Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

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Ingress had a brilliant birthday. She’s eleven. Eleven is nearly grown up! It’s also the year when children in the stories she’s read come into their own. Adventures begin, schooling starts, worlds are saved… she can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Her party earlier was such fun. Door was almost nice to Puck; Ingress had worried a little about that after she invited him. But he was very nice and charming, and Tom was nice, too, and Puck helped Ingress steal lots of roses off the cake while Havelock talked to Tom and Door, and it was brilliant.

She ate far too much icing sugar, but Tom had the peppermint potion waiting for her when the party was over. She feels much better now. And she’s eleven!

It sounds so good in her head. Eleven, eleven, eleven.

She should have asked Mary to stay the night with her, she thinks, as she tosses and turns. She’s never going to fall asleep, even with staying up past her bedtime. Tom and Door insisted she go to bed after she started yawning. They can be so silly sometimes.

She tosses one more time, and she thinks, again, how impossible it will be to go to sleep tonight. Her eyelids flutter and close. It is not long before she’s deep in dreams.

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Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

There's a couple of candles burning near the blue-jeaned knees of the woman in white; a deck of cards, with a string of them laid out. The Rose; the Parrot; the Soldier. The Earth.

"Your future." The woman smiles. "Do you like riddles?"

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"I like a Riddle," she laughs, and she remembers the man in the robe who sounded like Tom, but was not him at all.

He couldn't have been.

She sits down and points to one of the cards. "The Parrot is nice."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

"The riddle for the Parrot is, daca la pata y empiézame a platicar." Her accent is pretty good. She tips back her hood now, and slides down the zipper of her jacket a little. It's warm now, as the fire settles in and rolls up its sleeves. "It means, sit down and have a chat with me."

With the light on her face she looks younger.

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"I can understand ratspeak. And that of pigeons."

Ingress watches the flames. She thinks she can see a turtle within, deep in the heart of the fire.

"And I am sitting down and having a chat with you."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

"They're good cards," the woman agrees solemnly. "But it's easy when you start with the answer. How about this one?" She picks up the deck and shuffles it, her hands lightning fast; she flicks a card out, seemingly at and random, and holds it up facing herself. The back is a grey-scale checker.

"La cobija de los pobres. I am the shelter of the poor."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

Ingress nods.

"People fall through the cracks," she says. "Your hands move very quickly."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

The woman pauses, and smiles slyly as she gives into the impulse to show off. She lays the card she drew facedown on the ground, half-covering the World, and cuts the deck; the card she turns up now is La Mano. A lineless hand. "So do my eyes."

(This is the hand of a criminal.)

"Do you know the answer to the riddle?"

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

Ingress frowns, puzzling out what the question might be. Then she shakes her head.

When she looks up, her face is closed, wary.

"You're not the Sphinx, are you?"

Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

That makes her laugh. "No," she says. She turns over the card. She leaves it paired with The World, though.

It's The Sun.

"I told you before. I'm Rosie. Rosie Real."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"Rosie Really?"

She laughs at her joke.

"I'm Ingress. I haven't a last name."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

Her smile stills, and her eyes flick to the woods; to the shadows that have drawn near again.

"Careful," she says. "Be careful in the woods. Never lie--but watch what you give away. They'll take whatever you're willing to give away. Your name, your face... your heart."

The good humor has drained out of her; the fire feels colder now, for her. She touches the cards. The World. "The world is a ball and we are the foundation." The Sun. "We are the shelter of the poor."



"Do you understand?"

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"I-"

She shivers. The shadows are cold, too.

"I think so?"

The world is a ball, wide and vast.

Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

"Don't be afraid," she says, unexpectedly gentle.

The woman looks up at the shadows; they've gathered again, pressing close against the fire light, and in the reddish glow her eyes are distant. "They're not so bad, you know."

"They'll always come back. And they don't always go when you tell them to. They'll take all they can, and they think it's owed them."

"But there are more dangerous things."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

Ingress knows the shadows are there, even as she tries not to look.

...a tall man shape and a short one, blood spraying over the roses, a black-eyed angel's face twisted in fury, knitting needles clacking coldly in the corner...

"Like what?"

Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

"Like us."

Now she stands. "When I give the word we charge, understand?" She shrugs out of the jacket; it's just a white fleece hoodie (http://ofthatantet.livejournal.com/), a plastic daisy dangling from the zip. Under it her arms are bare. There's a bronze armband gleaming on one powerful bicep; letters scroll (http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/83075312/14543988) across it.

"You'd better take this. It's a tradition."

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

Ingress takes it. It's far too big for her, but then it fits just right.

"I need my slingshot."

She pulls it from the pocket.

She's ready.

Re: Not all is as it seems

[ofthatantet.livejournal.com]

As she hands it over, for a moment there's--a moment. A different moment.

They're seated in the playroom; she's wearing a denim dress and her hair is loose and wavy, her face like less war-like. Younger still. Nimble fingers wind ribbons through Ingress's hair; interlacing blue and gold. "You look good," she says finally, giggling a little. "Girl you look good," saying it the way her mother does.

And then the words are there (http://ofthatantet.livejournal.com/49800.html?thread=902024#t902024), as they never seem to be when she's awake.

"Being a girl," she says, looking down, "it's like anything else. You come correct or you've already lost. You have to wake up every day ready to fight. Because they will make you fight. Sometimes they will." She raises her eyes, Eddie (Dean) Toren's eyes, to meet Ingress's.

"You'll fight. You'll bleed."

"But you'll win." She takes a brand from the campfire and holds it up like a torch; like a blade.

She turns back to the shadows, and her voice is thunder. "For 'Riza!" she shouts. "For Chloe and the White!"

Re: Not all is as it seems

[smallestopener]

"For 'Riza!" Ingress calls out, her heart pounding and her cheeks flushed.

She's no longer cold.

"For Valdemar!"

They charge the darkness, young and fearless.