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 Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:07 pm
Guinevere had called Aodh shortly after her hospital visit. She had promised Niven cake, and Guinevere didn't go back on serious promises like that, especially not when the cake was kind of a 'sorry you lost an arm' cake. That kind of cake was one of the most important kinds to remember to make, and also one of the saddest. She had only had to get stitches out, and Niven was right, it had been painless. She imagined being stuck in endless medical testing limbo had to be worse, and felt briefly, fervently glad that her own powers hadn't altered her blood.
However, between the time that she had got back from the hospital and the present where she was standing on Aodh's doorstep, her lack of stitches hadn't been the only thing that had changed about her. She had experienced one of those peculiar Heraldic growth spurts, barely noticeable since she had almost been done growing anyway, but she woke up on Wednesday and all her dresses were slightly shorter. She assumed it meant that maybe her physical age finally corresponded with the 24 years old she had been assuring all the part-time jobs she was applying to was her age. It was hard to guess with Heralds precisely. Every Herald grew differently, and the only really reliable measure of their age was mental.
Either way, the growth spurt left her feeling a bit more grown up so she hadn't put her hair up in its usual ponytail today. She was taller and more collegiate now, so her hairstyle might as well grow up, too. It was barely noticeable, but it made Guinevere feel much more grown up, even as she stood on Aodh's door and reached out to knock.
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Posted: Fri Oct 08, 2010 8:26 pm
Aodh found that he didn't mind when Guin interrupted his day. Most people would get a stern talking-to, but not Guin, even if she sometimes gave him a nosebleed. He had been rather looking forward to their little date, even though it wasn't a date at all. Call it a leap back to their early days when there had been nowhere to meet but one of their houses. Niven was now old enough to help cook, even if it made Aodh panic, and they'd had a rather nice father-son bonding hour as they prepared a proper meal for their guest. It wasn't a secret that Guin hadn't yet mastered the stove.
Niven was setting out tea when the knock finally came, and he only gave the door a cursory glance. They both knew who it was going to be, so why worry? Aodh removed his apron (stains were horrifying when you only owned one good sweater) and approached, pulling the door open to greet... Guin?
The poor man had to look slightly up to look the girl in the eye. She had grown, no doubt about it, and the b***h had the audacity to outgrow him. He blinked at her a few times, and then shook his head to clear it.
"Come on in. All grown up, I see."
Now Niven looked up, and his eyes went slightly wide. Guin was indeed bigger, and she even looked older. It was expected as a Herald, sure, but this had come without warning.
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 8:13 am
"Good afternoon, Mr. Murray," Guinevere said warmly, but formally as always. "I brought some cake, like I promised, and I think I made it right. If you want, I can try a piece first, though." Shifting the dish so she could hold it in both arms again after having balanced it so she could knock, asked, "Where should I put it?" as she came in.
A blush at the mention of the height difference and Guinevere murmured, "Well, I just woke up and none of my dresses fit right." It was strange to be taller than Aodh, considering he was one of the very few adults she really knew. It felt almost like she had somehow betrayed him, in some sort of weird biological way, so she preferred not to think about it. Instead, she looked for Niven. Her motives for visiting hadn't been totally altruistic, she had to admit. Since she found out about Niven's blood, she wanted to know more, and though she wasn't sure how to broach the subject ("May I have some of your son's blood to study" just sounded coarse, after all), she had the vague idea that if she just hung around more, if something happened she might be there, or at least be informed of it. She was worried about Niven, but more than that, she was interested as a researcher. It wasn't necessarily a feeling she liked, but it was one she couldn't stop for all the tea in China.
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 11:45 am
Aodh lifted his nose and said in as snooty and British a way as possible: "Guinevere."
He had never been one for over-formal introductions, and although he was used to Guin he couldn't help but tease her every so often. Then again, she was an adult now. It seemed a little silly for her to be calling him 'Mister'.
"Aodh is fine, Guin. Now you're my age. Kind of. Niven, come say hellop, the tea can wait."
Niven grinned, as if he had been waiting for the invitation, and put the sugar bowl down on the table. As if on cue, Guin the Cat arrived to sniff at it. The child approached the elder Herald, though, and peered down at the cake in her hands.
"It's very nice," he said softly, then looking back up to Guin, "Thank you. How are your stitches?" With his hand and his stump, Niven deftly took the cake and placed it on the counter under a Tupperware bowl. GTC had a habit of getting into things. Aodh, meanwhile, went to shoo the cat away and finished tea.
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 7:02 pm
"Aodh, then." Guinevere amended, grinning. "That's going to take a while to get used to. Can't I call you Mr. Aodh first?" she joked. It was even weirder to think of herself as kind of his age, but she supposed she was. Biologically speaking, anyway. She had already felt like she was Aodh's age mentally, or at least close to.
"Hello Niven!" she said cheerfully. "You're very welcome, I just hope it tastes good. My stitches are fine, it didn't hurt a bit. The doctor says I'm going to have a scar there, but she assured me that it only adds to my mystique." She crouched down to offer the littler Guin a pat on the head before Aodh could shoo her off properly. It looked like her feline counterpart had done a little growing lately too. "How've you two been since last we met?" Hopefully there were no more decapitations to find out about like last time, but both of the Murray men seemed to have more or less the same amount of limbs as before. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked as they finished preparing everything. She hated feeling like a useless guest.
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 9:29 pm
"I guess you could, but I can't be blamed if I look at you funny," Aodh snickered, watching the cat who had turned from interested in food to interested in their guest. The feline purred and scampered after Guin, looking for more petting.
"There's nothing wrong with scars," Niven smiled, and he waggled his stump at Guin again. The end was the knotted tissue of a proper skin flap, and a little disconcerting all things considered. There was more than one reason he always kept it bandaged. "Nothing happened. Nothing exciting. We have the party soon, but that's all."
Aodh busied himself with the tea, pouring cups and placing the sugar properly. "I have a proper supper for you, of course. You Gaians and your mixed-up meals. And no, no, sit down. Enjoy yourself. You're our guest."
Niven accepted the cup offered to him and blew on it before sipping. Aodh plopped down on the couch and patted the cushion beside him, inviting Guin to make an Aodh sandwich.
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 10:32 pm
"Niven, I suppose I must resign myself to the fact that you have far more mystique than I do," Guinevere said with a sigh. She shot Aodh a pleading look, but eventually resigned herself to her useless guest status. She wasn't used to having nothing to do, and it made her feel like she was forgetting something important, even though she wasn't. She knew she wasn't, no one was more organized than Guinevere, and with college to prepare for and part time jobs to apply to, she had to be. Disaster was just a schedule slip away.
"Oh, the party?" she asked, "Do you need help with that at all?" If she couldn't help now, maybe she could do something later, after all, they were feeding her, and she was at the age where free food was better than an organ donation. Anyway, she liked parties, or she thought she would if she had the chance to attend more of them. She wasn't exactly social, but she got lonely at home, and she didn't get the chance to see many Heralds in ways that weren't accidental.
Accepting her cup of tea with a grateful murmur, the Herald sunk down onto the couch next to Aodh and relaxed slightly. "I'll have you know that I have incredibly proper suppers," she said primly, "They just happen to not be incredibly edible suppers."
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Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 9:30 am
"Pfft. That's because you're a fancy Americ--err. Gaian, I suppose. We here take tea, you tell her, Niven," Aodh chuckled, taking his tea straight.
"We do," Niven nodded, "Lunch is the big one. I like supper too, though."
"My son is, apparently, also a fancy American," Aodh snorted, "As for the party, I suppose I could, actually. You know more Heralds than I do, and I'd like to send them invitations. Otherwise I guess we could use some help setting up. The librarians, they don't like me much." Niven went silent again, sipping at his tea, and Aodh gave him a little nudge.
"We made chicken," the boy piped.
"Now tell us, Guin. What's new in your life, hm?"
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Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 11:50 am
"I can help with the Heralds," Guinevere replied. She had plenty of them in her research notes. "And with setting up too, but I warn you that I don't have much taste for interior design. However, I do have a rapport with librarians." Guinevere gave off a certain librarian-y vibe, herself. She was one of their people, she supposed.
As for his Americans comment, Guinevere wasn't completely unfamiliar with America since Aodh certainly wasn't the only lost Earth traveller on Gaia, but the joke was as strange to her as if he had made a vague in-joke about Timbuktu. So she smiled and pretended she thought it was as funny as Aodh did, but felt somewhat foreign.
"Chicken's nice," she replied comfortably. "Thank you, Niven!"
"New things? Well, mostly just all this," she gestured at herself, "And I'm getting ready for college, and I quit my job at Daemonolgie. Not very exciting, but considering the kind of exciting things that tend to happen to me, I'm glad of that, at least." Looking at Aodh somewhat nervously, she asked, "Aodh, did you ever go to college?" She didn't really know what to expect there, and it made her a bit worried.
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Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2010 11:57 am
"Pfft, it's fine. It's never a particularly pretty event, I must say," Aodh snickered. He hadn't really expected Guin to get his joke, her being born-Gaian and all, but he didn't feel foreign either. Ten more years and he'd have lived on Gaia as long as he'd lived on Earth.
"I did not, actually. I think I'd like to, some day. I showed up here right out of high school, and I needed to make some gold before I became the world's most naive hobo. Thank the Lord for the dollars-to-gold conversion rate." Really, he had been surprised how much his 20 bucks were worth when he'd arrived. "I took one class, though. It was very nice. I think if you like it there's no real problem. The only difference from high school is the size and the money. What are you going in for?"
Niven craned his neck around his father, curious as well.
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Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2010 10:18 pm
"Anthropology with a focus in paranormal species," Guinevere answered almost mechanically. She had told her relatives the same thing nearly a thousand times. "Surprising, I know." She rolled her eyes and grinned, adding, "But I figure that maybe if I go to college I can make a job of all the notes I have stacked on my side table at home." She didn't seem too concerned about Aodh's past, if only because she had been thrust into a new set of responsibilities right out of high school, herself. Guinevere was of the opinion that anything she could do, everyone else should be able to as well, which was why she wasn't much of a fan of small children.
"That's enough about higher education," she decided. "Do I have to dress up for the Halloween Party?" She didn't know what she'd go as. Last year she had dressed as Jane Eyre since she had Lucy with her, but Guinevere wasn't terribly creative about fashion or costumery. She made her own clothing, but it was uniformly plain and stern.
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Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 2:24 pm
"A-ha," Aodh nodded, and Niven chose now to stand and gather the food from the kitchen. He only hoped that he could be as productive as Guin when he got older, but did that mean he had to start now? From what he'd seen so far, Heralds didn't age at what could be considered any kind of "natural" rate. He might be in college in years or less! As he thought he scooped the carrots and mashed potatoes onto plates with the chicken, and came out with the first two. He set them down and went to retrieve the third, which GTC had seemed to magically appear for. He rescued it in time and made it back out just as Guin was asking about the party.
"Of course you do," Aodh responded, "If I have to, you do. You came last year, didn't you? It's no different, save that everyone's a little older."
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Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:15 pm
Guinevere nodded gratefully at Niven and grinned as Guin the Cat made an unladylike grab for the third plate. "I was afraid you'd say that," she admitted to Aodh. "I don't really know what I should dress up as. I'd feel silly if I just went as a witch or a cat or something. I mean, especially silly if I went as a cat, because, well, you know," She gestured to GTC, "Someone's cornered the market in that particular area."
Shrugging, she said, "Anyway, last year I had someone to dress up with. Alone, it's sort of embarrassing, you know? And I'm not really good at parties even when I don't dress up like a literary character." Last year she had still been looking after Lucy, but now Lucy had a real mother and father. She didn't like to admit it, but she missed the younger Herald more than she should and it made her feel old. She was barely an adult, it was lightyears too early for her to be feeling motherly about anyone. However, Guinevere was a worrier, and considering her somewhat scattered childhood, she worried about younger Heralds the most. She had good cause to, considering last time she'd seen Niven, he had two arms!
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Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 2:00 pm
"Well, I don't have a costume either," Aodh admitted with a little shrug. He never had someone to go with, but that was his own damn fault if he could say so himself. He wasn't exactly a man made for social interaction. "We should go together. Something simple."
Of course, he couldn't have a second go at his Headless Horseman costume; not when he's already worn it once, regardless of how much it had cost. He still had a good amount of Halloween makeup to his name, too. He'd have to think fast...
"I'm gonna be a zombie," Niven suddenly interjected, "It's better when you're actually missing pieces."
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