You know that awful moment when it's a Saturday morning and you're expecting to sleep in after a really long, really emotional day yesterday that had you in tears as you crawl into bed, and then it's 7:30 in the morning and you never wake up this early, let alone on a Saturday, but you're awake now and it's just... Sigh.
So, yes, it's 7:45 and while my headache from last night is gone, I really had wanted to sleep longer. Oh well.
For the focus of this post, Pinterest.
I believe that the majority of you already follow me on Pinterest, but I'm going to put this together for those who don't.
As any good writer on Pinterest does, I have a variety of story and character related boards to which I pin a good deal of pictures pertaining to the board's title.
I will provide a link to each board and a brief summary about what's entailed below. Please don't hesitate to follow through, even if you don't have Pinterest. (Though if you don't have Pinterest, you might consider it.)
Story Inspiration
I have three boards that all begin with "story". Story Inspiration is a collection of pins that provide me with inspiration for something to include in a story. That could be anything from a bunch of dragon pictures to a short quote that makes me go "Ooh, that'd be a fascinating line to spin a story off of."
Story Setting
As the title might suggest, Story Setting is all about the world in which a story might take place. The locations range from an artwork of an oriental palace in mountains to a digital rendering of a sci-fi style hotel room. Take your pick.
Story Style
This would be for those looking to outfit their heroes in anything from silver wire masquerade masks to a black bustle skirt from the Victorian era. This board is still a bit new and my eye is not particularly drawn to things of the accessory/clothing genre, so filling it is a work in progress.
Faces to Remember
When you're on Pinterest and going through people's story boards, you'll find that they have a penchant to save pictures of people who they find inspiring, and this is my take on that. All the faces to be found in this board are ones that I think would be interesting in a story, but have not yet found a home for. Ages range from adorable little Asian girls to an older woman with gray hair who has all the qualities of a mentor in her face.
Now, for the more personal boards, involving the characters I already have.
Characters
This is a stashing spot for the pictures I find that remind me of my characters. It doesn't always have to be spot on. Maybe it's his hair, or her expression, but it's a little conglomerate of things that make up the people inside my head. (Hint: If you wanted to have an idea of what Vivian looks like, here's your chance.)
Hints of Character
This board is very similar to Characters, but it's in words, songs, and poses instead. This song lyrics remind me of those two characters at this given time; that Mustang is one that I could see my character's brother fixing and then the character driving. Little things that make up the characters on the inside, instead of on the outside.
Profile: Sarris and Novarr Schaefe
This is a specialized board for my characters, Sarris and Novarr. It's a big mish-mash of Characters and Hints of Characters, just for the two of them. I also enjoy doing MBTI for my characters, so Novarr has a fair deal of ENTP pins. Sarris, on the other hand, shares her type with several other of my characters, and I have stuffed them all in another board that I'll share at the end. (Warning: Sarris has had a tough background, and a couple of the pins in this board reflect that. One is of bloody hands, the other uses the word "h*ll", so if you're not comfortable with either, consider skipping this board.)
Profile: Ruusan and Jaydn Schaefe
Technically, Ruusan has been both an Armstrong and a Vhander, but calling her a Schaefe was easiest, so I went with that. Like Sarris and Novarr's board, this is just a collection of pictures and quotes that remind me of these two sisters, although now it's extended to encompass the Deviant, so if something doesn't make sense, see if it has a "Deviant Ruu/Jade" note attached. If not, it may have a "Kidnapped Ruu" note, and that means the same as the deviant.
Profile: Ianthe and the Tribes
I believe I already shared this board when I posted about Ianthe a while back, but I'll share it again for any newcomers or happen-byers. This board is a bit more expansive than the last world, extended to include Ianthe's world and all the people and places in it. So there'll be pictures that remind me of characters or images of real life Arabian palaces, all in an attempt to capture the feel of that world.
Profile: Jasmine "Jaz" O'Haire
Not one of my largest boards ever, but this is a smattering of things that make me think of Jaz, who I've posted a couple of scrawls about. The majority of this board's contents are her MBTI type, which is ESTJ, but there are a handful of others things included as well.
MBTI Personality
And last but not least, my MBTI Personality board. This has a mix of various types that either hold meaning to me via friends or characters, or just interested me enough to repin them. If they are connected to a character, there will be a note at the bottom saying who it is. For instance, there are several ISTJ pins that are marked with Sarris, Jaydn, and Cameron, and more still of ISFP, which is a new character of mine, Leo Argon.
And with that, I think I've covered all my story-related boards on Pinterest. If you feel like delving into the bottomless pit that is the rest of my Pinterest, feel free, but don't expect to escape for some time.
Hopefully, you all found this quite interesting, or some such. Thanks for your time and I pray you all will be sleeping on Saturday morning, not writing blog posts, as I am.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Showing posts with label Cameron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cameron. Show all posts
Friday, March 22, 2013
Monday, March 18, 2013
Writing: Original -- Ruusan, Vivi, and Life
Honestly, half the time I don't even know how to title these things because the contents are so hard to define in a few words.
But, the three original Ruu bits I have decided aren't too awful to look at take place about ten months apart, although the last two will require a bit of explaining. As does this first one, I suppose, though it needs less than the others.
The first scrawl takes place about a year after Ruusan and Jhidek are married in the original storyline, putting Vivian at three years old, as you will read. I am contemplating not explaining the reasons behind Ruu's odd physical health until the very end of this post, so you smart readers who figure it out can congratulate yourselves on not needing to be told what was going on.
Actually, you know what, I'm going to hold on and let you guys see if you can work it out, just for kicks. Also, as a warning, this one's a bit on the old side and probably needs a bit of cleaning, but I'm not in a current mindset to do so, so you'll have to wade through the un-edited-ness. My apologies.
Ruusan puttered through the apartment, humming along with whatever was coming through the radio. Jhidek was off-planet working, so she and Vivian had been left to their own devices for a few days.
The three year old was caught up in an alphabet video, and her vocabulary had been expanding by the day. Ruu had been surprised though, that her daughter didn’t ask a hundred million questions, preferring to observe and learn for herself what something did.
She picked up a pair of socks and added them to the laundry basket on her hip, pausing to watch Vivi’s video for a moment.
The animated characters on the screen were in the midst of singing the alphabet song, and Vivian’s brow was lowered in concentration.
Ruu continued her foray for dirty clothing, getting the towels from the kitchen and bathrooms then went to the washer. She started a load, bent retrieve the dry clothes, and reached out to steady herself when she straightened. The world went black for a moment, and Ruusan hurriedly sat down, fighting a sudden bout of nausea.
Her heart pounded as she tried to control the urge to throw up.
Ruu worked to rationalize. We haven’t been anywhere; I haven’t been exposed to anything. So what’s going on?
When her stomach settled enough so she could stand again, Ruusan left the laundry and went on unsteady legs to sit on the couch near Vivian.
Her daughter’s green eyes turned her way when she came back into view. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
“Mommy just feels funny,” Ruu said, smiling a bit to put the child’s worries to ease. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
Vivian watched her for a moment, and then came over to sit beside her on the couch. She didn’t comment further, drawn in once more by her video, but Ruusan reached out to smooth her curls that were going wild.
After a few minutes, the nausea and dizziness faded entirely, leaving Ruu wondering what had happened as she contemplated returning to her work.
“When’s Daddy going to be home?” Vivian asked, looking away from her show.
The woman tucked the child close and kissed her forehead. “He said tomorrow, but we can watch for him tonight as well.”
“At bedtime?” Vivi checked, brow furrowing.
“Yes, at bedtime,” Ruu said, getting to her feet and carrying the child with her. “Are you hungry?”
Vivian thought for a minute, gaze returning to her movie and Ruusan knew she’d lost her.
“Alright, you stay here; I’ll scrounge up something to eat. Mommy’s starving all of a sudden.”
She went to the kitchen, and began to go through the fridge, looking for something that seemed at least remotely edible. The music of the alphabet movie shut off and Vivian appeared in the doorway.
“Vivi, does something smell funny to you?” Ruusan questioned, wrinkling her nose as she took a whiff of a Tupperware in the fridge.
“No,” the three year old said simply, coming in to sit on one of the stools.
“Huh.” Ruu murmured, frowning. “I think your father brought home something the other day and decided to share it, Viv.”
“Share what, Mommy?”
The blue-eyed woman smiled, and held out an orange to her daughter. “A bug, sweetheart. Mommy feels kind of off.”
“You said you were okay,” Vivian said, seeming put out.
She ruffled the mop of curls and picked out a couple of apples.
Alright. That is that. Feel free to leave a comment if you figured out what's up before I revealed it at the end. :P
Oh, crud... I just realized that the next two bits are going to spoil my surprise. How very frustrating. Oh well. Kudos to you if you figured it out before getting down to these next scrawls.
They take place, again, after about ten months, and in that time, several things happened. Namely, Jhidek being in an accident with a chemical (I think...) called tefloidite that caused him to go blind, followed promptly by the birth of his and Ruusan's first daughter, Ellora, the following day. There was a bunch of drama around all that as well, considering Ruu came pretty close to dying and such, but she was fine in the end.
It takes a month to locate a doctor who (Ha. Anyone else see that?) can fix Jay's eyes, and two days after that, he's already gotten a job. To say the least, Ruusan was not pleased over that, but he distracted her pretty well after allaying her fears.
These bits take place during the week that Jhidek is gone working, one mid-week, the other the day before her gets back, although they seem a bit disoriented, in that, the first doesn't seem to have any effect on the second.
You'll see what I mean. But, on their own, I rather like both the bits and I hope you will as well.
The darkness poured in then and she couldn’t see anything, could barely breathe, and this couldn’t be happening, not again, not to her, please Lord don’t do this to me.
Ruusan woke to more darkness interrupted only by a pale splotch that was her mother’s face. That was the only thing that saved her from panicking.
The sheets were tangled tight around her legs, and her heart was pounding from her dream; no, her nightmare. Definitely a nightmare.
Ruu drew in a shaking breath and croaked, “Momma...” She sat up with Sarris’ help that came in an arm across her shoulders.
“You were... crying, Ruu,” she replied, voice hushed in the stillness of the room as the Warrior drew a cool hand across the younger woman’s forehead.
“Did either of the girls wake up?” Ruusan asked, wiping the evidence of tears from her cheeks with a trembling hand.
Focus on the girls, don’t think about it, she told herself.
“No. Ellora almost did but she fell back asleep.” Sarris informed her, easing down onto the bed at her daughter’s side. “Do you need your comlink?”
The reminder of Jay brought tears back to Ruu’s eyes, but she blinked them away and shook her head. “No, I’ll be okay.”
Silence reigned for a long moment before Sarris murmured, “You were screaming, Ruu. It was like someone was killing you.”
Years of learning this woman, her mother, had taught Ruusan how to read the hidden emotions in her voice and on her face and right now there was a tinge of pain to her words. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, leaning into the Warrior. “It was a nightmare about Jay and... and Cameron too.”
The details of it felt like they’d been etched into her mind; the blood, the distorted scream of pain – not her own – and then the silence that had been the part to truly terrify her. He’d been motionless, not responding, then Cameron had been there – she’d known it was him from the moment he took her arm in hand – dragging her away. He’d pulled Jay’s arm around his shoulders, dragging him way into the darkness and he didn’t look back once.
Ruu didn’t remember screaming in the nightmare, but she must have. Her skin prickled and she shook her head to try and dislodge the memories. Sarris rubbed her upper arm, resting her chin on the top of her daughter's head.
Some of her bubbling fear slid away at the soothing touch, and Ruusan slumped against her mother, exhaustion pouring into her. “Sorry about this, Mom... you should be sleeping since your flight is tomorrow, not dealing with a nightmare.”
“It’s fine. I can sleep on the way home.” The Warrior said dismissively.
Did I mention Sarris visited? Calling her "the Warrior" is a reference to her being a Uhrician Elite Force Warrior, just as a reminder, and I'll go more into Ruu's nightmares after the next bit.
The apartment was dark and quiet, moonlight peeking through the shades over the windows. Ruusan lay on the couch with Ellora sleeping on her chest. Vivian had been asleep in her room for hours already and she had no wish to know what the time was now.
All that she needed to know was that it was late – or early - and even though she felt weariness weighing her eyelids down, Ruu didn’t want to get up and go back into the bedroom and the empty bed to be found there.
Ruusan studied the pale light that illuminated the living room, noting how much larger it felt right now and wishing it didn’t appear that way.
He’ll be home soon, the woman reassured herself, rubbing El’s back absently, unperturbed by the small puddle of drool staining the tank-top of her pajamas.
Jay had said he would be back tomorrow afternoon, so she just had to hold out until then, but it felt like the time between now and then was a month, not a matter of hours.
Her attempts to hide how much his absence had affected her this time from Vivian had failed rather dismally. The four-year-old could be more than observant at times, and Ruusan had already fielded a question of, “Are you sick, Mommy? You’ve got black things under your eyes.”
A quiet sigh escaped her as blue eyes went to the roof, contemplative.
As much as she missed him while he was gone, Ruu knew Jay was happy. With the device implanted into his eyes to help him see again, he was back to flying. And she was here with Vivian and Ellora, waiting for him to come home.
That was the way it was supposed to be, right? That was how it had been since the beginning, and that was how it would continue to be.
Ruusan laid an arm across her eyes, her other hand on Ellora’s back. I miss him more than I thought I would. I guess I just got used to having him around after El was born. Now though... It hurt.
A quiet breath left her. The first year of Vivian’s life had been like this, only ten times as worse. There'd only been a sleeping child and a bed devoid of a warmth she needed to be there during the heavy hours of night.
Ruu knew Jay was all right. He was out there, doing his job, doing what he loved. But when she would be just waking up in the mornings, still between sleep and awareness, and she’d reach out to find him... feeling that emptiness where he should be made her heart stop. Then she would wake fully, and remember that he was fine, just working, you don't have to be afraid.
And that is that. What doest you all think?
I mentioned explaining Ruusan's nightmares, so allow me to digress briefly on the matter. For some reason, after Cameron's death in the Original and after a rather difficult situation with a very close family friend in the Deviant, Ruusan is often subjected to nightmares when she has a lot of negative emotions swirling around inside her.
For instance, with the second bit, she'd been majorly worried about how Jay was doing, adjusting to his eyes being functional again while working at the same time, and that translated over very strongly into her dreams. She dreamed he'd died and that Cameron had dragged him away.
Also affecting her at that point were the similarities between that week and basically any point after Cam died, before she married Jay. Having a small child and waking up alone in a bed when she'd been expecting to find her husband there with her. The reminders of the devastating days following Cameron's death weighed really heavily on her mind.
And those are just a couple of emotions that her subconscious can be affected by; stress can get to her, feeling alone, even though she knows she's not, general worry over things occurring in her life, etc.
I find it, personally, to be a very interesting trait of hers. Thus far, it has cropped up more in the Original than in the Deviant, although I believe that, with all this kidnapping business, her four months completely cut off from her family and Jhidek in difficult conditions are going to have some pretty bad aftereffects on her mental state.
(I absolutely cannot wait. #sadisticwriter)
And, with that, I am finished with this post. Next, I want to do those Jaydn and Jase scrawls that I mentioned, although I can't decide whether or not to split them up into two different posts, because the bits are of some length and there are at least four of them, possibly five.
At any rate, I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into another aspect of Ruusan and thank you for putting up with all this randomness! (And muchas gracias for reading, my amazing followers and random visitors. I adore you all to bits.)
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
P.S. This forgetful writer almost forgot to let you know what Ruu was suffering from in the first bit, although you all probably know due to the following two bits. It was that evening that, with a bit of help from Jay, Ruusan realized she was pregnant with their first child. It was all quite adorable, let me tell you.
But, the three original Ruu bits I have decided aren't too awful to look at take place about ten months apart, although the last two will require a bit of explaining. As does this first one, I suppose, though it needs less than the others.
The first scrawl takes place about a year after Ruusan and Jhidek are married in the original storyline, putting Vivian at three years old, as you will read. I am contemplating not explaining the reasons behind Ruu's odd physical health until the very end of this post, so you smart readers who figure it out can congratulate yourselves on not needing to be told what was going on.
Actually, you know what, I'm going to hold on and let you guys see if you can work it out, just for kicks. Also, as a warning, this one's a bit on the old side and probably needs a bit of cleaning, but I'm not in a current mindset to do so, so you'll have to wade through the un-edited-ness. My apologies.
Ruusan puttered through the apartment, humming along with whatever was coming through the radio. Jhidek was off-planet working, so she and Vivian had been left to their own devices for a few days.
The three year old was caught up in an alphabet video, and her vocabulary had been expanding by the day. Ruu had been surprised though, that her daughter didn’t ask a hundred million questions, preferring to observe and learn for herself what something did.
She picked up a pair of socks and added them to the laundry basket on her hip, pausing to watch Vivi’s video for a moment.
The animated characters on the screen were in the midst of singing the alphabet song, and Vivian’s brow was lowered in concentration.
Ruu continued her foray for dirty clothing, getting the towels from the kitchen and bathrooms then went to the washer. She started a load, bent retrieve the dry clothes, and reached out to steady herself when she straightened. The world went black for a moment, and Ruusan hurriedly sat down, fighting a sudden bout of nausea.
Her heart pounded as she tried to control the urge to throw up.
Ruu worked to rationalize. We haven’t been anywhere; I haven’t been exposed to anything. So what’s going on?
When her stomach settled enough so she could stand again, Ruusan left the laundry and went on unsteady legs to sit on the couch near Vivian.
Her daughter’s green eyes turned her way when she came back into view. “What’s wrong, Mommy?”
“Mommy just feels funny,” Ruu said, smiling a bit to put the child’s worries to ease. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
Vivian watched her for a moment, and then came over to sit beside her on the couch. She didn’t comment further, drawn in once more by her video, but Ruusan reached out to smooth her curls that were going wild.
After a few minutes, the nausea and dizziness faded entirely, leaving Ruu wondering what had happened as she contemplated returning to her work.
“When’s Daddy going to be home?” Vivian asked, looking away from her show.
The woman tucked the child close and kissed her forehead. “He said tomorrow, but we can watch for him tonight as well.”
“At bedtime?” Vivi checked, brow furrowing.
“Yes, at bedtime,” Ruu said, getting to her feet and carrying the child with her. “Are you hungry?”
Vivian thought for a minute, gaze returning to her movie and Ruusan knew she’d lost her.
“Alright, you stay here; I’ll scrounge up something to eat. Mommy’s starving all of a sudden.”
She went to the kitchen, and began to go through the fridge, looking for something that seemed at least remotely edible. The music of the alphabet movie shut off and Vivian appeared in the doorway.
“Vivi, does something smell funny to you?” Ruusan questioned, wrinkling her nose as she took a whiff of a Tupperware in the fridge.
“No,” the three year old said simply, coming in to sit on one of the stools.
“Huh.” Ruu murmured, frowning. “I think your father brought home something the other day and decided to share it, Viv.”
“Share what, Mommy?”
The blue-eyed woman smiled, and held out an orange to her daughter. “A bug, sweetheart. Mommy feels kind of off.”
“You said you were okay,” Vivian said, seeming put out.
She ruffled the mop of curls and picked out a couple of apples.
Alright. That is that. Feel free to leave a comment if you figured out what's up before I revealed it at the end. :P
Oh, crud... I just realized that the next two bits are going to spoil my surprise. How very frustrating. Oh well. Kudos to you if you figured it out before getting down to these next scrawls.
They take place, again, after about ten months, and in that time, several things happened. Namely, Jhidek being in an accident with a chemical (I think...) called tefloidite that caused him to go blind, followed promptly by the birth of his and Ruusan's first daughter, Ellora, the following day. There was a bunch of drama around all that as well, considering Ruu came pretty close to dying and such, but she was fine in the end.
It takes a month to locate a doctor who (Ha. Anyone else see that?) can fix Jay's eyes, and two days after that, he's already gotten a job. To say the least, Ruusan was not pleased over that, but he distracted her pretty well after allaying her fears.
These bits take place during the week that Jhidek is gone working, one mid-week, the other the day before her gets back, although they seem a bit disoriented, in that, the first doesn't seem to have any effect on the second.
You'll see what I mean. But, on their own, I rather like both the bits and I hope you will as well.
The darkness poured in then and she couldn’t see anything, could barely breathe, and this couldn’t be happening, not again, not to her, please Lord don’t do this to me.
Ruusan woke to more darkness interrupted only by a pale splotch that was her mother’s face. That was the only thing that saved her from panicking.
The sheets were tangled tight around her legs, and her heart was pounding from her dream; no, her nightmare. Definitely a nightmare.
Ruu drew in a shaking breath and croaked, “Momma...” She sat up with Sarris’ help that came in an arm across her shoulders.
“You were... crying, Ruu,” she replied, voice hushed in the stillness of the room as the Warrior drew a cool hand across the younger woman’s forehead.
“Did either of the girls wake up?” Ruusan asked, wiping the evidence of tears from her cheeks with a trembling hand.
Focus on the girls, don’t think about it, she told herself.
“No. Ellora almost did but she fell back asleep.” Sarris informed her, easing down onto the bed at her daughter’s side. “Do you need your comlink?”
The reminder of Jay brought tears back to Ruu’s eyes, but she blinked them away and shook her head. “No, I’ll be okay.”
Silence reigned for a long moment before Sarris murmured, “You were screaming, Ruu. It was like someone was killing you.”
Years of learning this woman, her mother, had taught Ruusan how to read the hidden emotions in her voice and on her face and right now there was a tinge of pain to her words. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered, leaning into the Warrior. “It was a nightmare about Jay and... and Cameron too.”
The details of it felt like they’d been etched into her mind; the blood, the distorted scream of pain – not her own – and then the silence that had been the part to truly terrify her. He’d been motionless, not responding, then Cameron had been there – she’d known it was him from the moment he took her arm in hand – dragging her away. He’d pulled Jay’s arm around his shoulders, dragging him way into the darkness and he didn’t look back once.
Ruu didn’t remember screaming in the nightmare, but she must have. Her skin prickled and she shook her head to try and dislodge the memories. Sarris rubbed her upper arm, resting her chin on the top of her daughter's head.
Some of her bubbling fear slid away at the soothing touch, and Ruusan slumped against her mother, exhaustion pouring into her. “Sorry about this, Mom... you should be sleeping since your flight is tomorrow, not dealing with a nightmare.”
“It’s fine. I can sleep on the way home.” The Warrior said dismissively.
Did I mention Sarris visited? Calling her "the Warrior" is a reference to her being a Uhrician Elite Force Warrior, just as a reminder, and I'll go more into Ruu's nightmares after the next bit.
The apartment was dark and quiet, moonlight peeking through the shades over the windows. Ruusan lay on the couch with Ellora sleeping on her chest. Vivian had been asleep in her room for hours already and she had no wish to know what the time was now.
All that she needed to know was that it was late – or early - and even though she felt weariness weighing her eyelids down, Ruu didn’t want to get up and go back into the bedroom and the empty bed to be found there.
Ruusan studied the pale light that illuminated the living room, noting how much larger it felt right now and wishing it didn’t appear that way.
He’ll be home soon, the woman reassured herself, rubbing El’s back absently, unperturbed by the small puddle of drool staining the tank-top of her pajamas.
Jay had said he would be back tomorrow afternoon, so she just had to hold out until then, but it felt like the time between now and then was a month, not a matter of hours.
Her attempts to hide how much his absence had affected her this time from Vivian had failed rather dismally. The four-year-old could be more than observant at times, and Ruusan had already fielded a question of, “Are you sick, Mommy? You’ve got black things under your eyes.”
A quiet sigh escaped her as blue eyes went to the roof, contemplative.
As much as she missed him while he was gone, Ruu knew Jay was happy. With the device implanted into his eyes to help him see again, he was back to flying. And she was here with Vivian and Ellora, waiting for him to come home.
That was the way it was supposed to be, right? That was how it had been since the beginning, and that was how it would continue to be.
Ruusan laid an arm across her eyes, her other hand on Ellora’s back. I miss him more than I thought I would. I guess I just got used to having him around after El was born. Now though... It hurt.
A quiet breath left her. The first year of Vivian’s life had been like this, only ten times as worse. There'd only been a sleeping child and a bed devoid of a warmth she needed to be there during the heavy hours of night.
Ruu knew Jay was all right. He was out there, doing his job, doing what he loved. But when she would be just waking up in the mornings, still between sleep and awareness, and she’d reach out to find him... feeling that emptiness where he should be made her heart stop. Then she would wake fully, and remember that he was fine, just working, you don't have to be afraid.
And that is that. What doest you all think?
I mentioned explaining Ruusan's nightmares, so allow me to digress briefly on the matter. For some reason, after Cameron's death in the Original and after a rather difficult situation with a very close family friend in the Deviant, Ruusan is often subjected to nightmares when she has a lot of negative emotions swirling around inside her.
For instance, with the second bit, she'd been majorly worried about how Jay was doing, adjusting to his eyes being functional again while working at the same time, and that translated over very strongly into her dreams. She dreamed he'd died and that Cameron had dragged him away.
Also affecting her at that point were the similarities between that week and basically any point after Cam died, before she married Jay. Having a small child and waking up alone in a bed when she'd been expecting to find her husband there with her. The reminders of the devastating days following Cameron's death weighed really heavily on her mind.
And those are just a couple of emotions that her subconscious can be affected by; stress can get to her, feeling alone, even though she knows she's not, general worry over things occurring in her life, etc.
I find it, personally, to be a very interesting trait of hers. Thus far, it has cropped up more in the Original than in the Deviant, although I believe that, with all this kidnapping business, her four months completely cut off from her family and Jhidek in difficult conditions are going to have some pretty bad aftereffects on her mental state.
(I absolutely cannot wait. #sadisticwriter)
And, with that, I am finished with this post. Next, I want to do those Jaydn and Jase scrawls that I mentioned, although I can't decide whether or not to split them up into two different posts, because the bits are of some length and there are at least four of them, possibly five.
At any rate, I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into another aspect of Ruusan and thank you for putting up with all this randomness! (And muchas gracias for reading, my amazing followers and random visitors. I adore you all to bits.)
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
P.S. This forgetful writer almost forgot to let you know what Ruu was suffering from in the first bit, although you all probably know due to the following two bits. It was that evening that, with a bit of help from Jay, Ruusan realized she was pregnant with their first child. It was all quite adorable, let me tell you.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
A Summary of Storylines
This post is going to be entirely dedicated to the explaining of three storylines that myself and my best friend, Penny Kearney, have developed over the past six years of our lives. Well, one of them is six years old; the other two are under one.
There is the Original Storyline, the Steampunk Storyline, and the most recent Deviant Storyline. I've give brief intros to how they each began before each summary.
Also, there is a great chance these will be really confusing to you guys and I'm incredibly sorry for it, but there were just a million things that went on during all that time, so please just leave a comment if you need clarification on something and I'll get back to you with something more understandable as soon as possible.
...And let me warn you that my "summaries", as you will soon see, might as well be novels. I am no good at summarizing, although, in my defense, I am summarizing 20+ years worth of multiple character's lives. At least for the Original Storyline.
One more thing to note: both the Original and Deviant storylines take place in the Zephron Galaxy, which includes several planets, among them Sinjaro Kahn, Uhric, Norsha'ac, Gogam, Karon, Tigersoon, Tiloon, and Klowdarr.
Original Storyline:
Began: Oh, heavens, years ago. Penny and I started talk-gaming (character developing? What do regular writers call that?) with a taciturn Uhrician Elite Force Warrior and a green-eyed intruder who are about as night and day as Penny and I are. I think Sarris and Tara are kind of a testament to our own friendship, in how highly unlikely it is and yet it still happened.
General Summary: Sarris Nadir (Gogamian, UEF Warrior) and Tara Benson (Norsha'acite, bounty hunter) met under rather unlikely circumstances and became dysfunctional friends, though Sarris didn't admit to it for years. Literally, years.
Tara met Nuridarr Vhander during a brief, accidental stint on Gogam, which he helped her get through alive and in one piece and then they both were rescued from the planet by Tara's brother, Luke Benson (bounty hunter as well). Immediately after, Tara, Nuridarr, and Luke took a sudden leave of absence from the galaxy for two years, during which time Sarris an acquaintance through Tara by the name of Novarr Schaefe. (My apologies for similarities between Novarr and Nuridarr's names. Mostly accidental, and you never get them mixed up once you know them.)
After that, Tara and Luke find three of their younger siblings. Their entire family has been missing for several years, and they do find them somewhere between finding Ron, Andro, and Mara and Luke 'dying'. Except he didn't actually die. (Don't ask me, not my characters, and I can't recall anyways.) Following Luke's death by a couple of months, Tara married Nuridarr. Sarris and Novarr are just... living during this time. Not a lot is going on for them.
Tara and Nur's first daughter, Raina, was born a handful of months later, followed closely by Sarris and Novarr's adopted, newborn daughter, Ruusan. And Jhidek/Jay (Tara and Nur's son) came along a bit after that. (Don't worry, that was the end of the baby boom for seven years.) Sarris, a Ronin in the Uhrician Elite Force's ranking system, went into "the reserves", in a way, during all this that way she could be at home to look after Ruusan.
There was another kind of blank seven years, where life just went on and the Vhanders and Schaefe's raised their respective children/child. Jaydn and Merri were adopted/born about the same time. Jaydn was five when Novarr whisked her away from an inevitably bad situation after her parents died/were killed. (The details are still kind of sketchy at that part.) In the following eight years, there were a passel more Vhander children, while the Schaefe household remained safely at two. The two families are far from strangers, to the point where the parents are all "aunties" and "uncles" to each other's offspring.
Jaydn follows in Novarr's footsteps, taking up bounty hunting and eventually turning into something of a loner, which is her downfall in the end. Ruusan, after being lost for a time, decides to become an Emergency Response Transport Paramedic, which means that she's in the ambulance, at the scene of the crash. She attends medical school and takes up a job as an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, where her parents live. It's in the hospital that she meets Cameron Armstrong, a fairly average guy who is dying from a non-contagious, but uncurable, disease. When he asks her to marry him, she does.
Cameron's death ten months later coincides with the birth of their daughter, Vivian. Two months pass, and Sarris works with Tara and Nuridarr to find an apartment near the Vhander home on Norsha'ac for Ruusan and Vivian. Staying on Kahn is only a constant reminder of Cameron for Ruu, and the vote is unaninmous that she needs some time away.
Over the course of two years and through a series of author-caused events to cause a little heart-pounding anxiety and to strengthen bonds, Ruusan falls in love with childhood friend and never-before-romantic-interest, Jhidek. And he falls in love with Vivi, and Ruu too. (What? Vivian's an angel. Anybody would fall in love with her first.)
So they get married, and Ellora, the first Ruu/Jay bundle of adorableness, is born fifteen months later. Jaydn dies from her injuries after her ship is shot down by space pirates, much to the trauma of her family.
Here, I shall end. (Though there is a lot of unaccounted drama, let me assure you.)
Steampunk Storyline:
Began: Sometime in early 2012, Penny and I had been curious as to how Jaydn and Nuridarr would get along, as they've both got the same blood running through their veins and all. We couldn't come up with plausible trouble for them to get into in the original storyline, so we picked them up and moved them to Penny's steampunk world (a city named Sanbourne) which she has with a friend of hers, Katana. It really only served to show Jade's true colors.
General Summary: Nuridarr, now Nathaniel, and Jaydn, shortened to Jade, meet when she's ten-ish and he's eighteen-ish and she's an orphan and he's thrown himself out of his Gogamian crime....syndicate/gang/tribe/thing. Ten years later, and the two of them have, quite successfully, made their living on bounty hunting. Life is good, Jade is happy, and I kind of want her radio that she's got.
Insert Natasha Bennet, a rather fiery woman they nab, who ends up biting Nathan ("Shikhan, should you take something for rabies?" "I've had worse.") before they take her to meet the person who hired them to find her. It turns out to be a Gogamian that Nathaniel knew back when he was still with them. Also a man that Nathan isn't going to hand Tasha over to, so he sends Jade and Tasha off while he faces their client and his goons.
To summarize the rest, because this was an incredibly difficult storyline to write and it's hard to capture everything that happens, Nathaniel falls in love with Tasha, and it doesn't go over well with Jade. She moves out, starts working on her own, and goes to great pains to avoid seeing Tasha.
A lot of things occur in the next year or two.
Jade locates Tasha's missing family with the help of her contact, Charles, and an ex-assassin-turned-bounty-hunter named Jase Drouais gets mixed up in everything through a former connection to the kidnapper and the disappearance of his brother, Markham. Unfortunately, Jade gets laid up with an injured leg and is out of commission for the actual rescue.
Later, there is the appearance of a government official bent on killing all lowlifes. He's sees them as a taint upon the clean-blooded people of higher society in Sanbourne. Jade, Nathan, and his daughter with Tasha, are on the hit-list due to their heritage. After a really close call which Jase, the ex-assassin who she now works with, saves her from, they go to make sure that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are safe and the three of them end up leaving town. Jade, Jase, and Tasha's brother, Lucas (Luke, originally) work together to try and locate, then bring down, the government official, Horace Scott. It is thought for a time that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina perish in a train wreck, which makes life difficult, to say the least.
After that, Penny and I never actually finished talk-gaming it. And I know it sounds like Jade's perfectly balanced through all those events, but she really isn't, and after it turns out that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are alive, she skips town for four years, staying away as long as she needs to so she can screw her head on straight again. A lot happens to her while she's gone, including a couple of near-death experiences, a semi-relationship with a guy named Sato, and a friendship with a woman named Kensey during her last year
who ends up dying from sickness. After that, she goes back to Sanbourne to see if she'll be welcomed back after practically abandoning the people there that cared about her. And while things were far from what they'd been years prior, Nathan and Tara were willing to let her back into their lives to start rebuilding what she'd crumbled.
Deviant Storyline:
Began: Back in August or thereabouts of 2012, with Penny's curiosity over what would've happened if Luke had been unable to locate Tara on Gogam and save her, and by extension, Nuridarr, from the planet. Initially, I was a spectator, interested in the idea for itself and the effect it would have on Sarris. I didn't really become involved until the characters got their revenge for Penny and I wondering if Jaydn might've been an antagonist all along that we'd been trying to make into a protagonist. The question came up of how Jade might've turned out different had she been raised up with good, strong morals while still on Gogam. If that hard setting that she was born for was where she needed to be in order to be instilled with a good heart. The idea caught on quickly, and thus it began.
General Summary:
Tara's transponder is damaged during her initial days on Gogam, so instead of being rescued by Luke, she and Nuridarr are forced to remain on the planet, living on the run from his tribe who've branded him a traitor. She has gives up hope of ever getting off Gogam quickly and they just survive for a year or so. They're negotiating for supplies with an tribe that's an enemy with Nuridarr's old tribe when the tribe is attacked. In the chaos, Tara rescues a three-year-old baby girl named Jaydn after her motherr is killed. (Please don't feel bad, her parents were a far cry from what parents should be.)
For a small amount of time, the plan is to drop her off with another tribe, but Tara falls in love pretty quickly and while Nur was initially opposed to the idea of keeping her, he gets attached as well and they adopt Jaydn as their own.
Over the course of the following six years which are spent constantly moving, fighting to survive against both the planet and other Gogamians, Jade is brought up included in every process, being given her own duties and responsibilities, and she's taught that they all protect each other. Not every man for himself, as the rest of Gogam does.
While Tara gave up on leaving, Jaydn's addition to their family gave Nuridarr a newfound motivation to get Tara and Jade off of Gogam and to a better life out in the rest of Zephron. And he does, joining a pirate gang in order to get them passage on a ship headed off Gogam.
Jade is nine years old when the time to leave comes, and they realize that Tara is pregnant either while on the ship, or shortly after they escape into the rest of the galaxy.
While all this has been happening on Gogam, Sarris has spent the six years searching the galaxy for Tara, not even having a place to start, but refusing to quit until she finds Tara, living or dead. Novarr, only an acquaintance at this point, keeps in touch with her and does some of his own searching, while Luke, unable to get to Tara on Gogam, breaks off his efforts early on to continue looking for their missing family.
After this point, events get fairly fuzzy, as Penny and I haven't even talk-gamed their leaving. But Raina and Jhidek are both born within a couple of years of their getting of Gogam and Jade settles into her role as Imo's (Daddy's) wing mate and big sister with
ease, much to our relief.
Merri follows seven years after Jhidek, when Jade is seventeen, Raina eight, and Jay seven.
In the deviant, their focus as hunters is trained much more on the Gogamians who leave their home planet to terrorize the rest of Zephron and either turning them back or finishing them off. The effect on them as a family is a much more trained, orderly, and possibly an even tighter and closer dynamic than the original. They protect each other and carry out their missions together once Raina and Jhidek get older. (Not sure how they worked the Merri angle when she showed up later.)
Meanwhile, Sarris and Novarr slowly drifted toward each other, Tara's return to their worlds drawing them back together. He's there to help support Sarris as she deals with the guilt she feels over not finding Tara sooner, but eventually it turns to something more.
Ruusan does not go forgotten either. Sarris helped rescue her from a hostage situation on Sinjaro Kahn when Ruusan was ten and on her way back to Norsha'ac following a failed adoption attempt. Always a decisive thinker, Sarris decided that she didn't want to let Ruu go back to the orphanage and worked with the social service system on Kahn to legally adopt her. I'm not sure what her relationship status was with Novarr at the time, but they might've been on the edge of getting married when Sarris picked up Ruu and that was the turning point.
For a few years, the Vhander and Schaefe households would get together, so Ruusan wasn't strangers with Raina, Jhidek, and Merri, but when they got older, the visits dropped off some, possibly because the Vhanders, now with the kids of a safer age to aid in the fight, got busier with missions. Not positive on that account either.
Ruusan headed to med-school on Sinjaro Kahn from Uhric at eighteen, taking a more intensive course and finishing in four and a half years to return to Uhric where her parents and Jensen lived.
(Sarris became a Grandmaster while Tara was gone, which equates to a general or some such, and Jensen is a Ronin [equivalent = colonel] who works as her aide and was with her when she helped to rescue Ruusan. He started as a trusted aide and friend and was basically adopted into the family after a couple of years. Ruu sees him as an older brother and close confidante.)
The unintended silence between the two families came to a rather abrupt end when Jhidek, injured in an explosion while he and Raina were on a mission, dropped in, quite literally, to Ruusan's apartment. Things were touch-and-go, but she saved his life and
things just take off from there. I won't bore you with those details, but suffice it to say, after a couple of spontaneous visits, a close encounter with the bad sort of Gogamian for Ruu, a few months of silence to protect her on Jay's part, a tought fight that ended with a "missing, perhaps dead" news report on the Vhanders, and a conniving Tara, Ruusan and Jhidek worked out what they both wanted. Not without a bit of drama, of course, but they were married just under a month later.
And the rest of the story, as they say, has yet to be told.
And that's all of it! For the moment, at least. The only really "finished" storyline is the Steampunk storyline. The other two kind of go through stop-again-go-again expanding. Currently, Penny and I are caught up in the Deviant again, although we're at the tail end,
instead of the beginning.
To clarify that, we're talk-gaming at two points in the storyline. The first point is with Nuridarr, Tara, and Jaydn on Gogam and Jade is currently seven. The second point is twenty-five-some years down the road, with Ruusan and Jhidek, although I don't think we
truly intended to pick it up as agressively as we have. (It's only mostly my fault; I was curious if Ruu and Jay would work out in the Deviant as they did in the Original.)
Once again, please feel entirely free to either leave a comment here with questions or on my OYAN profile, where I can be found as PenWielder62. These storylines are ones that Penny and I have invested a lot of time and thought into, and they're actually quite
important to me, so I would greatly enjoy helping you clear up whatever it is that I've confused you with.
And thank you so much, as always, for reading. Knowing that there are people who actually enjoy what I write means a great deal to me.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
There is the Original Storyline, the Steampunk Storyline, and the most recent Deviant Storyline. I've give brief intros to how they each began before each summary.
Also, there is a great chance these will be really confusing to you guys and I'm incredibly sorry for it, but there were just a million things that went on during all that time, so please just leave a comment if you need clarification on something and I'll get back to you with something more understandable as soon as possible.
...And let me warn you that my "summaries", as you will soon see, might as well be novels. I am no good at summarizing, although, in my defense, I am summarizing 20+ years worth of multiple character's lives. At least for the Original Storyline.
One more thing to note: both the Original and Deviant storylines take place in the Zephron Galaxy, which includes several planets, among them Sinjaro Kahn, Uhric, Norsha'ac, Gogam, Karon, Tigersoon, Tiloon, and Klowdarr.
Original Storyline:
Began: Oh, heavens, years ago. Penny and I started talk-gaming (character developing? What do regular writers call that?) with a taciturn Uhrician Elite Force Warrior and a green-eyed intruder who are about as night and day as Penny and I are. I think Sarris and Tara are kind of a testament to our own friendship, in how highly unlikely it is and yet it still happened.
General Summary: Sarris Nadir (Gogamian, UEF Warrior) and Tara Benson (Norsha'acite, bounty hunter) met under rather unlikely circumstances and became dysfunctional friends, though Sarris didn't admit to it for years. Literally, years.
Tara met Nuridarr Vhander during a brief, accidental stint on Gogam, which he helped her get through alive and in one piece and then they both were rescued from the planet by Tara's brother, Luke Benson (bounty hunter as well). Immediately after, Tara, Nuridarr, and Luke took a sudden leave of absence from the galaxy for two years, during which time Sarris an acquaintance through Tara by the name of Novarr Schaefe. (My apologies for similarities between Novarr and Nuridarr's names. Mostly accidental, and you never get them mixed up once you know them.)
After that, Tara and Luke find three of their younger siblings. Their entire family has been missing for several years, and they do find them somewhere between finding Ron, Andro, and Mara and Luke 'dying'. Except he didn't actually die. (Don't ask me, not my characters, and I can't recall anyways.) Following Luke's death by a couple of months, Tara married Nuridarr. Sarris and Novarr are just... living during this time. Not a lot is going on for them.
Tara and Nur's first daughter, Raina, was born a handful of months later, followed closely by Sarris and Novarr's adopted, newborn daughter, Ruusan. And Jhidek/Jay (Tara and Nur's son) came along a bit after that. (Don't worry, that was the end of the baby boom for seven years.) Sarris, a Ronin in the Uhrician Elite Force's ranking system, went into "the reserves", in a way, during all this that way she could be at home to look after Ruusan.
There was another kind of blank seven years, where life just went on and the Vhanders and Schaefe's raised their respective children/child. Jaydn and Merri were adopted/born about the same time. Jaydn was five when Novarr whisked her away from an inevitably bad situation after her parents died/were killed. (The details are still kind of sketchy at that part.) In the following eight years, there were a passel more Vhander children, while the Schaefe household remained safely at two. The two families are far from strangers, to the point where the parents are all "aunties" and "uncles" to each other's offspring.
Jaydn follows in Novarr's footsteps, taking up bounty hunting and eventually turning into something of a loner, which is her downfall in the end. Ruusan, after being lost for a time, decides to become an Emergency Response Transport Paramedic, which means that she's in the ambulance, at the scene of the crash. She attends medical school and takes up a job as an ERTP on Sinjaro Kahn, where her parents live. It's in the hospital that she meets Cameron Armstrong, a fairly average guy who is dying from a non-contagious, but uncurable, disease. When he asks her to marry him, she does.
Cameron's death ten months later coincides with the birth of their daughter, Vivian. Two months pass, and Sarris works with Tara and Nuridarr to find an apartment near the Vhander home on Norsha'ac for Ruusan and Vivian. Staying on Kahn is only a constant reminder of Cameron for Ruu, and the vote is unaninmous that she needs some time away.
Over the course of two years and through a series of author-caused events to cause a little heart-pounding anxiety and to strengthen bonds, Ruusan falls in love with childhood friend and never-before-romantic-interest, Jhidek. And he falls in love with Vivi, and Ruu too. (What? Vivian's an angel. Anybody would fall in love with her first.)
So they get married, and Ellora, the first Ruu/Jay bundle of adorableness, is born fifteen months later. Jaydn dies from her injuries after her ship is shot down by space pirates, much to the trauma of her family.
Here, I shall end. (Though there is a lot of unaccounted drama, let me assure you.)
Steampunk Storyline:
Began: Sometime in early 2012, Penny and I had been curious as to how Jaydn and Nuridarr would get along, as they've both got the same blood running through their veins and all. We couldn't come up with plausible trouble for them to get into in the original storyline, so we picked them up and moved them to Penny's steampunk world (a city named Sanbourne) which she has with a friend of hers, Katana. It really only served to show Jade's true colors.
General Summary: Nuridarr, now Nathaniel, and Jaydn, shortened to Jade, meet when she's ten-ish and he's eighteen-ish and she's an orphan and he's thrown himself out of his Gogamian crime....syndicate/gang/tribe/thing. Ten years later, and the two of them have, quite successfully, made their living on bounty hunting. Life is good, Jade is happy, and I kind of want her radio that she's got.
Insert Natasha Bennet, a rather fiery woman they nab, who ends up biting Nathan ("Shikhan, should you take something for rabies?" "I've had worse.") before they take her to meet the person who hired them to find her. It turns out to be a Gogamian that Nathaniel knew back when he was still with them. Also a man that Nathan isn't going to hand Tasha over to, so he sends Jade and Tasha off while he faces their client and his goons.
To summarize the rest, because this was an incredibly difficult storyline to write and it's hard to capture everything that happens, Nathaniel falls in love with Tasha, and it doesn't go over well with Jade. She moves out, starts working on her own, and goes to great pains to avoid seeing Tasha.
A lot of things occur in the next year or two.
Jade locates Tasha's missing family with the help of her contact, Charles, and an ex-assassin-turned-bounty-hunter named Jase Drouais gets mixed up in everything through a former connection to the kidnapper and the disappearance of his brother, Markham. Unfortunately, Jade gets laid up with an injured leg and is out of commission for the actual rescue.
Later, there is the appearance of a government official bent on killing all lowlifes. He's sees them as a taint upon the clean-blooded people of higher society in Sanbourne. Jade, Nathan, and his daughter with Tasha, are on the hit-list due to their heritage. After a really close call which Jase, the ex-assassin who she now works with, saves her from, they go to make sure that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are safe and the three of them end up leaving town. Jade, Jase, and Tasha's brother, Lucas (Luke, originally) work together to try and locate, then bring down, the government official, Horace Scott. It is thought for a time that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina perish in a train wreck, which makes life difficult, to say the least.
After that, Penny and I never actually finished talk-gaming it. And I know it sounds like Jade's perfectly balanced through all those events, but she really isn't, and after it turns out that Nathan, Tasha, and Raina are alive, she skips town for four years, staying away as long as she needs to so she can screw her head on straight again. A lot happens to her while she's gone, including a couple of near-death experiences, a semi-relationship with a guy named Sato, and a friendship with a woman named Kensey during her last year
who ends up dying from sickness. After that, she goes back to Sanbourne to see if she'll be welcomed back after practically abandoning the people there that cared about her. And while things were far from what they'd been years prior, Nathan and Tara were willing to let her back into their lives to start rebuilding what she'd crumbled.
Deviant Storyline:
Began: Back in August or thereabouts of 2012, with Penny's curiosity over what would've happened if Luke had been unable to locate Tara on Gogam and save her, and by extension, Nuridarr, from the planet. Initially, I was a spectator, interested in the idea for itself and the effect it would have on Sarris. I didn't really become involved until the characters got their revenge for Penny and I wondering if Jaydn might've been an antagonist all along that we'd been trying to make into a protagonist. The question came up of how Jade might've turned out different had she been raised up with good, strong morals while still on Gogam. If that hard setting that she was born for was where she needed to be in order to be instilled with a good heart. The idea caught on quickly, and thus it began.
General Summary:
Tara's transponder is damaged during her initial days on Gogam, so instead of being rescued by Luke, she and Nuridarr are forced to remain on the planet, living on the run from his tribe who've branded him a traitor. She has gives up hope of ever getting off Gogam quickly and they just survive for a year or so. They're negotiating for supplies with an tribe that's an enemy with Nuridarr's old tribe when the tribe is attacked. In the chaos, Tara rescues a three-year-old baby girl named Jaydn after her motherr is killed. (Please don't feel bad, her parents were a far cry from what parents should be.)
For a small amount of time, the plan is to drop her off with another tribe, but Tara falls in love pretty quickly and while Nur was initially opposed to the idea of keeping her, he gets attached as well and they adopt Jaydn as their own.
Over the course of the following six years which are spent constantly moving, fighting to survive against both the planet and other Gogamians, Jade is brought up included in every process, being given her own duties and responsibilities, and she's taught that they all protect each other. Not every man for himself, as the rest of Gogam does.
While Tara gave up on leaving, Jaydn's addition to their family gave Nuridarr a newfound motivation to get Tara and Jade off of Gogam and to a better life out in the rest of Zephron. And he does, joining a pirate gang in order to get them passage on a ship headed off Gogam.
Jade is nine years old when the time to leave comes, and they realize that Tara is pregnant either while on the ship, or shortly after they escape into the rest of the galaxy.
While all this has been happening on Gogam, Sarris has spent the six years searching the galaxy for Tara, not even having a place to start, but refusing to quit until she finds Tara, living or dead. Novarr, only an acquaintance at this point, keeps in touch with her and does some of his own searching, while Luke, unable to get to Tara on Gogam, breaks off his efforts early on to continue looking for their missing family.
After this point, events get fairly fuzzy, as Penny and I haven't even talk-gamed their leaving. But Raina and Jhidek are both born within a couple of years of their getting of Gogam and Jade settles into her role as Imo's (Daddy's) wing mate and big sister with
ease, much to our relief.
Merri follows seven years after Jhidek, when Jade is seventeen, Raina eight, and Jay seven.
In the deviant, their focus as hunters is trained much more on the Gogamians who leave their home planet to terrorize the rest of Zephron and either turning them back or finishing them off. The effect on them as a family is a much more trained, orderly, and possibly an even tighter and closer dynamic than the original. They protect each other and carry out their missions together once Raina and Jhidek get older. (Not sure how they worked the Merri angle when she showed up later.)
Meanwhile, Sarris and Novarr slowly drifted toward each other, Tara's return to their worlds drawing them back together. He's there to help support Sarris as she deals with the guilt she feels over not finding Tara sooner, but eventually it turns to something more.
Ruusan does not go forgotten either. Sarris helped rescue her from a hostage situation on Sinjaro Kahn when Ruusan was ten and on her way back to Norsha'ac following a failed adoption attempt. Always a decisive thinker, Sarris decided that she didn't want to let Ruu go back to the orphanage and worked with the social service system on Kahn to legally adopt her. I'm not sure what her relationship status was with Novarr at the time, but they might've been on the edge of getting married when Sarris picked up Ruu and that was the turning point.
For a few years, the Vhander and Schaefe households would get together, so Ruusan wasn't strangers with Raina, Jhidek, and Merri, but when they got older, the visits dropped off some, possibly because the Vhanders, now with the kids of a safer age to aid in the fight, got busier with missions. Not positive on that account either.
Ruusan headed to med-school on Sinjaro Kahn from Uhric at eighteen, taking a more intensive course and finishing in four and a half years to return to Uhric where her parents and Jensen lived.
(Sarris became a Grandmaster while Tara was gone, which equates to a general or some such, and Jensen is a Ronin [equivalent = colonel] who works as her aide and was with her when she helped to rescue Ruusan. He started as a trusted aide and friend and was basically adopted into the family after a couple of years. Ruu sees him as an older brother and close confidante.)
The unintended silence between the two families came to a rather abrupt end when Jhidek, injured in an explosion while he and Raina were on a mission, dropped in, quite literally, to Ruusan's apartment. Things were touch-and-go, but she saved his life and
things just take off from there. I won't bore you with those details, but suffice it to say, after a couple of spontaneous visits, a close encounter with the bad sort of Gogamian for Ruu, a few months of silence to protect her on Jay's part, a tought fight that ended with a "missing, perhaps dead" news report on the Vhanders, and a conniving Tara, Ruusan and Jhidek worked out what they both wanted. Not without a bit of drama, of course, but they were married just under a month later.
And the rest of the story, as they say, has yet to be told.
And that's all of it! For the moment, at least. The only really "finished" storyline is the Steampunk storyline. The other two kind of go through stop-again-go-again expanding. Currently, Penny and I are caught up in the Deviant again, although we're at the tail end,
instead of the beginning.
To clarify that, we're talk-gaming at two points in the storyline. The first point is with Nuridarr, Tara, and Jaydn on Gogam and Jade is currently seven. The second point is twenty-five-some years down the road, with Ruusan and Jhidek, although I don't think we
truly intended to pick it up as agressively as we have. (It's only mostly my fault; I was curious if Ruu and Jay would work out in the Deviant as they did in the Original.)
Once again, please feel entirely free to either leave a comment here with questions or on my OYAN profile, where I can be found as PenWielder62. These storylines are ones that Penny and I have invested a lot of time and thought into, and they're actually quite
important to me, so I would greatly enjoy helping you clear up whatever it is that I've confused you with.
And thank you so much, as always, for reading. Knowing that there are people who actually enjoy what I write means a great deal to me.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Writing: Cameron and Ruusan Prompts (26-50)
And here is the second part of my Ruu and Cam prompts. I do have another set of fifty, but they were my first ones and need a rewrite that I am unwilling to attempt at this time, so. These shall have to do.
Without further ado, prompts twenty-six through fifty.
Jump
For Ruusan, the jump into marriage was welcome, although unexpected. If asked even two months prior, she would have said she didn’t have plans to get married anytime soon; that she wanted to focus on her job for a while. Cameron hadn’t had that sort of time, so she didn’t ask it of him.
Jester
Cameron could be, if the fancy struck him, quite the jester. From chopsticks up his nose to a well-timed joke to lighten the stress weighing on her shoulders, his easy-going humor never failed to make Ruusan smile.
Jousting
Sometimes, it felt like jousting, their exchanges. He proved to have quite the competitive spirit, and Ruusan had already known she’d had one, but when one was pitted against the other, the results were, while in good humor, quite serious behind the congenial exterior.
Jewel
She was his jewel; the beauty that made the pain of passing days easier. Cameron knew that if it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have been able to last as long as he had.
Just
Just promise me one thing, he’d asked one night. She’d replied with Anything, and he had told her to keep smiling. Always, always keeping smiling. And don’t be afraid to smile for someone else. Ruusan had understood what he was saying, but curled closer to him in an effort to ward off those thoughts.
Smirk
Ruusan had once said to Jaydn that one of her hunter counterparts had the most adorable smirk. Her sister had turned quite red, and refused to comment on the matter. Even after she married Cameron, she remained a staunch believer in her own words, because while she loved him very much, the man had no ability to smirk. Whatsoever.
Sorrow
It took months before the grief and sorrow lifted enough from her shoulders enough that Ruusan no longer felt weighted by it. The move to Norsha’ac helped in that respect, with the new surroundings and fast-moving Vhander family.
Stupidity
It was with some stupidity that Ruusan took in the veritable explosion of greenery in the new apartment she and Cameron had. Flowers, cacti, trailing ivy-related plants... they were everywhere, and all of a sudden, she wondered if she had any allergy problems.
Serenade
While Cameron never found a balcony, he did take to humming out a simple serenade if the mood struck him, much to his wife’s delight. He may have insisted his voice was nothing pleasant to listen to it, but Ruusan enjoyed it more than she was able to put into words.
Sarcasm
Sarcasm had never been either of their strong suits, although Cameron sometimes drifted towards it when his irritation had been roused. She would just hum quiet agreement and hurry him in the other direction.
Sordid
When Ruusan had told Cameron that she hated the sordid ‘love’ holovids of recent day, he had been initially surprised, then quite pleased, because he’d always wanted to find a woman who didn’t enjoy that form of entertainment.
Soliloquy
Ruusan wasn’t taken to soliloquies, as she wasn’t taken with being alone. If she had something to say, she preferred it be to someone, rather than to herself, with whom it would do little good.
Sojourn
During the beginning of their marriage, the Armstrong’s took several brief sojourns to different parts of Kahn, learning more about both the city and each other. Then they settled down, she in her work, he in his regular check-ups, but none of their curiosity with each other dimmed.
Share
Despite not gaining a sister until she turned seven, Ruusan found it exceptionally easy to share, especially with Cameron. She adjusted to sharing a living space with the ease of breathing, and he seemed to take to it easily as well.
Solitary
Ruusan could never be described as solitary; everything she was took joy in being near others and seeing their happiness, and that didn’t change even on the hardest of days after Cameron’s death.
Nowhere
Sometimes, Ruu would wake up from a dream, desperate to find him because he had to be somewhere; she had just seen him, only to remember that he was nowhere she could reach. The woman cried the most on those nights, wishing him back by her side once more.
Neutral
After a particular trying day at the emergency room, Ruusan would go into ‘neutral’ as Cameron tended to call it. The rest of her day would be spent in auto-complete, but when she reached home, he would do his best effort to pull her out of the abyss.
Nuance
She was surprised, really, at how quickly she picked up on his every nuance. The different ways he’d furrow his brows and the meanings behind each of them. Even the rhythm he tapped his foot to had a hidden purpose that she enjoyed finding out about.
Near
After he died, Ruusan found herself wanting Vivian to be near much more then she wasn’t. Sarris purchased a sling for her, and mother and daughter used it until the edges were fraying.
Natural
Falling in love with Cameron had been a natural instinct, as easy as breathing. Everything about him appealed to her tender soul, and all she wanted was to make him happy.
Horizon
He took an unusually strong interest in the horizon. When she asked him why it was, it was because he enjoyed watching another day set on his life and knowing that he had lived that much longer than expected.
Valiant
Ruusan’s ninth month of pregnancy came, and Cameron’s health continued to decline, but he held on with a tenacity that surprised the doctors and they pinned many titles on him, including ‘brave’, ‘strong’, even ‘valiant’.
Virtuous
Even before Cameron had begun loving her in earnest, he declared Ruusan had to be one of the most virtuous women he had ever known.
Victory
Ruusan felt they had scored a great victory over death as she watched Cameron, face drawn and almost gray but still quite aware, hold his baby girl in his arms and call her “Vivi” for the first time.
Defeat
It felt much more like death had defeated them, though, when she awoke the next morning to the doctors’ gentle grip on her hand, and the quiet information of Cameron having passed on an hour earlier.
And, with that semi-depressing note, that's all I've got.
Once more, I hope that you found these an interesting read and I shall poke through my endless documents for something more to share.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties
Without further ado, prompts twenty-six through fifty.
Jump
For Ruusan, the jump into marriage was welcome, although unexpected. If asked even two months prior, she would have said she didn’t have plans to get married anytime soon; that she wanted to focus on her job for a while. Cameron hadn’t had that sort of time, so she didn’t ask it of him.
Jester
Cameron could be, if the fancy struck him, quite the jester. From chopsticks up his nose to a well-timed joke to lighten the stress weighing on her shoulders, his easy-going humor never failed to make Ruusan smile.
Jousting
Sometimes, it felt like jousting, their exchanges. He proved to have quite the competitive spirit, and Ruusan had already known she’d had one, but when one was pitted against the other, the results were, while in good humor, quite serious behind the congenial exterior.
Jewel
She was his jewel; the beauty that made the pain of passing days easier. Cameron knew that if it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have been able to last as long as he had.
Just
Just promise me one thing, he’d asked one night. She’d replied with Anything, and he had told her to keep smiling. Always, always keeping smiling. And don’t be afraid to smile for someone else. Ruusan had understood what he was saying, but curled closer to him in an effort to ward off those thoughts.
Smirk
Ruusan had once said to Jaydn that one of her hunter counterparts had the most adorable smirk. Her sister had turned quite red, and refused to comment on the matter. Even after she married Cameron, she remained a staunch believer in her own words, because while she loved him very much, the man had no ability to smirk. Whatsoever.
Sorrow
It took months before the grief and sorrow lifted enough from her shoulders enough that Ruusan no longer felt weighted by it. The move to Norsha’ac helped in that respect, with the new surroundings and fast-moving Vhander family.
Stupidity
It was with some stupidity that Ruusan took in the veritable explosion of greenery in the new apartment she and Cameron had. Flowers, cacti, trailing ivy-related plants... they were everywhere, and all of a sudden, she wondered if she had any allergy problems.
Serenade
While Cameron never found a balcony, he did take to humming out a simple serenade if the mood struck him, much to his wife’s delight. He may have insisted his voice was nothing pleasant to listen to it, but Ruusan enjoyed it more than she was able to put into words.
Sarcasm
Sarcasm had never been either of their strong suits, although Cameron sometimes drifted towards it when his irritation had been roused. She would just hum quiet agreement and hurry him in the other direction.
Sordid
When Ruusan had told Cameron that she hated the sordid ‘love’ holovids of recent day, he had been initially surprised, then quite pleased, because he’d always wanted to find a woman who didn’t enjoy that form of entertainment.
Soliloquy
Ruusan wasn’t taken to soliloquies, as she wasn’t taken with being alone. If she had something to say, she preferred it be to someone, rather than to herself, with whom it would do little good.
Sojourn
During the beginning of their marriage, the Armstrong’s took several brief sojourns to different parts of Kahn, learning more about both the city and each other. Then they settled down, she in her work, he in his regular check-ups, but none of their curiosity with each other dimmed.
Share
Despite not gaining a sister until she turned seven, Ruusan found it exceptionally easy to share, especially with Cameron. She adjusted to sharing a living space with the ease of breathing, and he seemed to take to it easily as well.
Solitary
Ruusan could never be described as solitary; everything she was took joy in being near others and seeing their happiness, and that didn’t change even on the hardest of days after Cameron’s death.
Nowhere
Sometimes, Ruu would wake up from a dream, desperate to find him because he had to be somewhere; she had just seen him, only to remember that he was nowhere she could reach. The woman cried the most on those nights, wishing him back by her side once more.
Neutral
After a particular trying day at the emergency room, Ruusan would go into ‘neutral’ as Cameron tended to call it. The rest of her day would be spent in auto-complete, but when she reached home, he would do his best effort to pull her out of the abyss.
Nuance
She was surprised, really, at how quickly she picked up on his every nuance. The different ways he’d furrow his brows and the meanings behind each of them. Even the rhythm he tapped his foot to had a hidden purpose that she enjoyed finding out about.
Near
After he died, Ruusan found herself wanting Vivian to be near much more then she wasn’t. Sarris purchased a sling for her, and mother and daughter used it until the edges were fraying.
Natural
Falling in love with Cameron had been a natural instinct, as easy as breathing. Everything about him appealed to her tender soul, and all she wanted was to make him happy.
Horizon
He took an unusually strong interest in the horizon. When she asked him why it was, it was because he enjoyed watching another day set on his life and knowing that he had lived that much longer than expected.
Valiant
Ruusan’s ninth month of pregnancy came, and Cameron’s health continued to decline, but he held on with a tenacity that surprised the doctors and they pinned many titles on him, including ‘brave’, ‘strong’, even ‘valiant’.
Virtuous
Even before Cameron had begun loving her in earnest, he declared Ruusan had to be one of the most virtuous women he had ever known.
Victory
Ruusan felt they had scored a great victory over death as she watched Cameron, face drawn and almost gray but still quite aware, hold his baby girl in his arms and call her “Vivi” for the first time.
Defeat
It felt much more like death had defeated them, though, when she awoke the next morning to the doctors’ gentle grip on her hand, and the quiet information of Cameron having passed on an hour earlier.
And, with that semi-depressing note, that's all I've got.
Once more, I hope that you found these an interesting read and I shall poke through my endless documents for something more to share.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Writing: Ruusan and Cameron Prompts (1-25)
For quite some time, I have enjoyed writing to prompts. You get one word to write a small blip for. Mine are generally 40 to 60 words long.
However, to date, the only series of prompts I have completed have been two, fifty-word-prompt lists for Ruusan and Cameron. Hopefully, I captured at least some of the specialness of their relationship in them.
Walking
Ruusan took to walking with Vivian, everywhere. If no one was available to go with her out-and-about, she wandered in circles around the house, murmuring to her daughter about Cameron, her family, anything that crossed her mind, or if nothing struck her, she would hum a soft tune that comforted them both.
Waltz
She’d had no clue what a waltz was until Cameron deemed it important enough to teach her, despite the width of her abdomen from six months of pregnancy. It made for an interesting dance, but a fun one that ended in laughter.
Wishes
It was only a couple of weeks after they’d discovered Ruusan was pregnant that Cameron confided in her that one of his greatest wishes was to be able to hold their baby before he died. She’d whispered back that you will, you will, I won’t forgive you if you don’t.
Wonder Cameron took pride in the wonder that showed in Ruu’s eyes when he proposed to her in front of the night-shift in the ER, and felt his own joy when she said yes with tears in her eyes.
Worry
More often than not, Ruusan couldn’t reconcile how worry-free Cameron was, but she did understand it. He had to live each day as it came, otherwise his remaining time would be full of fretting and fearing. So she helped, fitting as much into the next twenty-four hours facing them as possible.
Whimsy
If questioned, Cameron would definitely say that, between himself and Ruusan, the whimsy one was he, but he would follow up with a comment about training his wife to live life in spontaneity and she was taking his lessons to heart.
Waste/Wasteland
When Cameron died, not twenty-four hours after their daughter was born, it took every iota of her strength to keep from seeing her world as a wasteland. It helped that she had her mother, her father, her daughter... her family to cling to.
Whiskey and Rum
It was late one night that they talked. Sarris had a glass of something brown, which could’ve been anything from whiskey, to rum, to a cellar burner. Ruusan was rocking Vivian back to sleep, and the Warrior whispered of how strong Ruu was. If she had been the one to lose Novarr, she wouldn’t have had the willpower to stand up and keep moving.
War
Of all their random games, goof-offs, and outings, Ruusan particularly enjoyed when they got into wars with pillows... water guns... anything usable, right down to the small skirmish over the remaining noodles in the paper take-out boxes.
Wedding
Cameron and Ruusan’s wedding was small, rather unremarkable, but special in every way. Her parents and Jaydn, then Tara, Nuridarr, and their brood all showed up for the event, witnessed the serene and heartfelt exchange of vows between the two. All Ruu could do was grin as they went to the reception afterwards, her fingers intertwined with his.
Birthday
It was five days after they were married that Ruusan dragged Cameron to her parent’s apartment to celebrate her sister’s birthday. Her family was so busy that he hadn’t gotten much time to just sit and talk with all of them. Ruu loved how comfortable he was after only a few minutes.
Blessing
Novarr was the first of her family to give his blessing to Ruusan and Cameron, which she was, frankly, unsurprised about. He’d developed a tendency to randomly join them for lunch and just talk; which she glad for. The more convinced he was, the more convinced her mother was.
Bias
When Jaydn declared Vivian to be the most beautiful baby she’d ever seen, Ruusan replied that it was all bias because Vivi was Jade’s first niece, and because she had none of her own. Yet.
Burning
The first time Cameron had said that he had a “burning, ardent love” her, Ruusan ended up gasping for breath from laughter. The last time brought tears to her eyes, even though she hadn’t realized it was the end at the time.
Breathing
After time, Ruusan realized that Vivian listened to her breathing for reassurances and comfort, especially late at night. If the child picked up on irregularities, like the ones that occurred from crying, she would awaken, and while she didn’t cry, she didn’t sleep again until her mother had calmed.
Breaking
Ruusan had expected, but not fully grasped, the way her heart would feel like it had shattered when a doctor came in to tell her that her husband had passed away during the night.
Belief
From the moment Cameron had mentioned it, it became her belief that he would live as long as it took to see their daughter, hold her in his arms, and tell her what every little girl needed to hear from her father; I love you.
Balloon
Ruusan commented that she felt like she’d swallowed a balloon when her abdomen had distended to about that size. When Cameron laughed, she threatened to make him eat a balloon, and see how he liked it.
Balcony
They watched an ancient tragedy one night, and afterwards, Cameron commented that it was a shame they had no balcony, because he would quite gladly serenade his lovely lady, no matter how bad his singing voice was.
Bane
Whereas the paramedic saw the illness inflicted upon him as the bane of their lives, Cameron would quietly inform her that it was because of this sickness that he had been able to meet her, and she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Beauty rises from pain, he’d mused, then pondered if that was the correct analogy.
Quiet
Vivian was a quiet child, even from when she was very young, and was more often than not content to remain close to her mother, except when there were guests over. Then she gurgled, cooed, and schmoozed to her heart’s content.
Quirks
Once, Ruusan asked Cameron if any of her quirks bugged him. He’d studied her pensively for a few moments, then replied that her habit of stealing the covers was quite troublesome, but only because it meant he had to roll across the bed so he could cuddle close and share the comforter once more.
Question
When she finally faced her mother, and voiced her wish for Sarris’ blessing, the woman had answered with the question of if Ruusan would be able to live on after Cameron died. Ruu had answered quietly that it would be hard, but she had a family to stand by her and help hold her up. Sarris’ approval of their marriage came in the form of a wordless kiss to her daughter’s brow.
Quarrel
Their quarrels never lasted long, and usually occurred because of a lack of sleep, frayed nerves, or a combination of both. During one of their first fights, Ruusan had been the first to repent, saying later how they couldn’t afford to let those precious hours slip away in anger.
Quitting
Jaydn had wanted to know at one point if Ruu ever felt like quitting; giving up before he died so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the pain that would come after. Her response had been a staunch no. She’d been in for the long haul from the beginning, and had never thought twice about it.
And that is the first twenty-five of the fifty Ruu/Cam prompts that I plan to post.
Please note that these prompts were not created by me. I found them online at some point, but I can't recall where.
Once more, feedback is welcome and I truly hope that you found this peek into Ruu's life at least vaguely interesting.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
However, to date, the only series of prompts I have completed have been two, fifty-word-prompt lists for Ruusan and Cameron. Hopefully, I captured at least some of the specialness of their relationship in them.
Walking
Ruusan took to walking with Vivian, everywhere. If no one was available to go with her out-and-about, she wandered in circles around the house, murmuring to her daughter about Cameron, her family, anything that crossed her mind, or if nothing struck her, she would hum a soft tune that comforted them both.
Waltz
She’d had no clue what a waltz was until Cameron deemed it important enough to teach her, despite the width of her abdomen from six months of pregnancy. It made for an interesting dance, but a fun one that ended in laughter.
Wishes
It was only a couple of weeks after they’d discovered Ruusan was pregnant that Cameron confided in her that one of his greatest wishes was to be able to hold their baby before he died. She’d whispered back that you will, you will, I won’t forgive you if you don’t.
Wonder Cameron took pride in the wonder that showed in Ruu’s eyes when he proposed to her in front of the night-shift in the ER, and felt his own joy when she said yes with tears in her eyes.
Worry
More often than not, Ruusan couldn’t reconcile how worry-free Cameron was, but she did understand it. He had to live each day as it came, otherwise his remaining time would be full of fretting and fearing. So she helped, fitting as much into the next twenty-four hours facing them as possible.
Whimsy
If questioned, Cameron would definitely say that, between himself and Ruusan, the whimsy one was he, but he would follow up with a comment about training his wife to live life in spontaneity and she was taking his lessons to heart.
Waste/Wasteland
When Cameron died, not twenty-four hours after their daughter was born, it took every iota of her strength to keep from seeing her world as a wasteland. It helped that she had her mother, her father, her daughter... her family to cling to.
Whiskey and Rum
It was late one night that they talked. Sarris had a glass of something brown, which could’ve been anything from whiskey, to rum, to a cellar burner. Ruusan was rocking Vivian back to sleep, and the Warrior whispered of how strong Ruu was. If she had been the one to lose Novarr, she wouldn’t have had the willpower to stand up and keep moving.
War
Of all their random games, goof-offs, and outings, Ruusan particularly enjoyed when they got into wars with pillows... water guns... anything usable, right down to the small skirmish over the remaining noodles in the paper take-out boxes.
Wedding
Cameron and Ruusan’s wedding was small, rather unremarkable, but special in every way. Her parents and Jaydn, then Tara, Nuridarr, and their brood all showed up for the event, witnessed the serene and heartfelt exchange of vows between the two. All Ruu could do was grin as they went to the reception afterwards, her fingers intertwined with his.
Birthday
It was five days after they were married that Ruusan dragged Cameron to her parent’s apartment to celebrate her sister’s birthday. Her family was so busy that he hadn’t gotten much time to just sit and talk with all of them. Ruu loved how comfortable he was after only a few minutes.
Blessing
Novarr was the first of her family to give his blessing to Ruusan and Cameron, which she was, frankly, unsurprised about. He’d developed a tendency to randomly join them for lunch and just talk; which she glad for. The more convinced he was, the more convinced her mother was.
Bias
When Jaydn declared Vivian to be the most beautiful baby she’d ever seen, Ruusan replied that it was all bias because Vivi was Jade’s first niece, and because she had none of her own. Yet.
Burning
The first time Cameron had said that he had a “burning, ardent love” her, Ruusan ended up gasping for breath from laughter. The last time brought tears to her eyes, even though she hadn’t realized it was the end at the time.
Breathing
After time, Ruusan realized that Vivian listened to her breathing for reassurances and comfort, especially late at night. If the child picked up on irregularities, like the ones that occurred from crying, she would awaken, and while she didn’t cry, she didn’t sleep again until her mother had calmed.
Breaking
Ruusan had expected, but not fully grasped, the way her heart would feel like it had shattered when a doctor came in to tell her that her husband had passed away during the night.
Belief
From the moment Cameron had mentioned it, it became her belief that he would live as long as it took to see their daughter, hold her in his arms, and tell her what every little girl needed to hear from her father; I love you.
Balloon
Ruusan commented that she felt like she’d swallowed a balloon when her abdomen had distended to about that size. When Cameron laughed, she threatened to make him eat a balloon, and see how he liked it.
Balcony
They watched an ancient tragedy one night, and afterwards, Cameron commented that it was a shame they had no balcony, because he would quite gladly serenade his lovely lady, no matter how bad his singing voice was.
Bane
Whereas the paramedic saw the illness inflicted upon him as the bane of their lives, Cameron would quietly inform her that it was because of this sickness that he had been able to meet her, and she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Beauty rises from pain, he’d mused, then pondered if that was the correct analogy.
Quiet
Vivian was a quiet child, even from when she was very young, and was more often than not content to remain close to her mother, except when there were guests over. Then she gurgled, cooed, and schmoozed to her heart’s content.
Quirks
Once, Ruusan asked Cameron if any of her quirks bugged him. He’d studied her pensively for a few moments, then replied that her habit of stealing the covers was quite troublesome, but only because it meant he had to roll across the bed so he could cuddle close and share the comforter once more.
Question
When she finally faced her mother, and voiced her wish for Sarris’ blessing, the woman had answered with the question of if Ruusan would be able to live on after Cameron died. Ruu had answered quietly that it would be hard, but she had a family to stand by her and help hold her up. Sarris’ approval of their marriage came in the form of a wordless kiss to her daughter’s brow.
Quarrel
Their quarrels never lasted long, and usually occurred because of a lack of sleep, frayed nerves, or a combination of both. During one of their first fights, Ruusan had been the first to repent, saying later how they couldn’t afford to let those precious hours slip away in anger.
Quitting
Jaydn had wanted to know at one point if Ruu ever felt like quitting; giving up before he died so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the pain that would come after. Her response had been a staunch no. She’d been in for the long haul from the beginning, and had never thought twice about it.
And that is the first twenty-five of the fifty Ruu/Cam prompts that I plan to post.
Please note that these prompts were not created by me. I found them online at some point, but I can't recall where.
Once more, feedback is welcome and I truly hope that you found this peek into Ruu's life at least vaguely interesting.
Ad astra per aspera.
To the stars, through difficulties.
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