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 Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 10:52 pm
Goodness, Doucette did not look happy. Vivi couldn't blame her, though, considering -- she wondered what must have happened immediately prior to Shepard coming into the kitchen, swearing freely and waving soul bottles around.
"Copy its soul." Half of a smile slipped from Vivi's face, and with Shepard gone to the display cases muttering inaudible curses under his breath, the Frenchwoman was much more able to focus her attentions on Doe. The excitement in her face mellowed, and Vivi took in a breath before beginning, the lilt of her voice pleasingly soft:"Mm, cheri. From what I understand, a soul cannot so much be copied as it must be captured. Although a soul is ... quite a wonderous thing, I do not believe it can be in two places at once! The instructions that I received were this. The soul bottle, it is like a magnet for creatures the color of its soul cloth. When one of that color comes near the soul bottle for an extended period of time... the soul will be sucked into the bottle. And the creature from which the soul comes, will fade away. Its body will die, and its soul will mix with the essence to become a Raevan. So you see, mssr. Shepard was merely worried that buy attempting to 'copy' the souls of your little darling cabbages..." Vivi made a floating hand motion, as if shooing away the potential unpleasantness that could have arisen from that particular situation.
"So nobody's agreeing with me that this lab place is completely daft." Shepard brooded, setting down a loaded plate of tart-slices, brightly-colored macarons, and miniature cream puffs. Forgetting (perhaps willfully) that the platter was meant entirely for Doucette, he picked up a small slice of blueberry tart and crunched into it moodily, lifting an eyebrow at the two freshly-picked guardians before him. Vivi might have waved off any visions of dead little pugsters, but those visions certainly weren't leaving Shepard's head. Nor was the image of poor Doe, grief-stricken with her accidental pugicide.
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Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:40 pm
Doucette's already pale skin was rapidly draining of what little color there was in her cheeks though a sort of greenish tinge began to color around the gills so-to-speak as she listened to Vivi. Her freckles were now so pronounced they would have made kids want to play connect the dots and create meaningless pictures across her face.
"You're feckin jokin'," she finally breathed, Irish accent full on now that her filter had dropped and her mouth was dangling open. Grandma would have said she was trying to catch flies with a mouth gaping like that, but Doe's expression was beginning to toe the line as a much larger form of netting.
Blue eyes shifted to stare at the tarts for a minute before looking back at Vivi, clearly feeling too ill to truly appreciate the array before her. The crunching from Shepard made her jump slightly and she looked at him with all the horror of a deer in the headlights for a matter of a few seconds. Suddenly everything seemed rather life and death to her, and the crunch had been her imagination's way of telling her that that was the sound of someone's soul being ripped from their soon to be lifeless mass. Fade away her a**.
And that was only the beginning of that little mental dam breaking. As she stared at Shepard enjoying (or grief eating) his way through the blueberry tart, she realized her bottle was still in his other hand and with a strangled sort of guttural, pre-language grunt she'd rip it out of his hands and clutch it against her chest. At least she didn't think it was going to start pulling the soul out of her bosom but she could attempt to keep it from draining Shepard!
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Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 11:59 pm
Shepard's eyebrows shot up as the soul bottle was quite swiftly torn from his grasp, and he quickly gulped his last mouthful of blueberry tart as he stared wide-eyed at Doe. The girl was seriously pale, vampire pale, and he leaned closer to her, at the ready just in case the girl fainted from the sudden drop in blood pressure. "So ... guess someone does agree with me." He might have sounded triumphant if that peculiar note of concern hadn't entered his tone.
"Non non non non non!" Vivi cut him off before he could begin any other speech, both of her hands lifting up in exaggerated 'no' motions. The way that Doe was looking at Shepard, her brilliant blue eyes so wide and her skin so drained of color, Vivi assumed that she either thought that Shepard was going to steal the bottle (unlikely), break the bottle (more likely), or get his soul sucked out of the bottle (least likely, but under the circumstances Doe'd just heard...) "You cannot actually gather a human soul!"
"Plus," said the Aussie helpfully, leaning forward to clasp Doucette's shoulder gently. "... I'm not grey. Least, I wasn't this morning. You alright?"
"It is not fun," Vivi admitted sympathetically, her brows furrowed with anxiety. Doucette did seem like a rather sweet girl, and her soul cloth was even less discernible than her own... The acrobat hoped Doe's own soul-catching journey wouldn't be as fraught with the literal and metaphorical soul-searching as her own had been up to that point. "And it does happen accidentally sometimes, the soul-catching. But... you do have control over when you open that bottle. Just remember that what you catch will contribute very much to the appearance and disposition of your Raevan. So, it seems we are burdened to choose carefully."
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Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 7:09 pm
"Choose?" The girl's voice was a weak whisper, and her eyes continued to dart between the bottle clutched at her chest and over to Shepard. She was holding something that was limitless...and yet somehow there was also a sort of control? So someone had said you cannot gather human souls, but was it more of a shouldn't than a can't? How could one be sure the little globe in her hands was actually discerning enough to know the difference of the souls it pulled into its orbit.
Shepard's grip upon her shoulder startled her, and she gave him another one of those 'caught in the headlight' looks, her plump lower lip quivering for just a moment and she looked as a child on the edge of a emotional fit.
But she drew herself together well enough, and quite suddenly. Placing the bottle upon the table she picked up her pen, doodled a quick tart, and then plucked the one she'd doodled from the plate and began munching upon it. Fingers strayed to dust the crumbs from their tips upon the hem of her shorts (what a bad habit!) before she looked placidly between Vivi and Shepard. Her expression looked assured and considerably more accepting, though the inside of her thoughts were more blank than she was willing to show.
Mental blocking had never been one of her skills, but she was doing alright simply remembering the jellyfish washed upon shore. Surely it would be a good choice, matching in color, and low on the list of horrors were one to find out she'd killed one. How many hapless kids killed those things on the beach every day? How many people did those stupid jellies harm on warm summer days?
The problem was clearly solved in the red head's mind. "I will have to be careful then," she said, before adding in absently, "And these tarts are amazing. I do wish I could gather them up as the soul. A more mouth watering creature there never would be."
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Posted: Mon Apr 26, 2010 7:40 pm
The first thing that showed over both Vivi's and Shepard's face was relief. It was as though a cloud of it had passed over them, casting its shadow over the previous anxiety they'd both shared and eclipsing it completely. Shepard let out a whooshing sigh and collapsed back on his chair bonelessly, his hands pressed, palms down, on his thighs. Doucette had taken that news both better and worse than he'd expected, but he was glad to see how quickly the woman had bounced back. He eyed her surreptitiously, one eyebrow quirking. Catching his soul. Hilarious.
Still, a tiny niggling thought in his head whispered, hey. What if they could catch a human soul?
Too bad you didn't have that bottle a few months back, the thought hissed distantly in his skull. Clive's hair was pretty grey.
Shepard himself went a little grey at the thought.
"Merci~" Vivi was saying, her own expression as soft and accepting as Doucette's. Her own mind was a great deal quieter than Shepard's, thinking only that if this other new guardian had decided the soul-catching conversation had ended, well then, it was over. She'd had enough of the mental hand-wringing in her own mind. The sooner this damn bottle part was over, in every way, the better.
A bare smile crossed her lips, both sweet and wistful. "If only we could catch such a soul! I think my own would be a strawberry. My own essence -- it is called the Broken Dawn. A Dawn of strawberries would be quite refreshing, n'est pas? But perhaps it is better this way. I would constantly desire to eat the Raevan."
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 1:56 am
Doucette burst into a delighted laugh at the idea of Vivi's poor raevan being built from dawn and berries, though it seemed delightfully pretty in her own mind. That dark haired woman's essence sounded beautiful even as nothing more than a voice on the air and Doe couldn't help but to wiggle forward in her seat, "Can I see it? Do you have it?"
As soon as the question had left her lips though, she looked downtrodden and scooted back into her chair. The woman had not brought her own essence along as a sort of show-and-tell exchange with the two.
"Mine's Liquid Aurora Borealis," she spoke up after a moment, holding up her fingers as if there were an invisible vial in the space between them, "Basically the light slid right off of the night sky and Dr. Stalker bottled it up and chose me to take it home." Doucette grinned and motioned at the soul bottle as if to say and you know what happened next.
Blue eyes shifted and focused on Shepard for a moment. For some reason she felt like he was part of it, like he'd received his own vial and bottle and any moment now he'd take it out and show off his wares. And yet it wasn't surprising when he didn't and she didn't know why. Grin turned back to Vivi, picking up her soul bottle once more and plucking curiously at the golden pronged cloth. Was it possible that soul bottles could be switched, or were they specific to the vials they came with? That made the magic of the science more...limiting, less impressive some how.
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Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2010 6:47 am
"Liquid Aurora Borealis." Vivi singsonged pleasantly, her mind bursting into visions of what the vial must look like. Swirls of green and pink and pale yellow peeking out of darkness... she wondered, did it look like paint? Or colorful glimmers of rippled water? "What a beauty it must be! I hope you take a picture before you return it to the lab. I would love to see such a thing. As for mine -- I shall show it to you."
The Frenchwoman lifted easily from her chair and made her way toward the bakery's onyx counter. It pleased her to meet someone in her own position, choosing a soul and gearing up to raise a Raevan. Vivi was nearly bursting with curiousity. What plans had Doucette made? What souls was she now considering? Had she met any other Raevans before? When had the lab contacted her? Vivi looked over her shoulder at the Irish woman with a smile. "May I also bring back with me some tea? Please, do not let the soul bottle interrupt you from enjoying the treats!"
Shepard cleared his throat then, snapping back to himself. Confections and creme puffs he could deal with much better than soul-stealing. "Right, damn, nearly forgot. Do give that ice cream a whirl before it melts, yeh? My own personal triumphs are in there." His face relaxed into an expression of grim, remote amusement as he reached absently for Doe's bottle and squinted at the indecipherable pattern of grey. Was there an animal that looked like this? "Let me know if you want to know the flavors."
He set the bottle back down on the table, close to Doucette and farther away from himself. "... Dr. Stalker. I gotta wonder just how this guy picks guardians. Crystal balls or private investigators."
"I am certain that one delight of being a mad scientist is not having to explain yourself, cheri." Vivi called from behind the counter, where she was gathering a few mugs.
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Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 4:38 am
Doucette was in love with tea, and so when Vivi suggested it she simply perked up like a puppy waiting for a treat, a happy yes floating across the room. "You know," the Irish woman spoke up, looking between Shepard and Vivi, "I would love it if you came by some time, to check out the essence of course." The invitation had been to the both of them, but she had a feeling Shepard wasn't all together interested in being further involved with the general discussion involving the lab. But she got so few visitors out on her island...
Shepard's mention of the ice creams had her glowing once again, fully recovered to her previous state of mind that she'd come in off the street with. Now she had someone to talk to about these issues (besides Dolce and Gabbana who, it turns out, are not the best for deliberating personal issues) and so she was back riding the emotional high.
For the rest of the afternoon Vivi and Doucette discussed their selections into the ranks of the Lab, their general feelings about their new tasks and their impressions of it all. Doe made sure Vivi would promise to come over soon to marvel at the essence and she extended the invitation to Shepard in case he wanted to see the pugs again (maybe he'd like to make sure they were still alive after all?). The two even talked of souls, Doucette finding Vivi's story of the puppy an absolute hoot and Vivi would learn of the red head's new possibility of a jelly fish. It certainly fit the colors, and the shape on the cloth could be tentacles? It also didn't make her feel quite like she was killing something.
When Doucette finally left she was beaming, and stuffed to the brim with all the treats Shepard and Vivi had fed her. Vermillion was somewhere warm and sweet, somewhere to feel like home and the Irish woman was almost sad to leave it and return to an empty house on a mostly empty island. But the two had put her in good enough spirits to push that lonely feeling aside and run for the ferry back to her babies and her new resolve.
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