A New Face

“Shiny!” – the crew of Serenity many, many times.

((Ona here. Since no one else seems to be able to update I’m going to give it a shot. Unfortunately Gemma is unconscious, so I am going to add a new character for at least part of this entry. Ishack, if you yell at me I swear I will get very mad, I will yell right back. I know I promised but it’s not fair to deprive me of my inspiration, so I’ll just hope this doesn’t ‘ruin it’ for you. If it does I’m really sorry, I am trying.))

A young woman dressed in vivid colors walked down the dusty dirt road to the Blythe farm. She was in her thirties, and still very pretty, with long dark brown hair and huge brown eyes. Her name was Airia, and she had a single purpose being here. The Blythe farm and the surrounding land held many memories for her, many of them pleasant, some not so pleasant. However much she may have wanted to avoid these memories she had to warn the girl. She was innocent and had always been kind to Airia, she did not deserve the fate John Goldstein would visit upon her.

As Airia walked past an apple orchard she heard a lot of yelling. Airia was not of a suspicious nature and she was the type to investigate anything she wanted to just because she found it interesting, so she followed the noise to its source. There she found a curious sight. A snowman, a big man with an eye patch, a goat, and woman all stood looking at each other. Next to them on the ground lay another woman and on top of her, obviously unconscious, the very girl Airia had been so determined to warn.
“Gemma!” she yelled, horrified. The standing creatures turned toward her, momentarily distracted. “What have you done to her?” Airia continued. “You… you… huài rén…” So it only meant ‘bad person’ she was a little too angry to come up with something worse. That didn’t last for long. "Chou ma niao," she flung at the man, who looked so disreputable that Airia had no doubt he was the reason Gemma was hurt.

***
Gemma awoke slowly to a familiar voice that she hadn’t heard in years whispering a language she hadn’t spoken for just as long. "Fahng-sheen," whispered the voice.

((Now Ishack should now why not to yell at me and I will repeat my plea and add one for people not to yell at me for this being slightly cheesy.))

"If you're not mad enough to bare-knuckle box, you're not mad at all."
-Red Foreman

((OOC: I apologize ahead of time for the sappy sap-fest that will most likely take place in this post. What can I say? Ishack, you handed me the reigns! BTW, the quote doesn't have much to do with the post.))

Vera and Pedro had rushed through the apple orchard towards where the crash had come from. Vera only hoped that Myrtle hadn't broken any bones -- they'd already been delayed once when Myrtle sprained her ankle a few days into their journey. (Vera had warned her that jumping in murky brown puddles wasn't be a good idea. Had Myrtle listened? No.)

Soon enough they found Myrtle...along with Tanngnjóstr, a pale young woman, a dying snowman and -- Vera's breath caught in her chest. The shock of seeing Kyrus here left her momentarily stunned. For one eternal second, as they held each other's gaze, unspoken feelings of loathing, longing, betrayal, hurt and deep mistrust flew between them.

The moment only lasted for a split second, thgouh, and in the next instant she regained her wits. She couldn't let her history with Kyrus distract her from her job -- that was how he had escaped last time. He was staring at her in awe; she had the upper hand now.

In an instant, she had channeled a powerful freezing charm in his direction; it hit him squarely in the chest, and the force of it knocked him over. She was left breathless for a moment: she hadn't meant to send the spell so forcefully, but the flare of emotion at the sighte of him had gotten her carried away. She carefully suppressed any other wayward feelings before approaching him.

((OOC: Arrrggg. This is so horribly awful, I can't continue. I tried some dialogue. It was crap. Please, someone take over. Feel free to add in the promised sap that I only partially got to. Maybe I'll fix this post in a little bit, if that's better...))

My Thought Train Wreck

"Dont eat yellow snow," Katy, along with lots of hundreds of thousands of people.

((OCC: Ruby here. As you see, quotes are currently inaccessible to me at the moment, so I asked my good friend katy for a piece of wisdom, and she complied.))

Lets retrace Transjostre's thought process from a few moments before--we'll start from when Myrtle begins to climb the apple tree:

"Myrtle is climbing an apple tree. Myrtle is clumbsy. Myrtle is going to fall off the tree. That tree looks old and brittle. That tree has a knot that looks like Myrtle's great Auntie Caroline. Myrtle's great Auntie Caroline has an ugly dog. Myrtle's great Auntie Caroline's house smells funny and has termites. I wonder why termites eat only wood. I eat wood. Do termites eat trees? Does that tree have termites? Myrtle is going to fall off the tree. Myrtle is going to get hurt. Myrtle is going to need an icepack. Icepacks are cold. Hoth is cold. Mark is cold. Myrtle is going to need Mark. When we were at Hoth, Myrtle fell through some thin ice. Myrtle is clumbsy. Myrtle is going to fall off that tree..."

CRASH!

"Oh dear, Myrtle has fallen off the tree."

My Train of Thought

"Don't approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.” Yiddish Proverb
((This is Ishack, sorry, this will be a short entry, catching Kyrus up))

Let us retrace Kyrus' thought process from moments before:
The man of snow was talking,“This goat came running at me and when it hit me instead of knocking me over I was here and the goat was gone.”
Magic, Kyrus realized.
Goat! he gasped.
Myrtle... he murmured
Vera. he choked.
A crash nearby broke his thoughts. Vera!!! She was nearby, he was sure of it, forgetting that she was out to kill him, he rushed towards the sound, followed by his frozen friend and the confounded flautist.
Not five seconds later, he saw them.
So did the snowman, "It's the goat!"
Myrtle smiled as she approached, and said fondly, "Mark, I wondered where you'd gotten to..." But was taken down by Gemma.
"Gemma!" Kyrus exclaimed as he rushed to help her.
"Myrtle" came a voice.
Kyrus looked up, there she was. Shock replaced all other emotions as he gazed upon her. It had been so long. And Vera hadn't changed a bit.

((Flo, it's so your moment...))

A Walk in the Park

“When people are laughing, they're generally not killing one another.” -- Alan Alda

((OCC: Ona here. Sorry about that long wait between updates but we’ve had some problems with motivation, creativity, and time. And I’ve been working on some of my other writing instead of this. But Flo was getting upset that no one had written for a while and jokingly said I should write about a snowman trying to eat Kyrus and Gemma. Then one thing led to another and I came up with this all by myself, don’t blame Flo for it, this was all me. Hope you enjoy it.))

Gemma and Kyrus walked down the rode that lead to the farm, not in the direction that led to town but in the direction that led to many other things none of them really all that interesting. An awkward silence hung between the two of them and Gemma didn’t like it. She had no idea why she had agreed to go walking with him anyway. If they where found it would ruin her reputation and she didn’t even like him.
But she was here now and she wasn't going to waist the time. She would have to find something to talk to him about. Music was out since it was an art he obviously had no appreciation for. He had made that quite clear when she had tried to talk to him about it earlier.

However before Gemma could decide what to say to the annoying mysterious stranger he spoke. “Why did you answer music earlier?” he asked. “When I wanted to know what we should talk about.”

“You didn’t have any interest in it at the time,” said Gemma icily. “Why the sudden interest.”

“I have no interest in music because I forced to learn about it at a young age when I would much rather have been playing with the other boys my age,” responded Kyrus. “My question pertained not to music in this case but to you and your interest in the subject.”

“Music is not just a subject to me sir,” responded Gemma slowly; she didn’t trust this sudden interest in her interests. “It is my one hope to leave this place forever and make a good life for myself.”

“You could marry like any other girl of your age,” Kyrus pointed out.

This time Gemma did not take offence at this view of women. For one thing his tone made it clear that he was simply observing not seeking to insult her, and for another he was right, it was the custom of the day that girls of her age should be focusing on marriage and nothing else. “To whom?” she asked. “One of the farmers sons? Or one of the boys form town? I’d still be stuck here. And I wouldn’t make a difference. If I can show people that women can do more than make a good marriage and keep house maybe I can help some poor soul who would otherwise be forced into a marriage to some man they hate.”

Kyrus seemed to be thinking about her speech long and hard. Either that or he had assumed that look while she was talking and had tuned her out so completely he hadn’t noticed she had finished. Gemma wasn’t going to interrupt him either way; if she just waited she might be able to figure out which it was.

However before Kyrus reviled himself a great blood-curdling scream pierced the night. Both Gemma and Kyrus spun to the left, the direction form which the scream seemed to be coming.

“Help! Please someone help,” said a voice from the same direction. Neither of our protagonists wasted any time in rushing to the aid of whatever creature might be in need. Which might be a sign of how late at night it really was because both of them tended to be suspicious and would normally have suspected a trap. Luckily this was not a trap so this unusual behavior brought neither of them to any immediate harm.

They rushed through the trees eyes scanning the dark for whoever it was who might be in need. When they reached the end of the first row they spotted the unusual damsel in distress.

It was wailing in the most irritating manner. “I’m melting!!!!!!” It screamed over and over again.

And sure enough it was. Water dripped from the body of the unfortunate, obviously lost snowman.

Gemma and Kyrus froze in surprise for a moment. Where on earth had it come from? All the snow had melted ages ago.

However they soon had no time to ponder this as the said snowman spotted them. “Oh good sir,” said the snowman. “And gentle lady please help me! I am lost and if I stay here much longer I will melt all away and be nothing but a puddle of water soon to nourish these lovely apple trees.”

Gemma still stood there in shock but Kyrus, a man who had traveled far and wide, responded calmly. “Slow down please,” he said. When the snowman seemed to have calmed a bit he continued, “Now tell me your story from the beginning.” Gemma approved of this; it was always good to start at the beginning.

The snowman didn’t say anything; he just stared at Kyrus in a confused way. Well Gemma thought it was confused; his top snowball rolled a little to the right, his coal mouth arranged itself in a frown and his eyebrows drew together a little. “Why don’t you start with who you are, where you came from, and how you got here,” she suggested to the poor creature.

The snowman’s face cleared up immediately. He rolled his head forward and backward in a gesture that vaguely resembled a nod and began. “My name is Mark,” said the snowman. Gemma thought Mark did not seem a very snowman-ish name but she didn’t say so for fear that the snowman would fly off the handle again. “I’m from a place called Hoth, it’s not a very big town but it’s nice enough. There are lots of good ice cream shops there and a lot of elves and reindeer…” he didn’t seem inclined to stop describing Hoth any time soon but Kyrus interrupted impatiently.

“So how did you get here?” he demanded.

Gemma would have though that Mark would have started panicking again but instead he reacted quite calmly. “Well I’m not quite sure,” he told them. “I was going to visit my friend Tom but while I was walking along…” Gemma didn’t see how a snowman could walk. “This goat came running at me and when it hit me instead of knocking me over I was here and the goat was gone.”

This was very puzzling to Gemma who knew many goats none of whom she would have thought had any magical powers. She did not have much time to think about this though because just then there was a crash a few rows over and Kyrus, Gemma and Mark all ran in that direction. This lapse in judgment might cause a little more trouble for our heroes then the earlier one.

Gemma was not thinking about that though, she still wanted to know how Mark walked. She turned and looked at him to see him rolling the bottommost of the three balls that made up his body and getting covered in dirt. Then she tripped over something, something soft and warm and definitely human. She hit her head and the last thing she heard before falling unconscious was three people shouting. One called her name, another started yelling about a goat and a third shouted about someone named Merle or something like that.

Hay, Pedro! Pobrecito!

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."
-Oscar Wilde

((OOC: It's me, Flo. I was trying to figure out how to make the content of this entry fit this quote, and I was stumped stumped. So I just gave up and wrote my entry, and it ended up being almost perfect for it anyway! I love when things just work out like that! :D))

Vera and Pedro walked in uncomfortable (for Pedro, anyway) silence for a while, before Pedro summoned the courage to speak. "Vera, I-um-I have something to say." He took a deep breath, and continued, "I know that everyone thinks Myrtle and I are in love, and are bound to be married some day, but-well-what I mean is, I can see why, but I just don't feel...that way about her. I mean, I do care about her, and I suppose I do love her, but I'm not in love with her, really. What I mean to say is that she feels more like a-a sister than anything else, and--"

"Is there a point you're trying to make, because if not, I'll just tune you out," Vera interrupted impatiently.

"What I'm trying to say is that...oh, bugger. Vera, I have very strong feelings for you, and was wondering if you felt the same way." He said this last part very fast, as if he were getting a heavy weight off his chest. Vera could practically feel his face grow hot with embarassment.

She then did what any other jaded, compassionless witch would do: she laughed. Hard. "Pedro-haha!-Pedro, you can't be-hee!-you can't be serious! You're-you're-that was a joke, right? Right? You were just...joking...you weren't joking, were you," she concluded when Pedro failed to join in the laughter. This would have been awkward, were it somebody with a bit more sensitivity in Vera's place. However, she managed to brush away her embarassment with a superior and slightly amused, "I'm very flattered, Pedro, but no. Just-no."

So this was why he had been throwing pebbles at her window! He thought he was going to woo her with pathetic cliches and romantic ideals. It was awfully sweet of him to go to the effort, but Vera had no time for sweetness. She swiftly steered the conversation to Myrtle, before Pedro, who now looked as though he would very much like to disappear, could protest.

"So, according to this Myrtle-ometer, Myrtle should be somewhere in this apple orchard." For indeed, the device had led them to the edge of a vast grove of apple trees. From somewhere in the thick of trees, they heard a faint crash and an alarmed bleeting. "And that would be Myrtle."

They're Out to Get You

Three quotes this time because I couldn't choose, all on this entry's theme:

-“Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.”-William S. Burroughs
-Paranoia doesn't mean the whole world really isn't out to get you.
-If you ever wanted to know what a person with acute paranoia looks like, just keep watching.

((OOC:Ishack here. Didn't really get anywhere with this entry but hopefully it will lead to a bigger and better next entry either by Ona or myself. Still it is somewhat enlightening about Kyrus' character))

That night, Kyrus didn't sleep. He knew he needed the rest, his body was exhausted, but his mind was restless. He couldn't stop thinking about her and how different his life could have been if their paths had never crossed. Not that it would have all been good. She had caused him to grow up, awakened him to the responsibilities of a Prince and the importance of an united Kingdom. Before she betrayed him, that is.
He rolled over on his side and reached his hand beneath his pillow to touch his dagger's hilt. It was going to be a long night, what with the paranoia and the memories. Still, he tried for seven minutes more before finally giving up.
He dressed slowly, meticulously, and patted his hair into place. He glanced into the mirror on the wall. It had been a long time since he had cared about his reflection.
'Thank God those days are over,' he thought. His arrogance in those days had been three times as bad as his pride was now.
He finished dressing and strapped on his sword and an extra sledge-hammer (because he could).
Of course, now that he was all prepared to do something he couldn't just undress and go back to bed. He had to do something at least semi-productive. He started by leaving the room.
It had been a long evening, sitting in primarily stony silence with the girl--he forgot what her name was--until her brother got home. Her brother had looked at him suspiciously but gone along with the girls judgement. It was rather stupid of them, Kyrus thought. It was likely they would end up dead for helping him. Dratt those witches!
He reached the front door.
"Where do you think you are going?"
It was the girl again.
Kyrus sighed, "Out."
She raised an eyebrow.
"For a walk," he clarified.
She didn't move so he did the only thing that seemed remotely reasonable, asked her if she'd like to come.
For reasons unknown to him, she nodded and followed him out.