It's early evening, and Rick is sitting on the couch in shorts and an undershirt, watching TV. He doesn't seem to be paying too much attention to it -- at least it didn't get ruined in the deluge, unlike some other things. Luckily he didn't have too much stuff. He may need new carpet, though, but for now it's relatively dry. He has a beer in front of him, as well as a glass of milk, but the former doesn't look like it's had much drunk of it yet.
While Rick sits watching the television, the heat in the apartment slowly grows. And there, into his line of vision, two shimmery, shiny lines slowly dip, like sunshine was dripping from the ceiling. Until of course the eyes can better focus on what was there, sheer, shining layers of something clear encasing a pulsing throb of glowing, golden sun like a vein. Once he notices that, though, it's likely easy to figure out where the spill of wings had come from. And if he did, in fact, look up to the ceiling over his couch... well. There she was.
Adena was simply sitting, cross legged, her wings hanging down as she'd tilted her head up to watch Rick, from her position directly above him. Her eyes were the soft touch of violet and vermilion he'd likely remember, skin the shade of a delicate pink and white lily. Though today, she had on a garment that must have been the bloom of a calla lily, white, smooth, fitting along her body like it had grown just for her, the bell of the lower curve resting over her legs and then settling against the ceiling, as if perhaps Rick was the one upside down.
The slow rising of heat is hardly noticeable at first, but as it grows, a little line of sweat appears on Rick's forehead. He wipes it away, glancing at the thermostat, but when those sparkling drips come into his field of vision, he looks up, squinting as he tries to figure out what's happening. Even as he does, though, some part of him //knows//, and a slow smile blooms on his face.
His head tips back far enough that he can look at her as well as is possible in this position, and he doesn't bother to hide the happiness that seeing her has elicited. Not that he could have even if he'd tried. "Well, hey," he says, tipping his head so that his orientation is closer to hers. Of course, it doesn't work that way, but still, he tried. "How's the ceiling?"
The fact is, when standing on the ceiling, looking down at someone who is sitting on a couch, things can really mess with perception. As Adena smiled warmly, then pushed at her legs to bring herself to standing, it might have been a shock and a strange moment of wondering whether she was coming closer to his face, or if he was falling closer to hers, even if he was the one sitting down and acclimated to the rightly functioning forces of gravity. Of course, when Adena stood on the ceiling, her face wasn't all that far from Ricks, and the flutter of her eyelashes as she blinked made it obvious that they were actually tiny, spindly little stamens covered in brown dust that 'poofed' gently whenever she blinked, creating a sort of eyeliner around her oddly colored eyes.
"The ceiling?" Adena blinked again, then tipped her head, looking down at her feet. As she did so, the fall of fresh, summery flowers that made up the mass of her hair today fell down into Rick's face, caressing his cheeks, chin, nose, and forehead with silken blooms and filling his nose with the scent of summer blossoms. Likely, he'd be marked with various shades of yellow and brown dust on his face, as well. "Hmmm. Ceiling. I like the roof better. Sunshiny. Warm. Glorious." Adena chuckled softly and shifted her attention to look back at Rick again, the flowers pulling away from him so that her face was again the closer thing to his view. "How do you like the ceiling?"
Rick lets out a laugh as that dust rained down on him, an easy, happy thing that might seem more at home on a child on Christmas morning staring at the tree, than an adult man. She seems to bring that out in him. His face moves a little bit as her hair brushes it, the grin that follows threatening to split his face in half. One hopes not literally. That might put a damper on the day. "I like it better than usual right now," he admits as he reaches up toward her, his fingers moving to touch her cheek lightly. The gesture is somewhere between reverence and desire.
Adena beamed a bright smile at Rick, nodding her head surely. "Well yes.. maybe I should decorate your ceiling, it seems so sad when it's all alone." She slowly floated away from the ceiling then, rubbing her cheek along his finger, then biting at his hand playfully as she moved and slowly flipped in the air, before she was standing in the middle of his living room, her wings fluttering softly. She lifted her arms and spun in place, and slowly along his ceiling lush, vividly alive vegetation started to grow. Plants sprung up and flowers bloomed, then began growing down the walls of the house, until vines started creeping across the carpet. Adena laughed brightly, clapping her hands as the entire apartment soon became something of a jungle theme. "Ooooh! Better! Now it feels so ALIVE in here!" Facing Rick, she fluttered up off the floor and her feet kicked happily in the air. "Oh! I almost forgot, I have something for you!"
Rick just watches her with a wide-eyed look, the wonder evident, even among all those other expressions. He hadn't quite realized that so many emotions were possible, honestly, especially all at ones. He watches as the ceiling starts to bloom into a garden, and another easy laugh escapes him, like he just can't hold it back. And why should he? He has come to see that he does not have to accept the life that he'd had before, one that even in paradise had seemed to run to gray.
When she speaks again, though, he turns back to her as well, and the smile is still very much in evidence, but now his eyebrows raise, too. "You do?" he asks, tipping his head to the side. "What is it?" He's curious -- and, well, excited too. The stuff that she's given him has been pretty good so far, mostly.
Adena lifted the edge of her skirt, and then pulled free from under it a small box. The box was made entirely of woven flower stems that had aged to the point they'd become stone. Setting the small box onto the table, Adena tapped at the top of it with her fingertips, the sound oddly faint, as her fingers weren't really as solid as a human's flesh. "In this box? There are 4 gifts. I only know one of the people that these 4 need to go to, but you'll have to figure those out. At least I know one. Uhm..." Adena rose up a little further into the air, her wings flittering and making lights dance on the walls filled with their new flora. "Name... nammmmmmme. Naaaaaaaame." She spun around in slow, lazy circles and seemed to lose track of the fact that she was trying to remember something, letting out a giggle as she got dizzy and tipped over, giving Rick a wide, broad grin. "Oooh! Hello Rick!" She greeted him as if she'd forgotten she'd seen him a moment ago, her eyes bright and happy, her cheeks flushing with delight. "You look so pretty with all your nice, new flowers around you!"
Rick watches as she takes out the box, his eyes following it to the table. It's beautiful, too -- like everything about her. He reaches for it to open it, but gets distracted by her becoming distracted. It's really a difficult thing to focus when she is there, and his whole ceiling is covered in plants. He can't help but laugh again at the re-greeting. "Hi, beautiful," he says. "Any pretty I got in me, I got from you." However, he does ask, "You were telling me about gifts, yeah?" He picks up the box, showing it to her again. "Four people? The people we went into that place with? Fiona, Mila, Isaac, James..." He says them with some hope that maybe they will jog her memory, too.
Adena giggled brightly, stumbling her way toward Rick with a weaving sort of walk as she attempted to regain her equilibrium. When she flopped onto the couch it was with her whole body, flopping to the side, her head ending laying on Rick's lap as the scent of summery flowers flooded around her and heat came in pulses from not only her wings as they lay spread out, mostly blanketing Rick's legs, but also her body in general. "Ooooh, no, not them. I owe them nothing. They already met their whole thing it's all done, all done, all done." Fluttering her hand toward the box, she undid a small latch that was made by three thorns creating a tight sort of lock, and then gasped in shock. "How did you get these?!" Amazement filled her eyes and she opened the box more fully, revealing 4 crystalline eggs. Each was a shade of pink or coral, and they pulsed with light, all at a different time, but never stopping. Like they were individual metronomes set to their own time. "Do you know what these are?!"
Rick looks down into her face, still with that happy smile. He reaches a hand to brush his fingers over her forehead, and his thumb runs along her temple, just gently. "All done, huh? Okay," he says, and this might be turning into Twenty Questions, but it's pretty fun either way. He looks over when she opens the box, and for a second, he squints, but then his eyes widen. "You gave 'em to me, linda," he says, the word said like 'leen-dah,' rather than the name Linda. 'Beautiful,' but in Spanish. "They're, like...lovestones, yeah? Baby-making." He grins, his eyes shifting back to her. "Who's getting a love baby?"
Adena's eyes were affixed to the shimmering, glinting, pulsing stones set into the little box, and her smile grew as her eyes shifted to mostly vermilion. "Hmmmm.... they're so precious. I have to give what's owed for returning our baby, and making it so that we didn't have to create even more this season, that's right! Oh! That... the girl with the long whitish hair, the... Volya?" Adena tittered a vibrant laugh and shook her head, rubbing marks from the flowers of her hair over Rick's lap. "Her name is funny, though I'm a fan of free sex." She looked up at Rick and the quality of her grin changed. "Hmmmm... Hellloooooo." Adena murmured the words in longer syllables than they needed, before reaching up to wrap her arms around Rick's neck, pulling him down at the same time she tugged herself forward and gave him a slow, resoundingly floral kiss that filled his mouth with the taste of jasmine and honeysuckle, much as if he'd been sucking on flowers for half an hour.
"Oh, Volya. Sure, I know her." Rick nods, but the rest of it is a little confusing, since he's still not that clear on what, exactly, happened with the pixie. Just that it turned out all right. He might have said something else -- but that kiss drives everything else that might have been in his head right out of it. His eyes slide closed as he loses himself in her scent, and the taste of her. At least he has something to go on -- the other stuff can be figured out at a later point, when he doesn't have something much more immediate, -- and if we're being honest, exponentially more pleasant -- in front of him.
Adena was decidedly leading Rick down a very specific path, when she broke the kiss and blinked eyes that had gone bright vermilion entirely, no pale lavender left in them "OH! You have to hand it to each of them, one per one of them. Only 4. And you have to let them know that the frigid bitch has promised to never reveal them by name or allusion, or description, to that icy bastard." She looked deeply into Rick's eyes and moved to climb into his lap, sitting side-saddle, as she leaned closer to his face again. Reaching up, she cupped his cheeks in both hands and stroked her thumbs over his chin and jaw. "Now... Where was I? Oh yes..." Adena murmured and went back to the more pleasant ideas of the afternoon, making sure she had company.
|
