She decided right then and there that around noon, when the sun was highest, was the time of day she hated the most. Hated it. Hated. It

She had been perched outside on a bench, her mobile easel set up in front of her, dabbing away at her canvas for nearly four hours now. It had been nice at first, over cast... not to sunny. Just the right kind of breeze. 

... But then that had all changed and the friggen' molten star in the sky was doing it's best to nuke her into a fried, pink cream puff. Shelby grumbled incoherently to herself, squinting at the canvas.

Normally she painted darker things. Plants, flowers, bones and skulls. She had always had a unique fascination with the human (and mutant) structure. What lay underneath the skin. But lately she hadn't been able to pursue those normal styles. Every time she tried... every time...

She shook herself, pressing a hand to her stomach as it growled loudly. "Oh, shut up."

She hadn't been able to keep food down for the last few days. She'd tried, really. A few crackers here or there managed to stick, but every time she tried to eat something more normal she automatically flashed back to that night and her stomach simply tossed all the food right back out. She knew it was bad, and that she probably should have talked with someone, anyone about it by now.... she just couldn't bring herself too. She was too private a person, and had great reservations about opening herself up like that unless she absolutely had to.

She'd just give it a few more days... see if she went back to normal on her own terms. Until then she'd do her best to keep herself together. 

With that thought in mind, she turned back to her paining. This particular piece was a lot more vibrant than her usual stuff. Lots of green and yellow, a virtual rainbow of color. She was working solely off of the image of the person she had saved in her head. 

There was a little bounce in her step that came purely from pride. This batch of cookies had turned out perfectly. Crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, rolled in cinnamon perfect little snickerdoodles. She would say nothing of the three prior batches which were safely in the trash, nor the smoky smell in the kitchen which she had left the rangehood running to try and dissipate. With the basket over her arm and a picnic blanket in her bag she was prepared for quite the snuggly afternoon once a certain someone got off work.

One of the more regularly outside kids recognised her and buzzed her in (success!) and she made her way across the grounds with something somewhat like confidence. She kindasorta knew where she was going. Plus, even if she got lost it wasn’t like she would stumble across any particularly dangerous rooms or anything. Heh, a danger room. The thought of it was silly. Who would have such a thing in a school, where kids could just saunter in and hurt themselves?

It was a beautiful day outside, the sun was shining merrily now, but the air was still cool enough in the shade to need a light jacket or (what she was hoping for) a cardigan. Kids ran about kicking, throwing and catching an assortment of objects, mostly balls, but there were definitely some juggling pins and superpowers in play as well. There were kids basking in the sunshine and even someone painting.

The painter caught her eye, as for a moment she thought it was Cafas (the pink hair and all). It was a young woman though, and not at all the ball of muscles she kindaknew. She had to pass quite close by the girl to get where she was going and the subject on the canvas drew her eye. Those colours, that shape, it really could only be one thing. And by thing she meant person.

“Hey, is that Jac? That’s pretty good!”

She stopped to admire it in time to hear the painter’s tummy rumble even from her polite distance. A quick glance at the girl’s face and general stature and the nurse mode took over.

“how long since you’ve eaten?”

A voice from behind gave her a start, and with a flinch she turned. Thankfully, she hadn't been mid-stroke when she'd gotten caught by surprise. There was a woman behind her, giving her a critical eye that made her instantly nervous.

"Um.. Yes, actually." She was glad to see the figure was recognizable, and that she'd done a good enough job that it hadn't incited instant aggro rage. She'd learned the hard way in one of her first figure classes that not everyone appreciated her particular brand of honesty.

The next question paused her to sputter and shoot an accusatory glance at her tummy. "P-pardon?" Traitor! "I ate earlier today..." She sifted her face away, dead set on not looking at the woman any longer. With her luck she would end up being some kind of mutant who could smell lies or something.

It wasn't a complete lie, anyway... if water counted that is. Lifting her brush again, she attempted to add a little more green to a part of the painting.

Sure she had eaten. And chucked it straight back up no doubt. She had the guilty look of someone sprung. And the wild-eyed hungry look of someone who was missing out on some vital vitamins and minerals. She knew the mansion took in people from the streets, and at a guess this one was fresh in this afternoon. But the pointed turn to the canvas signalled that this conversation was over. If only Zinnia would take the hint. Pity she could ignore hints just as well as the next person when she wanted to.

She fished a cookie from the little basket and nibbled on it while she watched the girl paint. Up close she seemed to be of a similar age to Zinnia, perhaps even a little older. This was clearly one of the grownup mutants Rowan had mentioned living at the mansion.

“You wanna snickerdoodle? They go best with cocoa or milk, but they’re ok by themselves.”

Because she would be damned if she didn’t try and get something into this kid.

The woman stayed silent, and Shelby stared to sweat bullets. She wasn't going away, she was just watching.

“You wanna snickerdoodle? They go best with cocoa or milk, but they’re ok by themselves.”

Her stomach growled again, and she cursed under her breath. Cookies had always been a weakness for her. Gradually she turned to cast a glace back at the woman, a funny expression locked on her face. She eyed the cookie the woman was eating, and after a moment of contemplating how to tasted she could have turned green from the sudden nausea that hit her. It probably tasted sweet, like that soda at the restaurant her Saph had been lured into.

Overwhelming guilt swiftly replaced the nausea, and she swallowed thickly. "N-no thank you. I-" How did she politely decline without sounding suspicious? Dammit she didn't have the energy for this! Fibbing was hard when you were tired and hungry.

"I don't know if my stomach will agree with it. Thank you though." With a sigh, she dropped her hand to her lap and fixed her eyes on her painting. It was easier to think about that, than anything real she was dealing with.

She looked like she was going to throw up at the mere thought of the cookie and a small part of Zinnia was offended. These were good cookies. She could understand that reaction from the first batch where she had derped out and put salt instead of sugar into them, or the ones she walked away from for just-a-second that had turned into perfectly black little charcoal pieces suitable for stuffing naughty kids stockings… but not these ones.

Perhaps she was a vegan. Or a celiac. She looked like something other than the cookie was bothering her though.

“is everything ok? You look like you saw a ghost. And not the air elemental kind.”

If she had met Maya that would be a slightly humorous pun. If she hadn’t then Zinnia would be coming across like a crazy person.

“let me at least make you a cup of tea.”

There was the half-brit coming out, something worrying you? Have a cup of tea. Feeling under the weather? Have a cup of tea. Suffered some horrific ongoing trauma that turned you off all food? Have a cup of tea. That last one was less common though.

She was fairly confident she could find the kitchen this time.

She winced again, mostly at how transparent she seemed to be right now. Trying to cover it all up when she didn't have any energy to put into inventing a cover up wasn't working. She ranted at herself in her head, not wanting to turn back and have the woman see the distress on her face. Maybe if she old her Saph was already helping her that would take care of things?

Then tea was brought up, she all her fell out of her seat twisting around as fast as she did. It made her back ache in pain, from where pudds had sent her flying through a set of metal doors. "No!" The volume she'd said that at hurt her throat again, and she coughed. Okay, maybe that was a little too dramatic, she tried to pull it back a little.

"...I kinda need to make my own stuff. I have to see it." She paused, agonizing on the inside over how little sense that made. "I have to know what's in it."

Setting her brush down on the lip of the easel, she turned on the bench to face the woman. "I... um... Saph is already helping me with-" Her crippling fear? The nightmares? The borderline eating disorder she'd gotten stuck with.

....maaaaybe she hadn't told him about those things, yet. "-with my problem." She dearly hoped name dropping him would help.

Tea was apparently a trigger word and Zinn felt her eyebrows creeping up to meet her hairline in worry. The crackle in the ‘no’ sounded like she needed some lemon and honey in that tea. It was the broken sound of someone who had hollered themselves hoarse. Generally it was a side effect of something else. The last person she had heard that grating in had been trapped in a burning house, screaming for help and breathing in smoke. Zinn had eased her pain as best she could by supplying a steady stream of oxygen, but at the end of the day it hadn’t been enough and the girl had passed on to the other side, hacking and coughing all the way. She wouldn’t lose this one the same way.

Someone called Saph was helping her with this problem. Perhaps that was the first name of the healer Jude had borrowed the power from to fix her eyebrow, perhaps the school counsellor (if they had one)… or maybe it was one of the X-men, the name did sound familiar somehow.

“I won’t put anything weird in it.”

It was tactless, really and thoughtless. She had meant vitamin drops of course. Not the body parts of a friend. Why would that have been what she meant, that was just silly.

If she could have, she really would have turned green at that point. Instead, the sleep deprived part of her mind latched onto the wording and she virtually stopped breathing.

Was this woman another plant from that monster? Was she here solely for the purpose of torturing her some more? Her pupils dilated and a sheen of sweat sprang instantly onto her skin. She wondered where Saph was. How far away he was, and how quickly he could get to her if she started screaming.

"W-what did you just say?"

There was a small part of her that was murmuring in some semblance of a sane manner. That this woman wasn't a plant from Roach. That she wasn't trying to feed her another friend, or god only knew what else. That she was safe in the school, just as Saph had promised.

But it didn't stop her from fixing her wide, shaken gaze on the basket the woman was holding. It didn't stop her from imagining all of the horrible things she could be hiding in it.

The girl went positively pallid, and Zinn knew she had put her foot in it. Unless this was just the precursor to some sort of body-shifting. She had seen something like that before. Clammy sweat shimmered over her skin and it wasn’t because of the sunlight. This was 100% panic attack.

“Hey, hey, it’s ok. I didn’t mean to frighten you. Here, breathe with me.”

She tried to encourage the deep, soothing box breaths that so often calmed a panic attack. In for four, hold for three, out for four, hold for three. Being an oxygen-generator tended to help with that as well. She had an unfair advantage.

The girl seemed scared of her basket and she casually flicked aside the teatowel to show more of the golden brown cookies. Nothing to be frightened of in there.

“I’m a nurse, as well as trained in first aid and I really think you should at least have a glass of water and sit in the cool for a bit. Are you on any medication, and have you taken it? Do you want me to call this… Saff for you?”

Her next best bet was to call Jude, and ask him what the healer’s name was and could he come and help her. She felt like this was perhaps better suited to a mutant ability than to the ministrations of someone who seemed to be only making things worse.

Her gaze dragged back up at the woman's words and she nodded slightly. She didn't think anyone sent to cause her more pain would try and calm her down at all. She followed her directions as best she could, slowly in and out. It did start to help her calm down. She nodded along nervously, peeking into the basket.

That small action actually absolved a lot of her stress. When she had calmed down enough she nodded her head sullenly, and moved to stand. If she were going to follow the woman inside for water and shade, she was going to bring her stuff with her. After packing away her paints and brushed haphazardly, she snatched up the canvas in one arm and he easel in the other.

"...No, i'm not on any medications currently." She laughed shakily. "...I don't know his number. I've only been here for a week." She could imagine Saph's face when he would eventually hear about this. The time a trained school nurse nearly sent her into a full blown melt down. He would lock her in her room for sure, or a psych ward.

"I.." She struggle to find the words for what she wanted to say, "I'm sorry for freaking out on you. I didn't really mean too, it's just been a... a very long week. My name is Shelby."

That was the understatement of the century.

No medications and only been around for a week. No wonder the poor thing was so skittish. Life on the streets was hard, doubly so for a mutant. Not that transitioning to life in a massive boarding school full of the weird and wonderful would be that much easier.

“Nice to meet you Shelby, my name is Zinnia.”

Between them they managed to bumble their way to the kitchen. Zinnia kept the basket slung over her arm (she had seen what happened to snacks left out on the counter) as she flicked the kettle on and dug for glasses and mugs in the seemingly endless cupboards. She passed a glass to Shelby, empty, and spooned coffee into her mug. Humming softly she retrieved the milk from the refrigerator, added it to her mug and poured some into the second mug, making sure her hands were visible at all times. Water was good, but it had no nutritional value.

She sat at the table and pulled her coffee towards her, swiping another cookie from the basket. She would have to be careful, or there would be none left for Jac.

“So, do you want to talk about it?”

Mental-health first aid was a required certificate for her line of work, and one she used almost as often outside as well. There was no reason for Shelby to give her details. But at the same time sometimes it was nice to just offload on a stranger with no strings attached.

She shuffled in behind the woman depositing her stuff next to the table. Then she snagged a chair and sat down. With her arms rested in front of her on the table top, she watched the woman's, Zinnia's movement with apprehension.

When Milk was set down in front of her she cringed visibly and shot a desperate look at the woman. One that clearly stated 'Do I have too?'

When the next question came from Zinnia, she didn't really know how to respond. "I... I don't know if I should." Her gaze traced her fingers, wound around the glass and crusted with little bits of different colored paints.

"I'm here because of some kind of protection program. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say." Hesitantly, if only to appease the woman, she lifted the cup and took a sip of the milk. It didn't taste bad. Didn't taste like much of anything. She still had to quell a spell of sickness when it hit her stomach, though.

After a moment with her eyes closed and her brows screwed together, she opened them again and fixed them on Zinnia. "Saph is the one who brought me here. Worked things out so that I can stay until..." She trailed off, gaze becoming slightly unfocused as she zoned out.

"Anyway, I haven't been able to sleep really, or eat." She wasn't sure if she wanted to say how long it had been, but she also wasn't sure if it was a super good idea to leave it out.

"...It's been quite a few days now."

Yes she did. Have to. A tiny sip made its way down and Zinnia observed the turbulence from over the top of her own mug. It seemed to be duel something-digestible-hitting-stomach-acid and memories of whatever caused her to be put into mutant witness protection. Whether it was protecting a mutant witness, or protecting the witness from a mutant was yet to be seen.

”…It’s been quite a few days now.”

No food or sleep for ‘quite a few days’? No wonder she looked like a mess. It was a wonder she could even muster the energy to go out and paint.

“Once you stop eating for a while it gets harder to keep anything down, but you need the energy. Do you like candy?”

She had spied an unopened packet of gummy worms behind the coffee tin, no doubt put up high to keep out of little hands. I didn’t have a name on it, so technically it was fair game.

“I would recommend seeking out a counsellor if one isn’t already organised for you,”

she retrieved the packet from behind the coffee tin and set it on the table so Shelby could open it herself, no meddling fingers from this one,

“I know that really helped me when I was going through a… rough patch.”

A messy breakup. The loss of something so small it wasn’t yet someone. The escape from the cycle of abuse. Shelby wasn’t the only one with secrets at the table.

"I used too." She muttered, trying and failing to not envision the taste of most candied things. The information about a counselor earned a quiet sigh from her and she nursed her glass of milk.

"I've already been appointed on. My first appointment is a few days from now." She frowned, and decided to take another sip of milk. "It's hard, because I have to be accompanied when I leave. I can't go alone." That made outside appointments frustrating to get too. She had to plan with someone else for the trip, and if there was no one available, or an emergency came up she was out of luck.

"I can ask Saph about potentially getting a different one. Mines police appointed." She paused, angling a funny look at the table. That had sounded better in her head. 'Police appointed'

A short lapse of silence followed. Until, "... Do you have any tips about how to go about sleeping?" She fixed pleading look on the woman without really intending too.

"Will a counselor help with the nightmares?"