Brynn~

Yesterday was pretty boring. Some dude came over to talk about the cherry tree we have out front because it's sick and is probably going to die any day now. Skye is all upset that we're chopping down the tree because of its cherries , but the cherries are 60% pit, 39% fruit, and 1% bugs XD

I've been trying to read this book called "the children of the king" or whatever because Skye thinks I should read more books, but I can't get through it though since the main character is an absolutely insufferable jerk. She's so rude to everyone and she's suuuuper annoying! I think she might get redeemed in the end, but I'm like halfway through this book and not really anything has happened to make my like this character even a tiny little bit.

It's early morning and chilly air is pouring through the windows... 

Skye~

I've been thinking. A lot. I've been thinking about life and what I should do with it and whether other people are thinking about the same things as me.

It's a really interesting moment when you realize that every single person on earth isn't just a cardboard npc and has a life just as, if not more, chaotic as yours. You and a random person from sweeden could share your life stories with each other and you would both be equally fascinated.

Fall is coming. I can feel it. The weather is beginning to get slightly less hot, the wind is picking up a bit more, and we got a home decor catolouge yesterday that was filled to the brim with pumpkins.

I love fall so much. I'm so excited ^^

I'm surprised this is still on the first page... thank you. 

Sea Glass~

I went for a walk today, but not to the beach. I walked into town, and I did not stop anywhere, and I did not speak to anyone, but I saw many things and crossed paths with many people. I do not think I acted (or, indeed, felt) very relaxed, but I do think I should get closer to achieving such with further practice. It was such a strange feeling to have so many interactions, and so limited and inconsequential...! Not to mention the frenzied race of what I suppose must be a normal society. It would be just as exhausting as exhilarating to take part, to try and keep up with things. How interesting. How draining. I lay on the floor of my bedroom for some time afterwards, head spinning with it all. 

Well, that didn't last.

Nymph~

I slip out at the coolest hour of the night. Every sound I make is masked by the constant deafening buzz of insects lurking in the dense foliage of my woods, hidden and noisy. 

The night is humid and the moon is shy. The dawn is cloudy, yellow and bright. The afternoon is boiling hot. I often go cold-blooded, but today I simply melt. I do not adjust to different temperatures automatically. I find ways to appreciate or ignore them. 

Lacy wings and flexible paws carry me today. I leap from bank to bank of a stream as I travel along it. Frogs and rodents scatter at my pounces. It is a satisfying collection of moments.

My ears feel funny when I finally glide back into the house, like they need to be popped. I blame the bugs.

Sea Glass~

I lie stretched full-length on the sand, looking up. I can feel granules sliding through my hair, sticking to my skin, packed solid and warm beneath me. The sky above is clear, unimaginably clear, unimaginably deep for a fall morning. I thought this kind of sky was a thing of springtime alone. Perhaps I simply never came here at the right moment.

Waves roll and break somewhere to my left. The tide is going out under the slender moon, whose crescent hangs, faint and promising, in the corner of my sight. Each inhalation lifts me slightly into the cool blue air, and each exhalation delivers me softly back to the grainy earth. I have never felt more filled with love, as if sunshine could be poured into a vessel. 

When at long last I rise, I laugh at my toddling, the feeling of physical weight encasing a bouyed spirit, marveling at the abilities of blood and muscle and bone, imagining I am learning to walk all over again. 

Slowly, as I walk back along the path skirting the wood, reaching home, coming inside to decide what to do next, the world begins to fall back into place. It falls around a bubble of a moment, a time when I lay on the sand looking up at the sky. 

Nymph~

I go out in feathers and fur. The sun is low, the light just beginning to turn gold. It is not especially warm, but it is by no means cold. Not yet. 

I meander through sycamores, bare twigs raised like the-fingers against the sky, oaks and maples holding onto the last burning leaves of fall, beeches that will hold their softer hues until spring. I trace and carefully obliterate the few invasive vines that have crept in. The oriental bittersweet is particularly easy to spot at this time of year, trailing festoons of orange and gold popping out of the massed branches, glaring brighter than flashing lights. 

Water slips from various tips and corners of my form as I move on. I wonder if it will evaporate. Cold air holds less moisture than warm. I watch for a few minutes before joining a flock of birds. 

Few parts of the forest remain green. A particular corner of Elysium is one of them. I settle under the small canopy and ponder this. Some of the bushes below are tipped in red. Soon enough they will glow, rubies resting in a kingdom of mousy sun-touched fur. Already, the sight can be found, elsewhere. Many things can yet be found.

Nymph~

The first snow of the year came today. It's technically not winter yet, but it is December, and I do not bemoan the passage of time. 

I arrayed myself this frostnipped morning in shades of gray and brown, touches of silver and gold playing hidden within, occasionally peeping out from fur or fang. The clouds above, however, soon resolved themselves into bringers of snow, and I was enthralled by my frequent switches between black and white as I leapt in their bounty.

It grows dark early. I will go now to find the paths that lead back to the house. Viola? will have something hot there, I imagine. Not that I couldn't come up with that myself, but I'm in the mood for a surprise. Perhaps fur-scales? Light? A liquid eye and a shooting star will do. Perhaps more than one. 

~Nymph is like an artist whose medium is her own body. 

Nymph~

I wake up feeling bold.

I haven't been myself. Snow and ice have come and gone; I burrowed into nothing and found no comfort. It's a wet false spring sort of day today, and it smells like earth and water. It's cloudy. I like that. I wrap myself in a cloud--no, fleece. But soft, and gray and white like clouds. Warm tufts of wool gather over my hands. I'll keep hands. 

I pass lightly over the ground, my every step graceful and with purpose. I make no sound, leave no trace, but I have swept majestically through, and my woods know it. 

I don't care where I'm going. Just around, through, here. I'm going here, and now I've arrived, and the dead and sleeping things acknowledge me, and now I'm going there. More things await. I will come to them in time.

Rough boulders lie between the trees. I visit them, and I visit the trees as well. Fallen logs, branches, clearings full of yellow grass. The skeletons of my forests reveal themselves. Water lies in streams and pools; I go to these, too, and stay and ponder and fiddle and play. I know every path. I know every place. I get so comfortable in the leaves that I stay for a nap, and wake some hours later to a brighter, lower sun.

Food is delicious. I eat on the roof of the house, among the tops of the trees around it. Today is a good day. I am the queen.

Sea Glass~

The morning is freezing cold and a deep, dark blue. But as soon as I sit up, Nymph grabs my hand and pulls me outside in spite of it.

"Wait, wait, let me get my shoes and coat on--"

"We don't have time for that!" Nymph growls, but she lets me step into some low boots before throwing a fur pelt she pulled out of nowhere at me and dragging me out the door. 

"What are you doing? Is something happening?" I ask.

"You have to be outside," she insists. "It's important. You can't miss it." 

I grumble and wonder to myself. Still sleep-fuzzy, I have no idea what she means.

We walk around the house and climb up the side. Viola? is waiting on the roof. 

"You got xyr! Great. Come on," she says excitedly, moving over to make space on a blanket for the two of us.

"What is this about?" I ask, shivering slightly as I awkwardly maneuver onto the blanket and try to curl every part of myself into another. Nymph, having lowered herself between Viola? and me, rolls her eyes and produces another pelt.

"It's New Year's Day! This is the first sunrise!" Viola? exclaims. "Shh, the sky's getting lighter."

Now comprehending, I acquiesce, and a hush falls over the three of us. Nearby, birds have begun to sing. Increasingly warm colors begin to creep over the clouds. We eye our surroundings, particularly the horizon, with rapt attention. Once or twice, Nymph points to something and whispers, "look!"

I shift excitedly. A certain area of suffused golden light at the base of the sky appears to be bellying upward. Nymph nudges me and hands me a pair of dark glasses. Viola? is donning a similar pair. I decide to merely hold mine for the moment.

I am watching the golden light in breathless anticipation when it happens. The edge of the sun appears. For a split second, I am awestruck. Then I remember that I am looking directly at the sun, quickly shut my eyes, and slip on the glasses. It is too late, of course; a misshapen sunspot hovers in my vision. But I watch the sun ascend, and hear the chorus of birds, and remove my glasses to look at other things: the backlit trees, the landscape all around this rooftop, the light on Nymph's and Viola?'s faces. They are beaming. Cradled in my pelts, I feel warm.

When the pink fades from above and we finally descend from the roof, I feel feather-light, bouyant, filled with incomparable secret light.

~Yeah, I know today's the tenth. So what? 

Night Vision~

It's raining. It's raining really hard, and Sam is upset because Reese cut up a raincoat to put on Chance, because he doesn't like rain. I thought pit bulls were supposed to be resilient?  

I made some sketches today and I like them. I drew a couple of satyrs, which is a nice break from what I've been drawing-- characters from the video games I watch Agent Winter play. I don't know who most of them are but I like to draw armor, and Winter plays a great many games with armored characters. But sometimes it's nice to get a break from unrealistically complex armor. 

Reese has been more like herself lately. While Winter was gone, Reese cried a lot. She put her electric guitar in her closet and played angsty songs (very unlike her) on my acoustic one. Which was nice, I suppose-- getting a break from her amateur guitar shredding was something we all needed. But it made me worry about her. I think she's finally gotten over Sebastion, which is good. She's still mad at him, but she's stopped throwing herself at the punching bag in the basement, so that's good. Like I mentioned, she cut up a raincoat for the dog today-- a classic example of her lack of thinking things through. So she's probably fine. 

Sam has been a bit more relaxed than usual lately. When Winter was away, she took care of Reese and I, and she was stressed most of the time. When Winter came back, she was really tense for a couple of weeks. Sam was mad at Winter, I think. I can't blame her. But on Monday Sam finally accepted Winter's invitation to spar with her in our little basement dojo, so I think Sam and Winter have made up. 

Chance is doing well. He seems happy to be done with sitting on Reese's lap and letting her cry into his wings. I'm glad Reese is over that too. She can be annoying but she *is* my sister, and I didn't like seeing her cry. 

It's time for dinner and Winter ordered pizza, so it's time to go.

Night Vision out. 

(please ignore the first post I made on here, Emerald's, i've kind of redone my AEs as you know and... it was cringey)

~Emerald Frost~

It's morning, pale blue and purple morning.

I get up, open the window and sit down on the windowsill. If I just tip down a bit more I will fall headfirst onto the rocky ground below. Terrifying. Exhilirating. This is my favorite place to sit. 

I watch the golden crown of the sun rise above the mountains, the village of CB nestled in the valleys below. I wave my legs nonchalantly and bite into a pear that I smuggled from the kitchen. It feels to be sitting here, serene and calm, with the breeze blowing around my legs, cold against my frosty hair.  

The sight of the cozy village calls the thought of other AEs to my mind. I don't have any true friends. I've met quite a few new AEs lately, and I think I'm more outgoing now than I used to be; but all the same this business of interacting with people, trusting people, knowing people, makes me nervous. I feel as if whenever I so much as say hello to someone all my secrets will be spilled and my heart broken. Daisy tells me not to worry, just to trust, and Patricks shuts himself in using anger and insults. But I am afraid to trust. And I don't want to be like Patrick. Sometimes I feel like indeed I am trapped in an icy world of my own creation. 

Lux~

I look down at the rose in my hand. Well, here goes nothing. I take a step forward, my breath fogging up the cold night air. I place the rose on the doorstep, and ring the doorbell. Immediately, I teleport to the top of a nearby tree, hiding myself in its branches.

~

@Nyx I leave this post in your care. Lux has grown up quite a bit since the last time we saw him, and it finally hit him. <3