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Juno Glimpses

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  1. #1


    Juno had decided to return to work as there wasn't anything else for it but to wait for a phone call, 'we're going to make plans for our trip to the hospital; coming along?' and so she got to the business of working on a flash for one of her customers.

    Every so often as she worked she would glance up at the clock on the wall. She had invited people to call her, right? She couldn't linger in that crowded apartment any longer -- were they that offended with her? Cliques weren't just for high school. That was probably the issue right there -- people too busy looking at the cutiepies and not paying attention to her. Minutes turned into hours and no calls had come through.

    If anything, she believed in a turnaround of agreements. I agree to take your phone calls and you agree to let me work with you.

    The Manticoress in her raged against this perceived act of rudeness; why, in Arcadia her Durance assured that she could deal with such infractions with a swift crushing blow of a paw, but....did they care about her willingness to help? That she saw it as being polite to wait to be asked? What was wrong with people?

    She took a sip of bottled water as she glowered at the now hated phone. Where were they? Did they really want her help, or was it just another blow-off disguised as a mannerly 'see you when we see you'? They were supposed to go in a group, right? or at least meet first to make their plans. That's why she held off going to the hospital on her own initiative.

    Wait a moment, it hadn't even been a day yet. But wasn't it a crisis situation?

    Somebody had "The Phantom of the Opera" playing in the shop DVD player. She hated that movie. The Phantom was a fucking stalker, pure and simple. Couldn't dip his wick so he had to kill a bunch of people for some weird compensatory issue on his end.

    Or wait. He was an artist who had been ripped off, so maybe she could empathize with him somewhat.

    Stepping out into the alley for a smoke, her darkening mood didn't stop her from focusing on some plywood. She wanted to break something and since it was part of a broken shelf that had been removed from the shop, entirely legal. If anyone asked, she could tell them that it was being broken up for the dumpster. Needed to be done anyway.

  2. #2


    She had never really been good at drinking, but then she hadn't been good at much of anything lately.
    Given an assignment to find Tickle Me Elmo by the King -- didn't get done. Didn't even get started, so whether that particular operation was a pass or fail would probably never be known at this point.
    Hedge fruit hunting -- no way. She liked that place a little too much for one reason: it was only a relatively short hop back to Arcadia and glory. A lot of Draconics felt uneasy about just how much they wanted to go back to a life of might and power, where the limitations of a human form were unknown. In such a place, Juno was truly a Lioness amongst Manticores, where her consort's....no, Keeper, she had been told....word was law and death was the punishment delivered by jaws, poisonous quills or a crushing paw. Did she want to run the gauntlet of temptation?
    She shook her head, surrounded by an alcohol fueled haze as it was. The sudden movement made her dizzy and she struggled to hold down the vomit that kept wanting to force its way up.
    Worthless. You are a pile of shit when it comes to the Spring Court. Probably better off to go Courtless and completely fade into the background, because its pretty obvious that you can't hold up to the responsibilities involved. Never have any sort of good reputation.....never hold a position within your Court....a total failure to others not to mention you should have been helping with the King.
    "AAAAAAArRRRRRRRRROWWWLLLLL!!!!!"
    The bottle exploded against the wall as with a howl of fury and frustration that had been pent up for far too long she hurled the container at the closest target.
    That felt better.

  3. #3


    After the Spring Court, Juno returned to her apartment where she wound up being violently ill. Perhaps it was delayed stress which prompted the sudden vomiting and the need to curl up in a dark place until she could recover. Or perhaps it was a lot of retained vitriol against what she perceived to be a terrible injustice and it simply couldn't be held in her body any more. She couldn't lash out at the meeting, so her body had kept things in check until she could reach the privacy and safety of her own home.

    This isn't the Spring that I understand and willingly embraced.

    She was curled naked, her back against the wall of her closet as she stared out into her room. If she was attacked in her den, she could defend herself easier in an unbreachable chamber. The Manticoress in her sighed. If they came with the intentions of harming her over an act of speaking up and out with the truth, she wouldn't go down without a fight. Many other Beasts before her had gone down with heroes clamped in their jaws.

    The second day was like the first in that no one came to attack her. Over the course of her thinking about what future, if any, she had left in the Freehold it occurred to Juno that she still had options open for expressing her disdain towards the bastardized version of Spring and anyone who aligned themselves with it. It would start with the visual cues as to her Seasonal alliance.

    Any item of clothing which had even the slightest hint of color to it was bagged up and put away. The enameled flower pin was tossed in, along with any other item which bore even a faintest resemblence to Spring Court heraldry. They didn't need to know that she was part of that travesty though her Mantle would argue otherwise.

    Black shirts....black jeans. The only splashes to break up all of that would be the white, silver or grey logos on any t-shirts she wore. No jewelry...no cosmetics. Just a lot of monochromatic neutrality. Johnny Cash had worn black as a form of protest and so would she. It wasn't a renunciation of Spring, rather, it was a showing of her sense of loss over a Court she still believed in but would not allow herself to openly support while Alice held the crown and continued to taint those ideals. She hated the player but couldn't bring herself to hate the game.

    She would do as she always did before her world fell down, and that was to promote the ideals of her Spring in her own way. Nobody needed to know what she did or didn't do to contribute.

    Her Desires were her own.

  4. #4


    For the first time in a long time Juno was happy. It had been touch and go for a while, with her trying to find something to fill the void that had been left behind when she gave up her one-sided war against Alice. Oh the temptations had been there, with her leaning strongly towards just giving up and giving in to allowing drugs and alcohol to buffer her pain, but it had come to her as a sort of revelation one evening.

    She had Bert.

    For the first time in too long her feline need for fastidious appearances wasn't suppressed. She had begun to keep her quills tidy and in order, her hair was groomed instead of bushing up into an ignored mess of human strands and fur, and she was taking a bit more care with her dress. While she was still keeping the Spring tendency towards displaying color in the wardrobe at bay, at least what she chose to wear was carefully cleaned and pressed. It seemed that the rumpled sickly looking Juno was a thing of the past, and that she had finally found that safety net she had been looking for -- no, in dire need of -- for all of those months. For once in a long time, she felt wanted and motivated enough to care about what impression she gave others.

    She was even beginning to show signs of interest in those things which she used to enjoy and made her feel presentable to the world -- for example, eye liner and other cosmetics. Even the subtle use of makeup around her eyes was an enhancement, as it brought out the intense blue color of her irises and it made her look just that much more healthier and alive.

    That was before she received The Letter. How very impersonal it was, to not learn of such things face to face.

    Bert had not been in contact with her for a while, and she determined that perhaps his duties to his own Court were keeping him busy. She was even willing to rationalize the lack of communication as being engaged with his mundane job, or that the holiday rush season was keeping him away. A week passed, then two, and finally a month's worth of unanswered calls. Every time the phone rang, she found her own heart pattering, then the sudden sink of disappointment as it became apparent that the caller was not Bert and there would be no plans for the evening. Despite all of this, Juno's own hope was still strong for his getting back in touch with her, and she purchased a holiday gift for him. It was a necktie printed with the big blue guy from Monsters Inc wearing a Santa hat and entangled in a goodly amount of wire and holiday lights.

    The faintest stirrings of suspicion began to stir. The letter confirmed it....and right in time for the holidays too.

    Juno didn't see the crumpled ball of paper on the endtable, nor could she follow the buzz of the dialogue emanating from the cheap tv set. All she felt, perceived at that moment was a stunning sense of abandonment. The pain she felt was staggering -- Fairest were far more sensitive to that sort of thing than they cared to let on to the greater unwashed masses -- and she knew that there would be no more chances for her. As the hours passed, the hurt became anger. The first stirrings of resentment began to manifest themselves -- how fucking unfair was it that people like Alice and Terri could find good reliable partners but she couldn't? She paced. She growled. Her tail bristled with unspoken frustration. What a waste of trust and Desire. Fuck Desire -- all it did was to get her into trouble and cause more pain than it was worth. Maybe she didn't need to feel Desire for anything. Maybe she would be better off keeping that distance because all Desire and the companionship which came of it accomplished was total bullshit in her case.

    She had tried to fight her way back into the safety net of society -- to trust again. First Sam and now Bert. Getting the carpet yanked out from under her every time it seemed that things were working out in her favor still hurt at the first shock, but after a while it was probably to be expected and worth her while to develop defenses against.

    A few days later found her staring out the studio window at people as they went about their holiday errands, and the knowing that each and every one of them was acting on their own Desires only made the situation suck that much more. After a few minutes of this, she would walk away from the window and return to either her workspace in the shop or the back room where she had a small area set up for her art materials and some hope of quiet and privacy as she went about putting her feelings to paper.

    Everyone else didn't have any problems satisfying their Needs and Desires -- so why were things so wrong with her?

  5. #5


    Juno had decided to play it safe after the Winter Court.

    If anyone had a problem with her lack of presence on one errand or another, she had prepared the best response ever for whoever brought up any questions as to loyalty or did she even care that something was going wrong in the Freehold. Of course she cared -- she had to live there, right?

    "Well. I would think that it is a better thing to avoid situations where people would be more interested in seeing how I conduct myself around Bert than to concentrate on the matter at hand. I don't want to be the one responsible for anything happening because someone was distracted."

    Or it simply could be that she had enough sense to know that dangerous activities and her recently developed interest in Adderall didn't mix. Thank God she had those pills before she went to the Winter Court gathering and that the euphoria she always felt, at least for a few hours after injesting a tablet, had taken most of the edge from her nerves. Bert didn't get called out in public, he had enough sense to keep to his own people and she to hers, and any questions were kept to a minimum. She didn't like the crash effect which occured when her toxin-resistant metabolism shook off the drug, but the timing was such that the event had come to an end anyway and thus she was spared any odd or unwelcome interactions.

    Nobody had to know that she had fallen off the wagon after the breakup. She had tried to stop the self-medicating for him, and for a while she had been successful. The joy of feeling wanted....and loved....had done more to draw her out of her shell than any artificial means.

    Too many broken relationships, too many disappointments.....too much sorrow.

    She looked at the plastic baggie of pills on the table in front of her. Booze to sleep, Adderall to wake up. The single Zany bar she had tried a few months back had made her sick, so....keep to the tried and true. So far her substance regimen hadn't affected her work or normal interactions with other people in the studio. So far. It was only a matter of time before her little secret made its way out.

    I'm not an addict.

    I can stop.

    She would probably get a free pass from other Lost - oh look, Juno is high again. Man. She knows how to push the Desire Agenda of her Court - if she went into full blown addiction.

    This is insane. Why am I thinking like this?

    Or perhaps not -- how many Lost wound up falling into substance abuse when they reached a point where no other means enabled them to cope? How many Lost lives ended in suicide? That was probably a dirty little secret that no one wanted to talk about.

    The past year had been the worst for Juno. Two breakups, her fall from grace with the Freehold, the loneliness....the grief....the fear. It was not a good way to live. She couldn't keep going much longer -- and she knew it.

    I am all right, really. No....yes, it hurt that Bert has taken his leave. It tells me that I'm....oh never mind. It isn't important.

    It's important to me.

    Picking up the bag of pills, Juno stared at them with a critical eye. The bland color hid something -- that for a few hours they could help her, if not forget, then to at least feel something besides pain. But it was a false hope, a fake emotion.....there was nothing behind the two-hour happiness which was truly sustaining.

    Six tablets left, and she knew what to do with them. Only this time she wasn't going clean for someone else or to win the approval of an erstwhile companion.

    It was something she needed to accomplish for herself.

  6. #6


    If anyone was to ask Juno where was she the day the Four Seasons fell, her answer would have been a simple truth. She simply didn't have any real need to be present in the neighborhood that day as her studio was across town and she was scheduled to work with a high-maintenance client that afternoon. She knew nothing of dragons or Spartan's end, and in fact she wound up with whatever we don't know at this time what caused the fire; the investigation hasn't started yet because of the numerous hot spots which are still being extinguished throughout the structure scraps of news that the local media was able to impart through a series of 'breaking news' cut-ins throughout the day.

    As she worked with her client on designing a flash, the Manticoress found her mind wandering as bits and pieces of conversation drifted through and around her focus zone. That's a bad fire from the looks of it. I hope everyone got out. With an old building like that, they have a tendency to go up fast when they take a light. Could it be some sort of terrorist act? I mean, Baltimore was pretty recent, people are shooting up parades and so on, so why not hit a historical landmark? That's what the human-logical side of her brain attempted to parse out. The other part of her which was Lost was naturally suspicious and wondered if the whole thing had been some sort of Loyalist hit being as that the symbolism of the Four Seasons name ran deeper than a hotel chain trademark. God knows there had been enough of those since her arrival in Sacramento. There was the Ear, for example, and Enzo's brief and shameful outlaw career. There was King Crunk -- too bad he had been such a double-dealing failure in the end -- and the attack on the ice rink. The Ash Run and Milford. To her way of thinking, there was more than enough motivation -- and pissed off opportunists seeking to 'get some' -- to want to burn the whole mess down. She could accept a mundane explanation. The alternative scared her.

    Inwardly, Juno felt somewhat sick. She had no way of knowing who had been there, who had managed to escape, or who was buried well and deep beneath the charred beams and tiles. It was the same sort of feeling that she could vaguely remember from when she had been a child and a beloved old church in the neighborhood had burned down. Her parents had taken her on a walk to see what was left of the building, and she remembered how frightening it had been to see that the roof was gone, the pristine light colored brickwork heavily stained with waterfall traces of soot, and the worst was the skeletal frameworks where all of the colorful glass windows had once been. If anything it felt dead.

    In the years since then, she could remember how sad everyone standing on the sidewalk had been.

    It was a feeling of loss that she had not experienced before, and some years later she found herself having more in common with that little girl during her moment of revelation than the Manticoress Who Walked Alone.

    Her parents had been with her then. Juno glanced over at the phone. It was a good bet that she wouldn't receive a call about the Four Seasons -- because the few people she had provided with her cards and phone numbers had since left the Freehold -- nor was it likely that anyone would make a special trip to her shop. It was too short of a notice to borrow a scooter so her own pilgrimage to what was left of the Four Seasons wasn't very likely to happen in the immediate future.

    As the Manticoress worked quietly on the flash drawing, she found herself feeling something along the lines of regret for what she could have experienced within the walls of the Four Seasons as a member of the Freehold but had chosen instead to keep her distance. It was too late now. The building was gone, the Seasonal Halls were gone, and any memories which had remained within the walls of the Four Seasons had been crisped away.

    Juno's sense of cool distance by design had been taken from her that afternoon, and all that replaced the nothing she had created was even more nothing.

  7. #7


    Justin didn't like this time of year.

    As the days grew shorter and the increasing chill of Autumn began to take precedence over the dry heat of Summer, those small reminders of what he had been were starting to creep into the stores.

    It was one of the reasons he made a point of avoiding the end of the mall where the Zumiez store was located. The alternating feelings of sadness and frustration at having had his budding pro snowboarder career taken from him, and the anger of being manipulated into that decision by his Keeper were too confusing for the Elemental. It was just that time of year when the shelves and windows were stocked with winter clothing that he felt his nose rubbed into it.

    Burton.

    Grenade.

    Dakine.

    Raiden Bindings.


    DC and Volcom didn't bother him so much, they were pretty much universal brands in the world of extreme sports. He even had a couple of pairs of Vans. It was the seasonal stuff that tore him up.

    Dragon.

    Airblaster.


    Running a hand back through his unruly hair, the Manikin paused in front of the invisible wall which he had created between himself and that wing of the mall.

    It wasn't a matter of being able to compete -- he knew he could go back to the sport and be on top of his game, if not better. It was the better part that held him back. He had been torn down and rebuilt by his Keeper in the name of performance improvements....it was those changes that gave him an unsporting advantage. It wasn't fair, it didn't make for a clean game. It had been his decision to step away from what he had once loved. His parents believed it to be part of that whole TBI thing and an understanding that it could never be the same for him again; Justin knew a different story.

    He shook his head. Sometimes trying for a higher level of principles just....hurt. Yeah. That's the word. It hurts. And it fucking pisses me off.

    Justin's hand curled into a fist as he stared at the Zumiez logo that seemed to be laughing at him from its safe corner of the mall. Part of him wanted to pick up a freestanding bubblegum dispenser and hurl it like a javelin at the box of you can't do this anymore can you that stood up like a giant middle finger aimed right at him, part of him wanted to scream and scream and the other part of him tried to rationalize that he was setting up to pick a fight with something that didn't have anything at all to do with the agitation that had suddenly manifested itself and was urging him on towards doing something stupid.

    It was a bad one. Justin sat down heavily on one of the benches and held the sides of his head.

    It will be all right.

    Get your breath, it's okay to leave. You're just not up to it. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe one day it'll be all right to go there.


    Words, just words, from family, friends, doctors that saw a medical reason behind his bouncing off the walls emotional missed connections.

    "No. It's not all right. It'll never be all right." Justin whispered softly, not really caring if anyone was close enough to hear him.

    Taking a deep reflexive breath, Justin closed his eyes for a moment as his body downshifted from fight into resignation. The sign pointing to the north exit beckoned to him, gave him confidence that salvation in the form of a route away from the Zumiez store was at hand. It wasn't running away, he tried to tell himself. It was something that ran far deeper than Summer stand and fight. Somebody could get hurt. Nobody in the mall had anything to do with what was tearing at him.

    As he stood up, Justin didn't spare a glance at the Zumiez store as he walked towards the exit.

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  9. #8


    Not long after the fall of the Four Seasons, the Manticoress had made tentative overtures to the other members of the Freehold ~

    I'm well. And you?

    What a terrible thing to have happened. No, I was not there.


    As time passed and things moved forward for the Freehold and her Court, Juno had followed suit and set out on her own. It had been hard to part company with the fellow artists in the body art studio where she worked even though she had made all assurances she would return when the time was right and her head was back in the game. She needed to find herself.

    With all her earthly possesions tucked into a backpack, the Manticoress had set off on her traveling spree with sketchbook in tow and feline curiosity at the helm. In short she was acting on her desire to know more. As she sat on one train or another, her idle sketching showed her the faces that had impressed themselves into memory -- Al-Adin, Mrs. Rosemary, Alice White, Terri, Marcus, King Crunk -- and she wondered what had become of them. Did they pick themselves up after the disaster? Did Alice find a place for herself after the end of her reign? Was Crunk even alive or had been made to pay the piper after his dealings? Inwardly, Juno understood just how anti-Spring she had been - everyone's Desires are their Own - by acting like a total shit towards the other woman. Passion could all too often make a hairline swerve into assholeism.

    So what brought me to Spring? What did I forget?

    Juno had spent many quiet hours in thought. Of course.

    She had acted on her Desire to be left alone and had alienated others in the process. Who was to say that they had Desired to know her and she had stepped on that?

    She hadn't been that great of a friend to anyone save perhaps Al-Adin - the Prince of Thieves had earned her trust and one could say older-cousin love with his acceptance of her for all her quirks and shortcomings, and Terri who liked her simply for who she was and had been the first to offer a hand when Juno was in a dark place.

    Sam Skrit.

    Bert.


    Desires didn't have to be physical things, and with her non-cisgender traits things had a tendency to get....complicated....on that playing field. It could be as simple as knowing what to do or say and being honest with oneself. Very simple. The Verdant Rule was an easy thing to understand at its core - be cool to yourself and to each other.

    Some revelations didn't come in a flash of light. At times a mental what the fuck did I do could serve the same purpose.

    Was it a need to make amends? Was it a drive towards a cause, to show others it was all right to pursue their Desires, having learned that they were such individual things at a sharp cost to herself?

    It had been months since she had stepped over the threshold of the body art studio. Taking a deep breath, she walked through the door and set her backpack down on the couch. The place hadn't changed - her Buddha's Palm Citron and the jellyfish aquarium were still present. Her surroundings had remained the same, it was she who had changed.

    "Can I help you...? Juno? Oh God, you're back!" The blue-haired girl with the intricate facial piercings ran from behind the counter, taking up the Manticoress in a hug that made her squeak from the exertion.

    "Mali, I've missed you, Radboy, Steven....everyone I know. It's been so....lonesome...some nights, missing you guys like I have." Juno buried herself in the hug, then, "I feel like I've come home."

    Mali leaned back, looking Juno over. "You've always been welcome here. Speaking of which....Steven is gonna want to talk to you. He's out of the shop right now, but....he's kept your space open. I think he's going to be happy to have someone help out with the clients. That, and you are one of the coolest people I know. If he says no, I'll kick his ass for you."

    Juno smirked, then, "Let's get me settled in before then."

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