[Log] Of soup, coffee, and young children Who: Adriel Carson and Tomas When: 15 OCT Where: Forest/cafeteria What: Adriel finds a kid covered in blood. Clearly tomato soup is out. Warnings: Blood Open or Closed: Closed Observable: Maybe, especially in the cafeteria
The boy was curled up against a tree near the pond that the strange man had warned him had a monster of some kind on it, his not-quite-five-foot form seeming even smaller with the way he wrapped his arms around himself. The crayon he’d used to draw on the bark of the tree - nothing decipherable but squiggles there - was still clutched in one hand, and the blood that had splattered on his face, hair, and shirt was drying on him.
He knew he should get up and do something about that, but he was both too angry and too scared.
He knew, now, just how big a mistake that he’d made. He’d given away too much, and all it would take would be the man talking, and he’d be... completely screwed. Despite having a certain power, he couldn’t defend himself against a bunch of adults who fought for a living! He knew that. He didn’t know what to do, and all he could manage at the moment was crying.
A small blue crow pecked at him occasionally, but wasn’t yet flying for help since there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger. Just tears, and the occasional tug at the soft blue ribbon Tomas wore around his throat.
He was contemplating trying to draw that pain away, but he didn’t really have the focus for it at the moment. So he sat still, a sobbing heap of misery.
Adriel was out for a walk, exploring the grounds. He hadn’t gotten to the forest before, so he figured why not? There was likely nothing really to worry about. He hadn’t seen any dangerous animals, yet, and giant, bipedal lizards didn’t count. Technically, from what Adriel had heard, the orange lizard was actually a man.
Who knew?
But no lions, tigers, or bears to be worried about, so Adriel was wandering around with not even a knife on his person.
That was when he heard the sobs. Frowning, he changed his path, walking right toward the sounds. He froze when he saw the boy, frowning deeply as he went down on one knee, still several feet from him.
“Are you okay?”
Sort of a silly question considering the kid was covered in blood, but that could possibly not be his blood.
Tomas blinked, rather startled that someone had managed to creep up on him. He’d been trying so hard to be alert since he’d been in this world, but then today it had just... all fallen apart. He’d fallen apart. He tried to push himself backward, but that only resulted in pressing against the tree behind him.
One arm raked across his face, trying to clear his eyes, and then he turned them up toward the stranger. This man didn’t look scary, and he’d gotten down on Tomas’s level. The boy nodded, then shook his head, not really sure what the correct answer would be.
His voice came out in a harsh little croak, and the blue crow that had been hiding against his side started and flew up to land in the tree. “I-there was someone-he was very rude-but he didn’t...”
He hadn’t been hurt, no. But now his throat hurt very badly from the crying, and he was scared.
“You’re not hurt?” he asked, pulling a handkerchief from one of his many pockets on his cargo pants, edging a little closer. He was an interesting-looking boy, but Adriel said nothing, just held up the green cloth.
“You want me to get that stuff off of you?”
Tomas hesitated for a moment, his eyes measuring the man carefully. He considered the little bundle of crayons in his pocket, but Talent didn’t make a very good weapon in a lot of ways, at least not for him. If he could draw directly on the man’s skin, he could make him feel pain, but that wasn’t always enough of a deterrent, he’d learned.
But he wanted to make friends. He’d tried so hard to open up a little despite his fear.
The boy nodded, then slowly uncurled himself, moving into a proper sitting position with his legs crossed in front of him. He stowed the crayon he’d been clutching so desperately into the breast pocket of his overalls.
“Thank you,” he said, quietly. A wince followed the words.
“Here...” The redhead leaned forward a little more and pressed the rag to Tomas’ forehead, wiping the blood off gently with practiced hands.
“So what happened?” he asked quietly as he finished his work. He reached up with his free hand and ruffled his blue hair.
“Also, I adore your hair color. Very cool.”
Tomas tilted his head to the side, trying to understand. He’d never had anyone tell him that they liked his hair. Well, his mother had tried once, but she’s not quite managed to make it very believable. For everyone at school, it had been a mark of his failure. And afterward, it had been a signal for fear.
He blinked, and it took him a moment to speak. He cleared his throat, swallowed hard, took a couple of deep breaths. His voice came out very raspy.
“A stranger, he said he knew a friend of mine, and so I was trying to talk to him, but he.. didn’t want to. And maybe I was rude first, a little, but then... he’d killed a duck. And he just flung blood at me, and then-”
He cut the story short, for sake of his voice.
“He left.”
Adriel sighed softly, shaking his head in disapproval, and then ruffled Tomas’ hair again.
“Well, if he was going to be mean, it’s better that he left, right? I’m sorry he was mean to you.”
And there was no other word for what the man had done. Throwing duck blood on someone was terribly mean.
“You want some tea or something?” He needed something for his throat, clearly.
Tomas licked his lips. At least now there was no blood on his face to accidentally taste. That had not been good. He didn’t even really relish the taste of blood, exactly, but he’d cultivated the pretense of it too well. Like many of his other “lies”, it wasn’t entirely false anymore.
He reached out a hand to the man, gave another little nod. The blue ribbon at his throat shifted with the movement, showing just the edge of an old scar there. He didn’t notice, too distraught to realize it was a little loose.
“Yes, please.”
He paused again, for just a second, and then added, “I’m Tomas.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” the redhead said with a soft smile, easily helping Tomas to his feet as he went up, himself. “My name is Adriel.”
Tomas couldn’t feel anything strange about this one, but then he’d already learned that his senses were malfunctioning terribly here. He’d failed to pick up on any sort of Talent from a man he’d seen in the common room, even though that man had been floating about the ground and moving far too fast to be properly human. Still, he couldn't help the internal feeling of relief.
He gave the hand in his own a little squeeze once he was on his feet, then looked around, waving an arm toward a bird still waiting in the tree above. The signal brought the bird down, and the small crow - small enough that Itachi had held it in his hands - landed on Tomas’s shoulder, bright blue feathers a few shades darker than his hair.
“This is...” Tomas coughed, then wrinkled his nose and tried again. “Lady Arabella.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Lady Arabella,” Adriel said kindly to the crow, making eye contact as best as possible with an animal with eyes on the sides of its head.
“Come on, you know where the cafeteria is, don’t you? I keep getting lost trying to find it.” He laughed. It was true; the last two times he had tried to find the cafeteria, he had ended up on the other end of the building or out a door that didn’t help him any.
“And what do you want while you’re there?”
Tomas beamed. He was immediately more inclined to trust people who were kind of his friends. (Especially those of the stuffed-toy or animal variety.) He waved a hand in the direction he’d come from when he came to the pond, then nodded slowly.
He knew where the cafeteria was, of course. It was one of the first things he’d learned.
He pursed his lips as he started walking, considering whether to answer the question or not. The whole speaking thing was difficult at the moment. He wondered sometimes if it was the injury itself or the crude way his friend had healed it that had caused his difficult with speech sometimes, but it didn’t really matter. If Dan hadn’t healed Tomas, he would have simply died from the slit throat.
He finally gave another little cough and then spoke quietly.
“Coffee? It’s warm. And soup. I want soup.”
Coffee? Did a young boy really need to be drinking coffee? Adriel didn’t allow himself to question that aloud, though, as the kid seemed rather confident that he wanted it—and Tomas was neither Adriel’s son nor his student.
“What kind of soup? Chicken? Tomato? Beef?”
Tomas frowned. The idea of tomato soup when he’d just had blood all over him wasn’t a particularly nice one. Perhaps it was a silly association, but he still didn’t want a whole bowl of red stuff to eat.
“Chicken soup,” he said, after a moment. Then he turned his head to look at the man beside him again, giving him a long curious look. The reddish hair wasn’t that strange, though it wasn’t something Tomas saw every day at home. The fact that he was only a few inches taller than Tomas himself - along with the freckles! - made him seem much less threatening.
Tomas stepped a little closer to him as they walked, then spoke again.
“I like chicken soup.”
“Oh, I love chicken soup as well,” he said with a broad grin, reaching over to ruffle Tomas’ hair as he stepped a little closer. He did love the color. Adriel’s dark red hair was very common in his world, or at least wasn’t that rare. Rarely did he see someone with unnatural colors like this bright blue. “Do they make good soup? I’ve had a couple sandwiches since I’ve gotten here, but no soup.”
Soup sounded good for lunch, though. The more Adriel talked about it, the more his stomach growled.
“The soup is good,” Tomas said, rubbing his head against the hand cheerfully, enjoying the petting as always. He felt much more comfortable now that they were up and moving. He even went so far as to slide an arm around the man.
“I eat soup a lot. I have problems with my voice sometimes, and it helps. I like warm things to drink too, like coffee and cocoa and tea.”
The fact that the young boy was cuddling up to him just touched Adriel’s heart. He rested his hand on his shoulder, giving him a small squeeze, and laughed at his words, just soft, playful.
“Well, I can cook, but I’m not the best cook in the world, and I can make one mean cup of coffee,” he said with a nod. “Of the three, I like coffee best. I drink a lot of it.”
His favorite drink, however, had to be a pretty-in-pink sangria, but he wasn’t going to talk about alcohol--or drink alcohol--around a kid.
Tomas turned to look at Adriel, and then gave him a very solemn look.
“Good coffee is better than all the gourmet food ever.”
Of course, he couldn’t really say that from experience. Gourmet food was sort of an abstract concept for him, since finding food that was good was enough of a problem sometimes in his world. And he mostly ate things that he got through work, or from the street vendors when he could get away with disguising himself to go.
“I agree,” Adriel said rather emphatically, nodding enthusiastically. “I’d rather have good coffee and average food--as long as it’s edible--than good food and nasty coffee any day.”
And that came from not having a lot of money, himself. He had just recently graduated college, after all, and a teacher’s salary wasn’t all that great. Even still, it was better than when he had been in college. Often, he had had to choose between food and coffee--and too often he chose coffee.
Tomas giggled, then shook his head a little.
“It’s nice to meet someone who agrees. People seem to like to tell me that I shouldn’t have it, but I love coffee. It makes me feel so... energetic. And happy. I like being happy.”
He wrinkled his nose, reached up to push his hair out of his eyes. The front of his hair still felt a little sticky. That wasn’t a happy thing.
“You are rather young to be drinking coffee, but--” he shrugged. “--really, it’s up to you. I’m sure that you can choose for yourself whether you want coffee or not, so what’s the point in telling you not to have it?” Adriel smiled and shrugged again. “I mean, really.”
Anyway, Adriel was neither Tomas’ teacher nor his father.
“Not to mention, around here, it’s nice to be alert.”
Tomas nodded, deciding that he liked the man even more. He gave a happy little wiggle that was worthy of a puppy.
“I don’t think it’s going to stunt my growth or something silly like that.”
There was a personal joke there, and his lips turned up a little more.
“And being alert is good here. There’s all kinds of people, and some of them are... really weird.” He started to speak again, then grimaced, his sore throat kicking up again. He gave a little nod toward a door into the building, then started toward it.
“I don’t think it stunts your growth,” Adriel said with a frown, shaking his head. “But if it does, it’s definitely worth it! The rich, dark flavor. Do you like cream and sugar in yours or do you like it black? I like mine with milk.”
When Tomas said that people were weird, here, Adriel laughed hard.
“Have you seen the bipedal orange lizard?”
“I have! Very weird.” Tomas shook his head. “And then there’s just lots of people from different worlds who behave in really weird ways, or have strange abilities, and it’s just... kind of overwhelming.”
Tomas found himself excitedly talking again, even though he knew he’d regret it. He sighed, scratched at the ribbon at his neck, and then shook his head again.
“I like all the coffee. With everything or nothing. If I can have as much as I want, I’ll put lots of things in. But if it’s limited, I’ll just have it black.”
“I agree,” Adriel said with a chuckle. “It gets very tiring, if you ask me. I never know what to expect from people here.”
Except when he was decked by some girl for hitting on the wrong guy. Now that had been funny and very much what he was used to, as was the sex, the rejection, the playfulness. Even this child with the strange hair was different.
“Well, you can have as much as you want tonight, if that’s what you want to do. I like it with milk and only milk, lots of it. It has to be this creamy brown color or I won’t drink it.”
And Bailey’s alcoholic creamer only made it better.
Tomas giggled. “It’s good that way sometimes. I’m not very picky though. And back home there isn’t always milk anyway, except the tinned stuff. So I’d go without coffee sometimes if I were that picky about it.”
He gave a little tug at Adriel’s arm as he brought him the last little bit to the cafeteria, grinning excitedly as they went in. His usual look around was rather sharp - making sure no one he had pegged a serious threat was around - but it looked fairly clear.
“Here, see, this is the one place I’m definitely not going to forget how to get to.”
“There’s almost always milk or some kind of powder creamer in my world,” Adriel said, a point for comparison. When they went around the corner to the cafeteria, he gasped and nodded. Ah yes, that was how you got to the food.
“I can’t believe I forgot.”
Tomas smiled, but didn’t say anything further for the moment. He had already spoken more than enough with a sore throat, and he wanted to get his coffee and soup and have a seat. So he simply tugged at Adriel, pulling him into the room, and went up to order from the drone.
It was only after he had his order in that he grinned over his shoulder at the man with him, cheerfully.
Adriel quieted down as well once he got his food and coffee, holding the steaming cup in his hand as he balanced his tray on the other, following Tomas to his choice of seats, then settling down with him.
Tomas gave another smile as they settled into the table, turning his chair to rest against a wall as he always did, sitting a little sideways on it, with his legs drawn up under him. The position was a little awkward for eating soup, but it made him feel safer, so he did it anyway.
He didn’t speak again until he’d managed a few sips of coffee and spoonfuls of soup, then he gave a little happy sigh.
“That’s much better. I should be more careful with my voice.”
“You can’t talk much?” Adriel asked curiously, sipping at spoonfuls of his soup, allowing his own coffee to cool. His own legs had curled up underneath him.
Tomas took another couple of spoons of soup before he responded. His eyes were on Adriel’s face, as if he was trying to decide something. What he wanted to know was how much he could trust the man, but that wasn’t always apparent.
He shrugged after a second, reached for a cracker, and held it up for the crow that was currently sitting on his shoulder. She took it in her beak, then hopped to an empty chair at the table to eat it, which was preferably to spreading it across the table, he decided.
“If I get stressed out or excited or talk too much, it hurts. And eventually my voice will stop working altogether. I’m not sure... the medical treatment where I live isn’t all that good, but I had an injury and my friend - who wasn’t all that experienced - treated it. So the inside of my throat is kind of a mess.”
He pointed to the blue ribbon he wore around his neck.
“Oh well that stinks,” Adriel said, scrunching his face up to stick his tongue out childishly. “I wonder if they can help you here? They might be able to. I don’t know anything about the medicine that they use, though, so they might not be able to.”
But for a child that young to not be able to talk...well that just sucked.
Tomas shook his head. “I’d rather not.”
He flushed, realizing only after he’d said it that it would be a hard thing to explain, especially since he wasn’t telling anyone his real age or what he did for a living or anything much about his current life. He’d been playing the “I’m still in school” card all along, and letting people draw their own conclusions about his age.
He shrugged his shoulders, looked down into his bowl of soup, then took another couple of spoonfuls before explaining.
“I mean, it’s kind of silly not to want to be better, but before it happened, I never slowed down. And... I guess I got used to it already.”
The wound must have been rather old if Tomas had gotten used to it and the consequences. Adriel held his tongue on this, mainly because he had burned his tongue on his soup.
But Tomas was good company, so Adriel continued speaking with him a little at a time until he got tired, his soup and coffee long empty.