Logs:(Ex)Portable Family

(Ex)Portable Family
Dramatis Personae Damien, Gaétan, Sera
In Absentia Desi, Lucien	2024-12-27 "Oh, my! Has one of you gotten captured again?"
Location <NYC> Holiday Market - Bryant Park
Gaétan has definitely been here doing some shopping, that much is evident from the large tote slung over his shoulder (in it, mostly, a variety of small handicrafts from various artists' stalls). Also slung over his shoulder, his green and black skate bag, lightly thumping against his side as he moves. He's neither skating nor shopping now but leaning up against a low fence and quite shamelessly rubbernecking -- he's got himself a coffee to provide some refreshment along with the show as he watches an almost-too-close-for-comfort roaring blaze that is starting to engulf several nearby food stands. There are already fire engines on the way, their wail approaching swift, so for now he's just kind of observing. One family of tourists is getting quite close to the fire to take a selfie. He plucks out his phone to snap a quick picture of them taking their picture. "-- I liked their empanadas," he is lamenting, mildly. Sera is carrying her own skate bag (green and purple), but has been slipping her own craft purchases into her brother's tote. She's in a violet dress with tiered bell sleeves, its also tiered hem falling just above knee-length with red leggings underneath and black ankle boots. Her hair has swung back toward a redder auburn again, neatly plaited and draped over her shoulder. "Not extra crispy, I guess." She studies Gaétan briefly, her tight grip on her power loosening just a bit but not spilling much noticeable. "We can get empanadas from that food truck with the creepy mascot. We might have stalk it online, though." Is Damien here to shop, who is to say. It's difficult really to tell what he's ever dressed for, today in a soft black alpaca sweater, wide-gauged knit in the pattern of a damaged spiderweb, a bronze torque around his neck in the shape of a serpent biting its own tail, decorated with obscure Celtic designs, which seems to slither slowly over his collarbones. The red leather belt holding up his black leather trousers (tucked into tall red boots with polished bronze hardware) sports a matching but less disturbingly mobile penannular pin. The only bag of any sort of purchase he has in evidence just now is -- still warm, slightly beginning to go clear where oil slowly leaches into the paper -- a little brown paper takeout bag. He's been unrolling the top to peek inside it but, when he hears Sera's voice, glances up from his imminent snacking to stride over. He does, admittedly, look quite strikingly different here than the last time she saw him, no wings, no starlight in his eyes, more-or-less Earthen clothes regardless of the oddity of his fashion, but if visual identification might deceive his biokinetic signature is jarringly identifiable. None of the complexity and nuance of the busy-busy hum of human biological activity, just a full and consuming brightfire emotion that and dances fickle as flame and twice as intense -- in this moment, nothing at all but delight and just as quick, tripping off into a dizzying height of curiosity. "Goodness," he's saying to Sera, "are you still here? This world doesn't suit you at all." Somewhat reflexively, Gaétan is shifting when this strange man comes over. He's not exactly putting himself between Damien and Sera but there's more alertness to his stance, a shift in his posture that suggests he's ready to if need be. The question throws him, though -- he's glancing between the two, defensively replying first: "This is her home, too -- you know this guy?" He's frowning -- then frowning a little more. Uncertain. "... he's not from your -- other home, is he?" Sera's surprise is tinged with disorientation, but it's quickly subsumed as her power drags her with uncommon force into Damien's curiosity. Singular and powerful as that influence may be, Gaétan's words stir a flush of warm affection that blunts its sharpness. "Oh! Yes." It's not clear who she's answering first, but she lays an appeasing hand on Gaé's shoulder and drops a small curtsy to Damien. "Salut! This is my brother." When she turns back to make the other half of the introduction she falters a little. "And this is Luci's..." She does not agonize for very long before settling on, "Damien. But no, he's from somewhere else." She glances back over her shoulder as if the inferno spewing black smoke were somehow representative of the world that does not suit her. Then back at Damien with a small helpless shrug. "My family is here." Damien's return bow is deep and elegant. It hardly seems possible that his curiosity could heighten, but at this introduction it does -- he's prowling in a light circle around the younger Tessiers as if this new sibling of Lucien's requires inspection from multiple angles. "Hah!" is his quiet conclusion. It does not sound like a tremendously complimentary hah. "Family is portable." He unrolls the bag again, now, plucking out a hot empanada pinched delicately between three fingertips. "I am still missing one of you, then," as if these miscellaneous Tessiers were Pokémon and he's so very close to completing the dex. "Wait, you're Damien?" Gaétan's brows have hiked and his tone, admittedly, also does not sound extraordinarily complimentary. "I thought you'd..." He trails off, turning slow on a heel as Damien circles him, and then finally shakes his head as if he's decided no, nevermind, this is exactly what he had thought. "What, you mean Desi? Yeeeah, we all are." He is eying the bag of empanadas with no small measure of hunger, and asking Sera (as if Damien is not right there): "... he's not like, an arsonist, is he?" "I don't think ours is so very portable, right now." Sera's incipient dejection is summarily bulldozed by Damien's intensity yet again, even the blip of relief that comes after quickly drowned in curiosity, though she's doing an admirable job keeping the bulk of it from Gaétan. "To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?" She glances at her brother, then Damien, then back again. "That...might depend on what you mean by 'arson'?" This hedge is not reassuring in the least, but Sera does not seem much bothered by it. "Did that fire start because of you?" she asks Damien baldly. At Gaétan's eying he draws the empanada one direction, and then the other, very much in the way someone might hold a dog treat teasingly in front of an eager pup. He's only half-looking at Gaé, though, his attention more on Sera -- "No? Oh, my! Has one of you gotten captured again? Is it Desirée, is she in great trouble?" Should Damien be worried about this, or angry? He is not, just continuing on his bright curiosity. "-- I had a debt to collect," sounds kind of offhand in his answer -- his eyes have flickered without much shift in demeanor to the roaring fire. "Again --" sounds almost like the beginning of a protest, before Gaétan thinks about this for half a second. "Hopefully not from the empanada lady or you'll be waiting a while. I don't think Desi's in trouble --" He hesitates, hedges, "-- exactly, she's just been. Busy." His own far more tortuous emotional landscape, not near so overwhelming as Damien's, is still summoning up a pang of hurt here. His stomach is audibly grumbling, and somewhat involuntarily his eyes are tracking the motion of the empanada before the indignity of this silliness catches up with him and he somewhat deliberately looks away to Sera. "-- we really are overdue for eating though, I would die for some of their --" "No don't!" Sera had just latched onto Gaétan's hurt, but now her terror has eclipsed that. She seizes his arm tight with this interruption, beating the fear back down only to be yanked toward Damien's singularly blazing curiosity again. "I'm terribly sorry," she tells Damien, just the tiniest bit breathless, "that's just the hypoglycemia talking. What my brother means is -- may we have some of your empanadas? I would compensate you for the both of us." She has not released Gaétan's arm, but her grip eases now. "After all, I did make him carry my stuff all day." At Sera's interruption there's a flash, bright and pure, very much of the same kind of disappointment one might imagine a dog to have when, in fact, the offered treat is snatched away. Damien tucks the empanada back into his bag, but for all this keen letdown he does not look in the least displeased at the youngest Tessier -- a glimmer of amusement in his eyes, a trill of pride searing away his own regret. "Oh? What compensation do you have to offer, then?" "What?" Gaétan's startled-sharp jerk is, unfortunately, far less grateful than he ought to be here; he's turning a baffled look on his sister first, and then on Damien. Despite this there's amusement, too, and a slightly longsuffering: "-- How on earth is Luci's weirdness inherited." "His culture is very literal." Sera has picked up both Damien and Gaétan's amusement. She does not magnify it so much as harmonize it, in a way, through herself, and through it finally regains some semblance of equilibrium. She also, finally, lets go of her brother's arm. "Joy," she replies after a moment's consideration. "Most people here really don't properly enjoy a delicious meal, but we are terribly hungry and I am a weaver of passions. Luci taught me." She cocks her head slightly. "You've only seen me spin pain and terror, but that was a pretty extreme circumstance. If you sit with us a while I can spin you such delight." Damien's eyes go a little wider, his smile for a moment seeming to almost literally brighten his face. The pride is stronger, too -- at least for a split instant before it, too, is washed away by a fiercely held warmth. "How could I resist such an offer?" He bows again, and offers the bag out to the youths. "I always have time for a bit more joy."