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 Posted: Tue Nov 29, 2011 7:50 pm
 It would be a long, and painful day. Amarus was sure of this.
She was sure, because while climbing up the book shelves in the library (out of perpetual boredom, what else), she had reached maybe fifteen feet up before she realized that she didn't really want to climb forever, and it was a real possibility. As such, she had tried to start her descent down, again out of boredom, when she discovered that the books on the shelves below her had merely been dormant in her ascent.
So when she tried to grip the shelf below, several very angry, very large tomes about Amityville Safety Protocol which clearly hadn't gotten a lot of love-- ever-- snapped at her hands, making her recoil back onto the shelf she was on. It wasn't as though the books there were particularly happy about that, either.
Which was why, on a relatively quiet morning, anyone sitting or walking nearby would hear an occasional whump as a book connected with the floor; the flutter of pages as these books spread their covers, losing occasional poorly-bound chapters; an occasional cursing, Jack suck a hobgoblin being the most creative to date; and some kind of creaking as Amarus got comfortable in her shelf. She was, indeed, attempting to get comfortable: she didn't know how long it would take the books to settle down. From some of the more ambitious ones trying to snap up at her, she tore a couple pages, and started to fold paper birds, which she let drift down to the ground level.
At least that would entertain her for a while. The shelf was like a little coffin, her knees bent and her feet flat against one side, while her head was propped up on the other side. She laughed aloud when she thought of the prospect of someone coming to save her. Still, part of her would really love to get out of the damn shelves. If she didn't, she'd fall asleep soon, and just fall right out.
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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 5:15 pm
Zar was still exhausted from the run in with the hunters. And you'd think that exhaustion would go hand in hand with actually getting some sleep. But it didn't. In fact, he felt as if he didn't really want to sleep again. What fleeting naps he had managed to grab of late were punctuated with the effortless speed and power of the caped man, the horrible slow weakening feeling that overtook him and the macabre scene in the nurse's office.
And fire. The fire lingered in his memory most of all.
So he was up early for his own reasons, dressed and then wandered down in the direction of the library, hoping to distract himself with some manner of reading. When he arrived, much to his approval it appeared to be empty, so he went for a walk through the shelves, quiet apart from the malcontented rustling of a volume or two.
..and paused as he game to a small pile of paper birds. That was..odd.
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Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 7:46 am
It was pretty easy for Amarus to fall asleep, but she didn't actually sleep for any sizeable chunks of time. Rather, she would take a series of short naps, ensuring she never dreamt. Her dreams were dark, confusing, and she could never quite grasp them when she woke. Were they memories? Conjurations of her mind, which seemed so steadfast in waking? A little strange, but that was hardly unusual at this school.
In any case, getting up "early" wasn't really something she did. She would just be awake at all hours. It made her a very flexible friend, but also vastly bored when everyone else seemed to be asleep. She had never been to the nurse's office, never met a real threat, and she wasn't thoroughly in touch with her emotions, so it would be nigh impossible to understand what any of her friends were going through. But she was trying, she really was.
Just not right now. Amarus managed to snag one of the biting books from the shelf below and was prepared to toss it over the shelf lip. She looked down, for a fleeting moment, not really expecting to see anyone, and had time only to call out, "Hey, boss, look out." She let go of the squirming, angry book. Leaning back into the shelf to take a breath (habit over necessity), she regained her sense of calm before leaning back over the shelf, fingers avoiding the still-angry tomes.
"Sorry about that. I'm kind of stuck," she apologized, clearly extremely embarassed she had gotten herself into a situation which she couldn't undo on her own. Yet. She would pick the jackdamned books off one by one, if she had to.
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Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 12:55 pm
He almost jumped out of his skin as someone spoke, on edge more than usual and not expecting anyone to be here with him, only just getting out of the way of the snapping book before it fell, backing up, peering up onto the shelves, finally getting a look at who'd spoken.
"Stuck? How did you even get up there?" for someone with hooves, it looked a fairly tough place to even get to, but some anxiety in his little paper pushing heart told him he was going to have to try and do the right thing and help out here.
"And erm. Is there anything I can do to help?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:47 am
Amarus regarded the unfamiliar boil with a perplexed look, which, to anyone but Amarus, was actually just a completely blank and unreceptive expression. He looked bookish, didn't he? But he looked like he wasn't meant to be bookish, at some point in his ancestry. He looked like he had, perhaps before adopting spectacles and business attire, meant to be attractive. What might he be, then? Not that it mattered particularly, she supposed. He was the only one around.
"I climbed up here," she said. "...I was bored," was the somewhat embarrassed explanation for why she felt that particular need. Not embarrassed that she was bored, but rather that her boredom had finally gotten her into a situation she didn't really like.
If only she could just ghost through the bookshelves, but Lotus Eaters weren't particularly good at that kind of thing in the first place. "Are you sure you want to help? You don't really look too excited about this. You could always pretend you didn't see me, and go back to... I don't know, whatever book you were about to read." The way she said book made it sound like an object of revulsion. Amarus normally had more of a neutral experience with books, in that she didn't care for them, and they didn't really care for her. In this particular situation, however, she had clearly angered the texts.
"If you do want to help, distract them, or something? I don't know. I guess those wings don't really get much lift?" she was now dangling half off the book shelf, grabbing at any aggressive titles, while trying to think of what she could do to get down. Well, at least she had company, now. "Alternatively, how good are you at catching things?" The corner of her mouth tilted up in a smile, though her mirror-silver eyes were still relatively unreadable.
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Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 9:49 am
((... ignore this, I do not even know HOW I managed to post twice =_=;;; ))
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Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 11:20 am
Zar looked fairly impressed that anyone could climb up there let alone out of boredom, and conceeded a nod at this stetement, it was possible, even if not the sort of thing he'd ever manage.
However, he got rather defensive at the implication he didn't really want to help, even despite the fact he had very much just been thinking along those lines. "Hey hey! Just because I'm in here doesn't mean I'm some cowardly honourless sneak." He was cowardly, he was a bit honourless, but he didn't like other people knowing or guessing that quite so easily. "I want to help." He eyed the books looking slightly worried even as he did so. They looked very angry, they could give a pretty nasty bruise or paper cut.
He looked thoughtfully at them. Perhaps a plan of action which didn't involve going near them would be best. Yes. That sounded like a worthy plan.
"Erm. No. My wings are from a practical flight sense...rather useless. And I'm not sure how to distract them. They do look /very/ keen on you. I don't know quite how you managed to offend them so." he tapped his chin. Catching things wasn't too hard, was it? How hard could it be.
"I could probably catch things however, what exactly did you have in mind?" He gave her a look he hoped was open and helpful but ended up looking rather clueless.
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Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 12:49 pm
It wasn't as though Amarus could actually tell what kind of personality the boil had, she just made a guess based on his attire, and the location they were in. After all, she knew why she was there, and it was not to read. She imagined, however, that most others who frequented the library actually enjoyed that activity.
At first, the idea of flightless wings seemed ridiculous to her. She stared at him, as if he would suddenly ammend his statement. He didn't. As she moved along to other thoughts, however, the idea of being flightless while having wings which would normally allow flight, started to sink in. She had a physical form, a body that felt familiar to her, one which she was constantly concentrating a part of her mind on. She did that because she needed to stay as tangible as possible. She didn't feel like a ghost, but that was what she was, wasn't it? A soul, something that had died and lost its true form. And she would never recover it. But in her current manifestation, while she could become fully tangible with concentration, she looked and felt like she was still alive. So a part of her felt solidarity, in that she had a body which she felt should allow her one thing, but... she could never truly obtain that. To be alive again, tangible. Even then, it was not memories that drove her, just a strong feeling of longing and loss.
One which she didn't really talk about. So her face remained fairly blank as she snagged one of the other tomes, and instead of dropping it down on her new acquaintance, hurled it off into the aisle somewhere.
"It might have been kicking them in the face on my way up, or tearing pages out of a few of them. Might equally have been when I hurled them to the floor. You know, basically, almost everything which could possibly offend them. I'd probably be pretty mad if someone kicked me in the face." She had been joking when she asked if he could catch things, and she laughed briefly when he expressed the potential for catching things.
She was tired of being stuck up there, however, so she devised a plan: climb down the side of the shelf as fast as possible and hope nothing made her lose her grip.
"Oh good, you can stand at the bottom here," she said, pointing down, "and catch me if I fall." Amarus' eyes glinted with amusement, and she have him a half smile before starting down the shelves. Through her concentration, she asked, "I'm Amarus. Did I mention that?"
She shook one of her fists furiosly to dislodge a book which had snapped its pages around her hand. Only half the shelving unit left.
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Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2011 7:23 pm
Zar winced as she so much as mentioned tearing pages out of books, to him that was tantamount to tearing limbs off flies, an assault on a helpless creature. Only flies were expendable, in his world paper was not. Still, there was only so much sympathy he could feel for the books that were currently holding a student at ransom.
"You really shouldn't tear them, its not very nice."
He did obediently trot over to stand at the bottom of the shelves however. Even kept his arms out, braced to catch her if she fell. Though eyeing the nimbleness of her climbing and her concentration, he doubted that he would have to. Still, he winced every single time she looked as if she juuust might lose footing.
It wasn't that he thought she'd be very heavy, but more that he knew just how weedy his strength actually was, and how tender and achey he was to begin with.
"Pleasure to meet you then Amarus." Or at least what he'd actually met of her so far, which at this point, looking up, was mostly rump.
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Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:05 am
As her face was currently busy staring down potentially aggressive tomes, she didn't notice the boil's wince, but his voice said it all. "I only tore their pages out while they were trying to pull me off the shelf," she told him, as if he was being absolutely ridiculous. How did he think she had made all those cranes? The damn safety manuals, of course. "They were just Amityville Safety Protocol texts, anyway." Amarus admittedly wasn't very respectful of books in the first place, but she really did have a live-and-let-live attitude about them.
"Hmm... Not very nice..." as her hand slipped, mistakenly placed down on a dormant book which then woke and shook her off, she felt something deep inside herself spark up, as if in excitement or fear. It was so distant that she couldn't place it, and before it really settled in, she had already reached out a hand to grab the next shelf, though she'd slid several shelves closer to the ground. Was she the kind of ghoul to be nice, anyway? She didn't really know, she wasn't sure what could make her nice or mean.
Probably not nice, she decided, finally. If she was expected to behave in a certain way so that she was nice, she probably wasn't doing that, as she could not recall ever thinking I should be nice to this boil/ghoul/thing. In that case, tearing pages out of books should be par for the course. Not that she intended to do it again.
Given she could render herself partially intangible, it shouldn't have been too bad if she'd fallen, but she didn't intend to find out. On another glance down, she realized the boil was still standing there, as if he could really catch her. She laughed, but then her mouth tilted in a half smile. "Well, at least you're brave enough to try," she finally explained, "even if you didn't tell me what I can call you yet."
She dropped to the ground as gracefully as possible, and stood facing the boil. "So... nice to see you from this angle." She bowed briefly, her bells jingling, the Lotus-Eater aura flickering over her skin.
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 7:51 am
Zar didn't seem too much placated by the nature of the books she'd in his eyes - vandalised - but didn't voice his objections as fervently as he might have wanted to. He hadn't even considered the cranes as anything but a passing bafflement at first and only now was making the connection. Poor innocent books, he thought to himself. Still, he figured he might as well stay relatively upbeat.
"I suppose given all the rumours and such around of late that the safety texts don't get much reading anyway, I doubt they'll be missed."
He did cringe as it looked for an instant as if she might fall, but she seemed to halt herself from doing so almost on an instict. He was rather impressed and almost said so as she mentioned his feeble little gesture of helpfulness. He smiled slightly. "Brave or silly enough, I'd probably miss you anyway, I'm not the physical sort at all."
As she dropped down to the floor, he gave her a curt little bow of his own, flaring his wings as he did so.
"I'm Zar." He added. "And I have absolutely no idea how you climb like that. Don't you get vertigo?" He couldn't really conceal how impressed he was at the ghoul's abilities, he'd never really met anyone able to do anything like it. "I'd be too terrified to climb up in the first place in case I couldn't get back down."
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 9:23 pm
Amarus didn't typically care about books, but she could more or less tell that the boil wasn't very pleased with what she'd done to the books. She didn't particularly apologize, but she did reach down to scoop up the cranes, unfolding them carefully and trying to smooth out the wrinkles. "If I catch the books they belong to, I'll put them back in, or something," she mumbled, without looking up at him. That was about as close to sorry as she could get, even if she didn't fully feel sorry for punishing the nasty books. It was true that they likely wouldn't be missed, but she didn't particularly like upsetting anyone. Well, that wasn't true; she couldn't usually tell she was upsetting someone, or at least she didn't feel anything about it. She did feel sorry, though, in some distant part of her.
"You'd miss me?" she asked, with a half-smile. She was picking on his wording, true, but that would be a rare joke; she wasn't usually alert enough to pick at anyone's wording. "Good thing I'm only good at the physical stuff, then? Besides, if you can't be strong," Amarus raised one arm, her gloved hand formed into a fist, and placed her other hand on the muscle of her upper arm, "at least you're brave." She unfurled the fist to point at him lazily without breaking position, then let her arms drop to her sides. It didn't take physical strength to make Amarus like someone, they just needed strength of will, or even a firm personality. She suspected that for all his bookishness, there was some kind of passion burning in there. Even if it was for written word, a passion which Amarus would never really understand.
She resisted the urge to reach out and brush her fingers on his wings; they looked so interesting, strangely made. "Zar. Easy to remember. Nah," she said, looking up at the shelves, shrugging, "can ghosts even get vertigo?" She tapped a finger on her lip, and then, as if breaking free of some deep thought, she smiled suddenly.
"Too terrified?" Then a pause, and her mirror-silver eyes glinted, "How busy are you right now, Zar? I think I have something I want you to try with me." She reached out a hand, tangible as per usual, and waited to see if he'd oblige her.
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Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 7:22 am
Zar had to smile at her subtle little gesture of apology reguarding the books, he couldn't help it, it was endearing. He nodded, seeming to approve of this a great deal. "I'm sure they'll appreciate that. They are aggressive but books are important, when we vandalise books, we vandalise ideas. Its sort of like..hurting little defenceless people."
He most certainly wasn't used to being complimented though, he'd almost never been thrown a single one in his life, his parents perpetually dissapointed in him over all else. So even being called brave made his stomach flutter. "Thank you." was about all he could really say "I've never been called brave before."
He followed her gaze to the shelves with an edge of pensiveness though, he wasn't entirely sure what she was thinking. With a little edge of nervousness he stammered. "N..no, not busy, not busy at all. What did you have in mind?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:16 am
Amarus wasn't particularly good with the students, nor with anyone, for that matter, and she was exceptionally not good with books. Still, she had a clear mind, and knew when it was appropriate to apologize for her behaviour. "Hmm... in that comparison, books are simply not worth my time, then. I would not harm someone weak, but not because I feel bad about it, rather because it would bore me and accomplish nothing." She rested her chin in one hand, folding an arm across her chest and using it to rest her other elbow. Still, it was her way of saying she wouldn't be messing with the books again any time soon, now that she'd thought of it that way.
Although she would never withhold a deserved compliment, Amarus did not go around handing them out for scraped knees; she only said what she meant. And in this case, he had offered to try to catch her, even if he knew he wasn't strong enough and could be hurt. That was brave, as far as she was concerned. "Well, stick around, you'll get plenty of chances to show how brave you are," she said, with a curious expression. Her face seemed blank, if a hint of amusement did cross her features in passing. Amarus got herself in a lot of trouble; anyone who bothered to be her friend would have their mettle tested, more than once.
"Come," she replied, her outstretched hand beckoning. "To the tables, so we don't hurt any of your books," she smiled, a teasing glint in her eyes, and walked off to one of the taller studying tables without checking if he was following. When she got there, she climbed onto the table, and perched herself on the edge. Not having any discernible shoes made this easier. "Up," she told him, if he had followed, reaching both her hands out if he needed encouragement and some momentum to get onto the table.
Whether or not he'd trust her, Amarus was offering him the chance to be a little bit different from how he would normally be. In any case, after this, she would probably return to causing trouble elsewhere; she'd already had to apologize to books once and she wasn't loathe to do it again. After the escapades in the library, she would surely say goodbye to Zar, without particularly knowing if she would see him again, or how soon.
Amarus was always around, though; it was hardly difficult to find her. Just had to figure out where she was not supposed to be.
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