Counting stars (open)

[Lucas Gorecki]

"Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five-"

He was on his back in the grass. Grass pressed against his back. He could feel it through the thin, sorry excuse of a T-shirt. Edges cut into skin, drawling lines of touch and feeling.

"Eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one-"

He tried not to think about it, about the grass and rustling of the hair on his arms. About the way his jeans rubbed and chafed against skinny hipbones that only seemed to have just the slightest sliver of skin between then and the outer world and one of these days the skin would wear away and all his insides would come tumbling out. Out into the world and for all the vulgar eyes to watch, vile fingers to poke at.

"Hundred-and-seven, hundred-and-eight, hundred-and-nine-"

Lucas took a deep, deep breath and closed his eyes for a second, swiped his left arm quickly across the grass, wincing at the sting. Dozens of little whips kissing his skin with all their teeth. No need to think thoughts like that right now. He'd had a good few days, managed to scrounge up some food from one of the little restaurants, mostly left-overs, little bits and pieces passed to him by people who took mercy on the xylophone ribs and sharp elbows.

He opened his eyes again, looked at the stars and... yep. He lost count.

"One. Two. Three-"

[Sati Beshara]

Sati taking was taking one of her night walks. She had been in this habit ever since she'd stopped self-harming. Perhaps it was a more passive way of getting herself hurt, of putting herself in a situation that was potentially dangerous and gave others the opportunity to hurt her for her. Or perhaps it was just a more positive way for her to get that energy out, through exercise. She didn't know; whatever the reason was, it must be a subconscious one. She tended to be a little 'out of it' when she walked, either way. It was not walking-catatonia, just...she was noticeably a little off, a little away in her head.

Or out of it.

However, she was not so out that she didn't notice the man lying there in the grass right before she walked on him. The realization that she had just nearly stepped on someone jolted her almost entirely back to right mind.

"Sorry," she let out reflexively, then added,

"I didn't see you there. It's dark and all.'

Come to think of it, what was he doing there anyway?

"Are you alright?"

He was on his back, after all. And now that she was getting a better look at him, he was rather, from what she could tell...disheveled. That was a nice enough way to put it.

[Lucas Gorecki]

Lucas eyes didn't flick away from the stars, but he shifted just a little away from the feet and legs and person connected to all that. He moved a little jerkily, a little disconnected from his limbs. Four. Two legs, two arms. Just four. Shouldn't there be eight? He had eight, didn't he- No. Humans had four and he was human.

At the moment, at least. Human. Of sorts.

"I'm fine." Subjective, prone to often changing meaning. For the time being, it served. And he'd lost count again. It was difficult to be spoken to and keep track of the amount of stars he had counted.

"Cepheus came out to play tonight. Foolish man, sacrificing his daughter because of an oracle's nonsense." Hey, if he had lost track, he might just as well lose track all together. Lucas blinked and turned his head, looking at the woman. "It's not that dark. I've seen darker places. There are stars here. I don't suppose that you're in the habit of counting stars, are you? I keep losing my place. There's too much whispering in the grass to focus."

Oh yes, because a, ahem, 'dishevelled' man talking about whispers in the grass was oh so very comforting. Really now. He'd be lucky if he didn't get the doctors called on him again. He hated when that happened. They never listened when he said that he didn't like needles.

[Sati Beshara]

Sati didn't know a thing about stars or constellations or anything. She had learned the basics of the rasi, the Jyotisha zodiac, from her mothers (that was how she thought of her mother and aunt as a unit, though when she called them that to people who didn't know her parental situation, those people tended to get a...different idea) and that was it. So she had no idea who Cepheus was or what this fellow was talking about. At first thought he was just babbling nonsense UNTIL he mentioned the exact word "stars". Then she made the right guess that Cepheus must be name of a star or constellation. She wasn't a mind-reader, she just knew that there were stories about the stars worldwide in every culture, even if she herself, as mentioned, did not know anything about any of them.

Even with this leeway given, he was still coming off as a little off still but she herself was also still a little too off to pick that up fully just yet. Talking to him a little more would likely fix that, though. Whispering in the grass? Oh he must mean rustling...

"No," she shook her head in regards to if she was in the habit of counting stars,

"Do you know a lot about them? It sounds like it."

Hard to say why she'd choose to just stay and talk to some stranger, even one whom she thought was "normal" (now there was a loaded word when it came to brains), instead of just going on her way like anyone else would on a walk. Maybe it was because she was...how she was when she went on her walks...or just being nice and engaging someone on a subject they seemed to enjoy, which Sati was the sort to do.

[Lucas Gorecki]

Lucas shrugged, which wasn't an easy thing to do while laying on the ground and trying to move as little as possible. Moving was such a hassle. Who wanted to move when they were comfortable? Well, sort of comfortable. Relatively speaking, of course. "I know what I read," he said. He also knew what he saw, but what he saw wasn't always reliable. Like right then, with a few of the stars doing a merry little jig around Cepheus. "Don't get to read that much any more." He tried to stay away from books as a spider.

People used them far too often to swat at him with them. Was that any way to treat a book? Poor defenceless food. Oh. And him. Poor him. He didn't think being squished would be all that much fun.

"Do you want to count too? Perhaps we can figure out how many stars are visible tonight. Counting helps. Makes things easier. My clothes don't hurt so much when I'm counting." Or just really focusing on any kind of task. Not that it shut his senses out. It just... it took first seat in his mind and he could pretend that he was still sort of normal.

[Sati Beshara]

Sati shrugged at the offer. She didn't have anything else to do tonight, and counting stars sounded fun, in a whimsical be-a-kid-again sort of way. Why not? Might as well. Yes, yes, strange guy she didn't know alone at night, all those unsafe things...they were half there in her head, half not...again, maybe the way she was on her walks made her less conscious that such dangers mattered, or maybe it made her put herself in the way of them as a passive replacement for self-harm, that whole deal. Whatever.

She sat down on the grass, a little further from Lucas than she would from someone she actually knew but still quite close enough for conversation,

"So who was that guy...Cephalus? I don't really know the Greco-Roman star stories."

Hurt? Maybe he had tags itching him, or was allergic to the fabric in them. Sati had known folks who were allergic to certain laundry detergents, but now that she was close enough to get a whiff, she felt like there hadn't been detergent near him in awhile.

"What's wrong with your clothes?", she asked, then added,

"I'm Sati, by the way."

[Lucas Gorecki]

Lucas was glad for the distance. He didn't expect that she would take kindly to suddenly having a wolf spider on her hand. She did smell a little off. Like others like him, the kind that shifted into form with too many limbs or hair or just too different. Still, didn't mean he wanted to be touched by them just because they were slightly similar to him.

"Cepheus," he repeated faintly, closing his eyes. "Adromeda's father. He was gonna sacrifice her 'cause his wife went bragging that Andromeda was prettier than what's-their-face. Nereids. Yes. Was gonna sacrifice his daughter to a whale monster thingame."

And thus, Lucas's very own take to education on ancient myths. It was a good thing that he wasn't a teacher somewhere. That would end badly.

"I'm- I'm Lucas. And my clothes are- no, they don't have a name. My clothes are just wrong. I can feel them. But I can feel everything and it keeps rubbing against my nerves like a scab that you keep picking apart and poking with needles or grinding salt in. I can feel ever bit of grass pushing against my skin." And there was no way he knew how to filter that input back down to a manageable level.

[Sati Beshara]

She nodded along as he told the story, oh that was interesting, she'd have to ask what nereids were when he was through...and then he got to the part about his clothes and his nerves and like a scab and feeling grass. And that was when it finally hit here that oh, he was crazy--

Wait. Wait, no. Maybe not. At least maybe not in the usual way that people were crazy, not for the usual reasons. Because she could now sense that he was a shifter too, and someone else who was also in the bug department like her to boot. And if he was a bug, then he might have the same deal she did with setae, and in that case...she knew what he was talking about. That was why she was so careful now to keep her body hair all over waxed and shaved as short as possible, because otherwise it flooded her sensory-wise with all sorts of weird stuff that she couldn't even put into words. But if she could, it might sound a lot like that sometimes, what he had just said.

How did she respond to that, though? Should she ask if that was the issue? The social awkwardness of this was bringing her back to reality pretty well right now, yay. She made a mental note to keep on keeping her setae trimmed down to next-to-nothing stubs, and that if she was ever in a situation where she hadn't, to try to keep her mouth shut about trying to explain what was coming in to her to other people. Nothing against you, Lucas, but she really didn't want to sound to folks the way you sound now.

"So, what do you become?", she ventured, assuming that he could sense her shifterhood as well as he could sense hers, as was usually the case with other shifters in her encounters with them so far,

"If it's ok to ask. I'm a moth, so you know the little hairs that everyone has all over their body? Mine, they pick up...everything, and it's just terrible. So I have to keep them shaved down or I just go...nuts. But I'm a girl so no one really notices, since we're supposed to do that anyway. Is that why you...you feel those things, with your clothes and the grass?"

Sati reckoned that she might be probing a little too close, a little too personal, but he had already told her about the sensations he was having, so if he was ok with her knowing he had them, he would probably be okay with her knowing, or at least asking, why, right?

(OOC: Sorry if it seems like she figured out 'oh he's nuts cuz he's a shifter' way too fast, it just...made sense, since shifters can sense other shifters and she has similar issues with sensory stuff, so if someone in the same category as her seems to be, it just sort of seems natural she'd reach that assumption.)

[Lucas Gorecki]

He raised his hand, pulling a face when the fabric grazed over skin. He looked at his wrist, expecting some angry red mark or a welt or scrape, anything that would bear physical witness to the way his skin felt. He was always disappointed. Then again, actual injuries hurt even worse.

Wait. She'd been talking. A question. Questions meant answers. She asked him a question so he should answer. That was the way it worked. Right. Okay. He could do that.

Sort of.

Maybe.

He hoped.

"Spider. I'm a spider. Sometimes. Not really all the time. I'm human now. Just two legs, two arms. The world looks sort of like it makes sense, so human. I guess." Now if he could just remember part two. Little hairs and shaving. He felt vaguely ill at the thought of buzzing electric razors or razorblades zig-zagging over his skin.

"Not the hairs. Skin and I can't strip that off. People tend to frown upon that and it would just hurt more. It's okay." Everything was fine. No one would have to worry. No one would have to know the exact details, even if this one person seem to come close to having issues like he did.

[Sati Beshara]

"Ach. I'm sorry. Hair, I can at least mostly shave off. I'm just lucky that the same didn't happen to the hair on my head, just my body.", she lifted up one of her braids,

"Instead, it just works like an extra nose now. It can smell things. My sense of smell isn't any better, it's just now got an extra place to...input, would that be the word?"

It probably wasn't, but at least she was speaking to someone who was probably familiar with having to use words that were only good enough for what he meant rather than right. She took the comment about the skin casually, only nodding,

"Yeah, people would notice enough to have a fit if you were missing your skin. And it would leave all your nerve endings expose so that would be trading one set of troubles for another."

Maybe she took the statement in such stride only because she thought he wasn't at all serious about the idea of really taking it off, but that wasn't a guarantee. If she did know he was for real about it, which she might, her reaction could well be as calm as this. Her own past with self-harm meant she knew that flipping your lid when someone felt like turning themselves inside out in the most literal way was really the last sort of reaction you should have. Well, no, for some people, that would be the right reaction, it let them know you cared, but for her it wouldn't have been and so it wasn't what hers was now. Not she thought he wanted to rip his skin off in any sort of self-harming way, it just seemed to her like something anyone would wish they could do if their skin did what his did. Like if you had itchy chicken-pox 24/7 only worse.

"Did you get any better gifts to go with it, at least? I've got a sort of internal compass now--moths can find their way by the moon and stars better than a Boy Scout, and now so can I. Come to think of it, that should really be reason enough for me to bother learning a thing or two about the constellations myself, so I know if I'm being guided by the Big Dipper or Makara or what."

Not that constellations actually guided her since they were only man-made ideas and the senses of an insect could not pick up on such concepts, but eh, whatever.

[Lucas Gorecki]

Better gifts? Yes, perhaps he should focus on that. Better things to balance out the bad so the nice lady could buy that really, everything was fine and that everything that had happened was okay or didn't really exist. It didn't exist. It was just in his head. Lucas giggle, a little off kilter and high pitch, for a fraction of a second. Yes, all in his head.

"I can see really good. I can count the grass in that little clump over there." He pointed in the general direction of one of the many clumps of grass in the park. It was a park. There was a lot of grass. Someone should teach Lucas the finer points of being specific.

"Makara Jyothi? The Capricorn lights the way. There are worse constellations to have tugging at your mental TomTom. Pan and Typhon never did play well together, or maybe Zeus's milk-mother would be better to guide your pace, no?" He was skipping bits and bobs of information all over the place, but at least he was smiling. Someone was talking to him and not in the kind of 'just wait here until the people with the white coats and the happy drugs arrive' kind of voice either.

[Sati Beshara]

"You know the Jyotisha?"

Sati sounded impressed, because she was indeed. Even if he knew about Western/Greek/etc. star myths and such, she admittedly hadn't expected him to have any sort of savvy around the sort she had been taught. Well, that would serve as a reminder to her not to assume like that in the future! He must *really* be into this stuff; she wondered if he knew about star myths worldwide, stories from all over? And no, she didn't think he was sounding crazy right now either because she was EXPECTING not to understand what he's saying since, as she said herself, she doesn't know much about stars beyond what her moms taught her. Plus the "mental Tom-Tom" remark had seemed more clever than anything else.

She decided to engage him further on the subject, as he clearly liked it a lot. Sati the sort who endeared herself to others by letting them talk about what they liked, not necessarily finding mutual interests. She found it worked pretty well, and it sure was useful for keeping any danger of awkward silence at bay.

"What're those, Pan and Typhon, what are their stories?"

They could make a night of this, she expected. Her asking about the stars he named, and him telling her. It was a right romantic idea, wasn't it, speaking about stars until the sun rose with some random stranger. That sort of thing wasn't supposed to really happen, but she was here and she had the time, at least until that time passed into 'too abominably late to get even a semblance of the sleep needed to get through work tomorrow' anyway.

[Lucas Gorecki]

"I read," Lucas answered. "Know all the places for cheap, under appreciated books. People are so generous if they are trying to get rid of you." It wasn't the wisest of ways to spend his money, considering just how skinny he was under his clothes. He would have been better of spending what little money he managed to obtain on food.

Eating didn't feel good, though. Scraping and rasping down.

"Child of earth and hell, more snakes than common sense. Dragon heads. A hundred of them all for Typhon. Pan, silly charmer trying to woo the sea nymph. He saw Typhon, he did, when the dragon god came to claim blood and wounds and revenge. But Pan saw, oh he saw." Lucas grinned widely, "and warned the others so they could flee. Poor Pan, too much time warning, too little time fleeing. Too little time transforming to a shape that would have him go-go-go. Half fish, half goat and Zeus thanked him. Pasted the most embarrassing baby picture up in the stars for everyone to see."

He shrugged. "Makara Jyothi. Light of the Capricorn. Jyothi brings good luck, or so they say. Haven't seen it yet. Maybe it will come my way one day."

[Sati Beshara]

Once again, Lucas's way of talking really wasn't so hard to follow. Typhon was a being of Earth and Hell, and maybe so was Pan, and Typhon had a lot of snakes (pets?) and hundreds of heads, which were dragon heads to boot. Pan was flirting with sea nymphs when he saw Typhon coming to do bad things, so he warned everybody, but in the time he spent warning everybody he couldn't run away himself so he...what now...oh he turned into a half fish half goat...well she didn't see how that got him away from Typhon (maybe he fought him in that form? it didn't seem like one that would do much good for that...) and Zeus (the boss one, right?) thanked him by...something to do with the stars, hence why he got to be a constellation.

"So he had snakes? Those are are sacred in my religion. What did the Greek myths think of them?"

Since Typhon had obviously been a bad guy, she offered a gentle smile,

"Don't worry, I won't be offended if it's something bad, I've already heard the Christian stories with the apple."

Of course, he might not know anything about Greek (it was always Greek with the stars in Western lore, right?) stories besides the ones about the stars Well, she could ask.

"Do you know other Greek stories? Not just the ones about stars? My mothers told me all kinds from Morocco and India, do you want to swap? You told me about Pan and Typhon, so I tell you one?"

They could make a night of that too, of exchanging folklore and tales. It'd be kind of like being a kid again, except she'd be telling along with listening.

"It's really cool that you know the Jyotisha, in any case. Do you know the star stories from other places too? Like, I don't know, Australia or something?"