shifted_logs | paper cities burning

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paper cities burning

Characters: Braxiatel and anyone ever. It's an open log! Tag in! Join in origami art!!
Location: The Astral Plane. Somewhere near food, probably.
Time: After Narvin has been made into a wee-bitty thing. Before the hypothetical future where Braxiatel jumps into a ravine because he hates babysitting.
Summary: Braxiatel needs to do something in his spare time. This is it.
Warnings: Origami awesomeness.

Among the stars and spaces between them, free of the heavy weight of unease that had haunted the Plane, a man was putting his supreme talents in dexterity and mathematical genius to use by making art out of folded paper. Or to put it more simply, Irving Braxiatel was going slightly mad playing the babysitter and so had resorted to origami to try to keep himself sane.

He had begun with a few simple flowers and had quickly gotten sick with the mundanity. That was how the paper model of the Palace of Versailles had ended up at his feet. Then, when he had gotten bored with that, he crafted for himself origami warriors, the grand life-sized sazu game pieces that once were placed in the floating tombs of the Deathless Emperors of Draconia, that they may battle one another in their sleeping death.

Presently, Braxiatel was putting the finishing touch on Nelson's battleship. He had done a fairly good job of representing the Battle of Trafalgar, as far as he was concerned, and was rather pleased by the final product.

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Braxiatel let her wander, masking his sigh. "Narvin has been having fun playing with technology. Well, he was a technician." A pause. "Will have been. English didn't evolve for this sort of conversation, not presently, anyway." Given a few more millennia, the language would have quite a vocabulary for time travel.

Brax nudged one of the battleships into place with his foot, pondering what to make next.

Benny caught sight of Brax nudging the battleship into place, and she did her best to subtlely nudge it just a tad out of place just because the mood struck her. It was all accidental of course.

"Five dimensional thinking, I'm sure. Probably goes straight over my simple human mind."

It was all said very lightly, because it was a joke and it was pleasant. There may be a large amount of Time Lords becoming part of the ensemble that was Benny's life, thanks to the Plane. This didn't mean they were meant to be taken seriously in the slightest. Far from it, in fact.

"Are they difficult to make? The origami, I mean. It is rather fascinating, the way cultures find to create art."

Unphased by this typical display of pettiness, Braxiatel tucked a white paper lily behind Bernice's ear. "Have you never tried it? It's not really hard. Some of the more complex patterns can be difficult for two-dimensional minds, but I'm sure you can manage a simple flower or balloon."

One of the most important things about dealing with Bernice's mockery was to give it fodder in a very carefully ironic way.

Benny's eyes followed Brax's hand, watching as he placed the flower in her hair, before looking at Brax solidly again.

"It's so kind of you to be so forgiving of all my faults. I'm truly fortunate to have someone as patient as you to lend me your guidance. Thank you."

She smiled sweetly at Brax before moving from a seated position to one where she was lying flat on her stomach as she looked over Brax's paper empire.

"So are you going to teach me then or what?"

He sat down in front of her, crossing his legs, and set a square piece of paper down for her to use. For his purposes, he had been using paper thickened by rags. Cost really wasn't something that Irving Braxiatel had ever worried much about.

"Follow my lead, Professor." Humming Mozart to himself, Braxiatel did the initial folds, then glanced up at Bernice, waiting for her to copy.

She shifted again into a seated position that mirrored Brax's. She scrunched her face up a bit as she watched, careful to pick up the details, because like hell was she going to look like an idiot.

She looked at her own paper, and hummed to the Isley Brothers as she made her own copy before looking back at Brax expectantly.

"Like that?"

Unable to resist a smile, Braxiatel nodded. "Precisely. And now..." He went to the next folds, this time lingering much less between steps. Irving expected Benny to take a fast learning curve in all matters, and the ancient art of paper-folding was no exception.

"Right, that's not too bad."

Benny watched Brax, looking between his copy and her own that was waiting to match up. She bit her lip, before diving in, folding as best as she could remember. A few folds away from the end she paused, staring at her own then at Brax's, and back to her own, before making two more definitive folds.

"There we are," Benny smiled at Brax triumphantly. "What next?"

"Just a little more." He methodically completed the final folds, holding up his flower, a marvel of mathematical precision. Braxiatel was careful to mask his admiration for Bernice's clumsy efforts.

Benny stared at the paper in front of her, still biting her lip.

"Just," she said, making one fold. "A lit-tle," she said, making the next and the next after that. "More!" she exclaimed, making the final folds and smiling triumphantly at her very simple flower.

"I did it!" Benny said, smiling proudly before unfolding her legs to give Brax a gentle kick. "That wasn't hard at all! You should have at least made it a challenge."

Nevermind the fact she had given the task 110% of her focus and wits.

Edited 2010-11-08 03:38 (UTC)

Braxiatel's expression was crafted to mimic that of a proud father seeing her daughter complete an arts-and-craft project for her nursery school. "Oh, very well done indeed. We'll have to frame it and place it up for the admiration of your colleagues."

And yet still he plucked the flower out from her hand, holding it up for just a moment, careful not to mar the imperfection. To him, Bernice's creation was infinitely more marvellous than what he had managed.

"The works of the universe's greatest artists, and a crummy piece of folded paper by Bernice Summerfield. I'm sure everyone would have a great deal of fun with that."

Benny made a face, pulling her legs back underneath her. Benny watched him inspecting the flower, feeling self-conscious about her lousy attempt at art.

"You don't have to be so rude about it. It wasn't that bad for a first attempt. Not all of us can be experts like The Great Irving Braxiatel."

"Not a bad epithet," Braxiatel said, cradling the flower in his hands. He smiled at Bernice. "I like it. Thank you, Bernice." And then, before it could get too sincere, he added, "I will place it with Peter's drawings."

"And even then, it will still be the most primitive and untrained piece of work you have. I suppose there's something to be said about children outshining their parents, even if it happens before they're out of their nappies."

Benny could still feel the lingering traces of embarrassment at her mediocrity in this pursuit, even as she shrugged it off as nothing terribly important. Her eyes went to Brax's work before her once again.

"So does that mean I get to keep some of yours as well?"

Braxiatel lifted an eyebrow. "If you are so inclined, I don't have any objections. I intended on recycling the paper when I was through."

Benny was surprised. The greatest excuse for a pack rat in the universe was about to toss out all this hard work.

"You were just going to get rid of it as easy as that? It's...well, it's all quite good. If you're going to do that, I'll just take them all." She paused, catching herself before she became too flattering or sincere, "It will give Peter something to play with that isn't a stuffed bunny."

"Be careful; paper cuts hurt." Braxiatel had his fingertips pressed together. He wasn't modest by any stretch of the imagination, nor was he exceedingly humble. He felt, rather, that he had a fairly accurate assessment of his abilities and his significance. It was merely that, like the firsts he had won himself in his school days, these creations of his simply weren't worth anything to him. Technically competent, but essentially empty. Meaningless exercises of a too-clever mind.

"Aren't I always careful?"

She started creating a cluster of the origami figures she'd take with her. She looked at Brax, straight faced. "Don't answer that."

She stopped as her fingers brushed against the sazu pieces. "Were you intending to play against yourself?

"Your use of rhetorical questions is admirable." The warriors, made from intricate patterns of interwoven folded pieces, cast a faint shadow dispelled by the Plane's natural aura. He glanced over where Narvin was, just to be sure the boy was still all right, then turned his attention back to Benny.

"I'd need a second set for that," Braxiatel pointed out.

"Why make only one set then?" Benny asked, idly tilting one of the warriors over to the point that it looked like it might fall, before righting it again.

"I mean, they're all very nice looking, but they're just for decoration if they don't have an opposing side to face."

Braxiatel observed Benny with some scepticism, but trusted to her impeccable balance. It was a foolish move, but there it was.

"I prefer my warriors to be just for decoration. Most of the time, anyway."

"They do make excellent decoration. I suppose I can't argue with that even if I tried."

And righting the piece again so it stood proud and upright she brought it over to her collection of origami figures. She smiled up at Brax.

"You do have quite a talent for homemade projects. Is childcare starting to rub off on you. I'm sure there are quite a few primary schools that would be very interested in your talents, Irving."

Assuming an expression of sincerity, Braxiatel asked, "Do you really think so? Perhaps I should look into it."

"Oh, absolutely," Benny answered. She smiled at him. Her smile was somewhere between fond and mocking, but leaning closer to fond. "Would you be Mr. Irving or Mr. Braxiatel?"

"That depends on which of my first names they care to use," Brax replied. "Of course, I'll need references. And who better for references than mother Summerfield?"

paper cities burning

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