2019-10-08 - Chalk Dust Butterfly

The Hanging Bridge might USUALLY be unfairly named though today there's perhaps more reason. Someone has been busy on a very intense project that is likely going to last maybe 2 days if it doesn't rain. Either way someone's really into 3-Dimensional chalk art making the walking path look like it's got pumpkins milling about like pedestrians. and others fashioned after super heroes, and another couple might be Dracula fighting a Luccidor sumo style to clear the bridge.

Busy bopping his head to a beat he's got streaming to his head Grant seems to be the chalk covered culprit at large. We know there's music because the pink haired punk is singing along and badly, not that he cares. it's a Green Day day apparently.

Its strange... seeing how much everything has changed. And how little its changed too. The people are different, nobody looks like she remembers. Not her parents, not her friends, not even old Mr. Custer running the same old corner drugstore. And since when did gum get so expensive?! Kass huffs to herself and shifts her messenger bag back up onto her shoulder and continues along. The white rubber toes of a pair of purple velvet Chuck Taylor high tops scatter pebbles and dirt with impunity as she shuffles along, head down, shoulders hunched. Its not easy being the crazy girl that's suddenly back after a decade in that creepy old mental hospital. Whispers follow her like a tidal flow, always nipping at her heels.

She slows as she sees the bright colors starting to take over the path, head lifting a touch, one hand reaaching up to brush wisps of fiery hair from her eyes. The more she sees the more she wants to see, her steps picking up pace quickly, rushing from scene to scene, her eyes flickering here and there while a delighted smile grows on her lips. Without hesitation Kassandra digs into her bag and pulls out a handy can of spray paint, white speckles decorating both cana nd cap as she shakes it up and moves to start adding her own flavor to the artwork. Suddenly the pumpkins are dancing across a black and white checked dancefloor and the superheroes are in the clouds. She gets involved. Perhaps too involved. Those bright purple Chuck Taylors are coming ever closer to Grant and she's giving no indication of seeing him, too involved in putting her own touches to the scene.

Grant knows the sound of a rattle can! That's his jam, yo. Looking up alarmed with a faint hanging grin he wipes chalk covered fingers in oranges and pinks on his baggy jeans leaving a smear in their wake. "Wooooah lady You got a whole corner over there we ain't even started yet on." Does he seem offended she's fucking with the work he's spent four hours on? Not even. This is some new form of entertainment. He chuckles, "Man the chalk'll wash off. Paint stays." His eyes float to teh rocks with a snicker, "Kill some squirrels with that." Still he doesn't lift a hand to stop her. A quasi clean finger adjusts a button behind his ear. His hand finds his phone to tell Spotify to cool its heels a bit.

"I'm laying groundwork... backdrops for the future. A ballroom.. up in the clouds... a barren parking lot... maybe its a parking lot in the clouds for the castle the ballroom's in... maybe they're different places... the art will tellt he story, I'm just making a setting." the muttered response comes even as the can rattles in her hand, the white paint sketching out lines and outlining an empty parking lot for Dracula and the Luchador. Her heel nudges up against his leg and she halts, her head coming up, that focused and almost intense gaze breaking as she blinks and realizes she's thisclose to someone. Letting out a small yelp, Kass stumbles back a few steps, loose laces on her sneakers sending her spilling onto the chalk-covered pavement. Wincing, she pushes up to an elbow, only to hiss and immediately pull her arm back up off the ground, gripping it with the other. "Shit. Uh... sorry. I guess I... I kinda got carried away. This is your work?"

Grant watches with a curious look of fascination, or maybe he is rolling on something right now. Maybe both. Squinting at her he listens with a bob of his head, "Well... then they'd have some place to go to when it rains." Ballroom makes total sense right? There's a flinch as he falls and he offers a hand from where he crouches to help the woman sit up. "Careful. THey are super 3-d. Easy to trip over." So not what happened but hey, perception is reality. When asked if it's his work he holds up his chalk covered hands with a wry grin< "Guilty as charged though since you started laying down lines like a Columbian drug lord with the Krylon? I guess it's ours now." He pauses looking her over iwht a laugh and waves with green fingers, "Hi."

Taking the offered hand, Kass pulls herself up with a small hiss. There's a new hole in the long-sleeved raglan she wears, a fresh scrape that oozes just a little surrounded by a smear of bright orange chalk peeking through. "Its fine.. I've had worse. I just... keep forgetting to tie my shoes when I go out." The absent-minded murmur rings of truth, like this one might forget a lot of small things when she goes out. Blinking again, those eyes shift towards Grant and and the grin pops back into existence like magic at the sight of his chalked fingers. "I work in acrylics too. Mostly I sketch.. I haven't played with chalk since..." She trails off for a long moment, getting the sort of thousand yard stare one might expect of a PTSD victim. It takes a few moments for her to start, shaking it off and grinning at him once more, "Guess it is. Wanna toss me that blue one? I got an idea." Kass pausees at the greeting, then laughs and brushes the hair from her face with a white speckled hand and a lopsided grin. "Hi. Uh, I'm Kass."

Grant reasons to her, "Eh if they're going to try to come unlaced anyways why bother. Then they can't surprise you. Tuck your laces in. Stand on em. Then you won't be surprised at least?" Coming from the guy that slides his shoes on. He listens to her prattle on about colors and paints. Hey, she came with her own rattle can. This apparently scores marks in his books. Reaching over he moves his Tupperware box of chalk over with a grin, laughing. His tinted hand shakes hers offering, bemused, "Grant. Baxter. G-Bax. Bax-Man. Hey there's food works too." He doesn't push for the interrogation of her life story, what he does ask oddly perhaps is, "What are you seeing?"

She shakes his hand in return, perhaps a touch overenthusiastic with it, like she's not used to the gesture. When he withdraws his hand and instead offers up the box of chalks, her eyes light up, face quickly following, and she shifts around to her knees so she can properly paw through the box, heedless fo the chalkdust that puffs up and settles over her clothes. This seems to be a big thing to her, the grin she turns towards him almost childish in its glee. "Grant. Last names just tie you to the past. Better to live in the now, yeah?" Kass pulls out a robin's egg blue chalk and looks back to him with a grin, "Butterflies. Great big butterflies swanning through wispy clouds.. carrying people, taking them off and away... carrying them somewhere... quiet. Calm. Somwhere else." Without another word, Kass shifts around to start making big, sweeping lines of blue across the pavement, huge wings starting to take shape under her hand.

Grant passes her the blue and just grins. "Well, yeah. I mean it's how the government finds you but I mean I'm no that hard to find." Looking around he reasons "I mean you found me and you weren't looking." He relents a wish bringing up the back of his wrist to itch his cheek, "Maaaan I am shit at hide and seek."

Grant stays perches on the stone bridge, arms resting on knees handing her the chalk. For some enabling might be the art and the picture the byproduct. "Away away? Is there water there?" He has to ask genuinely curious in a murmur, "You suppose the butterfly has a bus stop like the catbus does or? Does it just leave people wherever?"

"I'm pretty good at hide & seek... lots of practice..." she murmurs while drawing up the shape of the butterfly, pausing to blink and look up at him. "I don't remember it, though." A brief, haunted look flits across her face before she shrugs carelessly and goes back to her butterfly. More blues, grays, blacks.. the butterfly begins to take shape and Kass seems to have a heavy hand with the color for this. "I found the pumpkins first. You came after." Without looking back up, she murmurs, "You should try orange. For your hair. Really bright, like... toxic, neon orange."

She works without pause, smears of blues and grays quickly decorating her face like some form of strange warpaint as she rubs at her face or pushes hair back around her ears. "There's water. Still, deep water.. quick, rushing water... delicate, gentle water... and lots of green. Trees. Plants. Grass. And beaches too, all golden-white in the sun and silvery gray under the moon." Kass glances up towards Grant and gives him a funny look, "Butterflies have docks, not bus stops. And they would never just leave people somewhere unknown." Looking back down, she keeps drawing, coloring, filling in the butterfly before starting to populate its back with small splotches of color representing people. "The butterflies are good... but not the caterpillars. They're sneaky, tricky little fuckers."

Grant seems to be content to just take a ride on the vanilla abstract narration and it's exisitential bop. He let that poem float around his head like a flavor for a moment tinted with the horizons painted for him in his mind. His head dips in a nod and he murmurs, "Well," A grin widens lucid enough, "I learn something new every day." Docks! sure. He's got no evidence to the contrary. He looks around at teh pumpkins wondering if he drew them bigger maybe he can hide behind them. Does 3d work that way out here? Eh, maybe. "Well caterpillars are worm food. If they weren't clever they'd never be butterflies. We all do stupid shit when we're young."

"Caterpillars get people killed. They tattle. Stupid caterpillars." Kass mutters darkly while she fills in a little more of the wings on the butterfly before pushing back to sit on her haunches. Arms resting on her knees and outstretched, chalk staining halfway up her forearms in shades of blue, black, and gray with the flecks of color from the people speckling across the backs of her hands. Looking up at Grant, she blinks once more, then asks, "What was I saying?" She looks down, then smiles broadly, "The butterflies. They're so beautiful. And nice. So nice." Letting out a sigh, Kass pushes up to her feet, then looks down at her hands, turning them this way and that. "How... oh. This must be yours. Sorry, sometimes I act without really thinking." Kass hands him the stubs of the chalks she was using and offers a sheepish smile. "You were singing right? Earlier? What were you listening to?"

Grant reaches up and takes the chalk as curious and careful as he's picking fruit. An eyebrow arches looking slightly surprised at the apology. His hands turn up in indifferent gesture, "Well it's a public space.. It can only get piblic-er." Now he's just making that up. The words. He forgives the intrusion replying, "Acting without thinking is the purest form of passion for art. Overthinking it commercializes he process." He watches and contemplates orange hair. This might fade, but it could take neon layers. Huh. "Uhhhh Green Day. Holiday. Chili Peppers 'Stadium Arcadium' before that. If ya ain't listenned it's a damn good album."

"Huh? Last album they had I remember is... um... By the Way. I think? Yeah, it came out like.. two or three years after Californication." Kass shrugs again and lifts a hand, possibly to rub at the back of her neck. Stopping herself just in time, she stares at her hand for a moment or two before scruffing her palm heedlessly across her jeans to clear away the caked up chalk. "I like old stuff, mostly. Iggy Pop. David Bowie. Green Day's pretty cool. I liked Dookie. Uh... oh. Um, don't tell anyone this.. but I actually kinda really The Offspring. Shh, our secret though." She even lifts a finger to her lips to make the shushing motion. "So what else do you like? This is good. I like this. Uh.. .talking. And drawing. I'll bring out my paints next time, we can really get freaky with it. Turn the bridge into something else. I use sprays and acrylics mostly."

Grant admits pushing his chalk finghers through his bright pink hair, "Hey, Offspring and 311 are damn good bands." When she confides to him it's their secret there's a flash of a wink in return. "I like talking. I like drawing. I'm a um, I'm a painter. My therapist told me ya know draw what you feel and it kinda worked out for me and shit, ya know. Sooooo like when the landscape ain't workin or I'm buggin? Eh, change it. I like chalk. Acrylics. I'm a fuckin ninja with some spray cans. The boss lets me paint all sorts of shit so that works out pretty good for me."

Grant tilts his head and says, "Tell you what. I gotta take off but hang onto the chalk. There's a skate shop in town next to the dispensary. Bring it back to me there, Kass. Just remember with enough chalk you can make a door out of anything. Chalk's your friend."

"I make doors with or without chalk. Kinda. In a way. Not always a good thing." Kass takes the box without hesitation and smiles towards Grant. She glances around as if the dispensary and skate shop will just appear out of nowhere. Looking back to him, she nods, "Okay. I'll bring my collection fo cans. We can play with paints, see what else gets made."

Grant standing the smile, though a bit in his own orbit, comes wihtout guile entertained and pleased by teh ravenous consumption of his chalk box. You can buy more chalk, but you can't buy more inspiration for a moment easily. "Kass, I'm very glad to have met you. Enjoy the chalk. Do great things." And that done he taps his ear, though no one hears the phone ring. Looking up he says, "Go for Bax... Duuuude yeahI'm in. Get me like a meatlover's pizza and I'll meat you there." He waves and goes to get his board and backpack from the side and with a clatter rolls off.