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 Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 9:41 pm
2 - solo [baby]
3 - orp [baby]
4 - orp [baby]
5 - solo [child]
6 - solo [child]
7 - prp [child]
8 - prp [child]
9 - prp [child]
10 - orp [child]
11 - solo [child]
12 - solo [child]
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Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2009 9:50 pm
Eight- who didn't like the fact that if you said her name very fast, it sounded like Eighty Carter or A Decanter- had orange hair, freckles, and greenish-blue eyes that were hidden behind square-rimmed glasses with coke bottle lenses. Behind her head, casting everything within a certain area of her into interesting shades of blue, hovered a ring of light. She was slim but sort of flabby, clearly relying more on keeping her diet regimented than exercise to keep herself in size sevens. All her weight went straight to her hips anyway. The best thing that could be said about her happened to be that she was 'responsible'.
The first time any of them saw Elizabeth's new guardian was at the funeral, where custody was to be exchanged. Her hair was gelled into a careful disarray and she wore a cautious smile but no makeup. In one hand she held a purse with a multitude of pockets, and in the other was a paper cup full of something steamy that smelled acidic. "Hello, Elizabeth," said the woman, extending one hand. She wore black leather gloves. "My name is Eight de Cartier."
"Hello," muttered Elizabeth, glaring up resentfully at Eight through her bangs. The child made no move to take the woman's hand.
She stared at her new guardian- not a mama, she thought, no, Eight was a guardian, something to be endured, not someone to love or treasure or even want. What could the woman do that Mama couldn't? What could she do that Daddy Dmitri couldn't?
Nothing, Elizabeth concluded. Eight had nothing.
They sat together at the funeral, two strangers staring stiffly at a closed coffin. There was no funeral for Kae-Askavi. Of course not. He was a cat, not a person, but he had meant a lot to her. Elizabeth found herself sniffling, crying next to this unknown person with her stupid navy pants and black jacket. Didn't she even know you wore white to funerals?
After the service and interrment- Elizabeth couldn't manage to throw in a handful of dirt, kept feeling like she couldn't breathe every time she tried, so Eight did it for her- they left together, child walking with her back ramrod-straight as she followed the redheaded stranger with the strange blue halo. The two got into a car, a small beige deal with leather seats, despite Elizabeth's loud protests. Quietly, firmly, reasonably, Eight wrestled her into a child seat and buckled her in. The switch to set her loose was too far for a child of her size to reach.
The guardian drove in silence. There was nothing to say. They drove a long way away from their home, past the vehicles with no drivers, past the neatly manicured woods and into a forest, where Elizabeth fell asleep.
Then they arrived at a house in a neighborhood that was neatly the same, each house with a low stone wall and a little dividing fence, brick walls soaring high over their heads. A man with red hair, darker than Eight's, greeted them formally- Ms. de Cartier, Miss Wickwright- and continued with his business, which seemed to be seeing an old woman get carried away and then speaking to a black-haired boy. He had a red halo around his head with red roman numerals, and his skin was porcelain pale. The two males came over- apparently the boy, Carlisle, was her new neighbor.
("Melisane aa," said Eight, and looked quite disturbed upon seeing no response from the boy.)
No, Aunt Riku was her neighbor. She still smiled at Carlisle, though. He seemed nice, happy to meet her but disappointed at the loss of his friend. Leaving, he glanced over his shoulder and smiled again, a little reassuringly she hoped. Maybe they could be friends.
Once they were inside, looking around a house that seemed to have been emptied, redecorated, then trashed, Eight began to mutter quietly, words in a beautiful and fluid language. One of them, Elizabeth started to pick out almost exclusively, then a second. They seemed to be used almost interchangably: Four and Luka. She left to explore more; sat on the new couch, bright red in a white room, and waited for Eight to come find her. That ploy, which had always worked on Mama, did not work on the new guardian. Elizabeth went to find her.
She found Eight sitting in the room that would be Elizabeth's, curled up on the bed in a pair of gold satin pajama pants with a matching button-down top. It seemed like she had been waiting for her charge, because she extended one hand- covered in tiny, almost unnoticable scars, except for one wicked gash across the pads of her fingers. A clean line traced, almost whimsically, across Eight's fingertips. To be honest, it made the angelic child sick, but she walked over to her guardian anyway, clambered up onto the white bedspread with pink flower cutouts next to her. "I don't like you," she announced.
"I know," said Eight ruefully. It was the most emotion she'd displayed all day. Then she was quiet, a tiny frown settling around her lips and eyes staring off somewhere far away.
Elizabeth fidgeted. Giving this lady the cold shoulder wasn't working. "Imisskae-askavi," she muttered, wondering if her kitty was okay, wherever he had gone...
For a moment, she was unaware of her guardian's vague look turning to her. Then the bed shifted and Eight walked out of the room. "If you want it, dinner will be in an hour or so."
Elizabeth didn't want anything this woman could offer her.
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Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:36 pm
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Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:37 pm
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Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 12:13 pm
Then, around one, she became conscious of a need. Not just an idle want, like she wanted to eat, or wanted to breathe, or wanted to sleep. This need was more immediate than air, more desirable than the prettiest dress, sweeter than the smoothest cocoa. She absolutely had to get outside. Had to run, had to fly.
Fly? She couldn't fly. Her wings were too small. Mama had always said they were just announcements that she was a precious, important angel.
On autopilot, she reached for the covers; she pulled them away, her hand colliding with the wall but she barely noticed, the air so stifling and hot and smothering that it overwhelmed all else. She was burning, burning- she threw herself out of the bed, didn't even notice the smaller space between her feet and the hardwood floors. Was even the floor on fire? How tragic, she thought as she bolted to the window and tried to pry it open. She stood on her tiptoes and managed to pull the old window up a tiny bit. Cool night air seeped through the crack between the sill and the frame. Soothing, but not enough.
More, she thought dimly. I need more.
Elizabeth tried to heave the window upwards again. Open, she whispered, Let me out. Please, God, let me out. It was nothing but ugly desperation, utter terror pushing her closer to a mental edge she didn't want to cross, but that need was so powerful and so overwhelming she couldn't see the edge nor figure out how not to cross it. She needed out. She needed to feel the breeze beneath her wings, wanted to see the spirits crossing-
There were no such things as spirits...
The window rose a little more. Not enough, more, again, out, she had to get out-
Someone knocked on her door. Mama? Demi? Eight?! No, it doesn't matter, she thought, but her mind was clear enough to think and her grip on the window loosened for a moment. "Elizabeth?" Definitely Eight. Definitely that hateful woman pretending to be a mother. No matter! No matter! She had to get out, the cool night air was calling her. Please God, she whispered, and she pushed the top of the frame one more time, didn't even question the compulsion. Maybe she didn't want to. The window she jerked open, finally enough to step through and fly if she wanted. She hoisted herself up onto the sill, hands gripping the ledge between her feet.
Then something dark and powerful slammed into place around the room, around her, preventing the free fall she wanted. Preventing her flight. The wind ceased abruptly. Something shimmered between her and the outside- she reached out and touched it, touched through it a mind so overpoweringly strange that she staggered backwards. Was that convoluted, monstrous thing, the beast possessing that great and terrible mind, Eight?--
Someone hammered on the door, heavy and loud. Confused by the horrible mind, she didn't answer, mouth opening and closing like she was gasping for air. Tiny, voiceless sounds accompanied each inhalation in the sudden silence. The thoughts in her head stunned her for a moment, their viciousness and virulence. Whatever had touched her mind, whatever mind she had touched...
She gasped and bent over, stumbled back two steps. Have to get out- Let me out, she begged, clawing at the sill though the dark power was preventing its movement in any direction. No one answered for the longest time, and then a frightening voice whispered-
Sleep.
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Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 12:19 pm
"You must be kidding me," she said blankly to Eight upon putting the outfit on. Elizabeth felt like some kind of small, dorky librarian, not like she didn't like librarians, in fact she thought they were great! But she wasn't very much of a librarian, if you knew what she meant, after the initial fascination with the written word she kind of lost interest. Things were more fun when she had to struggle for them! It was too easy, and so she'd turned to something completely different: numbers. Math. There she had to work, so she adored it; it took time, and time kept her away from Eight, who right now was proving very obstinate as she said:
"It's only until we go shopping in about half an hour." And with that she'd shut the front door and pulled drapes over it, the same for the kitchen windows, which were everything facing the street. "There. Now no one can see. Please sit, Elizabeth, we'll leave once I've sorted this out. You will please write a thank-you note to Mrs. Queshire next door for giving you some of Carlisle's clothing." Ew, and she was dressed in a boy's clothes! could growing be any worse?! She grudgingly sat at the coffee table with thick paper and a special pen and wrote a thank-you
(Chere Mrs. Queshire-
Thank you very much for the sweater and the undershirt and the pants. I was worried I would have to wear too-small clothes to school today, only it turns out I don't have to go to school, but Eight is making calls while I write this so I guess I have to keep writing until then. The sweater is very nice but they are boy's clothes so I would have probably given them back except you cut holes in them and fixed them nice for my wings. Thank you very much, I appreciate the work you must have put in. Please be healthy and happy, you are a very nice person.
Amicably,
Elizabeth Juliet Wickwright)
which didn't actually say anything that she really meant.
She could hear Eight talking to someone - "Yes, I'll arrange for the records to be sent over" and such - but it wasn't very interesting, so she sat on the couch and flipped on the TV. Nothing interesting to see, there were a couple of news reports she stared at for a minute, but they didn't hold her interest for very long and soon she was gazing vapidly at a report on some sort of disturbance in a park involving a girl with weird eyes and a man with horns. Some kind of demon thing. Whatever, she decided, as Eight came out. So what if those eyes were really, really weird, or that she didn't like them at all? She got up and looked at her guardian. Eight looked back at her for a moment, and then said, "We're going now. Come along." A gesture and, reluctantly, Elizabeth proceeded out to the steps and then to the sidewalk. She could see dark-haired Carlisle pretending to read a history book on the small stone wall surrounding his family's tiny front yard; beyond that, the neighbors were talking in a small, tight-knit circle. Eight hailed a taxi and pulled her in.
Carlisle looked up and waved as they left.
The taxi was crushingly silent, as it normally was when the two of them were alone in an enclosed space. There wasn't much to talk about when Eight never seemed to take an interest in anything, and nothing Eight did - and she didn't seem to do much - really interested Elizabeth, either. So the ride felt a lot longer than it was, long enough that she felt like she'd been travelling for years when she stepped out of the car and steeled herself for a day of shopping.
With Eight.
This was going to suck.
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:03 pm
[PRP] An Eye For Proportion
-part of the world painting plot-
Read it here
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Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 10:04 pm
[PRP] Paint It Black
with Ophelia
-part of the world painting plot-
Read it here
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Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2009 12:39 pm
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 8:12 pm
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:36 pm
She looked out at the rain, shrugged and picked up her brush. Though she was not as good as Ophelia or Mr. Prosper yet, she had a certain conception already of how to paint a castle with a lake near it and so the painting went fairly quickly; it was a craggy place, all desaturated with the nearness of dusk, and for a moment she worried that it might interfere with the workings of the painting that she knew what time she wanted to go. But, she decided, it was definitely worth it just to try.
“Lir,” she whispered to the desolate castle, and it settled quickly into photorealism, sharp and real. She touched the painting and soon found herself in a twilight world of empty silence.
There was little to recommend the place to anyone or anything; the grass was soft, and looked like it might be green in the right light. The water glimmered with rainbow colors, the air smelled like fresh air, but the feelings around her were off despair and loneliness. Nevertheless, she continued forward towards the castle: slowly, bare feet slipping through the grass. There was a graveyard on one of the softly rolling hills, fenced in by flimsy-looking iron, grass overgrown among the tombstones. An angel rose against the moon, arms outspread as if to hug the gradient sky.
Eerie silence remained unbroken.
The door was ajar, embers barely crackling in the roughly hewn stone fireplace. She tiptoed past it; some kind of abnormally thick dust powdered the floor, coated her toes. When she stepped on something hard, she shrieked and tumbled back - some kind of bone lay before her, coated with dust. Lizzy’s eyes grew wide and she shook her head mutely, getting up and going on until she finally found a greatroom.
Hot food lay on a tabletop. The tablecloth rustled as if everyone were hiding under it; looking beneath it, Lizzy was not surprised to find nothing. She straightened and looked around, gingerly touched the hindquarters of an unidentified animal, all curled in on itself and facing away. Grease coated her fingers, she touched them to her lips as she circled the table warily. Coming to the other side of the table, standing next to a throne of some sort, she stared silently at the front of the animal. At the human face, twisted in agony.
As she fled that horrid sight, the wind wailed through the broken windows like a widow. She chanted the world information in her mind - uninhabited, uninhabited, uninhabited. This world was uninhabited. Had always been uninhabited.
Hadn’t it?
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Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 4:37 pm
Figuring it was best not to anger him - he could be a psychopath after all! - Elizabeth sat gingerly on the edge of her bed and nodded. Without further to-do, he sat as well and launched into the story.
“Once upon a time in a faraway land there were angels. Not fluffy fat baby kind of cherubs, but real angels, the kind that were made of holy light and heavenly fire. The righteous kind of who held justice in one hand and revenge in another. Chief among those angels were the Princes of the Presence, who could bear to hear the voice of God Himself. And of those Princes, each represented one single caste of angels, from the grigorii to the Seraphim, and of those castes the Thrones were the ones for battle.
“The leader of the Thrones was the Shekinah, she who was said to be as God. And it was the Shekinah who led the troops into the wars, through the first rebellion and the second, until finally the remaining angels remained loyal and acquiescent. No longer did they question God, because they knew that the Shekinah was forever on God the Father’s side. No one wished to fight the Shekinah, not even Lucifer the Morningstar, for she was as ruthless as she was beautiful.
“And so Heaven descended into a time of peace and stagnation. With no enemies to fight, the castes lost cohesion. The Princes no longer worked as a single flawless group. In fact, it could even be said that a war began between the Princes as the old ways of the angels faded into nothingness, leaving a new tradition of blood and pain.
“The Shekinah realized this, and stood aside, for surely it must be the Will of God.
“But she could not stand by when God’s wrath turned upon the humans. He schemed to bring about the End, to cause the Four Horses to come and destroy the world, and she could not bear it. Knowing her part in his plan, knowing her own love for humankind that was boundless as the night sky, and knowing that her end may leave them defenseless, she broke her soul apart and sent her Radiance far away.”
He paused in the story and reached out to pat her on the shoulder. “Please, will you help us find her radiance?”
Elizabeth felt she should. It would be the right thing to do. Even if it wasn’t, it wasn’t like she could hurt anything just by looking around. “I guess. What does it look like?”
“That’s the thing,” said the man. “No one knows. Oh!-” He looked flustered, waving one hand around in the air like he was trying to beat away a fly. “I haven’t introduced myself. I am Remiel, Great Virtues.”
“Remiel, Great Virtues. I’m Elizabeth,” she said, “I’ll help you.”
Remiel smiled brightly, literally glowing with delight. “I knew you would,” he said.
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