raven

  ❝Souls look like stars!❞ Indie rp blog.

[margotontheverge-deactivated201]

“That could be another mission,” Magdalyn said thoughtfully. “To get our parents to make friends with each other.”

Not only would this make her mother less lonely, it would mean her father could find someone else to go to the park and museums and everywhere all the time with, so if she wanted to take some time off, he’d have someone else to keep him company and he wouldn’t be terribly disappointed. Someone who didn’t get overstimulated and exhausted like she and her mom did.  Maybe one of Astrid’s parents also enjoyed shopping and going out to lunch and getting endless refills on their iced tea when everyone was done eating and it was time to go already!  Or maybe their parents could go out together and they could hang out at the house alone with just the animals like proper grownups and work on their secret missions.

“Documoto.” She liked that. It sounded important. “I think we should transmit some of our data, but maybe not all of it. The debriefing can be more in depth. A thorough analysis of all of it. That way if our data gets intercepted, it’s only some of it.”

She imagined their data getting intercepted in some nefarious way like her mother misplacing her own cellphone and asking to use hers then seeing all her messages to Astrid and starting in on some speech about data plans and overage rates. It could kill the entire operation. 

[astrid-janeway]

“Yes,” Astrid agreed, all enthusiasm. “That’s a wonderful idea!”

Magdalyn’s parents sounded like smart and interesting people. Plus, they seemed to love animals, just like her parents. Surely they would get along. Astrid thought her mother in particular would like having friends who enjoyed riding horses, and going to museums and art galleries, rather than people like the ones in their neighborhood who wanted her mom to participate in bake sales or come over for “chitchats.” Her mom had tried to make cookies for one of the bake sales and had described it as a “nightmare.” Astrid and her dad had actually found it kind of funny. The stuff her mom had used to make the...um, cookies, had been all over her and all over the kitchen. Her mom was truly a terrible cook. 

“I like the way you think,” Astrid replied, grinning broadly. Magdalyn thought like an officer. She was quick and smart. She would have been a natural for Starfleet. If they’d been back on Voyager, or even just back in the 24th century, Magdalyn would probably be doing Academy prep with her. “Okay. So we’ll start the mission tonight, and we can stay in contact with our phones to figure out how much progress we’ve made and transmit some of the data. Once we have enough we can meet for a debriefing!” She was so excited. “When you make your Documoto, you can add me by searching for ‘a voyager.’ There’s a dash between the ‘a’ and ‘voyager.’” 

[thewinchesterdaily]

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Magdalyn looked at her confused for a moment. She’d thought she’d said her grandparents were dead. Wait, no, they’d been talking about their mothers’ parents. Her mathematician grandmother must be her father’s mom. Well that was something else they had in common then, only having paternal grandmothers. She wondered if she had grandfather on that side too. Magdalyn was still a little sad she’d never gotten to meet her own grandfather. Her dad had lots of stories about him and he sounded like he would have made an awesome Grandpere.

“I bet your mom and my dad would get along a lot,” Magdalyn mused. “He can talk about science stuff forever.  He reads my mom science articles for bedtime stories. But, yes, I really would like to meet her.”  Of course she did. She’d worked for NASA. That was pretty badass.

“Keeping a secret is just for fun. Because it’s more exciting like..covert ops. No, wait, that’s wrong. It’s clandestine ops,” Magdalyn quickly corrected herself.

She liked the idea of documenting the things and people that mattered the most to her and she liked the idea of being sneaky about it. She planned to hide under furniture to get some good footage of her family. 

“Yes, I think that’s an excellent first mission! A mission of knowledge and of friendship. What’s the app called?” 

[astrid-janeway]

“Oh, I bet they would,” Astrid agreed, upbeat at this notion. Her mom could use some friends too. The ladies in their neighborhood put her in a bad mood sometimes... Of course, she had Sam and Dean. She and Sam even talked about science. But Sam and Dean were gone hunting a lot. Whenever they came over, her mom treated them, in many ways, as she would Astrid. Her mom did have a tendency to “mother” people, everyone really. Astrid thought Sam and Dean seemed to like this though. Probably because their mom had died when Sam was just a baby. Astrid liked it too because this made Sam and Dean kind of like her big brothers. Plus, it was just sad to think of anyone without a mom to love them. Her mom tried to get them to stay at the house too, for as long as possible. Astrid knew this was in part because she worried about them, but she thought part of it might be that her mom was lonely for more company as well. 

Astrid nodded. Keeping secrets could be fun. Magdalyn probably didn’t know this, but it could also be necessary. Maybe it was good Magdalyn had brought it up, as it seemed Astrid needed the practice. She smiled, not really knowing the difference between covert and clandestine ops but wanting to appear as if she’d understood. 

A mission of knowledge and of friendship. Astrid’s grin broadened. She was so happy in this moment. She would remember it for a very long time, even when she’d forgotten a lot of other things. 

“Oh, um...,” she glanced down at her phone. “Documoto. --We can add each other as friends and transmit our data to each other that way, or we can wait until we get together and then have a debriefing.” 

[margotontheverge-deactivated201]

“Oh! They do!” Magdalyn’s eyes lit up. “My dad has the best stories! Because they’re really GROSS! Sometimes Mom will say, like, ‘please not while we’re eating’ but I can tell she likes them too. Mom doesn’t talk about her work as much because she’s not supposed to, but I don’t think I would like it because I do like animals but it’s too many people. I’d rather work with just animals. Or just me. Maybe a scientist or something. I’m good at math so that’s good for that. I have a real microscope at home, not a dumb kid’s one. Dad got it for me.”   She was usually a quiet child but occasionally she got going and talked a blue streak, as her mother put it. 

“You sound like my mom. She says animals have gentle souls, even the tigers and the lions when they rip up the other animals because it’s just that they need to eat. They’re not cruel like people who hurt each other just because they like to.” 

“Yes, our very first mission! What should it be?” Magdalyn turned thoughtful. “We should keep it a secret for now like in the CIA. We could get a notebook and write about the missions in it but then write on the cover like School Notes or something so nobody knows what it is.”

[astrid-janeway]

Astrid grinned, showing teeth, when Magdalyn said “GROSS” the way she did. Astrid really liked her. She felt lucky for the first time since she had started school. She thought she would like to hear some of Magdalyn’s dad’s gross stories. She wondered if she would, if she did, as Magdalyn had mentioned earlier, come to visit and see the animals. It all sounded so fun and interesting. She hoped it happened. And soon. She listened carefully as Magdalyn talked. It seemed a shame her mother couldn’t talk about her work, though Astrid didn’t comment on it. She didn’t really understand why that would be, but maybe she was kind of like a doctor too. Patient confidentiality. The EMH had at times talked about things like that. Then again, Magdalyn’s dad was a doctor and he talked about his work stories. .

“Maybe you’d like to talk to my mom about that. She loves science. I mean, I do too. But my mom actually is a scientist, and my grandma is a mathematician. --And maybe when I come over sometime you can show me your microscope. I bet we could use that in missions.”

“That’s true,” Astrid said, “well, usually.” Magdalyn’s mom’s words sounded a bit like Uncle Q's, but she imagined her point had more been ‘animals are good’ rather than ‘people are bad.’ “I like your mom,” Astrid commented thoughtfully. It sounded like bad things had happened to her, but instead of letting that make her mean (like Ethan, possibly) she had stayed gentle and kind. And she loved animals!

“Hm...,” Astrid considered this. What should their first mission be? Astrid still had a mission to get her dad to resurrect the sparrow, but as much as she wanted to share that with Magdalyn, she knew it was out of the question. Magdalyn made a suggestion about keeping the missions secret and keeping a secret notebook. “That’s a really good idea,” Astrid commented, impressed. “I actually keep a log book. And I write about my missions in it. But I never thought about keeping it secret...” She suddenly wondered if she was more like her dad than she’d realized. She had two log books, one on her phone and one in an old fashioned notebook. The front of her notebook read: Astrid’s Log.

“Maybe, since we’re new friends...we should introduce our lives to each other. We could go home and collect data. In this case, we could film where we live, our families, and our pets!” This way, Astrid could satisfy some of her curiosity about what Magdalyn’s life was like and (kind of) meet her animals. “And you could show me your microscope and maybe some of your other favorite things. Whatever you think is important...I know it’s not very scientific, but we could think of it as an away mission into our own lives. A first contact mission!” Plus, Astrid thought it might be helpful to have this to show her parents if Magdalyn really did invite her over.  

She showed Magdalyn her phone again. “I have this app that I use as one of my logs. The other is a notebook. With this you can write things and add in photos, audio, and video. We could use this. You don’t have to use --money for it.” 

[margotontheverge-deactivated201]

Now Magdalyn was the one who was in awe.  “The FBI and NASA?” No wonder Astrid seemed more intelligent than her other classmates. “That’s so cool. They must have a lot of awesome stories.  An equine therapist is someone who works with people who have problems by having them interact with horses, taking care of them and sometimes riding. My mom works with kids mostly and some teens.  The ER is the Emergency Room.” 

She was a little surprised Astrid didn’t know that one. It seemed like most people ended up there at one point or another or someone in their family did. But she didn’t actually know what NASA stood for either, just that it had to do with space travel and science. 

She listened intently. Missions sounded like investigations. That made sense, given Astrid’s father’s line of work.

She pulled her cellphone out of her jeans pocket. “I mostly just use it to text my parents and my grandmere,” she confessed. “And I have some games. Here,” she handed her phone to Astrid. “Let’s put our numbers in each other’s. Then we can start doing the missions.” She thought her father would like the idea of their missions as they involved learning and held a sense of adventure.  Maybe she could get her parents involved too. Maybe if she sold her mother on it, she’d discover it was even more fun than shopping (the most boring thing on earth) and they’d never have to do it again even if she did outgrow things sometimes. 

[astrid-janeway]

“Yeah, they do have a lot of really awesome stories,” Astrid confirmed with a conviction that didn’t quite match the slightly uncertain smile on her face. Of course, most of those stories were connected to the life her mother had spent as a Starfleet officer (which Astrid thought had to be cooler than NASA) and the (very long) life her dad had spent as an angel of the Lord. So...not really any stories they could share with Astrid’s new friend, unfortunately. Still, Astrid was learning that there was a way of telling the truth even within a lie. Though this story of her family was not factual, there was truth in it. She thought it was kind of neat how that worked, but she had a feeling it was something her dad wouldn’t particularly appreciate. He still struggled with lying. He wasn’t especially good at it. And he sometimes even seemed to forget that he needed to. Out of her parents, he was much more likely to be the one who would tell Magdalyn one of his (true) stories. “I bet your parents have a lot of interesting stories too. I’ve never heard of an equine therapist before, but it sounds like one of the best jobs ever. Helping people and getting to work with animals? I would love to do that. --It makes sense too, because most animals truly do want to help.”

“Okay,” Astrid agreed happily, taking Magdalyn’s phone and pulling her own from her pocket and handing it over. She felt pleased with herself for knowing how to put her number in. 21st-century technology was...different. Her mom still struggled with it at times and her dad, she suspected, had always struggled with it. Though he had more familiarity than she or her mom did at this point, Astrid had quickly become the technology expert in the house. She handed Magdalyn’s phone back.

“Maybe we should have a mission for today, or tonight after school.”

[astrid-janeway]

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[astrid-janeway]

[astrid-janeway]

[capt-kathryn-janeway-blog]

[capt-kathryn-janeway-blog]

[magnumlux-blog-deactivated20201]

“Mommy, Daddy,” Astrid said excitedly. “Look what I made with Kes and Neelix today!”

[houselannistarth]

As requested by @deannastroi

[margotontheverge-deactivated201]

Magdalyn wasn’t sure what consulting was either, but it did sound business-y and boring. “What kind of work does your dad do? And what did your mom used to do? My dad’s an ER surgeon and my mom is an equine therapist.”  

Astrid seemed very impressed by their horses and their stable. Magdalyn was aware that her family had more money than some of her classmates’, and she hoped she hadn’t sounded like she was bragging.

But Astrid was grinning. 

“Sure, our own missions! How would that work? I mean what would we do exactly?” She was excited but still slightly confused. 

[astrid-janeway]

He’s a hunter, she’d almost said. But no, Astrid had been told not to tell anyone that again. She’d done so once and it had resulted in one of those awkward moments in their neighborhood... 

“Um, well, he’s actually a consultant too, but he gets to do more hands on stuff. He works with the FBI.” In other words, Dean and Sam. “He helps find bad people,” or things, “and stops them from hurting anyone. My mom used to be in the military and then worked for NASA. Not as an astronaut or anything, just in the background, doing science. But now she only consults and does all her work on a computer at home.” 

Her uncles had helped her mom get the paperwork and credentials she needed to consult. It was work she could “do in her sleep,” she’d heard her say once. She knew her mom still hoped to get back to Voyager, but she’d also heard her say that if they didn’t find a way back soon, she would need to change to another field. “Start over with something new,” she’d said. Something she couldn’t “accidentally damage the timeline” with. She had started painting some. Maybe if they were stuck here, she would become an artist like Astrid’s Aunt Phoebe, who Astrid had never met. 

“What’s an equine therapist? -And what does ER stand for?” She understood that a surgeon must be a kind of doctor who...just did surgeries? But the abbreviation meant nothing to her.

“Well...” Astrid hesitated. The missions her mom had sent her and her dad on had often been technical and more in depth than the ones they went on now. “It can be anything. Like...since you go visit cathedrals and I’ve never been to one, the next time you’re at one you could have a mission to tell me about, or show me, your favorite thing in the cathedral. Or your mission could be to find something that starts with the letter...A.” This wasn’t exactly how the missions had worked aboard Voyager, but she couldn’t think of any other way to do them here. “Sometimes the missions are easy. Sometimes you have to find out things. Like...your mission could be to find out how they built the cathedral. --Do you have a phone?” Astrid had a phone. She liked it. It was a bit like a communicator and a bit like a PADD. “We could communicate about missions with our phones. And then, at school or if we visit each other, we could go on some missions together. We could either think of something we both don’t know that we could go find out. Or one of our parents could assign us a mission.”

[margotontheverge-deactivated201]

“My dad likes documentaries about animals too.  I don’t know about bees. He really likes snails though.” 

Did all dads like nature documentaries? She was intrigued by the idea of missions. She didn’t fully understand what they entailed in this case, but it sounded like some kind of game.  A fun one.

“My mom works at home too. In the stables. And my dad works at the hospital. They made their schedules so someone’s always around and I don’t have to be left with nannies like Mom was. Dad mostly works late at night.” 

She was aware that she came from a good, loving family and that a lot of children didn’t, like some of the kids her mother worked with and she was grateful for that. She was pleased to hear that it sounded like Astrid did too, since she also seemed to have trouble fitting in with her classmates.

“I would love to go on a mission with you and your family,” Magdalyn said, eyes shining. 

[astrid-janeway]

Astrid smiled. Maybe dads, both of the angel and human variety, universally liked documentaries about...rather odd creatures. Astrid loved bees, and snails too for that matter. But they weren’t exactly her first choice to watch a documentary about.

“My dad works a lot at night too. Though not always. And sometimes he has to travel and be away for days. My mom works at home doing consulting, which I don’t entirely understand, but I think it’s kind of boring compared to what she used to do.” Her mom seemed happy most of the time, but sometimes Astrid would catch her at work when she thought nobody was around. When she thought no one saw her she looked sad and worried. She stared out at nothing in particular. 

Her dad was from here, well, no...he wasn’t. But he had lived here for a long time before. And Astrid had grown up hearing stories about what it was like on 21st century earth, both from her dad and Uncle Tom. But her mom was very much a fish out of water here. Fish out of water... That was a really sad saying. 

“It’s really nice that your mom gets to work at home because you have stables there,” Astrid continued. “I can’t believe you have stables at your house.” This was pretty much the best thing nine year old Astrid Janeway could imagine. The girl who had grown up on a starship was clearly impressed. She hoped Magdalyn had meant what she’d said about having her over to see all the animals. She kind of wanted to ask her about it, but she thought maybe she shouldn’t seem so eager. When Uncle Dean had found out she was having trouble making friends at school, he’d sat her down and given her some advice, and part of that advice had been to “play it cool.” 

Astrid’s grin brightened at Magdalyn’s response to the idea of missions. 

“Great! --We could do our own missions too.” She liked the idea of Magdalyn going on a mission with her family, but she also liked the idea of keeping her friend to herself for a little while. Her family, from her mom and dad to Uncle Dean and Uncle Sam, could all be a little...intense, and prone to various types of interrogation due to how they thought Astrid might be a “target”...at least that’s what she thought she’d overheard. 

Plus, she knew her parents were a little...out of step with the people around them. There had already been a few awkward encounters in their neighborhood. The people there mostly seemed pretty oblivious though. They might make comments or give strange looks, but they didn’t have the types of minds that made connections. Magdalyn seemed like she did. If she started asking the wrong questions (or the right ones, depending on your point of view) things could get...complicated.

[margotontheverge-deactivated201]

Magdalyn looked at her a little skeptically, not sure how to react to all this praise from a classmate. “Thank you, Astrid. That’s very kind.”  She gave her one of her hard-won warm smiles.

“Oh, yes, my dad and I do all kinds of things.  We do art like paint our feelings and we cook and we learn different languages and research different things because I have a lot of questions and sometimes we play instruments and he teaches me riddles and anagrams and we make up codes. And then other times we go to the park or to the museum. It’s a little exhausting,” Magdalyn confessed. “Sometimes I wish we could just watch a movie together or something.  Mom says Dad needs a lot of activities or he gets too restless and he forgets that not everyone is like that so I should just say something if I want a break but he always has so much fun- it’d feel mean.  What kinds of things do you do with your dad?” 

[astrid-janeway]

“Oh, we do a lot together. One thing we do is go on missions,” Astrid exclaimed with a grin. “They’re really fun. --When I was younger, my dad took care of me while my mom worked, and she would give us missions to go on during her duty shifts. There would always be something we needed to find the answer to, or locate, or understand, or experience. We still do that some, when we can. Though now my dad has to go away for work and my mom works from home so she can be with me. So he leaves us missions for while he’s gone. Sometimes we all do them together though. And my dad teaches me a lot, about life and...other things. And he tells the best stories. True ones. We watch things sometimes too. Maybe you could come over and watch with us sometime, if you like to do that. Like movies and documentaries about animals. My dad’s favorites are documentaries about bees.” She laughed. “He loves bees. And maybe we could do missions together sometime too.” She glanced over at her new friend to gauge her level of interest.

[castielappreciation]

[jonathanohhey]

[random-photos-x]

UndeR ControL # by GuillaumeRio. (http://ift.tt/1F6RUv3)

[margotontheverge-deactivated201]

Magdalyn’s eyes widened when Astrid said her father believed in all that. She knew all about religious types, like her mother’s family and she knew that you had to be wary of them even if some of them were okay. She hoped Astrid wasn’t being locked in prayer closets or being told she would go to Hell for sins like biting her nails or spending too long looking at herself in mirrors. 

She nodded quietly listening to Astrid’s next words. They made sense. Everything was always changing, wasn’t it? She wondered what she’d be like as a grownup. More like her father or more like her mother or something in between, hiding in the spaces where they overlapped or maybe even altogether different. 

Ms. Neistrom came back for the box just then. “Don’t worry,” Magdalyn assured her new friend once she’d taken off with it, “Ms. Neistrom will keep him safe. She’s the type of adult you can trust.”

“So your father’s religious?” she asked, unable to resist her curiosity. “I’ve been to cathedrals with my dad, just because they’re beautiful. We listen to the organ music or we sit quietly and sketch the architecture. They make me feel all hushed inside, like I’m caught inside a snow globe or like I’m part of something that goes on and on forever. I think that might be a spiritual sort of feeling, but I don’t know.” 

[astrid-janeway]

"Astrid,” Ms. Neistrom said, approaching the pair, still crouched by the sparrow’s box. “Can I take your bird inside now? --I promise you can take him with you after school if it’s alright with your mom.”

Astrid shut the box, standing and handing it solemnly to her teacher.

“Yes, okay... Thank you, Ms. Neistrom.”

She watched as Ms. Neistrom walked back to the school, box held slightly out and away from her body, as if she didn’t want it too close. As if the bird’s death might be contagious in some way. It wasn’t time to go in yet. Astrid wondered if she’d come to take it because she’d seen Magdalyn petting the bird’s feathers. 

Astrid gave Magdalyn a slight and crooked grin at her kind assurances. 

“Yeah, she seems nice.”

“That’s beautiful,” Astrid replied, turning to her new friend, again surprised (and impressed) by her words. “--And I’m not sure, but it sounds like a spiritual sort of feeling to me...” The truth was, Astrid didn’t hear words like “spiritual” or “religious” much. In fact, she struggled and failed to remember any specific instance when she’d heard those words from someone she knew. Nevertheless, she had some idea of the concepts. “That’s really nice that your dad takes you there and you sketch together. I’ve never been to a cathedral, but I’ve seen pictures.” Though the holodeck had been utilized to allow Astrid access to many places on Earth, and elsewhere, a cathedral had never been chosen by either of her parents (or her other Voyager family). An Indiana farmhouse based roughly on the one her mother had grown up in? Yes. The eternal Tuesday afternoon of an autistic man who drowned in a bathtub in 1953? Yes. Cathedrals? No.Maybe they’d just never gotten around to it, or no one had ever had a chance to program one. The way Magdalyn had described it though, Astrid had a rather desperate and sudden desire to visit one.

“My dad...,” Astrid continued then, addressing Magdalyn’s question. “I don’t think he would really use the word religious. --Do you do a lot of things with your dad? Like go and visit cathedrals?” Perhaps Magdalyn and her dad visited other interesting places she would like to see. She found her mind lingering on a vision of Magdalyn and her dad, their matching red eyes focused on their sketches as they sat side by side within the grand beauty of the cathedral. It gave her a warm sort of feeling in her chest, but also a slight sadness, an ache. It was very different living on the open Earth than living within the confines of a starship. There were more dangers here for one, and her dad was going on trips to hunt with Sam and Dean, as well as doing other things which took him out of the house. Now it was her mom who stayed with her at home while her dad left to work, instead of the other way around as it had been for her whole life up until they came here. She was very happy to have extra time to spend with her mom. But she missed her dad. She wanted to sit next to him in a cathedral and listen to organ music.