xp_logs | Alani & Haller | Chick Delivery

xp_loa posting in

After signing for an unexpected package, Haller delivers it to Alani, and of course a chicken has to take a swing at him for the intrusion.

Jim held the cheeping box at arms' length as he walked, gripped with an odd sense of anxiety. Why had he signed for this thing? Was he supposed to have done something as soon as he came in possession of the package? Could they breathe in there? There were air holes cut in the box, and clearly the contents had survived this long, but deep down he couldn't believe you were supposed to ship live poultry via USPS Priority Mail.

He swore the peeping was getting more urgent.

At least the chicken coop was relatively close. He hoped someone had been expecting the delivery, because if not he was out of ideas.

"Hello? Kyle?" Help?

Alani exited the chicken coop with the slow, ease of a person who just woke up, a hoodie that was obviously not her own housing a fully grown chicken in addition to her. The sleepiness immediately left as the chirps hit her, face brightening as she finally rushed over, to the annoyance of the lavender. “The Wyandottes are already here? Oh man, thank you, thank you, thank you! Here, can I,” her attention turned briefly to excavating the hen, “Audrey, baby, we’re gonna have to switch places.”

It took a moment, and the chicken did not seem pleased as she was held out in trade to the man. “Could you hold her while I get these in their brooder?”

"I-- okay." Jim was still trying to work out if keeping chickens in your shirt was normal even as the woman slid one of her arms beneath the cardboard box and somehow maneuvered the hen into the crook of his arm with another. Before he could move she'd already pivoted away, switch complete. He no longer had a chirping box to contend with, but he wasn't sure the single, full-grown chicken was an improvement. The telepath gingerly shifted the chicken from the cradle of his elbow and held it out in front of him. It stared at him accusingly, feet scratching at the air.

What do I do with this?

Her thanks were muffled as she once again disappeared into the coop, the chorus of peeps following. Outside, held aloft, the chicken stared up at him, unimpressed with what she saw and colder than she’d been. He offered none of the treats she was accustomed to in such times and made no move to rectify any of the grievances she found herself experiencing. Still her feet sought purchase, more urgently as a breeze ruffled her feathers. Her beak shot out.

Of course that was when Alani returned. Suddenly she was running to grab the chicken and shove her into the enclosure so she could survey the damage. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry! She’s never done that before! Are you okay?” Why? How? Did she get him bad?

"Yeah, it's fine," Jim said, his mouth entirely on autopilot because in the back of his mind Cyndi had burst out in hysterical laughter. He probed his left cheekbone with one hand. It stung, but no skin appeared to have been broken by the peck. However, one talon had raked the side of his mouth, scoring a very light scratch across his bottom lip.

The laughter was still going on. Jim sighed. Yes, thank you, Cyndi, getting a chicken to the face has already been logged in my journal of Things I'm Never Going To Live Down.

The hen, returned to her rightful kingdom, strutted away with a reproachful cluck.

“I’m so sorry, Audrey Henburn is usually my best girl, I never would’ve asked you to hold her if I thought she’d do that.” Like that made it better. Alani almost grabbed the man's face but stopped short. Boundaries and germs, she reminded herself, stepping back and digging around in her pockets for her tissue packet to offer him one for the wound. "This isn't how I wanted to meet you," she sighed, grabbing her belongings before locking up the coop. Audrey was taking a dust bath, unbothered by what was happening.

"Sooraya knows you so I was hoping to make a good impression, not get you mauled."

"Oh -- Alani, right?" He wasn't sure whether the marks on her face were tattoos or natural, here it could have been either, but they were a good tip-off. Jim grimaced and accepted the tissue. "Yeah, same here. Sorry, I think I wasn't holding her right. I'm not a big animal guy."

"Yeah, that's me." Another sigh of defeat, though she flashed a brief smile, before wilting back to a concerned bystander. "I'm so sorry, David, I shoulda shown you how to hold her instead of running away. The chicks are all settled so we should get that washed, they do, ya know, run around in some unsanitary spaces."

"That's probably a good idea. I don't really want to have to tell Jean about this." He followed her to the shed, eyeing the chickens warily. He had never really had the opportunity to look at once up close, and now he couldn't help but notice they had dinosaur eyes. He shook the thought away. "You're Sooraya's suitemate, right? She said it's been . . . five years?"

"Oh god, don't worry, I'm not going to parade you around." She couldn't stop laughing at the idea as she passed him items from the kit. At the mention of Sooraya, she beamed. "Oh, yes, well, I mean, I'll be going on being here about five, but Sooraya and I moved in together going on four? I couldn't do the living alone thing and her suitemate had moved out. Have you known her long? I know she worked with you and Muir, she only has good things to say about Moira."

Jim tore open a proffered antiseptic wipe and pressed it to his lip. "I met her when she first moved to the States, so I've known her for . . . damn. It has to have been at least fifteen years now." He shook his head in disbelief. "That's surreal. I used to help her with communication back when she was still learning English."

Alani was well aware that she was grinning like an idiot, taking the time he spoke to mouth fifteen in something like awe, before realizing he’d finished. “I wish I woulda been here and gotten to meet little Sooraya,” but that was a lifetime and a universe ago. “That’s awesome, I mean in the job and all but just fucking — wow, ya know. I know there was a whole history before I showed up, but still really trying to wrap my mind around the fact that there were, like, student-students here before, and Sooraya was one.” She shook her head with another laugh. “Sorry, gotta motor mouth, it’s what got me in trouble in the first place and sometimes still just automatic.”

Jim gave her a faint smile. "Don't worry about it. And yeah, it was strange, but the social landscape was a little different back then. Sooraya and I came here in . . . 2006? District X wasn't even a thing yet. If we heard about a mutant with nowhere else to go we just found an empty corner and built a program around them." He crumpled the wipe and stuck the trash in his pocket, less flustered now that he wasn't being assaulted by poultry. He tilted his head at the young woman. "How'd you end up here? Sooraya said you were outed, but not how you found the place."

"Everything was different back then. We're really working to build up District X now, and support more wide reaching programs, but I definitely see the pros in building programs around mutants in the middle of nowhere, I help with some of those still, but, I mean, I definitely like this shift." She dropped her eyes and hands to circle her left wrist like a bracelet with her right, before chuckling. "Ha, yeah, I used to be a pro-surfer, the outing happened when I was still a teen. M-Day, footage of me shredding debris got circulated. It actually took a few years for me to get here, I turned to activism after high school and then we got a mail bomb." She offered a 'what ya gonna do' shrug. "Shit happens, everyone's okay, but jokes on whoever did it, because now I've got more resources than ever."

Jim winced sympathetically. "That's right, we got here before a lot of social media caught on, too. And even as I say that I can feel myself aging to dust." It didn't help that Alani was also under thirty years old. Jack had always lived in the mindset of Older And Wiser Than You, but the further David got from that age the younger everyone looked. Logically, he knew Alani was probably in her mid twenties. Subjectively, he had the nagging suspicion that she wasn't even old enough to drink. He shook his head. "And yeah, I am glad things have improved since then, especially in terms of community resources. Sooraya mentioned the maternity box idea you two have been working on."

That earned a bit of a laugh as Alani raised a brow. "No, no, Sooraya's Dust. Okay, sorry, sorry, that was bad even for me. But, no, I get that, I even started with social media activism before talking in places, and I'm starting to feel a bit left behind, the whole going for a doctorate and doing other things more in this location doesn't help, but I still have some of my roots in Hawai'i and around the Pacific." She nodded again, more eagerly though at the talk of the boxes. "Oh, yes, though she's really the thought and drive behind them, I'm just an assistant. Helps that I used to work pretty exclusively with kids who couldn't go to school due to their mutations, before the center, so I know a number of parents and they know people who're about to become them."

Jim laughed. "Have you been taking your time-management tips from Sooraya, too?" It was difficult to tell through a disposition so sunny Jim felt he could have benefited from eclipse glasses, but there seemed to be some hesitation surrounding the subject of her background. While she'd breezed past it, he found it hard to believe Alani had no negative emotions associated with, say, being publicly exposed as a mutant and receiving a mail bomb. The telepath tucked this into the back of his mind for later and instead gestured to the coop. "So what about the chickens? Are they just a hobby to fill up your overwhelming free time?"

“I only learn from the very best.” She nodded sagely as she spoke. With the wound seemingly taken care of, she’d relaxed, now watching the man with interest, as his talk of her roommate touched on times she wanted to know about and she assumed that meant he also knew her co-chicken parent. Speaking of, she beamed at the mention of the shared brood. “Well, Kyle already had Yolko Ono, so I thought why not a couple of more. See, my grandma always used to have them running around on her land back home, they’re a great source of eggs for all the protein this place needs, and all the overflow can go to people that need ‘em. Now Kyle and I are working to shift their area, so we can garden it and have veggies and stuff too! And I’ll have you know I’m great at free time, I usually have a full half an hour of it uninterrupted at 5:30 in the morning.”

"I guess the extra protein is useful around h-" Jim trailed off as the name Yolko Ono finally invoked the memory of an earlier, unacknowledged detail. He blinked. "Sorry, did you call that chicken that attacked me 'Audrey Henburn'?"

Now it was Alani’s turn to blink, before slowly nodding. “Huh? Oh yeah, Audrey Henburn’s my special little girl, and I mean, I reckon if you ask around some people will call the girls other names, they’re all pretty good about knowing when you’re talking to them. We got Yolko Ono, Audrey Henburn, Eggatha Clucksie, Hen E. Erdrich, and we accidentally got a rooster in my first four pack so we have Dwayne the Cock Johnson. The four you dropped off are all girls, thankfully.” The smile edged on unsure, confused why he’d brought it up, but happy to explain the chickens to him.

Jim kept his expression neutral as Cyndi burst into exactly the type of laughter he expected from a sixteen year old. "That's . . . a lot of chickens," he said, having trouble coming up with anything more eloquent when his brain was clogged with giggles of Dwayne the Cock Johnson. He tried to refocus. "Those chicks -- is that how they come? Live in a box, I mean. I guess I just assumed you'd get eggs or something."

“And we still have more eggs than we know what to do with.” Alani was grinning again. “Oh yes, we could do fertilized eggs and sneak ‘em under a girl, but I was a bit nervous to do that with my abundance of free time and all that. They only hatched today, so I doubt they’ll have any trauma associated with being mailed, just gotta get used to their little brooder and the girls, then before ya know know it they’ll be laying and we’ll be even more overrun with eggs!” Excitement had brought a bounce to her, as she gazed lovingly at the coop.

And behind the chicken fence, Audrey clucked expectantly as they came back into view. If a chicken could sound disappointed, she surely was, and maybe there was a slight glare to her eyes as the man stepped out.

Alani's passion for the subject was almost enough to distract Jim from the mild horror of same-day chick deliveries. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to have your first significant memory be the inside of a USPS truck, but on the other hand that was probably just him anthropomorphizing.

"They do seem happy," he said, and they did, at least insofar as he could tell. A few hens were strutting around in the dirt outside the coop, and one of them was enthusiastically fluffing its feathers as it indulged in a dust-bath. He tried not to read too much into Audrey Henburn's continued presence. Chickens probably didn't plot revenge. Probably.

"I kinda wish I knew what they thought, but I reckon it's just wondering if there's any bugs around to snack on." A shrug as she overlooked her shared kingdom. "Sooraya likes her horses, and I like these little fake dinos, and thankfully neither of us has a living, breathing pet in the suite because I'd hate to imagine how sad it'd be."

Despite how grim the comment had veered, Alani laughed lightly, a grimace appearing at the thought before a lightbulb seemed to go off inside her head. "Oh! You were a counselor here, right? I don't wanna assume your plans, but I know we've got a pair of teens running and the center could always use whatever resources it can get. Don't force yourself, I know you're going for your PhD too, and if there's anything I can do to help, door's always open, my office is just in the chapel."

"That's an idea, actually." He wasn't sure of Shatterstar's opinion of animals, so perhaps something at the community center would suit him better, but the structure of routine responsibilities alone might help. More than that, though, Jim felt like Alani might be a good person to connect him with. She radiated the same warmth as Terry -- the sort of warmth even an angry teenaged boy found it difficult to repel, heterosexual or otherwise.

"Would you mind?" he asked the woman, momentarily forgetting the threat of stalking avian menace. "I've been working a little with Shatterstar. He might be interested."

Her smile froze a little as she cocked her head to the side, waiting to hear about the thought that had seemed to occur to David. At the question, though, Alani immediately nodded, partially from habit but more importantly for being able to do something to help at home, so to speak. "Of course! I'd love to help any way I can! Though, uh, probably not meeting me in the chapel then, there's a whole wormhole and just, wildass times tend to happen, so I'd prefer to not subject a kid to that."

"W-" She was stumbling for words now as her mind moved faster than her mouth. "What're you thinking? I'm happy to meet with him, or I could look at what's been shared of his files if you'd like before setting up a time and place."

"Um, probably not his files." With Alani also pursuing a PhD it was tempting, especially now that he had determined he wasn't a therapeutic fit, but Shatterstar hadn't consented to that. The boy would tell Alani himself if he felt so inclined. "If you've got any work at the community center he might be able to do, or even with the chickens, though . . . it might not help to give him options. Or hell, just offer to get him out of the mansion and into New York so he can see what's around him." Jim thought, but didn't say: Give him more people to connect with. Ones that aren't going to fuck him up like we can.

"Mkay," she took everything that had come out of his mouth in stride, already trying to figure out the best way to approach the teen. If anything, getting him to the center seemed like one of the best ideas, to make sure he could branch out and hopefully make connections. “I’ll reach out to him. I know we have another teen running around but I haven't met him, it'd probably be good to let them hang out with each other as well."

"The chickens..." She made a face. "With Audrey doing that to you I'm hesitant to have her around kids, but I'll talk to Kyle. We could always use help around if they're willing, especially because it'll be a whole summer project to get the zones set up!"

"Zones?" Jim glanced back in the direction of the gentle clucking, trying to recall anything he could about agriculture. "Like . . . crop rotation?"

That got an enthusiastic nod, as Alani motioned the area around the coop. “A lot like that, yeah! We wanna set up layered gardens and plots that would benefit from out clucky little girls looking for bugs and weeds. Of course that means sectioning places off until we can get everything set up, so maybe that’s why-“ She was fishing for a reason again and shoved that attempt back. “It’s a lot, honestly, but it’d be really great to have fruits and veg from the garden to cut back on costs, maybe some flowers.”

The older man glanced at the coop. It seemed safely fenced off. "If you're short-handed I can help out," he offered. "I don't have a lot of gardening experience, but I can follow instructions reasonably well." Animals may not have been his forte, but there was only so much that could go wrong with a tomato. He paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, "And telekinesis might be useful for some things."

"Oh! You're a psi!" And she'd said that louder than she'd thought. "It’s all a group effort around here for big things, so the more hands the better. I would love help, we would love help, whatever help we can get, once we've fully hashed the plans out, I'll reach out to you if you’d still like to help, and maybe the kids if they seem interested in it. Man, I wish my powers were more useful for these kinds of things, mostly I just use 'em to break down compost more.” A beat before she offered, “Human atomizer primarily, with the ability to shift to an underwater physiology, which funnily enough happens to be the reason I’m asked to do things around here.” Something she preferred but found no reason to comment on.

“God, I can talk for ages, I’m so sorry. Were you busy? Am I keeping you from anything? Do you have any questions I might be able to answer? Should I stop? I can stop.” That really made it seem like she could stop, great job.

Jim smiled. Fortunately for Alani, he appreciated verbosity in a conversation partner. It saved him the trouble of having to find and propagate a topic on his own. "You're fine," he assured her. "I've been out of circulation here for a while, so this is helpful. No questions so far." He couldn't put his finger on it, but something about her reminded him of Arthur. Perhaps it was a similar sort of positive forthrightness that could be mistaken for simplicity. Being uncomplicated was not the same as being shallow. He hadn't been in Alani's mind, but he had noted a few of the not-so-fluffy anecdotes, and he was positive you couldn't survive in the mutant activist sphere as an airhead.

"But yeah," he continued, remembering the original topic, "I'm still trying to establish a schedule here, so I'd be glad to pitch in on heavy lifting. Just don't ask me to do advanced stuff like driving nails with my mind. My fine control's not that great."

"Well if there are any I can answer, feel free to reach out to me, I'll do my best!" She didn't sigh, not really, but her exhale leaned towards relief, half a laugh, shoulders dropping a bit as she seemed to shift back, loosening her stance. There was always the worry that her enthusiasm, or just her personality, was too much, not that she would hold it against anyone. It was nice to have a bit of that worry alleviated.

Of course, with the turn back towards the garden, arms crossed as she looked back at the work to come. "This is all good to know. I think you should never push yourself past your comfort, so if you wanna help, you better also be ready to tell us when it's too much. An overload isn't something I'd like to have to explain for a silly little garden when I can use a hammer just fine."

This time the laugh was wry, "Oh, not overload, just a lot of broken wood and missing nails," Jim explained, spreading his hands. "I have a tendency to go a little harder than strictly necessary. I focused more on telepathy, but that doesn't have many practical applications around the house." Yeah, remember to mention the telepathy this time, Cyndi remarked.

"I'll take broken things over broken people any time, any day." Despite the smile, Alani's voice was firm, eyes never breaking contact. She'd learned communication was key, especially with new people she intended to work with more in the future. Hopefully. "Don't knock yourself, I can't even begin to imagine how much work you've had to do to train your powers. I think I'm as put together as I am because I became chill as a child and have had the same therapist since I was, like, twelve." That came with a shrug, smile lighter, but obviously amused.

"Me too, which is a scary thought. All right, let's plan on it." Jim met her gaze with his own. His area or not, some kind of structure could only help. The less time he spent in his own head the fewer virtual sessions with Dr. Allen he'd need. Besides, there was a limited amount that could go wrong with a community garden.

And, in the distance, Audrey Henburn looked on.