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 Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:00 pm
Arrival: June 24th, 2007!
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Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:01 pm
Reserved for reaction post type thinger, hopefully I'll get to doing eventually ):
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Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 7:02 pm
Got Elly checked out, seems her condition's real serious, more than I'd thought. Doc says its called hemophilia and it's typically found in boys and usually of royal decent, so called royal disease that it is..... yeah, real "princess" like for her to potentially bleed to death from a paper cut......
Garrett's getting better at the whole adjusting to people thing. I mean he ain't no social susy but at least he'll give a polite nod to the driver and speak his own order for the waitress... and Dad wasn't all too bad with him, I'd expected more questions, or at least that look he gives me. Guess he thought it was just as well not to bother now that there's two and well, I think it's pretty ******** obvious they dinnit come outta me, that's for certain..
Gotta go, Chuck, write you soon as we I can. ********, I'm taking too easy to this mothering s**t, it scares me.....
-L
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Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 11:53 am
Chuck,
Thought I'd mail you this. I'm dropping off the kids' letter to Santa so it wasn't out of my way or nothing. Garrett is surprisingly quick at picking up on printing and writing. Smart kid. Heh. Elly's super excited about the fat man coming and bringing her stuff. Kid's a real angel, everything's so refreshingly new for her that it makes me think twice about the little things. I just hope I can scrounge enough to satisfy'm. I can't help but feel over my head in this stuff, y'know? Too young, too much, too fast.....?
Couldn't do it without your support, though, Chuck. We'll be back in town soon enough.
See you in the new year. - L
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 7:29 pm
[x-posted from Garrett's journal because Elly is mentioned repeatedly]
[ Quest Part One: Initial Fears & Doubts ]
Elly is fast asleep in her crib, once his, but now a sturdy old hand-me-down to his beloved younger sister. Her chest rises and falls rhythmically, much to his relief, and her breathing is not laboured as it was earlier that month when she had suffered from a mild cold. But any sort of illness to a baby in her condition is doubly as severe as it is serious.
A letter lies on the brown comforter of the toddler's bed, its envelope, hastily torn, beside it. It had arrived much earlier that day, it now being just past eight, his bedtime, one generously extended from the previous set time of 7:30, under his insistence of him being grown up enough for such a bedtime.
Even back in his own bed, no longer hotel and hostel hopping with his mother and sister due to the immediacy and seriousness of Elly's aforementioned illness, Garrett feels far too restless to succumb to the lures of sleep just yet. If anything, the letter had provided more reason for his legs to be twitching and his wings ruffling. His right one does just that, on its own accord, as the thought crosses the boy's mind. He almost smiles, touching the upper bend of his disobedient wing as if soothing a separate living being, one that complies, albeit grudgingly, to his will.
Garrett hops off his bed, halted stiff as his taloned feet click against the hardwood flooring. He listens with concentrated pointed ears for any disturbance it might have caused, any alarms he may have raised, and is relieved to hear nothing but the usual cramped apartment noises; leaky bathroom faucet, the murmur of a radio, the slight hum of fridge, and the sloshing of a fishtank filter.
Click, click, click!
He travels to the window, ignoring the slew of Elegy's toys that have seemed to spill over onto his tidy side of the room, and pushes open the window. There is slight resistance; the night earlier had dumped another half ruler length of snow and frost, which of course looked pretty so long as you're inside near the fire, looking out said frost-decorated window, and not out in it, following Mum in ill fitting snowpants to a gig of some friend of a friend.
A cool, but gentle breeze slides over the boy's skin and tickles between his feathers. He selfishly takes a moment to soak up the feeling of being licked by the wind before the temperature suddenly hits him hard, as does the realization that Elly's breathing is slightly askew since his opening of the window. Nibbling his lip with that pang of regret, he instead does something rather uncharacteristic.
It takes two scrambling tries, but he manages to pull himself up onto the windowsill and swing his legs out the window. The winter air nibbles at his taloned toes, and this does not feel as nice on them as it did through his feathers. Still, he tries his best to ignore this, and instead concentrates on pushing open the window even further. With a muffled grunt, he shoves the wooden frame up above his head, and is bathed entirely in moonlight, sitting six stories up, dangling dangerously from a windowsill.
He had been thinking nothing coherent whilst doing this, but now, with the view he'd seen plenty of times before this moment now taunting him at a different angle, Garrett is suddenly overwhelmed by panicked thoughts that flood his senses.
Foolishness! You're HOW far up and WHAT do you think is going to happen? You can't seriously believe your wings will just magically know what to do when you do not, and that you won't become birdboy soup on the sidewalk! What happened to the reasonable, surefooted, stop-and-think-this-through Garrett?
This inner dialogue, strangely done in a voice very similar to his mother's, plagues the poor frightened Eden toddler as he sways right to left, whiteknuckled with fright, atop the windowsill.
With a striking intake of breath, Garrett is suddenly alerted of all his senses, and he is nearly knocked backwards from the impact. With a chirpy, scared noise, he withdraws his legs from the cold torment, and scrambles down in a maddened search for solace in solid ground, something he never thought he'd be driven to. He shuts the window with chemical-driven strength and slums immediately against the wall to the floor. He hugs his transitory flesh-to-scalier-flesh legs and buries his dark nose into his knees with a deeply rooted shiver.
Next time, he promises himself in the darkness, next time he won't be scared. He'll trust himself, and his overactive wings.
And as he decides this, his eyes grow very heavy, and he slips into dreamland, wherein he is flying, without care and without help, safely through the clouds.
This is where his mother will find him when she goes to fetch him in the morning, asleep beneath the window, his wings encasing him but twitching wildly as ever.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 7:30 pm
[ Quest Part Two: Swallow Your Fears ]
Garrett idly nibbles on a syrup soggy waffle, his vivid golden eyes glazed over and staring off into space. He swings his legs beneath the kitchen table to the beat that drones out of an ancient, crackling radio, but makes no other response in regards to the goings on around him.
His mother fusses over getting Elly to eat and keep it in to be swallowed, and not to decorate her bib. The baby flat out refuses, and the pea mixture squirts out her gums once more. Alaina groans and tosses down the spoon and glass container in a frustrated huff.
"Garrett?" she snaps without realizing her tone. The bird toddler doesn't seem to hear her in his daze, giving her time to adjust said tone, whether either notices this or not. "Honey, you've been chewing at that same piece for the last twenty minutes."
She moves to the overflowing kitchen sink, turning on the faucet and squirting grimy silverware with yellow soap. "Nevermind I found you curled up on the floor this morning. Is something bothering you? Issit nightmares, or the bogeyman?"
At the mention of such a beast, Elegy's eyes bug out against her baby fattened cheeks, and she stiffens up, looking to her beloved brother for his reply.
Garrett slowly turns in his place to give his mother a dull roll of the shoulders. Though never one for conversation, his night fright had made the trivial chore of conversation the furthest desire from the toddler Eden's mind. Wordlessly, he gathers his plate and fork, scrapes the half-eaten breakfast into the garbage, and dumps the silverware in with the rest of the dirty dishes.
Alaina is quick on her feet to catch her oldest charge before a premature teenage-esque silence rift comes between them. "How about I take you and Elly to the creek, Gare? Would you like that," she tries, tiptoeing around her words cautiously, "being around all those trees? It's prolly warmed up enough that the creek's not totally frozen, too."
Standing now in the doorway where he stopped to consider his guardian's proposal, Garrett chews on his bottom lip as he rolls the idea around in his head. His stiff and sore wings are suddenly a lot less so at the mention of open air and treetops. He provides a polite, but definite, nod, and tears off to get dressed for the day.
--
She knew what must have been bugging him. After all, she had been the one to read to him the letter that came in the mail, being that the toddler hasn't quite mastered the English language yet. In addition, she could tell from his not-yet-impulse-controllable wings and their eager twitching as they passed a tree down their sidewalk stroll that what the poor, DNA-confused child wanted, at least the bird-driven half, was the chance at flight.
Alaina nonchalantly tosses around some commentary. Oh, look at that nice sparrow over there, it's pretty. That old birds nest I'm sure will be occupied again quite soon now that the weather's looking up. I wonder if the birds come back together in a V-shape.
She shoulders a snowsuit paralyzed Elegy and collapses on a bench at the side of the snowy path. Garrett eyes her, silently hungry for more venturing into deeper, thicker foliage, but waits very patiently on his feet for her. She gestures with a briefly free hand and insists, "Go on and look around a little, hun. Just stay where you know how to get back to me, okay?"
"Mm!" Garrett tears off, his boots crunching the snow with every step. He makes his way toward a beautiful willow tree with low, thick branches, one he's visited oftentimes for solitude in the spring and summer months, even once in the fall, but never in winter. It is a fair bit less magestic without its engulfing strings of leaves, and, after careful consideration on the toddler's part, not good company for a winter's day.
He moves on to the next of his favourite trees, a sturdy, albeit also bare, maple. This one is less foreboding and stark, for one reason or another, and without hesitation, Garrett tosses off his boots and begins to climb.
Now, he isn't the best of climbers, and certainly his taloned feet do nothing but cause him certain agony in trying to find proper footing, but within what he considers a decent time frame, he pulls himself onto the thickest of the lowest branches at roughly eight feet in the air.
His blackened hands feel rough and wind-chewed. He takes a moment to collect himself, and finally gives a glance down. It's not so bad, he tells himself, certainly not like yesterday was. Not bad at all. This is a good height. Heights are good.
Something rustles nearby; a skittish squirrel takes off in the other direction upon the sight of what it must have perceived to be a very overgrown enemy. Garrett half chuckles. In doing so, his wings relax, though he doesn't remember ever tensing them. An updraft whistles through the trees and caresses the tiny child's wings, teasing them with what they could behold if only given the chance, like giving a taste of water to a long-parched desert tormented traveler. Garrett recognizes this, and even thinks on it a bit, the words from the letter echoing through his mind as if his wings were reflecting them back at him.
Try, try!
He swallows harshly without realizing the lack of moisture in his throat. He moves onto his stomach, staring down at the snow-laden ground. Not so high, right? It's nothing, even if I fall. Snow's soft.
He was proud, and convinced, by this revelation. He's not too high to cause serious pain, and there's enough snow to cushion any potential fall. Besides, he adds with less of a quiver in his mental reasoning voice, he's sort of flown before, with Nahuel! Well it was kinda like flying..
Unbeknown to him, as Alaina preferred it to be, his mother watches with every ounce of curiosity quelled by every fiber of the insistence for his privacy. Elly has fallen asleep, finally, in her stroller, puffs of hot breath visible in sequential clouds from out of the blankets. She hums softly to provide the tiny babe a soothing naptime melody, while also keeping her occupied, as well, as Garrett takes his sweet time testing the waters, so to speak.
Similarly, something he has picked up from his adoptive mother, the Eden toddler whistles lowly to himself to calm his nerves. He hugs the tree's thick, ribbed trunk as he brings himself into a crouch. His feet feel the shape of the also sturdy limb and fall into place as if made for this branch in particular. The corners of his mouth tug up in a sort of nervous assurance.
Another gust of late winter wind licks up at him, and he clutches the nearest solid objects for dear life, even though the force of the wind isn't enough to knock him from the tree. He waits like this, white knuckled, til his breathing returns to normal, and his eyes relax enough to allow himself to rapidly blink away the sting.
His wings, however, aren't so patient. They embrace the last gust of wind with open arms, so to speak, rippling beautifully under each finger of air that drags its way through the crevasses between the feathers. They remain open, as if urging Garrett to take the leash and let this puppy out for a walk already!
On the next big breeze, he decides.
Well, it comes and goes just like the last, with the young boy clinging instinctively to keep his balance. It is then that he decides that waiting for a wind is not exactly the brightest of his ideas.
On the count of three, he decides.
Well, three comes and still Garrett sits, perched in his tree, looking like what he imagined to be a big, scared, silly doofus. He grows angry at himself, and frustrated that his instincts don't just take over like he's sure they should have done, or would have, had he been a regular ol' bird and not some ridiculous half bird, half boy. And who's to say that he can fly, anyway, just because he has the wings?
Alaina can see from the cross look on her boy's face that this whole ordeal has gotten the poor thing very frustrated and disappointed. In truth, she was rather expecting him to take to the air naturally, and that was as much her mistake as it was his. He's no fish born in water, nor was he born to the sky, exactly.
And just as both of them assume that they are through trying for the day, Garrett moves to jump down from the tree. Yes, jump. It didn't occur to him that this was exactly what he'd been really trying to do the entire time.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 7:31 pm
[ Quest Part Three: A Thirst That Knows No Quenching ]
Jumping down seemed like the logical thing to do. It was, after all, a faster method than climbing, especially with feet like his. But what Garrett had not counted on was just how eager and ready his wings were for him to take his leap, and give them the chance to show him just what they can do.
At first, it feels like a regular fall. There's no resistance, and his clothes ripple with the cool air that finds its way through the bottom of his jacket.
But that is where it takes an abrupt left, quite literally. His left, usually the less vocal of the two, catches the air and bends swiftly, cupping it with unusual grace. The right eagerly follows suit, albeit out of sync from the other. He twists on an odd angle that favours his left, and his heart leaps into his throat and threatens to prevent all air from reaching his now-burning lungs.
Alaina, too, is breathless. It looks to her that in his fall, he twisted awkwardly and is quickly accelerating toward a very bad ending. She leaps onto her feet as her motherly instincts fuel her, drive her.
One two, one two, up down, there there!
His wings play a game with the brisk winter air, a sweet tug of war that lends them a chance to cup the air against their feathers and then allow it to slip away as they bend, just like a cat playing with a mouse by letting it slip through its fingers. Only in this case, it's more a case of not knowing how to keep it captured and not of letting the mouse go, in a sense, as the inexperience clearly shows through the boy's awkward battle against the air.
Because while his wings are certainly having their fun, the rest of Garrett's body is thrashed around, barely missing a lower maple twig, bumping a knee against the rough trunk.. it certainly does not look as enjoyable as it feels.
And oh, does it ever feel wonderful! Through the imminent, though ignored, panic and anxiety comes a pleasurable amount of endorphins that makes the situation seem completely unreal to him, and seems to slow the moment right down. Or are his wings really holding him up a little more? He can't tell, not at all. Nor does he remember to check his wristwatch, one he wears on his left wrist with the face side against the underside of his wrist.
He hangs there, in the balance, through certainly not balanced, rocking, sort of hovering, midway between where he once was and where he will soon land. And he knows this because, with every losing round of cat-and-mouse played between his wings and the wind, he gets closer to the mounds of snow on the ground. [He's quite relieved by the speed at which he is to land, however! Quite reasonable, and not at all damaging.] Although his exhilaration is unlike any other, the realization of it all joins that cloud of panic and anxiety, making it more difficult to ignore the fact that he doesn't know what the heck he's doing.
With a lean to the right, as he knows enough to favour his unruly right wing, Garrett finds the base of his wings and sends a shivering twitch through the structure to flap, flap, and, well, just keep doing what it's doing. Although this methodology throws the rhythm askew - the idle thought of his mother's insistence in everything having a unique rhythm, even mundane daily activities, rises in his mind - his recovery time is not so bad.
At some point, he had tucked his knees in . Now, so close to the ground as he is anyway, he stretches his cramping legs out and sinks into the snow. His wings, wholly satisfied by their endeavor, through, it seems, eager for that moment's notice to start again, fold comfortably against the back of his jacket. Dumbfounded, Garrett sinks completely into the snow. The temperature itself is enough to wake him right up again, and he pulls on his boots posthaste.
He runs up the path on wobbly legs, throwing himself into the embrace of his waiting mother's arms.
"Mum," he cries in a quivering voice into her coat, "Mum, I flied. Flew. Flewed?"
He pulls away enough to see her pixie-featured face for reassurance in his grammar, a sort of coping, distractive mechanism he's come to adopt.
"Flew," she corrects him with a nod of her bright red head of hair, her voice gentle, especially now. "And I know, I saw you."
His eyes widen out in an unreadable sort of expression, one that could waver between surprise or betrayed horror. Alaina clenches her jaw, in that moment wishing for it to be the first.
"I.. I donnow how long I was up there," he stammers, suddenly crestfallen. His letter had mentioned a flight being twelve seconds, and he'd forgotten all about it in the heat of the moment. His shame travels to his face and lights up his already flushed cheeks with a saddened glower.
Alaina brings her fingers through her charge's unruly, thick hair affectionately, and brings herself into a crouch to be at his eye level. "Darling, how long did it feel like? I know when I was watching you.. fly.. I thought it felt like forever. I'm sure it was at LEAST, oh, twenty two seconds."
She gives him a little wink and taps his naturally darkened nose playfully, knowing that was exactly what he wanted to hear. In truth, she wasn't sure how long it had been, either. What she was concerned about would now be gone, and replaced instead with a laundry list of new fears and concerns as only a mother with a child learning to fly would have: padding up all the sharp corners at home, sealing up the windows, restocking the first aid kit..
Garrett smiles brightly a rarely seen full smile, showing a full set of tiny baby teeth, apparently very pleased with his answer. He skips over to his sister's stroller, leaning in and giving her a sloppy kiss on her cheek. Her eyes flutter open and she yawns cutely before reaching out to grab at her brother's pointy ears. He laughs, pulling out of harm's reach, and starts up the path ahead of his mother and sister, certainly more energized and more cheerful than any day in recent memory!
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Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:53 am
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