Yvette, Shiro - last Friday lunchtime
Nov. 24th, 2006 01:33 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsThe day after Thanksgiving, with large numbers of students still absent or digesting, two of the non-Americans meet over lunch. Shiro provides some advice that proves invaluable.
Her food was problematic.
Yvette sighed, a small, frustrated noise, as she looked at her plate. Thanksgiving leftovers that Dani had been kind enough to put together for her - turkey, stuffing, mashed potato, peas, carrots. And a slice of pumpkin pie, which looked strange but she'd been assured was good, so maybe it was like cookie dough. Half the students were still away with their families, the other half were either sleeping off yesterday's meal still or lying low.
She contemplated the cutlery. Forks were awkward at best, dangerous at most - the length of her fingers meant she wasn't able to grip very well, and once she'd come close to sticking her talon in her eye. Knives were unneccesary, when you came equipped with a set of your own. Long-handled spoons were better, but she still managed to spill as much as she ate, as was evidenced by the scattering of peas on the table around her. Glancing around, she peeled off one glove and delicately speared a piece of carrot. Luckily it was firm enough to hold together and she popped it in her mouth.
It was going to be a very long lunch.
Was there anything better than a four day weekend? Shiro mused as he entered the kitchen. He finally had time to sleep, eat, and spend some time with his sister. He hadn't been doing much of that lately, given that he spent a good chunk of his waking hours on public transportation to get to and from the city for classes. He'd forgotten how nice it was to simply relax. And leftover turkey was a significant part to said relaxation.
He scooped some meat into a bowl, heating it up under his own power while he fetched a set of chopsticks from the drawer. He licked his lips as the gravy started to boil and sat down across from Yvette. He acknowledged her with a small smile and brief nod before gleefully popping a small piece of piping hot turkey into his mouth.
Yvette has been trying to spear a pea with her index finger as Shiro sat down - she couldn't quite get the angle right, and the vegetable ended up zinging across the counter, bouncing to a stop against Shiro's bowl. "Oh!" she exclaimed, embarrassed. "Please to be excusing me."
"Hmm?" inquired Shiro, mouth full of turkey. He gobbled it down and looked at the pea. "Yur mouf innt hur," he said. And then, like a person with some semblance of manners, he chewed and swallowed his food before continuing. "Having trouble?"
She nodded - if she'd been able to blush, her head would be on fire by now. "My hands, they are being... difficult," she admitted. Then she also remembered her manners. "My name is Yvette. I am being a new student here. Please, what is your name? Are you being a student also?"
"My name is Shiro." He offered her a brief nod before returning to his food. "I was a student here, but I finished almost a year and a half ago. I attend university now. I think you arrived here at a time when I . . . was not well."
"Oh, I am sorry, that you were being sick," she replied, eyes flaring a little brighter. "I am hoping you are being better now, yes?" She took another stab at her food - literally, in her case - managing to slice off a small fragment of turkey and awkwardly convey it to her mouth.
"It's a long road to recovery," he replied sadly, almost mantra-esque. "So those fingers of yours, I suppose that you cannot change their size to properly hold utensils? How have you been eating until now?"
She blinked at the almost sing-song tone and then shook her head. "I am not having the control, no," she said. "And it is usually being someone to help me, or we are finding things that are being easier for me to eat with the fingers. Back at home, my mother..." She lowered her gaze and her voice, shamefaced. "She is feeding me. Like a baby."
Shiro inwardly grimmaced. How shameful. But his countenance was not pitiful, rather sympathetic. When she reached onto her plate to grab another slice of turkey, he looked down at the utensils he held in his hand and smiled. "I have an idea. Have you ever seen these before?" he asked, holding up his chopsticks.
Yvette shook her head again, eyes widening slightly in curiosity. She'd seen him using the strange sticks to eat, and wondered. "No. Please, what are they being?"
"In English, they are called chopsticks. Hashi in Japanese." Reaching into his bowl, Shiro delicately picked up a small piece of turkey. "In east Asia, we use them instead of forks and spoons. They are rather simple to use. Your fingers are like hashi, ne?"
Blinking, Yvette watched Shiro using the chopsticks, and then looked at her bared hand. Moving the long extensions experimentally, she made a soft 'ah' noise. "Please, Mr. Shiro, can you be teaching me? To be using the hands like this chopsticks?"
Shiro blushed and put down his bowl. "Just Shiro, please," he requested, all the while remembering how he was one of the students who used to address Logan with a title. "You need to extend your thumb and your forefinger and then pick up your food with the tips of your fingers. Try."
Folding the rest of her fingers carefully out of the way, Yvette did as she was instructed on a piece of carrot. After a couple of tries at the unfamiliar movement, she managed a grip. Her talons bit into the vegetable slightly, and she eased off a little. Looking up at Shiro, her strange blue eyes fairly blazed with pride as she held up the carrot triumphantly. "This is being right, yes?" she said, pleased with herself. "I am thanking you very much. This is being a very good idea!"
"Very good. Now try this: keep your thumb stationary and just move your forefinger. Like this." He returned to his bowl to demonstrate, holding a clump of stuffing with the chopsticks. "Moving both makes a mess. And try not to spear your food either. It's considered impolite."
Popping the carrot in her mouth, Yvette attempted what Shiro said on her own clump of stuffing. Just moving the forefinger made things so much easier, she realised - there was less movement to control. "You are being from... Japanese, yes?" she asked as she manoevered the stuffing carefully towards her mouth - she'd been wondering how she was going to eat it, before. "Before you are coming here?"
"Japan, yes," he corrected. He wished he had some rice to show her how to eat more complicated foods. "I believed I heard that you are from Kosovo. Why did you cross the Atlantic?"
"Kosovo, yes." Yvette nodded, then paused as she considered how to answer the question. "The first time I am coming here, I am being... how you say? Rescue? Bad things are happening, but I am not remembering them. Yet." Just the occasional flash of the children's home in Pristina so far. "The second time, I am coming her for to control my power. So I am not being hurting people with my skin."
"You speak English well for a foreigner," he commented. "So your power . . . anou, mutation" - better to use the proper term, he felt, given that her uniqueness seemed to fall more in the realm of ouch than the realm of power - "is your skin and your fingers? What do they do?"
"I am learning the English in school in Kosovo," she told him, wondering if she was up to peas yet. She liked peas, but they had become her nemesis. "And Mr. Professor is helping me, when I am first here and not-awake, with the telepathy, yes?" Carefully, she scooped up a pea, holding it delicately between her talons. "And it is my skin, yes. Mr. Haller is saying it is a... how you say? Defence machine? I am being afraid and hurt, so my skin, it is being hard and sharp to protect me." She ate the pea and then held up her bare forefinger, before drawing it gently across the turkey on her plate. It sliced effortlessly. "My feet are being the same, but Mr. Forge, he is making clothings that fix themselves and stop me from cutting." She tilted her head at him. "What is being your... mutation, please?" There was only a slight stumble over the word.
"I am an energy manipulator, like Mister Summers." Shiro's hand lit up briefly to demonstrate. "Actually, more like Angel. You know her, right? I think she is your age. She and I have very similar powers."
Yvette's eyes lit up and she nodded eagerly. "Angel, yes, she is living in the suite with me and Laurie and Sooraya and Miss Jennie. And Miss Crystal. Angel is showing me the food fight and the slipping in socks." A giggle escaped, making the doll-like face suddenly much more human. "They are being my good friends. Are you having good friends here too, M... um Shiro?"
Shiro found himself gazing curiously at the girl. It was weird to hear the mirth in her voice when her face was frozen in an emotionless expression. "I used to. I am very close with Mister Summers' younger brother, Alex. But he moved to Hawaii after graduating high school." And then there was Clarice, but that was a whole other issue altogether. And not something to traumatize a little girl with.
"It is being sad, to be away from your friends," Yvette said, sympathetically, heedless of Shiro's look as she applied herself to eating, still occasionally dropping food but by no means as much as before. "When I am going back to Kosovo, I am missing my friends. But now I am here, to be learning to control my mutation and to be going to school. I am missing my mother, but I am to be seeing her soon. When I am being safe." It was said matter-of-factly, as if there was no doubt she would get control of her powers eventually. "Are you to be making other friends too? It is good to be quiet, but not so good to be alone."
That question deserved a moment of reflection. Did he have other friends besides Alex? Doug and Jamie were gone. Clarice was unclassifiable. He was at least friendly with Tommy, Kyle, and Angel. Marie was probably the only person left whom he could call a friend with any degree of certainty. "I suppose," was his response. "If not here, then at the school I attend now."
It wasn't the best answer in the world, but Yvette held her tongue. It wasn't her place to try and fix other people, especially other people she'd just met. But she marked Shiro's name on a mental list, and resolved to keep an eye on him. People needed that. That and apples. "What are you being studying, at the university?" she asked instead, honestly curious is knowing more about the helpful boy from Japan.
"Art." Which still sounded funny to Shiro. Not just the part where he is actually pursuing higher education, but that it's not something particularly profitable or marketable. Just enjoyable. "Specifically cartooning. I like to draw." And that comment only made him feel a little more uncomfortable. What was he, five years old?
If Yvette thought it was childish, it certainly didn't show in the way her eyes shone and she clapped her hands together, delighted. "Shiro is being very clever!" she exclaimed. "The drawing, he can be very difficult. Back in Kosovo, they are making the cartoons, to be, how you say... political? To be telling a truth about my country. Here, they are saying cartoons are being for the children, but they are being important in other places, because the making of the films is so expensive. The cartoons, they are being easier."
"In Japan, we call our animation anime, and it is for everyone. But that is not what I am interested in. I . . ." He looked around the empty kitchen, as if someone were going to jump out and hear the confession he was about to make. "I want to draw comic books. Super heroes, ne? Like Superman. Or maybe design video games." He'd only ever told this to Alex and Clarice. Usually when asked what he'd do with his BFA, he wouldn't respond because he was too embarrassed.
Pausing in her eating, she tiled her head at him again. It was obvious he was embarrassed about it from the confiding tone, but it was also obvious something he wanted very much to do. "It is sounding very interesting," she said. "Why are you wanting to draw the super heroes?" she asked, only honest interest in her tone - without facial mannerisms, she'd discovered she had to use her voice to give people cues.
Shiro shrugged. Because if he couldn't be one then he could at least create one. "People like superheroes. There is something magical about it. All cultures have stories about people of valor who do extraordinary things, ne? They always fascinate me." He busied himself with the rest of his meal to hide the red creeping up his face.
Yvette liked him, she decided. His voice was soft and his manner polite and non-threatening, but most of all he seemed to be a bit of a dreamer, like she was. "The heroes, they are being important, yes," she said, with an emphatic little nod that sent the barbs of her hair rattling slightly. "Back in Kosovo, we are having many stories of heroes. Perhaps I can be telling you one day?." She ducked her head a little shyly. "Maybe you could be drawing them? To make the practice?"
"That would be nice." Shiro smiled at her. Yvette reminded him a little bit of his sister. Except that Leyu was loud and outgoing. But still that sweet, tender, invitation to honesty.
Girls were going to be the death of him some day.
Her food was problematic.
Yvette sighed, a small, frustrated noise, as she looked at her plate. Thanksgiving leftovers that Dani had been kind enough to put together for her - turkey, stuffing, mashed potato, peas, carrots. And a slice of pumpkin pie, which looked strange but she'd been assured was good, so maybe it was like cookie dough. Half the students were still away with their families, the other half were either sleeping off yesterday's meal still or lying low.
She contemplated the cutlery. Forks were awkward at best, dangerous at most - the length of her fingers meant she wasn't able to grip very well, and once she'd come close to sticking her talon in her eye. Knives were unneccesary, when you came equipped with a set of your own. Long-handled spoons were better, but she still managed to spill as much as she ate, as was evidenced by the scattering of peas on the table around her. Glancing around, she peeled off one glove and delicately speared a piece of carrot. Luckily it was firm enough to hold together and she popped it in her mouth.
It was going to be a very long lunch.
Was there anything better than a four day weekend? Shiro mused as he entered the kitchen. He finally had time to sleep, eat, and spend some time with his sister. He hadn't been doing much of that lately, given that he spent a good chunk of his waking hours on public transportation to get to and from the city for classes. He'd forgotten how nice it was to simply relax. And leftover turkey was a significant part to said relaxation.
He scooped some meat into a bowl, heating it up under his own power while he fetched a set of chopsticks from the drawer. He licked his lips as the gravy started to boil and sat down across from Yvette. He acknowledged her with a small smile and brief nod before gleefully popping a small piece of piping hot turkey into his mouth.
Yvette has been trying to spear a pea with her index finger as Shiro sat down - she couldn't quite get the angle right, and the vegetable ended up zinging across the counter, bouncing to a stop against Shiro's bowl. "Oh!" she exclaimed, embarrassed. "Please to be excusing me."
"Hmm?" inquired Shiro, mouth full of turkey. He gobbled it down and looked at the pea. "Yur mouf innt hur," he said. And then, like a person with some semblance of manners, he chewed and swallowed his food before continuing. "Having trouble?"
She nodded - if she'd been able to blush, her head would be on fire by now. "My hands, they are being... difficult," she admitted. Then she also remembered her manners. "My name is Yvette. I am being a new student here. Please, what is your name? Are you being a student also?"
"My name is Shiro." He offered her a brief nod before returning to his food. "I was a student here, but I finished almost a year and a half ago. I attend university now. I think you arrived here at a time when I . . . was not well."
"Oh, I am sorry, that you were being sick," she replied, eyes flaring a little brighter. "I am hoping you are being better now, yes?" She took another stab at her food - literally, in her case - managing to slice off a small fragment of turkey and awkwardly convey it to her mouth.
"It's a long road to recovery," he replied sadly, almost mantra-esque. "So those fingers of yours, I suppose that you cannot change their size to properly hold utensils? How have you been eating until now?"
She blinked at the almost sing-song tone and then shook her head. "I am not having the control, no," she said. "And it is usually being someone to help me, or we are finding things that are being easier for me to eat with the fingers. Back at home, my mother..." She lowered her gaze and her voice, shamefaced. "She is feeding me. Like a baby."
Shiro inwardly grimmaced. How shameful. But his countenance was not pitiful, rather sympathetic. When she reached onto her plate to grab another slice of turkey, he looked down at the utensils he held in his hand and smiled. "I have an idea. Have you ever seen these before?" he asked, holding up his chopsticks.
Yvette shook her head again, eyes widening slightly in curiosity. She'd seen him using the strange sticks to eat, and wondered. "No. Please, what are they being?"
"In English, they are called chopsticks. Hashi in Japanese." Reaching into his bowl, Shiro delicately picked up a small piece of turkey. "In east Asia, we use them instead of forks and spoons. They are rather simple to use. Your fingers are like hashi, ne?"
Blinking, Yvette watched Shiro using the chopsticks, and then looked at her bared hand. Moving the long extensions experimentally, she made a soft 'ah' noise. "Please, Mr. Shiro, can you be teaching me? To be using the hands like this chopsticks?"
Shiro blushed and put down his bowl. "Just Shiro, please," he requested, all the while remembering how he was one of the students who used to address Logan with a title. "You need to extend your thumb and your forefinger and then pick up your food with the tips of your fingers. Try."
Folding the rest of her fingers carefully out of the way, Yvette did as she was instructed on a piece of carrot. After a couple of tries at the unfamiliar movement, she managed a grip. Her talons bit into the vegetable slightly, and she eased off a little. Looking up at Shiro, her strange blue eyes fairly blazed with pride as she held up the carrot triumphantly. "This is being right, yes?" she said, pleased with herself. "I am thanking you very much. This is being a very good idea!"
"Very good. Now try this: keep your thumb stationary and just move your forefinger. Like this." He returned to his bowl to demonstrate, holding a clump of stuffing with the chopsticks. "Moving both makes a mess. And try not to spear your food either. It's considered impolite."
Popping the carrot in her mouth, Yvette attempted what Shiro said on her own clump of stuffing. Just moving the forefinger made things so much easier, she realised - there was less movement to control. "You are being from... Japanese, yes?" she asked as she manoevered the stuffing carefully towards her mouth - she'd been wondering how she was going to eat it, before. "Before you are coming here?"
"Japan, yes," he corrected. He wished he had some rice to show her how to eat more complicated foods. "I believed I heard that you are from Kosovo. Why did you cross the Atlantic?"
"Kosovo, yes." Yvette nodded, then paused as she considered how to answer the question. "The first time I am coming here, I am being... how you say? Rescue? Bad things are happening, but I am not remembering them. Yet." Just the occasional flash of the children's home in Pristina so far. "The second time, I am coming her for to control my power. So I am not being hurting people with my skin."
"You speak English well for a foreigner," he commented. "So your power . . . anou, mutation" - better to use the proper term, he felt, given that her uniqueness seemed to fall more in the realm of ouch than the realm of power - "is your skin and your fingers? What do they do?"
"I am learning the English in school in Kosovo," she told him, wondering if she was up to peas yet. She liked peas, but they had become her nemesis. "And Mr. Professor is helping me, when I am first here and not-awake, with the telepathy, yes?" Carefully, she scooped up a pea, holding it delicately between her talons. "And it is my skin, yes. Mr. Haller is saying it is a... how you say? Defence machine? I am being afraid and hurt, so my skin, it is being hard and sharp to protect me." She ate the pea and then held up her bare forefinger, before drawing it gently across the turkey on her plate. It sliced effortlessly. "My feet are being the same, but Mr. Forge, he is making clothings that fix themselves and stop me from cutting." She tilted her head at him. "What is being your... mutation, please?" There was only a slight stumble over the word.
"I am an energy manipulator, like Mister Summers." Shiro's hand lit up briefly to demonstrate. "Actually, more like Angel. You know her, right? I think she is your age. She and I have very similar powers."
Yvette's eyes lit up and she nodded eagerly. "Angel, yes, she is living in the suite with me and Laurie and Sooraya and Miss Jennie. And Miss Crystal. Angel is showing me the food fight and the slipping in socks." A giggle escaped, making the doll-like face suddenly much more human. "They are being my good friends. Are you having good friends here too, M... um Shiro?"
Shiro found himself gazing curiously at the girl. It was weird to hear the mirth in her voice when her face was frozen in an emotionless expression. "I used to. I am very close with Mister Summers' younger brother, Alex. But he moved to Hawaii after graduating high school." And then there was Clarice, but that was a whole other issue altogether. And not something to traumatize a little girl with.
"It is being sad, to be away from your friends," Yvette said, sympathetically, heedless of Shiro's look as she applied herself to eating, still occasionally dropping food but by no means as much as before. "When I am going back to Kosovo, I am missing my friends. But now I am here, to be learning to control my mutation and to be going to school. I am missing my mother, but I am to be seeing her soon. When I am being safe." It was said matter-of-factly, as if there was no doubt she would get control of her powers eventually. "Are you to be making other friends too? It is good to be quiet, but not so good to be alone."
That question deserved a moment of reflection. Did he have other friends besides Alex? Doug and Jamie were gone. Clarice was unclassifiable. He was at least friendly with Tommy, Kyle, and Angel. Marie was probably the only person left whom he could call a friend with any degree of certainty. "I suppose," was his response. "If not here, then at the school I attend now."
It wasn't the best answer in the world, but Yvette held her tongue. It wasn't her place to try and fix other people, especially other people she'd just met. But she marked Shiro's name on a mental list, and resolved to keep an eye on him. People needed that. That and apples. "What are you being studying, at the university?" she asked instead, honestly curious is knowing more about the helpful boy from Japan.
"Art." Which still sounded funny to Shiro. Not just the part where he is actually pursuing higher education, but that it's not something particularly profitable or marketable. Just enjoyable. "Specifically cartooning. I like to draw." And that comment only made him feel a little more uncomfortable. What was he, five years old?
If Yvette thought it was childish, it certainly didn't show in the way her eyes shone and she clapped her hands together, delighted. "Shiro is being very clever!" she exclaimed. "The drawing, he can be very difficult. Back in Kosovo, they are making the cartoons, to be, how you say... political? To be telling a truth about my country. Here, they are saying cartoons are being for the children, but they are being important in other places, because the making of the films is so expensive. The cartoons, they are being easier."
"In Japan, we call our animation anime, and it is for everyone. But that is not what I am interested in. I . . ." He looked around the empty kitchen, as if someone were going to jump out and hear the confession he was about to make. "I want to draw comic books. Super heroes, ne? Like Superman. Or maybe design video games." He'd only ever told this to Alex and Clarice. Usually when asked what he'd do with his BFA, he wouldn't respond because he was too embarrassed.
Pausing in her eating, she tiled her head at him again. It was obvious he was embarrassed about it from the confiding tone, but it was also obvious something he wanted very much to do. "It is sounding very interesting," she said. "Why are you wanting to draw the super heroes?" she asked, only honest interest in her tone - without facial mannerisms, she'd discovered she had to use her voice to give people cues.
Shiro shrugged. Because if he couldn't be one then he could at least create one. "People like superheroes. There is something magical about it. All cultures have stories about people of valor who do extraordinary things, ne? They always fascinate me." He busied himself with the rest of his meal to hide the red creeping up his face.
Yvette liked him, she decided. His voice was soft and his manner polite and non-threatening, but most of all he seemed to be a bit of a dreamer, like she was. "The heroes, they are being important, yes," she said, with an emphatic little nod that sent the barbs of her hair rattling slightly. "Back in Kosovo, we are having many stories of heroes. Perhaps I can be telling you one day?." She ducked her head a little shyly. "Maybe you could be drawing them? To make the practice?"
"That would be nice." Shiro smiled at her. Yvette reminded him a little bit of his sister. Except that Leyu was loud and outgoing. But still that sweet, tender, invitation to honesty.
Girls were going to be the death of him some day.
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Date: 2006-11-28 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-28 07:03 pm (UTC)