ArchivedLogs:For Now

For Now
Dramatis Personae Isra, Nick	2016-05-11 "You went to college, right? Like, a /lot/ of college?"
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Treehaus - Lower East Side
A spiral of sturdy slatted wooden stairs winds up the trunk of an enormous oak, leading the way up to this treehouse positioned between a pair of trees at one side of the Commons yard, abutting the river. It's clear enough upon ascending that this is no ordinary treehouse, built sturdy-strong and with a polished finish that would rival most /regular/ residences. Spanning the distance between the pair of oaks, the treehouse is a long one-story building, equipped with both plumbing and electricity. The stairs lead up onto a wraparound balcony that projects out at one side to overlook the East River rushing by below. The doorway inside leads to a furnished sitting room, long low futon-couches on the pale wood floors, walls painted in leafy shades of green, exposed-beam ceilings that seem to have worked some of the actual branches of the tree into the curvature of the roof. The front room is bright and airy, large windows looking out on the Commons grounds and the river outside. Recessed lanterns in the wall give the room a warm glow, come nighttimes, and in the center of the room amid a stone-tiled patch of flooring there is a squat glass-encased gas fireplace providing warmth in winter. Off to one side of the room there is an elevated loft up nearer the ceiling, accessible by ladder and furnished with pillows and plush futon mattress and lots of blankets. The adjoining room is decorated in watery river-blues instead of leaf-greens; in here there's a small kitchenette to one side with sink and stove and toaster oven and counter space, cabinets on the walls. A long dining table in this room seats eight; by the windows, plenty of cushioning sits in the wide window-seats. Off in the very back, a tiny half-bathroom holds a sink and toilet. No stove in here; the wintertime tends to find this room much chillier, but there's generally plenty of warm blankets lying around the house. The fine, balmy spring afternoon is waning, but the chill in the air has no bite anymore. In the wake of plentiful, soaking rains, the city's plantlife is fresh and green and blooming. The animal inhabitants are enjoying the weather, also--joggers and walkers, with or without dogs, have begun pouring out into the parks before the afternoon commute begins tapering off. Isra is also out taking the air, if somewhat more literally than most. She is initially little more than a winged shadow against the dusky lavender sky, but on approaching the Commons she shifts her angle of attack and sheds a great deal of altitude in short order. Banking sharply, she circles the Treehaus and backwings hard, breaking her momentum and dropping neatly down onto the balcony. Her colors these last few weeks have been an impressive array of metallic multichrome hues that shift dramatically with the changing light, reminiscent of some exotic insect's carapace. This latter impression is perhaps reinforced, at the moment, by the fine tracery of silver veins on the black of her wing membranes, which call to mind a dragonfly's wings. She wears a seafoam green tunic dress cinched with a vibrant purple sash, a leaf green satchel slung across her chest, and a rather elaborate garland of wildflowers on her hairless head, twined securely around gleaming rainbow-spectrum horns. Nick has been inside, flopped across the loft futon in a black t-shirt emblazoned with the Green Lantern symbol and olive cargo shorts, leafing through a glossy trade paperback comic book. His ears swivel at the sound of Isra's wings outside. Amber eyes lift from the pages of his reading and peer out through the window even while he's rolling to his feet, tucking his book under one arm ('Green Lantern Corps vol. 3: Willpower' it reads), descending from the loft, and waving to Isra as he passes the door to the balcony. "Hola, Isra. You want anything to drink?" Isra folds her wings tight against her back and ducks inside. "Good evening, Nick." Both sets of her vocal chords engage, lending her words a kind of unearthly depth and reverberation. "I hope this day finds you well?" She settles down onto a couch sidewise, pulling her tablet from her satchel and switching it on, though her eyes are still following Nick. "I should rather enjoy a cider, thank you." "Yeah I'm alright. Just decompressing from AP tests, you know?" Nick pokes his head into the refrigerator and comes out with a bottle of hard cider. He holds the bottle out in the doorway as if to confirm it was what Isra had requested. "You mind if I have one of these?" This question sounds pretty /casual/, coming from a seventeen-year-old who is not even /her/ guest, per se. "Ah, yes, 'tis the season for standarized testing." Isra's long, pointed ears press back, and her tail twitches restlessly against the side of the couch, though her expression remains otherwise unchanged. "Which exams did you take, if you do not mind my asking?" The corner of her mouth twitches briefly into a smile, just quickest flash of fang. "By all means. It's neither particularly sweet nor particularly alcoholic, if these qualities matter to you." "Environmental Science and U.S. History," Nick replies. "Think I did okay on environmental science, but the history one..." He wobbles his hand to indicate his uncertainty. "It was like, all essay, and you have to /hand write/ everything. My fingers feel like they're gonna fall off." He goes back to the refrigerator to retrieve a second cider, popping the cap from both of them. "Thanks, and I'm not worried about it being not-sweet or not-alcoholic. Mostly just curious, you know?" He delivers one of the bottles to Isra with a polite bob of his great shaggy head before flopping down onto the couch across from her. Isra nods once, firmly, her ears flattening against her skull--or, at least, against the woven garland that crowns it. "May you achieve the outcomes you desire in those exams, and any you might still have to complete this week." Her smile spreads a little wider, shows a little more teeth, when Nick returns. "If you are curious about cider, I have a few recommendations--but Crispin is a decent place to start." She accepts the proffered cider with a steep incline of her head, holding the bottle daintily with the points of her heavy (metallic rainbow!) talons. "There are several excellent cideries upstate which offer tastings and tours, but they do check IDs and are not often particularly keen on welcoming the like of us, age aside." Nick snorts, his furry ears flattening down to either side of his head. "I think the outcome I wanted was mostly to get my parents to stop talking about it. I mean..." He studies the cover of the book in his lap. "Like, they're not the kinda windbags who think you /have/ to go to college or you're a failure at life or whatever, but they want me to have more options. You know, if I /want/ to go to college and by some miracle manage to get into one. Anyway, it's not like /I'm/ worrying about that just yet." He sniffs at his cider and takes a long sip, then nods approvingly. "This is good! Man, the idea of me going on an /any/ kind of tasting tour is kind of hilarious. Maybe if I went on Halloween and said it was a costume." Isra turns her bottle carefully in one hand, nodding as the teen speaks. "It is good that they are supportive but not pressuring you about higher education--I imagine you will get plenty of /that/ at school come senior year." She pauses, considering. "And, regardless of your academics, that will be a difficult path, should you elect to pursue it. College, that is." This clarification comes as she lifts her own bottle for a sip. "Though cider tastings present their own set of difficulties, to be sure." "My mom and dad are pretty great, but..." Nick wrinkles his muzzle, the expression curiously--vulnerably--human despite his rather canine facial features. "They don't /get/ what it's like to be a freak. I mean, they know people are afraid of me and hate me for how I look, but no matter how much that breaks their hearts they'll never know what it's like when most folks out there don't even think you're a /person./" His next gulp is much more liberal. Then, hesitantly, "You went to college, right? Like, a /lot/ of college?" Isra's bright green eyes fix on the young man, unblinking. "I can relate, in terms of parents," she says at last. "While they may certainly understand discrimination on many axes, even unto threats against their lives, they will never understand the way we struggle to even be recognized as worthy of /existing./" Her free hand toys with the stylus clipped to the case of her tablet. "I did undergrad at Cornell and my Master's at Columbia, but for most of that time I was able to pass as human. Once /these/ grew in..." She gestures at her horns with an elegant flourish of talons. "...Things got ugly rather fast, and I do not mean myself. I didn't last much more than a semester after I stopped binding my wings." Her tail twitches several times, rapidly. "It was no great loss, to me. Your experiences may be very different, certainly, but I would advise you to expect a great deal of resistence." This last softly, her wings twitching at her back. "Whatever you decide, when the time comes, know that you can come to me about it--even if only to talk." Nick sighs and drinks his cider /kind of/ fast while listening to Isra recount her college experiences. The furrow between the furry ridges of his brows bespeaks anger, sympathy, disgust--but no surprise. "Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. I mean, I can see what B and Shane been going through. It's not like I think I'm somehow gonna be immune to that." His long, pink tongue darts out and wets his nose. "Thanks. I--may take you up on that. But for now I'm just gonna work on my music and have fun with my friends and pretend there's no such thing as college." So saying, he arrange a couple of couch cushions unde his head and carefully flips his book open again to find where he'd left off. But before he fully turns his attention back to the Green Lantern Corps, he holds Isra's eyes with his own. "For now."