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 Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:12 pm
The last few weeks had gone by in a blur of time and motion. Julian could not distinguish when he had last spoken to Aphismet from the last time he had bought groceries, nor his time spent in lab X from his time teaching Gage the basics of chemistry. Everything was rushing, spinning, swirling into a mixture of problems, missed deadlines, and arms that refused to heal from a self-inflicted burn wound. The more the young man attempted to pay both attention to his Raevan, his studies, and his work, the more sleep he lost. By the time it came around to register for classes for his second semester of that year at the University, Julian had been through enough emotional and physical damage. He was going to do the one thing he never though he would.
He put an ad in the paper to find himself a babysitter for his frei who needed far more attention than he could possibly offer with the beginning of new classes and studies looming overhead. It was a temporary solution, to be sure. Julian really did not want anyone raising Gage other than himself, but a few times a month would hopefully not completely damage the lessons he was trying to instill in the young Raevan's brain.
The ad was very specific. He needed someone mature, intelligent, poised, and strict. Julian settled for a young woman named "Amaris". She had been the only one to respond to the commission.
Yet ten minutes before he absolutely had to leave the apartment on the day the woman was supposed to arrive, he was doubting his decision immensely.
"I do not know other people," Gage remarked timidly. His guardian was pacing the room in strict left-to-right format. The frei himself was watching the clock as though it might unravel all of life's hidden mysteries. "Some other people, but not this other person."
"Don't worry about it." Julian was trying to be patient, he really was. "She sounded... interesting."
She would be wonderful, Gage thought to himself, if she arrived before Julian lost "it". He was not sure what "it" was, but he did know losing "it" was a very bad idea. Maybe the Sitter should hurry.
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Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 3:22 pm
It was about another three minutes until someone knocked on the door with force.
Amaris wrinkled her nose and wriggled her fingers, curling them in and out of a fist. She never knew quite how to knock; should she do it softly for three times, or apply a bit of pressure for three times, or knock once, or knock... repeatedly?!
"Nergh," she said intelligently, and ran her hands though her hair, making it stick out more than she had intended. This was her first time babysitting, and although she had previous experience with her own child and charge, she never really... took care of a stranger's kid before. Not really. At least she had known Aylana a bit before accepting responsibility for her child. Although she had told herself not to, she found her mind wandering, wondering what kind of kid she'd be taking care of. Was it even a kid? Was it all just a clever ruse to kidnap her and sell her for ransom to whoever cared?!
She scratched her nose. Well, for a complex kidnapping plan, it paid pretty well. She smiled expectantly at the door.
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Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:58 pm
Approximately five seconds after the woman knocked on the door, it swung open inwardly, revealing a rather frazzled looking Julian. He was almost on the verge of being late, and that was enough to make his small, secluded world fold in upon itself. While the young man was of an average height, neither especially tall nor especially short, he managed to loom over the doorway's other occupant all the same. "Are you Ms. Amaris?"
She was given next to no time to respond before the intern was ushering her inside of the apartment and thrusting quite a few pieces of paper into her arms. Most of the sheets were headed with the phrase "Household Rules", but some others had such suspicious titles as "What Gage Can and Can Not Eat" as well as "Why Television is Rotting the Minds of Millions". Julian was in a bit of a rush.
"Sign on the bottom of the initial rule contract, and don't forget to lock the door behind me," he commanded as a parting message, leaving no room for arguement before he was out of the door and closing it as though to permanently leave a stable barrier between him and the female he had hired. And that was that.
Gage, on the other hand, was not so frank. He was hovering towards the side of the door, looking rather shocked at Julian's departure. While he knew the scientist did not usually lie to him, it seemed as though the reality of him leaving was not appropiate at all. If Gage had fully understood jokes, he might have written off the idea of a babysitter as one. Only, there the Sitter was, and there he was. Utterly Julian-less.
He froze like a floating, green iceberg.
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Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:07 pm
"Um" was pretty much all Amaris got to say before she was shoved in and handed papers. She flipped through them, bewildered. Babysitting didn't.... usually involve contracts.... did it?
"Is there a pen around here?" She mumbled, not wanting to find out what would happen if she didn't sign the contract. After a moment she started to rummage in the bag she had brought with her and pulled out a pencil, at least. She tried her best to read through the first page, she really did, but after the second sentence she found herself reading it over and over and over again but not really sinking in... So she just signed her name (and a little smiley face) on the line and was done with them all.
She looked up expectantly, then looked to the door, where she found the Raevan; if this had been a year ago, maybe she would have been more shocked and/or bewildered by the fact that the boy had no legs or waist to speak of, but after a few months in Gaia nothing really surprised her.
"Hey!" She chirped, flashing him a smile. "My name's Amaris and I'll be taking care of you for a little while, okay?"
Finally thinking that maybe the papers she had been given held some pertinent information, she started to paw through them helplessly. "Um, I don't suppose you could translate that guy's babble..." There was one in particular that seemed relatively important: What Gage Can and Can Not Eat? "Um, you're Gage, right? Are you allergic to something?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:08 pm
Gage's expression changed subtly as the woman gave her title and looked through the papers. It was clear the Sitter was no fanatical, scary person, but perhaps fear was not the emotion welling up inside of the Raevan. True, the situation was new and unfamiliar, but there was something else causing him to narrow his eyes and look inwardly rather than at the lady Amaris. There was something boiling within him, a realization that was at once painful and revolutionary for the Raevan.
Had Julian just left him? Just like that?
The Sitter's questions jolted the frei out of his thoughts. The image that had been forming was as easily destroyed as one's reflection in a puddle when a child splashes into it. Once the idea was shattered, Gage did not have the will to try and summarize it again. Sometimes it was better to stay foreign to one's own feelings.
"I eat energy from plants. And flowers," he explained as he fought the impossible urge to wring his hands. The action was nervous and compulsive and Julian had said to try and stop doing it. Everyone was a creature of habit, Julian would comment and sometimes Gage might wonder "what sort of creature?".
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Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 3:42 pm
"O-okay," she said automatically, though she couldn't help but frown a little. That was an odd way to phrase it. Was he like a vegetarian vampire or something? Well, whatever. Surely Mr. Sweet would have told her about any other pressing issues regarding his... um... son, she supposed, so instead of making the effort to read through all the papers she had been given (by which time Mr. Sweet would most likely be home and pushing her out the door), she tapped them together neatly, leaving the sheet with ways to contact him at the top just in case.
"Nice apartment," Amaris mumbled, standing up and smoothing her skirt. "It's... um... very neat. Do you guys like have a separate apartment for sleeping or something? 'Cause I mean..." Looking up, she saw a framed photo on the wall... it was... it was so straight. She impulsively reached up to the upper left corner of the frame and pushed it down - just a little.
Was she leading that boy down a road of no return? Maybe. But at least he'd enjoy being a kid. Maybe.
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Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 9:39 pm
As the Sitter commented on their surroundings, Gage visually examined the apartment as though for the first time. The room they were situated in was picture perfect, if the person taking the picture preferred angles and exactness to anything actually resembling a real, comfortable living room. The now slightly altered picture frame was the only thing not kept in perfect space, proportion, and position. One could only imagine even finger-prints were disinfected and wiped away every time Julian walked through the room.
Gage thought it needed more green.
"I do not sleep," he commented. While Gage was still unsure if he approved of being left alone with a stranger, slowly he was at least accepting the situation for what it was. Any morose suspicions on the subject were being kept deep inside his mind. Still, his statement was more or less true. The radioactive material that formed the Raevan's fel essence rarely required he sleep. Most of his nights were spent completing small activities in Julian's study or around the apartment complex. Only once in a long while would he formally have to rest in order to replenish his energy supply.
His gaze caught the Sitter's. "You do not like it?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 10:17 pm
Amaris stared at Gage, mind working furiously. "Well, no... I mean.. it's.. It's a nice apartment," she said firmly, breaking the gaze and turning to the room. "It's a very nice apartment. It's the kind of thing you only see in pictures, actually. It's... it's so clean." She almost whimpered. "Even I can't get my house that clean -- although I live in a mansion," she quickly noted. Then paused. "And I have a butler," she added, trying to regain what pride she had left.
She returned to the couch and examined it closely. Wrinkling her nose, she fluffed up the pillows, making them look poofier than usual, then turned to the coffee table. There she delicately picked apart the newspaper lying there and draped the sheets over the table. Moving to the blinds, she set them half-shut, opened the door to the bedrooms and left them ajar, rearranged some things in the refrigerator, moved the dish soap inexplicably to the top shelf of a cupboard, and made sure to muss up the carpet a little.
Lying her hands on the back of one of the chairs, facing away from Gage, she paused. And then she spun around, grinning brightly. "And when you get legs or become a real boy or whatever I expect you to make a nice buttprint on that couch," she said quickly, then smiled a little more sincerely. "So what do you wanna do? Watch TV? Go outside? I know a great arcade near here," she blurted, rocking forward on her feet excitedly. "It's got tons of stuff, it's great - have you ever been to one?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:26 am
As soon as Amaris began to move around the apartment, Gage was right behind her. Like a parent following an especially messy child, he tried to fix all of her little alterations, but everytime he stopped to put an object back into its proper position the Sitter was jetting off to toy with another perfect element of the Raevan's home. Julian was not going to be pleased when he returned. The green frei was sure of it.
When the human finally stopped long enough to offer some choices towards her temporary ward, Gage was nearly speechless. He felt the smallest inclination towards irritation at the woman's need to create havoc, but at the same time more pressing matters had presented themselves. "I am not supposed to watch tel-a-viz-shun, and..."
He paused. The question he was meaning to ask seemed childish. His gaze lowered itself to the floor, and it seemed the Raevan might have been pouting as he continued his response. "What is an ar... cade?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:41 am
Amaris froze.
Shock wasn't really a proper word for it. This was the mind-halting, melting, "STOP THE FACTORY" kind of announcement. He didn't watch TV? Or know what an arcade was? And lived in this freakishly neat apartment? What the heck was that guy doing to the poor kid?!
"Well," she said slowly, lowering herself onto a chair. "I take it you don't know what a video game is either...."
She sighed and pulled the pencil out of her bag again and pulled one of the sheets of newspaper to her, gesturing for the Raevan to come near. "Okay, so, um, not far from here is an awesome arcade," she began, then scratched her nose. "You've been to stores, right? Where they sell clothes and things? Well here they sell tokens -" she drew a little coin on one of the margins of the page - "So you can play video games and laser tag and do cool stuff! And all of these things are kept in the arcade so you can't use the tokens anywhere else.
"A video game is like something you would play on the television -" here, she pointed to the cabinet where she supposed the television was kept - "But the games at the arcade are made specially so you can only play them there and - and um - you can shoot space invaders with laser guns and stuff..." She drew a lopsided-looking arcade box. "It's kind of hard to describe," she finally admitted, scratching her nose again. "But if you want to go we can at least check it out. We can't just stay in here all day long." It's kind of creepy.
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Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:13 pm
The situation, Gage had at last decided, was an experiment. There was a scientific method for that. First, a problem should arise for which one might need to make an hypothesis. In this case, the problem was there was a strange Sitter invading the household. The hypothesis was somewhere within the many compartments that made up Julian's mind, but if his Raevan was to take a guess, it involved Gage's general reaction towards the Sitter. There was something disturbingly relieving about that assumption for the Raevan. If what he believed was correct, really this was all a test to see if he would fit in with society. All he would have to do is agree with the Sitter, please the Sitter, avoid noticing that the Sitter was somewhat strange, and perhaps Julian would be pleased.
Clasping his hands neatly together, the Frei did his very best to pretend he at all understood or wanted to see the foreign object Amaris was describing. His eyes focused on the drawing, narrowing and widening as a weak explanation was given for every part of the doodle. The lines were forming a picture, but even the words to accompany them were not exactly making a crisp image.
That left a single option; only one curtain to look behind.
"I want to see." There was a strange weight and hesitance to Gage's words, as though he had just signed over his soul to a force he considered neither good nor evil. Soon enough he expected to figure that out.
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Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:49 pm
There was a slow, steady intake of breath the moment after Gage had finished that statement, then a loud squeal. Amaris jumped up from the chair and, grabbing the boy's hands in hers, bounced in circles with him. "We're going out! We're going out!" She sang, then released him quickly and turned to reach for her sweatshirt. "Do you have a jacket or something? It's cold out there! We'll have to walk a bit, you don't mind do you?"
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Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 4:57 pm
Gage had an easy time of moving in circles considering he had no feet to get in the way. He merely moved, always the same as the girl pulled him around. Unsurprisingly, the explosion of joy produced a confused expression from the Raevan. While he was sure the arcade was some mythical place wherein coins allowed you to kill aliens, there seemed no obvious reason for the girl to be so very pleased about it all. As far as he knew, half the people in Gaia liked Aliens (while Julian did not believe in letting his charge watch tv, he had very little against news via the radio).
"I do not need a coat. I can not walk," the Frei stated with a slight shrug as he admitted the latter point. Being radioactive kept him from getting cold for the majority of the time, and floating did not require as much energy as going on foot would have. If anything, Gage felt the Sitter was getting the raw end of the deal. He released one of her hands, holding firmly onto the other incase she tried to bounce out the door without him. "Do not worry about me."
Julian had said that once with the exact same look in his eyes.
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Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 5:04 pm
"Oh, um, well then it's a long -" She glanced at his lower body briefly. "... Float." Well, whatever! Shrugging her sweatshirt on quickly, she only then realized that he was still holding on to her other hand. Smiling apologetically, she pried his hand off hers and held onto him with that hand while she stuck her arm through her other sleeve. "And we're off!" She cried triumphantly and was only halfway through the door (a new record!) before she screeched to a stop. "Wait -" She spun around and peered back into the apartment. "Is there anything we have to do before we can leave? Does the stove need to be turned off or something? Close the blinds? Do a tiki dance and slaughter a sheep?..."
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Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:18 am
If Gage was one to do so, he might have sighed in exasperation. Instead, he simply shook his head, grabbed the spare key from one of the living room's cabinet drawers, and lead the way out of the room. As though he was the temporary guardian rather than the temporary charge, he gently ushered the Sitter forward, locking the door behind her so that all three other occupants of the apartment building would not be able to break in. He was fairly sure none of them were stupid enough to steal anything from Julian, but they might make more of a mess. Vyn's guardian in paticular was untrustworthy wherein things involved keeping Dr. Sweet happy.
"I have never met an alien," Gage admitted as he hovered his way towards the stairwell. For reasons purely his own he was not a fan of the elevator.
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