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 Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 3:28 pm
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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 7:00 am
**Please, Dad?**
"Can I have a surfboard?" asked Ophelia over breakfast. She'd been thinking about it long and hard after meeting Levi, and if she wanted to hang out with him again then she needed to get one. And surfing looked really cool, anyway. By her standards, that was all the reason she needed. It didn't seem like too ludicrous a question, and everyone knew her father couldn't say no to her. That went against the very nature of the universe. He'd be happy to buy her a surfboard, right?
Yet, for some reason, it made Prosper spit coffee all over his newspaper. "What?" he asked.
"Can I have a surfboard?" she repeated.
"What gave you that idea?" asked Prosper.
"Well, I met a boy on the beach the other day, and he seemed cool, and he was surfing, and he said if I got a board he'd teach me."
A boy? Prosper rubbed his forehead and hoped this wasn't the start of a continuing trend. "I'll think about it," he sighed, and tried to salvage the paper. It didn't work - it was already nigh unreadable from a coffee bath before he even began rescue efforts.
"Please, Dad?" asked Ophelia imploringly. She leaned across the table and attempted to use her eyes against him. "Pleeeeease?"
"I said I'll think about it," sighed Prosper, not looking up.
"That means yes, right?" she asked hopefully, and retreated a bit to rethink her strategy.
"It means I'll think about it."
"Oh," said Ophelia, slurping her orange juice and contemplating her toast. "He told me about a good surf shop," she added helpfully after a while. "When can we go look?"
"I need to get to work," said Prosper, changing the subject. He got up and collected the breakfast plates. "Are you ready for school?" he asked on his way to the sink. The girl stared at his back, dumbfounded. Had he just said what she thought he had just said?
"But it's summer!" she protested.
"Liberty Center runs year round."
"But it's summer!" she repeated, thinking maybe he hadn't heard her correctly. He couldn't possibly expect her to learn things while it was so nice outside.
"You've had a month to be a juvenile delinquent all you want," he laughed, "Come on. Go put your shoes on."
Ophelia sighed and did as she was told, but she snuck glances in her father's direction as she tied her sneakers. This argument would be back. She hadn't lost yet.
She would get a surfboard.
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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 3:01 pm
PRP The war on common sense - Ophelia manages to get Prosper to the surf shop. She meets Kaimi, who has never been in the ocean. Injustice!
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Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:35 pm
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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 5:57 am
ORP Sidewalk Chalk - Prosper takes the class outside. With Nataya, Kaimi, Carlisle, and Wisp
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2008 5:40 am
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Posted: Tue Sep 02, 2008 7:44 pm
PRP Everybody's goin' surfing... - Ophelia finally takes Levi up on his offer to teach her to surf, and yet another catboy decides to tag along.
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Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 7:14 pm
**Urbanie**
Ophelia surveyed her work, feeling accomplished. Replicated before her was the world she and her friends had created in chalk on the blacktop. High mountains over a huge city, with just the faintest hint of a meadow off to the side; it still glittered with water – fresh paint. She took her backpack, slung it over her shoulder, and focused on the painting again. She thought of her friends and formed its name on her lips, but then something about the picture seized her with an intense loneliness and a different name slipped out.
“Urbanie,” she said. Before her, the painting warped and rippled, becoming a window onto a city street. Ophelia reached out to touch the panel, and in the blink of an eye she was standing on the curb, a window to the study hanging in the air behind her. A cool, dry wind whipped past her, but nothing blew on it.
For its gritty, urban appearance, this city was perfectly clean. And as she began to explore it, it was also perfectly empty.
There was no trace that anyone had ever lived here. Someone must have built it, but they had all left. Deep in her bones, Ophelia felt that same aching, intense loneliness that had caused her to name this world. Urbanie. That was its name. Such a lonely, empty world it was turning out to be…
…But not an unsafe one. As alone as she felt, she didn’t feel threatened. No harm would befall her on this world. And there wasn’t the eerie feeling that someone was watching her like there had been on Spritza. The fairy she had found there followed her around at home, but refused to accompany her out of the house or to other worlds.
It was so strange. There was no breath or movement here. No papers clustered in the gutters. There were cars parked on the side of the road, perfectly orderly. No one had been rushed or running from something when they parked them. There simply wasn’t anyone here. The storefronts were clean and orderly – no dust, nothing broken or out of place. Fruits and flowers rested in bins as if they had been just placed there this morning, but without their sellers it was impossible to say just how old they were. Ophelia resisted taking anything out of fear that perhaps they would trap her in this world forever, like Persephone’s pomegranate seeds in that book of myths she read.
In the distance, bells began to ring.
Bong… bong… bong… bong…
Ophelia four and then silence again. Was it simple automation, or was there someone ringing the bells? Another dry wind kicked through the streets, carrying the invisible ghosts of invisible garbage. She shivered, retied her shoes, re-shouldered her back, and turned back in the direction she had come, intending to retrace her steps back to the window that had brought her to this strange place. She arrived just as the paint dried, and returned home just as the last moisture faded away.
Safely back in the study, she reflected on her adventures. It was by far the most complex world she had managed, and had an air of mystery about it. Perhaps one day soon when she was a bit more sure of herself she would travel there again and try to unravel the secrets of the city.
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Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:49 pm
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Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008 6:46 pm
Quote: Otherworldly Adventures - Wisp and Ophelia.
Ophelia discovers Wisp (or Wisp discovers her?) wandering around her neighborhood around sunset. She invites Wisp inside and tells her about World Paiting. The two decide to set off for Urbanie.
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Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2008 9:14 pm
Quote: The Silent City - Wisp and Ophelia.
The girls arrive in Urbanie and begin to explore. After following the sounds of a bell tower, they find Joshua Baobab, a marooned master world painter, and help him to get back to the world of Dreaming before heading home to Tidewater.
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Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 5:07 am
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Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 5:30 pm
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Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 7:16 pm
ORP Welcome to the Party - Phells and Casca sulk around in the "uncool" bleachers and talk about how they have no idea who their secret santas are. Phells sees Wisp for the first time since the other girl grew.
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 9:13 pm
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