ArchivedLogs:Bubbles

Bubbles
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Matt	2015-08-16 "{We are fast running out of -- summer.}"
Location <NYC> Tompkins Square Park - East Village
Small but popular, this tree-lined park is a perfect centerpiece to the eclectic neighborhood it resides in. Home to a number of playgrounds and courts from handball to basketball, it also houses a dog park and chess tables, providing excellent space for people watching -- especially during its frequent and often eccentric festivals, from Wigstock to its yearly Allen Ginsberg tribute Howl festival. It's been a rather hot day, though as it heads into evening temperatures are starting -- slowly -- slowly -- to drop. The heat hasn't dissuaded people from visiting the park; in Tompkins Square it is bustling, tennis and basketball courts full, a lot of yapping coming from the dog park, a terrible busker playing an enthusiastically poor rendition of "Margaritaville" while people chat or eat on benches or picnic baskets. Lucien (in light grey trousers and a pale salmon seersucker button-down) is currently perched on the very end of one bench, right beside a row of chess tables. Large sticky bubbles float by intermittently, blown from not far away by a teenager looking after a pair of small girls and one eager poodle who chase after them. He is -- not so much chasing bubbles, though his attention is captured as one drifts closer and threatens to land on the book in his lap. His hand turns up, catching it instead against his fingertips -- more resilient than most, it doesn't pop but only settles there. With a small press of lips he looks from bubble to chess table to book to the nearby thermos of tea sitting beside him. Frown. Matt, sitting near his brother at a chess table, has just moved a knight and tapped the timer. He wears a seafoam green t-shirt with a gigantic white sperm whale curled beneath an eight-pointed star, and convertible taupe cargo pants currently serving as shorts. "{Are you contemplating the brevity of life and its tenacity, Luci?}" His opponent, a young woman with a tremendous cloud of curly black hair and a elegant white sundress, is chewing on her lip as she studies the board. "Merd. {I /still/ don't see that coming, somehow.}" The accent of /her/ French is continental, in sharp contrast to Matt's Quebecois. She glances up at the younger Tessier and his bubble. Smirks. "{Or just being assailed by second-hand cheerfulness.}" Another one of the persistent soap bubbles has floated down to land on the edge of the table, settling precariously atop the head of a captured white pawn. "{A lifetime of living with this one,}" Lucien tips his head slightly to indicate his brother, "{and you think I have not yet developed a resistence to second-hand cheer?}" His fingers close, slowly, popping the translucent bubble neatly against his palm. The woman exhales, a short and sharp laugh. "{Perhaps you are only barely staying afloat in the relentless tide of cheer, and any addition to it threatens to capsize your vessel.}" She moves the pawn, delicately, with the tips of lilac-painted nails, without dislodging the bubble. Matt smiles quick and bright, watching his opponent tap the clock just before her time runs out. "{You give yourself too little credit, Genevieve. And him, too.}" He flinches almost imperceptibly when Lucien pops the bubble, but continues, unfazed, "{That ship has weathered far more devastating cheer than just mine.}" "{'Relentless tide of cheer' summarizes my life so accurately it is startling,}" Lucien's mild tone sounds sounds entirely so serious. "{Tell me, have you /secretly/ met our sisters when we were not paying attention?}" His fingers rub in along his palm, wiping away the sticky soap residue and then uncurling toward the sky once more. The next soap bubble that floats near by, he simply watches as it drifts towards Matt, but makes no effort to catch. "{I have not.}" Genevieve props her chin in the palm of one hand. "{Though I should like to! I have only extrapolated, from your frequent expressions of saintlike patience.}" Her hazel eyes track the new bubble, then drift down to the clock. "{You are almost out of time, Matthieu,} she reminds him in a slightly sing-song voice. "{I'm sure Desi would love you, and Sera--}" Matt breaks off mid-sentence to look up at the bubble. "{--would, too.}" He blinks rapidly a few times, then, as the bubble drifts near him, blows a puff of air to buoy it up and away. "{I have precisely as much time as I need, my dear.}" The black queen moves back into the space her knight has just vacated, and suddenly controls vast tracks of the rapidly emptying board again. "Check." He hits the clock and flashes her a crooked smile. "{Sera loves everyone. Winning her over is hardly a challenge.}" Lucien exhales a very short-quick breath at Genevieve's last words. His eyes lower back to his book, hand reaching now for his tea thermos. "{Do not let him fool you.}" The next bubble that drifts by him he does not catch, either, but pops with a quick flick of one finger. "{He always bounces back.}" Though he is not /watching/ the game, the tap of the timer and the report of check put a very small smile on his face. "{But he is so very disarming. I /should/ have seen that coming,} Genevieve drawls, though she does not sound all that put out, or even surprised. "{And while the solution seems perfectly plain to me...}" She blocks the black queen's path to her king with the pawn upon which a bubble had landed. The bubble bursts of its own accord when she sets it down. She affects a moue of vague disappointment and hits the timer. "{...I know that you are going to respond with a dazzling smile and explain to me with your very lovely hands how I have just sealed my own fate.}" Matt's dazzling smile seems more a response to her prediction than the move as such. "{Flattery,}" he replies lightly as he lands his knight behind Genevieve's lines. It looks perilous, for both sides, but threatens nothing of immediate import. "{I don't know if I'd call it bouncing /back/. But I suppose no one ever returns from the underworld unchanged.}" Lucien's eyes have lifted from his book, again, tracking the erratic bob-drift of a bubble on a stray breeze. Past the pages of his book, dancing over above the chess game. Something flutters -- not just the breeze, but a stronger ripple across Lucien's mental landscape, flattening /something/ down into tranquility. "{You can hardly be blamed for not predicting the future. How many of us can see it before it comes?}" "{Mattieu, at least, seems to do a fair job of it.}" Genevieve sits up straighter and stares at the board. "{And such a tease! Is there some reason I should not take that?}" Meaning, apparently, the knight which she now captures with her remaining rook. Matt's vivid green eyes fix on the bubble, dipping down only briefly to follow the movement of Genevieve's hand, the sweep of the white rook, his knight joining its fallen brethren. "{Yes. Yes, there is.}" He lifts his queen between thumb and index finger, holding her suspended for a moment. "{To see the future is one thing. To make it...}" Instead of attacking from the direction she had initially threatened, she cuts diagonally in the other direction, taking an innocuous-looking empty space that the rook had up until then guarded, and landing her on the seventh row, across from the white king. "{Check.}" Lucien shifts on his bench, dragging his eyes from the bubble and turning his attention back to the game. Now his gaze tracks the recently captured knight with a very small press of lips. "{Sometimes requires sacrifices.}" He rises, moving a few steps closer to stand behind Matt's seat at the stone table. One hand drops, resting his thermos of tea lightly on his brother's shoulder. Perhaps an offering. Perhaps just /convenient/. "{But you do not need to be precognizant to see an opportunity. Or to make one.}" "{I think now you speak in the secret language of brothers, to which I have no access.}" Genevieve gestures somewhat dramatically at the board. "{That is how you always explain it to me, see? And mate in five, I think.}" Without waiting for a confirmation, she lays her king neatly on his side. "{I am yours. Again.}" "{It always requires sacrifice. Just not always one we can see, or understand, or care about.}" Whether the tea is meant for him or not, Matt takes it and drinks deep, appreciative. Returns it to Lucien's hand. "{You could have lasted six,}" he admits with a sheepish smile. "{And you will never be mine; I could no sooner own the western wind.}" "Our language is not so occult. Would this be simpler?" A thread of amusement curls through Lucien's softly accented voice. "{Perhaps next time we meet you and I should play.}" He tips the thermos slightly to indicate the board, once he has reclaimed his tea. "{Sitting opposite this one the outcome is nearly always a pre-ordained.}" "Simple! But no, I think this English is rather occult, even now." Genevieve's accent is rather thicker, perhaps even a little bit cultivated to appeal. Her gaze dips to the board, and her smile is just a little coy. "{Perhaps we should.}" She rolls the fallen king back and forth with the tip of one slender finger. "{Amusingly, most people think /French/ is our Secret Brother Language.}" Matt begins to gather his pieces. "{But really, I just get into these ruts where I can only speak in cryptic chess metaphors. It's like a curse.}" He hesitates when he picks up the last knight she took, turning it over in his fingers. "{We should introduce you to the rest of the family, soon.}" "{Of all the superpowers to be saddled with,}" Lucien remarks with a soft breath of laughter, "{that one seems quite esoteric. Limited in application.}" He takes another sip of his tea, watching the slow roll of the fallen king but then lifting his gaze back to another passing bubble. "{Soon.}" This agreement comes softer. "{We are fast running out of -- summer.}"