|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:21 pm
Arlyn was not fully opposed to the idea of hanging out with his little brother, but he also was determined not to enjoy it too much. The kid was quiet, which was a blessing, but Arlyn got a vibe from him that was... not quite bad, but it agitated him in a way he could not describe.
Lashing his tail back and forth behind him, the Anima walked down the sidewalk on his bare feet, with Bhel in tow. The kid's hoofsteps were enough sign that he was still following, so it did not matter that Arlyn could not check back over his shoulder on him.
Bhel trailed behind his brother in sullen silence, which quickly became the silence of a boy distracted by everything going on around him outside. He was forbidden from going to the Fa'e Headquarters without his guardian after the whole incident at Prom with Dustin, so Arlyn was taking him somewhere else. The bull Fa'e was not sure where yet, but he had the walk to admire the scenery and ponder whether or not knocking Dusty on his a** in public and covering him in ice cream was worth getting grounded from Headquarters.
Leading Bhel up to the door of the house at what had once been the Anima gardens, Arlyn took his sheathed sword in both hands, and knocked on the door with the end of the handle.
"We're here," he told Bhel flatly while he waited for Cerena to answer the door. Hopefully she still lived here, anyway; the Anima had not been by in a long time. Still, though, he remembered her as a person who would know a lot better than he would what to do with a kid.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 12:41 pm
It was quite a few silent moments before a rattling came at the knob and, with a small noise of exertion, the front door was finally pulled open. The young girl who stood there was unmistakably Cerena -- if only recognized by her warm, cheery voice, which ventured, "Yes? Oh, aren't you two cute! Can I help you?"
Visually, however, she was almost an entirely different person. The bright blue of her eyes was the only thing unchanged -- her once brown-gold hair had lightened considerably in shade, almost pure white and transparent at the very ends. Her youthful face (Cerena was still considerably young for a guardian) was lined -- perhaps with illness, perhaps with worry -- and she was frailer in figure, shyer in presence. Her headwings, which were once merely tiny twin sproutings of feathers above her ears, were larger, stronger, and the only really solid-looking thing about the Valkyrie nowadays. Fa'e guardianship had not been kind to her.
She stood there for a moment in the doorway, smiling beatifically down upon the two boys, before a thought suddenly struck her and she took a step away. "Would you like to come in? It's hot outside -- sorry, it's kind of a mess in here, this place accrues dust so easily... I can give you some lemonade though, if either of you would like some? I also have oreos... Are you here to see Lethe? It's been such a long time since anybody came by to see her, I'm sure she would appreciate it." At least time had not stilled her tongue.
Behind her was a room that was probably meant to be the largest one in the house -- a large, Japanese-style mansion with nearly a hundred of them. What was arguably supposed to be the living room was almost empty, though: there was a couch in the center, a coffee table in front of it, a few armchairs lined up next to one another against the wall, and many cardboard boxes scattered about. The floor was half-gleaming -- Cerena was in the middle of cleaning it, apparently. Perhaps they were moving.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:26 pm
Fortunately, appearance mattered little to the blind Anima. He recognized Cerena by her voice, and actually smiled a little.
"Do you-" Arlyn began hesitantly, but his voice cracked with his speaking so softly. He quickly cleared his throat and tried again. "Do you remember me? From one of the lanterns?"
He waited a moment for a response, being terrible at this whole conversation thing. Fortunately, she happily invited them in anyway - an invitation the red-skinned boy readily accepted. He motioned to his brother and stepped through the doorway.
It might have been polite to explain his whole reason for coming here, about how he had been stuck with babysitting, and how his brother was such a cut-up that he was not allowed to go anywhere alone, and how he had basically come to see if Cerena could entertain Bhel for a little while. But Arlyn was an Anima of few words, and so he settled for a much simpler introduction:
"Bhel is my brother, and I don't want to play with him right now."
Bhel wandered into the house alongside Arlyn, looking around at the half-cleaned floor and the furniture upon it. Lemonade sounded good, even though he did not know this woman. He figured if Arlyn had not killed her yet, though, she must be okay.
The toddler studied Cerena with a critical eye, observing that she had headwings that were bigger than his mother's. But she was not Mommy, so she could only ever be second-best. ... Come to think of it, his sister had wings on her head, too. Maybe all girls had headwings?
He was distracted from this train of thought, however, as Cerena mentioned Lethe. Bhel thought he recognized that name from somewhere (that crazy game of laser tag maybe?) but he could not put a face to the name.
"Who Lethe?" he asked, crossing his arms. If she was cool, maybe it was not so bad, then, that Arlyn had brought him here instead of to the Fa'e Headquarters.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:41 am
The lanterns? She remembered that there were still a few hanging in the back, lightweight and paper, and there had used to be such beautiful colors of butterflies drawn to them -- but their mysterious inner flames had gone out and she had never managed to figure out how to relight them. There were further flashes of memories: small child-shaped spirits, colorful remnants of a world long passed... "Anima," Cerena said suddenly as the name came to her, "Yes, I remember now. ...That was such a long time ago, wasn't it? I haven't seen Chai since then, I think there was some... legal trouble with the project, or something." She grinned wryly at the memory of the sour mint-haired girl, affection seeping into her voice, "She's been on the run since."
The floorboards of the rightmost hallway creaked, accompanied by an increasing volume of light footsteps -- someone intrigued by the sudden influx of voices was approaching to investigate. A silhouette came to the paper door, reaching for the edge of it with two arms, but Cerena turned towards it and said, "Oh! Could you please get two glasses of lemonade for our guests? It should be in the fridge, I just made a new pitcher." And so the figure paused, let out a hardly audible sigh, and went away again.
Nodding, Cerena turned back to the two boys. "Are there any more of you?" She asked of Arlyn, "I thought maybe not, not when no one came to visit the gardens anymore, but here you are and..." He had brought a friend! Was it an Anima like Arlyn? --But she'd never remembered a spirit being so tiny as Bhel was now, and she wasn't sure the Anima had ever gone through a stage of developing speech a toddler might. No, maybe the son of his guardian (a Kumaru? Something like that?), if Arlyn called him his 'brother'. (The Valkyrie had to grin again at the reason for their visit -- such bluntness was always appreciated, even if not necessarily so by the one they were talking about. Bhel seemed used to it, though.)
"Hi, Bhel! You're cute, aren't you? What sorts of things do you like to do?" They still had the TV hooked up in one of the rooms further into the house -- and she still had a lot of Lethe's old baby toys. Coloring books, crayons, all sorts of things to make noise and racket with... Circe and the twins had just been put down for their afternoon nap and wouldn't be awake for another hour yet, else she would introduce the young boy to them to play with. "Lethe?" She repeated distractedly, "Oh, she's--"
The hallway door creaked open again, finally revealing the previous silhouette to be a young, pale girl with curly black hair carrying two glasses of lemonade. "I Lethe," she said imperiously to the small Fa'e intruding on her territory, having caught his question shortly before entering. Shutting the door behind her with a foot, she strolled forward and crouched down in front of Bhel to inspect him more closely at eye-level.
"You're Mimizoo's brother, aren't you?" She remarked, passing him a glass of lemonade and offering the other at Bhel's accompaniment, an odd crimson figure with wrappings over his eyes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:43 pm
Arlyn actually smiled faintly as Cerena mentioned that she remembered him. He thought he might remember Chai as well, but it had been so long he could not call her voice to mind. Either way, there was one familiar person here, and that was enough.
"Only me," he told her in reply to her question if there were more. He had come alone. ... Or had Cerena been talking about the other Anima? "I have not seen any of the other Anima recently," Arlyn amended, realizing that he had not really thought about any of them in quite some time. It fit him, though; just because he was not actually the last of his species did not mean that he could not act like it.
As Cerena turned her attention to him, Bhel perked up a little, though he still looked a bit uncertain about being in a stranger's house. He thought she sounded nice enough, though, and if that changed, well, he had his horns. And his brother. Though he doubted his brother would become friends with anyone who was bad.
"Like playin' outside," he told Cerena in response to her question. The bull Fa'e promptly turned his attention back to the girl as she came into the room with the glasses. He took the one offered to him, then studied the girl who had brought it with a suspicious eye as she crouched down to look him over, too.
"Thanks," Bhel said, perhaps a bit belatedly, after he had taken a few sips of lemonade. Then he frowned a little at the girl as she asked him if he was Mimizoo's brother. Knowing no one by that name, Bhel shook his head, and flicked his tail from side to side a little.
"Got sister Mitsu and mommy Aylana," he told her. "And home got brother Arlyn," the boy added, pointing at his companion. "And home also got sister 'Cretia, brother Donat, and guardian Kumoru."
Feeling the cool glass against his hand, Arlyn took hold of it so he would not drop it, and sniffed at the glass's contents before he took a sip.
"Good," he said appreciatively, realizing just how thirsty he was.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
