[SOLOs] Small girl, big world | Page 1 | ashdown | Guild Forums

MoonRazor

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Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 4:39 pm

Here is where I'll keep all of Vespertine's solos. Whoop.

Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2016 4:49 pm

First step of many
A few months after the Come and See meta.

It had all been a blur. Like a nightmare that had happened months ago that Ves had tried and failed to shake. She still remembered the cold and the rain, the severed foot, the girl, the many-eyed deer... The fear that had gripped so many in that group. Ves had felt it too, felt it deep in her bones, like a primal scream to get out.

Which was precisely what she'd gone on to do. Once she'd found herself safe in her dorm room, she'd promptly packed up her stuff and moved to the house she now shared with Wil and Nasir. It had been symbolic, in a way, her leaving behind the gossip and drama of her life on campus, of her life in the shadows of that rainy dimension.

She hadn't been able to rid herself of it entirely though. The dreams, although not the same as that particular one, kept happening. She'd venture to that gray and ugly place when she was asleep and there was nothing she could do about it, no way to stop those rainy dreams when she had them. More than once, she'd found herself wandering down familiar streets in and unfamiliar setting, and she'd been terrified she'd find it all again – this time on her own.

The most troubling part, for her, was she didn't understand what it all meant. There was a doom-and-gloom feeling to it all, but Ves didn't know what that doom was, or how much she needed to fear it. In her mind, that made it terrifying. The unknown scared her more than anything else simply because it could not be defined.

So she woke up one morning after a routinely unsatisfying night at Donald's apartment, woke after dreaming about that place, and decided she couldn't let it remain unknown. Not to her, anyway. Others had been there, in the same place she'd been, and heard the call to come and see. Other people had gone and seen, and maybe some of them had a better grasp on it all.

Ves wasn't ashamed of being entirely unhelpful on that journey. She didn't feel bad about not being the one to find Heliodora's foot, or being the one to get frozen, or charm the many-eyed deer. But perhaps part of her felt a little guilt at having let herself remain ignorant for so long.

She sipped her coffee that morning and thought, long and hard, about what she could do. What she ought to do. In the end, it came down to something simple: It was time to find it. It was time to do some research, and time to start asking questions. They wouldn't be insightful ones or helpful ones, by any measures of the words. But it was a starting point, and perhaps they would lead her to better questions.

Somehow she suspected that this journey of discovery was not one that would easily end.

Ves set her coffee down, rummaged in a drawer, and found a pen and pad of paper. Time to write down some names.

(511)

MoonRazor

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MoonRazor

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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2016 12:57 pm

It's about us
happens after new hobbies

He saw the way she smiled when Deacon texted her images of their collaborative pieces and updated her on their progress. It wasn't the way she smiled at him. It wasn't coy or purposefully bashful or meant to entice. It was a genuine smile, one that crinkled that edges of her eyes and brought to her face a youthful beauty far removed from the mature, wily temptress she put on for him.

When she saw those pictures, she was unguarded in a way she never was with him. It made him feel small. Unimportant.

Finally, Donald stood and strode over to Ves on the couch, plucking the phone out of her hands. He leaned and pressed a mad kiss to her lips, tangling his hands through her hair, pulling her close, seeking the intimacy he'd come to expect.

"Jesus, Don, hold on." She broke from the kiss still smiling, and extracted herself from his grasp to take her phone back and fire off a text. By the time she was done, Donald had straightened up, arms crossed, frown on his face.

"What's the matter, daddy?" she teased, pointing her toes and running her foot up the inside of his leg.

Normally, that would've had him, but Donald was concerned now, his mind having jumped to conclusions his logic couldn't quite keep up with.

"I don't like that you're doing this partnership thing with this guy, Steele," he said, arms still resolutely crossed. "You don't need the extra money. Not from him, anyway. I can give you more spending money if you want."

Ves paused, her foot halfway up his thigh, and let her leg drop. Without quite thinking about it, she too crossed her arms, mirroring him from her seat on the couch.

"It's not about the money, Don," she said slowly. "It's fun for me. I like actually doing something with my time for a change, because the alternative is to sit around all day waiting for you to get off work." And god knew when that would be. Finance types, always working late.

Her refusal to cooperate flustered him. He lifted one hand to brush away his already-slicked back hair, rubbing the back of his neck with mounting impatience.

"I don't like that you're spending so much time with him," he said, changing tact. "Alone, with another guy."

Ves felt her brow quirk, unbidden. She stared at him speechless for several long moments. Then, "That's... rich, coming from the guy who has a wife and is spending all of his free time here with me – not the wife."

Ves watched his face begin to scrunch and knew a tantrum was coming. Not even a fight, just a one-sided expulsion of rage. And sure enough, Donald swung his arms wide. "That's not the same," he insisted. "It's completely different."

"Yea," Ves said pointedly. "I'm not the one knowingly cheating on someone."

"Don't make this about me!" he snapped, with a string of curses that made the vein in his temple pop. Ves marveled that he even had one of those. "This is about you."

She let out a short huff of air, more determined than a sigh, and snapped the furniture catalog she'd been reading shut in her lap. She stood in one swift motion, not quite tall enough to look him dead in the eye but she didn't need to. The fire burning in her mismatched eyes tightened her brow and wiped the smile from her face.

"Go home, Don," she said, her hand on his chest brushing him out of her way as she passed. "You won't have to sleep on a couch there, I'd imagine."

She let herself out and spent the walk home browsing the catalog for ideas.

(623)

Posted: Mon Sep 05, 2016 11:25 am

Reflection
After talking to Alexis about Other Ashdown and following them into the otherworld for another look-see in Supernatural animals.

Ves let herself back into the house, feeling soggy and wet through to the bones after her visit to Other Ashdown with Alexis. The place had felt as damp and cheerless as it had the first time, although this visit had proven to be infinitely less eventful. No severed feet, no disembodied voices, no magic deer.

She found, for obvious reasons, that she preferred the place that way - depressing in a way that didn't seem physically threatening. Being in Other Ashdown had made her felt entirely exposed, though. Watched, somehow, and it unnerved her. The whole place felt like an old dystopian movie, or how she might have imagined the world to look and feel if dementors took over.

Now at home - back at the house, rather than at the minimalist apartment Donald had set up for their clandestine meet-ups - she peeled off her clothes and slung them up on hangers to dry, pulling on sweat pants and a sweater and wrapping them around her for warmth.

What was it that Alexis had said about Other Ashdown? They'd said the place had dragged them in a few times, which suggested an element of surprise. No control over how and when they made it over there, which was worrying at best. It sounded like bad luck in general, which Ves usually liked to avoid. Now, though, it seemed she was too wrapped up in it to back out.

And Alexis had said they'd seen a kid get eaten by a spider. The thought made Ves shudder. Being in mortal peril seemed like anything but fun.

This, she imagined, was what people warned of when they said “be careful what you wish for.” Other Ashdown seemed for all intents and purposes like the botched result of someone wishing for magic in the world. All of the bad, none of the good.

But maybe there was a way to capitalize on it. Alexis, after all, could see pathways into Other Ashdown, which to Ves said that there was a way to take control. Some control, anyway, if not all. And if they could take some control, maybe there was a way to make the place less dangerous. Less potentially deadly.

She crawled onto her bed and ducked underneath the covers, stretching out in her exhaustion with eyes lidded while she stared at nothing in particular, still thinking.

Was this really something she wanted to get mixed up in? Was she making a mistake, talking to people about it, actively getting more involved?

Her gut told her she might one day regret it. But the chances of her regretting apathy and ignorance were certainly not low either.

“Gotta do what you gotta do,” she muttered after a while. She was, by virtue of the fact that she’d been there to see Heliodora and Pax, part of all of this, no matter what it was.

There was some dread attached to that realization. A lot of dread, really. She didn’t know what was in store for herself and others, and she didn’t know how much she would like it. But then again, she hadn’t known what would happen to her when she graduated college and had suspected that she might be in trouble with no marriageable prospects.

But everything had, for the most part, worked itself out there. No doubt it would here as well.

(563)

MoonRazor

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MoonRazor

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Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2016 12:07 pm

You're a wizard
After talking to Finn in Late to the game.

You're a wizard, Harry.

Vespertine pictured the wide-eyed look of surprise and confusion on little Harry Potter's face when he heard those words.

No, you've made a mistake. I can't be...a-a wizard. I mean, I'm just... Harry. Just Harry.

Those were the exact words that had run through her head when Finn had told her the same. Because the implications behind those words were ones that she'd never have ascribed to herself. She wasn't normal anymore – not in the sense that she was a regular civilian with regular issues to concern herself with. No, instead she was now what Finn had referred to as a "Visitor," someone with magical powers and an elusive Enemy to fight.

That seemed like a lot of responsibility for not a lot of reward. Finn had promised that she had magical powers, but Ves hardly felt magical herself. Whatever powers she had must reside deep within her, some sort of latent ability perhaps, that couldn't possibly be strong enough to defeat any sort of enemy, let alone one with a capital E.

"Who would want to do this, anyway?" she wondered aloud, clasping a pillow to her body as she considered her position.

What she did know:

The Otherworld was rainy and depressing as ******** teenaged girl named Heliodora was there, watching over something. And missing a foot.

It was possible to be dragged back over there involuntarily – and the dreams also occurred not by choice, but by some sort of chance.

There were ways to see figure out where the passageways to Other Ashdown were, on the off chance that anyone would ever want to go there of their own accord.

People who could see Other Ashdown were called Visitors, and of late, they had seen a dramatic population increase, which meant that something was awake and changing things.

But the cycle must have started before. Something precipitated their meeting with Heliodora.

Sunny said that the Otherworld was the Enemy's place – and Sunny was probably a friend.

Visitors were the good guys.

It wasn't a lot to go on. It was nothing at all, if Ves was being honest, other than context for understanding that there was something swirling around her. Drama, urgency, something much larger than the fate of herself or even the fate of the town. This was just ground zero, and the consequences of failure here in Ashdown could mean something much more worrying for the rest of the world.

The fact that they were here, that those thoughts had even occurred to her, chilled her.

"This is serious," she muttered to herself, rising from her bed and crossing to the desk. An unopened Moleskin notebook sat in her drawer. Ves fished it out, grabbed a pen, and wrote down everything she knew on the first page. Imprinted in the book in her flowy handwriting, it seemed much less of a concern than perhaps it should be.

But that was the thing about all of this. It was so nebulous, and they all knew so little, that it was easy to think of it as a figment of their collective imagination. Easy to pretend that the problem would solve itself if they stopped paying attention. At least, that was what Ves had spent the last few months trying her best to do. She'd all but convinced herself that the meeting with Heliodora and that odd deer, Pax, had been nothing but a one-off incident. Nothing to worry about, and certainly not her problem. She was just a girl trying to get through college.

But now, a few months older and several conversations wiser, Ves understood that she'd been mistaken. There'd be no wishing the evil away, if Finn was correct about all of this. A shitstorm was poised to hit them, and they'd best be ready.

She stared at the notebook again, gaze passing over the words but not quite taking them in as she thought. There was an Enemy to fight, somehow, which she had to assume was why the population of Visitors in Ashdown had seen such a big spike. In all things, there was an equilibrium and for every ounce of power that the Enemy accumulated, there would be another Visitor there to try to keep him down.

She was one of those now.

Ves shut the notebook and set it down in the middle of the desk. Rising from the chair, she made her way into the kitchen and snagged the box of strawberries she'd bought the day before. She quartered them absently with a knife, wondering how much trouble getting involved in this spooky business would get her into – and how bad.

How many people, really, were involved? How much did they all know? Surely more than she did.

And if—"Ow!"

Ves hissed as the knife slipped off the strawberry and bit into her finger instead. She dropped both and, instinctively, lifted her thumb to her mouth, sucking on the wound quietly as she frowned down at the chopping block.

Stupid.

There was a tingling sensation on her finger, one that she assumed was from her spit on the wound and she sighed, pulling her hand away from her mouth and walking to the sink to wash it off.

Only...

"Eh?" She peered at her thumb again, no longer bloody, no longer cut.

How was that possible?

You're a wizard, Harry.

Her mismatched eyes widened in surprise as it dawned on her. Magical powers, Finn had said. Magical powers. And even one as small and innocuous as that... It felt like evidence and validation all at once. Suddenly, she felt as if she really was a wizard, really did belong to this group of Visitors tasked with an impossible feat.

Even knowing as little as she did, Ves couldn't help but think that they were all probably screwed. The chances of them winning when they knew so little were certainly not high. But they could at least try, and she'd be damned if she wasn't going to pitch in.

If nothing else, it'd give her something to do.

(1014)

Posted: Thu Sep 08, 2016 8:37 am

Kickboxing
Happens after New hobbies.

Palling around with Deacon had given Ves a renewed sense of optimism and confidence. The "work" that she'd spent her entire life railing against had turned out to be anything but dull and oppressive – if anything she felt liberated from her cage of boredom. There was nothing more satisfying, she'd realized, than going out and doing something she was good at.

Which begged the question: What else was she good at?

In school, it had been art. Knowing the extensive histories of several branches of art – largely European, but she'd done a fair amount of coursework in Asian and Oceanian art, which was where she found much of her decorating inspiration. There had to be something special about her work, after all, something that would make it stand out from the countless other designers in the world. Often, in a simple room, one centerpiece that was different could make the whole thing come together. Give it a theme where there would otherwise not be one.

Ves knew her art, that was clear. But she wanted to know more. She wanted something else to call her own, something else that could get her out of the house while everyone else was at work.

In short, she was tired of waiting. Tired of waiting for Donald to get off work, tired of waiting for something interesting to come her way and change up the dull routine of her day. It was time to take matters into her own hands.

Her wandering feet brought her to one Strongman Gym. She peered inside, noticing a host of people working out on the other side of the glass.

Maybe...

Before she quite realized what was happening, she'd pulled open the door and stepped inside. And then she heard herself say, "Hi there. Do you have a calendar of all the classes you offer?"

What am I doing...

Ves looked down and saw the brochure that had been handed to her. Yoga, spinning, pilates... Wrestling, kickboxing. Her eyes skimmed through the list and settled on the last one.

"Do all of these welcome beginners?" she asked, looking up. "I've never done any of these before, but I'm eyeing the kickboxing. Would that be... Well, is that something I'd be able to do, do you think?" She was a slight woman, and not altogether powerful.

Her fears were somewhat assuaged by the answers – that, yes, there were beginner classes and progress was largely up to the student. She could improve as quickly or slowly as she desired, depending on the amount of time she spent training.

"Alright, thanks," she heard herself say, and felt her head nod. "When's the next beginner class? Tomorrow?"

Ves consulted the calendar, saw the early morning beginner class the next day at 7 a.m.

"I just show up then? And check in here?" The guy at the desk nodded. "Alright, thanks!"

Ves folded up the brochure and tucked it into her back pocket. As she left the gym, she blinked to adjust to the bright sun outside and let an apprehensive smile cross her face. Tomorrow, she'd start something new again.

(wc 519)

MoonRazor

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