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Aug 6. 2004


-- Yesterday was my weekly Sushi Day with my best friend. It's not somehting I ever miss and I didn't want to cart the bloom to school with me, and then around in town for fear that something bad would happen. So I left Gallium in charge.

...I actually think she did fairly well, as scary as that sounds.

Aug. 17, 2004


I don't know what's been going on really. Dreisan was here to stay but I don't know if he still is or if he disappeared. I haven't even heard how Xander, his bonded, has been.

I guess he's alive if Driesan is.

I've been pretty occupied with life and making sure my bloom is as comfortable as possible.

I do all the normal things you need to do with a flower. Water, sunlight. There hasn't been too many bad reactions.. I keep it away for overly large amounts of water because, well, it doesn't seem to need it.

It sits in the window sill and the tree outside makes good shade so the sun isn't too strong.

I talk to it often and keep it with me when I sit at the computer. I explain what I am doing and play music, telling it what I've been listening to.

Sometimes I find Gallium in a corner, behind some action figures, talking to bloom in a hushed voice. I have no idea what it is.. but it's probably something diabolical. Or just her bitching about various mendels.

I hope it emerges soon.. And I think Gallium does too.

/Halo

Aug. 27, 2004

- Val is settling in and proves to be.. well. I'm not sure. She's odd. She can be quiet at times and very vague when you try and get anything of value out of her. I'm not sure if she is like this on purpose or not.

As it stands, I set her up a small home. I used one of the carboard boxes I had stuff from college in. I cut a hole for a door and then some for windows as well. I took the cue from other owners and found that Christmas tree lights make good illumination. These have the rotating switch on the cord so she can turn them on and off at her leisure.

She was quietly pleased about what I bought her from the shop and she took them into her room and arranged them. She's using a spool of thread as a table but she seems content with sleeping in lumps of cotton stuffing on the floor, as opposed to a bed. I feel like I'm housing a borrower..

She's reading a lot. Gallium urges it. I have been reading Neil Gaiman and so, in essence, so has she. It's sort of a pain finding my bookmarks moved. Gallium has also been coaching her in use of the computer but she doesn't seem as interested as my little gothy mendel is. She is learning to type though. Gallium is going to teach her to use a journal, I believe.

Val seems to be developing at her own pace. I do find her sitting in front of my face when I wake up in the morning, legs crossed, in front of my mouth.

Weirdo.

Valsharess sat in the garden of their new house, her piece of red string in hand. She was sitting on a large lily pad and dangling it in the water at the Koi swimming underneath her. It was a wonder they didn't come up and try and nibble on her red foot, dabbling lightly in the water.

"Stop looking ******** miserable." Gallium was on the bank of the pond with her notepad, doodling and drawing away. "I'm trying to get this realistic. You look like s**t.. its ******** up my mood."

"Miserable?" Val turned her head to look at Gallium placidly.

"Don't ******** move!" The mendel chucked a tiny pebble nearby and missed Val by a longshot. The rocked plopped into the pond innocently and Val watched the ripples with calm silver eyes before just smirking and looking back at her string.

"I am not miserable you see. I am simply contemplating, oh Gallium. Oh Chemical one." She swirled the string over the surface of the water and watched the ripples it made. It was mesmerizing.

"What are you contemplating, weirdo?" Like sisters, Gallium and Val had gotten used to eachother's manners of speech and little quirks. They were both tolerant thus far. Or Gallium just had no good reason to hate Val...

"Life. Love. The mysteries of the universe." Valsharess tucked back some red hair that had fallen in her eyes and chuckled. "Why are we here?"

Gallium groaned. "Alright Buddha.. or Jesus.. or whoever the ******** it is." She continued to sketch, angling everything so she didn't drip onto the paper.

"Not like that.." Valsharess chuckled. She'd learned that her thought processes were often too mixed up for anyone but herself to understand. She left most of what she was thinking out.. and the rest she tried to translate so the others could understand much more easily. "I have done nothing.. since my arrival, birth, emergence. Hello here is Valsharess. She is red and striped. But what else is she?"

Gallium muttered something like 'Freak' and kept drawing.

"I sit here in the day and discover things in the house. I go to Mael and entertain him and make sure he does not eat me but he is a baby, offspring, unknowing. Does he have purpose yet?"

"He's a ******** baby Val."

Valsharess kept talking, "I have done nothing. I know of a few other feien and have not pursued anything further with them. Do I have friends? Do they consider me a friend? Am I just odd? They are juveniles as well. I do not know what their lives are like and if they know things that I do not."

"Well then ******** go and stop bitching about it." Gallium muttered again.

"Perhaps. I am not sure how to go about such thing, meetings, agreements and understandings. Halo is busy with things in the house and with school and Wren. Their life is complicated. Not so nearly as mine. I feel as if I have some undiscovered potential.. And what of my family? The real one? I was a bloom. Which means I must have parents. Halo has told me as much. Shall I meet them? Hello. I am your daughter. Mother. Father. Am I a disappointment to you? Pride?" Val spoke in a completely neutral tone, calm, staring at the water with wide eyes as one does when they are captured with something.

The oozing mendel shook her head, "******** mushy s**t. Who cares? Maybe not me. I was from a test tube. I'm an accident."

"I am not an accident, oozy one, element being." Val chuckled. "I have much to do it seems. To accomplish, do. Places to go and meetings and accords to make."

"Then ******** DO IT. Stop talking about it and ******** do it. God you moan all the time." Which was a lie. But it was Gallium speaking so it seemed that way to her.

"Where do I start?" Val turned her head to look at Gallium and the mendel blinked up at her.

How was she supposed to know? If she was a feien... what would she do? Fly around.. go places.. try and get piercings cause she had real flesh... Zap people with her magic powers.... YEAH.

"Magic."

"What?"

"DON'T ******** MOVE!"

Val turned her head back to it's former position, "Magic?"

"Yeah.." The mendel continued drawing. "You are a faerie thing.. so you have magic powers. That's just how it works. So learn how to use them.. Then ******** the s**t out of people for me."

Val pondered this. Magic. Yes she did know she had it. She was told. It was a beginning.

"Oh.. and then let me pierce you." Gallium threw it in at the end with a grin.

A small box arrived today. it was accompanied by a note and bore the colors of the christmas holiday.

Hmmm




So odd. A gift? Perhaps I should give her one in return....

"I met people.. new people that is. Well not people, technically, feien to be more accurate, but the point is that I met them.."

"Yes you met them. Rambling again move on with it." Gallium said tersely as she peered at the side of Valsharess's head. The feien turned a bit to look at her before having her ear tugged and putting her head back in the previous position.

"Yes well I met new feien. I now have acquaintances. It�s interesting. I now know more than a couple, more than a few. I think I am making quickly progressive steps towards becoming ...social�."

"Drink this." Gallium held out one of the feien's small cups filled with a clear liquid.

"What is it?" Val took the cup and looked in it, sniffing the liquid. It smelled like.. alcohol.

"Vodka."

The striped feien lifted a brow, "Halo said you were to stay away from the alcohol because the last time you.."

"..just drink it. Halo's a ********' sap. It's only one little cup so relax. It'll numb you up pretty good so I can pierce your ears."

"Can't you just do it without numbing me?" Valsharess took a sip of the booze anyway. She'd never had alcohol before! This was rather interesting. The feien coughed as the vodka went down her throat, "Odd.. taste."

"The taste doesn't matter, it's what it does to you.." Gallium gave her a metallic grin before marking a black dot on Val's earlobe. She shifted in front of the feien so she could look at her reflection in the Mendel�s body.

"Those spots ok?" Gallium pushed her heavy curls from her face and looked at Val, who had continued to drink the vodka, quickly, intent on getting this numbing sensation quickly and not knowing how fast the liquor might go to her head.

"I suppose. They are just dots. That's not the earrings are they? Otherwise I could have done that myself." She smiled, trying to tease the Mendel though humor was not her strong point. She sat her cup down beside her, empty. There was one black dot on her right ear and two in the left, " I think you missed one."

"It's creative freedom. It's original. ******** lay off." Gallium picked up her own small cup of vodka and took a tiny sip. She at least had experience with this sort of thing. ******** lightweights!

"So I met people, as I said, yes. I met Ianios (he said to call him Ian) and Selene one day. They were very nice. Both are adults. I wonder what I will look like as an adult. Do you think I will be tall, Gallium? Hmm I think I may. I don't know my parents though and how tall they were so I suppose it depends�"

Gallium didn't respond to her rambling. She was focused on the 'tools' spread out in front of her. There were 3 gold rings, pulled from a gold chain that had been dismantled, a pair of small pliers, and a pin.

"Then I met Neruo and Fifth. Both were boys. In fact I've met a lot of boys.. do you realize? Yes boys are odd. They argued. Fifth was something like you. Rather vulgar and insulting, not that anything is wrong with that Gallium.. It's endearing in you after a while.." The vodka seemed to have floated to Val's head. She was rambling and her nose and cheeks had flushed to a light pink.

"Endearing? What the ******** is that?" The Mendel huffed. "You are ******** drunk. I am so ******** glad I get to stab you with a pin in a minute�"

Val giggled a bit at that (DRUNK) and a bit of her bangs fell into her eyes. "Endearing yes, as in something to like as one gets used to it. Fifth is the same colors as me and has the same wings and eyes. His markings are different and he has horns and blue hair. Curly blue hair. Neruo said we might be siblings but we don't look exactly alike.. But his hair is so very bright blue and curly. I touched it to see if it was different than mine.. it was a bit thicker but altogether the same I think. I have never seen hair like that."

"I have curly hair." Gallium snorted and dipped her finger in her vodka before rubbing it coldly on Valsharess's ear. "He has horns though? That's hot. Like a ******** demon. He sounds like my sort of guy." She lined up her pin with the single dot.

"It was different than your hair, shorter and ... bluer." She giggled a bit again. "It's very warm in here Gallium. Yes he had horns. Horns would be odd to have. I wonder if he has to fight with other males with his horns over females when he wants to mate.." The thought of Fifth bashing heads with another feien boy made her giggle slightly again.

Gallium jabbed her pin right through Val's earlobe, firmly, a little hard, but fast.

"Ow!" Val pursed her lips, "Was that it?"

"I have to do it twice more."

"Hrrmmpph." Val crossed her arms, a bit more emotional with some booze in her, though still not on the same emotional level as a normal person. Her ever calm persona seemed to melt away just slightly.

"I think I should go back to meet more people. Fifth seemed to know a lot about feien. Neruo is very orange and he has feathery wings! Rather exciting. Feathers! He gave me one. It's by my bed."

"I saw. Really ******** bright. I hate orange. And red. And Pink. But not like your red.. like bright NEON red." The Mendel pushed the pin fully through, following it with a small gold hoop. It was perfect size for a feien earlobe. Once it was through she picked up her pliers and squeezed the hoop fully closed.

"Oh I wooonder why, shiny gally-pants." Val giggled slightly again. "It wouldn't be because of Neon-shmeon. Light bulb with vengeance." It felt odd having a ring in her ear. She touched it lightly and it stung. She wasn't used to the weight of it.

"Shut the ******** up. Remind me never to give you booze again. You get more annoying." Gallium moved to the other side and rubbed alcohol on that earlobe.

"Never give me alcohol ever again." Valsharess giggled and rubbed her nose even though she sort of couldn't feel it. "Neruo mentioned someone named Yanvir. I wonder who he is. Is he another feien? Perhaps he is super powerful and magical. Gandalf. Dumbledore! Dumbledore would be lovely. Perhaps he'll give you candy if you go."

Gallium rolled her eyes and prepared her pin, shoving it through another marked dot.

"Ow!" Valsharess looked out of the corner of her eyes and saw the end of the needle extending some distance from her ear. "I think I should go explore the labs more. Explore and adventure and have excitement. Yes indeed, indeed." She fell into a contemplative silence as the ring was slid through that hole as well and then closed. The weight on her ears felt evenly distributed now, though she knew that it would be disrupted as soon as the last ring was put through. "Like Indiana Jones! Except without almost being killed by Indians. Are there Indian feien? Do we have races? Is there discrimination?" Her thoughts just burst out in a rambled sentence and then she fell silent again.

"So ******** random.." Gallium muttered before jabbing the pin through the remaining hole. She did the same as the others, ignoring the feien's short exclamation of pain ("OW!"), and slid a gold hoop through the fresh pin wound before closing it.

"All done."

"Hrrrmm?" Val blinked at Gallium glassy-eyed, thoughts disrupted by the Mendel. "OH. Hee. I want to see." She rose to her feet and looked at her reflection in Gallium's waist. She shook her head a bit from side to side, watching the hoops jingle and ignoring the stings she got.

"I think I like them!" She shook her head again, got momentarily dizzy, and fell right into Gallium, coating herself in the Mendel�s silver ooze.

Val erupted into drunken giggles, "Heheheheeee! I feel on you! Goopy gloppy Gally! Shiny Mendel pants got all over me! Eww!" She stumbled up and tried to wipe her hands on her sides, only leaving silver ******** kids.." Gallium ignored the string of nicknames that Val kept spouting, which turned into random statements that made no sense to her, and started to lead the feien to her bed.

"Sleep it off..."

Secret Santa Mission - 1

---------------------------------------------

It started as a piece of paper.

“LOOK. Oh look look Hmmm It is so interesting.” Valsharess waved the paper in front of Halo’s face and smirked. “See this paper? Halo do you see it? See it you do.. On this paper.. on this slip of parchment.. there is a… name.”

Halo simply looked at the feien and lifted her brows. “Oooohhh.. a name. So?” She continued to change Otium’s diaper on the changing table in front of her. The monochrome baby was watching the brightly colored feien hover around in front of his mother’s face.

“The name has a meaning.. Indeed it does. A meaning. It is almost like a code. Well not quite… But it is more than what it seems…”

“Babbling again, Val.” Halo chuckled and looked at the feien girl ponder the meaning on the paper.

“Hrrm. It is what they call a ‘Secret Santa’. Though it ends up not being much of a secret at all because you reveal yourself. And indeed you are not Santa because that man is large and fat and jolly and I am none of those things… though I may be jolly on some occasions but not to the extent that Father Christmas is.. That is another name for him, did you know? Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, Papa Noel.. But as you see I am not him… So indeed it is not what it seems… But…”

“So you are in a Secret Santa and you have to give the person on that paper a gift?”

Val’s mouth remained open mid sentence as he guardian said what she meant so bluntly, “Well yes. Do you know who it is, hmmm?”

“….No. You haven’t told me yet.” Halo tilted her head to the side and looked at the feien while sitting up the newly changed Otium on the table.

Val waited a moment. “Well…” She let the pause drag out, “..it’s…” Valsharess smirked and continued to hold the silence, “Indra!” She said the name loudly and proudly and flipped the paper to show Halo the name.

Halo just stared at the paper and feigned shock, “INDRA? INDRA!...... …….” And then she just snorted, “Who’s that?”

Val blinked at Halo blankly, “He is a feien of course. It is a feien Secret Santa. I have done a bit of research, back story work as it were. He is grey and he has long shiny hair and he is a Steam feien. So I hear. So now all I need to do is get him a gift.”

“Buy him something grey?” Halo hefted Otium up onto her hip and the little boy swiped a hand at Valsharess hovering around. She easily darted from the little boy’s grip.

“That would be too quick and easy and what if he doesn’t like it? OH NO.. Halo.. You underestimate me! I will MAKE SOMETHING.” She puffed herself up a bit and smiled. Halo wasn’t sure she’d seen the feien so interested in doing something before. She seemed to enjoy having a purpose.

“Well as long as you know.. that’s all that matters right? Always do what you want to do.” Halo lifted a hand and patted Val on her little red head. “Any idea what you will make?”

“YES!” Val pronounced proudly, though not as much excited as determined. “I will make him a hair care set! He has long silver-grey hair. Very nice and shiny. But it cannot be shiny like that all the time.. Suppose something happens! Suppose he gets dirty or it gets knotted? Ohohoho.. He will need to take care of it. Not an east task when we are so small.. oh now. We hardly have lots of hair supplies around. I will make him a hair brush and a comb.. and I will go on the internet contraption and find out how to make shampoo! Because as Gallium says, the internet can teach you how to make anything… “ She fluttered back and forth, arms clasped behind her back much like a military general dictating a battle plan.

Halo was surprised how much Val had already worked out about it. “Well…” She was unsure what to say. “Christmas is soon.. shouldn’t you be getting to work?”

The striped feien looked at her guardian and blinked, “Hmm? Oh.. OH.. You are right! I shall start right now!!”