"People get killed by accidents all the time. Sure, they take guns, or cars, or drinking, but it happens. Just because a mutation is part of someone doesn't mean disaster is automatically going to arise. And teaching someone to control that could actually reduce the risk, just like teaching someone to properly drive a car or use a weapon. Is a car designed to kill just because accidents can take lives?" She looked at him, waiting for the sentence to sink in.

He seemed fascinated by his toes.

"Most mutants aren't inherently evil or dangerous. Unless, you know, the world is going to end because someone can change the color of your clothes. Don't let me change your opinion, I'm just voicing thoughts aloud. Besides, half the time I don't even consider myself a mutant... in the scheme of things, my ability feels relatively mellow." That, and her parents seemed to think that being 'hyper-aware' could just be a normal genetic mutation.

Like that really made the difference.

"As for your pencil, part of reading body language is knowing it's not fool proof. You take the clues and piece them together. I wouldn't peg you for needing control in your life just off a pencil. There would have to be more to it." She hoped off the table and tucked her sketchbook under her arm, starting towards the door as well. No use sitting here by herself.

Although now it looked like she was going to follow him. The echoes commented on this a bit too late.

"No, but cars aren't mutations. We can control cars, and tell when a car kills someone, and find ways to make them safer. We can't do that with mutations." Which wasn't the problem with them, actually, but the point was that they were different things. "Mutations are supposed to kill. And to make people sin in other ways, sometimes."

Okay, the sarcasm was annoying. More annoying was that Persi couldn't actually tell whether most of it was sarcasm or not. At least he could understand forgetting she was a mutant, though apparently for completely different reasons. "I do that sometimes...." He was trying to get out of the habit, now, but it wasn't that easy to do.

Evelyn earned another confused look from Persi for the pencil explanation. He couldn't tell if she was implying she thought he needed control because of other things, or that he didn't need control and that had just been an example. He wasn't sure which he'd prefer it be, either.

Well, at least they were leaving. Which, once out of the art room, brought up another problem. "...Which way is back?" And, a bit more defensively even though she hadn't said anything yet, "I was thinking about other things."

>> We can control cars, and tell when a car kills someone, and find ways to make them safer. We can't do that with mutations."

"Who says we can't?" Evelyn rebutted curiously. "Ignoring mutations isn't going to make the world safer, anymore than locking a bomb in a box and putting it away. It's still going to keep ticking unless you disarm it or find somewhere safe to detonate. Mutations aren't designed to kill. They're an adaptation, a survival mechanism really in a way. You're not going to de-tooth every wolf in the forest because they kill a few cattle. And exterminating the whole species would upset the balance of nature. The challenge is finding the problems and devising the way to meet them." Evelyn remarked, and his 'sin' comment was not lost to her. Well, her echoes.

"I think your problem is just that: mutations make people 'sin'. You think it's unnatural for people to have the abilities we do. But did you know a lot of our abilities are already in nature? Look at ants that lift objects several times bigger than they are. Look at fireflies that have their own form of luminance. Chameleons adapt their color to their environment. Some amphibians produce their own anti-freeze. Unless of course, you are concerned about what others could make you do with their mutations?" Ok, now she was bordering on nosy.

Or, she had started there.

"Path back is this way though." She pointed her thumb in that direction, and started walking quietly. She finally managed to shut out her echoes and hoped she hadn't done too much damage already. Maybe in a way mutations did cause problems.

"I'm not saying I always agree with it, and I'm not saying I always like it. Heck, there are times I'll probably deny being a mutant because what it implies sucks. But I have started to learn that pretending my mutation doesn't exist hasn't helped any, and sometimes, it makes it worse. I've got voices in my head like, all the time. I'd love to turn them off from time to time." She shrugged.

"Killing everything else better is a pretty common survival strategy." That was basically what predators were, after all, and even some prey did the same thing, with poisons or other lethal defenses. For that matter, that was how humans competed with each other too; wars were just a contest of who can kill better than the other, in the end. And how humans tamed nature; by killing it, and only allowing the survival of the parts they wanted, and could easily kill when they didn't anymore. Cats could have all the claws they wanted, they'd never survive if humans decided to kill them.

"Of course sin is the problem." Sin could never not be a problem. "It's not--well, it is unnatural, but that's not the problem. Humans are unnatural to start with." Unnatural vs. artificial; artificial was defined by human influence or creation, so humans were the source of all things not natural. That pretty well implied that humans were unnatural too. "The problem is that God didn't make them, and doesn't like them, and they make it easier and more likely for people to do other things that God doesn't like. ...And it's not about me, it's about everyone." Personally, Persi considered himself pretty immune to most mutations' bad influences. His wasn't very easy to use for sin, and he knew better anyway, so he wasn't very likely to use it that way. Well, not for serious sins, apart from using it at all. And since he knew better than to sin, he should have an easier time resisting encouragement to sin, at least compared to people who didn't know what was a sin and what wasn't. So, he was better off than most people, and definitely better off than most mutants, but none of that mattered at all.

That was helpful. Back to the room and the chair and drawing, this time with decent supplies, and hopefully no more too-perceptive comments, since she was apparently an artist also and so should know not to interrupt. Persi followed.

"I'm not trying to pretend I'm not a mutant." Well, he wasn't anymore, anyway, but even when he'd try to forget he wasn't trying to lie to himself, or to God. Not that lying to his parents was much better... well, they knew now anyway. "I'm just not trying to pretend that's a good thing, either."

Evelyn started to open her mouth to argue, then finally sighed and shut it. This wasn't exactly helping her with the whole social thing, and it certainly wasn't helping him deal with his issues. Or her issues. Maybe it was too personal. Maybe her own doubts about mutants were making her too biased.

Then again, when had she never been non-biased?

"Well, I think that's fair. Maybe there is a nature to survive and maybe mutants can kill, and maybe being a mutants isn't super great, but if the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, I'm not going to sit around and waste my time being afraid of every dangerous creature. If someone blows up the mansion, they blow up the mansion. I could just as likely get hit by a car walking down the street. Heck, artists used to die because they ate too much of the paint they used. The world is full of danger. But it's also full of good things too. Those are the things I like focusing on, and those are the things I draw." She steered the conversation back to art, momentarily considering if she had been to harsh with the kid. He did seem a bit sulky, and she decided maybe he just needed a stern word.

Or she made it worse. That was always possible.

"They breathed the paint, actually. I think even then they knew not to eat it." If nothing else, because then they couldn't paint with it.

...There probably was an artist who painted by spitting out mouthfuls of paint. Persi was pretty sure that that sort of art hadn't existed yet at the time, though. Of course, knowing what oil paints did to the brain hadn't stopped him from trying them, or his teachers from giving students the option to learn, so who knew.

"I dunno. I don't... focus on the good things much, I guess." It hadn't ever been a conscious decision at all, he'd just kind of felt like drawing something, which happened to be dark. And so did the next. And the next. "I guess, if I want to see a flower, I can just look at one. But there are a lot more bad things that aren't in this world yet, or that aren't where I can see them, so they're more interesting to try to draw."

And she could criticize that all she wanted. Plenty of people had, until he told them he was just drawing hell to show to the unrighteous. Which was another lie, now that he thought of it. At least, he hadn't been doing that on purpose....

"They ate the paint too. Not on purpose, mind you." Evelyn corrected him, pushing her hair from her face. "You know how the hairs spread on the pain brush sometimes? Well if you stuck it in your mouth and used saliva on it it would help hold the point. Or if you're eating and you have paint on your hands, lick your fingers without thinking of it... Artist were busy and sometimes those little habits just became part of life. But when you had lead-based paint, eventually it would poison you. Several artists died of lead poisoning, like Van Gogh, they even think Goya did too." Evelyn let the conversation trail, because part of that was only speculation. She wasn't going to argue whether or not Goya ate paint. Until she could time travel and ask him, she'd never really know for sure.

His response to the drawing thing did make her frown a little though. "But if you think the world is full of bad things, why make more? I think if life really bothers you then you should be making the effort to change it, not add to the problems."

"Or you could lick your fingers and smooth the brush that way." Persi shrugged. "Everything I've read still said most of it was from oil fumes, though. And lead was in everything back then. No one needed to eat paint to get poisoned by it."

He shrugged again. "I didn't really do it on purpose, I just drew what I felt like. But... I guess, it's not like you can fix a problem by ignoring it. And showing the bad things, in art, is different from existing. Only ever painting full people eating wouldn't keep people from starving, but it would let people forget that people are starving so they wouldn't do anything to fix it." Persi nodded. "So, it's better to show them than to ignore them." Not that Persi did show them, at least not very directly. But it wasn't like anyone saw his artwork yet anyway, so he could draw whatever he wanted.

And here was the room. The chair was still on the other side, but Persi wasn't all that picky about which chair he was in, anyway. "Um... thanks for showing me where the art room is."

"Hey, I never said I did it personally. I don't particularly like the taste of paint myself," Evelyn said, murmuring slightly under her breathe. This kid was impossible to please. It was getting a little wearisome.

Then he made a decent point about the art. She frowned a bit. "Maybe you need a balance though. If people see tones of pictures of people starving, it desensitizes them. If there are starving people, then full people, they can piece together the need to change." She let it drop slowly and sighed slightly to herself.

She was beginning to feel glad she was only here temporarily. Kids were exhausting. "Yeah, I'm always happy to rescue the less fortunate from their burdens of printer paper. Just, you know, try a little more optimism, you know?" She let a little hopeful tone slip into it.

Persi blinked. That was... not what he'd meant, at all. Or at least, it wasn't what he thought he'd meant. There were all sorts of subconscious things going on in peoples' heads, right? So maybe he had.

...Persi was quite sure he would not be doubting his own intentions an hour ago. Ugh. "I don't think that's what I meant."

"Maybe." Persi shrugged. "But they don't just see my art, they see everyone's. I'll draw starving people, and you can draw the full ones."

"I'm not a pessimist!" Persi wasn't offended, quite, but the denial was still emphatic. He probably would have been gesturing, if his arms hadn't been full of art supplies. "It's just, bad things exist, and there's no use ignoring them. And they're more interesting to draw than pretty ones."

"I don't think that's what i meant."

Evelyn blinked ever so slowly, and gave him another look. He was certainly confused. Was it something she said? She ran the conversation over in her head again, but nothing stood out and she couldn't understand what she did wrong. Lead paint, art, starving people...

She was confused. It was a very uncomfortable and unnerving feeling. She didn't like it at all. "I... guess. I guess to each their own." She did prefer pretty art, and she wasn't going to force him to draw a flower.

She turned, moving for the door in hopes of finding somewhere else to sketch. For once, she was at a loss for words. Teenagers made no sense.