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 Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 3:19 pm
"Your Da says you dig it here, Dee," Patrick swung the toddler in the air, listening to a surprisingly childlike laugh from the sharp toothed girl. He propped her on his waist, skinny hip jaunted to one side. "It's time we wait for Uncle Kian too, huh?"
"No baby," He met her grumble with a wide grin.
"Yeah, but you want your dolls, dont'cha?"
She hissed quietly, large nose tilting haughtily into the air. DDR squirmed from Patricks' loose grasp, her bared feet flexing on the new, soft pink shag carpet. Lissel, on one of her famous redecorating sprees, fixed the living area with gently pretty colors. DDR guessed it had been due to her worry over Kian and Autsu.
Patrick refused to talk about it. She didn't blame him.
DDR crouched next to the doll Archie gave her, snapped it up and tight to her skinny chest. "Mine," she said, butt thumping hard to the ground. Patrick, laughing, wandered to the kitchen. Adult mind or not, she saw the doll as pretty, as pretty as the too big bracelet she insisted on keeping to her person.
"Yours, yours. You hungry, baby girl?"
"Juice."
"Right on, chickie. Just gimme a second."
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 10:25 pm
It was the singing boy that'd done it. He'd been on the street, singing, for money. Such a strange thing to do. No wife, he'd said. No mother. Who took care of a man, then? Who watched over them when their protectors were gone.
A sister?
No, that wasn't how it was supposed to go. They fell. It was what Rru required. But she had taken her brother in, hadn't she? She had allowed him her household, offered the privileges of a husband within her nest. She had said, (had she said?) that she would keep him safe.
She'd meant to make them all safe. All safer. She had seen and she had understood.
Well, she'd thought she had. She'd thought--
They had taken him away. Of course. They'd had too. She was the source; he was the evidence.
And she was here, like this. At the moment, here was in Satika's arms, being carried into a house she'd never seen before. Because Satika said they might know something here. And she had asked. She had asked as a favor and hated the asking. Demands were easy. Favors were hard.
But she had to know.
So that's how they entered the unit. Satika in her red, flowing dress. Cecilia, in her arms, wearing gold, and frowning. Zives was perched in the metal tangles of her hair, singing a soft little song and fluttering her jeweled wings.
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Posted: Tue Feb 16, 2010 11:10 pm
DDR stared up at them from the floor, brilliant eyes bright in the full light of the room. Her mouth twisted in on itself and, in a shrill, sharp bark of a tone, said, "PA!"
Patrick took exactly two minutes to pop from the kitchen. He blinked at the couple (plus bird), cocked his head to the side, and grinned.
"Hey there, pretty lady! That's Dee, ignore her. I'm getting juice. You want some?" He glanced to the toddler as she wobbled unsteadily at the sudden standing. "Deirdra Dominique Rae, you be nice."
"My juice," DDR pushed herself up, arms still bound around the doll, large bracelet too loose around her arm. She studied the three people - two people, one animal? When her grandfather disappeared without waiting for an answer, presumably to get the others some juice anyway, the alien shoved her chin further to the air, bald and ugly. "... Can have some. Who you?"
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Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2010 1:12 pm
Satika was just settling Cecilia down, much to the toddler's irritation when Patrick entered, then left again. She barely had a chance to manage a proper curtsy before the man was gone.
Well, if she knew Gaian men, he'd be back. Indeed, this child was probably his charge, without the benefit of a proper mother. But, this was an ICRS location, if she'd understood Archie correctly. And if that was a case, then the child was not, in fact a child. Instead, like Cecilia, she merely possessed the body of a toddler. Then again, maybe the man was the reborn criminal and the child was his by birth.
Kneeling as she settled Cecilia she examined the child without approaching, "I am Satika and this is Cecilia."
"Am not." Cecilia responded, irritably. "Am--" And she made a sound that should not have come from the throat of a human, a sharp whistling shriek.
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Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2010 2:57 pm
"Yous Celia now," said Dee with little bitterness to her voice. She squeezed her doll close, eyes scouring over Cecilia and then, slower, to Satika. DDR was not an idiot, could never be accused of such a thing.The moment Cecilia insisted she was something else,someone not what she said she was and the underlying frustration that clearly spoke of repeated use, DDR had classified her as one of the Found. "I's Dee."
The little alien took a moment before she looked to Satika, really looked at her. The dark hair, the tint to her skin, the way she talked and dressed. DDR scowled fiercely, skinny shoulders scrunched up to her jawline.
"Pretty," is all she said in reference to the older womans appearance before her attention dragged right back to Cecilia. "What you do? To be here."
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Posted: Sat May 01, 2010 8:50 pm
Cecilia stared at the other girl with a sort of blank hostility, as she first translated (she did not yet think in the local language) and then considered her words. She was not, of course.
She was not Cecilia. Wearing a new skin did not make her so. She was, always would be, herself. This she knew to be true. Exile would not change her. Death would not change her. She was diamond, impervious to the waves of Gaia's change. She would not adjust. She would not give in.
Stubborn was something she was good at.
"I--" she hesitated. How to explain her supposed crime to an un-believer, one who had never heard the songs to Rru, who did not know the prayers and traditions. She searched the words her guardian used, coming up, at last, with some that suited. "prayed. Prayed good. Made change. Made good change. Made priests angry."
Satika was watching the two talk with a sort of quiet bemusement. She rarely saw Satika choose to interact, and never before with one of her 'own kind' so to speak. Well, there may had been others, but none she had been sure of. "I thank you for the compliment," she told the little girl, her tone as respectful as it would be if she spoke to an adult woman. "I serve a Lady that requires her daughters to be so."
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Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 7:47 pm
DDR bore the anger of her fellow alien, didn't look away. Iamel told her all about Kian when asked about the other ICRS child as he never truly treated the young girl as if she were really a child. He'd said Kian started off angry and violent, screamed in a different language, refused to do anything but throw blocks. That did not sound like the Kian she knew. He doted on Autsu even if the tall black man didn't know, he took care of Akuti and the people at the Unit. He worked, he kept to himself without loud words or swearing.
He'd changed. Gaia changed people. While DDR still felt as Jimi felt, mourned her dead lover and her charges on the far-gone planet, she still lived as Deirdra Dominique Rae. Nothing would change that.
They were both stuck on the goddamn planet for the rest of their pathetic, ugly lives.
But this one was a religious fanatic! Fantastic. DDR managed to not curl her lip - maybe Cecilia had been the decent sort of religious nuts. Her parents peoples had been religious and then became slaves to a blood-sucking race of creatures. Religion, gods, they did nothing. She didn't think it prudent to send her new Unit member into fits of rage and so kept those thoughts to herself.
"Change changes. Peoples don' want," Skinny lips pursed, eyes narrowed however briefly. "--Nice prayed? Or hurt prayed." Throats slit over a different god were not so uncommon in her world.
Satika, though - she caught DDR's attention for another brief moment. The young girls glance was not unkind, though flat and disinterested. "Pretty make problems," said she and eyes went right back to the other little girl.
"I have juice!" Patrick finally left the kitchen, a small tray of glasses and three half-full plastic pitchers of different juices balanced in his hands. "I know Dee likes herself some apple juice but I wasn't sure what you lovely ladies were into. So I have apple, orange, and cranberry. Since Princess Deirdra has given her permission for you to share her apple juice, feel free to choose that one."
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Posted: Wed Jun 02, 2010 10:43 pm
"Yes. But one survives how one can," Satika's voice was low and serious, her tone a bit far away. Funny, almost, to talk to this thing that looked so like a child about such things. It had been long since she'd had such a conversation, and the last time, she'd stood at the other side of it. Now, she spoke to few, and lifted her voice for nothing.
Except, of course, her daughters. There was that. How strange. To stand for what one had never had a chance to have and forgo the battles once so hard fought.
Cecilia, meanwhile, seemed confused by the question, her lips pursing in concentration. Nice? Hurt? When had it ever been about such things? It'd been about progress. About right. About protection and need. It had been, in some, small, strange way, about her brother.
Her brother. She'd come here for that. Because she had-- "Lost. Nice? Hurt? No matter. Lost. Looking now. Brother." She tilted her head curiously, "Old songs here?"
"Records." Satika interjected looking between DDR and Patrick, who had just re-entered the room. "She was hoping we might find some record of her home, here."
And then, graciously as she could, forcing herself into what passed for a Gaian mindset in her world she looked at the tray, "Might I take it? I am more comfortable serving my daughter myself. She can be, let us say, particular. I am, of course, deeply grateful for your kindness. It is so-- generous of you, to fetch refreshments for us."
There was something in her tone. Not disapproval, she was too well trained for that. Maybe amusement, maybe something like irony. Beneath the curtsying and obedience, Satika really didn't much care for men. Why would she?
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Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 9:54 pm
"It'd be rude of me to expect you to grab the drinks when we were here first," Patrick grinned, all sparkly and pierced, and he set the tray on the small table in the living room. He poured DDR's apple juice, moved away from the table in order to give Satika her room, and sat next to his grandchild. "I know all about picky children; Kian would throw things and shriek like a demon if things weren't just so. Dee's never been like that, luckily, but she's a little princess sometimes."
"S'good thing," DDR let her doll fall to the side, stroked idly at her bracelet as Patrick prepped her drink. When the glass came into reach, she wrapped long fingers around the cool glass and tipped it to her lips. While she drank, Patrick took the opportunity to further interrupt the conversation, glancing up to Satika from his position on the floor.
"Records, huh? There aren't too many books and things in this place but there's a computer, I think. Archie might have - Oh! Archie's records, hell, sorry, my head completely blipped out there. Autsu and Kian mentioned - Dee, baby, don't spill that - They said that Arch had papers on the criminals and things like that," He frowned, leaned back on one hand. DDR continued to sip and drink at his side, seemingly fully absorbed by her juice. "It's more their thing but I'm pretty sure one of them wouldn't mind raiding Archie. Kian actually talks about him without sounding like he wants to punch the guy.
"Do you know her original name? Kian's papers were all in his home planets name - I think 'Kian White' was added after I adopted him but - Oh, hey, did you mean on the planet planet or the specifics on it on where she's from? If the planet planet, what's it called?"
Someone had given Patrick some form of coffee. Brilliant.
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