Madeleine Gray (burnlyrical) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2011-06-15 16:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | #solo, 2009-08-17, madeleine |
It's not a silly little moment
Who: Madeleine & Althea (NPC'd)
Where: Home
When: Early afternoon(ish)
Given that her stomach was still flat, Madeleine was willing to put money on it being too early to begin tapping out random rhythms on her abdomen to try and turn the current inhabitant into some kind of future percussionist. She doubted the ball of cells she was harbouring was going to become any kind of genius at anything because she started playing Rachmaninov through her sodding uterus wall at any given point and she couldn’t give a toss if it did if the damned thing wasn’t born right. None of which was preventing her from irritably drumming snippets of the music from the commercials on her tummy. It was practically a nervous tick, brought about by an almost inexplicable spike in her stress levels. Almost inexplicable.
‘The doctor said this wouldcouldmight happen,’ Althea pointed out rather unhelpfully.
“Did it not occur to you that ‘heightened stress’ might mean something rather higher than usual to, say, me?” The usual background silence of her familiar’s sulking answered her. “What part of ‘fire elemental’ does not suggest that I might take it worse than others?” I’m a Gray. Which was all the answer anyone ever really needed for just about anything. Her mother would agree.
‘Don’t take it out on me just because you’re feeling sick.’ Where she was, exactly, Madeleine could not say. For a would-be pair of boots - ‘I’ll tell Zaviar you thought that.’ - she knew when to keep out of her elemental’s line of sight. Potentially out of her range altogether. Which wasn’t awfully difficult just then. The only thing Madeleine hated as much as throwing up was her body falling under the impression it might need to do so, leaving her hugging the toilet bowl for two hours. Just in case. As soon as it had begun to subside, she had relocated to the living room and stretched out on one of the couches, adamant she wasn’t moving for anyone. Which was around about when Althea had started - reminding her what the doctor had told her, when her next appointment was, asking yet again if she knew what her offspring was yet - and the television remote had been thrown in what the elemental hoped was her general direction, leaving Madeleine to watch... something. She wasn’t paying attention. It was American.
‘It will all work out,’ the snake informed her with a sincere confidence. It somehow sounded as though it had been stolen from a greetings card.
Eyes rolling, Madeleine slowly un-stretched, her limbs seeming content to take their time in returning her to an upright position. “You’ve been watching too much television.” Again. She needed to have words with her mother about that. Someone was turning the damned thing on for her familiar when she was not around and it needed to stop. It gave her ideas. Part of her was quite convinced it was Martie, doing it deliberately just to drive her up the wall. That or her mother was doing it because she refused to grasp why she shouldn’t.
‘I have not,’ Althea insisted. ‘Everything really will work out. It always does.’ The sentiment had come from one of those strange animated programs meant for children she had seen a while ago, but she was a firm believer in it. In this instance, anyway. Because it suited her. ‘Don’t turn it off - I want to see what happens to the chihuahua...’ A ridiculous kind of dog that looked quite a lot like dinner. Whatever it was they had been watching, Knight would have appreciated it. But then Madeleine might have thrown something at his head for laughing too much. ‘Fine. But next door only have the God channel on, so if I start reciting what you called religious drivel--’ Feeling her ward’s faint amusement amid threats of roasting and char-grilling, the snake paused. ‘I... am not in the tree you think I am in.’
“And you’re not the droid I’m looking for.” Madeleine’s nails tapped against the kitchen window, where she could see her familiar perfectly well. In that very tree. She would have stopped to marvel at the sheer predictability of a creature who could see right into her head and should have thought herto be the predictable one, but she wanted a cup of tea. And yes, it was true that Althea had known she would want one of those soon, but that was by pure virtue of the fact she was English. “Come inside, it’s set to rain at some point this morning and I am not drying you off.”
‘Shower. It’s set to shower.’
She was not going to set Althea’s favourite tree alight with her still in it. “A prettier way of saying ‘light rain’. As opposed to ‘torrential rain’. Come inside.” Madeleine turned her back on the window, blowing on her tea once out of habit rather than need before taking a sip. Rain was rain, light showers or not. It was water - something she was currently feeling the need to be as far away from as possible. In fact, she was going to find the rest of the candles. She would balance the damn things on the work surfaces if she had to.
‘You realise it isn’t morning any more and that it has actually already rained.’ Somehow the snake’s thoughts just sounded closer. ‘Everything outside is damp and I can dry myself, thank you.’ Or her ward’s element could. One of the many benefits of looking after a fire elemental. Everything stayed warm and dry. Until they got angry - then they became rather hot instead, but they were still quite dry. Not that it mattered unless she could get into the house before Madeleine inadvertently burned it down. So if she could just open a window-- ‘Thank you.’
Turning away from the window once again, the elemental returned to her search for the candles. The lighter that Zaviar had given to her for her birthday was already in hand. It had been refuelled no less than twice since because she truly did view it as a toy and would not stop playing with it. She had played with matches as a child - she played with lighters and fuel as an adult. Clicking it on and off in a manner that most would no doubt consider irritating (though she could hardly say she would have cared, since she considered most irritating herself), Madeleine rummaged one hand through the drawer full of candles. Dining candles, tea candles, other candles that likely had a name but she’d be damned if she knew it - the list was endless, but she didn’t want them all. Those that had burned out in the hall needed replacing and - and why hadn’t her mother done any of this? Was it that difficult? That she had no idea where her mother was or what she was doing wasn’t really featuring into her reasoning. Neither was the fact that Madeleine actually enjoyed lighting her countless candles individually. The lighter had been stowed away in her pocket, temporarily pushed aside in favour of her attempts at recreating her grandfather’s old party tricks of lighting flames while apparently putting them out. Blowing out candles and having them light again instantly. She had never quite managed to pull it off with the same flair - literally a heartbeat away from the same kind of seamlessness. Though you could get trick candles that just wouldn’t be extinguished. Tacky. It did not escape her that only a fire elemental could control flames that way, but it didn’t alter her opinion at all either. After blowing another candle alight - it was like feeding the spark before it was even there - Madeleine counted how many she’d lit. Far more than Zaviar would consider necessary. Yes, well, he wasn’t there. Hopefully they’d keep Martie at bay.
‘The fire grate needs clearing out to--’
“Yes, thank you, mother.”
‘I’m not your--’
“It’s a figure of speech, Althea.”
The living room smelled of pine. Hardly surprising, but it had been one of her favourite smells since her great-grandfather had taken her into the back garden of his family’s huge property to show her how to build a fire from scratch. He had done nothing more than shown her how to arrange the firewood, then stood back to see how it burned. At the time she had been old enough to do little more than create spark enough to light a match without touching it, but their fire had burned all evening. There was a flicker of pride at that memory. She had always preferred big, open fires. Hearths, camp fires, bonfires and the like. They always felt like a heart, a centre... She would have simply put that down to Lila having had so many burning whenever she could, but Madeleine did not think her brother and sister quite shared her perspective. And perhaps that was silly, because fire was fire regardless of where it came from, but she recalled Bethany having a fixation with party tricks and what may have been a need to impress while Jackson was just... there. Probably using his element to light his cigars. No, Madeleine put it down to a combination of her mother’s habits and that occasion with her great-grandfather. When she had learned that Fire was more than just the spark that made a match fizz and spit hot light for a while before curling up angrily against her finger and thumb. She had built a structure under his supervision and, with that spark, given it a life of its own. And it had burned.
With the old ash rolled up and away in the newspaper that had been protecting the floor, she could turn her attention back to rebuilding her fire. It never failed to make Madeleine feel like a child again. ‘Kindling’ had been her favourite word for a month when she was six. Ow. She liked it less so when it gave her splinters. Pausing in her construction, she withdrew her hand to examine her index finger. It was large. While she was of the opinion it actually resembled a door-stop, it came out with ease courtesy of the nails of her thumb and forefinger. Somewhere in the back of her mind she still felt her familiar shift around uncomfortably. “What’s got your metaphorical knickers in a twist?” she snapped at the creature watching her from the doorway. The splinter was flicked onto the soon-to-be fire, her free hand continuing construction while she stuck the injured finger in her mouth.
‘You’re different,’ Althea stated. Her tongue flicked out to taste the air. With the exception of a hint of blood, maybe, she could smell no difference. But it was there and until she knew what it was, she didn’t like it.
Madeleine glanced over her shoulder. “Is that some kind of code for ‘your mother dropped me on my head’?” Perhaps Martie had and she just didn’t want to admit it - no, there was a definite nudge of indignation there. As well as a deliberately weighted silence that she didn’t much appreciate. Intent on building her fire, she only half-heard the susurrus in the back of her mind. There was a vague awareness of the presence of something else, but her focus was quite fixed. That one spark barely required real thought any more but it required patience for her to sit and wait for it to smoulder, to eventually burst into flames as it would naturally. Patience she wasn’t sure she had. Huffing slightly, she crossed her legs and stared at her little wooden construct, watching it smoke. Moments later it was engulfed by flames. They licked up Madeleine’s hands and arms as she set a log atop what was left of the kindling. Most people called that catching fire. But they were not elementals, just cretins who did not understand that you could not just catch Fire.
If anything, He caught you.
Satisfied, she pulled her hands back from the fireplace, eyebrows raising in mild fascination as her element continued to envelope her hands. It was not the first time that had happened, but never had it been so adamant it would last and never had it been accompanied by a decidedly male voice in the back of her mind. “Oh.” It was a quiet exclamation of surprise more than it was a word, though realisation had written itself across Madeleine’s face. Continuing to stare, her eyes widened as her fingers began to slowly dissolve into flames themselves, her palms trying to--
‘... Is that all it was?’ The chipper note to Althea’s relief cut through Madeleine’s growing calm like a finely honed icicle. Snapped out of her hypnotic state, she shot a glare over her shoulder. The flames were gone from her hands; any onlookers would not have noticed the change.
“What do you mean ‘is that all’?” If the answer was not satisfactory, she was seriously considering throwing a log. And it would be flaming by the time it hit the snake.
The constrictor coiled defensively. ‘I thought something might be wrong.’ She also thought Fire might be a bad influence when it came to how volatile the elemental could be, but then that made sense.
“No.” Her attention turned back to the fire in order to poke the log around. “I’m fine.” She had achieved her mastery the same way she had gone up every other level - almost without noticing. Only now she was of an age where she had to actively tell her mother and preferably before her familiar did. Zaviar might have to wait until her hands were steady enough to use her cell.
‘That was sort of anti-climactic.’ Althea had expected a bigger, more explosive transition. Perhaps even an actual explosion. ‘Madeleine? … Madeleine? Can we get fireworks?’