12-04-2007, 05:24 PM
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Poe was happy to sit down across from Ahren, and listen to him tell his tale. There was an added age and something missing in him now that did indeed give him a rougher edge, but he didn’t have the same tired heaviness that he had when they and so many others left this land. She had always thought that he had been free of the alpha-weight when they did that, but seeing him now made her think differently. He had still been an alpha, even when he wasn’t ruling in that group. It was like how parents are still parents, even after their children have graduated well into adulthood. But they were truly disbanded, now. The story was, in part what she expected. Settling until the dramas that orbited them all caught up all that way, and split. More children, the long-gone Queen of something magical that Poe had never placed, and the explanation for Matinee’s absence in Ahren’s scent-aura. Poe had never found reason to believe in love and romance having happy endings, but there was an unexpected little sink of disappointment when she heard this. But as any sorrow was done with, Poe breathed it in and out, leaving just a stain on her insides. “Oh, my adventures have been spectacular and magical, as per usual,” she replied with her small pixie-grin, rolling her shoulders and arms back to prop herself up on her own bale of hay. “After missing the boat—due to my immense capacity for clumsiness, plus who knows what else—I caught another ship headed overseas. A pirate ship of course, because nothing less would do for my likes. We conquered some islands, saved some whales, raided some pirate booty,”—was one way of explaining it—“and wound up going to Africa. A little off-course, but brilliant no less. I swapped ships to get to Europe, but the closest I could get was Italy.” A reflection on her round-trip unavoidably brought up a number of faces, voices, and hands that made her head spin with closely cherished memories, as well as a handful that were better left in the past. Her face was bright and warm as she spoke to their simplified memory. “When I made it up to France, I only found the wake of our ex-Chimerans. I was told that everyone had split. Which through some strange emotion-logic, made me homesick for this place. For what was left, I suppose, but there is next to nothing these days.” She glanced around them, lingering on the dancing dust that showed up in the light from the open door. “It’s strange looking around here now, isn’t it?” she asked, turning back to Ahren with a tilted head. “When I came back here from my spill in the west, it seemed like it was full of ghost-memories. But they faded away quickly when I realized how it had just been reincarnated into something else. But it really seems like the Afterworld now.” |