noteful | Birthday Party for Laura/X-23

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Birthday Party for Laura/X-23

It's a pretty low-key party, all things considered, and not significantly different than the one Parker or Meg would have thrown in a dorm room for a friend at home, not-exactly-traditional menu not withstanding.

There's music, low enough to talk over (and maybe with a little more folk in the mix than one expects to find a party). Balloons and streamers in purple and blue and red. A place to leave presents. People to meet or catch up with.

And, most importantly, a chance to wish X-23 (or Laura) a very happy birthday.

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Castiel nods.

He does not shift or fidget. But he is not good at what humans call 'small talk.' It kind of shows.

"How are things with you?"

"They're good.

"My ankle's getting stronger, and that makes things a lot easier, especially running up and down to Bar to get more garlic bread. And I've been keeping busy at home. With classes and everything."

"If you need help, I can go for bread."

It would not be the first time in his career he's helped deliver manna.

"You enjoy school," he observes.

She always seems to light up a bit when she talks about classes.

"I may have to take you up on that offer."

Her doctor probably would frown a bit at the amount of time Meg's spent on her feet this evening.

"I do, yes. I always have."

It helps that she's very, very good at school.

"The remarkable thing about a place like McGill is that I'm surrounded by people who . . . this is going to sound a little . . . pretentious, maybe, but I'm surrounded by people who are smart enough and interested enough to get into McGill. And the conversations, the level of discourse and the ideas that people have and share, even outside of classes . . . it's . . . it's remarkable."

"You are happy to be among people with whom you have a great deal in common."

"I do not find that pretentious."

That only makes sense.

"You did not have that before?"

Meg is not one of those people who tends to blow her own horn. And it feels . . . a little like bragging to talk about being smart enough to get into McGill.

Even if she demonstratively is.

"I . . . everyone goes to high school, or is supposed to. And there are other people who are interested and take it seriously and are very . . . I don't want to say intelligent but maybe academically focused. But there are a lot of people who aren't. And when you get to university, especially one that's fairly selective, you're surrounded by people who want to be there, who worked to be there."

"And it is a part of your fate that you determined yourself," Castiel guesses.

He imagines that would factor into it.

Humans put a great deal of value in the ability to craft their own fates.

As well they should.

"Yes," Meg says.

She picked it.

(And it wasn't the University of Toronto.)

"And Montreal is . . . I like being in Montreal."

"It is an island. I believe."

Knowing at least a little bit about most subjects is a byproduct of having a life spanning thousands of years and a good vantage point over Earth.

"The Mount Royal. Iroquois. Then French. And then British. And now Canadian."

"But very different than the part of Canada I grew up in," Meg says.

"Montreal is very . . . I don't know, maybe it's just that everything's in French as soon as I leave campus, but it feels . . . there's so much to see and do and learn."

"The unfamiliar often makes the world seem bigger."

Or, in Castiel's case, the universe. Even angels do not see all of it.

And it is comforting, in an odd way, to know that he has not seen everything Creation has to offer.

"The last time I walked on Earth, many people never traveled more than one hundred miles from where they were born. At a generous estimate."

The world had been very big then.

And Creation continues, so there's always more to see.

"It's about 700 kilometres from home to university. So . . . that's about 420 miles."

(Closer to 435, really, but the 3/5 rule is handy for estimating.)

"That's a much more daunting distance without trains and cars and planes, though."

"Very."

Castiel nods.

"I find it sometimes makes people underestimate how vast their world still is. With all of its uncharted corners."

"Especially if you don't often leave your little corner," Meg says.

"When you were on Earth, did you go all over, or mostly stay in one place?"

"I went a number of places."

"There is work to do the world over."

"And," he adds, "I have watched many places that I have not walked."

"That makes sense."

She smiles.

"And now you're here. And there are balloons. And root beer floats."

New corners all the time.

"One of the stranger corners of Creation I have visited," Castiel admits.

He suspects that his Father had been having a whimsical sort of day when he created Milliways.

"I think I'd be a little . . . perplexed, if that weren't the case. That this is one of the stranger corners of Creation."

Castiel nods.

"And yet, the more often I visit it, the more I can see the purpose it serves."

Meg looks around at the people celebrating Laura's birthday.

And then nods.

"I think . . . I can see that."

At least, she thinks she can see the purpose it serves for her.

"It...."

Castiel ponders how to put what he is thinking into words.

"It provides a wider perspective. Even for angels."

"It allows people to experience things that would otherwise be impossible. And learn to accept them."

"Yes," Meg says. "And to . . . to ask questions about . . . about things that you didn't even know you needed to be questioning.

"Like . . . like what's normal and what's strange."

"You found a great deal that was strange?"

There were, at the end of the day, few things that Castiel found strange beyond being curiosities.

But he has something of a head start on Meg.

"Yes," says Meg.

Because, if she's being honest, oh, yes.

"But . . . I meant more that I found that my strange was someone else's normal, and vice versa."

Castiel smiles slightly.

"Perhaps we are all sent here to learn things."

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