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 Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 1:37 pm
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Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 1:39 pm
Siblings from Cabbages "I dunno. Looks kind of.. leafy, doesn't it?" Maddy was eyeing the small cabbage with something akin to wariness in her eyes. Did her mom honestly expect her to believe that she'd come out of something like that - or better yet, that someone else would? "Honestly Maddy, now you're just whining for the sake of whining." Olivia rolled her eyes, but with a smile on her lips, immune to her little girl's complaints by now. She knew that the butterfly girl didn't really mean it and was just airing her uncertainty the only she knew how to; by complaining. After her encounter with Rook, Maddy had eased up to the thought of having a sibling, even if she wasn't entirely comfortable with it yet. But Olivia knew that whatever lingering doubts she had would disappear when she met her new brother or sister for the first time; even the ugliest of babies had a strange sort of adorableness to them, and Maddy was nothing if not a sucker for cute things. But just to make sure, she would be entrusting care of the new cabbage to the girl. "Now, you have the instructions, right?" "Right Mom." Her mom had picked up another brochure when getting the cabbage, since the one she'd gotten when she got Maddy had long since been thrown out in a fit of cleaning. This one detailed the care of the cabbage plant, which was apparently very easy - just as easy as caring for a normal cabbage was. It was odd, Maddy thought, that all a biocomputer like this needed to make a kid was water and sunlight. Although she didn't know if they added something else before giving them away.. They probably did, she decided. It was going to go in a small bowl in her window, where Turtle wouldn't accidentally get to it and try to eat it (she wasn't sure who'd take the most damage from that, Turtle or the cabbage) and Pirate wouldn't be able to get his claws in it when they were allowed to roam her room. Her mom had said that how long it took for the baby to come out depended on the baby and could vary quite a bit, and she couldn't help but wish, in the deepest, darkest part of her soul, that it'd never emerge at all. That's awful! It's not as bad as you think, honestly. You know lots of people who have siblings, right? They're not unhappy, so why should you be? She scolded herself internally, staring at the cabbage in her hands. But what if.. what if her sibling ended up being horrible? Just because theirs' weren't.. You're being stupid again. You know lots of people that came from cabbages, and they're all awesome - well, except maybe for Austin, but he's not that bad. Really. And think about it, even if they end up being awful, they're young enough that you can change them. Her conscince was quick to retaliate, probably not having anything better to do. She eyed the cabbage again, feeling more than a bit weary. Well, only one way to go - it wasn't like there was a return policy on these things and her mom would kill her if she backed out now. And, well, there probably wasn't a return policy.
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Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 3:12 pm
The Waiting Game
It'd been a few days already, and the cabbage hadn't done anything too terribly interesting. In fact, the most interesting thing it'd done was fall down to the floor when Pirate had climbed up the curtains and accidentally pushed it. It wasn't the sort of thing you'd write a book about. It was, she mused, not the sort of thing that warranted much of anything except putting the thing back in the windowsill. It was boring, in other words. Maddy had expected that it'd only be a day, heck, a few hours or less before the cabbage would spawn a kid, but apparently that wasn't so. The thing'd been stagnant for days, just sitting in the windowsill, soaking up the sun and the water she fed it regularly. Her mom had entrusted her with the care of the cabbage, hoping to create some bonds between the butterfly girl and her new sibling before he or she actually arrived - or, well, make Maddy feel more bonded to her new sibling, in any case. Maddy wasn't quite sure if Olivia's tactic had worked, or she was just generally warming up to the idea, but she was beginning to really look forward to having someone new in the house. Maybe it was because her mom had to work late a lot of times, or maybe it was because she didn't really have any close friends, but she was beginning to feel quite lonely these days. It was an awful feeling, she'd quickly decided. Sure, she had friends - had made quite a few of them lately, actually, but none of them were particularly close; no-one she'd classify as a 'best friend'. She'd seen a few of them a couple of times, but not enough to share her secrets with them or really consider them someone vital. Not that she should expect a sibling to fill that void, but she couldn't help it. Maddy wanted a friend that was all her's, someone she could trust, and maybe that was what her mom had picked up on when she decided to adopt another child. Even if wouldn't be best friends (and they likely wouldn't, seeing as siblings are siblings) they'd at least always be together and someone to count on in times of need. And on the nights when her mom came home late. Olivia had said that Maddy was old enough to help out with her new sibling, at least once they became a bit older (and Dr. Akari's children tended to age fast), and the nanny didn't charge per child, thankfully. The hardest part was not knowing, really - would the cabbage open to reveal a sister or a brother? How'd they look; the cabbage-generated kids generally looked all sorts of odd, but some of them had looked quite normal as well, so which would it be? How'd they act, who were they, what of their personality? Would they be bratty and intolerable, or cute and sweet? Waiting was horrible.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 2:12 am
A battlefield.
Or perhaps more accurately, what once was a battefield; the wounds on the fallen are both obvious and numerous, but the corpses left wear only one uniform - the same.
So many dead. You think that there are too many, stretching from what seems like one horizon to the next, too many dead and none alive. None at all. Did anyone even survive this massacre, this slaughter?
Someone must've, for the bodies have been piled, stacked on each other with irreverence - blood and guts spilling out, darkening once pristine white armor into a dark brown colour, those still in one piece in one pile and miscellaneous severed bodyparts in another. It is all very organized, really, very practical. Between the massive piles of corpses are little walkways, cleared of gore and well-trod - in one end, the piles have clearly been sifted through, the bodies scavenged for all useful items. These soldiers bear no armor and only the barest hint of any can be found on those so ravaged, so ruined that even the scavengers could find no use for it.
And it's the same as that on the ones who have yet to sifted through. To the outsider's eye, your eye, there is no discernable rank to distinguish one from another. They are all equal, all dead.
Although.. in one corner, farthest from the one you started in, stands several pikes. As you near, you can almost make out the shape of.. of something on top of them, something small something..
You walk a little faster, squint a little and finally you notice that what looked like a banner from afar, on the middle pike, the one several inches taller than the others, can now be made out to be hair, thick and long, illustrious, curiously of blood, golden--
The baby screams.
301 words
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 2:14 am
Arrival "Moooom! MOM!" There'd been a lot of times where Maddy had imagined how she'd meet her new sibling, and each and every time it'd been in some cool, completely awesome scenario where, preferably, she got to show off to some of her peers. (How exactly this'd come about when all the cabbage did all day was sit in her windowsill, she wasn't ever entirely clear on, but it'd generally involve exploding cars and an army of butterflies carrying it) She had not, in fact, imagined that her new brother or sister would arrive while she was in the bathroom bruhsing her teeth, or that she'd nearly have a heart-attack when coming out of said bathroom, groggy and still with the remnants of sleep in her eyes. But that was how it had gone. After a clearly undignified squeal and a few shouts for her mom to come look, she moved closer to the creature that'd been hidden in the cabbage. It looked normal enough, so far - a lot of skin from what she could see, normal skin, human skin. It was a bit darker than Maddy's own, but that didn't say much as she was often confused as being sickly by strangers - but the baby's skin looked like the sort of skin that'd tan, not break out in rashes like Maddy's did. And it was already wearing clothes! The girl's mind boggled at this for a moment before chalking it up to the mystical power of the cabbages - which wasn't so mystical if her biology teacher was to be believed, but seriously, who believed in their teacher? Back on track, the clothes looked something like.. well, there wasn't really anything she could compare it to. There wasn't a lot of it, and some part of her mind, slightly more observant than the main part, quietly commented that it looked like it was made for movement. A lot of it. And something about the design looked familiar too, she just couldn't place it.. Well, maybe Mom knew, or maybe she was just being silly and focusing on unimportant stuff instead of checking if she'd gotten a brother or sister, which was clearly the most important issue at hand. "Maddy?" Olivia had arrived, morning-hair sticking out at outrageous angles and her fancy designer bathrobe recently stained with what looked like coffee. "What's going on?" Madeleine wordlessly pointed to the child in the windowsill, and Olivia's mouth fell open in an 'o'.
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 2:17 am
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 2:57 am
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Posted: Thu May 28, 2009 3:45 am
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