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 Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 2:59 pm
"Aspen," she said, halfway singing the name, very pleased with it. "Like the little trees that shiver in the wind, I see." Her voice was quiet, gentle, never teasing. It'd be an interesting crowd, these fledglings. One of them, Fiachra...that one was a recluse, she thought, testy, solitary. This one, this Aspen, was timid. Very much so. But then he was reacting to her trick, cutting off her musings.
Ah, that was wonderful! The wonder on the child's face made her toss her head back in thrilled laughter, and lightly plucked the bell from Aspen with her Will. "That's not an egg now, is it?" she said lightly, not teasing but certainly playful. Idly, she tossed that bell with her Will, letting it bounce lightly while she pulled first one, then the other bell from around her neck. Levelly, she took a deep breath and started speaking.
"I'm not sure you've seen this before," she said. "You little ones know about Will, yes?" The bell bounced up, down, up, down, jingling all the while. "Well, there's things some Sentinels can do and some can't. You know the stories of the Mystics, who lifted trees and moved mountains, and those Sentinels whose will is great even now: the artisans and the crafters." She paused, smiling, and added a second bell to the tossing, dropping the third and rolling it under one talon.
"But they never knew how to do this."
It was almost juggling now, what she was doing. The two bells sang quietly, never hitting each other, like a bit of a dance in their own right. "This is an art the Mystic's don't know."
After a moment, she looked over the three she had singled out, winked, and tossed the third bell up with a flick of her foot. Her Will caught it tidily and bounced it up, so all three bells were jingling. Brightling ceased to talk, concentrating on getting the rhythm just so, her position just so.
Then, carefully, she dropped a bell, caught it in her beak, and swung it back up, over the other two bells, which never stopped their dancing. Then she caught it, and the rhythm resumed.
Quick and easy, but very, very effective in attracting attention.
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:26 pm
Delighted to get a response, even such a small and tentative one, Mulberry quite cheerfully hopped over to the other fledgling and settled down closer to him. Conveniently enough, this also brought her closer to the bard lady.
"She pulled a bell out of my wing!" She happily informed him in a very loud whisper. "I think she's a mystic!"
She was about to ask Fiachra for his name, too, when Brightling's tinkling bell caught her attention and kept it riveted.
"You little ones know about Will, yes?"
"Yes, yes!" Mulberry eagerly, if somewhat breathlessly, chimed in - a good deal more quietly than her "whisper" to Fiachra, but every bit as enthusiastic. Her full attention remains squarely on the jingling bells, and Brightling's words makes her beak open wide and her yellow eyes glow with awe.
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Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:35 pm
Aspen turned to look at Mulberry with a smile. “I saw!” He said, having seen her take the bell from both fledglings. Aspen had turned with Mulberry to see the bell show and nodded that he knew of will. “Granny told us!” he said, proud to have paid attention in class. With all the things he had yet to learn, he was proud to show off the things he was educated on. Still, Granny had left out a lot in her lesson because the performer was doing things he hadn’t even phantom a Sentinel could do. His eyes were fixated on the bells that glimmered and chimed as they circled around and about Brightling.
All the moving about almost made him dizzy and he was suspecting even now that the bells were magic or had some magic abilities to them. They seemed to move on their own to what Brightling wanted as if they were trained companions. It was amazing, to say the least.
“Wow.” He was sure that if the Mystics knew of this, they would either be envious or want to steal her secrets.
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Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 3:49 pm
Now that she knew, really knew that she had the fledgling' attention, Brightling could really get to work. Laughing a bit, she strolled back and forth on the platform, still tossing the bells.
The little murmurs and whispers fed her adrenaline and fueled her amusement, and she tossed one bell up and over the others, and it tumbled back into its place without difficulty. Smiling, Brightling tossed her head and gave a light, trilling call.
It was answered a moment later by a small bird, a parus in the same fiery yellow-and-orange of the bard. Making a soft noise like laughter, the parus swooped low over the heads of the children and then alighted almost weightlessly on the platform. Trilling a quick, simple tune, she cocked her head at Brightling, who nodded.
The parus trilled and strolled to the back of the platform. She tugged something from the shadows, a small hide bag, and dragged it closer to Brightling. Nudging it open, she extracted a few strange objects.
They looked a bit like bells but they were made of wood with bright, unusual feathers attached to them. Brightling nodded to the parus, and Flickerwing gave one of the objects a little roll. Brightling swooped it up and kept juggling, though now there were four objects.
"One, two, three, four, may I have a few more?" she chanted lightly. Flickerwing whistled in response and rolled another, and then another, to Brightling, who put her foot over them.
"Now this is the tricky part, little fledglings," Brightling said seriously, looking from Mulberry to Aspen to Fiachra. "I need silence for a moment."
Flickerwing flapped, slapping the air with her wings in emphasis.
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Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:16 am
When the parus suddenly showed up out of nowhere (and what a wonderfully colourful thing it was, too!) Mulberry couldn't help but laugh out loud with delight. She gasped as the fourth object got swept up into the air and joined the others in their complicated dance, but her wide open beak clicked shut immediately when Brightling asked for silence. However, her excitement could not be held back. She nodded her head vigorously to show that she had understood and that she was being a very good girl, and half unfolded her wings, yet her yellow eyes never once leaving the hypnotically dancing bells.
Colours and parus and bells... Mulberry pitied the fledglings who were hanging around the other bards: Nothing could be more awesome than this!
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Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 2:30 pm
It wasn't really as tricky as Brightling made it out to be. There was a moment of difficulty, but...she had long since learned to overcome that bit. Nodding to Flickerwing, she sent the Parus aloft again and winked at the fledglings.
Laughing to herself, she snapped into action. One bell went up higher than the rest and came away from the other three dancing balls. Brightling caught the thong of it in her beak and tossed it over her head, even as she added another wooden bell to the juggling balls. Then again, a bell sailed clear. This one was caught by Flickerwing, who swooped down and executed a complex aerial twist before dropping the bell around Brightling's neck. The bard tossed up another ball just as she let the last bell drop, catching it in her talons.
One, two, three, all bells accounted for. Four, five, six, all balls accounted for. The display couldn't have taken more than a minute, but the complexity of it sometimes startled even the bard who performed it. Laughing aloud, Brightling tossed all three balls up and then let them fall, carefully directing each one's path so it stopped rolling at the feet of each of the three little fledglings. Dipping her head, she slipped the last bell around her neck and gave a low bow, looking up only to wink at the three again.
"And that, dear ones, is something you don't see every day."
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 4:55 am
Mulberry couldn't help but laugh with excitement first, but as the trick got more and more complicated and the parus gracefully joined in, she actually forgot to breathe for a while. Her beak hung open in an astonished grin and her eyes hungrily tried to follow every little move the bard and her parus made.
As the brightly feathered ball rolled to a halt before her feet, the little fledgling finally pulled in a deep, deep breath and let her appreciation out in jubilant hoots, bobbing her whole body in time with the sounds.
"Awesome...! Brightling did...! Best...! And the Parus...! How...?!" She gasped between hoots, too excited to think straight, much less speak coherently. "Love! Love it! Again! Again!"
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Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 8:28 pm
Aspen didn't know how to react. His body was frozen in a state of wide-eyed awe as his mind could not bring out thoughts other than to adjectives like 'amazing', 'fantastic', and 'impossisble'. His eyes bounced about, gaze shooting up then to the right and back around, frantic to take in as much as he could and feeling like he was always missing out on something else that was just at the corner of his vision.
It was good that the display ended and his eyes dropped to the bell at his feet with a final conclusion. He felt dizzy yet exhauled with deep satisfation. It had been tiring just to watch her and his mind was joggling with all the twists, turns, flying manuevers, and shimmering little bells that he didn't think the Minders would be able to get him to bed tonight as he felt too excited to even imagine sleeping tonight.
Looking up, he followed Mullberry, hooting and even giving off a few adolescent clicks of his beak. "That was amazing!!" he said, feeling that that didn't even give it justice. His eyes flashed to Mullberry and felt worried for her, giving her a nudge to see that she would breath.
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