"Me," he asked, finishing with the tomatoes and dumping them into the bowl with the olives. "I have been living here for a few months now," he said, shrugging his shoulders. He moved around the kitchen and produced a casserole dish and two large mixing bowls. He emptied the olives and tomatoes into one of the bowls and put most of the cheese into the other.

"I find it infinitely preferable to be here than to have to constantly deal with the kinds of people my father deals with as a result of his job. I also see the benefits to being close to NYU since I am enrolled in online coursework there," Mariusz continued, dumping the entire container of cottage cheese into the bowl that already had the mozzarella in it and beginning to mix all of it around.

"How about you," he asked, crossing to stand behind the blonde and peer over her shoulder at the peppers, onion, and garlic in the skillet. "That looks pretty good," he remarked. "Tip that into the bowl with the tomatoes and olives in it and mix it around well."

Satisfied that the cheese was mixed to his liking, Mariusz picked up the casserole dish and quickly greased it with cooking spray. "Once that is done we can begin building the lasagna."

Little by little, Evelyn finished adding the spinach to the skillet, and kept working to keep the mixture stirred. She listened to him speaking as she did and looked up slightly when he game over to check her work.

"Glad I didn't mess it up...Echoes at least help keep an eye on things, so guess they're useful for something." She took the pan and moved to the bowl to mix it in before answering his question. "I don't really live here... not yet at least. Been here once before, and got dropped off here this week to kinda wait out the riots... Not sure what I'll do when it's over though..." She remarked, mixing the ingredients together.

"Living in a place with all these people is... not easy. I would rather be home..." She said, frowning slightly. At least at home if she slept she didn't have to worry about waking up half the mansion. Not that she slept much anyway. She tried not to make a habit of it.

"Oh now, this is pretty hard to mess up," Mariusz said lightly, laying three of the lasagna noodles into the casserole dish and following it with some of the cheese mixture and spreading that around. "And what is so bad about living with other people," he asked, plucking the bowl of vegetables from her hands and laying in some of them and spreading them around before adding some sauce on top of it and spreading that around before adding another layer of the noodles. Working quickly all of the food materials were quickly layered into the dish and then topped with the mozzarella cheese that he had reserved and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. One could never had too much cheese.

"You may as well go ahead and move in, this is one of the safest places in the city," Mariusz said, "We have to wait about twenty-five minutes for this to be done. Then a few minutes longer for it to cool sufficiently for cutting," he continued, lacing his fingers together and then popping all his knuckles. He opened the freezer and rooted around for a moment, producing a tub of ice cream.

"The great thing about being an adult is that you can eat your dessert first if you want," he said, grabbing a pair of bowls and spoons and plopping the treasure down on the counter.

What's so bad about living with other people? Evelyn repeated the question in her head, and stared at the counter for a few moments, considering how best to word it. She watched Mariusz work as she did. "Nothing directly I guess. I just... I have troubles sleeping, and my mutation just...I don't want to disturb anyone else. At home, I don't have to worry about waking someone up or upsetting them. I don't have to share the living spaces, I can paint where I want, draw...I just feel...confined here." She sighed and crossed her arms across her chest. The echoes commented on the slightly defensive posture she had taken. She didn't mean to. She just felt so out of place here at the mansion. It wasn't home. She didn't know if it ever could be.

"It's a lovely place though." She didn't know what else to say. She watched as Talon picked out the ice cream, and blinked slowly in bewilderment. Memories from earlier in the day flickered through her mind, and it occurred to her she was standing in the kitchen making lasagna with someone she got beat up earlier in the day, and now he had pulled out ice cream. He just seemed much better at working with whatever situation seemed to come along. Perhaps she wasn't as great at adapting.

"How could your mutation possibly disturb anyone else," Mariusz asked, scooping some of the ice cream into the two bowls and then passing one of the bowls over to Evelyn. "This would be better with fresh chocolate chip cookies to go with it, but we can make do with just the ice cream for tonight." The avian mutant took a spoonful of the sweet treat and slid it into his mouth.

"You can do what you want when you want here too, as long as you respect the privacy of other people's rooms and do not go rifling through your roommate's things... if you have a roommate that is, most of the adults get rooms to themselves unless they want to share with someone else," the Czech man continued, putting another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth as the kitchen began to fill with the smell of baking lasagna.

Evelyn slowly blinked and accepted the ice cream. She suddenly seemed very interested in analyzing the texture of the desert. Smooth white, slight yellow tint, french vanilla? The echoes moved over to the box and confirmed it, and then started sifting for memories of different places she'd seen similar boxes of ice cream. The store names rattled through her head until she took a bite and let them try to pick out the ingredients in the flavors.

"I don't forget things. Ever. When I sleep, I relive memories. So I try not to sleep, because otherwise the wrong memory ...Chocolate chips would have made this better." She wasn't going to say she tended to wake up screaming. That just seemed silly and pointless and made her look like an even bigger mental case. [Vanilla, milk, Sugar...cane sugar? Beat sugar...] She let the echoes try to sort out what type of sugar. Not that they could tell the difference but they could still try. Her pallet wasn't that good, and she had never read the label so there wasn't the information for them to dig up.

"I try to respect people's privacy, but my echoes don't always do such a great job... That tends to get under peoples skin..." Or she just said the wrong thing and had an angry mutant attack her....

Mariusz waved the hand he was holding the ice cream spoon in with a dismissive gesture. "Bah, that is there problem then. Not yours. If your powers were so invasive then I surely would have noticed them by now. Since I have not then they must not be all that annoying." He took another bite of ice cream, his spoon chasing the last bits around the edges of the bowl.

"Besides that, if you want to learn to better control your powers then this is the place to be. I have mine under control, of course, but that is mostly because mine are all purely physical mutations," he paused thoughtfully for a moment. "I imagine there must be someone here with psychic or psionic powers that could help you control your... whatever it is you do, I do not think you have actually told me what your ability is yet."

[Ceramic bowl. Commercially made. Small chip, left corner, exposed bisque to elements. Spoon, stainless steel, slightly bent at handle. Ice cream, sugar content unknown.] She didn't want to talk about her powers. She didn't want someone telling her she could control them or learn how to deal with them. She didn't want someone looking out for her and she didn't want to be a mutant. But how do you tell someone who was physically mutated you had issues being a mutant? Mariusz had it worse, after all... she could at least pretend to be normal...

But maybe, that was it. She could pretend. It was much easier to pretend than admit what she was.

"I have hyper-awareness. Everything around me... talks, I guess you could say. I call them echoes. When I look around, I can read them. For instance, that toaster over there has one coil that's slightly more burnt out than the others. Someone damaged a corner of the cabinetry above it but it's been replaced. You had James chapter 2 open when I glanced at what you were reading, you wear a pewter cross on your neck, and your well educated and have the manners of someone whose been in a higher class society... The longer I'm around people, the more I pick up and read... My powers are all in my head." Evelyn said with a shrug, spooning more ice cream into her mouth to keep herself from continuing on.

"I do not see what is so terrible about that," Mariusz said, standing from the table and opening the dish washer to put his dirty dishes inside before replacing the tub of ice cream in the freezer and snaring his Bible from the counter top before returning to the table and seating himself.

"As for what I was reading when you glanced at it, have you ever tried reading it for yourself," he asked, sliding the black leather bound book across the table to Evelyn. "You might find it helpful, the Holy Scriptures discuss every sort of topic imaginable. Even how to live with mutants," he said as he was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a timer going off.

"Lasagna's done," he said, rising from his seat and crossing to the oven. Pulling on a pair of oven mitts he opened the door and removed the hot casserole dish from the oven, setting it on the stove top to cool before moving to the sink and running a sink full of hot soapy water and beginning to wash up the few things that needed it. "There is solace to be found in faith, if you look for it."

Evelyn wasn't quite sure what to think of Mariusz. He seemed unconcerned about what her powers did, or how invasive they seemed to be. They didn't seem to rattle him at all. A conversation she had before the riots came to mind, sitting in a cafe with Jude. "I think the trick to being your friend is to not be ashamed of your secrets." Perhaps Talon was one of those people. He had nothing to hide, so there was nothing to feel nervous about around her.

"You're different than most people." Evelyn remarked, finishing her ice cream and setting the bowl next to her for the moment. She'd move to put it away in a second. "You aren't afraid of people knowing who you are, and you're comfortable with yourself. People who lack confidence, and still have things to hide have more trouble around me I guess... Heck, I still have trouble around me." She still disliked walking past mirrors. They said too much for her.

She glanced down at the book he slid to her, and thumbed the fragile pages. She never spent much time considering religion. Not that she disliked it, it just wasn't a large part of her upbringing. "I've glanced at it, but no, I haven't really read much." She glanced up as the timer went off and let the book slide closed again, moving to put her dishes in the washing machine. "Faith has always been hard to grasp for me. My powers are so tied to logic they clash..." She remarked.

"Ah, the logic argument," the Czech man said in an unconcerned way, waving about a soapy taloned hand before resuming his scrubbing at one of the pans and then rinsing it before setting it in a dish drainer to dry and starting on the next. "I used to think that way too."

Mariusz finished with the last of the dishes and then moved around the kitchen once more, producing a pair of plates and forks this time. "Do you believe in a hell," he asked, approaching the issue from a very different direction than what most people would have asked as he produced one of the spatulas he had just clean and began dishing up pieces of the lasagna.

Evelyn blinked slightly, and considered his question. She stared at the counter top before slowly answering. "I don't know. No? I don't really think about death, or the future. There is too much to process in the present." Again, it echoes one of the conversations she had with Jude. She was very focused on the here and now. Considering anything beyond that was hard for her.

She watched the suds pop on the feathers of Mariusz, before he finished the dishes and started spooning food onto plates. It smelled good, and her stomach rumble a bit. Even after the ice cream she was happy to have some real food. The day had drained her more than she expected and it had taken long enough to make. She hoped it tasted as good as it smelled. She found a couple napkins in the center island and politely grabbed a couple, handing one out to Mariusz as he came over. Lasagna had a tendency to get messy after all.

"Something to think about," Mariusz said, sliding a plate down in front of the blonde woman before fishing two bottles of water from the fridge and passing one of them to her and taking his own seat after spinning the chair around so he could use it without being uncomfortable because of his wings. He sprinkled a little parmesan over the top of his piece of lasagna and took a sip from his bottle of water before continuing.

"See, now most people would begin by asking whether or not you believe in God or heaven or the afterlife. Almost all major faiths disagree on these issues, but the one thing the five major faiths all agree on is hell, or a form thereof," Mariusz, said, taking a bite of his food and then gesturing at Evelyn with his fork as he continued to speak.

"But, the one thing the five major faiths all believe in, almost universally is the concept of hell or something approximating it. The Muslims, Jews, and Christians all have hell while the Hindus and Buddhists, by dint of their belief in reincarnation, believe in a form of hell since you can be reincarnated as something unpleasant. So, the real question is not whether or not someone believes in God... rather it is whether or not someone believes in hell since the concept of hell is universal."

Evelyn took a bite of the lasagna, letting the flavors mingle in her mouth. It was good, and even the canned sauce seemed to taste fresh with all the ingredients they mixed in. She signed a 'thank you' motion as she accepted the water, and finished what was in her mouth before opening the bottle and taking a sip. It gave her more time to consider his remarks and try to think of her opinion on them.

"I guess I just maybe no one's ever asked me, so I've never really thought much of it. But if I figure out what I think, I'll let you know..." That didn't feel like a very complete response, but she ate a bit more, and shrugged slightly, toeing the ground and swallowing. "Honestly, I don't think I really believed in anything. I just figured you know, you die, the end. If there is a hell... I don't know." Back to her food. Her parents would probably have several vocal things to say on the matter, but Evelyn? She was an adult, but still forming many of her own opinions. Having the echoes made it difficult. All sides seemed to make sense.

She just didn't have a path to navigate by. "There is a lot of information out there to process, and most of the time I feel like I am just trying to dig my way out of it."

"There is always a lot of information to digest, even in here," the winged man said, taking another bite of his food and tapping a finger on the Bible. "The scriptures discuss every topic imaginable though, from watching the news, you might think it only talks about three or four things. If you need a guided tour I have a degree in Protestant Theology from Charles University in Prague. I can mark some passages for you, point you in the right direction." He shrugged his shoulders and sipped at his bottle of water before continuing.

"But, do not let me twist your arm into something you do not want to do," he continued, taking another bite of lasagna, finishing the piece on his plate and rising to dish out a second piece for himself. He knew he was going to eat like a bit of a pig, but that was a side effect of having the metabolism of a bird... eat, eat, eat.