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 Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 12:12 am
Sadie hadn't realized how much she went out until she gained another member of the household. During classes, she'd leave him at a daycare center, avoiding the curious glances of the woman who presided over it. There was a reason she only took him there during her classes, though - it operated with her school, which meant that there was a set opening and closing time and it was never, ever open on weekends. But he was so small, and it wasn't right for her to leave him all alone in their loft. Someone could break in - he could injure himself there. Man, raising a kid was tough.
But today, she was out to browse the bookstore. She had absolutely no literature at home past what she'd bought for the minimum of English classes she'd taken. She didn't mind those books, really, but they reminded her of spending time hunched over on a cramped desk as she took notes. Eughhh.
Raeburn didn't see at all how books could be interesting. He'd taken off the moment he'd seen her back turned, hoping maybe there'd be a book with a collection of paintings in it somewhere. Or maybe a coloring book, or one of those colorless "manga" novels Sadie was always thrusting in his face. Those were like coloring books with words, right?
He'd become distracted gazing at the floor tiles. They were normal floor tiles, really, except that most of the places Raeburn visited had boring wooden floors. These had such a lovely pattern, and the carpet a few feet away was definitely in good taste. Raeburn approved.
Currently the Herald was following a pattern he'd noticed in the tiles - one foot in one square, and then another in a square of the same color a foot away. It took a little stretching for him, as he was still not very large. He was so enamored with the tiles that he failed to notice he was stumbling toward a pair of long legs.
"Oof," he said as he crashed, falling on his behind. How undignified.
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Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 10:05 pm
Guinevere was many things, but overwhelmingly, she was monochromatic. The black haired Herald always dressed in somber, formal colours, and her pale skin was almost white. The only sign that she wasn't from a 20's film reel was her eyes, which were a vivid blue that had stayed with her since she was a messenger reborn. She sometimes wore other colours, but not to work, and it was from work whence she had just come. It wasn't like there was a dress code, but Guinevere already felt silly enough as a Herald working for a daemonologist, and she felt like if she wore bright colours it would only accentuate the fact that she stuck out like a sore thumb. This solution was completely unfounded, as some of the other employees' wardrobes were quite colourful, but part of Guinevere was still that little girl that associated magic with wearing black and riding broomsticks, so black it was.
Thus, partnered with her bladed wings, she looked a little like a particularly formally dressed gothic teenager who had happened to wander into the DIY section of the bookstore by accident. She had drawn a few odd looks, but since it was Gaia, and weird was the norm, they had mostly been from employees trying to figure out if she needed help. She did, but with fixing her bicycle, not finding a book. She was poring over repair guides when Raeburn bumped into her, and she blinked, taking a few moments to emerge from the perplexing world of mechanics and back into reality. Looking down, she asked, "Are you all right?" and offered him a hand.
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Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2010 12:03 am
The Herald on the floor blinked up at Guinevere. From his vantage point on the floor she was very pretty, but she was wearing an awful lot of black. Was she in mourning? She didn't look like she was in mourning. She was reading a book...well, Raeburn had no idea what it was. He couldn't read yet.
He did know that black didn't really go with everything, as many people seemed to think - and while it did draw attention to her eyes, Raeburn didn't think it did it in quite the right way. Her skin stood out, too. But at least she was offering help, and in a much nicer tone than Sadie would've.
"My butt hurts," he told her. He pulled himself up on her hand, and, frowning, immediately began to insult her clothing choices.
"Also that black does nothing for you. You look like you're at a funeral, and you're too pretty for that." Raeburn didn't know much (read: anything) about fashion, just colors - he liked colors an awful lot. It was just a pity that people who had skin tones and eye colors and hair colors that were easy to complement never wore clothes that did the right job. "But don't replace it with yellow," he added, as if that suggestion were something she ought to have come up with on her own. Her skin was nearly white, yes, but it still had a reddish tint in Raeburn's opinion. Yellow would bring in too many primary colors.
He looked her up and down again, his wings fluttering. His assessment was about right.
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Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2010 7:15 am
"Uh, they're work clothes? Thank you, though." Guinevere mouthed slowly. Her hand twitched a fraction of an inch. Maybe he had hit his head too hard, what kind of toddler gave fashion tips right after he fell? She caught a glance at his rainbow-coloured wings, checked his white hair and blue eyes, and made a quick guess; That kind of child.
"What's your sacrifice?" she queried, looking him up and down like he was some kind of exotic bird. "Watercolours?" Guinevere didn't know much about art supplies, but his wings looked kind of watercoloury. Thinking of the lonely little Lucy, she asked, "Do you have a parent nearby? At all? You're not alone, are you?" Heralds and parents were a tricky subject for Guinevere, who had been through three, and didn't like seeing Heralds without any. When she had found Lucy, she had hunted down parents for her with a vengeance, and if she had to do so for every homeless Herald in the world, she would.
However, that was neither here nor there. Clearing her throat and trying to look more like a responsible adult and less like a nerdy researcher goggling over a new specimen, she added, "By the way, my name's Guinevere. And yours?"
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Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 10:19 pm
Raeburn had no idea why Guinevere would be confused by his words; to him it was perfectly normal to spend your time trying to present an advantageous view of himself to others. "Sacrifice?" he asked. "I dunno what a sacrifice is." He blinked his eyes. "Sadie won't give me any watercolors though," he added, because that was important. He thought watercolors were very pretty, even if the paintings Sadie made with them were sometimes washed out. "She thinks I'll make a mess. She says she gave me markers once but I don't remember it." Maybe then he'd made a mess. He doubted it - he always colored inside the lines of her manga books, right?
"She's, um." Raeburn had no idea where Sadie was, other than 'in the bookstore.' "Well, I left her with a bunch of boring books that had ugly pictures on the cover." Guinevere's books looked boring, too.
"I'm Raeburn," he added almost reluctantly, shifting his weight from one foot to another. Did that make him look stupid? He sure hoped not.
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Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2010 7:13 am
Guinevere blinked again. "Markers? I guess that makes sense, too."
She smiled and said, "Were you looking for a particular kind of book?" Guinevere enjoyed being helpful as much as she enjoyed being nosy. She put aside the book she had been looking at and said, "I don't work here, but I can probably help." She already knew his sacrifice, or at least guessed at it, so she didn't feel like interrogating him about Heralds. She usually saved that conversation for guardians, who needed to know what they had gotten into when they suddenly found parenthood thrust upon them. Guinevere had a soft spot for all Heralds, but she was generally suspicious of most guardians considering she had been through three of them herself.
"To be honest, I was getting a little bored with DIY anyway," she informed Raeburn. "Unless you were looking for that after all?"
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Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 4:01 pm
This Guinevere lady said a lot of nonsense. He didn't know how markers would make sense at all - but they were very pretty, in Raeburn's opinion.
"Coloring books!" he said confidently, nodding. "Do you color too?" He colored a lot. Everything looked uglier without color - or at least, you had to be talented to make it look better when there wasn't any. "Sadie doesn't let me use paint but I'm learning to use colored pencils." That was important - colored pencils felt nicer in his hand than crayons did. And he could vary the tones more, and they smelled better. Crayons smelled horrible, and they melted if you left them out too long.
"What's DIY?" he asked, looking up at Guinevere and offering her a hand - it was safest to go in pairs, after all!
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Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2010 7:30 pm
"Okay, let's go find some!" Guinevere said, taking his little hand in hers. Colouring books for a marker herald, colour her surprised.
"I don't really colour much," she admitted. "I'm not an artist, but I bet you are." She bit her lip thoughtfully, saying, "I sew, though." Guinevere wasn't very crafty, but considering her wings were basically blades, she had to be good at altering and fixing clothes. "Coloured pencils, huh! That's pretty impressive. Do you use markers, too?"
"DIY means 'Do it Yourself.' I'm trying to find ways to make my house look nicer without having to pay too much money for it," she explained. "I'm not very good at interior design though, I'm afraid." She kept an eye out for the childrens' section and spotted it to her left, turning to make a beeline for it. "What kind of colouring books do you want? Do you know yet?"
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Posted: Tue Oct 12, 2010 11:06 pm
Raeburn nodded absently at the comment, which he chose to take as a compliment - artists were really talented people, after all. Raeburn was talented, right? Even if he couldn't sew. He snuck a glance at her outfit again, and then raised his eyes to her bladed wings. "Did you sew your dress? Or those?" He was raising his free hand to point at the ribbons tied onto her wings. He didn't really get sewing at all, but it seemed...cool, as one of his friends was prone to saying.
"Sadie says markers bleed," he said importantly. He didn't know why it was important to keep them from bleeding - but it had to hurt, right? Not that he'd ever seen markers screaming in pain when Sadie used them.
"I don't know anything about interior design, but I know about colors!" Raeburn remarked cheerfully. He liked talking about making things look nicer. It was a Very Important Issue.
The books that were around them now were all much more colorful than the ones that had been before. He shook his head, and then realized he was probably too short for her to see him do so. "Are there different types?" he asked. "I like Sadie's mangas because they have more detail than the animal pictures."
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Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:50 pm
"I sewed my dress, but my ribbons are a part of me, like my ears or my nose," Guinevere replied casually. "You can try to yank them, they won't come off my wings even if you pull." It was hell with cats, who batted at them while she was trying to walk places.
Guinevere didn't know much about markers, but she raised an eyebrow. "Really? Good heavens, that sounds messy. You'd think someone would have invented some kind of bandage for them by now." She didn't know that artists had to work with such difficult materials. Her markers never bled, but she had only ever really used sharpies and dry erase markers. Maybe there was a special, morbid kind of artists' marker she didn't know about.
"I know you know about colours," Guinevere remarked, thinking of his fashion tips to her. "I should really learn more about them, it could help me with my sewing a little." Leaning down to look at the books, she looked perplexed. "Manga? What's that?" Guinevere and pop culture weren't really on a first name basis. "Are they a fancier kind of colouring book?" The name sounded foreign.
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