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Scaramouche Fandango Crew
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 Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2014 4:23 pm
Even when she wasn't at work in the bookstore she and her wife owned, End of an Era's bookish tendencies never slowed. Today, for instance, she'd decided to pull everything off the shelf and put it back in a saner manner. Once upon a time, the bookshelves in the parlor had been shelved according to a precise system. However, she hadn't gone through and given it a thorough reorganizing since before they'd had children. Some days it still felt strange to be a mother of five- but she wouldn't trade it for anything. She smiled as she levitated the family photo albums that had gotten mixed into the novels and nonfiction over to the coffee table; she'd reshelve those last.
It didn't take too long to get the books up in proper order; really, there were only a few piles left- but the photographs were far too distracting. She was flipping through one of the baby albums when she heard the clip-clop of little hooves behind her. "Revenent, love!" she cooed, turning to see straight through the one son who'd inherited full transparency and general ghostiness. That had been... something less than fun... when he was a newbabben; it had been a relief to everybody when he'd learned how to not fall through the floor. The inheritance of ghostly properties was a mystery to everybody outside of the administrative building; she herself wasn't even a hundred percent certain how they worked, and she was the first ghost manufactured at the park. That hadn't really mattered to her in a long time, though; turns out that finding a family negates a lot of the worries you might have about being the only one of your kind. "Come look at this- I got down the old photo albums to reshelve them, and I think you might be at least mildly interested in this series when we were trying to figure out how exactly to capture you on film!"
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Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2014 4:44 pm
It was a wonderful day to go out- the sky was overcast and the light dim. Bright light had a way of fading him out, making him just a little harder to see than his normal transparency was. His mother’s voice had him stopped in his tracks, a little frown on his face as he looked back towards her. He didn’t want to look through photo albums. The door was given one last woeful glance before he sighed like the most put-upon colt ever and trotted back across the room to his mother.
He didn’t want to upset her more than he wanted to go out, though.
“I thought I always showed up on photographs,” it was certainly news to him that his mother and himself may not be naturally capable of being photograph. Sometimes he forgot he was ghostly. Usually those were the times he fell through something, like a chair or his own bed.
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Scaramouche Fandango Crew
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:29 pm
Ender patted the chair next to her as her son trotted into the room. She was a bit taken by the reverie of the early days of child rearing and smiled even wider as she thought back to the day the blisters opened.
"Not until we learned to play with the flash settings some- look here," she said, turning the page to some snaps of all of the babbens sleeping in a crib together. Flashback showed up, but bits and pieces of the others were just nebulous outlines, including nearly all of Revenant himself. As the pictures progressed, the ghostly infants came more into focus until finally there was a decent picture. "Turns out that if you leave the flash on default, the light does something weird to your reflective properties. The transparency was only half of it, though- it's hard enough to put winter clothes on small babbens, and when said newbabbens can fall through things... your sister Lemure was the worst. The sheer number of times that girl got stuck in the floor..." The unicorn chuckled at the memory.
"We tried asking your grandparents for help, but neither one of them really knew what to do with ghosts... and your grandfather was especially less than helpful. He was a much better sport once you got older, though," she mused, turning the page again to show them as slightly larger and playing with a bunch of old stage costumes with their similarly-aged aunts and uncles. "Even if sometimes you all did eat the lipstick he threw in the dress-up box."
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Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 2:10 pm
Even if only a technical standpoint, the pictures were rather interesting to look at. On the first picture he needed a moment to even pick out where he was, a faint purple outline with tufts of dark green hair sprouting out of seemingly nowhere. Then he began to show up more and more and Revenant's little snout scrunched up because he looked weird as a babben. All pudgy and near-bald.
"Mama I didn't do that-" the colt protested when she got to the story of him eating lipstick. He could remember, just a little, the time they played with all the costumes and stuff, but nothing about eating lipstick- but sure enough, there was the picture proof. Little babben Revenant, looking up with big, innocent eyes and a mouth smudged with chunks of lipstick and the tubes scattered at his little hooves. The embarrassed colt pressed closer to his mother's side like her presence could hide him from his own humiliating actions in the past, his face half-hidden, one eye still perfectly able to look down at the photos.
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Scaramouche Fandango Crew
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Posted: Thu Apr 10, 2014 6:00 pm
"Indeed you did, my son," Ender said, snuggling the ghostly colt closer. "Maybe you'd thought it'd taste like raspberries, perhaps? Though the love of messy food is... endemic to all children, I think. Look, here's your brother Moonlight the day I learned painting would never be his special talent!" she said, turning the page once more to a picture of a pleased-looking Pale Moonlight. The unicorn's snowy white coat was covered in vivid orange sludge; the result of pureed carrots being left unattended for two long. His horn was sparkling; it looked like an early attempt at magic use. "I almost started crying- we'd just given you baths, and he managed to get food everywhere! On him, on you, on the ceiling... but eventually, your mother and I managed to laugh about it. And not feed you guys after bathtime!" The unicorn laughed- what had seemed so upsetting at the time was now a distant, cherished memory. "Raising all of you at once was certainly a challenge; neither of us really knew what we were doing! Taquita only grew up with your two uncles, and I was an only child. But we muddled through somehow, eh?"
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Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:16 pm
Well that was one way to cure his lingering jealousy over Pale Moonlight. His brother just… naturally carried the aura of calm and confident that Revenant could never quite genuinely make himself feel. Serene like their Mama, like how Revenant wanted to be. Moonlight looked ridiculous covered in pureed carrots, and Revenant couldn’t help a small smile at the ridiculousness of it.
“Well none of us were maimed,” the words were almost parroted in the way that children do, just something he’s heard in town before about parents struggling to parent for the first time. Never mind the part where all of his siblings had various levels of ghostliness that would make maiming rather the accomplishment. Especially for Revenant.
Scaramouche Fandango Lua: I am such a butt, asking you to reply and then taking half of forever to do so myself.
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Scaramouche Fandango Crew
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Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2014 7:41 pm
Ender chuckled - not at the idea of maimed children, because that was terrible, but because she was amused at the words coming from her small son. "No, none of you were maimed. We thought maybe Lemure had appendicitis once, but she was actually throwing a tantrum at the time and when we swept her off to the hospital, she was too scared to tell us she'd been faking it! We never really had to worry much about you guys getting hurt; none of you were really into derring-do, and Lemure was too afraid of heights to threaten us with a dramatic balcony scene. "Which really- that was a good thing. Not only were you all safe, but I'm not sure how the hospital would treat a half-ghost- or a full ghost, like you and me. Two peas in a pod we are. None of the others are as ghosty as you and I are; Flashback only got an ear, Pale Moonlight got his stripes, Lemure's got her legs, and Bell Jar's got the one leg. But the two of us- well, you can see right through us!" She flipped the page again to show a series of photos at a school play. Lemure was on stage, and the others were watching her in the audience. It was clear that Ender had started out taking pictures of her little starlet but had moved on to her siblings' priceless reactions- all four had come along to see Lemure's first (and probably last) starring role.
Luafien Quoth the Scara: Anything to help Rev grow!
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Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 2:13 pm
For a little colt struggling to find where he fit in, it was a comforting thing to be told he was just like his mama. He knew it was just physically, with their translucent bodies and glow, but he very much wanted to be like her in poise and grace, too. Oh he’d give anything to be half as elegant as she was. Refined and well-spoken. He couldn't imagine her ever being a clumsy babben, it was utterly impossible.
He could remember that play, mostly because for weeks beforehand he had spent ages with his head under the pillow trying to block out his sister’s ‘acting’. She certainly had… flare… to her thespian styling.
“Mama… did you ever… I mean, when you were little,” the little colt’s face scrunched up. He didn't quite know how to ask this, it felt so odd, “Did you ever fall through a floor or anything?” Oh boy was Revenant good at falling through floors. Flustered by a pretty peer in class? Right through the floor and into the basement. Wake up startled from a nightmare? He’d end up on the kitchen table beneath his bed.
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Scaramouche Fandango Crew
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:02 pm
"That's how I found out what basements were! Any time I got stressed or scared about something, I phased right through the floor. Walls, too- when I got angry enough, I could charge right through a wall- and the surprise usually calmed me down. It's something you'll learn to control with age, my dear; while I know it's worrisome now, you'll get the knack of it." Ender hated seeing her son upset. "Adolescence is hard for everybody- not just ghosts! It was certainly hard for me... here, let me show you something." She reached out with a tendril of magic and floated an older, thinner volume down from the shelf. "Here's my first yearbook from when I started attending classes." She flipped through it to the class picture. "Look, there's Taquita in the middle there- and there's me on the end. Well, there's half of me. I got nervous during the picture and fell halfway through the floor. A couple of the older unicorn teachers had to come and rescue me because I panicked and couldn't figure out how to extract myself!"
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 9:33 pm
His mother halfway through a floor! It felt utterly ridiculous, more so than him chowing down on lipstick, but there was the proof, plain as daylight. Blue eyes grew wide at the picture, and he didn’t want to be mean, but he also couldn’t help the smile growing on his face. His problems weren’t unique to him, even if there were no other little colts or fillies around that were exactly like him.
“Miss Glory has to get me out of the basement sometimes,” she probably already knew that from parent-teacher meetings, but Revenant wanted to share it anyways. They were alike, even though his mother was so much more graceful than him, elegant and beautiful. He wouldn’t even have known if he hadn’t stayed to ask. The little colt cuddled into his mother’s side, a little guilty for having wanted to just leave and skip the ‘boring’ family photo time when his mother had called for him.
“Thanks, mama.” It wasn’t really an apology, because he hadn’t actually left, but he was grateful for the unintended lesson.
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Scaramouche Fandango Crew
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 11:00 pm
Ender nuzzled her son back. "You're welcome, my darling- it's always fun to look back on the past. Thank you for indulging me. I know this might seem in some ways like boring family history, but I've always thought it very important to know about where you come from and what it means to be part of a family. It's all I ever wanted as a filly. Well, that and a castle full of books." Their home might not be an actual castle, but it was certainly full of books. And who really needed a castle, anyways? Luafien I think we can get this wrapped up pretty quick here!
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Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2014 11:12 pm
The little colt shook his head- his mama didn’t need to know that he had wanted to steal away at first and not spend this time with her. She deserved better sons than that, and he was going to be that son for her.
“No, it was delightful. I liked seeing the pictures. It’s easy to forget things, if we don’t try to remember.” His little lipstick fiasco wasn’t that comforting, but along with all the other pictures of embarrassments? Well, it stopped being quite so embarrassing, and more just like being a phony, same as everyphony else. Even the refined ones like his mamas and Pale Moonlight.
“Though to be fair, castles are very, very cool.” Revenant knew he wanted one, or maybe an old manor, something dark and mournful, that he could share with his family and glide elegantly through. Even if they didn’t ever have a home like that, they did still have a mountain of books to read with each other, and the best ones just might be the ones they made together out of captured memories.
Scaramouche Fandango Lua: looks good to me! Thank you so much, Scara. Only one left now!
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