Welcome to Gaia! ::

Life had not gone well for the Darnell family that year. At least, it hadn't started out that way: with the chickenpox, both Jacoba and Wisp's immune systems had taken a nosedive and packed up for the winter, and quite quickly after they were still recovering from the chickenpox they both developed whooping cough.

That was too much to bear. Chickenpox was one thing -- you could sit around being itchy with the rest of the children who also had chickenpox -- but living in an apartment block, and having whooping cough, were two things that were not going to work out. One couldn't whoop in private, and as a teacher there was no time in Beatrix's schedule for whooping-cough, and anyway leaving two pissed-off and bitching children at home was illegal and slightly against her moral code. (Not to mention how popular she would be with the other parents, spreading an epidemic of whooping-cough.) Dr. Darnell took the time off of work, packed her two girls up, and left smartly on vacation.

It was glorious. It was nearly worth being separated from creature comforts -- for Wisp, being separated from Christian and Rory and Missy and Tyler, and for Jace, being separated from... well, being separated from her bike and Jack, mainly, maybe missing having Antony around as a kick-toy and foil, whatever Jace missed in particular. Never doing anything by halves, their mother packed them away to Africa: they whooped all they wanted on the great golden expanse of the vaal, the veldt-fires and the summers in the south, the four o'clock thunderstorm that happened every afternoon right on the dot and was over in a few violent wet hours. It was also -- though Jace would have rather died than admit it -- nice to have Beatrix all to themselves, armed with her sunhat, sitting in a chair outside with them listening to them mess around or reading them a book or reminding Wisp with some asperity that, no matter how much she painted or drew or smeared colours on herself, her mother's blindness would not change, and even with Thwomp's assistance no amount of repetition could make her appreciate her art. This depressed her youngest daughter, except when she realised that at that juncture what she should really do was describe every single aspect of every piece of artwork in laboured detail. Jace came into a room too many times hearing the tail-end of, "... and then the fuschia pales out into lavender and the lavender has backlights of blue -- "

The coughing fits had taken them a while to recover from, especially Jace, who had been furious the entire time she had been stricken with pertussis that she could not exercise to her liking. Beatrix had very nearly contemplated stapling her to her bed in order to prevent her eldest from developing double pneumonia: only a very hoarse throat had stopped Jace from her normal bouts of yelling. Instead, she cultivated slit eyes and a sibillant hiss. Normally it was only teenagers who passionately hated their parents, but "I hate you" was a normal occurrance every time she had to very nearly be smothered by her parent to stop her from doing push-ups. "For one thing," Beatrix snapped, "you're ruining your flexibility, foolish child. Build muscle when you're a teenager. Don't try it now."

At least that sort of logic tended to shut Jace up.

School had continued for both of them, even language instruction, though it was as terrible as Bea had ever thought sitting with Wisp in bed as the girl haltingly said her "Comment vous appellez-vous?". She tried hard, but her accent was horrific. On the other side of the coin, Jace's Spanish was actually not too shabby, but she was as lazy as she was sharp when it came to the habla espanol and seemed to only enjoy learning slang words. Wisp showed willing: it was just that she was awful.

"Was cooking breakfast all right?" she would say.

"DE RIEN," said Wisp, who obviously hoped that force and enthusiasm would win out over grammar or making sense.

That was new, too -- dinner, the consensus was, especially as they all started to get well and sulk instead of malinger -- would be on a three-way rota. Cake seemed to get into the menu with depressing regularity when Wisp cooked supper, and though Jacoba offered more than two courses those two courses always seemed to have sausages in them. Nonetheless, they both blossomed -- lost their jaundice and Jace burned as brown as she could in the sun, a freckled skinny redhead instead of a white skinny redhead, metal legs flashing in their separate parts as she ran around and walked on her hands. Wisp sat down on the chair outside their little house in Botswana and drew the countryside with her fingers, entranced.

"That's kind of ghetto," Jace would say at seeing her work, which was vaguely graffiti-meets-Matisse.

"Ha ha," Wisp laughed agreeably, "it's wack!" (Beatrix wondered what planet her daughters had come down from and reminded them in the next breath that they were very white.)

They had all left tired and sick and frustrated with life: even Thrwomp had seemed to wilt a little under the pressure, not dancing about as he used to but simply rolling from place to place unless his mistress bade him move. Going away perked them all up. Both girls write hundred s of postcards home, which -- as their mother reminded them -- due to the unnatural law of postcards would not arrive until after they had gone back. This aggrieved Jace, who wanted Jack and Antony to know as quickly as damn possible that her snake-killing tally was up to four and there was still time for more animal murder.

Coming home was a relief, too. The house smelled a little of dust as both girls tried to get through the door at once, complete with yelling and pushing (mainly for the joy of yelling and pushing on Wisp's part), all suitcases and souvenirs -- God only knew how Jace had smuggled the knives through customs, but how she did it was a mystery possibly to be examined by the government. Beatrix's youngest ran around opening up the curtains and greeting all the furniture ("HI, TABLE!") as Jace flopped down on the couch and stretched out like a part-robot starfish: the answering machine was full of messages, choc-full, but Jack knew that if he had set himself on fire that he would have reached her by some other means. With a relieved sigh, Dr. Darnell set down her bag, leant against the countertop and breathed in home.

"Well, girls," she said. "We're back."

"BIENVENUE CHEZ TOI," said Wisp. "Lol! Mommy, can I phone Christian right now -- " ("Unpack first," said her mother. "And it's bienvenue à la maison.") "I missed him and Missy and Rory and everyone so much! I can't believe how much! I'll never leave him again!"

"Well, why don't you marry him," sneered her sister, with a well-placed and sophisticated curl of her lip.

"Because he is the platonic love of my life," argued back Wisp sanguinely, "and also, we're going to be superheroes, I've decided this. You can't fall in love with your sidekick. Did Batman fall for Robin?"

"Batman was totally gay."

"I don't care -- "

"Less in-depth discussion of homosexuality in Western print comic," said their mother. "More unpacking."

Coming home was -- coming home.

Wisp Darnell had, in fact, pretty much wanted to go and speed over to the Deakon house the night she had returned: but there had been a ban on leaving the apartment for reasons she only found out later, and once she woke up attempted to get dressed, brush her teeth, shower and eat breakfast all at once. This worked as well as it usually did (ie, not terribly), but eventually she had pulled on her ripped-up overalls and her favourite and slightly equally ripped-up tie-dyed t-shirt, struggling to put on her hi-tops as she raced out the door. She very nearly caused a couple of traffic accidents as she put her curly blonde hair up in a ponytail as she rode, hands-free and not thinking about it, Jace's monstrous old bike eventually squealing to a halt outside of the Deakons'.

Knapsack tugged off, she was nearly horizontal in her race for the door, pushing the doorbell twice for luck and hopping from foot to foot in her agony. (This time, at least, she checked the front yard to see if Christian was there. No Chris.)

"Coming!!" a duel set of voices called. They were deeper than they had been, and they went on to say, "We're not buying anything, in case you're wondering!" before the door opened and Chris looked out at the rainbow colored girl blankly.

"You still look like a rainbow exploded," he told her, so shocked at the sight that his words escaped his lips before making it through his mind.

"CHRIS!"

Not at all offended (he knew personally that looking like a rainbow had exploded was the look that Wisp was going for), the blonde girl flung herself forward at him. Obviously, the fact that he had grown up meant one very important thing: he had graduated to become her jungle gym once more. "Chris! Chris! You grew! You're humungous! I missed you so much! This is the coolest thing ever! You're like a tank!"

Rory had been hanging out over at Chris', then when he answered the door, she head a very familiur voice at the door and went to inspect it. At the door was a very brightly colored girl who did, indeed, looked like a rainbow exploded. She gasped.

"WISP!" she cried, then tried to get around Chris to see the other girl. Rory was much bigger than what she had been, too.

Chris patiently let Rory climb over him, used to it by now. "Where you been?" he demanded. "Get in here!" he added a bit belatedly. "Ma!" he yelled over his shoulder. "Wisp is back!!"

"Wisp?!" Missy almost screamed, storming down the stairs. "Wisp! Come in here!!"

Wisp was laughing out loud at this point in sheer delight: she had springboarded off of Chris to fling herself at Aurora, safe in the knowledge that Rory would not conveniently sidestep and let Wisp splat into the wall. "Rory too?!" She was laughing even as she spoke, and as rarely happened, was immediately putting on a prismatic lightshow of rainbow twinkles around her head. It looked like a psychotic suncatcher. "Rory! Rory, you're beautiful! I want to draw a bazillion pictures of you, and, and -- Missy!"

And, of course, there was beloved Missy, who the girl threw herself at much more gently than she had belted at Rory and Chris. She hugged her around the middle and looked around at everyone, blue eyes dancing. "I grew, didn't I?" she said. "I grew whole centimetres!" (This was not impressive in light of the fact that Rory and Chris had put on nearly whole metres.)

Rory laughed, having given an 'ooph' when she got spring boarded into by Wisp. Not that she cared so much about being used as a landing pad. "Where have you been? I missed you!" she told the other girl.

"And ---" she stopped, blinking a moment. "I can't tell! I grew too, and you were already big and--" And she couldn't tell if Wisp was bigger than before or not!"

"You're both still little," Chris said as his mother cooed over Wisp happily along with Rory.

"So tell us where all you've been!" Missy said, pulling them all towards the kitchen. "I made cake! Actually I made two cakes."

"It was chocolate," Chris said evilly, licking his lips.

"Chris!" Missy said, only to sigh and shake her head.

"Two cakes." Wisp looked as though she had died and gone to Cake Heaven. "I'm never leaving ever again."

She swarmed into the kitchen with the rest, apparently more than happy that her two friends now towered over her: she dropped her knapsack on the counter. "I got you all souvenirs," she said, "only Jace helped me pick out Tyler's, only I told her that he totally didn't shoot anyone any more, but it's a really pretty throwing knife if you look at it art-tis-tically." Wisp liked things artistic: she had used her star sprinkles in order to paint a huge, colourful tree down one of her arms, its roots curling around her elbow, which was actually fairly cool for a kid and made lots of people stop and stare aghast that a tiny blonde child had such a huge tattoo. "She would've come over, I guess, but Mom is taking her to the cemetary, or something. I don't know. Chris, did you eat the chocolate cake?! You have grown up with jerk genes! Rory, he's grown up with jerk genes!"

Rather than recriminatory, Wisp just sounded impressed.

"He did!" Rory agreed earnestly. "And he keeps calling me short! I'm not," she said and added a tongue-stick-out aimed at Chris. "And you better not have eaten the -other- cake!" she added, giving him a poke in the arm. Not that it would hurt him, course.

Then she looked back at Wisp. "Oh!! I can do something special now too! Like you can color and Chris is strong? I can run fast!" And land on her face, usually.

"It's the stopping she has trouble with," Chris said dryly. "And I only ate one of the cakes, I promise. It was just begging to be tested, you know?" He pulled a chair out at the table and sat down. Obviously he planned on having MORE cake.

"You only get one slice," Missy told him as she headed to get the cake for everyone. "Tyler's gone shopping, I'm afraid, but he'll want to see you as soon as he gets back."

"That's so perfect." Everything was perfect, obviously: Wisp hopped up on the chair next to Christian and hugged into his arm, one finger absently tracing a red lightning bolt down his arm and a pinky adding in the shadow. Then the lightning bolt got given an angry face. "Rory, I knew you'd develop your super power. Now we can get to our plan of being a super hero team."

"Super hero team?" Rory asked, just a little puzzledly. She had been distracted watching Wisp paint on Chris' arm. The puzzledness went away as she grinned. "Well, I got a power now!"

"Oh! What all did you bring??" Cake and gifts! It was like a birthday party or something!

Chris watched the tattoo curiously, remembering how hard it was to take off Wisp marks without her help. Or, impossible, actually. "Shouldn't Rory be the lightening one?" he asked curiously. And he, of course, would wind up being the tacky "thunder."

He already knew how this trend went.

Missy passed out plates of cake. "How's your mother, Wisp? And your sister? We've missed them, too!"

"Oh, they're fine!" Wisp switched arms to the pretty light-skinned girl next to her: instead of a lightning bolt, she started in on drawing a cheetah with green spots. She also tried to eat the cake with her left hand as she did this, squinting in concentration. "Jace got, like, mega brown in Africa! I lolled! And me and Mommy learnt French all the time. I can sort of speak French now but she says my accent is really, really bad. Bien!"

Distracted again and the cheetah done (it wasn't that bad, even if it did have green spots) she dug in her knapsack once more. She took out a tissue-paper parcel, and unwrapped it a little before pushing it over the counter at Missy. Missy was also gifted with a melting smile: Wisp adored Missy. "I got you some earrings and a necklace," she said, as the tissue paper was pulled apart more. A pair of beaded earrings -- blue and white -- sat nestled in the paper, along with a fringe collar. "I thought they were pretty."

More things got dumped out of the knapsack as she went through it -- an apple, a sketchbook, some gum -- as she pulled out two more lumpy presents. Another beaded length of fringe -- green and red and yellow -- sat in Rory's parcel: it had actually come to life as a necklace, but would be better off as a bracelet. There was also a rolled-up sheaf of paper, the same as the rolled-up sheaf of paper in Christian's parcel, which also contained an enormous fang and a bottle of sand. "That's a crocodile tooth," Wisp pointed out artlessly, "and the sand is mysterious good-luck sand from the Kalahari. And the paper is because I missed you both so much, that wherever I went, I decided I'd draw the landscape but I'd also draw you in it. So you came along on the vacation with me in Spirit."

Another tissue-paper parcel was dumped on the table: it contained a wickedly sharp, oddly-shaped throwing knife with a number of points, squarish in shape with an ivory end. "And that's Mr. Tyler's," Wisp said. "Jace picked it out. She would have come along, I guess, but she's in a weird mood."

"It's lovely!" Missy said, promptly putting it all on. She really did like them! Of course, seeing as it was Missy, she would have loved anything. She adored Wisp just as much as she did Rory.

Chris grinned at the sight of the tooth, picking it up and looking at it. He was about to comment when she mentioned Jace again. He hesitated instead, frowning as he remembered that Jace had gone to the grave. "Well... um..." he said slowly, wondering how to explain it.

"Oh wow!" Rory said, taking her things and looking them other. The necklace was turned into a bracelet as she paused in her eating of cake, and examing on cheetah tattoo. She grinned a chocolate grinned to her best friend, then hugged her since she was in hugging distance.

Then she went about examining the pictures to see where all they went. "You had a good time though? Even if we missed you and you missed us!" she was now super happy, and energetic because of it. But then at Chris' tone, she calmed down and gve them curious looks.

"It was awesome once I got well," confirmed Wisp, who also had a matching chocolate grin. She glowed: the little rainbow prisms would still pop up every so often, out of everyone's peripheral vision. "We went on a safari and I saw this huge pride of lions and warthogs, and gazelles. And we stayed in this little cottage and there were heaps of poisonous snakes! I bet you would've liked the gazelles, Rory. They can really zoom."

Obviously this was what Wisp found exciting. "Even Mom had fun," she said, "she took us around and showed us everything, and she seriously loosened up at times. Mom really needs to chillax." Another bite of cake. "And Jace had fun, too, she's really cool when she's not trying to be, like, hardcore. I wish she'd come over today," she added meditatively. "I don't know why she's being bizarre, because Harper's in heaven and that's a happy thing, right?"

It was probably entirely Christian's fault that Wisp wanted to be a burgeoning Catholic. Father Higgins had his work cut out for him.

"So you know he's dead?" Chris asked. "We had a memorial service and everything. But a lot of people miss him now." He looked down at his empty plate, wondering when he had eaten it.

Missy sighed. They were far too young to deal with death! But it seemed they were growing up fast in more ways than one.

Rory, who didn't know Harper and there for was detatched from the whole death thing, played with the frosting bits on her plate. Wisp and Chris both knew Harper, so this was more their conversation.

But Wisp took it better than Chris!

"Mommy told me this morning," said the blonde girl. "I didn't know him as well as Jace; she told Jace last night. But it's weird, you know? She didn't cry or anything; she just got real quiet."

She took a fingerful of frosting, possibly to make herself feel better. "We didn't get the message that he was dead until we were back," she said, "but that's not a surprise, 'cause we didn't have a lot of phones in Botswana."

Chris nodded.

"It was a tragedy," Missy said quietly. "Which is why I want all of you to promise to not forget that this sort of thing can happen very easily. All it takes is one little candle to burn down an entire house."

Chris had a betraying thought, one that told him he'd probably survive even if the house burnt down. Without a mark on him.

"Yes ma'am," Rory said obedantly. It was more to just say something again than not. Then she looked around at Chris and Wisp. The mood needed to be changed.

She spotted Chris' earring. That was a good enough topic change. "Chris' got an earring that makes him weaker! So he doesn't accedently smush things!" she told Wisp informitivly.

More than happy to change the subject, Wisp immediately investigated Christian's ears. "That looks wicked," she said enviously. Of course, her ears had been pierced for a while: little paper Japanese good-luck stars dangled from them, affixed to little lengths of chain. "I hope you can still smush things, though, Chris. You're going to be my sidekick, you know?"

"How come I'm the sidekick?" he asked her curiously. "What all can you do? Other than drawing on people?" It was a rude question, but being a sidekick was a slam to his ego!

"Ok, then you can be -my- sidekick!" Rory told him happily. "If you can keep up!" she added with a wicked little grin. The girls were now teaming up on him, something Rory didn't used to do but she was discovering it was fun!

"I'm the oldest," Wisp informed him airily. "And I have the most ideas, and I know all about justice, and I know about freedom. And I can start to do this. Just watch."

She moved back on her chair and eyed her plate; she spun her pointer finger around in the air, more to assist in her concentration than anything, and with the other hand grasped the Rainbow Belt insignia that she had currently pinned as a belt buckle. Suddenly, a little transparent flicker of rainbow whirled around her finger, and she snapped it down with a crack. It hit the plate, made it wobble a little, and fizzled out immediately.

"Okay, that kind of sucks," she admitted, "but I'm getting better at it. I'm going to be training from now on. In-between flute and French and soccer. We should all train together, you know? We'll get Rory running so fast she'll beat the Flash. Kickin' rad!"

"You can... kick a plate's butt," Chris drawled.

"Christian!" Missy scolded. "I'm sure it will be very impressive when you've gotten more practice, Wisp," she said happily. "I can't wait to go clothing shopping for it!" Because with Chris there neither of the girls would get hurt, after all. It sounded like a lot of fun to her!

"Yeah!" Rory agreed happily, grinning impishly at Chris, because he was being a party pooper, and she was up to no good. That and the thought of Chris in spandex was just funny to her.

"And Wisp and I will get better and train and everything! I've been working on the running, too! And you'll get better at rainbow whip thing!" Which, in her opinion was really cool.

Rory was immediately high-fived. Wisp loved Rory. Having another girl superhero on the team? That was just great. "Of course I will," she said, "we're going to be the best superhero team ever, especially if Missy helps us with outfits, and we're going to show the Man that he can't keep us down!"

Who the Man was, it wasn't readily apparent.

A fashion designer conceives garment combinations of line, proportion, color, and texture. He or she may or may not know how to sew or make patterns. Formal training is not always essential, yet most fashion designers are formally trained (apprenticed) and schooled.

It was late afternoon: all homework done, all French conversation practice done, and Mom had just brought home the flute that she would use to start her flute lessons. They were going to go shopping later in the week for soccer shoes, so that she could start soccer, but just then Wisp Darnell didn't give a lot of priority to soccer or la Francais or the flute: what she was interested in was superhero outfits, and the reams of paper scattered all around her with scrunched-up designs confirmed that.

Designing a superhero team outfit was harder than it looked.

Christian wouldn't wear spandex, for instance, even though everyone knew that lots of superheroes wore spandex; so that meant that they weren't going to match. That grieved her heart terribly. Having matching uniforms only maybe in different colours had sounded great; but then again, her personal identity and creativity wasn't Rory's, and both of theirs certainly weren't Chris', who would have needed like ten miles of spandex anyway to make an outfit. Making an outfit for Chris, period, was going to be hard. Lots of superheroes were wearing black nowadays. Black was fine for Christian and Rory, who would look cool in it, but it was a secret that Wisp's powers only worked if there was lots of colour around. That meant she needed an outfit that looked -- like Jace was fond of saying -- like a rainbow had thrown up all over her, which was how she liked to look anyway.

She already had a list of necessities:

Christian

THINGS THAT FIT!!!

Rory

Let's her run

Me

Pouch 4 star sprinkels

Which was a start, but not very specific.

Maybe Rory would end up wearing spandex. Rory was cheerful and gentle and kind with her, and would probably not mind wearing anything so long as it wasn't dorky, and she would look fine in spandex anyway so long as they cut a hole for her tail. And they wouldn't give her a mask like the Flash, either. Masks were not something they were going to indulge in. Secret identities were no good when one of you was like the size of a small building, black-skinned and with fangs, and if Christian wasn't going to have a secret identity then they were all loyally going to be publically super together.

She did have kind of a love for Hellblazer, though. Maybe they could just find Christian a big leather coat.

Frustrated, Wisp chewed on a blonde curl that had fallen into her face. Shopping with Missy would make her and Rory's lives easier, because Missy had good fashion taste but was also really practical, but you couldn't really go and buy superhero outfits anywhere. It wasn't like in The Incredibles, which was one of her favourite films: there wasn't any Edna Mode in real life. And you couldn't buy armour, either. What if any of them got shot? She dismissed that thought immediately, as it made her feel chilly inside, but the fact they didn't have armour was still annoying! They were just kids, after all. Maybe the robbers and villains wouldn't shoot them, because they would think, "Oh, those are just kids. I can't shoot kids!" and give themselves up. Maybe being young had its good sides.

Wisp balled up the piece of paper and started afresh. Back to the drawing board.