#jay lombardo

[skyburned]

I’ve moved my stuff.  I started back at the beginning and redid a lot of what I did earlier.  I was going to try to post on both Blogger and Wordpress, but rapidly ran out of room on Wordpress and gave up trying to use it, so Blogger it is.  Having a very rough time recently and this has sometimes helped.  Here are a few more shots and some text (not complete, it skips a bit):

He stopped smiling and looked away from them down toward the foot of the column. "Well, Gabe won't be camping out here.  He wasn't fond of the countryside."

Kenley said, "As he was leaving, Gabe told me he would meet me at Twelfth Street.  He was literally halfway through the gate when he said it.  What does that mean? Is that a real place?"

Don shook his head.  "It's something he shared with Camilla when they were teens, it meant goodbye but with weight attached to it, not a casual 'later'.  I think it did start as a reference to a real place with a real event, the kind of thing they got mixed up in, you know, I got your back, you got mine - but the only one who would know that kind of detail would be Camilla herself."

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They saw Don Lombardo walk halfway up the flight of stone stairs before they vanished along with him.  Luca took her hand and they started toward the dirt road where they'd planned to walk the mile to the inn.  

"Where did he go?" Kenley asked.  "How does that whole stairway to nowhere thing work?"

"I don't know. He's dead somewhere I guess."  Luca smiled.  "How does that whole moon staying up in the sky thing work?"

"I don't know."  Their hand clasp tightened.  

"You know," he said, "when we get this whole thing nailed down and working, I've got to get a set of those stairs."

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Flying Into The Wind - Blogger

Thank you to everyone for sticking with me, and I am so looking forward to catching up!

[skyburned]

Intermezzo Ch 19

Like the entry on the other side, the way led through high stone arches.  There was only one set of these though, and no stairs leading up to them and no stairs leading down.  Instead, the grass and the rock fell down and away into a river far far below.  Whatever tempted Alisana to take that step, Fiona didn't see it.  

Then there was the moon.  It covered half the sky, more than half, so close a bird could land on that sand, so close a thunderstorm here would drop rain there.  Jay, who had come after her, as she knew he would, staggered, almost falling off the cliff, and looked at the thing and said, "That's impossible."

Her astronomy class had been something about planets and meteors and shiny clouds with pictures.  There had been a movie.  She had seen it when she was twelve.  Fiona didn't remember much but this wasn't right.  "It's too big, isn't it?"  

He glanced off to the right where lights sparkled in the treetops.  The same lights shone in the water and in the sky and in the dark forests. "Yeah, it is, but I don't think space and time work the same way here, Fiona.  If it hasn't fallen yet, it's probably going to hang right up there where it is."

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Notes:  I redid a lot of this messy story-thing, removing a couple of chapters, combining others, rewriting early parts because now I really know where I’m going and I wasn’t sure when I started.  The chapter numbers changed as a result - there are fewer of them now.  This would have been 21 I think before I redid things.

ALSO, I am including one of the shots of a sim I’ve been wanting to use for a long time: @esotheria-sims​ beautiful Marcus Blackbird!

And, also for her, a graveyard that I hope is different.  It took me quite a while to do this because I don’t know what I’m doing and I couldn’t find things I needed and the terrain just kicked my ass.

Anyway...here it is.  

Link to Blogger

[skyburned]

Intermezzo, Chapter 21

First shot is first.  First paragraph follows.  Last shot is last shot.   Middle shot is because I’m fond of Robanna.

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Offer my sword...

It was one of the dumbest things he'd ever said, a thing so dumb he would have laughed his way down the aisle and out of the theater if he’d heard it from an adult actor, but Jay didn't know how to take it back or turn a child's bravado into something from a sophisticated cynic. There was no way.  Robanna took a step back from the edge of the stairs, propped one hand on her hip and put on the kind of expression his mother might wear.

“You're needed," she said coolly, "but not for your sword."

Drake smiled. "Come up and hear what we have to tell you."

Jay considered thanking the man, decided what the hell, they brought him here, he had nothing to thank them for, and simply walked on up into the place with the bowl of fire.

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Link goes to Blogger.

Thank you again @esotheria-sims for both the dragon and Marek, who is indeed growing into a major role.

[skyburned]

Intermezzo Chapter 21

For Fiona Dirac there would be no hesitation, no moment of reflection, no consideration of choices. She was a girl on a mission.  Jay didn't so much as question her determination as wonder whether he could, or should share it.  Fiona would walk up that stone stairway and push aside the curtain of roses and go where ever it led.  It didn't matter if she'd been warned she might never leave.  It wasn't a current problem.  When it was, she would look at it, but not now.

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Link to Blogger:  Chapter 21

I’ve been slogging away at a chapter that I ended up cutting into two today.  This was a hard week in a horrible year (someone please hurl 2020 down a black hole), but RBG’s death is like the ominous thumping sound when the shark comes for you.  I decided not to hide and cry but to go ahead and do something and finish it even if it’s something inconsequential like this.  

I hope that if you can vote, you will vote.  For her.  Please.  

Anyway, here’s a small thing.

[skyburned]

Intermezzo Ch 19-Part 4     (Link to entire thing on Blogger)

Fiona sighed, maybe a little more loudly than was absolutely necessary, settled against the back of the bench and looked at Jay with what she intended to be a sincere expression.  Once again she was distracted by the cloud of sparkling lights crowding the toy.  What was up with that?  Had Hailie left old jelly to dry on its coat?  It really did look as if it had moved, too.  She shrugged and went back to Jay.

"My father knew something about spaces that we can't see or use and so did my mother.  They were getting to the same place, just using different tools."

Jay stretched in the chair, locking his hands behind his head, his mouth tight, and his attention seemed to wander.  She thought he was looking past her at the lights on the marina as if giving up.  "Kenley Dirac did not believe in magic," he said flatly.  "Come on Fiona."

She rubbed her right knee where she'd jammed it against something earlier in the day.  She'd probably have a bruise.  Where had she bumped it?  When she got out of Jay's car at the lake?  When she was walking away from her mother, the mother with the strange tatoos?  She's alive, Fiona told herself firmly.  The dead didn't change their looks like that.

"What's string theory Jay?  What's quantum entanglement?  What my father was doing was unexplained, not inexplicable.  You're calling it magic because you don't understand it.  My mother wasn't condescending.  She would have told him to cut it out if she thought it was worthless.  You don't know a thing about them.  I inherited what I can see from my father.  My mother loved him, she didn't humor him."

"Bullshit."  He leaned forward, leaning into his answer, casual, except he was gripping his right hand hard with his left.  "If magic's real, you'd be sitting here with Gabe Lombardo instead of me.  My mother would have slammed out a spell years ago to make me Gabe or at least like him.  You couldn't keep power like that a secret, not from my mother.  I believe your father tried to find your mother and something terrible happened. I believe he tried to use magic if you say so, but how'd that work out for him?  He never came back."

The ground moved and slid under them.  Rocks groaned with the deep noise an earthquake makes when one piece of the planet breaks another one and it cries out as it cracks.  With a monstrous groan a tower rose up out of the dirt and water on the northern end of the park, a wall of arches, doors and windows, curtains.  Candles suddenly lit, fire bursting out of nowhere.

 An archway of white stone glowed above a low flight of stone steps.  White flowers and pink flowers curled up columns and hung over similar white stone. There was ivy in the doors, and gigantic willow trees, and flagstones that stretched across the dirt toward them.

The little girl from the pier walked down the steps. Her name, Fiona scrambled to remember her name.  Alisana, it was Alisana.  Alisana's crow hopped over to the steps behind her and looked in their direction then stalked around the flagstones as if searching for something to stab with its beak.  

She waved and smiled at them.  "Hello Fiona.  You have Hailie's little dragon with you and it’s sparkling so I came.  Is she here?"

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Thank you @kashmiresims​ for the pose box I used for Jay sitting and for your moral support.  I really appreciate it!  And thank you again @esotheria-sims​ and @fracturedmoonlight​ for the dragon...

[skyburned]

Intermezzo Chapter 19

It had been a long drive considering it took ten minutes to get there from the Peninsula and Jay's house. One of about half a dozen overlooks on the marina, it had paper lanterns and chairs and it was the first empty spot they found. They'd been talking about where to go since leaving the lake and had come to no decision, not one they agreed on, but Fiona had made up her mind now and was going ahead whether or not he helped her. 

"I'm going to the Crossings," she told him again for the hundredth weary time. "Your mother told me Rayne saw Gabe in the Crossing. I'm going to find out where that was and I'm going there."

"Rayne Stanfield was drunk on her ass."  He sounded exasperated, actually more than exasperated, pissed off was closer.  "Cooper locked her up in rehab. She's living with Duff Tyson now, there's no way she's going to talk to you."

"That's why I'm going to ask her sister to talk to her instead.  I'm going to ask Hugs."   

He made a sound like a choking laugh.  "Hugs Stanfield?  You'll scare the shit out of her."  Fiona gripped Hailie's toy dragon and marched ahead.

She set the toy on a rattan table standing between a rattan bench and a rattan chair, all of it painted white and in pretty good condition for outside furniture.  It was South Beach so of course it was.  The little dragon settled and twisted a little as if it wanted to look directly at her. The tabletop must have been uneven.

"And that thing, it's a just a toy," Jay said, glancing at it and then looking back at her.  "Quit carrying it around like it's a weapon or your first-born."

Straightening, Fiona turned toward him and rested her hands on her hips, frustrated and as tired as he was and all his jerkiness seemed to have returned. 

"Hailie gave it to me and there has to be a reason she did, and it's a dragon.  She said it was a gift she was passing on.  It means something."

"She gave it to you because Hailie tries to help people, and she has lots of toys, the fact that it's a dragon is a coincidence. Your mother is a zombie and you're obsessing about a toy?"

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Note:  I’m trying to post this here as well as on blogger, for no particular reason except it seemed like a good idea in the middle of the night when I couldn’t do anything else.  Posted here in pieces, so this is Part 1. 

Link to Blogger:  Chapter 19

A very very special thank you to @esotheria-sims​ for a creation I have waiting such a long time to use (and will post a separate set of shots because I don’t care if it’s a spoiler).  Also, thank you @honeywell-mts​ for the gorgeous lot imposter lights!

[skyburned]

Intermezzo - Chapter 20

There is a rule about running from predators.  Don’t turn your back, don’t run, don’t scream.

The rule that applied to lions and bears and large angry cats must certainly apply to dragons. It did not look immediately interested in chasing her.  It had settled in a pile of red flowers and ducked its head to take a bite of a bush full of them.  There were a lot of candles standing all around and they shone on the dragon's pale skin. Scales. Whatever.  Nevertheless Fiona Dirac followed the rule.

She stood there.

Jay Lombardo stood there next to her too although he seemed inclined to move if only to do something other than stand there.  Fiona sympathized.  "What do you think?" she whispered.  "It might attack if we move.”

He kicked at the stones that had not been there five minutes ago with a pair of old sneakers, the laces worn and dirty, and looked at her with cool eyes. "We're here to find something like this.  I just spent a couple of hours parrying questions from my dad about you.  I'm not going home.  I'm not hiding in the dark even from a dragon."

It was a good argument, and after all the child had already seen them.  "Wait until we see what she does. Unless she sets the dragon on us, let's try to talk to her.  The last time wasn't very useful but neither Don nor my mother were angry or aggressive and this little girl isn't either.  She's not dead, Jay, I can tell you that much."

"They didn't come with a dragon," Jay shot back at her.

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Link to Blogger

I want to thank @esotheria-sims​ for her dragons and her invaluable moral support.  Just, thank you!

[skyburned]

Intermezzo Ch 19-Part 3.  Parts 1 & 2 posted earlier

(Link to Blogger where the whole thing is posted.)

Yeah.  About that.  Go ahead Fiona, she told herself, explain magic to Jay Lombardo. Keep it short.

"He could open spaces sometimes.  He could push light through them and he thought he could maybe move things back and forth but I don't know if it ever worked.  It had nothing to do with people though."  

Fiona thought about the Gateway Rock.  She'd wondered for years if the thing trapped in that place could get out and how it had gotten in there to begin with. Somehow it had.  Someone had locked it in there, and it sort of ominously felt like opening it was what her father had been trying to do. 

"He said he'd heard something about my mother, he was in a hurry, he was ripping around the house grabbing things.  He said he'd be back in a day but he never did.  I don't know why anyone would want to kidnap or hurt him, either of them."

Her eyes filled up and for a moment she thought there was no point in trying not to cry, and she was so tired, but if she could hold off for a little while it would be better.  Then she wouldn't have to worry about stopping.

Jay rested his chin on his hand and looked dolefully at the ground. Fiona sympathized, she felt sorry for him, she was going to be forcing him to look at something he wasn’t going to believe and wasn’t going to like. She'd hoped to avoid it but should have known it was inevitable. 

"Your dad played with magic spells.  That's what you're telling me?  Magic.  Playing with wands and boiling eyes of newt and hearts of snakes kind of magic?" He sounded as doleful as he looked.