ArchivedLogs:Faux Nature

Faux Nature
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Melinda	2013-06-08 '
Location <NYC> Bronx Zoo - Bronx
265 acres of parkland, the Bronx zoo comprises one of the largest metropolitan zoos in the world. Home to more than four thousand animals, the zoo's exhibits span the globe, providing animal lovers an escape from the urban jungle into a real one. Or as close as they can get in the wilds of New York, at least. The weather is glorious. As such the zoo on a Saturday is /kind/ of packed. Teeming with families herding small children around, teenagers lounging on the benches, eager tourists snapping pictures. Lucien does not much look like he should belong in that first group. Too young for children, too well-coiffed for /babysitting/. AND YET. Here he is. Meandering. His path is erratic, owing to the fact that he is not /dictating/ it; it is being dictated by the whims of a small child in blue tank top and jean shorts and green Converse sneakers, darting exictedly to. And fro. And to! And fro. She has a less-small child in tow; dark Batman t-shirt and jeans on the taller boy who seems kind of /bored/ but amenable to the dragging. Sera has been doing a lot of dragging. Zip! Zip zip zip! ZOOOM. She has discovered aardvarks, and at the moment she is eying them with WONDER. Trailing far behind but always keeping the children in eyesight, Lucien sips at a lemonade. Side-eyes the aardvarks. "Nature," he decides, "has a strange sense of humour." Melinda is okay with the meandering, chuckling softly as she digs at a shaved ice with a plastic spoon. She doesn't /exactly/ look coiffed, but could have, perhaps, at one time. She has instead come straight from work, wearing the typical white top with black bottoms of food service, touching it up with a bit of color in her bright red bag, the strap cutting a red line from one shoulder to the opposite hip, the bag thumping lightly against her thigh with every step. "It does," she admits at length, possibly as she is trying not to get brain freeze from the sugary ice she just melted in her mouth and swallowed. "It kind of makes me wonder what humans would look like if we had to subsist on only one time of very hard to get food." She smiles a little brighter. "What features would evolution grant the illusive twinkie hunter that only ate the cream filling?" "Possibly a nose much like that one." Lucien's head tips towards the aardvark. It is snuffling. Every day it's snuffling. "Also, a complete lack of tastebuds." In front, Sera is dropping to hands and knees to attempt this snuffling herself! It's hindered somewhat by her lack of ridiculous snout. "What about one who could only subsist on," Lucien considers for a moment. Sips at his lemonade. "Pomegranate arils." "Hmmm. Either a taste for the wax surrounding them, or perhaps really dexterous fingernails and a habit of floating like an otter." This causes Melinda to smile again. Otters! "You know, because pomegranates are easier to husk under water." She eyebrow waggles as Sera starts to demonstrate the snuffling, before casting a gaze in Lucien's direction. "Were you ever that young and energetic? Or were you like Mr. Dour and Accepting over there." She points to the brother. "-- Perhaps Jackson's sons," Lucien decides. "Ideally equipped for shelling pomegranates." His brow furrows, for a moment. "... less so for eating them." He pauses with his lemonade straw stuck between his lips, not drinking, just turning his gaze to consider the children. "I was young, once," comes his light answer, "wasn't everybody?" The children are moving on. Sera, admittedly, still on all fours. He is slower to meander after them. "I spent a long while /cultivating/ my dour. It is a practiced art. -- I cannot," he admits, "well imagine /you/ dour." "Ha. Maybe I'll get Shane to shuck all my pomegranates this fall." Melinda schemes, well in advance. Then of course, the conversation returns to the topic of youth. "Kids are pretty much introverts and extroverts pretty much from birth, and some like acting out crazy fantasies and others just imagine them in their heads as they read books. And that doesn't even touch on the notion of the artistically or mechanically minded" Melinda speculates, waving a hand at the pair of kids before them. "Me, I was fifty fifty on action and reserve. I loved the books, but I was constantly swinging a stick in the backyard as I read, or acting out what I learned in my books." She scoops up more ice and holds it for a moment before mentioning, "I had my 'all black' phase in junior high." "He is your employee. What are employees /for/ if not abusing your managerial rights to get them to shuck pomegranates?" There is a brief twitch of Lucien's lips, quick and amused. "Really. Goth Mel? -- Emo Mel?" He flicks a slow sweep of glance over her. "All black is easier to colour coordinate. It is still my go-to when I have too little patience to care about dress. It does facilitate /laziness/ quite well." There ar lemurs, now. He spares them only a brief glance. "Perhaps," he decides, after a pause, "actors just never want to outgrow that phase." "Yes, well, does your 'all black' come with eyeliner and black lipstick?" Melinda's brows rise as she grins. "And safety pins over ninety percent of your wardrobe?" More eyebrow waggles. "I don't know. I was probably more emo than goth, but - well, I'm really just playing around with the images. It was never really dour. I tried acting out, but it never led anywhere and my biggest disappointment in life was boredom. My parents wouldn't let me read in peace!" She rests presses the wrist of her free hand to her forehead and sighs heavily. "It was terrible." There's a breath after her very dramatic description before she adds, "Hm. And now I'm having a hard time imagining you having too little patience to care about your appearance." "Ah --" Lucien considers this. "I do own eyeliner," he will concede. "My all black generally comes with slacks and a dress shirt, though." He takes another long sip of lemonade, finally turning to examine the lemurs. /Critically/. "I can think of few worse fates than interrupted reading." The last statement just earns another smile. Almost-smile, half-smile, quick-twitch that is soon to fade. "Who has the patience to be on display all the time?" He says this, notably, in carefully-tailored jeans, impeccably slim-fit collared shirt neat and carefully pressed, hair tousled /just/ so, dark Ferragamo loafers that probably cost the better part of many people's monthly wage. "Tell me you don't sometimes wake up and just have /those/ days." Melinda laughs softly as she looks Lucien over, unable to keep the chuckles under wraps. "/I/ do, Lucien, dear. And then I wire myself up with caffeine and go to work. The question is, do you? You're at the zoo, with your siblings, and you still look like you fell out of a list of Hollywood's best dressed." She winks and shrugs. "Come on, I've known you for a while now. And you know me. I'm ribbing. I've seen you in the morning, after a blizzard or two, before coffee. You're just blessed with a natural ability to hide it." She too now eyes the lemurs and purses her lips at the description plate. "Do you know what I like? Hippos. I think they have it made. Herbivores that no one wants to fuck with." "Oh -- well." Lucien looks back towards the habitats, looking over the description, too. "Patience or no patience, there is something to be said for making a good impression. Zoo or not." He exhales a quiet laugh. "Do you want to be a herbivore? I hear people do that. By choice, if not by natural inclination. I admit, you are not quite so /intimidating/ as a hippo would be, though. Perhaps if you try opening your mouth just a little bit wider?" His fingers come together, spread open wide and yawning in demonstration. Hippo-mouth. "Oh, I don't know. There's just something less competitive about being a herbivore," Mel explains grinning at Lucien's Hippo impression and attempting one of her own. It's harder with that paper cone in her hands. She adds a little roar. "All those carnivores seem to constantly be hunting for the next thing. It's not my style. I like to dominate where I am and float around merrily in my environment. Besides, being a hippo may mean that I wouldn't know what meat would taste like so I couldn't miss it." She digs out a little more of her shaved ice and considers. "How about you? A sleek jungle cat, I think. Panther, perhaps? I could see you as a lynx as well." "Hippos probably know what meat tastes like. They do not hesitate to /bite/ things. Wasteful, really," Lucien judges, quietly amused as he turns to continue following after the departing children. "Is that what hippos sound like?" He mimics the roar. "I am not well-versed. In the language of hippopotamuses." He lifts his straw back to his lips. "Panther. Mmm. Do I strike you as predatory?" "Well, not particularly predatory. Often stoic, graceful, perhaps a little aloof. Then again, I am far more used to seeing big cats in the city like this, rather than in the wild where they are actually predatory." Melinda considers, turning to face Lucien. "Would you be predatory outside of the city? -- Wait, don't answer that. My mind has already started constructing this grand simile in which life in the city is just like the zoo, where we are all creatures outside of our normal behaviors, placated by diets and social interactions within our kind and stared at by others, everyone knowing what we are capable of, but never really letting us reach that full potential because our potentials make them afraid." She winks and tips the last of her dessert into her mouth and crumples the paper around the spoon. "It's an enticing little comparison. If you poke holes in it, I'll be sad." Lucien exhales again, slow and quiet. Around his straw, his lips curl upwards. Just slightly. "Oh, I do not think the comparison is far wrong. And lends a touch of credence to --" He gestures with his cup down at his outfit. "Always being on display. I have never lived outside a city, though. Born in," his smile twitches just briefly again, "-- captivity. I could not tell you much about my habits were I not an urban creature. You, though --" His hand tips towards Melinda. "You have had time elsewhere, non?" "Suburbia isn't any less urban, Lucien," Melinda shrugs. "Smaller towns, lesser cities, crappier zoos." She glances around and finds a trash can, leading their meandering in that direction for a little while. "But there, it's more like there used to be a zoo and everyone behaves like the partitions are still up, but really, only the ruthless see the game the way it really is, and strangely respect imagined walls so that their prey doesn't just leave them behind. They wouldn't really know how to hunt either." She wander back closer, turning her eyes to check in on Lucien's siblings. "We are such strange, broken animals - humans. And then we inflict our habits on other creatures to 'preserve' them." "/Sub/-urban," Lucien protests mildly, "it is right there in the name. You know," his tone /lightens/ with this remark, oddly cheerful, "you are oddly nihilistic for an optimist." "I suppose I should say that the suburbia doesn't necessarily indicate the presence of rural life. Alas, now I know I can always trust you to bring out etymology to win your point." Melinda chuckles. She then leans a little closer and bumps his shoulder lightly with hers as they walk. "May I live to surprise you further. Come on, if I were a pure optimist, would you really take me with you to the zoo to help balance out all this glorious, cheerful family development?" She raises her arms to gesture to the structures around them. "Mel, if I cannot take joy in being a /pedant/," Lucien is so-very-solemn here, returning the shoulder-bump, "what /can/ I take joy in?" He veers a little to the side to drop his emptied cup in a trashcan, reconnecting with Mel to hook his arm through hers. "I have friends who are quite purely optimistic," he objects. And then reconsiders: "-- /a/ friend." And then reconsiders /again/: "... acquaintance." "See? You're already downgrading this poor soul, and I'm vaguely sure it's because that person is optimistic. And you can't even hide behind the mention of Jax being that friend, because as much as I love him and find him positive, I don't know if I'd call him optimistic anymore. Poor guy's been through too much." Melinda gives Lucien's arm a squeeze and stays close. "Missed hanging out with you." "He is disgustingly optimistic," Lucien answers like this is a serious character flaw, "else he'd likely have shot himself long ago." His steps speed, just enough to continue keeping up with the children who are currently darting off towards the great apes. In answer, he just turns his head, pressing a light kiss to Melinda's temple, a faint trickle of contentment in the touch. And then continuing forward, before the children disappear out of sight.