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 Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 1:47 pm
Envy had been quiet after her laughing spell and exited the ride quickly. She was afraid she would be yelled at by the other riders but they all just walked off laughing. Then Fiero got all excited about a picture. She was shocked to learn her laugh hadn't hurt his ears. In fact, he seemed to be more excited than upset. She didn't know what to think yet.
"Yes, Envy laugh. But not understand it. It not hurt anyone. Why laugh not hurt but talk does?" She looked horribly confused as she stared off towards the games section. There lots of venders were calling out for people to try to win a prize. She tried to forget about the haunted house incident and pulled Fiero towards the games.
All the prizes seemed so large and the games seemed relatively easy. But then she watched as person after person failed to win a prize. There were dart tosses, ring tosses, even a milk bottle toss. She didn't know if she could win anything seeing as she was so small so she looked to her elder orb born friend. "Envy want prize. Can Fiero win prize?"
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 8:37 pm
"Fiero can try," he replied, but he warned her: "Is very likely I fail."
Fiero sized up the various games, and then found one he was certain he could win, but it would be cheating to do so. There was a game, of sorts, where a man guessed a person's age, weight, or both, and if he got within a certain number of the correct one, he won, but otherwise the player won. Fiero could easily win that game, since he looked like an older teenager, but was really less than a year old, and since he had no definite weight, being a corsea and given to floating, which is hardly conducive to being weighed. However, he would not seriously consider cheating in that manner. It was low, even though it would be amusing. He didn't want to be discovered.
He did want to win Envy a prize, though, if that was what she wanted.
He surveyed more games, trying to pick one he could win without cheating. Then his gaze fell on a man with three cups, one of which had something under it, and the others were empty. The man switched the cups so rapidly it was nearly impossible for the human eye to follow. But not elven eyes. Fiero found that he could follow the correct cup with his eyes if he concentrated and did not allow himself to become distracted by the semi-braiding motion of the man's hands. The winner, in the unlikely event that there was one, seemed to have a choice between money and a prize. Fiero guessed most people would go for the money, being human beings.
He floated over, taking care to mimic a human's walking motion with his blue jean-encased ribbons, and waited patiently for another amusement park guest to become frustrated and turn away from the game. Then he put down the requisite dollar and watched closely as the man moved his hands faster and faster, and with surprising grace for someone who wasn't human. He wondered if the human had any idea which cup the object was under, or whether he just hoped his opponent couldn't guess. When the cups stopped, Fiero pointed with confidence to the one on the left, and was startled to find that he had chosen wrongly. His concentration must have broken.
He put down another dollar and this time he ignored the human's rhythmic speech and narrowed his focus down to the one cup he knew the ball was under. The world did not seem to slow down for him, but he did not lose sight of the cup, and when his opponent offered him a choice, he chose the cup on the right. His opponent tried to dissuade him, but he was adamant, certain that he had chosen correctly. At last, and with great reluctance, the man in the fedora shifted the cup to reveal the ball underneath. He offered Fiero the choice between money and a prize and Fiero said he'd take a prize.
At that, he summoned Envy and asked her to choose from among the prizes hanging up behind the man with the cup game.
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Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:19 am
Envy tried watching the man with Fiero but got completely confused once he started going faster. She didn't have the skill for this kind of game. She didn't have skill for most of the games being so small and physically weak. She frowned a bit when he lost the first round but she was happy when Fiero found the ball on the second try. Now she was to pick her prize. She looked over the little things first then the larger things. Finally she picked out a medium sized unicorn. She liked unicorns.
It was a pretty purple unicorn, a lighter color than her dark hair. She held it up to show Fiero. "I choose this." In a book she had read unicorns were the purest and most innocent creatures in the world. She wished she was a unicorn, then maybe she wouldn't have bad dreams. Maybe her new unicorn would keep bad dreams away. "I name him Sun, so it will be bright when I sleep."
Now it was time for another ride. Thankfully for her she didn't have a stomach so getting sick on rides was not a problem. She was still curious about the strange heart shaped ride. Envy held Fiero's hand as they walked over to the big red thing where couples were standing. They all seemed so giddy and blushy here. She felt a little uncomfortable, especially when some of the couples turned to remark how cute a couple she and Fiero made. Not that she got what that meant really. She and Fiero were friends.
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Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 4:55 am
It amused Fiero to see Envy select a purple unicorn. It was among the last things he would have expected. However, thinking about it, she didn't seem like the sort to want an over-sized tiger or penguin or puppy dog. And she did seem to like most colors of purple. Her name for the unicorn was very precocious, and yet very innocent. He could only nod, really, when she signed it, because he regretted the need she had for something to act as a bright beacon while she slept. People, especially young people, should not have to live with the terrors Envy apparently dealt with nightly. It was cruel of whomever did this to her, and he had been partly serious last night in saying he'd punch them in the nose if he ever got the chance. He'd like to.
Fiero was further surprised by Envy when she led him to a ride whose name he could now read was Tunnel of Love. That didn't seem at all her kind of attraction. She tended to shy away from displays of affection, and he suspected that there would be a great deal of that around the ride. He had no idea what to expect from inside the ride, but the boat did look like fun. He'd never been on the water before. Not that a ride in an amusement park really counted as being on the water, but it was the closest he was likely to get. His slight swell of enthusiasm was quelled by the exclamations of the people around them as they waited in line.
Fiero was relieved that Envy didn't seem to understand what the people around them meant. He understood, and he didn't know how they could say something like that. High things! She was a child, and he clearly was not. Even to his slightly different way of viewing things, it was unacceptable for adults or near-adults to carry on the sort of relationship people were implying he had with Envy. His cheeks and ear tips burned in what might have looked like a blush, but he was privately furious, though he kept it to himself. If this was a ride Envy wanted to ride, he'd go on it and endure the strangers' idiocies. He wanted to make sure she enjoyed her stay with him and Korea.
So when their turn came, he endured the stares, leveling a fierce glare at everyone over Envy's head as they got onto the boat, which was barely large enough for the two orb born and the unicorn stuffy. It forced him to sit somewhat closer to Envy than he was comfortable with, considering the gist of the comments he'd been hearing since they got into line. Why would people jump to that conclusion? Surely other people went on this ride. Parents with children, siblings, something else. It went indoors, and it was on the water, so it was probably a good deal cooler than most rides, and the signs he'd read while in line warned it was a long ride. Most people probably used it to cool off.
He was relieved when the boat was allowed to float away with the current into the dark, yawning maw of the giant, heart-shaped entrance.
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:03 pm
Envy waited patiently, ignoring the babbling of everyone. The ride seemed aweful small for the two of them. Inside there were all kinds of very romantic scenes and a few things that tried to scare the two of them. Envy was completely confused by this whole ride. Of course she thought this ride would be like the first one they were on. But it wasn't scary at all.
"Fire-o, why all these hearts and swans and things? Is silly." She signs to her companion before they finally exit and a camera flashses infront of her eyes. She eeps a bit and rubs her eyes, the little white spots staying for a bit. An older man chuckled and handed her a picture of her and Fiero on the ride, her face the look of confusion.
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:11 pm
Fiero missed the first part of her question, but he caught the bit about the ride being silly. He agreed, though it was a nice opportunity to get out of the blazing sun, which seemed to get hotter by the moment. Or maybe that was the blush creeping up the back of his neck because of the way everyone kept scrutinizing him. He had an urge to shake someone and tell them he was not a *****. He restrained himself, because it stood to reason that he would say just that if he was a ***** just a ride for silly, infatuated teenagers," he muttered ferociously, unwittingly answering her question.
"Not a bad picture of you, though. You look kind of goofy."
He smirked at the picture as he looked at it over her shoulder. Confusion on Envy was not something one got to see very often, and he suspected no one had ever managed to document it on film before. He wondered if Wendell took pictures of Envy. He knew that Korea didn't take many photos of anyone, since she, herself, hated being photographed and tried to respect the wishes of others. He also suspected that she had never tried to take any pictures of him because she wasn't sure if he would show up in the photos, being from another world. Apparently the orb-born can be photographed, however. That was something worth knowing. He wondered how many other people knew.
"Hey, Envy, do you meet many others like us? Orb-born people, I mean? I used to see more when I was younger, but now, not so many."
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:28 pm
The small female nodded, noting that Fiero didn't seem to happy about the ride. It seemed to be more about the people talking about them. They kept saying they were a couple. But she knew better, shouldn't Fiero? She wondered what was so bad about the ride itself. She hadn't liked sitting so close to Fiero but it hadn't been horrible. She thought for a moment as Fiero asked about other orb-born.
"Envy not meet many others. Only Try. Clara's orb." Envy kept the picture as the two walked along. Suddenly a rollar coaster released it's riders and a surge of bodies pushed against the pair. Envy tried her best to keep from getting trampled or her ribbons stepped on. When she finally found a free spot she took a breath. She didn't like crowds. Being so small and not being able to talk really made it difficult out amongst lots of people.
That's when Envy realized in a panic that she couldn't find Fiero. She looked all around but there was no sign of the redhead she had come with. Panic started to enter her mind. She couldn't call out to him, her voice would attract too much attnetion and hurt people. She didn't have her board with her so she couldn't write anything. She was lost. She was really lost. She staretd to float around, to try to find her friend. In her panic, she didn't notice a group starting to follow her.
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:59 pm
Fiero saw Envy's reply and wondered who Try was. He'd heard Clara's name a few times in passing, but he'd yet to meet her or her orb. Not that he had any right to expect to do so. After all, Clara was Wendell's friend, and Fiero was Envy's friend, and that didn't preclude any knowledge of each other on the part of either Clara or Fiero. He was just curious. He had never met anyone who had been to the Underground, but he kept hoping he might meet someone. If he got really lucky, he might meet someone who had met Lysander, whom he had not forgotten.
While he considered the somewhat disheartening answer Envy had given, he found that there was a distinct disadvantage to floating: when surrounded by a crowd of people all moving one direction, a person is forced to move in the same direction as the crowd, whether one wills it or no. He found himself carried along as the crowd moved in a herd-like fashion back to the entrance of the roller coaster, going for another ride. He did not want to ride on the roller coaster. It was a steel coaster, and he had already determined that it would be too obvious he wasn't human if he had to sit normally.
So he disentangled himself from the crowd and discovered, to his dismay, that he had lost Envy. He tried yelling for her, and even showed the picture of them on the Haunted House ride around, hoping someone might have seen her, but he found no help in either method. She seemed to have vanished in to thin air. Wonderful. He began to make his way to the Missing Children Station he'd seen on the way in, hoping she might've thought to go there.
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:12 pm
Poor little Envy hadn't thought of that at all. She just wanted to find Fiero and not be alone. She was scared. Very scared. The Banshee clung to her small unicorn as she made her way past some buildings. She couldn't get her barings, having never there before she didn't recognize any of the other rides. So she tried to take a short cut through some smaller buildings. She realized very quickly that this was not part of the park, more like the back area where the workers went. This would not get her where she needed to be.
Turning around to go back she saw a line of boys blocking her way. They were teenagers with spiky hair and black clothing. They were all smirking at her while the biggest one stood infront of them. He looked quite strong and rather mean looking. "So little freak, why aren't you in the show?"
Invidia blinked and frowned a bit. She was not a freak, this is how she was. Just because she wasn't human didn't make her something bad. She tried to move past them but one of the boys pushed her back, knocking her down. She gasps a bit and held her little unicorn close.
"Looks like the freak doesn't want to play. I've seen her around, with that other freaky boy with red hair. Lets show them what we think of freaks!" They all slowly approached her, some rubbing their fists together.
Envy was scared. They were going to hurt her!! She was too small and too weak to fight back! What could she do!?! There was only one thing she could do and she hoped it would at least distract them enough to where she could get away. She had never concentrated on her voice before, merely speaking normally, but this was an emergency. She took a deep breath into her body and held it for just a moment. Then she let her voice loose.
The sound was deafening and at a pitch that made all the near by hounds start howling. Being near a rollar coaster kept most people outside of the little area from hearing the worst of it but the boys were not so lucky. They were all grabbing their heads and screaming in pain. Some even had blood coming out of their ears. She held her scream for another few seconds before stopping, her throat sore from the effort.
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:36 pm
Fiero stopped dead upon hearing a sound which, once heard, cannot be forgotten or mistaken for another. He had hoped never to hear it again, because as much as he adored Envy, her voice was torture to his ears, and the ears of most creatures with hearing organs. He had never seen her interact with a deaf person, but he guessed they would feel pain, even if they couldn't hear the sound. Something about the resonance she hit was like touching your tongue to both ends of a 9-volt battery while holding onto a piece of heavy machinery and shaking your head, but in your ears and teeth and jaw and everywhere else.
Then he went against every sensible instinct he had and started toward the source of the sound. It wasn't easy to pick it out, since it seemed to be coming from all sides, but he focused very hard and did not allow himself to become distracted by the colors and the smells and the people jostling him. Most of them couldn't pinpoint sounds like he could, but the majority of the people he saw were frowning like they had low-level headaches. Probably because they could only hear certain frequencies of Envy's voice, rather than the full range. He didn't know whether he felt sorry for them or envied them. He would have grit his teeth, but he'd read somewhere that was a bad idea if you already had a headache. Something about the tension it created in the jaw?
Once he got too close, however, it was nearly impossible to figure out where, exactly, the sound came from, until, abruptly, it was cut off. At that point he was also near enough that he could see several felled bodies, which made a nice trail for him to follow. Well. Nice was a relative term. He felt bad for some of them, especially the ones with nosebleeds and eardrums that seemed to have burst. He wondered how the park would decide to explain it when people demanded explanations. Not his problem. His problem was finding Envy. And killing whatever had made her scream, if necessary.
He saw her in an alley, clutching the unicorn he'd won, and hurried over.
"Are you all right? Are you hurt?" From the look of the people nearby, there wouldn't be any trouble from them in the immediate future. "What happened?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:43 pm
Envy had tried to move past the boys but they all swung at her in fear. She was close to tears when a familiar sight entered her eyes. Red hair and tan skin; FIERO!! The moment the elf got close to her she flung her arms around him. She was in tears and too scared at the moment to really say anything. Once she calmed down and moved away from the boys she explained how they had pushed her and tried to hurt her. So she had to scream. She felt bad...then.....she blinked and looked down.
"Fire-o. You have feet." She pointed after she signed to the feet now sticking out of Fiero's normally loose pants. What had happened while she was being attacked? She wanted to know but right now she just wanted to leave. "Can we go now? Envy not like this place any more."
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2008 9:11 pm
Fiero did as much as he could to reassure Envy that she had done nothing wrong, and that she had acted in self-defense. He told her that any court would side with her, in the unlikely event it came to that. Of course, this was based on watching Law and Order, but she didn't need to know that. It wouldn't exactly bolster her confidence, after all, that he got his knowledge from a fictional television show, even if it was originally based on real cases.
"Feet. That's nice," he remarked absently. "Yeah, let's go."
He turned, using only his back and waist muscles to turn and found that it didn't quite work as it was supposed to. Ordinarily, he turned and he turned. He did not stay rooted in place, dragged back to where he had been. This caused him to examine the exclamation of feet more closely, glancing down and finding to his immense frustration that he did, indeed, have feet. This in itself was no reason to be frustrated, but the sudden realization that he had no idea how to use his feet was frustrating. He didn't really have time to learn. He'd managed to get to Envy, and he'd presumably had feet when he did so.
Now he grit his teeth and frowned as he concentrated on placing his feet and moving his legs and bending his knees and all the other things people spend months learning to do when they first give walking a try. He had no patience for anything less than what he demanded, which was walking as normally as possible. His motions were jerky, but apparently determination counts for something, even when learning to use apendages never previously attached. Or maybe it was just all that practice at controlling the ribbons he'd had instead of legs. Either way, he got them to the front gate of the park and arranged for Korea to come get them.
"I'm sorry, Envy. This was supposed to be fun," he said as they waited. "Humans can be real jerks."
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Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 11:21 am
"It ok. It was fun, but not like those boys. They want to hurt Envy." She floated close to him, constantly looking over her shoulder. She was afraid the boys would come back. She couldn't scream again, not with Fiero so close to her. Could Fiero defend her? Like he said he would? She didn't know. He seemed to be dealing with having legs so she didn't think he could fight as well. Her little arms wrapped around Sun as she let his warm stuffing comfort her.
Once Korea showed up she jumped into the car and curled up. She wished Wendell was here. She wished she could go back to the Van de Burg house where she felt safe. Though she felt safe enough with Korea and Fiero, it was not the same kind of safe. She hoped Wendell would call them soon.
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Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:05 pm
"I won't let anyone hurt you," Fiero promised.
Walking had been difficult. Sitting was another challenge. He knew Korea never had to think about moving, but surely there'd been a time in her life when she had been awkward and unwieldy when she was young. He was ashamed to think of himself when Envy was so upset, but he couldn't stop being amazed at his transformation. He had not expected it to happen like this at all. Korea paid his new appendages no mind, really, other than to give him a look which said they had things to talk about later.
On the drive home Korea's attention was divided almost equally between the road and Envy. She wasn't as sensitive as Fiero, but she wasn't utterly without intuition. She knew something had happened - other than Fiero's sudden acquisition of legs. Once they reached town, she turned left, though a right would have taken them back to her apartment. The way to the graveyard was left, and she thought it might help Envy. It might not, of course, but she wasn't sure what else to do for the little banshee. She drove the car through the cemetary gate and parked at the end of the drive near the caretaker's cottage. Then she turned off the engine and turned in her seat to look at Envy.
"I don't know if this will help, but it's the only place I could think to bring you where you might find some solace. If I was mistaken, we can go back to the apartment, and if you want to be here, but don't want me or Fiero to come with you, we'll stay in the car, all right?"
She and Fiero exchanged a look in which Fiero read that he would stay in the car if Envy said that was what she wanted, and that he and Korea would be having a chat if so. He wasn't worried about talking to Korea, so much as he was worried about Envy being unhappy and surrounded by death. He didn't want to make her condition any worse.
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Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 2:52 am
"Envy go by self. Need to talk. Not want Fiero around. She already hurt his ears." The little banshee climbed out of the car and immeditely floated for the graveyard. She flaoted far from the car, passing several large headstones, before stopping infront of a large angel statue. She floated up and perched on this for awhile. Her little yet powerful voice talking away to whomever was there.
It was much different at night. Fiero had seen her mostly during the day but now....something strange kinda happened. Little balls of light would flit about the area Envy was in. She would smile at them and watch them dance for a minute then go back to talking. She seemed to attract them, as if they were glad to have someone to talk to. Her long hair was barely visable in the night but as each globe passed it was illuminated in the most unusual way. It would become obvious to anyone that the child was connected to this realm, being a banshee that would be no surprise.
Invidia herself was calming down. The nice child that had been buried under the statue was sympathetic to her recent encounter. He had been bullied before too so he told her not to worry and be glad she had such a nice protector like Fiero. Other spirits chimed in; some complaining about the behavior of children these days and others asking her to talk about the fair. Envy responded to all of this in her usual tone but soften so as to spare anything Fiero might pick up.
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