Prompt 5 (Snow Fairies): On a cold winter night, when the moon is nearly full and bright in the sky, you hear laughter. At first, you can't place it, but then you feel little pokes and prods, tugs on your hair, your clothes. Sometimes you think you see something out of the corner of your eye--a small, icy body. Sometimes you hear wings flapping in the night. As long as you are out in the cold, you feel eyes on you and you find yourself the target of small mischief from what seems to be icy little fairies, though they move too fast for you to see or grab. They never speak, only laugh. When you go inside, or venture anywhere with too much light or heat, they seem to disappear and do not bother you again.
The holidays were supposed to be a wonderful, special time of the year. A time filled with lights and parties, games and hot drinks. The gallery her mother ran was decorated to the nines and there were many, many small parties with people in pretty clothes drinking pretty drinks, enjoying beautiful art. It was a time when Flo had always felt like there was magic in every breath she took. This year though... that sense of wonder and magic came with a streak of strangeness...
Flo was not a particularly graceful person, but lately, it felt like she was constantly tripping over something when she was out on patrol (if you could really call what she did a patrol). Tripping over something, or getting things knocked out of her hands. She'd dropped her weapon uncountable times already, and each time she stumbled or had to bend down to pick it up, she felt like she heard... laughter, somewhere nearby. But so faint, and so quick... she wasn't sure if she'd really heard it. It was starting to give her a complex... especially when she kept thinking she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
Hercynia had never considered that Destiny city might be home to mischievous sprites, but it was getting harder and harder to explain it away. She'd read too many stories about Brownies and Fairies and Pookas. Something was delighting in playing tricks on her, and if she didn't figure out what was going on... well, she wasn't precisely sure what she was going to do. Its why, as the sky slowly darkened to twilight and the lights came on all over the city, the first stars found Hercynia on her hands and knees, peering under the ductwork on the roof of an old book store.
She'd seen something skitter under this thing, and considering she'd nearly face planted a moment ago, she figured her tormentors were back at it again. Leaning down, her cheek nearly to the cold, wet roof top, the page squinted into the dark and pondered how to get more light under there. She couldn't see anything moving, but that didn't mean anything... She wasn't entirely sure what she'd do if she did find something, but gosh darn it... she needed some answers.
stari_maga
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:26 pm
Pendour had been out in the city more in the last few weeks than she had been out in the last few months. She had her mission. She had her people to protect, so every night, like clockwork, she was out making her circles around the city. At least she was doing a little better with her self care. Her friends had caught onto her, and at their pressure she was sleeping for a few hours in the afternoons now, but the patrols were still long, and repetitive, especially when she didn't find what she was looking for.
Everything about the city was starting to blend together, and that included all the lights and displays that were set up in store windows and hanging off apartment balconies. The music especially was getting repetitive. If she heard another sleigh bell, she thought that she might have to go stop by her own apartment and pick up some noise-canceling headphones.
Sometimes, there were surprises, though.
Today she was hearing a lot of giggling that she didn't think was coming from the speakers of any businesses. She kept feeling tugs on her pearls, and she thought, just for a second, that she'd seen something fluttering away out of the corner of her eye.
She wasn't sure what to make of it, there were hardly any auras, so she just kept walking.
The aura that she did find was a Page, so of course she walked towards that, and broke into a smile when she saw the girl.
"Oh, you're Earth, aren't you?" she asked, her voices soft. "Oh, and, um, of course I mean hi, but it just always makes me happy, seeing what Knights I can find. The Earth thing, it reminds you of one of my mentors."
Something was tugging at her pearls again, and she tried to wave it away.
There was a hollow, clanging thump as Hercynia pulled back at the sound of a nearby voice, the back of her head hitting the duct work and knocking her stick crown off her short, ruffled blonde hair. Hand clapped to her smarting skull, the page turned to peer wide eyed at the beautiful lady that had joined her. She instantly reminded her of a mermaid and it left the page dumbfounded for a moment as she struggled to reconcile a mermaid on a rooftop in the middle of winter. Mermaids were tropical creatures, weren't they?
This mermaid had feet though, so not actually a mermaid then? The warmth in her chest was a feeling she was coming to associate with people like this and it helped clue the page in that this was probably another of her own kind. It took a moment for what she was saying to register and Hercynia blinked owlishly when it did. Her name wasn't Earth, so the knight must mean she was OF Earth. Knights seemed to all come from the different planets, as Richtersveld had been Pluto and Camelot had been Earth the way she was. In fact, that might just align with what the Knight was saying about a mentor being of Earth.
"Camelot?" She said, tentative. That was truly the only other Earth knight she knew, but it seemed like a good chance they might know the same person. The mermaid knight had something like bright tattoos on her and it made Hercynia wonder how she made they look so bright in the darkness up here. Were they really glowing? Seemed ridiculous, but at the same time, she was pretty sure fairies were tormenting her, so who knew what could be real any more.
In fact, whatever she'd been looking for seemed to take her distraction as an opportunity and she thought she saw something small and fluttery rush at her from the corner of her eye. Hercynia flailed as she jerked backwards, falling hard on her backside on the snow covered roof. She winced sheepishly, because of course there was nothing there.
stari_maga
Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2023 6:33 pm
Oh no.
Pendour's features twisted into a wince as the Page flinched and bumped right into a pipe. She'd startled her. She hadn't wanted to. Pendour always did her best to be gentle. She walked softly upon the earth- or the rooftop, as the case may be. With her scars, and her height, she took extra steps not to startle or frighten people. She moved slowly. She smiled often.
It wasn't always enough, and so when the girl stumbled back, Pendour was already frowning, already murmuring, "Oh, I'm so sorry." She stepped forwards, even slower. "Are. Are you okay?"
The tugging on her pearls went sharp. It got so sharp, in fact, that one of the strands by her waist broke, sending all of the pearls on it to scatter and roll across the roof with a soft clatter. This, on the other hand, did not seem to bother Pendour. She barely blinked, just sort of brushed at her waist and nudged any rogue beads out of the way with her foot so that nobody tripped.
"And yes, Camelot," she added, smiling softly because they knew the same person, but trying to keep her voice even gentler. "He was the first Knight I ever met."
Hercynia's eyes were wide as the lovely knight apologized to her, coming to see if she was okay. Blonde hair ruffled as she nodded, the strands falling forward into her face.
"I'm okay!" She reassured the other woman, rolling onto her knees and pushing herself up onto her feet. Her hands brushed sheepishly at the snow on her leggins and backside, all of her feeling silly and disheveled. It was a surprise to find that she was only a few inches shorter than this lovely lady, though not nearly so elegant. Up close, she really was even prettier, though now Hercynia noticed things she hadn't when she was on the ground, looking up. The lines on her skin really were glowing, and they'd distracted her from the slight oddness of the lady's face. She only noticed the scars now, and when she realized what they were, her imagination quite ran away with her wondering how she'd gotten them.
All together, her rampant thoughts kept her from saying anything else for long enough that Hercynia finally noticed the awkwardness of it and struggled to pull herself back.
"Yes! I met him at the library." Hercynia said shyly. Looking down, she saw the pearls scattered in the snow like little drops of white rain. Ah... it seemed like she wasn't the only one being tormented then.
"Did... did you see the faeries?" She asked as she looked back up, running her gold rope restlessly through her fingers.
stari_maga
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2023 6:19 am
"Fairies?"
This was the point when Pendour actually stopped to pay attention to the pearls that had dropped from her outfit, now making little craters in the thin layer of snow at her feet. When she frowned at them, she thought she could hear something a little to the left. It was a light, icy sound. A laugh. Pendour turned a little, and then turned all the way in a circle, her good eye scanning the air around her, but there was nothing there that she could see.
"Is that what this is? I don't, um. See them. No."
There was a moment when Pendour said nothing at all, just blinked at the winter sky, just full of stars and no creatures, before she said, "But then, my range of vision's not very good, so they can hide, if they're fast." She waved a hand at her bad eye. The Page had seen the scars. There was no reason to be subtle about them, now.
In all her looking for things, she thought she had seen the girl looking at her Transcendence marks. She took half a step forwards, and offered an arm out, palm down. She moved slowly. She also saw how she moved skittishly, even now.
"You can look, if you want," she said. "It's a blessing, from my Wonder."
Hercynia nodded as she watched the lady turn about, looking for the quick little creatures.
"They're fast." She said apologetically, nodding again at the other knight's acknowledgement that she couldn't see them. "I haven't been able to catch one yet." She hadn't realized there was something wrong with the slightly different colored eye the lady had, but it made sense if it interfered with her rang of vision. How strange it must be, to have something like that. Hercynia wondered why she didn't wear an eye patch... maybe because she didn't want to look like pirate? That was fair... but she could think of so many ways to make a lovely eye patch.
When the knight stepped closer and offered out her arm, Hercynia's eyes widened till they were large, round and very blue in her long, angular face. She couldn't help immediately reaching out to touch the marks with one long, very gentle forefinger. They didn't feel like anything, and that fact fascinated her as much as the glowing lines did.
A blessing from her wonder? That was quite amazing. It really called back to those tales of Knights, which made sense when you considered she was a Knight. It revived some of excitement Hercynia had felt when she had first powered up, this whole world of magic, good and evil suddenly opening up before her.
"They're very pretty." She murmured, shy now.
Was that something that happened when you visited your wonder? Hercynia had only been once... a very confusing, blurry rush before she'd been lost for hours in a huge, ancient forest... and then back just as unexpectedly, when she'd gotten lost and frustrated enough to want to be home again. She'd probably just done something wrong... not like she'd known what she was doing in the first place.
stari_maga
Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2023 5:41 pm
Pendour was still under the page's touch, not seeming to mind the unexpected contact. Her skin would feel bumpy. The scale markings overlapped with where her skin had burned, back when she'd helped Encke and Oberon get Caedus's starseed back from an overcharged Lyndin. She was covered in pockmarked scars, now, up to her elbows, and she felt the girls' fingers dipping into some of the bumps.
"I think they're pretty, too," said Pendour. She reached over with her other hand so that she, too, could trace the edge of one of the scale shapes. There was something soothing about it, even if the marks themselves didn't feel like anything other than skin.
"What about you?" she asked, glancing over again and thinking that the Page might be new, if she didn't know many Knights besides Camelot. "Do you ever go up to your Wonder?" She squinted. "Or, well, um, would it be up if your Wonder is on Earth? Over to your Wonder, maybe?"
Maybe it would even be down, if the wonder was somewhere to the south.
"Anyway, if you visit enough, you could get some, too. Well, not scales, probably, but something." Something golden, maybe. Pendour could see that happening. "Extra protection, too."
Hercynia shook her head, slowly, blonde hair brushing along her jaw.
"Only once." She said, considering again her singular visit. The magic spell to take her there had just... popped into her head, like she'd always known it and just remembered. It was sort of how all the knight magic seemed to work, when she thought about it. Her rope had just popped out of the air too. No surprise then that she'd popped up in her wonder and popped out too, hardly realizing what she was doing.
The page left off touching the knight as soon as the woman reached to trace the scales herself, interrupting Hercynia's fascination. She'd noticed that the skin hadn't felt as smooth as she had expected, but it was hard to imagine why that way. The longer they spoke, the more she found about her that wasn't visible at first... though, of course, wasn't it like that with everything really?
Hercynia smiled in her embarrassment and tucked her hair behind her ears, making them stand out a bit from her narrow skull. "I got lost."
This lady must have been a lot better at her wonder visits, if she'd gotten a blessing out of it. Extra protection sounded nice. Did the marks give her magical protection? That seemed right. Maybe it kept her from getting hit as often. Hercynia herself avoided fights when she could, at least until she figured out what she was supposed to do in them. In a rare moment of prudence, she'd asked for self defense lessons after she had awakened and her parents had agreed, a little mystified, but happy to fund something that would only keep their daughter safer.
"Did you go on a quest?" She wondered, after a moment's thought on it. That's how knights in stories operated, and how they got magical things. Did real life knights have those sorts of things too?
stari_maga
Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2023 7:45 am
"Well, the nice thing is, um, if you get lost-"
Pendour trailed off, once again having to reframe the way she thought about things, because she was going to talk about how if you got lost in space you could always come back to Earth, but that was all wrong.
"On your Wonder," she tried, instead. "If you get lost on your Wonder, you can always come back to the city."
Although, if they were going to speak of space, of wonders? They could look at Pendour's arms for days, at the way the glowing marks covered her scars, or they could shift to looking at her clothes, her ocarina, and the stories that those told, but for the full picture, there was an easier way.
"Do you want to come up to Pendour?" she asked, then squinted. "That's my Wonder. My name, too. Did I say that, yet?"
It was the polite thing, she knew, to start with your name, but sometimes that didn't seem so necessary. "It's pretty, and I can tell you more about how this all happened. Not quite a quest, but something like that."
Already large blue eyes got very large indeed at the offer and the normally low-key girl was almost... vibrating with her excitement.
"Yes!" She gasped out, her hands clasped together in front of her. A change to get to someone else's wonder? How could she refuse that? Would it look anything like her own? Or, would it be as different to her forest as her own green and fawn uniform was to the seafoam and pearl that... Pendour wore.
"Your name is pretty." She said, her voice rapt. "I'm Hercynia!"
What a strange name she had... not nearly as nice as Pendour, but that was okay. She was a dandelion next to a shining silver pearl, of course she was out shown. Hercynia didn't begrudge her that in the least. All that mattered was this beautiful lady wanted to share something amazing with her, and she was going to revel in every minute of it.
And, bonus, it would get the both of them away from those pesky fairies... as long as none of them managed to hitch a ride and go on to infest Pendour's wonder.... she'd just have to be careful that didn't happen. It wouldn't be very polite, to get invited somewhere and bring the magical equivalent of bed bugs with her...
"Is it under water? Can I breathe there?" The words wanted to bubble up out of the normally stoic girl and she struggled with them, feeling the pressure of too much trying to come out too fast. She felt like she was going to burst with excitement.
stari_maga
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2023 12:28 pm
"Yes and yes," said Pendour. Yes, it was underwater. Yes, you could breathe there. "You'll see, okay?"
She understood the excitement that could send someone almost to shaking, at the concept of seeing a new place. She got the same way whenever she got to see a new planet or wonder for the first time. It was something familiar that she saw within this girl, but she made sure to be a strong and steady presence as she reached out a hand, as she whispered her Oath.
Within a few seconds, they had vanished from the face of Earth.
