milliways_bar | (no subject)

Aside from the meat, that smells like the sort of thing that the scarred man by the fire is used to eating. So he looks up when a breeze carries the scent past him and offers a smile and a nod to her.

Spoon is not either of the werewolves who has been in the sandbox, so he's got no idea if there are rules to talking to someone in her headdress. Makes things a little awkward, but that's life.

"Hello," her voice is warmly polite as she returns the nod.

No rules that wouldn't be common sense in most quarters; i.e., don't grab at her veil or hood, and other than that? Sooraya is accustomed to people not knowing much of where she's from. She won't take offense at a slipup, if any happen.

"Hallo, ma'am." Spoon says in return, with another dip of his head, "I can guess you're from somewhere in the middle east, but, uh. I dunno much about the customs..." he waves vaguely at his own face, "it's alright to talk to you? Obviously, you just talked to me. Can I try that again?"

"I am from Afghanistan, originally. The year 2003."

"Surely," her smile doesn't falter, and it's reached her eyes. Her posture's calm, casually friendly and relaxed. "My name's Sooraya Qadir. Thank you for asking. Questions don't bother me half as much as people who don't know and can't be bothered."

"Me name is Spoon. Yorkshire, England, 2005. I, uh. Ask a lot of questions." Spoon allows, cheerfully, "Easily confused, see. It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am. Me mum cooks foods from Afghanistan, and surrounding areas, a lot."

"Everyone is, sometimes, no? I know I was; especially when I had to learn English after a move to the States.
A pleasure to meet you, too, Spoon. Is your mother a chef, then?" taking a guess as to his meaning.

"Relearning it wasn't bloody easy either." Spoon can relate to learning English. He had to do it a second time, up from canine. "She's a baker. The rest of us are hopeless in the kitchen, though, so she does all the cooking for the pack."

Sooraya now has a few questions of her own. She tilts her head at him,
concern flickering in her eyes, at the 'relearned'.
"I can imagine. One of my team is forbidden to even TOUCH the oven at home, after we spent a week scraping 'fish and chips' off the ceiling.
'Pack'?"

Spoon is good at body-language. (His specialty is "I am going to shoot you now") At the concerned look he says, "Massive amounts of brain damage. Grew the brain back, having to relearn most of the other stuff. I chop the vegetables for mum most nights, and I'm learning to make candy. Pack. Werewolf, see."

Sooraya, if she had a specialty, it would probably be "I'm lying my ass off" or "you scare me, mutant."

Her eyes widened. "[Allah, have mercy...]That must have been dreadful," soberly. "Yet, I wouldn't have known you were still a learner, if you hadn't said so.
Werewolf? Of the supernatural kind, or by birth?" She knows shapeshifters who can take a wolf's form, and so she doesn't immediately infer 'magical' or 'supernatural cause' from what he's said.

Spoon's no good at either lying or being scared. He tends to get angry if he's scared. Call it a survival instinct. He shrugs and says, "It was. Started trying to rehabilitate me in, mmm. December of '02. Started talking again in '04, and they let me go last February." Most of this he doesn't remember. At her questions he holds up his left arm; the one that looks like something very, very large ate most of the flesh off of it; leaving a perfect ring where the skin tore when Sarge's wrist-watch caught before the whole thing ripped off. "Bit, ma'am. Uh. Rather a lot."

Those are good instincts. One could wish some people in the X-Verse had a better developed survival sense.
She hissed softly between her teeth, started to reach a hand toward his arm before stopping herself. "It must have taken a great deal of strength to overcome that. You have others helping you, you said?" She's still not smelling afraid. There's worry, but it's not self-directed.
She grew up in a part of the world where 'peaceful' was the exception, not the rule. Scars are sickeningly familiar territory.

"Do now. Mum, da', and me mate Ace. Friends, too. Things are better. Dunno if I'm strong, but I'm the stubbornest son of a bitch you're going to meet. Not going to let anyone kill me after I survived them once." His arm isn't the worst of it. The rest of it, though, only his pack and his girl see. Spoon doesn't do swimsuits, ever. Or shorts.

"Good people then. I know family or friends can matter more than almost anything," her own eyes darken, as she pushes away old memories of her own. " Are they all 'pack' too, if I may ask that?" She almost grins at his description. "Oh, I believe you."

"Only Sarge and Muldoon." Spoon says, "Mum's human and me girl is part cat. The puppies are dogs." There are, in fact, too medium-small gray fluff balls with big blue eyes sprawled around him.

She likes animals, though she's not too used to puppies. "I'd wondered," she admitted. "Hello," offers them a smile with the words, the tone of voice friendly. "Are they named?"

"Rasia is the bitch, Stepan is the cur." Rasia is also the one with gray on her chest, and the slightly more delicate muzzle. Stepan is slightly bigger. Say hallo, kids.
Hi!
Hi!

The man did, in fact, make canine noises there. "Got asked, once, if they were my puppies." Spoon sounds bemused over that, although the rest of the conversation was...painful.

This? is the noise Sooraya makes when you say something like that right after she's got a mouthful of tea.
She coughs, splutters, and clears her throat after a minute. "Yours. That's...an imaginative question."

"She wanted to know," Spoon says blandly, "if they were shifted werewolves. Not withstanding the fact that Ovcharkas don't look a bloody thing like fuckin' wolves."

"Yes," she'd caught the implication. There may be some blushing, but she goes on, "Would they not be in human form, if so, unless it's full moon? Or maybe your world's version has different rules."
She moves closer, offering a hand for the puppies to sniff gingerly.

"Oh, I'm bloody special." Spoon says bitterly, "Can change outside of the moon, thanks to me government's tender care." The puppies sniff her hand and then give it polite licking.

Pet us now? is the canine request from two wiggly bodies.

Sooraya obliges, patting Stepan and then Rasia alternately.
"Are there any governments that don't mistreat their people?" she mutters, exasperated on his behalf. Between him and Muldoon, she's begun to think that anarchy sounds more appealing. Or some creative object lessons.
"Not everyone from my world is all that ordinary, either," wondering if she scents differently to him than an ordinary human. "Far from it, in some cases. So this place...isn't as strange to me as it might have been." She looks up and smiles tiredly.

She smells like herself. She is human, mutants are evolved humans, and he's met so few (two) mutants - with different powers - that he couldn't tell if she was special or not by that. "Power breeds corruption, I think. Why I'm glad I'm not an alpha. Beta's enough power and more than."

That gets an emphatic nod. "My teacher at home, or one of them, says that 'anyone who goes looking for power deserves to have it find them'."

"We've some unusual abilities, but most are inborn rather than gained from outside. And I've yet to meet anyone whose "powers" included common sense, which is a lot more useful." There may be an eyeroll at that.

"Can't help you there, ma'am." Spoon says, "I'm bloody insane, I am. Don't think I had common sense before they took me apart."