7701/Getting some dirt under your nails. Er, scales.

Getting some dirt under your nails. Er, scales.
Date of Scene:	01 June 2019
Location:	Student Gardens - Xavier's School
Synopsis:	Ororo meets Ainsley, and Ainsley leaves the gardens with a new project in hand for Xavier Institute's botanical ambitions.
Cast of Characters:	Storm, Sibilance

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Storm has posed:
Ororo does enjoy the finer things in life-- exotic foods, fine clothing. She's a human, after all, and a woman who enjoys creature comforts.

But there's nothing Ororo likes better than being up to her elbows in fresh loam, and that's where she's at in the gardens on a late springtime afternoon. One can hardly call them 'gardens' anymore; once upon a time the rear acreage had the sort of carefully cultivated plantings that New England aristocracy enjoys flaunting over one another. Neat hedges, orderly rows of trees, a greenhouse tucked away in the corner so the gardener can keep the 'homeowner's' prize-winning roses alive in winter.

In truth, the greenhouses, acreages, and orchards are now very nearly a botanical research project all their own. Between the chlorkinetics, the students who can channel sunlight, and those who just love growing things-- not to mention an endless demand for fresh fruit and veggies-- the botany classes are as much labor force as student instruction tool.

Ororo's working in one of the smaller greenhouses, a controlled environment for breeding plants. The current project is a crop of tomatoes that are showing a lot of promise. They dangle from overhead hydroponic trays, and each of the fruits is the size of softball and bright red with promised flavor.

Ororo is standing at a bench with a knife, a cutting tray, and a clipboard. She dices one of the tomatos and takes a bite, then frowns and makes notes on the clipboard. Looks like lots and lots of data, the sort of thing that someone skilled at metadata analysis can help her with. The X-woman is dressed as informally as possible, wearing low leather sandals, baggy canvas trousers, and a heavily dirt-soiled white tank top. A blue rag holds her wealth of braided hair back from her face and keeps it bound behind her head.

Sibilance has posed:
Sibilance shows up, the short snake woman slipping into the greenhouse to investigate. She creeps up to where Ororo is, sliding past the trays. She pauses to examine what the white-haired woman is researching, and leans in. Her tongue visibly flicks out, her eyes lidding in concentration.

"Hello," she says, realizing she's almost invading personal space. "Ah... I'm Sibilance," she says, peering up at the taller woman, dipping her nose shyly. It's intimidating to see someone like Storm. "I was told you're the one that handles the... gardening related things? Charles told me about it."

She smiles warily, not sure how to address her own awkwardness.

Storm has posed:
Ororo turns and looks the girl up and down, them beams at her beatificially. "Sib-- Ainsley, isn't it?" she inquires in a mellifluous alto that resonates around the room. Her accent is mostly Kenyan, with some influence of Arabic and a bit of the French colonial education system hovering around the vowels. "I am Ororo Munroe, but please call me Ororo. Coded names are for operations," she says encouragingly.

"Your timing is good. Do you care for tomatos? I cannot decide which direction to take this breeding," she explains, and cuts a slice for Ainsley. It's set where the girl can take it without having it pressed into her hands. "It seems quite succulent but I wonder if richer soil would make for a sweeter fruit. What do you think?"

Sibilance has posed:
Ainsley is further intimidated by the easygoing way she's addressed, and briefly closes her eyes in bashfulness when her 'code name' is addressed as such. She opens her eyes and affixes her gaze to the tomato, and examines it carefully. Then she reaches down and plucks up the tomato slice with the delicate care of a botanist, and examines it. Her eyes barely blink as she looks over the thickness of the outer layer, the luster of the inner flesh, the health of any visible seeds. Then she bites into it, popping it right into her maw, which is full of teeth that sit somewhere between human and dinosaur, with fangs built for stabbing.

Munch munch.

"The fruit's too large," she points out, reaching out to heft one of the enormous tomatos. "Smaller tomatos are sweeter because the sugars are crammed into a smaller space in the cells..." She rattles off the mechanics of photosynthesis and how plants store sugars, and then points to the sliced fruit, "Could use more sunlight and food, if you really want to stretch the sweetness."

Her tongue flickers out once, and she peers up at Ororo, now more confident. She knows plants. It's the one thing she's sure of.

Storm has posed:
Ororo's smile widens. "They said you had an aptitude for gardening," she compliments the girl. "And for growing things. And you're quite right, the smaller plants create denser flavors."

"However, small plants don't work well for big appetites," she says with a wry gesture at the school at large. She slices up the remaining tomato and sets it out for Ainsley on a clean paper towel, offering the girl the rest of the snack. "So the trick is to make them large as possible without compromising the taste. What do you think about hydroponics?" she inquires, gesturing again at the racks of soil and fruit overhead. Water gurgles from innumerable tiny pipes around them. "We're currently evaluating adding a fish farm of some kind. Tilapia, something edible and hardy. Not my favorite fish," she admits, "but palatable if prepared well. It'd give us a better return on composting than just throwing our vegetable waste into a bin to rot for six weeks, I think."

Sibilance has posed:
Ainsley snacks on the remaining tomato slices as Ororo speaks. She smiles and nods in agreement on the appetites, glancing back to the mansion as a whole. A lot of growing teenagers in a small area... it creates certain culinary demands. She looks back up to Ororo with a lift of her scaly brows on the note about a fish farm. She looks among the soil, and rubs at her jaw. "Too much water dilutes the flavor. Plants like tomatos can be very greedy with their water..." She reaches out to check the setup, with the discerning and nigh-unblinking eye of a scientist.

She's so gentle with the plant, as if she's afraid she'll cause it pain, but she clearly knows how to handle it without harming the structure. "If you need filler tomatos, these are fine," she opines, "More than fine, honestly. It's in how you cook them that best brings out a flavor... but I'm not much of a cook, just interested in the plants." She doesn't even look at Ororo as she speaks, going down the line as she falls into almost a sort of trance, checking each plant with the machine-like movements of a professional botanist.

"Aquaponics is a good idea, though. It'll lower the water bills in the long run," she adds. "I couldn't afford maintaining the piping, it was just a pain in the butt." She wiggles her tail and smiles mirthfully at the shaka-shaka of her tail rattle.

Storm has posed:
Ororo nods along with Ainsley's assessment. "Our thinking, as well. We'll likely use PVC piping then, it's fairly resistant to corrosion and is easy to fix with glue and tape. At that point, the only energy requirement is just lifting the water from the pond. If it was your project," she says, hedging, "what would you do? A water tower overhead to pull from the resevoir, or would you use individual pumping stations to control flow more finely from feeding pond? There are no wrong answers-- I'm curious as to your thoughts here," she assures the woman, and smiles again. She has a maternal sort of expression that tends to put people on their ease. "I so rarely get to discuss long-term plans with someone who isn't concerned mostly with their grade-point average."

Sibilance has posed:
She muses on that for a minute, looking around the greenhouse setup. She munches on the next bit of tomato, and wipes a bit off the juice off her inhuman mouth with the palm of her scaly hand. Her eyes follow the structure, and flick to the plants, and around the room. Then up at the mansion as a whole, with a brief squint. "I'm not an expert on water pressure, but I know you don't want the nutrients from the fish farm to wash away too quickly. The planters would require some careful tweaking so the water flow is good. The water tower would be fine if you equalize the pressure correctly. The simpler the better, if you're growing a lot of plants. Individual pumps are best for pet projects, you have to keep maintenance concerns in mind." She then starts pointing out good spots and setups, to the point where she gives a rough map of how to maximize the space of the greenhouse to fill it with as many tomatos as possible without diminishing the harvest. "Just be careful with outer piping in winter, this is the Northeast after all. It can chill greenhouse plants and your fish farms to death."

"Found that out the hard way with my old place," she mentions.

Storm has posed:
When Ainsley looks back, Ororo's smiling at her with warm approval. "Very, very good," she tells the woman. "I had suspected as much. I am not an engineer. Not really, even, a herbologist," she says with a humble tone. "I merely enjoy growing things. It's fascinating to see what other disciplines bring to the fold when we cooperate with one another."

She folds her arms loosely over her trim stomach and rests her hips against a bench behind her. Her posture's relaxed, trying to put Ainsley at ease, and she spares the girl a direct stare-- even if her body language is thoughtfully focused on her. "I think you went a little fast for me. Perhaps-- if you have time-- you'd draw up your ideas? Maybe even a work timeline, something I can hold in my hands?" she requests. "It might be a little tedious for someone with your skills, but I always feel like the first step from intention to production is committing words to paper. Even if it's less diagrams, and more... doodling."

Sibilance has posed:
The quiet snake woman views Ororo with a careful stare, and the sound of gears turning in her head is almost audible. She flicks her tongue out once more, and steps over to carefully take the pen and a piece of blank paper (or as close as she can get) and begins drawing something out. Her hand moves with a practiced ease, like an architect. No shakes, no inefficiency. Her mutations make this easy. She pauses halfway through the design, scraps it, and replaces it with another. Then she slides it over to Ororo. The dimensions aren't listed, of course, she hasn't had time to measure, but it's a blueprint that maximizes the space, and keeps modularity in mind. Ororo could use it for any greenhouse. Little notations are written here and there, maximizing the space on the page as well, with little numbers indicating the priority of each part in the system.

"I'm not an engineer, either," she murmurs, "I know what the plants need and what's a good way to grow them." The blueprint says as much. It'd need translation by someone that can build it. But this is the work of someone who could make serious money working with plants. "I never find this tedious," she adds, "It's my passion." Clearly.

Storm has posed:
Ororo examines the paper carefully once it's handed to her. "Give me just a few minutes, I'd like to look over this?" she requests. "In the meantime, perhaps look around the greenhouse here. Tell me what you think of the grow work we're doing."

She smiles and gestures at the small greenhouse-- really more of a lab, given the tight controls in place-- and sits down at the dirt-dusted desk to go over the diagram. She even turns on music, soft and low in the background, so Ainsley isn't wandering around a too-quiet room while Ororo works.

It takes her about five minutes and she waves Ainsley over, gesturing at the document. A number of names are notated in the corner in crisp, careful handwriting with just a little flaire to it that only comes from years of penmanship lessons. A few other notes have been jotted down, such as expected water requirements per plant, crossflow, nutrient yields, and other useful facts.

"I know you're still getting settled. But this would be a good project for you," Ororo tells Ainsley. "Take this to some of the students in design and engineering. See if you can convince someone to help you with it," she suggests. "If you need idle hands to help you, we've a few children working off detention in the gardens. It's good for the character, growing things. Plantings. Ask them for help, maybe even mocking up a model in one of the empty greenhouses to see how it holds?" she suggests.

Sibilance has posed:
Leaving Ainsley to her own devices in a greenhouse has her smiling instantly. She calmly goes about inspecting the plants, checking for pests, checking the health of each specimen. She brushes her hands over the leaves, she sniffs at them here and there, she seems enamored with every aspect of the work done here in this greenhouse lab. No criticism is given if not prompted... just enjoying it the way an art enthusiast enjoys a museum. When she gets around to checking the document, she looks over the names and up to Ororo...

Her gaze dips shyly for a second, visibly terrified of the idea of having to approach strangers for a project of any flavor. It's a quick but obvious flash of the demure personality she has in that head of hers. "I'll see what I can do," she mentions, with a wan smile. Being forced to talk to people to get something done... yeesh.

"Should be fun," she surmises, after she gives it some thought.

Storm has posed:
"I would be very grateful," Ororo assures Ainsley. She regards the serpent girl with an unshakeably serene expression, those blue eyes seeing quite a bit more than most people. "Perhaps if you logged into the school's internal forum, and made a few inquiries via instant messenger?" she suggests, delicately. "It might be an easier way to reach out to people and broach the topic without needing to run them down."

She smiles and rises again. "At any rate, Ainsley, it was very good to meet you. I look forward to seeing what you do with the greenhouse in the coming year," she encourages the snake girl. Ainsley's walked to the door, bid another fond farewell, and then Ororo returns to her labors inside the translucent structure.