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September 3rd, 2004~

"WHY CAN'T I DO THIS?!"

Little crashes came from inside the terra-cotta pot in Amalthea's room. Sosiqui paused by the door, made a concered face, and kept moving. It wouldn't do to bother the Feien in a mood.

"This will all end in tears," Kree muttered, flaring her wings to keep balanced on her mistress' shoulders.

"Whose? Yours, mine?"

"Hers, like as not," the dream said, giving the pot a good stare before they moved on.

....

"WHY! WHY!" Amalthea heaved a thimble at the pot wall and watched it bounce off with a satisfying CLONK. "Why can't I do this one little thing?" She whirled and stared at the gem as if expecting it to answer.

"No. I can't go get a teacher. Shut up, Rakuen." She retrieved the thimble and threw it again. "Shut up shut up shut up... no, you're different. You're not a Feien like they are, you're MINE..."

Amal flopped down on the beanbag next to the gem. "Be quiet. Please? Will you be quiet if I get a teacher? Will you be with me?"

Silence, for a moment, then - "I know I need to grow before we can be together forever... I'll try." She wiped the tears off her face with a corner of the beanbag. "I'll try, okay?"

Now how on earth to get a teacher... she gently put Rakuen's gem into the bag and flew out of the pot, carrying him with her as she always did, now.

September 20th, 2004~

"You're sure." It was a statement, not a question.

"Y-yes. I want to learn." Amalthea nodded quickly, clutching the gem in its bag to her chest. Her little knuckles were white with the force of her grip. "I-I will ride in the b-bag."

"Is it really that hard?" Kree said, lazily, from the windowsill. Shi stretched out one wing. "You're so curious, aren't you curious about... out there?" Shi flipped the wing at the open window.

Furious head-shaking. "It's... it's too hot." Her voice fell to a whisper. "Sun burns... melts... melt me..."

Kree and Sosiqui held identical "eh?!" poses for a second. "You mean... that's why you don't go outside?" Sosiqui managed, breaking the silence first.

A defensive look came into Amalthea's eyes, but she nodded, once. Sosiqui shook her head. "For heaven's sake..."

"Other Feien might be melty too," Amal muttered, twisting the bag's cloth between her hands. "The book said they had heat ones. And fire ones! That's not good, not good..."

"The Feien we're visiting are Darkness and Ice, respectively. Nothing hot, okay?" Sosiqui held out her backpack, which had several ziplock bags filled with ice nestled in the bottom. "Now. Are we going? Youko's expecting us."

Amal looked at the bag, and took a step back - then screwed up her courage and flitted in. Sosiqui zipped it up before she could change her mind, carefully putting on the backpack. "Okay in there?"

"Yeah," followed by some muttering Sosiqui couldn't make out. She rolled her eyes at Kree.

"Don't look at me," the Dream snorted. "I'm not coming."


Story continues here:
http://cluster.gaiaonline.com/forum/guilds/viewtopic.php?t=48859

November 05, 2004~

Amalthea concentrated, hard. A fine sheen of ice lay crackling over her skin, a mixture of frozen water and sweat... her armor against the sun.

If she was going to become one with her dear Rakuen, she was also going to have to go outside in the sun. That much was clear. Kree had sardonically suggested that she go at night, but Amal had brushed off that suggestion. She needed to be prepared just in case the sun did happen to be a factor.

So she had trained, hard. She had practiced by huddling on the edges of sunbeams until she felt dry and parched and had to spend the next two hours curled into a glass of ice water. Then she'd hit on the idea of using Chilly Touch to freeze a layer of ice over her.... the ice crackled and bent when she moved, but refroze fairly quickly.

It was not perfect. For one thing, she couldn't cover her face much, she HAD to breathe and see... nor could she cover her wings. And the ice tended to fall off even if she held her limbs perfectly still and beat only her wings, a stiff icicle in flight. A huge chunk of ice slid off of her arm halfway across the sunbeam, and she twitched and shook. But it was better than nothing, right?




"She found some motivation," Kree observed to Sosiqui, who was quietly watching the Feien from across the room.

"Yes... I think visiting Shalafi and Yeande did do her some good. I think she's coming out of her shell."

"By making a literal one," Kree snorted, flipping one wing.

November 15th, 2004~

"Let me get this straight." Sosiqui loomed over Amalthea, her face contorted with conflicting emotions. "You want to go see Julius so you can merge with the gemstone."

"R-rakuen. His n-name is R-rakuen," Amalthea stammered. The Feien was sitting atop the ice cube tray, wrapped in a washcloth that was soaked with ice water. Sweat still poured off her face, though, and there was a smell of smoke about her.

"Rakuen. Whatever. So you... you try to get Kree to TURN ON THE MICROWAVE WITH YOU IN IT?"

"It makes things hot, I wanted to see..." Amal whimpered.

"I didn't," Kree interjected, flipping hir head out from under one wing.

"And if you had, I'd have roasted you too!" Sosiqui raged at the Dream. "At the very LEAST you could have told me! And so YOU-" and she whirled on Amalthea again - "decide that TURNING ON THE STOVE IS A GOOD PLAN?!"

Amalthea looked down and huddled closer into the washcloth.

"You could have BURNED YOUR WINGS OFF. You could have PRACTICALLY DIED. DAMN, AMALTHEA." One hand slammed down on the table, making the Feien shake harder. "I appreciate your willingness to go out and do something new, but this is OVERKILL. And I don't want that to be LITERAL!"

"I need to be ready. For Rakuen-"

"Rakuen. Rakuen, Rakuen... Amalthea, you are talking about a rock. A chunk of glass! A corpse, if you must! The Feien is DEAD!"

Amalthea stood up abruptly, teetering on the ice. "He is NOT!" she yelled, shrilly. Her lower lip trembled.

Then she zipped out from underneath the washcloth, and was out of the kitchen before Sosiqui could fill her lungs to yell any more.

November 19th, 2004~

Amalthea really hated taking Kree's advice; for one thing, the Dream would give her this LOOK. This "finally listening to my superior wisdom, are you?" look.

It was so annoying. The little Feien shot a glare in Kree's direction. They were all in the den, now, with Sosiqui curled up on the couch with some novel or other, and Kree perched on the windowsill. Amalthea had a library book out in front of her. Although she hadn't gone to the library, she'd told her bonded what she wanted. So. Plenty of books about ice, and cold, and 'science'. Sosiqui said 'science' was the closest thing in the library to magic, and that her magic ice should follow the rules of science.

Whatever.

Amalthea stood up and turned the page, tugging at the paper until it flipped to the next spread. She read the words carefully, making mental notes. "Did you know," she said after a few minutes, "that in some places it's dark for six months at a time?"

"Yep," Sosiqui said, turning a page in her own book. "It's also LIGHT for six months at a time." Amalthea shuddered. "Can't have one without the other. Nothing would live in a place with no sun, at least nothing you'd want to meet."

"I would," Amalthea groused, getting up to flip the next page. At least one useful thing she'd learned - right now it was turning into winter-season, when the sun was far away and not as hot. It might even snow! That sounded fantastic. The whole world covered in ice, all cold... yes, that was the way to live! It would be perfect if it snowed when she went out to see Julius, but she couldn't count on it.

"Maybe there are lots of Ice Feien that live in the snowy places, in little villages," she informed Sosiqui. "I bet there are."

"Maybe," Sosiqui acknowledged, distantly.

December 19th, 2004~

Amalthea skidded gleefully through the snow, stopping to plunge deep into drifts occasionally, wriggling around like a hyperactive puppy. Now this... THIS was how the world should be all the time! Wonderful snow on the ground, ice in the gutters, frost on the windows... it was like heaven.

Something in her mind was whispering that now, when it seemed the whole world was locked in chill, would be a good time to go see Julius... but she was merrily ignoring it. It was so glorious out here, so fun. It made her feel more alive than she ever had before. The freezer was nothing in comparison.

The Feien giggled as she flitted out of a snowbank, flakes flying from her buzzing wings, the drawstrings of the gemstone's bag clutched tightly in her hands. "Isn't this great, Rakuen?" she called, looking down at the sack dangling below her. She landed deftly on the doorstep and untied the bag. "Look, the whole world sparkles like my wings. And like you," she added, almost shyly, as she pulled the gem out into the chill air. She carefully lumped up a pile of snow and nestled Rakuen into it before rocketing back into the air, swirling up high to dance dizzy circles around an icicle formation that had formed on the gutter.

Really, there was no good reason why the world shouldn't be just like this, all the time. With the cold air caressing her, the sun's cruel warmth dampened to nothing by the welcome chill of snow and ice... "No wonder the hyoomans call it a giving season," she sang happily to herself. Sosiqui and Kree were inside around the fireplace - what a horrid idea.



"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas... la da de da da da da dooo...."

December 30th, 2004~

"Intelligence. Courage. Bravery... kindness, joy, goodwill, generosity... blah." Amalthea kicked at the page of the book she was reading, and winced as the edge of the paper bit into her skin a little bit. "Ow." She sat down at once, curling and chilling her hands at once to rub them over the tiny cut. The skin numbed pleasantly under her touch, and she grinned, making a mental note to stab the offending page with her rapier later.

Intelligence, courage, bravery, etcetera... those were all things that were supposed to make you strong. She needed to be strong for her quest, for Rakuen...

Rakuen means paradise, Sosiqui had told her. A fitting name.

Must you do everything in your life for that chunk of rock? Amalthea frowned again as she remembered Kree's sardonic words. Don't you do anything for yourself?

He's not a chunk of rock, he's Rakuen, she'd responded. Kree had just snickered as shi flew away.

Don't I do anything for myself?


....

Testing the Bloom...

"This is what I did for your bloom, Amalthea. Watch carefully. The best thing I found was to surround it with examples of the elements and try to narrow it down by the bloom's responses." Sosiqui carefully carried the glass bowl, with the bloom resting inside, into the bathroom. "In here is a good place. It's easier to clean up on tile than carpet."

Amalthea landed on top of the faucet, slipping down to sit straddling the spout. "How will you do that?" She watched with interest as Sosiqui put the bowl down, then left the room and returned with a handful of odd objects.

"The elements. I'll test for the main ones first - earth, air, water, light, darkness, heat, and cold."

"What about ice?"

"Well, I figured out you liked the cold when the water your bloom was in got really cold... and I worked from there." Sosiqui grinned at the Feien. It was good to see her really interested in something that wasn't her gemstone. "This is just the first step, and hopefully we can narrow it down from here."

"Okay... so how do we do it?"

"Like this, at first... we can't test for them all at once, but we'll do what we can to start out with." Sosiqui carefully moved the bowl until it was in the center of the bathroom counter space, underneath the countertop mirror. Then she unscrewed a few of the bulbs around the mirror, until the inside of the bathroom was dimly lit. "Shade. Not light, but not dark... a good start."

Amalthea inched further down the faucet, away from the fading warmth of the lightbulbs. "And?"

"Water." Sosiqui turned on the faucet, drenching Amalthea's legs, and filled a small paper cup with water, then placed it two inches from the bloom. "Earth..." A crumbled handful of damp dirt from outside was put just opposite the water cup. "Air we'll test for later, I think... but heat, light, and fire we can work with. I'm going to light a match."

Amalthea squeaked and flew up off the faucet and tangled herself in the shower curtain. Sosiqui rolled her eyes, struck the match, and lit a small votive candle that she placed between the water and dirt. "Okay."

"Okay?" The Feien peered out from behind the curtain.

"Yes. Now we're going to go away and see what happens."

"I want to watch."

Sosiqui raised one eyebrow. "Well... you can if you want, but don't touch the bloom, or change the lights, or touch the other stuff."

"I'll be good. Can Rakuen come see?"

"Okay."

Amalthea zipped out from behind the curtain and out the bathroom door. Sosiqui sighed, but she smiled at the bloom as she left. A few minutes later Amalthea returned, perching on one of the faucet taps, Rakuen in her arms. She settled down and stared intently at the flower.

It was rather pretty, the way the dancing candle-flame reflected in the bloom's shiny petals. "I'm Amalthea," she said, abruptly. "This is Rakuen. And you're NOT a hot element, right? You better not be. Just warning you."