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 Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 8:21 pm
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Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2010 10:41 pm
Herald 01.12.10
Oh, how embarrassing! As Guin is (nearly) a fully-grown woman, she has begun to attract the attention that many men (and women) give to those they find attractive. Generally people are subtle, just looking from a distance or approaching politely if they are that bold. However, Guin seems to have attracted the attention of a particularly forward man.
How does she react? Is she scared or amused? Does she take the man up on his offer or turn him down? If she does turn him down, is she gentle about it, or is she as blunt as he is?
She had an hourglass figure, intelligent blue eyes, and a shimmering curtain of black hair, but rather than flaunt them, she chose to wear comfortable sweaters and tie her hair into messy ponytails. Her eyes were usually obscured by reading glasses, and her posture was hunched from spending all day leaning over books. It had been months since her mother had died, and since then, Guinevere had been concerned with growing up, not dolling up.
That wasn't the only thing that had changed since her mother died. She had thrown herself into studying, about Heralds, about demons, for college, it all blended together into a soupy mess that she was barely able to differentiate anymore. Guinevere was still a lively, nosy girl, but she barely had a social life to speak of. Thus, though she had a lovely figure, she never had a full date book. Her first date had been with Aethelind, and that had been a particularly confusing accident, not exactly the romantic event of the century.
Thus, when the man peeked over her desk at the library and asked her out, she was blindsided.
"Pardon?" Guinevere asked, looking up from book, glasses askew.
"Saturday night?" said the man hopefully. "You can dress up if you want, or, uh, you can just wear that. I don't care. Saturday night?" he repeated, as if the more times he said it, the less likely she was to refuse. "I always see you in here, and you look really plain at first, but, uh, the more times I saw you, the more I realized you weren't. Underneath, I mean."
Guinevere decided to take that as the compliment it was probably intended to be, and took a good look at the man who was accosting her. It turned out to be one of the assistant librarians, a college kid, probably a little older than she was. He had 'nerd' written all over him, not that Guinevere, who had 'shut in' written all over her, was in any position to make that kind of judgement about anyone.
She looked back down at her book for a moment, biting her lip. She hadn't been out in a long time, not out in a way that involved doing preplanned social things that weren't to help her research. She was starting to feel more like an old woman than a teenage girl, and for a moment, the person she had been before her mother died and she had to become an adult surfaced. That Guinevere blushed. Grown up Guinevere took over all too soon, though, and thought of a million reasons to say no. Normal people didn't just ask girls out. For all she knew, he could be a serial killer, and didn't just asking a girl like that reek of desperation? Like he was scraping the bottom of the barrel and Guinevere happened to be the most appealing thing he found down there.
She closed her book and looked at his hopeful face. "No, I'm sorry." she told him brusquely. "I have to study."
She didn't bother looking back. Still blushing furiously, the Herald quickly exited the library. Guinevere may have made herself grow up enough to support herself, but the consequences of a date that wasn't a complicated accident involving Lind was too much commitment for her. After living alone all this time, after all the guardians that she had gone through, Guinevere wasn't grown up enough for another relationship with anybody. She knew that, plausible though her mental excuses were, they weren't the real reason why she had turned the boy down. She just wasn't ready to face the truth yet.
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:09 am
The walls of the waiting room were white.
The person sitting next to her was in black. He stood out like a sore thumb, but nobody, not the nurse, not the woman next to her, not even the doctors could see him. It was just Guinevere, and she knew why, although she didn't like the implications.
"You frightened me," he stated simply, looking at the gash on her leg. "You should be more careful when you bike."
"You're not here for me, though." she muttered. "If you were, I'd know about it."
He shrugged. "I do care about you, you know."
"This is a hospital. You're sort of in high demand here."
As she said that, he got up and looked around, muttering what had to be a room number under his breath. Guinevere let go of her leg, grabbed the sleeve of his robe and grit her teeth. "Hey!" she exclaimed, startling everyone in the room and making the nurse whisper into a phone with some alarm. "I can't let you do it."
"It's the job," Aaron replied. He shot her a pained look, then his robe slid through her hands as easily as if it were mist and he vanished. Guinevere grasped at the empty air where her former guardian had been and then noticed the pain in her leg and rest of the waiting room staring at her, in that order. Grabbing at her bandaged leg again, she blushed, and looked down.
"There is no conceivable family reunion that I enjoy." she hissed to herself. It was sad, but true. Whenever she met her father, it meant that someone, whether she knw them or not, was about to leave this mortal coil. Not to mention he was an abandoning abandoneer from abandonmentville. Sure, being raised as Death's daughter had to be worse than being raised as a kindly young woman's daughter, but damnit, he could have at least said something. Told her why he left, so those years of father issues weren't quite so pronounced. There were times for mystery, and while leaving small children with new parents wasn't one of them. As for the rest of the people she could call family, Lady Vincira was long gone from her life, nothing but a memory of scissors plunged into a pale heraldic back on one stormy night. Kotatsu was dead, and despite being Death's daughter, Guinevere couldn't exactly visit her for tea and a chat about the afterlife, and Kotatsu's relatives were generally horrible- Snobby, rich, and superior, with little to no time for a scissor-winged waif that their estranged daughter had taken in. Add it all up, and it was no wonder that Guinevere tended to be so interested in other Heralds- they were the only "family" she could stand to be around.
The nurse called her name, and she looked up, hobbling gratefully over to the desk. "They'll see you in the surgery now, Miss." she said. Guinevere nodded and turned to leave, but the nurse called back, "Miss?"
Guinevere turned around.
"Are you feeling well?"
She gave a little grimace and asked, "Besides the leg? Peachy keen." The nurse didn't look like she believed her, but Guinevere didn't have time to prove it or explain. So instead, she kept on hobbling, reflecting on her past to distract her from the irritating pain. It was true, the past had a different sort of painful quality to it, but at least it wasn't physical and in dire need of a few stitches. Despite the encounter with her father, Guinevere hadn't lied to the nurse. As far as her past was concerned, she was slowly coming to terms with it. What had happened had happened, and though she envied people who had proper families and childhoods, she was learning to make do with her bundle of issues and neuroses and just muddle along all the same.
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:32 am
One surgery later, her leg was on the road to recovery, and Guinevere was feeling decidedly better after having worked out that, yes, her health insurance covered it. She was in the cafeteria now, sipping at lukewarm herbal tea and slowly feeling revived. Thus, when a nurse sat down next to her, she was shaky, but responsive, and the conversation went more smoothly than it would have had he approached her five minutes previously, when she was doing some furious figuring in her head.
"How did it happen?" he asked.
"It was a bike accident. I haven't been getting much sleep lately."
"Nightmares?" he prodded. She glanced at him, startled. Nightmares was not a nice word for anyone, but doubly unpleasant for her. He waved his hands hastily, explaining, "You came in a few months ago about nightmares. Seemed like you had insomnia, but that's not usually something that drives people to a hospital. Kind of stuck out in my mind, not to mention your," gesturing at the wings was made here. "You know, they kind of stand out." Even on Gaia. Guinevere relaxed.
"No, not nightmares, just a busy schedule, really. I'll try to organize my time more efficiently."
"If it keeps up, I'd suggest you just drop some of the stressful activities completely. Biking half asleep is bad enough, what if you'd been driving?"
Guinevere laughed. "I don't even know how to drive," she said, "So I don't think that'll be a problem. But no, really, I'll be fine. I just need to make a better schedule." She couldn't drop any of the stressful activities. The stressful activities were a full time job, cooking her own meals, paying bills, and all the other things that she had taken for granted when her mother had been the one doing them. Now her mother was gone, someone needed to, and it sure wasn't going to be the cat. "Maybe when I go to college. Not now."
The nurse frowned at her, but didn't press the matter. There was a lull in the conversation, and she sipped her tea, regarding him over the rim of the styrofoam cup. Black hair, like Aaron's which made her uncomfortable. She had just seen Aaron, and she knew why. She didn't want to be reminded of him so soon after the unpleasant encounter in the waiting room.
Which reminded her that he might still be in the building. She glanced around hastily, which caused the nurse to try to see what had alarmed her, but no one out of the ordinary was there. Luckily for her, she couldn't see anyone either, and she let herself relax. "I'm sorry," she muttered. "Sometimes I get a little nervous." She left out the 'about seeing my father, the physical personification of Death' bit. She wasn't sure if nurses could send people to the psychiatric ward, but she wasn't about to give him reason to try.
The nurse shrugged. "It's fine. Be careful."
She nodded, but her tea was done and she was in no mood to be chastized further. The similiarities to Aaron mixed with the worried clucking, though well intentioned, she was sure, were beginning to chafe her nerves. "Well," she remarked, getting up, "I would say 'See you soon,' but I think that would be tempting fate. So have a nice day, then. Thank you for your advice, I'll definintely try to keep it in mind." With that, she hurried out, putting the hospital, the nurse, and her father far behind her.
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:36 am
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:37 am
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:38 am
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:39 am
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:41 am
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 9:42 am
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Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 10:02 am
When she got home, there were more pressing matters.
There was a message on her answering machine, which she stared at for a moment, and then left untouched. First of all, she was hungry, and by 'hungry' she meant 'not for hospital food'. She had tried hospital food once and, to be fair, it was probably made out of the finest corrugated cardboard money could buy, but she wanted something a little more palatable. So she fired up the stove and winced, still waiting for the day when that simple action wouldn't remind her of Kotatsu sprawled on the floor. Having gotten that over with, she pulled out some pancake mix, her answer to when she needed something comforting, fattening, warm, and quick. Leg surgery? Pancakes. Father abandoning you to strange woman? Pancakes. It generally worked.
While she was cooking, Pucci rubbed up against her legs, meowing for some batter. She frowned at him, saying, "One of us in this room had a decent meal today, and it wasn't me," but dropped some on the floor for him anyway. Pucci was fat, and it was because she couldn't say no to him, but if she hadn't been able to before, she wasn't about to be able to now. Guinevere had a soft spot for cats, even vaguely malevolent obese ones like hers was.
"You know, you could have acted glad to see me before I started to cook pancakes," she informed him. "I was in the hospital. Getting stitches. It was sort of a big deal." Pucci continued licking up the batter on the floor, seemingly unperturbed by the news, and Guinevere rolled her eyes. "So much for woman's best friend," she proclaimed, and then remembered that that was supposed to be diamonds, which were frankly, just about as good at showing concern as her cat was.
A few spatula flips later, and she had some pancakes to eat herself, three to be exact, and the rest of the batter in the fridge, waiting for another crisis to come up, or maybe just for breakfast the next day. She poured some syrup over it and dug in, each bite slowly helping her feel better about the whole day so far. Pancakes always worked, it was a tried and proven cure.
Feeling better about herself, she washed her dishes, stretched, and then went to take a nap. She had called in from work at the hospital, apologizing profusely, but there had been nothing that could be done about it. Faced with the rest of the day off, she took the nurse's advice and got some more sleep.
The answering machine sat next to the couch she was resting on, new message light quietly glowing.
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Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 12:47 pm
Guinevere landed in a lake, spluttering to catch her breath. There was nothing around her but mist and water, and so she floated for a moment, gathering herself. The situation had an unreal quality, for starters, Guinevere could only vaguely remember how she came to be there, only that now she was. She shook her head and began to swim. No way to go but forward.
Eventually, she dragged herself onto sand, coughing and gasping as she lay down on the gray beach. She had been swimming for she didn't know how long, but her analytical mind noted that it had seemed longer than she would have been able to normally, but at the same time, shorter, as if someone had pressed fast forward on her life. She flapped her wings dry, the wet metal blades hissing against each other sibilantly as she did so. Then, ever so gingerly, she pushed herself into a sitting position and looked around.
The mist was thicker, more cloying here, and she bit her lip, but finally got up on wobbling, complaining feet to explore properly. The world was grey and gritty, claustrophobic and contrasting to the world of still water and mist it was surrounded by, but as Guinevere walked forward, she felt a sense of familiarity. It was an off-putting world, but at the same time there was a strange note of reassurance. Something about the beach struck a chord with Guinevere, maybe the similarity to Aaron's grey land, or maybe something more instinctive than that.
As she headed further inland, the terrain began to get more marshy. Puddle water she barely felt after her long swim, scratching grasses against her numb legs, and twisted, dark trees grew in her way. She wasn't walking in any particular direction anymore, it was easier to let her feet lead, skirting the hidden roots as if they'd been walking on this island for years. Dazedly, she shivered in the cold air and looked around like the land was an old photograph of a face she had forgotten.
Finally, her feet stopped on their own, and the surprise of it toppled her over into the stagnant water of the swamp. She collected her wits, coughed out a minnow and looked up. Just ahead, there was a glow. She stumbled towards it of her own accord now, half desperately, because after coming this far the analytical part of her mind needed to know why as much as her lungs needed to breathe. For the first time since she landed in the lake, she spoke, and her voice was raspy with the unfamiliarity of it, like Nikolai's almost. "Please!" she called out towards the light. Just the one word, but over and over again like a mantra. "Please!"
A hand came out of the mist and she grabbed it without a moment's hesitation. Like everything else, it was strange but half-remembered, and as it drew her closer, she let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding, and a faint flush of heat crept back into her numb body. "Thank you," she murmured fervently, looking down from the rim of the rock pool she'd been pulled up into. The water was black as obsidian, and in the middle, the reflection of her face stared back at her. The figure beside her pressed a cold object into her hands, and she peered at it through the choking mist. It was a round glass ball, warped with age, and in the middle there was a blue exactly the colour of her eyes. She took it and turned it round and round before looking over at the figure.
"You-"
The figure pushed her into the pool, and Guinevere woke up to Puccini licking her fingers.
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Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 1:12 pm
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Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 1:13 pm
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Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 2:10 pm
Guinevere took dreams more seriously than most people. Considering the nature of her powers, she had to, For a long while, she sat on the couch, thinking about it and stroking Pucci. The dream had been possessed of that same real and unreal quality that her premonitions had, but all that might mean was that Guinevere's subconscious was starting to ape her powers. As for the feeling of familiarity, of course it felt familiar. It was her mind that the dream took place in, that all her dreams took place in. They were made of fragmented pieces of memory and subconscious, and therefore should feel familiar to her as her own skin.
However, the events in the dream had taken on a logical progression. After she found herself in the lake, she was beholden to very little of the normal laws of dreamland, something which had bothered her when she woke up. And her legs still felt numb, which only helped to unnerve her, though it could have just been sleeping on the couch without a blanket in the creeping fall cold. She bit her lip and looked at the grain on the wood floor, gingerly putting a foot on it like she had gingerly pulled herself up from the grey, grainy beach. It was reassuringly solid, if a bit chilly, and it motivated her to put the dream behind her, though not before she wrote it down in her notebook. Now that she knew what her power was, she was dream journalling. Not every night, mind, but when one seemed particularly unsettling to her. When a dream could mean a death in her future, she considered it only right to record the data.
That done, she looked around the room for something else to occupy her, eyes alighting on the gently blinking answering machine. Hesitantly, she stepped over Pucci to reach it and pressed the play button. A static-strung voice crackled out at her instantaneously.
"Gwendolyn, we have received your message." it informed her a tad smugly. "We are very sorry that Kotatsu has passed, of course, but you must realize that you are not blood related to the family. YOur request is rash."
"Guinevere," the Herald corrected under her breath, but the machine continued regardless. Her mother's relatives had never given her much of a chance to interject in person, and even a recording of them didn't seem keen on letting her either.
"However, in light of the fact that our daughter seemed to see you as her responsibility, we will help pay for tuition. We have looked into the information for the college that you sent us, and it seems reasonable enough for a girl of your ability."
Guinevere ground her teeth at the 'girl of her ability' part, considering the information she had sent was for Durem City College, hardly a prestigious institution. But the offer was more generous than she had expected, considering she hadn't expected anything at all. This meant she could probably afford a college degree, which made her forget all about the dream as it sank in. If she commuted to classes and worked part time instead of full time, she'd be able to balance it with the financial help from her rich relatives, dislike them as she might. The message ground to a halt, and she sat down.
Eventually, her face broke into a smile, prophecies and problems forgotten. Dreams could wait, she had got one rather large issue out of the way, and despite her unpleasant relatives' brusque message, she felt like she could handle anything for one glorious evening.
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