ArchivedLogs:Small Measures

Small Measures
...to make the world suck less.
Dramatis Personae Anole, Isra	2014-08-13 Taking a break from Sharking.
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Second Floor - Lower East Side
The stairs and the elevator here unload people onto opposing sides of a balcony, a wide sweep of space overlooking the foyer below. Above there is a clear view up to the balcony on the next story up, and the roof skylight pours light down through all three floors of the building. The rooms here wrap themselves around the central balcony, with the lounge-like game room on one side, flanked by a children's playroom and an entertainment center for more electronic forms of recreation. The entertainment center and the playroom each have a single-user gender-neutral toilet adjacent to them. Two sides of the balcony hold an entrance into the large climbing-maze that leads both up and down through the center of the house, for those who think the stairs or elevator is too prosaic. Over in the media room there is a lot of noise and clamour, Shark Week well underway and a veritable orgy of meat-eating and shark-watching happening around the enormous television. Anole is definitely a fan of /both/ steaks and shark documentaries, but the lizardboy -- who, past greetings to his friends here, has been very quiet and kept much to himself through the evening so far -- has, maybe, only so much tolerance for /crowds/. And so, somewhere in the middle of a program on elusive species of deep-deep-deep sea sharks he has crept out of the media room, a chunk of roast still skewered on a kebab stick in his hand, to instead clamber over the balcony and perch on the /outside/ of the large climbing structure, bare feet glued to the lip of one of its exit tunnels and his skin a very /odd/ mottled patchwork of green and grey as it shifts halfheartedly in against the steel cables that support the maze. His green eyes focus down through the spiderweb of cables and tunnels to look at the foyer a floor below. Uncoiling from her seat, Isra wends her way through the crowded media room to replenish her drink. Even with wings tucked close to her body and tail held as still as consciously feasible, she poses a mild hazard to unsuspecting cups, laptops, and persons of small stature. By the time she reaches the drink table, she seems to have forgotten about her ginger ale and instead stalks outside. She gives a quiet sigh and stretches her wings, their membranes colored in a blue gradient that darkens toward the elongated digits that support them. Her back and sides--largely exposed by a gauzy white cropped tanktop--are patterned in wavy blue stripes reminiscent of sunlight refracted in water. These stripes fade toward the ventral side of her body, leaving her abdomen and face almost their usual gray, with only a touch of blue. An handkerchief hem skirt, white and thin like the top, reaches past her knees but leaves her tail room to sweep--freely now. Her eyes, still green and, with her horns, the only exposed parts that remain unadorned, search the balcony and beyond. Whether she sees Anole at first is hard to say, but she steps over to lean on the railing a few feet from him. "Do you have a favorite?" She says this quietly enough that her lower second voice can be heard as a soft echo to it. "Shark, that is." Her eyes do flick over to him now, keen and unblinking. This question elicits a sudden deep /blush/ from Anole, his own green eyes widening and darting back across the balcony, over to the open media room door where a very excitable blue sharkpup can be seen on one of the couches. “Oh -- oh.” He starts to lift his free hand to rub at the back of his neck but drops it, frowning instead at the huge claws it sports. “Makos are kind of. Pretty -- awesome,” and maaaybe only coincidentally the sharks that the pups most closely identify with, “though goblin sharks are kind of -- like -- I wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley, some of those deep sea sharks are like /horrormonster/ creatures.” He dips his head, nibbling at the edge of his chunk of meat. “... do you?” Isra allows a fangy smile at the mention of Makos. "I used to feel rather partial to whale sharks, but now I tend to agree with you." She tips her head in the same direction that Anole had just glanced, as though pointing Shane out with a spiraling ivory horn. Then, with a shrug that moves wings more than shoulders. "The twins have given me ample cause to become prejudiced in this matter." She taps the pads of her fingers against the railing idly; her sharp silver nails flash like a school of fish turning. "I have not seen you on campus. Do you plan to return in the fall?" “You turned yourself blue for the party,” Anole notes with a very small smile, eyes skipping over the adornment on Isra’s sides. “It fits.” Then there is quiet, toes curling harder against the tunnel he perches on. “I’ve been down -- in. Under the -- my family needs me. More.” Though the mention of his family puts a tightening in his shoulders. “I /did/ plan to return…” His tone now doesn’t sound /entirely/ sure. "I have spent a good deal of time in various types of blue countershading," Isra admits. "It has served me well as camouflage in flight. But yes, I commissioned a particularly marine pattern for this week. If I could do it myself, I'd probably look different every day." Looking down into the tangled paths of the climbing sculpture, she gives an even smaller shrug. "Certainly /I/ would like to see you back, as I'm sure many of my colleagues and your peers would. However..." She turns more fully to face the boy, settling her wings down over her shoulders. "I'm not speaking to you in the capacity of a teacher right now, and even if I were, I pass no judgment on your decisions regarding school attendance. Plans aside, do you /want/ to? And if so, is it primarily distance from your family that gives you pause?" “Do you swim? Could you be like a --” Anole’s expression has briefly shifted more animated as he gives this thought. “I guess winged sharks are more like, um, rays. But you’d be an /awesome/ ray.” He returns to nibbling on the roast, slower, thoughtful, as he considers this. “I want…” He blushes, shaking his head slightly. “I used to want to be a doctor. But I don’t. I mean. My family has been through. Through kind of a lot? It’s been a hard -- year. Especially -- especially with the news. Lately.” This earns another uncomfortable fidget. “I don’t want to be just one more person who abandons them.” Isra wobbles one hand--kind of? "I swim rather poorly, the least graceful ray in the water. I need a lot of space and powerful lifeguards go practice." Her pointed ears press back against her scalp. "Negative buoyancy," she adds by way of explanation. "I cannot say I understand your family’s plight; I only know the shape of it, and I commend you for supporting them. Yet I also urge you to discuss it with them. Remember that /you/ are family to them, as well, and doing right by you is important to their happiness. As for /abandonment/..." The lower of her voices has risen enough that she sounds like two people speaking together. "You are not her." "I bet the twins make good lifeguards. They're -- strong." Anole's smile twitches back into place. "And buoyant." He worries off another bite of roast, licking at some stray crusted spices threatening to fall. His eyes open just faintly wider, more attentive as Isra's voices shift. He pulls in a shaky breath, fingers scrunching harder around the handle of his skewer. "She's just, she's been out here. For /weeks/. Telling the whole /world/ how people -- people like /us/ are. Are." His voice has dropped lower, shakier, where Isra's rises higher. He stops himself short with another trembling breath. "... and she never even said. That she was alive. Never came to. To see m -- us." "Indeed, they are my swimming coaches as well. Alas, I fear I have been a disappointing student in that subject." Isra sits sidewise on the railing, balancing easily with wings mantled and tail swinging gently. "I'm sorry, Anole. I do not know her mind and cannot fathom her betrayal. But your pain you need not hide. There is no shame in it." "I looked at her website," Anole admits with a small frown, eyes tracking the motion of Isra's swinging tail. "Back when. When B was going. To them. The whole -- whole thing is written like someone who /hates/ us. Become normal, human, that's the /ideal/. She was our --" His head dips, fingers working again at the handle of his skewer. "You'd fit in, in the tunnels," he says to Isra with sudden brighter smile. "We're kind of the /least/ normal. The freakest of the freaks. Though there's not," he allows apologetically, "a lot of room to spread your wings most places. You could in our common room though, it's like --" His clawed arm stretches out wide in demonstration. "I doubt if she wrote any of it herself. Like all of their propaganda, it was calculated to salt the wounds that others have already inflicted." The lower register of Isra's voice has dissolved into a soft growl. "They would make us hate /ourselves/ so that they can imagine it charitable to defang us for their comfort. Perhaps they succeeded with her. Let it be a warning to us--there is no safety in the status quo." Her eyes search the climbing sculpture, one hairless brow ridge slightly raised. "Though there can be shelter, and I am glad you have that in the tunnels and in your family. It would be difficult for me to live literally underground, but then, I haven't much room to stretch my wings in /most/ people's homes." She smiles, too, fangs flashing. "But I still gladly visit where I am welcome." "No, I don't think she wrote it but. But she /pushed/ it and made it. Pretty. Gave it a -- a face that." Anole shakes his head, dropping his clawed hand to the tunnel beside him. His fingers curl down hard against the sturdy wood. "It's funny because I didn't think I -- would find that? I kind of. Just. Hitched across the -- from Illinois to here and I didn't. Find anything. That was like home. Until I met her. All of them." Slowly, his smile returns again. "I guess we'll just have to. Make sure to -- to keep. Being a shelter. For other people who --" His shoulder hitches up in a small shrug. The hard, inhuman angles of Isra's face seem to soften for just a moment. "Yet you found it--home. They cannot take that from you." She stretches one wing out, curling the silver talon at its tip clumsily around Anole's larger hand. "I admire your strength and courage. But remember, also, that you /can/ ask for help." "... strength? /Courage/? /Me/?" Anole turns his hand upwards, hesitantly curling his overlarge claws around Isra's talon in return. "I don't even know what help to ask for," he admits, cheeks tinting darker green. "Like for the world to suck less? That feels like a lot. To ask." "Yes, you," Isra says equably. "We are parts of the world, too. In our every kindness and every act of solidarity and acceptance, we make the world suck less in small measures." She cocks her head to one side. "Sometimes big ones, too." Anole's expression slides back into a heavier thoughtfulness for this, his clawed fingers curling against his toes. It takes a while of evidently contemplative silence before -- abruptly -- his face lights back up in a smile. "We /do/, don't we. I mean we -- we help, we can -- it feels sorta too /much/ sometimes but maybe. We --" He hops down off the tunnel he perches on, landing lightly on the railing with no evident difficulty as he scuttles closer to curl his heavy-armoured arm around Isra in a hug. "I'll start with small ones I think." "That is a fine place to start, and something no one ought ever to forget, even if they are out to change the world in big ways." Isra fans one massive blue wing out and wraps it around the boy. "/Especially/ if they are out to change it in big ways." Her ears swivel toward the party. "Now, then, dare we dip our toes back into the shark-infested media room?" Anole leans into the hug, squeezing briefly -- very /cautiously/, he may still not be entirely used to the strength in his regrown arm -- before he tips forward to hop down off the railing. "I'm feeling kind of brave," he tells Isra with a shyly crooked smile. "I think dealing with /these/ sharks will be fun." "Good man." Isra mantles both wings out and does not so much dismount from the railing as she simply stands upright, long digitigrade legs easily reaching the floor. "Maybe we'll even learn something, no?"