Topic: A certain darkness

starbright

Date: 2016-06-30 00:25 EST
Most would never notice.

Only those who watched the night sky enough to notice every star spangled across the ink black banner would likely realize that there was one fewer pinprick of light.

Oh, it was an inconsequential light that'd gone missing. It hadn't died out, it hadn't dimmed; it'd gone missing. Except that since hardly anyone noticed it, how could it be truly missed" It wasn't a member of any important constellation after all.

Sidra hadn't been given that honor. Perhaps one day she might, but she was such a young star! You better bet the other celestial bodies didn't let her forget it either.

Maybe another millennia or two, she thought. It was odd to feel the sensation of a single voice bounding around in her head: her own. Within the Sea she was just another voice amidst thousands. Millions" It's hard to keep track when your existence is too abstract to have defined parameters.

Having a body was weird, too. She could touch things. She could touch herself! Not like that. Pervert. That was a term she'd learned very quickly while walking naked down the street. She hadn't known that clothing was needed, no one told her. Not that she'd asked.

So now she had a body and clothes. Now to work on her voice.

"Hello." No response.

"Hello," she tried again, with more force. But the plastic man behind the glass didn't respond. She rapped on the glass. It was no use! She turned from the window display wearing the man's suit. Not his actual suit, just an exact replica.

Ahead there was a market. A bustle. The thrum of life.

And so the missing star went to go be where the people are.

I wanna be, where the people are I wanna see, wanna see 'em dancin' Walkin' around on those Whad'ya call 'em?

Oh, feet, flippin' your fins you don't get too far Legs are required for jumpin', dancin' Strollin' along down a What's that word again, street

Up where they walk, up where they run Up where they stay all day in the sun Wanderin' free

(OOC- You're more than welcome to notice a star winking out of existence.)

starbright

Date: 2016-07-05 20:59 EST
Sidra watched the bloom of lights exploding in the sky with an air of wonder. She didn't know why they were being set off or what they were, but the fireworks were hard to miss. The first one to boom through the night air had startled her.

She was alone in the square. Too late she learned of the festivities on the beach. Too late did she learn what a beach even was. It was next on her very long list of things to experience while she still had the time.

It was hard to be this way. Took so much energy to move with her legs and her feet and sometimes she forgot. Forgot that she couldn't just be where she wanted to be.

In her hand she grasped an apple. She'd already taken a bite of it and chewing was forgotten while the colors flashed overhead. Things like hunger and sleep which she needed now were odd. The sensations! The pangs in her belly which she had no words for or the way her eyelids kept wanting to drag together...!

Just words alone were hard. She still forgot to speak at times and found herself staring at people who could not understand her thoughts. She didn't have enough words, yet. Some people spoke English and some people spoke Common and to some they might think the two languages were just alike! But they just weren't.

So she was learning. It took a lot of time and energy and she wasn't sure how much of either she had left.

Eventually she would have to go back.

She lifted the apple to take another bite.

starbright

Date: 2016-07-08 00:45 EST
One step, two step. Wasn't that a dance" It could be with the right rhythm and sway.

For Sidra it was not. It was only walking. She had yet to find her twinkle in this form. The big structure she left was a place she had been directed to go. To her it was a place where people met.

They came, they drank, they left. So did she. It was the talking part she had not mastered yet.

A sound off to her side made her turn. The bins were rattling in a way she hadn't yet learned to be startled by.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Her heart beat worked itself into a sprint. This feeling of fear was an instinctual response to an unknown in the dark. Her feet knew to back away as the rattle got louder.

And louder.

The sharp inhale of breath was too an automatic reaction when a shadow leaped directly her way.

A second time she fell. This a much shorter distance and far more painful when she landed upon her backside.

Four feet padded closer. Sidra had no name for the creature, though in the near future she would learn it to be a dog. He was a small, mangy thing. As afraid of her as she was of it. She could see its tremble. The way it reflexively cowered from the hand she didn't realize she'd outstretched it until he responded.

Her heart ached. Compassion. How could she sooth this ache"

"Hello?" She greeted the dog. The dragon had spoken, could this beast'

It didn't. It stared at her in fright.

"Sup?" That was a new word she learned. A greeting which was a more complex dance than the first had been.

The dog didn't know this dance either. Sidra could sense it was going to run.

"Water?" She had the bottle still, more or less half full. The word had made the dog perk its ears. Yes!

She looked from the bottle to the dog. The dragon in the inn had drank from a bowl. The horse at the fountain had drank from the basin. Sidra did not have any such vessels. She looked helplessly at her...

She cupped her hand and poured some water into it. The dog sniffed the air and came nearer. In her excitement in holding her hand nearer, she dropped most of the water. Quickly she refilled it.

It took a few more attempts, but eventually her new friend was lapping water from her hand.

starbright

Date: 2016-07-22 00:20 EST
It had been days, many days, since Sidra had fallen to Rhydin. She'd slowly begun to master the whole, being corporeal thing, but it took a great deal of her energy to learn so much so fast.

She was beginning to dim. Soon she would have to return to recharge and she supposed that she'd be able to return. Someone at the inn had pointed out something called a 'clock' which represented the tick of time.

The concept confused her a great deal. The tick of hands marked the passage of a unit of measurement that never before had affect her. She was not entirely convinced that it was real at all.

Her favorite things that she had discovered to eat were apples. The green ones that made her lips pucker were the best, though there were little red ones that were nice, and ones that were pink on the inside. A very kind woman selling fruit had taught her the difference and let Sidra help out at her stall for some extra money.

She was eating one of the apples the woman gave her in payment when she came across another new thing: Crying. A very small person in the square was crying. She knew this being could be the young of her kind, but Sidra had also mistaken a dwarf for a child and this had not been a fair thing.

Sidra crept closer to the girl, something pulling at the strings of her heart in the way fat droplets rolled down those cherubic cheeks. The girl's eyes were on the stars above.

"What look?" Sidra asked as she drew nearer. The girl hadn't noticed the approach and was startled by a voice. She swiped hastily at her eyes with balled up fists.

"W-what?" The girl's voice trembled. Sidra crouched down.

"What look?" She asked again, pointing up.

The girl looked confused. Sidra wouldn't know it, but it was just the thing to shake the girl from her sadness. She was too distracted by the weird lady to cry. "The stars..." she said and pointed.

Sidra made a quiet thrum, a noise she'd been trying to master ever since she met the cold dragon. She smiled at the girl and lowered herself down to the cobblestones. "Look pretty." She pointed to her own eyes. "Why water?"

Again the girl's nose scrunched up. "I'm sad so I'm crying."

These were things Sidra didn't understand, but she wasn't sure what questions to ask. "Why look stars?"

Something the girl didn't know is that Sidra considered this to be a fantastically successful conversation. What the girl did know was she was dealing with someone who didn't speak her language well.

"I'm watching for shooting stars," she said slowly, enunciating her words clearly. "If you catch one you make a wish."

Sidra stared wide eyed at the girl as she took another bite of her apple. The slow speech was helpful, but it still took her a little time to puzzle out the meaning. She furrowed her brow. "Why catch?"

The girl understood the confusion right away. "You don't really catch them..." she clasped her hands together like she was snatching a firefly from the air. Sidra gasped. The girl pointed to her eyes then the sky. "You see them. If you see one you make a wish and it will come true."

Wish was a word Sidra had heard used in different ways. She understood it's meaning, but not it's meaning here.

"Why wish?"

The girl set her hands on her hips in an impatient gesture. She'd eight, being a teacher isn't easy. "To make it come true!"

Sidra puzzled over this information. She squinted at the girl with one eye. "Need wish?"

This was the question to ask. The girl's lower lip trembled and her eyes started to fill up again. Again, Sidra began to feel a sensation in her chest she didn't understand. When the girl nodded she knew she had to do something.

Sidra bite at her lower lip and thought. And thought....And thought some more.

There is really no other good way to describe how Sidra perceived what she did. Ask her later and that would be all she said: She thought it hard enough and so it was.

She was deep in thought when the girl gasped. She was too deep in thought to recognize when the girl started tugging on her sleeve.

"Look! Look!" The girl said. "A star! A shooting star! Oh and another!"

Of course Sidra saw them, but in her thoughts and not with her eyes. She didn't see their streak across the sky reflected in the girl's watery eyes. One, two, three. Was that enough' All of that thinking made her feel tired and dizzy.

The girl was concerned. "Are you okay, lady' Lady?" She shouted and she shook Sidra, but to no avail. She ran off to get help.

But Sidra was no longer sitting there when she dragged her da' back. For days that girl would go on and on about the shooting stars she saw.

It would take many days for Sidra to wake up and remember to be again.