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 Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 7:30 pm
**A More Dignified Nickname**
The cabbage was blooming. Her father had just vanished down a canal, she had orders to go to bed (go directly to bed, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars), and the cabbage was blooming. Ophelia had no idea what to do.
She evaluated the situation. The cabbage was blooming, but it didn’t look like it was fully open yet, nor was it making any noise. She went to her bedroom, changed out of her party dress, washed up, and put on pajamas. She checked the cabbage again. It was making some progress.
The couch was comfortable enough. She went back to her room, pull the quilt and pillow off her bed, and made herself a nest on the couch. She turned off all the lights except one of the lamps, and felt clever. This way, not only would she know if anything happened with the cabbage, but she would also know when her father came home. Within minutes of settling in under the blankets, she was fast asleep.
*
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when her father shook her awake. He smelled like smoke and cheap alcohol. She wrinkled her nose at him.
“Where were you?” she asked sleepily.
“Shhhh,” he whispered.
Ophelia turned and looked at the cabbage. More of the leaves had peeled back. It was glowing faintly in the lamplight. As she paid closer attention, more leaves fell away, flattening down from the center. Ophelia gaped at the figure revealed when the cabbage had completely opened.
“It looks like I got back just in time,” said Prosper, joining her on the couch. Ophelia nodded. Prosper considered the sleeping child on the coffee table. “I think he looks like a Phineas,” he declared.
The child yawned once and blinked awake. He sat up and looked at them with pupil-less blue eyes.
“Phineas,” repeated Prosper, nodding.
“Fiss,” replied the child, in a fair approximation of his given name.
“Fish,” said Ophelia, smiling. Prosper began to object. She nudged him. “It’s a more dignified nickname than Squishy.”
“Fish,” nodded the child.
“I think he likes it,” said Ophelia. She got up from the couch, picked up her blankets and pillow, and trudged across the room. “I’m going to bed,” she announced. “For real this time.”
She disappeared into her room. Prosper nodded contentedly. She had to be well rested for the exams. As for the child…
After the evening’s events, it was something of a relief to know that this boy would never be able to paint worlds. Ophelia he would always have to struggle to protect from the Nevermore, but it would never be able to touch Fish.
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Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:40 pm
**A Special Test**
Beneath her robes, Eleanora Crispin carried not only a set of watercolors sheathed in an elegant ebony wood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl pieces, but also a quiver of paintbrushes, a canteen of distilled water, an ornamental sword, and a small blowgun equipped with two darts coated in metabolic poison. When wearing all of these accoutrements, sitting comfortably became something of a task: luckily, in her short time on the council, she had developed numerous locations around the headquarters where she could, at a moment’s notice, deposit all of these accessories and go about as a simple Artisan-rank painter, which was quite useful when trying to discover the latest gossip.
She had been asked to sit in on this examination. Apprentice exams were proctored by a Journeyman- or Artisan- rank painter and overseen by a master, always. From the high, hidden window of the observation chamber, she could observe everything that happened in the room below. There were four students in this session, each in their own cubicle, open on one end to see the proctor. On one end of the room was a tall, thin girl with curly, short hair. On the other end, closest to Eleanora’s vantage point, was a short boy with eastern European features. In the near middle was a girl, vaguely Mongoloid, with long, dark hair pulled into a low ponytail, and next to her was a tall, dark boy. Australian, thought Eleanora. Or maybe Ethiopian. She wasn’t close enough to see his facial features, and that would tell her for certain.
The door behind her opened, and Eleanora glanced up briefly. “I didn’t know you watched the exams, Anatoli,” she said.
Anatoli Baccaria, Grand Master of the World Painters Assembly, sat down next to her and smoothed the front of his robes out. “I saw the list of names and thought I might stop by,” he said. “It reminded me of an apprentice exam I oversaw over thirty years ago.”
“Are you accusing me of being old enough to remember an exam group from thirty years ago?” Eleanora asked. Anatoli laughed. It was vaguely terrifying.
“I simply thought it interesting,” he said. He leaned in to better observe the students as they worked. “Drake, Irniq, Baobab, and Prosper,” he said.
“Precisely,” nodded Eleanora.
“Do those names mean anything particular to you?” asked Anatoli. Eleanora furrowed her brow.
“Should they?” she asked.
“Their teachers all took this exam together thirty-two years ago,” said Anatoli. “Very bright and gifted young painters, all four of them, from long, honorable lines. The families of Drake and Prosper have been members of the assembly for hundreds of years. Irniq and Baobab are somewhat more recent, but still quite formidable.”
“Michael Prosper in particular is an interesting specimen,” continued Anatoli. Eleanora recognized that name.
“They call him the rogue master, don’t they?” she asked.
“Some do,” shrugged Anatoli. “I don’t care for nicknames and pretentious titles.”
“That’s Ophelia Prosper down there,” intoned Eleanora, consulting the list she had been given. “The tall girl on the end. Is she a blood relation?” With world painters, you could never be sure. Surnames were passed teacher to student.
“Of a sort,” said Anatoli, “Michael Prosper’s wife died some fifteen or sixteen years ago. It was a rather tragic incident that I am not at liberty to discuss. As it were, they had no children. Following his promotion to Master, Michael Prosper refused to bow to the council’s will and was given a five-year wanderer sentence.”
“What were the terms?” asked Eleanora.
“Five years in exile, during which he could spend no more than two weeks on any world, nor could he visit any world more than once. Failure to comply would result in death.”
Eleanora stifled a gasp. “And he survived that?” she asked. “He must be powerful.”
Anatoli made a dismissive noise. “After completing his sentence, Prosper settled on Gaia, where he has managed to avoid our attentions. The girl, Ophelia, is a genetic relative of his, far closer related than one would expect a normal parent and child to be. Given her age, as compared to how long Prosper has been on Gaia, and the nature of the world, I expect she is some kind of artificially created child.”
“Still,” said Anatoli, “I propose a special test.”
“A special test?” asked Eleanora.
Anatoli nodded. “A special test,” he said. “You see, Michael Prosper has a gift for Names.”
Eleanora frowned. “You mean he’s a Pioneer?”
Anatoli nodded and continued, “And I would expect a child who is so closely related to him to share that gift. Shall we evaluate her talents?”
“The proctor is giving them Appearances, Names, and Feelings right now,” said Eleanora, “As is standard procedure for the Apprentice exams.”
“Instruct her to omit the Name from Ophelia’s next painting, and see what happens,” said Anatoli thoughtfully.
“Yes, Grand Master,” nodded Eleanora. She activated the intercom that would relay orders from her to an earpiece the proctor was wearing. “Omit the Name from Ophelia Prosper’s next painting assignment,” she instructed.
“Yes, Master Crispin,” replied the proctor. Below, the students finished their paintings and the proctor went to investigate.
*
Ophelia wiped her sweaty palms against the legs of her jeans and took up the brush again. “Appearance, a beach. Storms in the distance. The bones of some large animal jut up from the sand. Feeling, melancholy,” she repeated to herself. Name? The proctor hadn’t given her a name. Maybe the exam was supposed to get harder. It had been easy so far, three half-hour speed paints, judged for clarity and strength of summon. She thought she’d done well so far.
For this melancholy world, she selected a palette of grays and steel blues. The tones were in keeping with her father’s color theory lessons. The world took shape on the paper in front of her, and she felt the dull, lonely ache of it, deep down inside of her. Something had died here, or been placed here, and there were hurricanes brewing, far away.
“One minute,” announced the proctor. Ophelia frantically placed final details on the painting. She couldn’t hear or see what the other testers were doing. She focused on the world. Its name, its name… What was its name?
“Ruceana,” she said, plucking the word from the ether. The painting blurred and warped before her, and then sharpened into photorealistic clarity.
The proctor, who she had not realized was standing behind her, nodded in approval.
*
In the observation room, Anatoli nodded slowly.
“Ask the proctor what she named it,” he said.
Eleanora asked.
“Ruceana,” she said when the answer came back. Anatoli nodded again.
“Interesting,” he said. “It would seem young miss Prosper has passed her test.”
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Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 9:01 pm
**Homeward Bound**
The courier came by the townhouse later that day. He was a crisply groomed red-haired young man wearing a uniform that denoted he worked for the council. A single gold paintbrush insignia indicated that he was an apprentice-ranked painter. As Prosper had explained the insignias, a single brush was apprentice, two brushes were journeyman, crossed brushes were artisan, and two brushes over a palette disk was master. He’d told her because she’d noticed the pins at the ball and asked about it.
The courier asked to speak to Ophelia, and when she went to the door, he handed her a scroll and smiled at her. Ophelia looked down at the papers she held in her hands. They were wrapped in a rich red ribbon that was pinned by a single gold paintbrush clip.
“I take this to mean I passed,” she said, undoing the clasp and pinning it to the lapel of her coat. She smiled at the courier. “Thank you,” she said. When he didn’t move, she dug one of the heavy Bellamarian coins out of her pocket and gave it to him. He bade her a good day and left. Ophelia went back inside and unfurled the papers.
The thicker, outermost paper was an official-looking certificate stating that Ophelia Prosper had passed her Apprentice-level exams and was recognized as an official member of the World Painters Assembly. The inner paper was a thin slip of personal stationary. Printed on it, in neat, masculine handwriting, was a message.
I shall watch your career with interest, miss Prosper. Congratulations on your successful examination. –Anatoli Baccaria
When Prosper saw the note, he swore and stomped around the house before resuming packing at furious pace. Ophelia, who had already put her things into her suitcase, amused herself by playing with Fish. Like Dama had predicted, he was rather aquatic in appearance, and had already proven that he could breathe underwater in the bathtub.
“When we get home,” Ophelia told him, “I’ll take you down on the beach and teach you how to surf.”
Maybe she’d introduce Levi to her little brother (it was funny to think of him like that). Maybe they’d have a lot in common. And they could all go surfing together! That would be a lot of fun.
“Beach?” asked Fish, who had not yet fully grasped that this was not their normal home. Prosper, meanwhile, finished shoving belongings into bags and began work on a portal home to Tidewater. He asked Ophelia to lock up the house, so she balanced Fish on her hip and checked all the latches on the doors and windows. For some reason, you could only paint in to Bellamaria from certain places, but you could paint out from almost anywhere. It was magic Ophelia didn’t quite understand yet.
Prosper put the finishing touches on the portal and waved them over to it. “I would like to spend as little time here as possible,” he explained, and ushered both children and their bags through the painting before following. Once back in the study, he whispered something to the portal, causing it to close. Ophelia eyed him curiously.
“Well,” said Prosper, in a tone of voice that said, I’ll tell you about this some time that isn’t now, “That went as well as could be reasonably hoped.”
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:32 am
PRP Soggy Adventures - Ophelia and Fish meet Crowley and take Ophelia's surfboard out for a spin. Fish talks to dolphins. Ophelia doesn't believe him. Crowley does. Everyone gets wet. Fish makes a friend.
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Posted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 8:10 pm
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Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2009 5:14 am
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Posted: Wed Mar 11, 2009 6:29 pm
ORP Signups! - Ophelia volunteers to do costumes for Romeo and Juliet. So does Casca.
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Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:48 pm
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Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2009 6:23 am
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Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 7:53 pm
ORP Sex Education 101 - Phells embarrasses herself with knowledge bestowed upon her by her aunt. Wisp nearly dies laughing. Fruit is protected. Nahuel is hit in the back of the head with a banana - maybe it's karma.
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Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 7:16 pm
**Your Little Girl**
The dinner dishes were put away, the table wiped down, and Fish shuffled off to bed. The whole house seemed to be settling on its foundation after a long day of ordinary hustle and bustle. Outside, a soft drizzle of rain had started and was presently drenching the begonias.
Ophelia made her way down the ladder from her bedroom and into the kitchen, looking for a glass of water. She paused in the doorway – Prosper was seated at the kitchen table, working on his laptop.
“Hi,” she said. It shouldn’t have felt strange, but lately she and Prosper had been behaving more like teacher and student than parent and child. He couldn’t show her any favoritism in the classroom (in fact, she suspected he graded her harder), and it seemed to be carrying over into their home life.
“Homework all done?” asked Prosper, looking up from the computer.
“Yeah,” replied Ophelia.
“Any tests tomorrow?” her father probed.
“ An essay in English,” she answered, “And, uh, a diagram of the human reproductive tract for, er…”
“Sex ed,” said Prosper softly, finishing the sentence where she trailed off.
“Yeah, that,” squeaked Ophelia, and busied herself with getting a glass of water. Prosper turned around in his chair to look at her.
“Ophelia,” he said, sounding a bit stern, “We can talk about this.”
Ophelia blushed and took several long sips of water before replying. “Ms. Lindy does a pretty good job of making us talk about it in class,” she said quietly.
“I can’t help but worry about you,” sighed Prosper. “You’re my little girl, you know?”
Ophelia swallowed and nodded slowly, reflecting on how long it had been since she and her father had talked, really talked. Had they ever had conversations like this? Had he ever treated her like as much of an adult as he was now? She couldn’t remember anything like that. She didn’t think he had. “Yeah,” she nodded. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” suggested Prosper, except it wasn’t a suggestion – more like an order disguised as one. Prosper had moments when his magic leaked out other places than just his painting, and then he could be extremely convincing if he wanted to. Ophelia sat, just as Prosper got up to get something out of the pantry. He tossed a package of store-bought chocolate-chip cookies onto the table, and then poured them both glasses of milk from the refrigerator.
“Fish will be mad that we ate these without him,” remarked Ophelia, opening the packaging. She wondered what her father was up to, bribing her to stay with milk and cookies and all that.
“What Fish doesn’t know can’t possibly hurt him,” Prosper reassured her, his blue eyes twinkling. He set a glass down in front of her and then resumed his seated position across from her. He gave the computer screen a gentle nudge, pushing it shut, and moved it out of the way. “Once the school year winds down,” he said, by way of introduction, “I want to focus more on your painting.”
Ophelia dunked a cookie into her glass thoughtfully. With her father, it almost always came back to painting. She ought to have expected this – not that she minded. She loved painted. She loved the adventures it entailed, and she missed how much time she got to spend with her father when they were working on intensive training. “Are there exams coming up?” she asked, and took a bite out of her cookie for punctuation.
Prosper shook his head.
“I’ve had… a few indications that Master Anatoli Baccaria has taken…” he sighed, trailing off. “Special interest in you.”
Ophelia recognized the name. “He wrote me a note, in my exam-result letter!” she exclaimed, accidentally spraying her father with cookie crumbs. “Sorry.”
“He’s the leader of the council,” nodded Prosper. “Needless to say, Master Baccaria and I have had our differences in the past and—“
He slammed a fist down on the table abruptly, making the glasses jump.
“To be honest, I hate the man. Why sugar-coat it?”
Ophelia regarded her father with the same sort of cautious intensity one gives when encountering a wild animal.
“The Council is the governing body of the Assembly. I have no issue with the assembly itself, but the council is corrupt as can be. They wear their master rank like a badge of pride. But the master rank is enough to strike fear into the hearts of most novice painters. Do you know why?”
Ophelia frowned, thinking, and then shook her head no.
“I refrained from telling you more about this before, and it was foolish of me. Painters who have attained the Master rank have – they have sacrificed a part of their own humanity to do so. There are worlds – terrible worlds, worlds of power and sorrow – that are not of this mortal plane and should never, ever be painted. Painters have died trying to summon them. They have sunk into madness. They have exhausted every last drop of magic in their veins. Only the strongest painters stand to summon these worlds, and they must be of proper state of mind.”
He paused to drink some milk and then continued, “The world is Death, and in order to properly paint it, you need to be desperately and intently prepared to die.”
Ophelia looked intently at the grain of the table. “And you wanted to die once?” she asked.
“I was young and reckless and mad with grief,” replied Prosper sadly, “Although that hardly excuses my actions.”
“And they made you a master,” finished Ophelia, remembering. He’d told her part of this story before.
“And I have regretted it ever since,” he answered bitterly. “I would renounce the rank if it would allow me to undo the irreversible damage done to me when I wandered the lands of the dead.”
At a lack of what to say, Ophelia nudged the package of cookies towards him. Prosper smiled at her sadly and took one. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
“It was because of her, wasn’t it?” she asked cautiously, after they had sat in silence for what felt like forever. “Your wife?”
“It destroyed me,” he shrugged. “It was – it was such a shock. We were young and in love and so happy together, and then I lost everything. I painted that world because I thought I’d die in the process.”
“How did she die?” asked Ophelia. The look in her father’s eyes became distant, as if focused on something long ago and far away.
“Complications,” he said simply. “She lost the child and then she lost her life.”
Ophelia stared long and hard at the cookie box, reading the ingredients over and over again. She felt a deep sort of ache, a sympathy for this woman she had never known, who under different circumstances she might have called ‘Mother’. Of course that was silly – she wouldn’t be sitting here had her father’s life not taken the unexpected turns it had. She still felt sorrow for him, for the life that he had lost, a life that did not involve her or Fish or struggles with the council or a rank above artisan. But she also felt a sort of grim selfishness: she was glad that all those things had happened to her father, all those things that had brought him here, to this very moment, where he was hers.
She tipped her glass into the sink and then loaded it into the dishwasher. Then, compelled, she gave her father a hug.
“I’ll always be your little girl,” she assured him.
Prosper managed a smile for her and planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’m glad we had this talk,” he said softly. “Why don’t you go get some sleep?”
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Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 6:44 am
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Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 6:45 am
**I think he's lying**
Fish was finally beginning to emerge from his pain-pill-induced stupor. After arriving at the hospital, whatever they’d given him made him black out. The last thing he remembered was getting dizzier and dizzier in the ER waiting room until he finally passed out in a chair by the nurse’s station. Clearly some time had passed, because the more Fish woke up, the more he was aware that he was lying on his own bed in his own bedroom with a light blue cast on his left arm, which still hurt.
Also, his father was sitting next to the bed, and Prosper did not look particularly happy.
“Fish,” said Prosper, in a voice that was tired and a bit worried but not entirely angry, “What happened?”
Fish looked down at his hands, finding the cast incredibly interested, and deliberated over which lie to tell. Surfing down the banister would not go over well, he suspected. “I tripped,” he said, very deliberately. “My shoe was untied and I fell down the stairs and I landed funny.”
“Right in front of Ylaine,” said Prosper, and Fish nodded. The girl was in his Studio Art class of seniors, and while other teachers were always indicating that she was top of her class, her artistic skills, while they showed sophistication, were not the sort of inspired brilliance he had come to expect some his more intelligent advanced-level students.
However, judging from the foul mood that Ylaine was in for the rest of the afternoon, Fish’s fall had not simply been an accident.
Fish frowned at the cast on his arm. “How long do I hafta wear this for?” he demanded.
“The doctor said you can have it off in a month,” Prosper informed him. Fish groaned.
“Aw man, that’s like half of June!” he groaned.
Prosper chuckled sympathetically and got up. Fish looked over and saw his sister standing in the doorway.
“Aw, man, Feely,” he groaned, “Did you come to make fun of me, too?”
“No,” said Ophelia. Prosper whispered something to her as he left the room, and she nodded to him. She crossed the room and sat down at the foot of the bed.
“What really happened?” she asked, smiling conspiratorially at him. “Because I doubt you had time to take off your shoes before you fell down the stairs.”
Fish hesitated for a moment before telling her everything. “I surfed down the banister!” he exclaimed. “It was so cool! I went so fast! I was gonna make it all the way to the end, too! But then I lost my balance and stupid Ylaine was there.”
He made a mock-disgusted face. Ophelia ruffled his hair.
“You’re not gonna tell dad, are you?” Fish asked, wincing sheepishly at her. Ophelia looked affronted.
“Me? Tell dad?” she asked. “No way. I need this a collateral in case you ever catch me doing something I’m not supposed to do!”
Fish looked shocked. “You never do anything wrong,” he accused, because it was more or less true.
“Sure I do,” said Ophelia, winking at him. “I just never get caught.”
She laughed and left Fish to try to imagine what on earth she could have possibly ever done wrong in the way of misbehaving. He couldn’t imagine Ophelia breaking rules unless it was to, say, save someone’s life. Maybe, he suspected, she had only said it to make him feel better. Yeah, that had to be it.
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Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 9:24 am
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Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 4:46 am
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