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Rats.
Sept 7, 2008 22:26:28 GMT -5
Post by Princess Katie on Sept 7, 2008 22:26:28 GMT -5
Finola’s bike was hardly a bike anymore. She had added so many doo-dads and whatsits to automate her traveling process that it was now more Vespa-like in nature, except that it was powered by clockwork instead of gasoline. A ridiculously large clockwork key turned in a steady circle, propelling the bike-slash-scooter fairly quickly down the cement path of the cemetery. She wore her lab coat, open, over a black slipdress, yellow and grey striped knee-highs, clunky black motorcycle boots, and of course (what no scientist, mad or otherwise, would leave home without), a well-polished pair of goggles that covered the upper half of her face. They were necessary to keep bugs from taking out her eyes as she rocketed down the road, and also to look very cool.
She was playing courier; mom had somehow convinced her away from the lab long enough to take Danny his bi-monthly care package that she insisted on sending him. Finola thought it a bit stupid. Danny was an adult, he could take care of himself. But whatever, mom somehow felt the need to take care of everyone, and Danny was always grateful. Mostly, Finola just didn’t like having to act like a delivery service, not when there is science to be done.
Deep in her not-so-cheerful thoughts, the porcelain girl hardly had time to swerve out of the way of a rather large rat, waddling itself across the walkway. The balance of her clockwork bicycle was not so great to start off with, but her violent swerve sent it toppling over completely. Thankfully for our delicate friend, she landed mostly in the well-kept grass of an expensive looking plot. The surface of her knee chipped a bit, her goggles were knocked askew, and her parcel flew about a yard away, but for the most part, everything was unharmed.
In a moment of utmost drama, Finola shook her fist at the ratty culprit who looked completely unaffected by their near-collision. It chattered his teeth at her and scurried into the dead flowers in front of some gravestone.
If she wasn’t afraid that Genevieve would somehow know (and consequently shun her), she would stomp that rat dead.
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Rats.
Sept 7, 2008 22:57:14 GMT -5
Post by redtopaz on Sept 7, 2008 22:57:14 GMT -5
Nex had been minding his own business, happily ripping out mandrakes by the root and shoving them in a burlap sack he'd brought when a porcelain girl came flying through the air, landing in the plot next to his mandrakes. Her package, however, landed smack dab on top of a ripe little mandrake, squashing it. Nex picked up the package, brushed off the dirt and mandrake leaves, and stood up.
"Are you alright?" he asked, offering her a hand up, the box tucked under his other arm. He looked at her knee with concern. "I know a good repair spell," he offered with a smile.
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Sept 7, 2008 23:15:48 GMT -5
Post by Princess Katie on Sept 7, 2008 23:15:48 GMT -5
Finola barely contained the scoff. SPELL? Like, magic? What was this, Hogwarts?
Despite his horrible taste in the ‘art’ of magic, it was nice of him to help. She took his hand and stood, favoring her left leg, “I’m fine, thanks, nothing a bit of glue and a couple minutes drying time won’t fix.” She pushed her goggles back like a headband and took the box from Nex. “Thanks. Sorry if I smooshed your…ehm…” She glanced at the mandrakes with uncertainty. Well, she didn’t exactly look uncertain, just bored. But she felt rather doubtful. “…plants.”
She pulled a twig out of her kaleidoscopic hair, tossing it to the ground with a scowl. Now, the only object was to find the piece or pieces of her knee, “I would, appreciate, however, if you could help me look for a chunk of me-colored porcelain.”
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Sept 7, 2008 23:26:05 GMT -5
Post by redtopaz on Sept 7, 2008 23:26:05 GMT -5
"Oh! Sure," Nex offered. He held a hand out, closed his eyes and concentrated. "Βρείτε αυτού που λείπει," he mumbled, using a simple find-it spell. He was overjoyed when a bit of white porcelain floated out from a nearby patch of nightshade. It often didn't work for him. It was one of those spells he was patchy on. "Great! That one usually doesn't work for me. Especially in the mornings," he chattered, plucking the piece of porcelain out of the air and handing it back to it's owner. "Are you sure you don't want me to try and fix it? I don't have the spell with me, but it's just over at my place a few blocks from here," he tried again. It never even occurred to him how stalker-ish and suspicious his offer sounded. He just went on smiling.
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Sept 7, 2008 23:46:37 GMT -5
Post by Princess Katie on Sept 7, 2008 23:46:37 GMT -5
She had to admit, she was a little surprised. It’s not like she doubted magic existed, she lived in Chimera for Morpheus’s sake, it was just that it seemed so artsy and volatile and useless. So, when he retrieved her bit of knee for her after mumbling some gobbledy-gook, her naturally-blank expression gained a slight tint of shock. “Oh, thanks. And…congratulations,” she added. It was hard to tell if she was being sarcastic. Her voice was always sort of monotonous and her expression was always the same.
“And, really, no thank you. I, eh…” Finola mulled through her sentence in her mind, trying to make it as inoffensive as possible, as she limped over to her fallen bike-thing, leaning it against its kickstand. “My faith in…in spells, it just isn’t that strong. No offense. Glue works. It’s polymers in a solvent, and when the solvent evaporates, the adhesives harden. I know how it works, I know that it does work.” Her view was very cut and dry, if not a bit stubborn.
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Sept 7, 2008 23:52:01 GMT -5
Post by redtopaz on Sept 7, 2008 23:52:01 GMT -5
Nex had encountered skeptics before, but they usually believed him after a spell or two. He walked after her, determined to reverse her belief in the inefficiency of magic.
"But magic is really cut-and-dry, too!" he insisted. "You invoke the Goddess, envision what you want and then let yourself have it. It's really very simple. Just about anyone can do it," he added with a smile. "I can even teach you!" he boasted, not really seriously considering whether he could or not if she called his bluff.
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Sept 8, 2008 0:15:15 GMT -5
Post by Princess Katie on Sept 8, 2008 0:15:15 GMT -5
“How is that cut and dry?” She asked, pulling a small bottle of glue from the pocket of her lab coat, dabbing a bit on the shattered surface of her knee, laying on the missing bit with expertise, and wrapping it in a bandage (also in the pocket of her lab coat), to keep it in place as it dried.
No Goddess invocation required.
“Anything that involves a God or Goddess cannot possibly be ‘cut and dry’ because there is no proof of any of them existing. So, you’re out at step one,” being smarter than the average bear had made her a bit of a know-it-all, though she didn’t consider it a flaw. She leaned back on her bike-scooter, evaluating Nex. He didn’t exactly look like some weirdo hippy. A little on the weird-kid-in-Art-class vibe, but nothing too lame-o magicy. “Again, no offense.”
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Sept 8, 2008 0:22:27 GMT -5
Post by redtopaz on Sept 8, 2008 0:22:27 GMT -5
"Well, if the God and Goddess don't exist, how come the spell works?" he asked her, raising a dark eyebrow in a teasing manner. He handed her the package he still had under his arm. "Some things just need your faith before they'll reveal themselves," he said philosophically.
"By the way, where are you going? I'll walk you there since I've got all the mandrakes that can be saved," he said, gesturing to his sack of mystical plants. He liked talking to the technicolor haired skeptic. It was sort of fun and he generally liked new people.
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Sept 8, 2008 0:35:49 GMT -5
Post by Princess Katie on Sept 8, 2008 0:35:49 GMT -5
Hm. Touché, Merlin.
Finola shrugged, “Exactly. How come the spell works? No one knows. People ‘believe’ or whatever, but no one knows. Oh, thanks,” she muttered, taking the package and lashing it to the back of her bike.
“I’m taking this to my…” she paused to pull her goggles down so she could slip her hair into a ponytail. What was Danny? An uncle? “…to a friend of the family. My mom like, obsessively sends him cookies and socks and knitted things. I’m not quite sure why, except that she thinks he needs taking care of, I guess? You can come along if you’d like, if you want to keep arguing with me, but you won’t keep up if you’re walking,” she wound the oversized key as she spoke, sturdying the vehicle with her good leg.
She wiped a bit of grease from her hands onto her coat, before offering one to Nex, “Finola, by the way.”
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Sept 8, 2008 18:56:40 GMT -5
Post by redtopaz on Sept 8, 2008 18:56:40 GMT -5
"That's nice of her," Nex said, thinking back to when his own mother had him run errands around their small community. It was rare to meet a fellow mom-and-pop born denizen. "Oh! I'm Nex," he said, taking the offered hand and giving it a firm shake. He was a little surprised he hadn't thought to introduce himself sooner. "Don't worry about me, I've got my bike." He looked at her... contraption. "How does that work?" he asked, a little bewildered by the apparent complexity of design. What was wrong with a good old fashioned bicycle?
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Sept 8, 2008 22:13:29 GMT -5
Post by Princess Katie on Sept 8, 2008 22:13:29 GMT -5
A cocky burst of purple wound its way through Finola’s ponytail, as she gave the bike’s cogs a final wind. “It’s simple really, just like any clock or a music box. You turn the key, here,” she tapped the key with her porcelain knuckles, “and the mechanical stress is applied to the spring, and it turns the gears which turn the wheels.” Of course, she was drastically playing down the amount of work it took to actually build this contraption; even more the amount of tweaking it took for it to be actual viable form of transportation. She had gotten shattered into near-oblivion so many times trying this thing out.
“So, he runs the Rissa Grande. You know how to get there?” Most native Chimerans knew where it was, and though Nex was certainly passable as a Nightmare, so was Finola. And she was half Dream. “Were you born in the city?”
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Sept 8, 2008 22:22:13 GMT -5
Post by redtopaz on Sept 8, 2008 22:22:13 GMT -5
Nex listened to her explanation, more than a little confused. He didn't understand cogs or springs or anything like that and shrugged noncommittally in response. He just knew when his watch worked and when it didn't. Unfortunately, there was no spell to fix a malfunctioning time piece. Something about not using magic to manipulate anything relating to time... Time alteration was one big no-no in the mystical community. One just had to take the watch into the shop.
"I know where it is, generally. I'll just follow you," he suggested in his customary laid-back manner. Whether he could keep up didn't enter his mind.
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Sept 10, 2008 0:02:31 GMT -5
Post by Princess Katie on Sept 10, 2008 0:02:31 GMT -5
“Alright,” Finola said as she slipped her goggles over her eyes and switched on her clockwork engine. She took off down the road with the sound of about a hundred watches clicking together at odd intervals. Her modified vehicle was understandably quicker than a normal bicycle. She hadn’t considered it at first, but when she turned to ask him where he lived or what he did (so maybe she could gain some insight into why he chose magic (over something sensible like, oh, I don’t know, science?).
“Oh,” she said, in a tone that vaguely hinted at exclamation, before stopping and allowing Nex time to catch up. “Sorry about that, I’ll slow it down some. I was going to ask, where are you from?”
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Sept 11, 2008 0:32:06 GMT -5
Post by redtopaz on Sept 11, 2008 0:32:06 GMT -5
She took off like a bolt of clockwork lightening and Nex was hard pressed just to keep on her heels. He was an experienced cycler, but she had him winded withing the first mile. He was extremely grateful when she stopped. He took a few moments to suck in some much needed air before he even ventured to attempt speech.
"I'm *gasp* from Paddock Hill *wheeze*. It's out in the country on *puff* the edge of the forest," he said, leaning over his handle bars and gazing up at Finola through black hair. "What about you?" he asked, glad for the delay in having to pedal.
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Sept 11, 2008 1:03:37 GMT -5
Post by Princess Katie on Sept 11, 2008 1:03:37 GMT -5
“The Forest? The nightmare side, I’m assuming?” She leaned back casually on the seat of the bike, drumming her porcelain fingers on the metal handlebar, not out of impatience, but habit. “I was born and raised in the city, well, more of the suburbs, I guess. We live pretty close to The Castle, especially growing up, we were over there all the time,” Finola explained.
She wasn’t trying to make herself sound ritzy or aristocratic. It was normal for her. Going to The Castle for dinner was like going to family’s for dinner for anyone else. It was fun. Sometimes it was a burden and she wanted to choke one of her relations. It was just normal procedure.
“So, what brings you here? Do you work in Chimera?” Questions, questions. She couldn’t help it. It was in her nature as a scientist to ask a lot of questions. “Tell me when you’ve caught your breath. Take your time.”
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