fandomtownies | Strokes of Genius: Thursday [1/6/2011]

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Strokes of Genius: Thursday [1/6/2011]

Cally had managed to order/threaten/cajole/beg Nana into going back to the dorm and staying there after their walk this morning, so Strokes of Genius was dog-free on a Thursday, for a change.

Except for the Puppy Qee that Cally had dragged out of the sale bin and was currently painting. She'd started out trying for a Saint Bernard, but the ears would never be right, so instead it was on its way to being a puppy with green fur, glowing eyes and felt wings, wearing a Fandom High sweatshirt.

She felt that was fairly representative of the range of diversity in the student body. Plus, bored and left alone with art supplies.

Strokes of Genius was open and smelled of paint.

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"Cally?"

That was a really blond head poking its way into the store after classes. A really blond head carrying two cups of, of all things, lemonade.

He was trying to be nice.

Well, it was more hot chocolate weather, but it wasn't as if the shop lacked heat. Cold drinks were survivable.

"Hello!" Cally looked up from her project and waved a brush dipped in green paint. If she did that a little less enthusiastically, she probably wouldn't now have a drop of green on the tip of her nose.

Dolf blinked. The drop-of-green-paint looked adorable, though, and he laughed once as he shut the door behind him with his foot. "What are you making?" he asked. "An alien dog?"

Cally studied it, fixing a spot on the back of its head that she'd missed, in the process. "I think so. Or perhaps it's a Goblin dog?"

"A flying goblin dog?" Dolf asked, as he came around to the counter with both cups in hand. He set one down near her. "I wouldn't want to run into one of them."

Cally pointed to the sweatshirt. "It's clearly a student, so it's friendly. Or at least non-hostile."

Dolf squinted at her in a way that was maybe a little obvious. "Oh, I don't know," he said, smiling. "It seems to have attacked you. Right on the nose."

She frowned at him for a moment, before reaching up to rub her fingers across --- "Oh!"

Shaking her head, Cally reached for a napkin from the pile beside the register. "How long were you going to let me walk around like that, hmm?"

"I only let you walk around with it for a few seconds!" he protested, quickly. "I am not that mean."

He was, however, taking a sip of his lemonade to hide his grin.

"I don't need to be able to read your mind to know you're laughing at me in it." She wiped off the initial smudge, then gave the rest of her face a good scrub, just in case. "There; no remaining signs of paint-goblin attack."

"You better stay careful," Dolf cautioned her, setting his cup back down on the counter. "What if it comes back again? It could be your forehead next time."

"I suppose I'll have to keep a mirror about so I can check it every so often," Cally said, reaching for the cup he'd placed near her. "Unless you're planning to follow me around everywhere, just in case."

Dolf kept grinning through his slight blush (damn his fair skin), and answered, "I think that would be stalking, unless you asked me to." Which made him go slightly redder, but whatever.

Lemonade was, as it turned out, rather good for hiding grins.

"Perhaps not everywhere. You do have to go to classes, after all. But I appreciate you coming all the way out here to protect me."

Edited 2011-01-06 22:19 (UTC)

"That's what I'm here for," Dolf assured her, leaning up against the counter. "I'm really good against paint." Oh, Dolf, you were a complete boyscout, don't attempt to be snarky.

"I hope so, because you're leaning on some."

No, he wasn't. She just was that mean.

He veered up and away from the counter almost immediately. "Did I get it on somewhere?!"

Gullible, too.

"Hmm." There was probably something unfair about taking a nice long look up and down, but hush. "I don't think so."

Suggesting that he'd better turn around so that she could make completely sure would be too mean.

Edited 2011-01-08 05:09 (UTC)

Dolf smoothed over his shirt at his side a little nervously. "Okay," he said, "Good. I don't have a lot of shirts."

He still really needed a job. "Uh, so, how are you doing?" Ladies and gentlemen, the awkward part of the day.

Oh fine, now she felt guilty for teasing him.

"I'm well. " She grinned. "Though perhaps a bit bored today, as you can guess. My new classes are interesting, though."

"What are you taking?" asked Dolf, as he tugged on his shirt and kept checking. Just in case.

"The science of psionics, and the science of sexuality."

"So the first is for..." He waved at his head. "How's that one?"

So not touching the sexuality thing. So not touching it.

Chicken. Big Dutch chicken.

"Useful, I think? I hope. There's a number of people in it that I already knew had mental powers, but some I wasn't aware of. Even types I wasn't aware of; one girl can set things on fire with her mind, and another sees the future."

Yeah, that was still kind of... new, for Dolf, too. "Well, a lot of people at the reserves can do special things, too," he said, a little dubiously. "So I guess it isn't a surprise."

Big Dutch liar, also.

"Not entirely," Cally allowed. "The range is bigger than I've come in contact with at home, though. We have the occasional person who can move objects without touching them, but that's about it beyond telepathy."

"It's still more than we have," Dolf pointed out. He wasn't sulking about it, honest.

"That you know of," Cally pointed right back. "Several of the people in that class are from Earth."

"I think if people could throw fire around, I'd have heard about it," he argued. "They could do a lot of good!"

Or blow a lot of stuff up, but he preferred to go for the idealistic option whenever possible.

"They could," Cally agreed. "But the girl in question didn't seem thrilled about listing off her abilities. If they're rare, they might be kept secret."

"The scientists back home were planning to show the time machine to everyone eventually," Dolf muttered.

Cally used the brush to trace a lopsided circle in her dish of green paint as she thought about it. "Things are different to people, though. If you invent a wonderful new machine, the worst that can happen is someone more powerful, an untrustworthy government or business, can do is take it from you."

Which... just went to show that as cynical as she was becoming about the Federation, she had no clue about the worst they could do.

"When it's the body and abilities of a person..."

"But people wouldn't do that," said Dolf, with... less vehemence than he would have had about a year ago. "Not in these days. I just don't get it."

"That's what my people would like to believe as well: that everyone is trustworthy until proven otherwise." Cally would like to believe it, for that matter. She was just finding it difficult to reconcile that with the things she saw happening around her, at least back home.

"If we can't trust people, then what's the point in working together anymore?" Dolf asked. "We have to be able to expect more of people."

"I agree." But the reservation was there in her voice. "But I can't blame people for wanting to protect themselves, either. My experiences aren't theirs; to them, the danger may have already been proved."

"Then we should make sure they know they're safe," Dolf said, stubbornly. "And we can't be the only good people who'd do that."

"One would hope not," Cally agreed. "I'm glad that people seem to feel safe enough to talk about their abilities here, anyway."

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Strokes of Genius: Thursday [1/6/2011]

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