Logs:Royal Interview

Royal Interview
Dramatis Personae Bug, Sarah
In Absentia	2019-10-19 "I am the queen of the queens."
Location Evolve Cafe
As the evening has rolled on, there are fewer people in the cafe, with some only moving through on their way to the nightclub upstairs. Still, there are some patrons who are enjoying the relative quiet while doing work or having quiet conversation. Bug is up at the display case, his hands hovering slightly away from the glass as if he is contemplating on just reaching through and touching one of the colourful cupcakes that rests on display. "They're so pretty I'd almost feel bad eating one," he comments to the barista, before adding in an excited tone to the barista, "almost!" While he is wearing a similar bland type of hooded sweatshirt that he always wears, the hood is down and his dark segmented eyes are plainly visible, the unnerving crawling quality of his skin evident. For the observant, some bee-like insects are hiding in his hair rather than parading out in the open for the sake of not startling the guests. "I'm just going to get a glass of water now, though. Tap water! But I'll decide soon on something else." Sarah is rubbing at her temples as she quietly slips through the cafe door, the rainbow array of her clothing and pink hair the loudest thing about her. Yellow butterflies and lavender, turquoise, and white flowers cover the sleeveless navy blue romper she's wearing over a white t-shirt, it covered with it's own pattern of small purple quartz crystals. The pink and baby blue flannel she has layered over that is almost completely swallowed (along with the rest of her) by an enormous black hoodie that nearly hangs to her knees. The sleeves have completely devoured her hands, but surely they are in there somewhere. Her legs are covered with black leggings that have a pattern of small skulls in rainbow colors, purple combat boots on her feet matching the purple canvas messenger bag she has slung across her body. She wanders toward the counter without looking around or truly seeming to register her surroundings; she only notices Bug when she's nearly beside him. She takes a step away, looking up with an apology on her lips that abruptly turns into a gasp, the step suddenly a bit more panicked. "Oh!" Heat immediately floods her face, cheeks turning red. "I'm sorry!" she says just as quickly. "I shouldn't have done that." Still, she's looking away and at the cupcakes herself, resisting the urge to push her up sleeves and scratch at her arms. Bug puts his hands up in front of his face, and there is an agitated buzzing that comes from him in his surprise, but he lowers them again in short order when Sarah steps back away. "Shouldn't have done what? Don't worry, you didn't actually bump me or anything, I don't think." He does a quick (and very light) patdown of his body to verify whether that is the case, and gives an awkward half-grin. "See, I'm all in one piece. Or. Umm. I'm in the right amount of pieces, anyways." Sarah shakes a hand free of her sleeve to rub at the back of her neck. Pointing out that he startled her might not be a problem if it had been because she nearly walked into him. She returns his awkward half-smile, instead, though her eyes scan his hair rather than over his face. She blinks when she first spots one of the bees, brow furrowing just a little, before her expression brightens. You can almost see the light bulb appearing over her head. "Oh, I remember you. You're the bee guy," she says cheerfully, her stance relaxing. Her arm is swallowed again as she lowers it. "How have you been?" She even manages to look at his eyes - she thinks? - while asking. "Oh, yeah, definitely. If you met me, you probably know me as the bee guy!" says Bug brightly, while he tilts his head one way and the next to study Sarah. "They're actually more like pseudob- Oh! Yeah, I remember you now, you were drawing pictures in the park. Real intense focus on those, um, some kind of flowers that were out there." The red banded insects in his hair flap their wings quickly in agreement. "I've been fine, you know." He takes the tap water after it is placed on the counter and holds it up. "Getting by! You get caught out in the rain since I saw you there?" "I think they were daffodils? But yeah, that's me," she answers with a giggle. She's long used to being known as the person who was drawing. Her gaze drops to Bug's glass of water, quickly moving to the display case full of goodies they're in front of. "No, thankfully. I've been paying more attention to the weather app on my phone since then." As she talks, she raises a hand to mess with the strap of her bag, words coming a bit faster. "Speaking of drawing, I actually made one for you? If that's okay. If you want to see it, I can show you after I order. Do you want anything?" Bug's eyebrows go up, and it's clear that he's trying to contain his excitement, but he must not be very practiced at it. "Oh, if you're offering, I was looking at those cupcakes! They look really sweet and bright!" He takes a sip of the water, then scrunches up his nose a bit. "You made me a drawing? It's really cool of you to do art for random bee guys that you find in the park that you may or may not meet ever again! I'll get a table, you can show me, I want to see it!" Sarah relaxes again at Bug's excitement, a smile tugging at her lips. "They're almost like something out of a cartoon, in like, the best way. I have serious baker's envy every time I have one." She catches the barista's attention, ordering two cupcakes (she is so easily swayed) and a lemonade for herself. Once she's paid and tipped and pushed her sleeves up, she holds both plates out, giving Bug first choice. "I make everyone drawings," she says, smile turning a bit self-conscious. "I don't usually get to give them to people though." Bug selects a table that is nearby while Sarah is ordering and stakes his claim by putting the cup of water down on its surface. He takes the plate holding the brighter of the two cupcakes when Sarah offers them. "I don't really know anything about baking, except that it seems some people are slipping magic into the batter!" Once seated, he starts to tear open sugar packets and tilts the contents into the water. It's hard to tell how much he is focusing on it, though, as it is difficult to tell which way he is looking in the first place. "You're well armed for re-meeting, that way. You'll always make a great second impression!" Thinking of Jax's baking, Sarah can't help but agree. Some people are absolutely putting magic into their batter. "I'm not that level of Baking Wizard yet," she tragically sighs, pulling her bag into her lap once she sits. The sugar water gets a blink--the phrase 'Edgar suit' slaps against the front of her brain--but she places her glass and plate to the side of the table instead of focusing on that. A plain file folder labeled 'For Others', an assortment of pages spilling from it, is pulled from the depths of her bag, and takes it place on the table in front of her. "Thanks for thinking it's cool, by the way," she says, flipping through pages to find Bug's. "I'm always worried that someone is going to be weirded out, some rando just drawing things for them." Even still, there is an air of nervousness as she slides a page across the table. From edge to edge, everything is covered in color. Drawn gold borders divide the page into a quadriptych, scrolls labeling the seasons at the bottom of each panel. The panels are filled with flowering trees, shrubs, and flowers that correspond to that particular season; Bug will probably be able to tell that all the plants shown are also popular with bees. Apple trees, crocuses, marjoram and foxglove in Spring. Lavender, chives, strawberries and sunflowers in Summer. Honeysuckle, goldenrod, abelia and sage in Fall. Raspberries, ivy, snowdrops and hyacinths in Winter. The main focus are the handful of larger than life, fuzzy red bees near the center of the page, where all four seasons meet. Crawling over golden borders, hovering around the largest bee that wears a crown. A few are dusted golden with pollen. Bug pours another set of sugars into the water and then starts to stir the glass while Sarah digs into her bag, though he leans forward to watch her do so out of curiosity. He looks over the page when it is offered to him, and if it is possible, his eyes widen even further. His voice pitches up a little in excitement. "This is beautiful! I love it! You drew all that? With just-" He moves his hand as if holding something and wiggles it around like he is writing. "Wow. Maybe you're not a baking wizard, but you got some kinda magic!" Sarah grins, scratching at her cheek. "Maybe? Thank you, though. I'm really glad you like it." Now that the hard part is over with, she stashes the folder back in her bag, pulls her plate and glass closer. "I was looking into what plants bees like, and I wanted to draw some of the bees--" She cuts herself off for a moment, glancing at the few bees she can see in Bug's hair. "Your bees? Can you talk to them?" Or is that offensive to assume just because he looks like a bug? Angie once told her that if she has to ask herself if something is offensive, it probably is. Oh no. "Anyway, um. I wanted to draw the bees, and then I thought drawing the plants would help me remember what they are, and then it kinda..." She waves a hand at the page. "Grew." "Oh, my bees? The red guys?" says Bug, and instead of gesturing towards his hair, he gestures towards his gut. "I guess I can talk to them, but it's more like I am them. So talking to them is like talking to myself! But they're still also lots of kind of independent-" He takes a sip of the sugar water and leans in when he puts it down, like he is sharing a conspiracy, though his volume doesn't adjust. "It's just me, thinking in lots of places, and this me is the one people talk to best and is also the most responsible!" His lips turn to a frown and some more buzzing happens, as some of the insects take flight and then land again in his hair and one on his forehead. "Not that I'm not responsible everywhere." He points at the drawing, towards the bee with the crown. "But this one is the one most people think of as me." Sarah's expression slips into thinking mode as soon as Bug starts explaining. She nods along, but doesn't immediately answer, taking sips of her lemonade and looking around the cafe instead. Some part of her mind, far in the back, is just wordlessly screaming, but she's far more focused on putting this new information together. "Okay," she says, voice equal parts curious and cautious, "please tell me if I have any of this wrong. You--" She points to Bug. "--are for a lack of a better term, the queen bee?" She leans forward to now point at the same bee as Bug. "And you are also bees in a... people suit?" "I'm people in a people suit, and those people are mostly people bees," says Bug earnestly. He leans back in his chair and starts picking at the cupcake in front of himself, his finger scoops up some of the icing and pops it into his mouth. "But yeah!" He takes a regal tone. "I am the queen of the queens." His hands wave and he bows forward just a bit in a mock fancy bow, but continues in his usual voice. "The colony structure of my hives is different from honeybees or whatever else, 'cause it's just my body. If I lose a hive, I am losing a part of me, which is why I don't want people messing around with them." Sarah silently mouths the words 'people bees'. "I... have so many questions?" she says, turning that itself into a question at the last moment. "If your majesty doesn't mind at least." She gives Bug another smile with that addition, though she still isn't quite looking at /him/. Her gaze finds his hair, the space just above his shoulder, occasionally meets his (she thinks.) Whenever Sarah’s gaze turns to one of the hair bugs, it flaps its wings quickly as if in acknowledgement that it can see her back. Bug sits up straighter, and cups his chin in contemplation of the quickly converted question. “His majesty the queen will allow it,” he decides, again taking up his regal affectation... but he quickly breaks character by breaking into a barely stifled giggle. "I've never met royalty before, my sister is gonna be so jelly. Royal jelly." Sarah raises a hand to her mouth to stifle her own giggles. "So, you mentioned hives? Is the one in Thompson Square one of your hives?" she asks, another question immediately popping into her head after that. "Can you, like, communicate with it from here? Do the bees dance to talk to you, or is it like, mental?" She takes another drink of lemonade to stop the barrage, and after a moment of considering it, pushes her own cupcake towards Bug. "Payment for the interview." Bug leans forward to take the other cupcake, a thankful crooked-toothed grin breaking out across his face. "The one in Thompson Square is one of my hives," he confirms. "If you see these guys, that's just me, so I don't think anyone's actually catalogued them or anything." He points in the direction of the park, "I can tell where it is! It's not like communicating so much as it is also me. You usually have a decent idea of where your body is, at least, same for me." He scratches his scalp in a place where conveniently no insect is currently perched. "I think maybe it's hard to explain because I've always been lots of places, and it seems kind of weirder to me not to be. It seems kind of lonely? Living inside your own head like that." Sarah flexes her hands and stares down at them. Tries to imagine that she has another arm in a tree somewhere that she can feel and sense things from, too. Tries to multiply that all across the city. She's fairly sure she's imagining it wrong. "If someone messes up a hive, does it hurt?" she wonders. "What if they sting someone? Does..." She trails off, glancing at the bees in Bug's hair, before continuing in a lower tone. "Is it the same as when another bee stings something?" She does not want to give even a bee an existential crisis. "They don't have barbed stingers," says Bug, "Actually, most hymenoptera don't, or at least not so barbed as a honeybee's." Now that he has a backup cupcake, he digs in more ferociously at the one he's been picking at. "It's real painful, even though the venom is not actually more dangerous than a bee. It hurts like crazy to get stung by them." He flails his hands beside himself in a gesture like he is trying to drive off some predator. "If someone messes up a hive, yeah, it hurts... like, if someone sets fire to a hive." He pauses in his eating to shudder. "But more than that, it's emotionally heavy." Eyes widening in shock, a touch of horror enters Sarah's expression as she looks up at Bug. "That's awful. Someone didn't do that to you, did they?" Her appalled tone slowly turns pensive. "I can help you keep an eye on the hive in Thompson Square, if you want. It's right in front of where I live and I go all the time, so it's no problem." Bug crosses his hands together uncomfortably and he does not answer Sarah's initial question. The offer prompts a brighter response. "Oh! Yeah, if you can keep an eye on them out there- It's a tough time of year for them, with it getting colder and all. And hey, if you can keep an eye out for me," he untangles his fingers and makes circles in front of his segmented eyes with them, "I can keep some eyes out for you too."