ain't really a lot breakable in here right now, miss. Jus' us an' the horses an' the tools. Tack. Nothin' we'd want broke. Who're you roomin' with," Jackson asks, bright and curious, glancing to Hailey as he continues his work. "Me? I teach," he answers lightly. "An' I sponsor a couple'a the clubs. What /is/ your thing?" "/I/ feed Sugar," Spencer says, holding up another bloody-dripping handful of raw meat to the dragonfly. "But /one/ day I'll go to school here." "In a couple years," Jackson agrees easily. Hailey shrugs a little bit "Some chick named Lia? And my thing is sneaking, finding fun things to do, lock picking, hanging out." She rolls her shoulders. "Ya know." She gives a little grin before shrugging. "Can't show you my stuff unless something can be broken, except when I leave." She yawns and looks at her phone. "Hmm.... which should be about now. It's been fun...sorta.. see ya later then." She looks around for a big enough shadow and waves a hand. She presses against the wall and breathes out slowly, closing her eyes as she pushes into it, going through and dissapearing. Spencer takes the disappearing in stride, grinning brightly and nodding his /approval/ of this trick with an eager-cheerful: "/cool/!" Jackson tilts his head slightly to one side, watching it curiously. For a moment the tattoos on his head shiver and vanish, his piercings doing the same. But they reappear a moment later, and he exhales a tired-quiet laugh. "Yeah," he agrees, turning his attention back to his work. "S'pretty neat, hon."