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

[shipwreck_light]

(OOC: would you be terribly offended if I reposted canon!Seb's reply from last time? Want to play with Claude instead? Or any number of cuddly elementals?)

Re: Shade Pip

[bookblather]

Joanna choked on a giggle of her own. "Yes, wearing pants is... fairly basic modesty. For humans, at any rate. I suppose Shades have different rules."

She wasn't surprised that people treated the child like a kitten-- it came off that way, all playful purrs and the faintest suggestion of claws.

[martina_corlioni]

Normally, Martina wouldn't push into people's minds, but normally, she wouldn't end up in an outdoor clearing when she tried to walk into her kitchen. So she pressed at his mind.

Skilled, certainly Skilled, but there was something... unusual there. Not like any shields she'd encountered before. All of what she could sense in his mind was different than any Skilled person she'd encountered before.

"Hello," she replied. "You seem to have arrived the same way I did."

Re: Conall and Yuyan

[bookblather]

"Yes," Summer said. "It's like... there are these little tiny things called genes, and they make us grow into the people that we are. Everybody has them. Everything. Except maybe rocks."

Re: Mermaid AU!Setsuko

[shipwreck_light]

(OOC: Good! No need to punish him. Not that I /could/, but I would have been happy to try. And did I mention that RPing with Setsuko is always a joy?)

Lucien nodded. "It's more that I have extra Aether on me because I spend a lot of time in a precinct with Aethies. My material balance won't change until I get an Aethie or ten of my own. Most People are prettttttty balanced, starting out, but we actually have less gleam than most trees even though most trees can't talk."

Re: Albert and Susie

[bookblather]

Greek to him, but it obviously had some sort of importance to them. Jack acknowledged the introduction with a bow. "It is formal manners," he said, and smiled. "My sister Charlotte made me learn them, and you may see how well she succeeded."

[sarcasticsra]

"I did," he agreed, sighing again. "This isn't the first time I've appeared somewhere I didn't mean to go."

[subluxate]

(I would not be offended in the least! I have more time to actually play this time, which pleases me. Tag him with whomever you want.

Also, preference on a version of Johnny?)

Re: The Ash Tree

[bookblather]

The little caress of "most of the time" made Summer giggle, and dance a quick foxtrot step. "I have a family," she said, brightly. "I have a mama and a papa and a brother and a sister, and a not-really brother and a not-really sister. Gina's only a not really sister for now, though. I think she and Ivy are going to be married."

She hoped so, anyway. She liked Gina, very much.

Re: Rachel Weston

[bookblather]

"Uh," Rachel said, and stared at the glade. "I... I'm not really sure that my groceries matter right now."

Not that it was anything breakable. Bread, cereal, and a bag of apples, enough to hold her until she left for her trip tomorrow.

Re: Kostya

[shipwreck_light]

Nene, despite no longer being a fire-breathing newt and all, snorted at that. "Oh c'mon. I'm not that scary. Spirits or Aethies or whatever you wanna call 'ems aren't scary either. Not more'n People. So what if somebody hangs round with 'em? Should be about cooperation and gettin shit done."

The last, she fairly spit, curling her toes disdainfully in the grass.

All of a sudden, she froze, looked down at herself, and snapped her fingers. A bit of filmy golden material faded in across her freckles, although one of her breasts remained quite bare.

"Speakina which. Anyway. Explain this to me! How does anybody get anythin' done where yer from if people belong to spirits and somehow that's bad? I seriously do not get it."

[shipwreck_light]

Siebenkas did not especially /enjoy/ the quarterly meetings. Some meetings were of interest to him. They presented actual facts. Quarterlies? Arbitrary nonsense. And in this case, exploding coffee carafes. He hadn't exactly escaped that one himself, and it left him with this curious sense: perhaps his ducking skills were not what they had once been?

It was strange. Ever since he'd come back from the mission with Roa, he'd been wary down to his bones. And then this morning, over the meeting?

Just all of a sudden. Coffee. And it had surprised him. Also, his somewhat better autumn suit jacket, which was now in a dry cleaners' bag, which was going in the dry cleaning /pile/, assuming Ambra hadn't toted that off herself.

Siebenkas considered he should probably just run the damn thing over himself, not that he was running anywhere at all with a cane. Or in his rattiest pair of jeans, matched as they were with a very fine linen shirt of such caliber he was somewhat embarrassed to own it.

Other things he really should have taken note of: it was quiet in the manor. Too quiet.

He needed no other explanation for finding himself in a garden and all when the hallway did usually end in the common room.

Usually.

He sighed, hitched his bag over his arm and rubbed his toes in the grass. Counted to three. Just smelled. Just breathed. Just took in the sunshine without a hint of smog.

And then.

Peering out over today's touch out of place world.

He saw.

The cat.

The great, big, glorious cat padding around the edge of the garden, sniffing and flicking his tail.

Siebenkas's heart went splish-splash.

He didn't know this cat. It was surely big enough to take a serious bite out of him.

But the mere sight of that /cat/. All of that cat. Combined with the long and tragic absence of a (small, house) cat in his day-to-day life.

He sort of gaped.

Well.

No sort of to it.

(OOC: Sweet! Whichever Johnny you bring, he's going to get jumped by someone here. So, a Johnny who doesn't mind getting jumped.)

[martina_corlioni]

She frowned. "Not the first time?" That wasn't something she'd considered as a possibility before now. Her working theory had been a stroke or possibly a tumor. It could still be a hallucination or dream of some kind, she supposed. "Where else have you appeared?"

Re: Conall and Yuyan

[isana]

"Genes?" Conall asked. "Like seeds, but for people and animals?"

[one_eyed_nemo]

Nemo most certainly did not startle when he saw the human appear from nowhere. Literally nowhere; he hadn't walked out of anywhere, and Nemo hadn't smelled him before he appeared. Startling was for demis, and Nemo was not a demi.

The man didn't look threatening, just like a man with a walking stick. Nemo was fairly sure the man didn't have a weapon, and he was absolutely positive he could outrun and out-climb him.

So he strolled over, looked up, and said, "Where you come from?"

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

[shadowsong26]

"I...oh." He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "My...the other nonhuman I've met...doesn't appear as human as you do. More...stretched."

[sarcasticsra]

"No, my third time, as a matter of fact." He studied her for a moment and noticed she seemed to be radiating a kind of power not normally associated with humans. That was...disconcerting. "The first time was an ornate ballroom and hotel. The second was some sort of university."

Would it be too dishonest to shake her hand? Prying was rude, of course, but he thought this warranted investigation. The normal rules regarding angel-human interaction were quite clear, of course, but this was anything but a normal situation. Loophole! said a voice in his head, and it irritated him how much it sounded like Lucy. He needed to spend less time around her.

Nonetheless, he offered her his hand. "I'm Gabriel."

Re: Taz and Dallu

[shadowsong26]

Taz turned, and smiled slightly. A mixed Islander, raised by his mainland parents, between his face and his accent. Near of an age to join a ship, if she was any judge. "No, it's our first visit," she said, wryly. "I don't suppose you were expectin' to end up someplace else?"

[shipwreck_light]

That said, her situation was only momentarily improved. There were people everywhere, some of them sneezing up whole gales of thoughts, mostly of confusion and wonder, but there was more than one dinner order out there and the usual undercut of lust.

It made the natives fairly easy to pick out. From the edge of the stream for instance bubbles a fairly mild string of sentiments about how interesting that couple and if that person was worth approaching over the fire she had kindled from nowhere.

The man these happened to be coming from stretched at length, and in doing so happened to glance over Maria's way.

In seeing her there, he smiled and beckoned.

(OOC: this character has zero shielding capabilities, but is somewhat used to having his mind read; to most telepaths, his mental space comes off as a sunlit glen or forest much like where he happens to be sitting. You may feel free to OOC me about anything in Claude's head which Maria is curious about. He has at least two dirty secrets.)

Re: Kostya

[serpentine]

"Well, my...situation is complicated. I know that the courts of those who rule the countries bordering mine do employ those who work with spirits and do magic, but apparently a ruler who...deals with them and does his own magic is wrong."

"Or they're just looking for an excuse to come and invade Vaelan and make it part of their territory. I cannot tell you the number of times I've had to put up with people trying to assassinate me because I'm supposedly some kind of scary dark lord." Kostya sighed and shook his head. He really was tired of the assassins, especially considering that there was no chance that they could actually kill him.

"It sounds nice to be able to associate with the Aethies in your world and have others people look down on it."

[one_eyed_nemo]

Nemo reached the edge of the treeline and peered out, careful to keep to the shadows. He might not blend as well as some of his ancestors, but people wouldn't be looking for the flashes of orange and yellow unless they were especially detail-oriented.

He scented the air, mouth open slightly, turning his head slowly from one side to the other, and caught the scent of felines. Closer to demis than to 'cats, but still, felines.

He crouched down and crept through the meadow for a few steps, but the grass wasn't high enough to hide him. So he just stood and walked over to the human who smelled of felines, every confidence in the world that he couldn't be harmed by her. Mostly because, at close range, he had the weapon advantage.

"You smell like felines."

No one ever said 'cats were polite.

Nemo has no shielding abilities, other than what comes naturally to a cat, given they're private and secretive and all. Sapience does not grant telepathy.

Which is probably a good thing.

Re: Mermaid AU!Setsuko

[isana]

(OOC: Yeah, at least I'm getting somewhere with this new prompt. Hopefully I can get a new one down too after watching some SNL, but at least he's behaving, even if this thing isn't going where I originally planned. And hee, thank you! Offhand, I just nabbed a tourmaline ring that reminds me of either Robin or Hal.)

"Oh, I see," Setsuko said, even more intrigued. "So sometimes you can even get more Aether or water based on whether or not you spend time in a certain place, more often than not?"

She looked down at her tail, curious. "Does that mean if I spent more time on land that I would get more Aether and be able to survive for a longer time?"

[martina_corlioni]

Martina shook his hand briskly. "Martina." She paused a moment, debating with herself, before asking, "Are you Skilled?" There was no harm in the question, she told herself. And since he spoke English without a trace of an accent, he had to be familiar with the term.

[sarcasticsra]

Maria smiled back, not her real smile, but the false, comforting one she'd perfected at age seven. It put people at ease, this smile. It was gentle, and suggested that she too was gentle.

Some of her favorite illusions required no magical ability at all.

"Hello," she said, approaching him. He was extremely pretty, she couldn't help but notice, the rare kind of attractive that meant she would be perfectly inclined to fuck him whether or not she planned to kill him afterward. That alone made him worth talking to, she decided.

[sarcasticsra]

Maria blinked. A cat had just spoken to her.

There were rumors that the most talented in Animal Transformation could retain speech capabilities while transformed into animals, but most people regarded this as myth. Aside from that, he didn't have a recognizable magic signature that she could see.

She tilted her head slightly. "I live with three cats. None of them can talk."