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Post by Nathalia on Jan 31, 2011 20:36:01 GMT -5
((Helena, Apocalypse and the girls all made their way to a doctor to the edges of the Highlands. The man was excessively unnerved, but often worked for the Courts and took in the charges without any comments...those his expressions toward Makenna were rather horrible and snide.
Helena was fixed up and given a mild sedative; the torn side of her mouth will never quite be the same, it can open farther than before and the scar itself stretches all the way back to her ear.
Their carriage continued on back toward the Palace of Hearts, the Aces knowing which way to go and everyone in the carriage together to recover...but...something seems off.
Mist began to drift in as they rode and it seemed, at times, as though they were surrounded by trees...on the road?
How weird...
Apocalypse slowly seemed to fade out of consciousness...unable to be wakened. He slumped in his seat and the carriage rolled on for what seemed like an incredibly short time, all things considering.
When it finally comes to a stop, the Aces are gone.
A small blood stain is all that remains of them along with the reigns.
They aren't in front of the Palace of Hearts...
But, sitting out on the misty lawn of the Palace of Spades.
It's painfully quiet, though there are some lights on inside.
Kavi, covered in gore and terrified, managed to stumble out of the basement and shed and onto the lawn.
The appearance of the carriage looks like it might help him...Maybe he should...go look?))
~Nathalia
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Post by carcinoGeneticist on Feb 5, 2011 18:40:22 GMT -5
((I'm just gonna write from Adrianne's perspective, since she's the main focus from now on ;D))
When Adrianne awoke, she was no longer stuck on the bloody street, surrounded by death and pain. She was instead in an unfamiliar carriage, surrounded by faces. Some were familiar, others, less so. One of the familiar faces had changed, in a terrible way. Even now she peered out at Makenna with fear in her eyes, unable to look away from the wings that rose from the girl's shoulders. It was just... it was wrong. She pressed her face against her father's side again, feeling herself calm slightly as his fingers laced through her mane.
Piece by piece, Adrianne went over what she knew in her mind.
They had gone to a doctor, to check herself and Makenna over, as well as to get help for the Josiggy woman who had been accompanying her father. She had missed that part, but had been told she was perfectly healthy, if not sporting some new... features. The wings fluttered anxiously as she thought about them.
There was a little girl with the injured woman. Adrianne hadn't been brave enough to ask, but she wasn't stupid. The girl was another one of her father's children, which meant that she was the Finch hybrid's half-sister. She was also a Diamond, which meant that Adrianne was no longer unique in that. Existential angst threatened to overcome the girl.
Most importantly, they were now headed for home. Her father would be looking for Grandmama Heilyn tomorrow, most likely. After he'd had a chance to sleep. He must have been tired, because he'd suddenly slumped over. Despite herself, the girl smiled, and nudged him. "Papa... Come on, papa, wake up..." He didn't move, so she nudged him again.
The carriage stopped.
Eyes wide, Adrianne's head rose, and she looked to the nearest adult - Helena. "He won't wake up!"
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Post by Satra on Feb 6, 2011 15:24:56 GMT -5
While being examined by the doctor, those looks he gave her made her want to cry. She already felt horrible and hideous enough as it was, did he really have to make those faces? It was bad enough that there was a tenseness to Apocalypse’s gazes on her that had never been there before... She sat on the other side of her big brother, opposite of Adrianne, and cuddled up to him. She fought tears the entire way. Mama was still missing, Makenna and Adrianne were suddenly changed... But Mama could take care of herself and Makenna and Adrianne were safe. They were with Papacalypse now. He would protect them. Then he started to fall asleep. “Apocalypse?” The call was quiet, even to her. No... no he couldn’t sleep! Mist closing in. View of the world narrowed to a smaller radius doesn’t change what can come.
Carriage stop. The Aces are gone! Apocalypse! Wake up! PLEASE! Hot tears stinging and hand are shaking. Please... please just end horrible things...
A Palace loomed ahead, but the landscape was all wrong. I know the Highlands...Adrianne was already alerting the nearest adult, so Makenna allowed herself to fixate on the Palace. There were Spades symbols... beautiful decorative wrought iron everywhere. The Palace came into focus. Yes. She’d seen pictures of this place. The Court of Spades. Why were they here? |
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Post by Bee on Feb 7, 2011 21:48:04 GMT -5
  "It'll be all right," Helena assured the little girl, turning a worried eye over to Apocalypse. Talking felt ridiculous. The minuscule movements in the muscles of her face made her painfully aware of the new deformity; the optimistic part of her brain that always went well at least you're pretty when all other aspects of her self-esteem failed had gone into a dormant stage. Necessity and guilt kept her from dwelling on it, however. There were children with them (but where had the Aces gone?), and if she had gotten suddenly beaten with the ugly stick, that poor little Bog girl had the whole damn tree fall on her. Helena couldn't help thinking of her little brother, gone mad and died, those grotesque wings sticking out of a form not meant to support them. That girl was going to need a lot of hugs. She gently shook the insensate man, and when that didn't work she poked him, and when that failed to work she slapped him in the face, pulling back quickly in the event that he reacted...unfavorably. Nothing. Little needles of worry stabbed at her. This couldn't be ordinary sleep. They weren't in the right place, either. Somehow they had ended up at what looked to be Spades, miles and miles and miles away from their intended destination. The little needles of worry were suddenly knives. Damn it. Damn it.Simcha, who had been staring intently at the unconscious Cat from the moment his eyes closed, said, somewhat questioningly, "Poison sleep." "Magic," Helena responded, quietly. There had certainly been enough of that going about, hadn't there? She shuddered. She glanced at the Palace again--there were lights on, in a few places, however deserted it seemed--and then back to the girls. "For now, I think we should all get inside. There should be someone with enough know-how to wake up Apocalypse. It'll be warmer and safer for us, too." She thought she might be able to haul him in. She felt drained from the events of the day, but if she hovered a bit off the ground with her flight ability, it would only be a matter of keeping the man in her grip while her magic propelled her. "Keep close," she told the girls. ___ The strange creatures had abandoned him down there, with the broken, spent body of something that looked nearly like him, reds and oranges all; it didn't even take conscious realization to guess what had happened, his own blood-streaked fur next to the site of the disaster, but he couldn't make himself think the thought. He just ran, mindlessly, terrified, up the stairs and out of the little wooden room and into the mist-laden grass. He sprinted as fast as his stumpy little legs would carry him. It was the right way to go, the only way to go; he trusted the direction and it didn't lead him astray. People, immediately, out in the open air. He felt a rush of relief, even though he had no idea who these people were, if they were good, if they...if they...had some kind of special quality that he knew to be important in people, even if he was too out of it at the moment to pinpoint exactly what it was. He moved cautiously toward them. |
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Post by Satra on Feb 10, 2011 0:13:39 GMT -5
Her little clawed hands gripped at the fabric of her dress. Something was... approaching them. As it got closer, she became less and less happy about the form it came in. She gasped and covered her eyes when Helena slapped Apocalypse, then fought back tears when he did not wake. It was all so scary...
She started to move to be closer to Helena, but then the red thing was close to them now. What the...
WHAT was THAT?!
She screamed uncontrollably at the sight of it. What a horrible, monstrous thing! She screamed, her clawed hands extended and shaking violently. Her screaming didn’t let up as she scrambled to crawl behind Helena. Her knees got caught up in the fabric of the dress as she crawled, making it a very slow and awkward process, but she didn't stop screaming.
Oh please, let her kill it! What a horrid thing! A monster! A monster has arrived!
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Post by Bee on Feb 10, 2011 0:58:20 GMT -5
He was glad for his caution. He stopped. He stared. He shook, first slightly, then uncontrollably, as he lay eyes on the demon, the psychotic creature that shrieked and scrambled madly and began mauling the tall green woman, trying to get behind her and probably rip her open and he merely sank down in the grass and let the evil transpire, too dumbstruck by the demon's unrelenting and complete wickedness to move.
"Oh," he breathed, voice thin and shaky, "forgive me, forgive me..."
Helena couldn't move a moment either, but that was more out of utter bafflement than anything. Her vision had fixed on the red Card in the grass just as Makenna's had--it didn't take her exemplary night vision to spot that glaringly bright boy--but she couldn't comprehend the girl's visceral, overwhelming fear. She gathered herself quickly, reached out and pulled Makenna up and to her side, positioning herself a little in front as though to shield her from the quaking thing on the lawn. She had rather unceremoniously dropped Apocalypse in the process.
"Shhhh," she said, gently squeezing her shoulder. "I won't let it hurt you. Calm down, okay? It's just a boy."
Simcha gave a troubled glance at her father's prone form. Perhaps his soul had fled its fleshy prison, has Simcha had. She didn't like the thought. She had just started getting used to him; he needed to be talking, moving, not lost in an Otherwhere.
She turned looked at the other girl blankly, finally drawn by her squalling, almost glad to not be fretting over the fatherthing anymore. She didn't understand. She had seen the way the doctor had looked at her. She looked at the red, strange boy on the grass. He looked no worse, on the whole. Were they not both monstrous in the eyes of others, then? Why were they frightened of one another?
"Are you not kin?" she asked Makenna, perplexed. "You should comfort one another, not cower. Go to him."
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Post by carcinoGeneticist on Feb 10, 2011 23:53:24 GMT -5
With wide, concerned eyes, Adrianne stared at the woman while she tried to shake some sense into her father. A soft, hiccuping little sob burbled out of her, her ears laying flat against her neck when nothing seemed to work to wake him. She hunched her shoulders and waited, wondering.
Not long ago, now, she'd thought she would be dead. It appeared now, that in an odd twist of fate's strings, her father was posed to take her place. Some sort of terrible magic had claimed him, that much she was certain of. Poison-sleep, the girl who was her half-sister of sorts said. Poison couldn't affect her father, she wanted to proclaim, but she couldn't find the words and so instead clamped her beak shut and tried not to tremble.
"We'll come back for him?" She chirped up at Helena as they exited the carriage, the shivers finally overcoming her rather limited willpower. "As soon as we find help?" Such an obvious question, but the girl was young, and sometimes she needed to hear obvious answers to feel true comfort. At the sound of footsteps, she backed against the larger woman, eyes going wide.
It was a boy.
A strange looking boy, for sure, but not so strange as to warrant screaming! Adrianne yelped softly, swiveling, unsure of whether she should look at the newcomer or her sister-aunt. They both were putting her on edge. Finally, she turned her attention to the Corgi. "What are you doing here?" She asked, sounding wary.
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Post by Satra on Feb 13, 2011 2:50:41 GMT -5
Perhaps she would have taken it better if her Brother (who posed as her Father all too often) were not in a slumber he couldn’t awaken from.... perhaps if she had not suddenly become a hideous monstrosity over the course of only a few hours... perhaps if they had arrived in front of the correct Court.
Perhaps if any one of these things were removed from the equation she might have taken the situation better. However, as things were, this was more than the 9-year old could handle. She buried her face into the woman’s fur and just broke into sobs. She gave Simcha a wide-eye look of confusion and anger. How... how DARE she say such a thing?!
When Adrianne spoke to the boy, she looked at him timidly, peeking out from behind Helena. Tears still trickled down her face and the inside of her mask was uncomfortably wet.
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Post by Bee on Feb 13, 2011 3:16:05 GMT -5
"Of course we'll come back for him," Helena assured Adrianne, now that simply carrying him was looking like a more dim possibility. She really should--just be on guard for the girls. Especially since two of them were clearly highly disconcerted, to say the least, and Simcha, while a good deal more calm...didn't seem to have her bearings right. She gave the little girl--her little girl--a worried glance, and felt a twinge of bitterness. Whenever she imagined herself having a child, her imagination usually held a space for a warm cocoon of solitude, just her holding an infant, an immediate and powerful bond between she and child and the shifting face of whoever the father might end up being. And the love was there--and powerful--but the situation couldn't be more different. She was faintly worried that Apocalypse might wake back up from what was probably magic-slumber and into what would be more...magic-displeasure.
She stroked Makenna's hair as Adrianne called out to the Corgi, absently pulling Simcha to her with her other arm. The girl melted into her with no resistance, though she looked over at Makenna as though the girl were an alien.
The Morganberry mix was still rooted to the spot, breathing heavily, eyes locked on Makenna as though she might leap over and try to feast on his brains. The tall green woman seemed to be restraining her, which he found mildly reassuring but not enough to actually move towards them. He turned his gaze to Adrianne, eyes wide.
"I don't--I don't know," he said helplessly, not sure what even compelled him to answer. "I don't know anything. I'm lost."
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Post by Nathalia on Feb 14, 2011 17:26:48 GMT -5
((All present in the group suddenly get the incredibly odd feeling of being watched as the chill mist seems to close in.
The Palace of Spades might be the best place to go at this point, perhaps they can get you all some tea while you figure out how to get a carriage back to the Hearts?
As they head toward the tall building, a loud shattering noise can be heard as something smashes its way out of one of the highest windows, raining glass down before it, as it falls a good distance, before large blue wings open and it shoots back up into the sky, and then away into the mist on the grounds.))
~Nathalia
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