8878/History By Those Who Are It

History By Those Who Are It
Date of Scene:	20 August 2019
Location:	American Museum Nat. His.
Synopsis:	Meetings, greetings, currywurst and Kells.
Cast of Characters:	Winter Soldier, Sersi

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Winter Soldier has posed:
He's always loved the museums of New York. Where could you go that was cool and quiet and soothing in summer, when your rickety buddy couldn't bear the heat...or somewhere warm and interesting in brutal winters. Now, though, his companion is a big German Shepherd in a service dog vest, kept heeling close lest guards or docents take offense. He's wandering among the dinosaurs, at the moment, examining the great skeletons from every angle. "You could chew on those for a lifetime and never finish," he says to the dog, teasingly.

He's in those plain civilian clothes - Cyclones cap, jeans, white t-shirt, white compression sleeve and black glove to conceal the metal arm.

Sersi has posed:
Not many places beat the natural history museum in a city chock-a-block with exciting additions to the cultural milieu. Neither is there a singular collection that blends hard physics with Wailmer the Pokemon hanging from the ceiling. At least it /looks/ like Wailmer superimposed over a skeleton, which insistently bobs up and down, awaiting Sersi's efforts to catch the big, smiling blue sphere without a tail. In that, the natural version actually exceeds the animated one, given propulsion through the protozoic ocean requires some sort of fluked back end setup. She flings an animated blue-and-red ball airborne and it strikes on the dopey smile of that skeletal on digitalized beast.

Boop boop boop! A flash in the pan and suddenly the big tailless whale is no more, stuffed into the pocket of the smugly smiling ravenette. She whisks a gesture on the screen and sends a triumphant photograph winging through the aether to unamused friends or relatives, hard to know, crowing her success of some three-banded magic object gone. The app is shut down a moment later, for nothing is tackier than being /that/ tourist with /that/ phone out and not actually looking at the wonders of history. The adjacent hall to the whale leads into the prehistoric beasts, the masters of the other side of the K-T boundary; plesiosaurs be damned, it's all about king rex this and steggy-stabby that.

"You looked better without feathers," Sersi murmurs to a passing Utahraptor that looks like it escaped Woodstock and Burning Man with a perpetual sneer for all things warm-blooded, middle class, and spoiled. So, her. Or basically all of New York. The thing's maw is still full of great sharp teeth, and a child behind her inadvertently yelps when they snap. Hushed murmurs follow from a horrified parent. No, Jimi Hendrixraptor totally did not snap at you, Aiden!

Winter Soldier has posed:
The yelp has the dog turning, enormous ears pricked. Do I need to help the human pup? Buck grins down at her. "No, girl, it's fine. He's okay. None of the dinosaurs are hurting the kids, I promise." He finds a bench, settles, all the better to soothe the Shepherd by ruffling her ears with his human hand. Something out of history in his own right, though at least he isn't trundling after his big red, white, and blue relic at the moment.

Sersi has posed:
The kiddo points at the Utahraptor with a crooked finger, bleating. "It was gonna bite me! It has teeth!"

"Honey, it's just like the one at the zoo that moved. Remember? They had a whole show of animatronic dinos, and they didn't bother you then..." His mom shuttles the seven-year-old off, sighing with the put upon opinion of someone wishing she'd reconsidered choices in life. Sersi watches them go through the fall of her bangs, slicing a neat path that meanders around the questionable raptor and its shaggy presence. If Snuffy descended from that hellbeast, the world might be very cold and Henson a monster indeed. Her hands slide into her back pockets, giving her a casual look, though it's the pup more than the man that catches those luminous, surreal-green eyes.

"Well, hello, handsome," she lilts, her voice holding traces of Greek or Italian.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Man and dog look up with nearly identical inquiring expressions. They do say pets and their humans grow more alike as they go....and while Buck and Lili've only had six months together, well, that's still a lot of water under the bridge. "Uh, hi," he says, mildly, blinking at her.

Sersi has posed:
Inquiring expressions meet that timelessly fair face, an elegant alabaster oval dominated by the radiance behind it: the smile, the brilliant eyes, the sheer vitality. Sersi breaks free her hand from the pocket of her capris, giving a little wave to the shepherd before the man. "Sorry, I didn't mean to distract when on the job." She offers a small roll of her shoulder towards the dog. "But seeing such a well-behaved companion in here isn't commonplace. Especially with all the random sights and sounds, at that." Almost self-deprecating, she tips her head, the waves of blacker-than-vanadium hair sweep off her shoulder. "If only everyone else was like that, mm?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
"Oh, she's a gem," Buck says, expression softening into evident fondness. Lili lets her tongue loll in pleasure. "Best there is, she's all right." The soldier nods. "She does okay. Hell, she even deals with the subway at rush hour....better'n I can, to be honest." Buck ducks his head, sheepishly.

Sersi has posed:
The evident calming of the hound brings an approving nod from Sersi. She does not approach to pet Lili or interfere otherwise, granting room enough for a sniff to be taken and the fragrance distinguishably settle as hers alone: cream and musk wound around the soft wood blooms of a faraway corner of the subcontinent, radiant copper lapped by distant coconut. It makes her a traveler on the seas and currents of the monsoon, for all that her fairness of complexion means that's all but impossible. "Rush hour in the subways is a special kind of torment," she agrees with the huffed sigh of a native city-dweller. "Only stands to reason when half the stations are older than Methuselah and opened around the time of Ur. Except at least the ruins in Ur look a fair sight better thanks to somewhat regular maintenance." Her eyes glitter with amusement at this state of being, though she tucks her black hair behind her ear. "I'm being terribly rude, forgive me. You might have places to be, and I'm in the way. Or you might not want a complete stranger pestering you in here, so... well, I'm Zara, so at least that way it isn't a /complete/ stranger." An impish upturn of her lips teases.

Winter Soldier has posed:
"I'm James," he says, pleasantly. "And I got nowhere to be today. I just like to visit. Make sure the dinosaurs are still behaving themselves." Buck's expression is amiable, though there's that faintly gauging look in the pale eyes. New Yorkers aren't generally that friendly to strangers. Is this a trap? Is she just the rare innocent one does occasionally find?

Sersi has posed:
"James, pleasure's mine." Sersi offers her hand, beringed and graceful, the pressure-point dabbed by that fragrance hinting at exotic locations far from the humdrum chaos of sticky, stinking city folk. Whether he takes it doesn't seem to bother her in the least, but like with Lili, a calculated and cautious offering comes with extraordinary ease. Coming and going, she has no issue about letting the gesture be if he's not up to it. "The dinosaurs are tricky ones. Things have never been the same since they realized the skies were unoccupied and they could get more things done by sitting on the rock in the middle of the ocean instead of fighting with angry ferns." Her smile is lopsided and teasing, not altogether unsuitable for her current appearance. Not a native New Yorker, not with that accent, but a cultured one anyway. "This place /is/ spectacular. Even when it doesn't have game stops. I saw a few people trying to cast spells on their phones to make the triceratops do something. Related some game, but it was plenty entertaining. I doubt they watch where they're going, though, so be careful."

Winter Soldier has posed:
Winter Soldier leans over enough to take her hand with his human one, shake it gently. Old school manners. "You know, I never have tried something like that....I mean, the phone game stuff. It's weird to me to think of, that a museum exhibit might *do* something." Confessing his age, if obliquely. "People do seem to have real trouble looking up from their phones.'

Sersi has posed:
"I restrict myself to capturing digital wonders," says Sersi with a laugh, her fingers curled around him and warm, though not overly so in one way or another. A light shake does well for everyone, though the residual firmness remains all the same. "Sometimes listening to the recordings they do for places like this is worth distracting yourself with, but definitely not the same as living inside a screen without ever looking up. They have so much strange /stuff/ in here, how can people not find it fascinating?" Her smile widens all the same, even as she shakes her head at the behaviours of others that prove unaccountably fascinating, unbelievable, and mildly frazzling. It's not like humanity has changed much essentially in the last couple millennia about it.

"You're more used to the read the placard and look at the image museum, are you? This place seems to be more movie than actual display. Next up, we'll have Tony Stark offering up VR technology to experience all the pieces as they were intended in multiple forms. At least visual!" She perks up to that. "It beats standing in line for a look at a bust about this big." Hands held up indicate a very small piece indeed, a la Louvre or Nefertiti experiences.

Winter Soldier has posed:
There's a faint sigh at the mention of Stark. "That guy's never met a technical innovation he didn't like. It's a damn good thing we had his dad on our side, or we'd be having this conversation in German."

But he pauses, and admits, "I mean, not that technology can't help. I saw a thing where a museum had done high resolution scans of its medieval manuscripts and put 'em up online. You could page through 'em. It was almost as good as the real thing."

Sersi has posed:
"It sometimes feels like the Germans just figured out how to speak English, really. But we're not enemies any longer, so that counts for something." Sersi grins again. "I mean, Thyssen-Krupp elevators, those cute VW Beetles, and cars without turn signals. What more could you want? Mm, other than some currywurst. That may be the one thing in Berlin you cannot find in New York, or it's not the same." She sighs, an ageless heart lighting on that playful observation.

But coming back around, she taps her toe. "A museum that scanned their books? That's a great way to preserve them. They did that with the Book of Kells, didn't they? It beats going to Trinity every day for page-change time."

Winter Soldier has posed:
"You known, I never-" He pauses. No, he made it to Berlin, if not in the great push in '45. Berlin divided, with him darting back and forth over the border like a needle through cloth. "Yeah. I don't remember which it was. Some library in England?" he offers. "It wouldn't surprise me if they had. It makes sense. Think of all the research that could be done, with so much less risk."

Sersi has posed:
"If you've never had currywurst, you've got to try it. Promise, it's one of those blends that make no sense but work so well. Turkish people in Germany, the magic of it all. Sausage and spice, it's magic." Sersi wrinkles her nose and laughs again, unable to avoid falling into that sunshine. How often has she crossed the path of that city perched in the east, under a red star or a bent cross? It's best not to think too much, though those days were all of yesterday. "I'm going to have to look for that library. It sounds like the kind of thing to thumb through on a rainy morning or late at night, instead of something like flipping the laundry."

Winter Soldier has posed:
"Anywhere in New York that does a good version?" he ventures, hopefully. "Never had it. Never heard of it before, truth be told. Just google for the library, I guess. It'll come up."

Sersi has posed:
Sersi taps her fingertips against her lips. "Not that I've ever found unless they are homemade. I know the recipe and getting it just right is fairly tough, the spices not being as fresh or the air not as toxic with the weight of history." A wicked frisson sparkles against her lips before someone probably up to no good.