Logs:No Demonstration Without Hydration

No Demonstration Without Hydration
Dramatis Personae Anahita, Gino
In Absentia	2024-05-08 We all have an 'I hope you dance' speech lurking deep inside.
Location <NYC> Evolve Cafe - Lower East Side
Spacious and open, this coffeeshop has a somewhat industrial feel to it, grey resin floors below and exposed-beam ceilings that have been painted up in a dancing swirl of abstract whorls and starbursts, a riot of colour splashed against a white background. The walls alternate between brick and cheerfully lime-green painted wood that extends to the paneling beneath the brushed-steel countertops. There's an abundance of light, though rather than windows (which are scarce) it comes from plentiful hanging steel lamps. The walls here are home to artwork available for sale; though the roster of prints and paintings and drawings and photographs changes on a regular basis it has one thing in common -- all the artists displayed are mutants. The seating spaced around the room is spread out enough to keep the room from feeling cluttered. Black chairs, square black tables that mostly seat two or four though they're frequently pushed around and rearranged to make space for larger parties. In the back corner of the room is more comfortable seating, a few large black-corduroy sofas and armchairs with wide tables between them. There's a shelf of card and board games back here available for customers to sit and play. The chalkboard menus hanging behind the counter change frequently, always home to a wide variety of drinks (with an impressive roster of fair-trade coffees and teas largely featured) though their sandwiches and wraps and soups and snacks of the day change often. An often-changing variety of baked goods sit behind the display case at the counter halfway back in the room, and the opposite side of the counter holds a small selection of homemade ice creams. A pair of single-user bathrooms flanks the stairway in back of the cafe; at night, the thump of music can be heard from above, coming from the adjoining nightclub of the same name that sits up the stairs above the coffeehouse. The coffeeshop is met today with a bustling early-evening crowd, many eager for some shade and a sit-down after marching earlier in the nigh-summery afternoon. A group of young people are talking over each other in one corner, waiting on a friend upstairs in the recuperation zone; a group of middle-aged women in matching pink T-shirts (Moms Against Mutant Hate) has dragged numerous café tables together to eat an early dinner, their protest signs leaned up against their chairs. Gino is here by himself, dressed sort of plain in cargo shorts and a ratty camo t-shirt; a fanny pack; sunglasses perched on the brim of his denim bucket hat; a red paisley bandana currently pulled down around his neck as he finishes up his own early dinner, a free burrito from a protest a few blocks away. Is outside food allowed in here, unclear, but he's supplemented it with a cup of drip coffee about 30% cream and sugar by volume. Some of the Moms Against Mutant Hate keep sending him furtive looks, perhaps not Against Mutant Hate enough that his bone-grey skin and the protruding ridged shells and hollows on his face and hands do not either disturb or fascinate them. Gino is not really helping his case by simply staring back, his gaze flinty and baleful from within craterish eye sockets as he kisses burrito grease off the side of his hand. Does Anahita have any children? Oddly, no one seems to know, but if so she is not advertising it or her opposition to mutant hate, though that may be taken as read. She does have a pink t-shirt, but it's a different shade from the MAMH uniform and depicts, instead, an image of Funshine Bear surfing under a banner that reads "Hydrate while you Demonstrate!". The rest of her outfit is either very Mom or very not, depending on one's opinion of mothers, quick dry pants, lumbar packs, and hiking boots. She also has a glass of water, which she's setting in front of Gino before setting herself down at his table, a little heavily. "You should hydrate," she says, deadpan. The chair opposite Gino is initially rooted to its place as if sunken into the floor -- perhaps one of the Moms attempted to appropriate it earlier -- but after a second it is again maneuverable. Gino does not explain or apologize for this, but he does sit forward, spiky elbows scraping against the table. "Coffee is -- wet," he says, perhaps purely to argue, but he takes the water and drinks anyway, gulping down almost half of the glass before he sets it back down. He does not look any more hydrated, his skin still tough and ashy, but when he licks his lips there is a little bit of color coming back to them. Not much, though. Gino tilts his head -- "I never asked what you were doing after," he says. "You landing on your feet alright?" "It is," Anahita agrees. For a beat it seems like the argument might be dead in the water, until she adds, generously, "But it is also very hot outside. And you are a child of the sea." She seems mollified, though, when he complies. "I am doing..." She trails off into a thoughtful frown. "More or less the same thing I was doing before. Helping our people find shelter. Supporting protests. Telling stories." She flashes an uncharacteristically bright smile at a Mom Against Mutant Hate, who returns it awkwardly before turning her gaze elsewhere. "My job pays well enough for me to find a place, I just have not had time to do so. But I am good at landing on my feet, and my workshop is quite comfortable in a pinch. You are with the Morlocks, now?" There's only the slightest lift in her tone, more a request for confirmation than a question as such. "How are you settling in?" Gino gives a wordless 'if you insist' grumble before finishing the water. "That scans," he says. "Freaktown still needs you. Ex-Freaktown. I guess." He does not smile at the Mom, his relaxed expression tightening back into a somewhat hostile glare momentarily, before he drops his gaze back down to his empty glass, folding his arms on the table. "Yeah, yeah," he says. "Roof over your head, that's good." He blinks in surprise -- possibly that Anahita knows about the Morlocks -- before he seems to accept that of course she does. "They've been good to me," he says. "Decent place for us children of the sea, dark and damp. Not salty, though. Stinks a bit. Better to eat --" he gestures to the empty foil his burrito was wrapped in. "Up top." "Sometimes I feel I am cursed to always be a refugee." Anahita's tone is not as heavy as a statement like that might warrant. "From Afghanistan, from Utopia, from Prometheus, and now from Freaktown. I also feel blessed to have come out of so much upheaval relatively unscathed. No one should ever need to develop skills for surviving violent displacement, for salvaging a community from the wreckage, for starting over, again and again. But." She gives a small shrug and a faint ghost of a smile. "They are handy skills to have, in times like these. I hope that you can find a home where you've landed, and not just a roof --" She frowns again. "-- a city over your head. It must be a bit of an adjustment, after having the Hudson in your literal back yard." She tilts her head thoughtfully at Gino. "I have little concept of the waters down below, but I suspect the Holland twins might be able to offer you some advice on the salt water front. They have been amphibious in New York for quite a long time." Gino raises his eyes a little, back up to Anahita's face. "Bleak," he comments, his tone also a little blasé, but his gaze on her is thoughtful. Sorta. "Got any cheat codes, or is this a learn-by-doing kinda thing? Starting to think I'm cursed too. Or -- maybe, just, like, I wasn't meant to settle down like that. Just not in my path." He props his chin on one hand, automatically splitting his fingers around the protruding shells on his jaw, and sighs theatrically. "I miss a lot about Freaktown already but man I miss being by the water," he laments. "Just sentimentally, not even for --" with a sort of dismissive wave of one hand, "mer-thing reasons. I think I'm less amphibious than the Hollands anyway. Or would that be more amphibious?" He does not seem to care which it is -- he jerks his head back toward the counter. "I keep coming around this place, I'm bound to see one of 'em sooner or later. Get some cheat codes off them. Maybe once everyone's not so busy." "Mm, and here I was thinking you've dealt with enough aunties to know better than asking that." Anahita isn't smiling, but there's a fierce kind of mirth there in her eyes all the same. "We all have an 'I hope you dance' speech lurking deep inside. My number one cheat code you already know: 'drink more water.' A very close second is: 'don't try to go it alone.' Most of us need time alone to some extent. But it is too easy for that to become the default when you are adrift. Find others to drift with you, even if at a distance when you need, and you will always find a home, with or without a roof overhead." She leans forward conspiratorially. "Though it's best they drift a bit closer when you are doing things like, say, delivering coffee to our hard-working boys in blue. And a part of finding those people is letting them decide if they are too busy to lend a hand." "Mmm, all my actual aunts give me this subtle 'I hope you rot in hell' vibe and I got way less experience with you auntie types." Gino taps his fingertips at his lips a little thoughtfully as he listens to this. "I could definitely stand to drink more water," he concedes, but -- with another vague head-twist, sweeping the rest of the cafe with a glance, "Thought the point of all this is nobody's alone out there." Anahita tsks softly. "It can be hard to hit the sweet spot of seemingly self-evident advice that young people find just silly enough to remember for the joy of ignoring until the moment they need it. But 'I hope you rot in hell' isn't useful at all, except as a reminder you can find better aunties than those." She scans the cafe, as well, her eyes ticking first rapidly to the medics, the marshals, and the other Care Bears before sweeping back more leisurely over everyone else. "I think there are many points. Including that one. Community and solidarity don't necessarily translate to family, though." She turns her hands up, a gesture of somewhat ambiguous resignation. "It can be all too easy, when you are passionate about the cause, to put collective needs above personal ones. To be there for everyone else and not let anyone be there for you." Gino drops his hand back to the table, sitting back in his chair with a huff and a (somewhat incongruous) scrape. "You have a high opinion of me," he says ruefully. "Doesn't feel like I'm there for anyone else, I'm just there. Don't get me wrong of course I care about the cause, I just --" this trails off; he too is sending a considering, kind of guilty side-eye to the medics and marshals and Care Bears, the Moms Against Mutant Hate, his posture slouching forward again. "Yeah, you're right, community and solidarity isn't family. Guess you're onto something with all this self-evident advice shit." He drums his fingers on the table -- "Plus I already lost most of what I'm fighting for. It kinda harshes the vibe." "The vibe is indeed harsh." Anahita bows her head slightly. "But when you fight back, our oppressors know they cannot silence us, they do not get to take our homes and kill our people with impunity. You risk your own safety to tell the world that what we lost mattered, and that we are still here. Our own people need to hear that, too." She looks down at her shirt, then back up at Gino, quirking one eyebrow slightly. "Without you, what would I or any of the other logistical volunteers be supporting?" The corners of Gino's mouth tug down wryly as he considers this; he knocks his knuckles on the table with a sharp clack-clack. "You tell good stories," he says, and smiles. "People need to hear those too." He lets this sit for a second before: "I'm gonna get another glass of water. Hydrate before I demonstrate."