Logs:What You Own

What You Own
Dramatis Personae Polaris, Wendy
In Absentia Erik	2022-02-06 "You as a liberal would be a bridge too far."
Location <NYC> Chimaera Arts - Dumbo
This is just one of the many abandoned warehouses in DUMBO, and like many of them it has recently changed hands. Unlike most of those, however, it does not have some corporate developer's sign out front promising a transformation into luxury condominiums or a boutique shopping center or the latest concept restaurant. Instead it's marked by a piece of weathered but wildly colorful plywood propped up on a stack of broken pallets, which reads "Chimaera Art Space!" above "chimaera.org" in smaller letters. The warehouse is moderately large and decorated with graffiti art in various styles--some of it recognizable as the work of renowned local street artists. A pair of monstrous scrap metal sculptures, perhaps still works in progress, flank the entrance. The building itself has undergone significant renovation recently, complete with wiring, plumbing, and a modular partitioning system. The grounds, too, have been cleaned up, ramshackle fences torn down and rusting detritus removed in favor of reclaimed (and brilliantly repainted) outdoor furniture ringing an impressively engineered firepit. It's clear and cold out -- and cold in here, too, the heat failing in the large warehouse, driving what classes haven't been cancelled to be taught in bundled up layers. Here in the basement Wendy, bundled herself in fleece-lined leggings under her long pink and black striped skirt, green sweater over a black turtleneck, pink shawl, tall boots, is buried deep in the guts of the heating system -- not actually touching her tools currently. Just frowning at it as she chews slowly on a cream-cheese and tomato bagel, a large travel mug of hot coffee nearby. "I'd offer my parents," she is presumably not saying this to the heat exchanger, even if that is where her intent gaze is currently leveled, "but I don't know if they'd really get the Mormon thing. They'll probably try all the same." Despite her impressive cold tolerance and the fleece blanket wrapped around her, Polaris is pale and hunched and shivering periodically where she sits cross-legged on a stack of pallets, only a glimpse of her soft amethyst sweater and the black lace-trimmed blouse beneath it visible. "Maybe they won't have to," she replies darkly. "But even if I do managed to get baptized, the bar is so low they'd soar right over if they even wanted to understand, never mind try." She shifts underneath the blanket, straightening up significantly before slumping abruptly back down. "Have they told you to register yet? Mom did. After that 'I lost my daughter a long time ago' call." Her teeth grind slow, her eyes fixed on not Wendy herself but her coffee. "She didn't come right out and say 'you're gonna get yourself thrown back in there' but she may as well have." "Told me to register?" Wendy blinks, pulling her gaze away from the machinery to look at Polaris. "We're Jewish." She looks back to the heater, cheeks puffing out on a long, slow exhale. She nibbles delicately at her bagel, brows wrinkling into another small frown. "I'm sorry. You should disown them right back." "Yeah no, I should be more charitable." Polaris wraps her blanket tighter. "Guess I've been seeing too many Jewish humans yell about how it isn't comparable cuz they aren't actually dangerous and we are, so it's really more like licensing weapons or whatever. You probably see more of that carp than I do." The toolbox rattles quietly along with the ferrous components of the heater, the noise echoing ominously up the ventilation ducts. "I don't think they'll care who I own or not, but I am thinking about actually changing my name, finally." She frowns. "Unless I gotta register to do that. Frak." She's quiet for the space of a trembling breath. "I wonder what my other dad thinks about all this. I wonder if he even knows." Wendy's lips compress, her eyes flicking up to Polaris and then back away. She takes another slow breath, reaches for her coffee but doesn't sip it. One slender finger pops the lid. Closes it. Pops it again. "What would you change it to?" She sets the coffee back down undrunk, folding her arms around her knees. "Somehow, I don't think the idea of making lists of mutants goes over really well with him." "Polaris." The answer comes immediately, though as soon as she's said this Polaris is chewing on her lower lip in thought. "Do you have to have a last name, like legally? It could be like high school all over again if I go with Polaris Lensherr." She hesitates, shoulders sinking. "Though I mean, TerrorDad had like two decades to look me up and didn't, so I doubt he'd want to give me his name. Polaris Ho? I know they love me and all, but maybe not that much." "You don't have to have a last name." This is just a little stiff. "Why would you want his last name? Family is more than blood." Wendy takes another small bite of her bagel, chewing it over very slowly. "They love you?" Her voice is quieter, now. "What am I, then." Polaris blows out a breath and curls her knees up to her chest beneath the blanket. "I guess...I kinda wish I could have at least one parent who gives a shit about me? Even if it's only because I'm a mutant. I know it's stupid." She sits up a little straighter, after. "You're--I mean, of course you love me. You're my sister, blood's never had anything to do with that." Her dark green brows arch and her eyes widen earnestly. "Which makes me feel even stupider asking whether you'd want to give me your name. What would that mean you?" "It isn't stupid." There's a hesitation in Wendy's voice, though she doesn't follow this statement up immediately. She sucks a smear of cream cheese off the tip of a finger and drops her chin to her knees. "That we're family. I just..." There's a long hesitation, here, Wendy's shoulders tightening inward. "...am not sure what that means to you anymore." Polaris wilts almost imperceptibly. "Family means people who love and care for each other, who build lives and communities and meaning together." Her arms wind tighter around her knees, the blanket startling to slide from her shoulders as they gather in sympathy. "That hasn't changed, it's just now I also believe--want to believe--family is eternal. That's where I start to..." The next word refuses to come, and she emits a small noise of frustration instead. "I kinda can't imagine heaven without you, but it's not like I'm gonna...coercively assign you a Kingdom of Glory. Even if that weren't super condescending and disrespectful, it would be silly AF since you don't even believe in--any of that." She continues, softer, "Doesn't mean you're not my family. Family means growing and changing together, too." "Eternal, if we join your --" The pause in Wendy's words is very brief. "-- church. That's pretty explicit! What am I supposed to do with that?" She looks up, eyes wider and slightly watery, one hand turning up in front of her. "Eternal with conditions. Family that I don't fit into. This is getting so serious for you and you're growing and changing in a direction I can't follow." "I haven't even joined my church." Polaris says this slower and softer than Wendy probably had reason to expect. "And technically, you can still go to Least-Awesome Heaven if you don't join the Church or believe in Jesus or whatever. But I'm not asking you to believe that technicality, either. We've always had different religious outlooks, I just need to know how to think or pray or talk about this one respectfully." She's warming to the subject and actively pushing the blanket off herself now. "Toward you, I mean, not Heavenly Parents. They're fine. Or--I can't really believe this, but--if They're the kind of gods who love Their children less for not worshiping Them, or not doing it one specific way, then sign me up for the Outer Fucking Darkness." She leans forward, intent on Wendy. "I'm ready to accept the Universe might be unimaginably weirder than either of us or any mortal can understand. And I don't want to grow away from you." Wendy is quiet several long beats, her hand smoothing slowly at her shawl. "I don't want to grow away from you, either." She pops the last bite of her bagel into her mouth, setting her chin back on her knees as she swallows it. "And I don't want you in some. Outer -- darkness on my behalf. But I guess that's your choice." The sigh she blows out is heavy. "The world being weird, I'm with you on." "I know all about parents who throw away their own children. If that's God, I want no part of Their heaven." Polaris climbs off the pallet stack and sets herself down beside Wendy instead, peering past her at the inscrutable--to her--entrails of the machinery and thumping her head lightly against the smaller woman's shoulder. "But I don't think God rolls like that. I'm gonna be a bleeding heart anarchist Mormon or no Mormon at all." Wendy's head drops, cheek resting against Polaris's hair. Only for a moment, before -- "Oh!" Her eyes have lit, and she pushes herself up from her seat, dragging her toolbox over as she dives into the guts of the heater. It takes her a bit of tinkering before the thing rattle-whumps back to life; she emerges with a faintly satisfied smile. "Well. I'm glad you're keeping the faith where it really matters, then. You as a liberal would be a bridge too far."