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 Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2015 8:15 pm
The Cost of Freedom
One x One between Noted Musician and IGmangachick
January 9, 1941
“We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people's freedom.”
-- FDR, Eighth State of the Union Address
Profile Thread: X
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Posted: Mon Jul 13, 2015 12:49 am
 ♖Lawrence X Campbell♖
☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴ If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so.
If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.It had been months since Lawrence had gotten any real time off. Leisure time was hard to come by during times of war, and most people, if they found it, spent that time sleeping. Lawrence was no different, since he’d been transferred he’d managed a total of three days off, all of which he’d spent asleep in his bunk until mess hours when his squad mates and friends would wake him for food. Today would be his first real day off where sleep didn’t feel like the necessity. He took the free time in stride, starting with a morning at the local town cantina sipping white wine and reading The Phantom of the Opera. It was one of his favorite books as of late, as he had both a French and English copy so that he could go back and forth to slowly teach himself French. It was a very slow lesson, and the English translated version was so new it was a rough translation at best, but he wanted to try, and it was a lovely story.
As the afternoon neared, he set the books aside and spent a while wandering the streets, hoping to find a local eatery he wouldn’t normal be able to enjoy on duty. It was France, granting very few reminders of his home in London that he longed for so greatly, but it was better to see the world than only the inside of camp on his time off. It was in this wandering that he met a group of males, many of them younger than himself, whom he very loosely called friends. They were all dressed in their militant attire, so Lawrence only stood a few moments to speak with them before they were off to their posts and he could return to his lunch search. He took a left down an alley not far from what had been established as a war-time hospital, letting his eyes shift only momentarily to a group of girls as they passed. He watched as they hurried off onto the main street in their nurse’s attire and turned toward the hospital, giggling all the while.
A smile caught his lip at the sound, remembering his sisters’ laughter and their smiles fondly in his head. He always had to convince himself they were alright, that they had learned to be strong women years ago, before he was even old enough to protect them. It wasn’t always an easy thing to convince himself of, but the worry tended to go away when mail time came and at least one of them had sent something for him in the post. If they were strong enough to tie seventeen year old me to a chair and glue a wig on me, I don’t think some German’s are going to tear them down. He told himself, dragging his mind from his thoughts just as he came to a stop in front of a small bakery. His hand slid into his pocket, fingers running over the cool coins to try and determine their worth. It wasn’t much, but certainly enough for a loaf and coffee, and maybe something sweet if he was lucky. Besides that, bread sounded nice, good bread wasn’t a common back at camp, and he was exhausted by the sight of the crackers they were given so frequently as a replacement.
The bell hanging over the door gave off a loud clang as he pushed inside, drawing the owner and a few customers’ eyes. He waved politely, gripping both his copies of Phantom of the Opera in his other hand until the people turned their gaze away and he was free to look about at the food without attention. One particular loaf was almost shining in the case, drawing his gaze right away, but at the instant he caught sight of the cute little hand written price card in front, his face fell. He was getting much too far ahead of himself to think he could afford something that nice, even if it was just bread. Instead, he saw a simple baguette that looked fresh out of the oven and asked the store keeper to wrap that for him. He set a few coins on the counter, jingling the little he had left while he waited for the food to be passed across the counter. “Merci.” He said softly and turned toward the door, one hand around the bread and the other on his books. Now all he needed was coffee and a place to sit and enjoy the sights for the rest of the day.Si je suis le fantôme, c'est parce que la haine de l'homme a fait de moi si.
Si je suis pour être sauvé, c'est parce que votre amour me rachète. ((OOC: I've been editing the format, not the post. Carry on with what you're doing.))
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Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 8:38 pm
 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Éléonore ➸ Beaumont
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ⓝ Ⓤ Ⓡ Ⓢ Ⓔ
● Lifting her head from her textbook, Elenor looked toward the sounds coming down the hallway. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she spotted her roommates. They had been huddled around each other all day, the four of them. It was odd for Elenor to see, since they were all usually so relaxed with each other. It seemed as if something had hyped them all up, so she slid a small piece of paper in between the pages she was currently on in her text and flipped the book shut. She tucked the book into her saddle bag, pulling the strap over her shoulder and standing up, gazing over her uniform once before turning to walk towards the group of girls. Her small feet padded against the floor as she shuffled over, and when she stopped she overheard their conversation. One of them, a huffy little blonde turned to her and after recognition, she smiled and giggled before saying, "El, avez-vous entendu? Le personnel est de nous laisser en dehors aujourd'hui! Est- ce pas excitant!?" Elenor knew that it was common to keep volunteer nursing staff inside most days, even during mealtime, just in case. ●
● "Que Dieu me vienne en aide," she said more to herself than anyone, and her roommates waved her off as they turned back to each other. Elenor also knew that if her roommates were released, they'd spend so much time distracted, and she would have to end up dragging them back to the hospital. Like usual, but Elenor simply sighed quietly as her friends finished their chatting and headed towards the exit, one of them grabbing her arm and pulling her along. Her breath caught in her throat as she was rushed out of the hospital, her group turning down the street and heading to a common pick-up diner a short distance from their work place. ●
● After they all decided on a meal, ordered, then picked up their food, they turned back in the direction of the hospital, most of them chatting and giggling, still in their uniforms and all, brown paper bags filled with their goodies. Elenor trailed behind, paper bag in one hand, other hand on her bag strap. Her eyes held a far off daze in them, her hearing far from tuned into the group's convo. They passed many people on their way back, and Elenor didn't notice any of them. Her mind was on her textbook, and she wondered whether she would have it finished by next week. ●
● When they returned to the hospital, she decided to split from her coworkers and make her way to a quiet corner near her section of the building. She sat finally, pulling her brown paper bag onto the table beside her, lifting a pastry from it and nibbling it ever so slightly as she pulled her textbook from her bag and flipped it open to the page she stopped on. ●
ｗａｓｎ'ｔ ➸ ｉｔ ➸ ｂｅａｕｔｉｆｕｌ ➸ ｗｈｅｎ ➸ ｙｏｕ ➸ ｂｅｌｉｅｖｅｄ ➸ ｉｎ ➸ ｅｖｅｒｙｔｈｉｎｇ ➸ ? OOC { You're fine girl! c: YAY WE'RE STARTING so I kind of just threw together a post to get us started. I figured I'd let you know, since she's French, I'm just gonna use good ol Google translate for her language until she starts to learn English. ALSO how are they going to meet? Is he gonna get hurt? } Outfit
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Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 7:23 am
♖Lawrence X Campbell♖
☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴ If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so.
If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.Lawrence took up a bench out front of the hospital with his books and bread, watching all the lovely young French women going in and out of the building. Some of them spared him a smile, perhaps because he was the only soldier in sight, but more likely because he was offering his kindness to the surrounding pigeons that gathered around him. A little girl, no older than nine, asked if she could also feed the birds so he tore off a small chunk and handed it to her. Smiling, the girl went about feeding the birds for him so that he could have a bit of his own food for himself. The bread was a pleasant mix of sweet and salty, and had just enough crunch that it was pleasant without being overwhelming. He ate what was left of the bread until he’d had his fill, then handed the rest to the little girl who took it excitedly as her mother appeared from a nearby shop. Lawrence waved politely then stood from the bench and headed for the hospital, hoping he could get a glass of water or something of the sort to wash down his bread-dried throat.
Inside the hospital he was greeted first by the overwhelming scent of sterility. It wafted up his nostrils and made his head spin. He looked to the woman at the reception desk a moment, hoping to be in and out of the place quickly so he would be in the way as little as possible. As if on cue she looked up from her books to ask his reason for being there. ”Uh, water. I’ll try not to be in the way.” The woman tilted her head, a questioning look on her face. Lawrence tried to come up with the French word for water, as he had been taught it at one time by his bunkmates in case of emergency, but the word didn’t come. Instead, he mimed the action of drinking, albeit trying not to overdo the action in case he looked like he was asking for liquor instead of water. Seeming to understand by the action, the woman pointed him down a nearby hall.
Waving back at her, Lawrence rushed down the hall in search of the water fountain or something to get a drink. To his dismay, if there was anything of the sort there it wasn’t there any longer; that or it was hidden very well from his sight, in which case he was likely never to find it. So he surrendered his search in that hall and continued to wander down the nearby halls and corridors in the hope of finding something. What he found instead, however, was a girl, seated in a corner munching on what appeared to be a pastry and reading something he assumed to be a textbook. Not wanting to act the fool if he disturbed her, he opened his English copy of “The Phantom of the Opera,” flipping to a late chapter he remembered had many lines about water, he used the page number of the English words to find it in the French, granting a little leeway for length differences of words.
C’est le mirage!... c’est le mirage!... ne croyez pas a l’eau!... c’est encore le truc de la glace!... He read it slowly, matching the words to the lines in English that he had so well memorized from all his readings. He saw the word again, “de l’eau” and was certain it was what he was looking for to mean water. He formed the words in his mouth, knowing merci was about the only word of French he had ever tried to say, but wanting to say it to the best of his ability anyways. It gave him confidence enough to approach, waving a hand in the air shyly and hoping it would be enough to draw her attention. He decided he should first at least try English, as it would save him some trouble, but he had a feeling the girl wouldn’t speak a word, hence why he had to be prepared with the French.
“Umm, Sorry, I was looking for water? De le eu?” The French was horribly mispronounced, it was a surprise he’d managed to even form the consonances properly. He doubted she would understand his question that way, so he held his thumb in the page of his French copy and turned the book to face her, trying to find the line that simply said “De l’eau! De l’eau!” in the hopes that would do better to explain than his failure to speak a language he hardly knew.
Si je suis le fantôme, c'est parce que la haine de l'homme a fait de moi si.
Si je suis pour être sauvé, c'est parce que votre amour me rachète. ((OOC:: I thought they should meet before he gets injured, even if it's only for a minute. Just for that moment while he's half unconscious for the two to recognize each other like "You're the one who told me where water was." "You're the one who can't speak french."))
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Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:44 pm
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Éléonore ➸ Beaumont
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ⓝ Ⓤ Ⓡ Ⓢ Ⓔ
● Flipping to the next page in her book, Elenor brought her thumb to her mouth to ever so lightly bite at her nail, her eyes following the text effortlessly. Learning about ancient Russian history probably wasn't the best way to spend her free time, but Elenor wasn't one to let others opinions get to her. It was simply a book that had caught her eye off one shelf of the library a few days earlier, and it was one lucky book to have held her attention this long. Most days, if she liked a book, she would work her way through it until she found a point where it displeased her. Didn't matter what it was, whether a character did something she disagreed with, the plot took a turn she didn't like, or if it simply grew dull, she would place it among her other stacks of books to finish later if she decided to ever pick one up again. It seemed sort of counter productive when she would try to explain her process to others, but then again, she rarely did that to start with, so what was the point? ●
● Pausing after a long paragraph explaining the inner workings of the Russian royalty system, she kept her eyes on the page while stretching her shoulders back to hear them crack slightly. She must have been leaning over her book a little too much. After the stretch, she felt her muscles mold back into her slouch and she flipped the page again. When she flattened the page against the rest of the book, she heard a voice near her, and she twitched at the sound, but didn't look up. Someone was speaking English. It was odd that some random voice would be able to break her out of her studies, usually she was very used to blocking the rest of the hospital noise out. She figured since she wasn't used to hearing such a different language, that might have triggered a response. When she heard the voice again, this time attempting French, one brow creased over the mispronunciation. Finally accepting that the voice was talking to her, she looked up. ●
● It took a moment for her eyes to label who was standing in front of her. Not hospital staff. Maybe a visitor. Not French, obviously. He was bulky, but lean, built like... a soldier. Her brows softened, and she sat up slightly. She took in his features. Brown hair, fair skin, dark eyes, tall, broad shoulders... holding a book? Her thoughts paused as she looked at the books, plural, he was holding. He was pointing, but she already knew what he was talking about. "... L'eau ?" she asked, her voice small and measured. She could understand English for the most part, but she was limited. She preferred to speak her own language above others, so she replied without thinking. She had only been taught the basics, and that had been enough to communicate with incoming soldiers and the injured. ●
● Down the hall, there was a small corridor that had three or four water fountains lining the wall, next to them stood the doors to the restrooms. That's where she guessed he needed to head. Still, she'd rather be reading, so she decided to keep it short and sweet. She wouldn't be rude, she knew not to be that much of an a**. "Au bout de cette salle, prendre à gauche , l'eau sera sur votre droite ," she said, watching his reaction as she spoke. Deciding it better to reinforce her directions with movements and the best English she could muster, she followed with more, her accent thick in the new language, "This hallway, left, on right." She pointed down the hallway his back was to, then pointed left, following with the appropriate right point. ●
ｗａｓｎ'ｔ ➸ ｉｔ ➸ ｂｅａｕｔｉｆｕｌ ➸ ｗｈｅｎ ➸ ｙｏｕ ➸ ｂｅｌｉｅｖｅｄ ➸ ｉｎ ➸ ｅｖｅｒｙｔｈｉｎｇ ➸ ? OOC { How romantic, they meet through water, ahah c: } Outfit
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Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:12 pm
♖Lawrence X Campbell♖
☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴☴ If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so.
If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.While the girl looked Lawrence over, he took the opportunity to do the same as she came up with words for his question. She was pretty, thin, a girl perhaps a few years younger than himself with a glow he couldn’t quite explain. Her brown hair looked as if it would be warm to the touch, and her eyes with all their dark shades still seemed bright like the flame of a candle. She was strikingly lovelier than he’d first thought, so much so that a crasser man might be on his knees at the sight of such a lovely French woman. Law was not that kind of man, but he could still stand back and appreciate her for all that she was in that moment, so much that he didn’t snap back to the matter at hand until she spoke.
He hardly caught the French, being too new to the language to understand almost any of it. Thankfully, the girl seemed to expect this, and though her accent was so thick it was hardly understandable, he did catch the words about as well as she’d caught his poor attempt at saying “water” just moments before. He tried to follow the way her finger pointed while his brain worked to decode the thick accent. He nodded slightly, repeating the words out loud to her so that he was sure he’d gotten the directions right. “Down the hall, turn left, on the right… Thank you.” He wanted to be as polite as possible, as she had been kind enough to put up with is serious debauchery of her native language. Besides that, she was pretty, he did want to make a good impression, even if he doubted it would go anywhere. That was the world they lived in after all; he was a soldier, he’d signed his life to the Army the day he turned 18, and like his father before him he somewhat expected to die at war.
Perhaps that was why he wanted so badly to look upon this woman for another moment longer, for fear that it could be his last chance to see beauty or rest eyes on a woman. Most men just snuck out of the barracks at night to visit the brothels for things like that. But Lawrence had never much been taken by the girls in the brothels; they were captives, women without passion, something he doubted was true of the girl before him. That is precisely why the end of his words did not bring his feet to move, but instead stuck where they were, his eyes raking her over once more. Knowing she must have noticed his stares, he shook his head quickly, a light flush rising in his cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I should go. Thank you, very much.” He took a quick step back as he spoke, bowing deeply at the waist to honor the lady he’d just spent so long staring at before he turned on his heels and walked off down the hall where she’d said the water was.
His feet carried him faster than he first thought, wanting to be free of sight so that the girl wouldn’t think he was a complete loon. It wasn’t like he’d stared that long, only a few seconds at most, but he was afraid she’d still find him odd for such a short pause. He had tried very hard to keep his composure, and had been calm in the way he spoke despite the rosiness to his cheeks, but he still felt the fool for his lack of etiquette in front of her. And yet how worthwhile it was, to have her face in his head and smiling at him. If he were to die tomorrow, it might just be alright to know he’d seen a face that made him happy for the first time since leaving England. What was the right word to describe her though? In French, of course. He knew the English, even if beauty wasn’t word enough, he just wanted to remember the French so that should they ever meet again, he could tell her what he’d really thought in that moment. As his steps continued down the hall his mind wandered, trying to remember the book, how the phantom had described Christine and what words he had used in the French copy. The words didn’t come.
Instead what came to mind was an old fairy tale he remembered his mother reading to his sister’s when they were children. It was a story of a prince turned hideous and a lovely French lady whose name meant beauty. His mother had called her Belle. That’s what the girl in the hospital had been, belle. He said the word over and over in his head as he drank and walked back toward the exit. For a moment he had stopped to catch sight of a clock, but otherwise he continued to repeat the word silently to himself so that he would not forget it. He didn’t know her name, thus the more he said it the more it seemed like a name for her than a description. Next time they were to meet he’d have to be sure to ask her name, but for now Belle seemed to fit quite well.
Si je suis le fantôme, c'est parce que la haine de l'homme a fait de moi si.
Si je suis pour être sauvé, c'est parce que votre amour me rachète. ((OOC:: ))
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Posted: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:54 pm
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Éléonore ➸ Beaumont
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ⓝ Ⓤ Ⓡ Ⓢ Ⓔ
● After the young man replied to her, Elenor nodded ever so slightly, glad that he seemed to understand. This was common, she had run into the unknowing he or she that didn't know where they were going and were, of course, foreign. So this certain scenario wasn't so foreign to her. She gazed at him expectantly, waiting for his physical response to follow his verbal one. When he didn't immediately turn away like all the others had, she froze, not sure what to do. He simply stood there, looking at her. Her eyes connected with his, and for a moment she grew unsteady. She wasn't scared, just unsure. Did she say something wrong in English? No, she was sure she had said the right thing. She knew she had pointed the right way. Did she have something on her uniform? Her cheeks grew pink at the prospect, but before she could continue doubting herself, the man spoke again and turned to walk down the hallway. ●
● She blinked in surprise. Her eyes followed him the rest of the way down the hall, and just like that, he turned the corner and was gone. She blinked again, her eyes glued to the spot she last saw him. She wasn't sure what to think. She then turned her gaze upon herself, scanning her body to see if something was wrong with her uniform, her hair, maybe even her book. No, nothing out of the ordinary. She looked at her text again, but her eyes couldn't remember the spot where she had left off at. She couldn't even remember who she had been reading about. She shut her book for a second, taking a deep breath in to collect her jumbled thoughts. No sooner did her eyes return to the last spot she saw the man she spoke to. After another moment, she shook her head, maybe a little too hard, trying to refresh herself. She blew out some air, finally pushing herself up from her chair to stand, stretching a little and flattening her skirt. She tucked her book into her bag and grabbed the rest of her lunch, throwing out what she had finished and slipping the rest into her bag as well. ●
● It was odd, but as Elenor began walking down the hall, her small shoes padding the ground, her chest felt tight. She wasn't sure why. She wasn't one to think too deeply on any one subject or topic, but her recent short conversation had left her somewhat shaken. Her head turned slightly to gaze back down the hall towards the spot she had been seated in, and she shook her head again as she turned straight forward. She probably shouldn't think about it anymore. What were the chances of her running into the same man twice? ●
● She looked up at the clock as she passed it in the hallway. Her lunch break was almost over. The sooner she made it back to her post, the better. Her roommates were probably wondering where she was. She turned into a room, what looked like a break room, to find two of the four roomies sipping coffee. One looked up to see her enter, and she smiled before it disappeared just as fast to be replaced with a small grin. "Elenor , est que je vois un blush sur vos joues ? Pas très comme vous , le miel ," the small blonde pipped up, her eye brows raising slightly. At the remark, the second young lady turned to gaze at Elenor, bringing the cup to her mouth for a smooth sip. Elenor paused when she reached them, her hand rubbing at her cheeks as she quietly replied, "Je ne sais pas de quoi tu parles." Her eyes dodged the two girls, and the second one only giggled, adding to Elenor's uneasiness. "Je suis juste taquiner , ma chérie ." ●
ｗａｓｎ'ｔ ➸ ｉｔ ➸ ｂｅａｕｔｉｆｕｌ ➸ ｗｈｅｎ ➸ ｙｏｕ ➸ ｂｅｌｉｅｖｅｄ ➸ ｉｎ ➸ ｅｖｅｒｙｔｈｉｎｇ ➸ ?
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