ArchivedLogs:Growing Things

Growing Things
Dramatis Personae Isra, Nessie, Spencer	2017-08-19 "I think there's a lot of people that put money above lives."
Location <NYC> Guerrilla Garden - Lower East Side
Situated on the lot directly adjacent to the distinctive sleek form of the Mendel Clinic, this space was once abandoned. The chainlink fence around it is still rusty, dilapidated, and the signs affixed to it still unwelcoming -- rusty as well, reading KEEP OUT, and PRIVATE PROPERTY. For those who venture into the slitted gap cut out of the fence, though, the yard within tells a different story. Neat and cleaned of any garbage and weeds, the once-abandoned lot has been rebuilt. Packing crates have been broken down for their wood to create raised beds full of rich soil, each bed neatly tilled and tended. Stakes label the different plants growing -- a wealth of vegetables growing three seasons of the year in the carefully tended soil. Around the edges of the lot, smaller beds have had brightly coloured flowers planted, lending even more cheer to the little hidden garden. Very eclectically mismatched seating has been brought in; old packing crates, chairs scavenged from curbs, though it's all been brightly painted. Another blazing August day has faded into a decidedly pleasant evening. The sun has only recently set, and a few high clouds lingering in the blue sky catch the last glimmers of twilight in pastel pinks and purples. Down on the ground people are pouring into the streets, getting ready for the nightlife. But here in the garden it's quiet. A small boy is crouched beside a bed of tomato vines intercropped with some sort of ground-bound squash, industriously yanking out bindweed and depositing it into a bucket beside him. Spencer is dressed in a somewhat loose leaf green t-shirt bearing the silhouette of a dancing faun-creature bowing and extending one hand to a child above the words 'Amongst the Green and Growing Things' written in flowing cursive, convertible khaki hiking pants, and gray sneakers. He /has/ gardening gloves, but they are very helpfully draped over the side of his bucket and not on his hands. Isra is working on the other side of the same bed, securing some of the tomato vines that had grown beyond the support of their trellises and heavy with fruit. Her skin is light green, traced with faint but elaborate organic curlicues, while the membranes of her wings are the dark green of sylvan shadows dappled with leaf-filtered sunlight, her horns and talons shining like burnished gold. The simple white linen himation she wears makes her look even more like some creature of ancient myth, more a part of the garden than the city surrounding it. Her ears flit to and fro at the sounds of foot and vehicle traffic out on the street, and her tail waves slow and calm behind her as she works. Among the noises of street-traffic and foot-traffic just outside there is a less familiar sound. Scritching, quiet rapid taps clicking against the concrete. It precedes a rattle of the fence, a lean hard (very hard, what with the carapace) body pulling at the tear in the fence and pushing through quickly. The teenager who has just arrived is dressed only in a plain grey tee, a large but empty knapsack slung over one shoulder and the delightful aroma of sewers clinging to their clothing. At the moment Nessie has stopped juuust inside the fence perimeter, a little wide-eyed, watching the others work. Her two front pincer-legs twitch, fidgeting restlessly with each other. Her own tail waves -- a little less slow. Twitchy. Spence perks up at the rattling of the fence, twisting around to see the newcomer. "Ohey!" He waves one dirty hand excitedly. "I remember you from Something Different you came by my sib's bone booth and you had awesome drawings how are you doing?" This all comes out in one breath. Then, as kind of an afterthought. "We're just tidying stuff up you can do whatever, we won't get in your way. There's /tons/ of tomatoes right now, and okra, and beets, and some Japanese eggplants I think are ready, too uh...probably some other things I'm forgetting." Isra's ears flick toward the sound of Nessie's approach, and she looks up without any alarm at her approach. "Good evening," she offers quietly, in the wake of Spencer's somewhat verbose greeting. "Some of the squashes may be ripe, here and there. The onions and potatoes, too." One of her wings stretches out delicately between two of the neighboring beds to point out the relevant root vegetables. Nessie's restless twitching subsides at these greetings, and the smile that breaks across her face is immediate. "Oh! Okra? /Beets/?" Her skittering steps carry her quite rapidly in to the garden, hard pointed feet tapping up onto the wooden edge of a bed as she leans in to peruse its offerings. "You remember! And you /changed/ --" Warm and delighted, as her dark eyes look over Isra and her verdant body art. "Do you change a lot? Do you /work/ here a lot? Did you make these gardens? Sometimes I help in the one over in Clinton, I guess it was silly to not assume someone up here was working on them -- like how else would they get here, /garden/ fairies?" "There's /stripy/ beets those are the /best/," Spencer confides seriously. So saying, he disappears from where he's been weeding -- -- and shows up at a bed near the one Nessie is inspecting, still crouched. "These ones. You can tell cuz they have the pink-and-white striped signs." At Nessie's last question he perks up. "Oh, oh! Actually /yes!/ My pa made them -- he had help, but he's /definitely/ a garden fairy. I work on them, and a lot of other people from the Commons do, too. That's where we live. Over there." He points helpfully in the direction of the Harbor Commons. "We remember." Isra extends both of her wings wide now, showing them off before mantling them in a comfortable position. "I get new art done every two or three weeks, usually, though very occasionally I'm enamored enough with a particular pattern that I just get it touched up at a session. As for the gardens..." She tilts her head in Spencer's direction. "...it is as he says. I do not work here very often myself, but we do try to make sure people are coming by regularly to do at least basic maintenance, especially since Jax is not presently able to do so himself." "Jax... ckson is your /dad/?" Nessie sounds a bit awed, here. She rocks back on her rear feet, settles her weight lower to look down at the plants Spencer points out. "I just came to get plants -- someone came the other day but," small wrinkle of small nose, "there was a zombie here." She's sneaking more glances over at Isra, surreptitious despite no actual need to be, her smile warmer. "It's still /so good/!" After this, though, a furrow of brow: "... are they going to keep him in jail /forever/?" She's crouching still further to lean down and begin carefully uprooting beets to tuck into her bag. "Yep, he's the /best./" Spencer nods enthusiastically, though after this his eyes go big. "Oh wow, yeah zombies do get in here sometimes. Not often now, but -- I hope the person wasn't hurt. Do you want help? With the beets, or other vegetables. I'm pretty good at pulling things out of the ground I do a lot of weeding." He's gone back to weeding even while he says this, actually. Maybe with a bit more force than altogether necessary. "No, only three more weeks. If they try to keep him longer -- well we won't /let/ them." His lips press together tight and he swallows hard, but then smiles, fiercely happy, at Nessie. "Don't worry he'll be back soon." "{Thank you,}" Isra's Spanish comes with a distinctive Argentine accent. "I can introduce you to my artist, if you weren't able to track him down at Something Different." This offer is casual, off-hand. Her vivid eyes flick to Spencer, ears pressing back against her skull, tail swishing faster behind her. "Quite soon, yes," she agrees gently. "Sure! I'm only an amateur dirt-puller-outer myself. Strictly a hobbyist." Nessie ducks her head, sucking in at her cheeks and casting a sideways look to Spence. Her feet shift, quick and restless. "Lo siento, I shouldn't, um. It's not a good subject, right? Right. It's a bad. I mean," softer here, more sincere, "it's rough, I know -- I know it's rough." Her tail is twitching, eyes focused on the plants she is carefully slowly working out of the ground. Quicker! Brighter! "I'd love that! The art thing got /so/ busy it was hard to do /all/ the things I wanted to do." Spence is quick to transfer his pulling from weeds to beets, which he works out of the topsoil with admirable ease to deposit in Nessie's bag. "No, it's alright. I mean -- it's not alright, prison is /terrible/. Just, it's alright to /talk/ about it. We /should/ talk about it, right?" He looks up at Nessie. "Like so many people want to just pretend inmates just don't exist, like they just go away. They won't want to think about it, and /that's/ a bad." "If you have a phone number or email address to give me, that would probably make matters easier, but otherwise you can simply come by the Commons some evening. He lives there, as well." Isra finishes tying up the tomatoes and crosses the garden to the beet bed on long, gliding steps. She does not join in the beet harvesting, but perches herself on a nearby stump, taloned feet braced against the base of it, wings mantling around herself loosely. "Quite right," she agrees. "Though I think there's hundreds, if not thousands, of people out marching right now who won't let anyone forget Jackson. There are plenty of others less prominent in the media and public eye, though." Her expression does not change, but her wings pull in a little closer. "Rather more plentiful, even, than usual." "I don't have a phone or anything but -- the Commons. Okay. This time I'll remember. Maybe." Nessie's nod at Spencer comes too quick, too emphatic. "Yeah! Prison is hard /already/ and then people pretend you don't exist anymore -- being in prison /and/ forgot and alone is probably --" She gives one of her beets a somewhat violent shake to dislodge a clod of dirt from it. "Probably way harder. I don't have to tell /you/ I guess. He -- /your/ dad, he probably gets lots of mail and stuff, though, right?" Spence is nodding, also hard and emphatic. "I hate it. I used to go visit pa when he's in jail, but now they have some technology that makes it so I can't teleport back out again. I can still go but then I'm stuck and it annoys the COs so I shouldn't do it because that might make life harder for pa." This sounds very much like he is trying to convince himself. "But yeah, they used to keep him alone, always, with no light and no food he can eat, and once they didn't even let anyone visit. Now they do and he gets /tons/ of letters, but a lot of it is people who want to tell him how bad --" He cuts off abruptly, studying Nessie. "You know some people in there?" A soft growl rises in Isra's throat, barely audible, but it fades quickly. When she speaks, her voice is equable and soft, "It's deplorable but quite intentional, I think, on the part of those who stand to gain by imprisoning people." "That's /awful/!" Nessie's pincery forelimbs shift and click rapidly together, a small jittery tap-tap-tap of restless motion. "That's like a /torture/ they don't care about /anyone/ or /anything/ --" Her voice is sharper, motions sharper as well as she practically throws her beets into the bag and moves on, examining the signs until she finds okra. "Do people really /get/ something from locking people up?" A bit aghast. Her shoulders tense, tail twitching sharply again though now her voice has softened, low with her reply: "My papa." Spence gives several short, jerky nods in agreement. Then stops. Blips over to the okra patch and starts picking the long green pods, gathering them in the crook of one dirty, skinny arm. "Lo siento," he says quietly. "How long's he got?" Isra's ears swivel toward Nessie. "There are many companies that stand to gain rather a lot of money in various ways related to putting and keeping people in prison." The growl has returned, soft and low, and it does not stop while she speaks. "But people have all kinds of reasons for enabling or supporting that system, and rather a lot of them think, with greater or lesser degrees of self-deception, that they are keeping society safe." Nessie's chuff is short and angry. "That's people's /lives/." She gives a small stamp of one sharp foot, a small shake of her head. "I'd break down /all/ the jail if I could. There were so many kids at home who --" She scowls at the okra, holding out her bag for Spencer rather than actually picking it herself. "... Five years and four months." With a brighter (if a little sudden, a little forced) smile: "Maybe when he gets out he'll be a superhero, too." Spencer dumps an armful of okra into the bag. "I think there's a lot of people that put money above lives," he says darkly. Looks at Nessie, nods. "Five years and four months," he echoes with a wince. "You know, your papa's a superhero already. But maybe /you'll/ be one when he gets out."