2019-12-07 - Well, Hello My Name is Simon...

Sparrow isn't sure how long she's been at this. The original shapes have been subsumed by new ones, and that's kinda how she likes it. For this piece. How all the blue on blue on blue has evolved with every stroke, ever changing, like the waves. None of it seems quite right without that constant change, without that imposed motion. It is hard capturing fluidity in one static image, but the redhead may have given up trying a good long while ago without much thinking about it. Purity Ring has been playing on repeat, leaving her in a loop that passes over and over again without any counting. The only evidence that any time has passed, really, is that the painting has changed, the waves ebbing and flowing and, now, taking on color as if caught in dusk. Or maybe dawn. Let someone else decide whether the magenta is an open of good fortune or bad. She just likes the way it looks...

...the way it feels. Caught in the sea spray. Paint really shouldn't smell so much like the ocean. It probably doesn't, poking at memories and twisting them oddly, but it feels familiar. That one perfect night at Thor's Well. All ocean and stardust and lemon haze. Emotions and admissions and sinking into it all. She doesn't even notice when the music fades, when she shifts from one reality to another, so lost in that moment, in capturing it and what else it could be, an idea of collision and collapse and commingling never quite right on the canvas. She arrives spattered in shades of blue, in an oversized white tee and brightly colored pajama shorts, smiling before her crashing waves, everchanging, never quite right.

Grant has been sitting outside in his army jacket and layers. The truth is he's sitting on top of his trailer because it's a neat way to watch the sky and just zone out for a while. Hopefully this won't be like the time he was tripping balls and fell onto the fence. That was not a bruise that was fun to heal. Still today he's lost in his favourite medium: pastel chalks. His hands are a mess but there's a lot that listening to some M83 on mix can do do to bring him around to some funky drawings. Long hues of blue mix with neon lines making his drawing of the lights of tall plants rippling in the grey with little creatures swiming in it. Merchipmunks? Mermunks?! Don't judge. He's on some pretty good shit right now. It feels in a moment that leaves extend out over head, glowing phosphorescent plants and clam shell mailboxes on a stick. He leans in for more detail, and more until his hands are wet and he's falling into a sketch and floating looking a mermunk face to face before he's falling past it to... where? Through the drawing, falling up through the water towards a patch of light.

Its not hard for Kass to become consumed with her art, letting everything else fade away until the only thing that exists is the creation itself. She's found a wall, a perfectly blank, smooth wall on which to work her art. The jangle and hiss of spraycans are the only noise in the air, the industrial mask over her face allowing her to breath normally in the clouds of paint being created. Blues and purples of all shades coming together to form a night sky dotted by the occasional white-yellow shimmering star and the low-hanging moon. Passing through the night sky are a flock? herd? of large blue butterflies (morphos by the look of them), flying gracefully through the night sky towards somewhere unknown. Giant wings almost seem to be moving as she creates, lost in the art as she continues to flesh out her favorite subject. The earbuds in her ears pour out a steady stream of instrumentals that help to carry her along the creative waves.. the playlist currently set to "Your Hand in Mine" by Explosions in the Sky. Perhaps its the music that transports her, perhaps its the art that draws her in.. but soon enough she seems to fall forward and right into the mural she'd created; not falling, but floating. Floating along currents of color and sound towards something....

Aidan's usual art is magic, but today one of those blank walls in his trailer is properly Speaking To Him. Well, not literally. He generally tries to more or less ignore it if non-human things in the normal world speak to him. But there was a mark on that wall that today looked like a cliff edge he remembers from California, and so out came the paints. He's got music on too, his phone currently blaring Can't Stop The Feeling into his ears, and dancing does not necessarily make his spraypainting any more accurate, but it doesn't hurt the impressionistic nature of the scene that's developing itself on the wall, desert melding into beach and sky shading from noon to midnight by way of sunset. Here and there are plants or buildings or other such things, everything a bit off, a little too colourful and curvy. It's cheerful, more than any kind of accurate; the shapes and colours and proportions feel about right, just maybe not quite for this universe. Right now he's creating something that looks kind of like a dolphin and a hibiscus had a baby jumping out of the sea. It's definitely what art critics would describe as 'naive', but he's having fun.

Kailey lives by her art. It is how she earns a living but it is also her unending passion. But December is moist and no friend to spray paint in the Pacific North West. So instead she has gotten out her henna. True she has been wearing long sleeves, but that doesn't stop her from decorating both of her arms body art. The dark brown paste staining her pale skin deeply. It starts out as wedding style with repeated patterns and motifs. But then there are frames and in each is something whimsical and different. A triton with dark hair and trident swims with dolphin silhouettes on one arm. While on the other side the same frame holds a woman on a dragon. The finite details she gets with her cone only coming from years of practice. On the back of her hands hummingbirds and fairies dance around swirling lotuses and their vines. And on her palms each half of a heart that within holds an other worldly castle with a ringed planet in the sky behind it. Towers that are both fatastical and futuristic rise into the sky.

Kailey looks up from her painted arms in surprise. Here the paste has already flaked off leaking the deep brown, almost black, stain of the art in her skin. Eyes wide she turns to look around her sandy home with wonder. She finds her way outside onto the beach, blinking in surprise when she sees Aidan and the rest. When she opens her mouth to speak the sound of a bow crossing strings, somehow both rich and reverberating but bright notes. Like those of a cello. That makes her stop speaking and put a hand over her mouth in wide-eyed surprise. Much like someone who just burped rather obscenely.

Lips part and a high flutter of piccolo comes out. The neon redhead might think herself something a bit more tenor and sexy, but with a name light Sparrow, she can't help the tweety little woodwind which replaces her words. A confused twitter of words, at first, when the movement in what she thinks is her painting is no longer simply her own. When did the stars get wings? Or... red hair? And this sand... Oh, chirpity! What starts as a mildly disconcerted wave toward Kass falls short when Grant crashes forward on one of those magenta-tinged waves, as she surges forward to help him up, twittering pluckily at him all the while. She points to Aidan, to the house from whence the quavering notes of the cello spring. Chirp! Chirpchirp... Damnit.

Sparrow clips a quick, "What the fuck," to Grant in ASL. It doesn't seem to be a question, brows kept flat.

Alighting onto the beach from her descent from the skies, Kass looks almost disappointed to be back on land after the freedom of the air. Grant she knows, Sparrow she recognizes.. the other two elude her, but that is often the case in these Dreams. She reaches for her messenger bag only to find that it hasn't made the journey with her. A squawk of surprise and alarm trumpets from from throat like a french horn if someone held down the wrong keys and blew hard into the intake. Clapping a hand over her mouth immeidately after, the redhead watches Sparrow and Grant, frowning slightly over the signs that seem to be flashing between them. Shaking her head in incomprehension, Kass turns to face the rest of the... whatever it is they've arrived at. Looking around, she absently pats at herself, to discover something has made it through with her. The bright cobalt blue can of spraypaint that made up the body of her butterflies. Well, its better than nothing!

Aidan's presence is announced by what would probably be a far less musical sort of yelp-to-whoop sound if what came out weren't tones from what's probably an oboe. He clings to the dolphinium as it swims him in, and gives it a pat as he steps off onto the shore, looking around with further-widening eyes. A questioning tone emerges, directed toward the others, and he breaks off, then opens his mouth to experimentally try again. Nope, music. Another, and then he tries actually singing something, just to find out what happens. Oboe version of Can't Stop the Feeling, that's what happens. It results in an oboe version of a laugh, though only briefly before he's looking the place and the others around again, and realising he's short on ways to communicate, now. No ASL for him. He lifts a hand to wave to the others instead, looking confused and possibly a little sheepish. Friendly though! He oboes something conversational and entirely unintelligible as he approaches.

Grant looks up, and around in wonder. There's a lovely sound that is building as the refugee artists find concert and company. The lanky Baxter answers, in an I dunno tone that is a buzzing wave of a kazoo. Well he's never been very refined, why start now? The laugh that comes in a whirl of tones that halt greet Kazz with what might be ''hey you'' or even ''high tide''. Who can say. He signs to Sparrow I drawing,I. Maybe now? He looks to the beach now curious. He waves Kass over to where he wades up by Sparrow and turns to see if Aidan's making it out okay and: Ooh sand princess. Very official! Still it's the horizon that is making him look back.

"You are ridiculous," declares the woodwind to the kazoo, without using a single chirp, hands flapping instead. It's an affectionate sentiment, at least, even if it's followed by an uncertain shrug. A flutter of piccolo laughter joins the oboe, musical tones given actual music to work with distracting the neon redhead from her confusion, her mild distress. The smile Sparrow flashes toward Aidan doesn't quite match the brightness of the sound she just made, but it looks appreciative, anyway. She gestures toward Kass and, even without knowing ASL, the idea is pretty easy to understand, concise as it is: I recognize you or I've seen you before or I know you? Acknowledgement of that vague familiarity, their shared holiday family, and the relief which comes with another known face. Turning to the others, glancing at the storm, she lifts her hands like she might sign again... and then drops them, eyes going wide. Whatever idea just crossed her mind? She's thought better of it.

Kailey is smiling in the way of someone forcing it. As she takes several deep breaths. Those slowly and becoming calmed as she walks to meet the others. She glances over her shoulder at the storm and then back. A low to high, then small fall, followed by a high to low drawn out note of the cello comes with her next attempt at speech. So she turns back to the others with a worried smile and points at the watercolor store with a finger before signing, "Should we worry?"

Kass waves to Grant when he motions to her, eyes stuck on that horizon and what's approaching. Perhaps its the years of paranoia, or her attunement to this Other Side that has her peering just a little closer, showing her what her 'asylum eyes' see. What she sees is not something pleasing. When the normally shy and cringing girl comes racing towards you, honking like a french horn version of an angry goose, its probably not a good sign. She kicks up a spray of paint-spatter sand with each step and may accidentally spatter a few of them with more when she scrambles to a stop. Waving her hands around in nothing even approaching ASL, she instead starts the world's worst game of Charades ever. Big, grandiose waves of her arms, shoving motions of her hands. This lasts for a few moments before she stops, breaths, and tries again. Biting her lower lip, she blinks, startsusing her fingers to.. sketch? Into the air. Drawing a fast, crude outline of the upper half of.. a wolf? A black wolf with mean red eyes and big fangs. The details are blurred in her hurry, and she looks to the others, using one hand to point at the picture, then to the storm, then back to the picture.. finally calling out the first few bars of the theme song from The Neverending Story in that tentative french horn voice. Singing is not her thing.

Aidan looks from one set of gesturing hands to another with a clear lack of comprehension beyond recognition that Things are being Communicated. Just not to him. He oboes a question that says absolutely nothing useful to anyone, and his eyes widen when Kass starts to approach at speed. Speed and honking. His brow furrows, eyes squinting as she goes for gestures, and then-- the picture in the air! That's a new thing, and he studies what he can of it before echoing her theme singing, in oboe and with a questioning uptick at the end as he looks at the wolfish image again. What does he remember from that movie? Is it anything useful? Either way, her gesture has him looking at the storminess again, and he glances from it to the sand castle. A point that way, and another questioning noise.

Kailey turns to look at Kass and her lips, expressive, twist to the side. The cello sound is a very clear, "Uuuuuuhooooooh," That translates over. And her eyes go from the woman sketching in the air to the thing in the clouds. For a moment she bites her lip and then sees Aidan point back at the castle. And nods her head with enthusiasm. She turns to it and beckons at the others as she begins to trot towards it as quickly as she can. Running in sand is, even art sand, is harder than on dirt. As things begin to run and be washed away the cello of her voice makes a crying sound of dismay. Finger pointing as rivulets of color make their way towards them. She strokes her hand through the air as she runs, making the arc of a lightening bolt. Not a realistic one, but the kind you would see in Greek paintings to represent thrown bolts.

Sparrow's nod to Kailey needs no translation, though her worry isn't exactly clearly conveyed through her wide eyes and whatcha-gonna-do smile. Lips part with every intention of twittering a nonsensical answer to Aidan's incomprehensible question, but barely a toot comes out before the incoming honking distracts her, all eyes rather decidedly set on Kass. When the air-drawing starts taking shape with angry eyes and sharp teeth--which snap!--she takes a few careful steps backward which successfully convey the worry she said she was experiencing a moment ago. No, no, this is worry. And comprehension. Her brown-eyed attention flits between that makeshift Gmork and the Nothing bearing down on them, that unsteady french horn connecting the dots well enough to get the concepts across. Which has the unnatural redhead nodding thoughtfully.

She holds up a finger, not ready to charge, then brings two fingers up to her face and draws on herself. Head full of color, her eyes are given angry yellow slants. From her nose, she brings forward a magenta muzzle with sharp fangs of her own, flexing with her jaw in a defiant snarl. Swiftly, she adds uneven ears to the top of her head and shaggy pink fur to her shoulders, her arms. A bushy wolf's tail in midnight and violet. She keeps her neon eyes on Kailey, but doesn't move to follow until after the last touch of big clawed feet, all the better to walk between worlds--or run up the beach--a neon-bright werewolf in pursuit of an exit from this world into the next.

Kass shows relief when people start to get the reference, her shoulders slumping a bit. She looks to everyone as they start to head up the beach, watching Sparrow's idea with comprehension dawning and a grin spreading. Nodding eagerly, Kass mimics using her spraycans, covering herself in the bright blue of the butterflies she loves to create, adding large but thin swirls of the different shades of blues sprouting from her back in the form of butterfly wings that help to carry her forward. Trumpeting out the song Changes by David Bowie to alert the others to Sparow's idea.

starts toward the castle, but he hears that dismayed sound from Kailey, and pauses, watching the others. He picks up on the general idea, and shakes an invisible spraycan, pointing it down around his feet. The colour comes in, metallic silver forming into rolling treads like a baby bulldozer, carrying him forward along the sand toward the castle, or so he hopes. As he starts to move, he adjusts the invisible can again, studying the castle itself, or maybe the area of sky just above it.

Sparrow's laughter, upon spying wings and treads, sings out in the lower notes of a piccolo's reedy range, but it's still far prettier than even a brightly colored werewolf's mirth should be. It conveys approval better than the snarl she wears, magenta lips drawn back over violet fangs, determination in her neon eyes. Dodging those potential weapons left hanging, charging the air with the idea of static, she focuses not on the castle, but on an in between point, an edge, the horizon she won't be able to reach no matter how quickly those clawed feet will take her. With a melodic roar--a delightfully pleasant flittering of notes not half so fierce as the maw with which their delivered--meant to command the attention of her fellow artists, she slashes both arms through the air vertically, a blazing blue wound in the very fabric of this reality opening before her, at her command...

And swallowing her up as she charges through it. Poof. Gone. With a crinkle of paper, the world seals itself up, and Werewolf!Sparrow is nowhere to be found.

Kailey does a double-take at the vibrant werewolf now in their mix. There is utter surprise there and she looks down at her body and then the rolling storm. She licks her lips and reaches to dab her fingers into the numerous colors floating and all around her. What she paints now, by the lightning bolts that wait to be flung, is a dragon. Made of all the colors around them, whatever tint her fingers dip into as she works out the reptilian face and long, snaking neck. With sharp fangs and talons and wings. Does she have time to finish the dragon? Well she is going to try. She can facepaint one in under two minutes, after all!

Taking her own path, Kass heads back up into the sky she'd left behind, spiralling faster and faster as electric blue crackles of energy start to streak across her form until her wings and skin practicallly glow from from the effect. Faster and faster, building up towards something, creating a vortex of sorts in the sheer joy of the streaking paints and chalks that hang like afterburner effects in the sky behind her. And finally, she flares those wings out wide and shoots upward in a supersonic trail of color and triumphant, trumpeting sound. That speed carries her up and up and up until she finally just tears straight through the fabric of the world and disappears. The hissing sound of a spraypaint can is heard as that elecrtic blue line closes up the tear in her wake, then dissipates in a soft cloud of cobalt blue. MOTHRAKass, OUT!

Aidan hestitates in his path when he sees Sparrow-wolf rip the world right open and dive through and away. Well, that's a thought then! Though where'd she actually go? He thinks about that for a few moments as he lifts his arm up and sprays again, this time spraying against the side of the castle, and making an inviting beckon toward the others still there. Safety in numbers, right? Maybe. Or maybe he just wants company, 'cause what he paints is, awkwardly and cartoonily but recognizably, the doorway to a coffee shop, with the impression of tables and a counter and all that jazz behind the 'glass'. He eyes it, glances behind him at the oncoming storm-ish, then adds visible hinges, and pulls experimentally on the handle-side, to see whether it's going to let him in. And what's going to be waiting in there if it does! History tells him they've always been a decent place to get out of the rain, though.

Kailey blinks in confusion, half done with her dragons, as the others begin to vanish. She hasn't done this, perhaps, as much as they have. And she stares at Aidan in bewilderment. Then back up at the oncoming storm. Reluctantly she turns from the dragon to run towards the door. Giving a soft two-note sound that could be a thank you. She moves to dash through the door her has made.

Grant watches them leave with a grin, but also a bit of a panic to get away. He stops and draws a shield on the dragon and arms it with an upside down T. wait, no that's a sword. Look pastels are not waterproof. He's working against a deficit! He turns and draws above in the sky a circle with sticks coming way from it. It's a very Kindergarten style sun. It's not his best work, but it'll do the job for a moment. The sun lighting the sky a bit the help hold off the storm and scribbles the Magic Dragon charging the soapy storm with lightening leaving sketch marks where the canvas was clean. A door knob is drawn on the other side of Kailey's door and he opens it the other way and in he goes!