priorcommitment | have I been a fool? just say, say, say

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effy stonem

have I been a fool? just say, say, say

Everything was going wrong lately.

While Ishiah wasn't one to be melodramatic about the shortcomings in his life, didn't care to embellish them in the way that Robin so often did, there was still no denying the fact that his calm life on the island had recently started to take steps toward unraveling, back to the chaos that had enveloped Manhattan on such a regular basis. First, there had been the mass transportation of the island's citizens to the dinosaur region of the island, no reason or warning. Then there had been the hurricane leaving him, and a number of other people, stranded on the second island for a time— and for someone who often looked as far ahead as he could for weather updates, the lack of sense in that respect had bothered him on an intellectual level. Worse yet was finding that Lucy had required fairly major surgery, might have died had someone not found her out there.

And of course, Zerachiel had disappeared too.

Very rarely did Ishiah care to mope about hardships, but without anything especially productive to channel all the winding stress inside of him in, he found himself growing increasingly angered. Dwelling. That afternoon found him in one of the many untouched regions of jungle close to Bohemia, felling trees with an axe he'd found just because he could.

Maybe he could save them for roasting boar.

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The man is familiar in a strange way, like a memory buried within a dream, difficult to place save for scenes that work their way across her mind in flashes both brief and loud. She yelled at him, she thinks, or at least felt the need to. It was at a party, probably the one when she first arrived. She can't remember much of that at all, save for a girl who looked just like her and the morning after, waking up in the bushes to find Cassie hovering above her.

He bothered her when she was having an enjoyable enough time on her own. She should return the favor.

"Planning to build something?" She asks, coming up behind him as quiet as she can.

As lightly as the girl steps, Ishiah's ears pick up a great deal, even dulled as they are now thanks to the island's magic. He can no longer recognize someone by their precise footsteps, can no longer manage anything other than a decent guess whenever it's Robin and his light, sweeping gait. But he does hear the approach of a person, of two feet stepping through the brush, and so decides to turn around after giving a stalk of bamboo one last, heavy chop, the rest of the plant cracking as it falls to the dirt.

"Currently, I am chopping. Not trying to plan," Ishiah replied plainly. "Not having planned. Simply chopping and collecting wood in case it should be needed for anything in the near future."

For someone as observant as Effy Stonem would like to believe herself, it isn't difficult to discern the difference between serious and busy work. Although it can be argued that, in a way, all work on the island could be considered busy work, work meant to occupy and work meant to distract is not the same. She guesses that Ishiah is engaging in the latter.

"Why?" She asks, if only out of curiosity — will he tell the truth or make up some excuse?

He doesn't understand her. Most of the time, with humans, their displays of emotion are so bright, overdone, that it's impossible for Ishiah to miss them. They wail when they're hurt, they hum when they're in love, they all wear their hearts on their sleeves, but this girl, he can't tell what she's trying for at all. He only knows that she's staring in his direction, and he can only wonder what she sees.

"Someone I held dear disappeared from the island," he breathes, letting his arm relax while they talk. There's no point in lying about this. "And I would rather not think about it, or about anything in specific."

Where Effy is concerned, everything Ishiah is doing seems entirely counter-productive. It's all too quiet out here; if she were alone, she would find it nearly impossible to do anything but think. The best way to drown out a thought is to chase it away with noise (or a shot, or a pill, but she knows enough about him to know the offer would be wasted on Ishiah). Maybe she's biased, maybe people deal with their thoughts in different ways, but the intense look on his face even before she approached convinces Effy otherwise.

"No offense," she says, "but it doesn't look like it's working."

"There are degrees of effectiveness," Ishiah replies, slightly irate but doing his best to keep that volatile temper under control, because if there's anyone who deserves to be the target of his fury, it certainly isn't this girl, thin and quiet and hardly a ripple in the island's greater function. As far as he's concerned, she's a child, and Ishiah makes a habit of putting forth special effort for children. They need examples, they need to be protected, they don't need to be yelled at and scolded incomprehensibly. But all that energy needs to go somewhere, and so he picks up that axe and sends it chopping through another thick bamboo stalk, felling it with that blow alone.

"Short of someone knocking me unconscious, which may cause greater and lasting harm of a sort I can't afford, this may be the best option. If you have a different opinion, you are free to share."

He still didn't know why she was there, either, a fact which actually afforded him some amount of distraction as well, the flush on his cheeks settling at a paler tone.

As she already knows what his own opinion is in relation to hers, Effy doesn't bother suggesting that he smoke or drink his thoughts away. Instead, she takes a few steps forward, taking her time as she circles his work area before she comes to the growing pile of cut logs. She takes her seat atop them and crosses one leg over the other.

"Tell me all about yourself," she proposes, as much a request as it is a challenge. No amount of watching can ever tell the whole truth about a person, and Effy can tell that Ishiah's story is one well worth hearing.

She's sitting right on top of the pile, blocking his access, too quiet to be defiant but still showing a glint of it in her eyes. It almost reminds him of the way that Robin gets sometimes, determined to set himself right in the middle of whatever path Ishiah's walking on, demanding his attention. Affection. Although, for what it's worth, Ishiah's pretty sure that this young girl isn't seeking the latter. He stares at her eyes, remembering the way that the smoky eyeshadow was practically smeared over her eyes the first time they met. They're lighter now, probably less make-up to apply, but there's still something shadowed about them.

He tosses the next log in a different direction, starting another pile.

"I won't tell you everything," he says first, just to make it clear. He's too private to tell anyone everything, Robin aside. "But I can tell you what I once was, though you may not believe it. Have you ever heard of peri?"

Nodding, Effy merely watches in amusement as he begins his new pile, that gesture alone proof that if she hasn't gotten under his skin, she is at least tugging at a nerve or two. Needless to point out that after months of living on Tabula Rasa, she has become capable of believing almost anything; it's simply part of the life, here. Letting go becomes a necessary component to maintaining one's sanity.

"No," she admits, unfamiliarity doing nothing to quell her curiosity. If anything, she is all the more intrigued for it, and she gestures immediately — impatiently — for Ishiah to continue.

The fact that her eyes are smoky and her smirk too mischievous doesn't matter; to Ishiah, Effy is no more than a child, and her barely bridled enthusiasm is only proof of that. And annoyed though he may be, it's impossible for the peri to hate a child, or to leave a child's questions completely unanswered. After all, knowledge is the only thing that can bring them up to speed in a world where they are already sorely at a disadvantage, left largely without protection, especially on the island. Maybe knowing what a peri is won't help much on Tabula Rasa.

But one never knows.

"I was an angel, once," Ishiah continues, setting the head of his axe down on the dirt and placing his hand at the end of the handle. "Left and could have returned to service at any time, had I wanted. But I was an angel, a potentate, whose primary duty was to purge the world of demons. Literal demons."

To say that Effy Stonem has never been a religious girl would be an understatement of, well, biblical proportions. She has, at the tender age of seventeen, broken more of the bible's supposed rules than she ever tried to follow, and always without so much as a second thought, much less the sting of guilt and regret. She's not a believer in the slightest, and couldn't care less what consequences her actions will have in the afterlife. As far as she's ever been concerned, there's only the here and now, and the greatest mistake she could ever make — greater, even, than pre-marital sex, lying, or cheating — is to waste her life in the name of fear disguised as faith.

But then, that isn't entirely true.

She prayed the night that Tony got hit; started the second she saw him go down and didn't stop until they were in the ambulance, at the hospital, until his eyes finally opened. She made all sorts of promises — that she's never drink or smoke or use again, that she'd stay pure until she was married, that she'd join a convent and dedicate her life to the good Lord. That she'd do anything, in the end, if it meant Tony got to live. And he did, but she didn't keep a single of her promises, and she never thought about it again. Not until now.

"You're serious." It isn't a question so much as a realization; he isn't lying, and it's easy to tell. He believes it, and if a place such as Tabula Rasa can exist, what's to say that angels and demons can't, either?

There have been worse reactions. Ishiah has known the lengths to which the guilty will go, how easily they'll shine a blade or do anything to put faith and religion out of sight. He knows derision, too, the sneer of those who don't believe simply because they've never been given a reason, because most people need reasons to turn to anything beyond what they can concretely sense. It's hard to convince a person to put faith in chance, for instance, and putting faith in an invisible creator is much of the same thing. Effy doesn't fall into either category, not by far, her expression carrying surprise.

"I'm serious," he replies, trying to read the rest of her expression, the swirling that he can almost see behind her eyes. What is she thinking? What does faith mean to her?

Idle curiosities, for the most part. She doesn't matter overly much to him, isn't a close friend or anything of that sort, but she is a human, and she is a child, and both of those are reasons enough for him to care.

She has questions. Effy has every manner of questions, from the deep to the mundane, both serious and not, but to ask them all would be to reveal more of herself than she already has. She is hesitant to do so, even now, even after Ishiah has been so open with her. And while it's true that he's only scaled the tip of the iceberg, he's still given her more than she can ever return. Truth isn't in her nature, and even if it were, her own story pales in comparison to his.

Briefly, she considers lying to him. Making something up, something grand; becoming someone greater than herself, even if it's only pretend. But the sad truth is that Effy herself is the only one who cares, either way, and even if she lied to others, she'd know the truth herself.

"A lot of people think of this place as purgatory," she tells him, though she's certain he already knows. Effy can't remember dying, can't remember Cassie dying, and she has yet to see Tony's friend Chris around, who actually did die. She shrugged the theory off herself, when she first heard it, but it's worth mentioning now if only to have Ishiah either confirm or deny.

"I know... no more than any of you do," Ishiah replies first, swallowing thickly with great reluctance, the physical action matching the way that he feels inside. While not every waking moment on the island has been dedicated toward finding answers, the thought is one which passes through his mind constantly. The fact that he doesn't know, and that his father seems incapable of trust him to know, only makes Ishiah feel like more of a peri tumbling toward an inevitable failure. Or perhaps he already has.

Sighing, he tries to be more helpful. There's no point in dashing everyone's hopes, not when Ishiah doesn't have any hard fact or message that tells him to shut others' opinions down. "It could be purgatory, although then I wonder why it is that I am here, as I was never made to enter purgatory in the way that humans might. An angel typically does not enter purgatory, unless he has fallen at some point. Which I have not."

It's a plain, practical answer, but for Ishiah, it's the only type that he can give.

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have I been a fool? just say, say, say

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