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Locke’s blush increased. He’d been told that his powers were interesting before but Elise said that it was cool. Not only did she say that it was cool but it felt almost as if she had also complimented how he described it. Eaan had just stared at Locke with a blank expression when he said almost the same thing. Then again his friend had failed English multiple times. “Thanks. I’ll try not to blabber too much though. Most people don’t really care about dirt. It’s just something that’s there and is messy. Unless you’re a farmer I guess. Or a gardener.” Locke started walking alongside Elise again. The mud puddles they were passing were small and mostly watery, but they blurbled as he past them, the dirt moving the water. “Mud is the most poetical thing in the world. R. H. Blyth.”

After his less then stellar conversation with Twyla Locke realized that though he had favorite authors, he really needed to read more. Trips to the library to force himself to study that dreaded anatomy book were less painful when he broke it up with some random and pointless reading. Anything not science related was fair game and so far he had devoured Pierce, Nix, Paulson, and Macguire. Eventually he’d get out of the middle letters, especially since he was not looking forwards to Meyer. Blyth had been incorrectly shelved, the only reason why Locke knew that quote. Poetry was the most soothing for his frustrations. “I dunno. It might just be because of what I do with the earth, but the bass is the best instrument in my book. Brass stuff is all in the lips and nose area from what I’ve heard, and piano is in your hands and arms. I’ve never played the flute, but I think that would be here-ish,” Locke made a general motion to encompass the jaw line and ears, dropping briefly to where neck met shoulders. “You can feel it there when you listen too. When I hear the bass or when I play it, it’s like the drums. The vibes start off in my feet, making the whole world seem like it’s gotten sharper, then it settles right in my chest. It fills me.” He laughed. "Ok, now I know I'm saying way to much. My jaw's hurtin'."

“Yeah, I suppose it would be useful. Problem is dirt still hangs around me,” Locke explained, “It sounds stupid, but it likes me. Clay is the worst though. It’s got the most potential, but it’s really lazy. It will cling to me all day.” That was one mess that Locke did not enjoy dealing with. He knew that water would dilute it, but given the shear amount that would stay stuck on his skin it would be very taxing on the Institute’s pipes. Soils and rocks were his element so having them around made Locke feel more comfortable. It was like he had his own little shield with him at all times. Other people might not be happy about having grit in their clothes, but Locke was. He also felt a strange surge of pride and joy in seeing her smile over something that was so small to him. There, he had done something right. His eyebrow lifted when she told him her age. It was weird how she had almost read his mind about how close the two were in age. “I think it’s like eight days.”

Elise had problems explaining her powers at first it seemed. With the patience of the rock he worked with Locke listened to her bumblings. It actually made a great deal of sense. “Well that’s got to be useful. Do you play anything or is it just vocals?” he asked. If she had expressed any sort of distaste for her powers Locke ignored it or just did not notice. He could not see a down side of it.

So they were almost the same age. When he was younger Locke thought that parents all had kids at the same time, so everyone his age had to be a big brother or sister if they had any siblings. Of course it was stupid to have thought that. “Oh trust me, they’ve got the adorable part nailed,”. Now that he was older and knew better Locke just thought it was interesting how families spread out. Some were tightly clustered together, then there were ones like his own where there was a huge age gap. “August twenty-ninth. You?” Had Locke been into the whole astrology thing he’d know that he was a Virgo, which might explain some things about his personality. As it was Locke knew only that there was a sign called Cancer because of a book he had read. He didn’t believe in that sort of stuff, and since he failed epically when it came to picking up girls there really wasn’t any point in asking ‘What’s your sign?’

On the whole he wasn’t doing too bad. So far he’d done a few embarrassing things but she was talking and seemed interested in what he had to say when he did speak. If nothing else he hadn’t babbled some nonsensical word or burp or anything like that. It was almost as if he was normal. Locke tried to act as if he was interested in the process of removing mud from her flip flops but her babbling drew his focus away. She’s better at it then me. When I go off on something out of nerves I’m not nearly as interesting. Locke wanted to tell her it’d be ok if she tracked some mud in. He had done it a couple of times, and there were still times where he tipped over potted plants unintentionally. Maybe there was a bit more leniency with him since Locke could not help but attract dirt and his mutation let him clean up after himself. Forcing himself not to look at Elise while he worked on the mud Locke found it easier to get her shoes a bit better off. “What about music and emotions?” he asked, genuinely interested.

"Like I said, it goes into math stuff. I know you hate it as much as me. Who knows, maybe we're getting the wrong answer. I fail a lot of tests after all," There. The topic was put to rest and Locke had managed to insult himself which should make Chris feel a little better. It is one thing to feel insulted, another thing to hear someone insult themselves.

How best to describe how it felt to move a rock in the water? It was strange enough to tell people how dirt and such felt to him, that he wasn't just personifying them because he was strange. Locke honestly got the impression of different personalities from the things he worked with. He also found it hard to explain that he could feel vibrations from them. They didn't move, not in a way that you could see it, but Locke knew there was a vibe there, the same as when you pluck a guitar string. "It's weird. Like... you ever just know the answer to something, something you've known a long time, like your name, and when you get asked about it your mind goes blank? That's what it's like when the rock lifts up."

He gave Elise an odd shrug, really more of a movement of the shoulder blades then the shoulders themselves. It had been so long since he tried throwing a baseball, let alone an imaginary one, but he could tell that he had not done it right. None the less Elise seemed to have been impressed by it. Had he actually thrown something the result would be less then impressive. There would be no applause for the wild toss. Now was the time for an outright lie, something he was use to doing. “I grew up, interests changed and I became a spectator and not a spectacle. Chasing the little sibs is enough of an exercise.” Had he mentioned Chris or Mai yet? Locke couldn’t be sure, he was still trying to figure out how they ended up having a mud fight and what to do now as Elise was drawing closer to him.

She’s tall Locke thought to himself. Granted he had never really tried looking anyone in the eyes, but Locke had grown use to looking at people’s belly-button when talking to them. Elise was tall enough that he couldn’t do that. Her eyes naturally were just about level to his, giving him no escape. Did her height scare him? Not really. There were plenty of tall blonde bimbos back in San Francisco , with a few of them not being actual females. What was really disconcerting to him was that they kept on doing this, her looking in his eyes and him finding it hard to escape from it. “You can’t go in there like that,” he blurted out, trying to both fill the silence and, to his surprise, get a conversation going. He knew he could get the mud off him without having to hose off or wait until the sun baked it back into dirt.

Locke had to shrug his shoulders, a sign of deference. Chris had a valid point. “Sorry to say that only my step-mother and I knew that I was a mutant, and acting like I wasn’t didn’t make things any better.” To give them both some time to think the Californian prodded the rock that had obeyed him, feeling it lift briefly off the river’s bed before he lost contact with it. “I don’t want to have to go back to that. This is who I am and I’m comfortable with it. Sure I may have to do laundry an absurd amount but hey, if it means that I’m not defenseless then might as well buy some stocks in Cheer and Snuggle.” The words probably didn’t mean as much to Chris but Locke had meant it. Trying to ignore what they were just made things more difficult. Did Chris understand that? Did his family ignore the elephant in the room? Did he know what the silence was like and what it brought?

“Stick with me on this, ‘cause it’s about to do some math stuff,” Locke was unable to hide the distaste in his voice from mentioning that dreaded subject, “This is my friend talking by the way. To be a mutant means that we’re weighed in three ways, how beneficial or detrimental our mutation is, how acceptable to society it is, and how detectable or obvious our mutation is. Nobody wants Fluffy running through their backyard. Besides, with how random being a mutant is can you call anything normal? I mean taking mutations out of the picture you still can rock the most important test known to man. So yeah, I can blend in with a crowd, but I won’t lie, I am not normal”