Logs:Making Wonders

Making Wonders
Dramatis Personae Dallen, Jax, Quentin
In Absentia	2024-04-07 "When you think of liberation, maybe we know what ain't there no more, but what is?"
Location <XAV> Art Room - Xs Second Floor
Smells of paints and chalks and turpentine mingle freely in this room, well-used, well-stocked. Natural light flows in, plentiful through the large windows. The long counter-like tables are speckled with spots of color, and half finished projects often stand on easels or propped in corners. The many cupboards lining the walls are crammed full of art supplies. School has ended for the day -- for the students, at least. Jax is still here in the art room, perched atop one of the long counters. He's as colorful as the art room itself, vivid peacock-hued ombre hair and asymmetrically colorblocked blue and green short-sleeved button down. The contrast stitching in his neat black trousers shifts hue slowly to complement the also shifting tones in his Chelsea boots, and along his arms his vivid tattoos seem unsettlingly alive, shifting at intervals just slow enough to seem like it might be a trick of the imagination. Spread around him on the table there are a number of large -- ceiling tiles? They look like the ceiling tiles above but have been painted up in wildly differing styles -- here there's a vividly colored abstract geometric design, here an extraordinarily well-rendered landscape of the lake, here an obligatory replica of The Starry Night, over there someone has painted their own rendition of the iconic Gates of Lassiter photograph. The one currently in front of Jax is an image of Magneto-as-the-Statue-of-Liberty, a very beatific ray of light shining down upon Lady Magnetism. He is squinting at it intently, and just for good measure his eyepatch has grown a cartoonish second eye, which is also squinting at it. One hand rubs slowly at his temple. He does not sigh, but around the room the lights kind of sigh -- just a little, a faint dim shiver. The art room door thumps open wide. In the doorway, Quentin is quickly rearranging the wide-eyed expression he wears into a reasonable approximation of a Very Blase teenager who totally hasn't come specifically hoping for senpai to notice him. He's much less colorful than Jax -- jeans, a yellow tee shirt that reads ASK ME ABOUT MY MUTANT AGENDA in bold blue text, chipping black nailpolish. He ambles casually into the art room, spinning the Magneto-of-Liberty tile around with one finger to look down at it. "Oh, man, who's responsible for this? Are we pretending Magneto buys into the American Dream?" Quentin is so blase that he left the door wide open for another teenager to promptly wander in. Dallen is even less colorful, in a heather green and white raglan shirt, gray corduroys, and black sneakers. He's also less blase, his expression and the spiraling cascade of his thoughts -- those are colorful, anyway, snippets of sights and sounds and textures -- brightening when he sees the other two occupants. Quentin he'd spotted from down the hall, and it's not exactly like he followed the older boy in, but it's a little like he did, at once hopeful and anxious. Jax he was not expecting, and the sight of his advisor is both less complicatedly pleasant and a relief from the prospect of trying to converse with Quentin alone, however much he wants that. He fetches up at the table and cocks his head at the Art, slower to guess at the artist's intention because he's busy trying to analyze Quentin's commentary on it. "American Dream" conjures sound bites from several iterations of American History classes, and more prominently the sprawling family photo on the mantle in the Allred's living room on the other side of the continent. "Magneto" summons what he's seen of the man in recent news -- not much beyond "did some terrorism", "is now missing", and "controls metal". The last one segues to a more familiar green-haired magnetokinetic at this week's family home evening, which leads him circling doubtfully back toward the family photo... He pushes all of it aside as none of it helps him decipher Quentin's question, though at least he's pretty sure now it was rhetorical. "I'm not really sure I understand the symbolism," he admits finally, trying not to dwell on the genderbending of Magneto as Lady Liberty. But he's definitely dwelling on it. Jax doesn't really look up until Quentin shifts the picture away. His mind -- painfully bright, imagery glimmering in a range of colors stretching somewhere beyond what most people can perceive -- is rotating his musings on grading these projects away behind a strobing shift of other musings entirely -- several possible cupcake-or-cookie options flashing in succession, one of which will probably end up in tomorrow's rec room treat options, an elderly lump of a beagle who might need to be coaxed out for a walk soon, his metallic-bright dragonfly and a bucket of bloody raw meat for her dinner tonight, various faces -- Spencer, Matt, Ryan Black possibly familiar among them -- and whether they might need dinner later -- this colorful but rote laundry list of Chores whirls in vivid picture but little accompanying language, each potential task spinning off an endless ADHD nightmare of smaller component tasks to remember. "I ain't pretending nothing," Jax replies lightly, "an' I don't know that what the artist was thinking is the most important thing, here. Art's a conversation -- what it brings up for you when you're looking at it, matters just as much." He wriggles a little bit sideways when Dallen comes in, and there's a deliberate and palpable shift in the light -- just out of the visible spectrum but still there to be felt, with some focus. Across the surface of the counter like a message written in invisible ink: Howdy! "What is your mutant agenda, by the by? These --" A glittering glow fluoresces brief around the tiles on the counter to highlight them. "-- was s'posed to be speaking to the artists' feelings about bein' a mutant in the world. Imagine the symbolism's pretty personal. If y'all made your own, what kinda things might you put?" Quentin tips his chin up in casual greeting when Dallen follows him in. "I feel like the symbolism is someone still thinking there's liberation to be found in assimilating. Like the problem is we aren't American enough and if we try hard enough --" He shrugs a shoulder, and props his palms on the counter, looking away from the Magneto-as-Liberty painting to Jax. "But he was fighting against the status quo. You freed thousands of people by attacking the government. If I was making one I'd --" His hesitation here is small and he plows on ahead confidently: "-- take the symbols of our oppressors and tear them down entirely. We're better than that." Dallen gives a small start of delight at the word on the counter, proud of himself for recognizing that it's written in a shade of light that isn't visible to most people. He tugs sort of experimentally at his own shadow on the counter, trying to isolate out the same part of the spectrum in the negative, but he can't quite manage it. This almost slips into moving the shadow before he remembers << "that's creepy" >> in dozens of layered overheard voices. But then the voices blossom into the adorable-yet-disturbing fae creatures so common in Jax's art, and the only voice he's hearing (in his mind, anyway) is Quentin telling him << "shouldn't be muting yourself". >> His shadow turns and waves at Jax, then bends itself around to peer at the painted tile, head cocked in the opposite direction as Dallen's actual head. "Who's doing the tearing?" he asks Quentin, "in your tile?" The creepy fairies are rifling through his slightly hazy and heavily religious store of symbols, turning over trumpets and shields and beehives and puzzle pieces and grapes and -- are constellations "symbols"? -- and masks and... One of them ducks under an upturned basket and comes out dragging an oil lamp that looks exactly like the one Jesus holds in the poster on his dorm room wall. The fairies swarm around it, their sharp talons clacking on the smooth ceramic as they lift it up. Dallen's own fingers drum lightly on the counter to the pleasing rhythm of tiny claws, and his eyes flick from Magneto's inert torch to the beam of light shining down on him(her)(them?). He shakes his head, and shakes and shakes. "I would draw a light --" << (-- a light alights nightly lighting a night lightly like --) >> "-- like a lamp, or lantern. Maybe more than one." The fairies have carried the lamp off into the night sky and -- "Is a constellation a symbol?" Jax is accepting the boys' answers with a small bob of head that continues several beats longer than needed for just a nod (each successive bob comes with a rhythmic scintillation just out of normal vision, light shifting and fluctuating in its own cheerful bop-bop-bop that under normal circumstances only Jax can feel.) "Sure always been a lot in America that warrants some tearing," he allows lightly, "but if you do that, what comes next? Big thing a lotta people mistake 'bout anarchism is it ain't about tearing down, s'about building somethin' better. When you think of liberation, maybe we know what ain't there no more, but what is?" There are stars blooming and spreading across his mind, constellations that start off in familiar shapes but quickly rearrange themselves -- a double helix, a dragonfly, a flicker in flight. He's smiling brighter at the shift of Dallen's shadow, and his own grows a silhouetted cowboy hat to tip in response. "Anything could be a symbol if you use it symbolically. What would it mean t'you?" Idly while Jax speaks, the text on Quentin's shirt is shifting just a little: ASK ME ABOUT MY MUTANT ⒶGENDA, it says now. His blink is just a little startled, like he has definitely not considered Dallen's question until this moment. He's considering it now, starting to give an answer but then glancing to Jax and quickly rerouting. "I think we all are. Does not seem like a one-man project," he's declaring with a touch of grandeur that suggests it very much had been a one-man project in his mind until Right Now. "But, like --" He gestures to Dallen's moving shadow with an expansive sweep of hand. "Look at the amazing stuff people here can do." When his hand falls back to the counter he leans a little more heavily on his elbows. His fingers have started drumming in unconscious rhythm with Dallen's. "I don't even know why they still are oppressors. I'm pretty sure if you got enough mutants working together we could build something infinitely better." Dallen stands up a little straighter at the prospect that he's going to help Tear Down the Symbols of Their Oppressors. It's exciting Quentin wants to be a part of something with him, even if it's just a hypothetical art project (he's a little disappointed it's hypothetical). But at the thought of what symbols they would be hypothetically tearing down -- the Statue of Liberty? -- he's less sure. When he glances at Quentin's shirt, whatever question he's trying to summon about the Mutant Agenda derails at the change. He can't match the circle-A symbol up to anything solid except a few scattered glimpses of graffiti, and had placed it in a bucket of mystery symbols that's getting upended now to spill pentagrams and Cool S's and Kilroys across the starry expanse of his mind as he pokes through his memories for context. "I think. I would use the stars as symbols for people," he says slowly, uncertain but warming to the idea as he cherry-picks phrases from General Conference talks to reassemble into new shapes. "Because we all we see of each other is the light we shine forth. But we are more than just that. And I guess. Constellations would be groups of people." He's thinking about the Big Dipper -- in the sky and on the wall of the Salt Lake Temple -- and struggling to connect it with the Pearl of Great Price. "But doesn't 'anarchy' just mean there's no government?" The drumming of his fingers have seamlessly aligned to the rhythmic scintillation of Jax's light. "Why would mutants be better at building things?" His shadow is sawing a chunk of shadow wood out of the actual wood of the counter, and carving it in somewhat slapdash fashion into a...birdhouse? "I know mutants who are good at building things, but I don't think it's because they are mutants." "Oh -- gosh, yeah, it's definitely a group effort." The scenery in Jax's mind is shifting, bold colorful figures illustrated against a dreamlike painterly background mingling the literal and the symbolic -- glimmering fairylights around a busy bonfire, a fangy-smiling figure mantling huge batwings wide and protective over several people trying to hug him at once, Scott's visor-blank stare as he adds diligent notes to a training protocol, a buzzing swarm of bees pollinating fantastical looking plants, Lucien slipping him a fresh mug of coffee as they go over an enormous stack of paperwork, motorcycles arrayed like a protective shield around a group at prayer. "Anarchism means a lotta things to a lotta people, but at root it means no hierarchy. No rulers. That real liberty ain't compatible with coercive authority and can only come when people all get a say in making their own society. -- if you serious 'bout making a change," he's adding this more directly to Quentin, "might be good to start imagining what you want to create an' not jus' what you want to tear down." Where the boys' fingers tap against the table, the light shifts there, too. Little flecks of color that blossom against the countertop with each small drum. The pinpoint glows begin arranging themselves into constellations there, new shapes forming and re-forming in idle rhythm. "I like that. Stars've helped people find their way for ages, and people often do the same for me, too." There's a ripple of grief somewhere under this but it doesn't take clear enough shape to displace the colorful animations in Jax's mind. "I'on think mutants is any better or worse at building things inherently -- not cuz of being mutants. I do think that when a community gets pushed to the fringes it can prompt folks to get real creative about -- well, creating. I mean, your community," he's nodding to Dallen, "growed up lots of ideas about community on account'a half of the country coming down on 'em, right? I think a lotta mutants have had to figure out our own supports 'cuz it ain't always easy to find in the broader world." "It doesn't just mean no government," begins Quentin, and he's clearly about to forge confidently ahead with his own explanation but instead his brows are pulling together at Jax's. He's looking back down, eying the Magneto tile and then the dancing stars on the countertop and finally settling his gaze on Dallen's industrious shadow. "We have more tools to work with. That doesn't hurt, does it?" The shadow-birdhouse, for a moment, becomes real, appearing sturdy and solid on the table; a number of birds both shadowy and bright-plumed (red and purple feathered, mostly) flutter down to roost in and on it before it melts back into shadow. "How are we gonna build anything with the world -- I mean. You have to tear it down if you want to get anywhere, right? You can't just -- just --" One of his hands flails at the room around them. "What good do places like this even do when they're still locking us in cages out there?" Dallen is listening with intense concentration, trying to commit slippery words to memory so he can take time deciphering them later, but his attention keeps drifting back to the stars rising from their fingertips. His nod to Jax's question turns into its own small rhythmic bop, and he doesn't know how to say it but the drumming of their fingers and the dancing of Jax's stars is music, and that's important, and he wouldn't know how to paint stars making music together on a ceiling tile. "Tools help," he says slowly, trying not to feel frustrated with the clumsy process of speech. "Skills also help. People can build amazing things with very little, if they work together." The fairies that are also stars are also bees, now, and the sky a giant network of honeycombs, but when Quentin renders his shadow birdhouse in full color, all the other images dissolve into vibrant starbursts that shimmer and flutter through not just his mind but his whole body. It's still the same music, just less busy, now. More like when he's alone at the piano and he can just play the colors and shapes and textures that please him. "Learning is good. We couldn't do that, at our old school." The tempo of the music changes with his words. "Can learn to build things. Learn to tear things down, too." "Doesn't hurt," Jax allows easily enough, but he's nodding in agreement with Dallen. "-- But it ain't the only thing. Having the skills to use 'em, having a community to share those skills with, folks who can help fill the gaps in each others' skills and needs -- people been making wonders long 'fore we had any kinda fancy tools or powers to do it." The stars are slowly pulling themselves up off the table, swirling and shifting and expanding to fill the room with galaxies around them -- but, looking closer, each star is a tiny glowing-bright person. Jax and Quentin and Dallen are there, albeit tiny and fairy-fied, and many others at the school as well, and many more they don't know, working and playing and crafting an entire new planet together. "The thing about wanting new worlds is, we still gotta live in this one. I know it feels tempting sometimes to just want to scrap alla it an' start over but -- who are you building a better world for? The people in this one, I assume. The people who gonna come. And no matter what you planning, no matter where you going, you gotta make sure your people is fed, is safe, is took care of, right now. I gone to this school, you know. Growed here, learned here. If I hadn't had good people who cared about me an' was trying their hardest to be a safe place to grow, I wouldn't'a had a hope of figuring out how I could help others." He's starting to shift the tiles to the side, gesturing to the empty stools. "I'mm'a be in here working for a minute yet. Y'all want to dream a little, I got plenty'a spare tiles and plenty'a spare ceiling." Quentin steps back and lifts a hand as if he could catch some of the shifting stars around them against his palm. For a second it almost looks like he's succeeded, Dallen's glowing miniature fairy-star-doppleganger cupped in his hand. As the images continue expanding and shifting it moves right through his knuckles and then beyond. He is studying the ceiling tiles dubiously, and studying Jax considerably less dubiously. "Guess I have time," he declares iwth an affected nonchalance. He's hopping into a chair and patting the one beside him, lifting his brows to Dallen. "C'mon. Art's just music put to color. I want to see what you dream."