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

[sarcasticsra]

Maria smiled. "You gave Nicoletta a knife for her seventeenth birthday. She named it Charlemagne. It's still one of her favorites in 2030."

[johnny_corlioni]

And he'd thought this shit was weird before.

"So'm, righ' now, only 'bout ten years older'n ya." Given the usual difference of twenty-nine years, he felt justified in his shock.

Shock he shouldn't have, given this was probably his mind fucking with him because of something David had dosed him with, but shock all the same.

[sarcasticsra]

"You're thirty-four, thirty-five?" she asked, considering. "That places you--oh, I misjudged. 2010 or 2011 puts me at about five." She shook her head, studying him further, and realized there was something else off about him--he wasn't radiating the kind of magical ability he should be. "Are you cloaking your magical signature?" she asked. They generally only used that for meetings with new Skilled contacts, as it made it difficult for rivals to get a read on their magic, but it didn't make sense otherwise.

[johnny_corlioni]

"Thirty-five," he said automatically. Mostly, though, he stared disbelievingly at her. "Magic? The fuck're ya talkin' 'bout?"

[sarcasticsra]

She tilted her head at him. Talking cats, time travel, unexplained teleportation--could she add dimensional rifts to that list as well? "Magic," she said slowly, waving her hand and briefly turning translucent, just shy of invisible. Another wave and she was back entirely. "What else would I be talking about?"

[johnny_corlioni]

Johnny's eyes narrowed. She couldn't possibly have faked that. "There's no magic where I'm from."

Then, she was also five where he was from, so that didn't necessarily mean anything.

[sarcasticsra]

Maria blinked. "No magic?" she asked. A world without magic. She wondered what that was like. "Apparently, there is a multiverse," she muttered absently. "I should tell Torey."

[johnny_corlioni]

Johnny grinned. "Guessin' the science fiction an' comics things're the same?" His grin faded. "No, no magic." Too bad. Magic might have made life easier for Matt.

[sarcasticsra]

"There is a reason I have a cat named Spock," she said dryly, and wondered about that faded grin. She could press; he was, after all, technically unSkilled. She wouldn't even need to be touching him.

A moment's thought, and she did so--Johnny's natural barriers, even without magic, weren't bad, but were no match for a telepath of her Skill. Matt. Flashes of growing up.

Interesting. It certainly lent credence to the multiverse theory.

[johnny_corlioni]

"What, 'm not your favorite?" Johnny teased. Not that he actually had a problem with it; Torey was his favorite brother, after all. He had to wonder about it more when Torey wasn't someone's favorite.

[sarcasticsra]

"You rank very highly," Maria said, amused. "But it helps that I moved in with him and his family when I was thirteen."

[johnny_corlioni]

That would definitely count as an unexpected answer. "Why not with P--" He cut himself off, suddenly knowing the answer. "Tore wouldn' let ya stay with Melissa after Pop died?" He barely needed to ask the question; he knew that, if Torey could get Maria away from Melissa in his present day, Torey would, and that was with Pop there to take care of Maria.

[sarcasticsra]

Maria nodded. "Precisely," she said. "Melissa was only too glad to be rid of me, of course." She got her money, after all. It was such a shame she stuck so well to her rules, sometimes. Melissa would have been fun to kill.

[johnny_corlioni]

If Maria had shared that thought, Johnny probably would have agreed with her. It wasn't as though he and Torey had never talked about it, and he was pretty sure Letta had seriously considered it at least twice. "If we coulda gotten ya away from her sooner, we woulda."

[sarcasticsra]

Maria smiled, once again not quite her real one but a more genuine version, a slight sharpness to her eyes. "I know," she said. "I do appreciate it, and everything all of you did for me when I was younger."

[johnny_corlioni]

She'd clearly turned out fine, at least compared to, say, David or Leo or Stefano, so Johnny wasn't going to say they hadn't done enough. Torey had done--would do?--as much as he could, and Johnny assumed the rest of them helped as much as possible with that.

"Pop's gonna die in 2019?" Johnny asked, voice steady. "Or is it 2018?"

[sarcasticsra]

"2019," Maria said, nodding. "In the summer."

She wondered, briefly, if she should be sharing this information, but then she supposed that it couldn't do anything. They inhabited different dimensions, after all.

[johnny_corlioni]

"What--" Johnny cleared his throat. "What happened?" Was he going to end up having to kill several someones? He'd do it.

[sarcasticsra]

"Heart attack," Maria said, purposely softening her voice. She might not have felt the loss as keenly as her siblings, but she had been fond of her father, inasmuch as she could be.

[johnny_corlioni]

Irreverently, Johnny thought of how much more Matt would be on his case about stress levels and all that shit. "Heart attack," he muttered. "All the shit he's done, an' that's gonna kill him." He wasn't about to fool himself into thinking he could get his father to change any of his habits. For one thing, Pop wouldn't believe that Johnny knew how and when he'd die.

[sarcasticsra]

"Yes, it did seem anticlimactic," Maria said, carefully suffusing her tone with just a touch of melancholy.

Since she'd already read his mind once, getting flashes of his thoughts barely took any pressure, and this time she decided to ask, "How long have you and Matt been together?"

He was her brother, she reasoned. Caution was less crucial here of all places.

[johnny_corlioni]

Johnny gave her a look. "Based on that, 'm guessin' we're not together where you're from. Been... Christ, 'most nineteen an' a half years now." That would make him feel old if he hadn't been fifteen when they got together.

[sarcasticsra]

"No, you're not," she said. "He's straight. He's also cisgender. You're married to a man named Michael. He's...peculiar. In a good way. You seem very happy."

[johnny_corlioni]

Johnny's eyes narrowed. "How the fuck'd ya know he's trans?" He'd think about the Michael thing--and the straight, cis Matt thing, who was apparently male-assigned at birth (which was a hell of a mindfuck, considering)--after he knew what the fuck his baby sister was pulling.

[sarcasticsra]

"You thought about it earlier. It was an easy path to follow," Maria said. "My strongest magical ability is telepathy. I wouldn't have pried, normally, but this entire situation is abnormal."