Active Magic (TatlTails and othyrworld)

No one had objected to dinner ending when it did, Dagger being this close to smacking that smug grin off Sequoia's face and Luke making sure he wrapped up Flora's leftovers for her. And by the time everyone headed to bed, Madi was internally cursing that she hadn't gotten Sequoia that sleeping potion. But she tried to comfort herself in the fact that if Sequoia were that desperate for good sleep, then she would have brought up the subject herself. She'd be fine for one more night, and maybe even more than that.

Until Flora's outing, there was really nothing else of note from the other residents of the house. But a minute or two after the fairy left her room, the door that'd had the sleeping lump behind it earlier creaked open as well, revealing the vampire from that morning. She was sans giant hoodie and PJ pants, and instead wearing some well-fitted workout clothes. The moment she spotted Flora, whether Flora had a chance to spot her first or not, she greeted the girl in a conversational tone that was just a touch too loud for the silence of the night.

"Oh sup, dude!" She blurted out, her grin wide but slowly fading as she clearly searched for the next thing she wanted to say. She went from a hand wave to a thinking sort of finger point at the fairy as she started speaking again, and even snapped her fingers a couple times as she said "I'm tryin'a remember your name, I was like super out of it when you told me before. Fff... Had somethin' to do with flowers... Floral, Flora? Flora! That was it, right? Flora?"
 
Flora yelped when Clarisse began talking to her. She hadn't expected to be talked to at this time of night, but here she was. Talking to the scary vampire girl. It made sense when she stopped to think about it. Vampires weren't exactly avid sunbathers. "H-hello. I'm Flora, you're right. I'm just kind of... wandering the halls." She shifted her weight. This was awkward. She was making it awkward. God, why did someone else have to be awake? Next time she couldn't sleep she was flying up to the roof. Or to her garden. Oh... her garden.

She made a mental note to go down later and see if she could pull up some new flowers. She had the energy after all. Hydrangeas would look rather nice. And she could add in some violets. Maybe a couple poppies? The bright red would be stunning if she grew them right. Hadn't Jaqueline asked her to add roses? White and light pink roses would look nice.
 
"Oh okay, cool." Clarisse replied easily, quieting her voice a notch once she noticed Flora getting spooked. She hardly even noticed the awkwardness in the air aside from the spooking, the vampire just that confident she could keep the conversation going. "If you think you're gonna get bored of that, I was just about to head out for a run. You can come with if you want, keep up by flyin' or somethin'. You know, if you can an' you want to. Cool either way, but..."

She punctuated that sentence with a casual shrug, the motion trying to get across the feeling of "I think it'd be fun and I'd like some company, but also no pressure because I get it if you're not interested."
 
Flora bit her lip, considering the proposition. She wasn't super comfortable around the vampire- something about people who drank blood had always freaked her out- but it hadn't escaped her notice that Clarisse had lowered her voice when she flinched. Besides, Flora hadn't spread her wings for a while and this would be the best chance she got. "I'd like that. Can we stop by my garden first? I have some plants I'd like to grow."

She plotted out the garden in her head, drawing in patches for all the new flowers she wanted to add. Speaking of, "Do you have a favorite flower?" She could use some extra inspiration. Despite her near encyclopedic knowledge of plants, she still didn't know what to do. Decisions were hard.
 
"Aw sweet, you have a whole-ass garden?" Clarisse blurted out, before she could even register that Flora'd asked her a direct question. "That's awesome! Can I check it out? Must'a grown it quick, 'cause I didn't see anything like that last night. ...Oh wait, were all those orange flowers from you? The ones all over the hall? Those were so cool!"

It was about that point when her brain caught up to her mouth, and she realized she'd asked four questions before even answering the one she'd been asked. One awkward chuckle later, and she was trying to fix that issue. "Take your time with all that, but yeah. I guess my favorite flowers are azaleas? I knew a chick named Azalea once, really liked her. The flowers ain't bad either. Was never much of a flower person, so my answer ain't that great, but hey it's somethin' right? Works for you?"
 
Flora laughed softly. She could see why Sequoia liked this girl. She was loud in that soothing, softened way that old scholars who had deep interests in obscure knowledge but wouldn't risk scaring people away were soft. Loud in a way that wasn't obtrusive. She put the questions on a list in her head and took a deep breath. Her answer was going to be kind of long. "I live with Sequoia, I can handle multiple questions. In order: Yes I have a garden, you can check it out, I grew it this afternoon, yes those flowers were mine, thank you, I'll grow some azaleas, and that works perfectly well."

She tried to remember what azaleas looked like, and once the flowers popped into her min she was shocked she hadn't thought them up. She could plant then between honeysuckles, make some weird wall of pretty bushes. Maybe try and grow some flowering ivy on the walls? Make a little hut out of vines for meditation? She struck out the last one, deeming it unnecessary. She could just grow a little building anywhere anytime she needed to. A permanent building would just take up space.
 
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"Awesoooome." Clarisse grinned, accidentally showing off her sharp fangs for a moment. Then she realized her fangs were showing and she quickly shut her mouth again. A while back, people used to compliment her smile, but now all it did was freak them out. And she honestly didn't wanna freak anyone out, not with something so small that was supposed to be happy. Especially if they didn't deserve it.

"So yeah," She continued talking, because running her mouth or running her body were the best ways to shake off any bad vibes. "Whenever you wanna head out, I'll be on your tail. Check out the garden an' go on a run. Not a bad way to spend an evening, if you ask me."
 
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Flora stifled a flinch when Clarisse showed her fangs, rolling her shoulders and flicking her wings. "We can go now," she said, making her way out to the gardens with a small smile on her face. Azaleas. Good flower choices always made her happy.

The garden was really pretty in the moonlight. Soft light dappled through the leaves of her oak tree, shining pale spots onto the ground. The flowers swayed in a soft wind that ruffled through her hair. She itched to raise some flowers and for once she had the freedom to. Azaleas fought their way from the dirt until they were sitting contently in the garden, looking like they'd been there for ages. She pulled some white roses up around the tree, made a circle of flowers and thorns with a single open space for people to walk between. She really liked the makeshift building. Perhaps it wasn't a waste of space after all.
 
Clarisse followed after Flora with just a hint of guilt on her conscience. She knew she'd freaked the chick out, but all she could to do fix it was be her not-actually-scary self and hope she could prove the stereotypes wrong.

The garden was a good distraction for both of their bad thoughts. Clarisse wasn't really awake for much of when Madi was, so her exposure to actual magic was still pretty limited. Enough that watching flowers just sprout from the ground like those stop-motion timelapse videos on steroids was enough to get her jaw to drop. They were growing in exactly the same pattern they were supposed to, from (magically conjured) seed to blossom, but in like two seconds instead of two months. She was almost too busy gawking at the azaleas and examining them with her fingers to notice the rest of the flowers Flora was cooking up. She was just as into the roses on an objective level, and ran up with the same amount of awe to sit outside the little bush wall and get a closer look at the stems and leaves.

"This is so cool!" She breathed, almost nose-deep in the bush as she felt at some petals almost too gently for someone with her frame. "How'd you do all this? I mean I know it's magic, but do you like know the logistics of it? Like how'd you actually speed up these guys' natural growth processes? How much about their anatomy do you have to know to pull this off? Can you like fuck up the plants if you don't know enough? Holy shit, this is so cool!"
 
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Flora ducked her head, embarrassed by all the praise. She scratched the back of her head, trying to find the right words to answer all these questions. She'd never really thought about the logistics of her magic, let alone explain it aloud. "Well, I focus all my magic in the place I want them to grow, and then I just... pull it up, out of the ground. Then I use the magic to..." She mimed pulling something apart. "... to pull it up. I make it grow by putting the magic in the budding parts of the plants and aging those until the plant looks right. Some take more energy than others.

"I don't really have to know plant anatomy to grow them. Each plant has some kind of...feeling. An aura. As long as I know the aura, I can grow the plant. You know how I plant the magic in the ground? The plant has to have the right feeling. If I don't know a plant's aura, I can mess them up kind of badly." She took a deep breath, staring at her new additions to the garden. "At least, that's the best way I can explain it. Does that make sense?"
 
"Yeah, I guess." Clarisse replied, even though she could feel the start of a frown forming on her face. She wasn't stupid, she understood everything Flora was saying. But she wanted even more, and it was clear Flora couldn't give it to her.

"Not really the answer I was lookin' for," She admitted with a shrug, not wanting to leave the girl hanging or make her anxious about not doing something right. "But so far when it's come to magic, the answer's never really been what I'm lookin' for. It's like, no one's ever bothered to put any science to this shit, you know? There's so much to magic that probably has a scientific explanation, but no one's ever tried to put the two together!"

Oh shit, here comes a rant. Screw it, she'd already nerded out plenty in front of this girl and her reputation in general was way past shot, might as well get a bit of this frustration on her chest.

"Everyone I've talked to or read about just sees magic as somethin' that happens, but nobody ever asks why! That's what I miss about humanity, they may suck for the most part but they want answers to shit. Like, why do we get sick? Magic people don't care, they just whip up a healing potion an' bam! All better. Humans figured out it was germs that did it. How do flowers grow? It ain't just auras, it's cells splitting up an' assigning themselves different jobs an' figuring out how to use the energy from a giant star to make themselves some food! It's so fuckin' cool, the world is so fuckin' cool, but nobody here cares! It's all about the magic! But there's so much in between that, you know? And so much that probably connects an' intertwines an' explains so much that neither group knows yet if we just start lookin' hard enough!"
 
Flora considered the theory with a bemused look on her face. It was interesting. She wanted to try to explain it in her own words, even though everything she knew came from other people. "Well, magic is like... a force. Like energy. Some people are like batteries, I guess. We can pull the energy out of the air and hold it- up to a certain point, anyway. When we discharge it, we use that energy to force the cells to split. Or use it to target specific germs. It's like fancy electricity."

She paused for a moment, digging up the words a smarter man had once used to explain it to her. Well, words he had used to explain it to the ringmaster while everyone around him subtly eavesdropped. "A scholar went to the circus once and did a bunch of experiments on us. Apparently, we have more cells than non-magical people. He thought it was to store the magical energy." She shrugged. "I'm more interested in how I can use my magic then why I can use my magic. Theory can't help me push my limits, but continuing to use it can and will."
 
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Clarisse soaked up all that new information, coming down from her little info high as she tried to categorize the new stuff with the stuff she already knew. More cells, huh...? It made total sense that magic people had something humans didn't, but if magic was a form of energy like all these people said, then wouldn't it make more sense to be looking at nerves and synapses instead of cells? She'd have to try and find that guy's research... even though he'd done some fucked up shit to get it. Yikes.

That thought was enough to bring her back to the present in time to hear Flora's last sentence, about putting her skills into practice, and without hesitation she nodded in agreement. "Yeah no, I totally get that." She declared, pushing herself to her feet. "Used to play football, same thing goes for that. Knowin' anatomy and physics was a huge help for me to conceptualize shit, but that didn't help my body know how to do what it needed to do. Workin' out and runnin' plays did that, muscle memory an' shit. Most'a my team didn't give a crap about science, but they worked at gettin' good at what they did an' they kept up with me just fine."

She couldn't help a little smirk at that last comment, 'cause even though she'd totally respected her team and trusted them with her life, everyone knew she was the best one on that team and she'd be damned if she wasn't proud of that. ...Wait, was she actually damned? Did being a vampire automatically damn you? Well just in case, screw the metaphor. She was proud of her skills and wasn't afraid to show it.
 
Flora raised a few poppies among the less organized flowers, thinking over Clarisse's statements. Clarisse was pretty big in a muscly way so it made sense that she'd be into organized sports. Not that Flora knew much about sports. The only one she knew was archery if that even counted. And possibly knife throwing. If archery was a sport that knife throwing had to be one. It was way harder to throw knives than to shoot an arrow.

Once she was satisfied with her flowers, she wiped her hands on her pants. She was pretty much ready to go. She was eager actually. The night was perfect for flying and she hadn't spread her wings in what felt like forever. "Let's go jogging."
 
Clarisse actually chuckled at Flora's declaration, simply because of one detail: "Girl, I dunno how fast you plan on goin', but I ain't joggin'."

She pulled her ego back in after that moment, and added "Well I ain't gonna leave you in the dust if you can't keep up, but I've been goin' on these runs to test the upper limits on my speed. One'a the few perks of gettin' turned into a vampire was gettin' super speed, and I still haven't figured out everything I can do with it yet. I'm pretty sure I can't go like speed-'a-sound fast, though, so I figured someone with wings could keep up just fine. That cool with you?"
 
That was more than fine. Flying at a slow pace was fun, but it couldn't compare to the wild joyrides she had taken on her few nights of freedom. "That's more than fine. I should be able to go pretty fast." She was already feeling happier at the thought of flying headlong into the night. There was nothing better than the feeling of wind on her face and seeing things pass below her. If she got fast enough, she could leave all her problems behind.

And God did she want to fly so hard she couldn't think anymore. She didn't want to think about the future or about making friends with people or catching up on all the time she'd missed while in the circus. She didn't want to deal with the eventual fallouts she'd face between Sequoia and Dagger. Didn't want to worry over potential panic attacks spurred on by circus memories. Didn't want to flash back to the circus nearly every single damn time she saw something. She let out a deep breath. She'd had no idea she was so anxious about everything.
 
"Awesome!" Clarisse declared, clapping her hands once before turning out to one of the narrow trails leading out into the woods. She'd run this one enough times to be able to keep track of Flora and herself, and it had enough long stretches and curves to be good practice for both her speed and her reflexes. It was just right, hopefully.

"If you get lost," She made sure to tell Flora before she forgot to. "Either look for the house, or the bright, obnoxious blue streak that is my hair. Even at night it doesn't blend well with all the green, but hey I don't feel like dyin' it again so blue it stays. Anyway, you ready?"

The moment she got any sort of response from Flora on that front, she was off like a shot. Flora could take care of herself at this point, now was the time to run.
 
Flora barely had time to nod before Clarisee was a bright blue streak in the distance. She carefully unfurled her wings, taking a few moments to savor the wind on them before she flapped wildly. Soon she had caught up with Clarisse. The wind made her eyes water and her hair was flapping into her mouth, but she hadn't been happier in months. There was nothing tethering her to anything right now.

She wasn't a fairy or even a sentiet being. She was the wind in the trees and stars in the sky and a whoop that tore itself from her lips and the smell of rain on the horizon. The endorphin rush she got from these flights were legendary. So were the massive knots in her hair.
 
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God, Clarisse loved running. She'd loved running her whole life, long before she could do it any better than anyone else. Even when she was a kid, she ran everywhere she could. Life was too important to waste any time going from point A to point B, especially when she knew she could get there faster through her own power. But as she got older and running became part of athletic training, it became a little less about the destination and a bit more about the journey. The sheer feeling of fighting your way through G-Force and gravity themselves, feeling all your muscles burn as they pulled against the molecules in the air, falling into their rhythm as all you had to do was trust your instincts and go.

It only got even better after she was turned. Running, that is, not much else. Magic started pouring through her veins the moment she started needing it, lifting the burn and ache from her limbs until they were almost light as air. In return, she could push herself even harder, and the magic responded in kind. She knew she couldn't quite compare to a fairy in freedom of motion, but she didn't need to. This was as close to flying as she could ever want to get.

Somewhere in the distance, she heard a cry for joy that pretty much summed up how she was feeling, so she gladly responded in kind.
 
Flora whooped and swirled and put what little brainpower she was using right now into keeping up with Clarisse. She itched to make something grow. Right now, high on endorphins and the idea of freedom, she could probably grow a whole forest before she collapsed. She was pushing herself pretty hard right now and a pleasant heat burned its way through her wings. Shed missed this for so long. She couldn't wait to push herself into exhaustion.

Once she felt her wings truly begin to give out, she reluctantly landed in a clearing, yelling Clarisse's name with a hoarse voice. Her entire back felt ready to fall off and her smile was so big it hurt her cheeks. She released her excess energy slowly, growing herself a seat of vines. After a moments consideration, she grew one for Clarisse as well. And then put a table between them. And gave them each small tables to rest their feet on. Then added a vase made from thin vines and filled it with roses. Climbing hydrangeas clawed their way over the chairs and tables, adding bright blue flowers to the twining mass of plants. It was an impressive showing of power, even for Flora who knew her limits like the back of her hand.
 
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