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 Posted: Sat Dec 14, 2024 9:46 am
Quote: Fire Opal ( 8 ) : On a cold winter night, there’s nothing nicer than burning a nice log in the fire. Looking like any average piece of lumber, the neatly chopped log you selected has no clear indication that there’s something special about it–until the fire gets to it. A typical fire should be red and orange and yellow, and yet this one circles through all colors of the rainbow. It smells fragrant and pleasant, and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it–it just burns in beautiful, vibrant colors. As the wood burns, opalescent cracks appear through it, casting a shimmering light enhanced by the flames. By the end of it, only rainbow embers remain, sparkling like dark opals, and even they eventually lose their color and crumble away. The youma must've scared everyone away from the fire circle. It was all set up with marshmallows on stick and hot chocolate and those outdoorsy mugs, but when Almere had come over to follow the Chaos auras, she hadn't found any people here. There was just the fire monster, jumping around and leaving embers in the frosty grass. She could only imagine what would happen if it was left unchecked. She could see it in her head. There were flames jumping from one tree to another in the pretty park. People were running and screaming. The city skyline was dissolving into smoke. Luckily, Almere was there to face evil and save the day. Not only was she there, she had her new Squire weapon, with her spoon actually big enough to use as a sword. "Fizzle out, fiend," she whispered to it, and the fight was short. Honestly, finding all the singed spots around the grass and stomping them out took a few minutes longer. Then the area was safe, and Almere took a second to breathe. She took a step forwards, towards the fire pit, looking at the way that the flames in there still licked at the logs. It was so warm here. So beautiful. If she stared long enough, she almost could have imagined that there were some other colors in there.
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Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2024 11:22 am
When she’d struck the ‘scent’ of Chaos, Nis had hurried towards it, wanting to make sure that nothing too untoward was happening. Then, she’d felt a knightly aura in roughly the same spot and hastened her pace. But, by the time she got there, the Chaos was gone and all that was left was a single knight.
Approaching slowly, Nis took in the girl’s outfit and… unique weaponry. The girl looked like something out of an old book of fairy tales. Or maybe Mother Goose (not helping these vibes was the enormous spoon). Still, this was a type of knight that she was completely unfamiliar with. And as such, she had Questions.
Moving in closer, the tall Cosmos knight caught sight of the fire pit and sighed. At least that seemed safe enough. Like most, she enjoyed a good fire. Blinking at the heat, she admired it for a moment before tilting her head.
“Umm, sorry to interrupt, but I am pretty certain that fires are not supposed to burn that particular shade of green. Or blue for that matter. That your doing?”
Turning a curious eye on the strange knight, Nis wondered if this might be a lingering aftereffect of whatever magic the other girl had going for her.
”stari_maga” I am SO sorry! Life went for my kidneys ; A;
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Posted: Wed Dec 18, 2024 3:20 pm
As the colors of the fire went from just a slight pink to shifting fully into purple, then blue, then green, Almere was entranced. Was this a fairy fire? Was this a portal to some other world, but a small portal, so that the fae folk on the other side couldn't quite come through or anything, just try to send messages through colors and patterns? There had just been a youma here, and maybe it had something to do with that. She would watch for a while, just to make sure. She watched so hard that she didn't notice the aura as it got close, or even the sound of footsteps, or the very obvious lady in a beautiful outfit walking closer to her. She jumped when someone was starting to talk to her. Then she turned, and started staring at the lady, instead. "Woah," she breathed. "I'm used to all these knights that look like princes and princesses right out of a book, but you? You're like a goddess." She started looking at the details of her outfit with unblinking intensity. "A star goddess. Your planet, is it just full of these knights who are celestial deities?" That sounded amazing. It was also a little beside the point. She glanced back at where the flames were flickering in shades of rainbow. "No, it's not me," she said. "There was a youma here, but it's gone now, and the fire is still doing that."
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Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2024 9:29 am
Nis could and would have reasonably expected many different reactions to her presence. Anger, coldness, boredom or happy curiosity. At no point did her personal bingo card ever include breathy effusiveness or being compared to a goddess. Feeling a bit taken aback, she had to take a moment to reboot her brain before laughing a little self-consciously.
“Hardly. While I’m sure Cosmos could be considered more than human, I don’t think she’s a goddess. More along the lines of a really advanced Princess.”
She trailed off, not really knowing how to explain Cosmos since she’d never even met the lady. Even less did she know how to explain the Cauldron and her understanding of a Cosmos knight’s role as an ambassador and psychopomp. It was a lot easier to focus on this girl with the stars in her eyes. Especially since they had a lovely topic for discussion burning before them.
As she watched the fire, she could see thin, iridescent cracks opening up in the wood. It was incredibly beautiful and everything felt so peaceful. It was weird, but not dangerously so.
Nis could live with that.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “I don’t think the youma or whoever was controlling it did this. And since you said you didn’t do it either, we’ll just chalk it up to the usual Destiny City Holiday Weirdness, I guess. It beats angry snow monsters anyhow.”
She thought for a moment and then took a seat on one of the abandoned benches around the firepit. There was no reason they couldn’t sit and enjoy this while it lasted.
“I’m Nis, by the by. Squire of Cosmos.”
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Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 12:30 pm
"Oh, you have a Princess?" Almere didn't seem disappointed in any way by this revelation. Princesses were, in case it was hard to tell, one of her favorite things. "And she's more than human, and her name's Cosmos? That's amazing. Does that mean she's a Princess who lives in a castle in the stars or something?" That was a fun thing to think about. Almere imagined bouncing on clouds like they were stepping stools, up and up and up, until she was at constellation that stretched out above her, only she could knock on the sky itself, and it opened like a door. Was that how it worked? Probably not, but it was easy to imagine things like that when there was some true level of magic involved. "My Princess, Lysithea, she's right out of a fairy tale," she said proudly. "And a lot of us Knights, we have castles and things as our Wonders." A moment passed, and she was silent, caught up in watching the flames. "And I'm glad this isn't from a monster. It's beautiful."
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2025 9:20 am
Between the far too pretty to be real rainbow fire and her fellow knight’s rapid fire questions, Nis almost felt as if her brain had been dipped in a bucket of psychedelic drugs. She held up her hand, feeling a little dizzy.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t mean she’s an actual Princess. Or that she’s some sort of superhuman. She’s very powerful, on par with a Princess. She’s just... Sailor Cosmos, though,” she tried to explain. This, she supposed, was one of the hazards of not having personally met her patron. It was damned difficult to try and get solid information out when she, herself, only had the sketchiest grasp on things. “I don’t know if she lives in a castle or not because I’ve never visited the Cauldron.”
She couldn’t help the wry little twist of her lips as she amended, “At least, not in this lifetime.”
Nis did listen carefully though as the girl talked about her own patron who was actually a Princess, though Nis had never heard of her. Which was fine because she suspected there were a lot of people out there of some importance that she’d never heard of before. But the mention of fairy tales and many of Lysithea’s own wonders being castles and the like made the squire’s brain click as information began to slot itself into place.
“What is your Lysithea’s power over?” she asked curiously. “I’m not terribly familiar with the name and I do enjoy being reasonably well informed. It makes my job a bit easier in the end.”
A companionable silence fell and Nis found herself also watching the strange fire. The burning wood was beginning to crack more and inside those breaks it looked like shining opal. As far as weirdness went, this was the prettiest she’d seen. And the most relaxing. The smoke from the flames didn’t even burn the back of her throat. Instead, it smelled wonderful. It reminded her of some of the items that would come through her shop, wreathed in soft, floral smells. She’d always liked those items best.
“It is beautiful,” she said in soft agreement.
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Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2025 7:03 am
"Oh," said Almere, although this woman's comments that Sailor Cosmos wasn't quite a Princess or a goddess but something else entirely only made Almere more curious, not less. "Well, maybe I can meet her some day and find out what she's about?" That sounded nice. Almere wondered where she lived. Was it a castle, with the walls made of stars? Or was it an apartment, like where the rest of the real magical people she actually knew lived? "I know there's magical powers associated with being a Princess, with how all this is set up," she said, but then added, more determined, "But I think any girl can be a princess anyway!" And the night next to her really would qualify for that. "But, Lysithea's powers is unicorns. All the places I've been to on that world are kind of like they're from the middle ages? Castles, and banquet halls, and little lodges in the woods? It's beautiful."
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Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2025 9:29 am
Closing her eyes briefly, Nis considered the things she knew and the things she could guess at. The chances of Almere meeting Cosmos were, in all honesty, fairly small short of something catastrophic happening. But she’d seen the lively curiosity and hope in the other girl’s face and didn’t want to be the one to kill it. The best she could do, she’d decided, was to try her best to not feed into that hope too much.
When she opened her eyes, she stared at the opalescent embers of the strange fire for a moment before glancing at the other knight.
“Maybe,” she said cautiously. “But technically, we all meet her at the end. She’s the one who cares for our starseeds when we’ve passed on. So, I suppose, even more technically, we’ve also all met her at the beginning as well.”
Hell, she’d never even seen the Cauldron, but she knew it existed. Just as she knew that she might be called upon at any time to act as the psychopomp for a starseed to help guide it along to Cosmos and the Cauldron. It hadn’t happened yet, but all things considered, she fully expected it to happen at some point. It was a rare war, indeed, that didn’t involve any deaths.
As she listened to Almere, she burst into laughter. Not at the girl, never at her. But the idea that anyone could be a princess. She knew a few people who’d fail miserably at such things.
Herself included.
“Little sister,” she said warmly, “don’t ever lose that determination and optimism. But trust me. Not everyone can or should be a princess. I’d hate having that sort of power and responsibility thrust on me. No, I’d rather have my little lake and island than all the castles in the world.”
Her little lake that would surely be missing her. Sure, it wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it was hers and she loved it dearly. Just as she was sure that Almere must love her own Wonder. Though… Unicorns. That would explain the dreamy insistence and focus on fairy tales and princesses. Well, she thought, why not a planet of unicorns? It wasn’t any stranger than any of the other things she’d heard of. It was a big galaxy, after all. Plenty of room for all of them.
“It sounds lovely,” she said after a moment. “Especially the little lodges, but I’m partial to more woodsy things.”
The smoke from the fire they’d been watching smelled sweet, fresh. As far as Weird went, this was the sort that she could rally behind. It was peaceful. Pleasant. The world needed more of that.
“It's getting late,” she said softly. “And I’ve still got some things I need to see to. Look, it’s a very long chance, but it’s good for other people to know. Promise me if you ever save a starseed that you’ll find me or another Cosmos knight. We’ll be able to shepard it and get it to where it needs to be. We’ll keep it safe.”
Reaching out, she gripped Almere’s hand for a moment, giving it a friendly squeeze. The girl would learn and grow and be a marvelous knight. As long as she never lost her hope to the dark, she’d burn even brighter than the fire before them.
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Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2025 5:37 pm
The woman was still insisting that she wasn't a Princess, or a goddess, or anything like that. Almere was used to it. People tended to tal ilke that, to see themselves as mundane. She had thought it might be a little different, with the literal proof of magic all around them, with the rainbow firelight flickering in the folds of white clothes, but maybe even now it wasn't that easy. People had a hard time seeing how precious and special they were, sometimes. Almere understood. It was okay. She would look for the hints of magic in them. She'd remember the most beautiful things about them when they couldn't do it for themselves. And this moment? There was something serious in the older woman's eyes, as the dying embers cast prismatic light across her face. She was talking about starseeds. Souls. Almere leaned forwards, nodding, lips parted slightly. This was a sacred charge. This was something she dare not ever forget. She leaned even farther forwards, as close to the embers as she could manage. "I swear," she breathed, and she touched her fingers to her forehead, and then her heart. It felt right. "If I ever find one of these lost starseeds, I will do everything in my power to return it to its rightful guardians." Then she stood. She'd gotten her mission. This felt like an ending. Anyway, it was late now and the fire was dying. "Thank you for talking to me," she said. "I hope to see you again."
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