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2008-04-20T07:47:21Z

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Joysweeper: Removing all content from page

2008-04-20T00:36:25Z

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Joysweeper at 05:03, 6 November 2007

2007-11-06T05:03:38Z

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Joysweeper: Added another lump. It grows! Muhuahaha!

2007-11-06T03:17:21Z

Added another lump. It grows! Muhuahaha!

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Joysweeper: A big ol' lump of unfinished poorly-constructed text. I must start on my research paper now.

2007-10-22T17:08:55Z

A big ol' lump of unfinished poorly-constructed text. I must start on my research paper now.

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{{WIP}}
{{Universe|Xanadu}}

{{title
|name=Revan Saga Part 8
|author=Joysweeper
|user=Joysweeper}}

"-resounding joy, in resounding joy, ii-iii-iiii-iiiin re-sooouunding,
resound-ing resoun-ding joy!"

I opened my eyes and glared up at the ceiling. So much for my plans to sleep in.

Apparently someone in the room above me - _those damn second-floorers have bigger rooms, I bet_- had a radio or something. The song had started soft, with only one or two voices, but it built with more and more singing in harmony, getting louder and louder. I thought I could catch a hint of instrumental, too, and it was now impossible to ignore.

"Shut _up!_" I hissed despite knowing full well that I could not be heard. Somehow I’d gotten tangled in the sheets, as if I’d been flailing about in my sleep. I managed to escape them before too much time had passed, and swung my legs over the side of the little economy bed. I glanced around madly, spied the little coffee table in the corner, and half-staggered to it on stiff, aching legs.

The table had a little coffeemaker and a whole lot of papers sitting it. They went on the floor. I hopped up onto the disproportionaly large overstuffed armchair, picked up the tiny table by the round top, and inverted it.

Lifting my stool-like wooden weapon skywards, with one hand bracing the flat surface and the other wrapped around a leg, I poked the legs at the ceiling, first hesitantly, then with more vigor, not minding the flecks of plaster that drifted into my face. The voices and accompaniment continued on for a moment, then faltered, falling silent.

"Hey! It's only-" and I checked the red-glowing digital clock-"6:42 A.M.!
Okay, that's not very early... But still! This is _November_! Don't sing
Christmas carols until next month, at least!"

"Oh... Sorry!" The reply, while very muffled, was definitely at least three synchronized voices coming from the same spot. _Oooo-kaaay, maybe not a radio after all._

I let out a derisive snort as I realized how ridiculous I had to look, standing up on a chair to reach the ceiling with a coffee table, and climbed down, replacing the papers and whatnot that were on it. I couldn't _see_ anyone, but I couldn't dismiss the feeling of being watched.

_Well, no way am I gonna get back to sleep now,_ I realized. When I get up, I tend to wake completely. On top of that, I was hungry – so hungry that I suspected my stomach of trying to grapple my spine. The granola bar in my carryall disappeared in about two bites; I was still hungry, but after a few cups of odd-tasting tap water, I knew that I could wait a bit.

I went through the ‘morning ritual’ – bathroom, washing my face, brushing my teeth, fishing out the spare clothes I’d brought and putting those on. Unfortunately, it looked like the underwear I’d had on yesterday had disappeared, so I had to stay in the stuff I’d slept in.

The urge to examine myself got pretty strong. I was still hungry, but decided that I might as well take a look now, before I ended up gawking in public. I wasn’t quite ready to look at myself naked or spend a lot of time with the stranger in the mirror, but there were other things to check.

It seemed that I actually didn’t need a bra anymore. The one I’d slept in was unsettlingly loose – the elastic was tight enough, but the cups kind of flopped. I’ve never exactly been buxom, nor really wanted to be, so that wasn’t a big deal. It actually rumpled the fabric of my shirt, so I removed it. I hadn’t gone without a bra for years – my mom and most of my cousins were endowed similarly, but I’d inherited a little more mass from the Caucasian side of the family.

After puberty, I’d ended up with a thick body, thick arms, thick legs, average breasts, and not too much body fat. Squarely between “skinny teenager” and “fat teenager”. Asian girls, particularly Filipinos like on my mom’s side, tend to lean towards one or the other, rarely touching the “busty” or “meaty” territories. Maybe it was my dad’s genes.

‘Beef stock’, they’d called me in middle and high school, when everyone had been hunting for targets. As opposed to ‘dairy stock’ or ‘chicken’ or ‘pig’ like the other nonathletic girls. Livestock labels attached to women showed up a lot in my hometown. “Beef” was considered good for soccer, good for lacrosse, good for swimming, but not good for much else. I’d dabbled in sports, but the girls in them were just better. Until college, until Midtral, until I’d moved from Wisconsin to Florida, I’d been something of a recluse.

There, despite the fact that it was a pretty conservative campus, my body type, even in conjunction with my ethnicity, wasn’t all that odd. It had stopped bothering me; I’d briefly come to take an odd sort of pride in it, and then it just hadn’t mattered much one way or the other.

Now it seemed that that body type had been made a bit more obvious. Just patting myself down I could tell that my waist had thickened, my hips had narrowed, and my shoulders had squared. The T-shirt I wore strained a bit across the shoulders. When I put one hand over the opposite bicep and flexed, it swelled at least as high as it usually did after a bunch of reps on the weight machine.

It was a very strange feeling. My body didn’t quite feel like it had before. The same, but … different. In more ways than the obvious. It wasn’t bad, really, but … strange. A little exciting, a little scary… it wasn’t a big thing, but I couldn’t ignore it.

I feel like I have to do something, though.

My hair had become darker, dryer, straighter, and coarser, as well as noticeably longer. The ends just barely brushed my shoulders. That’ll do.

Spurred into action, I dug through my worn maroon pack until I found the scissors that I had brought along to make last-minute fabric alterations. Purposely thinking back to freshman year, I went into the bathroom, spread a towel over the counter by the sink, and bent over it backwards.

Fistfuls of hair were chewed through by the scissor blades, dropping every which way. The outer edge of my hand held against my scalp served as a measuring unit; everything past my thumb was cut. My hands seemed to be a bit wider than they’d been before, broader and longer, but they didn’t feel different.

This was the style I’d had yesterday morning, and pretty much ever since my roommate decided to cut it for me, citing that she was practiced in wig-trimming. It had turned into a disaster, so we’d had someone else neaten it out, but I’d kept the length.

My attempts were pretty messy, but I did get the hair much, much shorter. I took the edges of the towel and poured the long tangles of hair into the discreet wastebin that I’d seen under the counter.

After a bit of hunting, I found my cell phone – at some point during the night it and my duffel had been kicked off the edge of the bed. _Hmm. Call home now, or wait a bit?_ A sudden cramping from my stomach decided the issue. _Breakfast first, I'm *starving*._

There was no way that I was going to carry the duffel through the convention. Pickpockets had been the first danger that Dana had warned me about, and that was in normal circumstances. Now… well, I’d brought a pair of boy-type pants with deep pockets that had buttoned flaps. I knew that that wasn’t a guarantee of safety by any means, but I could put some stuff in them and not worry about a heavy bag, at least.

Wallet, including the room’s key card. I’d had two of them, actually. The other had been on my costume… It, like my shoes, hadn’t been seen since then, but fortunately I’d had my duffel with me. Somehow. Don’t think about that too hard.

Shoes… shoes… oh crap. I hadn’t brought extra shoes. I’d come in yesterday wearing a pair of really old sneakers, and I’d used the tape in my duffel to wrap them, going up my ankles and over the long socks in imitation of boots. They’d been the weakest part of the costume, but with the low cuffs of the wide pants I’d worn, few people could get a good look at them.

And now they were gone. I sank down onto the edge of the bed. I’m not going to go barefoot, that’s for sure. Even if my recollection of what had happened yesterday was fuzzy at best, I did vaguely remember a few things worth running from. I also remembered doing my share of sprinting, and the aches in my legs backed this up.

When I’d come into the room before bed, I’d been wearing boots that came to my calf, and very thin socks of some kind beneath them. Where had those gone? I’d taken everything off to shower, I remembered, and I’d folded the clothes… where were they?

Although I looked through the whole room, I didn’t really expect to find the boots. And indeed, I didn’t. They had vanished.

Well, towels might work… Dana, who’d handed over the keycards for the room, was one of those girls who couldn’t seem to function for a week without at least six towels. I found some, crumpled up and barely damp, in a corner beneath the bathroom counter. Apparently, although maid service had at some point distributed fresh towels, they hadn’t quite managed to pick all of them up. For all I knew, they’d become overwhelmed by the number of people attending the convention.

Wrapping a towel around each foot and tucking the excess under my toes, I used the duct tape in my bag to keep the things more or less in place.

It looked ridiculous. It wasn’t particularly supportive or protective. But it was still better than going barefoot. If barely.

Armed thus, I exited my room, locked up, and headed for one of the hotel’s smaller food courts, reasoning that it would have fewer people and less of a disturbance. I’d gone to the nearest one for an early lunch yesterday, and there were still signs with direction arrows on the walls, so I doubted that I’d get lost.

There were some weird things and people about- a very scarred white-haired man with a faint, misty halo and ethereal blue butterflies around his head who was playing with a Rubrik's Cube, a girl riding a giant yellow chicken thing, a cow-sized bronze-plated dragon with a big blue gem in the middle of its forehead – but we all just ignored each other, and it was morning, so it seemed that most people weren’t up and about.

It was quiet, peaceful. Rather surreal, really. The chaos of yesterday hadn’t completely disappeared, but it was subdued. All the really crazy creatures had been subdued by now, and for long enough that all the rest of us had gone to sleep.

This is why I like mornings.

As much as the arrows on the walls, it was the sound of several cats begging that drew me to the cafeteria.

Inside, I first saw a pixie-faced girl with insanely long blonde hair sitting cross-legged atop a cafe table, dropping bits of deli meat to a swarm? horde? pack? of meowling cats. Some looked normal enough, but I thought I saw hints of forked tails, folded wings, odd-colored crescents of fur. That explained the noise. There were one or two others about, but they seemed as willing to ignore me as I was to ignore them. I felt very much like I was being watched, all of a sudden… still, there was nothing I could do about that except act innocent.

Nobody was there to actually sell food. Whatever else had happened yesterday, someone had apparently seen to cleaning up the grill and closing down the deli. Fortunately a series of nice big vending machines sat out in the open, and I got to one while the place was still nearly empty. It was a close thing, though.

Deciding that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to go out later, I also bought a few pears to stuff into my pockets. They would keep for a bit, I hoped. Just in case.

After I’d finished with breakfast, I couldn’t stop myself from watching a pair of brown-and-white anthro horses jockey- no pun intended- for their place in the suddenly-forming line. It ended when one bit the other on the neck and they both ordered Corn Flakes. The black-skinned - really, actually pitch black - elfin androgyn behind them muttered uncharitably and almost got a tailswitch in the teeth for his or her troubles.

I laughed quietly at this, shook my head, and tossed the remains of my meal into a mostly-filled plastic trash barrel, then raked my fingers through my hair habitually and froze.

It had grown. Not by much, maybe by a difference of a quarter-inch or less, but it was decidedly longer. It took just an instant more to fingercomb than it should have. That was… not right. Hadn’t I already changed? Wasn’t that enough?

I glanced at my hand, at the single strand of near-black hair clinging to my skin. The irregularities of it seemed to jump out at me. The whole hand was broader and longer; my joints were knobbier. The very tip of my smallest finger was missing- the nail was still there, but not all of the flesh beneath it was. There was a miniscule pockmark just past the knuckle on my index finger. An invisibly thin white line ran across my palm, slightly puckering the "fat part" of my thumb. And several close-trimmed nails bore little white dent marks, as if they’d suffered some kind of impact.

Then my fingers flexed, nails touching my palms, then opening and splaying as my wrist turned, and my eyes went to a little mole, a birthmark on my wrist that I’d somehow kept. It was strangely comforting to see it – a confirmation that not everything was different.

The thing was, _I_ was not the one flexing my fingers, rotating my wrist, moving my eyes. It was as unconscious as a reflex – and yet not.

A chill traveled from the back of my neck over my upper arms, giving me goosebumps. That means -

To avoid thinking about that, I said in an unintentionally loud, disgusted voice, "I just cut this. C’mon. Give me a break; there’s a reason I don’t have long hair.”

Naturally, I was utterly mortified to hear a male voice shout "At least you
_have_ hair!" and would have slunk into the background.

Except that I caught sight of the shouter and felt my lips curl upwards at
the corners, hardening, and my legs betrayed me and moved me towards him as
my traitor tongue sallied, "Malak!"

"No faceplate?" my mouth asked, as the big man - _Damn. He looks smaller on
a screen._-grinned and waved. A smaller and less cheerful- looking teen who
apparently had an elephant's forehead- and ears, trunk, and a pair of extra
eyes- looked almost comically pained as he said "Not anymore."

"And a good thing, too. I have no idea how I was supposed to eat with a
metal jaw," "Malak" jibed. "Luckily there was a "regeneration mage" near
that Tolkein center, or I'd be trying to rig a tube." The elephant boy's
eyes- all four of them- rolled and his trunk wended sideways as he said
"Cheryl, I told you, you shoulda told her that you were a girl! How am I
supposed to be a big brother if-"

"Ah, _David_. I trust that your camera thing is operating smoothly?" My
voice interjected, heading off what promised to be an argument. _Huh? This
is the guy whose camera I helped find? Guess so- wait, what was his friend's
name?_ Hurried, I asked "And did you find Jim?"

"Camera's in my room and I don't know where Jim went. Flew off, probably."
He looked dejected as his "brother"'s pale-skinned arm came reassuringly
over his shoulders. "Don't worry about it, David. We'll find him. How
many big blue birdmen live in Florida anyway?"

I hastily excused myself and walked back into the hallways, starting to fill
now. It dawned on me that I was now wearing soft brown tunic-robes, and I
had to get back to the room and scrabble about in them before I found the
keycard, conveniently avoiding the issue of a rebellious body.

{{series bar
|series=Revan in Xanadu
|previous=[[Revan in Xanadu (Part 7)]]
|next=[[Revan in Xanadu (Part 9)]]}}

[[Category:Story]] [[Category:Joysweeper]] [[Category:Xanadu]] [[Category:Alien]]

Revan in Xanadu (Part 8) - Revision history

Bryan: redirect

Joysweeper: Removing all content from page

Joysweeper at 05:03, 6 November 2007

Joysweeper: Added another lump. It grows! Muhuahaha!

Joysweeper: A big ol' lump of unfinished poorly-constructed text. I must start on my research paper now.