2011-02-11: Eat Dirt

Players:

Heather_icon.jpg Mason_icon.jpg

Summary: Heather and Mason discuss dietary habits very maturely.

Date: February 11, 2011.

Log Title: Eat Dirt

Rating: G


Xavier Mansion - Atrium

The Atrium is large room with four corridors leading off in diagonal directions to the classrooms and dorms. A large window looks over the front courtyard. The Atrium has also been turned into a social area for students and teachers, with chairs, tables and a television set. Since its a main area of passing, it is encouraged that people keep things to a respectful volume.


It looks like Heather has just woken up, her hair all messed up and flat on one side, making it quite clear how she slept on it. What makes this unusual is that it is evening. On her lap is her breakfast, a heaping plate of bacon, spaghetti, devilled eggs all covered in a grape jam, with a side of mushy peas (with what appears to be bits of gummy bears conservatively stirred in). She is watching the TV on mute, with the subtitles playing, and holding the remote in her hand a bit defensively. She seems to be tuned into the cartoon network.

Mason's music from the piano has been playing for the last hour and a half, which means that he's tired. He exits the room, and heads toward the atrium. His eyes fall on Heather, and with a rather lazy saunter he walks behind the couch, and flops his arms over the back next to her, treating himself as if he were a throw rug flung upon the back. He stares at the TV. "I never thought I'd be so sick of music," he mutters, staring at the screen. "What're you watching?"

"There is a sponge. And he can talk, I guess. I think he's a fry cook," plays Heather in response, without much of a level of commitment to the words. She looks away from the television for a moment, though her eyes flicker back uncannily to check the dialogue at every moment the words change, "Music. You know how I feel about that. I get sick of it much too quickly. It can be so overwhelming."

"Oh, Spongebob. Man, that show takes me back." Mason grins sloppily, and slides over the couch into the seat cushion, and then rights himself, settling down into the seat. "What did you listen to before your powers took over?" he asks, glancing from the screen to the girl, and then spotting her…meal? "And…what are you eating?"

Heather puts down her fork and stares at Mason when he asks what she listened to before she manifested. This stare remains for a few seconds, a long time in Heather's perception, before she picks the fork back up and resumes eating, "Breakfast. It's okay… I like the bacon."

"What?" Mason answers, pulling his neck back with an incredulous look. "It's not like I asked you if you had any embarrassing birthmarks or anything. You didn't listen to music even before your powers kicked in?" He reaches out lazily to a potted plant within reach, and bats harmlessly at the leaves. "I mean, you did have a life before your powers, right?"

"No, I didn't have what most people would refer to as a life. I was kept in the World of Illusions, until I was manifested, then the In Between and then I was kept in the White Prison for three or fifteen years," replies Heather, now keeping her eyes on the television. "Everyone thinks I am strange, but they don't get it. I'm completely normal."

Slowly, one eyebrow creeps up as Heather tells her story. "Uhh," Mason studders, "Okay… You just told me the most not-normal upbringing I've ever heard." He reaches down and sticks his finger into the potting soile, coming out with a coating of black on his finger. He sniffs it as if it were some sort of flower, and adds. "I mean, I'm not judging you or anything, but usually people define 'normal' as something that is common. Things that a lot of people go through. What you just described…I've never even heard of."

"But you have to understand, even if the upbringing was non-standard, the results were normal given the nature of the upbringing. And maybe it's for the best." She scowls at this, though, and jabs at her eggs a little more forcefully than she was previously. "I'm glad to be here now, though, instead of any of those other places. They were all venomous, terrifying and viscirectional in their own ways."

"Sounds like it," Mason agrees, though he has no idea what viscirectional means. He'll chalk it up to 'something bad'. "Hopefully you'll never have to end up in a situation like that again." The popstar dips his middle finger into the pot and pulling it out likewise covered in soil, and takes a big whiff of the dirt before waving his opposite hand around the fingers. The soild starts to roll back and into a ball the size of a shooter marble as he plays with it.

"I will. It's inevitable. I just worry about when. While my powers are temporal, I am not yet so powerful as I will one day be, that I would know," says Heather, taking a few bites of her meal. She looks at what Mason is doing and furrows her brows slightly. "What are you doing with that dirt? You look like you're romancing it."

"I wasn't going to eat it!" Mason quickly responds, clenching his fist around the dirt ball and pinning the fist between his knees on the couch. Never mind that no talk of eating it had come up. "Um…" He nervously looks back at the TV. "So how powerful do you think you will be?" he asks, trying to shift the subject back, his face turning red.

Heather's eyebrows raise at that assertion, "I don't care what you eat, that doesn't really register any importance with me. You can eat it if you want to. It's just unusual." She does turn the subject back to the previous thing, "I will become a powerful time manipulator. Or at least I got that implication when my future self arrived in our timeline. I've been studying to become adept at timeline management for when the need arises."

Mason's redness doesn't subside, and he doesn't reveal the dirt ball in his hand still. He just clenches it as he listens to Heather. "I told you I wasn't going to eat it," he reiterates. "It… it just smells good. The smell of dirt is the best smell in the world. So…" the boy starts to relax again, shifting his position to face Heather, and lean back against the arm of the couch. "You talk about it like it's some ordinary job. When you become a time manipulator, then you could just go back and fix what happened when you were a kid, right? Then you wouldn't have to go through all that weird stuff, and people wouldn't think you are strange." Sounds like a good idea to him.

"Then I would create a split timeline where I am simultaneously having a normal life and a different one. It would have to be a bifurcating timeline where each caused the other, which seems to be more difficult to manage than this single one that leads up to me having responsible abilities, and preventing me from causing my own pain in the end," replies Heather after a few moments of thought. She makes a squeaking sound at the TV screen before she says to Mason, "Just put the dirt in your mouth! I command you! You're obviously thinking about it. If it's gross, you'll never ever think about it again."

Mason's eyes go wide at the sudden imperative of Heather's demeanor. "I'm not going to eat it, it just smells good. Here, smell," he holds out the potting soil to the time manipulator, the ball is much more compact than it was a moment ago, but still very spherical, not taking the shape of his fingers. It of course, smells like potting soil. "I met this girl who sees the world through smell and touch, just got me thinking more about it. She's really cool."

Heather smells it and she shakes her head, "I don't think it smells delicious at all. I don't know where you're getting that idea from." Of course, she's still ignoring Mason's assertion that he /doesn't/ think it smells delicious, "Do you want to split it in two, and we eat it together?" She pauses for a moment as she looks at the tv screen and tilts her head at what's happening. "Smell and touch? Is she a mutant? Or is she just disabled?"

"Differently abled," Mason counters. "We went out on a date, I think there's somethin' there," he says with his standard confident pop star smile. The suggestion that they eat it together seems to make him feel less weird about it. "I…I guess we could try. Have you ever tasted dirt before?" He suddenly follows it up with a piece of trivia. "Did you know the average person eats more than ten pounds of dirt each year?" He has no idea where he learned that, so who knows whether it's reliable. He holds the dirt out flat in his hand, and it flattens into a coin shape. He splits his fingers, and the flat piece of dirt separates. into two pieces. "This is kinda silly," he says. "You don't really want to eat dirt, do you?"
Defiantly to Mason's question, she takes the bit of dirt with a quick snapping of her hand towards it, chews it rapidly and then swallows it. She fiddles with her tape recorder for a moment and says with a unenthused expression, "Disgusting. And now you have to reciprocate." She takes a few bites of her own meal to wash down the flavour (not that her meal looks any better). "Are you dating someone who is differently abled, then? Should we start firing up the blogosphere?" The last question is asked in a tone that suggests it is meant completely unironically.

Mason looks at his own piece of dirt wafer, and then pops it into his mouth. He doesn't look like he hates it, even though he mimics Heather's response. "Yep, terrible." He chews awfully slowly for someone who wants to get it over with, though. After he swallows, he opens his mouth to show that it's gone. "I can't believe we just did that. And don't you dare blog about this, or her. You don't even know her name, so you wouldn't have much to write." He never assumes gossip about him is a mere tease, there's enough blogs out there already.

"I only have a twitter account, anyways. I don't blog. Blogging is for people who do not appreciate the instantaneous rush of tweeting. I keep my diaries by hand," says Heather, as she watches Mason eat the dirt. "You were really into that dirt eating thing, weren't you? You had that in your mouth /forever/." She examines his mouth, though, and nods. "It's not gross if you liked it. I don't like the sounds of your piano, either. Taste is taste." Judging by Heather's choice in food, it seems she takes that motto to heart.

"You're just saying that because everything is in slow motion for you." He licks his molars, trying to unlodge a piece that got stuck. "But who likes dirt? I mean, I'm sure it's bad for you. I don't think it's digestible." He looks like he's about to explode. "Okay! So it's delicious!" He holds his face in his hands. "I can't believe I like eating dirt. It's like candy. Especially that potting soil stuff, it's fantastic." He looks rather ashamed at the admission. Wait, did he just establish that potting soil tastes different from other dirt?

Very seriously, Heather plays, "We have to document different soils to assess which ones are the most /delicious/ using your discerning palate." She fiddles with the machine slightly and adds, "Deliciousness of soil may correlate with its richness for growing. If we work together, we will be a shoe in for science fair." Is there a science fair? "Honestly, nobody will care that you eat dirt."

"What!?" Mason astonishes. "I'm not a science experiment!" His protest is a bit louder than necessary. "Of course people will care that I eat dirt. That's not normal. They'll probably send me to Dr. Mayfair for some psychological disorder. And what girl wants to kiss a guy who has dirt on his breath all the time?" This is the most important factor!

"Ohhhh myyyy goooosh, you're being so dramatic about this. Mason! I see sound, and Dr. Parker-Mayfair and I never ever talk about that. You are in a crazy place full of crazy people who do crazy things and you think anyone will care about the dirt eating? If it makes you sick, then you have a problem. Has it made you sick?" asks Heather, looking incrdulously. "And keep breath mints in stock."

"Yeah, and I live in a world that watches everything I do. Last thing I need is to give the anti-fans something to make fun of me with." He lets out a sigh. "No, it hasn't made me sick." He rests his face in his hand, slouching in the couch. "I think I should be getting to bed anyway, I gotta wake up and pretend to study in the morning."

"What are they going to do about it? Blog about you? When I googled you, I found worse things said than you eating dirt! They're just making stuff up anyways. When has a blog ever mattered?" says Heather, looking back towards the television and finishing off what was once a heaping plate of food. "Enjoy sleeping."

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License