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 Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2011 3:14 pm
Vin was paying attention as well as he could to Kurma, or at least to the gently glowing ball that the strange floating man carried on a tether. He glanced upwards, thinking of relaxing and listening for a star, and nodded slowly; the motion made him a bit dizzy, and the boy wobbled slightly before settling down to sit on the roof.
"Okay, let's try this again...." he murmured, closing his eyes.
The alcohol made him a touch impatient, and Vin was just about to ask what, exactly, he should be listening for when he suddenly heard a sound in his mind, like someone running their finger in a steady circle around the top edge of a stem glass. His lips, parted and about to ask the question, instead turned to a smile, and Vindemiatrix found himself pulled across space to the world from which he took his name.
It was dawn there; the star that burned in the sky was brilliant gold, and loomed larger in the sky than the sun that Vin was used to on Earth. Not that he could spare much of a glance at it anyway, as the sudden light after the darkness of night back home left him dazzled. There were buildings around him, but they were made of shining white stone, which was not helping his eyes adjust to the sudden presence of light. After a few moments, though, the black-haired boy lowered his hand, forced open slightly watering eyes, and gaped at the surroundings.
They looked to be in the middle of a plaza, cobbled with white, and ringed with buildings. The area was completely devoid of any life, though. Arched windows peered emptily down at them - there was neither light nor motion visible in any of the buildings through them. Vindemiatrix could not see anyone at all down the roads that stretched away from the plaza, either.
The surroundings were nearly, but not completely, silent. The boy stood up and, still shading his eyes, scanned around for the source of the sounds of lapping water. There was a fixture in the center of the plaza that looked like it could have been a fountain, but it was dry. Vindemiatrix saw this, then instead made his way towards one edge of the plaza. The road made a small arch of its own there over what looked like a gutter from a distance, but, as the black-haired boy drew closer, revealed itself to be a deep canal. Most of the water was in shade, but a narrow strip of it sparkled in the sunlight that reached it.
"Is this-" he began, then brought his gloved hands to his face together to sneeze into his palms. "Is this Venice?" he asked, turning back to Kurma.
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Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2011 8:43 pm
"Well done," Kurma commented as they made their landing -- the first feet that had set upon Vindemiatrix in hundreds of years. "Not that it's too hard once you know what to do though, right?" He gave the senshi a smile, his attentions immediately turning to survey their surroundings.
The sunrise was most definitely a lovely sight to treat oneself to on a first visit, and so his eyes lingered upon it for a while, only darting from it occasionally to consider the stretched shadows around them. The air was light and fresh and crisp; much different from the thick city stuff they had to breathe back in Destiny City. Overall, in spite of being abandoned, the plaza they stood in struck as a place of quiet and relaxed indulgence. "Looks like it was nice in its prime," he observed.
"Venice?" At the senshi's question he gave a small shrug, his grin widening a bit. "You'd know better than I would. Is Venice supposed to be a place on Vindemiatrix?"
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Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2011 2:21 pm
"I have no idea," Vindemiatrix replied immediately and with a frown, shading his eyes with one gloved hand as he looked back to Kurma.
But behind him, the boy could see the other white-tiled and white-columned buildings, and was momentarily unsure whether they were laced with cracks or not. He could smell the sea air, but also other things - a pleasant bouquet of wine and a headier perfume, intertwined with less pleasant smells of population from the canals and gutters. Obviously, this place had not always been abandoned. People had built it as a show of unity, because no simple tribe could construct a place like this, arching over the water as though completely unconcerned with the lack in many places of solid ground above it.
Vin was still aware that he was tipsy, though, and blinked his eyes each in turn before rubbing them again. He could have imagined all that, his mind inventing the details of history.
He had been to Venice once, briefly, and he could definitely see the resemblance, but the sun was undeniably different from the one he knew at home. This place was all apparently his, as a senshi, but he was hardly having any epiphanies about the details of the city. Vindemiatrix was not really expecting more than one sudden magical revelation tonight; discovering this world in the first place was enough.
"I guess I'm not sure yet," the Senshi of Wine amended. "There'll be like, books for me to read and stuff here, won't there? I just have to find them and read them. ... If I can read them. Do all of the senshi's planets have their own different languages, or is it like Star Trek where everyone speaks English?"
Vinedmiatrix walked back to Kurma, then, when he was finished speaking, past him, to the buildings on the opposite side of the plaza. He placed one palm against the gleaming white stones when he reached them, feeling the warmth of the different sun radiating from them, and noting that there were, indeed, numerous cracks of age lacing the walls.
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Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 12:51 pm
A motion off to the side caught Vindemiatrix's eye, and, in his altered state of consciousness, drew his attention away from the strange floating man who had encouraged him to come here. He knew he was drunk, but something about the vague visions of people dancing felt more real than any sort of hallucination. Well, Vin was not an expert on that sort of thing, but this place had a feeling of profound reality to it. As much as all of it - travelling to space, wandering through an empty and foreign Venice, seeing ancient ghosts celebrating at the edges of his vision - would be easy to dismiss as just his imagination or just the drink of wine, Vindemiatrix felt a certain comfort here, a sensation that this was a safe place and that he belonged here.
Which was about the only thing that kept him from freaking out over all of it, really.
For now, he just sort of walked off, over the low bridges just a meter or so over lapping waters. Vin's path meandered slightly as, gazing upwards at the pristine-white stone marred only by time, he was not really trying to watch where he was going. Something like deja vu gnawed at the back of his mind as he tried to place why each building and street felt so familiar to him, but, like the whirling dancers he imagined on the streets, the memories evaded him.
The Senshi of Wine would have to return here when he could, and explore more thoroughly when he was better prepared for it. He knew he could not stay out too late, because his parents would be upset if they found him missing from his room. Particularly if he smelled of wine when he returned.
He found himself in another open plaza, this one with a statue standing in the center of a fountain. The figure was a woman in billowing skirts driving a spear into the fallen body of some shapeless snarling demon. Vindemiatrix circled it slowly, observing with sadness that pieces of the female figure had broken off over time, and lay crumbling in the fountain. The fountain itself was dry, but stained red inside. It was not blood - a whole fountain full of wine had sustained the festivals here.
As Vindemiatrix came full circle, he placed his hand on the edge of the fountain, and noticed just inside that there was a mask, similarly stained with red wine. He leaned down to retrieve it, and it gingerly in both hands as he brushed one thumb over the smooth cheek - a porcelain carnival mask, with brilliant swirls of inert gold remaining behind on the surface, and a few faint faded hints of more reactive paint and glaze. Too big for Vin's face, but an interesting find nonetheless.
He left it behind on the edge of the fountain, and turned around, trying to memorize the features of the buildings surrounding this fountain. Hopefully he would be able to find this place again when he returned. But for now, Vin was starting to feel thirsty, which seemed a good a reason as any to return to Earth.
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