Zephrun’s Imperium

Rose opened her mouth. For a moment, she wanted to tell him everything. Spill out every detail she'd been hiding for the last ten years of her life. But she refrained. She didn't trust him enough. "It's... complicated. But... I can hardly control it. if you can teach me..."

Rose's aggression dissolved, dizziness replacing it. She sat beside him, her emotions whirlwind. "You're... you're like me."

She raised an eyebrow, trembling. "Yes."

So you did close it. I wasn't seeing things. "That's correct." Her voice was tight, still. She hardly dared to breathe, much less hope.

"No. I didn't flip a page in your notebook and I didn't lay a hand on it." She didn't look away from him for a second, her grey eyes piercing. "But that doesn't mean I didn't move it," she whispered.

Rose regarded him darkly. "You know something," she hissed. "But whether that something is about me or about the way this world works, I haven't decided. For your sake, it'd better be the right one." She walked in close, wishing that she was taller than him. Her intense gaze just about made up for the height difference though. "How did you make that window latch move?"

It only delayed the answer.

TVG beamed at any reference to her creation.

Rose marched down the steps to the main floor, searching out Jahora. Part of her... part of her wanted him to resist her. Wanted the walls of this building to fall down to reveal that it was all just a mad experiment. Then she would know that none of this was her fault. Then she would have someone to blame. If he was like her, then that would release a great burden from her shoulders, but such a possibility was simply unimaginable for her. And because she wouldn't imagine the relief of knowing that someone shared her powers, she instead imagined the (surely more likely) release that would come if she got to dump her anger onto one person. But even if she didn't get to attack Jahora, she'd get her chance at Selene later.

She blinked and there was a pause. "Oh." Her hair returned to its normal musing and her pupils un-dilated. "Ummm... A... pen?"

Sophie's eyes sparkled, her already massive pupils growing larger in her excitement, hair trembling with joy. She could hardly contain herself. "Can I see it?" she asked, voice high pitched and strained.

Rose stepped out of the room, hair braided, dressed in the same clothes she'd worn the day before. She'd had some spare clothes in her pack, but, of course, that had been left back at the tavern. That didn't matter to her; she could get clothes whenever. In addition to her clothes, she also wore her customary scowl, a look of angry determination on her face. She needed to get Jahora alone: the information that he had was far too important to let it slip through her fingers and though she was willing to threaten him for it, she didn't want to do so with the others around. Especially the child. That one unnerved her.

Rose glared at Jahora as he walked out the room, mouth open. The nerve of that man! She nearly threw off her covers to run after him, but refrained, remembering that she was in her underwear. After she'd heard him patter down the stairs she got out of bed and locked the door, putting her clothes back on and running her fingers through her long hair for lack of a brush. As she continued to ready herself for the morning, she resolved that she would not be leaving this shop until she knew exactly what had made that latch move. If he was like her... Maybe he could teach her something. Bring a little more sense to her messy little world. She would not accept that she really had been seeing things. To do so would be to destroy any faith in what reality was. She'd only barely gotten that back, she wasn't about to give it up. But that smirk he'd made as he left the room... he knew something, something she didn't. And she knew she hadn't just made up that expression he'd given her. She braided her hair aggressively, a scowl on her face. If I have to beat the truth out of that man, I will do so. Part of her was deeply concerned that he knew far more than he should. That he knew of her powers and that he was purposefully making her doubt herself. If that was the case... Her expression darkened. He'd get far more than a beating for that. @Fallapede

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. "It was not the wind," she growled, ignoring the rest of what he'd said.

Rose couldn't keep herself from smiling. This was absolutely ridiculous. "I can promise you I didn't look in your notebook, but right now you are most certainly not discouraging me from wanting to know what's in there. You are far more nervous than you have any right to be, Jahora." She almost chuckled, until he moved the latch without touching it. I didn't do that, she thought, freezing. Her mouth fell open, her eyes widening with shock. No, not shock. More fear than surprise. "H-How did you do that?" she asked, trembling slightly. Is he... like me? “You did something similar in the tavern, maybe I wasn’t just... seeing... things.” She looked at him intensely.

"Well, maybe it blew off the desk." Rose decided to bluff: "After all, the window was open all night." In her mind, she pictured the latch on the window opening up. When she looked over, she saw the window open and she couldn't resist a smirk. How does it feel, Jahora? To not be sure of your own reality?

Rose raised an eyebrow. Then she paled. He thinks I was poking around in it... It wasn't as if she could tell him the truth. She just hoped he didn't notice that she'd paled and that her eyes had widened slightly. "I didn't potter around in here at all. You can go waving that notebook at me, but that doesn't change that I've never seen that thing before in my life."

"I don't sleep well," Rose snapped. She changed the subject immediately. "How was I supposed to know this was your room? It was dark and I was exhausted, I fell asleep seconds after I laid down."

Rose jumped and shrieked, holding the blanket up to her chest. "What are you doing in here! Have you been here all right?!" Her eyes were slightly red with tears.

Here's some art of Rose from the Oakenwey RP. It was a ton of fun to make.

It was morning. Early morning, true, but morning all the same. Sunlight peeked through the curtains, a golden line of illumination running down the side of Rose's bed. The light did nothing to quell her terror. Rose stared forward sightlessly, her chest heaving up and down with breath that was nigh impossible to slow. Her unbraided auburn hair - more red than brown in the sun's rays, but dark at the roots from sweat - cascaded down her shoulders, obscuring her view of the sides of the room. The reduced size of the room helped her calm down. Less to focus on, easier to see inward. She gripped the sheets and closed her eyes, reminding herself that it had just been a dream and that she was safe here. As tears streamed down her face, she made her breath come out in a shhhh sound, giving herself the motherly comfort that had been absent most her life. "It's okay, Rose, it's okay, shhhh. Shhh..."

Rose dreamed. Her mind was not a pleasant place to be, for the most part. Tonight was no exception. She sat, staring at a stained glass window in a gazebo. It was a real place, a little hideaway on her mother's property. Only, the stained glass depicted something different than it did in real life; instead of the vaguely outlined purple woman that Rose's family accepted as their deity, it was Rose herself. Star's garden was dark and no stars chased away the sense of doom that the scene carried with it. The glass looked menacing and the air was cold, like the hand of a corpse. She shivered. And the glass moved. Glass-Rose folded her arms, displeased. "So, you've learned how to move a notebook, have you?" The scene changed jarringly. It was still dark, but Rose felt paralyzing fear. No. She was fearful because she was paralyzed? It was hard to tell. Glimpses of the future were like that. Vague. More feelings and images than actual experience. She felt herself being grabbed, felt a knife against her throat. Piercing green eyes and chuckling. Her throat was cut and as the warmth of blood gushed from the incision, she was thrown back to the garden. "A notebook won't protect you against that," Glass-Rose sneered. Rose herself gasped, sweating, disoriented from being thrown to one thing to another so fast. In Jahora's shop, she tossed in bed, but the dream was where her mind was. She crawled backwards and the glass version of her stepped out of the window, leaving an empty hole behind it. Her glass-self wore a magnificent dress of blood red. It flared out at the bottom, but was tight everywhere else, with a ribbon around the waist and sleeves that fell off her shoulders. "Defend yourself, daughter of Star!" Rose was too frightened to do so. She continued crawling backwards, almost tumbling down the short set of stairs to the courtyard, but Glass-Rose caught her by the front of her shirt and held her up. "Darrin and Riva can't protect you now, Rose! And Jahora won't either. It's just you, on your own. But that's what you wanted isn't it? That's why you left. Isn't it?!" A whimper escaped her lips. "Bah, pathetic." Glass-Rose threw her counterpart down, but she didn't land on the grass. She landed in a white room, sitting in a familiar chair. The blood-letting chair. Finally, Rose spoke. "No. Oh, storms, no." She wriggled, but was restrained by a faceless doctor. "STOP IT! STOP IT, LET ME GO!" Rose shrieked, sitting up in the room she slept in. She was shaking, drenched in sweat, pale as death.

My friend was coming over and she was late, and my 10 year old brother (who's reading Alcatraz) said, "She's Grandpa Smedry!" I have never been so proud.