#anywhere

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The weather remains nice, and fall in New York is glorious.

Katrina takes her lunch OUTSIDE to enjoy in the dappled sun-shade of the courtyard.

Arty is already out there, sitting alone under a tree. He is peering into a paper lunch bag some what dubiously.

The nocker hesitates, then diverts.

"Hey." She says, as she parks next to him. A half dozen Nevers are already following her, one in every color of the crayola box.

He looks up at Katrina, and then at her entourage. THAT gives him a little smile. "Where'd you find these little charmers?"

Reaching out, he offers a hand to one to land on... but it zips away, and then blows a petite raspberry!

"They find me? I think they like colors. Try some candy, they like that too."

He glances into his bag again, and then empties it out carefully. A slightly squished sandwich with grape jelly leaking from one end. An orange, and a can of coke.

"Oh, I don't like this." He gives the Coke a side-eyed glance. "I don't get the appeal."

"Caffeine and sugar and fizz? If you don't, trust me, the sparkle crew will."

"Caffeine is essential for artists, at least. You have to stay up way too furkin' late, then drink it through the day."

Thistle has her lunch in a bento box, lot of little containers for eclectic things - candy and cheese and cherry tomatoes and pepperoni.

"It's not so much the contents, but the delivery method. I don't understand why they condense it under such pressure?" He is eying the can like it might explode.

"Otherwise the fizz runs out. Carbonation requires pressure. Now, if you agitate it yo can get a REAL good boom, but it should be fine now. Here." She takes the can to crack it open.

"Not again!" He holds up a hand to block.... nothing. Then looks at the can, looks at Katrina, and looks at the can again.

"I don't understand. Gary gave me three cans yesterday, and each one exploded when I opened it..."

A sour expression, thinking back at the muffled snickering as he opened yet another Coke to explode in his face...

"Agitate, you say."

"Yeah - like, shake it up before opening it?"

"Gary's a (&@((&&%."

One of the Never zips off a few feet further away, squeaking at the heat from her language! It doesn't stay away long, though.

Arty sighs. "And I suppose this sandwich is Not supposed to be flattened, either? No matter. It is sweet, your little friends should like it." He opens it up and offers peanut butter and jelly to Katrina's nevers.

"They seem friendly enough. C'mon guys - Art-.. Arthur's a friend."

"I guess all this must be as weird to you as the other stuff is to me."

The orange he keeps, taking out a small knife to slice through the peel and carefully segments the fruit.

"It's... much different than I expected. I don't remember what I expected, I guess, but I thought it would be more like normal but with Mortals. Not an entirely different world."

The Nevers pop over and are soon playfully squabbling over bits of sandwich. One takes hers to Katrina's head to sit upon, licking jelly off tiny hands.

"Aw, Greenie..." A little sigh at that.

"Do you remember anything of Arty?"

"Not that he had an easy time of it. But he was smart."

"I remember... remember isn't quite the right word. But I have impressions of him. Feelings, and memories, but it's like a memory of something I saw, not something I did?" He takes a moment to consider. "He wasn't very happy. Unnoticed much of the time, and not well treated when he was noticed. He hid... in books, in schoolwork. In the stars."

Arthur gives Katrina an appraising look, then, a little surprised. "And you. I didn't see it at first, I had to look at the mortal underneath." Just now recognizing the mortal from faded host recollection, and matching it to the flamboyant Nocker in front of him.

"You came over to help. You painted stars on the ceiling of the nursery, and he read you the patterns."

Shrug. "Known Arty a long time. Neither of us had it perfect."

"I don't know if anything in this world can be perfect. But there must be things that make it worth while. Otherwise there would be no point."

"Lots of things. Like... well, Arty had his stars and his sci-fi."

"People can suck, but some are alright."

"Nobody really likes school, but some of the stuff in class can be interesting." She dismisses it, but she's also clearly enjoying chem class.

"They don't?" Arthur wonders at this. "A chance to learn. I don't understand why everyone treats this like a gaol rather than an opportunity. True, a one on one mentorship would lend to better results, but here you can learn different things all in one day."

"You can..."

"Perhaps the flaw is in presenting the opportunity to everyone. Clearly many of those here are not eager to learn, and might do better being applied directly to a trade where they can be useful to their lieges."

"But, like..." Frown. "Um, you don't say THAT. People don't exist just to be useful cogs in a machine."

"That's half of why school sucks - because it comes from training people to work in factories. Bells and lines and conformity."

He seems puzzled. "But cogs are what makes a machine go. Even the smallest missing piece upsets the entire mechanism."

"But people ain't machines."

"But Society is!"

"Society exists for people!"

"Lot of it is fercacta, and that's why there's so much that's miserable - making everybody fit a mold, deciding what someone SHOULD be rather than letting them figure out what they CAN be."

"Yes, and for it to function, everyone must have a role to fulfill. Craftsmen and laborers, rulers and stewards. Everyone has their place..."

"But they have to find it, not be crammed into it."

"There is of course, upward mobility. Even the most common amongst us may shine with grace of fate upon them, and through the light of their deeds be granted rank and responsibility..."

"Saying someone is doomed to work shit jobs and struggle their whole life because they got born poor or in the wrong town or had shit parents? That's not fair."

He starts to say something, but then frowns. "...perhaps it is not."