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

"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."

He blinked. "A shape? I don't understand..." Though he knew Michaela kept certain attributes hidden, even Michaela couldn't quite appear human, and this stranger--whose name, he now realized, he still didn't know--looked perfectly human.

But, then again, so did he himself, and he was different somehow, at least.

Edited (friggin' icon) 2013-05-18 03:14 (UTC)

Jack let his eyebrows rise again. "What, haven't I said? I'm not human. Not remotely." He smiled and let Miranda rise to his mind; his teeth sharpened a touch. Then Charlotte, sweet and kind; everything about him became softer, gentler. "This is... a favorite form but it is not the one I was born to."

"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."

"Might be a Shade new to the form," Jack said, considering. "Or something else altogether. Far be it from me to state the limits of the universe, Star or Sunside."

"Michaela is an angel," he said. "Or at least I think that's what Michaela is, I've never been told."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Why do I think you are speaking literally."

"Because I am," he said. "And because Michaela would not be the first time that He took a role in my life."

Jack tipped his head to the side. "Hmm. I had not thought any of the human gods so... active."

"I'm an unusual case," he admitted. "I don't know of anyone else--at least now--who has the same kind of direct interaction with Him that I do. Though I've seen others in the past."

Jack nodded, thoughtfully. "Which one is this, now?"

He blinked. "I'm...not sure what you mean?"

"Which god," Jack elaborated. "There are a lot. Even discounting the ones who don't have angels by any particular name."

"The God of Abraham," he answered. "I'm sorry, so many people in this time assume Him by default."

"So, Judaism," Jack said. "All right, I have a reference point now. You must understand that my people... do not... we live somewhere quite different from where you do, and we... do not have gods as such."

What they had was his grandmother. So much the worse for them.

"Where exactly do you live?" he asked, curious.

"Starside," Jack said, with exactly zero belief that the other would have any idea what or where that was. "I haven't been Sunside in... oh, a hundred years? A long time."

Sure enough, "I'm not entirely sure what that means," he said, a little apologetic.

"Sunside," Jack said, indicating the glade in which they stood, "is here. Or somewhere very like here. The home of the humans. Starside is home of the Shades. There's not much else I can do to explain it... you understand it, or you don't."

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Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

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Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

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Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

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Re: tw: references to past suicide attempts

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