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 Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 8:52 am
"Hi," he said, starting at a flower on the playground at the Liberty Center. "My name is Carlisle. I'm nine. Or, I think I'm nine, but..." He sighed and frowned at the daisy that looked back at him with perfectly perky floralness. Since he was in actual classes now, he had to learn how to introduce himself without stuttering. It was not working out for him, and didn't look like it planned to start working out for him at any point soon. Actually, he kind of missed being a little kid now. Littler. He was still small, compared to the others he'd seen. It would help if some of the other kids he'd seen had been anyone he knew, but it was like everyone who actually was acknowledged as nice was either absent or else just... back in daycare, or something...
He was just getting up to go back inside and work on his reading- everyone else seemed to do fine, but the words got all mixed up in front of him and he couldn't make any sense of it at all- when a ball whacked him on the back of his head with a rubbery sound. Carlisle pitched forward, but caught his balance; then he turned around to see where the ball had come from with a somewhat hurt pout on his face. In a tone completely bereft of accusation, he asked, "Who threw that?"
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Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 9:48 am
Melchizedek, who had been wandering the playground aimlessly, was bored. Katrina, sick of his wanderings and not knowing where he was, had actually taken the initiative and driven him out to the Liberty center to dump him there. Melchy, as much as he was annoyed at that, had to hand it to his guardian. She was smart. More or less. Melchy still didn't like the idea of her boyfriend.
Stupid boyfriend. Grumping, Melchy snorted and idly kicked the first thing he saw: a generic, red, probably school-owned kickball lying forlorn where some kids had left it. The ball, much to his inherent pleasure, went sailing through the air, and.......
Struck a girl in the back of the head. Squeaking unhappily, Melchy tried to dash to the girl's aid, but basically just succeeded in sauntering over in a generalized attempt to reconcile the situation. "Ohdamnmit, sometimes things jus' get outta yer hands, y'know?" he said easily, surprised that the words didn't come out of his mouth more hurriedly. But he just couldn't bring himself to care.
"Ain' my ball an' I din' meanna hit anythin' when I kicked it," he added. "Y'bleedin' er concussed 'r'anythin'?"
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Posted: Sun May 18, 2008 12:56 pm
He rubbed his head disconsolately and looked balefully at the strange boy with different ears. It hadn't actually hurt that much. But it did hurt. Still, he had got what he counted as an apology, so he had to forgive the other boy. "I guess," Carlisle said. "I think I'm okay."
After a moment of silence, he worked up a guileless smile. "That was a great kick, though. I almost fell over!" It was one of the only real standards of measurement he knew for kicks- how far the ball went, and how forceful it was. If it almost knocked him over, then it was a really good kick. Impulsively, he held out one hand for the other boy to shake, if he so chose. "I'm Carlisle. It's nice to meet you," he chirped, just like his mother had taught him.
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Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 4:59 pm
"Meh, th'kick was okay," he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and tipping his head back. He was pretty glad she was okay, he supposed, but mostly he was just happy that he wasn't going to get in trouble for hurting the girl. If she taddled on him, that'd be a major low point in his day. "Leas' it din' hurt ye," he said, then paused to listen to whatever she was saying now.
Carlisle? Well...that certainly put a damper on Melchy's mood. Poor girl, with a boy's name and all. He paused for a moment and looked her over studiously before saying anything. She was rather pretty, and he chose to ignore her more obvious oddities, seeing's he wasn't halfway normal himself. It didn't seem fair to stare at strangeness.
"Carlisle," he said when he was done with his inspection. "Weird name for ye. Boy's name, ain' it?"
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Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 8:36 pm
He fidgeted while the other boy looked him up and down. The urge to say hey, my eyes are up here was overwhelming but he kept his mouth shut and waited for his attention to return to his face. "No, really, it was a great kick," he insisted. "I couldn't do as well!" Not like he'd tried, but... same difference, really, he knew he couldn't do it. (Carlisle had the oddest feeling his talents lay elsewhere- not in sports, anyway, and certainly not in reading or science or mathematics and probably not in music).
"Er, yes," he said uncertainly. His hand fell back to his side and he gave the other boy a truly confused look. "I... am a boy. Why shouldn't I have a boy's name?"
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Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 2:52 pm
That brought a full stop to the cat-boy, and he actually had to physically stop himself from taking a step back. As it were, when he heard Carlisle’s words, his tail lashed and puffed out like a bottlebrush, and his ears flicked back for a second. Jeezus, had his judgment been off. Melchy was pretty glad he hadn’t said anything to him about how he was pretty, at this point. Then he blinked.
“Oy, Carlisle?” he said, just to make sure. “Did I see you a while ago, maybe at a Christmas party? We were both abou’ yay high?”
He gestured to about waist-height, indicating quite easily that they had both been babies. He didn’t entirely get the whole growth thing, but he was pretty sure that Carlisle, being a cabbage kid, grew about the same speed as him: fast.
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Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 3:56 pm
His jaw dropped. Had the other kid thought he was... a girl? No way, that couldn't be it. "Yeah, at Harper's, wasn't it?" The grief of Harper's passing had pretty much... passed. He was still sad, but there was no point in endless mourning over something he couldn't possibly help. "We played ring-around-the-rosie with Kisala once or twice, I think?" Yeah! Why hadn't he recognized Melchy before?...
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:39 pm
"Huh, totally forgot about that till just now," Melchy said with a quick shrug, focusing intently on Carlisle and ignoring the mention of Harper at all. That was how it had been for the boy since the funeral: he ignored it. What else could he do? He was a boy, a pirate. Crying wasn't an option.
Not that that mattered. Ring-around-the-rosie....heh. "Jeez, what a thing t'remember. Weird t'think that was...what, coupla months ago." He looked at his feet and hands reflexively, then shrugged and tilted back against nothing, tucking his hands neatly behind his head, as casual as if he had been leaning on a wall.
But he couldn't keep the strange thought out of his head: Carlisle was really rather pretty, even if he was a boy. Pretty like a girl.
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:09 pm
He nodded, seeming to get that Harper was not a topic for discussion here. "Yeah," he agreed helpfully, absently rubbing the side of his head. Melchy seemed to be pretty intent on leaning back coolly like that, and who was he to interfere with the actions of others? Except he really didn't want to go in and practice his reading. Or his math.
"What do you think of school so far?" was all he could come up with, though. It was pretty lame, as continuing a conversation went, but it was a continuance.
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Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 12:01 pm
What an odd question. Melchy, who hadn't really managed to catch a class quite yet, tilted his head down to look at Carlisle and shrugged.
"Dunno, t'be honest," he answered. "Never really done any classes 'r anythin', and my Cap'n ne'er bothered sendin' me t'daycare. This is one 'a like...three times I been here," he finished, shrugging and suddenly crumpling into a neat sitting position just across from Carlisle.
"Hones'ly, you're th'first kid I talked to inside these walls. Tonsa cabbage kiddoes around, but ne'er bin here long enough to chat." He shrugged.
"You like it here?" he asked, looking genuinely curious.
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Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 7:10 pm
"We're technically not inside the walls," said Carlisle, just for something to say. Did he like it here? No way. Well, some things. He did really well with history. It was like he just got it, instinctively. And the time to spend with other kids, that was wonderful, but...
He averted his eyes for a minute. "No," he said, "I don't like it here."
New subject, he thought. "Uh... So what have you been up to, if you're not in class?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 7:21 pm
"Walls, bound'ries, lines of delination, all th'same thing when y'get down to it," Melchy answered with a vague wave of his hand, his unorthodox but obviously thorough education kicking in as he spoke. "They tell ye not t'cross them. Means, 'This space is our space.'" He shrugged and then looked at Carlisle, who apparently was just as unhappy about being here as he was.
"Why doncha like it here, eh?" he asked, but Carlisle's question derailed that train of thought immediately, and he considered the possible answers to the question. There were a number of things he had been instructed not to say by Cap'n and the rest of the crew, but he was pretty sure he could come up with a satsifying answer nonetheless.
"Eh. Th'Cap'n taught me t'read an' write an' read maps, an Hawkiss taught me arithmetic. So I been getting, I guess you could call it a practical education. Hands-on, like." He shrugged and smiled. "Lotsa sailin' an' learning t'use a sword."
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Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 7:34 pm
He seized on the chance to distract Melchy like a drowning man might a piece of flotsam. "Sailing? Like, on the ocean? What's that like?"
Personally, Carlisle wasn't sure he'd take too well to the open sea. He liked being closed in, safe, and a ship on the ocean certainly did not fit his idea of 'safe'. Agoraphobia, mild as it was, had never failed Carlisle in looking out for himself before. "It must be neat. Do you spend a lot of time doin' that?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 7:47 pm
"I like sailing well 'nuff, so long as I don' get too wet," Melchy answered, shuddering from head to tail as he considered the idea of being drenched in icy saltwater. "Sometimes when th'weather's bad, it gets real scary, but Cap'n an th'crew are good sailors. We got wrecked once. Spent a whole long time stranded. But that was when I was little. Nothin' that exciting's happened long time since. But yeah, I do go sailin' kinda a lot. Cap'n likes t'get out er th'crew gets all restless an' starts robbin' places." He nodded firmly, then suddenly realized he had mentioned one of the topics on the "FORBIDDEN: NEVER MENTION IN COMPANY" list set down for him by Katrina. Desperate to change the subject, he put his hands on his hips and looked at Carlisle.
"So you don' look like yer one o' them ballplayin' kids, eh? You do lotsa readin' or summat?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 12:46 pm
He nodded, listening solemnly. "Yeah, it sounds like that would be annoying," he commented, thinking about it. Especially since Melchy seemed to be sorta like a cat. Robbing places? Robbing places? Was Melchy's crew involved in... piracy?
That would suck. What sucked more, though, was that the other boy brought up That Subject. "No," he said. "I can't read. I watch TV mostly. And visit the neighbors."
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