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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Summer blushed, and looked down at her feet again. "I don't swim very well," she mumbled. "It's stupid, I know, my grandmother was a Selkie but I'm not very good at it. I..." How could she explain? What was there to explain? "I keep meaning to practice."

"I don't know the Queen of Lourdensail," Joanna said, "but perhaps we do have the same name." She didn't quite understand the child's distinction between name and name-name, but it hardly mattered for the moment. "Pip is a very nice name. What is a Shade?"

The child probably was not talking about shadows, or relief from the sun.

Summer blushed, and ducked her head, smiling, as they flickered around her. This was so much better than ordinary touch- not heavy or overwhelming at all, just little kisses on her skin, like "Thank you," she said. "For the compliment. I think you should be nice. My mama always says you should be nice to people always. Anyway, I'm very glad to see you. You're beautiful."

Edited 2013-05-17 03:40 (UTC)

Jack shrugged again. "I'm never wrong," he said. "But believe as you wish."

He nodded, still not quite convinced. "But you said yourself, humans don't live as long as I have. So I must be something...else, however I smell."

"Oh, Conall swims better than everyone," Yuyan said. "I've been swimming before I could walk and he beat me soundly when we had a race."

"You're not that bad, Yan," Conall muttered. "But Summer, what's a selkie?"

"Realllly now? I tell ya, everybody's fallin' down on their jobs," mused the newt, rubbing its newty little chin as best it could considering it also had newty little forelegs with which to do this. "So! Nice ta meetcha, Kostya. And lemme tell ya, there's only one thing you've said in the past few minutes that's even kinda wrong."

Nene stuck out her tongue. All well and good. Newts did that on occasion.

Nene's manifested as a flash of fire.

"'parently it's not ~correct~ to call Pyres and Gusts and the like spirits 'cause we've got livin' thing logic instead dead thing logic. Or somethin'. But, I was a spirit for a few hundred yonks b'fore that and I'm fine with it. Sooooo..."

Close as Kostya had come, he could now catch the piffles of smoke she gave up when she breathed roughly between drawls, even if her lips didn't move along with her speech. "Dude, the hell're you from you got /spirits/? You're makin' be nostalgic."

(OOC: still posting with the tree icon because there's a chance I'll have a better icon of this character tomorrow. Also, this thread pleases me. Any lag in my replies is purely the result of the fact I'm in the middle of changing jobs.)

Oooh.

Ooooh!

That was a really pretty tail! Most Aquas didn't make tails with People bodies, not anymore, not since Lucien was around. It wasn't in fashion to look like a fairy tale.

He wanted to touch the glinting scales, but even if Setsuko wasn't an Aqua- and he had started to suspect that this mustn't be the case -you did not go around poking other people's tails. That was rude.

"Hmm. Well, I am dry mostly, so maybe if I said I get heavy and slippery? But slippery is fun! It's the heavy part bothers me and Maman doesn't like me to look pruney. I think."

As for the other thing. "And people, who's supposed to be here- my Aether lines /do/ work, they're just not as good as if I was a sorcerer. That should help." Lucien wanted to believe it would anyway.

She blinked at him. "Oh, um... it's a... it's a person who is half human and half seal. Not... not like half one and the other, like you, I mean like... half the time they're a human and the other half they're seals. My grandmother let my grandfather hold her skin for a while-- that's how they change from one to the other, they change their skins. Anyway, my grandmother let my grandfather have her sealskin for a while, but when my father was nineteen she went back to the sea. Selkies do that. I've never met her."

"Believe as you wish," Jack repeated.

"Not sure still ish a Lourdensail," Pip happened to muse. At least up until it came to the last part. Then, she perked, sort of fizzing to attention against Joanna. Anyway, it felt like she'd gotten a bit of soda on her.

"But! A Shade ish just like a Majest, only the opposite. An we do exist. Yep. I am a thing."

Kostya sat down on the grass, fascinated by this Pyre. "Where I come from, calling something a spirit doesn't indicate a lack of being alive. I'm pretty sure that the land-spirit I'm bound to is alive..." His voice trailed off his he frowned, wondering why he was not feeling much in the way of ill-effect like he usually did when he lost his connection to Vale.

"One could make the argument that I'm partly this kind of being as well, though I don't really like to talk about it. I prefer for people to think of me as human because explaining the whole thing is just too much for most people."

Kostya didn't particularly mind the fire and smoke that came from the newt, even if some of his magic was ice-based. After all, that particular power did not come from him, but from the land-spirit he was bound to.

"So maybe that's why I smell odd to you?"

(OOC: Take your time with both things! I might be slow at times too. And I am glad that this pleases you!)

Heavy and slippery? Setsuko wrinkled her nose, confused. "You're not necessarily heavy in the water," she pointed out. "I find that on land you're much heavier, even." Though he had a point about being slippery, she supposed.

She raised an eyebrow as Lucien kept talking. "What are Aethers?" she asked. "Are they like you?"

"Oh," Conall said. "Well, I can do that too. Change my snake half into legs, that is. But I don't have to spend half my life as a human and half my life as this. That would be difficult."

"Did your grandfather ever get to see her again?" Yuyan asked.

Susie nodded. "It is interesting. This reminds me of the last place I was ended up in. It was a pretty place, it reminded me of Chris's home."

"I know that place I ended up there too. This one feels different, but not bad." Albert said. He looked over at Jack, going through the list of different species in his mind. He wanted to ask him about it, but thought it would be rude. He wished Jill was here she wouldn't hesitate.

Susie placed her hand on Albert's shoulder, her eyes darted over to Jack. Albert nodded.

"Um Jack can we ask you a question?"

"Woulllllllldn't doubt it," Nene trilled. "See, thing is you smell like you got a serious harem'a Aethies on ya. Notesa most everything, but if I hadda pick, mostly Prim. Almost kinda like- yer a place, but'cher also a People and the cuddly, sparkling woo essence of life-ness. And a martini."

Which might well have been an odd list, woo in itself, but it was given with a certain degree of deliberation and at least one serious puff of smoke.

"Which is all just dandy. I mean, ya smell like whatcha smell like and ya call yerself whatcha do. Me, I was livin' in a volcanoes out in the Barbares when somebody decided spirit meant dead. Get my flamey ass dragged back to civilization and oh, yer technically an Aetherial Being, because /reasons/, apparently."

"Well, I...well, um, a land-spirit - an Aetherial Being, I guess would be what you would call him here...well, I belong to him, in a sense. I rule over the land for him." While Kostya explained this to Nene, he looked away from the Pyre and at the ground, ashamed.

"So, someone...decided that spirit meant one thing and not another?" Kostya frowned. No one person decided these kinds of things where he came from. Most of his magical knowledge came from the people he knew personally and the record books of his ancestors, with a few books from other sources.

"I know you exist," Joanna said, suddenly just a little amused. The child was just so... well. "I can feel you right there," and she poked a little bit at the side of her neck. Not enough to hurt the child, but enough to be felt. "But I don't know what a Majest or a Shade is."

Summer blinked at the thought. "No, I don't think so..." she said, trailed off, and then said, "But I don't understand. I thought nagas were just always half-snake and half-person. That's part of why people had to be so... um. Shouty about rights?"

Edited 2013-05-18 02:05 (UTC)

"Certainly," Jack said, suddenly amused. These humans were almost adorable! Oh, certainly the girl was no longer alive, but that didn't make her any less human.

...hmm. Perhaps he should have said as much to the other man. Ah well.

"We /are/?" It went up around her, the gentlest joke, a flush of spring breeze touching out of place in the heady summer warmth, there before the laughter, bells and light sounds, after images of touch. All of this working together into something half a dance, half a chant. "Our parents put us here to grow. We haven't seen them in a while by your time, but the forest isn't lonely, you know. It's just not very talkative."

Pip snuggled in tight, watery-happy sounds running over the edges of her tiny person. "Hmm! OK. Woul, a Majest is like sunlight that talks. They can make light do whatever they want. Imma Shade, so sorcerers'll tell you- I'm madea dark. I guess that kinda makes sense, even though I got a glow, like any other kinda Aethie."

A scuffle followed along Joanna's cheek and the small shape she had just glances before flickered out before her. Wings and a tail in black, a flash of heliotrope at the center, besides a visage something of a mouse, there before it vanished again.

"I like moonlight an starlight OK, but the sun kinda ows."

He didn't have much to say to that, but he couldn't help feeling he'd made some sort of serious misstep here. The one person here who seemed less confused and was willing to talk to him--he couldn't afford to upset him. "Perhaps the trap for...for me was subtle, but I wasn't the primary target." Not that he actually believed he'd been trapped, just naive and blind.

"To grow?" she asked, and on impulse spun just a bit, the way she would in a shower of petals. "Do you grow then? Like flowers? I will talk to you, while I'm here, only I don't quite know what to say. What shall I talk about?"

The question Albert had on the tip of tongue almost disappeared with the ease Jack answered the question. He came back when Susie squeezed his shoulder.

"Are you a ghost? I know I've seen this before, but I can't think of it at the moment. I'm sorry if I'm intruding, but I've felt this before."

"Me too. I hope you don't mind our curiosity, where we're from it's our job to talk to ghosts and the like. We want to be sure we don't make any assumptions, that's all." Susie said before she started babbling.

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Page 4 of 21

RP Time? You betcha!

Re: Conall and Yuyan

Re: Shade Pip

Re: The Ash Tree

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: Conall and Yuyan

Re: Kostya

Re: Mermaid AU!Setsuko

Re: Conall and Yuyan

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: Shade Pip

Re: Kostya

Re: Mermaid AU!Setsuko

Re: Conall and Yuyan

Re: Albert and Susie

Re: Kostya

Re: Kostya

Re: Shade Pip

Re: Conall and Yuyan

Re: Albert and Susie

Re: The Ash Tree

Re: Shade Pip

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: The Ash Tree

Re: Albert and Susie