The Jaded Soul: Captain's Log

This journal no longer receives updates from my Twitter account. It might be awhile before I update again. Until that fateful day, I hope to traipse around Profusion and occasionally update @JainaJade (also archived on Pinboard).

Have a pleasant lunar cycle!

Alone in energy-conserving dimness, Jaina ran her fingers over her new toy. The vending machine had called it a PINpoint, which sounded a good deal tinier than it was was. It looked like a clunky mobile phone circa 1997 A.D.

She abruptly illuminated her hand around the PINpoint, casting eerie shadows within its screen and over her shoulder, and tried to decide what to do. This device could be the answer to questions she hadn't dared to ask herself -- what if something happens to me away from my friends? How could they know? Could they do anything to help?

But there's no such thing as a free lunch or free answer. There's always a bill attached when you look. And this? It was meant to communicate and transport across dimensions. Did it track dimensional co-ordinates? Would it forward them to whoever built and offered these things? Who might that be?

Her light rippled unbidden up her arm as she imagined a vast plot whereby vampires could obtain passage to sunless worlds, or worlds with harmless suns, and feed, feed, feed.

"Stop it," Jaina said aloud. The words jarred in the silent bedsit and disrupted her reverie.

Ice might know. Or he might want to dissemble the device to see how it worked. She suspected she still couldn't predict his reactions as well as he could hers.

She sighed and chucked the phone-thing into her open duffel. "Fuck."

The PINpoint might prove harmless. There were people who charged for killing monsters, after all, and Jaina did it for free -- not because of ulterior motives toward the victims, but because she got something else out of it. Perhaps this device's supplier had similarly benevolent designs.

But just in case...

Well, it had come to her homeworld with her. If it was tracking and sending data, any recipient already had this much. That potential mistake couldn't be undone. It hadn't been aboard ship yet. Wouldn't, either, until she had some answers.

Resolved, Jaina leaned back and soon feel asleep.

What's wrong with me?

I keep ordering drinks, swallowing them, hoping they'll calm the storm in my stomach. They don't. Alcohol won't fix this but I haven't any better ideas.

There are things I should be doing. Vampires, generally speaking, don't off themselves. I'm not sure of the time differential, but I think Ice must have missed me by now. I owe him an explanation. Not that I have one....

There are two of me. One shrieks at me to do my duty while her twin wails on that I cannot abandon my individual desires. Inside my gut, they're kicking each other to pieces. They bellow all the while about higher power, love, responsibility, freedom, family, and friends. I don't know who will win. Surely not my belly.

This is stupid. Booze, melancholy, all of it. I should get out of here, to business or to pleasure, or just to get out of here before I unravel further.

So why does my hand beckon for another glass?

That Lance! Asking me personal questions in public, I mean really. And Sir Suitov there is no help. Those... those males! They'd let me blush myself into a red death!

Don't tell them, because I think they already know, but I love every minute of it.

So there's some newer folks around the Inn, and some old faces (Holy cheese, guys, we're OLD!), and everything's going amazingly well. I'm not sure what to make of it. Aren't there supposed to be ginormous dramas that give no-one time to actually think? Isn't my most pressing matter supposed to have cosmic significance beyond "damn, Weft's annoying?"

Oh well. Boo drama! Hooray beer pancakes, apparently!

Longest day of the year, apparently. It snuck up on me, what with the time differential between -- well. What with quirks of portals and all.

I'm trying not to feel sorry for myself. I've done that already, many times. I should be happy with what I have: the eye of a charming chap, the ability to weasel free caffeine out of him...

...wreckage to live in and to feel sorry for myself in...

Shit.

I've already sung this song, I know. Poor JJ. She broke the rules and cried about it. Pity! Pity for the freaky-haired, freaky-headed idiot!

I'm not sorry to have lived my life. I like my adopted family members and assorted friends. I'm glad I met someone as interested in me as I am in him. He's a mage too; Kara would approve.

And there's the problem. I don't have Kara anymore. I like my new life, but I liked my old one too, and I have never understood why the old had to die away.

Oh geez, explanations. Um. When I was a kid, my family decided I would take up the family business. That happened to be smiting the undead, which sounds exciting but is actually a bitch. I was trained by a wonderful woman named Kara, whose approval meant everything to me -- so of course I was nothing like her. She was clever and quite talented; I was clumsy, slow, and a test of her limited patience.

She died. I was supposed to be proving how well she'd trained me, and I totally choked, and it was all my fault.

Family was not at all happy about losing a good worker and being stuck with me instead. They kicked me out and cut all ties. Screw them anyway, I figured, and walked away.

Except that in my head, I still belong there.

It's getting dark -- not safe to be writing. Tonight will be short work, and then I can sleep. If I'm lucky I won't even dream about waking up back home. Those are nightmares in reverse. They're lovely. And then you wake up, and they're not anymore.

Yeah. Pretty much. How did you think my ship crashed, anyway? Wretched things.

I've been spotted! *runs away and hides in the icebox* And whoever found me appears to have read my bio, too!

Nifty.

A quick snippet online caught my eye.

When it comes to accessorizing, your philosophy is:
Buy cheap. Change often.

That's pretty much me. A lot of jewellery and stuff isn't made to last very long (human-made stuff, I mean), and I'm... older than I look. Heirloom quality goods last for ages (or damn well should) but cost good money. I'd rather try to keep fixing up the Soul. Or is that keep trying to fix up the Soul? Eh, she's better than she was for awhile anyway.

So I wear cheapie stuff. Crude pendants on cords mostly. I don't wear rings -- they affect grip on weapons and can get smashed flat with your finger still in them. I've seen some nasty damage happen that wouldn't've if the idiot girl had just been bare-handed. Necklaces sometimes, long cloth or leathern cords so I can tuck them into a shirt, keep them out of the way. Bracelets never for the same reasons as rings. Anklets -- only over sturdy boots and only when I'm being daft, to be honest.

No piercings, if you were curious. I've tried but my skin inflames and hurts, and shiny things on the sides of my head are not worth the ouch. To make matters worse, when I tried pierced ears, the earrings migrated enough that I don't think I could have kept them. If I had stupidly left them in, I think they would have migrated right out of there. At least with my l33t uber-skin, I don't scar. Thank Goddess for small favours, or in this case large annoying integumentary favours.

My foot's still not 100%. Fuck. I don't have the urge to beat my head into the hull anymore, at least, and I'm getting some detail repairs done around the place, but I'll be glad when I can kick some ass again. There's just something about a final blow that feels sooo right and victorious. IT's awesome.

Getting the head-hull urge again. Dammit. Where'd I leave that bevel?

I'm in the middle of convincing myself that it's okay to take the night off. I don't think I'm persuaded yet.

I really ought to be out there. Winter nights are bad because the sun stays down forever and the dead don't feel the chills. It's nasty.

But I can't. A leech child had jumped feet-first onto my instep some time ago. It was fine so long as I minded my kicks, until the other night. Fucking zombie can't tell its left from its right, so it just shuffles forward. It trips on a doorjamb, falls like a log, and lands its hollow but rather heavy head on my goddamn foot.

I fucking hate this job. Which I should be doing, foot pain or not, because who the hell else is gonna keep some of those places clean? You? You're all bundled indoors, secure in your "knowledge" that the bads aren't real, can't get you, that the shadow that twitched on the street corner is just a trick of the flickering streetlight.

Sure. And I'm the Prince of Prussia.

I should suck it up. Be a woman. Swallow some painkillers and maybe a little liqour. Get out there and save the world. Again.

Damn it. Whatever I end up doing, this is going to be one hell of a night.

There's a reason I usually tumble out out of portals. Opening a portal big enough to walk through takes more out of me than opening one I can somersault or crawl through. Doing portals is bad enough without trying to make it worse.

Besides, given the sort of people who hang out on the other side of my portals, it's safest to enter defensively -- but you didn't hear that from me. ;)