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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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?"

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."

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.

"I know I'm not an angel, and...smelling like one or not, I'm not certain I'm human, either," he said, a little defeated now. Other immortals existing or not, he was still painfully unique.

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."

"Believe as you wish," Jack repeated.

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.

Jack, who had thought that topic was past, had no idea what to say to that comment. It probably wasn't polite to comment on the excellence of a trap that could catch multiple people at once. "Perhaps?"

"I'm not entirely certain I was deliberately trapped," he said. "Just...misinterpreted some things."

"The only difference between that and a trap is the intention behind it," Jack said, dryly.

"Exactly," he said. "And I'm not sure of the intentions of the other people involved as far as I was concerned, so I can't be sure."

Jack thought briefly of his sisters, and of the way Miranda would manipulate him into doing something that it would take Charlotte the merest bat of her eyelashes to achieve. And Charlotte never meant to manipulate. "It can be even more effective when intentions are good. But it's a moot topic, I suppose."

And their intentions were as far from good as it's possible to get. "It was a long time ago," was all he said.

"Very long," Jack agreed, thinking of the language he spoke and how very, very old it was. "It must have been... difficult, for you?"

Not that he had any idea. Shades were meant to live as long as he did. But humans... well.

He gave a hollow sort of laugh. "I'm not entirely sure that word is strong enough."

"Probably not," Jack said, easily enough. "I'm rather rusty in this tongue."

"I'm sorry," he said immediately, switching to English--reminding himself to stick to modern, twenty-first century language, rather than any other stage in its development he'd witnessed. "I shouldn't have switched on you. I try not to, but...when I have my memories and I'm...surprised...I revert."

"It isn't a problem," Jack said, switching back to English because the other had done so. "I know many languages. I only meant that my word choice will not be the best."

He nodded. "Still, it is more courteous to stay with the language you approached me with. So I apologize for my rudeness."

Apparently human manners were different than Shade ones. But he'd known that. "Technically," Jack said, "I am the rude one, approaching you in a shape other than my own."

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tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts