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Early December: (Regular)

A few more cards won’t hurt
Trading shiny CCG cards with Demy.

Incomplete.

Mid-December: Cracks (Solo)

Gigi had three snowglobes now, and no matter how she rearranged things, there wasn’t quite enough room for them on her shelf. The realisation brought on one of the intermittent fits of melancholy that she’d been feeling so often lately. It was getting close to Christmas, it should have been a happy time. She wasn’t feeling very happy. Despite all of the snow and sparkle, she felt the missing things most. Maybe that was why she couldn’t bear the thought of putting one of the identical globes away in a drawer. They were a set. (She needed more.) She needed them on display, where she could see them every day. It was one of those plans that wrote itself.

She sat on her knees beside the half-done Christmas tree, ribbons and baubles spread out around her in a disorganised rainbow, and the snowglobes sitting carefully on the coffee table beside it all. The tree was half-wrapped in tinsel and silver beads. It was family tradition that everybody had to hang an ornament, so Gigi had been delaying in the hopes that her father would come around. He hadn’t.

She focused on the ribbon, running satin-soft between her fingers as she measured it out. Three times around ought to be enough, she thought, cutting the length with a neat little chevron at the end. She smoothed it out in a line along the carpet, then carefully set one of the snowglobes at the centre point. She pulled the ribbon up over it, twisted it to make it stay, and ran it back down the other two sides, like wrapping a present. For good measure, she did it again, making a ribbon star top and bottom. She checked the key to make sure it could still turn, then tied the whole thing off tightly and made an extra loop at the top to hang it. The globes were quite heavy, but this year’s tree had thick needle-y branches. Still moving with slow care, she hung the ribbon loop on the tree, pulling her hands away slowly. The snowglobe spun a little but remained suspended, a perfect Christmas decoration. A smile found its way across her lips, and she began on the second, a different coloured ribbon.

A sound from the kitchen made her look up. Her mother was on the phone. It was her dad – she could hear the pitch rising.

Measure the ribbon, she thought, lowering her head. Find the centre. Lay the snowglobe neat on the line. Wrap once–

“Nick, I said no!” she heard, and the rest was lost in harsh low whispers as the kitchen door closed her out of the conversation.

The ribbon unravelled in her hands. She began again. Centre. Wrap once. Twice.

Even with the door shut, the raised voices were so hard to ignore. Gigi stared down at the globe beneath her fingers, then glanced up at the finished one on the branch, as if it could comfort her. But as she looked it moved. Slid. The ribbon twisted against the smooth surface, giving in all the wrong places, the cross of fabric pulling wide like a mouth and spilling the precious globe to the floor. Gigi cried out and dove for it, just barely catching it on her outstretched arm, eyes and mouth wide with sudden horror. She cupped her hand around the cool glass globe, tears pricking her eyes. She’d broken it. She was shaking.

“Geej?” The blurry figure of her mother appeared around the kitchen door, phone still in hand.

“It fell, I dropped it! I think it’s cracked, Mummy I broke it! I...”

Her mother crossed the room and gently lifted the globe from her hands, turning it over till the snow fell, holding it up to the light. Gigi’s hands felt empty without the damaged weight, and she immediately replaced it with the half-wrapped snowglobe, all but stroking the flawless glass.

“Be careful!” she begged, her voice a squeaky sniffle. She pulled the second snowglobe off the table and into her lap too, curling protectively over them both while her mother examined the third.

“There’s no crack, Geej. Not even a dent. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine!” she yelled, choked with tears she couldn’t really explain. She’d dropped it. Nothing was fine anymore. Just because her mother couldn’t see the cracks didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Mid-February: Elysion

Leopard's Lethal Lava Land

Gigi dropped to her knees again as another fissure started to open, coughing and choking on the volcanic ash and gas. Her head hurt, and in her own little world, that meant she needed a coffee. Iced coffee would be *really* good right now. Another large piece of debris slammed into her and she rolled with it until it wedged up against a rock ridge and trapped her there, in a smoky triangular gap. The bruises and little bright-hot ash burns covering her were minor annoyances, but she couldn’t move and she couldn’t *breathe*. She closed her eyes.


Smokescreen (Solo)

Ash continued to creep in through cracks in the rock, and cracks in the ground beneath her. The sounds of battle were growing fainter, and Gigi felt dizzy, but she was already on the ground, there was nowhere further to go. She was disoriented, light, the grey blocking her vision more than just ash and smoke, but a darkness much deeper that pressed around her.

There was another distant crack, and the stone beneath her trembled and split wide, and along with the rock and a thin trickle of glowing red lava, she fell into the gap, ash like glitter raining down with them. It seemed she fell a long time. Didn’t she have a card like this?

When she hit, the ground was plush. For a brief, still moment, there was nothing but the softness beneath her scratched cheek and the low hum of sleeping electronics – tiny, familiar sounds after the tumult of the volcano. Then the desk chair she’d fallen asleep on toppled and crashed down on her, tangling her legs, and it rained pens and homework instead of ashes. It hurt just as much as if it had been the dream rocks. She lay amongst the spinning wheels and coughed so hard she felt she might throw up. She still couldn’t catch her breath. She raised her hands to her mouth and they came away black-grey, but her eyes were stinging and she couldn’t tell if it was real or just the way the colour was draining out of her world.

“Gigi?”

The light snapped on, dancing too-bright flashes on her bedroom walls. Gigi shut her eyes again and coughed even harder, curling in on herself, foetal. The chair was pulled away, and her mother’s gentle hands touched her cheek, her forehead.

“Geej, honey? What happened?” The tone, at first sleepy, took on equal parts panic and accusation and concern as her mother took her hands. “Ugh! What is this, charcoal?”

“…nightmare,” Gigi managed to rasp, but the ash was still choking her up, even though the air was clear now, or at least as clear as un-vacuumed teenage bedroom generally got.

“Honey, I’m calling an ambulance.”

Her mother started to get up, move away, but Gigi clung, unwilling to be left alone again. She struggled to sit up, the world tilting, black and grey across her vision. She held her mother’s hand tight in both her own, till their knuckles whitened, and everything else faded out.

Gigi didn’t remember the paramedics that stomped all over her room, or ambulance ride, or the frantic hospital hallways. Unconsciousness was like someone had cut the film and spliced the frames back together at the moment of waking. A missing space between now and then. Her mum was still holding her hands.

The room was very white, and her mum had her nightdress on under her trenchcoat and her hair was nearly as tangled as Gigi’s. She was the most beautiful person Gigi knew.

Gigi was wearing an embarrassing hospital gown and a ventilator. The air tasted of plastic but at least she no longer felt like she had the whole volcano sitting on her lungs. The memory was awfully vivid for a nightmare, the people had had real faces, she remembered how soft the cat’s fur had been, and the tone of her voice, and the rumble of the stones as they burned and cracked.

“Gigi,” said her mother gently, but Gigi could spot the anxiety she was trying to suppress. She smiled, and her mother sighed. “What was it, Gigi? Some science experiment with gas?”

“Huh?”

“Playing with candles? Cigarettes? Did someone give you cigarettes?”

“What? No!”

“Tell me the truth, honey. Cigars?”

“No mum. I don’t know. I had a nightmare. It was all fire and scary…”

“Nightmares don’t coat your lungs like that, Gigi. The doctors said you had serious smoke inhalation. And little cigarette burns, honey, everywhere! You know better than that! What were you thinking?”

Gigi flopped back against her pillow. What was she thinking? Nightmares so real they burned you, and the doctors thought it was from smoking? It was a logical conclusion, kind of, she guessed, just not the right one. But how were you supposed to get doctors and parents to believe your dreams were out to get you? Even in this city, it was kind of far-fetched. She wouldn’t have believed it either, if she hadn’t been the one in the hospital bed. It was all a bit much to process. Was it really worth denying it, she wondered? If this was what it looked like, she might as well use it.

“I... miss dad,” she said.

Her mother sat back as if she had been slapped, an expression of guilt flickering across her face, and Gigi felt a brief pang herself. It was a pity play, pure and simple, but it wasn’t as if it wasn’t true. Her mum recovered herself and leaned back in, stroking her hair, awkwardly combing out the tangled curls. “He’s on his way, baby. I called him. For you.”

But you never call him for yourself, Gigi thought sadly.

She was drifting in timeless white non-sleep, hospital-dazed, when her father finally pushed open the door. He was fully dressed, dark hair ruffled and eyes wide, as he half-stumbled into the room and flopped on the edge of her bed with a bouquet of pink get-well flowers.

“Are you all right? Is she all right?” he demanded, turning first to her and then to his wife.

“I’m okay now, dad,” Gigi said. Now they were both here, everything was okay. For one blissful moment, Gigi had both her parents’ attention at the same time, with no fighting. Then her mother made to give up her chair, offering to let her dad take her place. That was not okay. She caught her mum’s hand again, and reached for her dad’s, holding them there, together with her, forever, until her eyes wouldn’t stay open any more and she fell back into sweeter dreams.

Early June: (Regular)

Get the Reference
Meeting Arian over American history revision.

Complete!

July: Murder Mystery at the Museum

Night at the Museum

The Suspects:

The Financial Backer
The Intern
The Rivals
The Lover
The Ex-Wife
The Collaborator

The Finale:

J'ACCUSE!


Her dad was driving her home again. It suited her mother not to have to come out so late at night - she claimed everyone was on the wrong side of the road. It suited Gigi too, because it meant her dad ended up on her doorstep with her mum opening the door to him. He never came in but Gigi lived in hope, and always made him walk her all the way up the path, just in case.

"Didn't win, huh?" he asked.

Gigi continued to pout. "I was completely fooled! I should have listened to the cute detective!"

"Cute? So she was like a little kid, then?"

"No, dad," Gigi rolled her eyes, fidgetting with her unhelpful investigatory scribbles. "He was like twenty and really cute and had a weird accent..."

"Remind me to tell your mother you're too young for these things," said Nick.

Gigi pouted forever.

November: (Mau Regular)

Four pawed bakery fan
Gigi & Athene!Cat

Complete!

February: (Battle)

Sometimes all that’s needed is a little faith
Gigi, Athene, Grus, ********* href="https://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/viewtopic.php?t=23884923" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" >[R] Seeing a friend safely home (Athene & Gigi)

Complete!