Iluminatus - Of Smoke and Mirrors

[Sarah Jane]

1990 - September

Sarah Jane Smith is 42 and vacationing on the North Sea. She managed a fine little cabin at ridiculously cheap rates and snagged up a reservation. A little investigation had shown that rates were down because the large empty house up on the hill was reported to be haunted. Not exactly haunted, but three divorces and two cases of near fatal overdoses and one serious fist fight seemed to be results of resent stays in the surrounding sea side resort. This little bundle of shacks at the bottom of the cliff. Employment was down in the area.

Sarah's curiosity was surely piqued. It might have been wiser to go up to the old house in the day, but she was concerned about getting caught poking around up there and decided to make her trip at dusk. She had learned to be quite wary of authority and did not want to attract any clowns with guns. Up the curving cliff rode she went on her Vespa.

Black leggings and boots, short short skirt and a gray and blue striped dark sweater that fit to a tee and a gray denim vest to protect her from the wind. She rode her Vespa up all but the last half klick not bothering to turn on it's light on the lonely rode. Tonight there would be enough moonlight even to see by.

She parked and hiked, drinking in the growing twilight and the rhythmic rush of the Sea below. It was a beautiful old house. The Doctor would have well seen it's ruined beauty, and she missed him then for at least two strides. Then she was too overcome by her freedom and the cool night to dwell on that old sorrow.

The wind was picking up and it tugged at her hair and kissed her face and made her feel like a kid that had snuck out of the house at night, something she'd always been wont to do. She is grinning and her tongue plays with her canine tooth as she stands on the front porch of the grand old place. She is tempted, almost humorously, to knock, but does not, putting her hand on the cool metal doorknob instead.



((Open just for Lux for now, status may change))

[Jack Harkness]

1209 - second summer - Lucis

It was silent, the room made of glass and light completely silent while thousands of Lux were gathered in the grand room.
Thousands of beings, all made of the same thin glass and smoke as him. And yet none of them the same.

Lux resembled each other, of course...like any other species.
But they told each other apart by the color of their smoke, their telepathic fields and the sounds of their voices.
And yet, with all these beings around, none made a single sound.

Every single one of them silent and staring at him, the one in the middle of the circular council.

Denatus stood completely still, his voice frozen at the last spoken words.
'You must leave now'

And that was it, he was simply cast out from his world and for the right reasons as well.
He had killed another Lux, there was no room for hostility on Lucis. They were right for banishing him.

So the golden colored male slowly turned his back to the high council and left. Each step harder before a flash of golden light swallowed him whole.



1990 - September - Earth

It had been a very very long travel, centuries have passed and the lonely Lux never seemed to find the answer.
The answer to that unasked question he needed to find in order to return home.

And after three thousand years of searching he became quite comfortable with his banishment.
He had seen so many planets, so many beings, so many wars and so much love.

And this new planet, this completely new and untouched by Lux planet. It was beautiful.

His glass skin ran down the wooden wall as he gently touched the familiar frame.
It used to be alive, somewhere not even that long ago.
The feint idea of the wood being alive once seemed to linger.
And Denatus could feel it.

He had been in the house for quite a while, and he had never seemed to find someone who wanted to teach him the language.
Not that he could blame the species living on the planet.
They had never seen a Lux before and it seemed they weren't telepathically active.

Sometimes he could hear a foreign language, something he could grasp the meaning of. Simply because he never managed to tune in on the telepathic field. But it was quite alright.
No one had tried to attack him and it seemed the people on the planet were quite nice.

Tonight was another one of the lonely nights. The lonely alien standing in the attic of the house. His palm pressed against the cool surface of the window.
It was cold to touch, but so dang familiar. He loved glass.
But the glass on this planet was thick, and it didn't hold any color.
Still, it was the closest resemblance to his home world he had seen in ages.

[Sarah Jane]

The metal of the knob was cool to the touch, but it didn't feel 'haunted' whatever that felt like. She felt a little foolish for having thought she would. Inside was amazing. Classic 1800's dark wood. Delicate molding over arched doorways. A flared staircase that went up. Two couches were uncovered, their patterns long lost to time, and a chair with torn wicker. A few other things were under sheets. The place was a bit dusty and there she could see the fireplace tools had fallen over who knows how long ago, but all in all, it was just a house where nobody lived. It was nice enough here that she was surprised it hadn't been taken over by teenagers or squatters.

There were papers on the desk. She went to them and started reading, frowning a little in the dim light.

[Jack Harkness]

As his fingertips lingered on the glass, the lux could feel something enter his field of perception.
He could feel something moving around in the house, too big to be one of those winged shreeking animals..and certainly too big to be one of the insects on the planet.
It had to be one of the inhabitants of the planet.

Someone who might want to help him?

He slowly turned on his heels, the layer of dust underneath his feet making way for his glass skin.
Unlike humans, Lux didn't wear any clothes.
The elements had little effect on their bodies and they didn't need to cover anything up either.

They were also a very tactile species and preferred to go without clothes.

He had been on several planets where they wanted him to wear clothing. And if they wanted that he would.
But up until now not one of the inhabitants of this planet seemed to care.

He took a step towards the door, the rotten old wooden thing that seemed to be more of a barrier as expected.
The first time he had tried to open the thing from inside the attic he had been pushing and pulling at it for half an hour.
In the end it had been one of the shy creatures who helped him out.
Opening the door and running away quite fast as well.

The Lux didn't even once consider they might have been scared shitless.

His feet barely made a sound on the dusty old floor, his fingertips gently touching and feeling the old wardrobe next to the door.

[Sarah Jane]

It was with inevitability that Sarah Jane found herself headed up the narrow attic stairs. She was quite fond of attics. Attics were where you could find the true history of a house. The true nature of a family. The rest of the house had been a bit of a wash. She had some names, some dates, and a sense from some faded old gardening clothes that someone who had once lived there had been quite large, but nothing to suggest anything of note had happened here recently except perhaps some hurried shoe prints in the dust. If she didn't like attics so much, she might have felt silly for coming here in the first place not having found so much as a bloodstain, much less a ghost. Though such things were traditionally kept in attics, she never really expected it to be that. Of all her travels, she had not met something a fellow human would call a ghost by classic definition.

The door creaked as she opened it. Creepy and typical, it made her chuckle softly. Then she froze stock still in the doorway as her mind tried to comprehend what she was looking at, her mouth open in surprise.

[Jack Harkness]

Denatus was about to move to the door as the thin rotten wood swung open by itself.
The figure behind it certainly no insect or small critter.

The deep dark smoke within his body swirled around slowly, showing he was completely at ease in the other her presence.
Not that any other alien species had ever figured this out.
It was kind of hard to read the expressions of a Lux without a telepathic connection.

He turned his head slowly, not needing to do so in order to see her.
But just doing it to look polite. The last planet he had been nearly cracked him for not 'looking' people in the eye.

The glass creature took a step toward the woman, not realizing he might be coming off as completely creepy or even hostile as he raised his hand to try and touch her.
Denatus just wanted to have some kind of knowledge on the language of this world. And he needed to touch someone to tune in on their minds.

[Sarah Jane]

"Oh, aren't you just gorgeous." She whispered under her breath as she beheld this delicate looking creature. Humanoid and featureless. Glowing, and with dark depths as well. It was instantly clear that she was not looking at some sort of swirling pattern on the creatures surface, she was looking right into it. No guts, no gears, just smoke that looked like clean wood burning on a still day.

It looked at her.
"Hello." she said breathlessly.

As it raised it's hand toward her, Sarah Jane raised her own in reflection and they met at fingers and palms. It's skin felt just like glass. Up close, it was easy to let her gaze all but fall into the delicate complexities of the smoke or mist that slowly swirled inside it.

[Jack Harkness]

The second their palms met Denatus could feel a rush of knowledge coursing through him.
Sparks of near golden smoke lighting up as his system tuned in on the telepathic field of this being.

The foreign language the very first thing he learned to understand.
His body completely still as the smoke inside revealed how active he really was.

So these beings weren't completely dull to telepathic fields.
He could now sense the receptors. He was instantly curious if he would be able to not just, understand..but also reply.

"Are you able to understand me now?"
He tilted his head slightly, another curious habit he had picked up from another being living on the planet.
His voice would sound a bit strange to other species.
Deep and clear but not spoken, as if it were thoughts he directly sent to the brain.
Like that little voice in the back of one's mind, yet louder.

The Lux took no thought in even pulling his hand away.
Like this it was easy to pick up new knowledge. And he also liked the soft and warm texture of the woman her skin.
Completely new to his fingertips.

[Sarah Jane]

Sarah Jane is by nature a creature of words, and abundant and clear in this area of her mind. The rest tended to be a bit more chaotic, but she liked it that way.

She half expected the softly glowing entity to pop like a bubble when she touched it. Sarah Jane hoped she wasn't about to commit accidental murder on this fragile creature. She was, also, at this moment, wondering if this was what a ghost was, and it would either engulf her or disappear as they reached for each other. She gasped a little as the glass person lit up with a web of soft sparks and rods of golden light.

A strange sensation went through her mind. It was as if someone put careful nimble fingers on the Rolodex of her mind and gave it a gentle spin, casually, delicately flipping through the indexes with smooth fingertips.

A laugh came up out of her as certain as she'd been spun in the dance, though her slim form hardly rippled in reflection no more than a centimeter. Her dance partner's hand against hers is the perfect balance point. Delightful! And then she felt his voice, coming not to her ears, but somehow projected from the middle of her head as though she were listening to the radio on her headphones. Soft warm. A man's voice.

"Yes! Hello." She studied it's smooth face, wondering if it would resolve into features, but mostly just watching the curls of smoke within him thick as though from a gentle man's pipe, and lit with soft storms from within.

She is covered in chillbumps in her wonder and her startlement.

[Jack Harkness]

A spark of gold ran through his dark core as he heard a reply.
It was always thrilling and exiting to communicate with new species.
This one being another one of those beautiful creatures out in the universe.
'My name is Denatus Lux...I come from a far away world to discover your world'
If he could have smiled he would have, instead he sent her a small spark of his emotion.

Thrill,exitement, yet completely calm.
He didn't want to overload this non-telepathic species with his thoughts and feelings.

Denatus was exited to get a propper image of this being called 'human'
So he did what every Lux would do.

The man of glass took another step closer and slowly raised his other hand to gently reach for her face.
His right hand still connected with her palm so he could feel her reaction. He didn't want her to go shy like the others.

[Sarah Jane]

She let him touch her face if he would, wondering what the world looked to him and in what way he saw, his smooth face eyeless.

"I'm Sarah Jane Smith, investigative reporter. This is my home planet. Humans like me live here in the billions. The Earth is already 'discovered'. I think it is important for other species to understand the beauty of Earth as we make our first steps into outer space, but it is dangerous for you here. The Earth is unfriendly to Aliens. I am worried for you." Even in her worry, she is smiling at him, so far pleased with her discovery and brimming with curiosity.

She raised her own hand to the inhuman smoothness of his chest, putting a hand over where his heart would have been had he been human, wondering if there would even be a ghost of a beat there.

[Jack Harkness]

His fingertips gently grazed the skin of her cheek, the same shape and smoothness as other Lux would have.
These humans seemed to resemble his kind alot. Same height,same features.
Exept they had eyes..and a nose, he discovered this by cautiously ghosting his hand over her face.
And lips..'Your species is soft...' he rested his glass fingertips on her lips before she reached for his chest.

What was she expecting to feel there?
His skin was the same texture everywhere, and she couldn't feel anything else underneath.
Not in his current emotional state.
'none of my kind has ever been to your earth...'

When Sarah Jane said him earth was unfriendly to aliens he tilted his head slightly.
'Your species has not been unfriendly to me yet...'

[Sarah Jane]

He really did just feel like glass. Glass under her hand, glass fingertips sliding with such care on her her face, on her lips. She let her hand drop, though she did not pull away, letting his fingertips continue to brush her lips. For some reason his words brought heat to her cheeks.

"I'm glad. You've been lucky. Have you met any other humans? Have you been down in the town?"

[Jack Harkness]

Denatus gently took her hands in his, enjoying the contact he hadn't have in ages.
'I have seen other humans...I have not yet gotten the permission to leave this mansion...'

His head stayed focussed on her, slightly tipped forward as if he were watching their hands.
'before I go and discover this world...I wil show you mine'

There was a slight pause. Denatus had shown his world to others before, none of them had ever really seen it as he had.
It wasn't just made of glass and light.
It wasn't just the most beautiful planet one had ever witnessed.

Lucis was a lonesome planet... somewhere he could never go back to.
But he never showed his grief.

'If I may'

[Sarah Jane]

"How long have you waited?"

Their hands intertwined, each exploring the others texture.

"You don't need anyones permission to leave, but I'm glad that you have waited. I can help you see Earth without danger finding you. I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

He would not understand the reference, but sometimes she told jokes when meeting Aliens just in case the Doctor was somewhere listening. Or she pretended that he did.

"Show me." She said, then, quite seriously. He did not have any expressions, but his smoke seemed . . . solemn.