ArchivedLogs:Earning Miracles

Earning Miracles
Dramatis Personae Kelly, Rasa
In Absentia	2013-11-12 A slightly less sick Rasa and a Kelly talk about Miracles.
Location <XS> Lake
A small little spark of hope and sanity. That's really all it took for Kelly. He was running dangerously low on either of those qualities, and he knew he most certainly wasn't the only one. But. . . it was there none-the-less. And he was glad to breathe it in, if just for a moment. He bundled up tightly as he strolled out by the lake, his plump silhouette easy to spot contrasted against the water line. But his shoes were still worn around his neck, tied together around there strings even in this frigid weather, the flurry of a light snow around him, melting often before it even touched the ground, but even the chill grass shifted slightly around his bare feet, bending close to the boy to touch. And even better, there was a whistle in his lips. A slow but cheery tune that matched time with his odd skipping steps. Rasa slips out of the boathouse, fingers trailing on the door frame before closing the door behind hir, a quiet look on hir chalky face. Hir eyes are a bright green today and hir hair a steel blue that matches the lake. Ze tugs the large loose jacket up around hir neck to keep the light snow flakes from melting on hir flesh before crossing hir arms over hir chest and hugging hirself close. Ze seems lost in thought until Kelly's whistling catches hir attention, one gray eyebrow climbing hir forehead as hir head tilts a little. Behind hir, a tail twitches from side to side, mid thigh height, then lowers to skim the tips of the wet grass. Silent still, ze unwinds one arm to wave to Kelly before slipping it back where hir fingers can keep warm. For a brief moment, Kelly's face lights up to see Rasa wave at him, and then he calms it down to something much more forcefully sullen. The look of a toddler at a funeral home, knowing he should be more sad only because others were. Still as his wet feet begin to plod their way over to her, he has a bit more energy than he has had in a while, and the leaves in his hair were fully green, though several of his flowers had gathered up a light dusting of the snow, as they weren't as warm as the rest of his body. "Hey Rasa. . ." he greets cautiously, "I hope you're feeling a little better? I was. . . well, really worried about you yesterday." "Worried about me?" Rasa wanders closer, lips pressing firmly together while one corner tries to hide in the folds of hir cheek. "I wasn't the one running around in my underwear, lost and confused." Ze wets hir lips and lets out a noisy breath, appearing a little uncomfortable. "You do a fairly good shrub impression. I might not have noticed if I hadn't been in the room when you went in." Hir eyes move upward, studying his flowers for a moment. "I take it you're not seasonal with your... greens?" "No, as long as I'm healthy, they're healthy, dang it." He says with some lingering disapproval, as if the flowers were a particularly annoying break out of acne, or a scar he was ashamed of. "If they get brown and start falling off, usually means. . . well, that I'm not doing so great." And then he looks over Rasa's skin and asks back hir. "I guess it's kinda the same with you? I mean, you had your thoughts on your skin, even." His voice is a little wary when he brings it up, though. "Huh? Fuck. Not again." Rasa's skin turns a metallic shade of gray silver, the sheen obscuring some of the finer features on hir face. "I've been trying to stop. It's... well, embarrassing is one way to put it." Ze scowls at the ground as ze pulls up hir collar to hide more skin. "-- by not doing so great, do you mean physically or emotionally? It's useful to tell when you're sick, I suppose, but it's shitty to have something broadcast your every bad mood." "Physically, I think." Kelly says, blushing himself and letting hir know quickly: "Oh, it isn't doing it right now, it was doing it back at the med bay. You had So-" and then he cuts himself off right away. "Uhm, that word we aren't supposed to say on you, here." And the plump boy motions on himself where he saw the words on hir. "But. . . if I get depressed, like lately, I usually don't take care of myself, and it starts to go brown, too. Like. . . I have to eat WHOLE bunch or, well, I go brown. And I haven't exactly been hungry since I got here. I wasn't, well, nearly so, uhm. . . big before." He laughs at himself, but it was clear he was also embarrassed about that as well. "What was in there?" he wondered, pointing at the boat dock ze came out of. "Well, you'll figure out your food needs as time goes on. 'Starving' is a shitty place to be, gives a person no perspective." Rasa refolds hir arms across hir chest and gnaws on hir lip. "The Med Lab. Yeah. I remember. My head's still pretty fuzzy from all this and having to keep remembering not to say really stupidly common words is annoying." Ze shakes hir head before following Kelly's pointing finger back to the boat house. "There? Mostly just memories now. From last spring, before things got ... bad. I mean, I guess things were crap back then, but it was like now, a break and we were relaxing. It's really cold now. They don't exactly heat the boat house in the winter." "Is that when you came here, then?" Kelly asked hir, shrugging his shoulders as he shivered in place, jaw chattering away from the chill air the more he stayed out in it. "And who was 'We'?" Kelly looked to the boat house again, and followed it out into the water. "I imagine this is a pretty good place hang out, guess I am just wandering what it was like before all this, and why everyone else decided to come here." "Hey, are you cold? We can go inside and talk, if you were just hanging out here fore me." Rasa frowns, turning toward the school where there is heat. "You asking about the boat house, or are you talking about the school in general?" Ze gestures with one hand to encourage him to follow. "Oh, I came out for fresh air, kinda important." He explained, and then down at his feet where the grass was pooling around, and very thin little roots were coming down front he tops of his feet and into the dirt and grass beneath him. "And, uh. . . that. But it is getting kinda chilly." Kelly says meekly, "Been a little sheepish coming out for it since the attack." But even as he talks, he was willing his roots to come back into his feet slowly, and stepping along beside hir, not allowing them to go very deep. "And mostly I was asking about you." He decided. "But I'll settle for the school, if that's what you want. But what brought you here?" "I just... am not sure what you're asking. Do you want to know why I came out to the boat house, or why I came to the school?" Rasa heads for the door, a hint of frustration in the set of hir shoulders. "I came to the school because I had no where else to go. Things weren't working with my family and it was all about to fall apart. So I came here. Don't know where I would have gone otherwise though." Ze exhales and then changes the topic. "The conservatory is a good place to be warm and still get fresh air and dirt. Sometimes we have classes there." Ze nods to hirself and continues walking. Kelly bites his tongue on his reply, carefully letting out "I apologize." Instead of what he meant to say. He keeps a decent pace in his steps now, though, letting the subject drop entirely. "Yeah, it looks nice, just afraid I might make a mess of it. There are a lot of hard to get flowers and stuff in there." he explains looking over to Rasa to see how ze looked close up, a much more serious look in his eyes when he asks: "Is the, uhm, shots working like they said?" "Well, if you think about it, you're probably one of the rarest flowers out there. So, you should feel right at home where unique and interesting flowers gather." Rasa scrubs hir fingers through hir hair as ze pulls the door open, following in a gust of cold air and feeling the rush of hot air on hir face. "Yeah... I think they're working. I mean, right now, I'm only irrationally ticked off at you, not snarling and shouting." Hir brows dart upward before a small smile tugs at hir lips. "Don't say that too loud, though. I don't want the gardener trying to cross pollinate me with one of the arum's or roses. . ." Kelly says, relaxing quite a bit when he steps into the warm air and shakes his head sending the wet and snow scattering. "I'm too young to have kids. Even the green seedy type." But when his grin begins to fade back a bit, he turns towards hir and says: "And honestly, I hope you don't, but I wouldn't mind if you were ticked off at me, or even hated me forever. As long as you were still you enough to do it." "Would it weird you out if I told you I ate fruit that grew off a guy I know?" Rasa raises an eyebrow, moving down the hallway to the conservatory, slowly unbuttoning hir coat, keeping it on until ze is fully warmed up. "I wouldn't worry too much about pollination. It's not like you grow sentient mutant plant babies." Ze pauses and gives Kelly a long look. "You... don't, do you?" Whether joking or not, it's hard to tell. Instead, ze shakes hir head. "You know this isn't over yet, right? I haven't been cured and they still don't know enough about this to know if the treatment is going to prolong my life a day, a week, or even a month." The chubby plant taps his lips when he hears the 'W' word come from Rasa, and is careful to not touch on it himself, moving onto the second question instead: "I haven't yet." Kelly said, with a nod as he settled down himself, unbuttoning his coat to reveal that the bandages he had been wearing were all gone already. Just a few little green scabs left behind on his skin. And the vines on his right arm weren't quite as long as normal, but were close. "I know, I mean I just want to hope it's not all we'll get. But it's something. I guess I've got no right to hope for it, when it's your skin on the line, your friends who are sick. But I was getting' pretty close to giving up the last bit of hope I had seeing how empty these halls were getting." "This place is magic, kid. The people who live here, the stuff of miracles." Rasa draws in a deep breath, holding it for a while, then letting it out slowly. "I am constantly holding my breath, waiting for the next miracle to come, but feeling like I've had too many already." Ze bows hir head and moves to sit on a bench in the conservatory. "S... forgive me. You've probably got your handful of wonderful right now and I'm smearing worry all over it. Just... wait. You'll see. Something amazing is going to happen." Hir face stays pointed toward the ground, hir tone getting quieter. "If I've got any miracles coming, you can have 'em instead." Kelly replies moving himself to a bit of grass to sit down, letting his roots out again as they start to dig their way into the dirt, and he gives out an audible sigh as his whole body melts into a small bit of bliss. He keeps his face somber though. "I don't really think I've earned 'em yet." "You've earned them," Rasa replies quietly, enjoying the warmth and the bench ze is sitting on. "Everyone of us here has."