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 Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:11 am
**War Stories** Mom made them breakfast and then she and Nahuel left for the dig site. Ranza chugged a bowl of Lucky Charms and then headed off for ports unknown on Nahuel’s bicycle. The immediate result of this mass exodus from the Cooper household was that Orli and Nat were left alone eating pancakes and drinking orange juice.
The plastic starfighter was set at the center of the table. Orli looked from it to Nat a few times.
“You used to fly?” she asked again, still in awe. Nat nodded and swallowed. Orli studied him intently and popped a chunk of pancake into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully for a while.
“All kinds of ships,” elaborated Nat. “Fighters, freighters, battleships, cruisers…”
“Wow!” exclaimed Orli.
“Actually, I flew here,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
“Really?” she asked.
“I did,” he verified. “They won’t let me fly in the military anymore, but it doesn’t mean I can’t keep my personal ship in use.” He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back, smiling all the while. Orli stared at him in awe. This wasn’t just some old man – this was God incarnated.
He straightened his chair, stood up, and took his plate to the sink.
“Where’d your sister get off to?” he asked. Orli shrugged.
“I dunno,” she said, sliding out of her chair. “Her an’ Nah go places and never tell me anything.”
“Well,” said Nat, taking Orli’s plate over to the sink as well, “It looks like we’re stuck here with nothing to do.”
Orli sighed heavily. She concurred.
“This isn’t really how I imagined spending my vacation,” said Nat.
“We have blocks,” said Orli helpfully, “And puzzles and books and action figures and movies.” Usually when she and Nahuel and Ranza had nothing to do, they played with those, but those were no fun and grown-ups never seemed to play ‘em right. There had to be something better to do—Oh, RIGHT!
“Can you tell me a story?” she asked. “’bout being a pilot?”
“Sure,” said Nat, settling into the couch. “Come over here.”
Orli climbed up onto the couch next to him and pulled her goggles down over her eyes. “Ready,” she declared.
“Okay, so, a long, long time ago—“
“How long ago’s that?” asked Orli.
“Give or take… sixty years.”
“That’s a long time.”
“As I was saying,” declared Nat, clearing his throat. “A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”
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Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 8:45 am
**Ordinary Mayhem** “I found a potshard!” cried Nahuel as he danced around the living room, disturbing Ranza’s action figure diorama and the spaceport Orli and Nat were in the midst of constructing out of blocks on the coffee table. “It was my first day digging and I found something important.”
“Let me see it, then!” demanded Ranza, looking up from her book. It was an adventure about a girl who became a sailor, and she had read it at least seven times by now.
“Well, I don’t have it,” scowled Nahuel.
“Then it never happened!” Orli chimed in, pushing past him to get at her blocks that he had so unceremoniously knocked over. “You messed up my space port, Nah.” She looked disdainfully up at him and set about clearing blocks away from her model starship.
“Sorry,” muttered Nahuel, rounding on Ranza. “I swear I found it! I’m not allowed to keep it because it belongs to the institute, but I found it! Didn’t I, Mom?”
“Yes,” called Eshaa over the sounds of cooking.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” scowled Ranza. “I found six gold coins in the garden today.”
“Really?” asked Nahuel. “Show me!”
“I don’t have them,” shrugged Ranza. “I put them in my treasure box.”
“Arggh!” yowled Nahuel, and stalked off to find something to do that didn’t involve little sisters. Orli stared after him, put the last block back into place, and hopped up onto the couch next to Ranza.
“Whatcha readin’?” she asked.
“The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle,” explained Ranza. “I found that in that big box of books the neighbors gave us.” There had been a lot of adventure books aimed at a young audience in that box, but Ranza was drawn to the ones about high seas adventures. She’d sorted them out and intended to read them all, but had gotten caught up reading this one over and over again. “You’ve really got to learn to read, Orli. It’s great!”
Orli leaned over her sister’s shoulder and peered at the words on the page. She knew a few of them, but a lot of them were beyond her grasp. She was in preschool some days and they were learning their letters and their sight words, but she hadn’t mastered Dr. Seuss yet, let alone gotten to the point of reading anything with more than ten words a page.
“Grampa told me stories today,” she told her sister, “About how he met Gramma?”
“He’s not our grandpa,” corrected Ranza, turning the page. “He’s mom’s grandpa.”
“Well, it was cool! He was a pilot and he had to rescue her from bad guys who had captured her ‘cuz there was a war going on and--”
Ranza glared at her and looked back to her book.
“Orli,” she grumbled, “I don’t care.”
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2008 5:40 am
**Bye Bye Bye** Nat was set to leave on a Wednesday, early, before the space lanes clogged up. He insisted he'd enjoyed the lengthy visit, but it was time for him to go. (Nahuel was eying his room greedily.) He had "things" to get back to, which made Eshaa eye him suspiciously since he was retired, but he laughed and ruffled her hair (which was extremely amusing for Orli to watch because almost no one got away with that.)
"Can I go with you?" she asked before he managed to get out of the apartment.
"Maybe when you're a bit bigger," replied Nat, ruffling her hair like he had already ruffled Eshaa's.
"Why not now?" she demanded.
"You're a bit little for it now," he laughed, straightening the goggles that his ruffling had knocked askew. "But I promise, when you're bigger you can come with me."
"And you'll teach me to fly?" asked Orli zealously.
"You bet," he replied, grinning down at her. Eshaa muttered something about how they really needed to get going and left Orli at the mercy of two older siblings (who were not speaking to each other - something about a lost bike.) The whole situation seemed absurdly unfair. Ranza was the same size as her until the start of the summer! Why didn't Orli get to be that big? Did stars even grow?
Well, that was silly. They had to. All the stars in the marble city were grown ups. She resolved to ask the Red Man about when she might grow. It was important that it was soon, because she really wanted to collect on that promise... And escape attending boring pre-school classes.
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Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:31 pm
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Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:14 pm
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 7:36 pm
**A... pet?** Orli eyed the glass globe in front of her. Mom brought it home from work (mom was always bringing weird things home from work). It sparkled from within and swirled with some kind of internal nebula.
"What is it?" she asked, nudging it. It tried to roll away.
"Be gentle with it," admonished Eshaa, setting the orb back in its place. "It's an egg. There's a little baby unicorn in there."
Orli pressed her nose against the orb and squinted. "I don't see it," she said. Eshaa laughed.
"Of course you can't," she said, "It's still an egg. You'll see it when it hatches."
Orli thought about this for a moment and then nodded. "What's it for?" she asked. Eshaa smiled.
"It's for you!" she explained, ruffling Orli's hair. "It's a pet for you!"
Secretly, Eshaa had been worried about how much time her daughter spent alone and took it upon herself to remedy the situation with a companion of some sort. Nahuel and Ranza were thick as thieves, but Orli was a slower, more solitary sort of child...
"For me?" asked Orli, her eyes widening. The egg was such a pretty color - and it had a unicorn in it? Could they keep a unicorn in their apartment? Would it sleep in her bed? Could she ride it?
"What do you say?" asked Eshaa slyly.
Orli knew her manners. She latched onto her mother's leg. "Thank you!"
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 7:19 am
**Faramond** The unicorn hatched. He was yellow, like she was, which Orli greatly appreciated, and he was little like she was, too. She named him Faramond, after a prince in a story her mother read her.
She wrote her christmas list, which included "Being taller" and "A new x-wing toy."
The Red Man hadn't been to see her in a while. She wished he would come back and take her on adventures. Ranza was out in the city almost every day now, riding her bike and doing all sorts of things Orli was too small to do. Even with the unicorn, the little star was terribly lonely.
And Nahuel? Nahuel had gone back to Eden to do something there. Eshaa was trying not to worry, and she told Orli not to worry, either.
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Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 6:59 am
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Posted: Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:44 am
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Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 3:56 pm
**An Invitation** Faramond had ultimately settled on being the size of a medium-sized terrier, though sometimes, like when Orli took him with her to the park, he would become much bigger. It was great, like having a dog and a pony in one! He seemed to be nocturnal, too, so Orli got him to sit up with her at night on the window seat and look up at the stars. Cold nights were best for this, like the light from their building froze and fell to the ground and made everything in the sky burn brighter.
She closed her eyes and thought she remembered whizzing through the sky, ice crystals stinging the corners of her eyes, adrenaline pumping in her veins as she blazed a trail of her own luminosity across the night. She opened her eyes and watched a shooting star cross the sky in a blur of light. She opened the window for a better look and leaned out, still looking up. Another star burned through the darkness, and another, and another, until the whole sky was alight with shooting stars.
Orli’s mouth dropped open. She wanted to be up there with those stars. The sky was calling her, practically reaching out and grabbing her—
And with that, she began to rise off the seat cushion. Faramond whinnied in confusion, but Orli shushed him. “I’m gonna go see the Red Man,” she whispered. “I’ll be back by morning.” She was already gaining speed, passing through the window and then into the sky. The wind whipped past has face as she escaped the atmosphere, and then the glorious vista of the universe unfolded before her. All this was happening at speeds far faster than light – there was probably some star-magic involved, because she suspected there was such a thing, because they were, after all, stars
A bit later, she touched down in the great dark city, arriving on the front steps of a large house. The Red Man was waiting for her.
“Hi,” said Orli. He nodded to her, smiled, and ushered her inside. She’d been here before, she realized, just come in the back door. The light was all funny, a lot of it was in colors she couldn’t properly name or describe. The house was pretty, lots of smooth surfaces and furniture she didn’t understand the purpose of. Nothing like their apartment back home.
“Would you like to go to a party with me?” asked the Red Man.
Orli nodded excitedly. The Red Man always paid attention to her and did cool things with her, even if back home her siblings basically ignored her. A pair of women glowing faintly coppery brown appeared from a side door and motioned for her to follow them. Orli happily complied, ogling the interior of the house as she went. It was much nicer that what passed for interior décor at home, and it appealed to her internal sense of aesthetics.
The women held up a dress, sparkly and dark blue, that Orli thought was much too big for her, even if it was pretty. Then they put it on her, and it was, surprisingly just her size. Orli asked to see a mirror. The brown-glowing women didn’t say anything, but they let her look at one. She looked her reflection up and down and gave it a grin of approval.
“I finally grew!” she declared. The women didn’t say anything. She wondered if they were mute as they ushered her back into the hallway, combing her hair as they went. All efforts were pretty much pointless as it puffed back up into a nebulous mass almost immediately.
A few minutes later, the Red Man met them in the foyer. He took Orli’s arm in his, told her that she looked charming in the same way that a good-natured uncle might, said goodbye to the maids (or, at least, Orli assumed they were maids of some kind,) and then they were on their way.
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Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:08 am
**Party Time** The party the Red Man invited her to proved to be a lot of fun. More fun, she suspected, now that she had grown and could see past people's knees. Unfortunately, she was still only a bit more than waist high to the other Stars, but that was better than nothing. It was always important to be grateful for what you got - Mom said that when she tried to actually instill manners in any of her ferocious brood.
No one actually spoke to her for more than a few minutes - they mostly seemed to be conversing in a language that sounded to Orli like what light bouncing off crystals must sound like, and try as she might she could neither understand it nor begin to make the sounds. She wondered if she had lost some important part of her star-self if she couldn't speak their language, until the Red Man, who must have somehow sensed what she was thinking, assured her, "You are perfectly intact, it is simply locked away somewhere."
With that, he swept her away and began to attempt to teach her to waltz. It proved rather difficult, and ultimately pointless, because Orli apparently had two left feet when it came to dancing. They returned to the group and someone handed Orli a cake that had the consistency of a cloud and tasted like spun sugar and was not particularly filling. She saw the other stars eating occasionally from platters that were being passed around, but of course she was too short to reach, so she couldn't sample any of the other food.
She was now beginning to realize that there was no lighting source anywhere in the room. The only light came from the bodies around her, and from herself. Everyone here was softly radiant, yellow and red and white and blue. Almost everyone was perfectly youthful or at the beginnings of old age, and she was by far the youngest person in the room. The Red Man took her around and introduced her to people, but she was never quite clear if he was speaking in English or in the language of the Stars, because she thought that maybe she was starting to pick it up, like something she had known a long time ago. The other Stars all laughed and treated her like an old friend, even though Orli didn't remember them at all.
"Well, that rather complicates things a bit," laughed one woman.
"What?" asked Orli. This caused the woman to laugh even more, and Orli realized it was because she had unconsciously slipped into star talk.
"You were supposed to arrive on Gaia with your form intact," she explained, and her dance partner whirled away with her before Orli could ask any more. Orli gave the Red Man a puzzled look. He laughed and shook his head.
"Don't trouble yourself over it," he said, so she didn't. Orli quickly lost track of time and events after that, as was typical of her adventures in the star realm, and the morning found her fast asleep on the window seat in the kitchen beneath an open window, still wearing the dress from the star world, with a bracelet that looked like it was made of shards of moonlight clasped around her wrist.
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Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:08 pm
PRP The Gypsy Witch - Polly recruits Orli to confront a Witch in the Durem shopping place who has apparently placed some kind of curse on the Phoenix girl. Orli, previously traumatized by the movie Stardust, does not have her belief that a witch will cut out her heart and eat it reduced any by the ensuing conversation. The witch gets away, and the girls obtain a pair of charms with uncertain magical properties.
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 7:51 pm
PRP Stars All Maligned - Orli encounters Merroth on the playground and plants ideas in his head about his home planet's technological inferiority.
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Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 6:01 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 6:03 pm
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