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 Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 9:22 pm
Gage
-----------------------------------
As soon as they got back home, Eiry bolted from the car, ripping free of everything that might've held him back. He phased through the car seat, the flesh of his brother, the glass of the window and the metal of the door, letting nothing stop him as he raced away from the vehicle. He heard voices behind him, the loud tenor of his guardian, but he stopped for nothing. He just raced and pumped his wings, moving himself as fast as he could. The churning weight in his chest commanded that he do so.
When he finally came to a stop, Eiry could hardly tell where he was. Wiping his puffy red eyes, he fought to swallow the dry saliva that had solidified in his throat. It was so hard to swallow. He was already so full of feelings, so full of emotion that it threatened to make him throw up. Clearing his eyes of tears long enough to look around, Eiry found out where he was.
The sunken graveyard.
The frei cast his eyes around, looking at the sunken tombstones and how they hung over each other, dejected and hanging. They were cloaked in moss and saggy verdure, so much so that they hardly resembled gravestones anymore.
Then Eiry caught himself wondering: Would Gage get a tombstone?
The thought...Brought more tears to Eiry's eyes.
Floating down onto his knees, sinking into the cold mire, Eiry lost himself again into dry sobs. Thoughts of his green friend filled his head, bringing a warmth to his heart that he knew he would never be able to feel again. Gage was always so quiet, so quiet. Like he was waiting for something from someone. Eiry remembered when he first met him in the park, their connection instantly forming through the life and death of plants, their life force. He was positive, and Gage was negative.
Eiry always felt like they had a bond, that they completed the two halves of a whole in a way that life and death itself complemented one another. He wanted to spend time with him, get to know him, speak with him, something, but their few encountered didn't allow for that kind of involvement. They only had a few special encounters, each one heavier than the last.
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Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2009 1:51 pm
~ A special delivery for Eiry and Riv from Ebony Shade! ~  I wonder what's inside? heart
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Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:10 am
Opening
-----------------------------------
Glancing at the packaging, Eiry thought about how nice and perfect the gift was wrapped. It was very clean, each edge sharp and practiced. It made him frown to think of ruining such hard work. So, not even bothering to rip through the perfect parcel, Eiry reached inside with his intangible hand, and pulled out its contents.
Immediately his face lit up with a smile.
"Tomes," he aid appreciatively, feeling the smooth covers of the books he pried from within. What great gifts from Ebony, Eiry thought, his eyes brightening with each long look at the two covers. He opened one of them up, leaving the other upon the box, to take a long inhale of the smell of paper. It was so new, so fresh, he could still smell the ink! The raw smell of paper tickled his nose, making him smile.
It was a good thing she gave him books too, because he was already thirty four times through his Shakespeare collection and he couldn't recall how many times he had read through Edgar Allen Poe's Complete Poems and Tales.
Leaning back so that he laid against the floor on the pillow of his ethereal flaming wings, Eiry opened up Frankenstein and began to read, his grin still plastered from ear to ear.
"I must thank Ebony sometime for these."
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Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:10 am
Hint
-----------------------------------
Stirring underneath the warmth of his blankets, his face pressed against his knuckles, Isi fought to keep his eyes closed, grasping desperately at his last dregs of sleep. He could feel that it hadn't been long since he went to bed, not long at all. But he just couldn't sleep. Something was pulling at him, beckoning that he wake. So at length, grumbling and pulling his sheets down from over his head, he peered at his room around him. Nothing was immediately apparent until he realized that there was the faint outline of a figure standing over him.
Isi jumped. "Holy...Jeez!" he barked, scrambling up from his bed. The figure didn't react to Isi, just stared. As Isi fought to keep the reigns of his breath under control, he stared hard at the figure, watching as its ghostly light brightened. It was young Fletcher, the child ghost, watching him with intent eyes and a dissatisfied frown. "What is it, Fletcher? What is it this time?"
Fletcher watched him quietly for a moment and then finally shifted. He moved over to the wall, and passed through. When Isi didn't make any move to follow, the child returned, stared at him, and left once more.
Isi sighed, groaning as he fought to get his legs free of the covers. He jerked them out into the cold air and then forced them underneath him into a walk. He didn't bother to take his crutches. They would only wake up the other occupants of the household. He followed Fletcher as quietly as he could throughout the house, moving as silently as he could, tracing his fingers along the cold walls as he made his way downstairs, across the hallway, and eventually to Eiry's room. Isi twisted his mouth in a frown as he saw Fletcher disappear within the door.
"Eiry...What about Eiry...?" he whispered, moving forward slowly. Fletcher's face peeked through the door, making sure that he was following, "I get it, I get it. You want me to look at Eiry."
Isi quietly opened the door and peeked into the room, and, to his surprise, he was greeted by Eiry's peering red gaze. Isi jumped again, latching onto the door frame to support himself on his wobbling legs, "What the hell, Eiry?! Don't scare me like that!" Isi snapped in a hushed whisper.
"My apologies, Isi," the minty frei said, moving back and pulling the door open for his guardian. He had a blanket around his shoulders, obscuring most of his body.
"What are you doing up? You should be sleeping," Isi said, leaning against the doorway. He furrowed his brows and crossed his arms against his chest.
The frei gave a gentle smile. He was oddly quiet this night, a sign that he was tired. He didn't move with energy like he usually did when he stayed up late, and his mischievous nature was oddly dulled. He was just tired.
"Fletcher," he said at length, giving a shrug to his shoulders, "Keeps me up at the weehours of midnightdark. He speaks with me, but his words are too muddledfog for me to comprehend. I do not know what he means to say."
Isi furrowed his brows, but attempted to keep his gaze soft nonetheless. "That's strange. Fletcher also woke me up. He led me down here, actually." He watched as Eiry's head tilted with the weight of curiosity. "Well, whatever. Don't think anything of it. Just go back to sleep, Eiry. It's really late."
"Do you thinkponder that the ghost child has come to warn us?" asked Eiry.
"No, Eiry. He's probably just lonely," Isi said, giving a stern tilt of his head, "Now go to sleep." Eiry nodded and floated back to his bed, nestling back down into the sheets. Isi watched and made sure that he was bundled up again until he closed the door and started back up towards his room.
He couldn't help but wonder...Perhaps Fletcher was trying to warn them of something again. But of what?
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Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:24 am
Going
-----------------------------------
Here.
Gone.
Here and gone.
Gone.
Gone.
Can’t come back.
Eiry looked down at his long fingers, staring in dull confusion as the faint outlines of himself refused the phase back into reality. He furrowed his brows, made the thought again, wished himself solid, but his fingers remained faint intangible digits attached to a fast fading palm. Eiry tried again. Once more, then again, another true out of disbelief, but there came nothing, no chance, just, and quite literally, nothing.
It was like choking.
Being able to flip back and forth between being there and not was like breathing for Eiry. If he couldn’t will himself from one state to another, it was like he couldn’t breathe.
He was suffocating.
Clawing at the air, clawing through himself, trying to pull himself back into substantiality, Eiry screamed. His voice scratched back to him from the emptiness, bouncing back fainter than before until Eiry couldn’t hear himself scream at all. His throat strained, his lungs collapsed upon themselves but he still couldn’t make a noise. His voice disappeared, begging for the corporeal.
Then everything else, every inkling of self…vanished.
Never again to reappear.
He was gone.
Gone.
Eiry awoke with a gasp lodged in his throat. Sweat permeaded his brow and he found himself on the ceiling looking down at his bed, devoid of sheets and pillows, just an empty mattress. Sucking in a desperate breath, Eiry confirmed that he could, indeed, breathe. He could. He checked his pale grey hands, checked his frayed ribbon, and checked the sweaty contours of his face. He was all there. Regulating his breath, the frei shuffled down from the ceiling back towards his bed, he was shaking terribly.
”A plague of foul thought and night terror…Nothing more,” Eiry consoled himself, “Nothing more.”
While the words comforted him, he still couldn’t help but feel terrified to will himself intangible lest he find himself in a waking nightmare.
Instead, he pulled up his blankets from the floor, nestled himself in them, and wished himself back to sleep.
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Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 11:25 am
Life in the Dead----------------------------------- . Eiry wakes up to find that his dreams have come true!! But perhaps there is some life in the dead after all... . -----------------------------------
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Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 10:01 pm
Coffee
-----------------------------------
After the commotion of Eiry’s growth, Isi had nothing else in mind but a relaxing cup of coffee and a good long stare at his raevan. He sat on a bar stool in front of the kitchen counter, gazing in quiet awe at Eiry who was staring, quite fixedly, into his reflection on one of Aphismet’s pans. The boy took in a long sip, staring hard at his raevan.
It was so odd, seeing Eiry with a tint of life in his skin. Before, he had been so pale, so touched with death, and so grey. He was lifeless, save for his energetic movements and bright clarity in his eyes. But now, come with the new transformation, Eiry’s skin had lightened with hues of peach and pale sand. For Isi, and probably for everyone else in the household, it was like staring at someone who had come back from the grave. His torso had lengthened, which was expected, continuing on the lanky form that was hinted from Eiry’s lithe arms and neck. Isi could only imagine, a fatherly pang in his breast, how Eiry would look like when he grew up into Valsaros.
“How do you feel, Eiry?” Isi asked, his hands cupping his hot mug. He was sipping it all too fast, and he would probably jumping and twitchy in another hour at the rate he was drinking, but he didn’t notice. He was too intent on Eiry.
Eiry glanced up, echoing the same thoughts that Isi had trailing through his brain. His eyes were wide, hardly believing the transformation himself. He fumbled for words, his eyes distractedly rolling back, time and time again, towards his reflection in the pan he held in his hands.
”New,” Eiry said, breaking his gaze with the pan for a few meager moments to look at Isi, ”Stretched and pulled like the shore. A little unsure, a little wary, but my feelings wander wither to thoughts, intentions that, just perhaps, I may be meant for something more.”
Eiry watched as Isi stared on at him, just nodding in a kind of dumbfounded way. They, letting his hand drift towards his chest and down towards his stomach, he patted his abdomen, mentioning, ”Also, a great emptiness, like a basin opened up here. It yearns sometimes…Mimicry mocking my yearning for death and plants.”
”Eiry, you idiot,” Isi said, his words more fond than their meaning, ”That’s called hunger.”
Eiry broke his gaze again from his distorted self in the metal, his eyes widening at Isi, ”Hunger, prithee don’t lie, but hunger as in the devouring of corporeal brunch and munch?” Eiry didn’t know what he thought of this new found ability to eat. He hadn’t really thought about it, it didn’t really come to mind. In all honesty, when Eiry saw the growth of his brother, he was more focused on the fact that he had a torso rather than what he could do with the new anatomy. He saw Rivener trying foods every so often, and the thought registered, just not as something that he, himself, would one day be able to do.
”Strange,” Eiry breathed, his pointed ears perking.
”Would you like to try something, or do you want to hold off on that for a while?” Isi asked, his coffee steadily getting colder in his hands.
The newborn Sigel tilted his head from side to side, rolling the idea around in his head. At length, he shook his head, looking off to the side, ”No. My first meal deserves no less than Aphismet’s best. I wish to bequeath that honor unto him.”
”Fine, fine,” Isi said, looking into his cup. Unknowingly, he had drained the rest of it and already his pallet was yearning for more. ”Eiry,” he said, raising his voice to yet again break his ward’s concentration from staring at the pan, ”Can you hand me the coffee pot? It seems I drowned this faster than I could enjoy it.”
Eiry aimlessly nodded his head, his arm slowly breaking free from the pan. He didn’t want to break his gaze from his reflection. He was intent on inspecting his ears and he was positive that he could reach the asked for item from where he sat without exerting too much extra effort. Without thinking really, nothing more than “coffee pot”, Eiry leaned a bit to the side, and the coffee pot was in his hand. He handed it absent-mindedly to Isi.
He held the heavy coffee pot for a long time, turning the pot this way and that to see his ears. It was only after a minute did he realize that the coffee pot was still in his hand. He looked up, questioningly at Isi. ”Coffee?”
Isi was staring, eyes wide, at Eiry as if he had, just right then and there, grew a horn from his forehead. ”Eiry,” he said slowly, his voice a little parched from slow shock, ”Eiry, you didn’t even reach for the pot.”
Eiry stared back at him, not quite understanding his simple accusation, ”Pardon?” he asked, his gaze drifting for seconds at a time, back to his reflection.
Isi could hardly believe it. He pointed at Eiry, his brow furrowing over his eye, ”Eiry, the coffee pot was way over there near the stove. You reached and the coffee pot floated over to you. It lifted up and floated.” The cripple stared at his ward for a moment, his eyes no less wider than before. Silence passed between the two as they awkwardly stared at one another. ”Eiry…Did you do that?”
Eiry stared back at Isi, momentarily dislodged from his growth—induced narcissism. He looked back down at the coffee pot, still hot in his hands, and then over to where the coffee maker was a yard and a half away. Eiry’s arms were long, but they weren’t THAT long. Eiry looked back at the pot, staring at it along with Isi, as if the coffee pot had grown legs.
Could what Isi implied possibly be true?
Eiry had to know, he had to test it. Staring at the coffee pot, Eiry imposed his will, just like he did on himself when he wanted to go intangible. It took a try and one more, for the pot to lift out of Eiry’s hand. It floated just a couple inches above the counter,just as Eiry willed it. A sweat drop beaded on his brow and Eiry had to bite his lip to reign in the strain it took to lift the kitchen item. His fingers began to twitch, tenseness started to lay its heavy weight on his mind, and it was then that Eiry could hold it no longer. The coffee pot fell to the kitchen counter and bounced, belching up hot sprays and gushes of hot drink. Eiry hardly jumped, he just willed himself intangible to escape the steaming coffee, and Isi yelped, quickly pushing himself off the bar stool and moving away from the counter.
His eyes were showing all of their whites. Eiry could hardly believe it. Did he really just do that? Did he really just suspend the coffee pot in midair? He stared at the brown liquid spilling all over the counter and the empty pot it came in. Yes…His growth as a sigel, demanded that he say: yes, I did just do that. An ear to ear smile of pride and excitement exploded onto Eiry’s face and he looked to Isi, all his teeth exposed in a Cheshire grin.
Isi could hardly believe it himself. Standing on weakening legs, the boy pushed a hand through his hair, staring at the mess on the counter in disbelief. He looked back up at Eiry, his own mouth cracking into a smile. ”Eiry,” he said, breathlessly, ”You’re telekinetic. You’re like a ghost, moving things around a room! You’re showing signs of telekinesis! Small, but still! Telekinesis!”
Eiry couldn’t help but beam like an idiot then, his chest puffing with pride. He knew that Isi wasn’t immediately thinking of it, but he was: the kinds of things he could do, the kinds of PRANKS he could get away with, now that he could do this! Eiry, his face still stretched into a stupid smile, dropped the pan he was holding and immediately focused his mind again on the coffee pot. Forget staring at the contours of his ears! He was going to push himself farther, strengthen this ability as much as he could and he was going to start now! Eiry focused his will on the coffee, meaning to pull it up from the counter and back into the coffee pot.
Isi stared at his ward, shaking his head in disbelief and giving a chuckle as he leaned onto the counter for support. This was so worth it, he thought. Rearing a raevan, despite its dangers, its hardships and troubles, it was worth it. Isi promised himself then, that no matter what, he was going to be there for when Eiry completed his journey to becoming whole…To becoming Valsaros.
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Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 4:11 pm
Test
-----------------------------------
It was late the night that Eiry grew from frei to sigel, that the raevan finally drifted towards his bedroom. He would've stayed in the kitchen the whole night long, practicing with his new found ability of telekinesis and reorganizing the kitchen cutlery with more thoughts (one utensil at a time of course), if Aphismet and Isi both didn't order him to bed. So, instead, Eiry focused his meager training on moving a glass of water up the stairs to his own room.
"Without spilling," Eiry muttered between clenched teeth.
As he slowly moved up the stairwell, lifting the glass a few steps, before letting it and himself rest, Eiry was dimly aware of his lengthened torso. With its appearance, so came, too, a new flood of feelings. One feeling that particularly stood out in his heightened awareness of self was the added weight. Before, he was feather light and Eiry could hang around Isi's neck without to much detriment to the cripple. But when Eiry tried that again today while the boy was on his crutches, the lad stumbled and gave an awkward laugh as he fought to hold up the new weight of his raevan. For the sake of nostalgia, Eiry was sad about his sudden gain in weight. Not only was he sad, but he was nervous. With an abdomen came a stomach and all these other kinds of pink fleshy things that were described in gruesome detail in cheap used horror novels, and with a stomach (plus other nameless squishy organs) came a whole new set of worries and responsibilities. Eiry wasn't blind to the rare instances when Isi spent long hours in the bathroom, hugging tight to the porcelain after eating something his body couldn't handle or when he stumbled around the house, pale and cross-eyed with illness. Eiry didn't want that, but he knew with the new addition to his body that it was now a potential experience he might one day face.
Eiry lifted the glass, holding it steady with his will, up three steps, before he let it drift down safely against the top of the stairwell. He let himself drift back against the wall, tiredly panting. With the draw of his arm across his forehead, he wiped off beads of sweat from his skin, skin that finally held color, and smiled.
A small triumph. The glass of water had made it up the stairwell, not a drop spilled.
Letting his hand trace down his front, his fingers tripping along the fols in his vest and sleeveless turtleneck, Eiry, for the upteenth time that day, felt the solidness of his torso beneath the fabric. He could feel the cage of his ribs and the soft oval that was his tummy and the weaved muscles within it. He felt himself over and over again, as if disbelieving that his growth had finally come. After each diagnosis, Eiry came to the same conclusion, that it was, indeed, real.
A Cheshire smile lit up his tired face and he drew his hand away from his soft abs lifting up from the floor. A strain of thought and the glass of water was lifted up, a foot, a yard, until it was floating eye-level with Eiry. He pushed it along with thought towards his bedroom, down the darkened corridor. When he came to the door, Eiry paused in momentary conflict. Usually, he never bothered to open his door, he just floated through it, but he wasn't sure if he could do that now with the glass of water. Perhaps, his quick thinking mind dictating an alternate solution, he could open the door with his mind too! It wouldn't hurt to test his limits, Eiry reasoned, sticking his tongue to the side of his mouth. The ghostly sigel paused, his hands clenching tight. Very carefully splitting his thought in twain, letting one part govern the levitation of the glass, Eiry made the other part of his mind focus on the twisting of the door knob. Slowly, slowly, Eiry's torso tightened, his red eyes focusing on both the glass and the door...The brass know clicked...Just another whim to push the door wide on its hinges...
And Eiry lost it.
As soon as he thought about opening the door, his other whim on the glass disappeared. He couldn't move nor think fast enough to save the glass from falling to the floor, belching out the water in a big messy gush all over the floor.
From elsewhere in the house, Eiry could hear Isi shuffle and shout sleepily, "Whatever you just got yourself into, it better be clean in the morning, Eirdisceol Etul Delaran."
"Yes," Eiry called half-heartedly, looking at the failed experiment with an unhappy frown.
"Go to sleep, Eiry," Isi's voice drawled lazily from his bedroom.
Eiry didn't bother to answer. By the way Isi was slurring his words, he would be asleep in another few minutes if not seconds. He would not hear him if he was to assure the lad. Floating downwards, Eiry looked at the mess of water on the floor, pulling his mouth into a frown. If he was going to lift the water back into the glass he needed to see what he was doing, and the light from his rune was not enough to see by.
"Light..." Eiry muttered, looking accusingly at the at the dimness of his rune. Then suddenly, at the beck and call of his whim, did a small orb of light appear from nothing near his fingertips. Eiry gave a gasp and jumped back, surprised to see that the ghostly orb of light appear near his fingertips. Eiry gave a gasp and jumped back, surprised to see that the ghostly orb followed the movement of his digits. After a few experimental waves of his fingers, Eiry smiled at the little will-o-the-wisp that dutifully followed.
"That will do..." the sigel whispered, reveling in the light his little summoned orb produced. It was just what he needed to clean up the water.
"This night," Eiry whispered to the little ghost orb as he leaned over the mess on the floor. He began to focus his mind on the droplets, pulling them together, "Last night, I was in darkness...This night I have a night light to sleep by."
-----------------------------------
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Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 7:17 pm
Lucia floats sneakingly up to the front door, rings the bell and floats as fast as possible back to the car leaving this right in front of the door: To see the surprise in your balloon, click here!
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 1:01 pm
Balloons
-----------------------------------
Eiry wasn’t the one to get the door. It was actually Percy, the ever watchful ghost, who first noticed the balloons by the door. It was only after Percy managed to call Eiry down from his fixed state on the porch, that Eiry discovered the balloons hovering calmly, dancing anxiously in the wind from where they were left on the porch. Floating up to them, offhandedly comparing their set-up to his body and his ribbon, the raevan inspected the card tagged along to them. At first, he didn’t recognize the name, beautifully handwritten in black ink. He stared at it for a while, looked around the drive-way as if the mysterious gift-bringer would hop out of the bushes right then and there, and then let his gaze fall back on the card.
”Lucia,” Eiry echoed, feeling the edges of the card with his fingers. Then he remembered. It must’ve been the dark haired raevan that showed up! She was nothing but a faint memory to Eiry, for she first visited him when he was caught in some of the deepest throes of his depression. He remembered her deep purple eyes, for that was really all he could remember of her. If they only met for a few moments at best, then why did she bring him balloons? The thought plagued Eiry and it was only until he took the string of the balloons in hand, that he realized what it was.
It was kindness.
”This fair Lady Black requires thanks of me, in some form, some way, some time on some soon to come day. I will find a way to please her in return,” Eiry said to himself, making a mental note. He took the balloons inside, intending to find a nice use for them in one of his projects in his room.
-----------------------------------
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 1:02 pm
Kiss Me, Thrill MeThe Beginning of the Outbreak Metaplot ----------------------------------- . Things seem to be going well for the Delaran family. Aphi's girlfriend and Isi's friend and co-worked, Alex, is coming to live with them! But something's not right with the raevans...And the first domino begins to fall in Kiss Me, Thrill Me. -----------------------------------
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:45 pm
HaHaHa
-----------------------------------
At first, Eiry couldn't do anything but sit in his cardboard box and remember. He recalled the way that Isi hobbled out of the front door, leaning against the frame and panning everywhere for his raevan. The Sigel had given a small noise then, a great shaky inhale that betrayed his hiding place on the porch. He was somewhere in between intangibility and being solid, leaning against the railing and trying to hold himself up. There was a swelling heat in his shoulders from where his brother's stingers sunk into his ghostly flesh. He remembered Isi's face contorting in anger, the way his feet dragged against the wooden planks, as he leapt for him. Everything else beyond getting picked up into Isi's arms was blurry. What he could remember was just the sting of Rivener's attack amidst the blur and dizziness that absorbed him, that was it really.
The next thing he could remember was being carried up to his room, but Eiry didn't want to stay in there. It was next to Rivener's room. At the moment, Eiry wanted to be as far away from Rivener as he could, which meant, in this case, the attic. So there he was, curled up in a cardboard box with his arms wrapped around the comforting rectangle of his favorite Edgar Allen Poe poem collection. Eiry had long since been left alone by those who wished him sleep and rest. He pushed his lips against the edges, trying to surf over the wave of dizziness that was rocking his vision. The poison in his system was very slowly leaving his body, but the effects remained in full swing for Eiry. He groaned and chewed bitterly at the edge of the book, releasing a hand momentarily to wipe back the sticky bangs from his forehead. Everything was so hot, but if he moved, everything suddenly seemed bitter cold! His head wobbled and he let it rest against the solid edge of the book.
Maybe if he closed his eyes, and fell asleep, maybe it would go away...
A light behind his eyes flickered, and suddenly flared, covering the dark pallet of his eyelids. Eiry's ear twitched, and the glow of his rune flickered and changed, casting angled shadows in the corners of his box. The glow had flickered orange.
Eiry twisted his head again, trying to adjust himself into a more comfortable position. Thoughts of memory still clung to the edge of his tired wonderings and a familiar red and black figure came to his mind. Rivener. What had happened to Rivener? He had become so angry, he had never been so angry. Big brothers were supposed to protect, that much Eiry knew. If Rivener hadn't protected him them, turned against him, glare and all, then that meant...
Rivener was not Eiry's brother.
Eiry's face frowned during his sleep. The long hours marched on, the light of the sun filtered through the windows and danced across the floor, but every hour seemed like a single moment to Eiry.
His thoughts flapped in his mind like black birds, banging against the fontanel of his skull. Rivener was not Eiry's brother. He was not his brother! He would change that sultry smirk, show him what it was to have an enemy. Those paints he so loved...Eiry's mind shuddered with thoughts of covering Rivener in paint, covering his whole room, his prized possessions in bright red red paint! The corner of his mouth pulled up in a smile. And Isi, he was always yelling, always frowning, grimacing and hobbling about on his stilts like an old man. Eiry entertained visions of Isi falling down the stairs, of watching him crawl, the boy's skinny legs dragging useless behind him and it made him giggle. It would be so easy to render him immobile, so easy then to feature him in a show of horrors! To have Aphismet as an audience to a crazy audacity of haunts. He looked so tender when he was helpless, a perfect picture of guilt and sorrow. Put him somewhere with someone he can't reach, tease them, prod them, show them flickers of horrors and watch their bowels curl! A show needed someone to entertain, right? What better than the frail fleshy mortals of the Delaran household? Not to mention their new guests! Guests that Eiry so very much wanted to drive out in screams...Oh, the poetry of it all, the wonderful images of toying with them, manipulating them through a black haunted house of tricks and toys, so easy to warp their emotions between fear and anger and absolute terror. It was just all too easy!
The morning hours waned. It had been another day of uninterrupted rest for Eiry, blurs of Isi and Aphismet coming in the attic to check on him passed in blinks. He didn't even hear their words, just curled tighter into his box and swallowed up whatever dead plantlife they toiled to bring up to him. He waited until they were gone, or just outside the door to resume his incessant chattering and eerie chuckles.
This much, Eiry knew: He had to have patience. The father of suspense and horror taught him that, and he would do nothing that wouldn't be fit for Poe's liking!Patience...Start things off small.
So by the time darkness folded itself over the house, and quiet settled in the old walls of the mansion, the cardboard box was filled with shreds and bitten, half-chewed pieces of paper, remnants of the chewed up rattled tome that was Eiry's favorite book.
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:56 pm
HeHeHe
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For the next two days after Alex's visit, Isi kept a close vigil on the room he left Eiry in. He didn't know why Eiry wanted to be in the attic, though he could take a couple guesses. He kept himself armed with medicines and, thankful of Eiry's new found ability to drink and digest things now thanks to his newly grown stomach, gave Eiry doses of cold syrup medicine every six hours. He kept checking on him, coming up to the attic and hobbling over to Eiry's box. From what he could see, the medicine was doing its work and helped clear away Eiry's dizziness and his small fever. His sniffling was gone in the second morning and he had lost all symptoms of the small poison. Isi was feeling okay about that, feeling hopeful, but it was strange when Eiry didn't respond. He spoke with him, prodded and even read some of his favorites stories to the minty sigel, but there was no clear response.
So when Isi heard a strange dull clicking outside his room one night, similar to the sound of rubber heels walking casually down the hall, it was easy to blame the sound on the resident ghosts of the house instead of thinking that they might be caused by his ghostly ward. Even when his sheets were ripped off his sleeping body in the middle of the night, he still blamed it on Yvette. Isi had no inkling of a suspicion that it might be Eiry. Bitten awake from his thin sleeping by the n** of the cold through his thin pajamas, Isi forced his eyes open and gasped.
Floating beside him, head lolling onto his shoulder as if the vertebrae in his neck were gone, was Eiry, red eyes wide and mouth stretched to each ear in a terrifying grin. What didn't immediately register in Isi's half-awake mind was that Eiry's rune color was flickering, unstable between it's usual minty hue and an unnatural orange.
"Eiry! Jeez," Isi stammered, rubbing his eyes and lifting himself up from his bed. He tried to force his mouth into a smile, after all, his raevan was finally up again! He sifted a hand through his pepper grey and brown hair, remarking lightly, "You want to knock next time? How's it going, kiddo?"
But Eiry didn't response, he just floated there, unmoving, just...smiling.
Isi furrowed his brows, trying again to keep his sleepy smile tacked onto his cheeks. Eiry was prone to try and pull tricks and Isi couldn't help but think that this was another one. He was going to snap out of that state any moment now and lunge upon him with a hug or something. Isi couldn't help but wonder if his neck was hurting, holding his head like that against his shoulder. He tried again to speak, get some kind of response from his wispy ward, "Are you feeling alright? Did the medicine help you?"
Still no response. Eiry just sat there in the air. Smiling. Still smiling. Head lolled onto the side, bangs sliding into his face, his grin unchanging. The only thing moving was the flicker of his wings and their ghost fire. Smile.
Isi was not a very patient person. So when his ward refused to give up the ghost and snap out of his trance, Isi set his mouth into a firm frown and sat up straight in his bed, pointing firmly at Eiry. "Okay, cut it out, Eiry. I'm in no mood for putting up with your ridiculous antics. It's one in the morning, I just went to bed a little over an hour ago, and I want to get some sleep. So tell me how you're feeling so I can get back to sleep. You should be getting back to sleep too."
Smile.
Except this time, something changed in Eiry. His rune stopped flickering, and stayed on orange, and the edges of his disturbing smile twitched. In the next moment, Eiry began to chuckle behind his smile and he faded away, pushing his intangibility so far that it was hard to see him in the dark, nearly invisible. Isi, slightly disturbed but too frustrated to really care or notice the peculiar behavior, slipped back into bed, pulling his covers over him.
"Eiry, you better leave this room and go back to bed, or I'm going to bust a nerve," he muttered as he made himself comfortable and rolled onto his side. It was to his surprise that when he turned over, Eiry was lying right there beside him, still intangible and still stuck with that eerie, unchanging wacko smile. Isi gave a yelp and threw himself back, falling out of his bed and onto the floor with a thud. When he opened his eyes again, rubbing his head, his heart jumped again, for Eiry was again, right there in his face with that smile, that stretched cheshire smile! Isi gave a yell and threw his arms in front of him, uselessly trying to push his insubstantial raevan away from him.
"EIRY! STOP!" and when Isi opened his eyes next, Eiry was gone. Momentarily, for all he knew, gone from his room. Shaken, Isi clambered back into his bed, constantly checking over his shoulder for that terrible grin. He nestled himself back down in his bed and closed his eyes. And he kept them shut, because he was too disturbed to open them again and find that unchanging psychotic grin smiling back at him.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 9:07 pm
HoHoHo
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Effectively dodging all forms of sleep by dreaming himself into nightmares about Eiry's constant and suddenly eerie grin, Isi awoke late in the afternoon---
---In the kitchen?
Jolting himself upright to the tear of fabric, Isi found himself pinned to the top of the island, the edges of his pajamas all tacked down by various kitchen cutlery. As he shifted, a mass of torn paper slipped off his body, poofing into the air, a literary snow. Eying the shreds, Isi quickly decoded the words necessary to deduct that it was Shakespeare, it was probably all of Eiry's Shakespeare and Poe books, gutted and shredded into papery snowflakes. Instead of worrying about how angry Aphismet was going to be upon finding his beautiful kitchen island suddenly covered with knives, or about the state of Eiry's most beloved and prized books, Isi ripped the rest of the knives and forks, and even the occasional spoon, out of his pajamas and threw them off to one side.
"JEEZ, what the ******** happened?!" Isi blurted, examining the holes in his pajamas and the holes in the counter top for their reality. Sure enough, they were real, and sure enough, he was not dreaming. Offset by fear, Isi swung himself off the counter, and, making sure that he didn't step on anything sharp, stood up. Glancing around for that grin, Isi ducked behind the counter and started picking up handfuls of the silverware. When he leaned back up, looking towards the silverware drawer, he saw first, Eiry. He was floating very much the same way that he saw him first in the throes of midnight, head lolled onto one side with that blasted grin still stretched between his pointed ears. The tips of his hair had turned orange, as well as small traces between the interlocking mint and blood red in his wings. Isi jumped and blinked and in that blink, Eiry was gone again. Forcing his eyes to stay open, Isi put back all the silverware and meandered out of the kitchen, using the walls to stabilize his path. He started upstairs, meaning to change out of his ruined pajamas into clothes, and when he passed by the garage and the desk where Aphismet and he usually left important things like cellphones, keys, notes, and other such things, he grabbed his cellphone. Rivener was gone somewhere, perhaps to the tattoo parlor, or off with Zul, or something, and Aphismet was at work, preparing to take off a day or two to help Alex with the move into their home. At the moment, Isi was alone and if things were to continue like this, Isi wanted to call Aphi and get him home as quick as possible.
Isi was starting up the stairs when he heard something scratch against the floor in the hallway behind him. Unable to keep himself from checking, Isi let himself peer around the corner. What he saw was that terrible grin. No longer floating, but laying against the ground. Isi's spine stiffened.
"Eiry, I can't put the ******** up with your ******** mischief anymore!" the youth shouted, trying to keep his tone and face as menacing as possible, "Quit it! Quit it, NOW, Eiry!"
But his words had no effect against that grin. It remained grinning and grinning, a perfect, quiet insane smile. Eiry's hair was matted, wild and wispy, more wild and unkempt than usual. Unmoving. That smile. But then it snapped into movement. Isi jumped and threw himself against the wall of the stairwell. He could only watch in terror as that grin started pulling itself along the floor panels, scrambling against the floor, and tilting this way and that, neckless, it seemed, the minty ribbon and orange glow trailing behind. He looked like a wild bug scrambling with broken legs.
Panic swelled up in Isi's chest like a wave, and, without thinking, he threw himself up the stairs, scrambling up as quickly as he could. He kept the cellphone clutched in a death grip in one of his hands, glancing back after each falter towards the grin. It slammed up against the side of the stairwell he had collapsed against a moment ago, and continued scrambling up with frightening speed.
"HOLY s**t!" Isi yelped, tripping once more on the stairwell. He resorted to crawling up on his knees and elbows for the few brief moments that it took for him to get his footing back underneath his weak legs. For a few brief moments, it looked like the grin was going to catch up to him, but Isi broke free of the stairwell and onto the second floor. Throwing his feet underneath him into a run, Isi bolted down the hallway and into Eiry's room. He slammed the door shut, but when he hopped to a stop, he realized how stupid that effort really was in face of a raevan that could will himself intangible. Just as Isi convinced his weakening legs to move again towards the balcony, he saw the dreaded cheshire grin melt through the bottom of the door. He gave another loud swear and forced the balcony door open and lunged for the one to Rivener's bedroom, ripping that one open as well. He had just about hobbled his way over to the door of Rivener's bedroom, when, behind him, he heard a terrible guttural cackle. Isi didn't even bother to look behind him because he knew that the smile was there. He threw open Rivener's door, but to his surprise, it slammed back on him. Isi forced it open again, it slammed shut once more, nearly clipping his fingers, and he threw all his weight into his shoulder and blasted open the damn thing. The smile, he knew, was probably right behind him, nipping at his ankles.
Isi fell into a headlong run towards the next set of stairs, not even bothering to reach for the railings as he threw himself into a mad scramble of the stairs. His legs, weakening, made him stumble more and more against the stairwell and each time he glanced down between his ankles he could see the white smile skulking just behind. His heart was racing, and he thought he was clutching his cellphone so hard that it just might break. And Isi could've sworn that this was the longest stair that he had ever climbed, because, for a few split moments, it felt like he was never going to reach the top.
Finally, he made it onto the third floor. He was just crawling onto the landing, his legs still on the flight of stairs, when instinct demanded that he look back behind him. It was to his surprise that the smile wasn't there anymore. Somehow, it disappeared on the stairwell. Isi looked around, his heart beating so wildly it made his chest cold, and he paused there on the edge between the landing and the stairs. He saw no smile.
"What the ********> he said, his words coming out in woeful pants, "What the ******** is going on..." With trembling fingers, he tried to open his hand to get to his cellphone, but it was when he looked down that he noticed the white gleam of teeth. The grin was in the floor, just beneath him. All smiles. All teeth. Smile.
Isi gasped, and before he could throw himself back down the stairwell, escape that maddening smile, arms flew up and snatched his shoulders. He could hardly resist as suddenly, Isi was pulled down into the floor. Into and through the floorboards.
When Isi opened his eyes, he found himself upside down...trapped in the ceiling of the third floor. With growing panic, he looked up and found his chest ended promptly where the ceiling was and his body was presumably on the other side and still lying against the top of the stairs. Isi gave a struggle, breathed a few cuss words, and struggled again, but to no avail. He was stuck.
"Eiry!" Isi called. And finally there was a response. It was soft at first, high-strung and tense, the excited drawl of Eiry, who was lying on the floor directly beneath him, still all smiles, still all grins, the tips of his fraying hair as orange as autumn leaves, Small freckles of blood, a tell-tale sign that Eiry was unwell, spattered his cheeks, framing that SMILE.
"TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad?"
Isi's eyes widened and he struggled again, giving everything he had until he convinced himself that he was very much stuck and unable to move.
"Oh, god."
"The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them."
Feeling the hardness of plastic and metal in his hand, Isi remembered that he had a cellphone. He lifted it to his face and frantically began to dial the number of his brother.
"Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell."
Lifting the phone to his ear, Isi prayed that Aphi would answer, feeling the blood slowly seep to his head. All the meanwhile, trying to keep his gaze from the ground, from looking at that SMILE, Isi bit his lip, focusing his attention on the ringing of the cellphone. Trying to keep away from looking at that smile, that smile! Smile.
"How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story."
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*Eiry is reciting passages from Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 10:52 pm
Attempt----------------------------------- Isi's fingers trembled as he held the phone next to his ear, listening to the ring, over and over again from Aphismet's Cellphone. "Come on, come on," Isi muttered, turning his eyes away from the smile, "Come on, big brother, I need you now..."-----------------------------------
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