How Green Becomes Wood

"You don't need to be weird about it," Daizi chuckled, "It's just Alec remarked the mahogany smells similar to him, but that he had never noticed the cotton candy on him."

She stepped back a bit to give them space to explore whatever scents they wanted to, not wanting to smell something random and risk turn her stomach, "I like the smell of fire too. And the ocean air... I had a very mildew-y apartment once too, but I loved that terrible place. God, Dark fought so hard to defeat it... I don't remember if he managed it or not."
 
"I don't think our mum ever even tried," Alec mused thoughtfully, thinking back. "I'm not sure."

"Oh, I missed a couple. There's a row of them over here. I guess they didn't fit with the others," Xander said. He walked over and started to flip the little cover on the fist one and then paused. "Oh, this one says it's a collection of cooking spices. Huh, there are more than five-hundred cooking spices in the world! The sign says they are still adding to the collection and that they currently have three-hundred. Only twenty-five are on display, and they rotate them out. Spices should all be save to blindly sniff, right?"
 
"They should be," Daizi agreed, going up to sniff a few. She went through, at random, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, enjoying all their normal woody, earthy scents, "Cooger's mother makes this incredible pecan pie at Thanksgiving. You'd expect, given him, that it'd be a very sweet, caramel and chocolate creation, but actually she only adds rosemary, so it really cuts the sweetness and gives it an earthy depth... My first year in the United States, he ushered us all down to his parents house, and they were so inviting, like I had always been part of her family. She'll take you in faster than any of us did."
 
Alec sniffed one a few times and frowned. He looked at the name. "This one smells like garlic but not quite. It's called Annatto? Mexican, apparently. It's an interesting scent! I wonder if it tastes like garlic, too."

Xander stood at one of the tubes, sniffing quietly. He didn't say anything, just stood staring at nothing.
 
"It might. I'm sure if we get some for Dark, and a recipe that uses it, he'll gladly make what you give him, and then you can find out. I'm not sure how accessible it is," She remarked, leaning to sniff the same spice, "Do you you want to smell it Xander?" She asked, and hearing the richness of his silent came a bit closer to him, and in a much softer tone asked, "Xander?"
 
Xander started when Daizi repeated his name. "Huh? Oh, uh, nothing. I mean, yes, it smells nice," he stammered, trying to guess at what she might have asked or said. He started to put down the beaker.

Alec took it from Xander and held it up to sniff. "I smell... cinnamon!" he said cheerfully. Then he paused and sniffed it again. "Hmm. Cinnamon."

Xander scowled and snatched the beaker back. "Isn't it nice?" he grumbled, putting it back.
 
"What's wrong with cinnamon?" Daizi asked softly. Even though they said it smelled nice, the mood it inspired in them worried her. She found the beaker, and sniffed it, but couldn't figure out why they were reacting that way, and even when she somewhat awkwardly remarked, "I like to put it on my hot chocolate," it didn't occur to her how that little habit of hers may have affected them, because it was something she had done for so many years, and had made for so many people.
 
"Yes, hot chocolate," Alec murmured with a soft smile. "Hot chocolate given away on the street when we were little, but without the cinnamon, but so warm and comforting. And then cinnamon in hot chocolate made by you so many years later."

"The first day we stayed at your house," Xander filled in quietly. "Chocolate and cinnamon. SImple and warm."

"Good for rescuing a pair of teens from the winter streets," Alec agreed with a wistful smile, staring at nothing in particular.
 
"Oh... Right..." Daizi murmured, picking it up to smell again. Having the memory spoken aloud, she was able to go into it too, "I just wanted to warm you up... It was so cold that day. You needed something." She reached out to find Alec, and then squeezed him lightly, "I hope with time it's become a happy memory, I know neither of you were particularly thrilled to have been scooped up like that."
 
"It is an extremely happy memory," Alec assured her, smilng at the squeeze. "It wasn't a good time, not at all, but it... it became a good time. I believe that makes sense? And we've had so many good memories after it that all tie back to that moment. Right, Xander?"

Always one to play things close to the chest, Xander just mumbled something that sounded vaguely positive and then rustled the map a lot. After a second, he said, "Alright, next we have hearing or touch. They're right next to each other, so it doesn't really matter which we do first."

"You pick, and I'll make sure no one runs into you," Alec told Daizi, taking her arm gently. "There are a lot of children with their parents, and even though they have working eyes, they aren't really looking where they are going.
 
"I'm very familiar with those sorts of families," She said casually, "but thank you for keeping your eyes open for me... Better safe than sorry. We can go to hearing next, I suppose. Is it that way?" Daizi asked, pointing in the correct direction, towards were soft jazz was playing. It was quiet, because of the distance, and perhaps only could be detected (from where they stood) by those who had learned to cut through noise to focus on something specifc.

In that room was information about the cochlea and hearing, as all of the sensory rooms had. This one had buttons to have the information read aloud, and Daizi grumbled slightly about how all of the rooms should've had it, because although she could read braille, not all blind people could. There was also a station to test different frequencies, since older people couldn't hear frequencies as high as younger people can. Through the an archway was a wooden area with a big sign declaring it a "Whisper Chamber", and in the corner of the room a soundproof chamber, to show how without the ambient noise to distract your brain, you can hear your own heartbeat.
 
"Yes!" Alec told her, only mildly surprised but still deeply impressed at her accuracy. Xander led the way, and Alec followed close behind with Daizi on his arm.

Alec loved every second of the hearing room, making certain to read anything that didn't have a read-aloud section (there wasn't much he needed to read out), and hopping place to place. He spent the most time with the frequency test, fiddling with the dial and seeing how good his hearing range was. It turned out he had fantastic hearing. Xander, on the other hand, seemed to have slightly less hearing on his left than his right. Both of them disliked the "Whisper Chamber," declaring that if they wanted to hear their own heartbeats, they could sit at home in their rooms. They still had fun, though, especially witnessing it all through Daizi.
 
The hearing room Daizi had a lot of fun in: for her age, she could hear higher frequencies than average, which she accounted to her adamant protection of her most important sense. Unlike the boys, she loved the Whisper Chamber, because she couldn't only hear her heartbeat, she could hear the baby's, and considering she only rarely got to hear what had become her favourite sound, she lingered there for a long while. Because of Xander's discomfort with pregnancy, she didn't express why she liked that room so much, choosing to instead let it be, and if they guessed at the reason, fine, if not: there was nothing wrong with stealing a few extra moments with her third child.

Eventually, and with great effort, she pulled herself away from the chamber (after taking the time to point out to the twins it was shaped in a way that if two whispered at opposite ends, they could hear each other as if they stood shoulder to shoulder), and said, "Right, so... Touch next?"
 
"I'm betting this is going to be the weirdest," Xander said, once again leading the way. "I'm still hoping for slime pits and rice barrels."

"For someone who doesn't like to be touched, he sure does like to touch some strange things," Alec told Daizi with a grin as they followed Xander. "This is so much fun! I am so glad we got to do this."
 
"I'm really glad too. It's nice to get to be just us." Daizi leaned against Alec's shoulder lightly and followed him into the touch room. This, too, was split into different parts. The first had a bowl of ice water with a timer: according to the sign, the ice was at the temperature the ocean was the night the Titanic sank, and you were meant to put your hand in to see how long you could withstand it. There were other tests of a similar nature, too, one let you put your hand near a (safe) heat source to see how close you could get before feeling it, and a few other texture based challenges.

The second part, however, was in the dark, and although not a maze, it had different textural items to feel and try to figure out what they were when you couldn't rely on sight. This was the room where, presumably to Xander's excitement, there were different kinds of slime.
 
Neither twin particularly liked the ice challenge, but, of course, Xander had to try to leave his hand in until he was starting to lose feeling in his fingertips. The heat source was then rather nice, and because he already couldn't feel much, though he could tell it was hot, Xander was able to get far closer to the heat source than Alec could. Alec, for his part, didn't actually try to get too close to the heat source, letting Xander "win" easily.

Then came the slime. Alec made faces at the textures and squirmed, but Xander actually grinned in delight as he messed around with the slime. They also had fun trying to guess the other items in the dark, and while they weren't bad, they nearly as good as Daizi (presumably), and the simplest of objects were what confused them more than the complex ones.
 
Daizi only briefly held her hand in the water, since she relied on touch far too much to even temporarily numb her fingertips, but the fire she didn't mind, and while she did it, she shared the little fact that Helen Keller, when she was very old, would hold her fingers above candles to make them sensitive enough to be able to read braille again.

When the backroom was described to her, she laughed loudly, saying, "Well that's just my normal life!" and so committed to not saying what any of the objects were until the twins already had their guesses. There were only a few that eluded her, and they were all uncommon objects she only knew the names of. The slime she was neutral towards, knowing she was bound to experience many uncomfortable textures as the baby grew and found fun new ways to make terrible messes.

"What's next?" She asked, after they had experienced everything Touch had to offer, "I know they don't have a taste room, since there's not really a way to so it safely at the scale this museum is, too many people come through."
 
"We should have our own taste experience at home!" Alec said excitedly, still shaking the feeling of the slime off his hand even though it was long gone. "We could get salty, spicy, sweet... all the flavors and then take turns giving them to each other!"

Xander was busy studying the map. "It just says, 'this way out if you can find it.' What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know, but there's the exit," Alec said, pointing toward the door.

"Cool." Xander walked through first and stopped short when he realized he was walking straight toward himself. "What the hell?"

Alec moved a bit in front of Daizi and crowded behind Xander. "Mirrors," he reported, baffled. "Lots and lots of mirrors."

The mirror maze was surprisingly empty, devoid of all but Xander, Alec, and Daizi, lending an even more eerie air to the situation.
 
"Mirrors?" Daizi asked, turning slightly on her heels, reaching out to lightly touch a wall, and when she felt the cool glass against her fingertips, she chuckled in a way only those who love magic and the occult can when they find themselves in a situation, which, while objectively safe, evoke the collective unconscious memories of fae,"No worries. I'm immune to the charms of mirrors and what lurks inside them."

She held Alec a bit tighter, and told Xander to stay close, "Take a breath," she advised them, "Put your right hand out against the wall, just follow that wall. Eventually we'll find the exit that way."
 
Neither Xander nor Alec had ever heard anything at all about mirror charms or anything at all to do with that, so they looked at her in utter confusion. The idea of fae, bloody mary, or any number of other tales concerning mirrors didn't even cross their minds. But, Daizi was Daizi, so they shrugged it off, putting it down to her different beliefs and interactions with what other folk would consider the ordinary.

"That seems like it would leave a lot of fingerprints and smudges on the glass," Alec mused.

"True. We don't want to leave an easy way out for the smucks behind us," Xander agreed. "How about using your cane folded up to just tap on the glass as we go? Gently."

I'm sure it won't be too hard!" Alec encouraged and nearly walked straight into a wall.
 
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