A Year of Whimsi

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 13: 090 Loving Across Time February 18, 2013

"No." Jubilee said in a calm tone that gave no indication of the predicament they had found themselves in, "I will not."

John breathed in and felt the sharp pain of something in his side, he did not dare move to look, he knew there was blood the coldness that encroached on his limbs had already dulled the pain from them. He coughed, the lack of ability for him to move his arm kept him from wiping the liquid he had coughed up away, and even though he knew what color it would be, from seeing it.

"Go." He said one he managed to take a breath deep enough to allow him to speak, "Break the paradox."

"No." She said as she slipped between the opening in the door and reached him, "I am staying here."

"I will die." John said as he felt her hand on the source of the pain and the strange feeling he had come to associate with her time travel. "Everything else will." He paused as the feeling washed over his chest, "this slice is not worth it."

"Yes it is." Jubilee said as he felt another wave of pain caused by the lapse in his time. He screamed in pain as the shifting lights blurred his vision, "I am not going to leave you to die."

He grabbed her wrist, she looked at him with tears in her eyes, tears he had never seen before. "Leave me or all that will remain will be a few stray grains of sand."

Jubilee shook her head as light appeared around her, overlaid images of a child and old woman and thousands upon thousands of other years hid her features in the moment. "If we leave now there is no telling where we will go, when we will end up or see each other again."

"I have run into my self hundreds of times." John said as Jubilee blinked, "I already exist outside the time stream. I will be there wandering the land as you do time. We may not meet again for another hundred years, but when you do." He lifted his hand towards the single orb of light that had remained, the light that if touched could erase everything, or nothing, or somethings, a light that would erase him, "Just take my hand."  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 13: 091 Four Seasons February 19, 2013

A cycle of seasons marked by the wind
Summer, fall, winter, and spring
The breakers and the bonds rescind
and all the stars to them they bring.

A travel and journey by magic entwined.
Summer, spring, winter, fall.
The breakers, the binders, fate designed
they beckoned the stars to call.  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 14: 092 Abortion

"Abort Mission! Abort Mission!" Gears heard through the speaker, the hollow echoing caused by the pipes gave the frantic fear a strange sound. "Gears?" There was a pause before owls yelled his name over the transmitter a second time,

"I am on my way." he said as he spun the wheel and forced the airship into a sharp bank towards the floating city. The sounds of screams and mayhem crossed the channels and made him wish he had remained tethered to the floats, "come on girl you can make it." He said to the ship as her urged her to speed, "Owls?" He said into the speaker as the static went silent.

"Gears." Owls said her voice oddly calm, "Gears, the others, they're hurt, they're not breathing. I think some of them are dead."

"Hold on Owls." Gears said as he watched flames and black smoke billow out among the clouds, "Just hold on."
 

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 14: 093 Gunshots

Gunshot. Stop.
Lights begin to flash.
Lives being to flash.

I have climbed mountains and tamed the clouds
forced caverns and caves to reveal to me the heart of the earth,
I have ridden rapids and rippleless rivers
as they flowed with life towards the ocean
I have followed the wind,
seen endless skies, reached the horizon.

Flashing lives.
Flashing lights.
Stop. Gunshot.
 

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 14: 094 A Masquerade

Fren watched as Ri walked around the room her bare feet silent on the floor before she spun on her toes and sat on the ground in a flurry of billowing skirts. The illusions that had been flickering for the duration of his presence solidified. She rubbed the skin around her wrists as she looked to the table where her holsters and boots sat. The sleeves of her dress clung to her arms and left no room for even her sleek weapons. "There are reasons I avoid parties." She said as he handed her the white wooden mask she had thrown at the wall earlier.

"I know." He said as he picked up his own, a red and black one made to look like a firebird, a design he was certain he could thank his brother for later.

A slight shimmer obscured her facial expression for a moment before she donned the mask. "You are welcome at this one." She said before she stood up just as quick as she had sat down. He looked at her and a tilt of her head made him aware he had begun to fiddle with his earring again.

He shook his head before he secured the mask with the ribbons. A glimpse of himself in the mirror, that somehow was tall enough to reflect all of him and the extra height of the feathers. "I look ridiculous." He said as the sight of himself in black and red clothes in the form fitting style of the Warring Lands made him look every bit a gangly bird.

"I kind of like it." Ri said as she slipped on thin cloth slippers that were only practical in castles. "Makes it easy to find you."

"I still look ridiculous." He said as he shook his head and sent the feathers dancing.

"I like ridiculous."

"If you two are done I need ridiculous to get his brother." Tilli said as she walked into the room without knocking. Fren looked towards the door to find the trader standing in a blue and green dress covered in gold chains, jewelry, and a large hat, over the top but nothing as ridiculous as his.

"Is he stuck or something?" Fren asked as Ri walked past her to the hallway.

"Something." Tilli said with a slight laugh, "Sunshine is refusing to come out of his room."  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 14: 095 An Unexpected Twist on the Ending

Broken down and beaten,
lost in darkness and despair,
nothing left to go on
no reason left to live,
no reason left to live for
nothing left to live for
except to the half-filled cup
there is always life itself.  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 14: 096 Restless February 24, 2013

My eyes are closed and even in the darkness I can see patterns of light illuminated by some unknown source. I breathe in and feel the dry air suck all the moisture from my throat, the smooth weight of the blankets shift. The darkness presses in, the silence presses in, the weight of my blankets press down. I exhale and the sound of my breath is the only noise in the house and I twist once more onto my back. I open my eyes and stare up at the ceiling, a mix of shadows from various sources, street lamps, porch lights, hall lights spilling in from cracked door ways. My gaze shifts past the windows that show a grey night sky that no longer shines black and reveals to me the stars, and down along the wall and the side of the room to the bright red blur of my clock.

I glare at the color until it focuses into three separate blurs with half-seen shapes. Three blurs mean sometime after midnight, and by the size of the first, sometime after one as well. I roll onto my side and place my back to the numbers that count the passage of the night. Over the course of a few more hours, or a couple, or countless ones, I stare back and try to make the same formless figures come into focus, to gauge how long since I tried to sleep, how long until dawn arrives.

Eventually I drift into something that resembles sleep, a sleep that is not restful for the restless.  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 14: 097 Running Away February 25, 2013

Run away.
run fast and far.
Don't stop.
run fast and far.
Keep going.
run fast and far.
If you stay.
If you stop.
It ends.  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 14: 098 An Unknown Truth

"Queen of the Apples." Dolle said as she set the cup on the table. Her tone was a mix of her standard haughtiness and something that sounded like bitterness.

Tilli looked up from the maps that they had spread across the table and at the prompting of the wind lashing sand against the tent walls decided that a conversation would pass more time than silence, "Care to explain?"

Dolle stared at her before she set the apple she had been rolling around in her hands on the table, "No."

"If you are going to complain about people associating you with apples I would stop carrying them around." Kirsch said as he walked into the front room, "Dying your hair might not be a bad idea either."

"You would know how to do that last one." Dolle said as she picked up the apple and threw it at the one eyed man.

"You are like your mother." The Dragon said with an amused laugh as she walked over from the bar and placed the apple that had landed on the floor back on the table, "but if you get apple all over my bar I will make you clean everything top to bottom until you stop smelling like apples."

Dolle stared up at the Dragon in surprise and disbelief as she left the table, Tilli suppressed a laugh at the woman's face which was best described as a stunned fish. "If you hate the association you should put effort into not making it so easy." Kirsch said with a laugh.  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 15: 099 Persephone

"What are you doing?" John asked as Jubilee made sounds he never thought could come from his kitchen, even the time his cupboard had fallen and sent all of his pots and pans and plastic dishes clattering to the ground paled in comparison to the din she made.

"Looking for something to eat." She said as her head poked around the corner with a bag of popcorn, "How do you cook this?"

"The microwave." John said slowly, "Read the instructions."

"Can't."

"Can't?"

"It's in English." There was a pause, "Which one is the microwave?"

John stood up from the couch and walked into the kitchen to find what looked like feathers and an open window. He kept his mouth shut and forced the question away, he did not want to know. "That one there. Match the numbers."

He watched warily as she opened the door and pressed the numbers. She pressed the start button and left, he glanced at the timer and as she opened the fridge decided that he needed to get a fire extinguisher. "I should probably not drink the pomegranate juice." Jubilee said as she pulled out the spherical bottle, "Ya know how well it ended with the fruit."

"I don't think that's gonna happen."

"Can't be too careful."  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 15: 100 Enlightenment

"So where did you spend the enlightenment?" Jubilee asked as she sat down on the top of the roof of some building that had a good view of the city.

"Traveled around Europe." John said as he took the coffee that she pulled out of the air, "That was where you left me, and luckily for me where the history I know happened. Then come near the revolution, I hopped across the pond." Jubilee turned and looked at him, "It was a nightmare, thought about finding a better ride than a sailing ship, but by that point the quaint life of the past had grown on me."

"And it would have been hard to find another way."

"Yeah." He said as he took a sip of the coffee, "Where did you spend it?"

"Everywhere." She said, "I was looking for you. "

"It took you long enough." John said,

"You were hard to find."

"It was not like I could put a flag pointing to where I was, or that I knew you were looking."

"We should go see it again, another grand adventure. Maybe run into yourself. Or myself."

"Wouldn't that cause a paradox or break my human mind?"

"Paradox, it might, or it might not. Depends what you do. As for mind breaking, I think any version there would be well aware of time travel." Jubilee said as she stood up and balanced on the peak of the roof. "Your biggest problem would be revealing your future. Running into me, well, that is a story for another day."  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 15: 101 The Martyr

"You are the one to lead them." Fren looked up at the white haired woman and her green eyes that saw things she should not, "You plan to as well."

"No." Fren said as he closed his book, "I intend to do no such thing."

"No?" The dragon asked as she returned to cleaning the glasses on the table, "The martyr without a cause then?"

"I am not a martyr." He said as she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

"Not a martyr? Then tell me: why were you willing to die cloud-born?" She watched him for a reaction, one she had chosen her words specifically for.

"I am not a martyr for having a black dot on my ear." Fren said as his hand went up to fiddle with the piece of glass and metal he had shoved through the mark years ago. "And I did not learn magic because of it."

"No perhaps not, perhaps you did." The Dragon said as she rubbed the green glasses with the cloth, "Who is to say you would have been drawn to it if you had never been marked."

"That does not make me a martyr."

"No that does not. Your decisions do." The dragon said "Not many people are willing to get these anymore." she held up her hands that he could see the faintest hints of scars that started in the palms and wound around her wrists and forearms, scars that had been healed by magic and eventually time. "And fewer still who openly use it and never once turned it against the villagers."

Fren opened his mouth but was stopped from speaking , "Yes I know what would have happened if you had. Who do you think has stopped mages from conquering this entire valley? Who ensures that it is only those who are peaceful that keep their magic." Fren opened his mouth to answer but she kept talking, "Yes the ones that the council can not prove use magic, they do a good job of keeping tabs on other magic users. You were an interesting one. You made it no secret you used magic, although being a cloud born you would have had eyes on you even had you never gone anywhere near it. There was a lot of worry about you turning violent, about you getting fed up with the villagers, about you not being able to take it, and turning your magic against them. Stopping you was not something any one looked forward to."

He opened his mouth to say that the thought had never crossed his mind, it had on occasion, but he had known too that it would have done nothing.

"Luckily you took it all and when your time came you allowed it, you were willing to die for your magic and even now if they came for you, to kill you again, you would let them. I can see it in your eyes."

"Others have done the same, what I did was nothing special." He looked down at the table and shifted as the back of the wooden chair pressed against his skin and made him feel the ridges of the scars along his back.

"Perhaps not." The dragon said, "But you are the only one to live and return to the desert without any thoughts of revenge in his heart."

Fren looked up, "You returned."

"It took some of the strongest mages I have ever met to stop me." The Dragon said her voice hard and cold, "I am bound by my magic. I can only stop others."

"And do you plan on stopping what I plan to do?"

"No."

"Why?"

"You are what the desert needs."  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 15: 102 Alice in Wonderland

"Well this is very peculiar." Fren said as he stared at his brother who no longer wore the eye harming orange coat but one that matched his.
"Curious and curiouser." Den said as he stood up and dusted off the dirt that had collected from their fall, "Usually the portals are airy and not so"
"Tunnel like?" Fren said as he looked up through the strange room they had fallen through to the sun sized piece of light that had been what looked like a rabbit hole from the other side.

"I am late." Kirsch said as he pulled out something silver from his pocket and took off at a dead run.

"I suppose we should follow him." Fren said as they looked around and aside from some strange plantlife that looked like it belonged in the setwern lands there were no signs of the others.
"I suppose so." Den said as they both started running with a start.

"Why is he not stopping?" Den said as the shorter man ran through trees that had low hanging branches that threatened to poke one of their own eyes out or impale them with an ill placed branch.
"Where did he go?" Fren said as they arrived at a fork in the road with no sign of the short man in the red coat.

"Better question where did you go?"

"Ri?" Fren asked as he searched the forest for the familiar form of the grey-scale goddess.

"No." Ri said as the normally featureless white mask appeared in the air, unattached to anything and with a wide smile.

"No?" Fren asked as he exchanged glances with his brother, the expression that he was fairly certain mirrored his own told him his twin was just as confused as him.
"Then who are you?" Den asked as she appeared from the air, first her black markings and then the rest of her.

"Smiling. Grinning." She said as she walked between them, "Chesire." She paused and cocked her head to the side, "Wonderful thing this land."

"And where is this land?" Fren asked and in response got only a laugh.
"Is she going to skeddadle on us like rabbit boy?" Den asked as the black haired woman turned around and began to walk towards the fork.

"Yes." Ri said as she stopped at the edge of the fork and turned back around to face them, one hand went up and pointed to one side of the path behind her, "he went that way." Den took a step forward to head down the path she had indicated. "You want to go down that one." Ri said as her other hand went up and pointed in the direction of the other.

"Why?" Fren asked as his twin stopped, the strange blue coat shifting in the wind.
"Yes why?." Den asked.

"That one leads to the queen." Ri said

"The apple queen? Means Dolle. " Den said
"And two in one." Fren added as he began to walk in the direction of the first path,

"The Queen of Hearts." Ri said with a tone that promised something more and made Fren stop.

"I am not certain that is not Dolle." Fren said, "or that you are being helpful."
"She is being entirely unhelpful." Den said, "Maddenly so."

"Now mad." Ri said as she began to fade, both twin squinted their eyes in an attempt to see through the illusion, "mad you want."

"Now why would we want that?" Den asked as she completely disappeared leaving only foot prints down the first.

"That path." She said as a white hand appeared to point at the second path, "She wears the hat of madness."

"Who?" Fren asked as he looked for any signs of Ri.
"Who?" Den asked him, "Til."
"You go find her then." Fren said as Den stepped towards the second path and he went towards the first. "And I will." He was stopped though as he felt something pull him back to the center of the fork, a quick look at his twin told him the same thing had happened there. His brother got over it quickly while he stood and wondered what had caused the strange sensation Den took a step down the path, and like a rope was strung between them, Fren was pulled along.
 

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 15: 103 Wiseman

"You are a wiseman who would avoid war, you have a good head on your shoulders kid." Kirsch stared at the man, a man who looked older than him, double, triple his age even. Kirsch laughed at it, while he looked barely the age of adult hood enough time had passed that even compared to the planet he was not young, less than a thousand years difference between him and the ground, more than ten between him and the man whose hair was whiter than Dolle's. Still he kept his mouth shut, he had not spent his years on the planet to get annoyed when an old man thought him as the age he looked.

He studied the maps, the names had changed and morphed, cities had risen and fallen, the sun had fallen again and over the years the magic that kept it a desert had faded and grass now grew over the land that was now known as the sun plains. The once untamed western lands were traveled and mapped. The barren sea of storms inhabited with a civilization that took advantage of the mists and fog, the dark island connected to the outside world and still overrun with zombies. Every name he had known was gone, the politics and boundaries had changed, but the dealing were the same.

The screens blinked and changed, names and faces and outlines of countries ran around the screen. "What is he doing in here?" Kirsch turned to face a woman who reminded him of the twins.

"He is a void touched." The old man said, "And knows strategy."

"I do not care. He is unauthorized. I want him out." The woman said.

"Cherry Override. Authorization code K- V- One- Zero- Nine- Two- One- Five." Kirsch said aloud as the woman raised an eyebrow at him. The screens stopped and he heard the ding.

"Override Accepted." A female voice said over the system as the screen nearest him lit up with a cherry. The blond woman opened and closed her mouth a couple of times in surprise.

Kirsch raised the eyebrow on his good eye, "Still works, I wonder if the others do as well. Locate Void signatures."

"What are you doing?" A map of Maldia showed on the screen red dots scattered over the planet. "And what are those dots for?"

"Finding my friends." Kirsch said, "and using your system to do it." He looked at the dots, "Filter by strength, high to low, show the top twenty."

"What is that going to do?" The woman asked irritation and frustration blatant on her face. The dots disappeared leaving only the twenty, a few in clumps over the sun mountains, a couple in the middle of the stone lands, the others alone. "Void Tags D-S, R-G-E, F-F-B, D-A, T-G. Sunshine, Ash, Firebird, Apples, Compass " He paused as the unclumped ones were tagged, "Void Tags G-D, K-T, N-P Green, Red, Blue." He paused as the clump around the mountains was illuminated, "they never change." He said with a laugh, "Void Tags C-R and T-S. Blood and Stone. " Two clumped ones lit up. "Remove the other tags." He turned back to the woman, "track those two, do not go near them. Cherry Session Terminated." The screens returned to the state they had been in before he had taken over.

"Void signatures." The woman said, "You are searching for the Star Binders?"

"No." Kirsch said, "I found the star binders and you might want to make note of them."  

[whimsicaldreamer]

Week 15: 104 Natural Wonder

"So where do you want to go today? The pyramids and the sphinx? The great wall of china? The hanging gardens of Babylon?" Jubilee asked as she walked into the room through the closed door.

"How about Frank's diner." John said as he closed the door on his fridge and ignored the door to his equally empty pantry, "I am hungry."

"Hungry, harvest. Oh we should go see Stonehenge." Jubilee said as she crossed the few steps of the kitchen and set her hand on his arm, "Great place, love the clock function, makes it easy to travel to." She got out before he found himself out of his kitchen and in a grassy field with no stones in sight.

He looked around, it was a grassy area with a clear blue sky that had a few clouds here and there, a cold wind in warm air told him it was in the fall, or at least that was as close as he was going to get with a guess when his self appointed guide of history only gave out such details at random. "I do not think we are in the right place." He said as his stomach grumbled, "Can we just go back to my time, or some other time when there are people around so I can get something to eat for breakfast."

"Oh shush." She said as she grabbed his arm again, "I was only off by a few months." The jolting humming buzzing and he was standing on the same field, this time the stones were there and he happened to be standing in the middle of one, a quick yank before the sensation was gone and he avoided being in cased in stone. A fate he did not enjoy thinking about even though Jubilee claimed that it would not kill him as long as he remained perfectly still. "There we go. Spring."

John stared up at the stone arranged in a circle and stared at the groves in the ground, grooves that in a few years had been erased by the landscape to have never existed. He let out a whistle. "That is impressive." He said as he touched the stone, stone that had yet to be worn away by time, or crumple and fall over. "You know there are people in my time who think it is an alien landing sight."

"Like the pyramids?"

"No those were just built by aliens."

'Right." Jubilee said," No this place is much cooler than anything to do with aliens. It is a giant device to keep track of time."

"You would find that cool." He said as he looked at his watch, a pocket watch he had bought a couple hundred years before he was born, and probably needed to wind again.