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 Posted: Mon Oct 07, 2013 12:12 am
Quote: Warning: Potentially triggering themes.
Yet now, it poured - all across streets and lawns and ill-prepared children who giggled while they brandished their backpacks and binders against the sky. It felt strange to loiter in these parts, where sunshine met the ground with warmth and life. In a peculiar way, he missed the rolling seas of sand contained within the Rift, occasionally broken by a jutting violet crystal or a broken building, succumbing to the ceaseless corruption. There were no children, no hopes, no dreams - just an overwhelming reality that entropy dawned on the horizon.
One day, these children would grow old. They'd spin tales of days long since past to the next generation's children, as if their stories mattered. As if the young would pause their lukewarm machinations to listen. As if this cycle hadn't echoed their affairs before.
Times turned, but people never changed.
Alois folded his arms about himself in the rain, in some meager gesture to hide his body heat from the gripping cold. Thunder roared across the skies, a whisper of a youma's relentless stuttering cries. He bowed his head to the domineering downpour and watched for the telltale cracks splitting concrete - his only indication of passing distance. The roads felt longer these days; destinations skittered away from him and the sun stalled in its inevitable arc across the sky. The universe cooled, so time was slowing down. Everything turned to lethargy. Was this truly the path of entropy? For all things to ease into immobility - silent, fading into peace?
He never wanted such trifles. He scoffed. Sneezed.
Even the weather could wage a war and win. But why couldn't he seek success within his own aspirations? Why must it all crumble into dust, beneath blatant successes that buried tragedy beneath its visage?
He sighed when the wind teased his hair again. It coiled against his face like wet branches, slick and gnarled against his pale complexion.
Equally lackluster gold eyes met with the familiar face of a young girl caught in the rain. No shoes. No umbrella. Hair plastered across tanned skin. Yes, the girl from the flower shop. The one trapped in her dead mother's shadow. The one content to live amongst faded tales of the dead. He wondered about her since then, how she survives in the midst of eternal disappointment. No more mother, not now, not ever. Still, she survived it, even seemed relatively amiable in the wake of disaster. And he wondered how long it took her to surmount the tragedy, to learn that she could see and hear and feel and smell and taste and not everything was steeped in ash and monochrome and utter, blackened hate.
He wanted to know. All he needed to do was ask.
"Somesing wrong wis' your shoes?" He asked, gesturing toward the pair she held by the heels. Rain ate through everything - a better acid than most. "Or do you prefer to pick flowers in ze rain, Orah? To feel ze mud between your toes?" Black boots halted on asphalt. He watched her in the jaundiced lamplight. Studied her expression. Her brown eyes like domesticated animals - passive and complacent.
Did she come to study the vultures who lingered in the rain?
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Posted: Mon Oct 07, 2013 9:48 am
It had been sunny earlier, a good day to go to the community garden and pick some of the fall vegetables that had grown ripe. A nice bonus, some of the fall flowers were in bloom, which meant she could clip some of those and bring them home as well. The weatherman had said there was a possibility of rain, but that had been later and the teen had hoped she would make it home before it started. No such luck though, and she'd been caught out without her umbrella.
That had, of course, brought out thoughts of what to do about it... Home was a few blocks from here, but it wasn't a terrible walk. Sure, she would get wet, but it wasn't like she would melt from it. The only issue being that she had worn her brown leather boots today, which when wet, brought about the most awful blisters.
Thus how the young man from the flower shop found her... bare foot and soaked nearly through, a canvas bag full of carrots, celery, potatoes and onions in one hand and a bundle of flowers in the crook of the other, her boots dangling from her fingertips. Her hair curled bravely despite the wetness and though the rain desaturated the world, she still seemed to hold all her color... warm tan skin and chocolate eyes, a splash of teal in her skirt offset by the cream of the rest of her outfit... she was almost the polar opposite the man that stood in front of her, clad all in black with pale skin, his eyes the only bright burst of color to him.
"Oh! Alois? Um..." Orah shifted on her bare feet, rubbing the back of her heel with one foot in self-consciousness. Geez... she'd even painted her toe nails lavender just the other day, though she hadn't expected anyone to see it.
"I forgot my umbrella." She said softly as she ducked her head. "When they get wet, they give me blisters, and since the shop is just down that way a few blocks, I thought I'd just walk home barefoot..." It was sort of embarrassing when someone pointed it out, actually. She hadn't been thinking about how it looked, or who might see her like this. Some how, she suspected the last time she'd seen him in the shop, she hadn't lived up to his expectations... Not really surprising, since she never did that for anyone, but this really wasn't the way she'd wanted to meet him again. It made her wonder though and she blinked wide eyes.
"What are you doing out in the rain? You're going to catch a cold like this." She said as she shifted again, hugging the flower bundle against her ribs.
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 11:09 am
Alois watched her expectantly. She danced under duress. How strange. He almost smiled; she took great pride in her appearance, even the hidden pieces that normally no one was privy to. Hardly fitting for a girl living as the ghost of her mother - maybe he was wrong in his earlier assumptions.
He refrained from taking his eyes off her when she responded, studied her meekness with mild contempt. He didn't understand the benefit of playing so coy, but given their situation, it was hardly the time to study it. If the two stood around in the rain, pneumonia would surely follow. However, he recognized that she valued her own safety above others' opinions, so she held some saving grace to herself. Curious how they were in the form of leather boots; perhaps nothing else would suffice for one so fashion-conscious.
He fiddled with his turtleneck collar, slipping the tips of his fingers beneath it to peel the wet fabric from his neck. He had forgotten how disturbingly uncomfortable they became when drenched with an unexpected downpour. Well, half-expected. The other half just didn't care. "It's... A long story." He let slip his fingers from the turtleneck and stepped aside, cocking his head in the direction she was walking. "I don't sink you want to catch a cold eizer, so we'd best keep walking.
"As for why I'm out... Sometimes we miss experiences when we avoid adverse conditions, like ze rain. Who else is out? Just zose wis umbrellas, but sometimes it's necessary to shiver and huddle beneas' a downpour. If I never got wet in frigid temperatures, zen I wouldn't haf' much appreciation for staying dry, I guess." That explanation would suffice, for now. He didn't expect her to pry into his affairs beyond the normal platitudes. Hardly anyone did; too often lately people preferred solitude over company, and when the unwelcome arrived, they hardly took the time to feel out reasoning.
As Bischofite, no one asked him how he was doing lately before he attacked them.
He turned to walk beside her, thinking little of the prospect. A quick glance toward her bag confirmed a few vegetables poking out. Grocery shopping? Maybe she was one of those individuals who brought their own bags, as a means to desperately conserve the environment. Hardly the thing to worry about in a city besieged by teenagers with overwhelming power... Then again, those vegetables weren't in bags. "I doubt you left ze house to prance around in ze rain like I did. Were you shopping?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 3:53 pm
The teen blinked as she found herself staring at him and her cheeks heated as she offered a tentative smile and started for home again. The weather seemed to fit him... the darkened, desaturated colors and the melancholic atmosphere was fitting foil for his dark looks and that bit of an accent. Hitching her shoulder, she shifted her bag higher up and tried to think of something clever to say.
He was obviously a far deeper person than she was, if his answer was any indication. It was something of a roundabout answer, masking what he truly thought, but the fact that he brought it up probably meant he might have actually thought about it before, even if just in passing. She never thought of things like that... to her, rain was just something that happened, something she had to deal with. Sometimes she even enjoyed it, like when she was younger and played out in it, splashing in the puddles that formed.
"Do you normally go seeking adverse conditions?" Orah said softly as she struggled to keep hold of the flowers in her elbow and still reach up to brush the clinging strands of mahogany out of her face. The teen was unaware of the irony of that question, perhaps blissfully so. Had she known... Needless to say, things would have been different. Slender feet fell into a deeper puddle, but she ignored the sensation of cold, almost enjoying the slide of water over her skin. She'd be chilled by the time she got home, but she had more important things to occupy her attention right now.
His return question made her shrug and a real smile slid across her face this time, even as water dripped from her bangs.
"Oh, I don't know... I've played in the rain before, though that was a long time ago. I was at the community garden this time, actually. My family has a plot there and I grow vegetables and things. I guess you could call it a hobby. These are all stuff I grew there. It was a productive season, I got quite a lot."
Not that he probably cared all that much about a silly little garden... he didn't look like someone who spent much time in the dirt, nurturing plants to fruition and pulling weeds, getting dirt on his knees and under his nails. His hands looked finer than that, like someone who did things that took more skill than hard labor. Orah's own fingers curled shyly, hoping he hadn't noticed the state of her nails. As rewarding as she found it to reap the harvest of her hard work, she wasn't sure he felt the same way. Would he find it silly to spend so much time on something like that, when you could just buy the same things at the local grocery store?
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Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 4:51 am
"I didn't used to," he answered cryptically. He hadn't in Germany, not to the extent that he sought adversity here. In light of powered happenings, his dabbling of years past sounded dull and hollow, only a touch to the surface. Maybe he just needed a few reminders that he still had a pulse.
Alois found the thought funny, and shook his head with a sardonic smile.
He considered asking her the same question, but it sounded ridiculous in retrospect. What reason would she have to go out in the rain, if not for necessity? As she had mentioned, she hadn't played in the rain since she was far younger. This was a childish notion. A child's actions. He drew his jacket in tighter and folded his across it. The rain fell deep and steady, monotonous. Just like their footfalls. He knew rain wasn't the point of interest - a passing pretense, maybe, but it didn't matter here. He was looking for a reason to stay human. To retain a pulse, maybe. Tired eyes stared onward, and he wondered if Orah ever suffered such thoughts.
Would she want to depart from her place as a shade of the dead? In a way, they had at least that much in common. Both were paltry echoes of something greater. But did Orah even consider it anymore, or were her coping mechanisms great enough that she could overcome it and enjoy her bizarre false-life?
Looking at her, he wondered what her mother looked like. Did she have those same deep brown eyes, the same slender legs? Did she paint her toenails lavender once upon a time, or carry her shoes in the rain? Did she smile and greet almost-strangers kindly, or did she reproach them for passing glances? How much of Orah was her mother regardless, and how much more might she become?
A strange thought floated to mind in the midst of his profusion of questions: he should've bought her flowers.
And he agreed with it. A great deal of mourning lay there.
He heard her response, but it sounded far away. Maybe he should reel himself in. "Gardening, huh?" Another glance at her bag. The various vegetables sported a healthier, more robust form than the modified foods at the grocery store. Tomatoes that tasted like tomato too, maybe. "it is a useful hobby." He coughed into the crook of his arm. Loosening tar. "Where I'm from, it was sort of a staple hobby. I never tried it. But... People are different zere. More serious. I guess it was a serapeutic effort." Did Orah need therapy, or just carrots and beets? He considered that she didn't view her life that tragically, and perhaps it was for the best.
He sighed through his nose and angled his face toward the sky, closing his eyes. Did Orah wonder about youma at night? Did she know of darker worlds, deep beneath the surface? Or was her life confined to that little flower shop, just around the corner? The shop, the plot, possibly school given her age. Maybe she lived lightly. Maybe she floated atop the waters of reflection, rather than chained and weighted to its floor.
Oh, how much easier it was to think about her.
Opening his eyes once more (he had a suspicion he might slam into either her or a pole), he continued warily. "My Opa, my grandfazer, shot himself when I was four. Obviously I didn't understand for ze longest time, but you will - he was a man growing up srough trying times. A soldier in ze war. I knew of zis, because I used to play wis' his iron cross. Now, he used to keep pigeons and he had quite a lot at ze time. Maybe twenty. And in retrospect, he took better care of zose birds zan his offspring. A very cold man, he was. From what I was told, he and his neighbor were at odds for ze better part of twenty years, Finally one day, his neighbor tampered wis' ze birdseed zat was always delivered to his door. Ze morning he woke up to silence, he shot himself. No note, no word to anyone else."
He kicked a pebble that crossed his path. It skittered into a puddle further down the road. "He let his hard work define himself. Try to avoid zat, if you can."
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Posted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 10:41 am
Having him acknowledge her little hobby seemed to relax the teen of some small bit of tension she hadn't even known she had. No one liked being told they were silly for the things they liked to do... and in particular for her, having something simply accepted, even appreciated, was a bolster for what little confidence she had in herself. She was obviously not a gardening expert; if he grew up in a place where gardening was common place then he probably knew a couple, but at least she knew he wasn't secretly sneering at her.
He seemed a little different today than the last time she met him, and she wondered about it. Maybe it was just that last time he had been thinking about his father and today he seemed to be thinking about something else entirely. Not surprising, she guessed. People changed from day to day and when it came down to it, she really didn't know him all that well. Maybe she just caught him on melancholic days. Hearing a sigh, dark eyes turned to watch him watching the sky. He felt more real today. More approachable, maybe. At least his questions were lighter, easier to answer.
Her steps faltered though, when he suddenly brought up his grandfather's death, and she had to bounce a step or two to get back into step with him. That was sort of a drastic change of topic, though he brought it back around in a bit of a grim way. He had admitted loosing at least two important people in his life, one to suicide and one to murder... how much more tragedy lurked in his past?
"I-I'm sorry, about your grandfather." She said, meaning it. What a tragic, useless way to die... Orah would never say it out loud, of course, but she found it hard to relate to it. She understood, fundamentally, why he had killed himself, but she couldn't seem to comprehend why someone could latch onto something like that and place it above their own life... above their family. "Gardening is not nearly so important to me that I would be... distraught if I lost my hard work, but... I kind of understand."
This was a hard thing to think about, far darker than she usually cared to be. Why did he seem to bring thoughts of death with him whenever they talked?
"When my mother died... it tore my Da apart. My brother was too young to remember, but I was four. I saw how it hurt him, how he closed himself off to everything, even us. It was... scary, and it hurt. I... I saw him once, alone in his office, through the crack of the door when he didn't know I was there. Its hard to remember exactly, but... I think I saw him holding a gun while he sat in his big leather chair. It was only for a moment though, because he heard me and put it away." Orah hadn't understood, back then, what it meant. Guns were bad, of course, but she'd been too young to realize he had been thinking about killing himself. It had terrified her, later, when she realized what she had seen. The young girl pressed her lips together as she frowned down at the sidewalk, her steps even and firm.
"I've never actually told anyone before about it, but that's sort of why I understand. At least a little. What I don't understand though is how, in the heat and sorrow of the moment, someone can just forget everything but the pain they're feeling. Just like your grandfather, my father forgot that he had more to live for than he had to die for. He forgot that he had me and my brother, that we needed him... though in the end I suppose he remembered, since he's still here and taking care of us. People who suicide never seem to think about all the people they're leaving behind who care about them. They just want to end the pain of the moment, without thinking about how their death will hurt the people around them."
Maybe she was being insensitive, but it felt so... selfish, to her. It made her angry, and sad... things she didn't like feeling. She could have lost both of her parents, her brother would have had to grow up not knowing them. How could her mother's death justify doing that? When it came down to it, she had to admit that it was part of why she had always been the one to take care of her little family, to work so very hard to keep their lives moving. Her father couldn't handle it all by himself, that scene in his office proved it. She knew he was a weak man and it had meant she had learned to grow up strong and independent, able to fill in where he fell short.
Realizing she was letting herself get worked up over it, Orah took a deep, calming breath, feeling her chest rise and fall under her clammy top. She felt the rain, again, as it hit her shoulders and slid down her arms. The past was the past. Dwelling too hard on it made it hard to face the present, or the future. Orah wanted to apologize for dragging out her dirty laundry, but hey, he'd done it first.
"There is a lot in life worth living for, I guess I'm saying. I wouldn't do that to myself." She said with conviction, blissfully unaware of what the future might hold. Maybe someday she would truly understand why someone would choose death over life, but not today.
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2013 2:55 am
Though he listened, inwardly the impulse to smile threatened to surface. She explained her own family's trials and tribulations in the subject as easily as he lied, and she never knew the difference. So, she would always recognize Alois as the one who lost his father and bought flowers for the grave, as the one who lost a grandfather to suicide over a cage of dead pigeons. Strange stories, ones too bizarre not to hold a grain of truth.
And it did - his grandfather indeed participated in the war.
But he never kept pigeons. Why would he? Flying s**t machines, he called them. Bullet fodder for amateurs.
Maybe they weren't so different: Orah and Alois, bullet fodder for adversity. Would all the travesties in life kindly come here. Plague these two, stretch them and overstretch them and break them on your knee, don't worry they'll rebound. They always do. Something will snap, and something else will break, and still something yet might tear away but they always rebound. They'll always come back. Maybe even for more.
He wondered if she hated her father for that moment of weakness - if, some days, when she's curled in bed with her cute velvet sheets of sprawling violet and rife with lilac patterns, knees retracted toward her chest in a loose fetal position, that those wee moments before sleep yielded acerbic thoughts for her father. That b*****d, that yellow b*****d who sought to forsake the role of father in lieu of losing his wife. Their mom. He wondered if, in those same moments, she hated the world with equal fervor. If she cursed aloud, quietly, and spoke hexes and maliciousness instead of prayers born from piousness. Did Orah hate? Did Orah ever spit vitriol toward her remaining parent? Or was she a good girl? A good, meek girl who stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek when he got home and took his coat and tucked it into the closet for another day?
If he had to guess he'd assume the latter, but he secretly wanted the former.
Orah the Resentful. Orah the Slighted. Orah the Relentless.
Alois waited for a time after she finished speaking. He allowed the silence to spool out, just enough to cover a time of thought but not quite enough to produce a sense of unease in those uncomfortable with the ambient sound of the world. Most people hated silence, consciously or not.
"Suicide is a very simple sing," he responded with surprisingly emotionless intonation. Maybe he just lost the will to fake it. Probably so - why try to sound sympathetic to the plight of suicide when rain came down on him in sheets and he just didn't give a s**t? "You might be oversinking it when you say zat zey just want to end ze pain of ze moment wis'out considering how it will affect zose around him. Zat's an outsider's perspective, one who's already been touched by ze endeavor of suicide. But it is a challenge, you understand, to go srough ze motions and overcome ze most basic sense of self-preservation. You wouldn't sink it, but turning a gun on yourself takes quite a bit of effort."
He knew, but not for that same reason. His gaze swapped to the sky, and the cold rubberized grip felt unconscionably heavy in his small fists. He never expected a gun to be so heavy, but he hadn't carried one before in the duration of his remarkably short lifespan. But now he found its weight incredibly cumbersome and almost too great a burden for his tiny wrists. But he remembered the game well enough, and they already flipped the coin. David was going first. David who wasn't a David but a Dah-veed.
So he passed it on and waited.
Russian gambling, or something like that. Now he considered it retarded cyrillic for suicide. All you need to do is pretend - close your eyes, and pretend. Squeeze the trigger and pretend that the chamber is empty, that no one is home. And in that next second, maybe that's true. Maybe everyone left through a sudden hole in the wall.
Maybe it was time to return to the topic at hand. In a moment of sudden clarity, dawning on his face in a thin smirk, he pilfered Orah's back for a few of the vegetables therein. "I'll show you," he assured her, while he withdrew an impressively large carrot and a couple of tomatoes. These ones lacked the perfect color of supermarket tomatoes. He never liked those ones - the fire engine red was unsettling, in that he wondered if they were truly tomatoes. But these ones held the familiar scent of homegrown product, unadulterated by genetics and the quest for the perfect fruit.
They weighed heavy in his hands and it took little time for him to discern which vegetable was of the greater burden. "You see, suicide is a very simple prospect. Easy to understand if you know how to look at it, but most people don't consider it beyond a superficial glance. It's just a product of too much pain," he nodded to the pair of tomatoes in his right hand, "and not enough coping mechanisms," he nodded to the single carrot in his left. "For example. Your dad, in zat moment, probably harbored pain in ze weight of zese tomatoes and possessed ze coping mechanisms ze size of zis carrot." He allowed his hands to adjust as pseudo-scales, with the tomatoes near hip-level.
"But - wis' your peeking srough ze door, zere came a realization: zat you are every bit as much of a coping mechanism zan anysing. Denial is as good a coping mechanism as any, and it's easy to lose sight of pain when you're playing wis' your kids, I would assume." A quick and dexterous delve into her canvas bag produced a potato, which sat heavy in his left, thus returning the mock scales to a steady balance at chest height. "As long as ze efficiency of ze coping mechanisms matches or exceeds ze pain, suicide is not a problem. But being human, sometimes people forget to use zem and zey need a reminder at one time or anozzer. Perhaps you were zat reminder for your dad." Afterward he returned the vegetables to her back.
Idly he wondered if his hands would smell of earth later, and his mind would drift to this moment.
Even if nothing came from his explanation, at least the vegetables got a minor wash. Then again, they were both pretty soaked given the prevalence of the rain. However, an awning loomed in the horizon - a meager offer of a reprieve, should they choose to take it - but why shirk the storm in favor of shivering on someone's doorstep?
His jacket hung heavy to his shoulders - waterlogged and soaking through the turtleneck, through the skin, to the bone. A shiver threatened to run through his body, and acted on its impulse. He used to smoke in the rain. When did it become such a problem? "I should'f taken a goddamned umbrella." He sighed, and pulled his arms tighter about himself.
Pigeons, vegetables, and suicide. He smiled a little.Bluefire Dragonz i found time! yay insomnia!
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Posted: Wed Nov 06, 2013 1:31 pm
It never occurred to Orah to lie to Alois about her past, even as his lies spilled from his lips with ease. Why should she lie to him? There was no benefit to her, not even as amusement... and as she could find no reason to lie, she also could see no reason why he would lie to her. Maybe that made her gullible... but if you weren't open to other people, how could you expect to get close to anyone?
She didn't hate her father for his moment of weakness. Deep down, maybe, some small part of her harbored resentment for the responsibility he had forced on her, but the greater part of her simply loved him too much to give that seed what it needed to grow.
Orah watched with wide eyes as the young man pulled vegetables from her bag and mimed a scale, explaining to her the concept of coping mechanisms. What he said made sense. Her presence had tipped her father's scales, or at least startled him out of his fugue and reminded him of his responsibilities, of what he would be leaving behind. It hadn't healed him, by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it had allowed him to go on.
This was all getting kinda heavy for a girl who preferred to surround herself in sunlight and flowers. The awning was a welcome sight and Orah picked up her pace. She had begun to shiver and the awning in question was the one she had been making for since the beginning. Its bright colors were dimmed and the normal racks of sweet-scented flowers were inside, but it was the front of Farah's Garden, the lights inside sending out a warm, cheery glow.
As they drew close, Orah slowed and turned, feeling awkward, but hopeful.
"Hey, um... I'm sorry the conversation got so dark there. That's not the way I normally am. I don't even know why I brought it up. Would you, um..." She shifted on her bare feet, suddenly shy. "Why don't you come inside and let me get you something hot to drink? You look cold, I know I am. You're welcome to stay till the rain stops, or however long you want. My dad is minding the shop and my brother is probably out getting into trouble."
It was courtesy to make the offer, but she wondered if he'd find it weird. He hardly knew her... and she honestly wasn't sure what he thought of her, though she suspected she hadn't come off as terribly witty or interesting. Standing under the florist's awning, she probably looked bedraggled and the shop probably looked humble and boring... she had been stupid to even ask him, he probably had far better things to do. Orah dropped her eyes as she reached up to push her hair back and wipe some of the rain off her face.
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Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2013 8:46 am
An utterly frigid sensation crept up his spine, nestling into the nape of his neck and spreading its fingers against the back of his skull. He brushed it off as losing body temperature, but he suspected it stemmed from something else. Whatever it was, he ignored it - it had no business here.
But neither did he. And he knew this. He knew he didn't belong next to the tanned girl, pretty in a rough kind of way, unpolished and honest and content with her life. He knew he didn't belong on the puddle-stricken sidewalks of Destiny City, still rife with the shadows of leaves long ground into the pavement. No, he must've been something else - like the senshi, something from the stars or even deep within the earth - and he wasn't welcomed here, at least not by himself. She hadn't recognized him for what he was, or she simply didn't see him as a threat. That didn't matter, but the suspicion persisted.
And perhaps it even deepened, and he didn't know it could, when she offered for him to come indoors. To pass beneath the awning, to seek a break from the rain and something to warm his ebbing body temperature while her father toiled and her brother followed in Alois' muddied footsteps.
For a moment he wondered if the boy watched another little boy, the budding age of ten, accidentally bury a bullet in his brain.
He smiled a dark smile but he shivered all the same. No - shuddered. He shuddered and it racked his body visibly, but he had the excuse of the weather to pad his inward struggles. Something about walking inside with her simply struck him raw, and the worst of it was that he couldn't figure it out. Why would it matter? How many houses had he inhabited via guests or friends or past lovers? Why would this be any different? Why should this be any different? And he had to know - he had to see what plagued him so wholly and easily.
What was it that crawled under his skin and poisoned his blood? Was it her? Was it the flower shop? Was it the pervading sense of death that struck him ever since he met her?
"Sure," he conceded in a surprisingly even tone. Even now, so unsettled, he managed a lie. He questioned if he could ever tell the truth as simply as her, who didn't even falter in her telling of her father's miseries.
He had to know. He couldn't let it slide. If it meant following her inside, entertaining her platitudes and playing nice while he inwardly monologued about her existing solely as some morbid reminder, some half-wrong trophy of her father's conquests long ago, then so be it. He would take it, and he would smile that wrong smile that flashed his teeth more than his kindness, what kindness he could fake, and he'd swallow whatever insipid concoction she offered him for a drink. If it was anything but boiling water, he figured himself disappointed.
Youma never brewed tea or milked cows or brought syrup to life with carbon dioxide.
And suddenly he felt that misery well up in his throat, but he tried to swallow it all the same. The rain still pelted them in sheets, so it was easy enough to disguise it. He failed, and so did she, the breathless little girl beside him who resembled her mother and served as a semilethal reminder that her mother is dead, always dead, gone and rotted and flashing a grimace toward the lid of her coffin somewhere in Ireland. He hoped Orah smiled like her. He hoped it brought tears to her father's eyes every time she found a little joy in life.
Alois hoped it stabbed him in the gut with the ferocity of pitchforks and torches. At least then they'd have something in common. And when he introduced himself, he could smile a knowing smile. A shared secret that would both bewilder the man but set him at ease. Let a monster follow his little girl to her room.
No - the monster was Bischofite. Alois was the plague.
In a break of tradition, he pushed past the swinging door with the bells that signaled their arrival, but his fingers caught the edge of the handle and held it open for her passing. They slipped from his grasp just as easily, settling into the jamb with little protest. Yes - he remembered this place, and that same primal fear threatened to follow the curvature of his ribs and constrict his lungs until he drowned without water.
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Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2013 11:22 am
Sure.
That simple word rattled her, like she'd touched an exposed wire and felt a spark of electricity spike through her body. It brought a smile to her face as she looked up again, though it was equal parts joy and nerves. She didn't understand why, really, but she felt the strangeness of it. Maybe it was just that she had few male friends and rarely brought anyone home... maybe it was just the dark and the rain and the cold...
The door opened easily as he took the lead, surprising her again, but she followed automatically, stepping to the side to let the door swing closed. Sweeping past Alois, she padded to the back of her shop where an older man sat at the counter reading a newspaper. Wire glasses perched on his nose, obscuring emerald eyes and his hair was a rich brown with hints of copper, curling despite efforts to tame it. The man looked up when the door rang and the smile that curved on his face was an echo of his daughter's as he saw her.
"Ah, Orah. Didja get caught in tha rain?" He said as he slid off his stool to wrap an arm around her shoulders and kiss her forehead. His voice was heavy with Irish flavor. "Why're ya carrying yer boots insteada wearing um?"
Obviously embarrassed, the teen shifted on her bare feet, dripping water onto the tile floor. Even soaking wet, she blended well into the scenery of the shop, like she was just another flower, like this whole place was just a foil for her dark looks.
"Da..." She said through her teeth as she tilted her head, trying to turn his attention to the other occupant of the room. "This is Alois. He's one of my friends and he walked me home. Is it okay if I take him upstairs and give him something warm to drink? Its freezing out there and we're soaked."
"Oh! Ah... hello there!" Her father said as he turned and adjusted his glasses, something of his absent minded nature showing through. He brushed his hands on his apron with the shop's logo on the front, though they were reasonably clean already. "Yes, yes, come in! You'll catch yer death out there. Go right on up, get yerself warmed up."
"Alois, this is my dad, Art Gowan." Orah said as she stepped away from her father. She gestured towards the door to the back. "Why don't you come this way? Da needs to keep an eye on the shop, maybe do some of the dusting and cleaning he's been putting off..." Art coughed at the reminder and bustled back to the counter, busying himself with the things on it.
"Leave tha door open!" He called as the pair moved past the beaded curtain, Orah taking a left to a set of stairs rather than continue into the storeroom. She dropped her boots on the rug at the bottom before she trotted up them, letting Alois trail behind at his own pace as she settled herself into hostess mode. She was trying really hard not to think about how out of place he seemed here... he was in sharp contrast to pretty much everything around him. Still... she would try to make him feel as welcome as she could, because that was the kind of person she was.
The bag and flowers went into the sink and for a moment the girl paused in thought, making a quick decision before she turned back around to find her guest's progress.
"Tea, or hot chocolate?" She said as she brushed her hands on her hips.
The home Alois walked into was nothing fancy and obviously well-lived in. The first floor was mostly living room on the right, arranged with the usual couch, recliners, book shelf and TV. The other part was kitchen, separated from the main area by a long peninsula that must serve as a table, as there wasn't one to speak of. Doors in the back could be a bathroom and a closet, or a laundry room, but they were shut. A stairway leading up hinted at bedrooms another floor above them.
Its was pretty obvious there wasn't a lot of money in being a florist, or a single parent with two children. The furniture was nice, but well-used, and mismatched, as though purchased separately. There were feminine touches here and there that showed who ran the household, but there were as many masculine notes that said the single female was out numbered. A scented candle and picture frame shared space with a coffee cup, a t-shirt draped with a small blanket over the back of a chair... sports magazines spread over the coffee table around a vase of flowers. Clean, but lived in. Tidy, but not well off. Orah felt her cheeks heat as she waited, wondering what her guest thought of her humble home. Did he look down on her for her blue-collar life? Did he see the bit of untidiness her brother and father had brought in despite her best efforts and think her a poor housekeeper?
She hoped and worried and waited, her fingers twisting together.
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Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2013 8:07 pm
The relation between them was staggering - not in appearance, but in demeanor. Strangely, the way Orah carried herself was a more feminized version of her father, as they carried much of the same mannerisms. It felt unusual to watch him and analyze these similarities, almost as if he'd been caught staring.
However, the man seemed warm and inattentive toward his analyses. He practically came to life as his daughter approached, as if he'd finally reached his reprieve and earned a cool glass of water to offset a blisteringly hot day. And perhaps that's just what Orah meant to the man - a necessity. A necessity looking through the cracked door while he carried the heavy weight of his guilt pointed toward his temple. Yes, that abrasively soft reminder of his responsibilities to life.
But he'd never know the priceless place she held in her father's heart. His, now matching Orah's mother in terms of status quo, never viewed him as a boon of life and mirth and happiness, but something more of a detriment. All those vitriolic fights, manifesting an even greater rift in an already precariously organized family. Strange how roles could be so different.
But the prodigal son faces sacrifice, whereas the chosen daughter would never know of such crimes.
For a moment, he'd forgotten he was cold.
Alois approached the counter at a reserved pace, though he had little to say toward the bespectacled man with his creased eyes and upturned mouth. Those green eyes lit with a vibrancy he suspected was often lost to the folds of his skin, where they sunk and stretched and bedded shadows that long haunted him through the night. Idly Alois wondered if he'd always been that way, or if misery only set in after his wife died. He hoped it was the latter - it hurt far worse for the unprepared.
Alois smiled at the man, that same wrong smile he'd plotted since before he crossed the threshold. All teeth and gleam, all cold gold eyes, without a lick of mirth to warm the algid occasion. After all, Orah already implied he wasn't warm. Who was he to prove her wrong?
Sometimes crows lighted on powerlines, and it looked alright. The thick black cord held the birds readily, and a murder atop a potentially lethal apparatus made sense in a morbid way. But sometimes crows strayed to lands unbecoming of death, and roosted on monkey bars in the playground or recently hitched bikes. It was in these settings that individuals noticed their oily black feathers and sharp golden eyes. And Alois wondered if he shared that same fate - if he looked altogether incorrect in such a setting, full of vibrant color and warm, welcoming familial relations. Would they notice a crow perched atop a playground sign?
Rhetorical questions aside, his smile subsided into his normally stoic countenance and he bade Art Gowan the Florist a farewell with a notably curious phrase: "She's so genuine, isn't she?" And without pause, he followed her toward the stairs.
He unlaced his boots slowly, deliberately. Each black lace shot through its eyelet, and retraced its steps down toward the tongue of his boot. And once he'd removed the pair as well as his soaked socks, he tucked them into the toes of his shoes. He straightened up and started up the stairs, though he only surmounted two steps before he paused and reversed his route. For reasons only half-understood, he slipped his switchblade from his pocket and dropped it into the boot. It jutted at an awkward angle and gleamed under the fluorescent light, but at least it remained in position. Finally he ascended the stairs to follow her.
Once present in the living room, Alois gave the space a superficial once-over, yet nothing caught his eye. Clashing decorations were present in nearly every household, and what remained held little interest for him. They were simply odds and ends, borne from a busy life and washed over the room like discarded seaweed and stray oceanic organisms seeking shelter in warm sands. At least it looked like Orah lived here, that she wasn't some stranded transplant that suffered great misfortunes to wind up here. He, on the other hand...
"Orah." His bony piano fingers found an old wooden frame surrounding a single photo of a remarkably beautiful woman. She resembled Orah in an utterly striking fashion - one might say the ten was a spitting image of the woman in the photograph - but the thin layer of dust on the frame suggested that it had hung there for quite some time. A fixture. An anchoring point. Was it for her father, the one who contemplated eating a bullet as a means to stymie the flow of misery? Or was it for Orah, to remind her of her place as a walking epitaph? "Is zis...?" He trailed off, question implied. It was entrancing, in a way, to look at her calm beauty. The way her gaze drifted off camera, with a thin smile rivaling the Mona Lisa's. She carried a mystery to her - something worth coveting. Something to draw in those weak at heart for a beautiful woman. And his beat, just once, a little too hard.
Almost like a palpitation, not altogether out of place.
But strangely, he wanted to see his dad again. And it hurt. So he
"Tea," he answered in a bastardized word from his native tongue. Tee, tea, close enough. He never much cared for it regardless. Finally he wrenched his gaze from the photo and regarded Orah once more - suddenly flawed, suddenly rough, suddenly uncomfortable with herself. She looked human. Somehow he found it uncanny to think of her as such. "You alright?" His brow furrowed. Maybe it was just his imagination.
The world has produced stranger things before.
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Posted: Sat Nov 09, 2013 8:55 pm
Orah would probably never know what Alois thought when he saw her with her father, or what he saw when his eyes found the picture of her mother on the wall. These were all just pieces of her life, cornerstones of her existence, and unless something drastically changed, she almost didn't even notice them any more. It wasn't that she ignored her father or forgot about her mother... they were just simply there, expected.
What was not expected was this strange man standing in her house amidst the trappings of her life, standing out from them like a crow would in a flowerbed. She never really thought about how her life might look to an outsider, so it was hard to deal with the doubt that sprang up when she was suddenly faced with it all like this. She didn't even have the comfort of knowing he dismissed it all so easily as inconsequential.
The dark haired girl blinked as she watched him touch her mother's old modeling photo and she felt a real smile drift over her face. Her mother was a sweet memory with only a little sadness attached.
"Yeah, that's my Ma, Farah. That's one of her old modeling photos that we held on to. She was maybe twenty three when it was taken, I don't remember." Was that the first time he'd said her name? No, surely not. It just sounded weird in that accent of his. She was used to American accents, and to some extent Irish ones... the german flavor in his voice always struck her whenever he spoke.
The sudden concerned question jerked her out of her thoughts and she dropped her hands as though guilty of something and turned to sweep back into the kitchen.
"Oh! I'm fine! Just give me a minute to put the water on to boil." She said as she put her back to him, her hair a mess of wet curls down her back. She was over thinking things, she needed to stop that. If he'd noticed something, then she had been too obvious with it. The steel pot was filled with a rush of water from the sink and slid onto the gas stove, a click click and a whoosh announcing the flames that sprang to life under it. Estimating the time it would take to boil, she swept out again and brushed past Alois to head for the stairs upwards.
"I'll be right back down. Make yourself at home!" She said as she all but ran up the stairs, leaving drops of water in her wake. He was left to his own devices while she dived into her room to strip off her soaked clothing and towel off before donning something far warmer and dryer.
Downstairs, Art said something to a young man who entered the shop, but he just grunted something in the affirmative range and headed for the stairs. The strange boots there made him frown and he glanced upwards at the warm light of home. Who the ********...? Green eyes like Art's dropped again and caught sight of a flash of silver, prompting still more curiosity and more than a small amount of suspicion.
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Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2013 9:15 pm
He found it difficult to avoid watching her. She carried herself with a certain grace not often found in most individuals. Maybe it was inherited from her mother, who he now knew as a model. But something was very much alive in the way she carried herself - far unlike a ghost from the past. Orah was her own person, surprisingly enough. Her only curse was her striking resemblance to the dead. A facsimile, maybe, but certainly not a symbol for loss. Maybe that meant she was a separate individual in the eyes of her father.
Maybe that meant nothing at all.
However, she sprang up the stairs soon afterward and left him to float about the place like an indelible mist that obscured al the strange trinkets and fixtures that she came to recognize subconsciously. "Wann sind wir daheim?" He asked to the photos that stared blankly toward him. Family photos, he recognized, of rolling greenery he identified as Ireland and the faces of warm youth eternally smiling at the walls behind him. She lived here, every day, formed her own fond memories of every surface in the room and the meandering knickknacks contained therein. She loved this place, and loved in this place.
Yet she let him stay unattended. Though he found a rather comfortable seat in a warm, oversized couch - one safeguarded by an inexpensive slipcover - he entertained darker thoughts. Alois considered stealing away one of the many strange decorations adorning the space, from the t-shirt to one of the flowers in the beleaguered vase, though perhaps he considered snatching a photo above all the others. A flower would fade and a shirt dismissed until months later, but a photograph... That would surely tug at the corners of her mind while she consciously delved through a mental catalogue of items present in the room until she happened upon the singular absence.
But he would erase the entry, surely.
Alois settled on his unwarranted souvenir, and it didn't take long for him to determine who he wanted in the picture. Stealing the photo of Farah was too easy for them - surely the father would immediately recognize her absence. Orah might too, though he wondered with the ease by which she spoke of her mother. No, he wanted one of Orah, and they were plentiful enough. Her grade school photos hung in the stairwell on their way up, though he hoped for something more recent. Unfortunately, it proved impossible to locate a recent photo of her alone. No matter - paper tears.
It was easy enough to pry the back off a frame using his fingernails, and the photo in question came out easily. Another young boy stood next to her - presumably a brother given his age - but it was of little consequence. Alois replaced the backing easily enough and the frame stood white and empty in the center, much like a beckoning void for another family memory to be tucked away behind a veil of accumulating dust.
And for a moment, he thought of Chernobyl.
With the photo now tucked away in his marginally dry wallet, Alois drew his wet jacket about himself with a sigh. Walking in the rain already justified itself; he'd forgotten just how terrible it felt to strand himself in wet clothes. It drew a small smile to his features, almost a ghost of some mirth he might've been capable of in years prior.
The kettle screamed like a tiny air raid siren. Alois watched the stairs, waiting for her evacuation.
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Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2013 11:05 pm
The whistling of the pot drew the teen downstairs and she came bouncing down the stairs in new clothes. Tan legs were covered in dark leggings while the rest of her girlish form was draped in a hip length sweater of a creamy color. Her hair, while not dry, was no longer dripping and had been put up in a messy twist with hair sticks.
Trotting over to the stove, she extinguished the flame and poured the hot water into a pair of mugs she pulled from the cupboard. Another cupboard revealed boxes of tea in a couple of varieties and she snagged two to drop into the cups before she turned to find out where her guest had gotten to.
"Here, I brought you a towel..." She said as she came towards him to offer up a large folded bit of terrycloth. "I could toss your clothes in the dryer if you wanted, but you'd have to borrow some of my Da's stuff until it was done, and it would probably take a while."
It felt awkward asking him that, but it really was good hosting to make the offer. She wasn't even sure why it felt awkward, beyond the idea of a guy she barely knew being naked in her house, even just long enough to dress up in her father's clothes, which also struck her as kind of weird. Maybe it was the idea of letting him so far into her life... but she'd had people over before, ones she didn't know that well. Maybe it was because they had been friends when they had come over, and she still wasn't sure where she stood with this man. Would he think it weird? Probably.
As she swept back into the kitchen to check on the tea bags, a small tinkling came down the stairs and a calico kitten appeared around the corner, a small toy mouse held in her jaws. The sound came from her collar and after pausing to assess the situation, she trotted over to the stranger with her tail high, dropping the mouse once she got close enough to sniff at his pant leg. The tip of her tail curled back and forth as she investigated this new person, very little fear in her activity and far more curiosity. She appeared to be a few months old, at that awkward stage where she was all legs and hadn't put on any weight yet. Deciding she liked what she found, or just wanted the attention, the kitten turned and arched her back as she rubbed against Alois' leg, looking up at him to gauge his response.
"Oh, that's Lola." Orah said as she brought the cups to the table/counter, setting his in front of one of the chairs. "If you don't like it, just ignore her and she'll go away. I bring her down to the shop sometimes and I'm trying to teach her to leave people alone if they don't want her attention. The tea is ready, if you want it. I also have cream and sugar, if you like that in it."
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Posted: Sat Nov 16, 2013 4:26 pm
Alois nodded toward her and took the offered towel, though he uttered no indication of thanks. Sometimes kindnesses mean a little more when unspoken, he considered, as he used the warm towel to ruffle his hair and dry some of the dripping strands to a more controllable level. Suddenly he felt tired - as if by remedying his drenched state he also forsook his own energy. The lethargy caught him by surprise and he closed his eyes for a time, but as he opened them to regard Orah, he looked a little older in his exhaustion.
While he considered her offer of drying his clothes, his mind wandered toward death marches. Toward the evacuation of Chernobyl. To the Trail of Tears. How long would they have to suffer and walk? Was there a procession far bigger than prior events trudging through Destiny City right now? Were they a part of it, Alois and Orah? He smiled, but it split his face in more saddened cracks than what little mirth he wanted to express.
And he realized he wasn't pitch perfect in the art of interpretation - he knew what notes he wanted to convey, but occasionally his delivery came faulty. She must've realized this by now.
So how long would it take for her to discern his nature as a deceiver?
"Zat might help, but... Wis'out an umbrella, it's an exercise in futility." Rain continued to pelt the windows in percussive reminder, as if to confirm its strength and longevity to those who it touched just moments before. Was Bischofite the same way? No - he lacked that sense of power and ubiquitous nature. Too realistic. Too certain.
Did Orah consider it before she asked, or did she simply offer platitudes as a means to justify that she was a good host? What she offered was comfort, simple and short-lived; as soon as he left the house, what little good it did would fade away in a matter of seconds. But wasn't he the one who, at the beginning of their meeting, explained the importance of experiencing a moment to its fullest extent? So who was he to turn down a chance toward tactile sensations more soothing than illness-inducing?
"On second sought, might as well." Alois understood what it entailed - entrusting his clothes to a stranger who could easily pour bleach all over them, as well as donning attire that normally belonged to her father as she'd expressed earlier. It meant undressing in a bathroom foreign to him. It meant trusting someone he hardly knew, someone who remained such a thorough symbol of death in his mind that he barely considered her human at times.
But she was human, she was alive - made readily apparent in the flighty manner that she conducted herself, and the softness in which she asked her questions. She wasn't her mother - the beautiful woman forever captured in a still that hung on the wall - she became her own person in all that time spent dogging her mother's shadow. She was Orah, the tan-skinned girl who worked at a flower shop and endured enough hardships to harbor a modicum of understanding for all the strange and twisted s**t he constantly lied about.
He could affect her, unlike his indifference in the eyes of the dead.
A brush against his leg roused him from his thoughts, and he smiled fondly, though it faded into stoicism not long after. The quick gesture of affection reminded him of a dog he hadn't seen in ages now. The cat proved a distant echo to a companion he constantly fought, but it was enough to rekindle some mild connection. It felt strange, foreign even, to feel any kind of indication of emotion simply by petting an animal. Still, his long fingers traced along the cat's back and lingered at the tail root, where the kitten's tail rose high and fearlessly. A mild rumble indicated her content with his motions, and that was enough.
Alois sat up and stretched momentarily; the sudden shift in position confirmed just how drenched he truly was. "I'll take it as is," he offered as a decline to cream and sugar. It was as close to straight water as he might possibly manage at this state.
But was it such a transgression to enjoy what trifles came of being human? Though Orah was uneasy around him, she never questioned her humanity in such a fundamental way. Did she know of humans who broke into monsters with enough Chaotic energy? Was she aware of that sudden evolution? He sighed, and watched his breath ripple the tea that steamed in his cup.
Why falter now?
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