Logs:Fresh Meat

Fresh Meat
Dramatis Personae Jax, Kurt, Matt, Shane
In Absentia	2019-11-19 "You're new. You're a freak. It's high school. It's like chum in the water."
Location <XS> Conservatory
Tall panes of glass and a many-gabled glass ceiling protect this large indoor garden from the elements, while welcoming in sunlight to keep it warm year-round. Adjoined to the southern face of the venerable mansion and surrounded by more conventional gardens beyond, the conservatory is all Old World elegance from the outside. Within, however, it is lush and green and in certain corners--whether despite its careful tending by the groundskeeper or because of it--seems practically wild. Footpaths and a burbling artificial steam wind through the space, connecting its disparate parts. Benches are scattered throughout, thorough soft grasses or mosses under certain trees also invite rest. The outside wall is lined with tropical and subtropical plants. The ferns and cycads and epiphytes are kept moist by artfully hidden misters that also give the place a sort of magical ambiance, dense foliage wreathed at times with drifting patches of mist. Nearest the building is a desert in miniature, with a few impressively sized cacti as well as palo verde and other trees adapted to arid climes. Between these, and by far the largest section, is dedicated temperate zone plantlife from around the world, the beds growing more carefully manicured and the pads less winding as one approaches the center, where a clearing with a small ring of seats is a popular spot for some teachers to hold court. Outside it has been wintry, but within these glass walls it's as cozy as ever. Somewhere, in other classrooms, probably -- one assumes, this is a school after all! people are hard at work. Other people. Students, maybe even some teachers! Not this teacher, though; just at the moment, Jax does not have a class in session. What he does have is a plate full of cookies (crackly powdered-sugar-dusted rich dark-chocolate ones, warm pumpkin chocolate chip ones whose melty chocolate chips seem just fresh out the oven) and a thermos of cocoa and a sketchpad. Even among the vibrant colours of the greenery and flowers, Jax stands out -- his vivid blue-and-purple-and-teal hair has a metallic flash to it today, as does his similarly peacock-hued makeup; his darker slacks and neatly pressed button-down can't really be called subdued either, with the bold contrast stitching on the pants or bright asymetrical cross-hatching on the shirt. Taking shape on his sketchpad is an intricate drawing as well -- a number of children wending their way through a forest, following along after -- well, the figure at the forefront of the group of kids isn't completed just yet, but seems to be some sort of goat-legged faun-like creature in a long tailcoat. Jax has taken a break from drawing just at the moment -- charcoal pencil twirling restlessly between his fingers in a blur of motion that seems every so often to send a small shower of glittery dust down towards his sketchpad, though that could just be a trick of the light. Certainly there's quite a bit of dark and very un-glittery charcoal dust already on his scarred and calloused fingers. "Half the time," he's telling Matt with only the faintest twinge of exasperation in his molasses-heavy mountain drawl, "I just want to make, like, a form letter to send back at all 'em what's complaining. Feel like I'm doing more right by their kids if I take the time to explain individually why it's, you know, actually important for 'em to learn about things like consent an' that they got a right to it." Adjusting to living in a small German village to a large city was tough. The school was fairly small and everyone was very kind to him here, which he appreciated, but it still got overwhelming for him. It was a lot of socialization and people. Kurt was very outgoing and friendly, he loved talking to people, but even for him there was a point where his social battery would run out and he would feel the need to retreat into less crowded areas. His favorite activity to do by himself was pray. Although it wasn't normal praying all the time, he didn't spend his time praying the rosary everyday. Instead he would sit in a praying position and talk to God. Tell him about what was going on, talk to him about issues and whatever was on his mind. God never answered but Kurt found he worked through a lot of issues that way, talking them out with God. Contrary to popular belief, all praying does not happen in a church. Kurt liked to pray in other places. Kurt would often wander the halls and different areas of the school to explore and one day he had found the conservatory and fell in love with it. It was fairly quiet and the different plants and flowers were beautiful. The air inside the conservatory smelled much better than outside in the city, instead of car exhaust it smelled of leaves and flower petals. It was a very calming scent to pray too. God had created nature and the flowers, it only made sense to appreciate all of God's gifts. Kurt teleported into the conservatory from his room. He didn't have a class to teach and wanted some time to talk to God before he was needed. A BAMF sound broke the silence of the conservatory when Kurt appeared in the normal puff of magenta smoke. The smell quickly dispersed along with the smoke. Kurt took a deep breath in, smelling the relaxing scent of plant life, closing his eyes to focus on the scent. Beside Jax, Matt is a little bit slouchier and a lot less colorful in a dark metallic blue vest over an ice blue dress shirt, gray slacks, and black brogues. He's barely touched his lunch, chicken parmesan on a bed of linguine, the tomato sauce very generously herbed, but he is nibbling on a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie. His eyes are trained on Jax's sketch thoughtfully. "Do you think they'd be much more convinced by a one-on-one explanation than a form letter? I'd guess no, but my complaints are generally a bit easier to divert." He bumps his shoulder lightly to the other man's in sympathy, then tilts his head. "Incoming," he says right before Kurt appears, and flashes a quicksilver smile and bright "Good day!" at their newest co-worker. "Anyway," he adds, gesturing at Jax with his cookie, "I'd be happy to help you draft a form letter. Mind you, the administration ought to be fielding these complaints. They'll agree at meetings that sex ed is important, but when it comes to actually persuading the parents..." He gives an exaggerated shrug. "I don't know, but I feel like I gotta at least try, right? Though maybe I'm making things worse, who knows." Jax exhales a heavy breath, his nose crinkling up in mild disgust. "Like for guaranteed sure there's parents who'd just be mad no matter what if their kids learned that sex exists and they gotta right to feel nice but I think a large number of them is just throwin' a fit cuz it's a queer tellin' 'em." He shakes his head, scuffs his fingers through his hair. His smile flashes bright, and he glances over to Kurt a moment after Matt. A large ombre-blue straw hat appears on his head out of nowhere just long enough for him to lift a hand, tip the hat to Kurt. The hat dissolves into a puff of rapidly dissipating smoke a moment later. "Howdy. Cookie?" He waves a hand towards the plate beside him. Kurt jumps a little at the sudden greeting and his eyes fly open. He had assumed it would be empty. "Uh Guten Morgen!" Kurt quickly answers back, his tail wrapping slightly around his leg as he approached the two people in the conservatory. His large yellow eyes widened in surprise when a hat suddenly appeared and disappeared, "vow, das is amazing!" His tail unwrapped from his lag and wagged slightly behind him in excitement. "How did you do zat?" Quickly Kurt made his way over to them, "yes! Danke!" Kurt takes a cookie and bites into it, "mmmmm zis is so good!" Kurt savors the taste of the cookie, it was soft and sweet. Some cookie crums fell from his mouth into his fur but he quickly wiped them away with his hand. Shane's entrance into the conservatory isn't quite so dramatic. He comes through the door from outside -- opens it quiet, shuts it quiet. He has less colour to him than the others, a deep satiny-black mandarin-collared brocade jacket frogged at a slant up its front in metallic silver cording, black slacks, polished oxfords. The wide flat slits of his nostrils flare at the brief brimstone tang left behind in the air as he passes through; there's a slight ripple that shivers down the gills along the sides of his neck. He makes his way over to the bench, rests an elbow on Jax's shoulder, leeeeans in to extend one blue hand -- one of his tiny points of black claw extends, sliding out longer to skewer a bit of chicken out of Matt's lunch. "I mean, you are kind of spreading the gay too. How would kids ever know to be queer if you didn't tell 'em about it?" In the inhuman cast of his flattened features, huge pupilless pits of black eyes, it might be hard for a stranger to tell just how serious a statement this is. His chin tips up toward Kurt. "New Guy. Yo. See your students haven't eaten you yet. He does the --" Where his hand rests slung against Jax's shoulder, his webbed fingers wiggle. "Thing cuz he's a fairy. They all get some of the magic." Matt lifts his free hand, presses fingertips to his lips in an expression of scandalized indignation at Shane's question. Not at the pilfering of his food, though. He picks up the lunch box and offers the whole thing silently to the young man. "Goodness. Wherever they get the idea from, we certainly wouldn't want them thinking they can have sex. But on the matter of fairy magic I must respectfully disagree. He can do the hat trick," he tells Kurt now, completely deadpan, "because he's a cowboy. The baking, though..." He waggles that half-eaten cookie in his hand. "That's fairy magic." He pops the entire rest of the cookie into his mouth and plucks up another. "What kinda Yankee nonsense is that I ain't no cowboy -- though," Jax muses this thoughtfully, "I do play one on stage sometimes. "I'm a hillbilly through an' through. A cowboy's more like --" He waves his hand towards his head. Another hat appears -- this time, it's an enormous black Stetson with a glittering purple-blue-green ombre tassle around its base. He touches his fingers lightly to the brim, inclining his head just slightly to Kurt. A tiny slender humanoid creature -- dressed in jeans, spurred boots, a leather vest, red bandanna, a matching black hat -- with bright blue hair and a large pair of glimmering blue dragonfly-like wings -- peeks down over the brim of the hat, tipping its hat to Kurt as well. "Anyway, who's to say you can't be both. Fairies got creatures need herdin', too." He tucks his pencil behind his ear and picks up a chocolate cookie of his own. Kurt listens to the new person, Shane, talk curiously. Some of the terminology and slang was new and interesting to him. Although Kurt attributed it to his still inept grasp of the English language. "vat is zee gay? And Queer?" Kurt tilts his head in confusion, the spade of his tail also tilts, mimicking his head. He drops his confusion though to a slight amount of horror, "vhy would zey eat me?" Kurt didn't think people here ate other people but he hadn't exactly asked someone that question. Kurt had so many questions about lots of what they were saying but the idea of someone eating him took precedent. Shane pops Matt's chicken happily into his mouth, licking at his claw afterward. "The taxonomy of hick is very important to my Ba." His gills are rippling gently at the appearance of the cowboy hat -- and a little bit faster when the tiny cowboy fairy makes an appearance. The heavy hairless ridge of his brows lifts, his black eyes opening just a little wider. "Gay." He waves -- vaguely between the two older men on the bench, before slipping into an only faintly less glib German: "{Gay? Queer? Homosexual? Flaming fucking queen?} I know you have queers in Germany, it's one of the gayest countries in Europe." His smile spreads wider after this -- uncannily wide. Extraordinarily wide. The way his mouth seems to split his face open shouldn't really be possible in a human face, and the excessive number of serrated sharp teeth behind his lips only makes it look that much wider. "You're new. You're a freak. It's high school. It's like chum in the water." "My sincerest apologies for my boorish flatland city-slicker -- oh!" Matt pressing both hands to his lips at the appearance of the cowboy fairy. "How marvelous. But what manner of creatures would they herd? Starlings? Cicadas?" His bright green eyes glimmer with delight. "Rats?" He raises his eyebrows in time with Shane's, finally dropping his hands. "Either word can specifically mean homosexual or broadly just not heterosexual, depending on the context. 'Fairy', though, usually just means 'homosexual'--when not referring to certain magical folks such as this." He turns his hand palm up to indicate...maybe the little fairy on Jax's hat, or maybe Jax himself. "But I don't think Shane was speaking literally of--devouring you." He pauses. "Probably. Many students do like to see how far they can push new teachers, though. Some more gently than others. How have you been faring so far?" "Obviously fairies in different regions gonna tend different sortsa creatures." Jax's tone is one of gentle -- instructional! -- patience as he explains this to Matt. He doesn't exactly draw attention to the sketchpad in his lap, but across its open page, now, the image is shimmering, shifting and changing from where it had been static charcoal to bright vivid colour and motion. A tan-skinned woman with warm sealfur -- clothing? or perhaps it's just her own hide? -- watching over a pack of lemmings on an icy cliffside. A pair of skinny coily-haired youths with deep brown complexions, webbed fingers and toes and laughter in their faces as they try to corral a cadre of frogs leaping through a marshy swamp. A pale straw-haired child with enormous sunflower-petal wings playing a reedy flute to a flickering host of synchronized fireflies dancing through a meadow. His cheeks have flushed just a touch darker as Shane speaks. "There's a lot of slang ways to say it, but --" One of his shoulders lifts and falls carelessly. "What it boils down to is there's a small but very outspoken number of parents -- an' occasionally other teachers too -- Big Mad on account of they think it's inappropriate for --" He waggles fingers towards himself. The hat on his head changes again -- still a cowboy hat but its colour shifting to bright rainbow. "-- Someone like me to teach their kids 'bout sex. Or, probably, 'bout literally anything at all." Kurt eats some more of the cookie, more crums falling to get stuck in his fur as he does. He tilts his head further to the side when he gestures between two men and then speaks in what sounded like German but not words Kurt knew the definition of, although he did remember hearing them. He couldn't remember where from. "Ah, sorry. I guess I didn't get out much. I shtayed in zee church most of zee time." "I'fe been doink good. I am beink zee best teacher I can, zee shtudents lofe ven I preform for zem." "Uh... huh." The look Shane gives Kurt is inscrutable, black eyes unblinking and his flattened facial features not shifting all that much. His tone is extremely flat, though, with his following: "... sure." He claps his hand against Jax's shoulder, squeezing firmly. JOSTLING firmly. "Sounds like they should make your class mandatory for the fucking staff, too." He leans down to grab a cookie, nibbling it slowly as he slips around the bench and heads out to the rest of the mansion. Matt's eyes skip aside toward Kurt periodically as he watches the cavalcade of fae husbandry, that simple gesture alone enough to shift his expression fluidly between boyish wonder and jaded incredulity. He slowly replaces the lid on his lunch when it appears Shane is through picking the meat out of it. "I'm glad you're settling in so very well," he says, all sweetness and friendliness. "I do appreciate that this is a nonsense language, but {homosexual} means the same thing in English as German." He tucks his largely-untouched meal away in his attache case. "I'm sure that your students will let you know soon enough, if you cannot locate a suitable dictionary." His smile does not waver. "Welcome to Xavier's, at any rate." Jax tips his head to one side, his smile fixed bright and steady in place on his lips. The shifting imagery on his sketchpad fades away -- as does his hat and its accompanying fairy passenger -- leaving just the static charcoal drawing behind on the page. Even that is gone soon, too; he closes the sketchpad with a slow press of his hand, fingers tented on its cover for a moment. "No? Bless your heart, then, I'm sure this school'll be a bit of an education." He stands fluidly, tucking his sketchpad under the plate of cookies and picking up both at once. Offering his other arm out to Matt as he gets up to leave. "No doubt we'll see you around."