(Takes place a few days after Flowers That Won't Fade)

Katrina grumbled as she searched through piles of clothes, both dirty and clean, on her bedroom floor. What did she care if her hair was a little messy? It was summer and hair is supposed to look a little windblown in summer. According to Katrina's mother, though, her hair had crossed the line from “windblown” to “squirrel's nest”. Rather than sit patiently for the next hour while her mother played hairdresser, Katrina had escaped to her room to search for her own hairbrush. She had had seen it a few days ago, she'd shoved it somewhere to hide the fact that it was looking a little rosy, then had forgotten about it until her mother had decided it was about time Katrina untangled her unruly locks.

Finally, she found it right where she had left it: under the bed. It was still looking distinctly rose-like. Crabbily, Katrina glared at it. Cut that out! Be a hairbrush! The rose image slowly and reluctantly withered away under Katrina's stare until it was only a hairbrush once again.

Hearing footsteps outside her door, Katrina automatically jumped up and hurried out her door with the hair brush.

“I'm going outside to brush my hair! No use wasting...” it was then that she realized that it was not her mother coming to check on her, but another student who had simply been walking by, “...a beautiful day.” Katrina let her momentum carry her down the stairs and out the front door before the confused student could see the blush forming on her cheeks. Apparently she was getting paranoid.

Katrina made her way to the garden, barefoot and careful not to step on any really sharp sticks. She went straight to the untamed section of the grounds to enjoy the wilderness of the flower and fern jungle before it was tamed by hedge trimmers and weed whackers. It seemed like a fitting place to tame her own wild locks and she plopped down on the ground. Surrounded by dandelions and roses living harmoniously as neighbors, Katrina began to gradually unsnarl a weeks worth of tangles.

--

Soon enough, Katrina had saved herself from the danger of having permanent dreadlocks (more a danger in her mother's mind than in her own) and she sat absently picking strands of hair out of the brush and letting the wind blow them away. One by one they floated lazily to catch in the thorny stalks of the rose bush on the opposite side of the pathway.

Suddenly a thought occurred to the thirteen-year-old that made her sit up straight, jolted out of her lazy summer daydreams. She looked at the brush in her hand, then at the rosebush opposite her. Quickly, Katrina yanked the remainder of the blonde hair out of her hairbrush and held it in a clump in her fist. She added stray hairs to the clump until there was not a single hair left on the brush.

Setting the brush on the ground, she imagined it blossoming. The handle turned thin, green, and thorny. The bristles turned soft and red, wrapping themselves around each other until they formed a crimson rosebud. As usual, Katrina could see both the illusion and the reality overlapping each other as two images that were coexisting in the same space. Then, Katrina stopped imagining the rose. The brush immediately returned to its normal state.

Katrina grinned, then, not bothering to get up, she crawled across the pathway until she sat next to the rosebush. She selected a dandelion that was growing amongst the roses and tied the whole clump of blonde hairs around the stem.

“Your turn,” she winked at the happy, yellow face of the under appreciated flower. The dandelion stretched up and its soft stem hardened and pushed out small, prickly thorns. It lifted up its spiky leaves and they marched up the stem, changing shape as they went. The jagged edges retreated until the were nothing but a gentle zigzag along the edge of a heart shaped leaf. The pretty yellow head turned orange, then fades into red until it matched its rosy relatives. The fuzzy top twisted around to become the spiral center of a single rosebud. Only Katrina would be able to tell that this flower didn't truly belong in the rose bed.

Then, Katrina closed her eyes and deliberately thought about something else. She pushed all thought of flowers from her head and focused on the first thought that crossed her mind. I wonder what's for dinner. After a few moments, she opened her eyes again and looked back at her experiment. Once again a grin spread itself across her face. The little dandelion was still doing its best to look like a rose, even without Katrina concentrating on it.

“Cool,” she whispered to herself.

(This thread is now open, if anyone would like to join me in the garden feel free to hop in!)

Garrett woke up late. Between hard labor, DocProf visits, and the pseudo dates he had had with Maya, he had been a busy boy. So today was an official day for laziness and procrastination. So must the stream pool, as well as rush. It took him a solid hour to get out of bed and get dressed as he took his sweet time moving around the room. When he eventually did get it together, he shuffled out of the room and decided to go shoeless. Maya had seemed to enjoy it, so why not?

He made his way outside to the grounds. It was a beautiful day, the sun high in the wide blue sky, the clouds seeming unrealistic in their patterns and shaping. He inhaled deeply through his nostrils, taking in the late summer scents. He walked through the grass, enjoying the organic feeling underfoot and between his toes. He could hear a mockingbird chitting and trilling away nearby. A warm wind slid over his back and it made him think of another natural beauty. He actually looked over his shoulder, smiling, to see if it was her.

It was just the summer wind. He walked towards the once lavish garden, now choked with weeds and wildflowers. He resisted the urge to beeline for the tool shed, opting instead to relax and enjoy whatever he came across. He saw a gorgeous iris jutting out from a particularly thick patch of weeds and roughage. It was a soothing sight and it gave him the idea of meditating upon it. He looked around and found a metal lounge chair, picking it up and awkwardly hauling over so he could enjoy the stark contrast of beauty among chaos.

He reclined back, the sun beating down on him. He noticed he was becoming particularly pale, so he removed his T-shirt and watched the occasional bee pass the iris. It was so warm and cozy, it became a slow slide between wakefulness and dream.

It was strange, being in limbo. It wasn't necessarily bad, but it was rather boring. Every day seemed to lead into the next with nothing to separate them. Well, not much. A short jaunt into the city with a friend here and there did help to break up the monotony.

At least Ghost had woken up this morning to a surprise. She'd woken up to the strangest sensation: something was traveling through her. She blinked her eyes open just in time to see a little foil ball traveling toward her face. Naturally she reacted with surprise, which in turn surprised her little friend and resulted in much surprised shouting. Apparently she'd fallen asleep somewhere public again and an early riser had found the need to toss foil balls through her as she had become incorporeal some time while sleeping. The evidence was all over the couch in the form of twenty or so little wads of foil. This of course resulted in a corporeal Ghost taking revenge in the form of tickling.

Said excitement had long passed, though and Ghost was left to haunt the living area, hoping to bump into someone interesting. There were certainly enough interesting folk to go around in a mutant-inhabited mansion. The problem was that the lazy summer sun was making most hide away somewhere. There was nothing especially exciting going on inside. She supposed that the excitement really came once the school year started again.

So when a teen came tearing through the kitchen area obviously on her way outside with of all things a hairbrush, Ghost thought she may have finally found someone to play with. Maybe she could play a trick or something. There hung the possibility of fun in that idea. Ghost had carefully picked her way to a window, though her attempts at stealth didn't seem to be needed. The girl seemed rather busy with her own agenda in the garden. Ghost watched bemusedly from her perch in the open window as the kid took vengeance on her hair, and sent the loose hairs to float away. But Ghost became most interested when she turned her hairbrush into a rose and then a dandelion into a rose.

Ghost wondered if she was a plant kid or maybe she had some kind of transmutation powers. Well, she hated to intrude, but it was the most interesting thing she'd seen all day.

"Excuse me." Even though there was some distance between the girl and the window where Ghost was sitting, Ghost's voice came soft and clear to Kat's ears carried by a gentle breeze so that she would not have to shout. "I rather liked the dandelions as they are. Personally, I think roses are overrated. Will you leave this one as a rose or will we ever get to see his happy yellow face again?" Ghost waved to the girl from the window as it may not have been readily apparent who spoke.

Ghost didn't see Garrett in the garden due to the angles and the wild overgrowth of the shrubberies, though he would probably overhear her voice as it trailed nearby.

Katrina jerked her head up, her smile replaced by confusion. She didn't know where the voice came from. She glanced around and finally saw someone in the kitchen window, waving at her. At first she thought it was her mother, but the voice was all wrong. The girl also had seen what she had been doing, which meant she had been watching the whole time. Katrina narrowed her eyed in suspicion, but it could have just as easily been the result of the patchwork sun patterns that were playing across her face. One thing was for certain, with all the windows in the mansion, Katrina could never be sure if there was someone watching her or not. Suddenly she felt a little like Big Brother was watching her.

“Dandelions will all get picked soon enough and thrown away!” Katrina called back. Then, realizing it was silly to yell across the whole yard, Katrina picked up her hair brush, brushed the soil off of her dress and began walking back toward the house. Maybe next time she would work on her experiments inside the house. With all the overgrown bushes, she had thought she was in private, but the angle of the windows was apparently high enough to see over bushes. People on the ground wouldn't have been able to see at all, Katrina was sure. There could be someone right on the other side of a bush and no one would know if that other someone didn't make a lot of noise.

Katrina rounded the corner around one of the overgrown bushes and there was someone laying (sleeping?) on a lawnchair right in Katrina's pathway. It was a spot very similar to one Neena had been napping on another day earlier that summer, and a very similar thing happened. This time, Katrina was able to stop short before totally falling on top of him, but she did use the support of the arm on his chair to catch her balance again. Stupid balance was always throwing her off lately. She didn't quite seem used to the new size into which she had sprouted.

“Oof! Sorry,” Katrina apologized a bit loudly, then added a softer apology for her original volume, “sorry.” She straightened herself out and really noticed for the first time who was sitting there. It was the hairless boy-who-was-almost-a-man or man-who-was-still-somewhat-a-boy. Katrina had a hard time telling his age exactly, but he was in that stage of being almost grown up that made someone the coolest kid around. She had seen him around, helping put with the clean up efforts, but hadn't had a chance to talk to him yet. Whether she would get the chance now depended on if she had woken him up by jostling his chair with her near trip onto his lap.

The iris was an ocher yellow at its base, opening into a warm amber and finally exploding in a brilliantly soft orange. Garrett's lids were half closed, as they usually were when he meditated. He thought of the iris and in his mind's eye, he saw it from above, opening slowly and closing. Patterns of light raced around the stem in a helix, rising to the petals and then descending. It took only a moment to recognize a chakra. But which one? From the heat of the day and the colors of the iris, he assumed it to be the tumo chakra. His hand slid over his solar plexus, the location of the chakra in his body. he could feel the ganglia of nerves pulsating in time with the opening and closing of the flower.

Tumo was the source of action and power. It was also the heat chakra, the ones the Nepalese Sherpas used to melt ice around their bodies in the Himalayas. The heat of the sun and the heat from his core was seemingly overwhelming, almost palpable. He wondered if he couldn't find all sorts of inner workings with the chakras and their related nerve bundles. Perhaps the iris was telling him this.

Perhaps..

“Oof! Sorry,” Katrina apologized a bit loudly, then added a softer apology for her original volume, “sorry.”

He had also felt her weight on the lounge chair as it shifted under him. The iris disappeared briefly as his eyes opened and the sunlight made everything too bright for a moment. Squinting slightly, he looked over to see a young girl. Younger than most he had seen around. Younger than any, really. He sat up a bit more and let his eyes adjust. He smiled, as it seemed the girl was a little nervous. Perhaps she had not seen him. He did notice then that he had put the chair directly in the center of the path.

"Hello there.", he said to her in a quiet voice. " I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was in the middle of the road here." He stood up and grabbed his shirt and stretched fully, feeling the warmth of the sun down to his bones as he did so. As he was about to slide his T-shirt on, he saw Maya sitting in a nearby window. He simply stood there for a moment, smiling at her. He almost forgot about the little girl. Reality snapped him back and he slid the shirt on.

" My name is Garrett, by the way." He smiled again as he lifted the chair and moved it out of the path.

The girl had yelled back about the dandelions getting thrown away and then promptly gathered her things and ducked behind the overgrowth.

"I didn't-- I'm sorry." A wisp of an apology drifted by. She'd almost said that she hadn't meant to pry, but that would have been a blatant lie. It was a lazy day and this girl was a resident she'd yet to meet. It wasn't her intention to scare her off so soon.

"Aww, fooey." Indeed, she hadn't meant to scare her away at all. Ghost supposed that being abnormal was beginning to feel too... normal. She tried to take a mental note that next time she met someone she should probably keep the oogie-boogie stuff to a minimal at least until they were familiar. Showing off had worked for the younger kids, but maybe the older ones like this girl just simply weren't impressed. Ah! And Maya was just beginning to think the girl may some day call her sempai or better yet nee-chan. Ghost glanced wistfully back at the bush and was surprised to see Garrett's disembodied head and shoulders pop up over the height of the shrubbery and catch her eye.

"Howdy!" She called across the lawn not bothering with powers anymore. The word sounded all wrong with proper pronunciation and even stranger coming from Ghost. She waved, "I think I just ruined someone's day," and shrugged sheepishly. She swung both legs out the window then and hopped nimbly from the sill over the large green bush that decorated the outside of the mansion below the window. She ambled lazily toward the garden, in no apparent rush. It seemed that Garrett and Maya couldn't avoid each other even if they had wanted to.

She back to not being able to see Garret. She was just too short at ground level. Ghost couldn't help but identify with dandelions. There were people who were like roses: beautiful and stunning at first sight. Everyone knows what a rose is and for what they supposedly stand. And there were people who were dandelions: unwanted and unloved, yet beautiful in their own way. It took spunk to survive when the world wanted you gone.

She sighed and laced her hands behind her head as she walked. Apparently you just can't win them all.

As Katrina apologized to the bald young man, another, more airy apology floated by on the breeze. Katrina glanced back toward the girl in the window, but the bushes in this part of the garden were too tall for her to see over them. The bald man, who introduced himself as Garrett, also apologized for being in the middle of the pathway. Everyone was being so polite!

Garrett was tall enough to see over the bushes, and he stared at something for a moment before putting his shirt back on. Katrina stood on her tip toes, trying to see what it was, but alas! she was too short. Her question of what he was looking at was soon answered though, when the girl from the window called out to Garrett in a voice that was louder, but farther away sounding than the airy voice she had been using before.

Katrina still couldn't see the older girl over the shrubbery, but called out to her. “Howdy back! I'm still here! You didn't ruin anything. I'm Katrina, by the way!” She grinned up at her tall companion and held out her hand for him to shake. “And it's nice to officially meet you, Garrett.” Katrina tilted her head, again wondering about his age. Perhaps she should have called him mister. “Umm, are you a teacher or a student?”

One hedge made all the difference in the world. Between little Katrina and petite Maya, it was like an imposing barrier, splitting up the world. Garrett couldn't help but snicker when he heard Ghost yell Howdy. It sounded like Minnie Pearl was speaking through her. Price tag and all. He really had to maintain his focus on his new friend here, Maya always distracted him. It was natural to Garrett.

He looked down after moving the chair and bent over slightly to speak to the young lady. "Hello, Katrina. What do you mean by officially?" Had she seen him? Undoubtedly so, but when? It occurred to him that he really did have a bit of tunnel vision when Maya was nearby. It was a nice change from the ever-present awareness, also known as paranoia, that usually dominated his appearance. The Mansion was doing a world of therapeutic good, even if he never learned another thing about his mutation.

He saw Ghost drop out of the window, well, nearly float from it, and then turned his attention to little Katrina. When she asked him if he was a teacher or a student, he couldn't help but have a nearly full belly laugh. "Well, my friend, I must assume I will be a student. I am not entirely sure what I could teach anyone." He mulled over the thought. He was happy to help anyone he could, but could he actually educate somehow? And if so, what would he teach them? Another meditation for another time. By now, Ghost was nearing and he was anxious to hear Katrina's reply.

Ghost danced her way toward the brush that concealed her friend and soon-to-be-friend. Well, she wasn't really dancing, but the way she stepped so lightly and kicked up her feet to flounce the edges of her sun dress did tend to give that impression. She stopped curiously at the point where she had seen the girl before and tried to decide which rose might be a dandelion or if the dandelion was a dandelion again.

In the end she had no idea, but she did hear Katrina's shouts to her from yonder over the untamed wilds of the shrub.

So she decided to dance around the brush where she'd heard the voices. "Ta da!" She raised her hands and announced her glorious entrance. It was a good day and it just seemed to be getting better. "Sorry about spying, Katrina...?" Ghost looked at the girl to reaffirm that she'd heard correctly and to memorize the face. She nodded reaffirming herself too. It was Katrina then.

"Katrina. I'm Ghost." She dipped her head in an informal semi-bow, but remembered that people liked to shake hands so she offered hers with a grin. "You've got some real talent, there."

As the girl from the window made her way towards the pair in the overgrown garden, Katrina addressed Garrett's questions. “Officially? Well, the school isn't that big, so you see people in the kitchen or helping out with the rebuilding and stuff. And some people stand out more than others,” Katrina shrugged, then grinned a goofy grin.

“You're no cat-eared person and you aren't blue all over, but you do look different from most of the others around here. And you look kind of old to be a student, but kind of young to be a teacher, so that's different too. You could be a teacher, it just depends on what you know and what you know how to do. Even I could teach you something, maybe.” Katrina would have perhaps added an example, but at that point Ghost entered their little clearing in the jungle.

Katrina bowed back and shook Ghost's hand, “Nice to meet you, and don't worry about it. It was nothing, just an experiment.” Katrina shifted her feet uncomfortably. She didn't really want to talk about her powers. She had heard too many horror stories and had too many nightmares about people using other mutant's powers for their own gains. She had no desire to be the subject of some crazy scientist's experiment or to be captured and be forced to use her powers for someone else's purposes. The less people knew about her, the less chance there would be that something bad would happen to her.

Of course, Ghost and Garrett and the other people at the mansion, and even the people at Mondragon Labs all were so nice that Katrina wanted to trust everyone and felt horrible lying to anyone. Instead, she usually just kept her powers to herself and didn't use them when other people were watching. Anxious to talk about anything other than her powers, Katrina switched back to the subject she and Garrett had been discussing.

“I was just saying that Garrett could be a teacher, it seems like. What do you think, Ghost?”

“Nice to meet you, and don't worry about it. It was nothing, just an experiment.”

Ghost of all people, wouldn't press a mutant to divulge their powers. Though after seeing the impressive display, she was curious -- her curiosity would never trump Ghost's desire to avoid causing another's discomfort. Some might consider that as manners.

“I was just saying that Garrett could be a teacher, it seems like. What do you think, Ghost?”

"Ooooooh?" She inspected her friend from head to toe, seeming to appraise him in this new light. She grinned then. "I'm sure Mister Garrett has a vast knowledge of many things, though I'm not quite sure what he'd teach.... ?" Her slight accent made the formality of her speech especially evident. Usually when she became more familiar with a person she would loosen up. They just had to earn it.

She arched her brow at Garrett to let him know she was teasing and noticed the lounge chair. "Working on your tan or were you spying too?" She motioned to the chair to direct Garrett's attention there. She took the opportunity while Garrett wasn't paying attention to wink at Katrina like they had some secret together and to her know she hadn't forgotten about her.

Katrina was right. Though the Mansion and its grounds were quite large, the general population wasn't. He wondered what she meant by people standing out, but decided not to look any more paranoid than usual, which was too much. "That makes perfect sense, Katrina. I guess I just feel like I haven't been here long because every day is so good for me." He smiled at her.

Maya had joined the conversation now, talking to Katrina. The younger girl seemed hesitant to speak of her powers. This was a well known subject to Garrett. He would give her all the room she needed. He was watching them both, but his eyes kept moving back to Maya. The first time she glanced over at him, he pretended not to be looking but when she looked at him again, he just kept looking at her. He noticed how her formalities and accent had returned while speaking to Katrina. She had definitely softened up to him. It was just much more apparent now that he had a different perspective.

They both had the right attitude about teaching. Maybe Garrett would look into it someday. He liked the idea of it. Especially if Maya became a teacher as well. Then they could have lunch in the teacher's lounge. His mind was digressing until she asked him about his purpose for being out in the garden. "Spying? Hardly, unless you count the iris there. I had no idea you two were here until Katrina ran into me. Were you spying?" He chuckled and waggled his eyebrows, then slid a sly look at Katrina, so she could participate.

"Now that I think of it, from your vantage point, perhaps you were interested in my tanning progress."The slim grin of delight and self satisfaction appeared, almost smug even.

Seizure might look more like a teacher, but Ghost's proper way of speaking made her sound more like one.

“I'm sure that Mister Garrett knows some interesting things that I don't know,” Katrina responded, copying the formal title that Ghost used, unsure if she was teasing him by adding it or if it was really proper to call him mister.

Ghost changed the subject from teaching to Garrett's reason for being in the garden,
>>>"Working on your tan or were you spying too?"
Ghost winked at her while Garrett wasn't looking. Katrina got the impression that she was teasing him about tanning.

>>>"Spying? Hardly, unless you count the iris there. I had no idea you two were here until Katrina ran into me. Were you spying?"
Now Katrina got a sly look with wiggling eyebrows from Garrett. Had she missed a joke somewhere along the line?

Katrina shrugged, “I wasn't spying. I thought I was the only one out here.” Privately Katrina noted that if she had been spying she would have been invisible. The only reason she had even found for spying, though, was when grownups decided to have important meetings that could possibly pertain to everyone- and didn't invite anyone who wasn't old enough to drive. Katrina figured in those cases she had a right to know what was going on, but she didn't think it would be very interesting to spy on people who were just going about their everyday lives. She'd rather just walk right up and talk to them in that case.

>>>"Now that I think of it, from your vantage point, perhaps you were interested in my tanning progress."
Katrina hoped that had been directed at Ghost. She didn't tan well herself, but she sunburned easily and blushed even more easily. Blushing seemed to be a natural reaction for many situations she found herself in lately, and Katrina couldn't help but blush at what Garrett seemed to be insinuating.

Ghost raised her eyebrows at Garrett and leaned to the side to see around him and consider the iris that had supposedly captured his entire focus. Ghost liked iris flowers. She'd never seen an orange one and so she became a bit distracted as Katrina was talking. Irises represented wisdom and valor, but it also meant one's friendships are important. She secretly wondered if he knew this.

Now that she was closer to the shrub, Ghost noticed the overgrowth that sheltered them from view of the mansion looked like a large deer berry shrub. Left alone to grow as it pleased, it seemed that the plant had taken over the area next to the path, though she saw springs of rosemary: proof that a healthy herb was fighting back. It smelled heavenly back here. No wonder Seizure had chosen this spot. Too bad this jumble of plants would probably get the ax in favor of a more organized garden experience. That irked Ghost.

She realized she'd drifted out of the conversation and when she looked around again Kat was blushing and Garrett was looking rather smug about something. Ghost just looked confused.

"I have already apologized for my spying to the only person on which I was spying." Ghost flounced her skirt accentuating her movement as she turned to Katrina. The shift in placement shielded Kat momentarily. It was maternal instinct or something - she wasn't entirely sure what he'd said, but it was enough. Ghost looked at Kat with the full force of her honeycomb colored eyes. "Am I forgiven?" The way she said it sounded more like 'are you okay?' she could probably answer it either way.

The smug grin dissolved into a strange look of confusion. Apparently, humor was not called for in this situation. Ghost was admiring the iris and speaking to Katrina to make sure she was alright. He didn't really understand what he had done other than lay in the sun and get interrupted, but apparently he was no longer needed in the conversation. This was no reason to be coarse with either of them though.

He turned to Katrina. "I apologize Katrina, I can tell you don't understand what's going on here. As a matter of fact, neither do I ." He smiled at her, hoping he hadn't upset her with his adult nuances that he had directed towards Maya. He really wasn't used to kids her age and it was showing. Ghost was now turned away from him and only speaking to Katrina. It was very strange to Garrett. Not disconcerting, just odd.

"Well, I apologize for interrupting you two. I'll see if I can't find somewhere to relax that isn't so in the way." He smiled at both of them and then turned and started walking across the lawn towards the outer edges of the property.