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 Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 2:50 am
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:49 pm
Canti's Special Skill
Wall-climbing Canti learned things by simply trying. As babies learned to they could walk, Canti learned that he could climb... up walls. Lucas' house had high ceilings, especially where the entryway sloped up to follow the stairs. Due to his child's obsession with keeping things tidy, the photographer had invested in a pole-arm of sorts, a spear tipped not with a blade, but a duster. Canti had at first given a cry of delight at this new 'toy' of sorts, but the delight quickly fell short when he found out: his arms were still too short to reach the dustiest of places. The cobwebs haunted him. He tried to spray at them with Febreze, tried to get them with the vacuum, but to no avail. Eventually he took to ignoring them for a while, or at least, he tried. Every time he went to bed or just traveled up to the second floor, there they were, taunting him. "Keiran-sir, can you be flying Canti up to the corners?" He beseeched the dragon-scaled angel that took permanent residence upon their couch. Keiran's pale green eyes tracked the for a moment over the rim of his beer before he offered a smirk. "Man, you're really adamant about this s**t, ain't ya? Sorry, buddy, but I can't fly you up there. House is way too small for my wings." He responded. "Tell ya what, though. You're an ant, aintcha? Can't you do a, like, Spiderman or something?""Spiderman?" If Canti had the ability to, he might wrinkle his nose. "Like the movie?" "Right, kid, like the movie." Keiran may have been a little drunk at the time. He set his beer down on the coffee table, far from the coasters that Lucas had laid out for that very purpose. "C'mon, let's try it out."And that was how it happened. Keiran lifted the boy up easily in the hallway, leaning them both against the wall. "Go on. Give it a shot."And Canti did. Laying his hands upon the wall, first upper, than lower, he thought about climbing up the wall to those nasty cobwebs. Then, Keiran dropped him. The ant was about to give a little yelp of disapproval, but he did not fall. Instead, his lower half smacked into the wall, and he was left hanging there like a common insect. "Told ya.""Q-Quick, Keiran-sir, get my duster!" Canti told him, hardly believing that this was happening. He began to toe off his shoes, each falling to the carpet with a soft thud. He then pressed his toes to the wall, finding purchase there rather than a slick surface. When the feather duster was shoved in his face, the ant grabbed it and placed it between his teeth. He began to climb. --- "I'm home!" Lucas called into the house before he sighed. Work was more harrowing than work sometimes, and he began to toe his shoes off when he judged something was amiss. Usually Canti would be all about sprinting out here to greet him, but he hadn't heard any scrabbling or anything close to movement. "Canti?" He called to the house, moving to place his messenger bag just inside the living room. "Here, Lu!" Lucas sighed with relief. He checked the potential that Keiran had taken the boy on a harrowing, drunk adventure off his list. "Where? Where are you?" "Up here, Lu!" The ant practically sung. He was just putting the finishing touches on the corners of the ceiling, wrapping the last of the cobwebs up in his duster. "Where-- Canti!" Lucas shouted from the bottom of the stairs, far, far below where the ant was. "Canti! Get down now!" The brunette was now an amazing ball of nerves, able to register the lilac hair hanging above him as his boy. "Okay, Lu." He was done anyway. Carefully, Canti crawled his way along the wall, upside-down, to meet his guardian at the bottom of the stairway. "How did you do that?" Lucas asked, breathlessly, about shaking as he yanked the boy off the wall. It wasn't easy to do so, but with some extra pull, Canti unstuck. Canti only laughed in response at first. "Lu, what is the saying? Where a will is being, there is also a way!"
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Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:51 pm
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 3:08 am
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 2:40 pm
He hadn't noticed it until it was nearly too late.
Canti was a powerhouse, even as young and as innocent as he was. He knew he didn't like his Lu to worry, though. He hadn't offered the boy anything but his fondest attentions, Canti didn't have to question that he was well-loved in the house. But Lucas could also be... a bit over-dramatic, at least in his personal opinion. He didn't like that small and sinking feeling in him when the brunette fussed over him, rather, that look he got on his face when he did. It just wasn't the right sort of attention for Canti. He felt as if he should just disappear in those instances, remove the concern from his guardian.
So when the strange feelings hit, the ant boy didn't show it right off the bat. He had looks on his side, too. A dark, glossy shell that didn't allow for anything normal like a flush of color or lack thereof. As long as he acted alright, then he could keep it hidden while he tried to figure out what was going on. Canti had never been sick before.
It had come in a burst of heat first, blurry vision and disorientation in all of his eyes. Canti had to lean on the banister of the stairs to keep from falling over. Luckily, no one was looking at the time, though he knew if he fell there'd be trouble. He had simply gone down to the thermostat and flicked the notch down a few degrees, went about his business of tidying up Dyre's space and crib. A moment later he was inexplicably chilled, and whatever had been consumed earlier was obviously deciding not to agree with him now. Tummy aches were actually something familiar to the ant, who ate sugar about twice as much as he did anything else. It was bound to make him act up sometime.
Canti went about his business. Every now and then he sat down for breaks in his various self-employed chores, more than he usually took, and watched the window for when Lucas would return from class and work. It was scheduled and expected for him, he'd go down and greet the young photographer when he got home if he left. His vision blurred in and out, he was feeling so incredibly exhausted all of the sudden and very, very confused. He hadn't planned to tell Lucas, though. Maybe he was just tired.
When the ugly green van pulled up outside on the curb, Canti got up slowly and wobbled for the door, picked his way carefully down the steps. The front door slid open, a soft and candid sigh escaping the photographer's lips as he shrugged his canvas bag off onto the nearby floor, beginning to slip out of his shoes. His hazel eyes flitted to the stairs before him, Canti moving his way down with a slight smile. "Hey, there's my little worker. Did everyone behave for you?" He opened his arms to accept the approaching child, latex-covered fingers ready to muss his hair in the familiar way.
"Hey Lu--," The ant child began, and with that croak everything inside came right up in one great heave. He painted Lucas's shoes and the carpet.
---
"What's WRONG with him?" The van careened through traffic, honking wildly though the driver was only half paying attention to what he was doing.
Keiran had never actually been frightened before, but this side of his wimpy little ward was a bit unnerving. This wasn't the disease, either, it was stress. "HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW?!" he snapped in return, his hackles raising as he considered putting on a seat-belt. He had a lovely choice of language for an angel. "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S SUPPOSED TO BE SICK, NOT HIM. I'M NOT A DOCTOR! WHY DO I HAVE TO HOLD HIM?"
"YOU DON'T HAVE A LISENCE, NOW KEEP HIM STILL."
And he was, somewhat. The ant-child lay pressed against Keiran's chest, shivering violently, all eyes squeezed shut, curled up as small as he could manage himself. It was instinct, this position. For some reason he thought that it would press out all the pain, maybe even numb it some. But it didn't. He didn't know what to do. He was barely even aware of himself at the moment. His 'parents', his guardians, were a mere blurring smudge to him, yelling at the top of their lungs at each other while they sped far past the limit down the interstate. The only real thing was the wing on his antennaes from the window they were keeping open just in case he needed to throw up. He felt so frail. So cold.
Where were they going? Not to the hospital. No normal doctor could see him. The lab, then? Canti took in a shuddering breath, tried to focus on his Lu in the drivers seat. There was only the soft, warm brown of his hair and the latex gloves on the wheel. Things were so, so cold. Was this... dying?
"Lu... Lu... I love you..." He managed softly, before closing his eyes again. He didn't feel himself convulsing from the chills on his body. Keiran was at such a loss for what to do. He gripped his first child, their first child, uncertainly, wondering not for the first time what he had gotten himself into. He could feel the boy's very spirit shaking.
"For God's sake, Keiran, HOLD HIM!"
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:53 pm
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:56 pm
Reserved for Lucas' worry about Canti, maybe has one of his fits while he's out.
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Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 10:37 pm
Canti's VaccinationsFirst shots! Pre-dates the metaplot, I'm just too lazy to move this crap around again.
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Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 5:30 pm
It was a slow recovery, but they had let Canti come home. That was all that really mattered to Lucas.
The young man had decided not to attend the next week of classes. He had sent notice to the teachers, by email to avoid any of the strange looks adults seemed to give when a teen mentioned they had a child, and had made the arrangement to take his tests the following week. It was possible that he would be missing something important with his two-day absence from each, but Lucas had gone past the point of caring. Keiran was offended, and he didn't care.
Canti lay nestled beneath two comforters for the winter, stripped down to only a pair of pajama pants because he would sooner die than complain to his Lu about the heat that had been imposed upon him. He felt restless just laying there, always so used to be up and bustling, but he also felt nausea that came in slow and steady waves and decided it must be better to lay still as his guardian had instructed him to. He lay staring quietly out the window until Lucas breezed in with a bowl of soup between both hands and a soda can cradled between his neck and shoulder.
"How're you feeling today, Canti?" He asked the ant child, setting the bowl down on the nearby table and settling down in the chair he arranged at bedside. His latex-covered fingers deftly maneuvered the tab on the soda can to crack it open.
"Tired," Canti admitted quietly, his antennae drooping somewhat. When Lucas offered him the soda, he shook his head at first. It was a bad sign since Canti loved sugar like nothing else. When Lucas insisted, however, he reached his upper arms to gingerly take it. It was a sweet little burn in his throat, and relief washed over him momentarily.
"Good?" Lucas asked, and Canti nodded. The brunette reached out carefully, touching the bandage on his child's arm where a needle had been pushed through the exoskeleton. "You'll be all better soon, Canti."
"I am sorry I scared you, Lu," The ant replied, and Lucas shook his head. "You had gotten the stain off your shoes, yes?"
"I had to throw them out, Canti, I'm sorry."
"Mm..." His Lu was always the type to panic unless he was there. He was thinking he could have saved the shoes and Lucas wouldn't have needed to throw them out. "How long until I get better, Lu?"
"I don't know," Lucas sighed, reaching to slip his hand around one of the ant's free ones. "But when you do, I'm sure you'll be ten times better. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger..."
But if he had lost Canti, he didn't honestly know what he would have done. Lucas never pictured himself as a father, but then, Canti was not a child in the conventional sense of the word. A part of him had transcended past the immaturity of a child, even as he was still struggling to learn. Sometimes Lucas felt like he was the one being taken care of, and as odd as that was, he didn't want to lose that. He had never realized how alone he felt in the world until he'd almost lost Canti, and that had spurned him into doing something... bad in the meantime. Now that Canti was back... he felt at peace.
"You just rest for now," Lucas told the child gently. "Would you like me to read you a story?"
"I would be liking that very much, Lu. Get the one with lots of pictures, okay?"
Canti meant the Encyclopedia, Lucas knew. He hadn't had any storybooks before the twins came into their lives, and so he had used what he had on hand. Luckily, Canti had never known any better.
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Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2010 9:57 pm
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