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 Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 8:56 pm
Just before...Lofn thrust herself into the wind, submitting joyously to the feel of the brisk flow skimming her skin and flaring her hair back. Things always seemed so much less complicated when she was up here, where only the wind and the clouds and the sun coexisted.
She felt a brief pang for disregarding her mother's advice about not flying when the sun was high and people could see her, but pushed it away for now. Besides, she was high enough that no-one not expressly looking out for someone flying across the sky would see her... Which, she reasoned fretfully, meant very, very few people.
She flew higher, expertly dodging a small bird, and attempted to categorize her feelings. She felt... envious, unworthy, restless... lost. Yes, lost... That was the word for it.
But why?
And why did these disturbing sensations multiply ten-fold when she watched Takuto sing? Why did she feel almost jealous of him?
Takuto was very dear to her, and she was sure that anything that made him happy would make HER happy, too, and she WAS happy... But there was no denying it. She was jealous. Of - she nearly didn't manage to evade an incoming bird this time as she pondered the question - how easily he seemed to fall into this role of being a singer. Like it was meant to be.
Whereas sh-
Lofn checked her flight in mid-air, hovering as she looked around in bewilderment. For a moment there she could have SWORN she heard the sobbing cry of a child... Here, up in the sky. Impossible, but she had definitely heard...((It's getting a wee bit long, so I'll end it here. XD))
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Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 4:17 am
Crack!
There was no pain, not at first. Then, a burning sensation spread from her wing, seeped fire into her shoulder blades... She looked, numbly, at the little hole at the tip of her wing, just beginning to stain the snowy whiteness about it with crimson.
Such a little hole.
Panic squeezed her chest, making it hard to breathe; she flapped her wings frantically, ignoring the tearing pain in the right wing in her desperation to get away.
Crack!
She felt rather than saw the bullet graze the tip of her tail, and then her wings caught a current of warm air and she sped away, buoyed by both the opportune wind and her own agitation. Who could be shooting at her?
Crack!
The third shot sounded fainter, more distant, and this time the bullet missed by a wide margin. Not daring to slow down, lest she give whoever it was a clearer mark, she flapped her wings again. The pain flared, but it was less acute, since she'd anticipated it, and the wind bore her safely away.
Hundreds of metres on the ground behind her, a grizzled old man lowered his rifle from his shoulder, and cursed.
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Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2007 4:50 pm
Unfortunately, adrenaline could take one only so far, and her burst of strength soon left Lofn feeling weak and faint. Feebly, she moved her wings... The right one no longer hurt, but in place of the pain was an awful numbness, and she dared not turn her head to look at it.
The warmth of the sun seemed one moment oppressive, the next moment so cold it chilled her to the marrow, and she shivered uncontrollably. The shop, Lofn thought dazedly. I have to get back...
There was a violent swirl of nauseating colors which melted into deep, cool black then, and she surrendered helplessly to it, even as she became distantly aware of her plummet towards the earth.
Takuto...
Her eyes drifted shut, and the darkness claimed her.
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Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 5:27 am
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Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2007 11:14 pm
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Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:09 am
"Ne, do you think Tenshi-san's gonna be okay?"
Ow... Who... A girl? But I don't remember there being a new child...
"Shh, you idiot, you're waking her up!"
Lofn struggled to remain in the darkness, but the murmurings of those two - a boy's voice had added to the girl's - were maddening. She tried to reach for her pillow to cover her ears with, but the movement was rewarded with a stabbing pain that completed her rise to wakefulness. She opened her eyes.
A young child, distinctly WITHOUT neither tail nor cat ears, was hovering over her, her round, rosy-cheeked face not two inches from her own. "She's awake! Tenshi-san's awake!
Lofn would have yelped, if her mouth hadn't felt like someone had stuffed a wad of cotton wool into it and given it a good swish around before pulling it out, leaving fuzz clinging to her tongue. Instead, she croaked, "Who...?"
The child squealed. "Tenshi-san TALKS!" The sound was jarring, and Lofn winced.
"Oh, put a sock in it, Elina." The boy - a raven-haired child of around ten or twelve - moved into her line of vision and peered at her curiously. "She needs QUIET, like in all those medical dramas! Now go get some water."
Lofn would have welcomed an entire jugful of water just then, but her need to know where it was... her situation... was even more pressing. She rose on one elbow halfway, then fell back with a soft cry; her wing throbbed with a dull but insistent pain that prevented any further movement.
"Don't move," the boy warned, fussing with his oversized spectacles. "You need to rest. Your... wing got shot." He sounded eagerly professional, if there was a way to sound eager and professional at the same time.
The brief period of time - how interminable it had seemed when it was all happening, and yet Lofn thought now that it could not have been more than a few minutes, ten at most - before she had blacked out came back to her in terrifying clarity, and a tear of delayed shock welled up in her eye before she blinked it back. Her wing... She glanced at it, almost afraid to find it mutilated, useless, crippled... A neat crisscross of white bandages binding her wing surprised her gaze.
She looked back at the boy; he nodded proudly. "I'm going to grow up to be a doctor, just like my dad. Bandaging a gunshot wound is child's play!"
That it should be strange for a young child to be familiar with GUN wounds completely escaped Lofn's foggy mind. She wet her lips with her tongue and found that she could speak and move her head a little without incurring a fresh wave of pain. "Th-thank you... Where am I...?"
"Will! I'm back!" A swift pitter-patter of bare feet accompanied by an ominous sloshing of water in a container sounded just outside the door, before the owner of those feet inserted a wheedling pout into her voice. "Open the door, silly, I can't turn the knob while I'm holding a jug AND a glass, can I?"
Will sighed, and got up to answer... Elina's? summons. "Angel-san, this is my younger sister, Elina." He frowned at her. "You're spilling all the water, Elina! You know how finicky Dawly-san is about spilling things!"
Elina laughed lightly, musically, as she flounced over to the bed and poured a glass of water and held it out eagerly to Lofn. "Aw, it's only WATER, Will. It'll dry up!"
The young child - who didn't look more than seven or eight - helped Lofn to a sitting position as she held the glass of water to her lips. "Are you okay, Tenshi-san?" She checked herself. "Woops, I keep forgetting. I mean, Angel-san." Her countenance was beaming and cherubic, but as her plump fingers brushed Lofn's chin, it seemed to Lofn that she could very faintly hear a familiar sobbing wail...
Then the contact was broken and the ghostly voice vanished, leaving Lofn unsettled. Was it pure nerves? "Thank you," she repeated, drinking thirstily. "An-angel? Well..."
"You are an angel, aren't you?" Elina gestured vaguely at her wings. "I saw you fall from the sky!"
Will a-hemed then, and began in a clinical sort of tone. Lofn found herself thinking that he would be a VERY good doctor indeed; his voice was just concerned enough, but perfectly detached. "To be precise, we saw you falling from the sky at 1.10 pm in the afternoon. You were wounded and we brought you to our private tree-house and I treated you. It's not terribly serious; the bullet went straight in and out, so there wasn't any shrapnel to remove. You'll probably be fine in a couple of weeks." Then his natural exuberance took over. "Why were you falling from the sky? Are you really an angel?"
Lofn's mind was whirling again, but it snagged with relief on the boy's assurances that she wasn't crippled. Then it snagged with alarm on something else. "1... 1.10pm? What time is it now?"
Elina shrugged and pointed to the clock. "I can't read the time yet," she confided with an impishly repentant air.
"9?!" She yelped this time, and would have sprung out of bed if Will hadn't thrown his weight against her and restrained her. "You're not to get out of bed!"
"But it's 9! Mama and Takuto and everyone else must be so worried..." Oh, she knew that Kemis and Lewis and the other teenagers/adults frequently stayed out this late, but she'd never done so. She didn't really have that many places to go.
Will's eyebrows shot right up, above the spectacles which made his eyes seem even larger than they really were, even as he bullied her firmly back into bed. "You have a mom, Angel-san?"
Almost immediately, that faint sobbing was back, only more imperative. Lofn craned her ears trying to pinpoint its location, but it seemed to buzz all about her...
"... Angel-san?"
Lofn snapped back to herself. "What?"
Will looked at her strangely, before continuing. "I said, you should stay here until you've recovered some of your strength." He fidgeted uncomfortably. "Actually, you're not supposed to be here at all. Dad doesn't like us to interact with strangers. But it's okay!" He added urgently, "We'll hide you! No-one ever comes to the tree-house but us and our housekeeper, so..."
The boy looked so earnest and pleading that she melted. One night couldn't hurt, right? They seemed like nice people, and besides, she was feeling tired and sore... "Okay, but... Um... Is there a telephone here? I should call back..."
Will looked even more uncomfortable. "... Dad doesn't allow us to carry handphones, because... Because he doesn't like us to talk with strangers. The phone here is only an intercom. But there're phones up at the main house. Shall I carry a message for you?"
Lofn fought the urge to shut her eyes and fall back asleep. "Could you phone," she recited the house phone number with a sleep-slurred voice, "and tell Mama... that I'm... fine? Tell her that I'll be back soon..." The rest of her words were lost in an intelligible mumble.
Will and Elina stayed quiet until it was obvious that the angel had fallen back into slumber, before they crept from the room. Elina slipped her hand in her brother's. "Ne, Will, do you think Tenshi-san can help kaa-san and tou-san get back together again?"
Will squeezed her fingers. "I don't know, Elina. I don't know."
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Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:29 pm
Lofn was having an odd dream.
Scenes and scenery swam before her, as though she were watching an accelerated movie; of a happy world, where harmony existed and she (she?) felt safe and content. Life was a constant round of ballet lessons and piano lessons and school... And always, always there'd be the warm security of her mother's arms to comfort her at the end of a trying day.
And then things changed.
There had a car accident, and mama had gone to the hospital... "For some time", they'd said. There had been constant phonecalls, from her (her?) grandmother - she didn't like her, Grandmother had a frightening way of staring down her nose at herself and Will, like they were pesky bugs that had gotten onto her elegant clothes - from the doctor... She didn't know who else. They kept Will and herself away from the phone during that time.
"Some time" turned into a month, which turned into a year, which turned into two years...
Will knew what had happened. He always did. But the only time she'd dared to ask him... The only time she'd broken down into a great quivering wail and asked whether mama was dead, he'd hugged her - something he never did - and told her fiercely that no, she wasn't, that she'd come back, that Dad would make things so that she'd come back. She'd believed him, for a while.
Two years turned into three, and Papa had become cold and distant. Even when they ate dinner together at the large table, they rarely spoke, and the one time Elina had tried to pipe up about how difficult her piano lesson that day had been and whether Mama would be glad that she'd improved so much, Papa had become white and turned ANGRY eyes on her and told her to keep quiet while she was eating. She'd been so frightened she'd sobbed into her soup, and Dawly-san had to take her back to her room and comfort her.
When Lofn awoke, the sun was shining in through the lace curtains, and she could feel the stickiness of tears on her cheeks.
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Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 6:29 pm
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Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 7:02 pm
A lingering sadness stayed with her as she slid shakily out of the soft bed - noting with relief only a few mild twitches of pain skittering across her right wing - and made her way to the water jug, thoughtfully arranged on a platter along with a glass.
She touched her face... Still wet. These tears... Hers? Another's?
That dream had been far too real to truly BE a dream; she'd not only seen it, she'd felt it, in all its emotion.
She poured herself a glass, eyed the chair which was obviously built to a child's dimensions, and decided to plop upon the bed instead.
The dream was fading, its vivid detail receding into the mistiness of after-dream, and she sought to remember it desperately. Will... He'd been in that dream. Had comforted her, tiny tears glittering in his own eyes... No. Not her. Someone else.
Elina-chan?
But she didn't have the power to see another person's memories! At least, she'd never had that power before. Could it be possible, she wondered as she sipped gratefully at her glass, that she'd grown that power when, well, she grew?
The thought made her shake her head in self-denial. She didn't want such a power! It was... It was so sad. And, she added firmly with a touch of self-beration, it was mean of her to see another's private memories without their permission!
"Angel-san?" Then, very properly, "May I come in?"
Will.
She hurriedly drained the last drops of water from her cup and placed it back onto the tray, making an automatic, absent note to herself to wash it later. "Good morning!"
The door swung silently open, testimony to scrupulous maintanence. Will walked into the room awkwardly under the weight of a platter laden with covered dishes. Delicious scents wafted from it, making her stomach protest the fact that she had not eaten for nearly 24 hours... "Good morning, Angel-san. How's your wing?"
The greeting made Lofn uncomfortable. She was an angel, but she was an Oneroi, and she was pretty sure few people actually subscribed to the Oneroi religion... If that was the word for it. Besides, it made her feel a little bit like she were a specimen stamped "Angel" on display. "It feels much better, thank you. Err... Um... You know, my name's Lofn." She offered, smiling tentatively.
He set down the tray with a clatter and a sigh of relief, before turning to her and fussing with his spectacles nervously. "I'm Will Radborne. You met my sister yesterday...?" At her nod of confirmation (Lofn privately thought that she couldn't possibly forget her, given the dream she'd just had), he continued. "Lofn-san... Are you truly an angel?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 2:44 pm
Lofn ducked her head, considering her answer. Will looked absolutely serious, nothing like it was an idle question designed to satisfy a childish curiosity; did he want something of her? As an angel?
In the end, she opted for the truth, as she always did. "I'm sort of an angel. You see... I'm an angelic Oneroi." Bringing her tail around to her front, she waggled it a bit in emphasis. And then she repeated by rote what she'd heard Iria/Lucifer/Raine tell new parents so many times.
Will sat through it all, his small, grave face composed, although she glimpsed a disappointment in his eyes. He really was mature for a child, Lofn thought. Why, she'd been running around and... glomping people... at his age!
At last, she finished, and they simply sat in silence for a while. After a short period of time that Lofn spent fidgeting and wondering, he asked, "So you weren't sent to help us?" The heaviness in his voice made Lofn feel even MORE wretched and useless. Couldn't she help, somehow?
"Is this about your mother?" She blurted, Elina's despairing tears on her face still fresh in her memory.
Will's eyes widened in wonder. "How did you know about mom?"
Lofn twiddled her fingers in her lap. "I... I saw a dream. Just before you came... Something about an accident, and Elina-chan's mother not coming back." She looked up again, a little desperate. "Can I help? Somehow? I can't do much, but I'll do my best!" Despite her suspicion that those tears were shed in years long past, she was sure that the child carried her sorrow still within her. No child should have to grow up with something like that!
Taking his spectacles off and polishing it with the hem of his shirt - it was probably a fretful habit, seeing as how the glass hadn't had even a speck of dust on it - Will squinted short-sightedly at Lofn. "You can see dreams of people's pasts?"
"This was the first time," Lofn admitted. There was no doubt in her mind that the dream had been real, although she'd have been hard-pressed to say why. "Actually..." A new thought struck her, and it was distressing. "Before I came here... I heard a child crying. Then when I touched Elina-chan... and I heard the same crying..." She paused a little, looking at Will's expression; for just a moment, he looked pained. "I think... I think Elina-chan misses her mother." She finished timidly.
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