#if you've ever wanted to climb a six foot three man like a tree

[liviavanrouge]

Biship Bloom Birthday vignette

Bishop: Man, getting up early for this, I can't believe it...I'm still so *yawns* sleepy....

Bishop: I wonder who I'm gonna have to deal with this early in the morning, please let it be someone chill at this time

???: How mean!

Livia: Hehe! It's me, Livia Vanranrouge, here as your presenter today!!

Bishop: Oh brother *laughs* hey Liv! Expected you to be more chill in the morning but still at least it's you and not someone like Kalim!

Livia: Ah hey! I'm just as hyper as Kalim maybe even more! That feels offensive towards me, I should tire you out more

Bishop: Haha...p-please don't..why don't we begin the interview now?

Livia: Okay! So, if you were to fly anywhere where would you go!

Bishop: .....The Afterglow Savanna...

Livia: Really?

Bishop: That's where my pops was born and raised, he said it was a great place to live but he left because of his families protest against him being with my momma

Livia: Wait! Your dad's family protested about true love!?

Bishop: Yeah....it nearly went to the point of physical force, so my momma and pops ran away together in the middle of the night

Livia: It's like a love story...

Bishop: Hahaha! I guess it was, but they both loved each other dearly, I'd have ran away too if my family were against who I loved

Bishop: I still visit my pops family though, they don't like me very much but they don't hate me either, so it's pretty calm yet awkward whenever i visit

Livia: Huh, if you visit them why visit the Afterglow Savanna?

Bishop: After my pops ran away his family moved so he didn't find them again, the wedge between my pops and the others grew bigger because of that

Bishop: They reside in the City of Flowers, so I've never been to the Afterglow Savanna at all actually, it's a place I desperately want to visit but I'm afraid to ask my parents to take me there

Livia: Bishop...

Bishop: I don't want any bad memories to rise for them, so I'll save up and when I'm older, I'll pay the place a visit myself..

Bishop: I wonder if I'll find my person to love if I visit there...I wanna settle down like my parents when I can and start a family

Livia: Hehe, that's a big step!

Bishop: I know....I'll be ready though even if it catches me off guard

~~~~

Part 2

Livia: Next question! What class are you good at!

Bishop: Hm....I'd say Physical Training

Livia: Hahaha! I expected that!!

Bishop: *Chuckles* Yeah! You've seen me parkour around the school all the way up to the top tower! The heart attacks I gave everyone two days ago when I climbed to the tippy top and leaped off only to be caught by Yolan and Epel on brooms with a blanket tied between them!!

Bishop: That was the funniest and my most favorite moment from this year! Even though Leona practically grounded me for three months because of it, hahaha!

Livia: Yeah! It was hilarious!

Bishop: I started parkour thanks to my momma, back in her native tribe she'd leap from stone to stone, climb trees, scale cliffs and much more. When I turned six, she took me out for a nature walk and we ended up leaping from stone to stone through a rushing river

Livia: Wow! My Papa would pull a protective move and make me stay behind while my elder siblings do something like that...

Bishop: Probably because you hold a special place in his heart, well you and your siblings all hold a special place no doubt

Livia: This isn't about me!!! Tell me more about your mom!

Bishop: Oh yeah! She would hold my hand as we leaped from stone to stone and taught me how to get out of a rushing river if I were to ever fall into one when alone. It was thanks to her that I'm so nimble and quick footed now

Livia: You are in the track and field club..

Bishop: Haha! YEP! When I heard we had that club I dashed all the way there to join, being with Jack and Deuce is a blast even though we can get competitive seeing who's the fastest! Those two are behind twenty points to five, even though the five times they won is because I wanted them too

Bishop: *Smirks smugly* Don't tell them I said that though~

Livia: *Giggles*

Bishop: I grew up with Epel too, so there are times where he'd come join me when I go parkour, he was terrible at it but managed to keep up, that had my deep respect..

Bishop: The adults who weren't my parents weren't able to keep up you know, so little guy earned my respect and trust, loyalty as well! I was glad to have him as a friend at that time, someone who won't complain about me going too far ahead of them

Bishop: Even so, Epel got better as if he had been practicing, soon enough both me and him were just leaping about, laughing and having fun...those were the times...

Livia: Sounds fun, you two are apples in pie

Bishop: Yep! Wouldn't trade my pal for any other friend!

~~~~

Part 3

Livia: Last question! What is something that made you glad you could use magic?

Bishop: Just everything in general for me to be honest, this is an easy question to answer

Livia: Huh?

Bishop: Both of my parents wield no magic, it came as a surprise when I was able to, thought I inherited the use of it thanks to my grandfather on my mother's side since he could use magic

Bishop: After my magic appeared, I always used it to help my parents with their chores and all of that, my pops would be worried and closely watch me...and when I say closely, I mean hold me close to his chest and watch me do my thing kinda close

Bishop: My parents always tell me to be careful when doing magic, so I do my best to be safe..but there was this one time where my magic went out of control

Livia: What....

Bishop: My pops put his life on the line to save mine, ever since then I reduced the amount of magic I used each time I aided my parents, I hardly used much unless my parents gave me permission

Bishop: I remember once I was playing with a few kids who WANTED to play with me and a wild animal got into Epel's farm, I rushed there and found him about to be attack so I struck it with a lightning spell, chasing the beast away

Bishop: I remember being praised for weeks, getting head pats and nods of acknowledgements

Livia: That's amazing, Bishop!

Bishop: Haha, it was a long while ago but thanks

Livia: Yay! Here's your broom, the orchids, hydrangeas and white gardenia's make for such pretty decoration!

Bishop: White gardenia's are my favorite, heh!

Livia: Awesome let's end this off on a good note then!!

Bishop: Very well then, let's head on outside, gal!

~~~~

Bishop: I hope I graduate from school and become a man my parents will be proud of, but for now I'll continue to be myself! Let's go!!

------

Bishop: *Smiles wide, his eyes closed as he held a hand towards the sun as he flew over the botanical garden, three eagle owls flying around him*

[bomberqueen17]

Am sitting in the dark on my big sister’s leather couch in Savannah like a creeper, but I’m awake extra early and just don’t want to put a light on that disturbs anyone. So I guess I’ll collect my various thoughts, none of which are all that interesting-- mostly, airline travel, elderly dogs, and the foibles of children. The almost-5-year-old niece, who was quite standoffish last time she saw me (understandably, I seldom see her) has decided I am The Best, and over the course of yesterday extended this to my dude, who in the last five or six years has gone from mildly distressed by small children to pretty used to them. Which is good, because last night she decided he was For Climbing, and her favorite thing is to climb into his lap and then press her nose to his nose, which is disconcerting if you’re used to adult personal space concepts. (I don’t usually do things like that to him, so -- but he’s been quite amused and graceful about it, which, I mean, you have to be somewhat, but I’ve been substituting my cheek for my nose because I don’t want her to mash my glasses into my eyeballs, for example.)

The trip was uneventful; full planes, but no real issues. First leg had a large group traveling together where apparently nobody spoke English, and so this being the US, it’s not like the airline was going to have anyone on staff who could translate for them, so they just stood in the way of a lot of things and the staff repeated themselves without slowing down and generally no one was thrilled by this, especially when they extended this to listening to crew instructions in the cabin. But they seemed copacetic with the Fasten Seat Belt sign, at least, so in the end it went smoothly enough.

We arrived in Savannah to discover that it was a lovely, breezy, relatively cool sunny day-- of course much warmer than we’d left (freeze warning last night in Buffalo, wtf), and there were strange bugs everywhere-- black beetles with red dots, flying around in pairs conjoined at the ass. Dude Googled them, and discovered that they were Red-Shouldered Bugs, also sometimes known as Love Bugs, because at mating season they stick their asses together and stay like that for a couple of days at a time, while going about their business. They have become a theme so far, because my sister’s back porch seems to have some kind of nest of them or something underneath it, they’re just everywhere out there. But they’re not really by the pool so much, so you just have to kind of wave your hands as you go out that door. 

The closing dates on #1 buying my sister’s new house and #2 selling her old one are actually lining up in a copacetic fashion, which is very good and also important. Of course, my sister is still trying to finish out her position with the Georgia national guard, so she’s managed to cram two back-to-back sessions (you know how the pitch is “a weekend a month, two weeks a year” well she’s trying to do I think two months’ weekends just to wrap up all her stuff, and she has to cram that in right before moving), and also her husband has already moved so she’s on her own doing it. (He’s living in the barracks of a tiny National Guard post up in Maryland, which is their destination. She says he’s doing better than she thought he would; his only real distress is that he loves to cook and hates eating out, and his kitchen facilities currently are a microwave and a mini-fridge, so he is dying inside, but figures if that’s his only complaint he can’t really count himself that unfortunate. He really is kind of a foodie, though, so I’ve no doubt his suffering is real. It’s not even that he likes fancy stuff, it’s that he really likes making it himself. He has discovered that Maryland has excellent crab everything, though.)

But, Middle-Little, and Mom and Dad, are both able to come help move, so. 

Today, a Pod arrives, that we’re going to try to fill. One Pod is already gone, and it had all the stuff she was sure she wouldn’t miss over the short term in it. (”We packed up the liquor! That might have been premature.” There’s some tequila and some gin left, I’ll improvise.)

I told Big Sister what Dad had told me, which was that since her specialty is logistics, he had great faith in her. She rolled her eyes, and said, “Well, he’s not wrong, I even have the letters after my name,” and I don’t know what that means so that’s today’s line of questioning. 

Her children went off to free-range the neighborhood at one point, and she wound up dragging lawn chairs out to the driveway in front so she could at least keep tabs on what was going on. We were scrubbing her driveway, as well, because her mother-in-law had, last visit, done a really cool art project with tempera paint that was supposed to be washable, but it turns out if you let tempera paint dry on uncoated concrete, it is not in fact washable anymore, and now she has this house she has nearly sold that has not been closed upon yet and the driveway is completely coated in splatters of paint with childrens’ footprints in it.

So-- there was some name for it, Mouse Painting or something, like from a book or something-- parents or caretakers of young children, note this down, it was a great activity and enormously fun, and cleanup can be easy-- throw the kids in the pool! no problem-- but for the love of all that’s holy, hose down the driveway while the paint is still wet. It was several days baked in Georgia sun by the time my sister got home, and it’s apparently indelible, so we spent a while with Oxy Clean and scrub brushes out there trying to get it faded enough that the buyers on this house don’t back out. 

(This, by the way, is a great encapsulation of that particular mother-in-law relationship.) 

So my first afternoon in Georgia was spent sitting on lawn chairs out front listening to children shriek in the yard across the street. Sort of off-handedly, I don’t know what this says about anything, my sister told me the names of all the surrounding dogs. She has two, who wander the neighborhood a bit, and so she’s just aware of the surrounding dog-terrain, because everyone’s dogs kind of wander a little bit. That one’s Georgia, she said, so-and-so got her for her (child’s) birthday, she’s a little under two years old now. That one’s Max, he’s not quite a rescue-- rescue orgs wouldn’t give them a Shepherd because they didn’t have a fence, but she found that one on Craigslist, and then just got a fence right away anyway, he’s like a year old and he’s got some anxiety problems and tried to eat my cat but I don’t blame him, I try to keep my dogs from bothering him too much, etc. 

The punchline of the dogs thing though is that later, all three kids were climbing the trees in the back, and the middle child had asked me to come watch, so I was standing there watching (and discovering that there were fire ant hills out here, i’m glad I was mentally prepared for that), and Max was pacing in his yard and watching us, so I said hi Max! to him, and middle child was astonished that I knew the dog’s name. So I told him I was psychic and knew dogs’ names, and, get ready for this- he said oh yeah?? what’s the name of that dog across the street? and I said, Georgia! She’s two! 

It blew him away. 

He then demanded whether I knew the name of the hound they’d found and rescued once in a brief incident like five years ago, and I was like, look buddy it only applies to current dogs, but as of this moment I’ve just remembered that dog was named Julep, so. I have to think of how to bust that out.

Oh I also rediscovered my childhood superpower of swimming in water everyone else thinks is cold but I find comfortable. Dude couldn’t even stay in the pool ten minutes but I was in there close to an hour, me and Middle Child, who’s the most, hm, thermally stable, let’s say (he’s a Substantial Boy), and I felt like the water was warm, but after I’d been out, dried off, gotten dressed, and was sitting at the dinner table, I realized that all the fat in my thighs was still chilled, and then I was cold.