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 Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 12:26 pm
Clerise dragged her nails along the wall, watching fascinated as the gaps her claws left were immediatly filled. She was on her way to the library, hoping to catch sight of someone besides Hiro, and hopefully Cerceris.
She hadn't seen her in so long...
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Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 9:08 am
Cerceris walked along the ceiling of a hallway she knew by sight, still wary of her Feed map. She was feeling a bit unsettled as a whole; her mind was still trying to fully digest the nightmare she'd had, and her spider legs were stronger and faster than they had been before the change. The mental distraction in combination with the new physical power hadn't made her run into anything yet, but it was probably just a matter of time.
The Aanida girl pondered slowly as her arachnid limbs propelled her along the ceiling, which seemed to listen to her just as well now as it had before. She had no idea what her nightmare might have meant, and every idea she came up with seemed flawed somehow. No matter how she turned it over, it didn't make logical sense. Putting thoughts of the dream aside for a moment, she thought back to Akira and his bond with... Anubis? Certainly, there would be a pertinent book somewhere in the library. And probably at least one on dreams as well, which would hopefully shed some light on her sleeping vision and let her stop examining it in her mind.
And of course, there would be tea. Her lips turned up at the corners at the thought of tea. The only thing that would be better to find than tea would be Clerise. Ooh, or Clerise with tea! Allowing that pleasant thought to fill her mind, Cerceris sped along the ceiling all the faster.
Turning a corner, she froze for a moment. The initial panic reaction of oh no there's someone there made a quick about-face as the unmistakable form of the someone registered. Something like elation bubbled through her, met with the discontent left over from her nightmare and shacked up with it in a sudden knot in her stomach.
"Clerise!"
Despite her vague turmoil, the Aanida girl couldn't help but call out. The prospect of being near Clerise again was too tempting to allow any sort of resistance, especially after the pleasant contact with Akira - she unconsciously found herself craving the warmth of touch. Specifically, Clerise's. She released her grip on the ceiling and twisted in the air, her body making minor adjustments to her path as she fell. It had gotten used to its new shape even though her conscious mind hadn't. She landed with relative grace on her human feet, the tips of her arachnid legs meeting the floor briefly before she took off at a run toward her friend.
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:42 pm
Clerise's ear twitched at her name, whirling around to see a familiar (albeit larger and pointier) figure racing towards her, the tell tale clinks filling her head with relief and joy.
"Cerceris!" she half whined, half yowled, dropping her hand from the wall and started off on a clumsy run towards her friend. Clerise's ears were twitching wildly now, and her tails lashing furiously as her own sharp bits were clacking against the floor.
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:02 pm
Cerceris met the other girl halfway, pulling her into a fierce hug with all the legs she wasn't standing on. Even without tea, this was a very pleasant surprise. The Aanida girl was now almost as tall as Clerise, at the perfect height to nuzzle her face into her friend's shoulder. She took advantage of this immediately.
After a little while of this wonderful embrace, Cerceris pulled back and looked up into Clerise's face, six electric blue eyes locked intently on the single fiery one. There were questions poking rudely into her happy mindspace, and they weren't going to leave unless they were given voice.
"I missed you! Are you feeling any better now? I left you some soup from the cafeteria place, a wolf boy Akira showed me how to get it. How long have you been awake? I got an urgent message to go to the infirmary, otherwise I would have stayed with you until you woke up again. I was worried, but then I talked to Aerin, and..." She paused, looking briefly down at the blackened arm. "I'm still really worried, actually." Head tilted slightly, she peered back into Clerise's eye as though it held the answers to everything important in the world. "Are you going to be okay? The alien RA sounds like a scary thing to have inside of you. You'll still be you, right?" The hint of a plea had crept into the Aanida's voice without her notice. I don't want this RA to take you away...
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:08 pm
Clerise's eyes were squeezed closed, tight and blocking out the ugly surroundings. Cerceris was here. Ceceris would make things better. Help her make sense.
"Imissedyoutoo," Clerise spit out, words awkwards on her tongue, and she spit them out quickly-- but she knew Cerceris would understand and feel better.
"I had the soup and it was delicious, and I know Akira he's tiny but I hear not anymore."
Clerise averted her eyes, glaring at the gnarled limb. She flexed the fingers and watch the half necrotized muscles clench and unclench. "RA is scary and sort of full of ******** uppery ness. I hope I'll still be me." Clerise closed her eyes again, and wrapped her arms tight around Cerceris' neck.
"If I won't be me anymore I don't know what I'll do," she whispered, voice hoarse. Her wing flapped and tried to wrap around her and Cerceris both, but the dead feathers settled for brushing up against their arms and losing feathers to the ground.
"I want to be me," Clerise murmured, but even as she did she wondered if she was no longer even herself in this form. Were any of them? Her heard hurt.
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:36 pm
Cerceris felt the knot in her stomach unclench at the reassurances from Clerise. She relaxed into her friend, easing the tight hug into something just as comforting but a bit less desperate.
She found herself staring at Clerise's injured hand as it flexed, half curious and half disturbed. At least it doesn't seem to hurt you any more. I wish it was whole, though.
The Aanida girl leaned back into the embrace as Clerise squeezed her. On a whim, she reached up to softly touch the other girl's hair. Her fingers worked in slow, rhythmic movements, gently massaging the scalp behind one of her ears. "I don't know what I would do either," she whispered back. Her eyes closed as the wing fluttered weakly against her arms.
"I want you to be you too. I really like you." She buried her face in Clerise's shoulder again, her mandibles tasting the skin there. Images of her very recent nightmare suddenly flashed through her head. She gave a small jerk as she tried to drop them from her mind just as she had done with the mutated school map. That wasn't real, it wasn't you. Even though it seemed just like you... it was all in my head. None of it happened.
Cerceris took a deep, steadying breath. Continuing to think about her nightmare would just get her worked up, which was useless. Instead, she had to find other things to think about. Like the reason she had been making her way to the library in the first place, which was to find some information. And to get some tea, which seemed to be the more pressing of the tasks at the moment. Tea makes things better, she thought firmly to herself. Or at least seem better, she amended as her spines let her know about the feathers fluttering past them.
"Let's go to the library and have some tea. I know I could use some right now." Her lips curved weakly upward, but her eyes were still concerned. Mental turmoil was not one of the problems she was good at solving, and neither was a loved one being taken over by a hostile being. But tea had to help at least a little.
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:45 pm
Clerise let out a soothed purr when Cerceris pet her hair. She mumbled something lowly to herself, in clicks and hisses that flicked her now forked tongue out as she continued her confused words. She was too busy drawn into ehrself to notice the momentarily lapse in Cerceris' behavior, but the word tea snapped her out of it.
"Teaaa? I like tea. Can I have green and extra bitter? Sweet tea makes me sicky in the face."
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:59 pm
Cerceris smiled genuinely this time. More proof of the healing powers of tea. Not to mention the fact that the purr Clerise had emitted was immensely soothing for a sound she had never heard before.
"You can have any sort of tea you want, I'm pretty sure green tea gets more bitter the longer you leave the bag in. Sick is no good, in the face or not. I'm going to have some honey chai tea, I think. It's pretty sweet, but I'm not going to make you drink it." The Aanida made a lame effort to disentangle herself from the other girl, not really wanting to break contact but aided by the thought of delicious tea.
"Have you ever used the library before?" Cerceris had no idea what Clerise had done before she arrived, or even while she had been sleeping. She wondered if it would work like the kitchens. Would little mechanical bees bring out books or computer chips full of data, or would the information go right to her Feed? That was an intriguing notion. Cerceris felt a little guilty for using the library solely as a place to get tea until now. Still, there would be lots of time at the academy to make use of it in the intended manner.
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:13 pm
Clerise murmered to herself, and settled for leaning her head on Cerceris' shoulder and ambling along towards the library. "I think i have. Lieth took me there, and Astra wanted to but he sort of dropped me here and retired to his little land. I think he's outnow. I went and read a while, and I read my own history.
"RA has records-- the little RA, tiny and small in a room-- of all the children before they came here. I am missing pages. We should go see yours after we get my tea and your odd sweet necterfood."
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 8:34 pm
Cerceris bit off her protest before it escaped her lips. Her life before the Academy had been both fairly unremarkable and... well, less than entirely pleasant. She slipped easily into step with Clerise, supporting her friend's weight easily now that they were about the same size. "I wonder why yours has pages missing," she thought aloud. Thinking about the tiny RA in a room of records and vaguely wondering if they were allowed in such rooms, the Aanida allowed her thoughts to drift away from the times before coming to the Academy. It would be interesting to look at the records of the other students, though. Perhaps she could find out a little more about Akira, and the other students whom she hadn't yet encountered but was fairly certain existed. Hey, speaking of Akira...
"I was hoping to spend a little time in the library looking up a few things. Akira said he was bonded to a death god called Anubis who guides souls, or something... I wanted to find out more about that. And I also wanted to find out about bad dreams and how to prevent them because they aren't nice." And I wanted to see if there was anything about alien RA and the language you sometimes speak. She refrained from saying that last part out loud, for reasons she couldn't quite place. She wasn't even entirely certain that she wanted to find out about the frightening thing that had merged itself with her best friend. It might be worse than she could handle, but in the end it was probably better knowing than not.
"But we can see the records first, if you want. Well, right after tea." The Aanida smiled again, showing her teeth briefly. She had thought of her tea as being like nectar on a few occasions before, though she wasn't actually very fond of the stuff from flowers. "The library will still be here when we get back."
Cerceris rounded the final corner and headed straight for the familiar machine and its enticing selection of teas. She plucked two cups from the stack with a sort of efficiency that comes from lots of practice, pushing the button to fill each cup with the tip of an arachnid leg. Another claw-tipped arm delicately speared a packet containing a bag of green tea leaves, bringing it to the Aanida's mouth to tear it open. Her other spidery limbs seemed to have somehow wrapped themselves around Clerise's waist and shoulders in a pleasantly comfortable embrace and didn't really want to move, even for getting tea.
A package of honey chai tea was the next casualty, torn open as the green tea began to steep. The aromatic chai brought a smile to Cerceris's face before the bag even touched the water. The odour was warm and inviting and reminded her of Clerise in an abstract sort of way. The Aanida offered the green tea to her friend, holding it in front of her good arm.
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Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 4:29 pm
"Libraries are nice and I like them. They're full of things that are old and smell like old lives." Clerise's ears twitched at 'bad dreams.' "Bad dreams aren't nice. Find an answer, and share it with me?" She asked, cocking her head. She clicked her teeth lightly, and gingerly took the tea with her good hand.
She sipped at the bitter liquid, curious. Clerise licked her lips. "Much better than smelly sweetness. Bitter bitter bitter bitter." She sipped at it again, and flicked her tail. Muchmuch better. "I drink this." she murmered, licking her lips.
She scrutinsed Cerceris' face carefully. Tea made her happy. This was tucked away to a small part of her brain reserved for caring about others, locking it away for further usage.
She felt a strange sensation pass through her, a vague message being sent to Cerceris and the pieces of RA inside of her brain picked up on it as well.
Please report to the Infirmary for your next growth.
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Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 8:51 am
"I'll share whatever answer I find," Cerceris promised. She couldn't hide the smile that passed over her lips as Clerise mumbled into her tea, and she didn't particularly want to. Before she had time to take more than a small sip of her tea, a familiar message played in her head.
Please report to the Infirmary for your next growth.
A frown creased the Aanida's brow. Not until I've finished my tea, she responded firmly. She had no idea whether or not there was an actual sentient entity on the other side of the messages, but advancement could wait. Everything could wait for tea and Clerise.
Facing the prospect of more disorientation and time away from Clerise, Cerceris sighed heavily. "The infirmary wants me to go grow," she pouted. "But I've just found you again, I don't want to go. I missed you. What happens if I don't go? Could you come in with me? Would you even want to?" Cerceris paused for breath. Will I ever find out the answers to all of my questions?
She took a comforting sip of tea, cutting it short as she realized that it was her only real method of forestalling the trip to the infirmary. The spidery legs embracing Clerise unconsciously curled inward to bring her closer. "I don't wanna go," she repeated quietly into her tea, gripping the cup like a lifeline. Six eyes stared moodily into the beverage, idly watching it steep as her mind worked. I'd rather look at my record in RA's room. At least I'd still be with Clerise. What if I have another bad dream when I'm in ACR? Maybe Aerin can tell me how to stop them, and then I can tell Clerise. I don't want her to have bad dreams either. I wonder what she dreams of. Her thoughts continued drifting off into lazy spirals, trying to avoid the inevitability of more time alone. Time alone was nice before she'd met Clerise, now it was mostly just lonely.
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Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 6:39 pm
Clerise scrunched her nose. Growth. What a silly thing. Growth was good and growth was bad.
Go?
"You and I will go as one." Clerise said, nodding with a faraway look in her eyes. "You and I, you and I, you and I go together like one and two and black and white and tea and books."
The girl wrapped her arms around Cerceris, hugging her tightly, her club arm curling its few fingers into Cerceris' hair.
"We'll go together and they will understand."
Clerise wiggled away a bit from the loving embrace, grinning and displaying her teeth. "If not we will always meet in dreams. In sleep. In land of rumbling clouds and violet rain."
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Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 7:03 pm
For once, Cerceris needed no time to ponder the words being spoken to her. They resonated somewhere around her sternum and came into her head like old friends. They were undeniably right, which made her happier than she'd been in too long.
Cerceris leaned into the embrace contentedly, reaching up again to return the soft touch of hair. These physical comforts were new and delightful, and she would have to explore them further when there weren't so many pressing things to be done.
The Aanida smiled back at her friend and took another swig of tea. "Dreams where I see you are bound to be nicer than the ones where I don't." She pushed away the lingering malcontent that came with thinking of that dream, preferring instead to focus on the possibility of going for advancement with Clerise. More eager now to go to the infirmary, she hugged her friend close, making certain she had a firm grip on the other girl. "Careful with your tea," she cautioned as her arachnid legs made contact with the wall and began lifting the two girls. Cerceris was pleased to find that the extra weight hardly taxed her at all as she scaled the wall, making the transition to the ceiling slowly and carefully to avoid spilling anything important like tea or Clerise. Once everything was appropriately settled, she started to make her way back out along the halls. I could do this more often.
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