everybody's got their dues in life to pay (open)

[ainsley]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: dddddd; border: #660000 solid 8px; width: 420px; padding: 15 5 15 5px;] Everybody's got their dues in life to pay the lyrics: 'dream on' by aerosmith the outfit: here Tagged open The Notes well this is open, so snag! ---FINDING A HOME IS A LOT LIKE FINDING LOVE. Many people search for it their entire lives only to never truly taste it. Often, people look for it in the wrong places at the wrong times, mistaking it for something more trivial or giving it up when they find it. In many ways, finding a home is a love, only that, instead of finding the connection in a person, one finds it in a place. A home is not a house nor even, necessarily, a building. You don't have to live there or even go there often. Truth be told, home isn't even a place at all, it's a connection you share with a place. It can be a connection forged over time or a bond formed instantly, the second you set foot on the hallowed ground. Ainsley was still searching for a place she could connect with, and call home. She'd been to England, France, and got far away from her birthplace in Australia, unable to settle on solid soil. Home is a feeling of comfort, a sense of belonging. It's a feeling of security, a place to come to when you're in retreat from the world around you, it's a nurturing sensation that helps you recover and invites you in even when everywhere else seems to reject you. As such, you can't make a home or build one, it has to find you. Furthermore, the homes we knew and loved as children are quickly outgrown the same as the blankets and lullabies that once made us feel safe. They become nothing more than cherished memories of a simpler time, when the world was smaller and home was wherever you rested your head. Ainsley took a moment to breath, and walked out onto the sands of the beach. She had on an entire outfit from the previous activities of the day. Shopping, buying necessities, and enjoying the surroundings of this newer environment. Her feet were in a pair of tall black boots, as she stood there on the sand looking out towards the water. She shrugged off the little denim vest she had over her shoulders and dropped it to the ground. She hunched her body downward and removed the boots from her feet dropping them directly next to her vest. In our materialistic society, we forget the value of a home. We build houses and mansions, mistaking them to be homes. We feel that we can build bigger, better and more perfect dwellings and make them homes, that we can solve everything with money and greed.We waste billions upon billions building castles, large and small, only to find them empty and meaningless. No matter how many people live inside them, these temples to greed always feel vacant, like no life can survive within them. They're cookie cutter solutions to an individual need, a desire that's as personal and unique to us as our fingerprints. That's why we build houses, not homes. That's why so many people, though happy in every other way, are still searching for that feeling of home. Though they might have the family of their dreams and the life they've always craved, there's always that gnawing sense of emptiness, the realization that something is lacking, whenever they stare at the walls around them.Because home is about character, the character of yourself and the character of the place around you. That's what makes a home something you can't buy, but something you find, cherish and hold onto. For, much like love, it's something that can be very fleeting and something found not in the grandest of words or gestures, but the smallest of symbols. If you don't enjoy the moments you have, they could be gone tomorrow and moments not enjoyed make poor memories. Ainsley sighed drawing in a breath. She looked down at her watch and around at the empty shores of the beach. She took a deep breath. "here goes" she muttered, unzipping the back of her skirt. She shrugged it off, standing in her underwear, she wriggled out of her bralet top and slipped her hand from the band of her watch and waded into the water in a pair of lacey boy short panties and a matching bra. The cool waters washing over her skin felt amazing, and at that moment she didn't care who might see her. created by ADE! Pb-ified by WILL

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[kale kennedy barker]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: dddddd; border: #37373f solid 8px; width: 420px; padding: 15 5 15 5px;] I never said that I would be reasonable The Lyrics: "friends & enemies" by tub ring The Outfit: here Tagged: poca/ainsley The Notes: hope its okay --- YOU KNOW, KALE WAS engaged once. More than once. He might still be engaged technically. Oh god, he had promised his life to more women than he had breaths in this world. It was not that he was desperate and wanted to get laid that he said these words. Whenever he said them, he thought he had meant them, problem was he "loved" pretty much every girl he saw. And the newer and shinier they were, the more attention he gave them. Kale had never had problems with getting women, he never needed to lie to them. But for some reason, he was charming enough on his own. He was pretty sure it was his accent. "I'm pretty sure it's my accent, darling." He repeated the thought in his mind as Widow Hughes had asked him why any girls ever fell for him as him. The image Widow had of him was probably not the best. Visually speaking. She was used to seeing him work or work out boredom. Always the eccentric, he was pretty sure she was most used to seeing him shirtless, in boxers, garden gloves and his goggles in his hair as opposed to over his eyes as he worked with chemicals used for home made bomb production. He was a bit better off today. He was at least wearing pants... and shoes. --- KALE LOOKED OVER at Widow, yet another girl he adored. "And my devilishly handsome smile." He added with an overly cheesed grin. Widow rolled her eyes, but did not deny a thing. Kale walked over to the counter in the kitchen where a small supply of his chemicals rested, pushed back against the wall. That rule was put back in place when Widow and the rest of the Hughes old friend slash siren colleague, Jasper came over with his daughter who sometimes enjoyed reaching up and grabbing at bottles marked 'dangerous.' Or sometimes, if Kale had gotten a sharpie to them they were marked, 'fun time toys.' Which he could see why a child would be confused. He didn't see anything wrong with letting the kid experiment, Curious minds and all? He worked with these chemicals and items all the time. They were his love, they were his life. Perhaps that was why he couldn't stay in love with ONLY one woman. He already had his one true love and it was anything and everything that went BOOM. There was nothing that excited him more than seeing one of his creations start as harmless substances, like soap, and transform before his eyes into a celebration of color, light, heat, and sound. A dance of flames and cinders. A power, a force so strong it erupts like a volcano and no one in impenetrable. That was real life magic there. --- PEOPLE TRIED TO psychoanalyze his obsession with the kaboom. They would pretend they knew his past, which no one did, and act like that was why. No. Sorry. Kale knew his background and a million kids grew up in a similar way and weren't nearly as care free and charming as he was, or as a more sane person would put it careless and dangerous. Kale would never use safety precautions because he didn't care if he died in the process. He really didn't care. And if he did, he wouldn't be as good at his job as he was. He wouldn't be the "Basher." If he hadn't gone the illegal way, I can assure you, Kale would have been working for the military making new weapons, or perhaps a firework maker. Something in pyro-technics. Kale ran a hand through his hair, not helping the ruffled mess it was before looking at Widow and grinning, "So Is Wendy really your real name?" Widow glared at him over her Mike's Hard, "donny tell you that?" Kale shook his head and Widow sighed and shrugged, "Wendy Moira Hughes. Not really a secret." She said as if it was no big deal but Kale understood. Not many people knew her real name and having people know can make you feel vulnerable. He followed her as they stepped into the backyard on the porch. --- BEST THING ABOUT living in the shaks is that the beach is so close to being you backyard. He smiled out at the ocean when Widow looked at him, "Not like your name at least." She said with a small laugh in her tone. Kale smiled his smile, "Now, Wid, who says my name isn't Kale Barker?" she shrugged, "Oh I don't know, how about when I met you the first time in my teens, your name was Harry," Kale laughed, his accent lacing his words in the thick smog(he is british, cockney accent), "Bloody hell, I forgot about that, Harry James Poder, thank god I stopped ripping off movies for my names." He replied amused as he looked out at the water. He leaned down on the railing of the porch as he saw a girl in the distance walking along. "I always am in need of a new name." Kale added almost cryptically. Widow shook her head amused as she followed his gaze to the girl. She patted him on the shoulder before making a comment about nothing but his name ever changes and she went back inside. Kale gave her a glance as she walked away before he looked back at the girl in the distance who seemed to be... stripping? --- KALE SMILED AND straightened out before he hopped over the railing into the sand. He walked a bit closer as she got into her underclothing and waded into the waters. As he got to where she had dropped her clothes, he looked up at her in the water and gave a small smirk, "You know, according to the coast guard, it is highly dangerous to go swimming alone. You simply never know when the sharks will come out." He called out to her in a friendly but sarcastic tone, his cockney accent playing in his words. created by ADE! Pb-ified by WILL

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[ainsley]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: dddddd; border: #660000 solid 8px; width: 420px; padding: 15 5 15 5px;] Everybody's got their dues in life to pay the lyrics: 'dream on' by aerosmith the outfit: here Tagged open The Notes well this is open, so snag! ---Psychiatrists tell us that, of all the human needs, the need for safety is the greatest. It is the need that concerns us before worry about anything else. Without safety, they say, we can not be happy, fulfilled or content.But safety is an unusual need in that it is based almost entirely upon an illusion. As humans, we are blessed (and cursed) with the knowledge that death is inevitable and that it could happen at any time. At best, safety is relative, at worst it is nonexistent and just a figment of our overactive imaginations.The simple truth is that we are never safe. Freak accidents, diseases and any number of other deadly incidents can take place at any given time. Even if we lock ourselves away in a metal room and remove all foreseeable hazards, death and injury can find us. Deep down we know that.If true safety were a requirement of our happiness, humans would be driven mad in frenzied attempts to mitigate every possible hazard, knowing that it is all a futile effort. As long as our mortality can not be escaped, safety can not be achieved.Yet, most people, feel safe when they sleep at night. Though literally anything can happen while they slumber, they rest assured that they will wake up the next morning in much the same condition that they went to bed. Safety was one of the few things Ainsley understood entirely. She didn't bother with the fake sense of reality. Heck, her job back home was to work with deadly snakes, make sure they were healthy, milk them of their venom to sell to medical research, and the like. Safety? Eh, she could do without. Our minds, over the years, have trained themselves to ignore the millions of risks we face, responding only to the most immediate and probable dangers we face. Much of this is self preservation, enabling us to spend our energy on the things that are most likely to hurt us, but much of it is also self deception, allowing us to turn a blind eye to less visible risks.This has resulted in a warped sense of safety. The dangers we face every day have become skewed and warped by a combination of convenience, media hype and misinformation. Whether the dangers are bad drivers, terrorists, heart disease or bird flu, we know we can't possibly protect against all of the hazards we face, so we focus on the ones that make us feel the most safe, not necessarily the ones that pose the greatest risk.That is the crux of the safety problem. Since safety is an illusion, so are many of the dangers. What makes us feel safe is often very different from what actually improves our chances of survival. What helps us sleep at night is rarely what helps us wake up in the morning, but she had already taken this into consideration, and came up with conclusion that she just did not care, When the voice caught her off guard she listened before spinning around to see a taller figure than herself. He stood on the sand looking out at her.His words had a thick accent, probably british by the sound of it. As she spoke back her own aussie accent came through in her words "I could take on a shark with one hand behind my back." she said back, jokingly. "Sharks don't come around here after I beat up the last one." she added.Ainsley waded backwards a little more, as to have the water cover her body. She didn't know this guy, and though she wasn't uncomfortable with his presence, he wasn't getting any sort of free show. She planned to stay beneath the level of sight until he was gone. She scanned him over, from his sandy brown-ish blonde hair, to his big bright eyes, and downward, over his mid body to his shoes snug in a pair of boots. "How long have you been there?" She asked, raising a brow. created by ADE! Pb-ified by WILL

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[kale kennedy barker]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: dddddd; border: #37373f solid 8px; width: 420px; padding: 15 5 15 5px;] I never said that I would be reasonable The Lyrics: "friends & enemies" by tub ring The Outfit: here Tagged: poca/ainsley The Notes: hope its okay --- ON THE WAY created by ADE! Pb-ified by WILL

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