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 Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:52 pm
On the subject of why higher powers would be flinging about possibly powerful objects, Jan had a few theories - the primary of which involved said higher powers being bored out of their minds. Being omnipotent didn't exactly mean being boundlessly creative, after all. Everyone got a little listless after eternity, so she'd heard.
"Plant 'em," she shrugged at the question, "Put 'em in the freezer, a bowl of water to watch 'em grow, under your bed - I dunno!" the exclamation followed by a put-out sort of snort, "Probably send 'em to school to boot - sheez, and I thought it was bad being the be-glassed geek. How much playground horror will they get from having tails, do you think?"
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 12:57 pm
"Jan, I've got a little girl with blue skin. I've got a little boy who's got six arms. I've met kids who look more animal than human. I don't think they'll have that much of a problem," Raven shrugged. "Though... sending a rock to school might have odd consequences. I'm not sure about how the teachers would deal with it."
Logic. Something. Great. Couldn't there be easier things to say about little rocks that were being handed out like candy on Halloween? "...I'm worried. I don't like this whole 'souls trapped in inanimate objects' thing that's going around. It feels... weird. Like there's something larger going on."
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:02 pm
The sound Jan made to echo and emphasize Raven's final comment was accompanied by a momentary drop of shoulders and a dark, contemplative look. But it was over in the next moment as she threw up her hands in exasperation, flailing the relic over her head, "It's standard fare, far as Gaia goes," she pronounced with a touch of whine in her voice. "This place is all wonked out to hell and back, Rav - I wouldn't go worry about kiddies."
Though... yeah. The whole souls in physical objects thing... She hadn't quite gone there yet as far as thinking about philosophical implications, having been rather obsessed with the fact that dual-personas meant a definition of duality and the reality of opposites, rather than mere cognitive conception. So... oof. Souls in rocks. That wasn't a fun thing.
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:06 pm
This was Jan. Raven could talk to Jan, confide in Jan. "...look, Jannie... I've got this wand, right? There's supposed to be a soul in there who was killed in a wronged fashion-- a vampire soul." Pulling out Yui's wand from her purse where it'd been hiding from the rain, the little red wisp sulking somewhat, Raven presented it to Jan. "And now there's a rock with twin souls stuck inside? It's not..."
Not what? Not right? It felt... wrong. Right to save souls, but to put them into things that weren't alive? To make them... trapped? It felt... vicious. Like playing God, only perhaps it was the higher powers who did at least some of it-- it didn't make sense. Why would these things be happening? What was going on?
...it hurt Raven's brain to think about it.
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:12 pm
.......oh, fine. They couldn't 'just let it drop'. Not something like... ugh. She hated the ones with big ol' moral implications. It was grand fun to think about something complicated and all, but to have to deal with it? It really was kinda easier to be on the sidelines, scooping up the mess.... This was different.
...and not that unfamiliar, unfortunately.
Setting her rock back on the paper-swamped desk, Jan peered with a frown at the red wispy thing fluttering off the end of the wand. She pushed the non-lensed glasses back up her nose, cocked her head to the side, pursed lips - "Entirely kosher," Jan finished Raven's sentence with her own vocabulary. Then, taking it in a more mundane direction, "If there's one thing I know to piss someone off, it's to deny 'em revenge by sticking them in a... stick."
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:16 pm
Grimacing slightly, Raven considered things. This wasn't the way things were supposed to work, right? There had to be more. "At least with the wand someone was there to tell me what I was supposed to do," she muttered. "Take care of it. Make it feel welcome-- her, I mean," Raven glanced warily at the wand. "But... I'm lost with the rock."
Really lost. Lost enough to admit defeat-- a huge blow to her pride, really. Putting Yui gently back into her purse, Raven considered her own rock again, the little pair holding each other so tightly. "I wonder what they did..."
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:21 pm
Ui. Now there was a thought. That the little tykes now petrified on her desk weren't just manifestations of the world's principles but.... previously living souls. But who knew? Maybe it was an entirely different idea, maybe they really were just in an 'egg' stage, and had never known life before. Because putting something already conscious in a material object? Ew. Not so nice.
"Actually, they were calling them 'relics'," Jan mentioned at a mumble, brow creased in thought as she tapped fingers on the wooden edge. "If this is some sort of redemption arc," she added after a moment, "Do you think we as guardians are supposed to be guides or challenges?"
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:26 pm
Guides or challenges? Guides sat better with Raven, simply because it meant that she could help the little things, rather than try to change what they were going through to make it more difficult. However, with her luck with fate... "I'm not sure. I hope we're the guides. Guardians are supposed to care for things, right? Hopefully... look out for them."
Why was it so complicated? Maybe it wasn't, and Raven simply made it more complicated by the need to have it explicable in her mind, logical and following a set group of laws. At the same time... "Maybe I'm wrong about the whole thing though. I don't... get it. But maybe we're not supposed to? Nothing's particularly well organized about how these things have been tossed around..."
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:41 pm
Jan breathed out through her nose and directed a rueful smile at her friend. Organized? Cute. Since when had life as we know it been anything like alphabetized? Or even chronological, in some cases? The world was pretty screwed for want of order. A shame it insisted on using the big, fancy ingredients like 'politics', 'magic' and 'morality' to bake it's double-layer cake.
"There's only so much you can figure by hearsay and thinking," she said after a pause, "Just play it by ear - maybe things'll get clearer when they've finally hatched." Big ol' maybe right there. They both knew it. But what else was she supposed to say? Empty reassurances when dead against her moral opinions.
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:44 pm
"Yeah, I can hope," Raven grimaced. "You're ok with all of this then?" If Jan was, that would set something right in Raven's mind. After all, Raven carried something of an alarmist tendency. Thus if Jan was ok with it, it would all be fine again...
Well, no. Not fine. But easier. Right. Easier.
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:00 pm
"Well I can't just throw it away," Jan snorted, picking 'it' up again and, instead of waving it about as she'd intended, pausing for a moment and holding it closer to her chest before interrupting that momentary tenderness with a shrug and slight grin that slowly faded into a neutral expression.
It wasn't that she was necessarily okay with anything about it, really - but hell if she could do anything about it, right? The powers that be say 'jump', you ask 'how far, how high?' and you keep jumping until they say stop. Just made things easier. And it wasn't like the rock was doing her any harm, exactly. Besides occasional migraines. Or fear of dropping it on her toes. Again.
"There are worse things," she concluded with what she considered a helpful gin.
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:04 pm
Well... that was good enough for her then. "'kay. So... rocks. Relics. And souls. And... shouldn't you be doing something productive?" Raven queried, giving Jan a speculative look before glancing at the papers strewn about the room. "You have a job. Multiple jobs on occasion."
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:42 pm
Oh goody, didn't it always come back to that? Jan made a face and crossed her arms emphatically, "It's rainy," she said bluntly, "No one works when it's raining." An outright and ridiculous lie, but if she had no better explanation (and she didn't, not really) then she might as well go with what came to mind first.
Still... the idea of a job, in connection to this rock-thing. Hunh. Would've been weirder and freakier if she were the only one she knew with one of the things, but as she very clearly wasn't she wasn't going to try and associate the weirdness of her new parental position with the weirdness of her job.
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:45 pm
"Rain doesn't absolve you of responsibility, Jan," Raven shook her head, resisting the urge to smile. "C'mon, you should at least pretend to get stuff done. Besides, if you aren't doing anything, you know that no one else is going to get anything done for your tabloid-- and if you work on that, I won't push you to work on other things."
Unspoken, of course, was the 'yet'.
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:49 pm
Hands flew half-way up in sudden realization. Oh right! Between neglecting to obtain a second lease for Henchmen and neglecting to write a response memo on why exactly she'd failed to dispose of anything big and important enough to justify her stay on Gaia, she'd entirely forgotten to neglect scrounging up enough articles for the next issue of the World Weekly. And that was all besides the regular practice of neglecting to 'call' home.
"This is why I have you," Jan moaned melodramatically, palm smacking forehead, "Think I can warp that wand-stick thing you've got into a story on haunted chopsticks?"
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