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 Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 10:45 pm
The trouble with being as brave as Bal was - which was very brave indeed - was that it required him to do all sorts of horrible things, like sneak out and wander around in the middle of the night with nothing but a wagon and a little big sister to keep him safe.
"You said you wanted t'see the sun come up," she said when he complained, and this was true - he liked the sun, and Naida had said it was even bigger and brighter when it was rising - but he had never said that he wanted to go outside at night. Not that he was scared, because he wasn't, but he didn't like the dark. It was cold and pressed in tight around him, and he didn't like feeling so blind.
He had wanted to stay inside and watch it, but Naida had told him no, they couldn't do that because it had to be on a hill. He couldn't argue with that logic, so here they were, heading in the general direction of the park and its hill, Naida's wagon clattering along behind him and attracting any monsters that happened to be in the area. She sang loudly as they went, which both made him feel better and made him worry all the more about monsters.
Wait, no, not worry. He never worried, because he was brave.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 3:01 pm
The bonus of living a nocturnal life, Ishizuke reflected as she lay back in the dew-damp grass, enjoying the tickle of it on her cheks, was that you could watch the dawn coming. Stifling a yawn, the girl shifted and stretched her newly-long arms up to the sky, splaying her fingers so they framed the brightest stars in the sky. To be truthful, she still didn’t really know what to do with herself. The growth spurts had left her awkward, though she was enjoying the freedom her mama was giving her now: she had been allowed to come out to watch the moon set alone.
Stealing a glance at her watch, Ishizuke sighed softly and shook her head. It was maybe half an hour until sunrise...almost time to go home. Pushing herself up onto her elbows, she arched her back and sighed happily as she felt something creak. She huffed softly and stifled a yawn, then rearranged herself and stood without falling down in a tangle of long legs.
Opening her mouth to yawn again, she paused and actually stuffed her fist into her mouth to stop the sound escaping. She had caught a sound—voices—on the breeze. Tilting her head in birdlike interest, Ishi trained her good eye in the direction she thought the speech had come. There was a bit more, then quiet but for a rhythmic creak. Blinking curiously, Ishi shifted and made her quick descent down the hill.
She was lucky, she reflected, finding the path without trouble and setting her feet on it, that the park was so close to home and that home was in such a secluded neighborhood.
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Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 9:52 pm
Bal's ears pricked up, curious before he was. Was there a sound? He squinted and thought he could make out a dim outline on the path ahead of them. His heart caught in his throat, and he clenched the handle of the wagon until his fingers turned white with the strain. "I think there's something there," he whispered as quietly as he could.
"Maybe it's a monster," Naida suggested unhelpfully, and he frowned.
"No," he said stubbornly, more because he did not want there to be a monster than because he had any doubt that there was.
He was quiet for a moment and watched the shape, and then, in a burst of bravery he did not really understand, cupped his hands in front of his mouth and called, "Hello!" His heart very nearly stopped when he did it, and he wondered if he had had a reason. Maybe there wasn't, and he was crazy.
"...Howareyou," he added quickly, his courage and clarity leaving him all at once. I wonder if it is a monster that will eat me all at once or in pieces.
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Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 1:50 pm
At the call, Ishi lifted her head and narrowed her eyes, half-squinting through the dark in an attempt to find the owner of that voice. It wasn’t hard to find where it had come from: she had a good sense of hearing, and since her nocturnal rambles more or less deprived her of the sight in both, not just one, of her eyes, it was trained much better than that of most children her age. But she couldn’t see the owner of the voice, not yet.
‘Humph’ing, she kept walking, setting her feet on the path. The little ‘howareyou’ finally elicited a response from her. “Hello!” she called back, though relatively softly, finally moving those few more steps and into a pool of light from one of the few tall lights that dotted this stretch of the path. Stopping in that pool, she looked into the darkness and caught the silhouette of at least one person and a wagon with something in it.
They were both smaller than she had expected. What on earth were other children doing out alone at night—especially children who, as far as she knew, didn’t live in the neighborhood?
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Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:31 pm
The shadow stepped into the light, and Bal realized that it was a girl, not a monster. She was older than they were, with yellow hair and a small voice. He wondered if she was one of the responsible sorts of older children, and if she would want them to go home. Truth be told, he wouldn't have minded leaving, but the idea offended his pride all the same.
"Hello," he said, scuffing the ground with the heel of his shoe. The conversation was suddenly uncomfortable now that she wasn't a monster. "Will the sun come here soon?" Bal edged closer to the bright center of the pool of light, Naida's wagon clattering across the pavement behind him. He wished she would talk instead, but she seemed to be too busy watching.
His eyes darted to the darkness, which he liked less than ever now that he was under the light. It was not as black and heavy as it had been earlier; the eastern horizon was smeared with silver, and the stars were paling in the sky. It still had a funny thickness to it, though, and he wondered if anyone had ever drowned in the night.
It wasn't so lonely now, though. The girl had found them, and while she was not a grown-up, she was old by his standards. He looked up at her appraisingly, trying to decide how good she would be at warding off vampires, should they choose to arrive.
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Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2008 12:39 pm
The bright hello that issued from the younger child (a boy with a horn like a unicorn's? Astonishing!) caught Ishi a bit off-guard. She had been expecting terror, or something, in spite of the fact that the girl had been singing. After all, how often did she see children other than herself, especially children younger than herself, in the park at this hour of the night? It was unheard-of.
The question only served to throw her even more off-balance. "Um..." she began, then slowly nodded. "Yes, the sunrise will be starting in maybe fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour. You can see it rise from where I was." She pointed, and then looked around. "I'd show you to it, but...I can't, really. I'm allergic to the sun."
When she said it, she unconsciously tilted her head to ensure her hair hid the scarred half of her face. "My name is Ishizuke; I live right down the street from here." She looked at the boy's sister briefly. "It's a very safe place." Turning her good eye on Bal, she put her hands on her hips. "Isn't it a little early for you to be out, young mister?" she asked, teasingly.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:36 pm
"Yes, b-but--" It was too early for him to be out, and all the darkness was making Bal feel quite sick, but he was sure his reason was a good one. He just needed to explain it right. "The winnow isn' right for sunrises."
"There're lots of trees in the yard," said Naida, who was slightly older and knew words better. Bal nodded, and then studied the older girl. He knew that he and Naida were too little to be out, because it was very against the rules, but she looked a bit too small, too. It was hard to tell, though. Big kids and teenagers and adults tended to all run together in his mind.
"How are you all- aller- How does the sun make you sick?" he asked, suddenly curious. He knew what allergies were, because Laura was allergic to some kinds of nuts and talked about it, but he had always assumed that you could only be allergic to food, and maybe some drinks. What else could you be allergic to, if sun was possible? Air? Water? It frightened him a little to think about.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:51 pm
The explanation of why he was out made Ishi tilt her head thoughtfully, and eventually she shrugged and nodded. "Makes sense, I guess. I live down behind a hill, so I don't have a good view of anything unless I come up here." She didn't watch sunrises, but she understood the theory behind it, particularly since she was so fascinated by the way the moon rose and fell. Different, but the same.
The second question made her wrinkle her nose, and she shrugged. "Dunno," she said quietly. "It's really, really rare, though. Mama says my skin is really, really sensitive, and that it's like getting a sunburn really fast. I kind of hate it, but it means I get to watch the stars and see things that other people don't get to see. I saw a fox earlier," she added proudly. It had only been a brief glimpse, but she had still impressed herself. After all, most people didn't even know they lived in the neighborhood.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:00 pm
"A fox!" cried Naida, and Bal himself flushed with pleasure. He had never seen a fox before, or anything half so exciting as a fox. Truth be told, he was not exactly sure what a real fox looked like. He had seen cartoon foxes, though, and they looked long and delicate and very orange.
"What was it like?" he asked, suddenly both very interested and envious. It was better to talk about than the burns she got from the sun, anyway. Her explanation had made sense, but it sounded like it hurt and he didn't want to think about it too long.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:17 pm
"It was a lot smaller than I thought it'd be," Ishi admitted, frowning as she tried to remember exact details. "Maybe like the size of a cat. And kinda...brown. I've never seen one before, and I thought they were like...red. But this one was brown-ish. Dunno. Its eyes glowed when it looked at me, though. They were like...bluish-green. Turquoise." Nodding sagely at her own description, she shrugged. "Sometimes if you look up at the sky, too, you can see bats," she added. "They're not bad like everyone thinks they are, though. They don't get tangled in your hair. One flew right past me, once, and nothing happened. Sometimes people think pretty strange things because they don't understand something," she said, and trailed off thoughtfully at the end. That was something to think about...
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Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:40 pm
His sister had fallen into a contemplative silence, which she did sometimes, but Bal was not exactly sure what the older girl meant. There was something in the end of her voice that made him feel it was important.
"Are you like a bat?" he asked curiously, tilting his head slightly and thinking about it. He didn't think anything strange about her, but then he had never been afraid of getting a bat in his hair either.
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 8:05 am
The question made Ishizuke pause, looking a bit bewildered at the child while she tried to think of a way to answer the question. "I don't...know," she said eventually. "Lots of people think I'm weird because I can't go out in the sun, I guess," she said. "And I guess I'm pretty normal. I just sleep the opposite of most people. Sleep during the day and wake up during the night." Smiling a little bit, she rubbed her hands together and glanced at her watch. She didn't have a whole lot of time left before she'd have to sprint to the house, but the kids were interesting.
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Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:50 pm
Bal nodded, his face contorted into an expression of extreme seriousness as he worked through what she had said. It didn't seem exactly fair that anyone would think she was weird, because if she was allergic to the sun then that was just like Laura not eating nuts, which was not very weird, or at least nobody seemed to think so.
He was not exactly sure how to articulate this, though, and it seemed like one of those things that nobody was able to satisfactorily explain to him, so he thought about the second part of what she had said, his tail swishing as he considered how to phrase it.
"But at night isn' it s- um." Bal broke off and looked at the ground, his cheeks turning slightly pink.
"S'scary," Naida finished serenely, breaking out of her thoughts to glance up at the older girl.
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Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:27 pm
"I know how it can seem that way," Ishizuke answered serenely, not at all troubled by the child's reaction. Once upon a time, she would never have dreamed of going out alone, but as she spent more and more time outside, she just didn't...feel afraid anymore. She had become accustomed to the dark and its creatures and sounds. "It's something you're not used to, so it's new and different and scary," she said. "Lots of people don't like the dark, because it's so different to them. But it's really not that bad. Just different." She smiled warmly at the child, then glanced at her watch once more.
"Um...I really have to go," she said apologetically. "I have to get home, but the sun will be coming up soon. If you go on up that hill, you'll be able to watch the sunrise really well," she added. "Nice meeting you both," she added, then giving a brief, distracted wave, she turned and headed back toward home, trying not to look like she was fleeing anything. She wasn't afraid of the sun, it was just...dangerous to her.
And maybe a little scary.
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