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 Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:02 pm
Out of Season
"Look, mom! A bird!" shouted Nahuel, who had run ahead of Eshaa. He was excitedly hopping around something he had found in the snow. From the distance she was at, Eshaa could see that it was brilliant blue and and gold. As she got closer, the patch of color formed itself into a large parrot.
"It's not moving," said the toddler, crouching down to inspect his find.
"Don't touch it," said Eshaa, finally catching up to her son.
"But it's hurt!" he protested, not moving back any. Eshaa bent over and gave the bird a better look. Its breathing was very slow and its eyes looked glassy.
"Remember when you went to work with me? How warm it was?" she asked the jaguar boy at her side. Nahuel nodded.
"Uh-huh," he said.
"This bird's home is a place like where I work. What's the weather like here?"
"Cold," said Nahuel astutely, chewing on the end of his scarf.
"So the bird can't live in cold weather like this because it's home is warm," said Eshaa. "Let's go inside."
"Can we take the bird?" asked Nahuel, tugging on her coat. He looked hopeful. Eshaa hesitated long enough to be interrupted by the crunch of snowboots. She turned to spy an older man in a building maintenance staff uniform approaching them.
"Sir?" she asked, not sure if she'd ever seen him before. Maybe he was new. "Sir, do you know the animal care and control number?"
He didn't reply, but he did approach them so he was standing over the bird. And then he began to laugh. A low, steady, guttural laugh. Eshaa took her son's hand.
"Nahuel? Let's go, kiddo," she said, trying to pull him away.
"Mom! The bird!" he shrieked. Eshaa looked again. There was no sign of the old man, not even prints in the snow, but the bird...
The bird was on fire! It was encased in a flickering red glow and was thrashing madly in the snow, its wings carving wild patterns and flicking half-melted ice into the air. Its mouth was moving, but Eshaa couldn't hear anything. Whatever this was, it wasn't normal, even for Gaia. What had even happened?
She looked down at Nahuel, who looked a bit terrified and was clinging to her leg for dear life, and scooped him up into her arms.
"Mom! The bird!" he protested again.
"Let's go, Nahuel," she said forcefully, pressing a hand over his eyes and hurrying into the building. Hopefully, he hadn't been traumatized.
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:55 am
A baby in the snow? (Backdated to Jan 24th)
It was a while later when Eshaa decided to go back and see if there was anything left of the parrot. Nahuel was asleep for the night, so she figured it was okay to leave him for a few minutes, and so she made her way back down to the ground floor and into the yard. A new layer of snow had fallen, so she couldn't pick out their footprints, but she thought she remembered where it was. Light from the parking lot illuminated the whole world, turning the snow ghastly in the darkness.
There was a bundle in the snow in front of her. Eshaa approached cautiously. What was that?
The bundle mewed piteously. Eshaa frowned and stepped closer.
It was a baby. Someone had left a baby in the snow. She crouched next to it and saw it was wearing some strange feathered jacket but was still blue with cold. The colors looked familiar - bright blues and golds. Like the bird.
It wasn't a jacket - the feathers were attached. They were wings. The baby was the bird.
Eshaa was going to find that maintenance man and strangle him. But she couldn't just leave it out here to freeze.
"Looks like you and I are stuck," she said to the baby, picking it up out of the snow. It cooed. Eshaa glared pointedly at the night sky and hurried back inside.
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:06 am
Journal - Eshaa Cooper
I couldn't just leave her there. I mean, what would you do if you found an infant freezing to death in the snow? I mean, an infant of dubious origins - I don't know if she was the bird or just plain abandoned, or if the bird even existed in the first place or if I was just having a vision and Nahuel got caught up in it.
It's been known to happen.
The baby - I'm calling her Esperanza, or just Ranza for short - has settled in nicely. She didn't speak at first, but she's picking it up fast enough, and she and Nahuel are fast friends. He's really taken to being a big brother, and I hadn't realized how much he has grown until I saw him and Ranza together. I mean, I guess Ranza is about the size Nahuel was when I first got him, and Nahuel is a lot bigger than her. He loves being a big brother, though, and is determined to teach her EVERYTHING. (I certainly hope that doesn't involve jumping off bookshelves, but it probably does.)
I called Wystan because I figured he'd like to know. He said, "What, another one? You have GOT to get off Gaia."
I miss him.
I never thought I'd ever say that, though.
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:09 am
This RP is part of Nahuel's growth quest. The whole thing can be read here.
Ranza was finally roused from her nap about an hour later and toddled into the living room. Nahuel was still there staring at the puzzle box intently, but when he saw her come in he waved her over.
"I got a new toy for us, Ranza!" he said excitedly. Ranza inspected the box and gave it a shake.
"What's it?" she asked.
"It's a puzzle!" answered Nahuel, taking it back and biting into the shrink-wrap with one sharp canine tooth. It came off in strips.
"Whatsa puzzle?" Ranza continued, watching eagerly as he opened the box.
"It's a picture in a buncha pieces," replied Nahuel, dumping the box out onto the carpet. "We gotta find the corners first. They're the ones with two flat sides."
Sharp-eyed Ranza pulled a piece out of the pile. "Like this?" she asked, holding it up.
"Just like that!" answered Nahuel, taking it and laying it flat on the carpet away from the others. "There are three more just like it."
He began rummaging through the pile and pulled out another two corner pieces. Ranza found the forth.
"Now what?" she asked as Nahuel laid them out with the correct orientation.
"We need the edges," he said, fishing a piece out of the pile. "They've got one flat side. See?"
"Uh-huh!" replied Ranza, plunging her hands into the pile and pulling out an edge piece. She hadn't been wrong yet!
"You're good at this," said Nahuel, taking the piece.
"I'm lucky," hummed Ranza, a self-satisfied grin crossing her blue-tinged face.
"You bet," nodded Nahuel. He began to piece together the border of the puzzle as Ranza continued to use her miraculous luck to pull more pieces from the pile. After a bit of mashing and fighting and moving things around, the border came together and the puzzle was framed.
"What now?" asked Ranza enthusiastically as she looked back and forth between the border and the pile of remaining pieces.
"Now we fill it in!" said Nahuel, and they both went back to work.
The puzzle had filled in quite nicely and they were very close to being done. There were just a few patches that needed to be filled in and a dwindling pile of pieces left. At this point, it became a race. Both Nahuel and Ranza were eager to take the glory of placing the last piece, so they were both fitting pieces as fast as they could to try to steal the privilege.
They both went for the last piece at the same time.
Nahuel and Ranza both froze, eyes locked on each other. Each child was determined to place the final piece. After what felt like an eternity, Nahuel withdrew his hand.
"You can do it," he conceded. After all, he was the big brother. he had to be nice. Ranza had never finished a puzzle before. The parrot girl grinned, picked up the piece, and triumphantly placed it. They sat back and admired their handiwork - the temple was complete. It towered around the surrounding jungle; a palace fit for a god.
"Awesome, right?" asked Nahuel.
"Yeah."
A while later, Eshaa came back and showed them how to slide the puzzle onto a piece of wood and hodge-podge it down to so stayed put as a permanent art project. Nahuel was excited to hang it on the wall of his room - it would look so cool there!
That night, Nahuel feel asleep dreaming of jungles and temples and mayan warriors and princesses and jaguar gods.
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:27 am
Cabbage? (cross-posted with Orli's journal)
Damn it, thought Eshaa as she fumbled for her keys. Esperanza had just started screaming again, and despite her older brother's attempts to calm her, the only reasonable way out of the situation was to get the door unlocked and head inside before the neighbors complained about the noise. It didn't help that she had a notebook full of pictures of pottery shards, a report to for the museum that contracted her, and a cabbage precariously balanced in one arm.
"Mom?" asked Nahuel over the parrot child's screeches, "What's the cabbage for?"
"I don't know," replied Eshaa, finally locating the keys and unlocking the door. A cranky toddler and an overly-inquisitive child weren't really what she had wanted to come home to. She shepherded her brood inside and pulled the door shut behind her. "Doctor Jones gave it to me and told me it was a new project for me."
She scowled.
"I don't know why, unless he's referring to my mother's family's propensity for botany."
"What's a propensity?" asked Nahuel, putting his sister down. Ranza set to work kicking the carpet.
"Why don't you look it up?" Eshaa suggested as she headed into her bedroom. The notebook and report met the desk with a thud. She stared at the cabbage for a bit, debating what to do with it (Accidentally forget to water it? Nah, Doctor Jones would be pissed,) and finally decided to perch in on the windowsill. The weather had been unseasonably warm and clear, so the glass was open, and she supposed that would be good for it. After all, plants liked fresh air, didn't they?
"Moooooooooom, what's for dinner?" called Nahuel. Ranza had ceased her temper tantrum, but Eshaa could still hear her sniffling. She gave the cabbage a prod and left the room. The hungry masses demanded feeding, after all. At least the cabbage wasn't making any demands and didn't come with any instructions. After spontaneously combusting parrots and exploding leaves, she was quite through with the unusual flora and fauna of Gaia. Happily, the cabbage had given her no strange empathetic vibes, nor had it done anything particularly out of the ordinary yet.
It was just a cabbage. A large, innocent, leafy green cabbage.
"Can we have hot dogs for dinner?" asked Nahuel.
"Mango!" shrieked Ranza, naming a fruit she had tried molesting at the grocery store the previous afternoon.
"Yuck," said Nahuel, making a face.
Eshaa put some water on to boil, to a package of frozen franks out of the freezer, and dug a mango and a banana out of the vegetable crisper to cut up for Ranza.
"Can I have two hot dogs?" asked Nahuel. Eshaa gave him a warning glance.
"You're forgetting something."
"Oh yeah," he nodded. "May I please have two hot dogs?"
Eshaa noted he was scowling, but agreed anyway. "Sure, but only since you asked so nicely."
"Awesome!" enthused the boy as he perched on the counter and dodged a glare from his mother. "We played soccer at school today!"
"How was that?" asked Eshaa as she sliced a banana into cubes.
"It was fun! My team won!"
"Did you help?"
"Sorta."
Eshaa smiled slyly and looked at him as she put a handful of banana chunks into a plastic bowl and started on peeling the mango. "What's 'sorta' mean?"
"I didn't score a goal, but neither did anyone on the other team!"
"Well, that's good," said Eshaa. The water had begun to boil, so she unwrapped three hot dogs and dropped them in.
"I wan' mango!" shrieked Ranza. Eshaa hurriedly sliced the slippery fruit and dropped it into the bowl. She put it on the table and lifted Ranza into her booster seat.
"This goes in your mouth, not in your hair," she warned her. The toddler, as usual, nodded solemnly but did not comply. Sighing, Eshaa turned her attention back to the boiling hot dogs.
"Don't burn 'em," said Nahuel.
"Who here has been cooking for sixteen years?" asked Eshaa. "You or me?"
"You," said Nahuel pointedly.
"That's what I thought," she replied. "So could you just sit down and wait for dinner?"
Nahuel sat. After about fifteen seconds, he asked, "Is it done yet?"
"No."
Another fifteen seconds passed.
"How about now?"
"Nahuel, the hot dogs will be ready when they're ready and no amount of asking will make them cook any faster."
"Oh."
He didn't interrupt her again. Eshaa stirred the boiling water for another few minutes, got plates out, and put buns on them. Finally, after what could have been considered forever based on the amount of groaning Nahuel did, she drained the pot and put the hot dogs onto the buns.
"Do you want ketchup?" she asked.
"No."
"Mustard?"
"No."
"Tomato?"
"No."
Eshaa stared at the naked hot dogs. "Can I put anything on your hot dogs that you will eat that will make it look less like a plain, boiled slab of meat?" And a phallic one at that, she thought, remembering what Wystan's favorite thing to say about them was. They're called wieners for a reason.
"No," said Nahuel. "Can we eat now?"
Eshaa put a plate in front of him and then sat down with her own. "Dig in."
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 6:29 am
Clear with scattered star showers (cross-posted with Orli's journal)
"...And in what astronomers are calling perhaps a once-in-a-decade event, there will be meteor showers steadily through the next week as Gaia passes through the orbit of a minor asteroid group."
Nahuel looked up at the television and pushed his homework aside. "Does that mean there are gonna be rocks fallin' from the sky?" he asked. Eshaa laughed.
"A meteor shower is a fancy word for a bunch of shooting stars," she explained. Nahuel's face lit up. "Why don't you take Ranza up on the roof and see if you can spot some?"
"Cool!" he exclaimed, getting up from the table and going over to his sister, who was building something with blocks on the floor. "Hey, Ranza, wanna go look for stars?"
"Yeah!" agreed the parrot girl, reaching out. Nahuel picked her up, tucked a key into his pocket, and left the apartment. They took the elevator up to the roof and the jaguar boy stepped out onto the terrace. A streak of light sped past over his head.
"Ranza, look!" he said, "stars!"
"Oooh," cooed the little girl, pointing at another streak of light. Brother and sister watched the sky in awed silence for a long time as points of light streaked away into oblivion. "Lookit!" She exclaimed, moving her chubby finger towards a particularly bright and steady streak.
"That's a cool one!" said Nahuel. "Good eye, Ranza!"
"Fallin!" said Ranza.
"Yeah, it's a shooting star," he replied.
"No," replied the parrot, getting frustrated. "Is fallin!" Nahuel looked again. The star wasn't simply growing in brightness and then fading away into the atmosphere. It was really falling, speeding towards them. It wasn't big, and it wasn't coming directly at them, so Nahuel wasn't scared, but he was amazed. Was this magic?
He and Ranza watched as the star came closer and then vanished through a window a few floors below them. Nahuel gaped at it for a moment before connecting the dots in his head.
"That's mom's window! Come on, Ranza!" (Though, since the girl was still in his arms, she didn't have much choice in the matter.) He ran back to the elevator, frantically hit the button for their floor a few too many times, and hopped up and down impatiently as it descended. Finally, after an eternity, it dinged and the doors slid open. Eshaa was still on the couch watching the news, and Nahuel and Ranza proceeded to look around the door to her room. There wasn't anything there, though...
The cabbage was glowing.
"Was it doing that before?" Nahuel asked Ranza.
"Dunno," she shrugged, and fought her way out of his arms in order to crawl back to her blocks. Nahuel stared at the cabbage a bit longer in frustration. Why was it glowing, and where had the star gone?
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Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 8:30 am
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Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 7:56 pm
Through the Hole Again
"Ranza, I'll show you something cool, but only if you promise not to tell anyone else about it," said Nahuel, crouching at eye level with his little sister. He'd already gone through the trouble of riding to the hole with her on his handlebars, so if she said she couldn't keep a secret he'd be mad. But he figured she would, because Ranza was his sidekick and sidekicks did whatever heroes told them to do. "You promise to keep it a secret?"
"I promise," said Ranza solemnly, nodding. She hopped from foot to foot, eager to get at whatever Nahuel was hiding. Where was it? Was it treasure? It sounded like treasure to her! "What is it?" she demanded, trying to see around him.
"It's a magic portal," explained Nahuel, stepping aside.
Ranza blinked.
"It's a hole in the wall," she said, thoroughly let down.
"And it's a magical portal," said Nahuel. "Come on." He hopped through and vanished. Ranza frowned. She felt distinctly like she was being duped. On one hand, her brother was cool. On the other hand, her brother was a boy and boys were untrustworthy. After weighing her options and deciding it was better to go through the wall and be stupid with someone she knew than stay outside and be stupid with a bunch of strangers, she hopped through.
"Isn't this cool?" Nahuel asked. He was standing above her, perched in an apple tree.
"How do I get up there?" Ranza called to him.
"You have to climb," he replied, pulling a piece of fruit off a branch and biting into it.
Ranza approached the base of the tree and tried to climb.
"I'm too little," she pouted. Nahuel hopped down and landed next to her. He was a cat, so he could do things like that. He finished his apple and tossed the core somewhere in the grass.
"I'll help you," he said. He picked Ranza up at the waist. "Grab the trunk."
"Okay," said Ranza, and did so.
"Ok, now start pulling yourself up."
Ranza did that, too, and Nahuel boosted her up above his head.
"Do you see the branch there?"
"Yeah."
"Grab it."
She did.
"I'm going to let go now," he said, and did. Ranza hung in midair. Her arms hurt.
"I want to get down!" she whined.
"Let go, I've got you," said Nahuel. She let go. He caught her. "Was that so bad?"
"No."
He showed her the rest of the orchard - the trees that always had fruit, the stream that was always warm enough for swimming, the cave in the roots of the biggest tree where they could hide things, including themselves.
"I promise you, it's magic," said Nahuel, as they crouched in the cave. It had begun to rain. There was thunder in the distance.
"Magic," repeated Ranza, nodding. She couldn't agree more.
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Posted: Sun Apr 06, 2008 6:55 am
Open RP
Charlie (?) and the Chocolate Factory - Ranza and Eshaa go on a tour of a chocolate factory where they find not only ridiculous amounts of sugar but other children! Ranza meets Dalal, Aaron, and Luc.
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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 4:02 am
Open RP
Art Class - Nahuel takes Ranza to the Eden Project building for some fun with colors. Along the way, they meet Edens Mort, Finn, Laerad, and Evelyn.
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:01 pm
Private RP
Starlight, Star Bright - Ranza, Orli, and Nahuel meet a little girl named Ishizuke while playing hide-and-go-seek-in-the-dark. Ranza is good at Hide-and-Go-seek-in-the-dark. Orli? Not so much.
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 7:24 pm
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Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 5:09 am
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Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 2:08 pm
Private RP
Water Break - Ranza and Nahuel make the acquaintance of a little girl named Sabina. Ranza goes swimming in a fountain, Nahuel is forced to be responsible, Ranza makes a friend.
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 4:25 pm
Quest Time! It seems someone's decided to provide Esperanza with an adventure! Make sure to pack a juice box, this one might take all day! A treasure map, made to look vintage, is delivered to Ranza's beside, for her to discover when she wakes up. It maps out the area not too far away from her favourite place to play! Curious, it seems that someone knows more about her than she thought! Well, no matter, as this person clearly wants her to play a harmless little game. Harmless, that is, if she can properly figure out the challenges keeping her from the treasure! Have Ranza follow the map and come across three challenges, Indiana Jones style. [Seems like the shapeshifter has been keeping up with her movies, hehehe..] They shouldn't be too dangerous, but surely not too easy to insult Ranza's intelligence. The tasks have to follow these specifications: one must be a mental challenge, one a physical, and one a test of will. Use your best judgement in decided what they should be. The area is foresty suburbia, so her biggest threat would be nothing more than a skunk or a gardener snake. But lastly, the treasure! Now, every pirate has to down some grog in their lifetime, and there's no better time for Ranza to start! Non-alcoholic grog, that is, which tastes pretty darn nasty. Her last task, separate from the first three, will be most challenging of all - down the cup of non-alcoholic grog, and the treasure, something special that's directly out of her past, will be hers for the taking! Best of luck, parrot pirate lass!
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