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"Lucien? What did I tell you about running off on your own?"

Somewhat unsurprisingly, his son didn't answer him with more than a grin. And a splash, once Claude had drawn closer.

Leave it to any child of his to throw off his nice new boots just to stick his feet in the first likely looking stream that came along.

It wasn't even as if they'd gone that far out of town, but away from the roads, from the other sorcer-sorts and Aethies, even the breeze felt calmer, though it had hardly caught to much all the while they'd been walking. Claude being glad they had any at all, as hot as it had been the past few days.

The storm the night before had left lacy scatters of twigs and leaves and knocked down spider webs. Clean and still damp, the leaves overhead and tangled in the grass, they looked pieces of stained glass. And the trees, when they nodded, they sounded clear as harp strings with nothing else to cut the sound.

Out of farmland use and the whiles of any humans at all, the stream had been left so clear, so delicious looking. Just begging for some little blond imp of a boy to come along and kick his heels in it.

Well, one already had. Claude didn't bother with another sigh. He pulled his shoes off and laid them in the stones at his side, stretching lazy as he reached his own toes towards the glittering surface.

And promptly jerked back with a yelp. "Child of mine? That's /cold/."

"I know," said Lucien. "I think it feels nice."

"Maybe if you're part bear. I've always halfway figured, you know."

They had some teasing hums between them and Claude crossed his legs, feet now on the warm pebbles along the bank where they damnwell belonged.

"I think I got that from your side of the family," his son suggested after a while. "Anyway, why do you think it's like that? I don't hear anybody around."

"That wasn't tagging along?"

"Well..." The boy knitted his fingers in his hair, tugging himself a wingtip curl along his temple. "I think I'd only notice Nene if she was /gone/."

"And as for our new friends?"

"They couldn't have gone far. They know we have candy." To which, he nodded. Ever so sure of himself.

Ah, children. Children had gotten him this far with their self-assured beings. And children had found him what was really a rather strange clearing on closer inspection. The stream wore deeper through some places in the grass than others, showing shifts of rock, glints of moss and tree roots sneaking by. It divided the clearing just about cleanly in half.

Besides, on the edge of the forest easing back into being, a great, old ash stood.

Covered in tiny flowers. Pink and violet and hints of white. All of them, growing in streaks as if the bark had long ago turned to soil, though the tree seemed healthy and strong otherwise.

Besides.

"Papa," said Lucian, voice hushed. "There aren't any birds here, are there?"

"No," Claude answered after a moment. "It's just you and I and /a bunch of stinkers who ran off from us/."

"Oh, so that doesn't include me?"

"Child of mine."

They had a few more hums, there in the quiet of the clearing.

There, before something very strange and very faint began to creep along Claude's Aether lines.

It felt like being tickled almost. Anyway, it made him smile. Lucien too.

And next, there his son darted off again, racing over the grass and into the middle of the clearing, where he stood staring into the sky and whistling. Expecting a giant Gust to come sailing down in the form of a giant bird? It might just be that.

Welcome!

Note that anything your characters do in the clearing may result in posts back of things happening around them, even if these aren't exactly invited. Something's lurking around here, and it wants a snack!

Feel free to bring your own fairies, ghosts, mages and seriously confused regular people.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, usually you get your dad's last name." Andy shrugged. "But I don't have a dad, so I get both my moms' last names. And my mom didn't have a dad until she was five so she had her mom's name and her dad's, which is how me and my sister wound up with such a mouthful. How does it work for you guys?"

"Oh," Yuyan said. "So these...genes, right? They're like the drawings for building certain things, like designs for contraptions like a still or a ship."

"Yes," Summer said, doubtfully. "Sort of? I think. I'm not very good at that part of science yet."

"Where exactly do you live?" he asked, curious.

"Starside," Jack said, with exactly zero belief that the other would have any idea what or where that was. "I haven't been Sunside in... oh, a hundred years? A long time."

That grin set Gabriel on edge. Everything about him set him on edge, like nothing he'd ever encountered before. Lucy was irritating, but this wasn't irritation. This was slicker. More insidious. More appealing, in a dangerous way.

"You're not trustworthy," he said at last, eyeing him closely.

Gabriel smiled. "It's natural for mothers to worry about their children," he said.

"We have our Clan name," Taz answered. "Most of the time, people marry their own Clan. Sometimes you marry into another, and then the babes have that Clan name. I'm Clan Hantree, so were both my parents, and some hundreds more people, Grandfather would know better. Dallu?"

"We don't typically do surnames," he said. "Descriptions, sometimes. I was sometimes called Dallu Longhands, because mine are." He held up his fingers to demonstrate.

Sure enough, "I'm not entirely sure what that means," he said, a little apologetic.

"What, 'm not your favorite?" Johnny teased. Not that he actually had a problem with it; Torey was his favorite brother, after all. He had to wonder about it more when Torey wasn't someone's favorite.

"Not at all," Jack said. "Never claimed to be. Unless you're one of my sisters, which you manifestly are not."

Or, well, Nicholas and Pip could trust him too, and his parents. But no one else. And definitely not his grandmother.

"Anyway, you didn't answer my question. That's rude." He shook a lazy finger in Gabriel's direction. "Tsk, tsk."

"I answered your question," he said, primly. "It's your own fault if you weren't paying attention."

Yes, but Martina suspected she worried more about her grown daughter than did most mothers. For good reason, granted.

"You said this has happened before," she said. "How frequent is it?"

Edited (oops) 2013-05-19 06:23 (UTC)

"Oh!" Andy said, gleefully. "That's cool. Man, I want one of those." He looked down at his hands, which were not particularly long. "No idea what it would be though."

"Sunside," Jack said, indicating the glade in which they stood, "is here. Or somewhere very like here. The home of the humans. Starside is home of the Shades. There's not much else I can do to explain it... you understand it, or you don't."

"You rank very highly," Maria said, amused. "But it helps that I moved in with him and his family when I was thirteen."

"You answered it," Jack corrected, still grinning, "in the most concise and inexplanatory manner ever. I know what an angel is but I'm not sure which god you claim to serve. It's been many years since I was Sunside, cut me a break."

"I'm afraid I can't give you one," Dallu said, with a faint smile. "They usually just sort of...catch on, whether you like them or no."

"S'true," Taz said. "He wouldn't give me one, either, even when I batted my pretty eyes at him and begged."

"You, estes, have never begged for a thing in your life," Dallu said mildly, and Taz laughed.

He thought for a minute, then slowly said, "Another...plane? Like Heaven, or Hell?"

Man, everybody had a girlfriend except him. Andy kept that little observation to himself though. "I'll ask somebody when I wake up," he said, thoughtfully. "Not gonna ask my sister though. Brat. She can be Leah Bratface."

"I do not claim to serve any God," Gabriel said, bristling. "I do serve Him, and His Will, whatever that may bring."

Even if He did make baffling decisions regarding Lucy.

Jack blinked at him for a long moment.

"No, it doesn't... it's not flat, what?"

"All right," Jack said, loading his tone with patience. "You serve God. Which God? There's a lot."

Yeah, okay, he was winding Gabriel up.

Couldn't help it if it was fun, now, could he?

"No, a plane like...like a plane of existence. Perhaps dimension would be a better word?" That didn't sit quite right with him, but it might be clearer for the other being.

"The only God there is!"

This, at least, he could be sure about. Other rules might be broken. This one never would be.

OOC: Gabriel is like this far away from a full-blown existential crisis. It's going to be amazing.

Edited (html failure) 2013-05-19 06:22 (UTC)

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