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 Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:00 pm
After his time spent deep within the city, the bustling Harbor district seemed quiet to Fish. The Scene, he reflected, was like the City's heart, thumping with some internal beat and the motion of people, and everything fanned out around it. The Harbor, on the other hand, was like the City's hand - an extremity.
The young man strolled through the once-familiar streets, his trident slung casually over one shoulder. He was still wary of Blacksuits, of course, but after beating a few up he wasn't quite as scared of them. Winding up back on the outside after the fiasco with Abbot, and three months later, however, had been inexplicably disorienting. His roommates had been happy to have him back, but it felt different somehow. They watched him with funny eyes as if they were afraid of something he might do.
Fish didn't dare go home, didn't dare risk leading Blacksuits to his parents, or risk being recognized by a neighbor. He was supposed to be twelve, not seventeen.
He turned a corner onto a street he remembered, faintly. Each house was painted a different color, and even within that rainbow one stuck out in particular. Fish smiled. How could he have forgotten this house?
He continued up the street, whistling a happy tune as he went.
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:16 pm
"Cal! You get back here right now!" Svana darted through the door after her erstwhile little brother and scooped him up under the arms. He struggled, but she was stronger; she had to be. Everyone had to be, really, both to hold the little ones and fend off the older ones.
"Wanna candy!" Calum complained mightily, his feet kicking back and forth freely in the air, knocking into her shins on the backswing. She winced.
"No," she said, firmly, and deposited him inside the door. A little shove made him stumble away, and she closed the door before he could recover. He was too fumble-fingered to work the doorknob, but the wood still shook a tiny bit as he threw a tantrum on the other side.
Svana leaned back on the door and sighed, brushing her hair away from her face.
This is not what we should be doing, and you know it, came the quiet, hissing voice of the goddess. One of three.
She'd barely had time to breathe, let alone get to know her apparent divine patron. Svana rolled her eyes. "I'm relaxing. Go away."
There was a pause. Your mortal concerns are admirable - loyalty, family, care. But you must re-prioritize if we are to replant Yggdrasil.
"Mmm... just one more minute." Her mom would be calling everyone for dinner in about half an hour, and right now, her mother still trumped the internal whisper.
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Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 3:31 pm
It was good to know some things never changed. The house's old residents still lived there, even if he had deserted his own home a few blocks away.
The little boy Fish didn't know - he didn't know all of the siblings who lived there, just the ones who were remote to his age. Or, to phrase things better, the age he was supposed to be. Which meant that he did know the girl. She'd gone to school with him for a while. They'd never really been friends, but... It was the sort of recognition that came from living in the same neighborhood.
"Svana!" he called happily, waving.
Oh, wait, he remembered. You look seventeen.
Well, this was awkward.
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Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:16 pm
Svana blinked and straightened up, giving the approaching young man a wary look. Who... did she know the person that had just called her name? He didn't look familiar... but... then again, he did. "Who... are you?" she asked, clearly confused.
The internal susurrus kicked up again. "Do you know this one?"
"No..." she said aloud, but something was nagging at her. He looked... ah, yes, that was it! He looked like a boy from school. A weirdo. She was a weirdo too, because of her family and her clothes.
They hadn't known each other that well - just been weird, in proximity to each other.
"Do... do you know... um... was it Fish?" she asked, after a moment. She thought that was his name. Something like that.
The goddess was radiating wariness at her, and that alone was strange. She was right at the door to her very own house; the knob was two inches from her hand. Surely if anywhere outside was safe, it was here...
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Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 2:26 pm
"Yeah," nodded Fish, deciding to check in at the rumor farm. Best use her apparent clueless state to his advantage, eh? "I knew him. I heard he disappeared."
He felt a bit bad, intentionally misleading her like this, but he was older now, more experienced. He had to be clever, had to be crafty.
I smell another god,said Poseidon from the bubbling place at the back of his mind. Fish flinched.
Where? he asked.
Here, replied the god. The girl, I think. Don't let your guard down.
Fish regarded Svana curiously and shifted from foot to foot. She didn't look like a Player, but neither did Maria, and he had seen what Maria could do when they'd infiltrated the Blacksuit HQ together.
"You hear anything about him?" he asked, maintaining the charade.
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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 7:08 pm
"Oh." Svana squirmed, mentally. That was awkward. "No... he just stopped coming to school, I guess, or something... I didn't know him very well..."
The divine whisper in her mind made a sound very much like a snort. "Stammering like that doesn't suit you."
Svana tried to ignore that; what was she supposed to be, anyway? Having a goddess in her head was all well and good, and the dreams of the Tree were lovely, but that was grown-ups work, right? Not stuff for a kid like her. Maybe it would be important once she grew up. "Sorry," she mumbled, part to the stranger, part to the goddess.
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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:57 pm
"Eh, don't sweat it," sighed Fish. So then, rumors of his participation in the Game hadn't spread. But he couldn't go on like this forever. She'd eventually figure it else, or he'd slip up.
See what you can find out about her, advised Poseidon, and FIsh decided to confirm the god's suspicions about the girl before dropping too much information.
"I did hear one or two things about him," he shrugged, "But I figured it had to be crazy rumors. I heard he's... playing the Game? But that's just an urban legend, right?"
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Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 7:19 pm
Svana flinched visibly, then tried to cover it up. "Oh, um... I don't know? I've never heard of something like that-" she stammered.
"This one has been touched by the breath of another. Be on your guard," the goddess whispered in her mind.
Svana took a step backwards. "If you do anything to me, I'll scream and all my brothers will come out and beat you to bits," she informed him, keeping her voice as level as she could.
"Something needs to be done about that," the goddess said.
She wasn't sure what the goddess meant, but that grim tone only made Svana more nervous.
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Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:25 am
Fish laughed uneasily and took a few steps backwards. This was not going well at all! "No need to get all excited," he said. "I'm not gonna do anything to you."
Her initial reaction puzzled him for a second, though, until he realized... she's lying.
I was waiting for you to figure that out, said Poseidon, sounding smug.
"But really," added Fish, "I'm not scared of your brothers."
He instantly regretted his momentary cockiness and struggled to remember her brothers. Were they big?
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Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 7:35 pm
"Well, you should be," Svana demanded, putting her hands on her hips.
"And you should be warier than you are."
"What did you want with me, anyway? How come you know my name?" Maybe Fish told him, but that'd be weird. They hadn't really talked.
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Posted: Tue Jul 29, 2008 7:50 pm
"I used to live around here," said Fish evasively. "I mean, 'til the blacksuits started hanging around my house, that is."
He rocked his weight from foot to foot, feeling a bit smug. "You don't recognize me, do you?" he asked, motioning to his chest with a webbed hand. Something about this struck him as cruel, but then again, it seemed like Svana hadn't gotten a very good official welcome to the game yet. As the first other player she met, he felt it was practically his duty to scare a bit of sense into her. "I'm Fish. I'm in the Game."
He smirked. It felt good to be an a*****e.
"So are you. I can sense it."
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Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:11 pm
"Y-you're..." Svana stared. "But you're so OLD!"
The rest of his statement took a moment to percolate through her astonishment, but when it did, she shrank back against the side of her house. "D-don't hurt me!"
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Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:23 pm
Oh. Wait! Fish hadn't meant to scare her that much! Now he felt bad. He'd never particularly liked Svana, but he'd never disliked her either. Now it amused him, that he was playing against someone he knew from the old days, before any of this madness happened. But she was part of that madness, too.
His smirk faded. He frowned. "Why would I want to do that?" he asked. "I haven't got any reason to. At least, not yet."
This was getting sufficiently more awkward than he'd expected it to be. He was always astonished by how small and weak Newbies seemed, but he'd never known any Newbies personally before. If he recalled correctly, he and Svana had once been the same height.
For a moment, Fish remembered Ciro's initial consternation at discovering he was suddenly older than the fiery prophet. He'd never been in a situation like that from the other side.
"Someone else might, though," he added. "There are lots of big, bad prophets around. But hey, if you're careful, maybe you'll wind up like us someday!"
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Posted: Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:27 pm
"I-I..." She swallowed, hard. "All I want to do is make the Tree grow. It's so beautiful. Why would anyone mind that?"
Naive, the goddess whispered.
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Posted: Tue Aug 12, 2008 5:01 am
"The tree?" asked Fish, suddenly confused. Who had said anything about a tree?
It might be worth investigating, burbled Poseidon, who was infuriatingly calm about all this.
"What tree?" asked Fish. He found himself crouching a little - towering over her was getting to simply be too awkward. "Who're you working for?"
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