rainbowlounge | 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

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?"

"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."

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.

A wave of meaning flashed behind the word. Skilled, magic, a brief glimpse of the history surrounding it. He saw her most recent thoughts, noticed the barriers guarding her deeper ones, and did not press further. He'd already pried enough. "I'm not," he said, faltering. "Not how you mean. My abilities are...different in nature."

Skilled. Magic. There were texts, of course, about a universe encompassing multiple dimensions, but he'd never before encountered such stark evidence supporting it. Some things were not to be known, not by him. That was in the rules.

Nothing followed the rules any more, not even him.

That joined neatly with what Martina had felt when she'd pushed against his shields. So he didn't have magic, or at least not the brand of magic she knew so well. Which raised the question of what kind of magic he could do.

"You seem to understand my abilities," she said, drawing herself up as tall as she could. Which was perhaps heightened by her mental presence. "What is the nature of yours?"

"I had help," he admitted, somewhat apologetically, indicating his hand. "It's not often," or ever, "that I encounter humans with your abilities. I had to ascertain what they were."

Her mental presence was admittedly impressive. He smiled, gently, and mirrored her actions. His wings stayed hidden, but the effect was recognizably angelic anyway.

Martina couldn't help the soft gasp at all or the way her eyebrows rose. "Oh," she said softly. "You're that Gabriel."

She'd have repeated herself in English, but if he actually was the archangel, he'd understand her.

The Italian didn't surprise him, given her name and what he'd gleaned from their handshake. He was momentarily surprised she'd been hearing him in English, but then he supposed that was probably what she'd expected to hear, given his appearance. "Yes, I am," he said softly, almost sadly.

It helped that she'd been speaking English and had last heard English before vanishing out of her home. "And you do not know how this is happening to you?" she asked. If he didn't know for himself, he certainly wouldn't be able to say why for her, which would make getting home that much harder.

"I suppose it must be part of something I'm not meant to know," Gabriel said, and that didn't used to frustrate him as much as it did now. Lucy was a terrible influence. "Don't be too concerned. You'll return home eventually, and it will be as if only a few minutes have passed."

Edited (html failure) 2013-05-19 04:47 (UTC)

A few minutes still meant enough time for her daughter to worry. Teresa would need to clean her brushes, and she might go into the kitchen instead of a bathroom to do it. Martina wouldn't be there if she did. She just hoped Teresa would have the presence of mind to call her father first.

"My daughter will worry," she explained. She opted not to explain the degree of Teresa's possible worrying; archangel or not, she didn't know him well enough to share details about Teresa. "How long did you stay the other times this happened to you?"

"For me, roughly two Earth hours," he said. "When I returned, no one had noticed my absence. Your daughter will likely not even know you were gone."

She had to hope not. Teresa might be nearly twenty, but she still wouldn't react well, and no one else was home to calm her. "Thank you," Martina said, perhaps a bit stiffly. "I... worry about her."

Gabriel smiled. "It's natural for mothers to worry about their children," he said.

Yes, but Martina suspected she worried more about her grown daughter than did most mothers. For good reason, granted.

"You said this has happened before," she said. "How frequent is it?"

Edited (oops) 2013-05-19 06:23 (UTC)

"This is my third time in roughly the equivalent of six Earth months," he said thoughtfully. "From what I understand, appearing here once increases the likelihood you will continue to appear other places in the future."

"And you have no idea why it happens." It made sense that God had His secrets, but this seemed like such a petty one to keep.

"None whatsoever," he said. That shouldn't trouble him as much as it did.

Martina pursed her lips. "How disconcerting." She shook her head. "Will you tell me about yourself?"

So she was curious. It wasn't every day she got a chance to ask an archangel questions and get some sort of answer direct from said archangel's mouth.

"I suppose," Gabriel said. These meeting places were anomalous and outside the realm of usual behavior, after all. "What would you like to know?"

She hadn't entirely expected a yes. "What do angels... well, do? What do you do during your days, when you're not delivering messages from Him?"

RP Time? You betcha!

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