<<I don’t go to school. I’m a bouncer at a night club, and part of the security staff at a local school.>>

The little robotic voice informed her of Jac’s employments and she nodded. These were both jobs where her appearance would be a boon, not a detriment, and Zin was pleased that such visible mutants could work in such standard jobs. Mutation was the new tattoo, and often workplaces subtly discriminated against anything that could be seen while wearing full length sleeves and pants.

Wood working was cool, although not something she had pursued herself. Shop had been running at the same time as biology, and to her the science had had more of a pull. She noted the detail away, she would have to ask about the wood working that her new friend did at a later stage. People liked to show off their crafts in her experience.

The spoon looked tiny in between the massive fingers, but it stirred the tea delicately, barely clinking against the side of the cup. Zinn took another sip of her own icy beverage as Jac explained the family rift.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

It was an unfortunate fact that Mutants and particularly visible mutants were at far greater risk of all the terrible things than their human counterparts – domestic violence, suicide, self-harm, substance abuse, all the unfortunate lot of mutantkind. She had been lucky, to grow up in a family to whom mutation was no big deal. She briefly wondered if she had had a visible manifestation of her mutation what might have been different for her.

“I used to look hue-nan,”

The difference between her face and the face of a stock-standard human was obvious even from behind the mask, but with it removed the contrast was stark. A part of her mind wondered what she had looked like before the change, had she been blonde and pale, dark like herself, something in between, tall, short? It was impossible to tell by looking at her now. Whatever it had been, it was clearly nothing like her mutant form, if the family had reacted so badly. She didn’t know what to say in response to the family information, yet she didn’t feel so bad for asking. Maybe she was just nosey.

“Well, I think you look pretty awesome now. Just saying.”

Pretty pretty too, but that was a bit too much for a first coffee meet. Plus she wasn’t sure if she herself was comfortable with that, and Jac seemed to be shy about her appearance, at least the mouth part.

“Nust be nice, doh, to be duh eldest,”

Zinn raised her eyebrows and gave a miniscule snort, these were the words of someone who was not the eldest.

“It’s a trade-off, you get more attention, but you get more rules too.”

For instance, if she had wanted a pet reptile as a pre-teen there would have been no way that was going down, but now both her brothers had scaly pets, multiples even. Even now her parents liked to share their opinions on what she should and shouldn’t do. The difference being now she was an adult, they were only suggestions, not so much rules.

“My brothers are brats, but I think all little brothers are. They’re sweet sometimes too, and too clever for their own good. Neither of them are mutants as far as we know, but neither of them have been tested either.”

What was the point, when an older sister clearly carried the gene, if they manifested mutations so be it, it would change nothing about their home life. Plus, it was an expensive test, with few benefits to knowing ahead of time. She made an effort not to stare at her friend’s mouth, but she gave it a quick glance or two, it was fascinating if a little private. Part of her was surprised how delicately she sipped her tea. Part of her was not.

“Ah, well my mutation means I can breathe non-oxygen. My respiratory system works a little differently, so usually I’m operating on carbon dioxide in, oxygen out. Like a tree.”

This was what she was operating on now. It was a boon on hot days when the air was smoggy, and in air-conditioned environments where a breath of fresh air was a rare commodity. It was not so combat-oriented as some other mutations she had seen or heard of, but in its own way it made sense as an adaptation to the world she lived in. Evolutions attempt at reversing climate change perhaps. Jac didn’t seem like the type to grab and experiment, plus she was certain that she had coffee-tinted breath, but she had been told in the past it was something like smelling the ocean air, or ozone. She certainly wasn’t going to offer, that was just obscure.

>> “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Jack shrugged a shoulder, her eyes smiling. There wasn’t very much that they could do about it, now. The past was in the past. Jack had changed her name and hadn’t seen any of them since the trial for her to become an emancipated minor. She’d severed ties with them, reconciliation was not an option.

>> “Well, I think you look pretty awesome now. Just saying.”

Jack gave a modest laugh, bowing her head. It was a rare sentiment to hear, but it also wasn’t unheard of. Most people who dubbed her “awesome” were boys of various ages—young ones and people into their teens. Whereas most people who panicked upon seeing her, usually whining a stream of “ew, ew, ew, ew, ew! Get away, get away!” were typically females over the age of eleven. Zinnia was an exception. She was also going into nursing, however, so things that usually made people squeamish were probably an old hat to her.

“T’ank you,” Jack replied, still modest as she took another sip of tea, “On duh ‘right side of t’ings, iss I e’er go into acting, I’ll sa-“ Jack paused. That was a difficult word, “save”, “- cost duh cos-tuning dudes less tine and cash. Allegedly it takes a long tine to cos-tune duh sci-sci* creatures.”

That was Jack's attempt at humor, albeit a self-deprecating joke. She wasn't used to these casual conversations, so she was testing the waters on what was funny and what wasn't. It was funny to her, at the very least.

>> “My brothers are brats, but I think all little brothers are. They’re sweet sometimes too, and too clever for their own good. Neither of them are mutants as far as we know, but neither of them have been tested either.”

Jack nodded attentively, setting her cup down. She only had wisps of memories of what her brothers had been like. Sometimes she questioned if she truly remembered them, or if her actual memories had been reduced to stereotypes—the eldest, over-achieving sibling who didn’t get out much and wrote more than they socialized… the trouble-making jock of a middle child. And then Jack, who’d been Joanna at the time. The doted-on little sister. It was nice to hear someone else’s story. A family that had somehow managed to work-out.

>> “Ah, well my mutation means I can breathe non-oxygen. My respiratory system works a little differently, so usually I’m operating on carbon dioxide in, oxygen out. Like a tree.”

Jack inclined her head. What a subtle mutation! And, thankfully, not a psychic one. Jack did not like the notion of someone cavorting about her mind.

“How did you realize your nyu-tation?” Jack couldn’t help but ask, “It seens so subtle.”

Much unlike the long and laborious process of transforming from person-to-prawn… there really was no ignoring that.

*sci-fi

Jac had not seemed uncomfortable for Zinn’s admiration for her shiny skin (shell?) and Zinn felt herself relaxing a bit. When her new friend cracked a joke she grinned, the awkwardness of not knowing what was and was not ok to talk about draining away further with every slurp of her coffee.

“I’d totally go see any movie with you as the hero! Plus then you’d win at every cosplay contest ever.”

It would be difficult for anyone to hardcore cosplay Jac, with a waist that thin and a stature that could be classified as hugenormous. She imagined though, that if her new friend were to chase the acting dream they would have to cast a voice actor, and Zinn liked the purring growl of her voice, so unlike any voices she was used to. She kept that to herself, two compliments in a row was a little heavy handed.

Jac asked about the discovery of her mutation and Zinn dipped her head a little, it was a good story, but could come across a little over dramatic if not told carefully.

“My younger brother almost drowned in the pool of our building when I was young. I was the only one there to resuscitate and I did my best, but I was just a child, I didn’t know how to do it right.”

It had been terrifying, trying to copy what had been hinted at on TV and in movies with no technique.

“When the ambulance got there they drained the water from his lungs and there was so much, he shouldn’t have come out of it. They did a bunch of tests, to see how much damage might have been done to his brain from lack of oxygen, but they found he was fine, and had a higher than average oxygen. For a while they thought he was a mutant – but they did some tests on me too and found that it was me.”

It was around this time that she had first discovered a desire to be a nurse. Seeing how calm they were, how gently they treated her brother and herself. How much knowledge they had compared to herself. Life goals- set.

“How about you, did you change gradually or one day – boom, visible mutation?”

Jack was lifting the cup of tea to her mouth when Zinnia replied to Jack’s attempt at humor.

>> “I’d totally go see any movie with you as the hero! Plus then you’d win at every cosplay contest ever.”

The prawn was grateful that she hadn’t been mid-sip when Zinnia very genuinely voiced her approval of casting Jack as a “hero”. She was really surprised, to say the least. People like Jack were never cast as the hero. They were always the yowling, blood-spattered monsters that lingered just at the fringes of the darkness, and very rarely tarried from that niche, unless it was a mutant-directed film. Jack glanced aside, taking a sip of her tea. It was nice of Zinnia, to think that she could be a hero—even if Jack had no idea of what “cosplay” was.

“Duh line-light is not really for me, doh,” she said, still sounding humored, “I try to stay outta it as much as I can.”

As if the freakish mutant needed more attention than she already received.

>> “My younger brother almost drowned in the pool of our building when I was young. I was the only one there to resuscitate and I did my best, but I was just a child, I didn’t know how to do it right. When the ambulance got there they drained the water from his lungs and there was so much, he shouldn’t have come out of it. They did a bunch of tests, to see how much damage might have been done to his brain from lack of oxygen, but they found he was fine, and had a higher than average oxygen. For a while they thought he was a mutant – but they did some tests on me too and found that it was me.”

Jack nursed her tea, taking small sips, throughout Zinnia’s recounting how they realized that she was mutant. She was a rapt audience, despite her constant sipping of the tea. The cup was growing low, so she set it down and refilled it with water from the small kettle.

“Dere are tests?” she echoed, allowing the tea to steep. Again, with how apparent her mutation was, there wasn’t a need to do any tests. She, likewise, didn’t ask very many people about how they realized their powers. Jack would be the last to know that there were ways of testing for the X-gene, while Zinnia, as a nursing student and mutant, might know a good deal more.

>> “How about you, did you change gradually or one day – boom, visible mutation?”

The prawn felt her throat clench involuntarily. The logic would follow that, after asking Zinnia how her mutation was realized, Zinnia would ask about Jack’s. Maxillipeds twitched, an expression of discomfort, but her eyes only looked distant.

“It was a gradual change,” Jack explained. She assured herself that this had nothing to do with her backstory, only the transformation itself, “Hurt like a mud-der. I was not conscious much of it. Still not sure how long it took. A long while, doh. Weeks, I t’ink. Dunno.”

Jack spared the gory details pertaining to the shift itself. She was in polite company, in a posh café. Nobody wanted to have their afternoon coffee or tea interrupted by harsh descriptions.

Jac described her transformation briefly and Zinnia winced. Puberty had been bad enough, but growing a shell instead of just hair in new and exciting places didn’t sound like a fund trip. That was not factoring in the wicked growing pains that she assumed would have to come from changing from a pre-teen human to a fully-formed mutie with a shape like Jac’s.

“Yowch, that sounds awful. I guess it’s good you don’t remember it too much.”

It reminded her of a case study she had been assigned, one of the few that mentioned mutations in a medical capacity, where a young man had begun growing tentacles from his face, like an octo-beard. The pain had been agonising, and for weeks he had sought medical treatment with no success. All painkillers had no impact, and the transition was messy; blood and tiny severed wriggly things from the times he had tried to push on with shaving, serious ‘ingrowns’ causing problems far worse than unsightly dots. Eventually he had signed up for a voluntary induced coma, and they had put him under for six months until his body ceased the changes. He woke up an entirely changed man, and with a whopping hospital bill to boot. It had been an ethics case, about whether it was the right thing to do. Zinn had argued yes, because at the end of the day he was in unbearable agony, and all other options had been exhausted.

“Dere are tests?”

Zinnia dipped her head, three main ones with varying degrees of price and intrusiveness that she knew of.

“There are a couple of pretty accurate ones, all post-birth, there hasn’t been any successful tests developed in utero,” she was torn on whether or not she wanted there to be, “a blood test, a DNA swabbing and the least accurate is a non-invasive pee test.”

There was far too much error in the pee test for Zinn’s liking, too many people expectantly awaiting their mutation, or concerned about it impacting on their lives and on further testing showing negative, too many visible or otherwise confirmed mutants testing as negative. It was the cheapest, though.

“Having a positive result doesn’t necessarily mean that the X-gene will manifest, or that the mutation will be noticeable, some people have it and only carry it, some like me might have it and never know about it. Mutations aren’t always dramatic unlike what the politicians like to imply.”

>> “Yowch, that sounds awful. I guess it’s good you don’t remember it too much.”

“Yeah,” Jack intoned, clearing her throat. In all honesty, she remembered her conscious moments of the transformation in great detail. They were surreal, like a nightmare, but very tangible. She remembered finally waking up, the terror, the chill, tatters of clothes and who-knew-what-else and the ominous silhouette, who she would later realize was her father, who’d attacked her. The only thing she was unsure of, were the moments spent unconscious, and how long the whole ordeal had actually lasted.

But, once again, she was in polite company.

>> “There are a couple of pretty accurate ones, all post-birth, there hasn’t been any successful tests developed in utero… a blood test, a DNA swabbing and the least accurate is a non-invasive pee test.”

Neither of her parents had been on the up-and-up when it came to technological and medical advancements, Jack remembered that much. Her family was one of the last to buy a computer, there were never video games around the house (except in her eldest brother’s room, and only because he’d saved his own allowance for it). They had two t.v.’s, one of which was black-and-white and had a dial.

The prawn wondered if, had her parents the wherewithal to know about the tests, they could’ve tested her. And if this whole mess could have been prevented, somehow.

>> “Having a positive result doesn’t necessarily mean that the X-gene will manifest, or that the mutation will be noticeable, some people have it and only carry it, some like me might have it and never know about it. Mutations aren’t always dramatic unlike what the politicians like to imply.”

What would her life have been like, if they had known that Jack carried an X-gene? Jack hummed, watching as her tea once again took-on the rich color of a saturated drink. Careful hands lifted the cup, and she took another sip. The young woman had more questions, but most of them would wander into personal territory. Jack didn’t want to air her dirty laundry.

The prawn relished the sweet and subtle tang of the lemon balm, and set the cup down lightly.

“Dat’s really sun-ting,” the prawn mused, sighing, “It sounds like a con’licated t’ing on it’s own, doh—testing sore-” she held up four fingers, signifying that she meant “for” instead of “sore”, “-duh X-gene. Like sun-one could use it sore duh wrong reasons. You know? Surrender deir child to duh sys-tun ‘cause dey has duh gene.”

Jack was just spit-balling, though. She wasn’t any sort of academic. But if Zinnia covered that sort of thing in her studies, it was a good conversation point.

“Has you heard o’ anyt’ing like dat? In your studies?” Jack inquired.

She had indeed heard of things like that, in her studies. Similar to children with disabilities the statistics for children who tested positive for an X-gene were at higher percentages of adoption and foster care.

“Lots of parents feel they are not equipped to properly handle an X-positive child, there seems to be little difference though in whether they find out through a test or through the manifestation. I guess some people benefit from having some fore-warning, but the people who would abandon their child based on an active X-gene probably not going to be great parents to them anyway.”

Too late she realised she may well have stuck her foot in it.

“No offence, of course.”

People who chose to adopt or foster whilst being fully aware of the challenges their charge may face in later years were usually better prepared for a mutation should it manifest. It was a careful screening process to ensure that that was not the sole reason for adoption, though, even more questions than the standard paperwork.

“I guess that’s why there isn’t an in utero test yet, too much concern that terminations based on X-gene would go way up.” It was just a little too close to eugenics. She suspected eventually they would cover the possibility in an ethics class, but so far she had not had to debate whether it was an option for expecting females to decide to terminate because of the possibility of their child being different.

“On a lighter note, it means that people can organise to have training in self-control already established by the time a mutation manifests, which should reduce the number of young mutant malfunctions.”

School shootings too, as schools began to implement relaxation, meditation and mindfulness classes in an effort to minimise the risk of young ones losing control and burning down the classroom, or accidentally vaporising the gym pool.

“What sort of woodworking do you do?”

A subtle change of topic, and a chance for her new friend to show off her talents.

Jack listened as Zinnia combed her way through the difficult topic, occasionally raising the hot tea to her lips to sip.

>> “…I guess some people benefit from having some fore-warning, but the people who would abandon their child based on an active X-gene probably not going to be great parents to them anyway No offence, of course.”

Jack exhaled sharply in an almost-laugh, “Dey disowned nee, I take no oss-ense.”

It was very poor parenting, to abandon ones child like that. Jack had no connection to them, no loyalty or love. Zinnia could past the cruelest of judgements on them, and Jack would probably snicker about it. The prawn’s head bobbed as the woman spoke. She hadn’t realized the possibility of learning control early-on because of preemptive scans for an X-gene. It was quite interesting. There was quite a bit that Jack didn’t know.

>> “What sort of woodworking do you do?”

Jack grasped for her phone, and typed a brief response, <<All kinds. Building, carving… no power tools, though.>>

She reached into her pocket, fingers pushing past the whittling knife to grab a few of her projects—one complete, two incomplete. Jack put her phone aside and lined her projects up on the table—a sphere in the frame of cube was the complete design. The sphere free-standing but not removable from the box. The second figure was an owl, who was mostly complete, except that his feet were un-sculpted blocks. The last was a wolf, whose front end seemed to be emerging from a block of wood.

“I use a nice* to cars** dese,” Jack explained, “Whittling, is what it’s called. Lots o’ detail work. Usually use ny secondary hands sore dat, doh. Hard to do detail work wit’ dese.” Jack held up her hands and scrunched her fingers lightly, and then set them down lightly upon her lap.

“I do duh little scul’tures in my s-ree tine… yet when I’s got duh none-y, I like to n-ake larger t’ings,” Jack was beginning to ramble, for talking about her hobby made her open-up a little more, “N-ade to order t’ings dat can dee ordered online. Not a relia-dull source o’ inc-un doh. N-ore sor duh enjoy-nent.”

Lavender eyes shifted to Zinnia, full of excitement, when the prawn realized she’d charged into a monologue about woodworking. A timid hand brushed over the crown of her head, smoothing her antennae back.

“I got a little carried away,” the prawn apologized. Jack reached for her teacup, her scant social inclinations already withering up within her. She sipped the lemon balm tea, as if it were her reason for falling quiet.

*knife
**carve

Zinn was in agreement with the no powertools thing. She had had one incident with the blender trying to make a smoothie. Never again. She would buy all her smoothies pre-smoothed. Or bribe a housemate to work the devil machine.

Jac set some examples on the table and with a quick glance for permission, Zinn lifted them one by one to observe more closely. The optical illusion brain teaser one was fascinating. How did she get the ball inside? By turning it over in her hands several times the ball rolled about loosely until she could see where the grains matched up. This had been one piece of wood, carved whittled into the shapes. She was suitably impressed.

Her large friend stretched out her fingers and Zinn gave them another look, well she was offering them and curiosity was an emotion Zinn found hard to supress. It made sense that the smaller fingers she had glimpsed in the change room did the delicate work, compared to the larger hands visible now. When they slipped once again behind the edge of the table Zinn turned her curiosity to the unfinished owl and the detail in the feathers. Jac was speaking confidently now, and she had to concentrate to keep up. It was like listening to someone with an accent, the more effort you put in, the easier it became to follow. Each feather was beautifully textured, and Zinn ran her fingers delicately over them, feeling the grain of the wood and the bitten sections where the knife had coaxed the animal out of it.

“I got a little carried away.”

The excited ramble came to a sudden stop. Zinn glanced up and Jac was hiding her face (somewhat ineffectively due to size) behind the teacup. Aww, she was shy. Zinn took a swig of her own drink then made sure her fingers were clean and dry before picking up the least completed piece, the beginnings of a wolf emerging from a piece of wood. The workmanship was on display, the nose was perfect, complete, the ears had fur carved just so to see the breeze ruffling them. This detail faded around the shoulders, as the body faded seamlessly into the wood, showing the shape of the piece that the artwork had started as. This was her favourite by far, showing all the steps of its creation.

“Is this one spoken for? It’s great.”

Her friend seemed a little shy about her passion, but the joy it clearly gave her was infectious.

“How long have you been whittling, to get this good? And how long did these take you to make?”

>> “Is this one spoken for? It’s great.”

Jack lifted her gaze from the half-empty teacup to see what “this one” was. It was the wolf. The front end looked fine, but past the ribs it was mostly unfinished. No hind legs, no tail. Just a… clump.

“It’s not sin-ished yet,” Jack said lamely. Not, “No you may not have it” or “Yes, it’s been spoken for,” but, “It’s not finished yet”. Jack couldn’t fathom giving an unfinished piece to someone. Part of the prawn was tempted to pull her knife out and finish it right there, but a knife-wielding prawn would probably be a suspicious sight in the café.

“Not sore anyone yet, no,” she backtracked, “Just sore sun. I could sin-ish it and get it to you later? Just sore duh hell o’ it.”

The prawn couldn’t fathom why someone would want a half-finished sculpture. Jack unlocked her phone on tapped through various screens, until she pulled-up a blank prompt for saving a Contact. She showed the screen to Zinnia.

“Iss you want,” Jack stipulated “It would seel weird to gi’d an un-sin-ished car-zing to sun-one.”

>> “How long have you been whittling, to get this good? And how long did these take you to make?”

Whether or not Zinnia took the phone, Jack continued talking, “T’anks. I took wood-shot when I was sixteen, did a section on whittling. Been doing all sorts o’ woodwork since.”

Jack paused, calculating in her head how long it had been since then. She wasn’t the sort that was easily able to recall how old she was.

“Dat was around nine years ago,” she clarified, “I twenty-size years old. So I’s been doing dis sore nine years.”

The prawn seemed to be processing the question about “how long” the carvings took. She’d never actually timed herself… and it wasn’t like she sat by a clock when she was working.

“I don’t know… how long…” she held up the ball in the cube, “Dis one took a while. See how t’in duh…” Jack traced her finger along the vertical bars of the cube sides, struggling for a word, “…dese parts are? And den to do the s’ere inside it… very dissicult. Took a long tine. But duh owl is only a sew ninutes. Wol’s a little nor tine.”

Jack pocketed the owl and the enclosed sphere, leaving the wolf with Zinnia, for the time being. This conversation was lingering too much on the prawns’ interests for her own liking. But she also didn’t really know what to do when it came to small-talk.

“What’s… sun-ting you… always wanted to do?” through much internal struggling, that was the question that Jack settled on. It was lame, but it was something, "Sun-t'ing you're good at, sun-t'ing you're not good at... and sun-t'ing you drean of doing?"

The idea of parting with an unfinished piece seemed to horrify Jac, like showing an incomplete painting in a gallery, or screening a movie with the dotty morph suits unedited. She offered to complete it before giving it up and Zinn agreed. She took the offered phone and typed in her details, name, number and email address, somehow she didn’t take Jac for much of a call-and-have-a-chat type, but perhaps she was mistaken.

“T’anks. I took wood-shot when I was sixteen, did a section on whittling. Been doing all sorts o’ woodwork since.”

Zinn realised as the taller woman spoke that she had no idea how old she might be. It was impossible to tell by looking at her, she had no wrinkles in any of the places soft-skins did to show age, no hair to go grey. She worked as a bouncer at a bar, so surely she would have to be at least 21, but other than that Zinn had not the faintest idea. For all she knew Jac could be 80. She doubted it though, and Jac moved to give her a little clarification, which was sweet of her.

Her attention was drawn again to the ball in a cage, and she imagined Jac bent over it, carefully working around the bars, using little tools to smooth the ball to round. It seemed likely to take forever, and if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, touched it with her own hands, she might not have thought it possible.

“Well, once the wolf is finished you could email me? I would love to buy it from you.”

She turned the piece over in her hands, already dedicating a spot on her bookshelf for it. She had a few knickknacks in her sharehouse, but many she had left at her parents, or disposed of after highschool when they lost their significance. Love notes from your crush from elementary lose out against the space they take up when you’re sharing an apartment in NYC.

“What’s… sun-ting you… always wanted to do? Sun-t'ing you're good at, sun-t'ing you're not good at... and sun-t'ing you drean of doing?"

Zin pondered the questions for a moment as she finished her coffee. They were good questions, deep thinker questions.

“I always wanted to see England, visit the places my Dad grew up, meet my grandparents, see the house where he had his childhood. We never did make it back before they passed, and the house has been sold, but I’d still like to visit some time. Hmm, I’m pretty bad *ss at taking blood, but other than that I guess listening? Lame I know. Oh yes, I can sew alright.”

Recognising a weakness was an important skill, but many of her work-related improvement areas wouldn’t make any sense here, so she took the easy way out.

“I am a terrible runner, literally winded in a minute, and I’m a pretty bad sleeper, I have to wear a machine to remind me to breathe, otherwise I might just stop… Oh, and I can’t drive”

Dreams were tricky to put a name on, she was still pretty young, a career was one thing, and that she had plotted out and was on the road towards it. But more than that? Was that what her crunchie friend was asking?

“I’d love to be a paramedic, first on the scene type thing, maybe spend a year or two researching mutant specific maladies and what we can do to improve health care for our X-geners. Kids maybe? One day?”

She was unsure if kids were a dream, or just something she was expected to do one she hit a certain age. If she did become a mother she was almost certainly going to adopt, unforeseen surprises aside, too many younglings without families for her to justify growing her own. Plus she had many years of work that wasn’t really suited to baby bellies (at least on the staff).

Zzzt zzzt.

It was rude, but she checked her phone, sometimes there were emergencies she needed to attend to. This was not exactly one of these times. “Hey Z. out of milk, are you on dinner tonight?” it was one of her housemates, and she realised she was in fact on dinner duty. And that she hadn’t prepared anything. Spaghetti it was. She would grab milk and ground beef on her way home.

“Hmm, my housemates need me to cook dinner. I had better go. Unless you want to come?”

That was a bit weird maybe, bringing someone home on the same day. She pressed back until she got to the ‘add contact’ page, and offered it to Chief.

“Can I have your number too?”

“I’ll e-nail you,” Jack agreed, tilting her head. The prawn already anticipated that she wouldn’t accept payment from the woman. She already sold figurines every now and again. If she gave Zinnia the statue, it’d almost be like giving a gift to a friend. Jack wordlessly accepted the phone when the young woman passed it back to her.

Zinnia replied to Jack’s inquiries, while the prawn pocketed her phone and the wood wolf sculpture. She had polished of the tea, and the cup now sat with tiny granules of remnants at the bottom.

“I can’t drive either,” Jack assured the woman. There prawn paused, then chuckled a bit. Another attempt at humor. It was funny because Jack didn’t comfortably fit in a vast majority of cars in the market. She might be able to drive an SUV, but really, who had the money to insure an SUV in New York, of all places? Not Jack, that was for damn sure.

>> “Hmm, my housemates need me to cook dinner. I had better go. Unless you want to come?”

Jack shook her head, closing her eyes. No, she had had her fill of socializing today. She wasn’t sure if she could handle meeting more new people, and in such a closed, formal environment. Not to mention eating in front of other people. Drinking, that was doable. But eating? It was downright messy.

“Dat’s okay,” Jack assured her newfound friend, “T’anks for oss-ering, doh.”

Jack picked-up her surgical mask, slinging one elastic band around her face-spikes on one side, and stretching it towards the other side, concealing her mouth once again. Zinnia requested Jack’s phone number in-turn

“Yeah, sure,” the prawn agreed. The prawn accepted the cell phone carefully, turning it around in her hand and typing her information in. For name, she entered her whole name, then in parenthesis, the word “gym”. Jack then entered her cell phone number, and clicked “Save”, before passing the phone back to Zinnia.

Contrary to her ownership of a smartphone, Jack was not technologically savvy. Of course, she had an email address, but she checked it maybe once a week. She didn’t IM. It was thus that she only included her cell phone number. She didn’t even check the contact information that Zinnia had input before sliding the phone back into her pocket.

“You done wiss dat?” Jack inquired, pointing to the glass. The prawn took the dirty dishes and delivered them to the bin where other dishes rested, then followed the young woman towards the exit. The two faced each other in front of the restaurant, a pause settling between the two.

The prawn held out an enclosed fist, and pointed her knuckles towards the young woman casually. Jack hung-out with too many guys. Whereas some people saw handshakes or hugs to be a suitable parting exchange, Jack had settled on a fistbump.

“Today was good,” the prawn remarked, “T’anks sore duh caw-see… and sayin’ sun-t’ing earlier.”

Way earlier. At the start of all this. If Zinnia had never said anything, none of this would’ve ever happened.

“See you around?”

Jac couldn't drive either, and the thought of her trying to squeeze in behind the wheel of Zinn's Dad's Bug was a giggle-worthy thought. So Zinn giggled, quietly, so it would not be thought that she was laughing at Jac. Once Jac began to chuckle too, she let loose into a real giggle. Now they were laughing with not at

"No problem."

If Jac was coming to dinner Zinn would give her flatmates some warning. They were cool, but it would only take one "Dayum!" to scare Jac off from ever coming back. Plus, what might she eat? Zinn tucked away 'tea' for future reference.

The larger mutant slipped on her facemask and Zinn aknowlegded the privlige she had of seeing her friend's mouth at all. Clearly it was something she was shy about. Or otherwise she was like a frog and couldn't help but lick up insects. Ew.

Zinn slipped her phone back into her pocket and nodded her agreement to being done. Jac cleared away the dishes, and Zinn took a moment to pack her book away snugly and shoot a affermative reply to her housemate. She would get milk. She was on dinner duty. She exited the little cafe, nodding to the guy behind the counter as she went.

"Today was good, T'anks sore duh caw-see... and sayin' sun-t'ing earlier."

"My pleasure." and she honestly meant it.

"See you around?"

The proffered fist was familiar to her. She had seen the Hero movie with her little brothers and ever since Baymax fistbumps had been a regular thing. She bumped, and couldn't help the:

"Bah-da-ladala-dah-la" that escaped her.

She dipped her head and turned away before she could see if her new friend got it. She would be embarrassed if she didn't, and so she didn't want to know.

~Fin.