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shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer

PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2007 7:30 pm


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II» solo [cabbage]
III» roleplay [cabbage]
IV» solo [baby]
roleplay storage...
PRP- 3 baby, 1 child; ORP- 4 baby
VI» solo [baby]
VII» solo [baby]
VIII» solo [child]
IX» [ORP] Sidewalk Chalk [child]
[PRP] Pretenders to the Throne [child]
XI» solo [child]
XII» solo [child]
XIII» [PRP] Merroth and Carlisle [child]
XIV» [PRP] Jahzara and Carlisle [child]
XV» [PRP] Too Darn Cold [child]

PostPosted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:40 am


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She was on the phone, speaking to her foster father on the phone. Apparently her grades- As, with a smattering of Bs- were not up to snuff. She would have to come home if they did not go back to being As straight down the line. And if there was something Elixabeté Lille de Verdelet did not want, it was to return to living at home. It was scary there sometimes.

All was silent on the telephone line as Father finished his rant. She scribbled down the answer to problem nineteen while she waited, taking care to keep the sound of crinkling paper to a minimum.

"Have you thought about securing the line of succession," he said finally, his voice carrying his annoyance over the phone line. She considered taking one of the butterscotch candies and rubbing it over the mouthpiece of the cell phone, pretending it was interference. Lixxie did not have a clue what he meant, the line of succession. She had not thought about it, though she had heard Lady Saalah mentioning it over breakfast a few months before she had aged to nineteen. Something about making sure the position Master of Ceremonies went to a suitable person... not like her. Lixxie was not suitable on many levels.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Father."

There was a pause, and then a sigh.

"I mean, you must acquire a child. Else, our line will die with you- as I fully intend to never let you take over the position our family is known for, and I will not consent for it to go to anyone else's clan, a child is necessary." His voice was cold, and she shivered in response. Of course. She knew that he didn't think she was worth much. Lixxie was just happy that he allowed her to continue attending school as she did.

She couldn't help but think of some of the things she'd done lately to earn her father's ire. He had taken Grim away for this entire week. Lixxie felt incredibly lonely without him. A baby was something even Father couldn't take away; maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea, to acquire a child. At least as someone to talk to. "But where would I find one, Father?"

There was another pregnant pause.

"In the obvious place." Then he hung up the phone, an abrupt end to the conversation. Of course. Didn't babies come from...

Uh. Maybe she'd better find a different way than that. The idea of... She shuddered and dropped that thought like a hot coal. Besides. That would take too long... Father sounded like he wanted her to "acquire" a baby fairly soon.

She doodled a little heart in the margins. Maybe she could adopt? A little boy, Lixxie thought. That would be nice. A little boy that she could hug and take care of. Dark hair, maybe. And gray eyes, too. She liked gray eyes.

Come to think of it, hadn't she heard of a place where they were adopting out children? The Liberty Center. There'd been a flyer in the grocery store, right next to the notice of a change in store ownership. It had said that they were adopting out children... and cabbages? Maybe she'd get a cabbage, to adjust to the idea of having someone else in her dorm room with her. It could have window space until it became a baby. Then she could move to the top bunk, and he could have the bottom.

Her Puppet, Sethunya, clambered up the side of the bed, chattering gossip in a tiny, statacco voice. Lixxie was too preoccupied to listen.

Yes. A little boy would be just right.

shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer


shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer

PostPosted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:09 pm


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Lixxie goes to the Liberty Center to obtain a cabbage, and after a little inital confusion, meets up with Sadanobu Iijima. After talking to him for a bit, she recieves a cabbage that will hopefully become a dark-haired boy. Yay!

Read all about it here.
PostPosted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 12:36 pm


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When Lixxie came home from her Arcane Theorems class on a rainy Thursday, there was a little black-haired boy sitting in a ruin of cabbage and pot on her windowsill. At first she was distressed, and cried out, "Who let you in here?" She almost started crying, she was so sad and scared, but leftover reason from her course overtook the near-instantaenous reaction. The cabbage looked as if it had broken from the inside, and the little boy looked brand-new, though he was already clothed.

He looked like he was going to cry, with one finger twisted in his long, red-tinted hair.

"Oh," she crooned, dropping her books and sliding over to the windowsill. The blue-haired girl scooped up the baby and cradled him, a little clumsily, and sat in the rolling chair near her desk. "Oh, it's okay. Don't cry. I was just suprised." Tentatively, as if she'd never been this close to a child before, Lixxie untangled his finger from his hair. Instead of letting her pull her hand back, the little boy gripped onto it and stared at her out of gray eyes as wide and pale as her own, though they appeared more pink for the disc of light behind his head.

"Oh," she sighed again, looking at the tiny fingers wrapped around her own, then closed her hand around his. Her grip was gentle, but the baby looked like he was about to cry again. She immediately loosened her grip on him and kissed his forehead. "It's okay. I didn't mean it." Both of them looked at each other, the little boy tearful and Lixxie confused. The only parenting technique she could remember was that of Saalah, and she knew she did not want to raise him like that. Nor did she want to isolate her baby, like the green-haired man seemed to do. Her baby wouldn't grow up scared of other people, either.

She started, and the baby hiccuped. "Sorry," she whispered to him. "I just remembered, though- you need a name. I almost forgot." As she ran her fingers through his hair, straightening it and marvelling at the tiny curls at the end. The baby smiled pleasantly.

Lixxie smiled back at him and thought of names. She wanted a name that sounded nice with his surname- dul de Elixabete- and also meant something. Boy's names were difficult, though; Grim had already been named when he had come through the lantern. This would be quite hard.

"Deigo?" It didn't seem to fit; she shook her head and tried again. "Mephisto? No... that's too scary, and you're a good boy, aren't you?" He giggled and clapped his hands. "Well, maybe as a middle name."

She thought very hard, staring at the ceiling and fluffing his hair with her fingers. The name would come to her; she just had to be patient. Even the little boy seemed willing to be patient, sticking his free hand in his mouth and sucking on his fingers with a contented look. Edward was a nice name, but the little boy didn't look like an Edward. Emmett was also a nice name. But that also didn't work. Rose was good, but it was a girl's name...

"Oh!" She gasped, and picked him up. Lixxie hugged her baby gently. "Carlisle. You'll be Carlisle Mephisto. And that's your whole first name, there aren't any middle names or anything. Carlisle Mephisto." Pleased, she settled the baby on the side of the lower bunk that would be his bed.

Carlisle Mephisto smiled again, exposing tiny, perfect teeth. "Happy birthday, Carlisle Mephisto," she whispered to him. "July nineteenth. I'll write it down." She did a little dance, oblivious to the baby for a moment, then sat next to him. Startled, he nearly fell over; she caught him. "I might forget otherwise," she said, with the manner of sharing a great secret.

He giggled, and she laughed, too.

shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer


shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer

PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 1:27 pm


PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 3:37 am


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Carlisle Mephisto awoke to silence where there had been crying mere hours ago. "Mama?" He slid off the lower bunk, falling with a soft thump to the beige carpet. No, Mama still was on her bed. But not crying, and that was good. He had woke up, though, and did not feel like going back to sleep. On the contrary, he was very awake. Something called him, and he followed it blindly. He put on his shoes and jacket like Mama had taught him, then got to the business of following the thing that wanted him somewhere, now. Through the common area where Alia slept sprawled wildly across a couch, down the hallway that sometimes had people sitting in it but not right now, and out into the cold winter night. Bright lights flickered at him as they had so often for a long time (as long as he cared to remember), but otherwise there was complete silence but for the crunching of his feet in the thin layer of snow.

The compulsion brought him to tall, wrought-iron gates; one hung slightly crooked, leaving enough room for someone much larger than he to get through. So Carlisle followed whatever it was that called him through and into a dead brown garden. The thing led him to a stop right in the center of a large polygon of withered plants that reached up through the snow like dead fingers and cast eerie blue shadows across the untouched ground. Whatever he had come to see, it wasn't here. So he sat down in the middle of the seemingly endless expanse, covered his eyes with his hands, and began to wail. When he cried at home, Mama came right away, even if she was supposed to be away for the day. That was who he screamed for, then, and heard no response from his cries for Mama. Just silence, and that offered no comfort to a sobbing child.

It seemed like forever, but someone came. He heard the snow crunch under the person's shoes, felt cold fingers on the top of his head. "Why do you cry, little one?" Then it wasn't Mama. He wailed louder. The sweet voice shushed him. "Please do not cry." Her articulation was quiet and precise, and he peeked through his fingers at her. Her face didn't look like Mama's at all, her nose too long and eyes too wide, with a pointed chin that Mama lacked. But it was a nice face, and as Alia told him, bad people had bad faces.

"Mama not coming for me," he blubbered, and sniffed loudly. She wrapped him in her arms and cooed something that he did not quite catch, but just the semblance of words comforted him enough to quiet his sobs. He wiped his nose on the pale pink blanket that covered her thin shoulders and cried a little bit more, but that wasn't really from sadness, just relief. When he looked at her again, her blue eyes were full of something he didn't like or recognize. But he sensed it didn't mean anything bad for him.

She wrapped him in the blanket, even though her white dress couldn't keep her very warm. "Did she leave you here?" With a shake of his head, Carlisle pointed out his lone footsteps. "Okay. Do you know where your mom is?" He pointed at the footsteps again.

"Some'un want talk me, I heared it." The lady tilted her head. "You want talk me?" A smile, and then she nodded her head. One of her hands pressed against the side of his face.

"Your halo is beautiful." She stared at the funny red thing that always followed his head around. "It's a clock, but it counts to thirteen. What are you, little boy?"

He thought about it. "I are little boy! Mama call me Carlisle." She smiled again and sat with him in the snow.

"Of course, that's true."

"Why call?"

Her face fell, and she looked- sad? "Because I'm lonely. No one stays with me. Not even Astar, and I made him." The lady ran gentle fingers through his hair, selected a shank of it and split it into three, and braided it into a plait. It felt nice- Mama never did this. She just pulled his hair back. No, she was never rough about it, but she didn't have time to play much anymore. Snow-time made her sick and kind of mean. But this lady fit with the serene landscape, like the missing piece of a puzzle you didn't know was incomplete. "I didn't want a child to come, but you're the only one who heard." Her lips trembled a little, then firmed. Mama did that when she was sad, so he did what he always did with Mama and put his hands on her cheeks.

"Smile," he ordered imperially. "Sad is bad." It looked like she was trying, but it just made her look sadder. "Why you not smile?"

She shook her head and closed her eyes. Water, like when he cried, ran down her face and over his hands in two smooth rivulets, ending their journey by soaking into her white nightgown. "Oh, little boy. I know." He let go of her face, touched his fingers to his own eyes, then yelped. That burned! Was it her tears? He pulled his hands back and looked at them. Something black, like ink, covered them where her tears had gone. "I'm so sorry," she sobbed, and pressed her face into his hair. She stayed there for a moment, then straightened and picked him up.

"Here, I'll take you home."

Sooner than he would have thought, he was tucked into his bed, and the woman was gone.

shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer


shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer

PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 2:22 pm


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The fourth odd thing:

Carlisle opened his eyes to darkness. Quietly, so as not to wake Mama as she slept in the bunk above his, he walked out into the common area shared with four others. A new person sat at the small table near the window; a dark red towel hung over the back of her chair, a bottle of heavy red stuff and a piece of flat, circular bread before her on the table. Always game to meet a new friend, Carlisle put on his best smile and walked over to her. "You know Miz Bella? She has baby daughter." He hadn't gone to see baby Sara yet, but he knew she existed. Bella had called and told him.

"I know Miz Bella and baby Sara," the girl said cheerfully, and she picked him up. "Oof. You're getting heavy, Carlisle." Gently, she sat him on her knees. "It's Maundy Thursday," she told him, tickled his feet and kissed his forehead right on the black line where Bella's tears had fallen the first time he saw her. He examined the piece of flat, strange bread while she fluffed his hair. "I'm Megan Eisenheim, darling." The little boy didn't realize how much she knew about him, so he felt compelled to introduce himself.

"Am Carlisle." She smiled and hugged him tightly. "Am big boy. Not big as big boy with horns from fu-fyoo- funeral. Harper is in box."

He started to tell her one of his fragmented stories. But she cut him off. "You're my sweet darling, Carlisle," Megan Eisenheim said softly and kissed him on his forehead. "I hope you'll be this trusting forever. Look at that!" Obediently, he turned to watch a bird wing its way across the rising sun. When he looked back, Megan Eisenheim was gone. But the bottle and the bread were still there, and the towel too.

Carlisle thought maybe she'd come back for them. Anyway, he shouldn't touch them anymore now that she was gone. He'd move them for her tonight, though, since it wasn't good to leave things out for so long. He went back to bed, and had sweet dreams until his mother woke him up to go to day care.
PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 8:13 pm


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Such a busy week he'd been having.

Carlisle held baby Sara in his lap, one arm tucked properly behind her head and the other gently tickling her tummy. Across the room, his 'aunt' sat curled in a winged armchair, reading a book; her husband formed the seat and back of Carlisle's post against the back bookshelves. The baby dozed, and he was close to dozing off too. Uncle Astaroshe was brushing his hair, and that didn't help him keep his eyes open enough to convince Bella that he wasn't sleeping. Before he fell asleep, though, he wanted to tell them about his week. In fact, they'd promised he could once the baby fell asleep.

“So,” prompted his uncle.

“So.” Carlisle hugged baby Sara close and yawned widely. Bella looked knowingly at Astaroshe and stood, crossing the cherry wood floor and relieving the boy of her daughter. “Not tired,” he protested, when his very comfortable seat started to move. He had had a very busy day, exploring the town house and then the backyard and the neighbors' houses.

Making the lie of his own words, the second his uncle set him into bed, Carlisle fell asleep.


On last Wednesday, he grew. Well, not a lot. But he didn't look like a baby anymore, and that was good. Mostly, anyway.

The up sides were, he didn't feel so unsteady walking anymore. He could run faster, because he had longer legs; Mama let him go down to the cafeteria by himself. No one asked him to stay put too often, and he could stay by himself in the afternoons. It was easier to form words, and somehow everything seemed to make more sense to him now. All these things were good, and he was happy, but... There were down sides, too.

For instance, he was too big to stay with Mama anymore. It was okay for a baby-sized kid to stay in the dorms with her, but he didn't look like the kind of little kid who had to stay with his mom anymore. So, he had been moved to Aunt Bella's. Her house was in Aekea, as it had to be for her husband to get to and from work in a decent amount of time. Unfortunately, it wasn't close enough to the campus of Mama's school that she could easily commute. Besides, for reasons of her own, Elixabete was quite determined to remain in the dormitories.

At first he'd been scared; what kid wouldn't be? He had adapted quickly, though, a lot faster than either of the two new adults thought he would. There were things to do here all day- play with baby Sara, explore, find a room with a big piano in it and then play the big piano until Astaroshe came to find out what the racket was and relocated him to a keyboard that didn't look so expensive, with a pair of headphones to keep the tunes to himself. But that didn't keep him too occupied for long, and soon enough he'd gone out to visit the neighbors and cause chaos for them too.

Firstly he made the acquaintance of a very angry-seeming man in a dress who apparently was named Sade de Graves. He had long, luxurious curly golden hair which he wore in pigtails and a dark tan. Frankly, Carlisle thought Mister de Graves was really, really odd. But he was pretty, and if he hadn't heard his roommates refer to him (him being Sade, not Carlisle) as a male he (being Carlisle) never would have thought he (Sade) was a boy.

Sade de Graves' first roommate was named Hei Shigeo. At first, Carlisle had thought that Sade was greeting Shigeo, but no, his name was Hei Shigeo and heaven forbid anyone use “hey” to greet anyone in front of Sade. Shigeo had a neat, shoulder-length mop of brown hair and thick square spectacles that darkened whenever he walked outside, which didn't seem to be too often because he looked all soft and squishy, though thin, and his skin was sickly pale. Being a charitable person, Carlisle decided to ignore the fact that his new acquaintance seemed overly dismissive of anyone in the house except Sade, even his twin sister.

Hei Sugita looked just like her brother. She wore the same sweaters layered over the same blouses, kept the same haircut, and had the same style of glasses (although they had thinner lenses and always seemed to balance precariously on the tip of her rather pointy and straight nose, and didn't darken when she went out to play badminton with Sade). Even Carlisle couldn't tell them apart except by Sugita's healthy tan and the ink spatters that decorated the sleeves of her sweaters. Usually, too, Sugita (who he was to call Sugita-san, since she didn't like the thought of little gaijin brats calling her by her first name without some kind of honorific, and American honorifics made her feel old) had some sort of bruise on her face. No one else could tell, but Carlisle noticed, since the skin where the bruise was always looked flatter and less healthy than the rest of her. The two of them got along, if only because he did look up to her and honestly tried to listen to her and talk to her. It seemed no one else, except the fourth member of the house directly to the left of Bella and Astaroshe's home, was willing to put up with endless rambling about minuscule details of Sugita's job as a secretary-c**-public relations worker at a job agency in Barton.

The fourth person in the house of Sade, Sugita and Shigeo didn't have an S at the start of her name. Her name was Moriah Haneul-yoon Bell, and she looked more male than Sade and Shigeo combined. For instance, her black-as-black hair was kept trimmed neatly and brushed forward so it fell in her eyes. Sometimes she wore reading glasses, especially when she was tired, and she didn't like to talk very much. Carlisle, though, could tell that this was the ruling queen of the household. Moriah had to control everything, even when Carlisle could come over. The first time he'd walked into the room that was claimed as her studying space (she was going for her Masters in business) he had practically run back out to Sugita and Sade under an onslaught of ill-intentioned curses and had never tried to talk to her again.

That was the town house to the direct left of his new home, and that was all well and good. He liked it there, especially how Sugita seemed patient enough to help him with all the new work he had to do. The family he really liked (besides Aunt Bella's) was the one to the direct right, though.

It didn't have much in the way of people, or of fun, but 15 Black Way drew him like a messy office would draw an angry Sugita. The building itself looked ramshackle and abandoned, and the inside agreed. Dust lay in thick layers and cobwebs cluttered corners, dangled from pale wooden tables that might have been oak at one time. What had to be fine wallpaper was grimy and grayed out. Roaches and other unsavory insects skulked along the floorboards.

When he had first wandered in, he had thought it must have been abandoned for many years. Then he stepped into a room decorated for a boy much older than he, and felt long, claw-like nails sink into the back of his white shirt. That was the owner of the house, a woman approaching her old age named Josephine Moss. She had long, tangled hair in a shade of gray-brown that reminded him of decay and the dead of winter, and her breath smelled absolutely foul as she whispered in his ear, “You aren't my boy.”

Stammering, he explained himself, and then the woman simply seemed confused, muttering about her boys and how they were lost, and that she didn't think they'd ever come home. It worried Carlisle a lot more than explaining the holes in his shirt to Aunt Bella, who had told him to never, ever, under any circumstances, go into the house with the overgrown lawn. But he just couldn't help himself. It was like some kind of oversized magnet drew him inside the house, up the stairs, and into that room. When Mrs. Moss led him into the kitchen, he looked about ready to flee, but it was spotless. Actually, the room she'd found him in had been very clean, too. It was just the family room, as she called it (and the living room and the library and the study) that were so filthy.

“Why don't you clean them up,” he asked, and immediately regretted it as her face took on a somewhat confused look of melancholy and anger. “I mean, just so you don't have to work so hard to keep the bugs out of here.” She liked to talk about how hard it was to keep the rooms she bothered to care for from getting dirty because of the insects, and in fact after gleaning Carlisle's name and regaining her balance that had been all she spoke of.

She frowned. “Oh, it's not worth it,” she said softly. “My boys aren't ever coming home.” It was something so against what she had said before that he was going to say something about it, but then Aunt Bella was calling his name and he had to go.

And those were the neighbors in 19 and 15 Black Way.

He'd also been moved out of the daycare and into the larger populace of the older children at school. Of course he did his best, but he knew already that he was one of the worst students- struggling with highly basic things like a book called “Go Dog Go” and simplistic math. (What's nine minus four? See if Carlisle knew; he was more likely to tell you that it's raining on Mars than he was to tell you that it was five.) Health was okay, even if he could never remember most of the rules, and gym didn't particularly bother him. Science sucked, even with a great teacher like Mr. Iijima. History, though: He shone in history, could remember the names of places and people with ease. Show him a picture of John Quincy Adams, or Charles Disraeli, or even Albert Einstein and he could tell you their name, date of birth, outstanding accomplishments, who they married, and when they died. Lifetimes were easy for him, even lifetimes of countries. It was simple, and he loved it.

On the weekend, he visited Mama at the college. She smiled at him and was so glad to see him, but something was different because he'd been sent away. He somehow didn't feel so close to her as he had, but his Mama was his Mama and he loved her still. And on Sunday evening, he went back to his new home with Aunt Bella in Aekea's residential section.

All in all, he was quite happy with his new age.

shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer


shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer

PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2008 8:26 pm


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[ORP] Sidewalk Chalk
With Ophelia, Wisp, Kaimi, and Nataya
In Progress

Carlisle is stuck in art class- only it's really hot, so he's stuck in art class outside. Very serious conversations ensue.
Read it here!
PostPosted: Sat Nov 15, 2008 11:25 pm


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[PRP] Pretenders to the Throne
With Merroth
Completed

He didn't actually think it was possible for someone to hate him that much. Well, at least the history project ought to go well...
Read it here!

shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer


shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer

PostPosted: Sun Nov 16, 2008 8:09 pm


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"You know," says Sugita-san, "You never look fat when you zip up a good Pinot Noir." With gray eyes that are more dead that soulful, which is an expression he's observed before, she stares into the bottom of the tinted-glass bottle, swirls the liquid inside with a flick of her wrist. She has a new watch, pretty and glistening titanium, he supposes, or perhaps it's silver. The face of the watch is black with tiny ivory numerals in the Roman style. He admires it, because he doesn't know what to say, and he doesn't think he's really that smart anyway. Probably anything he says would just irritate her, so he stays silent and just observes.

She's pretty, in a sort of masculine way. Sugita has the same face as her twin, made unsettlingly androgynous by seasoned application of makeup, and the same hairstyle without as much gel. Carlisle wonders for a second if that means Shigeo envies her. Well, Carlisle would envy Sugita. She's smart- her fingers are covered with ink stains and calluses that he knows come from her keyboard at the job agency, where she does secretarial work and hands out job assignments. That doesn't really make her smart, he knows, since they only really say that people with jobs in, for instance, microfinance (which he supposes Barack Obama must be good at) or world domination (like Alexander the Great), are really smart. Her job doesn't make Sugita Sugita, though. It's the books on her shelves- "Remembering: An Experimental and Social Study," which was written by a professor emeritus at Cambridge on Earth, and then Rousseau's "Confessions" which he knows she's read all the way through, "Nicomachean Ethics" and "Eudemian Ethics" and "Magna Moralia" by Aristotle, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and "The Birth of Tragedy" by Nietzsche.

Carlisle would never read these books, and that was for the good, because why should he? It's easy, ridiculously so, for him to remember that Rousseau might have been a homosexual and he lived in France for a while and he never picked a settled religion. That's a person, and Carlisle is good at people, if that sort of thing can be said. Aristotle wrote the Constitution of Athens, and Nietzsche was crazy, these are easy to remember, but well.

No one really looks for people who are good at people. It's always math, which he doesn't understand, or reading, where the letters jumble up before his eyes, or science, where it just makes no sense. Why on Earth does he care about the conversions between Fahrenheit and Celsius? Carlisle isn't going to be a weather man or anything like that. (He doesn't actually know what he's going to be. Except that he's not going to be a weather man.)

The entire time he's been thinking this through, Sugita's been speaking, and he only snaps back to reality when she says "Aw, c'mon, Carl, even ********' Sade woulda thought that was funny. Here, lemme try again: This guy, he's got a dog, and he tells everyone it's a service dog, 'kay? So anyway, this kid jumps up on him and is like, 'Can I pet him', and the guy's like, 'No, I'm a lawyer. He helps me chase ambulances.'"

It's weird, but he thinks he prefers it when Sugita's been crying, but he feels sorry for her so he laughs a little. "Too serious for a kid," says Sugita after a long moment, eyes slightly unfocused as she looks at him. He knows that if he makes a joke and really laughs this time, she'll forget about it and go back to just drinking out the small liquor store he knows she's got stashed under the desk. "Why're you so ********' serious anyway?" Slumping in her chair, she swills more of the wine in her bottle (there's a long-stemmed crystal glass at her left hand, which is resting on the desk, but she gave up the charade of only having one- two- three- four glasses a long time ago and is now just drinking it straight out of the container). "You don' have a reason to be, you, you've got... friends and stuff..."

He's never thought of himself as serious before. "I don't think I'm serious," pipes Carlisle, uncomfortably swinging one of his legs back and forth like the pendulum of a clock.

"Then what are you," says Sugita, a little cruelly he thinks. Obviously, he's Carlisle.

So he says it: "I'm Carlisle."

The empty bottle, when it hits the hardwood floor and shatters, makes the sort of sound he's always imagined a breaking heart would make (which he thinks about rarely, but usually when he does it's at night when the house is very loud but none of the things he hears are his mom snoring). "Damnit, Carlisle," says Sugita, the slur gone. "You're crazy."

"I am not," he says, and that's that.
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 7:09 pm


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One day he visits Josephine after school and finds her in the kitchen scouring her skin with steel wool. Something bright red stains the ivory basin and he thinks that it's just strawberry syrup, so he goes and puts his backpack on the bottom stair and comes back to help her. Gently, because he has to be gentle with a girl, even an old one like Josephine, Carlisle tugs the steel wool out of her hand and only then realizes, when the crimson clinging thickly to the strands of wire is warm and smells like iron, that it wasn't strawberry syrup after all.

"Mrs. Moss," he says, staring at the wad in his hand and at the trails of something now clearly identifiable as blood that led down the sink, to the drain and from there, he imagines, to the sewers where you can find the molten core of the earth. He wonders what burning blood smells like. "What are you doing?"

She waffles for a moment, mumbling under her breath, and then she tells him clearly in her hoarse, croaking voice: "Washing."

With a nod, Carlisle gingerly puts the steel wool down in the sink and leads her back to the kitchen where he knows there's a first aid kit, which he uses to disinfect the wound and wrap it up for now. "Your hands were clean a long, long time ago, though," says Carlisle, mystified. It's beyond him- not his understanding, but just his ability to want to understand why someone would do something like this to herself. For a moment, he wishes he had a cell phone- the land line for this house had been shut off ages ago.

"No, there was blood."

It's never any use to argue with her. "But it was your blood," Carlisle points out reasonably. "If you hadn't rubbed away like that, it wouldn't have bled."

She shakes her head, stubborn to the last. "Not my blood," she insists. "My boys' blood." He freezes, wondering if he should go upstairs and look for corpses. But she lifts bandaged hands- he wrapped so much gauze around her fingers they look like sausages instead of extensions of the hand- to her face where tears are beginning to bloom like fungus on a grave, and she says, "It'll never come off." From that, he knows- he doesn't understand how but he knows- that the boys are still fine, whatever and whoever they are. Josephine's shoulders, not thin but bony protrusions that jut out like a hanger to produce unnatural angles in her sweater. "They won't come back."

"I won't leave you," says Carlisle, not because he means it or because it's right or because he wants to stay with this disturbed woman forever, but because she wants to hear it. "If you need me, I'll be right next door, like always."

Her eyes are half-crazed as she stares up through hair that didn't gray quite right. "I hurt them so bad. One day, you'll want to leave too." Then she pushes him out the door, all the while sobbing after her boys.

shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer


shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer

PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 7:53 pm


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[PRP] Merroth and Carlisle
With Merroth
In Progress

Oh god. A feeling of impending doom... it's almost crushing! DX
Read it here!
PostPosted: Sun Nov 23, 2008 7:57 pm


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[PRP] Jahzara and Carlisle
With Jazhara
In Progress

OH THANK GOD, SAVE US FROM THE HORRIBLE GAMES OF CATCH SHIGEO FORCES US TO PLAY, PLEASE.
Read it here!

shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer


shibrogane

Stellar Lightbringer

PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2008 1:07 pm


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[PRP] Too Darn Cold
With Cecelia
In Progress

The swings are kind of lonely when you're alone, and he didn't particularly want to be outside anyway...
Read it here!
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