Private Finished nature speaks

Today was a pretty nice day for a walk. It was still a bit chilly, but Michi didn't mind it at all and figured she could go off on her own today. It would be such a waste if she didn't go sight seeing around the academy grounds which she was sure had no right to look as pretty as it did. It made her wonder who manages the upkeep on this place. Then again, it wouldn't be too surprising if anyone here had some fancy ability to help with that. She considered badgering her friends to join her but she needed to be more familiar with the school grounds and chattering with someone else made her miss some details. Michi sighed, still trying to wrap her mind around magic being normal around here. She'd been in Manta Carlos for over a month by now, but she'd only really seen the inside of the islet facilities for the majority of that. Students were walking about, some perhaps were from staff, but considering it was a weekend, it was a smaller crowd than the one she'd witnesses earlier that week. She stopped just as she reached the end of a hedge, leaving an opening to the greener part of the school grounds. She would have simply passed by and kept following the cobblestone path, if she hadn't seen someone seemingly hiding from behind one of the bushes. She looked around her, finding no one else in the area before curiously walking up behind the stranger. "Um.. Excuse me. What are you doing here?"

This guy... was not hiding, was he? MIchi stared back at the guy with a raised brow, trying to understand the sight she was looking at. He was crouched down behind the bushes and... eating grass? From the looks of it. What else could explain the grass in his mouth? Michi had the idea to leave and pretend she didn't see him but it was probably too late: she had approached the guy and the guy had ackowledged her presence with a reply. "Um. Your job?" she echoed. What job? "Do... you have to be..." she trailed off, trying to choose a word from the noise she had ringing in her ear. "...crouched down there? To do your work?"

The suspicion was clear to see in Michi's eyes, especially with the way they were slightly squinted. But really, she shouldn't judge. That was the first thing she was told when she was released from the islets: expect that things here are going to be vastly different from how life used to be for her and she should keep an open mind. Still. Seeing a man eat from the ground is... pretty unusual. Michi nodded, pretending to believe what the guy was saying. "Okay, so... weeding, right?" Her eyes scanned his surrounding. No sign of other weeds that he supposedly 'pulled out'. Pretty sure he wasn't weeding at all, a voice rung in Michi's mind. "Do you... need help? You look like you've... barely started with weeding," she asked, ending up with a weird emphasis on the statement.

"I don't mind helping," Michi stated plainly. Or it could have been that easy but she could tell how the guy was being shifty about it. Really, it wasn't helping him that he was cleary was hiding the fact he was most likely eating grass. She'd seen some of the farmer folk do that stalk-in-their-mouth thing when she was in the old farming town, but this somehow looked forced. Or maybe she was reading into it too much? "Really, I was just going for a walk to distract myself a bit," she repeated, crouching down beside the stranger and idly picking out some weeds that she could. She wasn't the type for this kind of work, but now that she was picking unwanted plants from the ground, it felt kind of relaxing. "So um. I'm kind of new here so, you know. If I look at things weirdly that's just probably knee-jerk reaction since. Well. Everything worked differently from where I grew up," she said, almost randomly. But both of them knew what she was onto. For Michi, she was just bad at questioning stuff out loud. "So um. You could just tell me if it's normal with you folk, or something."

As though telling him that she wasn't going to judge him for what's normal for them, he easily confessed what was happening. And while that was a relief, she blinked with surprise when the guys face turned into... a giraffe? She's never seen a giraffe up close but that couldn't possibly be a horse, right? Michi had to muffle her laugh when he said all he can do was 'eat grass', as if the simplicity of it amused her. Though to be fair, maybe eating grass would have been better than what she was dealing with. "I... kind of expected the non-human part," she stated, still mindlessly fidgeting with stuff from the ground, though by now she couldn't tell which was ornamental grass or weed because she wasn't looking. She let him eat in silence, while she moved on to flicking away some dead leaves and weeds nearby until the other guy turned a question to her. Michi stopped what she was doing and stared at him and for a few seconds, the buzzing noise in her head seemed to get louder. "We... my friends and I got in a little accident and it kinda ruined 'normal' for all of us," she confessed before returning to weeding duty. "And it looks like there's no turning that back so here we are. "I didn't catch your name, by the way?"