#acij

O quanto a cidade já cresceu, e quais são os desafios para o futuro. A mobilidade da região e a construção da ponte de R$ 60 milhões de reais, foram alguns dos assuntos discutidos na reunião que aconteceu nesta segunda-feira (24/03) na ACIJ. O evento promovido pela Associação Empresarial de Joinville, reuniu lideranças empresariais e políticas para debater o futuro do maior polo econômico…

A Fundação Pró-Rim lança na próxima segunda-feira (28) o vídeo “Vidas Compartilhadas, Esperanças Multiplicadas”, durante a abertura da Plenária semanal da ACIJ, em Joinville, às 18h30. O vídeo é uma parceria com a Escola do Teatro Bolshoi, uma superprodução comemorativa aos 2000 Transplantes realizados pela Pró-Rim ao longo de sua história. O transplante renal de número 2000 foi realizado no dia…

Os números positivos da construção civil – que registrou o oitavo período de crescimento consecutivo, no segundo trimestre deste ano – animam a rede de fornecedores, de pequenos a grandes negócios. Líder no mercado regional de equipamentos para construção, fundada em 1987, a Versátil Andaimes e Escoramentos, de Colombo (PR), busca ampliar a presença em Joinville e região, principal polo econômico…

@mauriciomacri recorta 900 millones destinados a la #niñez

[su_pullquote]En el país, hay 6 millones de niños y niñas pobres. Es la mitad de la población infantil. Sin embargo, el gobierno avanzó con una resolución que ajusta 900 millones destinadas a la Secretaría de Niñez. A la par, busca lograr bajar la edad de imputabilidad a 15 años.[/su_pullquote]

En el país, hay un 48 por ciento de pobreza infantil, lo que representa a más de 6 millones de niños y…

Café com novos associados Acij

Estivemos no café com os novos associados Acij!

Confiram mais fotos na nossa Fan Page www.facebook.com/maxschwoelkfotografia

Alana e Max =)

(Wasn’t sure which part of history to put this in, so I just went with early Rome, about 145 CE. + Based somewhat on the plot of The Illusion.

Sorry that Ax is so out of character. I suck at both him and Tobias. And their names are changed only to make them match the timeline a little better…

Yaacov = Jake

Rachael = Rachel [duh]

Cassandra = Cassie [double duh]

Markus = Marco

Tayla = an older version of Tayler that comes from the Latin for “to cut” which I thought appropriate.

Family ties and backstories have been played with to give it a historical spin. Jake is an Israelite fresh from the ten years since a Jewish rebellion in Rome filled with all sorts of hell. Rachel was likely a slave bought in Turkey by a wealthy Dane, who later saved her master’s life and earned both a sword and freedom. Cassie is a third generation from Ionia, a once Persian province where Greeks and a large group of North African spice traders lived. Marco is a male servant of Bacchus, a religion the Romans tried outright to make illegal, so the believers would live in the woods and fields, away from cities. Perfect way to keep him at Ax’s Shoop. xD

Wow. Long ramble. Anyway…)

"He was tortured. He will need time to heal. And someone to help him remember why he even exists in the first place."

<Exists, Prince Yaacov? Why would he need to be reminded of that?>

Yaacov sighed. “Believe me, Aximili. He will. Because right now he feels like he’s somewhere far away, and the only thing holding him here is his shell. We need to try to heal what is inside if he’s to ever truly get over what Tayla did to him.”

<As you say, Prince Yaacov.>

"Please don’t call me that, Aximili. I don’t want to be taken for Simon Bar Kozeba. Son of Deception."

<I thought your people’s once-Prince’s title was ‘Son of the Star”?>

"He was, once. But not now. If my people name him such, we are tortured and crucified. He failed to lead us to our freedom, to our Homeland. And so we call him son of Deception that we do not get treated worse by our Roman lords."

I watched him walk away, stalk eyes wavering in confusion, but did not deny him.

                                             *

He was crying for his father, my brother. He’d morphed into a human for just that purpose, as his nothlit form could not shed tears. How could I comfort him? I did not understand humans half as well as I liked; they were strangers still at the best of times. Suddenly, at the sight of my friend, my shorm, in so much pain, I felt as inadequate as when I’d first learned of my brother’s death.

The trees with their bitter fruit hissed as if in pity for the human, cold and unclothed in the flattened grass of the Shoop. These humans thought that spirits dwelled in some trees, ‘olive’ trees in particular, and Markus often poured some wine at their roots in a primitive libation. Once, he’d even shrieked in terror at my practicing my tail blade fighting against a poplar, believing I would enrage their god of riches and the dead: Pluton.

In the time it took me to think these things, my nephew had stopped crying. He dragged himself up into a seated position, looking awkwardly at his limbs, as if just as unused to seeing them as I was of losing my hooves when becoming one of their species. His nails had dug into the earth like his talons, and as he rubbed viciously at his eyes, they left muddy streaks behind. I felt my tail droop guiltily. What could I do? I had been too slow to save him from torture: even though it was his idea, the thought still burned me that I’d left my greatest friend alone at the mercy of the Sub Visser Fifty-one…

I took a step forward, slowly, unsure if he wanted company or not. He was the only family I had, yet I could do nothing! Nothing to ease his pain.

His eyes opened at the sound of my hoof crunching on a fallen twig. I froze, feeling my fur bristle oddly at the strange vacancy in his eyes. Had he fallen to the same madness Markus sometimes did on his nights honouring the Wine god? I’d seen how the herbs they infused with their drink caused them to rage and dance until long into the morning light. Even his most apathetic actions didn’t worry me as those nights.

But no, my nephew’s eyes weren’t maddened so much as… flat. Mirrors into a ravaged mind. I knew then that his bird form had hidden the terror and pain from the others that he couldn’t shield now.

"Pater?" I froze. Father? Did he think I was my brother, Elfangor?

He’d crooked his arms into his lap at odd angles, and it took me a moment to realize he was merely used to bird wings more than arms. I inhaled the deathstink of fear and made up my mind, walking toward my shorm.

He shivered.

<Tobias, do not be afraid.> I felt foolish, but at the same moment, I could think of nothing more than stories told to me in my youth. Calming tales of seeing loved ones again. I needed to calm my friend down, bring him back from ‘Tartarus’ as Markus had called it.

Perhaps Cassandra’s words made more sense now than before. "Death and Sleep pass through the same gate. Their cousins Plague, Strife and Hatred make their own way up from Darkness. Despair follows, but leaves more pain than them all combined."

A descendant of Persian Ionians, I noticed that many treated Cassandra as some sort of seeress or ‘Oracle’, for her different habits and darker complexion. Rachael, the freed thrall made lady thane and her fellow traders from the north especially, calling her a ‘volva svartalvar’, or ‘dark elf fate weaver’.

For the first time I almost wondered if these primitive humans were right…

Not entirely sure what I was doing, I arched my tailblade overhead. My form is what many of my new friends called ‘like a centaur’, but seemingly, for all their understandable evolution, these creatures were far different than my Andalite brethren: being raucous, violent and lacking proper tails or stalk eyes. It was this blade that was my weapon, my shield.

I arched my tail forward, posed in a blow that could with ease take his head and end his misery.

An eternity passed where he only looked at me with glassy eyes. How long had it been? I hadn’t been measuring time as I should. he could be trapped as a human now, forever, because of my incapability in helping him.

But what was I to do? He was as lost as a vecol. His mind broken where his tail was not. Yaacov was right: he was lost somewhere still.

What use was a warrior that could not fight? His misery should be ended. I wasn’t able to kill Tayla. Rachael released her on Tobias’s command. But I could have reached her and taken her head myself… only I hadn’t. Maybe if I hadn’t paused, my shorm would be whole right now, and not lost to whatever gate Despair prowled through in the wake of her cousin, Death.

The evening breeze stirred the branches again, sunlight filtering down on the curved blade mere inches from my nephew’s forehead.

I made up my mind.

I felt detached from my own blade, somehow. Watched it arc down, turn and flatten against his brow.

He was my shorm. To kill him would be to kill myself, my greatest friend, my shield. I had to help him, even if I could only, for a moment, pretend to be my brother for him.

And so, I told my brother’s story as well as I could. As well as I could as my own four eyes began to well with tears. Tobias frowned, a faint light returning to his eyes with each verse of the tale. I had grown up on stories of Utzum, the mythological ability to impart memories through D.N.A.

But in this world, where myth was held close to the breast with truth, where a rebel prince was denied honour by those that loved him because of cruel overlords, where a slavewoman could make herself a freeman and a warrior, a servant of a god of Madness devised strategy like a master, and a woman could speak to beings unseen and muster power in a world where she was seen as outcast… in this world, who was I to deny such things if they could help the only family I had left?

I would bring him back with the father he never knew.

                                              *

I was startled, later, when I awoke to see noonday sun filtering through the trees. I had missed my morning ritual by hours.

I felt exhausted, and realized why: I had talked long into the night.

Sudden worry gripped me. How long? How long had Tobias been in human morph? He had no home, no family left. Nor did he understand humans any better than I did at times…

I rushed out of my Shoop, eyes darting around, trying to spy a huddled form on the ground. Sunlight betrayed me, making shadows and bodies where there were none.

I-

And then I heard a sound from on high. Peering up, a massive bird swirled in a lazy spiral above. I backed up in time for him to land on a branch.

His face held no emotion. Could not. It always was eerie to me, how empty and harsh those eyes were, when I was so used to Andalite eye joy.

<Hello, Aximili.> I felt a sharp joy when I heard him use my name and not my brother’s.

My eyes tilted happily. <Hello, Tobias.>

Did he know? Or suspect my sham? Hours later, he asked me of dreams, memories he could never have had. I told him of Utzum. Whether he thought I had tricked him, he never said, and I could not read the hawk’s features.