rainbowlounge | RP Time? You betcha!

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RP Time? You betcha!

"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.

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"Traps don't have to be subtle to work," he replied. "Believe me, I know."

Edited 2013-05-16 20:20 (UTC)

Jack tilted his head to the side. "Perhaps it's just my family. Grandmother does tend to make adolesence... interesting." As did Miranda. But Miranda, he trusted, had good intentions.

"Damnit yerself," replied the grass at Kostya's feet. "Some people're enjoyin' themselves. Relax already."

And laughter. Again. Pointed, this time.

When he looked down towards where the voice had come from, he found himself confronted with firstly lots of be-flowered meadow grass, second a rock, albeit a fairly nice rock, and third a rather large, umber-colored newt.

"Thank you?" Joanna said, at a complete loss. There was something very small and cool against her neck that was speaking to her, and liked her hijab. "My niece gave it to me, the last time she stayed with me."

Soon enough a land-boy came toddling toward Setsuko, with bright gold hair like Dani's, large eyes, and a shy smile. She watched him settle near her--close, but not too close--right before splashing himself with some water.

Setsuko giggled, watching him blink in surprise, right before doing that strange choo! sound that land-humans did sometime.

"I didn't think land-boys got themselves wet for the sake of it," she said. "Usually that's only when they're swimming."

"I didn't mean that subtlety doesn't work," he said. "Just that...it's not required." He realized where his hand was and jerked it away.

Edited (one day i will learn to double-check my icons before posting to these things) 2013-05-16 20:26 (UTC)

((Hmm, she's Wiccan, so... Wikipedia says fire! Haha, not something I'd thought about before. She uses it mostly for banishing.))

"It is in my family," Jack said, with conviction. "Although we were allowed a learning curve."

He blinked. "Allowed a learning curve?" Clearly he'd missed some detail here. It didn't sound like a very nice one.

Kostya laughed bitterly when he heard a voice telling him to relax. He was too used to being toyed with to trust anything that preferred being invisible.

After seeing nothing that he could clearly identify as a spirit, he said, "I have no idea who I am talking to or what I should talk to, but I would rather you not torment me. I get enough of that at home."

He shrugged. "The price of royalty. So to speak."

That made a certain amount of sense. In his own experience, royalty tended to either be malicious and backstabbing or inbred and not very bright, or some combination thereof. "I see."

...but if royalty was here...

"I suppose people are coming in here from all over, then..."

Edited 2013-05-16 20:42 (UTC)

"Probably." Jack shrugged, and looked around. Certainly a variety. "It's more people than I've ever seen."

"More people all at once, do you mean, or more variety?" he asked. It could mean either--the latter would make a little more sense, but...then again, if this stranger was coming from such a distant place, he might have been in a very isolated royal enclave.

Jack gave the man an odd look. "All at once," he said. "I haven't been Sunside since... oh, long and long ago. Back then people didn't gather in groups much."

He jerked. "You're--I've never met...apart from Michaela, I've never met...but you seem human, like I do, but..." He was probably lapsing into his mother tongue but he didn't care. There was another immortal in the world, another human immortal.

Edited 2013-05-16 20:52 (UTC)

Jack blinked, and gave him a closer look. He hadn't heard that language in even longer. "You don't smell right to be a shade," he said, in the same tongue. "What are you, then, if not human?"

Whirling around found her face to trunk with the great, old ash and all of its flowers.

Which there was, somewhere underneath all else that grew there, still an ash tree underneath. One as calm and fulfilled as ever a tree could have been, there for what had become of it in the many decades it had lived and grown and shared itself.

Summer could see the blossoms as blossoms.

But at the same time, through the same image.

There were what her true sight told her were... children?

Thousands of them.

Gleamy little points of light all looking out after her in curiosity.

So that wasn't exactly the breeze there stirring the petals closer her hair.

(OOC: remember how Shades reproduce via growing flowers? Other Aethies do that too.)

(OOC: Righto! I wasn't sure and I know athame can go either way, depending on what school one ascribes to, so I wanted to make sure. Anyway, congratulations Maggie! You just attracted a Pyre.)

So there was very little to disturb her along the way- plenty to catch her interest. Translucent people, lost people, laughing people, someone with what looked like beer, all of them coming into being and having their looks around the clearing. None of them seeming the least bit inclined to scrap. Not yet, anyway. But, with so many of them, each so different, altogether... and who knew what would come next?

The smell only deepened towards the ash tree. And some of the others as they winked in and caught themselves on each other, they carried their own after scents of magic, of ordinary perfume. But, there was this one smokey note that carried along, the same intensity and space no matter how the wind blew. Besides that as Maggie walked on, she began to get the impression. Whatever it might be, that smell moved behind her.

Turning to have a look found only a passel of clover. An umber brook salamander. And some laughing children.

She made to carry on her way when an orangey brown flash in her peripheral vision saw the salamander take a loping few steps after her. Besides that when she stopped again.

The salamander stopped too and cocked its head at her.

He might have wept, hearing the language in someone else's voice again, if the rest of everything hadn't completely overwhelmed that. "I wish I knew," he said. "I wish I knew, I only know I have walked the Earth for something near to two thousand years and I can't die, no matter how hard I try."

"How do you ever get used to this?" asked Conall. "I hate not knowing where I am, or if I'll come back, or--"

"Shh!" Yuyan held a finger up to her lips. Someone was crying from not too far off, and as she followed the sound, Conall in tow, she discovered a young girl, all by herself, tears streaming down her pale face and plastering tendrils of red hair to her cheeks.

Somehow, she looked oddly familiar, like that lady she'd met at the fountain.

"Excuse me," Yuyan said, crouching down beside the girl, "but is everything all right?" She produced a handkerchief from her sleeve, offering it shyly.

"Oh," she said, breathlessly, and put a hand up towards the children. They were so beautiful, like little sparks of glitter shaken on a dead-black piece of paper, sparkles and shimmers, beautiful like she wished sometimes she could be. "Oh, you're so pretty!"

She didn't know why she felt at ease with them-- perhaps it was because they were a tree, a pleasant tree, and because they were only curious, not malicious. So many people at home looked at her like they wanted to eat her up. The flower-children here only wanted to tug at her hair.

Summer looked up, accidentally met the woman's eyes, and dropped them immediately, shoving herself backwards. "I'm s-sorry," she said, stuttering and hating it. "I d-didn't mean to b-be a b-bother."

The idea of death as put forth by this man was... not foreign, exactly, but certainly unfamiliar, and Jack tilted his head again. "You smell human," he said. "Humans don't live two thousand years though, so I confess myself at a loss." He shrugged. "You cerainly aren't anything I've encountered."

He'd encountered quite a bit, in his day. And mostly been scolded by Miranda after.

Oh, poor thing, Yuyan thought. "You're not a bother at all," she said, and meant every word. Except for the occasional cursory glance in their direction, nobody seemed to notice.

She decided to offer the handkerchief again. "Is this your first time here?" she asked.

"I told you it was scary," Conall muttered. He settled down just behind her, coiling his tail around her knees.

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Page 2 of 21

RP Time? You betcha!

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Kostya

Re: Shade Pip

Re: Mermaid AU!Setsuko

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Maggie

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Kostya

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Shade Jack

Re: Shade Jack

Re: The Ash Tree

Re: Maggie

tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: Conall and Yuyan

Re: The Ash Tree

Re: Conall and Yuyan

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: Conall and Yuyan