strangetrip | [EP] hands in the dirt, head in the sun

After Vax'ildan caught her giving some of the plants a little nudge, Joanna was being more careful and not using magic as she tended the plantings. Getting her hands in the dirt and around growing things was grounding in ways she needed, with or without magic.

"No. Thank you. I have all the towels I need." The staff's obsession with offering towels was beyond Joanna's understanding, but was easier to ignore than the lack of aura and their general vagueness. "The fuchsias could use some attention, though. I was going to get to them after I finished here, but you could take care of them." The groundskeeper looked at Joanna with confusion. "The fuchsias. Bushes... small, carmine-" With no signs the woman knew what Joanna was talking about, she shook her head. "I'm going to clean up this bed today. Maybe you could find another part of the grounds to tend?"

The groundskeeper toddled off to do... whatever it was she was going to do, and Joanna let out a sigh of disbelief before catching the eye of someone passing by. "I had middle school students who were easier to talk to."

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"And there's not much in the way of painting supplies here." Not much in the way of most things here, really. No one was going to starve to death or go naked, but it didn't go much further than that. "You could try asking the Innkeeper for them? They're all always going on about us being comfortable and happy here, so maybe they'd take an order."

Kitty shrugged and smiled, expression wry with self-awareness. "Engineer. Problem-solver. You didn't ask my advice, obviously. It just seemed logical."

"I may, in time." With no idea how long they could be stuck here, Joanna knew she'd eventually need more and different things to do. "For now, the grounds are much larger than my garden. Then with trying to find a way home or how and why we were all brought here, I've enough to keep busy.

"Yeah, I hear that." She tipped her head curiously, though. "I can't think of a good way to ask this, but I wouldn't think that a painter, teacher, and gardener would have a lot of knowledge about the kind of things that might have brought us here. I hope you don't think I'm being dismissive. I'm just curious."

"Unlike a scientist or engineer, you mean?" Joanna didn't sound particularly bothered by the question. It was a fair one, from anyone who didn't know what she was, but she also wasn't comfortable revealing herself to those who weren't already comfortable with or at least knowledgeable about magic.

"My older daughter, Ingrid, is a rational skeptic, a librarian, and ABD. Her sister Freya is a touchy-feely bartender with what has been called, usually affectionately, woo-woo tendencies. When you look at the world in different ways, you find different things. And it's not the first time I've found myself in another world. I might see things others don't."

"Obviously, yeah," Kitty agreed. She knew that from her teammates. They succeeded often because they didn't see things the same way. But the last part piqued Kitty's curiosity. "It's not the first time you've been in another world? What happened the other time? Or was it times? It's not the first time for me either."

"Just the once. There was a portal, opened by a key which has since been destroyed. Most of my family, along with others who'd supported us, were... exiled. We were only recently reunited with my son, who'd been left behind." That Ingrid could open the portal Joanna kept to herself for now, although she'd thought she'd told Vax'ildan.

"We ended up on some version of Earth and have lived there since."

Kitty frowned while she ran all that through her mind a few times. Portal, key, family support all seemed to suggest some kind of power struggle, possibly magical, since Joanna didn't seem technologically inclined. Multiverse seemed a little more techie, but Yana's magic more or less supported it.

"Are you Skrull?" she asked in the language and then, "Kree?" in it. Joanna didn't seem like either, considering she'd never met either who were particularly gifted with plants.

Joanna shook her head. "Whatever you said, I'm afraid it's not a language I recognize." Obviously what she'd told Kitty had an effect, but not one Joanna could place. She wouldn't have said as much as she had, except obviously they'd all been brought from their home worlds to here somehow, and there were apparent humans who came from worlds other than Earth.

"I asked if you were either of the two species of aliens I know particularly well." Kitty decided that since they were talking, she might as well sit instead of crouching, and folded down to the ground. "But I didn't think you would be. If I had to guess, I'd say magical of some kind."

"The key and portal I encountered in the past were magical, yes." Kitty seemed very comfortable with the idea of aliens, and not bothered by discussions of magic. And she'd adapted quickly here. What was her life like before?

"Depending on your definition, we're all aliens here, whether we're different species or not. Humans," or those who appeared human, "from worlds other than Earth. Humans from Earths that aren't the same. Those who aren't human at all. And none of us belonging here.

"But you're right; I am not either of the species you mentioned."

"Non-human aliens," Kitty amended agreeably. "It's weird not to have a stable frame of reference. At least the laws of physics seem to be the same." So far at least. "I guess it would be neat, like being Newton or Galileo to have to figure it all out from scratch, but right now science is the only thing I trust completely. I think I might be losing my mind if couldn't count on matter behaving the way I expect it to."

She brushed her hair back behind her ear, thoughtful for a moment, but then she shrugged. "Probably not. I grew up around people who can do everything from planar travel to mind-melding with machines. Nothing fazes me for long."

"Your life before here sounds far stranger than mine. I'm fairly certain mind-melding with machines would do more than faze me for awhile." Joanna had certainly never attempted anything like that with her magic, nor heard of anyone who did.

"But I think I drove Ingrid to pulling out her hair before she could convince me to upgrade to a smartphone, so that might not be surprising."

"Magic and technology don't always play nice together," Kitty said. "So that doesn't surprise me at all."

[EP] hands in the dirt, head in the sun

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