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 Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 6:50 pm
You'd think that, after spending the better part of a year slogging around to try and find an answer to a nonsensical demand, Dusty would be on cloud nine to finally have the puzzle pieces he needed. But no. At the moment, he felt like a miserable sell-out. His epic quest shopping trip had turned out to be a total disaster, and now all that Dusty wanted to do was to gather what little was left of his pride and drag it back home.
After getting his dubious purchase wrapped up in paper (because there was no way in hell he was going to let anyone see the level he'd sunk to!), the child struck out onto the streets of downtown Barton once more. The package he carried with him was nearly three feet long, slender and stiff - comparing it to the sword on his back, actually, it wasn't too hard to guess what it might have contained. Still, he showed little excitement of his new acquisition, half-hiding it under his arm as he walked.
At least Nil should better be happy about it, Dusty grumbled as he walked. Nearly all his savings, gone in an instant. But that was taking him one step closer to the kingdom, at least. Just one more task to complete, Nil had told him. He'd better start putting feelers out, try and find some folks that weren't complete wastes of space to help him....
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Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:22 pm
With a jingle of the bell on the front door of Whitestone's Used Books, Jilan let himself out and stepped out onto the sidewalk, stretching his arms over his head. The small-framed Porcelain's shoulder crackled, and he let out a brief grunt of momentary pain, followed by a relieved sigh as he rubbed the joint and then turned to glance up the street. He did not ordinarily have to work the earlier shift, and, while the little scholar was not fond of rising early and getting on the crowded bus with all of the 9-5 workers of Barton Town, being finished with his hours for the day already was nice.
It was about time for some coffee, though. Oh- and lunch.
Declining to return home for a meal, Jilan headed up the sidewalk away from the bus stop and towards his favorite little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop. About half a block up the road, though, he spotted a dark-skinned person carrying a large parcel; though he said nothing, the Porcelain could not help but let a few tendrils of curiosity slip from his mind in the general direction of the stranger and his burden.
... Er, well, now that he had made himself obvious, Jilan projected a small apology, too - hopefully he did not come off as too nosy or anything sweatdrop
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Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:53 pm
Now, Dusty wasn't exactly what you might call an initiate. His experience with magic was mostly constrained to watching other people do it and then struggling not to look impressed. But there was something distinctly alien about the nagging sense of interest that slipped into his mind, and he thought that he could figure out which way they were coming from--
Ah! There, that funny-looking guy! His eyes narrowed as he stared, trying to figure out what was going on. Then came the sense of apology, which just perplexed Dusty further as he tried to figure out how the heck he was doing that. It didn't seem like the guy was going to actually say anything about it, though, which left the onus on Dusty if he wanted to find anything out about it.
Lugging the package with him, the Fa'e approached the stranger. "Hey - that was you?"
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Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:14 pm
As the white-haired stranger approached him, Jilan stopped walking and turned to face him, tugging at his robes a little to straighten them. Then he pushed his glasses up to sit a bit higher on his rather flat nose, and knit his fingers together. The Porcelain nodded in response to the question, and projected an affirmation along with it.
The little scholar continued to give off a low undercurrent of nervousness, and did his best not to stare with his triple-lidded eyes as he looked the stranger over. After a moment, though, he stepped to the curb, closer to the Fa'e, and projected an offer of help.
"Ah, do you need help carrying it?" he asked at the same time; his voice carried no accent different from that of the majority of Gaians, but his manner of speaking was still odd and a bit over-enunciated, as though the Porcelain was rather unused to talking aloud.
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Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:33 pm
Of course, as he was being given a look-over, Dusty was returning the favor. It was weird - even though the little guy didn't seem as overtly strange as the Fa'e in Dusty's life were, there was still something about him that just.. wasn't... normal. A lot of little things, maybe, not even counting the way he talked with emotions - which, by the way, was starting to wig Dusty out a bit--
"WHOA!" the child suddenly shouted, jerking away. The cause for his unreasonable reaction was made clear as he exclaimed, "Holy s**t, I thought you didn't talk or something!"
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Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:57 pm
Jilan reached up with one hand to catch his glasses with one finger as they threatened to slip from his face, and pushed them back in place before telling the stranger, "Aah, yes, I do, just not all the time." He placed slight emphasis on the pronoun, and indicated that talking in normal Gaian fashion was not necessarily the norm for all his kind.
There was an awkward pause for a moment, before the little scholar added, "Sorry to trouble you, sir. I will let you go on your way, if you do not need help carrying your burden?"
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Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 9:01 pm
"Wait wait wait!" Dusty took a step forward, as though worried that the scholar was about to dash off and leave him. "I don't need help carrying, no, but I wanna know how you did that stuff! I mean, it was like you were thinking in my head... just not thinking."
If Dusty were just a little older and wiser, he'd probably have realized that it wasn't the sort of thing you generally pried into about people - mostly because if you stopped every person on Gaia to question why they were unusual, you'd spend your whole life listening to rather inane stories. But this one had affected him with their strangeness, and thereby caught his attention. He could at least afford to give Dusty an explanation, the Fa'e was sure!
"Is it something you learned?" Dusty prompted.
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Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 9:54 pm
For a moment, the Porcelain's mouth hung open as he tried to figure out how to explain it. "It is ... just how my kind talks," he stammered a bit distractedly, hoping to buy himself a few more seconds to try to come up with something better. Perhaps, if he just showed the stranger?
He projected the image of a baby, though it was Porcelain not human - much tinier and with a round, nearly noseless face, and very pale skin (Jilan's thoughts trailed off on a tangent briefly to explain that this particular child was the daughter of a good friend of his but that was really not the important part). When she was very young like that, she could project very simple things, like a feeling of hunger when she wanted something to eat. Then he projected another image of the same girl, a year or so later, matured enough to walk, though she was still clumsy on her feet. And she knew by then how to ask for more specific things, like if she was hungry for candies in particular, or if she wanted Jilan to play music for her on his zither.
And then he himself could show things like memories, as he was just doing.
".... If that makes sense to you?" sweatdrop
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Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 11:00 pm
There was only one word that could succinctly express what Dusty's thoughts were on what he had just experienced:
"Whoa."
And for the first time in his life, Dusty found himself almost envious of someone else for being what they were. He tried to imagine what it would be like to speak a language of simple concepts like that, as naturally as breathing. It was an unusual moment of empathy for him, to say in the least.
"Can other people learn to do that, do you think?" he asked, still a bit stunned from the touch of memory.
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Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 12:44 pm
Jilan shook his head, then paused a moment, thinking through what he had learned of his kind's magic from the High Priest to be sure of his response. Then he frowned and fixed his glasses again, and repeated, "Ah, no I do not think so." The little scholar hoped the white-haired stranger was not too disappointed, but really, he was fairly certain that it was not possible to teach mind-speaking like this sweatdrop
Not having to study that, at least, freed up his time to study other things, like human magic, though, he added with a small shrug. "And I can learn how to speak your way, too," though the Porcelain still needed practice at it, as the stranger could probably tell. But the stranger could probably do plenty that Jilan could not ... like carry large packages all on his own. And he was also much taller than the young Porcelain - a thought that was touched with the faintest hints of jealousy.
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Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:37 pm
One didn't have to be an empath to read Dusty's emotions on this part - his jaw set, ears drooped by a few centimeters, and an unhappy "oh" escaped his mouth. It had seemed pretty cool, but it was obviously not something he could be a part of. All he could do now was shrug his shoulders and try to look passive and disinterested, as though he wasn't really that keen on the idea in the first place.
Of course, then there was that bizarre glimmer of an emotion carrying over from Jilan, and it was unexpected enough that Dusty broke into a barking laugh. "Wait, what was that? What was that?" he exclaimed, singling out that little feeling of jealousy as best he could. What in the hell had prompted that, he wondered?
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Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 10:12 pm
The Porcelain boy tilted his head to the side ever so slightly as he observed the stranger's reaction, one brow quirking slightly but no emotions on the subject escaping his mind. At the sudden laugh, though, he jumped slightly, his projections making his surprise more than abundantly obvious.
"Ah, what?" he asked, voice pitched a bit high as a faint embarrassed blush blooming on his pale cheeks. Misunderstanding what the stranger was picking on him for, Jilan wondered nervously if his speaking was really so poor, that it was difficult to understand him? He would have to work on it, then, because his father had told him that none of the magic he was studying would work if he could not speak well, and Jilan had been trying so hard to pronounce just right so he could learn to cast great spells-
Abruptly, the stream of thoughts dwindled to near nothing, and the little scholar reached up with both hands to both fix his glasses and hide his deepening blush. Then he looked up at the stranger again, then quickly away, and clasped his hands together in front of himself. "Sorry," he said carefully, projecting the apology as well for his improprietous blathering.
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Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:04 am
Dusty laughed, "Oh, c'mon! You don't have to apologize, I was just wondering!" One thing was for certain - the child's mood had lightened up. Nothing like seeing someone else with a dose of discomfort to brighten up your own day! "Geez, I take it back, anyway. That feeling-talk would trip me up, you can keep it!" Given the number of times Dusty had an inappropriate feeling (especially at other people's expense, or when trying to avoid giving something away himself), it seemed like it would have been a bad idea even if it were possible. He'd be projecting all the wrong things in no time!
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Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 6:09 pm
"Aah." Jilan steepled his fingers and calmed his thoughts again.
Well, all that the stranger wanted to know was whether or not he could learn to communicate like this, right? So if he is okay with knowing that this little scholar cannot teach him, "Is that all?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 8:34 pm
Was that all? Damn, this kid was even more socially awkward than... well, half the people Dusty usually picked on, anyway. Though that didn't seem like the right thing to say in this moment.
"I guess so?" he offered out, sounding a fair bit awkward himself as he tried to get a measure of the other. He gave up the effort after only a few short seconds, though. "Well uhm. It was nice meeting you....... I didn't get your name?"
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