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 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 6:45 pm
Mechelen opened her eyes after bringing both Rose and Almere to her Wonder, and made a noise of utter dismay.
Sure there was something wrong but the fact that her ballroom now looked so much worse than it had before they had started cleaning made her want to cry.
The floors were…ruined? They looked…puffy? Shining like they were wet, Mechelen couldn’t help but let out a cry, letting go of her friends’ hands and moving to the worst part of the floor, gently pressing down with her foot.
When water bubbled up, she could have cried. “Seriously? I was working so hard…I just. Wanted to host a ball…” The despair that she was feeling was…quite nearly overwhelming and she looked back at the two Pages with eyes that were filled with tears.
But…no. No there was…this was the whole point of her being here. There was something very wrong…and she was here to fix it. She had to find her Code piece and fix it, just like Almere did. This…was the whole point of all of this.
Drawing in a deep breath, Mechelen tried to calm herself down. She was the eldest here, and there was no reason to worry her friends or seem…weak.
“I know it’s fixable…I know that’s the whole…whatever’s going on. It just. Really surprised me…but…”
She turned back to the floor glumly and pressed her toe on the wood once again, wincing as the water bubbled up. “But it’s fixable. We just have to…”
She just had to…figure out where to go. Glancing around the room, she noticed a small, glimmer, leading towards one of the doors in the back. “...This way, I think.”
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Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 7:54 pm
“It’s okay,” Rose said, trying her best to be reassuring, even if the damage was… well… water damage like that was pretty bad, wasn’t it?
She kept a smile on her face. She reached out to give Mechelen’s hand a squeeze too, nodding in agreement when Mechelen insisted it could be fixed. It could! It absolutely could! Rose believed that! She hadn’t seen Mechelen’s Wonder until now, but she knew her friend had been working hard to fix it up. This was just a temporary setback.
“We’ll get everything all fixed and you’ll host the ball and it’ll be so much fun,” Rose insisted. “I’ll see if my other friends would want to come. I’m sure they would. You know, Reims and Ephesus and Amarynthos and Dering and… Evie?” She was pretty sure that wasn’t quite right, but also might not be totally wrong. He was a quiet boy, so Rose didn’t know a lot about him, just that Reims hadn’t been very nice to him as Riker. “I think you saw most of them on Urania.”
Rose followed along, trying to avoid the worst of the damage to the floors in the hopes that she wouldn’t make it worse.
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2024 12:53 pm
Oh, that was bad. They'd had the floor perfect. They hadn't really been able to fix anything else yet, but the floor had been clean, and shiny, and ready for dancing. Now it was warped, like things had flooded. "Where is there even water here?" was her first thought, which was probably not helpful, but of any of the things that might have gone wrong here, that was not what her first thought would have been. "But Rose is right. We're magical." Almere held so much faith and hope in that, especially now that her own spoon was no longer melting. "If we can fix your powers, maybe we can fix this, too." Hopefully that worked, because Almere didn't even know where to start with trying to replace an ancient ballroom floor. "And look, she has so many friends she can bring," she said, as Mechelen walked towards the back, hoping to distract her, "And I can bring the twins. If we brought everyone up, we could have such a nice ball, just with us!"
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2024 1:49 pm
Mechelen was so glad that her friends were here. Honestly, if they hadn’t been, she would have fallen apart. She didn’t want to admit it out loud, but she was really ready to start crying as she walked over the ruined floors. “I love that idea. It would be the people that were on the moon with us, right? The other day? They all seemed really nice, and I think it could be a really fun party!”
Focus on the could be. The would be…and keep following the strange, somewhat comforting sparkles. They led, as she had half thought, back to the bedroom where she had found her signet ring.
It was still a mess up here, and honestly, she felt a little embarrassed. It wasn’t her home...but it was an important place to Mechelen and…the fact it was such a mess reflected so badly on her. “It’s somewhere in here. I can feel it, and this is where…the uh. Little shimmers were leading me…I’m so sorry it’s such a mess. I haven’t been back here since I found my ring…but there was a note too, so I don’t know…what that was about. I guess…the last Mechelen…?”
Said out loud, it was honestly a little creepy but…
That was fine.
Her eyes drifted around the room and landed on an ornate unicorn shaped vase on the fireplace that seemed to be glowing slightly. “...I think…it might be here?”
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2024 2:03 pm
Rose nodded about her friends so Mechelen knew she’d gotten it right. She might have to do some convincing to get Reims to agree to come along, but she was sure the others wouldn’t have any problem with the idea. They could relax and goof off and have fun and not worry about all the scary things on Earth for a little while!
“Seems like a pretty good bet,” Rose said when they came upon the unicorn shaped vase and its faint glow.
She glanced around the room briefly, wanting to give it a more thorough examination but also not wanting to be rude. This was Mechelen’s Wonder. Rose didn’t want to do anything to further disturb any of the progress Mechelen had previously made in fixing it up.
“I wish I could’ve seen what these places were like hundreds of years ago. They must have been really pretty. A place like this probably had parties all the time, so… having a ball here, even if it’s just us and our friends, would kind of honor that, I think.”
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2024 2:29 pm
"I know," said Almere, looking across the empty building. "Obviously, I love being a Knight. I get to have magic and fight evil!" She pulled out her spoon, now repaired, and held it out in front of her like a sword for dramatic effect. "But it's a little sad that we ended up being Knights of these places now that everyone is already gone." There was a Lord of the Rings quote about that, though. Something about doing what you could with the era that you lived in. Almere intended to live into that, and if that meant throwing a ball with a bunch of teenage knights, it meant throwing a ball with a bunch of teenage knights. That should cheer Mechelen up, at least. "I like your unicorn vase," she said, knowing that from this point, it was probably up to Mechelen to resonate.
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Posted: Mon May 13, 2024 4:01 pm
Mechelen nodded, feeling the same way as the other two. “I both wish that I could, and like…don’t want to because we’d be way too old if that was the case. Can you imagine how many wrinkles we’d have between the three of us?” It was mostly a joke, but…she knew what Rose really meant, and she did wish she could have seen this place in its glory…it was beautiful in its ruin but.
“Oh! Thank you…I guess…I’ll do this now.”
Reaching out, Mechelen took hold of the vase and peered into it, seeing a small, glowing orb that…she now knew was the Code piece, and she couldn’t stop the small smile on her face.
It was beautiful, even if it looked…kind of sad at the same time.
Slowly, she turned the vase over and the orb fell into her hands. It wasn’t difficult to resonate. It almost seemed as though the Code piece was craving it, and Mechelen’s eyes closed as she bonded with the piece. And…she did get to see her Wonder as it was. A lovely palace. Clean and well cared for. There was a ball going on, just as she wanted now…and there was…
There was someone there, with arms around who she assumed was the Mechelen of the past, and the…the outfit looked almost familiar…
But just as she was going to see the face of the mysterious stranger, the Code piece began to glow brightly, and Mechelen opened her eyes slowly, frowning and looking around.
“Oh…it’s even more beautiful…”
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Posted: Sun May 26, 2024 8:23 am
Rose was happy to wait. She looked around at what she could but made sure she didn’t disturb anything, wanting to familiarize herself with as much as she was able, so when they came back again to clean up a bit she’d at least know some of the layout and a bit of what needed to be done.
“You did itI” she gave a quiet little cheer when Mechelen was done, pleased to see the Code piece looking so bright and cheerful.
“We’re two for too now,” Rose said. “You guys both did great.”
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Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2024 3:31 pm
"I don't think you have to be young to be beautiful, or to dance," said Almere. Her books were full of kind grandmothers with hair as silver as starlight, or powerful old enchantresses who lived alone in the woods, some good and some evil. Maybe being alive for a thousand years would have some disadvantages, though. Maybe Mechelen had a point. Almere chewed her lip while Mechelen meditated, and she thought about these things. She thought about immortality, and if it was worth is, and she thought about grandmothers, and then eventually, of course, she ended up thinking about unicorns, and then about dragons. Then Mechelen was done, and the code looked brighter, and she grinned. "It looks happier," she said, then turned to the other page. "That meas we just have Rose left, right?"
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