groovygamers.com

The problem with having a telepathic girlfriend is that you can't ever really get away from her.  Sylvia chases Donnie down the halls to wherever his favorite hideaway is, maintaining a gentle presence somewhere in the back of his brain without quite broaching conversation.  She understands the fight-or-flight response, and she wants to see where he winds up.  Wherever it is, he won't be alone.

Downstairs they go into the undercroft beneath the stage and basketball court, Donnie's mind whirling in anger at letting the Dragon leak through, possessiveness by his dragon half, worry of hurting Sammy, frustration for embarrassing himself in front of the new girl, guilt for finding her casual eroticism enticing, worry that Sylvia heard it-

>beat<

Realization that Sylvia is following, a presence comforting.

He waits for her in a dimly lit hall under the stage, one of the many service tunnels that were used by any number of teenagers for illicit or dangerous things. Just down the hallway is the room here they tore out Colin's soul. Here the room with the stalker-board for Sammy.

Sylvia comes around the corner, knowing Donnie is aiting for her. She stops, heart leaping in the sudden thrill of fear when she sees to luminescent eyes gloing pale green looking down the hall at her.

It's me, Donnie thinks.

"I know," she says.  Or maybe she doesn't say it.  Her lips aren't moving, and the dank concrete corridor has a watery luminescence that puts a white halo of overexposure on their hair.  "Are you all right?"

Donnie seems completely normal when she finds him. "Yeah, I think so. I don't know why the Dragon came through so strongly."

It's easy to see he's lying. It was odd, this relationship. He was lying, and knew Sylvia knew he was lying. He just needed to say the words, but was comforted that Sylvia knew the truth, that he was wanting to tell her, but felt the need to speak the self-delusional falsehood.

Sylvia, from time to time these days, neglects to explain her leaps of logic.  "She's pretty, isn't she?"  There's not a trace of accusation in her voice.

Donnie purses his lips. "Yeah. Kind of exotic dancer pretty. Unnerving. The whole stretching thing more pissed me off than anything."

"Pissed you off?"  She seems amused.  "Why?"

"Brazen. She as showing off, using her sexuality as a weapon. Just reminded me of Torrence, I guess. That's not the reason I snapped like that. I think it is the reason I lost control though. You know as well as I how easily strong emotions affect my control."

"She's nothing like Torrance," Sylvia says, dropping her gaze.  The haze of brightness flickers, and then it vanishes.  Sylvia speaks plainly.  "Alicia didn't have the luxury we had.  She grew up a freak, and she had to learn to take her strangeness and make it an asset.  If she's shy, she's deformed.  If she's aggressive, she's a cat.  Follow?

"You know how they used to tease you, and you're just--"  She takes a moment to choose the right word.  "--cuddly."

"Heh." Donnie takes her hand and leads her further down the tunnel. The end of the hall seemed to be a sad graveyard of broken and dusty desks, chairs and detrius of thirty years of abused school equipment. It looks haphazard, but Sylvia can see (through Donnie's mind or her own awareness?) of a subtle illusion. Nothing powerful, nothing severe, but simply a illusion of impassiveness to the pile. Donnie leads her through a careful path through the desks and broken chairs to another door lying underneath a couple sheets of sagging wallboard. There is just enough room for Sylvia and Donnie to get through, but John would have not been able to.

Donnie whispers something that tickles her eardrums and immediately forgotten, and the door pops open, leading to hat amounted to a fair sized closet.

Unlike his room at home, it was meticulously clean and the shelves had a number of small jars that immediately reminded Sylvia of Mitzi's collections.

"What is this?" she asks, eyes roving the jars of dried and pickled curiosities.  "When did you set this up?"

"Over the last month. It's my emergency bolthole when I need to make a tincture or salve to aid a spell." He reaches for a scretop container, and opens it up. The scent of clean peppermint suddenly fills the room. "Remember this stuff? Helped you guys see my magic when we were tracking down the witches."

She nods, but she doesn't have anything to say about the witches.  She never has.  "You're sure it's safe?  I'm a little worried someone could find it and lay a trap."  She pauses and then oh-so-innocently adds, "Or video cameras."

Donnie is typically oblivious to the connotations and the connection. "Nahh. They'd have to bypass my spell or even know this is here. I would have known if it was tripped."

And that's why they haven't gotten past the huggy-kissy.

"I sort of wish I could do that," Sylvia confesses, doubling back on the conversation.  "It wouldn't be so hard, and it wouldn't be so terrible--would it?--to make people, I don't know, think I was pretty.  To make them want to do things for me.  Sometimes it's tempting to be that person, but I always think about what you and the others would say.  That's probably all that stops me."  There's nothing particularly eerie or menacing about her tone of voice.  She's just laying it out there, a plain and evident truth, to see what he thinks.

"You are pretty. More than pretty, you're smokin'. It's why I get so worried and jealous all the time. I think someone is going to sway you away from me. Someone mysterious and cool, like, oh, I dunno,  Dylan. Or Logan." The last is said with an amused, smarmy tone. Donnie allows the memory of seeing her visit Logan's house bubble up from his mind. If she's looking, she sees it. There's no fury there, just faint confusion. Right now he feels pretty secure about them.

He unrolls a couple yoga mats, one blue, the other purple and offers her a seat. He goes to a bookshelf of jars and slides them aside to the air grate behind and flips it open, pulling out a book sealed in an oversized ziplock bag. It's obviously old, and the leather binding is tattered and dry-rotted. He sits down across from her and sets it between them.

Sylvia leans in to look, a wee bit distracted by what Donnie's just said.  Well, of course he'd say she was pretty.  He's her boyfriend.  It's one of the things boyfriends say reflexively, isn't it?  It's like a survival instinct.

And what's this about Dylan and Logan?  It's true.  Dylan's cute, and Logan makes her feel--well, not huggy-kissy but oddly stable, as if he's homing in on some universal balance that imposes order on all the ugly chaos of the world.  But Dylan has voracious appetites that Sylvia finds monotonous, and Logan--well, still not huggy-kissy.  Perhaps a little too much like a grown-up for her to feel anything but a curious yearning for milk and cookies, bedtime stories, and blissful ignorance.

"What's this?" Sylvia asks.  "Are you casting a spell?"

"Nope. This is an account of the creation of the Accords from the forties. It has a listing of a wide range of magical races that signed or agreed, and a semi-definitive list of those who did not or refused. It also explains a bit about each race. It's essentially a 'course' on the Accords and those involved. I wanted to show you a little of our world's secret history."
He scans through the book (which smells like old bookshops) and finds a section. Tapping it he sets it down and tells Sylvia about his worries. "Humans are attactive to the magical races because they are so emotionally dense. They have the ability to feel and experience a wide range of emotions, many flavors and shades. The magical races are more primal, their emotions more basic and powerful. It what makes them seem more mosterous to humans. They don't have morals like we do, they don't understand things like we do."

He sighs, resting his elbows on his knees. "I share my soul with the dragons. Essentially I am part dragon, and I struggle with the balance beteen the two. Sammy is part djinn, and is facing the same. The djinn are powerful beings, often able to cross the borders when they want. This led to Sammy being part djinn. Her grandmother or someone in her line caught and held the attention of a Djinn, and they had a child. Perhaps more. Sammy's gifts are coming in stronger and stronger. One of the reasons trouble seems to find her is that careless mix of magic and human. Not only does she cause trouble for herself, but trouble is drawn to her, like metal filings to a magnet. She might be dealing with this kind of attention the rest of her life."

Donnie looks down at the book, seeming as if he were steeling himself to say something. "The dragon part of my soul is attracted to her. I worry if Dylan meets her. He will be.. persistant, I think."

"Persistent, but not. . . . "  Sylvia's kneejerk defense flags.  "He wouldn't hurt her, would he?"

No. He won't,but it will be like a moth to a porchlight. Whenever he is around, he will be watching her. He won't be able to help it." Donnie blushes and says "Uther mentioned to me one time how magically powerful any children would be that, ah, I might produce with Sammy."

Not if I have your boy parts in a jar, Sylvia says.  Then she gives him a look of coy innocence.  Oh, I'm sorry.  Did I think that aloud?

Donnie gives her a sardonic look. What, are wanting her for yourself? The memories of furiously jealous Slutsylvia are in his thoughts.

Sylvia refuses to be bothered by the implication of bisexuality.  She'd be doing her parents a disservice.  "No.  Sammy's not my type.  But I'd totally do Sarah.  I mean, think about it.  She's funny.  She has soft skin, nice hair.  She games.  She's basically you, but maybe a better kisser."  She's joking.  Well, she thinks she's joking anyway.

Donnie laughs, neatly caught. "Boy wouldn't THAT piss Colin off."

He leans forward suddenly, giving Sylvia a long, lingering kiss, mentally feeding her the flames of his passion and desire he so often kept wrapped up tightly.

When he finally comes up for air, he says in a shaky breath "Are you sure about that?"

Sylvia chases after his kiss like he gave her a lollipop and now he's taking it away.  "What?" she says without much in the way of coherent thought.  "Sure, mm-hmm, sure."  It's hard to comprehend anything past the fact that they're alone in this private little room and he's as much as given her written permission to take the restraints off.  Raw teenage lust is an almost palpable presence, boiling up toward the ceiling like steam.

Donnie waves a hand, and the door is covered in magical sigils for a moment before fading. Having sealed the door, his glasses are tossed to the side as he goes in for another kiss. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a little voice is asking Is this wise?

He doesn't listen.

[Fade to black!  Fade to black!  That's a good line on which to end, and I wouldn't want to squick the readers.]

OOC: Alicia, munching popcorn, complains, "But it was just getting good!"  >:D

OOC: "Shut up! Shut up!  They're not supposed to know we're here!  And I even got mentioned!  How hot is that right?  Now stop hogging all the popcorn."

OOC:  But they're both thinking of ME.  I winz the squick.  Here, I got a jumbo Coke to share.  And some lawn chairs for all of us.

{Hmph. Even the new kid who isn't even there yet is nodding in approval. You go boy.}

OOC: "Yeah, but it was me who inspired them to do the nasty. So there."


OOC: "Cool. Hold on, let me make sure the videocam battery is all charged up."

OOC:  funniest part is that Sammy might be the last one to you know, do it.  Nudge Nudge Wink Wink Say No More!  Lil Miss Miracle intends to take out entire city blocks between the event and the afterglow.

OOC: Heh. I seem to recall a certain Olympian campaign where a certain half-djinn girl engaged in a certain activity with pretty much the same result. ;D

Y'all are pathetic. :D

OOC:  my inspiration!

OOC: Pathetic is that there are more OOC lines after the scene then the whole scene had  ;D