forest voices

A character references & writing blog.

[forestvoices]

One day she realized it had been at least a year since she'd even seen him, and that was the point when Quinn realized that she had probably been shatteringly sad over a lost love long enough.

****

Not that that helped anything, because it didn't change the way she felt. There had been something Miranda said, and it was pathetic that she would have been willing to agree to live a hundred years longer just to be able to say hello for one day.

Which was enormously unhealthy.

Which made the entire thing more pathetic, especially as Quinn didn't expect to make it past her mid-fifties in all realism, and had always resisted anything magically life-extending. She got dealt the cards that she held and that was what she was going to stick to --

-- and that was what made it all so horrible, really, that she could love someone that much that she would compromise that, for a single day, when they hadn't spoken in a while before he was gone, that she had ended up so unusually in love that a year later she found herself unable to move past it, still grieving every day.

She'd given romance one more chance and it had spat on her.

****

Quinn was no idiot; she saw a therapist.

It helped for the duration of the session, maybe a few hours later, and then she wouldn't be able to sleep and would remember how he tried to help by changing the rain patterns, and ...

Then she would stay up all night, maybe two, with Tony, and try her best to forget instead of actually dealing.

****

The man she bought her tea from smiled at her, talked to her, asked her things in a way that indicated a more than shopkeeper's interest; once upon a time, she might have reciprocated it.

He was nice to talk to.

She wasn't giving that sort of thing any more chances, though.

Invariably it went horribly, and trusting it one more time -- multiple times -- had basically broken her.

****

Forgetting was actually dealing. Forgetting was the only thing that worked.

She wasn't forgetting.

She actually wanted to, at this point; not even remembering the relationship had existed would stop her from dwelling on the moments. On everything that reminded her. It was sad how much reminded her, at this point; boardwalks and rainstorms and specific lakes, certain songs and anytime she texted anyone to complain about particular traffic, ever.

(She’d stopped texting that much at all, really.)

****

Complicated grieving was kind of an understatement.

There really were only two solutions: fix it somehow, which wouldn't happen (even if he did reappear, would anything work out? He might not even remember who she was, and as jealous as she was of Miranda -- no, envious -- it was one of them -- that wasn't something she wanted to deal with) or actually, properly move on.

"It would be nice," she told her therapist, "to be able to actually remember the good things without getting trapped in an emotional vice every time. It makes it very difficult to look back."

It wasn't an uncommon problem.

****

The people who said 'don't get attached to people from other worlds because they're just going to disappear someday' had always bothered her, but maybe they were right.

That kind of pessimism had always bothered her.

Able to return, she had chosen to stay in this unusual world, appreciating the additional challenges it brought her. Even to this day, when she could run home and pretend he'd never existed -- there was too much for her here.

That was more important.

And it was enough, until such time came again that she remembered something.

****

"You don't even have any friends outside work, except for Stark and the guy who owns the bar," her assistant pointed out. "You don't have any female friends anymore. How many people are you going to distance yourself with for how long?"

It was unfortunately just a reminder that she'd lost other people, too.

But she saw them when she went home, even if they didn't quite remember.

Somehow it didn't hurt as much, that way.

It was actually kind of nice that for the most part no one she socialized with knew anything about him.

****

One day, she was able to look at a photograph, and smile wistfully, and accept that a good thing had been and it probably was never going to be again -- she couldn't give away that tiny shred of hope that somehow things might get fixed again, because only part of the problem had been them, there'd really been nothing wrong, just not a lot of time and then -- nothing.

External influence.

But that one day she was able to experience a memory and just remember it.

****

Most days she'd do anything to get over it, and couldn't.

Most days she'd do anything to get through it and it was like trying to claw her way out of something impossible to breach -- it hurt, every second, and she just kept pushing despite the fact there was no way to escape.

Every day wasn't most days anymore.

****

Outside, lightning struck Stark Tower.

Inside, Pepper Potts sighed and ignored it as the power flickered and the generators kicked in, putting blankets over Tony and Quinn -- who had passed out in positions they'd regret in the morning on the living room floor.

The rhythmic rainfall on the balcony had been enough to soothe them, apparently.

Pepper turned off the TV.

[forestvoices]

3 sentence fics so far!

1. Archer and Issedi for Court

Holding her hand in his and spinning her about once, he looked her up and down one last time and took in the glorious tall hat with its floor-length wraparound veil and declared,

"Now you will look perfect for your wedding!"

Issedi didn't have the heart to point out that much as she would talk about wanting to have a wedding, she wasn't actually engaged, and didn't have anyone to marry or even anyone who would consider it, because watching him dress her up (especially in fine hats) was far too much fun. Instead, she just laughed, and kissed his cheek.

---

2. Adam and Erin for Court

So it wasn't actually that he could read her mind, just that whenever she told him what she wanted or even said it to anyone else where he could overhear it or read it or -- whatever, Adam always wanted to give Erin the things that she wanted.

Generally it wasn't like it was with Anathema and the nuclear reactor, but he was still doing things he'd promised the Them (and Aziraphale and Crowley and eventually even Owen and Kara) he wouldn't do like using his powers to create ice cream trucks in convenient locations and influence the weather and move ley lines around so the dousing work she went on with Spiritualist Lyonette worked out better, and he should've felt guilty, but he didn't, because he loved her.

It was all going fine until she whispered something as they were falling asleep under the stars and woke up with a giant water park in the backyard.

---

3. Danny and Lydia for Shans

"You know," she said, "Marrying me is actually a really horrible idea, because it's me and all, and so if we actually hold a wedding people are going to die or at least get seriously hurt, and something will be set on fire and nothing will go according to plan. We might even end up missing our own ceremony being pursued by the police across state lines for something we didn't do."

All Danny had in response was a grin and, "That's what makes being with you so much fun."

[forestvoices]

there's a followup two pages later i forgot so for completeness:

"I learned them both from observation, after all."

"Being a duke's wife and being a corpse?"

"... Sleeping."

[forestvoices]

"What if he actually loved you?"

"He doesn't."

"What if he did? Would it matter?"

"No."

"Because --"

"That's not where I belong."

"You don't belong dead, either."

"Maybe I do, rather than --"

"Issedi."

"What."

"You'd be better off a prince's wife than a corpse."

"I'd be better off a corpse than anyone's wife. Corpse, after all, I know how to do. Corpse is a relatively easy task. It's about the same level of complication as sleeping. I don't think I could be anyone's wife, but if I were, I wouldn't be a prince's."

"You know how to be a duke's wife."

"I'd still be a much better corpse."

[lonelymountains]

1-4/50 Pictures of Natalie Dormer

[forestvoices]

Gerd~

[fringefashion-blog]

Green Embroidered French Lace 1950 Vintage Party Dress from DevilNight

[forestvoices]

Miranda wants one.

[ladyinterior]

[jennaavh-deactivated20160117]

Oh I want a tree house!

[forestvoices]

reference for that one world

[forestvoices]

I WROTE ANYTHING AT ALL SO I WILL POST IT HERE even though no one cares about these characters and has no reason to read this

Just written to get her thoughts out. Because wow they were a fucking mess.

I hear the keening before I know who it is, and I can feel the pain shoot through my entire body — it stops me in my tracks, halfway across the bowl, surrounded by keening dragons. It's Cervilaevarth's pain and everyone else's, all at once.

« Ofrovth is gone, » he tells me, and if I hadn't already been frozen up I would be then.

It all moves quickly after that. We abandon the bowl quick as can be; I need to get away from the keening. He needs a private space up above, where he can watch all the others, keep an eye on the unfoldings without being in the thick of things. In the mess of it all. Our emotions drowned in a pool of everyone else's.

Not that that isn't what's happening to everyone else, anyway.

Cervilaevarth is on his ledge, head hanging down over the edge of it to watch — well, I'm not entirely sure what he's watching. I don't want to know. I assume it's chaos in the bowl; maybe they found Corelle's body; for the first time in my life I don't have any desire to be aware of every little thing that my home is doing.

I chose to come here.

I don't want to be here.

I'm curled up on the bed trying to tune everything out, because I hate myself right now.

I chose to come to this future, where we knew things were different. I chose to come here to help. We thought we could change things. And, to be honest, we wanted to fight Thread. We thought we knew what we were getting ourselves into, but we hadn't expected — this. Hadn't expected Corelle and her even more ridiculously uptight ways; somehow she managed to be more uptight than things already were. Damaging relationships with weyrfolk. Damaging relationships with the bazaar, which I have come to learn is a tenable but very, very important relationship. Not one I know anything about, but not one I'm about to encourage tossing aside, either. Things here have always been the way they are, to some extent — things here should not be the way they are, but who am I to say what should change and what shouldn't?

I have the utmost respect for W'rin, and I always will.

I never had any respect for Corelle other than what the job required, what my lifemate's instinct instilled in me. I realize that now. That I never met her, but I didn't like anything I heard about her.

That I wished I'd been more involved in the actions against her, Searched a couple girls myself. Actively making things better for this falling Weyr we'd come in to fix. Come 400 turns into the future to fix, leaving everything we knew behind. And Cervilaevarth was determined, if frequently distraught that he didn't have just the right plan yet. He was distracted by the coming of Thread, the insistence upon which he forced me to read over every old formation chart in existence to expand on it, to learn new things, to broaden horizons so we could be new and innovative. And we were just wingriders. Faranth forbid W'rin ever tossed me a 'second's knot, what that dragon might do —

Not that that would ever happen, because I'm a girl.

And that's the thing. That was how Corelle felt, too, despite being a woman. That women were worthless. In a time where everyone needs to be offered to the dragons, where we need more riders, because Thread is coming, and that must be tantamount. Thread and safety.

I curl up in a ball on my bed, hide my head between two pillows, try to breathe in the enclosed space. Feelings are overwhelming me not just because of the dragons' intense grief, but because the more I think about it the more I realize that the first thing I felt when I heard that Ofrovth was the one who had gone between was some shade of satisfaction that Corelle couldn't bring Igen down anymore.

I never knew her, and I'm glad she's dead.

Not Ofrovth. Ofrovth never did anything wrong. But Corelle was a human being, and one I hadn't even spoken to, and yet I hated her actions so much that I am glad she is dead. That's a new feeling for me. Being glad someone is dead. It's not something I ever thought I would experience, and I hate myself in this moment more than I could hate anything Corelle did.

What right do I have to feel this way?

I don't want to feel this way, and I can tell it's reflecting in my dragon how miserable I've made myself; he is retreating further into his own mind, pulling away his gilded charms and leaving me to my own demons. He is already ashen enough, greyer than his usual snowy-blue. I can't be helping.

But I'm making myself sick.

After another ten minutes or so of crying, we rally. We go outside. We walk. We shake it off. Because it doesn't matter that my first impulse was to be glad she's dead. I'll deal with that on my own time. Right now, the Weyr matters, and it's our job to help see it through.

Even if I am a terrible person.

All I can do is push that away.

[theseasonswillchangeusnew-blog]

[forestvoices]

wow.

the first 'this looks like Brice and Hes' picture I have ever seen where his hair in no way requires photoshopping. Because where the light catches it it looks copper.

[vegaofthelyre]

Details | Elie Saab

[nehirose]

oh

[forestvoices]

aaaaand there it is. I had forgotten who had posted this.

Miranda wedding dress, ladies/gents/other.

[becausehiddles]

Over all the millennia, only you have ever loved me, Thor. Only you have ever looked at me with affection in place of condescension. Why, then, am I killing you, and not the others? 

Because you stopped.

[forestvoices]

I kind of hate that these are all perfect YEHEN gifs just because this movie is new and so it's weird to use them for a character who isn't Loki. Even though CT Loki will never, ever have hair like this and Yehen ... does. Also these facial expressions.

[forestvoices]

Notable warning: I wrote this while on five different drugs. Forgive me in advance for just about anything. Also it got kind of long, but – because she enabled it anyway, to improve on Hannah’s work week with what little braincell I have left; unfortunately that means as usual it doesn’t really end.

Even if he didn't have an actual lab yet -- and the grumbling about not having labs was a thing that Nico noticed had been growing recently, between the pair of kaiju scientists, Carlos not-from-Night-Vale-personally, and people like Sara (who had of course found a space somewhere and Nico really truly didn't want to know where it was) -- Nico still tended to show up and give things to Newt whenever she didn't need them anymore. Not just any old 'things' -- things that actually came from her, demon things. Hair that fell out. Shed wing membrane. Claws that fell off or needed to be clipped. Tears from a poked fingertip eye, one time, when she was lucky enough to be able to collect them. It was kind of an unspoken agreement that this would keep happening; not once had he ever asked, but after the time she snapped a nail on something in front of him and he shot it a longing look without even realizing she'd started handing things to him and never really stopped.

Studying them probably didn't provide much information anyway; most of what Nico was made of came out as an inky, oozing mess with no clarity to it under a microscope. The tear had degraded and appeared to be water. The wing membrane was the only thing that actually looked like something besides slightly moist blackness, and (thankfully) she didn't ever lose much of it. But some of it was the thought that counted. Some of it was the fact that Newt always seemed to think that this time he'd manage to pull something new out of an old thing.

Someday, she thought, he'd ask her for a seed; she probably had not been clear entirely on the idea of how bad that was and at least 30% of him probably didn’t care (not that it was really his fault). Of course she'd refuse. The thing that surprised her was how occasionally she didn't want to; that a tiny part of her would be willing to figure out a way to make one so he and maybe that Carlos fellow could test things on it, provided they swore on their lives not to eat it and to keep it frozen whenever it wasn't in use. But she had asked the Lord of Storms to kill her outright if she ever tried it, and he and the Lady had both agreed that was the best possible course of action, so there was nothing for it. The tiny, tiny part of her that wanted to make her scientist friends happy would just have to stay tiny and locked up in its own little bone metal box.

It was hard not to want to give them things that made them happy; everything about demonkind seemed to fascinate Newt, who made her feel valuable in a very new and different way, and Carlos was utterly enthralled by her way of traveling and picking things up and moving. Even Hermann enjoyed her company at times, generally because of the fact she had no interest in speaking to him so much as appreciating companionable silence, and at times even he would ask her something relating to being a large dangerous beast. (As for Cecil -- well. Sometimes you just needed someone to talk to who had more than two eyes. Cecil never made a fuss about her species or abilities; he acted like they were entirely and completely normal, and that made Cecil nearly as calming to be around as Tesset – though had they not both been frequent scientist plus-ones, may never have met.)

She had accidentally snagged a lot of her hair on a tree, and unlike Miranda when she did the same thing, didn't try to cut it all off. Instead the feral part of her flailed about madly without using higher brain matter, and it resulted in tearing a large portion of hair right out of her scalp. Of course it regrew almost instantly -- she'd just eaten and had her focus on it -- but what of the hair she didn't consume in order to gain the energy back she kept, and headed back to the hotel to chez Geiszler & Gottlieb. It had DNA tags, and they were fresh, so maybe someone would get something out of it.

What she found when she got there was a surprise; Hermann Gottlieb suddenly leaving carrying a briefcase and wrapped in a giant winter coat even during warmer seasons -- Miranda had said she suspected he had something called 'scoliosis' and tried to keep it hidden, hence the posture, but Nico wasn't about to make guesses about other people's bodies -- and saying something about going to work with Rowan and Peter because he just could not stand being in there right now and if you are staying do please make sure he doesn't RUIN anything. Carlos was the one person in New Orleans Gottlieb tended to ever rely on -- well, except for Newt, but he wouldn't admit it -- but with the parapsychologist not being there it was apparently Nico's job.

She tended to ruin things easily, so she wasn't so sure how good a job she could do.

But once she got all the way in the room she realized it wouldn't really matter because Newt was doing a truly wonderful job of ruining things all by himself. Or “fixing” them, as he likely thought – that is to say, absolutely nothing was where it had been. Which was different than not being where they belonged. Usually Gottlieb organized and Newt systemically destroyed that organization, but this looked more like Newt was systemically destroying everything in the name of organization.

“… What are you doing?” came out of Nico’s mouth, soft but confused, and yet somehow loud enough to be heard over the dulcet blasted tones of Some Really Hardcore Metal Band with a Rock Music Beat (not their actual name). And Newt nearly dropped the Fantastik spray he was holding to yell her name and give her a delighted smile and say he was glad she’d shown up.

Nico continued to stare.

The furniture was all moved about, the vacuum was plugged in but not in use – and yet the room looked and smelled as if it had been used – some of the walls were halfway washed, the entire kitchen was covered in clean dishes (except for the ones in the open dishwasher; the sink was empty, a very rare event) and the entire place smelled like bathroom cleaner. Oh, and there wasn’t a clothing item in sight on the floor – all of Newt’s clothes were folded on top of his bed as if he was soon going to put them away.

“I brought you a hair –“

“Good, I’ll get to it after I’m done cleaning up!”

She continued to stare.

He laughed. “What, never seen a place in the middle of spring cleaning before?”

“It’s November. Even I know that isn’t spring,” she teased, not wanting to say either I’ve never seen you clean anything or I don’t think this is how you clean up.

“Yeah but it still needed to get done and Hermann kept complaining about the mess in his sort of holier-than-though sigh it’s messy in here what EVER shall I do kind of way, and then I woke up today and just decided to clean the whole thing but it’s awfully hard to finish just one at a time when there’s so much, plus he won’t let me wash the walls around the window –“

“He does math there,” Nico explained, glancing in that direction. “It’s written all over.”

“…”

“In blacklight. So you either need the room to be black lit to read it, or you need to be me.”

“What does it –“

“It looks like math,” she replied cheerfully, “Otherwise known as I have no idea. Where should I put this?”

“What? OH! Hair. You brought me – us – me – hair. Awesome. I love you, let’s work on that right away, come on.”

“The cleaning –“

“Can wait! After all, it’s almost done.”

Gottlieb was going to kill them both.

[forestvoices]

Nobody else was ever in the pharmacy on Sundays, so Quinn often felt confident letting others use the space. Draco was somewhat less agreeable, but that was just because Draco didn’t really like anyone at first; a few of those who had considered using the pharmacy’s back for scientific purposes had actually been annoyed off by him. It seemed Carlos was relatively unflappable, though – not just in an “anomalous phenomena” way but in a “most people just don’t bother him” kind of way.

Whatever Carlos was doing was nothing the pharmacist or the potions master actually wanted to ask about; it looked like he was trying to figure out at what point some weird smoky substance he had in a transparent crucible kind of device changed chemical states, as part of it was being made very very cold and part of it was being made very very warm. Neither of them listened to Cecil’s show, and so they couldn’t have surmised based on when Carlos came from that it was technically shadow energy. Neither of them asked.

What Quinn did ask was, “That’s not going to contaminate anything, you promise?”

“It won’t,” the soft spoken Spanish fellow replied. “It won’t get out. I mean. I hope. Sorry. Anomalous phenomena are by definition –“

“Unpredictable,” she predicted, and he laughed a little.

“Yes.”

“I can’t really hold it against you if something goes wrong,” she said, and leaned back against her desk and stretched her neck,  going backward enough the back of her head touched, well, her back. Carlos stared for a second, and Quinn laughed. “what?”

“You are very flexible.”

“Er.” Carlos especially hated social situations when people’s species came up. He hated social situations in general but this was even worse than the typical exchange. “No. I mean – yes, I didn’t know that.” Was this the part where he asked? He didn’t know her well enough to be sure of how to handle this revelation. Was she volunteering this information because she was okay with being studied?

“Shapeshifter,” she explained before he got a chance to ask. “Seal shifter. No, it’s not magic. It’s just me. Part of my genetic makeup. It’s – semi-unrelated to the magic; seal shifters aren’t likely to be of other elements, though they don’t have to be mages at all. Water creatures tend to water magic, so it’s more the other way around. The magic didn’t’ give me the second form; the other form was part of indicated what my magic was. Make sense?”

“You’re not psychic, are you?” he asked flatly; it was an honest question, these days, because sometimes Cecil said things without him asking in a way where he suspected Cecil was actually psychic. The third eye didn’t dissuade him.

“No. Plenty of others are, though! Here, I mean. Pretty rare where I come from.”

“I wonder if Cecil’s made friends yet.”

“Is he psychic?” Quinn had gone back to rifling though paperwork, but now she was looking at Carlos. “They’re all usually pretty friendly, so if so one may’ve reached out already –“

“He’s – I don’t really know what he is, to be honest. I don’t think he knows, entirely. Never talks about his family or his background much except in the context of wanting to avoid mirrors. I’m working on finding out, though. I recently discovered his tattoos actually change color – like a mood ring, I mean. They seem to correspond to emotions. I couldn’t confirm that because I didn’t want to have to induce sadness or anger.”

“How sweet of you.” She sounded a bit grim about it, though. He tilted his head at her, wondering exactly what it was she was disapproving of; once he thought of her as a seal-person and not a human, her emotions were suddenly so much easier to read. Once she realized he was looking at her, that he was reading her, she fessed up: “Studying someone you love. Is he a lover, or just a project?”

Carlos didn’t tend toward rage, so he didn’t do anything like slam his hand on the counter, but he did visibly bristle. “Well, it depends on how you define ‘lover,’ but please don’t imply I don’t care for him –“

“It was just a question, really.”

“Which do you think it is?”

“Both. Though I suppose it depends on how you define ‘lover,’ but other than that. It seems, externally, like both. Does he know he’s being used?”

“I don’t think he sees it that way,” Carlos – kind of squeaked, suddenly feeling meek under her gaze and calmly, sociably delivered accusation. “Because it’s not, also. I’m not using him. He likes helping.”

“Maybe because he wants to please you. Maybe because he likes helping. It might help you, ethically, to be sure.”

“So,” Carlos joked, and hoped this was a joke that flew with the formidable pharmacist, “I’d really better get to work on reading the mood tattoos, because then I’ll be able to tell –“

It worked. She laughed.

Time passed.

Eventually, he spoke up: “You never think about it?”

“What?”

“Studying people you love. To know them better, as an influence on the world, both.” Did he actually love Cecil, or just really like him? Were they, in fact, in love? Maybe. He hadn’t considered it much; relationships weren’t really something he had much experience in. Cecil seemed to know what he was doing, though, and it was one area where Carlos followed his lead without much trepidation.

Quinn, on the other hand, very clearly seemed to love. Openly, inclusively, and without reservation. He’d gotten that impression of her fast. That, and that her lover – depending on how you define ‘lover’ – was actually a very powerful personified storm.

Which to a water mage must’ve been interesting.

Useful, even.

But when he started to explain that to her, she frowned a little. “No. No, I’d never – I don’t even like taking advantage of him when he offers. He wants to help, but I just can’t – it isn’t his job to do my job, see. It’s not his job to be my battery.”

“It’s okay with you if Cecil volunteers, though. That makes me okay. Even though you were notably judging me at first. But it’s not okay with you if your Lord of Storms volunteers for the same thing, because he wants to help you, and lower your workload, and probably likes the look you get in your eyes when you get passionate about something,” not because Carlos was at all attracted to Quinn, but because despite their semi-animosity at times he’d seen her excited about something and it was aesthetically pleasing in a way he was sure her actual romantic partner must have been captivated by, “because it’s not his job. Cecil, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a radio host.”

“Well –“ Quinn faltered. “He isn’t technically a person. He doesn’t think like a person. It’s exploitative.”

“Cecil might not be human,” Carlos confessed, “I’m not sure and I’m not sure he’s sure.”

“But Cecil’s a person.”

“I think your boyfriend still has autonomy and is able to make his own decisions. Which could include helping you. I know it sucks to accept help, but it’s probably best to indulge it once in a while.”

That was why he didn’t think he was taking advantage of Cecil, much as it could easily have been seen as such. He studied Cecil, but Cecil wanted to be studied – both because Cecil lavished in Carlos’ attention, awkward as that made Carlos feel sometimes, and because Cecil genuinely wanted to be helpful.

He left Quinn in a position she’d never been in ebfore – she was clearly torn, and in fact she was chewing her lip and staring at her papers and wondering if she had, in fact, colossally fucked up.

“I’m really shit at this,” she told Carlos about ten minutes later.

“Pharmacy?”

“Dating.”

“I’m more shit at it than you –“

“Maybe I shouldn’t keep telling him I can take care of myself. When being protective is kind of – his thing. He’s only ever had one loved one to protect before, and there’s two League Commanders now, but I don’t have two of him. She might. I don’t.”

“So …” Carlos prompted, awkward.

“It isn’t as if I didn’t let him help in situations where it was really, really bad. Or where there were things I couldn’t handle like giant starspawn who got me in a bad moment. But I always have to step up and be all ‘no I’ve got it’ when it’s really better to let him help, isn’t it?”

Carlos smiled thinly. “Yeah.”

“Sorry. I know we’re not really friends.”

“I’m apparently easy to open up to. So can you be, as it seems.”

“I try.”

“You succeed.”

“And yes,” she added, after nearly forty minutes of silence, “you can go ahead and study me, too, if you want, but I don’t think you’ll learn anything of import.”

[forestvoices]

Issedi, okay, sometimes I don't get you.

(And no, this is not the start of something that's first person and in character this is actually me yelling at my own character and not being sure where to put it because I didn't have anyone to talk to about it due to presently being the only one here both virtually and literally and not feeling like dumping my character's shit into anyone's email but figuring that like 98% of the people who ever look at this care due to having interactions with her.)

You are seriously nearly sixteen years old. Sixteen. Not forty. I know all of your friends are older than you are now, but they weren't always. And yet you were always like that. So much more mature than everyone else. And it's not narrative failure because lots of my teenagers act like teenagers just fine. It's just you.

Why did you try to run away from your blood-given leadership right when you're so good at it? An island whose populace is almost entirely older than you are respects you as the place's leader not just because you were there first but because you haven't actually fucked up yet. Because mostly everyone keeps their own order-or-not, but if people need something you're trying to make sure it happens and you handle the fact that people have an adversarial response to the island itself and therefore also often to you in a really relaxed manner and apologize for things. Since you didn't create this mess, you're just trying to keep it managed.

And if you really hated being a leader, if it really wasn't for you, you'd have told someone else to do the job you've been doing; told someone else to keep track of what's going on where and figured out a way to foist the magic off on them, too. I'm sure that there are people around who could find a way to make that work, but instead you've chosen to keep yourself right where you are. Which, okay, I guess that's just you and that's what you're going to do. And a lot of people love you, which surprises us both. And I think at best people are neutrally disinterested in you and living their own lives. And you're not really a leader leader who's trying to control what people do, so that helps. You're nothing at all like Jamie, who for RP mechanics had the same literal position you do of knowing more about the world and somewhat being able to bargain with it. Somehow your NOT being controlling is doing a much much better job than his attempts to actually lead ever did (and I don't think it's just the crowd, though some of it is that). Notably no one else is trying to be the boss of everyone. Just the boss of individual projects. Which makes sense but that was all a massive tangent to my proper point which is: no, really, with that maturity, what even are you doing and who are you.

You seriously act like you're a lot older than your age most of the time. I'm seriously starting to wonder if you gained a few years on your interdimensional travel and have just been thinking you're only fifteen and change. Really. Because the choice company you keep is -- the youngest person you hang around a lot is Miles, who is 21, and you don't tend to act notably younger than he does -- but you also don't act notably younger than Rhen. Or Vincent, who is over thirty. And a father. And yet he treats you like an equal and not like a child despite the fact he's a parent and when Harriet is your age he's not going to be regarding her as a fellow adult. Your stated age has really started not lining up with your character and it isn't because I'm fucking up writing you, it's because that's who you became.

And sometimes it does actually make me wonder if you're not actually something like nineteen or twenty and that "year" on the island wasn't really a lot longer, like, for real -- and that's just because of appearance because your attitude is still way older than that. I used to think Emilie was pragmatically mature for her age, and in her canonical place at ten she kind of is, but both in the game and in her family's story she still acts nowhere near as mature as you. You're having every kind of adult relationship except romance at your current age -- romance being the one thing at your age that you would find normal, since of course it's totally fine in Ieria for noble men around 40 to marry girls of 14, that's what's done because of fertility. 

I do not know what my point was, except that Iss, really, I'd like some answers as to what makes you so you, and you're not giving 'em to me.

[ooku]

[ezekeilreyes]

Ladies and Gentlemen, these are the men from Lamke’s Fashion Week in India.

Lets take a minute to appreciate this photoset.

[forestvoices]

Shadowlands Sultanate fashion, clearly.

[forestvoices]

December 24, 2007.

[forestvoices]

Fourteen nests hatched that week, nine in one day; Kaydrin's eggs decided to be different and take all night, hatching at dawn the next day -- the last finished climbing out of her shell just as the sun finished its path to the top of the sky. And so they received their names, names that suited their births: Sirocco, first-shelled, for a strong wind. Chinook, who followed -- another wind. Nykterinos, the nocturnal. Parallax; their father was an astronomer and promised Kaydrin it made sense, as did Adhafera and her curly coat, Perseus and his extra-sharp spines. Dagian was last to break shell, her name suiting her time of birth similarly to brother Nyk's. And those two in particular continued to suit their names; she always woke early, he always did most of his playing and learning and exploring at night.

Kaydrin's nest had been settled in a nice proper pile of stone ruins, and the hatchlings never wanted much for things to climb on, experiment with, and try to eat. And when the army sent their cadets over so the hatchlings could consider proper partners, it was to the amusement of all seven that the humans kept falling on things. They weren't very good climbers, and if they were going to try to impress this particular nest of dragons they had to do better.

Of course the first six weeks of life passed kind of quickly, and so by then the young dragons had made their decisions about whether or not they wanted to go into service in the first place. To humans, from the outside, it seemed awfully young to make such a choice. To dragons, it was easy: some were born to it, some were not. The humans who were around it a lot, at least, got used to it. The high-rankers never saw any problems with it.

Nykterinos, who had long ago decided that while he would be happy to serve, partnering was not for him, nonetheless enjoyed (sleepily) watching the cadets when they came to visit, hoping to wow his siblings. One of them managed to lose his coin early on, which should have denied him entry, but Adhafera had immediately taken to him and insisted he be allowed in to get to know her. By the time they were seven weeks old, Adhafera was living in the barracks instead of the nest. Parallax made fun of him: If you're serving, why aren't you out meeting people?

Because, and Nyk yawned, I prefer to guard. I'll stay here. I'll do fine.

Kaydrin had insisted this was a valid life choice, but dragons as stronghold guards were rare enough most of the hatchlings didn't believe it. There currently wasn't one, after all; not except their parents, and they didn't count. Not that all of their parents were in the service themselves, but most of them were -- the hatchlings who decided the army wasn't for them were few and far between.

Perseus chose not to, for instance.

That was it, for their group.

And for the fact that she was born first, it took Sirocco an impressively long time to make a choice. But one night, finally, she scrambled over a pile of fallen rebar to Nykterinos and lay down next to him, proclaiming only, I like that one.

He didn't get a chance to say 'which one' before she was pawing his head in the right direction: and a tall, thin human in a long blue coat was just off to the left, cooking at a fire he'd just made. By himself.

Why that one? He's been here every day, anyway, why haven't you talked to him before?

Sirocco yawned; it might've been early in the day for Nyk's standards but she had practiced her gliding all day and was wearing out. I've just been watching him. He's hiding something, but he's doing it in a really good way. I don't think much of anyone else can tell. He's got fancy clothes but he's not really all that fancy, is he? I bet he'd be good. For what I want.

As far as Nyk knew, what Sirocco wanted was to take over the world; she had that kind of commanding presence. This human, on the other hand, was poking at a campfire with a long stick. By himself. On the other hand, as a fire dragon Nykterinos approved of that, and -- maybe this one would do. He wasn't sure exactly what made a good choice; he hadn't gone to that class. Hadn't needed to.

Not that it would have surprised him if Sirocco hadn't gone either.

Let's go bother him, she suggested suddenly, and sprung to her feet. You can run through that bonfire, right?

Suddenly Cadet Delurin's dinner wasn't going as well as planned.