multiversallogs | (no subject)

Who: Xas & You
What: Feels about religion, followed by feels about plants, and also new acquaintances/friends/enemies.
Where: In or around Chimer. Specifically the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the morning to early afternoon, then the Chimer City Trail Park - but he could have wandered elsewhere by nightfall, although he'll have a plant with him.
When: All day Shundi.
Notes: I have never done this summary-y type thing before. I'm sorry if it's the worst. Also, a rough approximation of clothes, minus the goofy hat and creepy mannequin face.
Warnings: None, I think. If anything comes up in the comments, I'll edit accordingly.

It takes Xas a few weeks to reach out to God, and when he does, it's less desperation than experimentation. He just wants to know. Before they took his wings, he used to hear God all the time, feel Him everywhere, feel himself pulled toward Him like a moth to light. But then he stopped listening, and now Xas isn't sure if the silence is his own doing or if God doesn't reach here, the same way he didn't reach Hell.

He's already in Chimer peering up at the spires of the Cathedral when he gives in and tries. ("All right," he says quietly, a little resentfully, and waits in vain.) He goes inside in time to catch the end of the service - his first time in a church, to add to his string of recent firsts - and sits in the pews for a while afterward, giving a set of stained-glass apostles a rather challenging look.

He always did think humans' idea that God waited in a house for them to deign to visit Him was a little ridiculous, if endearingly earnest. As if He were their patient grandmother.

When he finally leaves the church, it's half boredom and half frustration, and he's glad to stumble almost immediately onto a park and to almost as immediately get lost in it. He's never seen most of the plants before, and by dusk he's on his knees in the dirt, scraping at dirt to get his hands under the roots of a small flowering shrub. It's gotten him into trouble before, this habit of plant-taking, but he doesn't think anyone will miss it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"What are you doing?"

Possibly Xas was not expecting a tiny girl to be in the park at this hour. Possibly no one is expecting this, which will surely be their downfall because unexpected Megans are the most alarming types of Megans. Either way, she's here, sucking down some kind of slush thing that isn't a proper Slurpee but is pretty close. Her pupils are roughly the size of nickels, overtaking her irises so that the entirety of her eye appears black -- one of the upsides of being freaky-looking is that it's hard to tell when she's high.

She's standing in shorts that are extremely seasonally inappropriate and a top that is inappropriate at all times of the year, gazing with fascination at the dude digging up plants. That kind of looks like fun, though, she's considering helping.

It takes Xas a moment to look up from the shrub, and when he does it takes him several more moments to answer. He's busy staring - at her hair, a little, and for a second at her wholly unseasonal outfit, but mostly at her wings. They look like insect wings. He doesn't know how she would reasonably be able to fly with them. Probably poorly, if at all. It's a thought more hopeful than analytical.

"I'm going to pot it," he eventually says, tone distant. He looks back down at the plant, then tilts his head at her. Ridiculous wings aside, she looks out place and potentially cold. "What are you doing?"

"Watching you pot a plant, apparently," she says with a bright smile. Yes, in practically her underwear at dusk, that's what she's doing. Megan makes great life choices. She blinks placidly at him for a few moments, glancing at him, to the plant, and then back at him. "Are you allowed to do that?"

She desperately hopes the answer is no because then it instantly becomes cool.

"I don't know," Xas says, glancing back down at the plant as well. He saw several like it along the trail and doesn't think he's destroying anything rare or particularly valuable, but maybe so. Or maybe there are rules about plants here that he's unaware of. "No one has stopped me yet. Can you really fly with those?"

It's not an elegant transition. It's not a transition at all. But it's hard for him to focus on the plant when someone is standing right there being insensitively winged.

"Uh huh!" To demonstrate, she starts flapping them, lifting herself about six inches off the ground, bent slightly forward with her toes dangling underneath her. In motion, they sound about like what one would expect -- a humming-buzzing, loud enough to be unmistakably coming from something human-sized and not an actual insect.

By all rights this ought to be impossible, there's no way those things are sturdy enough or large enough to support her weight, even if she's pretty tiny... and yet, it's happening. After a moment she stops and drops back on the ground, catching herself with a slight wobble.

"Oh," Xas says, and he thinks - vindictively - that she isn't very good at it. But it's still better than he can do. And she's just a kid. "I've never seen wings like that," he says, trying to force himself to warm up to her through sheer force of will. "They're pretty."

They are. Impractical, but pretty.