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 Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 2:03 pm
::Chronicle One::
Ari slowly pushed the chair back, balancing precariously on its back legs. The pen in her mouth slowly traced circles in the air, thanks to the assistance of her tongue. Waving a second pen like a metronome in her right hand, she kept beat to the silent and unsuccessful thought process in her head.
Moaning, she let the first writing utensil drop from her lips, the pen bouncing off the chair in its descent and skittering across the floor. Watching it languidly, and with no intention of retrieving it from wherever it fell, Ari continued to wave the second pen through the air. Upon her desk lay a piece of paper, as white and pristine as the day it was removed from its package, excluding the small corner that was bent beneath her laptop.
Growling under her breath at the sight of it, Ari moved to place the pen on the desk. This change in position, unfortunately, ruined the delicate balance of the chair and its occupant, and it tipped over backwards, sending her flying. She barely had time for a yelp before her head made contact with the wooden boards below.
{Dream Sequence}
Her posterior region was beginning to feel somewhat damp, and something spiny and altogether uncomfortable was sticking into the small of her back. Muttering something under her breath illnaturedly, she thrust her hand underneath her body and extracted the pinecone. Pulling herself into a sitting position, she glared at the coniferous spawn before flinging it as far as possible, which came to a distance of about three feet.
"Brilliant," she grumbled, taking in her surroundings for the first time. Her location had a remarkable resemblance to the woods out back of the apartment building, although she had no idea how she had gotten there.
"Maybe..." she mused aloud, "When I fell off the chair I managed to...um...fall out the window...um...err...and a...umm...wind...err...current...mmm...carried me here. Yeah, that's...umm...plausible." Or at least it would be until she figured out exactly how she arrived at her current position.
Standing up and brushing herself off, she glanced around the area. A strange rock formation sat nearby, and Ari couldn't help but think that the bumps and cracks in the rock face made it look remarkably like a sitting gorilla. Moving over to it, and placing one hand on the "head", she smiled a bit, before something caught her eye.
It appeared to be some sort of clearing with a small lake. The water glittered playfully, even though the sky overhead seemed to be a mass of grey clouds. Something shined brightly at the water's edge, drawing Ari's attention. She moved forward as a magpie does when stalking its silvery collection, unable to tear her eyes away.
"A crystal?" she asked aloud, as she drew close enough for the object to come into focus. Then, as though some massive eraser was being drawn across the scenery, the world faded out.
{Dream End}
Ari found herself sprawled across the floorboards in her own beloved room. Sitting up with a gasp, she had to take a few moments of respite as the room spun like a carosel, and her head took the tempo of a drumbeat. Wincing, she stumbled to her feet, using the nearby desk for support. Looking out the window next to the large piece of furniture, she frowned.
'The sun may be setting now,' she thought, 'But tomorrow, I'm definitely checking out those woods.'
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Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 3:50 pm
::Chronicle Two::
Ari did not like hiking.
Oh sure, she was all up for the whole nature thing. It was beautiful, inspirational, breathtaking...She could most likely use her internal thesaurus to go on indefinitely, but that still did not alleviate cramps or muscles sores that resulted from walking too far.
She had come to the conclusion that the events of last night must have been some sort of dream or vision, simply due to the fact that she didn't experience anything of this sort. Discomfort, thy name is Ari.
Ari had begun her foray into the woods at exactly two o' clock in the afternoon. It was now exactly half an hour past, and she still had made little to no progress. Her hobby and expected profession in the literary arts hardly made for a fit body, even if they did give her mind plenty of exercise.
Well, except for the fact that she currently still had writer's block. Her book would never be finished at this rate.
Grumbling under her breath, and staring very intently at the ground, it came as quite a shock to her when she crashed into a very solid object. An 'oof' escaped her lips as she went flying backwards, landing ungraciously on her behind. Looking up from her ungainly position, she quickly identified the obstacle as the gorilla rock from last night's 'experience'. Crossing her arms, she pouted.
"You could've warned me, y'know," she adressed the rock firmly, which, being an inanimate object, paid absolutely no attention in the least. Sniffing indignantly at it for 'mocking' her, she stumbled to her feet, dusting both imaginary and real dust particles off her clothes. Taking great care to walk far around the monkey boulder, she moved into the next area of the forest.
Her heart began to palpitate wildly, excitement fluttering within her chest as do the delicate wings of a hummingbird, thrumming in the breeze. Her eyes caught the familiar glint of sunlight on water. Pushing aside foliage, she approached the lake, even more awed by its beauty than she had been the night before. Breaths coming in short gasps in the exhileration, her eyes darted across the shoreline, searching for the vision of magic from the night before.
Nothing was there.
Ari sighed, strongly disappointed. With all the signs, she'd thought that the dream had definitely been prophetic, or some sort of paranormal vision. Turning to leave, she gave one last glance at the lake shore.
And promptly tripped over the crystal from the night before in her moment of distraction.
Her mind did not wonder how it had gotten behind her, nor made any attempt at reason. She grasped the crystalline object in her tiny hands, mesmerized by the gentle colors swirling within its depths. A strange golden, fog-like substance gently wafted around crystal and possessor, as if to embrace this new meeting.
Clutching the crystal close to her heart, she murmured gently.
"Perhaps this is destiny." And she smiled, happily, even while some portion of her mind told her to stop being a hopeless romantic and get her butt out of the dirt. Deliriously glad at this aquisition, she wandered back into the woods in a haze of consciousness, only half concentrating on the path home.
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Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 1:56 pm
[Saved for Ari Story Fragment]
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Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 2:27 pm
::Chronicle Three::
Leaving off typing in the middle of a sentence, Ari pushed back from her desk, the legs of the chair scraping across the floor. Standing up, she picked her way around piles of junk scattered around the floor. Well, she wouldn't exactly call them junk, they were just articles of her personal life that she was entirely too lazy to throw away. Not to mention that somewhere in her soul, she believed that they added aesthetic value to her room. No, really, she wasn't just making it up...
Collapsing on her bed, Ari sighed happily, contented with her latest outbreak of work. It was really thanks to the vivid dreams she had been having every night since she had picked up the strange crystal in the woods out back. Every night, the wandering sleeper within her was whisked away to another whimsical location, once a forest filled with dancing fireflies, another time a courtyard in what appeared to be feudal Japan. She had seen creatures both original and a mishmosh of those that existed. With the material that these night fantasies were giving her, she might be able to finish her current book and actually start working on another book. Or two!
She flipped over and squealed excitedly into her pillow.
Sitting back up, Ari leaned over to her nightstand. Pushing aside various papers and drawings, she finally located the Hershey bar she had purchased earlier in the day. Ripping the wrapper off and depositing it absentmindedly on the floor, she bit into the dark chocolate with gusto, finishing the entire bar in the space of one minute.
Licking the remnants of her snack off her lips, a sparkle caught the corner of her eye. Grinning, she glanced over at her dresser at what she had affectionately dubbed her "good luck charm", since it seemed to have heralded the end of her writer's block. Either that, or the little clouds that always surrounded it were some kind of hallucinogen, and were giving her the strange dreams. Either way...
Well, she sure as hell didn't know what made the little crystal float. Or emit strange and unknown gaseous substances. There wasn't a battery hatch, or any other device to make it do so. Ari had experimented with it a bit, turning it upside down. The crystal had hovered in position for a moment before righting itself. Ari wasn't sure, but she thought she saw the glow decrease a bit for a moment, as if it was sulking, but it could've been her imagination. Since then, she had filed the crystal in her mind under 'Things that can not be explained, so don't bother.'
Reaching over from her perch on the bed, just barely lifting her behind from the matress, she managed to grab the crystal with the tips of her fingers, the floating object transferring itself to her hands. Cupping it in both palms, she stared at it absentmindedly, while deciding what to do next.
Then it lit up like a sunlamp and Ari felt her mind falling away....
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Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 12:57 pm
::Chronicle Three-Continued::
Multicolored clouds swirled wispily around her, touching her softly. Ari stared, wide-eyed at the scenery around her. As beautiful as it was, she couldn't help but wonder if somebody slipped some drug into her chocolate bar. She whimpered a bit, looking around frantically, when a movement caught her eye.
"Who's there?" she called out, voice shaking. She saw something move again out of the corner of her eye, and spun around. Nothing was there except more swirling cloud matter. Fear fading into irritation, Ari pouted.
"I don't feel like playing games, y'know?" she yelled, stomping her foot.
"Gamesth?" A soft voice whispered behind her, curiously. Ari jumped, startled, and spun around again. A young child peered at her gently out of lazy eyes, head tilted to one side. His glossy blond hair, streaked with blues and reds, swept over his forehead. A pair of golden wings shimmered behind him, and Ari gasped.
"You're beautiful!" she stammered out, before clasping her hands over her mouth. She didn't mean for that to slip out! The child giggled in a quiet voice, before reaching out with a tiny hand to touch her face. Ari, almost in a trance, placed her larger hand over his.
"You're...mine?" he asked softly, bringing his face closer. Ari nodded enthusiastically, not really registering what he said, but somehow happy, nonetheless. He nodded back at her, a small smile making its way onto his face.
"Name?" he asked in the same whispery voice, removing his hand from hers and placing it on his chest. Ari barely had to think before her answer slipped out.
"Sora," she said, blissfully, "Because dreams like you are castles in the sky." As she finished her statement, Ari tumbled backwards and the world faded out once again. Moments later she slowly awakened in bed, eyes blinking open as she stirred from her rest. Remembering what had happened, she sat up in a panic, and nearly slammed nose first into the child she had met in her dreams, who was floating a few feet overhead.
Heartrate returning to normal, she gently ran her fingers through Sora's hair. Realizing that he was fast asleep, Ari tiptoed out so as not to wake him.
Moving carefully down the stairs, so as not to have them creak, she wandered into the kitchen, grabbing a banana. Peeling it absentmindedly, she bit into it, lost in her thoughts of the child in the room above.
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Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:13 pm
::Chronicle Four:: (Finally...)
By the passing of about a week, Ari had abandoned all previous caution when moving around the baby child that had, by all consideration, adopted her. She had come to the realization that if Sora wished to be asleep, Sora would most likely stay asleep, mostly due to an incident involving a slippery kitchen floor, a table with a broken leg, and two sets of dishes. After spending the following two hours cleaning broken pottery fragments from between the kitchen tiles, she had gone into the next room to find that Sora was still sleeping right where she had left him. Well, give or take a few feet.
She had also noticed that he tended to drift while taking one of his naps, due to the ethereal cloud that he perched upon. She had been typing the next chapter of one of her stories, lost in thought, when all of a sudden, something bumped into the back of her head. It turned out that, while in dreamland, Sora had crossed the room, knocked into her plastic floor lamp, which swayed on its stand before falling onto her cranium. When she woke Sora afterwards, he admitted that he had no recollection of moving at all, and appologized profusely for hitting her. Well, at least tried to appologize, making sad looking faces and all. Ari then spent the next ten minutes appologizing to him for making it seem like such a big deal, when really, she was just curious as to what happened. Not like the lamp was that heavy, not at all.
(To be continued later....)
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Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 2:29 pm
::Chronicle Five::
After spending some time trying to solve the drifting dilema, Ari eventually came up with a solution. Realizing the tightness of Sora's grip while he was unconscious (something discovered when he had accidentally latched onto her hair while floating about), she gave him the end of a long cord to hold on to, the other end attatched to a bracelet on her wrist. Although it kept him from moving somewhere dangerous while he was asleep, Ari couldn't help but feel that one or the other of them was on a leash.
Eh, well, at least Sora didn't seem to say. She attempted to explain, with exaggerated hand gestures galore, just why he should stay close to her when she first showed him her invention. Afterwards, Sora just took the string and smiled coyly, perhaps even patronizingly, at her, making Ari feel that she had probably gone to far with her pantomining and had insulted his intelligence. Which, Ari had no doubt, was fairly high. When he wasn't sleeping, he was watching everything that was happening, soaking up atmosphere and ideas.
Which was why Ari had taken him to the library just in town. Which was fine up until the point where she realized that A.) Sora was fast asleep by the time she got there and B.) He was too small to be able to hold up any of the books, anyway. Could he even read yet? So, Ari found herself sitting deadpan in the children's section of the library with a sleeping angel baby, listening to some mindless children's show. Apparently sock puppets singing theme songs were the holy grail of early childhood intelligence. Whoopee.
Either way, the children's room of the library looked like it hadn't been touched in ages. The television on which said show was playing looked to have come from a grandmother's tag sale, lacking remote and cable. There was a fine layer of dust on all surfaces in the room, which rose into the air when Ari slammed her palm down on the table. Ari sneezed violently several times, causing Sora to open one eye lazily to look at her before falling right back to sleep.
"I know this is a college town mostly, so there aren't many kids around," she muttered, "but this is RIDICULOUS!" Ari crossed her arms at the last word, giving the evil eye to the dust. Deciding that Sora would be alright for a moment, Ari stomped out of the empty room in order to hunt down the librarian and tell him to either clean out the children's room or show her where the cleaning supplies were.
After several minutes, Sora yawned and opened his eyes, peering blearily around the library. Realizing that his guardian was gone, he slowly came more into awareness, not so much worried as curious. Now, where had Ari left him this time?
Hovering over to one the bookcases, most of which were low, being in the children's section, Sora grabbed one of the books. Unfortunately, due to low budget, the library had to cram all its children's books into limited shelf space, and the books were stuck in the shelves fairly tightly. Sora, unable to dislodge the book with his preliminary tug, swung his tiny feet off the cloud and braced himself against the bookshelf.
After about thirty seconds of this tug of war, the book popped free, Sora's momentum sending book, cloud and Seraphii careening across the room. His ride was interrupted by a collision into another bookcase, which swayed for a few minutes before beginning its descent down towards the small angelic creature.
Realizing the danger quickly, Sora fled from the shadow of the bookcase, the end of the small child's cloud barely escaping the falling furniture. The fall kicked up the dust in the room, cloaking the entire room in a soft haze of grey and white. Sora, being so close to the bookcase when the accident happened, found himself covered entirely with a thin layer of dust. He sneezed lightly once, causing another small dust cloud to poof around him.
Once everything (i.e. dust) had settled, Sora pulled himself into a sitting position, crossed legs style, on the cloud. He had managed to hold onto the book through all the excitement, and he propped it up against his knees, the large picture book hiding all but the top of his head. He had just turned to the title page, which had a picture of a bright and colorful spider on it, when an excited shriek came from the doorway, distracting him.
A tall and thin man, with a small mustache, stood just inside the room, pointing towards the fallen bookcase, and aparently attempting to get some words out. Ari stood just behind him, a little shocked, but Sora could see the beginnings of a grin quirking at the corner of her mouth. The man then turned to Ari, and with gestures not unsimilar to the ones she used earlier, attempted to ask her what she was going to do about this.
At least, that was the gist of it. The man, who was the librarian, was spluttering and stuttering so much that she could barely make half his words. Eventually they came to an agreement in which Ari agreed to clean the entire library in exchange for the librarian not calling the police or library security, or something to that degree.
After the librarian, who Ari decided needed to go on a long vacation, left, she walked over to Sora. Looking over his dust covered body, not to mention the state of the room, she sighed.
"Do I even want to know what happened?" she asked finally.
Sora just looked at the book, then her, then smiled.
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Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 1:20 pm
::Chronicle Six::
The large glowing numbers on Ari's digital clock read 3:00. This, however, was wrong, as she had forgotten to reset it at some point or another, and the actual time was 4:00. This was A.M., not P.M. and Ari was currently awake, and consuming her sixth cup of coffee for the night. It was the week before her college's Christmas vacation, and naturally, this meant that she had finals to study for.
And that meant that Ari was currently twitching over a textbook from the ingestion of too much caffeine and lack of sleep.
Sora, on the other hand, was getting plenty of naptime, slowly floating around with string grasped in one hand.
At about 4:15, officially, not Ari's clock time, the words on the page of the textbook became blurred enough to be illegible. At 4:30, Ari began to sway back and forth in her seat. At 4:35, she fell out of her chair and onto the floor.
This actually caused a chain reaction in which Ari fell on the string holding her to Sora, which caused the string to be pulled downward, which lead to the small Seraphii's cloud to begin it's sharp descent floorwards.
He never actually hit the floor, due to the length of the swing, but the jerking motion made him startle awake. Blinking somewhat sleepily, he gazed at his guardian curiously, who now appeared to be sleeping on the floor.
Deciding he didn't want to know, Sora went back to sleep.
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