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 Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2008 6:44 am
PCM - Part 2
Ranza escaped a trip to the doctor’s by claiming she felt fine and by not mentioning the shade of gray her legs were turning. Despite some teasing from Nahuel, she mostly managed to enjoy her self-proclaimed sick day and all the television, new books, and ice cream that entitled her to.
It was all perfectly fine until when it was about time to go to bed and Ranza began to itch again. Orli complained about all the noise she was making, but Ranza didn’t care because – AHHHH, AHHHH, HER SKIN WAS ON FIRE. Well, not literally but it certainly felt that way. When ten o’clock rolled around and they still weren’t asleep, Orli’s bedtime being eight and Ranza’s being nine, Eshaa came in and demanded to know what was wrong.
Orli declared Ranza was being far too loud and Ranza just scratched. Their mother left and returned a while later with a glass of water and some pills.
“What are these?” asked Ranza, suspicious her mother might be trying to poison her.
“Just something to help you sleep,” sighed Eshaa, and Ranza took the pills. Eshaa left again, and within a few minutes she began to feel their effect. She still itched, but she couldn’t move her arms to scratch. Everything felt heavy – her arms, her legs, her neck, her head… It was like there was an elephant sitting on her, or the pressure at the bottom of the ocean was crushing down on her.
Presently, it began to rain outside. Ranza knew it was just rain, but something in the back of her mind made it sound like the ocean, churning a groaning, slapping up against the side of a boat. She forced her eyes to stay open and focused on the ceiling. It was still there. She was still in her bed…
The air above her churned and sloshed. It was the ocean. It was the ocean. She was underwater. A fish swam past her ear, glowing orange in the dim light that emanated from Orli’s hair. s**t. She was drowning.
The rain pounded on the window, rattling the panes. It sounded like a storm on the sea. The room shifted, but Ranza stayed pinned to her bed by the unimaginable weight of her limbs.
She wanted to scream, but her mouth was stuffed with cotton, and her jaw was too heavy, anyway.
And beneath it all, in a real place she was only faintly aware of, the fire beneath her skin got worse and worse until it felt like there were pins stabbing through her arms and her scalp one at a time, scissoring her apart.
But the ocean kept pressing her down, stifling her into sleep.
Finally, the morning broke and the tide rolled back from over Ranza. Her feathers had returned – long, stiff, glorious feathers. Maybe she’d be able to fly with them now; feathers like a real birds’, all perfectly aligned and shiny on her arms, and dreadlocky on her head like they ought to be. All her feathers were back, except for her tail. And the dark skin on her legs remained.
She thought that maybe, the room smelled faintly of the sea.
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Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 10:13 am
Nah’s bike. Nah’s stupid, shiny blue Schwinn. Sitting in a shop window like nothing had ever happened to it. Ranza could meet the price the pawner wanted if she emptied her pirate chest, but then she’d be broke. But then Nah would talk to her again…
She groaned, regretting that she was so nice, and went back to the garden to get her money.
...
Ranza took the bike in the elevator and then leaned it in the foyer of the apartment. She stomped into the living room and stood over the end of the couch, where her brother was sprawled out playing a video game.
“I found your stupid bike,” she declared.
“Thanks,” said Nahuel, not nearly as excited as she had hoped he would be.
“You’re welcome,” replied Ranza, in mockingly civil tones. She chucked a pillow at his head and stormed off.
Nahuel grinned. That had been far easier than expected.
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Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:49 pm
-Reserved, Hiccups Halloween-
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Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:50 pm
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Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:51 pm
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 5:33 am
WARNING, SECRET SANTA SPOILERS AHOY. exipotic Hello, Esperanza! Thank you for your participation in the Hiccups' Secret Santa Exchange! Your Hiccup will awaken to a big basket next to their sleeping place. No alarms or booby traps were triggered on the delivery, freakishly enough, so the shapeshifter is getting really good at what she does! A note is attached: Plz fill and send2 the home of Avery b4 Decmbr 25 & u get 1 too (:OOC:And that's it! What will you do about it? How will your Hiccup fill the basket before shipping off the gift? We look forward to finding out! Feel free to send things whenever you feel like it; just make sure not to spoil the surprise TOO early on, ;D. Remember, suggestions for things to "fill the basket" can range from art, Gaia items, well described [and it'd help if you had a picture, original art or not] IC items/toys/learning tools, Secret Santas available on the Breedables forums, etc. Please be very creative! (: If you don't know the person you're assigned to, feel free to allow Exi to relay the gifts instead. Thanks again, and season's greetings!
Ranza narrowed her eyes at the basket and scanned the note again. Well, what was she supposed to do with this? Fill it? Give up some of her hard-earned loot for some brat named... Avery? Who the hell was Avery? No one she'd ever met, and she'd met quite a few others like herself.
Was Avery a boy's name or a girl's name? Briefly, she entertained the thought of Avery, whoever s/he was, waking up on christmas morning to a basket full of frilly princess dolls (if he was a boy) or to a basket full of matchbox cars (if she was a girl.) That would be hilarious beyond belief. Except she probably wouldn't get to see it.
The premise of getting her own basket of loot in return intrigued her, though. Would it be from this Avery brat? Or a different little monstrosity? Would they know if she skimped on Avery's basket and under-stuff hers accordingly? She didn't think that was possible, but this was magic they were talking about. After all, whoever had left the basket (The lady from the halloween party?) hadn't set off any of her traps, and Orli always set those off, and so did Nahuel, and if they set them off then it was nearly impossible not to.
So there was probably some kind of karma attached to the basket.
"Phooey," she spat. This was going to take some effort.
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 1:19 pm
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Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 4:33 pm
A basket arrives just a few days short of Christmas, in the same manner as the basket that had originally arrived with the request to be filled. Many goodies are inside! Esperanza's Basket  The size of the chest is about the length of a twin sized bed mattress and the chest's height is a bout knee height (for size comparison: 6'2 person). The treasure and coins within seem to be real though when you reach in the gold seems to disappear. On the back of the chest is a small bit of writing carved in a golden plate:
This is a Chest of Holding
What you see can be used but if you come at me with greed you will never be able to touch the treasure within. Come at me with charity in mind and I will give you riches. Come to me with need and I will give you enough. Whatever you put within my endless depths you can always retrieve and only you may retrieve them...I will keep your treasures safe from harm so long as you take care of me. Happy holidays!
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Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 6:16 am
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Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 6:17 am
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Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:00 pm
You're back.
Nahuel stepped into the apartment and pulled the door shut behind him. He wasn't sure how long he'd been in Eden, but it was winter now, and he was older than he'd been when he'd gone in. His first stop had been new clothes, and then bumming a subway ticket home - there were apparently issues with the surface roads, some kind of invasion. He didn't think about it to long.
Ranza was reading on the couch when he went into the living room. That, in and of itself, was nothing new.
She peered at him over the top of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and said, in her most venomous voice possible, "You're back."
"What, no hug?" asked Nahuel, grinning at her.
"I was hoping you'd stay gone," she replied. "Then I could have your room."
"You better have not taken any of my stuff."
"Why would I want any of your junk?"
"I don't know," shrugged Nahuel. "Just to say you took it?" Ranza scowled at him. "Where's Mom?"
Ranza gave him a blank look. "Work," she said, and went back to her book. Nahuel stalked off to the kitchen in search of something to eat - he was suddenly starving. The calendar on the fridge caught his eye.
It was 2009. He had been gone over two months.
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Posted: Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:02 pm
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Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 5:16 am
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Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:14 am
Invasion of Space
Ranza took off for the garden every chance she got. Every day after school, she took her newest stack of library books, climbed up into the trees, and read until dinner time. She'd finished Harry Potter a few weeks ago, and then Twilight, which she had to say for all the hype that surrounded it was sadly disappointing and would not have even been worth reading had there not been a minor, depressing character with her brother's name. But other than arming her with new material for teasing, Ranza was of the opinion that Twilight had been a waste of time.
Now she was on to Maximum Ride, which she was thus far enjoying such better. For one thing, Max kicked more butt on a bad day than Bella ever did. For another, she had wings. Back wings, not arm wings like Ranza's, but the same basic principal was in play. It had, at least, inspired Ranza to practice the whole flying thing, which she had never fully understood before but was now starting to get the hang of. It was a tiny bit awkward, with how you had to hold your body. It took a lot of core strength, so she trained that, too, doing hundreds of crunches before bed every night. Eshaa marveled at her older daughter's newfound sense of athleticism in the same way she marveled at how tiny Orli, an infant for almost a year, had finally grown up over night.
Ranza was on the second book, just getting to the good part, when the first notion that something was wrong crossed her mind. Something in the air was... wrong. It took Ranza a while to figure out what, though.
Petroleum smoke. She definitely smelled petroleum smoke. She looked up and around, and her eyes finally came to rest on a bulldozer idling on the edge of the grove. She narrowed her eyes at it.
"You're not supposed to be here," she murmured to herself. She closed the book (reluctantly, because Max and her flock were about to kick some Eraser a**,) and put it back into her school bag.
A man got out of the bulldozer and approached the tree where she was perched.
"Hey, kid, leave," he barked, looking up at her.
"No," replied Ranza obstinately.
"We're scheduled to clear this land today," he said. "Get off it."
Ranza threw an apple at his head. The man ducked out of the way.
"This is the future home of the Durem Plantation condo project," he continued. "Get the hell out."
"You!" shouted Ranza down at him, and threw another apple. She had no idea what any of that meant, but she was feeling emboldened by Max's adventures. The man went back to the bulldozer, revved the engine, and started it forward. The ancient fence crumpled beneath it. He was headed for the tree.
Ranza stared the huge machine down as long as she could, her bag clutched in her hands. It got closer and closer, gaining momentum, and she realized that this man didn't care if she got hurt. There were bad people in the world, and this man was one of them.
At the last moment, Ranza bailed out. She leapt out of the canopy and flapped her arms furiously, taking to the sky. It was hard, but she caught the wind and followed it as far as the wall. The sounds of crunching timber filled the air behind her, but she couldn't look back. The garden was gone. It had been stolen from her. Tears welled in her eyes, and then began to drip down her face. She wiped them on her shirt and slipped out through the hole in the wall.
Her kingdom for condos.
Furious as the storm-tossed ocean, Captain Ranza swore revenge.
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Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2009 7:38 am
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