The City of Light: Later Wednesday Afternoon

Mar 27, 2008 02:50





Naminé had to admit, she was relieved to be out on the street again. Having tea and cakes with sphinxes was not her idea of a pleasant sort of afternoon. (If there had been any cake left, which there wasn't. Helena had been right about the cake-hogging, and she would have to tease Valentine later.)

"To the castle, then, is it?" she asked, looking around. "Where is the castle, from here?"

She didn't expect a castle to be very hard to see. Castles were typically large affairs, with lots of flourishes around the outside. You had to let everyone know it was a castle, after all.



Valentine considered this question very, very carefully.

"I've only been there the once," he announced, "after Helena here got herself arrested. But I think it's..." he mused on this for a moment, then pointed off in a random direction. "That way. Perhaps. Most certainly."



Helena looked at Valentine oddly for a moment, then shook her head.

"No, I think it's actually in completely the opposite direction," she informed him. And then faltered. "But then, with everything up on my caravan wall, rather than at Aunt Nan's, I had to move a few things about. It might be... that way, instead."

She pointed off in a different direction entirely.



"Are we about to get dreadfully lost?" Naminé laughed. "However did you two find it, last time? I hope we're not about to wander aimlessly for hours. We'll be sphinx food for sure."



"Last time, I was kidnapped by beetley-police on stilts," Helena explained, turning a few circles as she looked around the street. "What we need, really, is a way to get a good view. Almost everything that we found before, we found with a good view."



"My tower!" Valentine was grinning from ear-to-ear, now. "What we need is my tower, you know. Best view in the world, and it can get us to your castle, and- it's my Tower. You have redrawn it, haven't you? Of course you have. It's a very important tower."

Valentine instantly started rummaging through his pockets for the flashlight that he still had on him from the last time they called his tower. Hopefully, the batteries were still good.



"Your tower?" Naminé asked, perking up and looking around. She had to admit, it was one of the things that had always bothered her, that she'd never gotten to see his famous tower. "I don't see it, either. If we're already lost, how are we to find it?"

Silly Naminé, presuming that towers are stationary things.



"We call it, of course," Valentine said with a wolflike sort of certainty to his voice as he turned the flashlight on and shone it into the sky. It would be far easier for his tower to take notice of that than it had been trying to view it through a mass of vomit-tentacles, after all.

He was very smug and very pleased as he waited, indeed.

If towers could have background music, his might have been announced with the dramatic blaring of trumpets, perhaps, or an entire symphonic noise that rose out of nowhere as it did, as well. It seemed small in the sky, at first, but with another great leap, hurling itself toward them, it became very apparent, very quickly, that not only did Valentine have a tower, but his tower was huge.



It was huge. It was enormous. It was beautiful and it swept out of the sky with flair. It didn't need music, with an entrance like that.

"I ..." Naminé laughed. And found herself to be entirely speechless.

It seemed vulgar to applaud.



Valentine crossed his arms and grinned as the tower landed on front of them. It was, indeed, enormous, barely fitting between the buildings on the street.

"I did say I had a tower," he said proudly before making a grandiose gesture toward the front door. "Shall we?"



"Can we?" she asked, eyes shining. "This is ... amazing. I never imagined it would be anything this grand."

It was breath-taking. It flew. Naminé wondered if the rest of the group might abandon the castle-visiting plan in favor of sailing around in the tower instead.



"Well, I am a very important man."

The door was open. Valentine was ushering the ladies inside. And then, the door was closed once again.

And the view? The view was amazing. It showed off all the little nooks and crannies and strange little faces that the buildings below seemed to form if you looked at them from the right angle with the sun shining on them just so, and the Castle of Light, it would seem, was sitting in the first direction that Valentine had pointed, after all, which would only serve to fuel his ridiculously large ego.



Naminé stared, out the window, soaking in the artistry of it all. So many worlds looked ramshackle and sprawled out, pulsing in every which direction. A city that had been drawn into life wouldn't have that problem.

She turned to Valentine, eyes wide. "Do you do this often? Stare as the city floats by beneath you?"



"Not so much, anymore. Obviously." Valentine grinned and snaked an arm around her shoulder, leaning forward for a kiss and ignoring any gag-faces that Helena might be making about the public display of affection.

It was in his own bloody tower, dammit. He could kiss his girlfriend if he wanted to.

Fortunately, the Light-Palace-Thingie was very nearby, when traveling by chicken-legged flying tower.



It was a quick sort of kiss, as Naminé was sort of concerned about the public display of affection. And the 'yes, I'm dating the boy who seems to have once been the rather strange doll on your wall.'

The tower began descending as they neared the castle, and Naminé sighed. "I wish it had taken longer. I could stay up here for hours."



"There's really no reason for either of us to go in there, is there?" Valentine glanced at Helena, who shrugged dismissively. "We could very well drop Helena off and my tower and I could take you for a tour of the entire world, if you'd like."

Valentine thought it was a wonderful idea, at any rate.



"That sounds perfect," Naminé said. "I could see the grand tour. The scullery. Possibly both of them, if there really are two. All the little ins and outs and cubbyholes and stairwells. Can we? Really?"

She turned to Helena, eyes shining. "You don't mind? You're sure?"

She'd seen castles. Towers, on the other hand, were something special.



Helena smiled and waved a hand at the pair, giving a shake of her head.

"You'd probably both be bored anyhow. The Prime Minister is a little insane."

Possibly because he was her dad?

"Come on and pick me up again when you're finished, alright?"

The tower landed, and Helena was already making her way toward the door. She wasn't one to stop moving for anything, apparently.

Where else would Valentine have inherited it from?



Naminé waited until Helena had left, and then slipped her arms around Valentine's waist.

"Are there really two sculleries?" she murmured, leaning up for a lingering kiss.



It was a perfectly lovely lingering kiss, wasn't it?

"Possibly more than two sculleries," he replied. "Perhaps we ought to find out, hm?"



A kiss like that really deserved another. It was a rule, of some kind. It should be. They should write one.

"Show me," she murmured, smiling.

Perhaps they could write it later. Right now, she had a tower to see.

(OOC: once again, preplayed with the super-win importantman. We'll stop spamming your flists soon, honest. NFB distance, NFI, but OOC = love.)

valentine, city of light, yours and mine, helena, dueling sketchbooks

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