ArchivedLogs:Magic Words

Magic Words
Dramatis Personae Sebastian, Lia
In Absentia	19 December 2013 Checking on 'Bastian after he left the dance leads to...a lot of confusion, mostly.
Location <XS> Gardens
From indoor gardens to outdoor, though without the protective greenhouse glass the back gardens do not last all year round. Still, the gardens out here are well-tended and well-worth spending time in, as well. The paths wending through the beds of flowers and herbs and vegetables spread out through the school's back grounds, tended by students as a credit class. Benches offer seating and a small pond is home to koi and turtles, as well as a few frogs. At the far back edges of the garden, a droning buzzing marks a few stacked white boxes as beehives. The heavy beat of music spills out from the school. From the gardens it's not quite easy to make out much by way of melody, but the distant rhythm can still vaguely be heard, and with the frequent passage of people in and out of the back doors there's intermittent clearer /bursts/ of song coming from the Great Hall. The back porch is crowded, with the unseasonably mild weather, clear and mid-40s even long after sunset. Out here in the gardens it's quieter, though not deserted. A pair of students stifle giggles, holding hands as they hurry through the gardens to go hide out of sight behind the workshop. Liza sits and talks low but eager with another sophomore girl on a bench by a dormant vegetable bed. A little deeper in, Sebastian is perched in his elegant suit on the rocks rimming the koi pond, legs crossed and his shoes removed and neatly aligned up against the edge of the stones. His hat's been removed, too, set behind him on the pond's edge. He has his cellphone in hand, face illuminated by both its glowing screen and by the warmer light of the electric lanterns dotted along the pathways. There's a soft droning overhead; he glances up, then back down as he steers a dragonfly -- vividly metallic blue and about half a foot long -- down to perch on the rocks in front of him. The milder night is a blessing as Lia makes her way outside, large brown eyes only going wider as the night air hits her skin, so much of it unprotected above the bodice of her sleeveless dress. Finding the porch clearly free of small blue sharks, she gathers her skirts up in both hands and moves out into the garden to begin her inspection of the surroundings anew. The effect is nearly cinematic, the wintry gardens with the pale girl silhouetted in the light streaming through the mansion's doorway, clad in a flowery gown, eyes searching. An odd almost-smile pulls her lips askew, her head tilting slightly to match as she spots 'Bastian and his...giant robot bug? Pulling her skirts higher in a fluffy pile of red under green, she proceeds to the pond. "Hello," she greets, her smile taking on a shy note. "You went out a long time ago and didn't come back. I thought maybe you were sad." Sebastian's head turns when he hears approaching footsteps, not to look towards Lia but just to tilt one ear more towards her, his nose twitching faintly. The dragonfly's feet click against the stone as it turns, /its/ enormous eyes watching the girl approach. It lifts off a moment later, hovering just high enough to reposition itself on Sebastian's thigh. "Would you like to sit?" he invites with a wave of his cellphone towards the stones. His fist rubs against his heart, head shaking slightly. "I should have come back. It's nice out here, though." His eyes lift, skipping up over Lia as his cheeks take on a faintly darker hue. "That dress looks really good on you." Lia steps a bit closer, examining the rocks at 'Bastian's invitation. "Would that work? I'm kind of floofy." She gives her skirts a little shake where her hands are holding them clear of the ground. "You didn't...have to come back. I don't think? Other people are outside. I just. Thought maybe you looked sad. But I'm not always good at knowing...what people are doing in their heads." The compliment stops her dark brows in their attempt to dip down thoughtfully, face lighting in a pleased smile instead. "Thank you. You are a good helper of finding clothes. You always know what is prettiest." The dragonfly's movement steals her attention, eyes darting sidewise to regard it. "Is it...alive?" "Maybe." Sebastian doesn't actually seem certain, regarding Lia's skirt thoughtfully. "I've never had a skirt like that. You could try." His eyes dip downwards, fixing on the dragonfly. "I don't think I'm good at knowing what /I'm/ doing in my head." His finger brushes down along the dragonfly's slim back, less bold blue than its gleaming cobalt. "I don't know," he admits. "I don't think he's alive, but I'm trying to teach him to be. His name's Blackberry. He's a robot." Finding the highest rock near 'Bastian, Lia dips deeply into a crouch and kind of half-leans, half-sits on it, pulling the bulk of the skirts in front of her. "Oh. You mean you don't know if you're sad?" She reaches a tentative hand out to touch the dragonfly's head. "Blackberry is a good name. It is like a faery. Peaseblossom and Mustardseed." Her head tilts at the thought of teaching something to be alive. "You are making him alive? With magic?" "I --" Sebastian swallows, his eyes fixing on the dragonfly. "Do you always know when you're sad?" His hand lifts, pressing against the side of his collar, clamping it more securely against his gills. "With science," he finally answers. The dragonfly takes a few tentative steps closer to Lia. "I'm trying to make him smarter. He's already the smartest of my colony. /I'd/ have to be a whole lot smarter than I am to get him to really think for himself, though. But I'm doing the best I can." "I think so? If I was sad and didn't know it, I wouldn't know...would I?" Lia asks without a hint of irony. "Oh, you have bunches and they are all yours? You make them think? You must be...very clever." Building robots is so far outside of Lia's understanding that it's all roughly the same to her. "My dolls don't think unless I put /all/ of my magic in them. And then they're just...me-thinking. I think." "I don't know." Sebastian's voice is soft. "I think maybe it's like getting into cold water. At first it feels really terrible but then you get so used to it you stop noticing what the temperature's like." His finger swipes against his screen. There's another quiet humming, another dragonfly, a little thinner, gleaming yellow instead of blue, zooms in to hover overhead. "I have a lot. Um -- thirteen total. This one's Dandelion. The others are all farther away right now, though. Or asleep." His brow wrinkles up uncertainly. "I think that's you-thinking, too. The dolls aren't thinking, you're just -- projecting into them?" “So you were sad for a very long time and now you can't tell if you're sad anymore?” Lia's eyebrows succeed in knitting this time, finding that thought rather unpleasant. The arrival of /another/ dragonfly does steal her attention quite handily. “Oh. Oh, hello, Dandelion. You are yellow. Blackberry is blue.” There's a little charmed sound of almost-humming in her throat as she watches the dragonflies. “I...they don't do things or think things, I think, unless I put my magic in them. “ "I don't know," Sebastian says again, with a quick crooked smile. "It was just an analogy. Maybe not entirely accurate." He shakes his head as he looks up at Dandelion. "No. Dandelion's the fastest. Blackberry's the smartest. I just gave them all different colors to tell them apart easier." The slender yellow robot zooms down faster -- a little too fast, really, thunking into the rocks as he comes to a rather rough landing in the grass. "Dolls usually don't do or think things. We're not magic, though." His brows furrow at this, deeply. "Your genetics let you do what you do, it's not like you're a /witch/ or something." "Oh. That is good. I didn't like the idea of you being so sad for a long time." Lia returns 'Bastian's smile with a small one of her own. "Oops. He kind of...not-really crashed. Is he okay?" She giggles at 'Bastian's assurance. "No, I'm not a witch. No bubbles or broomsticks or cauldrons or spells. I don't...usually talk rhymes, either. But what do you call it, then? When I make the dolls dance and I don't touch them? When...I take the thing out of me that thinks and moves, and put it in a doll that thinks and moves instead, while I am there? It is the magic in me that makes me...thinking. And doing." "It's not magic," Sebastian says again, firmly. "It's your mind. There's nothing magic about your brain. You take your consciousness and project it into other vessels. It's like -- Hive. It's not /magic/ when he talks in your head. It's just his brain stretching out. He stretches out into other people. You stretch out into dolls. Or doll-like-things. It's because you're a mutant, not because of any magic." "Most people's brains don't put themselves other places, though." Lia looks a little confused. "And I don't...move it. I think it stays in my head. But /I/ go away from here," pausing, she taps both hands against her chest, near her collarbones, "and I end up somewhere else. And this shape does nothing when I'm gone, even though it still has my brain. And...the." She pauses again, brow crumpling. "People have magic filling them up, so I can't put my magic in them, too. They always wanted me to, but you can't fill something that is full. But bodies. Still have brains but no magic. So they're empty. And I can go there, fill /those/ with magic. But I don't like it." "Some people's brains do. Telepaths. I imagine what you do is kind of like what some telepaths can do, but you operate with a different set of targets. I don't really know, though, I'm no kind of neurologist." Sebastian shrugs, looking back down at the blue dragonfly in front of him. "People," his voice is slower, now, quiet as his fingers curl tighter around his phone, "don't have magic. It's not magic, none of it is magic. /Thinking/ is /not magic/. It's just thinking. And most people's brains can't do what you do because most people /aren't mutants/. And even other mutants, everyone's got enormously different abilities. /You/ can't breathe water, but just because I can that's not magic /either/. It's a separate respiratory system that filters out oxygen. People are different, Lia. They have different abilities and their bodies can do different things and it's not magic, it's just biology." “I don't have gills,” Lia says, fingers tracing down her neck as if to confirm this for herself. “Then...what is the thing that makes people different from bodies? And what goes away when I'm not here? And what is in the dolls that makes them dance and think when I am there, but not when I am not? Maybe...I am bad at the words. Sometimes. I have to come up with things by myself because no one tells me.” Her arms cradle around her knees. "No. You don't have gills. But that doesn't mean /I'm/ magic for having them. And /I/ can't take my consciousness and put it into a statue. But that doesn't make /you/ magic because you can. It just means your genetic expression is different than mine is. It's not /magic/ any more than it's magic that Hive can link /his/ mind to people who're far away from him. And the fact that you can't control your regular body and other bodies at once is just how your abilities work. Nothing in you is /going away/." Sebastian shrugs, tapping at his phone again; the pair of dragonflies powers down, double wings flattening against their bodies. "You also don't talk and dance when you're sleeping. Sometimes your brain can only run so many processes at once. Maybe it just takes too much effort to project your thoughts into another place so you can't have it both places at the same time. But I can't /give/ you a more exact answer than that. You should ask Dr. McCoy. He might be able to figure out better just /how/ your abilities work." He exhales sharply at the other question. "/Life/ makes people not-corpses, but there's a bunch of different things that make that up. Technically people might still be kind-of-alive even if their brains aren't working much, like their heart's still beating but. Mostly," one clawed finger taps at his temple, "mostly what we think of as making people alive is all run up here. Your brain stops being able to think rationalize and control your body functions and -- there's not a whole /lot/ separating people from corpses anymore." “I /know/ everything isn't magic. Not...having wings or gills or being purple or running really fast or flying or being furry or flowery or really strong. So, no, I don't think gills are magic. It's different. They're...there? Like...touchy.” Lia holds up a hand, poking at the air to illustrate being able to touch something. Then she listens quietly and not really comprehending the long explanation. “If we don't know what to call it...can I /call/ it magic? The alive part and the thinking part and the part that fills people up? That's...what I call magic. It seems a lot shorter than all of...that.” "I said /I/ didn't know what to call it. That just means it's time to learn. But if you don't care about learning you can call it whatever you like," Sebastian allows, leaning down to get his shoes and slip them back on. "But you'd be /wrong/. Words /mean/ things." There's a more irritated edge to his tone, now, not particularly harsh but his words are coming faster and more clipped. "I could call this pond a volcano or call this school an elephant or call this robot a fig tree or call you a boy but that doesn't make any of those things /true/ it just makes /me/ stupidly delusional. So yeah /you/ can call /anything/ whatever on earth you want to call it." He slips his cellphone back into a pocket, leans down to scoop his robots into his arms. "But that doesn't make it true, it just means you're not bothering with reality." He's turning to go already, shoulders hunched and robots held against his chest, not back towards the school but farther off away towards the workshop, his little black top hat left on the stones behind him. "Oh...I just. Don't know, either. So I picked a...thing." Lia curls in on herself further, not understanding what's going on. One hand slips from her knees to ball in a fist, rubbing a small circle on her chest. "I didn't mean to make you angry. I just wanted...to see if you were okay. Because Shane said you weren't happy." She shifts a little to pick up the hat when it is left behind. "Your hat..." she offers quietly, working her way back up to her feet. "I'm not /angry/." Sebastian's voice is sharp, though, and he neither turns around nor stops walking away. "There's just no such thing as magic." He doesn't bother with the top hat, either, just tightening his shoulders and ducking his head, pace speeding as he hurries away. Lia looks down at the hat in her hands. “I'll just take this inside for you then, so it doesn't get messy,” she informs the hat, voice soft and eyes a little watery. Her eyes stay fixed on the hat as she returns to the building, either muttering to herself or consulting the /hat/ along the way. “I just...then /what/ do I call it?”