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 Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:17 pm
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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:30 am
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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 4:59 pm
goodbye mother
It had been years since she had first grabbed Kotatsu's warm hand and felt the tears roll down her cheeks at the newness of it all. No longer crying, but facing forward, Guinevere was older and wiser. She smiled more often now, real smiles with perhaps just a hint of loneliness behind them that no one had managed to banish quite yet. She had grown into a Young Lady, not just a woman, but someone who had been raised to do the right thing and not quite know what to do with herself when asked to do menial labour. She didn't expect to be mystical or magical anymore, and though her sharp wings would quiver when she touched someone's cold hands in winter, she thought that maybe she was finally getting the hang of this new life she had found herself in.
She only wished the nightmares would go away, the repetitive bad dreams that plagued her tired mind and made her feel like she had hardly gotten any sleep no matter how early she went to bed. The dreams had started when she first became a teenager, and always consisted of a music room, heavy beats, slashing, bloodstained scissors, and fear. She wasn't sure what it meant, or why it was happening, but she was napping in short bursts to try to stop it, like Aodh had told her. It just wasn't helping. The dreams seemed to envelop her as soon as she closed her eyes, just like they had been waiting all the time she was awake. It wasn't logical, which meant it must be supernatural, and, well, she was sick of that sort of thing. There had been a time when recurring dreams would have made her thrilled, but now they just made her tired. She had thought she was done with all that.
The worst part was that last night, there had only been one victim, but what a victim it was. She couldn't get the image out of her mind, the sickening sight of Kotatsu's face as the scissors slashed into her. It had been even harder to sleep than before, and she shook her head as she put on her shoes to leave the house. It looked like she was going to be spending another unfulfilling day in a coffee shop, drinking herself awake.
"Where are you going?" It was Kotatsu herself, probably trying to cook in the kitchen or something else that would surely end in disaster.
"I'm just going into town, I'll be back soon." Guinevere opened the door, then paused.
"I love you, Mother." She didn't know what had made her say it. She never called Kotatsu anything but Kotatsu, and she had certainly never said she loved her, not that she could remember anyway. She did, of course, well, she hadn't at first, but now...
Shaking her head, she left before Kotatsu could reply, it had been the sappy sort of thing the heroine said in romantic stories, and she regretted it. She was done with that part of her life. It was that face, that face from her dream. That was all that was wrong with her.
When she came home, Kotatsu Mikaboshi was dead.
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:00 am
hello father
Guinevere had often heard that when things went horribly, terribly wrong, it seemed like the world was in slow motion.
She had dismissed it as a trick used by filmmakers, but as she saw the body lying out on the floor, it felt like her limbs were filled with lead, and she found that she could not rush to her mother's side so much as she could stagger. Mother was unconscious. Mother was unconscious, but a smaller, nagging part of her brain pointed out that Mother's chest was also not moving, not even a little...
Guinevere ignored the nagging part of her brain. the rest of her brain didn't like it much right now, all things considered. Instead, she opened her mouth, a painful task considering hr suddenly-leaden limbs, and hoarsely said "Mother!" There was no reply, not even a little.
A few moments later though, there was something, and that something was a slightly embarrassed cough. Guinevere looked at the woman in her arms hopefully, but it remained cold and very definitely dead. No, the cough had come from somewhere else, and Guinevere's eyes travelled along Kotatsu's body until they came upon the hem of a black robe. Travelling upward, the hem became a man in her vision, and furthermore, a familiar one.
"Hello, Father." Guinevere said weakly. Because she was Guinevere, and the corpse in the room that had formerly been known as her mother had raised her well, she added, "May I get you a refreshment?"
Aaron had left Guinevere with Kotatsu at a young age. Whatever had motivated him to do so, Guinevere had worshipped him despite his flaws, and she had always suspected that he would return. As time went on, she began to realize his flaws, and though she still loved him, she was not about to run into his arms and expect him to take her home now that Kotatsu was dead. She didn't quite know what she was expecting of him, but as she sat across from him in the living room and stirred sugar into her tea, she realized that what she had least been expecting of him was for him to show up again.
"So," she said, and trailed off into awkward silence. She should be crying, she felt, or at least be breaking down. Instead, perhaps because it was so soon after Kotatsu's death, or perhaps because the situation was so odd, she found that she was strangely detached. Like she was watching the whole affair from the window, it simply wasn't happening to her. Aaron coming back was dreamlike enough, but Kotatsu being dead in the kitchen was simply impossible. The best she could do about the whole affair was make polite conversation. "What a pleasant surprise."
Aaron had always been quiet, she recalled, and he looked into his teacup like it might bite him. Eventually, he said "I'm sorry."
She looked up sharply. "About Kotatsu? Certainly not your fault."
"Not for that," he studied her sadly, and Guinevere didn't like the expression. "For, um, plenty of things. But mostly for what I have to tell you now..." He coughed again, licking his lips nervously. "You sensed her death. You can see me."
"Guinevere, you know that heralds have unique powers..."
"No." she said firmly, wanting to stop his words immediately, wanting to rewind to yesterday, wanting to do something. "Oh, no, no, no, no." Not this. She could have handled any other sort of power, she could have handled necromancy or cutting people with her mind, or sewing magic into clothes, but predicting peoples' deaths? "No, please."
Aaron looked at her kindly, sadly, smiling the same smile he had so often given to her when she was a messenger reborn. "I'm sorry." he repeated, putting his teacup aside and getting up off the couch. "If it's any consolation, you'll have fewer nightmares about them if you know them less. And you couldn't have done anything even if you knew what the dreams were about. Death," he muttered bitterly, "Is inevitable. But when I went to collect her soul, I felt I should stay around and tell you." A pause, and he looked at her helplessly. "I'm sorry."
Guinevere felt herself crying, because self-pity was just ignoble enough to warrant immediate tears. She didn't want this. She wanted to have a mother. She wanted to be a normal girl. She wanted Aaron to shut up and stop saying 'I'm sorry'. Most of all, she wanted a hug, someone to tell her everything would be okay, and to help her clean up her tea, because what with her shaking hands, and her watery eyes, she had spilled quite a lot of it. Instead, she took a deep breath and looked back at the blurred figure of her father as he got up off the couch. "Certainly not your fault," she said weakly, because even if she was upset, she had to be fair, "But I'm sorry, too."
He went to the umbrella stand and picked up his scythe, then turned as he heard her cry more fiercely behind him. Shaking his head, he left as he came, hardly noticed.
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:01 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:03 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:37 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:39 am
Herald 10.12.09
Now that Guinevere's a teen, it's time for a rite of passage: her first (part-time) job!
Does she flip burgers? Wash cars? Walk around with a billboard? How does she get to work, and how does she get along with co-workers? Do her...unusual...abilities cause any problems there?
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:42 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 9:43 am
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Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 12:04 pm
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:40 am
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 12:26 am
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Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 12:29 am
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