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[Grey]
Grey was his life. A flatline with no lows or highs. Numb and flat, but flat like a flat note. Important, intrinsic. He was superior, always superior, never inferior. He was immune to the immobilising lows that the others felt, immune to brash crimes of passion or acts of anger. Able to exist solitary for ever without the desire for human contact.

Grey.

He did not regret the inability to experience the so called highs of emotion either. Love was as much a weakness as anger. It made people lower their defences and stay even when they were hurt time and time again. Happiness made people unreasonably over-estimate their own abilities and potentials.

Negative and positive were damaging.

Grey was safe. Grey was nothing.



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My character's username: Divinity
My character's level: 2
Character's HP: 30
Current party: --
Current Guild: --
Location: Tulgey Wood
Small IC description of character: Tall, extremely pale and slender with delicate features, long slender wings and light clothing.
Character journal: [x]

Rewarding

She remembers her first chess match.

Kind of. Sort of. She was actually too young to remember. And she doesn't think of her father as being nostalgic -- eyes on the future, never look back, he so loved his platitudes and pretty phrases -- which is probably why she keeps this story so close to her heart as one of the few memories he willingly talked about.

She was young, so young, couldn't even read yet. Three, she thinks. And her mother apparently was against it, because what three-year-old could sit down long enough to play chess, much less enjoy it, much less their boisterous little girl who was always knocking things over or pouncing on the cat or running around screaming? But the way her father tells it, chess changed her. Her mother said that he was always having to remind her of the exact rules at that age, but her father merely waved his hand as if to dissipate a bad smell and said that she was just always looking for a weakness, and in any case, he didn't have to remind her for long.

He said there was something in her eyes, something sharp, something hungry. He said she moved her chess pieces with clear focus.

Every time she played chess after that, she tried to play it like she had with her father.

Hatred

And now, maybe, she has finally lost at ballet, too, despite it not even being a game. There are set rules, though: you have to have working legs to dance. Sure, she's seen those diversity movies about people in wheel chairs, and she's cordial at least to the girl with Down's Syndrome in the younger class, but she had danced like she had done everything else in life: to win.

The doctors are hopeful about her full recovery, but hope is not a set thing. You can't make a move in a chess board and merely hope to win -- life doesn't work like that.

She's such a ******** idiot.

As KittyClaws33 wanders out of Tugley Woods and at the end of her path was a huge lake.

She stepped up to the lake, peered in, and the image seemed to change shapes as she starts to pick up voices.

"Elliot," said a deep baritone voice, and KittyClaws33 smiled.

The images seemed to shape and take form as if she can close her eyes and remember the scene as if it was only yesterday.

KittyClaws33 was standing at the top of the stairs, half hidden and half peeking out at the commotion below.

It was her birthday, her special day, yet her parents and relatives; cousins and aunts and uncles, were all getting ready to work. Work, as always, was hectic at the family estate.

Despite putting on a fancy little dress, no one even complimented or greeted her. She felt down, but she knew they will remember but not always on time, it was only later on, to a few days to weeks, that they will remember.

She hears someone calling her name softly and she timidly turned around.

There stood her brother, opening his arms with one of his hands holding a bundle of wrapping paper and ribbons.

She got up and ran towards him, jumping into his arms and hugging him tightly.

While still holding her, her brother brought her to her room and closed the door.

There, he held out his gift and smiled. "Happy Birthday," he said.

The present was big in her arms and she sat on the floor to start opening her present.

It was always her big brother who remembered her birthday and to savor the feeling of happiness welling up inside her, she opened the present, diligently.

As the wrapping paper fell open, there sat her gift. A purple rabbit, her favorite color.

"His name...is Elliot," her brother said.

And the last image to fade from the lake, was her grabbing the rabbit and jumping into her brother's arms...

KittyClaws33 smiled sweetly at the image until the image started to shift again.

[Nostalgic]

He was never nostaglic. Things that were past were so often consigned to oblivion, irrelevant unless required. He could not even remember his wives names without thinking carefully about it. What mattered was appearances, details, flaws and points of exploitation. His children were not exempt from this, Susan was immortalised in his music but Mikael could be anywhere out of his reach and was simply a vague and irrelevant memory much of the time.

Memories were often echoes of failure, so he set them aside, irrelevant in the face of his perfection until he actually needed them.

He could not easily remember, but he could never forget.



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My character's username: Divinity
My character's level: 2
Character's HP: 30
Current party: --
Current Guild: --
Location: Tulgey Wood
Small IC description of character: Tall, extremely pale and slender with delicate features, long slender wings and light clothing.
Character journal: [x]

The images shifted again and KittyClaws33 smiled wide.

The images on the lake shifted to a time when her brother took her to the human world for the very first time.

She had stared at wide eyed at a world far different then her own. Her brother took her hand of an older version of her from the last memory and took her to the most expensive place full of fills and dark fabrics.

Her brother spoiled her rotten, buying her clothes that fit her own style and to coordinated styles to her brother.

It was a pure happy memory, totally random and one of the very few that she treasures.

One last time, the images seemed to fade and shift to another memory deep in her heart...

Out of all the memories that have showed up so far, KittyClaws33 thought that the last one would be as good as the last.

She was wrong.

The image shifted to a group of red hydrangeas in the middle of a deep, dark forest during a down pour, she can even hear the rain fall towards the earth and heavy breathing.

She was sitting on the cold, muddy ground wide eyed with a splatter of dark crimson across her face.

In front of her was her beloved brother once again. But instead of proper and smiling, he was angry, his clothes disheveled, wet from the rain and dirty from the mud...and blood.

She didn't understand why going with the tall man was a wrong, she didn't know that leaving the house was bad and that it was dangerous. She had left the house in the first place because the atmosphere in the air was one filled with dread and she wanted to be in a happy environment once again.

The scythe dissappeared from her brother's hands as he spun around and held her in his arms.

She could see the tall man now, a lifeless heap of nothing on the ground, nothing but a solid mass of cold flesh.

He was dead.

As the image shifted to nothing but the lake water once again. KittyClaws33 got up at the sound of a trove revealing itself with a treasure chest in the middle.

As she walked towards it, she recalled all the memories that just happened. All those memories were to show her how precious her brother is to her, and it didn't hinder her relationship towards him, but strengthen the ties even more.

Remembering the promise she made to him, she stepped up to the treasure chest, and opened it. Claiming her second prize for the day, the items added to her inventory and her level going up.

With that, she left the lake, to wonder elsewhere.

Her wandering brought her to a lake. It was a pretty place, and it sounded happy, which should have struck her as more odd than it did, considering she didn’t see where most of the voices were coming from. BUT. This was a forest with talking trees, so it didn’t strike her as too odd. In fact, they seemed to coming from the lake.
The lake itself was pretty, and is had a good number of reflection going on…. Wait, no. Not a reflection. That was…

She remembered this.

Bethany ran, laughing, and she was trying her hardest to keep up. It wasn’t that Beth was faster, just that she’d had a headstart. She’d practically cheated taking off like she had.
“Wait for me!” She knew Beth wouldn’t wait, but it didn’t matter. The ice cream truck would wait, and she’d catch up there. She was laughing. Hot summer day, two dollars in her pocket, her best friend and an ice cream truck. It’s what summer dreams were made of.


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