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 Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 5:07 pm
 Before the darkness had hit, Elizabeth only remembers a handful of feelings. She'd awoken to the vibration of Sodóhka's growl against her side. Then there had been the explosion. A feeling of soaring. She remembers the sting on her back and legs as she slapped the water like a ragdoll. Gasping at the sudden cold. And then there had been blackness.
She wakes yet again to Sodóhka; this time it's the wet feeling of her nose against Elizabeth's cheek. "Getoff," she mumbles, swatting at her companion and rolling over. Then she immediately sits up, spitting out sand. "The hell..." she demands groggily, wiping at her mouth and nose with the back of her hand, also covered in sand. Opening her eyes, she looks around, trying to remember how she may have gotten here. "Where are we?" she asks her spirit companion. "An island in the middle of nowhere, it appears," answers Sodóhka. "My best guess is that the ship sank in the middle of the night, and the current carried us here."
"Us?" asks Elizabeth, looking at Sodóhka. Normally the wolf considered herself an extension of Elizabeth. Ordinarily she would have said "the current carried you here." Sodóhka nods toward the sunrise, and Elizabeth shields her eyes against the light, making out a silhouette a short distance away. "She doesn't appear to have awoken," adds Sodóhka. Elizabeth stands and begins to stagger toward the sleeping figure.
"Medea the Redeemer," she whispers in shock, dropping to her knees next to Xanthea. "Xan, can you hear me?" she asks loudly, shaking her friend. "I didn't even know she was on the cruise! Xan, wake up!"
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Menelie generated a random number between
1 and 3 ...
2!
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Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 5:08 pm
[Apparently Gaia forgot I told it to roll.
Elizabeth will find water.]
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Antidia generated a random number between
1 and 2 ...
1!
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Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2013 9:46 pm
 Fancy drinks, sunbathing, snorkeling, fairies, it all seemed so wonderful and relaxing. A large luxury ship, everything she ever wanted only a fairy away.
She closed her eyes feeling the sun on her face, then suddenly...
"Xan, can you hear me?"
Xanthea's eyes fluttered open, and she brought her arm up to shield her vision from the bright light. "What? Elizabeth! How'd you get..." she realized she was not in a plush lounger on the deck of a cruise ship anymore, but on wet sand. The wave hitting her foot was the first clue. She sat up abruptly and looked around. "Where are we? What happened?"
Flashbacks to the Valentine's Ball suddenly started. "Oh please no..." she whispered before reaching up and wrapping her arms around Elizabeth, so glad that if she has to go through hell again, at least she has familiar company. She sniffled a little, not sure what else to really do about this. "How did you find me?"
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Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:12 pm
"Thank the Guardians," says Elizabeth as Xanthea begins to wake up, running a hand through her short hair, and getting sand all in it in the process. "All twelve of 'em."
She shifts so she's not kneeling anymore, rather sitting on her hip next to Xan. A little flutter ripples through her heart when her friend's first reaction had been to embrace her, but she ignores it in favor of the immediate situation. "I...I'm not sure. I didn't find you, necessarily," she says. She points to where she'd woken up. "Just washed up on the same beach. Maybe it's fate." She gives a little half-smile. Or more divine meddling. She keeps her arms sort of loosely wrapped around her friend, and pulls her a little closer. "The important thing is that we're together."
Sodóhka, meanwhile, had left the two alone for their "reunion" and had gone to explore the little island. So far she'd found no other Pae, but she had found a pool of water. She couldn't tell if it was fresh or salt water without Elizabeth's more corporeal tongue, but if it were fresh water it'd go a long way for them. She'd also found the bottle of wine Elizabeth had won in the casino, which would do in a pinch but certainly wouldn't be the first choice for drinking. She circles back around to Elizabeth and Xanthea, visible to both.
"I don't even really know what happened," Elizabeth was saying. "Something must have happened to the ship, hit an iceberg or a reef or something. Although..." she surveys the horizon. "No sign of it. We must've floated for a while. Lucky thing, ending up together." She smiles a little, trying to stay positive.
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Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 6:17 pm
Closing her eyes so tight as Elizabeth explained the situation, Xan didn't want to let go of her friend. If she let go, and opened her eyes, she'd be transported back to that beach of a deserted island with no ship in sight. But Elizabeth's word had a very surprising calming effect on the blue angel. She let her eyes flutter open, and brought a hand up to shield her vision from the bright sun.
She felt okay, other than the emotional shock of it all, "Elizabeth, are you okay? You didn't get hurt did you?" The sight of Sodóhka sitting in front of them was extremely reassuring to her.
Not wanting to come off as weak to Elizabeth of all pae, she put her proverbial big girl pants on and focused. "I only remember the cruise--I didn't even know you were there. Did ... did something put us here? Why us?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 10, 2014 8:05 pm
Elizabeth sighs a little and shrugs, looking out onto the open ocean. "I...yeah, I dunno," she says, somewhat wearily. "I mean, I've been to enough parties where something goes hideously wrong to want to never leave home again." But somehow they kept leading to Xanthea. Maybe it was fate. "But we can philosophize later," she continues, standing up and hauling Xan to her feet. "Now we've got to be practical. Water ought to be the first thing, since it's shaping up to be a hot day. Then shelter, then food." She nods and begins to scan around the island.
"I feel that now might be an appropriate time to mention a pool of water not too far away. I don't know whether it's drinkable or not, though." says Sodóhka. She isn't entirely sure if her ability to speak telepathically with Elizabeth would extend to her friend, but it wasn't as if she had anything to say that Xanthea shouldn't also hear. "It's also possible that there may be fruit in the trees, and fish in the water nearby."
"Right, pool of water," says Elizabeth, purposefully striding toward it. Well, as purposeful as one could look, walking across sand. She hadn't forgotten about her power, and how it might get her off the island, but there was no way she'd leave Xan alone here. She loops her arm through Xanthea's, keeping her close.
Reaching the pool, just a short distance away, she kneels down next to it. It didn't smell salty, but one never knew. She cups her hands and dips them into the water before raising them to her lips to take a sip. The water drips down her chin, but she smiles. "Fresh water. Excellent." She spits out a little sand that had gotten stuck. "Well, that's one down, two to go." She grins at Xanthea.
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 1:12 pm
It had been...well, a long time since Elizabeth and Xanthea had been stranded on the island. They had done alright for themselves--they'd found a couple pools of sweet fresh water that refreshed every time it rained, which it did often. Elizabeth had constructed a shelter from the broad leaves of the trees growing on the island. It wasn't particularly warm, but it did a good job of keeping out the rain and the wind. The two women slept close together at night, often wrapped in each other's arms. Sodohka positioned herself at their feet or their heads, and was a comforting presence to them both. The trees were full of fruit--coconuts and bananas mainly--and the sea was full of fish. Elizabeth had woven a fishing net from tearing apart the fibrous leaves of the trees, a technique she'd read about at one point but never thought she'd have cause to use. With it she had been able to catch enough fish for them to maintain a somewhat-healthy body weight, though both of them had clearly dropped quite a few pounds.
And so they'd lived for almost a year. Elizabeth had sort of come to enjoy their peaceful life together. Xan was sweet and gentle, as well as clever--she was the one who'd found a whole huge area filled with berry bushes. It had been a tense thing, eating small amounts of berries to make sure they weren't poisonous, but they turned out to be just an orangeish version of blackberries. Sweet and juicy and plentiful. Elizabeth had come to think of Xanthea as her partner, not just her friend, and wondered often how she'd ever manage to go back to living with loud, frenetic Amapola after they got off this island. She would miss this quiet existence, free from distractions or chaos.
But they would need to get off the island. She'd been resisting it, but Elizabeth knew that Xanthea didn't enjoy this as much as she did. She could see it in her eyes, how they searched the horizon for any sign of rescue, and how tired she always looked at the end of the day. Elizabeth was hesitant to use her power, or even to tell Xan about it, since of course the question would be "why didn't you use it earlier?" Which would be a perfectly reasonable question. Why hadn't she used it earlier? At first it had been that she didn't want to leave Xan alone while she went for help, and then it had been that she wasn't sure she could navigate back here, and then it had been too late to say something, and then....she had to admit to herself that part of it had been that she didn't want to leave as badly as she did when they'd first washed ashore.
Elizabeth began to practice when Xanthea was sleeping. She directed Sodohka to stay, to keep her warm and comfortable, while Elizabeth went out to a different part of the island. She tried teleporting to a different part of the island, first. To get her bearings back. She hadn't used her power in a long time, and part of her was doubtful that she could still do it. Back and forth she went through the sand, each time executing the move better and better. Slightly more confident, she waded out into the water and teleported back to camp. Perfection.
Over the next few days and weeks, Elizabeth began to hone her skills. She zipped back and forth over the island with ease. Then she began to try to take things with her. She started small, with a shell or a fruit or something non-breathing. They all came through sandy, but unharmed. Then she graduated to a hermit crab, held carefully so it couldn't come out and pinch her. It, too, seemed fine. Elizabeth then worked her way up through more and more complex creatures, becoming quite the hunter in the process, to test whether she could teleport them safely through the sand. It was all to make sure she could bring Xanthea with her when she went without hurting her. Elizabeth was confident, at this point, that she could bring anything with her, as long as they remained in constant contact.
"Have you been to the mainland?" asked Sodohka.
"Not yet," answered Elizabeth. "I don't know that I could make it back, and if I bring her with me, then I only have to do it once, I don't have to make it back."
"So you're ready, then?"
Elizabeth nodded. "I'll tell her tomorrow." She watched Xanthea sleep, the rhythmic rising and falling of her chest calming her nerves. She was so beautiful, Elizabeth realized. With her golden curls and her almost luminescent skin...she reached over to tenderly brush a strand of hair away from Xan's face. And in that gesture, Elizabeth realized something else: she loved her. That was why she'd gone to all this trouble to get them off the island. It made Xan unhappy, and Elizabeth couldn't stand that.
It was an odd realization to have, for her, who'd resigned herself to never love. It kept her awake for the rest of the night.
The next morning, Elizabeth chose her words carefully:
"Xan...we've been living here a long time..." She ran a hand through her hair. "And I think it's time we go home. Home-home. To the mainland." She took one of Xanthea's hands in her own. "I've...I've been practicing with my power, to travel through sand, and I'm confident I can land us on the beach. From there it'd only be a short walk to my house." She bit her lip. "Will you try with me?"
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