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 Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2005 11:40 am
-//Vanille Chocolat's Anima__.
This lantern has been entrusted to Vanille Chocolat. I only hope that she will be able to further my knowledge of the Anima through her guardianship of the soul that will emerge from this lantern.
 personality_.n/afacts_.Name - n/a
Guardian - Vanille Chocolat
Memory - Guilt
Alignment - n/a
D.O.B. - 3.8.05
Gender - Male
Height - n/a
stats_.Strength - n/a
Dexterity - n/a
Intelligence - n/a
Charisma - n/a
Constitution - n/a
Speed - n/a
Magick - n/a
Creativity - n/a
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:33 am
[ Message temporarily off-line ]
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:36 am
..The Memory..When a baby is first born its personality is a blank canvas awaiting the brushstrokes of a masterpiece, the shiny new needle ready to begin the stitches of an epic tapestry. Learning from day-to-day experiences, a story soon builds up behind each person, carving them each uniquely. A million emotions merge together from each influence, no matter how insignificant they might seem at the time. Due to this, it is rare for the human mind to be limited to one emotion at any one time. There will always be something else playing in the background, like a defiant trilling piccolo in an orchestra. But, during the most unusual of circumstances, an emotion so intense can take over an entire being, mind and body alike. When such an emotion is laid bare like this it becomes all the more memorable, and far more liable to be picked up by wandering fragments of soul, such as the Anima who encapsulate those feelings within themselves, just as a young child would, never to be forgotten. This story is an example of such a memory.
* * * * *
Our mother looks like a film star on her way to the Oscars. She stands in front of the large mirror on the inside of the old wooden wardrobe door, turning this way and that, glancing over her shoulder and running a hand over her lower back to admire herself and make sure the dress fits - which it does. Down to a tee. It's made from a silky red fabric that glistens with gold and tangerine like the sunset each time she twirls, elegant folds swaying with every small movement. Though she might not have the figure of a model, her stomach comfortable from bearing two children.
"Do you think it looks okay, Benny? Not too...?" She asks me suddenly. Her pale face is surrounded in a cloud of auburn curls, wriggled loose for the carefully coiled high bun. From my position on the bed, I start. Having been so absorbed in awe at her stunning appearance, I realize I must have slipped into a daze.
"Not too anything, Mom - you look fantastic," I reply truthfully. The smile I receive is such a contrast to the usual concerned frown the breath is forced out of my chest. Glowing enough to fade the shadows of many sleepless nights from beneath her eyes, she turns back to the wardrobe to fetch a pair of high-heeled shoes and pushes in her ballet-dancer toes. By the time she checks the clock and looks back to me, she's frowning again.
"You will look after Florence well, won't you Benjamin? You will phone us if anything goes wrong, won't you?"
"Of course, Mom." I reassure her quickly. That paranoid tone is far too familiar, still scary, although I've come to expect it by now. Hopping off the bed, I take her arm and stride down the staircase and out the front door. Outside, the boyfriend is waiting beside the car, wearing an equally exquisite tuxedo and tender smile. I'm the one who reaches the car door first though, and I offer her a hand up into the leather interior, bowing like a chauffeur. You'd have thought she wouldn't have time for dating, what with everything that's been going on, but, she says, since our family is only three-quarters of a whole, if we complete it things might start looking up. I don't know what to think of this theory, but I guess our mother deserves a chance to kick her heels up once in a while.
"You two have a good time," I raise my hand to wave as I wish them bon voyage, receiving a salute and grin from the boyfriend as he jumps into the driver's seat and some muffled instruction from our mother through the darkened glass window. I wait until they disappear round the corner of the street before lowering my arm and turning back inside to find my sister.
* * * * *
For as long as I can remember, Florence has always been a sickly girl. It took her twice as long as me to throw off the measles we both got one Christmas, and she's suffered from most - if not all - of the usual childhood maladies. Once when she contracted the flu, she was so unwell she had to be admitted to hospital until the doctors were happy she was over the worst of it. More recently, she's been bedridden again by fatigue. The doctors are baffled, advising us not to let her over-exert herself and to make sure she gets plenty of rest, but our mother has taken to keeping a bedside vigil. This is making her almost as tired as Florence herself.
Sometimes I find myself imagining what it would be like if Florence died. Once, I even spent an entire day around the house pretending she wasn?t there. She just thought I was annoyed at her over something, and returned the stoic silence. No matter how hard I tried to look through her, convince myself she was gone, I couldn't do it. It felt as though I was having something essential ripped from me.
I knock on Florence's door and open it before she has a chance to reply, expecting her to be sleeping. To my surprise she's fully dressed, her Victorian-style nightgown abandoned for a pair of patchwork jeans and a crimson sweater that's at least two sizes too big for her, and is kneeling on a chair to arrange her soft toy animals on the windowsill. What shocks me even more though is the rest of the room is completely spotless - something that I swear has never happened before. I almost do a double take, wondering who this intruder is and what on earth she's done with my sister.
Upon hearing my entry, the girl turns to look at me over her gently sloping shoulder, and I realize that thought was completely irrational. Ask anyone who knows our family, and they'll tell you Florence used to look like our father. I don't remember exactly what our father looks like - it's been years since I last saw him and we don't have many photos - but I tend to think of him as an eagle, as Florence is very much like a bird, a delicate downy fledgling. Her facial features, once smooth and soft as peaches, have sharpened like the rest of her body to become more angular through illness. If you touch her chest you can feel her ribs, and every breath of air that passes her lungs. Only her hair - long tangling clouds of straw-colored candyfloss - has remained the same.
People also say I resemble our mother, though I have no clue as to how they could think this up. I?m tall for my age, gangly, like a tree with branches that are too long for its trunk. My hair fits well with this appearance, as it looks like and is of the same color as a bird's nest. A year back I had a shower on Easter morning, and Florence fashioned it so she could nestle her tiny, green and blue foiled, Lindt chocolate eggs there. I always got the red and yellow ones, and our mother would keep the purple.
Now my sister literally bounces over to greet me with a smile so wide it could put the Cheshire cat to shame. She's two years older than me, but already I stand a head taller than her, so she has to tilt her neck back when she does reach me.
"Hey there Benny. I'm glad to see you're dressed - we ought to get out before it gets dark or we'll miss it! Come on, find some shoes!" She chirps. I look down at her feet; she's dug out her pair of green gumboots with a frog face painted on each. I gave up wondering why she insists on wearing them - despite our mother's attempts to hide them - a long time ago. Hang on a moment!
"What do you mean 'we ought to get out'?" I receive an inquisitive glance as she busies herself about the room once more.
"We?re going for a walk."
"But you?re meant to be in bed!" I say this as though it?s the most blatantly obvious thing in the world, but quail as soon as I catch her expression.
"I feel fine Benny. You don?t need to worry. Look," she takes my hand and lifts it to her forehead, staring at me with ardent blue eyes, like the waters of summer's lake, "Feel my temperature. I?m not hot at all."
Reluctantly, I have to admit she?s right. Her skin's as warm as it's meant to be, though her hands are freezing as always. Poor circulation.
"Mom will throttle me if anything happens to you..." I say at last. She only smiles and gets her coat from the back of the door.
"No, she wouldn't. She couldn?t stand to live without both of us."
* * * * *
We end up traipsing through the countryside. It was raining earlier today, so everything smells fresh and bright. The last few cotton white clouds scatter the sky, breaking the endless blue. Florence leads me through grasses and brambles, past thickets and over fences, delicately bowing, ducking, and jumping to avoid snagging her hair. We pass a wild Buddleia bush ? you know, the sort that attracts butterflies all summer through with their sweet scent and millions of tiny purple flowers ? and I lay my hand to one of the branches so I can push it back and continue. Before I know what?s happening, Florence has doubled back and grabbed my wrist with surprising force. I stumble back myself, shocked by her grip and the fearful arch to her eyebrows.
"You almost squished it!" She says.
"Almost squished what?" I blink as she leans closer to the leaves of the Buddleia, lifting both our hands away as she does so.
"The butterfly."
This is ridiculous of course. Butterflies never come out around this time of year; it?s far too cold still and there are hardly any flowers. But, sure enough, as I follow her gaze down my eyes come to rest on a tiny creature so bigger than my thumb. Tenderly, Florence slides her fingers beneath it and raises it from the leaf it's resting on so she can get a closer look. It?s set of periwinkle blue wings are almost a perfect colour match to the veins I can see running beneath my sister's milky skin. A haunting reminder that, even though she?s bouncing around like a windup toy right now, she's not in the best of health. For that matter, the butterfly doesn't seem to be in the best of shape either. One of its wings has many hairline tears cutting through the dusty scales. I wonder for a moment if it's actually alive, but then it twitches.
"Poor thing, that can't be very comfortable for you, can it?" Florence croons softly as she strokes the creature's thorax and abdomen. "But you?ll get better soon, I promise."
I sink back on my heels, inwardly sighing at my sister?s innocent outlook on life. That creature couldn't possibly survive another day. However, as Florence continues to murmur in that gentle, soothing voice of hers, a miraculous thing happens. The butterfly shifts its wings again and shivers beneath my sister's touch. She removes her finger and raises her hands above her head to fan them to the sky. The tiny creature mimics this action with its wings as it takes to the air, followed by Florence's smile and my wide eyes.
* * * * *
Later, after we've walked for what must be hours, Florence stops near a rickety old fence that looks more moss and lichen than it does wood. I suspect that we?ve come to the end of our journey, but then she clambers up onto the fence and bounces to test it for springiness. Taking the hand I'm offered, I hop up gingerly, testing its strength before wriggling closer to her. I don't know about her, but I'm exhausted, and to make matters worse we still have to walk back.
"When we were very small, Mom and Daddy would take us for walks up here all the time." Florence breaks the silence of the countryside, her voice light and cheerful. I feel her hand reach out to touch my arm, and I watch the reflection of the clouds bathed in gold and amber skimming across the sky in her glassy eyes.
"Do you remember? We?d go kite flying, and sledging whenever it snowed. Mom would have to carry you because you were so tiny back then. You really were sweet, I wonder where it all went wrong." Although I'm not looking at her lips, I can feel her smile, and bend my hand up to give her a quick pinch for the comment. She only chuckles softly to herself; soon it develops into a cough. Trying not to tense, I pretend to remain unconcerned.
"But no matter how gruesome you look, you?ll always be my brother." My sister mumbles at length. Together, we watch the sun perform its last dance over the hills on the horizon, and the stars blink blearily while the moon yawns and stretches.
* * * * *
It doesn't take us as long to get back, probably because most of it's down hill. Florence holds my hand all the way, leaning her cheek against my shoulder and closing her eyes, I can tell she's flaking fast. By the time we get back, she's practically sleepwalking. I help her undress, putting her boots at the foot of her bed and handing her the dearly beloved nightgown, then tuck her in for the night. I may be the youngest, but sometimes I have to be the oldest. Then I head for my own room and curl up beneath the covers, drifting off to sleep within a couple of minutes.
A shrill should awakens me, and at first I fumble over my bedside table to switch off the alarm clock, but the noise continues. Groggily, I figure it must be the phone and head onto the landing to answer it with a weary "Hullo?"
"Benny? It's me," my mother?s voice comes from the receiver. She sounds panicked. I jump in before she can continue.
"What?s wrong?"
"We?re at the hospital," her voice quavers, and my worst fears are confirmed, "You didn?t wake up so I thought it best if you stayed there. Then I worried what would happen if you woke up, and, and-"
"Mom, is Florence okay?" I must sound as alarmed as her.
"She?s going to be fine, Benny. It?s just a little fever." She doesn?t sound so sure. I fall silence as she continues to talk. Apparently, at 1:30am when she went into Florence?s room to give her a goodnight kiss as she always does, my sister was burning up like a furnace. With a fever of 105 degrees, my mother had no choice but to drive her to the hospital. I?m told she'll call whenever she can with an update, and I sit down alone in the dark with the phone to wait and worry.
2:36am. They pump my sister full of drugs, poisons foreign to her delicate body, to bring down the fever.
2:53am. The drugs don?t take affect quick enough. My sister suffers from respiratory distress.
3:17am. My mother rings again, distraught. My sister goes into cardiac arrest.
3:49am. The doctors have run out of options. What makes Florence, Florence has already slipped away.
* * * * *
Even if the boy had cared to look over his shoulder as he rushed to the cupboard under the stairs ? a secret place, a place for hiding ? he wouldn't have been able to see the lost soul bobbing with no particular direction above him. Flinging back the door and picking his way between the shoes and dusty cardboard storage boxes, the boy coiled himself away in the space between the tattered old quilts - kept for sentimental value but forgotten all the same - and his father's oak wine rack, still littered with ancient bottles. His heart pulsed at a thousand miles an hour, as though it were beating for both him and his sister, and his eyes were wide and wild in the dark. He wanted to cry. So badly. Anything to just distract his mind from the thoughts that were swelling there. The tears wouldn't come, even when he bit his lip hard enough he could taste the tang of blood on his tongue.
With arms that quivered like frail autumn leaves, he gripped his stomach in an attempt to keep out whatever it was that wanted to seed there. It didn?t work. As each tiny, worrying possibility grew in intensity, a deep, unsettling gnawing feeling began in the pit of his stomach. Curling up tighter still, he sucked in a breath and dug his nails into his sides. It was all his fault.
Coming into contact with wave after wave of guilt, the little lost soul found itself thinking along with the boy. It was all his fault. If only he had followed his better judgment and made her stay in bed. If only he?d taken her back earlier. If only he?d been stronger and able to help more. What could he do? She was gone because of him! What was he going to tell his mother? It was all his fault. The soul clung to the thoughts, the memories that raced through it, not wishing to let go to this new sense of being it had discovered. Once the boy finally silenced, it moved onto further journeys, knowing that, one day, it might too be able to create feelings like that of its own?
..Fini..
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:38 am
..The House of Tea..Huddled on the corner of Nicholson Way, one of the city?s many bustling streets, there is an English Teahouse. Set against a backdrop of towering skyscrapers it?s fair to say it?s out of place, some piece of history plucked from its original time. It?s the sort of building that would be better suited to a little village amongst the hills, with winding cobbled roads that make it easy for a stranger to lose their way. Nevertheless, there is something charming about the quaint misfit.
There's a little bell above the doorframe that tinkles whenever a visitor enters, alerting anyone who cares to listen. The floor is paved with ancient floorboards, covered with rugs beneath the rickety old tables and chairs. Hand-stitched cushions have been placed on every seat and bench, all in a variety of fruit patterns - cherries, apples, strawberries, and blackberries. In one corner, there's an iron stove with a plentiful supply of firewood for the winter. The counter is the only thing that seems reasonably modern, a collection of coffee and tea making machines behind its glass display case in which the days freshly baked cakes are shown. Muffins, brownies, Victoria sponges... anything that struck the owner's mind that morning. The shelves too are littered with wears - tins containing all the different tealeaves and coffee beans, waiting to be infused or ground, are stacked upon each other there.
However, it?s not only the first floor that carries its own peculiar charms. Tucked away round the back there is a narrow staircase with a worn red carpet pinned to the wooden stairs. There?s no light above these stairs ? that, or no-one?s ever bothered to change the bulb ? so when the first step is taken with the customary creak, there?s no clue as to what might be found at the top. When the stairs level out at last, there?s a just as narrow corridor with doors leading to a bathroom, small kitchen, a master bedroom and box room. When the very last brass doorknob is twisted and pulled back during the day, bleak sunlight floods into the passage.
This is the room that Vanille rents from her aunt. One side of the ceiling slopes above the two leaded windows with low sills. Upon these are a variety of odd objects ranging from books to a clump of letters, scarves to a palm-sized lump of some ochre and earthy brown mineral. The latest edition is a certain lantern with a cloud of swirling wind dancing around it, but more on that later. The floor, once again, is made up of wooden boards covered with a rug beneath the wrought-iron bed and a chest at the foot. Above the bed there's a shelf, bowing beneath the weight of another collection of books, and in one corner a coffee table stands with neat piles of textbooks and an array of mugs that need to be returned downstairs. Pillows and cushions are strewn around the legs of the table, and all the girl?s art supplies are sheltered beneath. That said, between the dark beams, the whitewashed walls are masked with sketches and paintings, mostly of trees and natural form, but there's also several animal observations and photos dotted amongst them. Her latest project lies on the floor, the palette accidentally left open and the acrylics drying out...
So it might be a bit of a haphazard place to raise a child, the many possibilities to create mess just waiting to happen, but it's still home.NB. I might rewrite this some time =O.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:43 am
..Scrapbook..
For pictures and the sort ^-^!
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:48 am
..All About Guilt..
When I get round to being less lazy, this shall be written up =3.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:50 am
..All About Vanille..
Everything you need to know about 'lil old me. Should you be interested, of course XP!
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:52 am
..Acquaintances..
Peoples we knows.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:55 am
 ..To Do List..I. Fill out the rest of the front page. Add a picture of Vanille =/?
II. Write up butterfly's arrival.
III. Write up growth.
IV. Write up naming questu!
V. [Possibility] Write up "The Star System" xD... Prove Vanille's madness once and for all.<
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 8:58 am
..Links..
...To what, I don't quite know yet. Most likely other journals and things, but nyaa...
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 9:01 am
..Rules..001. Do not post here unless you are:
- Gorachii
- another Anima owner who has been given my permission to do so
- dropping off a gift, in which case please PM me first X3. Finding random posts popping up in my journal's likely to make me freak a little.
002. Do not steal any of the art/concepts here. The Anima belong to Gorachii, as does any of her artwork appearing in this journal. Keep your sticky paws off or I shall be forced to find a suitable punishment >D!
003. Please don't ask to buy my Anima. Sometimes, I may be a slow little guardian, but he's my baby and I?d like to keep him. Go stalk the Anima thread - here! - if you want one.
004. Feel free to PM me about RP, unless I'm away or stated that I'm busy ^.^.
005. THIS is my favourite number.
Thank you ^ ^.
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 9:06 am
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 9:08 am
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 9:15 am
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 9:21 am
..Credits..The Anima concept is (c) Gorachii and Wren.
The concept and character of Guilt is (c) Vanille Chocolat.
All official artwork of the Anima is (c) Gorachii.
Special thanks must go to Pika-bunny for making the banners for this journal. She, and many other artists on Gaia, are the bomb =).
Do not steal/replicate/reproduce the art and concepts here in any way except for personal purposes.
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