Logs:For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease.

For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease.
Dramatis Personae Kiri, Leo
In Absentia	2024-11-15 "I didn't mean to get out, but this is my 'go and fight' now."
Location <NYC> New York Botanical Gardens - Bronx Park
The full moon is shining silvery on the trees that shade this section of the path -- thin and faint as compared to the much wider and more well-trekked path they are probably supposed to be on. The rest of their group for this full moon hike has wandered on ahead together with the enthusiastic and knowledgeable tour guide pointing out the various flora. A quiet rustle in the underbrush pulled Leo's attention away, though, and he's crept out here, very quiet, to push aside a branch and peek through the scrubs at a large beaver carrying a large stuck back to its dam. He's dressed tonight in a sleekly tailored maroon corduroy jacket over a black button-up shirt with bright yellow under the collar, cuffs, and placket, deep indigo cigarette cut jeans, and black chelsea boots, a plush orange scarf draped aesthetically about his shoulders. He's been watching in silence for some time, crouched in a still quiet. He only lets the branch fall back into place when the creature finishes setting this stick and crosses to the other side of the river and out of sight to continue its quest. Kiri is bundled in a camel coat, black wide-gauge sweater, thick blue jeans, and heavy black boots, her eyes very wide and her breathing very soft as she watches the beaver at work. "Is this what they call a 'wood chuck'?" she asks Leo, still hushed even after the animal has disappeared. Then frowns. "Or is it ground hog. River hog? It looks," she admits, lowering her voice even further, as if concerned she might offend the beaver from afar, "kind of more like one big rat. The forests here are like in picture books." She looks up at the thinning trees overhead. "All this, they're all going go covered up with snow soon? That happens in the Christmas, right?" "I -- don't know what's a woodchuck," Leo admits, with a small perplexed frown. "It is not a groundhog. Beaver. Maybe more like -- waterhog." He's gently pulling the branch aside again, but lets it drop quickly when he can spy no further beaver through the gap. He's rising carefully from his crouch, dusting off his coat (very unnecessarily; he's been quite careful about not getting dirt on it while spying on the beaver.) "It happens in winter," he hedges, his frown not leaving. "Christmas if we're lucky. The woods get very pretty that way." "Waterhog," Kiri repeats, satisfied. "I wonder if it tastes good." She straightens up easily and shakes her head. "This feels already colder than any winter in Genosha. I have never seen snow," she says reverently. "Only in pictures. They look like...in the lowlands of my mother's fathers, we have sand like uh..." She describes a fluid rising and falling with one hand. "Like waves, or mountains. White sand." She tips her head to the side, sighting the big round moon through the branches. "When the moon is like this, the sand glitters." Her shoulders tighten just a bit, and only briefly, her smile returning easy. "I can't wait to see the snow." "I had not seen the snow until -- college. When I was young I went one time though with my cousins to --" Leo is mimicking Kiri's up and down hand motions. "Some sand dunes near our aunty house. Could ride them down like surfing. Not so pretty as yours sound, though, they were --" His hand, still in the air, seesaws uncertainly before dropping back to his side. "Just sandy color." The thought of the snow is putting a small involuntary shiver in him, though he seems accepting enough when he adds: "Back at base it is colder right now. Probably I think you'll see the snow long before Christmas." "Dunes," Kiri echoes, though it's Leo's hand she points at. "Yes we ride down ours, in uh..." She thinks hard, but then settles for, "Little boats. I will try that here, on the snow. Like I seen in movies." She sounds like she can't quite decide whether the sledding in movies that she has seen is some kind of fantastical exaggeration. Whether it's talking about snow or just her low-Latitude constitution, she is bouncing up and down a bit for warmth. "You grow up in Philippines? Until college." "No. Until --" The gesture of Leo's hand, some nebulously Shorter Height than he is now, is a little ambiguous. "We had to... we moved to California, Los Angeles was also..." He trails off, shrugs small. "Warm." His hands tuck into the pockets of his jacket, and at the hoot of an owl somewhere nearby his head is tilting back to squint into the trees. "... what would you be doing, you think? Now. If you had not -- if not the war." "Did you live in Hollywood?" Kiri doesn't sound all that certain whether her geography is correct or whether that is indeed anything to be particularly excited about. The unseen owl is definitely exciting, even if she has no luck locating it. Her smile thins at the question. "I wanted to be the best rider and hunter from our village, maybe even chief!" She laughs, watching for the faint puff of her breath in the crisp air. "In the cities it was bad for our people. In the highlands we thought, it was different. We were free." She's quiet a moment. "What about you? If not for the labs." "Oh -- no, that is -- Los Angeles is very big." Leo is still looking up, but he's slowly starting to make his way back toward the main trail. He stops -- there's no owl above him but some smaller bird is vanishing through the canopy. He doesn't answer. Just shakes his head, after a long consideration. "Not free. I don't think I have seen anywhere free." Kiri trails after Leo, trusting his experience picking their way through the unfamiliar forest. "I joined the underground to find my brother and send him home. Then I saw the city." She lifts one hand as if she thinks some gesture might help her convey the situation in Hammer Bay, but just drops it again. "Then I thought, we find him and send him to America. I guess that's not so different as thinking we were free in the mountains. At least here, he would get to see the snow." "No cage is definitely still better than cage. No slavery still, I think, much better than slavery." Leo starts moving again slowly, holding a prickly thorny branch out of the way for Kiri to pass before he lets it fall back into place. "It's just very hard to unsee how close we always are to --" His hand lifts, too -- inadequate again for whatever he wants to convey, but he drops it again in silence. Kiri ducks under the branch and stalks forward quietly, trailing her fingertips lightly over the smooth trunk of a young beech tree as she passes. "I see it now, too. How stupid I was to think, 'it won't happen here, not to us' until the day they passed that {buzzard vomit} law. But I don't know enough American...things to see what it looks like here. When we have to smuggle people out from here in the dark." "I think here people -- also think that. I think they might keep thinking that until it is too late for smuggling. Maybe it's stupid, I don't know. I think people everywhere want to think their home will always be a home." As they emerge back onto the wider path, Leo is tipping his head up to look at the bright moon overhead. "I think it's always very hard, and very personal. When do you give your home up to violence. When do you stay and fight. When do you go, and fight. When do you go and just try to move on." "I don't think it's stupid if they want to stay..." She trails off into a sort of subvocal "ohh" and nods, the motion small and difficult to see in the dark. "Wanting that, maybe we don't want to look at the 'too late' until is too late." She brushes her coat off as she steps out onto the path. Look up, but closes her eyes like the moon is too bright for a moment. "I...want to be home so much. I didn't mean to get out, but this is my 'go and fight' now." "The ones still there are lucky to have you." Leo squints up the path, tilting his head towards the distant voices of their tour group. He's slow to move and slower to pull his eyes away from the sky and to Kiri. "I really hope one day you can be back. Show us your trees." "They're lucky to have you." Kiri blinks her eyes open, and blinks again. Looks at Leo, a little wonderingly. "Have us. When we go, I will show you such trees. They are like our people." She smiles, determined. "The blood of dragons is in them."