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 Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 2:10 pm
"Sounds...um...great. Thanks."
Chin was already wondering how to get the book back in one piece. She ran her fingers thoughtfully over the cover. "So what's Len like?" she asked.
Sabriel gave the thing another poke when it went limp, relieved. Lenore suddenly fired off with a whole bunch of babble, causing him to look up at her - trying to understand it only made his head spin.
There were a few in there he got. "Tail. Whip." he said smugly, swishing it. Chin said that word a lot, and there was a tail/whip on their key. He pushed the helmet back at her, tilting his head at Len. She had a funny tail, too. In fact...
"Bird?" He put a lot of meaning into that question.
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Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 7:08 pm
Crow looked down at her charge thoughtfully before replying.
"She's a handful - curious to a fault and determined to get her hands on everything. Likes to steal stuff, too - gonna have to work on breaking that habit sometime soon. But..." she trailed off as she watched the girl trying to engage conversation with Sabriel, smiling slightly. "She's a good kid. Tries to do the right thing, friendly, and one of th' sweetest kids I ever met."
She paused for a second, then laughed at herself.
" 'Course, I tend to see the good traits more than the bad since she's my kid."
Lenore nodded in approval as she watched the tails move.
"Neat. I got sharp feathers on my arms - they can cut through anything. Well, except rock, but I don't try to cut through that too often."
Tugging Sadako out of the helmet and setting to clumsily braiding her silky hair, Len gave an absent nod at Sah's question.
"Yup, I'm half-bird. I got tail feathers and my sharpy feathers are wings, and Mama says I can fly 'cause I got hollow bones. That's pretty neat - I wish I could see what they look like, if they is hollow. D'you have hollow bones?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 7:50 am
A loud snapping and breaking sound could heard coming from within the walls, ceilling and floor. The whole structure started to tremble and change, taking a new, bigger and more elaborate form
It didn't take long before it stoped, but nothing was in the same place anymore
The once 'small' green area had now turned into a huge place
To the north a huge sea-like lake covered most of the landscape, with a set of islands floating in the distance
To the east a higly ridged mountain rose from the ground, with a luxuriant forest growing at its feet. A small road was barely visible, going all the way up and then disapearing to the other side
To the west and south the once forbidden woods were now a large dark forest. And between it, the lake and the river stood a complex of buildings that were the newly formed farm
And the inside the HQ had also suffered a drastic change. It was now much bigger and taller than before, despite of the 2nd an3rd floor fusing together
On the first floor a whole new area had been added on the east side, dedicated to the instruction of the Mishaps
The older blue, red and yellow areas had also changed. New rooms were added and the older ones were wider than before
The Mishaps rooms were now placed in a new disposition, all of in one single floor now. They too had expanded, giving the guardians and their children a much wider space to live in
Also a new magic was given to them, allowing the rooms to be chaged directly by the guardians whenever they needed
And as for the 3rd floor, the attic had lowered and merged with it, while the minishop inflated its space. Also a semi-natural pond and luxuriant vegetation covered the rest of the now soil covered floor
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Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 1:30 pm
Chin smiled. "She is pretty cute - you can't deny that. Sabriel...he can be, but it's usually when he's trying too hard to be grumpy."
She suddenly jumped as the couch started to tremble underneath her. "What the...?" Lunging to grip the arm closest to her, she looked frantically at Crow, wondering if the building was coming apart. The butterflies in her stomach started to swarm as she stole a glance out the window...
Chin squeezed her eyes shut. "We're all gonna die." she mumbled, clinging to the couch like a liferaft.
Tailfezzuhs must be a name for Len's tail. That made sense. "Bird." Sabriel agreed. He followed the weaving of her fingers in and out of the doll's hair, curious, before coming back to his earlier thoughts - bird. Birdbirdbird. They liked to hop on the windowsill (which he avoided now) and taunt him because they knew they were safe. He didn't know it, but his tails had started twitching again.
His reaction to the changes was a small 'yow' of surprise, lost in the creaking and snapping of the building. Sabriel peered up and around curiously, ears flattened at the noise, and a little fur raising along his back, though he appeared (mostly) calm on the outside. "Len??"
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Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 8:21 pm
Righting herself on the couch where she'd been nearly thrown off, Crow looked around cautiously as the room stopped moving. Giving a whistle as she inspected the newly-enlarged room, she gave Chin a puzzled look and shrugged.
"Well. That was peculiar."
Clutching Sadako with white-knuckled hands, Lenore peered around with wide eyes.
"Ishta," she said softly. Shaking her head at the annoyances of magical buildings, she finished braiding Sadako's hair and set her on the floor.
"We's okay, Sah. Stupid magi-call house just movin' 'round and being a jerk."
Sadako gave a raspy titter and scuttled back to the pilot's helmet, nestling inside it. Pulling at her tangled hair, she looked at Sabriel with crafty blank eyes.
"Cat." she said clearly, enjoying the fact that she made him uncomfortable.
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 1:09 pm
Chin dared to open her eyes again, swallowing when she saw the state of the room. She slid from the couch so she could look out the window. Okay. That was different.
"Very peculiar. D'you remember having a farm?" Or a lake. Or a forest. The list went on and on.
His fur slowly smoothed down as the sounds rumbled to a halt. Len wasn't panicking, though she had looked a little surprised, so he refused to. The house was moving? ...weird...
Sabriel glared suspiciously at the doll as it started moving again...Sadako's dry rasp rubbed at his already on-edge nerves. Forgetting all the times Chin told him not to do something, to be nice, he pounced for the helmet.
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:11 pm
Crow bounced off the couch and scooted next to Chin, pressing her nose against the glass.
"A farm..? Uh. Dude. Where'd the mountain come from?"
Lenore gave an involuntary screech and flew backwards as Sah pounced, flapping her arms hard enough to get herself on her feet. Jumping up onto the couch, she blinked and shook her head as her instincts released her.
"Whatchoo doin', Sah?" she asked in alarm, ready to glide out of harms way if the boy showed any inclination of doing anything.
Sadako gave a squeak and scuttled out of the helmet, racing for the television. Climbing up on top of it, she sat and laughed hoarsely in triumph at her escape.
"Slow," she said, shaking her head in amusement as her eyes focused on Sabriel's face.
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 6:36 pm
"A m-mountain?" Oh geez. What on earth was going on here? Chin's eyes were wide as she took in the entire scene through the window. It was like the HQ had been suddenly popped into a completely new place, but she could see hints of the old place all over. This was too weird. She glanced at Crow, wondering what she was thinking.
"Maybe we should learn how to ski. I dunno what else to do with an entire mountain, do you?" she said, only half-joking.
Sabriel's momentum carried him on over the helmet. He was sent tumbling right under the couch with a surprised yowl, choked off by a cloud of dust. He sat back up, nearly banging his head on the bottom of the couch in the process. This hadn't been the best idea, had it?
Sneezing, he crawled out into the open. Len was right above him. He curled up a paw and rubbed his eyes with it, squinting so he could see her sitting up there.
...bird...
Lenore's worry was right. But when Sadako started laughing, thoughts of trying to clamber up there were driven right out of his head. He glared at the doll, tails thumping angrily on the carpet. The nerve! "Leeeen." he pleaded with the girl on the couch. She was taller, right? She could help teach the creepy thing a lesson, right?
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2005 6:45 pm
Hopping of the couch and skirting around Sah, Lenore reached up on tip-toes to retrieve Sadako from her perch on the TV. The doll gave a rattling hiss insolently at Sah and writhed out of Len's grip, scuttling up the wall like a spider and disappearing through the rafters.
Lenore gave an awkward laugh and shuffled at the carpet uncomfortably.
"She usually ain't so silly," she said to Sah apologetically.
Taking in as much of the new view as she could, Crow considered how long she could remain upright on skis without fallin and rupturing a major organ.
"Huh. Maybe there're caves to go spelunking in - that seems a little bit safer." she said, face still pressed against the glass.
"I wonder what made everything change?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 4:55 am
Sabriel teetered over to the TV where Len stood, trying to look up into the rafters where Sadako had disappeared, but soon gave up, seeing only cobwebs up there. Wherever the evil thing was, it was really good at hiding.
"Dako stupid." he corrected Lenore, a little hotly. She'd let 'Dako escape, after all.
Chin ran a hand through her hair, trying to make sense of it all, and figure out an answer. She was just as clueless. "Maybe they moved everything?" she suggested. "Like, to Kenya or something. But then there'd be the people that don't live here...okay, bad idea." Leaning closer, though not as close as Crow was to the glass, she tried to find something that would make it all sensible.
"There's the playground and the greenhouse and stuff. Do you think anyone's out there?" Imagine standing out there while everything went topsy-turvy. They were lucky to be in here rather than out there.
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Posted: Thu Dec 08, 2005 7:19 am
"I...well. I have to say, I'm at a bit of a loss for words."
Stepping back and wiping off the nose-print from the glass, she glanced at Chin conspiratorially.
"Wanna go check it out?"
Lenore's face pinched into an annoyed expression.
" 'Dako ain't stupid, she's just acting like a jerk," she replied, glancing up a the rafters as she emphasized the word. "Mebbe she just scared a you 'cause you's a cat, Sah."
Picking up the helmet and jamming it on her head, she dragged the scratched old aviator goggles over her eyes and crossed her arms, her face fixed into a proud expression.
"But I ain't scared of you - you's a cat, an' Imma bird, but that doesn't mean I is scared of you."
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Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 8:16 am
"Why not?" As long as nothing else happened while they were out there, Chin looked forward to seeing the changes. A mountain, for heaven's sakes. It was mind-boggling. Then she hesitated. "Should we take those two with us? I could run up and get coats and stuff..."
Acting like that, Lenore reminded him...of Deimos, in the strangest sense. He felt almost threatened by it. Turning his head away without answering, Sabriel studied the view out the window, though he wasn't really paying attention to it at all. "Dako stupid." was all he could think of to say. It was repetitive, but it helped his injured dignity. Dako was still stupid, no matter what she said.
"She come down?" he asked abruptly. "Dako down soon?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 8:38 am
"Nope."
The doll's hoarse reply echoed down from the rafters, accompanied by a rather evil chitter.
Giving Sabriel a careful look through the scratched goggle lenses, she shook her head and waved a dismissive hand at the rafters.
"She ain't comin' down," Len said irritably.
Crow glanced over at Len and Sabriel. The two seemed to be getting along okay - well, at least they weren't trying to kill each other. Nodding eagerly at Chin, she buttoned up her frock coat and gave her a thumbs up.
"Let's go - maybe there's giant milipedes out there the kids can ride or something," she said, her excitement at the new HQ making her already haywire imagination go into hyper activity.
Lenore, still looking at Sah with a mix of fear and dignity, nodded as she listened to the big kids talking.
"Wanna go outside," she said clearly, her eyes leaving Sah for a moment to take in the glorious new places to wander through.
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Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 8:53 am
"Giant..." Chin stared at Crow, a little worried for her mind. Shaking her head, she picked up the book and tucked it under an arm so she could put it in their room, and made for the door. "I'll be right back!" she called to Sabriel before disappearing around it.
Barely even noticing she was gone, Sabriel glared up into the rafters, then snapped into attention as he heard Len. Outside? Were they gonna go outside? He wasn't sure he liked it out there so much, but it wasn't dark any more...
The door thudded open, and Chin came back in panting, barely visible underneath a pile of coats. She tugged a few things free, dumped the rest on the couch, and went over to Sabriel. He protested loudly as she stuffed him into a sweater - it was blue with a snowflake plastered on the front. She thought it was adorable. He hated it with a passion.
Pulling on her own coat, she finally returned the thumbs up. "Ready!"
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Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 9:06 am
Crow lead the gang outside, humming cheerfully. The grounds were huge, stretching in every direction farther than she could see.
"Wow..."
Lenore ran out in front of Crow, tugging her worn and trailing trenchcoat closed. Lifting the goggles off her eyes so she could look around better, wishing Sadako was with her, she gave an impressed whistle.
"Where we gonna go?"
Glancing at Chin, she shrugged.
"I dunno - more of a follower than a leader when it comes to exploring. You can pick, Chin."
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