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part six.
IP: 137.44.82.131
Posted on December 11, 2010 at 09:08:07 AM by georgia

Beneath Mount Etna, the isle of Sicily, off the coast of Italy, 991 AD Really, Mallos thought as he wearily subjected himself to the fifth identity scan; just how wily could a baby not even one yet be? The security surrounding the place was extreme to the point of laughable. Every single form of magical protection possible had been employed and only originals were permitted entrance, providing they showed their identifying pendants at each level of access. Gwythr's paranoia was ludicrous. Mallos was still convinced that the child was largely harmless, and had resubmitted his request for adoption twice over the year, but the council wouldn't budge. This was his first time actually visiting the girl in her "home" and the hard steel and rock made him feel uncharacteristically low. A lot had happened in a year. The young man Panagiotis was dead; disease had taken him only months after his friend. Aura had disowned her daughter a little too late and was already considered to be a social outcast. Already, the council had illegally deliberated over items (petty items, but items none the less) without her being present, and it was probably only a matter of time before she was excluded from the decision-making processes too. Gwythr had not stepped down as High Judge of the Star Chamber after he adopted the position as Chair of the Council of Originals, but he had appointed Tsi as his second-in-command. Tsi was the only other original who showed any interest in the little girl - once she had been safely stowed away, all of the others (including her own mother) had chosen to ignore her very existence. Between arriving at Mount Etna and making it down to the room where the almost 12 month-old was half-crawling, half-shuffling about took an hour. Mallos felt his frustration lift when he saw Tsi was ahead of him, and he joined his friend on the floor. Tsi smiled at him. "I can't believe it's been almost a year. Did you come to say happy first Christmas too?" Mallos nodded once in silence, and Tsi continued. "I shan't be here for her birthday next week, though; this concludes my visit for another year." "Why are you here?" Mallos asked flatly. "You never stood up for her. You voted in favour of locking her up here." Tsi shifted uneasily. "For her protection as well as ours, Mallos. Damnation, she's divine - and can't control it! The least amount of people suffer this way. But..." he hesitated. "When her father died... it was a very odd thing, Mallos. He was weak, I grant you, but I didn't believe he would actually die until the moment that he did. He seemed alright when I left him, but when I returned he'd passed on... I still wonder to this day if perhaps he took his own life with poison, rather than live with the notoriety. Before he died, he said one thing to me." Tsi glanced up and looked Mallos sadly in the eye. "He said, 'what is it?' and I told him it was a girl, and he said, 'Aura bless her, she will need it. If Aura won't bless her, will you, Tsi?' I was distracted by the generation of the great star then, and didn't reply... I wish I had, Mallos. I wish I'd had time to reassure the poor guy that his daughter was in safe hands." Mallos gently lifted the girl onto his lap, and she stared at him with haughty blue eyes. "There is a difference between being safe and being blessed, my friend." He paused, and added sheepishly, "what's her name?" Tsi looked blank. Mallos felt a well of anger bubbling within him. "Are you telling me that after a year, no one has even bothered to give her a name?" Silence was answer enough. Mallos glanced down at the unnamed girl on his lap and turned furiously away from a rather guilty-looking Tsi. His eyes fell on the pitiful Christmas decorations which had been haphazardly placed around the room by the child's attendant; some mistletoe was bunched in the corners, a few candles were lit on the mantle and a sprig of holly had been clumsily weaved around them. Holly. There was a pretty name for a girl. He verbalised this to Tsi, who shrugged and wrinkled his nose. Mallos invited him to come up with something better; Tsi shrugged again and reeled off a stream of common Chinese names, all of which the former shook his head at. "I still prefer Holly," he grumbled, staring at the bright red berries wedged between the prickly green leaves. Red was such a pretty colour. Ruby? No - "Poppy." Tsi nodded. "That's nice. And English, like her mother, whether she'll admit it or not. I'm not sure she looks like much like a flower though." Mallos eyed the girl, who eyed him back with a worryingly mischevious glint. "The plant from which opium and heroin comes from? Are you kidding? I have a funny feeling nothing will suit her better." Tsi chuckled. "Good point. Merry Christmas, little Poppy." He left shortly after. Mallos waited until he'd gone before kneeling down next to Poppy and placing his hands gently on her temples. Uncontrollable divinity incorporated complete instability of all powers... some of which could be more problematic than others. Mallos fused a touch of his own divinity with hers, stabilising her immortality and eternal youth. Imagine uncontrollable eternal youth - one minute you'd be twenty, the next fifty and snap - back to twenty again. Uncontrollable immortality was worse, though... after she passed a certain age, if her immortality was unstable she could die at any time. What would it be like, to live knowing that any second you could simply... die? She would never know. Without giving her immortality as a separate power, Mallos couldn't make it so that she would never die, but he could make it so that she would never die of old age. Her eternal youth should cause her image to settle down once she hits her early twenties, thus stabilising her appearance. She wasn't completely immortal, not by a long shot - but at least she would be spared the pain of constantly being made older or younger, and her chances of survival was increased. "Merry Christmas," he whispered gently. Poppy blinked. "Merry Chrrrrrrrrr," she muttered lazily, snuggled up against his chest and dropped instantly to sleep.

[it's now 4am so i don't know how good this is. will edit in the morning =D]

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