ArchivedLogs:This Is Me

This Is Me
Dramatis Personae Alex, Fiona
In Absentia	2016-12-30 Discussions on the self. Kierkegaard would be proud.
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Garden Plot - Lower East Side
The smell instantly changes here to something greener, herbally sharp and mulchy; paved walkway drifts at angles through raised multi-tiered garden beds, reaching varying elevations of a mere foot above the ground to three feet, each held up by retaining walls of leftover stone from the houses, riddled here and there with spiraling mosaic dragons. While companion flowers of red geranium, fuchsia bee balm, violet petunias, pastel-and-white sweet pea, are sprinkled throughout and alongside each box, it's primarily vegetables; between tall eerie trellis spires of fixed animal bones, clung over with curlicues of lush vine sheets and okra, delicate netting protects lower levels of melon and tomato, kale and tomatoes and a number of other edible foods, with a separate box of sand-loving root vegetables sending up frondy foliage for carrot and onion and garlic. To one side, a compost heap lets of faint shimmers of heat and steam, to the other, a strongly scented bed of myriad herbs, both medicinal and otherwise, flanked on one side by a large healthy swell of coneflower. With a shed nearby housing gardening tools, the whole of it is watered by a network of hidden hosing that gives off faint tickles of mist when in use, ribboned with rainbows, and there are structures in place to suggest the garden can be enclosed in winter months. It's chilly outside, but with the structures up (December IS a winter month, right?) it's warmer inside the garden. Fiona seems to have wandered in here during her explorations of the various commons areas; she's seated on a wooden bench near a bed growing... something. Maybe tomatoes, though the season seems wrong for that - she never was much of a gardener. She has her knees hugged to her chest with her lengthy tail draped off of the edge of the bench, reading some old book about... sailing ships. Yup! Outside, the sun has gone down, but inside a lightbulb provides enough light for reading; it also prevents her from seeing outside as well due to the difference in lighting. Outside the glass, low to the ground, little shadows flick back and forth. Hopping motions, in and out of sight, with one occasionally taking off and vanishing into the darkness of the sky. These eventually coalesce, however, together into a larger, shadowy shape -- being replaced quickly by a teenager wearing a... well-worn hoodie and a blue windbreaker that is at least two sizes too big for him. The boy hesitates for a moment, peering in through the glass, before he gently knocks his knuckles against the glass. Soft, gentle, almost embarrassed, as his eyes peer out as if from kohl-darkened sockets. Alex raises a hand, giving a tiny little wave with a hand half-covered by the oversized jacket. Fiona doesn't notice anything amiss until there's the tapping - softly rapping - at the garden chamber door. She starts, looking up, and sees someone new - not that that's an uncommon thing around the Commons for Fiona - she's rather new as well. The horned girl peers out of the doorway, blinking as her eyes adjust to the light before finally spotting the boy. "Um, hi!" she greets him cheerfully, tip of her tail twitching slightly nervously. "This isn't, like, your spot is it? I can leave..." Alex's eyes track the flick of Fiona's tail for a moment, considering, silent. Teeth briefly worry at his bottom lip, and then he lifts his hands to pull back his hood, revealing a feathered scalp. "Hi." Alex gives Fiona a shy smile, before he moves to slip through a side-door and into the warmer room. "No, no, please. Not my space at all." Alex waves a hand, a gesture that begins as a dismissive motion and awkwardly peters out near his forehead. His attempt to turn it naturally into brushing through his hair is made difficult by the fact that he /has/ no hair, and feathers aren't nearly as easy to run your fingers through. "I was just wondering if B was around. Have you seen them?" Fiona smiles faintly, "B? Oh, um, you know B? I don't think they come around here that often... Shane is probably somewhere..." she posits, "But Shane is not B, even though they look really similar." She learned this lesson the hard way. "But um, yeah! I've only run into B once. They seemed nice. Aaactually, this book is checked out on their library card... but, I don't know how to get ahold of them again. I guess I don't need to in order to return it." Alex blinks several times and then shines a bright smile towards Fiona. "Yeah, Shane and B do look pretty similar, but they dress /way/ different. Plus, B usually has..." Alex's hand flaps in the air again, gesticuating. "Robots. Drones. Flying...." Flap-flap. "Tech-things. And I've never seen B in a suit." He glances around, then shrugs his shoulders. "I'm sure you could leave it with Shane if you needed to." A pause. "You're new, huh? Xavier's?" Fiona nods at Alex's first question, "No, not Xavier's... well, not yet, anyway? I dunno," the girl dog-ears one of the pages, then closes the book for the moment. "I'm kinda sleeping in one of the guest rooms here right now - I don't really have a home or anything... or at least, not one that's safe to go back to," she bites her lip, revealing a fang. "I dunno if the Xavier's thing is totally gonna work out, or not... if it doesn't I heard the sewers are nice," she frowns a little. Does not /particularly/ like the idea of living in the sewers, though... At least not what she has pictured in her mind. Alex gives Fiona a small, sad look. "I understand that problem all too well," he says, quietly. At the mention of the sewers, his eyes narrow on her, eyebrows pulling upwards. "Who told you about the sewers?" Alex asks, a thread of tension working its way into his voice. "The sewers? I mean, they're sewers... everybody knows sewers exist in cities..." Fiona trails off, thinking about it for a moment, "Though, I think it was Shane that said there's a group down there or something. I was camping out for a few nights before I ended up here though... I suppose I'll go back to that, you know, if I have to. At least it's dry?" she murmurs. "Oh." The tension in Alex's voice melts away, and his shoulders relax. "Yeah. If Shane told you." He pauses for a moment, glancing Fiona over once, measuring. "Yeah, there are. I live down there, actually. It's not exactly /nice/, but... people won't try and kill you just for looking like... us." Alex says, a trace of bitterness in his voice. "Mostly dry. Warmer, too. Safer than trying to camp out in the city somewhere. We've all been there, one time or another, I think." Alex falls silent for a moment, seeming to mull something over, before he sticks out his hand. "Alex." "My name's Fiona," she holds out her hand - red with black nails, like her horns - and shakes it. "That's good to know... I guess I've been pretty lucky, overall," she murmurs. Alex might think she's referring to the past few days - but really... "Everyone in New York's been nice to me mostly, I guess... I haven't had anybody come after me yet. Though, I guess it's pretty easy not to draw any attention when I can't really go buy things from stores or anything anyway..." "Some places are better than others. Evolve is great, when I can afford to go there. A lot of places are OK, and then the rest...." Alex trails off, spreading out hands in a gesture of resignation. "Well. Still better than anything else." A pause. "How long have you been in New York? I can't imagine too long, if you've not run into any assholes yet." This is said with a little teasing grin, as the teenager sits down on a bench across from Fiona. Fiona angles her feet so her big toes touch, tapping them together lightly while looking down at them. "Ah, I guess I got here," she counts off on her fingers slowly, "On the twentieth? So, ten days?" she frowns, looking slightly embarrassed. She's not really hip with what's going on anywhere. She unfolds her legs, stretching out on the bench and then sitting on it more normally. "I guess I've always been kind of lucky. I didn't have much trouble at home either until those jerks showed up and ran me off..." "Jerks?" Alex says, curiously, tilting his head to one side. Only for a moment before he blushes and shakes his head, once, twice, raising his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Lo siento, lo siento. I don't mean to pry. People's pasts are past, and 'round here, for people like us, they don't tend to be the most pleasant things to dig into." The teenager sticks his hands into his pockets, shoulders curling inwards slightly and eyes casting down to the ground. "I'm glad to hear you haven't had much problems here, though. Even if it's only been a week and some." "Oh? It's not... that big a deal, I guess. There were some people in my hometown that showed up, or maybe lived there, that... Well, I guess they tried to kidnap or kill me... like... a couple times," Fiona shrugs, stubbing the toe of one of her boots against the ground. "B told me I was lucky not to get beat up by cops for trying to sleep in a park... I think... maybe they just didn't notice, 'cause it's dark, kind of hard to tell maybe..." "Yeah. They patrol the park less in the winter too. At least, the darker parts of it." Alex says, softly. He falls silent for several moments, fidgeting slightly in his seat once or twice, looking up towards the sky. "I'm glad you're here, then. It's better than being alone, outside. It's not safe out there." His voice is gentle, quiet. "If things don't work out at Xavier's, and you can't come back here, B or Shane can help you find us. It's not much, but... you're welcome to join us." "Oh," murmurs Fiona, "I feel like a burden on people here... I feel kinda dumb. I never realized New York was such an expensive place to be and..." her gaze pulls away from Alex and looks at the ground for a moment. "I dunno if they'll go so far as to kick me out... Hrm," her tail swishes pensively. Whatever the case, her current living arrangements are not something that could really be considered 'permanent.' "S'not like you chose to look like you do, or have people try to kill you." Alex points out. "At least, I don't think it was. If you did, I think that was pretty silly of you, and you should make better decisions in the future." A light twinkle in Alex's eye matches the teasing warmth in his smile. "Shane and B are good people. Their dad, too. You can trust them." Fiona's cheeks turn a darker shade of red, and she looks down at the ground again, smiling faintly, "I-I didn't choose to," she stammers, "I mean, I don't know if I would, or not... this is just, me," she gestures to herself, "I don't think I would want to change it. Maybe. I can't imagine looking any other way, like..." she looks up at the ceiling of the greenhouse, thinking. "Like, I know I don't look NORMAL, but I dunno what I'd look like. Plus, I wouldn't have my tail... It'd be weird. Just weird." "That's good." Alex says, nodding his head. He pauses, silent, for several seconds. "Sometimes, I wish I was normal. That I could just walk down the street and not have people stare at me, or cross the street, or..." Alex trails off, glancing away from Fiona and staring at the floor. "But," he says, after a few moments. "Then it wouldn't be me. I wouldn't be me. It'd be someone else instead. And I'd rather exist than not, you know?" He pauses again, blushing. "I don't know how I managed to just meet you and am spewing out all sorts of garbage not five minutes later. Lo siento." Despite the redness on his cheeks, Alex looks back up at Fiona, then glances around. "Anyway. It's good you're here, rather than out there." Fiona smiles, the tip of her tail rapidly waggling back and forth, "Yeah. I think... I'm not really religious. Maybe superstitious - but I think things happen for a reason. Well," she pauses, thinking about all the really fucked up things that happen in the world for a moment, "Okay, some things happen for a reason. Aaand, I think us being mutants is one of those things. You know like, bad things can happen, but good things can come out of them... and if you erase the bad you erase the good too." She thinks on his 'all sorts of garbage' thing for a moment. "I guess I'm kinda bad at keeping my mouth shut and... it rubs off." 'cause that seems to happen rather often with people she talks to. "By the way... what's um... what's 'lo siento' mean?" "I'd like to think that you're right." Alex says, hesitantly. "Hey - as long as you're blurting everything out too, than I won't feel so bad." He flashes a brief smile at Fiona. "Oh. It's Spanish. It's... an apology. After the whole Rising, when it wasn't safe to be apologizing in English anymore, people 'round here switched to using it instead. It stuck, I guess." "Oh, I see," nods Fiona - she heard about the zombie outbreak... which was, to be honest, pretty crazy. Rather hard to believe if you didn't see videos... "You don't have anything to apologize for, though," she laughs. "That's interesting though..." she murmurs. "I didn't know that much about it, you know... we didn't have anything like that happen where I was. Is it still... unsafe to say... things?" Alex shrugs his shoulders. "Not sure. Probably it's alright, but... you'll probably get strange looks. I'd get used to saying it in Spanish if I were you." Alex says, pursing his lips. "Seems safer. One less thing for people to be angry at us for, you know?" Alex shrugs again, non-committal. "Anyway. Doesn't look like B's here, and it's getting pretty late. I should head back towards home." Alex finishes, awkwardly. "Yeah, it's getting kinda late... and... well, colder," Fiona laughs a little, nervously. "Y-you should come back, sometime. You know. Uh, after you find B, I guess," she tucks a suddenly offensive lock of hair behind one of her ears, rubbing self consciously at the point of it. Alex smiles and nods. "Definitely. I'm around. Or, come down and visit us. Just in case." The teenager sticks his hands into his pockets, shifting from one foot to the other. "Anyway. It was good meeting you, Fiona. D'you mind getting the door for me? It's hard for me to open it." "No worries," Fiona assures Alex, standing up and stretching out after the long sit, arms above her head. She's somewhat puzzled over the whole door thing - since the door isn't exactly heavy to begin with. Still though, she opens it and proceeds through, holding it for the raven boy. A mischievous smile flashes on Alex's face, and he grins for a moment -- just as he begins to shift, body and clothing blurring together and shrinking with a rather nasty crunching, fleshy grinding sound. A few moments later, seven black birds -- ravens -- sit on the ground, stretching, flapping their wings. As one, cawing with laughter, they lift off of the ground, swooping out into the darkness. One last one remains behind only long enough to gently brush one side of Fiona's arm with a wingtip and give a very un-bird-like wink before it, too, sweeps out into the night. Fiona looks rather confused by this, but not terrified. She gives the birds a farewell wave as they disappear from sight, heading back towards the light and warmth of the indoors.