RP Time? You betcha!

[shipwreck_light]

"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.

Comments

Re: Jack, Spirit of Darkness

[bookblather]

"Never claimed to be trustworthy," Jack said, "but I'm not a liar either." He shrugged. "But believe as you wish; far be it from me to shake someone's worldview." Unless it was funny, but that guy looked as if he would break, and there was too much of Charlotte in him to go any further.

"Also," he added, "point of interest, the dark is not always bad."

[one_eyed_nemo]

"No, a ship," Nemo said nonchalantly. "Just come from Veni. New York on Old Earth, right?"

Re: Jack, Spirit of Darkness

[sarcasticsra]

"You're wrong," Gabriel said, because he had to be wrong. There were rules. Some rules might be broken, but others could never be.

"The dark is where you lose yourself," Gabriel said, stiffly. "It's chaos and temptation and against the rules. Perhaps it isn't objectively bad, but I prefer to avoid any kind of mess I can."

[martina_corlioni]

Martina pursed her lips. "How disconcerting." She shook her head. "Will you tell me about yourself?"

So she was curious. It wasn't every day she got a chance to ask an archangel questions and get some sort of answer direct from said archangel's mouth.

[sarcasticsra]

A ship. That sounded excellent. "Correct. 2030 CE."

[sarcasticsra]

"I suppose," Gabriel said. These meeting places were anomalous and outside the realm of usual behavior, after all. "What would you like to know?"

[johnny_corlioni]

If Maria had shared that thought, Johnny probably would have agreed with her. It wasn't as though he and Torey had never talked about it, and he was pretty sure Letta had seriously considered it at least twice. "If we coulda gotten ya away from her sooner, we woulda."

[sarcasticsra]

Maria smiled, once again not quite her real one but a more genuine version, a slight sharpness to her eyes. "I know," she said. "I do appreciate it, and everything all of you did for me when I was younger."

[janet_mohren]

"At least it's cooler," Janet was saying when the two men appeared. She jumped slightly. "Is that what we looked like when we got here?" she murmured to Alyce.

Alyce shrugged and lifted a hand to the men. "Hi. Do you have any idea where we are?"

[sarcasticsra]

"Other than not in Kansas anymore?" Richard said with a charming smile. He shook his head apologetically. "I'm afraid we only know the what, not the where."

Mark rolled his eyes at him. "This has happened to us before," he explained. "The last time, we appeared at some sort of university in the year 2013. I have no idea where or when this is."

Re: Jack, Spirit of Darkness

[bookblather]

Ah. Here now he was on steady ground, and comfortable ground.

"Ah, is it so? Then tell me this: without the dark, where is the rest? Where is the calm for the grieving and the soothing of aching muscles? What comfort can any of us draw when there is no darkness to shelter us?" He tilted his head, studied the man. "With rules, with endless light, there's nowhere to hide or rest and relax. Things shrivel."

[janet_mohren]

"For us, it's 2018," Janet said. "What about you?" The second man had implied that 2013 wasn't their year, so she figured she'd ask.

"How soon did you get back home?" Alyce added. "And how?"

[sarcasticsra]

"For us, it's 2109," Richard said. "2018? That's incredible."

"We got home the same way we got here," Mark added. "Unfortunately, barely any time had passed when we got back. For us, it'd been a couple hours. For everyone else, a couple minutes."

"You had fun at that party," Richard said, nudging him lightly. "Don't try to deny it. All those people you got to make fun of."

"'Party' is a gross misnomer in reference to that gathering," Mark said.

Richard merely smirked at him before turning back to the women. "Pardon our manners, by the way," he said. "I'm Richard. It's a pleasure to meet you both."

"Mark," he added, nodding slightly.

[johnny_corlioni]

She'd clearly turned out fine, at least compared to, say, David or Leo or Stefano, so Johnny wasn't going to say they hadn't done enough. Torey had done--would do?--as much as he could, and Johnny assumed the rest of them helped as much as possible with that.

"Pop's gonna die in 2019?" Johnny asked, voice steady. "Or is it 2018?"

[sarcasticsra]

"2019," Maria said, nodding. "In the summer."

She wondered, briefly, if she should be sharing this information, but then she supposed that it couldn't do anything. They inhabited different dimensions, after all.

[martina_corlioni]

She hadn't entirely expected a yes. "What do angels... well, do? What do you do during your days, when you're not delivering messages from Him?"

[one_eyed_nemo]

Nemo looked exceedingly pleased with himself when he said, "Rikis and demis get developed in fifty Old Earth years. Maybe you get one."

[janet_mohren]

"I'm Alyce," she said with a smile, extending her hand.

"And I'm Janet." Janet shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "I hope you don't mind, but I need to sit. By the stream, maybe." Her shorts would probably get damp, but even that might feel good at this point. And she could put her feet in the stream; it should cool her down.

[johnny_corlioni]

"What--" Johnny cleared his throat. "What happened?" Was he going to end up having to kill several someones? He'd do it.

Re: Isshiri

[bill_meyers]

"Terrific," Bill said aloud. "Perfect." Supposed to get all the kids, bring them home, and then take the girls out for a movie and ice cream or coffee, and instead, he ended up who the hell knew where. Not his SUV, he knew that much.

He saw a kid picking his way over the ground and figured the kid might know something, so he picked his way over. Didn't get too close, though. "Do you happen to know where this is?"

Please say yes.

OOC: This is Bill in May of 2009, so a year after he lost his leg. He has a prosthesis, and since he's wearing shorts, Isshiri can see it.

Re: Host: Claude

[johnny_corlioni]

"That your kid?" Johnny asked, gesturing to the boy in the clearing. He lowered himself to the bank of the stream.

Ripley ventured over to the guy to sniff him cautiously... and then started licking his hand.

"Ripley," Johnny said sharply, reaching over to pull her back by her collar. "'m sorry. She's harmless. Jus' friendly when she feels like it." Not that most people found a tiny, fragile-looking, soft-coated dog intimidating, but there was always one.

Re: Other Host: Lucien

[martina_corlioni]

"Buongiornio," Martina said to the boy, then caught herself. "Excuse me, I meant to say hello. Are you here alone?" Normally, she would assume a parent was nearby, but with how she herself had just popped up, it seemed less likely.

Re: The Ash Tree

[one_eyed_nemo]

Being down on the ground so long, in an area Nemo didn't know, with so many strange people, was beginning to make him antsy. The nearby tree, with its huge trunk and thick, sturdy-looking branches, might be a good place to relax. He strolled over and stretched upward to claw at the trunk--

--and nearly fell backward when the trunk made a sound.

Re: Kostya

[serpentine]

"Well, it /is/ a little bit fun to play along with sometimes, if the person isn't going to be reasonable about it." Kostya laughed a bit.

"I mean, it's better if they didn't see me as one, but sometimes it's not worth trying to convince them otherwise. People are going to believe what they want to believe. Might as well have /some/ fun."

Kostya thought for a bit on what Nene said. "Well, some people are kinda weird about power they don't understand. The residents of Vaelan don't mind that I have magic and they don't. They know that they owe their good-being to the land-spirit, so I guess they see me as another way he protects them."

"It's mostly outsiders who don't understand."

"And yeah, I guess you could say I come from noble blood, though my mother is from a merchant family...my family doesn't really care where people come from if they want to marry in to be honest. Having a reputation as family of dark lords seems to make other nobles less than thrilled to offer their daughters in marriage."

(OOC: I probably should clarify what kind of land-spirit Kostya is bound to. Vale started out as a river-spirit that came to become the spirit in charge of not only his river home - the source of which is in a mountain cave - but also the lands in the valley surrounding the river. Hence why his base powers are ice-based since his source comes from mountain melt-waters.)

Re: Jack, Spirit of Darkness

[bill_meyers]

So apparently this guy could float in midair. That would be useful if, say, you had to either hope to the bathroom or spend a few minutes dealing with putting on a leg.

Bill wasn't bitter. Really. He just thought it would be useful.

Also, he thought the guy was damn hot, and Brenda would totally agree. Too bad she wasn't here. They could potentially have a threesome.

As long as the guy didn't float during sex. Moot point, though; no Brenda.

"What's up with the floating?" he asked.