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 Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2011 10:39 am
Actually, that had been something of a crisis. Milton had been teaching Virgil rudimentary math by having him count the books in Milton's room (a considerably manageable task compared to the tomes stored in his study) and it was nearly lunch time. The wizard had stepped out a moment to prepare another cup of tea and, upon returning, found Virgil nowhere in sight.
At this point, it was well known that the Raevan liked to play games despite his creator's adamant discouragement, so Milton had simply sighed heavily and cracked open one of his books. It was also well known at this point that the best course of action was to keep from humoring Virgil's attempts if one wished for him to come back repentant. After an hour, however, Milton had cracked and gone searching through the closet and under the bed. It was possible that Virgil had simply adapted new techniques to frustrate him - the boy was exceedingly clever, unlike his brother.
After searching all of the upstairs, Milton had finally lost his temper and gone shouting through the house. Threats were implied, some of which the wizard would be embarrassed about later. Needless to say, he caught the attention of the other residents of the home and was corralled into the kitchen to cool off while the more playful Byron went looking through the house, putting Adam in charge of looking under every possible object big enough to fit Virgil.
A half hour later and Byron returned to report that Virgil wasn't anywhere to be found in the house. Milton had gone quite pale then, a mixture of rage and panic. They'd taken the rug to scour the whole of the plains outside, and Byron was put in charge of searching the woods.
He must have slept there for hours, and when he's in a room, he likes a place near a window. After this suspicion, I had him spend a few days in the study, where there are no windows. I learned two things - he does not feed on synthetic light and he does not like being enclosed in one room for long.
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Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 2:14 am
SOLO : Not the Night Before Christmas, but A Night, in December Milton Fettua was not a religious man. He was orphaned at a young age and raised, for the majority of his life, within a nondenominational facility. The holidays and birthdays passed with the barest of treats for the most part, and this is not a fact that Milton sees as an act of deprivation toward him. It's also probably why he finds the most comfort in rich foodstuffs.
So when the winter rolls around, the wizard makes no greater preparations than to review the measurements of his wards and tailor their warmclothes appropriately. Technically, this could be considered a gift - he'd agree that it was - but it's more for practicality. There's a difference between frugality and cruelty, the same way there's a difference between snug and smothering.
No stockings are hung, but when the snow falls, the fireplace is lit in the chimney. There's no chestnuts there, but there is a brew that makes the fire a distinctive shade of mauve. No songs are sung, no candles are lit, no oil burned, no dreidel spun.
Not by Milton, anyway. A wizard has no such time or cause for such tomfoolery.
But Byron, the strange man who has, at some point in time, moved into the house proper within the few months after Virgil's birth, is a fool. And as fools are wont to do (especially the sort of Byron's), he doesn't miss the occasion to open his mouth. Byron and Milton differ in a lot of ways, but Milton differs with practically everyone. And, strangely enough, the wizard has found himself more and more tolerant of the fact that Byron has moved into his home without invitation, stayed despite numerous attempts and acts of violence to make him leave, and a penchant for pushing at his buttons. The man is an affluence of odd information, the sources of which Byron rarely betrays. The brew on the fire, in fact, is his concocting; something Byron claims everyone will enjoy drinking and something which Milton has consequently asserted his cynicism over.
The children are delighted all around. They're both of a curious sort, even if the ways do vary, and they're content to buzz around the fire while Byron extends for them the very many ways in which the season of winter is honored in all the worlds he takes note of.
Virgil is a tinge over two months old now and Adam is two years. Neither of them are human, and so neither of them correspond to what's to be expected of children that age. Adam, a veritable golem born from the heart of a mysterious, mechanical cabbage, is four feet tall and as wide as Milton himself. Barely considered the look or mentality of a preteen, the wizard knows the golem will truly be a behemoth once he's reached his peak of maturity (and it baffles him: Where is all the extra clay coming from? Why can't he take it apart without tearing something vital? Does Adam bleed? The possibilities...) and capable of the feats of strength for which his kind are legend.
(TBC)
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