Night of the Dancing Flame

Well tonight was a night of changes. Aislyn finally took initiative and told everyone that tonight they would burn The Shack. I was at dinner with friends and hardly noticed at all until I got home and had time to just let my brain turn to mush. It was at that point that I realized things were eerily quiet. Okay, maybe eerily is a bit drastic. It was like the kind of silence that comes over a group when they are lost in thoughts only a fire can draw from a person. I found everyone gathered around the burning building so, donning a sweater, I joined them.

It was quiet for awhile, the only sounds being the crackling of wood when sparks were spit into the air. Knowing myself as I did, I decided to look around at the faces of my many characters before I let myself get lost in the flames. My Oceana crew seemed pensive, even the ever-lofty Luella. There was a certain amount of sadness that hung around them that was almost tangible. With The Others, there were looks of resignation, almost a sense of giving up. Even from Jocelin, who usually liked a good fire. Not entirely sure what was going on, I turned to Laidley, the person closest to ask a loaded question. "What did I miss?"

"A lot." He didn't bother to take his eyes off the burning building.

"Wanna fill me in?"

Jaryn sighed as if this were a laborious task set before him. "Aislyn decided we needed to burn the shack to put those poor unused creatures out of their misery. She asked Jocelin for help to start to fire..."

I blinked. "She asked Jocelin?" That was huge. The tiny redhead may have been a fire mutant and all it would take was a little flick of her wrist to set the shack on fire, but Aislyn controlled her own kind of flame. "What's that about?" I wanted to know.

"It was a show of good faith."

Good faith? "I'm sorry, good faith for what?"

Jaryn finally looked at me, his expression half unreadable from the odd shadows cast on his face, the other vacant of any discernible expression. "That they stay away." He saw me opening my mouth, confusion on my face, and nodded. "Don't freak out. We had another Campfire earlier."

"Wha...without me? Dude, you can't have Campfire without the Scout Leader...or...whatever...would be the NCIS equivalent. Anyway, what? What do you mean, stay away?"

Jaryn turned back to the fire. "It was actually Patrick's idea."

I looked around for Patrick and saw him standing by Kitty and Irish, completely lost in the flames. Putting my lips together, a I gave a short whistle that I so could not do in real life and caught his attention. After motioning for him to come over and join us, I frowned up at him. "What's all this crap about staying away?"

Sitting on the other side of me, Patrick nodded. "Yeah, we had a talk later. All of us...Others." He said it like it was a bad taste in his mouth. "We decided to go on vacation for awhile. Maybe permanently."

"What? Why? What happened?"

"Nothing, really. It was just a mutual decision. We all decided you need to focus more on your book and not us."

"Is this because I haven't been paying much attention to you guys? Because I'll work on that."

"No." Patrick's smile was serene and genuine. "It's cool. We all think it would be better this way. We'll still be around, just not so...prominent."

Suddenly I felt very sad. I knew what it was like to abandon a character, but to have a character abandon me? That was a terrible feeling. "Pat, I'm really sorry."

"I know." He still had the calm smile even though I felt like I was breaking up with seven different boyfriends at once. All my rp kids were leaving me. "We're going to head out after the fire."

"And we have a lot of work to do, starting tomorrow. There are plot lines that need to be better fleshed out and you know the more you write, the more characters will be birthed here."

I nodded, still feeling the sadness of knowing my brain would be...well, less full than usual in the morning. "I'll miss you guys," I said to Patrick. "Stop in now and then to say hi at least, yeah?"

"Of course." Reaching around me, I witnessed something I never thought I would. He extended a hand to Jaryn, which was taken and shaken as in true friendship. Oceana versus The Others. Except no longer. In the morning, there would only be ashes left where the shack had been. And even less of my Others.

"Alright, guys. Well...goodnight." I got up then, refusing to say goodbye. But as I walked away, I know Kenayde was watching me. Being the sensitive one of the group, I knew later she'd come check on me, maybe even make a little bed on my bedside table. I turned around once to wave and got returning gestures from Patrick, Jocelin, Rogue, Kitty, and Irish. Fischer saluted in a sarcastic sort of way, and Xander just kind of gave an odd, detached nod. It was then that I noticed Noah wasn't there. But suddenly, I was a little too tired to care all that much.

Campfire

I had to wait until the roommate was gone to hold Campfire. It's...a little awkward with her here for various reasons. Plus she and Jaryn have this weird energy...anyway. So I called everyone to come sit in the valley, myself included, and amused myself with the parallels between this blog and what is going on in my book at the moment. Oceana crew sat to one side, The Others sat to....well...the other side. Now, I should at least mention by name who makes up The Others since I don't yet have faces for any of them but Noah. We have Irish, Kitty, Rogue, Jocelin, Xander, Patrick, and Fischer. Some people may or may not be familiar with these people and wondering why some are here while others are not. Like Ophelia or Genesis. They decided to just die. Sad, but sometimes muses die.

So to the left all huddled together sat The Others and to the right, Oceana crew. Some people were glaring. Some weren't even paying attention. Some were eating Jaryn.

"What? I'm hungry."


"You're always hungry. Anyway, so everyone knows why we're here, right?"

Luella raised her hand. She always raises her hand. "Why is this called Campfire if we don't even have an actual campfire?"

"It's a phrase, Lu. It just means to come together for a discussion."

"Then why don't you just say that?"

"Because I have a slight obsession with NCIS, alright? I'm not the one on trial here!"

"I didn't realize anyone was on trial," Laidley say with a smirk.

I point at him. Sternly. "You...zip it." All of The Others seem bored and I have a whiff of smoke so my attention is immediately on one person in particular. "Fischer, put it out."

"Put what out?" he asks innocently.

"Your flaming ego. What do you think I'm talking about? This is a no smoking brain. Today anyway." He mutters and puts it out, and I remind him to pick up the butts or the sheep will eat them. This thought seems to amuse him but a sharp look from Merrik has him thinking better of disregarding my request that he clean up after himself. "So as I was asking before. We all know why we're here, right?"

"Because we don't get along," answers Merrik darkly, still looking at Fischer. Huh. Looks like some rivalry going there for top bad guy. Of course, Fischer has no real body yet and Merrik is dressed like...well, we all know what he's dressed like.

"Correct. And quite frankly, I'm tired of listening to you all griping about everyone else. It's childish."

Irish bites her lip. "Um, but we are only six inches tall."

"New girl. Cram it." By this point I am pacing, as I tend to do all the time. All the chibi faces are watching me go back and forth, back and forth until Aislyn's eyes turn into little x_x and she falls over. I stop pacing and sigh. "Look, I can't make you all get along, but I can lay some rules down so that's what I'm going to do. First rule: the television does not belong expressly to The Others." Kenayde gives a little cheer. "Rule number two: there is no electrified, sonic sound, super freakified fence. You all are allowed to go wherever you choose."

"So in other words," pipes up Xander, (great. I knew he'd have some golden nugget or two,)
"we're free to squat where we want so long as we make nice puppy dog eyes to each other and pee on ourselves whenever a pretty girl walks by with a wave and a smile."

Everyone looks at him and I'm sure my expression reads disgusted. "Um...yeah, something like that. Without the peeing thing, though." Really? What was that?

"Realistically," says Elas, "you can't just throw a bunch of characters together that are so different and expect them to get along."

"I'm not asking you all to be best friends. It would just be nice if all the bickering and the warring would stop."

"War?" Suddenly I have the interest of Rogue, Jocelin, Fischer, Laidley, Merrik, and Aislyn.

"No, not war!" I rescind quickly. "No war!" I look helplessly to Noah, who always has the innate ability to bring peace to chaos. He nods and stands.

"How about this? Why don't we just go about our lives without the set purpose of irritating or ignoring other people. We are supposed to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves."

"Don't care," replies Xander. "Won't tomorrow either."

Noah looks at the much older man with a frown darkening his sweet face. "You don't care?" he asks, as though it is impossible to even fathom. "You would care if people started treating you the way you treat them."

"Let them," Xander encourages. "At least then I'll know I'm stuck inside this imagination with people who have some semblance of intelligence."

"Intelligence?" Now Kitty is getting into it. "It hardly takes intelligence to insult people."

Luella raises her hand with a blissfully brainless expression on her face. "All those in favor of insulting Xander say Aye!"

The echo of the word bouncing around the insides of my cranium will be giving me a headache well into next week. After the vote was taken, everyone decided they had better things to do and dispersed, leaving only Kenayde and Noah in my company. I pinch my nose and sigh. "That wasn't quite how I wanted things to work."

Kenayde lays a sympathetic hand on my arm. "It's okay. It will all work out in the end." Having said her bit of encouragement, she turns back to her side of my brain and also disappears.

"You can go now, too, Noah. Don't worry."

But the frown is still there on his little cherub face. "But...where do I go?" And then...he wibbles. As if his eyes weren't ridiculously big as it was already. They fill with emotion and the only thing I can think to do is pick him up and put him on my shoulder.

"You stick with me, buddy." I try not to let him hear me sniffle. "You'll be my own personal angel on my shoulder."

He snuggled me then. Well...my ear, anyway.

So much for bringing peace of mind. It seems like all I've succeeded in doing was making things worse.