Reptiles and Bibliophiles (Marnie)

[Ashley Engel]

Aerodynamics and Theories of Flight
Shadowrun Fifth Edition
A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living

Ash had been up since the early morning, as per usual for her routine. But today was a violation of her schedule. She had free time, and no idea how to spend it. She had her books, only one of which she’d almost read through for a second time, but she found herself too restless to focus on any of them despite multiple attempts. It wasn’t the content, she surmised after giving up on her notes for Shadowrun. The issue lied within herself.

Boldly exploring out of her room as far as the common area for the dorm, she wound up taking up a place in one of the chairs laid out in an open living space. Maybe it was supposed to be homey, or socially inspiring. It all felt bland, though. It didn’t matter to her if the decor was the lavish details of her childhood home or the more simplistic colors and layout of a shared dorm space. All of it was just furniture. Dull things she couldn’t garner anything from.

She had always thought people were the same way- faceless background fixtures she couldn’t gain from. But so far Hammel was doing its best to prove her wrong. Already she had a list of individuals in the back of her mind, distinguished from the grey mass of humanity. Ash had always thought in terms of “me" and "them”, but this school and it’s occupants were slowly cracking down that method of classification. People were starting to stand out to her, even if it was mostly just by what they cost.

Marnie, for instance, had a cost of emotional discomfort and mild irritation.
Ash wasn’t entirely sure why thinking of her dormmate made her stomach churn and her nerves fray, but it did. She didn’t like that, but Marnie as a concept was interesting. Her power existed as a detail Ash wanted to dissect. She wanted to know the limitations and potential of the ability. She never thought about why. She’d never thought that before in her life. She just took interest in things, and explored them until exhaustion.

Chameleon Girl, as Ash had been referring to her, was an untapped well of information. It just came down to if the knowledge was worth the cost. For most people the answer was always no, and thus Ash’s distaste for them stayed as the only part she kept in mind. For more recent acquaintances like Marnie, things were more complicated.

Thus, with an empty day ahead of her and a lack of ability to stay locked up reading, she pursued the closest source of occupation. If her time at Hammel thus far had taught her anything it was not to go in without a game plan. So she took her time in getting up and moving to Marnie’s room door, and she didn’t knock until after she’d solidified in her mind what to say.

A greeting, first of all, since it was still morning and she was the one requesting conversation.
Hello was appropriate, and expected, so she settled on that. After three sharp knocks she cleared her throat and straightened her posture slightly. She was still in pajamas- dark green pants and an oversized button-up shirt, but that was no excuse to slouch when addressing someone.

“Hello, Chameleon Girl. Are you awake?”
She asked only because she couldn’t simply hear. Walls and doors were usually her saving grace, but just this once she wished they weren’t blocking her ability to tell if Marnie was indeed conscious without asking.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Exhausted wasn't the right word for it - Marnie was sore, certainly, but a good kind of sore, the kind that left her feeling energized. She'd gotten up to make a few laps of the pond while it was still chilly outside, and had just finished a hot shower in the communal bathrooms. Dressed back in her comfortable pajamas, with her hair in a towel and her dirty workout clothes slung over her forearm, Marnie returned to her dorm room only to find her neighbor standing at her door expectantly.

"Don't tell me there's another spider in your room." Marnie meant it mostly as a joke, but it'd be a lie to say she wasn't thinking it. Dealing with creepy little eight-legged monsters was bad enough as is, but it was another level of awful to smash them to death with hardcover smut in front of a kid. "What's up? Did I miss a tornado drill or something?"

[Ashley Engel]

For some reason she’d taken Marnie as the opposite of the active type.
Lazy. Unintelligent. Stationary. It wasn’t anything against the way the girl presented herself. Ash just typically had a bad opinion of everyone. She’d been told for a long time she was abnormal, so imagining that other people might do things similar to her was never her first thought. When Marnie walked in Ash turned around, both surprised to see her awake already and to notice the clothes over her arm. Ash did not handle surprise well. While normally her face was composed into a neutral expression and her posture was upstanding, when she turned to face Marnie she looked startled and uncomfortable.

“N-No..” The confusion didn’t let up any as Marnie spoke.
If there was a tornado drill, there would need to be a tornado.. And as far as she’d seen the weather was fine today. So the other’s questioning seemed wildly out of place. The idea of a drill to test machinery and practice was far out of Ash’s understanding, as much was likely clear as she stared at Marnie in an obvious loss of direction.

“I.. er..” She looked back to her room, then to Marnie’s, then to the girl herself.
Somewhat clumsily she sidestepped, moving away from the door should entrance be wanted.
“I don’t understand.” She didn’t like admitting it, but there seemed to be no salvaging sense from the conversation otherwise. She moved again, to look out the window. Nothing ominous hung in the sky. It wasn’t even raining.

“Why would there be a tornado drill?”
She muttered the words, more to herself than anything. Most people would have dropped the missed comment, but Ash couldn’t let it go. Not understanding something bothered her beyond words. When she looked back at chameleon girl, it was with an expression similar to a child being told Santa was indeed not real. She simply couldn’t wrap her head around the situation at all, and despite any initial intent her whole focus was now rerouted entirely to trying to figure out what the other meant.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Oh, man. Marnie's first encounter with her roommate had already been awkward enough. Now that she was reconsidering her joke, it seemed more and more like a bad idea. 

"I was just kidding," Marnie said, in a deliberately gentle voice. She considered reaching a hand out to pat the girl's shoulder. It occurred to her that her neighbor had mind-reading powers, and that only served to confuse her more. Had she not been able to tell that Marnie wasn't serious? Had she lied about her power, and was really some kind of fire bender or something? Marnie already barely knew how to connect with average people her own age, but a young kid with savant-like abilities and no social skills would prove to be a challenge.

"Are you... okay?" Marnie asked. After a moment's consideration, she opened her bedroom door and stepped inside. The odds were probably good that her dormmate wouldn't toast her belongings to oblivion. Probably. Either way, now Marnie was in a decent position to either offer the girl a pillow or slam and lock the door. "I'm pretty sure there are no tornados in town, they're kind of obvious."

[Ashley Engel]

Kidding. About a tornado drill.
The humor was beyond lost on her, but she was used to that. People had tried humor with her before and it rarely worked. There was a difference of course between hearing thoughts and reading thoughts. Just because Ash could hear Marnie didn’t mean she was listening to her. Eavesdropping was never really her thing, and she’d never found people’s thoughts to be all that interesting. Some things she couldn’t help but hear, but that all came down to a matter of volume. Now that Marnie wasn’t screaming about spiders and fear, it was fairly easy to gloss over her mental voice. While the two tones mushed together well enough, there was a distinct difference between them. Ash didn’t know much about her power, but she knew which voice to listen to and respond to. It was a lesson she had not learned easily at Kocher.

“I’m fine..” She let her eyes linger on the window as Marnie moved into her room. Despite the verification that there were no tornadoes, she still stared idly for a moment before turning to follow. She only moved a few steps forward before lingering in the doorway. Ash was socially inept but she understood the boundaries of living spaces. Mostly because she was very strict about people violating her own. She didn’t step into Marnie’s room, since express permission hadn’t been extended. Instead she stood outside it, staring at the details in her line of sight. She’d gotten a distracted glimpse of the girl’s bookcase before, but now without spiders lurking she was able to really analyze the titles on display.

“Yes, I’ve been told they’re rather ostentatious.” She muttered, referring to tornadoes. It was her own attempt at humor, and as could be expected it was flat and dry.

“Regarding my presence at your door.”
Coming back to her initial intentions made her straighten again, hands coming behind her back slightly for a more professional posture. It took effort to pull her eyes off the books and to Marnie’s face, but Benjamin had drilled at least some small bit of how to address people into her.
“I was going to request further conversation regarding your power. I still don’t fully understand it.”

[Marnie Sullivan]

Well, that cleared that up - okay, it didn't really. Marnie still wasn't quite sure whether her neighbor was alright or not, and she clearly didn't communicate in any manner Marnie was used to. Oh, well. If they were going to live near each other, she might as well try. Besides, the girl didn't seem dangerous, just weird and curious about Marnie's power. Marnie deposited her workout clothes into her hamper and sat cross-legged on her bed, feigning a casual air. She wanted to laugh at Ashley's comment about tornadoes, but wasn't entirely sure whether it was a joke itself.

"That makes two of us, I guess," she told Ashley. "I've never lived next door to a telepath before." Marnie pointed at the chair that sat askew from her desk, fortunately bare from any stray clothes. "We need to get to know each other anyway, right?" Marnie's chameleon sat in its tank on a shelf above her bed; Marnie was barely paying attention to it, being more concerned with the girl in her doorway.

[Ashley Engel]

Ash hesitated before moving a single step further into Marnie’s room.
She’d made a motion- offered permission. It was fine to be here. But no matter how clear that was Ash still felt wildly out of place. She’d never even gone into her parents’ bedroom, much less a relative stranger’s. Her motions were mechanical and overly contained as she moved straight to the offered chair and sat. Her ankles crossed and her hands folded into her lap neatly. Her eyes drug up from the floor to Marnie’s face then off again.

Her lips twitched when Marnie said telepath. Despite a year of adjusting she still wasn’t used to the word or it’s connotations. Different people heard different things out of it. What she heard was a summarized label. A nicer way for Marnie to say she’d never been near someone who could invade her head on a moment’s notice. Ash wanted to clarify a lot of things about what she could do, but all the same she also didn’t want to talk about it at all. She was not proud of her abilities in the least. She had enough trouble with people before all their inner monologues were put on display.

“Correct.” She nodded, affirming the other before letting her gaze continue to trail.
Most of the room was standard, identical to her own save the actual signs of someone living in this space. Ash’s own room was still relatively barren, save for three lonely books and a journal. At first, she’d written off all the different details about as Marnie’s junk. But, slowly, her attention settled on something behind the other. Yet again she was pulled away from her primary motive.

“Is.. What is that?”
She didn’t point, but she did nod towards the terrarium. She’d never seen something like it before. It was a tiny nature box.. For what? Textures readily available for practice in blending into nature? That seemed smart, though the container was a little overly grand. Wouldn’t a shoebox do just as well for leaves and sticks? Unfortunately for Ash any thoughts to give away the actual purpose of the terrarium wouldn’t arrive until after her question. Oh, how very useful her power was. She did so love it.

[Marnie Sullivan]

"Hm?" Marnie turned to see what Ashley was referring to, and was relieved to see it was just the terrarium instead of more inappropriate reading material. Marnie hadn't exactly bonded with the animal yet - she had never been much of a pets-without-fur person - but at that moment she was grateful for its presence. You could get a lot of mileage in a conversation out of weird pets, and she would probably need it with Ashley. "Oh, that's Felix. He's kind of hard to see, but that's his tail right there." She pointed to a small green curlicue peeking out from behind some leaves. The lizard was still young, only a few inches long and rarely any color but a muted emerald green. It didn't seem to hide on purpose, but it often took Marnie a moment to locate it.

"I know it's dumb, 'haha the chameleon has a chameleon,' but it was my mom's idea." Marnie had been a little disappointed to learn that the lizard didn't actually have the ability to change color to match it's surroundings. In the book her mother had given her, she'd read that they actually just changed according to the temperature, and sometimes moods. Marnie wondered if her mother would have gotten her the pet if she'd known it couldn't actually do what Marnie did.

"I'd offer to let you hold him, but he's a little weird about being picked up." She had actually never tried, but she wasn't sure how Ashley would handle it. The girl didn't seem dangerous - she couldn't even kill a spider - but she was clearly strange. Then Marnie remembered that of course Ashley was strange, she could read minds. Her cheeks prickled a little and Marnie tried to will them not to change color. Hopefully Ashley had missed that thought.

[Ashley Engel]

Ash squinted.
A chameleon.. Felix the chameleon. She’d never been near a pet before. The only animals she’d seen were in pictures, and the occasional moose on the way to the city. Damn things never stayed out of the road. So to be so close to one- to see one in a habitat neatly contained in someone’s room.. It was trippy. She stared like an awestruck child, lips slightly parted with words that were not quick to come. She tried to gather what she could from Marnie’s words and her thoughts. Sure, it was technically an invasion of privacy. But she wanted to understand, and she didn’t want to have to ask more questions than she needed to. What she got, however, was a little different than what she wanted.

“Antisocial behaviors.” Her lips twitched again in briefly displayed displeasure. Even though she spoke to Marnie, Ash didn’t look at her. Her eyes stayed locked on the small creature, fascinated by it. She didn’t seem to blink very often.
“I’m weird because I don’t relate to people correctly.” She offered the words offhandedly, like the topic was just as casual as chameleons and the weather.

“I’ve never had any pets before. My therapist said sometimes children with emotional issues would start out harming animals, so my parents were wary about getting me one. Honestly I’ve never been in a situation to be able to so I’m not entirely sure if I’m dangerous or not.”
Noticing her own posture she paused, forcing herself to lean back in her chair away from Marnie and her pet. The irony of the girl having a chameleon was appreciated, even if Ash didn’t laugh or smile about it. The situation was quirky. She liked that.

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t particularly find the idea of harming your reptile appealing, so I doubt I’m prone to those impulses.” She shrugged in one of those but you never know ways and left it at that. Slowly she pulled her focus back to Marnie. It would be rude to ignore her for the company of her possession, wouldn’t it? Ash honestly wasn’t sure.

“Have I made you wildly uncomfortable yet? You can tell me to leave at any point you know, I won’t feel offended by it.” Which wasn’t entirely true, but she wanted it to be, so she said it like it was.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Well, that was honestly a lot to process. Marnie wanted to feel reassured, but she was a little stuck on the fact that Ashley just admitted that she didn't know if she was a danger to animals. As unattached as Marnie felt to the chameleon, she still knew she didn't want to return to her dorm one day and find it with its feet pinned and its guts dissected on her desk or something.

No, that was rude. Marnie couldn't deny the girl was somewhat discomfiting, but she definitely seemed to be making an effort. Flatly stating uncomfortable truths and fixating on unusual pets weren't crimes. Neither was going a long time without blinking, but that would be unnerving no matter who was doing it.

"Of course I'm not uncomfortable," Marnie lied, a little too cheerfully. "Hey, I've got an idea. I've always wanted to try this - what am I thinking right now?" That was actually true; usually in movies or books with mind-readers, anybody who asked that would be thinking some variation of "this is bullshit" but never anything that would actually be difficult to guess. Hoping it would shift the conversation away from possible animal abuse, Marnie settled on a sufficiently random thought (an image of a bottle of hot sauce) and waited.

[Ashley Engel]

Confusing. Ash normally thought she didn’t like liars.
But there Marnie was, saying she wasn’t uncomfortable when the contrary was obvious. Ash was both irritated and oddly pleased by the words. She didn’t like it when people didn’t say what they meant honestly and openly because it felt like a waste of everyone’s time. But the fact Marnie was lying and trying to act nice was.. amusing? Not relaxing, but something similar. Ash liked it.

The change of topic had her blinking twice, face ever so slightly turning to surprise before evening out again. Of all the conversations she’d had regarding what she could do, no one had ever asked that. And, since she didn’t watch many movies or tv shows, the cliche within the words was missed. So she was left to stare at Marnie, caught off guard by the eagerness in her. It passed quickly enough as she shifted in her seat and tried to focus.

Something Ash had yet to be told- when she earnestly focused on what she was doing she looked fairly angry. Her eyebrows came together and her jaw set. Her frame went rigid and her normally blank face drew up in uncommonly strong lines. So she sat there glaring at Marnie, trying to listen and decipher what she could hear. At first, she muttered words as they floated around. A brand, a color. None of it made much of anything until she pieced the particles together herself.

“Hot.. sauce.” Despite hearing the details with her own ears (or whatever she heard with exactly) she still thought she was wrong. Mostly because it seemed like an impressively obscure thing to randomly have on the mind. “You’re thinking about hot sauce?”

[Marnie Sullivan]

At first Marnie was afraid that the faces Ashley was making meant she was upset about being asked what was probably, Marnie now realized, a patronizing and overused question. She was almost regretting that move until Ashley stopped muttering.

"You're thinking about hot sauce?"

Marnie wasn't impressed, exactly - she hadn't doubted that Ashley could do what she claimed, and neither was Ashley the first mind reader she'd ever met at Hammel. But the answer was indeed correct, and something about Ashley being so bewildered about it was downright endearing. Marnie applauded as though she'd just seen an especially impressive juggling trick.

"That's it!" she exclaimed, grinning. "Was that weird? I bet no one's ever thought of that when they asked you to guess, right?" 

[Ashley Engel]

Ashley smiled.
It was small, and she was quick to pull it off her face. But Marnie’s clapping made her feel good. Proud, for once, of what she could do. Between her family’s less than thrilled reactions and the common responses of discomfort and avoidance from peers she hadn’t really grown into her power as something to be done for praise. Receiving it was an odd mixture of embarrassing and wonderful.

“No one’s asked me to guess before. So technically no, no one’s thought of that in such context before you.” Even though she was careful to keep her face resigned there was still a lightness in her tone, more relaxed than before. Her words were still rigid, but progress was progress.

“You are very..” Ash squinted slightly at Marnie, searching her features like the word she was looking for lied there somewhere. Her pause was brief, before she settled on, “unexpected.”
Whether or not it was a good thing was made clear when the smile returned, reserved but at the very least a natural and easy expression.

[Marnie Sullivan]

Not for the first time, Marnie felt unsure about her neighbor's response. Unexpected? It wasn't exactly a trait she often strove for. But Ashley was smiling, and Marnie had the distinct feeling that she was being complimented.

"No one's seriously ever wanted you to guess before?" she asked, a little incredulously. "I mean, I guess if you're only ever around metas people are probably like, 'yup, telepath here, just another Tuesday,'" Marnie said, shrugging, "but that's kind of boring, you know?"

It felt like progress, honestly. Marnie had pretty much forgotten that a few minutes ago she'd been mildly concerned for her chameleon's life. For a moment she was just pleased that the two had moved to a less awkward standing, until she suddenly remembered why Ashley was there in the first place.

"Wait, you were asking about my power, right?" Marnie sat up a bit straighter, feeling flattered that someone with a power like mind-reading was curious about her own. "What'd you want to know?"

[Ashley Engel]

There was a nodding that accompanied Marnie’s words.
Ash chose not to point out the facts that she rarely spoke to people, and when she did the exchanges were rarely pleasant enough to leave room for strangers to have her guess their thoughts. People were nearly never comfortable with the idea of what she could do. Even Marnie herself hadn’t taken well to it initially. That was usually where Ash left things with people. A brief passing, enough exposure to nail the coffin, and that was it.

All this, whatever it was, was new and strange. It was equal parts interesting and nerve-wracking, and overall left the telepath unable to comprise an opinion. Their discussion simply was. Undefinable.

“Everything.”
Ash stared directly into Marnie’s eyes as she offered the word bluntly. It was the truth. She wanted to know what Marnie could and couldn’t do. How it worked, when it started. Why it happened, what parts of her body shifted to facilitate the coloring. Obviously skin pigmentation was involved but to what extent and how was unknown. Chameleons were not based on emotional or conscious impulse as far as Ash understood, so Marnie’s control was already well beyond anything she could simply research in nature documents or animal texts. Thus the only real option for proper learning was to ask. There really wasn’t anything she didn’t want to know about it. But, after a moment, she understood they were better off starting with something small.
“Is it entirely voluntary? Can you control it at will or is it a physiological reaction?”