A little later, Irene sat alone on the couch, dozing as her body digested the pancakes. It was not something she was used to, but she’d been trying to teach her power to let her, well, eat. Take nourishment from the food, instead of having it provided by her power. Her parents theorised that that ought to make it easier for her to control it, by relying less on it (though she drew the line at actually having to go to the bathroom. That was just gross, no way was she going through it).
She’d even tried to actually sleep for any meaningful amount of time, but it seemed that was something she’d have to work on for a while longer – it just wasn’t possible for her to sleep for more than an hour a week (and even that was a major improvement over her complete lack of sleep until last year). And if you took into account that it had taken her until her ninth year to be able to walk. And she wasn’t even going to think about how difficult it was to talk to people with words instead of telepathy (Melody thought it was a nifty feature of her power, but it was actually just her relaxing her control, returning to what she was used to).
Her eyelids began to droop, just a bit. That was a strange sensation, but not an unpleasant one. She’d just recently discovered it – before, going to sleep had just been like flipping a switch. But this… this was quite… pleasant…
When her eyes fell closed, the first thing she saw was Melody, the way she’d looked at her at the ice cream parlor just before they’d realised her power was messing with them; and Irene still felt wretched about it, but now it made sense, if she was truly in love with her then maybe-
What is love
Oh baby, don’t hurt me
Don’t hurt-
The sound of her cellphone woke her up again and her hand moved to pick it up – but it was only a text message. Mel- Oh!
LadyMom1900: Why am I concerned?
“What does she mean this time?” Irene asked no one in particular. She’d never gotten used to her mother’s eerie ability to just know when something – anything – was off. Even if it was just a finely honed intuition.
Gloomy2000: I don’t know?
The reply came near instantly.
LadyMom1900: Your father gave you advice again, didn’t he? What was it this time? Please tell me it wasn’t relationship advice.
Gloomy2000: How do you even know that!?
LadyMom1900: Mommy-Radar. Now, tell me what he said.
Irene’s thumbs paused over the screen as she actually stopped to process that line. It had to be a joke, but…
Gloomy2000: Do you actually have a superpower just for keeping tabs on me, or was that just a joke and you just had a bad gut feeling?
LadyMom1900: Yes 😉
Oh God, she’d discovered smileys. The world was doomed. I shouldn’t have set her up with this account.
Gloomy2000: That is not an answer.
LadyMom1900: Oh, but it is 😀 Just not a satisfying one 😛
The couch beneath Irene burst into flames. “Goddammit!” she shouted, floating off as it turned to ice.
It took three pills and half a minute of concentration to fix it again, and relax before she finally wrote an answer (fortunately, her mother didn’t press the issue – she probably knew she’d get her answers anyway).
Gloomy2000: I was talking to him about Melody, and how I feel around her, and he said that I’m probably in love with her.
LadyMom1900: What a *~#&!$§ blockhead!
Irene actually rocked back from the phone. Wow. She’s actually swearing.
LadyMom1900: Wait, is this doo-dad actually censoring my writing? What is even the purpose of censoring it, everyone with half a brain cell knows what it says anyway!
Gloomy2000: Moral guardians.
LadyMom1900: @$$h0l3$. There, like that could stop me. But let’s get back on topic. Baby, whatever you do, do not listen to your father when it comes to relationships, humor or interior decoration.
She didn’t really know how to respond to that.
Gloomy2000: It feels right, though.
The reply actually took a while, this time.
LadyMom1900: Baby, you really should have brought this up on Sunday, because this ought to have been said in person, not by mail. But I guess better this way than not at all (leaving you with just your Dad’s view on things). You are twelve years old, and Melody is the first person around your age who’s spent any significant amount of time with you, or paid you real attention. You trust her, she trusts you and you both enjoy spending time together and seeing the other one happy. That is love, but it’s not the
LadyMom1900: same as being in love. I’ve explained the Four Loves to you before, and I’d put my money on Philia for this one, not Eros. At most, you may have a crush on her, which is, again, different from actually being in love. And that is just fine. It doesn’t have to be true love, and you don’t need to look for more than Philia from this – just knowing that you’ve found your first real friend, after all the troubles you’ve had on your way, makes me want to sing and dance. Your father, unfortunately, has
LadyMom1900: always been prone to thinking in extremes; do remind me to tell you about the Bloody Teddy Incident in our eleventh year – and I’m afraid that his wishes for you colour his perceptions too strongly for him to offer reliable advice when it comes to such matters. In conclusion, I ask you to take a step back and really analyse this. I know that’s a counter-intuitive approach at your age and in your situation, but ‘following your heart’ without using your brain only works out well in cheap novels (
LadyMom1900: or by pure chance). I’m sure if you look closer at your interactions with and feelings for Melody, you’ll realise that it is not a romantic relationship you want or need. And don’t forget what I told you about having a boy- or girlfriend before you’re a teenager!
Now her vision got a little blurry. It always made so much sense when her mom explained things.
LadyMom1900: What ridiculousness is this?! We can shoot people to Mars on rockets and get online near-anywhere on the world, but we can’t have messages longer than five hundred letters? How come no one’s fixed that by now!?
Chuckling wetly, Irene wrote a reply.
Gloomy2000: That’s because you’re using your cellphone’s text messaging function. Use the chat program with the blue icon for longer messages.
LadyMom1900: (^_^)7
Shaking her head, Irene went back to writing a reply to… well, the important part.
Gloomy2000: I’m not sure if I can do what you ask of me. I just don’t know how to deal with all these sensations!
LadyMom1900: Welcome to puberty, baby. Nothing’s ever going to be quite as horrible as the years to come, I promise you.
Gloomy2000: Gee, that makes me feel much better. Also, I’ll be a teenager in less than two months, anyway!
LadyMom1900: And you’ll wait, at least, until the very last second before you even think about a relationship like that, or I’ll ask Uncle Jake to start telling you all his knock-knock jokes >:-(
That was actually a horrifying threat, if one knew the quality of Jake’s jokes.
Gloomy2000: (0_0)
LadyMom1900: There, now that we’ve got that out of the way – is there anything else you need? A hug? A kiss? I can be home in less than fifteen minutes, if you need me.
Gloomy2000: No no, I know you have to work, and I’m honestly much better now. Besides, I need some time to think it all over by myself. What are you up to, anyway?
LadyMom1900: There was a dam breach in South China, but I’ve mostly fixed that. I’m just going to hunt down a local supervillain, then I’ll fly to Australia and try to get Maddie to lay off the Protectorate for now; maybe even convince her to help stabilise the situation in Russia.
Gloomy2000: Cool! Be safe, and greet Maddie from me – tell her I miss her!
LadyMom1900: Roger! You be safe, too, and don’t let anything get you down, baby. Enjoy your week off, and don’t let your father keep you from inviting Mellybean over! Hugs and kisses! ❤
She shut her phone off and put it aside, lying back on the couch. Despite it all, she could feel a smile on her lips. That came at just the right time.
Wiggling around on the couch, she got herself more comfortable without the use of her power, before she had to giggle again. Mellybean. Where did that nickname come from? I wonder what Melody will think of it.
Perhaps she should take her mother’s advice and not listen to her father too much; surely it couldn’t hurt checking up on Melody for just a moment…
Tieshaunn 
I originally wrote this just for fun, and didn’t intend to publish it at all, only reference it later on in an comment by Irene; but since I haven’t been able to deliver a proper chapter so far, you’ll get some insight into the lady here. Enjoy 😉
Oh god. Fan fiction from the author. x_x
Could have been worse I guess. There were no R18+ moments. That we know of…..
*One quick google search later* OH GOD, MY EYES! SOMEONE GET ME BLEACH FOR MY BRAIN! An entire web serial, ruined!
(Jokes)
Mellybean ftw!!!!!
♥♥MELLYBEAN♥♥
On a more serious note I absolutely love Gloom Glimmer’s interactions with both of her parents. It makes me smile and gives us so much insight into their characters.
This has to be my absolute favourite chapter of this story so far.
If she checks to see what is happening … things will get really, really nasty for the guys that locked a certain mall.
You beat me to that thought. I was thinking something like “Kudzu is about to have a really bad day.”
this is one of my favorite chapters from you so far, I really liked how the characters were portrayed.
Thank goodness she has a sane mother to counterbalance her father’s insanity! My fears for her emotional development are mostly relieved. I really hope that Irene waits not untill she is a teenager but till she has a firm grip on the emotional and mental effects of her power to even consider a romantic relationship. She also needs a wider circle of friends to see how being close friends with one person can be very different from a close friendship with another person. She really just has a LOT to learn, and I hope she doesn’t have to learn it the tragic way. Let’s face it. There is no true easy way for her. Her options either hard or disastrous.
So she’s twelve years old? I’m assuming she’s physically much more mature than that, given her feelings on sex from earlier in the story, but then why the worry about puberty? Maybe I’m misremembering something.
Irene’s chronological (12) and biological (14 to 16) age have both been stated as far back as Rising Stars
As for puberty, well… let’s just say not all is koscher with her body’s development, and leave it at that for now
Ok yeah, I was just not remembering that. Thanks for the reminder.
Sweet merciful Kamina, the Lady gave a classical Tieshaunn answer, the entire world is doomed!!!!!!!!!
found this chapter by accident: it is missing from TOC.
This chapter helps make Gloom into a real person. Thanks
Things are shaping up for, the anticipation rises, the stage is set for the grand battle ahead, the Raven and the Song will take the frontlines against the Masters of the Mind, against the Phantasma, a Glimmering Hope reveals herself, ready to defend those she cares about, as the Tieshaunn draws his pen, and directs the battle to commence.
Funny. The Fans pretty much wrote the content, (If not the plot) of this interlude in the previous chapter’s comments. Including Mellybean’s new name.
Something I’ve seen before, in creative forums. Still always fun to see.
the nickname mellybean is something that came up in the irc channel, it just later migrated into the comments (and now the story)
as for the Lady’s speech, well, I’d like to think that she’s just saying the sensible things to say to a child in Irene’s position – so I’m not surprised that it all came up in the comments.
And just to make it clear, I wrote this two months ago; I just edited and uploaded it now
Is Lady Light your own self insertion? You both seem to have somewhat similar personalities from what I’ve seen. I don’t know if it was intentional. It’s a good thing you didn’t do it with the main character. That rarely turns out well, but self inserting as a significant side character usually turns out better. I know that Eichiro Oda (author of One Piece) has admitted to intentionally or unintentionally modeling his Shanks character after his own personality. It would be cool to give your personal view of events through the voice of a character that has a similar personality and perspective to your own. Also, maybe you could make a character that represents the view point of your readers. I’m stealing this idea straight from One Piece with the Bartolomeo character that represents Oda’s biggest fans.
Classical Tieshaunn answer makes a strong case for it
Now that I thought it through, I believe that what Tieshaunn does is simply adress our view points and his opinions in conversations between characters, like when we were discussing Lady Light’s morality, next chapter and there came an answer from Gloomy directed at Mellybean’s harpy of a mom, which was in a way an answer from Tieshaunn to our discussion.
So it’s more like every single character out there in the verse is a potential host for his self insertion, instead of a designated character, that also gives Ties more fluidity to adress more subjects and points, so it’s generally better than having a particular “view point” character.
In other words, the Brennusverse has the Tieshaunn Force, which randomly posseses characters to ilustrate a point or stance or play with our minds, it perhaps may be the only element in the universe capable of looking past the fourth wall, and who know what nefarious plots is it up to, how it affects the characters, for you see, the Tieshaunn Force is alive, it has a will and sentience, and drives the world into change.
look at it the other way – I was building up to those particular revelations, like when Gloomy ended up defending her mother. I was quite happy to see that the issue was picked up and discussed in the comments even before I made it explicit in that chapter – it shows I wasn’t TOO subtle about it 😀
And it’s nice to see that we happen to start discussing stuff right before it gets revealed
I do have a self insert character, but he hasn’t shown up yet, and he won’t be more than a curiosity to the plot, anyway.
However, many characters are modelled after what I see as aspects of myself, friends, family or just random aquaintances that inspired me; or they were originally created for another story and migrated, taking mannerisms along that WERE self-inserts back then (Lady Light was originally the main character of the original blazing stars story, which would have begun with point zero).
what I’m trying to say is, all my characters are a part of me, of my personality and my memories – that’s where I draw them from, after all. I could go on pontificating about literary theory and all, but in the end, it boils down to: any similarities with me are just a result of the writing process, not intentional
My self insert will show his ugly mug sometime down the line