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There's an empty, interstitial space of open grass and trees, overrun and unmaintaned, near some of the abandoned apartment buildings that PHA has been threatening to take over. Fox has been talking about taking over some of this area in order to put up pigeon lofts, and they invited Mearc to this very open area to both see their work and be out away from doorways.
The dusk of this area has the chirping of crickets and a figure some six inches taller than the typical Fox, hammering away on a mostly-built loft. When the broad-shouldered figure turns toward the last of the sun, though, the lessening sunlight catches his eyeshine. So that's an identification, maybe.
And lo, here's a Mearc! He looks about like a Mearc usually does--his hair's pulled back with one of those large claw hairclips, he's got his usual paracord bracelet and messenger bag. He seems to be wearing eyeliner, that's a new thing. Something he hasn't done in front of his partners yet, that he's doing for Fox, because...it's an experience. And Fox is safe to experiment around.
After all, he's experimenting, too, it seems. "Fox? Iiis that you?"
"It's me," agrees Fox, tapping in one last nail before slinging their hammer through the waistband of their jeans, turning to face Mearc. The voice is different, yet somehow the same, in some ineffable way. Possibly because the teeth are the same. "The eyeliner looks really good on you," Fox offers with a grin, propping one hand on his hip. "How are you, Mearcstapa?" Both arms offered for a hug.
"I'm alright. Busy, but alright. Jack and I have a plan together for my den, in the house. Now I just need to, like. Paint walls and do furniture shopping. And find an office space outside the house, because I can't have 'my quiet refuge for when I need introvert time' also be my workspace. It just doesn't work like that."
He takes the offered hug easily, squishing with (what little) all the strength he has. Hug good.
"So, pigeon loft, huh?"
The strength that Fox has in this particular form is much greater than what he has when he's a 5' Fox. That hug is a long, big-squish affair. They don't pick him up off the ground, but they clearly just thought about it. "That sounds like things are going right and you're setting appropriate boundaries. Do you think you just need a smaller building on your property that's separate to the house, or something else entirely, like Lux has the Collective?" Hug complete and released, and then they step back, squinting at the lofts. "Yeah. I don't know if you've heard me yelling about pigeons, but I decided to stop yelling and do something useful."
"It's probably going to be a something else entirely, I think. Part of the reason for that is that travel time creates a separation and allows me to transition better from work-mind to not-work-mind?" He gestures the division of time, and then smirks. "Havdalah. You gotta give yourself a way to mark when you're switching modes."
"Mmm," agrees Fox, testing the hinge on one of the loft doors, and leaning to put the hammer down in their toolbox. It's either brand new or maintained to look brand new as only a Matter Adept can. "I go and do work in my plant room. It's still in the same place, but that time I spend with my planties is for me and me alone." A very serious sentence for at that it has the word 'planties' in it. "Travel time seems a sensible break though. Havdalah."
"What types of planties are you growing right now?" This is equally serious, apparently. He looks thoughtfully at the loft, then at Fox.
"I have the seeds that Lux brought me back from Hawaii - they're my special babies. They like to sit out on the big porch during the day. Beautiful beach plants. Then I have a bonsai that Yoshitsune trusted to me in Maine when we thought the world might end, and my micro-bell peppers and yellow pear tomatoes. My herbs and the like, for dinner, and then my weed, which is on its 9th generation and I'm very proud of it." Fox glances at the loft. "Vasha will help me luck into getting some family groups here, and we can get them back on a proper diet and some medical care. Most of them will be feral, but they're all still essentially domestic animals."
"Pigeons? Yeah. I had a friend who talked to them in Chicago. Pigeons and seagulls--he told me the pigeons have a harder time in the city, because of how they were domesticated. And that pigeons and doves are basically the same species?" He sounds not entirely certain on that last point.
"They are all basically starving stray domestic animals, but humans don't see them that way. They think they're in the same pest category as raccoons or urban foxes. Foxes choose to be in cities. Pigeons are abandoned children. And there's nothing for them to eat! No whole grains, no... wheat or rye. Bread crumbs." There Fox grumbles deep in his throat and runs a hand through his short hair. "It's cruel, what we did to them. They stopped being fashionable and we threw them away like garbage."
A wry half grin. He was going on again. "Um. They're the same family - Columbidae. The difference between a dove and a pigeon beyond that is kind of... arbitrary? So not the same species, but very close."
"You're my favorite urban fox." He grins broadly, moving in closer with a grin. "...and, uh, please don't feel bad for rambling around me. Alright? The infodump is one of my favorite forms of communication, honestly."
They wrinkle up his nose in delight at the compliment - a very Fox gesture. One hand comes to pat Mearcstapa's shoulder in a manner close to a familiar headbutt. "The people I surround myself with, among the wizards - they're prone to that sort of thing. Much less than the people I used to hang out with. But. I have to remember when I go out among the un-Awakened that... that isn't usually a preferred form of communication."
A beat, and he returns Mearc's grin. "Bit of a relief that it's so, really."
He leans into the patting hand somewhat. "Well, I'm not the average un-Awakened, you know? I'm all Lost and stuff."
And thus the patting hand remains, even when patting is done. "No! You're not. I was explaining the reflex, not categorizing you. It's nice to have someone safe to infodump to. Like... I am pretty sure that some of the pigeons we caught on our first round up have some Lahore genetics in them! In a couple generations I might be able to bring some of that back out, if I decide one or two pairs won't get faux eggs and actually breed them." Fox's green-gold eyes - more animalistic than when Mearc last got a good look at them, their pupils going a bit sharp - glitter with delight.
"Oh! So you use fake eggs to discourage breeding in pigeons you don't want to mate? Do pigeons mate for life? What makes Lahore genes different?" Because clearly the proper response is to ask ALL THE QUESTIONS. He is sincerely interested in the answers, though, that much is clear.
"It's sort of like TNR in feral cats - any cats that we can't rehab for pet life, we remove their eggs when they're brooding and replace with a fake egg. It doesn't cause them harm because eggs don't hatch a fair amount of time anyway. It's the closest we have to being able really fix them. Without magic, because i try to do only what I can to naturally for these poor kids." Their eyes light up, and he drops his hand from his shoulder to dig out a cellphone. "Lahore are a really rare breed, from Iran! They're so pretty, like coffee and cream." A picture is quickly shown, and then Fox explains, "Pigeons are socially monogamous and mate generally for life, but their bonds aren't unbreakable. Extra-pair matings aren't uncommon, but they don't translate into an addition to the family unit."
Mearc grins. "That's pretty neat. Not entirely dissimilar to how people form bonds, I suppose." His attention shifts to the picture, and he nods a little. "And that's a very, very pretty bird indeed. Hopefully you can bring out those colors and such again. Have the prettiest of pigeons in town."
"I'd settle for the healthiest," sighs Fox, tucking his cellphone away again and scratching his jawline. "It is really not dissimilar, really. They're not the brightest animals, but they are sweet, and they don't deserve what we've done to them." Another absent patpat on Mearc's shoulder, and they look back at the box. "You know people just dumped quail, of all things, in Rittenhouse Square not long ago? Like 'oh, I'm bored of this animal I thought would make a neat pet, let's just dump it where there's some grass in the city, it'll be fine.' Quail are very stupid birds. They will not be fine." A heavy sigh. "Did I ask you how your life is going or did I just start ranting about birds?"
"You did not just start ranting, Fox. I started asking questions about birds. And about your planties. Which was a way of me showing interest in what's going on in your life, while also learning something I would not have otherwise known, in case that wasn't clear. So no feeling guilty about that." He leans into the patpat somewhat. "And I mentioned some stuff about my life. My den and such."
"I do rant about birds sometimes. And planties. And ... " Fox's vulpine teeth -- which apparently either follow him from form to form or he's just comfortable with those teeth -- get bared briefly and he pulls a breath in through them. "Well, lots of things. Once my brain gets set on urban wildlife, it's sort of... " A brief gesture with one of her hands, like smoke curling up and away. "I don't feel guilty exactly, I'm just checking. We have a baby -- a new kid -- a just -- you know. Fresh meat. So I've got a lot on my mind and sometimes I forget how to human."
"I'm not sure I ever knew how to human. I'm actually really bad at it, by some standards." Though that may be self-mocking, it comes out pretty lightly. "So, if you don't do it around me, I'm not going to judge. A lot of the rules for humaning aren't actually written down anywhere and have to be learned by observation and imitation and that's a lot of hard work and yeah."
The smile that Fox gives him then is a little bittersweet. "That's fair. It can be very hard. I'm not sure I ever knew how properly, either. But I definitely, definitely am unlearning it. Partially on accident, and partially on purpose. When you're being a field of grass, you can forget how to human very easily." Their smile gets a bit brighter. "But yeah, don't worry about humaning around me. I'm never entirely human anymore, and will get less so over time."
"Same hat." There's a little edge to his chuckle, but not all that much.
Mearc holds out his hand to Fox. "Walk with me for a bit?"
Blinking in brief confusion, the Thyrsus opens the doors on the loft -- leaving them open for wildlife to check it out, perhaps, or some other little quirk of Fox's mindset, who can say? -- and then takes the offered hand. "You okay?"
"Yeah. I just want to...I want to show you myself, but it's not entirely safe right here. And like, safety is an illusion, but I can take precautions, and so I will. I want to get a little space between me and the door to the loft, so I don't end up busting a gate into unreality right here. That would be rude to do to your nice project." He smiles, and squeezes their hand lightly, careful with the nails he's been growing out. No scratching or anything.
"Oh!" Their eyes catch a little light from somewhere, a brief flash of eyeshine as Fox turns to look aside at him. His hands are grubby and worn from their work, and he offers quietly, "Thank you, that means a lot." Whether Fox means the project not getting destroyed by a briarwolf trying to fit out through the door on a pigeon loft, or the idea of seeing Mearc's mien, or -- well, they don't specify. "I'd prefer not to bust holes in reality. Vasha gets cross. There's so much paperwork."
"And I'd absolutely hate for Vasha to be cross with me." He chuckles warmly. "I like him, he seems to speak a lot of the same language as me, when it comes to duty. And learning Russian from him was actually pretty fun."
"I'd say he's an absolute bear when he's cross," Fox laughs, that strange little gekkering sound that her laughter is, "but I've known actual bears, as well as bears more like me, and Vasha's no bear. He's just Ukrainian." A small squeeze of Mearc's hand. "He does. We spent -- years -- apart, because there were things he needed to do -- was duty-bound to do. It sucked, but." Their shoulders rise, and fall. "How is your accent?" Fox asks, swapping over to Russian.
Mearc flips to the same language. "Absolute shit. But I try, and I practice, and that is better than nothing."
After about 45 meters from the loft (well outside the safe range given his Wyrd), he stops and lets go of Fox's hand. "Are you, uh, ready? It's a pretty dramatic change."
Laughter from Fox -- brighter, but still that strange animal laughter -- and he answers, "It really only gets better with practice. I spent the better part of a year on it before I wasn't obviously American every time I opened my mouth."
They stop, look back at the loft, and then turn to look back at the Hunterheart. "One of the people I look up to most in the world is half jumping spider. You can't scare me with who you really are, Mearcstapa."
And so with a mote of glamour, Mearcstapa burns away his Mask, revealing himself to Fox as an eyeless man with translucent black skin, lit from within by glowing blue blood and from without by tiny square pixels where his freckles once were. Right now, he's definitely wearing more red freckles than green. When he smiles, he shows teeth that belong in the mouth of a large cat, a panther if Fox is that intimately familiar.
His Mantle, when not concealed by the Mask, is a stronger thing too; it feels like being chased by some large predatory beast through a cornfield, warm breath on the back of their neck, the rustle of dry cornstalks surrounding them, an unmistakable feeling of being watched.
There are a lot of reactions that people can have to seeing a face like this. Fear, nervousness, edging slowly away, the careful neutrality that people get when they don't want to show a negative emotion. Fox's eyes widen, and their mouth turns into a small 'o' -- they're about to say something, when their head snaps to one side suddenly, and the Thyrsus scents the air as their Nimbus flares, not (this time) felt by the Hunterheart.
But no. There are only bugs and bats and the grass under their feet, and so Fox turns their face curiously back toward Mearcstapa, and once the concern for safety passes? His eyes light up, and his face breaks into a huge grin. "You look kinda like Lux! But entirely like you!" A half-step closes the distance, and he leans in. Studying, with evident delight. "What do the colors mean? Do they mean anything?"
"You're welcome to touch. The colors...do bear meanings, but aren't a consciously controlled thing. It tends to telegraph how my mind is working in a given moment. Am I processing mostly thinkingly or feelingly? If I'm showing more green, I'm calculating, processing, working through something on an intellectual basis. If I'm showing more red, I'm doing less of that and more reacting emotionally. And...it's not surprising Lux and I look alike in some ways. We both escaped from the same Keeper."
Rough fingertips rise to trace the path of a blood vessel along one cheek, and gently press on the pixellated red squares; the corners of Fox's mouth curl up, and his gaze settles on the lack-of-eyes, studying them next. "Well, most people don't control those sorts of reactions, they're mostly autonomic, it's just that -- you have different colors, different reactions. It translates very well." The Life Mage sort of veers off to one side conversationally, the way they often do. "Is the creepy feeling you, too? There isn't corn. I checked."
"The creepy feeling is me. It's a representation of my relationship with the Autumn Court, and it's grown stronger recently. The corn is...corn mazes in October out in the farther-out suburbs of Chicago, which represent the height of Autumn to me. Haunted corn-mazes mixed up with my feelings about being a predator. Because that's what I am, in some ways, at the very core. A predator. A hunter. The wild dangerous thing that watched the boundaries and did anything it had to, in order to ensure others didn't escape. Mearc-stapa; the border stalker."
"It's ... really cool," Fox answers, their eyes catching the neon that comes off of his face and reflecting it back to him. Human eyes don't; Fox's do. "I mean -- I know it came from something really shitty." Their mouth twists a little, rueful, as they listen, and their hand stalls on his cheek, head tipped just so. "Mearc-stapa," Fox repeats, as if tasting the word, feeling its shape in his mouth. A slow blink, and a second. "I like your teeth."
"Thank you. They're...fairly new. They came with learning some things about myself and my time Over There." His freckles go redder, shimmering like an animation in a very old computer game where something changes color in a very pixelly way.
"I got mine first," Fox offers, sticking out his tongue a bit, vulpine teeth resting on said tongue for a minute before they shrug. "No more human life for the Orphan." The shrug which follows means that she doesn't seem that as much of a loss at all. And then the freckles go redder. "Do you have strong feelings about your teeth, or what you learned?"
"What I learned, mostly. That...the Keeper who I escaped from wasn't the one who took me, to begin with. That someone I know now, here, is someone I killed Over There, but didn't remember until now." His voice is soft. He unclips his hair-clip and pulls his hair back again, mostly to have something to do with his hands. His hair is raven-black in this form; same length and texture, just...matching the rest of him.
A gentle patpat to his cheek, sort of rote -- or perhaps similar to the hair-fiddling. Just something to do with his hand. "Oh!" That seems to take the Thyrsus a fair bit of time to process, their gaze unfocusing a little. "So you -- " And they don't finish that thought, mouth squishing together a little. "You can die there and not... die?" That, first.
It is really hard to tell where Mearc's looking when he doesn't have eyes, but his head tilts down, making it seem like he's looking at the ground. "What, you think the Good Neighbors would allow their captives to escape through so simple a means as death?"
She puffs out a breath, and his smile gets that rueful twist to it again. "It's just that that's the one thing I can't solve. It'd take an Archmaster to, which -- I guess answers the question. I can literally create life out of -- not even thin air, because air has substance. Out of nothing. But I can't -- bring someone back from the dead." Fox's lips press together just a little. "I'm sorry."
"It's alright. I survived. So did the person I killed. We move forward, as well as any of us can."
Another one of those soft laughs, and Fox's hand moves from cheek to shoulder, squeezing gently. "I usually say 'as long as you're still alive, you're moving forward,' but I suppose 'as long as you're alive again,' or whatever. Life isn't static, that's what makes it life." A pause. "You know I can change a rock forever, but I can't change a bug forever?" As if this matters, somehow.
Mearc's freckles shimmer green, and then normalize at about an even mix. "The universe is making a point about object permanence, clearly."
Laughter, then. "Or that life means change. I can... as long as I'm holding the spell active, I can keep it permanently going. But it's ... I have to keep it going." Fox rolls their shoulders, then. "You're alive, so you're changing."
The Thyrsus lifts his free hand, turning it upward in the space between himself and the Hunterheart. Here in the dark, the nimbus which surrounds him is literal -- a subtle green glow suffuses the space around her, then less subtle, increasing until it's a brilliant thing. The scent of fresh-cut greenery and petrichor floods the air, and the feeling of being watched is paired or countered by the companionable feeling that comes from making extended eye contact with a faithful canine companion or close friend. Endorphins to uplift the healer and provide social bonds.
That wry smile returns, and Fox shrugs as the brief, incredibly powerful flare of their Nimbus fades away. A handful of heartbeats, and that is all.
Mearc inhales a deep breath of that scent while it's in the air, smiling softly. "I'm not sure how much of it is 'who I am is changing' and how much is 'my awareness of my self is changing'. Do you think there's a meaningful difference between those two statements, in practice?"
His head tips slightly to the side, and Fox looks up toward the near distance thoughtfully. "I don't think there's that much difference, but then, almost everything that changes about me is increased understanding. I learn more about myself, I learn more about magic. About the only thing that doesn't come from more understanding for me -- no, I guess that's not true." The abrogated sentence leads to a pause, and then: "Being an Orphan is all about understanding, but put into action." Beat. "But that's me. Do you think there's a meaningful difference, for you?"
"I don't know. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Specific example: gender as a thing. While I don't think that my identity is shifting, as I sit and actually think about how I wish to express myself within that space, I've come to a conclusion that there's some things I've done because I've felt I was 'supposed to' that--or not-done, conversely--that I feel differently about. You know? And there's a whole tangent about labels and things I could go on here, but, uh. Yeah." His freckles do a slow red-shift as he speaks, though not to the same extreme as before.
"Why wouldn't you go on a tangent?" asks Fox, and his gold-green eyes focus again on Mearc's face. It's difficult to make eye contact with someone who has no eyes, but it's not the first time the Awakened has looked into nothingness. "I just spent forever talking about pigeons, and that's not -- your understanding of gender, which is a thing that is, if not more important than pigeons, then at least far more personal."
Mearc allows just a moment of direct eye contact before slowly blinking and glancing off to one side. This is how a cat says 'I love you', according to Jackson Galaxy.
"I can't actually figure out how people separate their experience of gender identity from, like. Gender expression and sexuality and all that. Like, I get that it's a real and important thing to a lot of people. And at the same time, it is easier for me to 'be' a guy, and part of me feels awkward and weird for benefitting from the patriarchal mess that is society, but like. I also feel like...I don't know, changing just to change would be playing a word game, to me, while other people out there have bigger, stronger feelings and actively have had to fight for their right to transition and stuff. But on some level, I just don't get it, and never really have."
The smile that crosses Fox's face then is a slow, lazy thing, like warm molasses running across a glass plate. It lingers, and their head cants a little bit to the side. Foxes fixate on things, watching them with the sort of singular attention that closes the entire universe down to the focal point of said attention, and so she does.
"If it isn't important to you to separate those things, then you don't have to. The wonderful thing about something as individual as gender is that -- as much as I respect and appreciate the fact that you don't want to disrespect other people's bigger, stronger feelings, and the struggles they have had... it's really about you when it comes to your gender and your expression. You aren't -- and shouldn't be -- beholden to anyone else's struggle when it comes to determining you." A small upward curl of the corner of his mouth. "It took me a long time to be able to wear a body like this again, but why would that matter to you? It's not your body, it's not your -- gender."
"Is it important to you to have words for it? Because if it isn't important to you, you don't have to have them."
"No, it's not important to me. But the world seems to place a lot of importance on it." He shrugs, then his freckles go greener. "...again?"
"Then tell the world to fuck off, and you'll come up with an answer when you feel like it. You're the sovereign ruler of your gender, and only your words matter." One eye winks slowly, and Fox laughs. "Yeah. Again. So... " It's that pause that he gets when they're looking for the thread to pull, where to start the story.
"If you had met me before I first Awakened, twelve years ago, I would have told you that I was a transgender woman. I'm not, but for a long time, that was the closest thing to describe my experience. I mean, I might not have said anything, because I was living in St. Petersburg at the time, so 'stealth' is not even - stealth understates how I was living." A pause. "And then... sometimes, when one of us Awakens, that event doesn't just change who we are, but it changes who the universe always remembered us as."
"Which gave me a lot to think about, for a long time, starting with 'am I suddenly cisgender?' And the answer to that is no, too, but -- it's a bit like being gaslit by the universe, not gonna lie."
Mearc grimaces. "That sounds kind of awful, I'm not going to lie. And perhaps sheds some light on why you cherish your control over your form now; you very much can influence your gender expression starting from the body itself. You, uh, look really cute right now, though. Hope that's okay to say."
They drop their hands to their side, and spread them out lazily. "It took a long time to come to the knowledge that, for me at least, my body is an experience, and that experience isn't identity. If I have to put a word to it, I'm genderfluid, but I'm also not just speciesfluid but genusfluid and familyfluid. It's hard to get upset about gender identity when you've been a swarm of bees." Fox rambles on a bit and then the last bit seems to catch up to him; his nose wrinkles up. "It's very okay to say. I picked this face on purpose because I've learned to like it."
"That makes a lot of sense. Swarms of bees have drones and workers and a queen, and all of those are roles, and we ascribe gender to them, but a swarm is a swarm is a swarm." He chuckles. "I'm, uh, going to put my Mask back up, if you don't mind. It's weird being so visible for so long."
"Or a field of grass, or a tree, or a shark. Sharks don't really care about gender. But you're right, I hadn't quite thought about it like that." Fox's smile falters a little, and he tips his head to the other side. "I like seeing it, but I'd rather you weren't unhappy or uncomfortable, by far. Thank you for showing me." The brief flash of their grin returns with all those teeth.
Mearc rubs a hand down his face and suddenly looks nice and human again. "You're welcome. It's, uh...I'm not uncomfortable with you knowing what I look like. It's just a vulnerable feeling."
"Oh -- no -- I didn't think you were. It's just something -- in our brains, I think. We love mysteries, and being in the presence of a walking Mystery when I can see it is just delightful." Fox's eyes glitter in the dim light. "I'll have to just be happier that there's a mystery that I know is there and other people don't."
"A secret you can cherish all to yourself." Mearc pulls out his phone to glance at the time. "I ought to be heading home soon, but you up for a hug before I head out?"
This makes the Thyrsus's nose wrinkle up with delight. "I do like that," Fox agrees. The secret in wrangling the feelings of Awakened is, apparently, just to phrase everything like mysteries. "I am pretty much never not up for hugs, but thank you for asking!" He opens up their arms in invitation.
Mearc steps into the hug, warm and close and comfortable. "I'll remember that."
A contented sigh from Fox ends with a low 'hmm', and perhaps not surprisingly, he buries his nose in Mearc's hair and takes a deep breath in. The Thyrsus is a champion hugger, if there were, in fact, hug competitions.
Mearc enjoys the moment, then disentangles. "You have a good night, alright?"
"I will, absolutely," Fox agrees. "Take care of you. You're important." The disappearance of a fox happens with a sort of reverse full-body sneeze, and then an actual fox disappearing into the tall grass.
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