ArchivedLogs:A Little Sun, a Little Rain

A Little Sun, a Little Rain
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Micah, Matt
In Absentia	28 January 2014 Part of the Morpheus TP.
Location <NYC> Tessier Residence - Backyard - Greenwich Village
Living in the heart of Manhattan means space is precious, and as such, the yard behind this house is small. It is as exquisitely well-kept as the rest of the place, though; all available space has been meticulously cultivated and transformed into a lush retreat from the concrete and asphalt of the city. The borders of the garden are lined in a wealth of flowers, the selection chosen to provide a panoply of color in all seasons save winter. A grassy rock-bordered pathway separates these from the raised-bed vegetable garden that dominates its center. The far left corner of the garden plays host to a tiny rock-lined pond, goldfish and a pair of turtles living in its burbling water. To one side of the pond is a garden table and set of chairs and presiding over the pond, a large oak tree with a hammock underneath, its branches spreading out over the tall brick wall that screens the entire area off from the city outside. The garden outside is snowy. It glitters, bright and frosted-over, but this does not seem to hurt Lucien's bare feet any as his toes curl into the powder-softness in his backyard, leaving footprints through the otherwise virgin snow. Flowers curl up through it, white snowdrops with moonstones for petals. /Black/ snowdrops made of hematite. He plucks a black one, lays it down at the edge of the iced-over pond when he goes to kneel. He's dressed in white, too, soft linen pants, plain white t-shirt, and even with icicles hanging from the oak tree, ice limning the rock wall fencing in his garden, his breath doesn't frost and he's comfortable out here. More comfortable still when Matt's fingers ruffle his hair absently in passing, drop his own plucked plant -- a sprig of yarrow, not a flower, though this one is made of malachite and not fronds -- against Lucien's snowdrop, and wanders off to drop down into the hammock hanging from the oak tree. Matt's casually-dressed too. Jeans, a t-shirt with one little turtle saying 'Trust me!" as he tips a container of ooze towards three others. Barefoot, too, a red-leather-bound copy of /Alice in Wonderland/ in hand. It's the book more than anything that clenches something hard and tight inside Lucien. He reaches down for the plants, but when he closes his fist around the yarrow it's shifted into a chess piece instead. His other hand curls around a fistful of snow. Micah is curled up in a bean bag chair in the Lighthaus living room, quiet music coming from his laptop, as Carole King slowly sings her way through "Tapestry". He is dressed simply in faded, patchy jeans and his olive T-shirt with a Darwin-inspired sketch on it of finches with adaptive technology upgrades. He has...rather a lot of yarn piled up around him that he is casually making into yarn balls. For some reason he is making about a dozen of them at the same time, each with different yarn. The base skeins come in a wide variety of colours and patterns and...tangle into one another with a bit of shifting and blending of their dyes that makes it confusing to follow any given thread. That the yarn balls he's started won't stay where they're put is also cause for a raised eyebrow...and then just a shrug as he reaches for the next... Though it is rather a great deal fuzzier than the average yarn ball, and has soft, pointed ears. Sprite is under his hand, purring softly, one of the smaller balls of yarn in her mouth. She darts away from the bean bag, quarry obtained. Micah stands, conveniently disentangled from the mess of strings as he does so, and follows her across the room. He is just in time to see the cat jump out an open window on the far wall, onto a tree branch full of dark purple heart-shaped leaves. Micah leans out the window to watch where the cat goes, but finds that pressing on the window sill opens a rectangle of wall rather like a door that simply hadn't been there before. He steps through it, conveniently onto the sun-warmed sidewalk. The door closes behind him and...melts away into the front of the Lofts building, where Lucien leans with a cigarette dangling from his fingers. "Did you just see a cat with a ball of yarn?" Micah asks, his fingers raking through his hair and mussing it further. "She was in a tree, but it's gone." Where the front of the Lofts building once /was/, Lucien's snowy garden now is. Lucien tips his head up, perhaps not as puzzled as he otherwise would be to find Micah here in his quiet. "I have a tree." Somewhere -- over there. He tips his hematite snowdrop towards it. Then, carefully packs his actually-not-cold snowball into a neat ball. Offers it almost solicitously towards Micah. /Presents/ it, with a flourish, and a tipped-head nod towards where Matt is so /very/ peacefully reading his book in the cozy quiet hammock. "Your cat may be reading." The cat /is/, in fact, reading. A book constructed out of yarn, and leaves etched in gemstone. She's scaled up Matt's hammock to nestle herself in the oddly striated leaves of the oak (if it is oak, chiseled as it is out of a variety of minerals) tree. Purring loud enough to rumble through the ground they now stand on. "Oh," Micah responds simply when Sprite reappears. "S'long as she's safe. I was just worried. She went out the window toward the street." He offers Matt a greeting wave with a warm smile. When he reaches out a hand for the snowball, it is suddenly covered in a knitted minty green fingerless glove with Wish Bear's tummy symbol on its back, and his previously bare arm is concealed in the long sleeve of a slate grey henley shirt that has layered itself under his tee. "You made snow." Something /ripples/, colours growing brighter, the world growing a little /warmer/. Sprite's book starts to trail yarn down towards where Matt nestles in his hammock. The snowy world around them blossoms warm and green and springlike -- though the snowball remains in Micah's gloved hand. Even with a helpfully little beadazzled etching in its surface: THROW ME. In his hammock, Matt looks now, abruptly, like he's seen better days. But given the shape he was in /last/ time they saw him, he looks like he's seen far /worse/, too, lean-muscled where he used to be emaciated, but traced over with thin scars on a head now /shaved/ rather than simply losing its hair. He's smiling, though. Warm and -- /warm/. "You worry," he tells Micah, soft and amused, "way too /much/. These walls are thick." And glowing. The stones in places have turned to glass, lit up bright and cheerful like the twinkling lights of their Yule tree. Lucien turns his snowdrop on its stalk to plant it back into the ground. "Only the gods can make snow. I do think it might rain, though." He sounds pleased rather than concerned at this possibility. He half-turns, eyes fixing on Matt for a long while, fingers clenching and unclenching into the grass. Sinking deep into the dirt until finally he just flops back to lie into it, the smile on his face brilliant and unconstrained. "Did you teach your cat to knit?" Looking down at the instructive snowball, Micah shrugs and lobs it at Matt's shoulder. "I worry 'bout as much as is necessary. Usually got good enough reason." He chuckles at Lucien's observation. "Don't mind the rain, s'long as it's /warm/." He settles down in the grass beside Lucien, the lively /green/ of it far too inviting to resist, resting his head atop the other man's stomach as if it were a cushion. "No-how. She's just a yarn thief. Help us /all/ if she ever figures out thumbs." Sprite scrambles down her own string of yarn, dropping down to whumph onto Matt's chest and then tumble to the grass. At least, it /was/ Sprite at first; by the time she hits grass she has /become/ a rather roly-poly puppy, a scruffy mutt wriggly-eager and clearly in a mood for play. Matt /tumbles/ out of his hammock, with a small /oof/ as snowball hits shoulder. All the better, anyway, to play with puppy; he's lured over towards the others by the little creature's frolicking. "There's no reason for worry. We got grass. We got puppies. We got --" He lifts his hand, walking tickly-fingers along Micah's belly, and then plucks Lucien's snowdrop back out of the grass to almost absently stick it in Micah's mouth. Where it's now a bit of chocolate-ginger candy. /He/ rests his head on the other side of Lucien's stomach, scooping the dog into his arms. "You know, it's funny --" But this just trails off. A little bit choked. Around them, it does start to rain. The pond begins to overflow, the water oddly swirling in brilliant shades of colours. Warm water, lapping at their backs and then carrying them slowly upwards. Lucien curls his arms down, wrapping around Micah and Matt's shoulders both as they start to float. His fingers curl down too, tightly gripping Micah's shirt. Gripping Matt's tighter /still/. He eyes the dog with some bemusement. "Sprite with thumbs would be a menace," he judges, as though she were just /always/ a puppy. "-- I don't mind the rain." He closes his eyes, letting the brightly colourful water lap at all of them. "We just get so much of it." Micah giggles at Matt's antics with Sprite-pup, smiling brightly as they draw nearer. Brighter /yet/ as his skin shivers pleasantly under Matt's fingers. His lips close around the flower trustingly when Matt places it in his mouth, a pleasantly-surprised sound coming from his throat at the unexpected flavour. He holds it on his tongue, speaking around it, “Oh, that's too bad. It was pretty an' now I've eaten it up. S'like Jax's cupcakes sometimes.” Snuggling closer against Lucien, he shifts up to better nestle himself against the other man's side, head resting instead on his shoulder. One hand reaches over to boop the wriggling Sprite-puppy's nose. “No thumbs for you,” he declares with clear amusement. “Need the rain. Be nice when it's rain again an' not snow. An' look. S'all warm an' pretty.” His hand dips down to trail fingers through the water, creating expanding rainbow ripples through it. Puppy!Sprite's tongue laps outward, licking at Micah's booping finger. Licking at Matt's nose. She wriggles her way in to curl in a warm puddle of squirmy black fur amid all /three/ of them, tail thwapping down against legs. "Oh, don't worry about /that/. I know worrying's like, your /thing/ and all but this rain's giving us pretty much /all/ the chocolate, see?" Matt swipes a hand lazily out to the side, coming up with a whole /bouquet/ of chocolate-flowers that he spreads out along Lucien and Micah's stomachs. Sprite promptly rolls all over them, crushing them into a mess of powdered petals, but no matter -- the pond they're now floating in is sprouting endless lily-pads of dark chocolate blooms. "Be nice when it's rain again. Be nice when it's /sun/ again. I like the --" He buries his face in warm puppy-fur. "I like the warm, you guys. Can we just --" He relinquishes /puppy/ into the bright colourful water, watching the ripples grow and grow and /grow/. His hand grabs Micah's, clings tight for a moment, face turning instead in against Lucien's shirt. It takes a long moment before he pulls himself free of both of them. And /dives/. Upon waking, there are identical bouquets of -- flowers? -- tucked into vases, on both Micah and Lucien's nightstands. Not, exactly, normal-type flowers. All of the tiny blossoms are snowdrops, though not formed of /petals/. Some of the iridescent white petals are formed of moonstone, some of the dark (rather /un/like their namesake) petals are formed of hematite. Some of the flowers are /candy/, dark chocolate studded with pieces of candied ginger. In the center of both Lucien and Micah's "bouquets" is a taller piece of striated malachite, very carefully crafted to be reminiscent of a frond of yarrow. The vases are half-filled of very brightly colourful water, swirly-rainbowy in hue. Very /oddly/, it seems to /keep/ its brilliant rainbow swirls neatly even upon jostling, though to all smell, taste, touch (and chemical testing), it reveals itself to be nothing more than simply water.