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Fox has a full range of emotions just like everybody else, and nobody knows that the usually outwardly-cheerful Orphan of Proteus has All The Feelings more than her cadre.
Today? A crow flies from the porch, a white splotch on her back, lands on the back of the couch in the living room, and screeches loudly, before stomping up and down the couch's back. She takes flight again, swoops out above the city, and registers her opinion on matters in an excretory manner most suited to her current form before swooping back in and perching on the couch's back.
The darned Penthouse is so big that the comings and goings even a raucous crow could easily go unnoticed, if not for the meddling of happenstance that results in someone coming into the living room just about the same time that the crow comes back in. Mei is standing near the door leading back out, wearing yoga pants and a hoodie and looking like someone who just recently got up, including the cup of coffee she's holding in her hands. She tilts her head when Fox comes in and lands on the couch, then shrugs and heads over that way. "That sounded like a complaint," she says, having heard the annoyed screeching before she reached the room.
Fwump. Fox's body does that sort of inverting itself into its default state that is the release of her Shapeshifting spell, and she puts human feet on the floor, shucking off her backpack and throwing it across the room. She slumps down on the couch, wearing her ratty wool peacoat and her worn-out sneakers, dropping her head into her hands. "I'm mad."
No shit, really?
Mei blinks a couple of times with that blank look that comes with not being entirely awake, then takes a long sip of her coffee before moving around to the front of the couch so that she can sit down next to Fox. She takes another slow sip, filling her body with the caffeine's effects, and then leans forward to put the cup on the coffee table before she sits back, turns sideways to face Fox, and crosses her legs. "What happened?" she asks. "Sorry if I'm processing a little slow. I was on a stakeout all night and just woke up."
She stands up, shucks off her coat and shoes, and then sits back down. The little Thrysus flops her head in Mei's lap and whines in a way that's only barely human. Grumblegrumble. Fox whines low in the back of her throat for a while before finding words. "I found this girl," she begins by explaining. "She's not human, she's some sort of lucky person, and she's very into being Irish for someone who lives in Northeast. But she's nice, and she's an artist, and I will probably have to take her to the Assembly because she very obviously knows stuff and now she knows about me because yesterday I was hanging out with Kayla and being a fox. So I went to check on her."
There's a moment of quiet before Mei giggles a little bit, but seems to be trying not to. "Sorry," she says. "I'm just remembering memes about the Northeast Philly Dude monk. I'm not laughing at you. I'm not seeing why it is that you're mad, though." She starts brushing her fingers through Fox's hair, giving some light skritches, like she's not even really thinking about it. Just doing it.
Fox snickers softly, then, her mood buoyed up by the jokes that Mei makes, the meme she references, and her presence. She nuzzles in comfortably and curls up on her side, making a little whining sound. "Someone was there I don't know, named Cash, I guess, or Darren, and he was hurt, so I said I could help. I didn't know if I could heal him because of the whole Veil thing and I don't know what he is but I could have at least relieved his pain and I'm very good at first aid too. And I brought pelmeni!" She huffs. "And then they started talking in Irish, I guess, and you know how it's like really obvious when someone is talking about you even if you don't know? Like... "
"I know what you mean," Mei says, listening as she brushes her fingers through Fox's hair and looks down at her. "Kind of like this?" And she switches to speaking in Cantonese to say, "ugh, Fox is so pretty it's just annoying." While doing her best to sound disgusted. The Fox part is a name, and not really translated, so that part is obvious. "Anyway. I'm guessing you're annoyed about them just talking about you like you weren't there, in a language you couldn't understand?"
Her eyes half-lid as Mei continues to pet her hair, and the animal that is Fox gets soothed by hair-pettings. She makes a softer, mumbling sound, and replies, "That better have been something nice," huffing and ruching around a little bit in Mei's lap, bringing her hand up to rest on her cadremate's knee. "Yes. I am ... annoyed. Hurt. And also the Cash guy was kind of passive-aggressive and frankly that was not very cash money of him."
"It wasn't. It was very mean. Definitely rude," Mei lies unconvincingly. She strokes a hand over Fox's hair again, then she leans over to pick up her coffee and returns to sipping it while they talk. "You can't make people accept help if they don't want it, but I agree it's rude to talk to people in front of them in a way they can't understand. My mom does that kind of thing all the time, and it always really annoyed me. I refused to answer her in Cantonese. I could always feel how it bothered the people she does it to."
"You're a very bad liar and I love you too," Fox guesses wildly, huffing and turning onto her back so she can look up at Mei. "Oh I wasn't making him! I even said like... that the state of being in pain is part of the experience of being alive and all living things are justified to determine the path of their existence and experience pain if they want. I offered. You know me, I don't force, unless someone is like, dying." She flops her arms out to the side, very dramatically. "I don't like it. It's mean."
"I can see up your nose."
"I know, I'm just saying. If you get mad about people not taking your help, you're setting yourself up for a lot of pointless anger," Mei says with a pause to take another sip of coffee. "But it sounds like that's less what bothered you, anyway."
She shifts her head so that Fox supposedly has a better angle. Whether it helps or not... dubious. "Anything important up there?" she asks. "When I was a kid my doctor sometimes found quarters and stuff in there. Like magic."
"That didn't bother me at all, really. People are allowed to keep hurting. Hurt is an experience. I think it's silly and shitty to keep hurting unnecessarily, but free will is also an experience and I would never impinge on someone's free will by trying to force them blah blah BLAH!" And then Fox sticks out her nose and wiggles her toes. "Ummmm, well, your BRAIN is up there, of course, and that's very important. I don't think I could find a quarter up there though probably I could transmute the air into a quarter but then it would not fit right and that would hurt."
She lifts her left hand. "Did you see my ring?" No, Mei has not, but now apparently Fox is feeling better because her train of thought is caroming off of the walls again.
"What? That thing is back?" Mei pretends to be offended. "I thought I got rid of that thing weeks ago! All that overthinking and spinning in circles, brains are the worst." She crooks a lopsided smile at Fox. "And are you saying my pediatrician was better at magic than you? I'm pretty sure he was a Sleeper," she teases.
She reaches out to take Fox's hand gently with hers, so that she can lean in and get a better look at the ring. "That's pretty impressive. Did you make this?"
Fox just laughs aloud at Mei's continued silliness, which is, of course, exactly the point of the exercise. "I think he might be better at prestidigitation than I am," she admits. "But that's not really magic, is it." That's a statement, not a question. She sticks her tongue out, and then blushes happily as Mei takes her hand to look more closely.
"I did! I did it all with one spell, actually. One working. It took me like... three hours, and it was really hard, but I was able to Perfect all four metals, and then Shape them, and put them through a Crucible, all woven in together." She reaches up to take the ring off and hand it to Mei so she can see the writing on the inside, brontium letters that read girl with a bird. "Brontium -- Perfected copper -- is aligned with the Primal Wild. So it'll always be touching my skin."
"Which one of us is the Adept of Prime?" Mei teases. "I think I know magic when I see it. Speaking of which..." she takes the ring and turns it over between her fingers, studying it more closely. "Do you mind if I take a closer look? I don't like prying into things like that without asking, but I could probably learn a thing or two, too."
She makes another face up at Mei. "Well if you say so, he's a better magician than me," Fox assents. She reaches a hand up and boops Mei's nose, and then nods her head once. "I don't mind at all, you have my permission. Learn away."
Mei laughs at the boop, then her focus changes to the ring as she lets her vision slide into the supernal spectrum and starts studying the work itself. She's quiet for a little while as she does this, and then looks at it with Mage Sight, working her way through the layers of the spell and picking them apart under her gaze. "Okay," she says a little sullenly. "I guess I have to grudgingly admit that you might be a better magician than my Sleeper pediatrician. This is quite an expert piece of work, not that I'm surprised by that from you." She offers it back.
She laughs again, that raucous, animal sound, unrestrained and present. Fox is nothing if not here and now in nearly everything she does. (She has her daydreamy moments, everyone does.) Taking the ring back, she turns it over in her fingers and then slides it back on her hand. She hasn't taken off the ring that she and Vasha made out of a silver coin, so she's wearing the two rings stacked up. "Thank you. I'm very proud of myself. I don't try to be proud of myself often, but that's good work."
Mei holds her hand up, where the siderite ring that was made for her when she was an apprentice sits around her index finger. "Yours is a lot fancier than mine," she says. "But mine does he trick for me, when I need it. And I didn't make it myself, so..." she shrugs. "I don't think there's anything wrong with occasionally being proud of what you've done, in and of itself. It's when pride turns to arrogance that it's generally an issue."
"Well, I got the gold and the iron from the meteorite that Vasha called down in his little miracle, and then I thought it would be useful to add the silver and copper so we could both use the rings as Yantras... " Fox trails off, and adds, "That's Liezel's work, isn't it?" She reaches up to gently patpat the ring fondly. "She's been so busy lately. Doing good things." A small smile. "Yeah, I know. I just don't like to be -- you know -- "
"It is, and thus of the highest quality," Mei confirms about the ring. "Siderite's not the best for me, but I couldn't afford gold to make it orichalcum. Still can't, though I imagine that if I asked, Zoya would spring for it, I guess. It just feels so weird to ask."
She gently pets both the ring and the hand it sits on, folding both of her grubby little hands around that one of Mei's and bringing it down to smooch the first knuckle of her index finger. "Oh. You should ask Zoya, though. Do you know where her money comes from? Like where it came from to begin with?"
"No," Mei admits with a little hesitation, like maybe this is something she should know, given the way that it's coming up. "I guess I've been conditioned by growing up in America to think that asking about money is rude. It's not really in Chinese culture, you know? My parents talk about money with their friends all the time. I knew how much money they make, growing up. It's just not really a taboo. Huh. I'm actually a little surprised that my attitudes about it ended up so different, now that I think about it."
"Americans are super weird about money, it's true." But mostly, Fox just listens through that part.
Fox takes in a long, slow, deep breath. "So, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya is... like... that Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. If you Google her, you'll find out that her father is Vladimir Kosmodemyanskaya. Zoya is literally, like. Her father is an oligarch."
She sucks on her teeth, then, and pauses, as if thinking of how to broach this last bit. "Her father is also a Seer of the Throne."
"Zoya's money is her money, but it came from him. Spending that money doesn't mean Vladimir -- who supposedly went to jail in 2004 but I am not sure where he is right now and I haven't gone looking -- can see what she spends it on. But oh, she loves to spend it on us. It's a fuck you to her father, who is so fucking terrible, to spend her money on helping the Pentacle."
"I mean, Americans are weird about money because the capitalist class has pushed the idea that they should be, because that helps them to keep wages depressed and prevents people from knowing how badly they're getting screwed," Mei answers with a frown. "Now I'm annoyed that I let myself fall into that trap. Even though I've largely never had a real employer, other than myself."
She listens to Fox explain about Zoya's money and ahhs softly, nodding a bit. "I knew that her father was a Seer, that came up before I joined the cadre. A warning that it might mean danger for us. Between her and Vasha, the Seers are worth worrying about. Fine. I didn't know that's where the money came from, though. I figured it was just from her being... y'know. Famous."
"Hah! I haven't had an employer since I Awakened. I worked for terrible corporations and I never will again." So says the Thyrsus. "There's plenty of food in garbage cans and rich best friends to pay for things." Fox, professional grubby little sugar baby? Sure, why not. She squeezes Mei's hand gently and nods her head, looking up from the Obrimos' lap with a pensive expression on her face.
"I mean, she makes her own money now, but she definitely is a trust fund baby. Her dad's literally a fucking billionaire, and that's the kind of money you can't spend with a hundred lifetimes to do it in. I thought she'd told you about the Seer thing, and yeah, I mean, between the two of them, yeah, and just in general, we should worry. But... don't worry about asking Zoya for money."
"It makes her happy to buy things for us. I could tell her I wanted a pony and she'd get me three."
"I remember that she had no issue paying my rent for my house and my office while the court case thing was going on," Mei observes thoughtfully. "I knew she had money coming out her ears, just not where it came from. I guess that makes sense, and I won't feel bad if I have to ask her for something. I don't think I want a pony, though," she adds with a smile. "I'm not sure what I'd do with the poor thing."
"I could make it very small and then you could have it like that tiny horse that we saw on the SNL sketch when we were both really high that one time," snickers Fox. She is not -- very clearly -- at all serious. "But yeah, don't feel bad. She loves getting stuff for us."
"I'm pretty sure the poor pony wouldn't like that much," Mei says with a laugh. "But it might be happy if you made it bigger. Pony the size of an elephant!" She laughs. "At least now I'm back to work, and can afford to pay for some of my own things again, too. With a little less worry about taking cases that I really don't want to, just to pay the bills."
She scoots up and deposits herself in Mei's lap more properly now, draping her head against the Obrimos' shoulder, comfortable and snuggly. "I have been the size of an elephant. I mean, like, that time I was an elephant. Also I made myself very tall once. It's very interesting. Did you know that I got shorter when I Awakened, too? I wasn't always this short. I guess I had to learn how to be tall again." Fox crosses her eyes and sticks out her tongue. "I'm glad you're back to work, even if that means you have like... Things to Do that are work. But I like that you only have to take the cases you want to."
Mei puts her arms around Fox and leans her head against Fox's hair. "I've been taller, too. I lost a few inches when I Awakened as well, with the whole new body thing. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about all that. The other day I wasn't really thinking about it and mentioned being a trans woman in a conversation with someone, who thanked me for trusting them with that information. I realized again that... outside of my own head, most of the world thinks I'm not, you know? Any time I mention it, I feel guilty."
"I lost most of a foot," laughs Fox, shaking her head a little bit and snuggling in all comfy against her cadremate. "It was really a mindfuck. Not being able to get things from the top soda rack at the convenience store without climbing the display and annoying the man behind the counter is really frustrating."
She puffs out her cheeks as Mei goes on. "Yeah. Not that I exist legally, but like, the feeling of like 'oh, if I had proper paperwork, it would be under this female identity.' It's sort of a mindfuck, isn't it?" Her chin tips up, and she looks up at Mei, wrinkling her nose up. "Okay, I was a trans woman, am I a cis woman now? No, I'm still trans, because that's a thing in my own head, and no matter how much the universe gaslights me, I'm still who I am. And then, as I progressed and became an Orphan, unpacking further gender stuff... " She puffs out her cheeks. "Plus, then you add in orientation, and THEN WHAT? I've just stopped putting labels on myself altogether other than 'fluid queer'. It's hopeless."
"Yeah, I'm not that worried about it as it pertains to me, myself," Mei admits with a slight shrug of the shoulder Fox was leaning against. "I just realized I need to be more careful what I saw in front of who, because I never know. Like if I said I was trans in front of someone who later met my mom, and mentioned it, my mom wouldn't think that I was trans. It could be a mess. Likewise any of the people who have known me long enough that they'd believe otherwise. You know? For me, I just am who I am. I'm not as worried about the specific labels."
"It was kind of a mindfuck for me at first, but it isn't anymore." Fox's agreement comes with settling in against Mei again. The wind picks up outside the tower, and it's possible to feel the very slight shift of a tall building as it leans just-imperceptibly as the air moves around it. "Oh, yeah. From a Veil standpoint, you do need to be careful. Was it one of us, or like... someone from another community, at least? Someone you could explain 'hey you can't -- say anything about that because of Reasons'?"
"Well, it was in front of Jeremiah and Kay, so that's all fine. I'm not so worried about them, but it might not hurt to ask them not to mention it," Mei shrugs again, because really... mages keeping things secret she's not so worried about. "The other person there was Jeremiah's girlfriend, though. I didn't know he was dating the singer for Flout. I have no idea if she's from one of the other communities or not, but I'm sure I could get advice from Jay on how to deal with that, one way or the other."
"Oh, no shit?" Fox frowns thoughtfully at that. "I like Flout, they're pretty good. And yeah, you don't have to worry about either one of them keeping secrets, if they know that's a secret to keep." Her head bonks absently against Mei's shoulder. "But yeah... you should probably ask Jay, he'll be able to tell you what the best way to handle that is. I'm sure it won't be a problem." Fox seems to just sort of bob on along through life, relatively few problems. Doot doot doot. "What do you think I should do about this Fiadh girl?"
"I'm really not sweating it, but I'll have to try to remember to mention it the next time I see either of them," Mei says with a fairly considerable lack of concern on her own part, too. It's not like she habitually introduces mages to people from her Sleeper life, or anything. The odds of it coming up are pretty slim. "I don't know what you should do. Track her down again and have a conversation when you're less likely to get interrupted? Try to get a feeling for how receptive she is to learning more about the wider world? Or whether she's the kind of person who might be able to follow rules?"
She huffs out a breath. "I'm good with apprentices," Fox offers sort of wryly, letting the matter of people knowing about Mei's quantum trans state slide. Mei will figure it out, after all. She's very intelligent. Fox puffs her cheeks out, ruches around a big, grumbles. "They've popped, you know? The world is different! They have to deal with it. Her, she's ... well, I think she's gonna be trouble if someone doesn't help her know what the ... greater rules are, you know?"
"Mages don't really have a choice. One way or another we stay involved with the Supernal, even if we move to the middle of nowhere and avoid mage society completely," Mei responds, wrapping her arms around Fox again. She continues, "if she's a Sleepwalker she has more of a choice, y'know? She can just decide not to sign on. But there are benefits to doing so. Like getting to know more about what's going on in the world, and having other people to look out for you. So, really, maybe the benefits are the place to start? It's hard for me to know what to say for getting through to someone I've never met and know nothing about, though."
Fox huffs gently. "Yeah. I meant as much from a social standpoint. People are sometimes strange to me and I sometimes find pigeons and ants easier to understand." She sticks out her pointy little tongue again and snuggles into the arms wrapped around her, looping her hands around one of Mei's arms and letting out a little sigh as her eyes half-lid. "I dunno if she even gets why I'm upset, or if she thinks that I'm, like, the worst, or if she's just, like, written off the little weirdo who walked out. It's not like she's texted to see if I'm okay or whatever, so maybe that Cash guy said I was the worst and she doesn't like me."
"You're probably worrying about it too much. People usually are," Mei suggests with a soft laugh. "Just try to talk it out, I guess? For all you know right now she already realizes what went wrong, and the whole conversation will take 10 seconds and then it will be done with. Until you actually talk to her, you're just running through scenarios that might not even be accurate in your head, so it's probably best just try to set it aside until you can talk."
"I do worry about people too much, because I understand them, except when I don't. And when I don't, it's like... " Fox looks around for words, but then Mei continues talking, and she chuffs amusement. "Yes. Running through scenarios is like foot-in-trap."
"Exactly, although I've fortunately managed never to step in a trap. At least not literally foot in trap." Mei laughs. "So far. Some day I'm sure I'll be animaling around and do so by accident. Just not yet. I could use some dinner. Are you hungry?"
"If you do, just call me, I'll break the trap," Fox assures." And then she pauses. "I like dinner. Let's have dinner, and more snuggles."
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