(no subject)

[notmeant2b.livejournal.com]

Date: September 21st, 1999
Setting: Rodeo Drive, Hollywood, California
Status: Private - ?
Summary: In which Someone has been keeping herself busy, and Heaven and Hell quite confused.



The Earth, as it turned out, was quite a large place.

The Earth. That was what This Place was called. The girl had learned a great deal in her travels; among other things, that most things had names. That she herself did not possess one troubled her vaguely, but she hadn't come across anything that seemed suitable, as yet.

Some of the humans she'd encountered had used words to describe her when she had first manifested herself a heavy corporeal body like theirs. Monster, at first, because forming a proper functioning body out of thin air was trickier than it looked, and her first few attempts hadn't turned out quite right. Rude of them, but then on the whole they did seem a terribly jittery, paranoid race. Perhaps it came of being made so fragile.

Angel and demon had been next, but she hadn't liked that when she discovered that these were names for Those People who'd kept her locked up all that time (she was very fuzzy on the difference between the two, and really didn't care. As far as she was concerned, if it had wings, it was the Enemy.) Hiding her own wings had taken care of that problem. She didn't like them anyway; the colors were all wrong, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't make them beautiful and white, or sleek and black like the ones the angeldemons had.

She had learned to speak, too, though it had taken her some time to catch on to the fact that the people in each place had their own language, and would not understand another place's. Her own speech was still a jumbled mess of English, French, Portugese, Japanese and a dozen other languages and dialects. This was frustrating when she tried to communicate with the humans, but she had learned to hold her temper in check with the understanding that when she stopped them moving, it was called "death," and it couldn't be undone. The tall, frightening figure with no face or eyes who had explained this to her seemed to be immune to her powers, and she didn't want to attract his attention again (though it seemed he was everywhere she went, somehow.)

At least he wasn't chasing her, though. The winged people kept hounding her, all over the face of the Earth. The girl was getting very tired of them popping up every time she thought she was finally rid of them. They also seemed rather confused as to what to call her, which seemed odd (you would think if they were so different, that an "angel" would be able to tell another "angel" from a "demon" or from something else entirely.) She had no compunction about attacking them; they were a good deal more durable than the humans, and did not die easily.

Standing on a street corner near a sign that said "Rodeo Drive," though her reading was still very shaky, she wound herself up in a silk wrap she'd taken from a little shop--the person who ran the place would never miss it, or indeed remember that he had ever owned such a thing--and studied her own reflection in a large window. She'd finally got the face right after numerous tries: long dark shiny hair, no longer tangled; sharply-cut and delicately feminine features; and luminous, pale blue eyes. She did like her eyes, and had taken great care to reproduce them as accurately in this human form as possible.

A young man passing by stopped to sweep his gaze over her body, making a low whistling sound that she interpreted as approval. She smiled back at him, still practicing the expression, and he seemed to like that, too.

Maybe this person could answer the question she'd been asking everywhere she went, searching for the meaning of the one word she'd known all along; the one she remembered from long ago, that conjured up images of fire and fear and a strange, deep-seated longing she did not understand.

What is aTali?