The River (LSU's Accepted) - M

[Plantae]

I'm not getting any better at my inactivity, for which I apologize to the both of you that are still active (Kirsten and Yi-wen). This is not yet dead; if it gets worse, expect a quick plot twist to use as a reason to cap this one off and start a sequel instead. Otherwise, I have absolutely no qualms against progressing with only us three, and whomever comes back.

= Joseph Faust =

"What in the hells was that?" Tryfan asked it frantically, fear and the frustration of being almost entirely inept against our most recent threat. I had to admit that the feelings rushing through my mind were not any less fierce, or straining, or frantic.

"The Fae," I breathed with force, water dribbling down my lips from our encounter, "know her." I wheezed violently as a bit of grimy water was expelled, tinted in the slightest red.

"How? What does this mean?" Tryfan asked, accompanied by an equal glance from Sara, expecting an answer of sorts.

I was fretful. I could not give them any answer that would be satisfying. "All I know is that they called her zhila; they may have even revered her in a way. Beyond this, I know nothing." I paused momentarily, and then turned to Lily, and asked her as a relief for the others. "What do you recommend we do Lily?"

She tugged at the hem of her shirt in a way that reminded me of Hela, striking me with the thought of where the fire child had disappeared to. She had the same sort of greasy feel about her, Lily did; had Hela rubbed off on her? She proceeded to respond, however hesitantly, "She came through the water..." It was all she could say, and in only a whisper. Had this threat shattered her enthusiasm so much? And then I realized... I was shivering, and not just from being drenched. It had crushed my own faith also.

I collapsed gently to my knees, grimacing slightly as the bruises met with hewn stone. "I have no plans." I told them all this, with some regret, and Sara frowned slightly.

To all of our luck, for it seemed we were growing closer as a team, Tryfan suggested, "The water, yes!" I eyed him warily at this revelation, fighting for all the will in me to suppress what I could so easily let slip to the surface in this moment of anxiety.

They must not know, yes, there was strategy coming to me. I had a feeling of dread, and the voice inside me asked, "Oh, back to your old ways so soon, Joseph? Letting yourself be exactly the bastard you've become, you are." The voice made the most of mechanical nicety, pronouncing perfectly on each syllable, and for all I could hear depicting my thoughts to a tee. I could feel that old hatred rising in me, and I fought back the words. The voice stated simply, "It gave you power." I cringed.

"Jo-" Sara stumbled and then managed to trip herself in midsentence, concealing her last syllable in a liquid-hampered splutter. "Mathias? Are you alright?" I snapped out of my reverie, and noticed that I was drenched further. I had been sweating, and my head was pressed to the chilled rock. I made attempt to recover, and said, "Just these wounds. I will be alright."

I saw with my peripheral vision that Tryfan would have none of these "wounds." He saw something in me, he could feel my weakness like he could feel the stones beneath us and the vines crawling stealthily. Never before I had met Tryfan had I considered the question, "When a tree kills in a forest, does it make a sound?" Now that question came to me like cold ice water gnashing over my teeth, frigid were my bones and my body. I was, in all respects, entirely spent; I could not stay weak like this. The worst case scenario would come to fruition if I fell to weakness- this watery enchantress- was it inevitable? And I knew it then, just as father time might know when the hourglass will stop pouring, that it would come. The day would arrive when they would know. I clenched my teeth at the thought.

"As I was saying," Tryfan said, with an honest sweetness and compassion for all of our condition, "we must avoid 'water' as if it were the plague. It is obviously part of her power." His words came to me with a broiling nausea, and I stood, swaying. I realized again that tone in his voice, and that look of pity in Sara's eyes, and that... charity... and I could scarcely suppress the desire to vomit the bird's pickings that I had eaten over the course of the last several days. Just to stain that oddly smooth stone... to create a blotch of wretched puke on that surface and to defile it would make me so satisfied. All the better, to get rid of the sickness entirely, and reassume the poise that my person usually exerted. I could not stand being on the receiving end of weakness. It made my confidence in myself drop remarkably, and my will to survive push all the harder to make up for it. I was obviously frailer than I thought, and though the group had not seen how finicky I had been eating- where they had their fill I had fallen into malnourishment.

"So I was saying," Tryfan repeated with no further patience, "she seems to get her power from the waters."

"Of course she does," I snapped. "She is the River! She brought us here! When we drowned and entered this world, it was her all along? Could you see it!? Could you not see that gorgeous temper, and the glory of the waves in her eyes? She was a walking storm... an awakened beast."

Sara trotted gently across the stones, and approached with some caution. I could tell by just her step that she had all her own person back. Her mind was again full, and I was gladdened of it. The gray of my mind, however, darkened the stage so that only the faint song of the nightingale called me back to her. My senses were at the same time brightened, and I could not understand this place anymore than I could existence. Sara caressed my shoulder, and then both, with finesse enough to make a small shock of pleasure tingle through me; I allowed her to do so for a moment, before she chose a good a time as possible to draw away from me.

"I don't think she will come back this night." Tryfan said, with some doubt, but not so much that the suggestion sounded senseless.

"You're probably right," Sara added, and I nodded quietly in assent.

"We stay here then." I uttered it with such a finality, and equal banality. I moved away from the two of them towards the cave mouth, and snapped two of the branches of the unperturbed alder sapling with ease. They were brittle to my touch, as sinewy as they should have been in a growing plant. I could smell Tryfan's wince at the plant's pain from here, and the insides of my heads flared with brimstone and fire, and I felt a small and otherwise unnoticed cackle emit from my lips. There was a quality of this new and terrible world that caught my amusement, snagged it with derision, and tossed it around. I could only join in this helpless metaphorical jig. I felt it all, quite suddenly... a new foe amongst it all. I drew in the fragrance and nodded again and again, until I was so certain.

"Here we are," I stated, approaching the other three with my head down and my hair a mangled mess over my scalp; it obscured my eyes.

"You are going to start a fire?" Lily muttered it so naively then, and further uttered, "With sticks?"

I uncharacteristically tossed one branch to the side, and looked at her with a single feral eye. It glinted, so briefly, in the moonlight. I threw back my head with the same gesture that had seen the branch to strike the cave wall at my left. I guffawed with some meter to it, rhythmic in the sort of way that the gnawing of flesh is.

"Aren't I?"

"Lily would- er, I would think so," mumbled Lily.

No one had the perception enough to follow my motion as I reached for the metal warfan that had clattered to the floor some time ago, when she had been here. It was fluid movement; it was as water.

"Our group doesn't want to be cold, does it?" The question was ambiguous in the face of a hunter. For it was, suddenly, predator and prey. The chase.

"Oh, of course not..." and I flicked my wrist nimbly, sending the metal fan careening towards "Lily." She could hardly see its iron shape in the flickering brightness of the cave, nor could she sidestep quickly enough. It was not that time froze, no, not at all. It was that everyone besides myself was far too sluggish. Sara gasped at a speed that made me scoff mentally. Tryfan drew back, horrified, but I heeded not to this, nor could the fan. It was a weapon meant to hurt. And hurt it would. She would most certainly bleed, and I would strike with unerring accuracy.

"But you aren't part of the group..." Oh, no, she most certainly was not. I had been studying her, her maneuvering, and her poise, and her scent. She was just off, and I knew this was not Lily. I did not know what happened to Lily. If this "creature" was impersonating her, she could very likely be dead. The thought was sobering, but not appalling.

And I finished coolly, with an inflection that instead suggested murderous fury. "Are you?" There was a delicious and most ghastly "slice" as weapon connected with victim. As it nearly embedded in shoulder bone, but instead scraped it away with a blow boasting razor teeth. There before us stood a shifter, a gray-skinned woman with mucky hair and a mouth gaping wide in what had not yet reached anyone's ears in the silence that pervaded my reflexes. It was the precursor, this silent mouthing.

Then, time came back to itself and her savage scream echoed gruesomely off the walls of the grotto.

=====

Oiyg is brutally injured, but only on the shoulder, and is still capable of fleeing with some difficulty. It is equally possible for her to be captured before she can return to Eleiamae, defeated, and find the stone statue that she has become.

[Emotional Faun Chiko-sai]

NB: Took control of Lily during the post... sorry to Asi if you're still around! Prepare for crap of the common or garden variety. Apologies in advance.
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Hela et al.
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Alright already we'll all float on okay.
Don't worry we'll all float on.
Even if things get heavy
We'll all float on alright...
- Modest Mouse

The Epilogue Post

[Testimony of a Young Woman Under House Arrest]

The house is warm. That's all that can be said about it. Otherwise... I'm not sure, but it unnerves me, those things that the little girl talked about. She said she was going to find her father inside the door. But there isn't a door. Or there isn't a door, now. She gave me a flint, with which I tried to keep the fire going, but since it went out a while ago it won't light up again, no matter how hard I try.
The River is bad; there are fairies, she said. They are fairies that kill humans. They will kill my friends, if I could rightly call them friends. That Mathias is a right shifty man; one never knows what he is thinking. Tryfan who apparently likes me. Sara with her righteous rage.
She said they would be killed by the new moon, and that I shouldn't go to find them. Easier to kill people in groups, she said. I should stay here in the house where it is safe. I am hungry but have found nothing to eat inside the house, so I will eventually have to venture out in search of food and water.
I borrowed her father's clothes, a reddish tunic and breeches - perhaps it could be rightly called stealing. Though it seems clear that the owner of the clothes, and of the house, won't be coming back again. The feeling is that of emptiness. I can find my way about with cat's eyes but my shapeshifting magic is unsuited to the area, which I assume is fire country where only flames and magic that burns are welcome. No water, the little girl said. Yet it thunderstormed a while ago, and is still drizzling now. An end to the supremacy of fire.
The River is reclaiming the land as its own. The fire country is dead. The others haven't been looking for me, or otherwise they are already dead. Maybe I will die soon, too.
What happened to Hela? I don't know.
What happened to the others? I don't know.
What will I do?
...I don't know.

[Testimony of Two Ravens Before the Allfather]

Yes, lord, we have found the half-giant, in a manner of speaking. He is not in Midgard, as we had suspected, but in a surreal dimension existing roughly parallel to it. It is governed by water. No, lord, not by Water Giants of Aegir's kind. It is something we, with all our thousands of years of faithful service, have never seen before. Towards humans it is malignant. Of that much we are sure. It appears that it tolerates the intrusion of beliefs to a certain extent. Our report is not concluded as soon after our discovery of his whereabouts, the half-giant appeared to catch wind of our presence, and has since disappeared from the dimension. We ourselves were forcibly ejected by the aqueous entity that we mentioned earlier.
We gather that from his domestic surroundings (he has built a hall, lord, a house) and minute observation that he has acquired a daughter. Contrary to our previous assumption, she is not a fruit of his union with the giantess Angrboda, having more of the cast of a faerie. Ostensibly, the half-giant has sealed away his chaotic inclinations. Otherwise we would have been able to locate him with ease, regardless of where he went.
We are deeply sorry for our failure, lord.

[Testimony of a Wolf Spirit Before the Allfather]

The half-giant? He brought his sons, master, and I was not able to finish off so many of them. They used a diabolical method, master, using fetishes and avatars to manifest in the chaos maze, tricking me into believing that he had killed them when in actuality they were bringing the girl to him. Naturally I could not defy Lord Fenris-wolf, my nature being similar and far inferior to his, master, but I say Sleipnir should be punished for his part in this. He is your personal charger yet he obeys the demands of his parent. I complain against this injustice, master.
Where did the half-giant and his daughter go? I can't rightly say, master. I was out cold at the time. Maybe Freki knows. He was there.

[Testimony of a Werewolf Spirit Before the Allfather]

Your humble servant begs to inform that he cowers in awe of your august presence, master. As you say, master. I will dispense with the customary inflections due to one of your rank, to ensure the clarity of my message.
I report that master's suspicions were confirmed in full, that Loki Lie-smith had indeed possessed a house within the no man's land of the River, and within this house he kept two things: a daughter and a labyrinth. The labyrinth is dimensional chaos is Lie-smith. With his departure proper from the realm it is reasonable to assert that it has gone as well. The only thing that should remain there is the house, which is now but an empty shell.
To your humble servant, master, his daughter seemed a half-wit, only capable of little tricks with flames and hiding away in holes in the manner of a mouse. It is the faerie ancestry speaking, for is it not true that most, if not all faeries, are the type that hide and sneak and slink? Titania must have not fulfilled her part of the bargain very well. But I digress, master.
A little belief goes a long way - is that not what they say, among the old gods, master? Centralized belief in you and only you. It opens up new paths. New understanding. Lie-smith played his available cards very well with his daughter as the deciding factor. While he looked for fresh worlds, to begin anew in, his daughter stayed behind, to guard the house, so to speak. To guard his labyrinth. He got his other children to help with the process when it seemed that his little belief could not escape from our pursuit of her. Apparently filial piety is the prevailing trend in operations of the heart.
This is where we failed, master, and again I beg your utmost forgiveness. Gevaudan went all to pieces the moment he saw Lord Fenrir. It could not be helped. We are uncertain of Lie-smith's current location, master, perhaps you could conduct some inquiries?
I do not know if he ever sustained any true affection for his daughter, master. There are some things even I cannot determine.

[Conversation between Blood-brothers Meeting for the Last Time]

- Are you sure of what you are doing?
- Absolupositively. Are you sure of what you are doing?
- I am not. None of us are. But there is nothing else we can do.
- How the mighty Aesir have been brought so low. That is the question. And I will dance upon your funeral pyre (if there is enough belief left for one).
- You would.
- Not out of malice, you understand. It's just that it's the done thing, for sworn enemies who were once closest of brothers. You should know. Stories and circles, that's all you move in.
- Circles are all there is left to us. We are creatures of habit, and the habit is growing ever harder to keep. All our deals are done in the currency of belief, and it is not true that there is more to share when less of us survive - our value lies most in complete sets, as a collector would say...
- I've done a bunk, is that what you're saying?
- With the vanquished gone, there is no point in there being a victor left.
- Well, that's not my problem.
- Your problem is that you never realized that you ever were beaten. It made things difficult. Complicated.
- It's very plain now that I'm the one that came out on top at the end, isn't it.
- ... Yes.
- I'm off. I'm not struggling in this hellhole a second longer. I've found a new place, and I want to be the first one there.
- Perhaps it is fitting.
- You've gone soft in your old age.
- All things must come to an end.
- Goodbye, Allfather.

[Hela's Monologue]

This is a strange place Father has brought me to, & I am worried & not a little scared, it is unstable & undefined. There are people like Miss Lily & her friends but also not like them because they haven't begun yet to believe. Father says this is a good thing & we will shape their beliefs so that I won't be just a little fire spirit any more but a Goddess of Death imposing fearsome & terrible to behold. I say that maybe I wouldn't want to be imposing fearsome & terrible to behold, & Father says that that's what every god wants to be & that I am so contrary that it would be hard for me to become one anywhere on account of other people massacring my believers who would be too pacifist to raise a finger against them, I nodded because at the time I did not quite understand, & he laughed.
Father is changed greatly, he is darker & a little harder & somehow malicious in his ways. He has told me to keep the dagger, it will be useful in time to come. He has made Plans, Plans that promise to overwhelm & envelop & encourage belief growing as if weeds on a plain. Previously I had asked Father if it was possible to open doors to other worlds here like the House. He said "No" in a final sort of voice.
There are big things happening in the world with the river on the rise. What my fire divined that night in the House was shocking & disarming all at once but here which is far away it seems now a dream a bad one now I am forgetting it, her, them, the riverine humans. I have got a new life now where I cannot reach them & they cannot reach me, & may the Lady be with them because if not they are of a certainty Dead.
I am me & I am not me, in the new land I am me with the downturned ankus & the wild hair & the grim face, handmaiden of chaos ruler of corpses priestess of fire, no longer do I hide but they hide from me. Daily my realm grows larger fuller broader & my power grows crueler colder harsher, & perhaps I am happy...

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Ref. Akutagawa Ryunosuke, In a Grove. Next post (if ever): The First Emperor's Horse

[Asilynne]

Hey all, many thanks for keeping my character alive and active :biggrin: Sorry if shes been a burden to you...I still dont have the net at home yet but things are going better for us, for those that didnt know me and Rudy moved back to VA and have been staying with my family since Nov, but soon we re going to be moving into our own place again, and when we do things will finally be back to normal lol
So dont worry I said I was coming back didnt I? ^v~ Ive read everything up til now so Im all caught up, Ill try and get back here (the library) again sometime soon and make a post, it wont be able to be every day but Im going to try at least once a week because I really like this RPG ^v^
So anyway thanks to Weasel and Plantae and Chiko-sai especially for keeping Lily alive and active. Ill try to post something soon, next time I can get up here, since Im working on some delicious ideas in my mind right now! Sorry again that its been so long since Ive been around ^-^()

[Plantae]

Oh, you have a great "your welcome" from the all of us here I am sure, Asilynne; I feel it our duty to keep the colorful Lily alive and well while you are away. I mean, if we were expected to feed your pet, it wouldn't exactly be a good idea to ignore it, now, would it? No burden at all...

I am entirely glad to hear that you are back, and wait for your posts; I am without care as to how sparse they may be, for it will make each one all the more valuable. Here is to hoping for consistent internet access in the future! Just ignore that five-day rule.

All and all, "delicious ideas" certainly grabs my interest. I am sure you will not disappoint.

I must forewarn all of you of several things in this coming post. One, it takes an unnecessarily large amount of words what could be said in several sentences, and two, I make an attempt at some poetry with a bit of a syllable pattern; three, and finally, it is so offbeat it may be vulgar (probably my intention in some backwards way). There is an abridged summary at the end, but I'm sure those left are those that want to read the original.

= Oiyg =

That metal, tearing… my shoulder blade! What ferocity, oh how it gave me pause and in me new cowardice awakens, or is it the old? I care little for any of it, and desperately wish that I can escape this horrid place with these horrid people. Why have they attacked me? I have been fitting in so well… how does he know me? He must smell the marshes, those dangerous climes with their dangerous mistress. Ah, ah, Elly. She has sent me on a mission that could get me killed! I have been hit on the shoulder blade, but what cruel things could still happen to me? I am filled with what tastes like bile, an emotion that boils over every fiber of me… my heart… my soul- if I have one; it covers the supreme ache that is rattling through every inch of me with that last strike, which had seemed so calm, the eye, but had really been no less than the wall of some great storm. I can hear the thunder crash, and I remember that age past when I had been a tree, when I could not flee from the lightning bolt which bore down upon me. I remember burning; I can feel that itch on my skin. Then, I begin to slowly understand this vile tongue of flame which ravages my heart. I see her, and words come to my mouth. I spit “Witch!” And I recognize it, finally. The overwhelming feeling inside of me abates and I know it as my own. It is no longer foreign. It is mine. My own. My [i]hate. And suddenly, what I have seen as a world so good and new, so fragile and so balanced, so beautiful, has been torn to shreds and the last vestiges of my constitution fall away. “So sickened am I! Poor, poor, Oiyg! She is but small!" I tell this to anyone that listens, and know not if the terrible words even escape my mouth.

“Ahgh! Roargh!” I scream, the words… they tear themselves from my mouth until they are hardly words, and more beasts, all of their own spirit, which yell alongside me. A chorus, a cacophony of fatal fury is the creatures and I. Oiyg had only wanted to be a friend, and then the Fae and then Elly, temptress and trickster, the queen of them- now I want vengeance, and to answer to no master. I tap deep into the reserves of power, power that I would not have known- power awakened not by practice, no- and glorious energy which I had not known existed. It is like a floodgate unlocked, spilling relentlessly onto a wary hamlet below, but not cautious enough was this thorp, for it was swallowed away and the blood of a nation mixed with the waters of yore. The waters that had flowed beneath me for long, oh the waters which were my nutrient, my lifeblood, and the strand of them that entered the marshes; I was glad they had boiled, I hope for it all that her words were true and that Elly’s home was but a searing and frigid waste.

I imagine with the mind of a child, and will the transformation with the control and need for dominance of an adult. I am between them now, no longer so naïve, but yet enough to be of little worth. My own dirty face melts away, for I am but a puny child with a strange rage, but my countenance will not be taken so lightly; no, Oiyg would not be taken lightly! I burst with, “No she will not! Oiyg is not… a… CHILD!” I see no longer the light of the world, no Oiyg does not! Oiyg grows! Growing I am!

“Kill the betrayer! Kill the betrayer!” Do I say it, or do those ridiculous humans? It is so vicious, it could have been the either of us. I want to be that kind of monster. I want to hate and to maim, decapitate, eviscerate, slaughter, butcher!

What wiles has she! What wiles this Elly. “Whore!” I say, and repeat, “Whore!” I taste the viciousness of the word, this insult is so new! I cackle, and I cackle to the extent that they only stare do the humans. I wipe a single dainty finger on my wound, still chuckling insanely, and bring the finger to my lips where I taste it with a dodgy smile. I guffaw with the force of a sneeze, and then I do sneeze- blood. It flies from my nose and strikes the ground with a ”kershplat.”

I speak with a new authority now, a masculine tone and an underlying, offbeat meter with the touch of the unseen dark. “Foul, worthless humans! Oiyg is good and nice! Oiyg is kind and fun! But no, Oiyg is not good enough! Oiyg is too stupid! Elly says she is, I sees it in her eyes! I sees her disgust! Her grossiness, that ugliness! That hideous smile! I see it in my mind! I see her charms! I see her and I see you and I see me and I see blood! I see your blood, and her blood, and the world’s blood intermixed and splattered all over like a beautiful… pretty… portrait. Of me! Of Oiyg! Oiyg so red in her anger! Oiyg turned and repulsive!”

I cannot even stop to catch my breath, for my devilish need. For my need to blast them all, to force all these thoughts from my mind. It expel it in a merciless and meaningless burble, a bubbling like the bubbling of a pot cooking human flesh, I speak like a true cannibal, “Ger-ee-oo-ar-ga-ee-a-er-en-ee-oo-ga-la-argh!” It feels to Oiyg ridiculous, but is terrible to behold! The desperate incantation invoked by a lost child, the final straw of a human mind breaking; or maybe the same straw, dipped in a vat of swirling guts and bile, and disintegrated in the wake of a tumultuous premonition of doom.

A sulfurous vision of death, and the truth of enslavement, and how we all fall in the scheme of the world. Gods and men, men and gods, and the damnable creatures that live in a pseudonatural space adjacent. Twisted, mutated and unwanted. That is how Oiyg feels! Forlorn, and why should she be! She will force herself in, force herself into a body, and into a niche, no matter how sadistic that niche may be.

And a raw, crimson mask
It flows over the fangs
The liquid dripping from
Is never to be known

Wrong is the image seen
By human eyes who now
Want blindness in their hearts
Their souls to put to rest

Never again shall see
The horrors such as these
Fingers, long claws and sharp
Razors that cut too deep

The body of one young
Now turned something ancient
For it smells rotted, gone
The nostrils cry in pain

The wolves they run in fear
Succubi are in tears
A being, tentacled death
Chaos breathed into life

=

The grin- a great toothy maw- of a terrible thing lights the dawn. The rising sun is crimson, the falling moon has gone out like a candle; only whispers in the dark, whispers and the growls of a being- a hideous, satanic creature. It bellows, and no longer speaks even mangled vernacular. The coming day has begun, and a child has died.

And from the body has risen a monstrosity.

=====

I realize that was not at all lucid. Oiyg has fallen far into transformation, and will recognize no other. She is still keen to run should it be needed, and is more set on Elly’s insides on a platter, but will be satisfied with a couple dead humans should she be provoked. She has shown her demon nature, and it is most certainly not pretty.

She cannot sustain the form forever, a short time actually, and will fall into a coma or barely have the strength to flee after it is ended.

As for her exact appearance (and possibly powers), I'll let your imaginations decide.

[Asilynne]

Thanks Plantae, heres hoping I dont disappoint! And congrats on the grungy bloodladen post and poetry, deliciously demonic LOL ^,-,^
Ive got less than an hour so here goes, I planned most of this out in my head already so I hope it looks as good written out as it did in my head!
I also tried my hand at a little bit of poetry in here, though its not long and pretty simple I hope you guys like it!

~~~Lily O'Keefe~~~
Alone where the flames dream...

There it is, those familiar trees...the trees my childhood mind called home. Back before the world told me I had to be civilized, back before I became a creature of technology and gasolene. A plastic shell that thrives and breathes on the whim of society.
It was less complicated back then.... I knew who I was, knew the way the world worked. I knew the pulse of the earth, as each tree breathed with its own rhythm. I laugh as I remember, but it is not Lily the Adult I hear, it is Young Lily, the Lily born of the Earth, born like a tree which knows not the fast pace of "human" life. Born like a songbird or a deer, who dont know roads and fences, dont know property lines or boundaries. All I knew was the earth in its entirety, all that was nature was my home. I climbed the highest trees before I knew it was dangerous and not "lady-like", I ran headlong in the woods and rolled in the grass before I knew I would "get dirty". As if that were a bad thing!
Though part of me knows I am still in that house of Fire, that I had been Adult Lily for far too long and that I could never go back to these woods I knew as a child, I still delight in every moment. The River World had been in my head too, but I found myself in it, so this is no different.
But suddenly I hear a voice, a voice that didnt belong to the Woods of Young Lily. A voice that I have only heard in the River World, singing a song that spoke to the inner reaches of my heart.

Every year I die,
And every year reborn am I.
My life entwined
With every leaf
and every vine
This is my belief.
My soul is nature divine.

Reaching the small clearing where I always set up my little forest home, I see him.

Tryfan.

In my childhood spot...how could he know where this is? Why is he here? Seeing me as Young Lily, he smiles, but he does not rise from his seat on my favorite branch. Before I can think to ask the questions that run through my head, he speaks, and his voice is like the whisper of the wind in the trees, and then I know. I know what he says is true.

"I am Young Lily's favorite tree. I am the woods you ran in, I am the stream you jump across. I am the path you took just now. I am the woods. Call to them, Lily, and I will hear you. Call to nature and I will come."

Call....


I woke up with a start, to find the flames in the fireplace still flickering as they were a moments ago. I was dreaming, I felt that stronger now, but part of Young Lily, the part of her that had been strangled and smothered by my hectic adult life, was alive again. Before I had just accepted I would probably die in this strange house, die without anyone knowing or mourning my passing, and I had not cared. But now I was Not Quite so Adult Lily, I wanted to live, but most of all I knew what I knew back then.

No four walls could ever hold me.

I would find a way out, and that dream had made me remember how. Tryfan had said if I needed to contact him I just had to ask the forest and he would hear. He must have powers similar to mine, born of this River World, and while mine were dampened by this house of Fire Magic, it couldnt dampen my natural spirit. My spirit always called to the forest, it always gave me strength and a sense of well being. And while I could not take one of my animal forms I could use my human self, as I had in days long past.

Calling forth Young Lily to help me, I threw my head back and howled like a wolf as loud as I can. Wolves had always seemed to me to be the essence of nature itself, wild, untamed, killers at times but also gentle towards their own. I hoped their call would stir the heart of the forest, and I hoped Tryfan would feel the call. Though I didnt know what he could doto help, somehow, it would feel better if he knew I was still alive. Reguardless of how long that would be, it would feel good to know I wasnt alone. Hela had said not to follow her, and indeed I couldnt with the disappearance of the door, but I was also worried about her.

And if Tryfan didnt come.....I knew what I could do. But it was dangerous, and I wasnt even sure if it were possible. Life was described as something that displayed at least two of the following: Ability to breathe, to consume something for nourishment and to leave waste, to reproduce, and there were more...why couldnt I remember what Ive learned? It didnt matter, because the form I was thinking of displayed all of these.
I would wait til the flames turned to embers before I attempted, that would surely give him enough time to come, if he heard. And if I tried to take this form....would I know myself? Would I be able to become Lily again? I didnt have the answers, to anything. But I knew one thing.
This house would not hold me here, and if I had to die, I was taking it with me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Im going to PM you Plantae because I need to ask permission about this "form" Im talking about LOL
Hope you dont mind me calling Tryfan, Weasel ^v^

[Drusilla]

Ooh, I'm back! Sorry, things have been crazy, but hopefully after Mardi Gras life will settle... or maybe not, since my birthday is coming up and my friends and family want to do something big, apparently. Dunno. I'm trying to catch up, but I'm kind of dumb right now... More about that later, I guess; I want to finish reading right now.

[Weasel Overlord]

Short. Apologies. Hope that's okay for you, Asilynne!

[color=palegreen]~Tryfan Wen~
...when the forest calls, I answer | the forest burns...but I come...

The wind whispered through the trees, and I listened. After the horrors of the cave, my heart being broken and then rapidly re-mended after Mathias’ surprising revealing of Hela and her even more surprising transformation and escape.

Something had told me that she was not truly Lily...something called and whispered in my mind. Like the gentle touch of a willow branch on my shoulder.

But this time...flames licked about the edge of my imagination. Hot, threatening flames and I could hear the forest screaming...

But these screams had undertones of something much more dangerous...Someone else was screaming too...

red...blood, scorched wood...

screaming...trees screaming...the ancient Alder but a stump, a pile of cinders forlorn and alone, dampening in the sad rain...

“Lily!” I broke from my reverie, ready to answer the whispered message. I grasped my spear and charged out of the cave, managing to keep my footing despite the headlong rush.

“Lily...” I panted as I ran, a sense of urgency pushing me onwards, ever faster, never tripping.

Sure-footed as a cat, I skidded to a halt outside an old house. The Alder had told me of it, heeding my desperate cry as I ran.

Brandishing my spear at any dangers, I padded through the old doorway. Lily sat beyond.

I knew it was her. I could smell her. Like a divine flower she sat, huddling in front of the embers, a look of desolation on her face.

I coughed gently, to let her know I was there and she turned.

“I knew you were coming...” She smiled. “I’m glad you’re here...I don’t like this house.”

“I told you I’d come if you called...”

[Plantae]

Prepotency

A robin pecked curiously at the statue that had appeared overnight, and warily too, for it had heard the songs of the Fae, and their power, and it had grown an intelligence by it; the bird was not so capable as to comprehend exactly the relationship between the two, but it had all the caution for this unknowing. For the marshes had boiled, or so it had felt when it had dipped a talon in them by accident, a talon which it nursed yet today; it knew not, again, to make connections, but the poor avian had instincts and they told it that the air about this place was wrong.

Still, lacking quite the intelligence to flee, and the area proving free of predators, it sat more than a little gleefully on the head of the strange rock and groomed its feathers.

And then, an hour later, it saw her- it knew her. It fled to the wind in an instant, not in time to see that wicked being touch the carving mercilessly.

It did not see her ruthlessly whisper a siren’s sing-song word, and nor did the robin stay so long as to hear her say, “Awaken to my service,” for it was in such a horrid tone, who would have listened willingly?

But a sculpture had no will, and was forced to listen to all over the ravages of time- for a sculpture did not live.

And then it did, it lived and it breathed, and a nymph found herself no longer in sleep. She was alone, forlorn, but she felt that presence in her mind, that faint call that demanded in a hideous and needy murmur. It was but a single deed that Eleiamae must accomplish, and then her freedom was granted upon her.

“Kill the shape-shifter.”

= Oiyg =

In the mind of a beast, there was no solace, and so it was for Oiyg. Her bloodshot eyes bore into the humans left, but in her own rage she lost track of the betrayer. She lamented this with a howl, for he had merely run past her. In presence of mind she might have asked, "How could this be?" But in this monstrous form, she could only ask "Where could he be?" And even then it was garbled in her own mind, and she instead put herself straight to work against another foe, for her memory faded... Oiyg could not remember shifted where the betrayer was, even which one of them was he. Her mind had devolved into simplistic notions.

Two humans, twenty feet from-

Trail, smells like human...

Scent on wind, nymph-

Nymph striding towards...

Paths to contemplate, so she took the closest. She extended a tentacle in her confusion and swiped lackadaisically affront her. Oiyg did not strike a human, and so she glared as she smelt the wound still gaping and still bleeding in her new form.

But it was regenerating quickly. She had awakened a new power, and the so she was not distracted in the least.

And then it overpowered her again, that ebb of thoughts from beyond. Eleiamae...

The beast turned and fled, rushing towards the hills and then the wetland below them. Through the forests, crushing saplings and hearing their death cries. Crushing all in her way, for there was only one way- to kill Elly.

A fleeing robin was devoured with a gaping maw, for she saw none of what she was doing. Bugs flew into her mouth too, and there in that acidic grin they met their demise.

She gnawed her way through underbrush that proved too difficult, and chased the smell- but it was not so hard, not a challenge she felt. She realized again that the creature, temptress, nymph was coming to her. A sane Oiyg might have called her a fool. The insane thing spawned from her wondered what nymph flesh tasted like.

It was a curiosity then, how in sudden bated breath it sat like a massive shaggy dog- it did have, though, several key differences.

First, the demon Oiyg did not have fur. Second, she had no ears. Third, no tail. And lastly, the two of them looked nothing at all alike- for Oiyg was in a ravaging fury, frenzy, a maddening state... but yet she waited.

= Joseph =

It had left, and they had lived. He embraced Sara but had no trouble suppressing tears. She, in contrast, let a single fall, the rest abated either by that she was strong or by that she was terrified. He had no means of discerning which.

With each movement he rejoiced more, and then, as it took him further, to the pool where he saw his matted face and the fuzz now sprouting off it, a new idea was wrought into his mind. "You missed a challenge," was his sentiment. "You cannot fight your own demons or another." He reminded this voice, for which he spat on mentally, that it had ran from him. And he drew himself up proud, and broodingly stirred the pool with the stick he had tossed aside.

It was strange by any means, for it was as if he stirred a cauldron of some foul substance. So he stopped, and then he vomited in all his distress and for the blood he had seen. Was it his delusion?

It was no delusion. And so, with a war fan since dropped, he decided his power was at no pinnacle. He wanted value in this world, and he would cleave it from his own blood. Therefore he would, and he slashed his own arm without care, bracing it and then squeezing his crimson sacrifice into the pool. He imagined he had cut not his own arm, but that it was Zhila's. He willed it, in empathy, and the floodgate was opened.

He swore he heard a feminine cry of pain in the distance, and he smiled as Sara knelt down beside him. She looked aghast at the wound, and then more as it healed. It could only mean when a runic scar twisted about it, that the magic had been done to good effect.

And then he laughed, but the bellowing and giddy echo was not his. Joseph claimed to his mind that he hoped that his act had hurt her, and so he explained to Sara, "I may have harmed Zhila. She may not be so... invulnerable." Her gaze questioned, but he shook his head, and gestured with a shrug that he could no more inform her as to what it had been that he did.

And then the other part of him delighted in it, and though he tried, in finality he was only disillusioned with it. He knew that if that wracking wail had been Zhila's, or maybe if his magic had gone awry- if it had done the damage at all- he would dig further and make room for little else.

He wanted to inflict death upon Zhila, who had the same intentions as to this group of humans? No, Joseph merely wanted to prove he could kill- or was it again?

And then the mask was put on, and he denied it all- and voiced to Sara, "We ought to find Tryfan." Lying came second nature to him, so when this declaration came sprinkled in worry, it was hardly surprising that in reality he would have said it with not an ounce of care.

Joseph's cares were more carnal.

=====

[Drusilla]

Sara Raize
...promise me they will never see the fear within our eyes...

I stared at the wound, now scarred over, that Joseph had made on his own arm... and the shock started to sink in.

The silence of shock is overwhelming; it isn't real silence, only self-made; to block out all other stimuli while your mind tries to cope. It was like I was stuck in a vacuum; I could see, but didn't, I could feel, but didn't... so it was for all of my senses. My mind was numb, weak, unguarded.

I floated in, whatever it was, the thing that wanted me. It hovered in my subconscious, melting into the shadows of my mind while I was defenceless. I knew it was there... but I couldn't stop it. No, I could, but I didn't. The darkness became one with my own, deepening the taint of my own soul, feeding on my weakness. Preparing...

"Sara, did you hear me?" Joseph whispered, a slightly concerned look in his eyes. I looked at him, face slack, eyes cold, empty. I had heard... but, yet, I hadn't. I just stared at him, empty, observing him in every aspect... but never let him see that there was anyone home.

"Sara?" The concern intensified, slightly, a slight shadow crossed his face as he looked into my empty, soulless eyes.

Mustn't ignite his curiosity. Mustn't draw his attention too greatly... Keep him at bay, Sara, keep him at bay...

"I'm fine," I whispered, by voice slightly rough, like in the past few moments I had forgotten how to use it. I kept my face blank, but his worry remained. Quickly, I smiled slightly, and he seemed to relax. He hadn't notice that the smile didn't reach my eyes...

"Let's find Tryfan," he repeated, and I nodded, standing like one with no individual purpose, no mind of her own. I followed him out of the shelter of the cave, and into the trees... but I turned and disappeared into the forest, without a sound, leaving no trace. I did track him, however, able to hear, able to almost smell his movements. I hunted him, waiting to see how long it would be until he realised that I was no longer there, no longer following him like a well-trained dog. I was no one's dog, not even to the shadow.

The shadow called to me, but it would wait. I wanted to hunt Joseph for a while longer...


There, Sara's off on her own little adventure... I've got a subplot for this, so no one's going to see her for awhile... and it'll buy me time to finish up at school and not worry about keeping anyone waiting... ^_^;;

[Asilynne]

Sorry for the loooong wait, Ive had this in my mind for awhile but havent been able to get up to the library recently. The reasons why are a very long story which I will post in my journal come April when hopefully Ill have net access once again ^-~
Anyway here goes, itll probably be long so hopefully Ill get to do everything I have planned before I run out of time!

~~~Lily O'Keefe~~~
The definition of life is blurred

The last flickering flame had died, had turned into a pile of faintly glowing coals, like gold nuggets shining with a light of their own. He wasnt coming. Either he wasnt able to or he had not heard. Maybe this house was in a time apart, maybe time didnt pss here as it did on the outside. This house was full of mysteries, not one of them could I even begin to figure out. But one thing I knew for sure; If I was getting out of here alive it would have to be by my hands.
I would not die here, that was what I had decided. And if I died here, this house would die with me, engulfed in flames. One way or another. But I put such things out of my mind as I focused on what I was going to do. If it could even be done.

Fire. It had the traits that defined life. It fed upon wood. It created waste in the form of carbon and charcoal. It breathed oxygen, and it reproduced. But did it have a mind, did it have what I needed to BECOME it? I would find out, though the thought frightened me a bit. Would I still know myself if I managed to do this? Would I be able to come back? Shaking my head I cleared away those thoughts too.

Dont be afraid, remember Young Lily. She would never doubt her own abilities.

Taking a deep breath I moved my hands near the coals and concentrated, focused on the image of fire, on its life force. And suddenly, the question of whether it was possible or not leapt from my mind. Fire shot up my hands. No, not UP my hands, for my hands were no longer there. Instead was five fingers of flame attached to a column of fire that ended at my elbows. There was no burning sensation, just the feeling that every molecule in my arms were surging, exploding, dying and then being born in fractions of a second.

The fear I had squelched down came back as I stared at what I had done. Images of Helas sewn on dead legs flashed though my mind. What did I do? Will I, Will I be lik her now, is this how that happened? In a panic I tried to make my arms back to normal, but in vain. The fear clouded my concentration, I couldnt do it, and that only made me even more afraid.

Im a FREAK! Oh goodness why did I try this?! What good will it come if I get out, if Im a freak?!?

I leapt to my feet, fear giving me speed and recklessness. Running to one of the walls, I attempted to pound my fists into the wall, screaming when they went through and set the wall aflame. Backing into a corner on my hands and feet, I only succeeded in catching more of the dry wood on fire, but the fire seemed to rest like a carpet on the ground. Regaining my senses for the moment upon seeing such a strange sight, I looked at the wall I had caught on fire. A door had opened up where once there wasnt one, and not caring how it happened I bolted for it.

Diving through I hit the ground and rolled, laying motionless for a moment as I caught my breath. I was out. I was free. That was the only thing on my mind.

And then the smoke hit me. Looking around I saw that the grass was on fire. The dry brittle brown grass had easily caught when my flaming arms touched them, and the fire was quickly spreading to the lifeless trees. No.... I thought, cursing myself once again for my foolish attempt.

I wanted to cry, wanted to put my face in my hands and cry for what Ive done, but I knew that would be equally foolish for more than one reason. So I just sat, sat as the forest burned around me, as the doorway into the house gaped open, until I heard a voice I had been waiting hours to hear.
"Lily..." Tryfan burst through the flaming treeline and stopped. I quickly put my hands behind my back as I heard him, ashamed that I had been the one to cause so much destruction. Unbidden, a smile came to my face as I saw him.

“I knew you were coming...I’m glad you’re here...I don’t like this house.” I said the last sentance with a choke in my voice. It was a great understatement but relief always brought that out in me.

"I told you Id come if you called," he said, and I looked away, my face growing as hot as my hands. What he said, or the way he said it, made me shy, though I didnt exactly know the reason for it. Standing up I took a few steps towards him, wanting to tell him what happened but being afraid to. He didnt know me well, and I felt like a monstor. What would he think?

".....Im.....sorry..." I started, and he movd closer. "What are you sorry about.....Oh Lily---youre on fire!" He started to take off his shirt to beat out the flames when I stopped him. Moving my hands up in front of me I held them out. Firey fingers spead from arms made of flame. I looked into his disbelieving, startled eyes, mine full of grief and sadness, and tried to stay strong as I choked on my words.

"I...dont know if I can turn them back....."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hope thats ok, I wasnt sure about all of the things with the Fire House ^-^() Sorry Weasel :X Halfway through this post I realised a few details arent completely the same between ours so I hope you dont mind that I took some liberties with the part when Tryfan found her. I didnt change too much but still -.-() Hope its ok ^-^()

And sorry if it sounds all sappy and such! LOL I didnt want it to sound too 'Lifetime Channel' XD
Anyway I have less that 15 minutes left so until next time ^v~

[Plantae]

Everything is fine, Asilynne, quite certainly; I much liked it. The following is a filler, to forewarn. It only hints at Sara's possible actions mostly, Drusilla, if you wish to say they are otherwise.

= Joseph =

The very timbre of Sara's steps, careful but still rustling... it was damn fine. That soft padding, feminine, wanted my passions for it. She thought herself sly enough to hide from me; certainly, I could conjecture that she could not quite understand just what magic had done to my senses, now of which I had to withhold some of their power to avoid being harmed by the cacophony of sounds and sights that would otherwise reach my eyes and ears.

No, I could most certainly feel her. I could have known she had left my side in a fog, in the night, in a crowd- anywhere at all I could have known her- but there was a sudden difference. It ebbed from her, her position in the woods beyond, my having realized the instant she departed; with the single act, this ambidextrous feat- for she was no longer now a lapdog- I realized again that she was not some girl, she was a woman. She was a woman like Eleiamae, as was Lily a lady the same, and she was a dame like Zhila. The thought was sobering... so I let her play the game, mantis and her mate, for but a time. I felt, though, that her presence with me was not complete; she was fleeting but by the smell of her, and it would be only moments until she was called away. The question was, then... by what?

And walk on I did. I amused myself by talking nonchalantly with a flippant comment of, "Where do you think he could have possibly gone?" She lurched as she followed, thinking now would be when I noticed, but another footfall or two. I let it ring rhetorical.

So, pit-a-pat and a slouch, a mopey gait was mine. And then I queried, "Whereof has your mind gone Sara? You seem yet bothered... oh what is it by?" Then, as surely as she did before, she thought she knew I would recognize her gone then. Certainly, then, when no answer came to a simple question, I would see?

But then I followed, looking out ways from where she would have been standing before if she had followed instead of playing in the trees, and making it for all the world be as if I could not yet tell she was there. For it was at that instant I said, "I understand your not responding... it is hard here, what a strange world. Leastways, I think, the dread of never reaching home. I know you know it." She must have thought she made me a fool, by talking to my imaginary companion; however, though I might have been a jester, I was certainly not the joke. I was making it.

So I continued with a sigh and a laugh, a deep and simple laugh, for which it resonated to her as what would have been my... anxiety at our human condition. But the words, the wicked witch, the magic- the whole of it surely- it was all simplicity to me. When compared to here, back there was nothing and never again. I had no desire to be sane if to be insane was to want, with every fiber of my being... well, it was.

And so I thought aloud: "What time hath passed now for the time we have had here, you think, Sara? Hours, minutes, days, years? In all the novels I have seen, movies- the heroes were always out of time, were they not?" There was no answer but the woods woman Sara anticipating the discovery she was gone, oh so I could think by her fidgeting. I let her, hopefully astonished; she might ponder if I would finally identify her disappearance. But the question hung in the air, and I hoped... nay... I thought I knew that she was taking notes. Judging my tone and manner, and thinking to reach my personality due to this; therefore, I "woefully" looked skyward and conjectured, "But are we really heroes? I sure hope so, do you not?"

With a delicate caliber, I spun at this, and for a second Sara beneath the canopy flinched when my eyes touched exactly at her position. But this was only in my peripheral vision, for which I thought she was likely to think she was still well-camouflaged. She was not, as it was, and merely giving mimicry; mimicking the superior senses of me, but that was arrogance, and so I let the act go on while dismissing this as such.

"Sara?" It was the whimper of a lost fawn.

"Sara?" It was a wailing child, me as the babe and her mother who had been but by my side seconds ago; it was the most severe sort of deception, me pretending myself distraught… alone and the weaker for it.

I sped back the path, to the cavern of afore. I searched it high and low, my dignity failing; I let her think she had beaten me in such a way. I made it a show, the whole of it. I let her be the ventriloquist, and me the unwitting puppet, running about frantically searching for his lost head… and then solemnly I sat down in the center of the cave, on a rock as comfortable as one at Eleiamae’s… where was the Dryad? And then with a marvelous efficiency, but still slowness… like slowly turning on a radio… I picked up signal of Sara’s leaving beyond. In my reverie she had left from the woods, thinking now she had tricked me.

With this knowing I let my body wait but several seconds, tingling all the way. Then, with all haughtiness, I rolled on the floor in sadistic laughter. A cackling smile and a face contorted with the pain of speaking such ridiculous circumstances.

Then that flare of humor was out: I realized that I had lost Sara to the shadows of the great oaks and aspens, the alder saplings and pines. I would have never admitted to anyone that for that one, single, solitary shake… I came so close to feeling forlorn.

=

I had set off an hour ago. I had gone towards the marshes… for several seconds, and only in their general direction, before deciding explicitly and perfectly that Hela’s house was the best place to look. It was not a hard decision. I could see the smoke from where I stood.

Scenarios ran through my mind of what could have possibly happened, and when I said ran, I sincerely meant “walked at a brisk pace,” for I could only imagine myself as being entirely concerned with what had gone on there. I had the sneaking suspicion that whatever it was, Lily was alive; Hela was a fire creature, too, so I would be equally surprised should she be dead. I would be quite shocked actually.

And so I was when I arrived, out of the blue, Tryfan not seeing my approach: I was quiet and there were few plants that could stand these deadlands.

For a moment I lingered, but I was by his side soon, dropping what meager possessions I had, for I had only my weapon. And then I picked it up as promptly, paranoid. I witnessed firsthand the grief and sadness, and then the fire, and I held my head through it. I gave a feeble “What’s happened?” I was told, not necessarily all, and I bore into that flaming flesh of Lily’s.

I could only imagine what fun the river Zhila would have. She could put out a bonfire with the flick of her wrist certainly. Then I realized how right I was, and how vulnerable she was, and wondered for all the worlds where such a pre-eminent creature as that trying to slaughter us had gone in this time. I was curious.

It was but a bit until I decided with elegant simplicity that I did not want to know.

=====

[Weasel Overlord]

wow...long long time...so sorry it took so long guys...

[color=darkgreen]~Eleiamae~

All I remembered was the overwhelming feeling of greyness. It had surrounded me, engulfed me, until I was but a shadow of my former self. Lost on a wave of cold, grey madness.

I had embraced the feeling of closeness to the Earth, my immobile body a weight in the ground to be weathered, pecked, sat upon. No-one would know of my existence.

No-one had ever cared.

Encased in stone, riding the grey madness, I lost all care for my world. All the care that I had found in the last times...who knew when? Time lost all meaning as stone.

A single phrase of mine reverberated through my mind, carrying ominous warnings.

”I am STONE!” Perhaps I had asked for this.

The River, Zhila herself, had chosen to answer my prayer with a twisted sense of mercy.

But it had not worried me.

At least...not until the ground had become to shake with the tremors of transformation.

They shook my grey form, waking me from the madness long enough for a little worry to seep through.

Worry. A thinking, feeling being’s emotion. Stone I may have been, but after those tremors, I knew there was another part of me. The part that was hunted, almost by the land itself.

A memory or power seeped back. Power, not over useful things, but over emotions and playing with people, and illusions and glamours.

But still. They were me. And a great cracking had filled my awareness.

Light flooded into my grey life, illuminating my madness, my torpid, unchanging nature.

And I hated it. And I struggled as a faun struggles to stand for the first time, until I was free of my prison to find...her.

She. Zhila. The River herself, stood before me. And my mind was bent to her will, almost with no effort did she win me to her cause.

The shape-shifter must die.

My apprentice. Oiyg.

It was the her tremors I had felt, as she realised her great power, her great revenge. She was bent on killing me, and I, feeling once again the ever living emotion of worry, was worried.

What could my powers do to her, now she had reached her full potential? It was futile, and Zhila, exhibiting her cruel mercy once again, had set me on a course which would surely be my destruction.

And now. Now she came. And I was to be destroyed.

Clenching my fists and closing my eyes, I raised my arms in a summoning gesture. My own powers may not be much help, they could never rival those of Zhila, after all, but those under my dominion are less vulnerable than myself.

I felt the motions in my waters as my creatures answered my calls. Snakes swirled about my feet, joined by leeches, and small birds perched on my shoulders and any available area of skin they could find.

The waters at my feet rushed in anticipation. It had been a long while since I had called upon them for purposes other than scrying.

And Oiyg came.

She strode, terrible and changed beyond recognition towards me, a dreadful light in her eyes.

With a gasp, I recognised the madness behind her glare, not dissimilar to my own. Bowing my head, I flicked my wrist once, muttering under my breath.

The gloomy water eddied at my feet, leaping in a parody of Zhila’s power.

I bid the liquid take form of a shield, and, just once, wished for a weapon of substance. Something comfortingly heavy in my hands, one that could wound, nay, kill, with a movement of my arms.

Sighing quietly, I closed my eyes once more. Battles are more the better conducted blind.

My hearing improved without the distraction of sight and I felt the marshes move about me.

“We are on my ground, little one.” I placed as much seduction in my voice as was possible without my hesitation showing through.

“Why do you chase me so? It is not possible for you to win.” A snarl. A rush of wind as her head turned to me.

No longer capable of living thought, it seemed, she had degenerated to become animalistic, almost back to her roots.

My lip twitched at this reference to her past, for it had been obvious to me that she was almost one of my own kind. Not a Naiad, no, but a Dryad, almost. The spirit of a tree, or maybe even the tree itself.

The natural magic had always seemed stronger in her, pointing towards her fauna nature.

She was a part of the forest, I was part of the marsh. My waters were her sustenance, her branches gave life to my creatures, places to live. We were joined, but not so joined that I would hold back.

She wanted my destruction, whatever the cost, it seemed. But I felt no flicker of guilt, her predicament was of my doing, after all, but I had never been bothered by such matters.

“Child...” My voice was gentle, maybe I could get through to her, though doubt was strong in my mind.

“There is no need for such violence...such killing.” I sensed anger at my words, and a wave of mistrust and hatred washed over me as Oiyg screeched.

She screamed, loud, bestial, no longer herself.

And I felt pity.

[Plantae]

= Oiyg =

What courses the length of a demon, the life that drives it, is no soul as it was with Oiyg perverted and piteous. It was the tastes of the wild and for the first time in an age she bathed in the transcendence of control, not conscious to thoroughly enjoy it. She was feral now- slave to instincts but no other. And so she paced a trot-a-trot here there and gave forth her unhindered calm lacking with a snarl and a snip. She nibbled at the birds that flocked around her here, the mind-infiltrating wench that she no longer knew. Oiyg knew this Eleiamae- for in vivacity it was made clear how no cruelty was well-suited to the word “Elly-“ and the thing of her knew this being could in all sanity be too much for her. But she would still taste crimson. She would still taste scraggly reed hair and pallid marsh flesh if only in a snap and only for a time until she died herself (or it most proper). Though the land stretched far to the fogs and back to the fire lands around her, she had but one intention so cemented that she was a creature in a corner. It was her devotion and her own possession that drove her limbs to funny maneuvers. That if she were slated to fall, fated though there was free will and no such destiny, that she would leave this plane as she had come to it: no, not of seed, but from the crashing thunder, now bequeathed by her gestures, and with a lightning strike.

It was the green and the strangers among it. It could be all and nothing in the peat bogs of their hearts, beating rhythmically and the Oiyg-bastard’s a bulls-eye in its un-soft screeching meter. It would be driven there, the stake, but now the grotesque hide was closed but a scratch-chest, possible premonition of that to come. It was the waters, oh those with their whimsical vicissitude of swirls and swaths of frothy muck for which the scum of this place dwelled. If ever there was a river where the devilish mistress of the place did dwell, not of the marsh but of this world, that Zhila, it would be likened pure. But there was no such perfection. For even if it was white rapids and calm chaos, a hodgepodge of the highest quality in the liquid that put a bottled counterpart in an ever-growing ever-distant world to shame, it could never be. For the taint of sin scraped bottom ever-more and nevermore would life inhabit; it was wrong for that it was only portent to an immortal and for it lacked the part of life that made it worth its living: death. When a goddess could find mortality and not the opposite, than vice versa would it be, but no, for then though it would be it would be again and not flawless, merely erred in different dark than the former. But this sorceress in front of the eyes of fire, Eleiamae, she used it, threw up her shield of it, and even brought with it a sword in her grip. So it was not the two, no, it was Oiyg far-gone and Eleiamae focused and the saber. For though it was of moisture, condensed granted, but still of such make that it might be called meek… water could best make a blade for what it did. It eroded passageways in all of space. How could it be, then, blasphemy, to say that with passade it would carve asunder that which would be the daemon’s passade into the after.

The Cirque du Freak had come to town and brought with it its fire dancer and its contortionist to perform an aberrant ditty. This was them now, the two, and hunter/hunted and predator/prey upon the other with their eyes and circling like vultures. Oiyg was doing the little of it, this movement, for such a large carapace meant ground covered easy. Eleiamae’s wit had her pinned to finding the perfect opening but her powers were a myriad. Her opponent was a one-trick-pony heigh-ho-having way to a burning corral, not okay. She used all her resourcefulness, all the tools of an artisan of dirty war. There were avian kind upon the monster now, pecking at its eyes, and Eleiamae was still a-twirling. Hither now, hied them hence the snakes which the lumbering fiend trod on, but not before chance came for them to sink their venomous mire fangs into the heel of it, tough as it was. Nor was it too much that she even beckoned the insects forth, mosquitoes which with their suckers penetrated the softest places, itching and red and sore was this challenger for it. But ne’er was it complete, finished, for now the first slash came with which the elephant moved just slight of. It was the waiting game, the matter of time before the bigger fell the harder. So it was a deliberate pecking swipe, swing now, a miss, connect too tough deflects the great. The small a-ho! Parry the scraping teeth which with luck still gnash a finger or two, not tearing but drawing blood. And both is pooled and sweat on faces, grimy countenance of ragged -locks-one and foul forehead of that one broad. One was the weaker, single which was the flailing apprentice?

And then it was two and not three, one and not two. That is to say with a rapid lurch were the canines tearing as they were born to, right in the right of spots in that gray-green soon-corpse, surely. They were buried there, certainly, non-probable not Eleiamae shorn- it was visible as ever and the tension the high as anticipated the death throes- from the flowing life in her veins which collected near a drip-drip dropping way. They were scarlet tears of mourning for the deader, for shame, the fallen. Yes did she bleed, but slowly, and at the shoulder- Oiyg had taken that water weapon through the gullet.

So they did arrive in wails, in wiles pleased with but a sacrifice, but with the puncture wound that missed the point and a pupil proved inferior. The temptress tasted victory the same mo the zenith of her foe’s end. The first was a jiff in which the other’s grime-brick blood came pouring. What was a little-big wound on the shoulder for a puncturing of the throat and its arteries? Not a wound at all, or so her triumphant sun-colored irises cried to the sunset- wolf on the prowl. Eleiamae was alpha female this eventide, the tide of Oiyg’s uncontrolled… hemorrhage. For she was not losing but the very air in her veins, she was saying a frail farewell to freedom, bittersweet good-bye and into the frigid embrace of an angel. It was a wonder where the souls would go here of all places- a heaven or a terrible purgatory?

She cast one last look at the animal-like outsider before her. At the oozing sores, pus-filled and bloody blotches and she bore her eyes into the brown-black skin. She gazed at the downcast burning eyes of red-green and to the calamitously infinite, giraffe-mimicking legs which stretched. Four-legged was she, claws on every hoofing foot. The hock of her covered in bumps, awful protrusions like warty imps bursting through her skin that then frolicked from there across the whole of her body like plague. And then at that bulbous head, swiveling on that almost implacable support of a neck, the holes that could be ears- at the mudded piece itself. She was in horrific appreciation for the lethality, now clutching her shoulder in pain, of those tyrannical cuspids. One last growl roared and a heave, a final sigh of an inevitable shudder.

Then a scream that silenced all, every waking entity, and against the rocks and mountains far, and from the clouds of ocean and the mists- to curdle and spoil, to corrupt- burst to reduce itself to a girlish expression of fear and hope extinguished and nadir… there lay her.

The Naiad collapsed at the helm of her kin-tree, Oiyg wide-eyed with a hateful blaming glare. She kneeled there, from exhaustion or even sympathy, for guilt, for what many emotions had broken through her rock shell, now molten: prone by the mutilated body of a child, piercing so awkward, so wrong. Eleiamae, prostrated at the feet of the dawn. The sun shone over the tops of the trees and made her deed look all the more despicable in the growing brilliance of day.

A reverberation is brought to her eye. The gathered waters splutter, rippling as if by giant’s stride by the blood of the shapeshifter.

In a crescendo, a cacophony made by a melody that was yet a forlorn noise echoed on the heart of the earth. From a distance came the sound of a wall, rubble- in a peal of deafening thunder- breaking.

=====

[Plantae]

Me-oh-my... I am a double-posting devil. But it is necessary in wake of Kirsten's accidental departure due to a back injury.

I Do Not Believe in Fairies

In the caverns below is a pit-a-pat. Standing center a quiet bedroom is a low pool- a well of drinking water or for other purposes- that reverberates with each delicate drop. The stalactites hanging woefully from the ceiling are its cause with moisture gathered densely there, trapped at this rock precipice of a ceiling. It is in these rotting bowels of the earth that lives the Fae and their kind, lamenting languishing wings of emerald that serve not well the purpose of flight. They grow to loathe the smells of the earth but there is a passage substance that binds them. It is the water. It keeps them in this less-than-lavish… falling into their own disdain and wallowing in the muck and malevolence.

No one but they would say that their city was grotesque. But when one wakes to see it incessantly- walks among it and about it- and always is ever-present within it… it grows to wear on the occupant. The streets and footpaths of the tunnels were weirdly empty. Not a single body in the hallways- nor in the homes- nor in the mushroom gardens or even at the great abyss, a stench perfumed by smell of dirt and fungus for which smelled better than the roiling piles of garbage yonder.

There was no Fae breathing at the great council table or in the square where the fountains had ceased to flow but stewed still with stagnant water. There was not a footstep on the cobblestones at the village’s heart, in the fortress from stone, and no mistress consul on the highest stool. The temple is bare as before it was built and occupied only by furniture and growing dust. All was as unoccupied and desolate as the distant surface of some dead star, abandoned by the cosmos to float endlessly in the gargantuan and choking distances, the mindless climes ripe with their own nothingness.

It was the weight pressed by a single might upon a weary world, a small world, and a waning world. This plane here remained as lifeless as the Fae halls so needlessly wide and welcoming. The warmth given by either had long since disappeared with those who stoked it. But somewhere a blaze is a-burn and flaring at the hand, not minding whether or not this hand is human or any other; it is merely there. And for its once-vibrant visage, for all its wiles and conniving citizens- those influenced by corrupted water spat from the great maw of her power- it remained no comparison.

Images flickered in the pools like windows. Like a theater, olden and with players that only mimed their action. These pictures flashed on and on and repeated and came unique, from different angles and perspectives many. They glossed the puddles like a gossamer-winged lace-fly, flittering here and there, and filling the wells with their council and then blank again. It was rife and riled and reminiscent- for these images were not newly seen- with a warrior’s memories.

In completeness and not in whole, the ghost duel between a fire dancer and a fire-breathing contortionist. The water rippled with certain anger as the nymph within its picture made blade from water but settled again as she wielded it in such skill and so it proffered its own will, wishing to augment fate. But the dryad-like naiad was not in dire need assistance, nor at all. But the stewing liquid needed her. For it needed distraction and vengeance that this lamentable shape-shifter’s fall would provide her. But for all its sight it was blind. For all its sense it was senseless. But then something happened that the River did not expect. All it had taken was absent-mindedness and droplets born from blood.

Suddenly it was fading. A wail and not the shape-shifter’s vibrated through the stone. Through the soil and the seed and the decay- she had been so caught up she had not understood. But the deed was surely done, so certainly that pebbles shook themselves free like sweat; a previously flawless ceiling crumbled, slowly, and then shook with fervor.

It is said that when Satan possesses all and the earth is swallowed by truest black that he is to find mercy. That the crown prince of hell shall find pause and he shall ask as his foe, the diminished god, withering away at his feet, “Shall you take nothing with you, God?”

“I shall take nothing.”

“Not even you God?”

“Not even me.”

The floors fell through and opened up as a civilization and a culture, interrupted by her hand, blinked out of existence. It took with it the beautiful structures, limestone and mica, mortar and masonry, and all the parts that had made them the Fae. It took with it the idols. The statuettes that depicted what the Fae had touched at one time. An old man with a patched eye and raven, Viking helms and hammers breathing lightning and then the last and fiery depiction. All the sculptures had once burned to show the life owned by those they represented. The all-father’s light was dim. All the others were dead. Only the trickster’s light lay yet in his eyes. And but only by his legacy in his daughter. But it mattered not at this odd hour, for the River world never had and never would have gods. All was swallowed by the collapse, even the thirty-seven corpses with forest hue wings at the wayside. This was the consequence of magic misused.

=

In the mountains to the South, in the highest throne at core of it all lay an empty basin. It was here, this mystical portent that would flow the River of this island. But the basin lay hollow, empty and without the death-bringing tide that once ebbed within it. For the River was in another demesne, on the realm of solid ground, tossed in grief over the well, which in seconds held miniscule drink as several saltwater tears fell within its maw.

Here rested Zhila or what had been her. The beauty, a presentation stolen from a dreamscape and applied in despair, had fallen away. The pitch-dark locks were instead a shiningly bald scalp of grotesque gray skin and the furling eyes of the sea a decrepit cataract that was holding only white and rusted silver pigment. The face was twisted, the fairytale countenance instead an aged and alien one. She was now but a doppelganger. She was a shadow and a whisper and a shell. For it was all she had ever been.

Her floodgate of power ran dry though it would recuperate in time. For now she was left to see the prune-like limbs and fall into a chasm widened by bastard vanity. Her first fault, or at least that which set her usually remunerative maneuvers back: why in all hell had she called for the shape-shifter’s murder? She tried to comfort herself, but while she had been wheezing from a demonic attack on her borders to which she had to leave her human homicide to attend, that illegitimate seed her own corrupted lifeblood had nurtured turned into what she should have seen it as to begin with.

Oiyg had been a tree. A simple tree formed from a seed gone astray. How it had morphed and made it over her wall she did not know. It was possible the seas had taken it, or at least its ancestral kind, to this side of the island. But however it was, baptism of fire had awakened her foe within it.

She knew the taboo as her own cruelty. She knew the effect a fiend’s, an other-sider's spilled hemorrhage would have on her work, her eroded landscape, should it fall! If she had only seen that demon for what it was a little earlier. Her desire to see the humans dead had blinded her, fooling her by simple trick of transmutation.

What she had knew not reason for was the Fae’s death; she knew, that is, but would not acknowledge it. The very waters she had poisoned with had suffered their demise and the magical backlash the entirety of their village. She had leeched their lives to give her youth and controlled them for her purposes.

She forsook her name in a moment. For Zhila was the language Fae, beasts of burden now toiling in the afterlife. She gradually stood, straightened her posture, and looked from her arisen courtroom at the spread of land below. And then she vowed, with the heart she had not, that some day soon the sun would rise red for her pain.

=====

[Drusilla]

The first half-decent post I've written in a long time! ^_^

Lyrics (purple italicised) are from the song "Be My Victim" by Shadow Reichenstein.

Sara Raize
All alone on the street at night, you walk beneath a full moonlight

I sat in the dark, alone, or so I thought. I huddled at the foot of the old oak I had run to before, my knees drawn in, my arms hugging my legs tightly to my body, my face resting on my lower thighs. Where was I? Why was I here? Where were the others?

Were there others?

What was a dream, what was reality? How could I be sure? I shivered in the cold, my clothing barely enough to keep me from hypothermia. If it got much colder, I probably wouldn't live long... Despair and helplessness overwhelmed me, and I felt death's fingers lightly brushing my soul.

The chosen victim for my next attack, you feel my presence behind your back

I shivered again, violently this time, the imagery of my mortal soul being reached for from beyond feeling too... real. I opened my eyes, the sight of the empty forest bathed in moonlight assuring me that there was nothing to fear. Empty forest... I laughed silently to myself, knowing full well that the forest was never truly empty. The wind passed lightly through the trees, and I could have sworn that there was a whisper on the wind... But no, I was being silly. Children fear the dark, or what possibilities their minds see hiding in it, and children hear voices of evil in the night. I was no longer a child.

Indeed not, my dear.

I jumped slightly, sure that I had heard something this time. I peered into the darkness, but the shadows and moonlight played tricks with my eyes. Surely, there was nothing out there.

Not a child, certainly not, nor fit for mortal life... Your beauty is too great for that...

Filled with fear, try to run; resist my power, it can't be done

I stood, trembling visibly, trying to breathe evenly. “Wh- who’s there?” I whispered. “…Joseph? Is that you?”

The “wind” only laughed at me, but it was almost reassuring, not condescending in the least. It didn't make me feel any better though, knowing that there was something, someone out there that could play to my emotions. Part of me wanted to give in to this power, but I fought.

You feel my grasp, turn to see...

"Who in God's name are you?!" I cried, tears appearing in my eyes. I felt cornered, trapped, and escape seemed impossible. Who ever this was... they were powerful, and I had no chance against them.

"It has been a long, long time since I was referred to as "who", not what... you are a remarkable woman, Sara..." The voice was no longer an echoing whisper in the dark, but real, almost tangible, if a voice could be as such. A faint warmth returned to my numbing limbs as I struggled to move, backing away from where the voice had come from...

Caught in a trance and you can't break free

"I don't give a damn if I'm remarkable or not, just stay the hell away from me!" I tried to sound strong, sure of myself, but only managed to sound weaker and more afraid. That laugh floated through the night to caress my skin, managing to feel like warm fur and cool satin simultaneously.

"I cannot, my dear... your bright flame in this cold world of water draws me to you... Come to me, my Sara, come..."

I continued to walk backwards, away from where I thought he was, but I was naive, so naive. His arms caught me, so gently, and I found that, though my mind screamed out against it, I couldn't fight back. One single, warm tear escaped my eye and rolled gently down my face, leaving a trail of cold behind it. A hand, soft and gentle, lightly brushed the tear from my cheek, but even so I could feel the power in that seemingly harmless hand. This man could crush me so easily... yet he was being so gentle...

"Come to me, my Sara..." he whispered in my ear.

At last... you'll be... free from the chains of... mortality...



EDIT: I was "texting" (that is, talking via text messages on our cells) with Asi on Sunday, and she said that she and Rudy should have internet access by tomorrow...

[Emotional Faun Chiko-sai]

Dodgy shortish post that isn't really a post but probably comes somewhere under the umbrella of River-world fanfiction. Er.
----------------
The Immortal Magai
"Death by Water"
-------------------------------

Don't leave me and say that you want to find a way back
Believe me, I followed all you said...
- Lo

The sound of water fills the cavern in a deadly rush. The First Emperor's horse, being born from water, knew that there would be a time when it would die, and that it would die by water; but it never wanted to die here. Here where there was no one. Without a name, or a lineage, or a crowd of mourners at its disposal; that was no proper way to die...

Water lapping at its hooves it climbs, first onto a low rock, and then onto a higher one, and finally the promontory nearest the ceiling of the cave that is busy with stalactites: but the level of tainted water keeps rising, and its legs are almost spent, sensitive to the clarity of liquid as they are. This is how all grandfather tales begin - "There was a time when people, humans, would offer only the purest of distil to me, the horse, the First Emperor's horse..."

The horse can see the scales of its shins dissolving with a hiss in the water, the River's water, and it is afraid; yet it realizes the futility of attempting to escape. It is no foolish horse that the First Emperor called out of the waters to be his steed. The River in this cave is a far cry from the Yellow River of the horse's birth; where the yellow depths nurtured, these crystalline waves have every intent to kill. "I lasted, I lasted a long time. The people came and then they went. I thought one would stay, but he was no longer human, and he would not."

Before the markings on the wall completely disappear into the surging waves, the horse bows quickly, in all the eight points of its compass, and then it lies down in the prescribed manner for all royal steeds: prostate, with the left front leg, already half eaten away, raised into a kneeling position. The last thing it thinks of is immortality.

"He went away, and he left me in a safe place, or so he called it. I do not know where he is now, nor if he still keeps the vigil he used to keep in the old days, with the pot and the map of eight.

"He lived, and I died, in this place that he called safe."

*

This is a room he has had for years now. Fortune-telling is a popular service, and those plying their trade greatly sought after. Much belief is concentrated in the mutterings of soothsayers, even more in their promises of luck, of fortune, their special amulets to ensure prosperity, marital bliss, riches. He took this room, this gaudy room filled with cheap carvings of dragons and war-gods and fu-dogs, because it fitted the job description. Practitioners of feng-shui must look convincing in this new world where things are said that are not meant and deception winds round hearts like a creeper embracing stone.

In the alcove at the corner of the room there is a red-lacquered altar, one commonly found in Oriental houses, where the masses pay their respect to their ancestors. There is nothing written on the board of this altar, no couplets, no dedications, and certainly no names. A single bronze urn, gilded with some metallic alloy, sits in the middle of the altar. It is there for the look of things.

He rises slowly, as if in a dream, and takes the bundle of joss-sticks from the drawer beneath the altar.

He removes: one, two, four, eight slim scented rods.

He lights them with a match.

He draws a pattern in the ash of the faux-gilt bronze urn. Eight groups of broken lines.

He writes, in fluid, sweeping movements, The Immortal Magai, in the old script that no human now uses.

He holds the joss-sticks between his palms and bows low, eight times.

He places the joss-sticks in the urn, one on each trigram.

This is good enough.

Fuxi mourns.

[Plantae]

= Joseph =

I stood for a brief time, a brazen time in which Tryfan and Lily stared hopelessly at one another, lovingly, a time in which I realized that maybe I did miss Sara. I questioned myself as to where she had gone, and I worried for her, but then I worried not. She was fire, and for it, she would find herself not lost again quickly enough. I simply wondered if she would come back the same, wherever she had gone. But such thoughts brought me to a stalemate, a standstill, and were not in their worth in need of brooding over.

So I stood and I turned my mind. I watched and I waited, letting my senses grow larger than the two doves here and spread across the fire lands, and over the tattered remains of a charred house, and through the scant grasses. I let my perceptions, to which I had ignored of late, to find their full extent. And when my sight was emancipated, like an eagle’s and myself soaring somewhere unique to here: then I saw them coming. Two figures, forms, shapes, in the distance with their blazing crimson hair shining like strange treetops of saplings in a forest of gray. I could not scarcely make out their faces, but they wore reedy, plant-like material, dyed a vibrant maroon; as was the only feature that shone clear, their eyes, which were almost the same shade as their apparel, but in such so slightly off that it was unnerving. Both had their hair cropped short, a sweeping hairstyle, similar, and fruitlessly messy.

It was as they grew closer that I became aware of an aberrant arrangement. I noticed, somehow, that their eyes were… jumbled. And their other features too, as I saw thin red eyebrows and lips, and plain button noses. Some of them were sunken, but it was as if their features had been scrambled lackadaisically by a child artist, amusingly and without much care to actual human anatomy. If humans are imperfect as we are, than these humans were more bizarre yet, alien save for familiarity. It was all so wrong about them. They were but fifty yards off and not stopping- the one stared me back, and then the other- and I noticed they were both severely malnourished. Their lips were cracked and their limbs were gangly, thin and with a turn of the wrist that breathed something alien. Their dispositions, unreadable, and they approached with all purpose towards the three of us.

The woven detail of their clothing was beautiful, simple tunics woven right to point that I felt I must thank their seamstress or be unfulfilled, and they walked barefoot- they walked over harsh rock and harrowing gravel without a muss- and somberly. Zombies on the fields of yore, with what their skinniness, seemed some forced march gone awful. I had whispered at a moment, not remembered, of their approach and Tryfan and Lily were as wary as I. But had they adverse intentions, we would not have been the wiser; they merely strode right up to me, as I was closest. Both looked androgynous, and surely twins, though I believed the more dignified of the two was a woman and the other a male, the first by the curves and the second by his disassociation with said curves. Either way, both their faces were malleable, and I had to stop myself, as Tryfan and a still-distraught Lily did, from staring at the jigsaw, pieces, eyes, ears, mouths, noses, and skewn about sloppily. In high time the first, the one I conjectured a woman, stated with utter banality and a tone halfway in between a male tenor and a female bass, “Where is she?”

The man chuckled, for what reason I was not sure, and added, “And are you hers?” He grinned, sadistically, and drew out a long carving knife.

I knew exactly which “she” and “her” they meant and so hypothesized this was a variant of asking if we came in peace. But it was moldable enough and though threatened by the figure on the right with the knife, I spoke up with not a tremor in my voice, almost matching theirs in their and my dullness. “She is not here and that is good enough. We are ours.”

The man with the dagger relented, sheathing it again at his waist. He looked wary before shooting us a cursory gaze, deciding then, “You are not Fae. You are not hers. Then the Fae are dead.”

“Dead?” Queried Tryfan and myself, simultaneously, and we both shot the other a sidelong glare in lack of appreciation.

I could have sworn the female uttered, in whisper and in attention, “Contention…”

The man was blind to it and gave, scathingly- “The Earth has swallowed up their residence. Their city is gone.” It was a speech laced and stifled, as if coming through thin tube. And then he saw Lily’s fiery arms and he started, and so did she, and she asked, without rhyme or reason and without needing more sign of trust, “Do you want her dead?”

Tryfan looked as if he was about to say something dance-like, that is, around the point. But I declared prior to his attempts, “She desires to murder us. It is only fair we return the favor.”

The male made a peaceful gesture without expression and stated, as he noticed the blaze-afflicted Lily,“Good.” Then he strode past Tryfan and I, and he muttered an invocation in Lily's ear, and he watched her breathe, rhythmically, and she closed her eyes. And seconds passed, roughly seven, and the fire went out. “Simple,” he guffawed. Tryfan smirked angrily.

=

We made for South immediately. We heard their stories and their names and we gave ours. I told them Mathias, taking care to make sure they suspected no different. And, seeing no alternative, told him we had come from the other world, by Zhila’s hand. He insisted we had not- that she had not the power. Tryfan protested first and I agreed, but he discarded the argument.

There was a point in which the revelation came to me that they were speaking English (probably via magic). I asked him, he called Kaesaht (or so was it pronounced to me) and the woman Seezeit. They told us no more of themselves, simply that they were from the other side of the wall. I questioned their motives and was betting that the others also did. I was not sure what talents they had- nor was I sure of their intentions- and their personalities proved virile, indistinguishably so, and I concluded their forte deception, or at least apathy.

They further explained the demise of the Fae to which I listened intently. They knew little, but the wall had broken and they were scouts, the twins of a tribe, from the other side. I did not tell them of the shifter creature, so like them, that I had wounded and transmogrified in that. They had seen the great chasm that now existed there. Kaesaht intoned violently that the Fae were the mortal slaves of Zhila and so their genocide was not to be missed. Seezeit, perhaps more reasonable, deduced that it might have been Zhila’s own doing. It might not have been intentional, of course, but violent magic has violent ends.

We asked few questions and they less even after that. And we reached the mountains, towering high, and a scene to which they shrugged off entirely. And we camped there, but a short trek through them.

And they said there was a river. On the other side of this range, and in this range was the mouth of it and Zhila’s lair. They had not the faintest idea where. And this was but a theory. I was not sure how raised the spirits of the others were, though I might have made a few subtle gestures as if mine were. I actually cared not. I did care for the world beyond the wall.

I accompanied Seezeit as she went to forage or to hunt, for she carried a bow. In either case, it was unspoken. She left a small camp we had made in the foothills, I followed, and she made no attempt to digress that I should do otherwise.

I left the other three alone. Hopefully they would remain so in the gathering night.

We had avoided the waterways. Puddles, that stream of the marshes, everywhere- we had passed them by- had we moved past.

For the water had eyes.

=====

Elaborate as you like in between fire lands and mountains in your own posts. I apologize if I stepped on your plans for Lily, Asilynne.

[Weasel Overlord]

Yeah. It's short...and ambiguous at the end. And tinged with Radiohead... I blame Fake Plastic Trees for making me emotional. Damn it, but Thom sings like an angel...*happy sigh*

[color=darkgreen]~Eleiamae~
she looks like the real thing
she tastes like the real thing
my fake plastic love

[color=darkgreen]Crouching in my own blood and gore, I puddled a finger in the swamps that were my home.

The death of the tree-spirit had touched me, to my own surprise. Oiyg, well, she had grown on me in a way that I had thought was not possible. I had become, and yes, I dared to speak the word, almost fond of her.

And after her death, though pain lanced through my shoulder, and through my entire body, I felt a strange peacefulness fall over me. Though there was physical pain, the hurt deep inside had dulled to a mere ache, stabbing over and over at my heart until I could take no more.

The one I loved, yes, for I loved him, was not one for me. And though it hurt, and stung, and sank me into abject misery to think this, I knew that it could never have been. He could never have fallen for me. Glaring at my reflection in the waters, I saw my true self staring back malevolently. I was a swamp-being. My essence was these waters, the mud of my life was not meant for any other.

But it did not mean that I couldn’t grieve for what I could never have. Shaking my head, a tear fell, star-like in the gloom as its path ended in a gentle ripple of the waters. The salt making no difference to the clarity of the water as it spread slowly outwards.

I felt like that solitary droplet, floating of a sea of despair and apathy, unable to escape, and being swirled about until only the barest part of myself remained to tell the tale, scraped and worn, but surviving.

Though I was of the swamps, I had felt a connection with Tryfan. I had felt it deep within my soul, tugging at my mind and body like an anchor tugging at a ship. But he was smitten with the girl.

The human. I could barely stop myself spitting as I thought of her, in his arms... Taking him from me...

He should have been mine...

I claw at my hair and eyes, tears streaming down my cheeks as my heart adjusts to the loneliness once more. Beat by slow beat, it grows chill and icy, but I do not want to be this way any longer... My heart longs to love, to feel loved.

My soul cries out for a partner. One to share my very being with. One who can accept me without reservations, for who I am, not for who he thinks I should be.

I sob, breath rattling and chest heaving, clutching at the ground, grasping at the mud that is my life, and my prison.

My knees throb from kneeling too long.
My head spins from a loss of blood.
My heart tears itself apart, screaming for love.

And I know that I will never feel this emotion. This love.

Pitching forward, I fall, into the mud and into myself.

And I do not want to leave.
I do not want to go back to the harsh, unloving reality of my world.
Tryfan does not love me.
Tryfan will never love me.
I wish I could be who you wanted...

But I am Eleiamae. The unloved one. And I shall die alone.

[Asilynne]

I had an idea today for something interesting! Though I dont know how good itll be since its 1:30AM and Ive been up since 5am yesterday XD If I spell things wrong pay them no mind ^-^()

~~~Lily O'Keefe~~~
Truth and wisdom fade with time...

I lay quietly in our small camp, pretending to sleep, but really I was wide awake, my insides turmoiling. My mind was racing, thinking a million things at once, every one attached to a million feelings.
Hela was alone in the house, condition unknown....regret, frustration, desperation, helplessness.
The fire.....fear, shame, apprehension, unbalanced
These strange new people....wariness, mistrust, curiousity, hope
Tryfan....nervous, joy, fear, uncertainty

I twitched my fingers slightly as I lay, feeling the snug feel of the leather gauntlet for my crossbow. When the fire went from my arms, there it was, as if it never left. Yet another thing I didnt understand and couldnt hope to. But I was here, long ago, (it was only a few hours ago?) back in the Fire House I had come to the realisation that this was not a dream. But that had not made it easier to accept.

How sad I was. I remembered a time when the strange was accepted readily, adapted for, not a thing to be feared or upset about. But that was a different time, she a different person, and I could never be her again. Myself, but unreachable. Adults are supposed to be the wise ones, but we grow stupider with age, we forget whats most important. We forget how simple the pure truths of life really are. The world taints us, we feel to survive we must become the mostor we fight, we must misttrust those around us because we were done wrong by a few. We fear getting close to another human being for the pain one in the past has caused. We sell out our futures and live life barely living at all.
Whats happened to me... I thought somberly, my throat tightening. I was so confident, so happy, I trusted myself. I knew that I didnt have to know everything and for that I knew more than most. I knew I had a purpose, knew the meaning of life, knew that where I was was where I was supposed to be. Now I dont even know why Im anywhere.
Choking back my irrational tears born out of stress and frustration, I wished desperately for the times when I was wise. I wished I knew everything would be ok. I wished I wasnt so helpless.

And then suddenly I knew we were going to be fine. No matter what happened, no matter where this strange River place took us and what we encountered, I knew we could handle any obstacle together.
Standing up quickly I went over to where Tryfan lay, and gently nudged his shoulder. "Tryfan...." I whispered, and as he sleepily blinked at me I smiled.

A childs smile, and when I spoke, it was a childs matter of fact voice.

"We re going to be alright Tryfan, I just know it."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heheheheheh yeah ^v^ You might have seen it coming or not but Lily unwittingly has shifted into Young Lily ^-~ I want to be able to communicate with all of us River Folk so my MSN messinger is outlawgirlasi@msn.com If you have MSN Weasel Id like to talk about our charries ^v~
Now Im going to sleep LOL

[Plantae]

= Joseph Faust =

I realized with a distraught and hopeless disposition the shape of my body in the wee hours of silence that occupied Seezeit and me. The hunt was narrow and the game scarce, made the more difficult a process by the fact that we were forced to avoid all watering holes where an animal or two might have congregated. I was at the point, now, I realized, that I would probably fell and devour a unicorn if it meant some habiliment. There was only so long you could fend off those human desires, dehydration and exhaustion which clawed at my consciousness. Though I had endeavored to discover more of this stranger, Seezeit, that had also failed, and so my pains were exemplified by ennui.

With each frail step I felt it building to crash fatally. I could no longer imagine how I had warded it away so long- pointedly guarding myself from the desire to eat, drink, and sleep- but that I realized it was necessary. My clothes had been soaked, were still damp, from the rains of prior and the undying mists of this land and I was full of dirt and grime. Clothes in irreparable state, sandals and by association, my own feet covered in muck. Now that I had this time to think about it, I was in a frustrated state of being.

But by all the impulse that drove me was that thirst. That undesirable and deadly thirst, fatal for its likeliness that she would see. I could not even take but a drink in this forbidding place. I feared water! It seemed so ridiculous, and the cracked lips, stinging with each movement, urged me for once to obey my bodily needs rather than to use such calculating logic. It was a war within, strained body and stressed mind, pressures, lies, all of them falling on one another and trying for the entire world to make a string of dominoes. Just to make that first step begged them. To give into greed was their purpose. And as the delusion grew thicker, like an exoskeleton over clarity, even logic began to sway from its rigid course towards fallacy.

I could tell I was growing meeker by the minute as I turned to distraction and denotation to calm my nerves. Fact, a statement of truth, this one declaring: she has capacity to manipulate water. I must drink water. And therefore, I could not go near the water. But it was no better. I scanned the horizon, the trees and the wood and used all of my senses, focusing and looking for prey. Deer, fowl, any sort of creature that might serve. The woods rang with the desperate twilling of birds sing-song and frivolous. But birds were no sort of meal for five. There was left me no means of keeping my mind from it. I would have cried out in agony, frustration and pause, had I not had sense not to make a due revelation to Seezeit just in what state I was, and what they, Tryfan and Lily, were likely of also. It had not been quite that arduous, not so lengthy a trek yet... but that made no excuse to this famine. The next yearning would be for civilization, a hot meal- in cities and with a normal life in which no one starved even for so short a time as this.

I was hopelessly struck with a poignant slap across the face by memory and fear. A phobia built ago on the seeds of weakness, timidity and sickness. That old nausea and those days, those three days alone I had in that forest, and vomit and spiraling dizziness. I remembered that and so it was with this multi-pronged assault that my defenses fell. It was my little paradox; my greatest fear doubled over on itself for what fearing it caused.

So was the epiphany: I realized that it was not this simple three-and-a-half-days fatigue but the greater compounding of these factors and those of the past. I had a headache, my vision was dim, and I was groggy. I was not suffering from dehydration merely in name, but in actual medical terms. My heightened senses had actually fooled me. My body structure so changed, I had not understood the symptoms until they reached the severity where they were noticeable against this new backdrop. Now it bludgeoned me, mindly clobbering with the blunt truth. And I realized water was no longer a casual matter of thirst, but survival.

And of course for irony there was a pool, and not listening to Seezeit's consummate warnings, swallowed up, I was fallen at the pool's side and leaning in for a drink. I lapped it up slowly, still present dew and rainwater. It might have been impure, but such was not my worry as of the moment. It was instead but the slow perfection, the non-rational notion that the water would somehow disappear and leave me without such. But it did not, and I kept my pace until the grappling hands of Seezeit pulled me out of my reverie, and into sitting position away from the pool. I stood up and stared her down, intending for all the world to drink more, that is, until I was more distracted by her hand (which came out of nowhere and with my reflexes so nurtured in incompetence by the nausea of my deed and the still-present sleepiness was not able to be parried) contacting with my face and leaving a pitiful red mark, replacing pale skin with a pink hot as sunburn. She growled, almost, her teeth bared and seething. "You idiot!" There was no need for further communication, and I pressed my own hand against my cheek, reminiscent of the other palm that had but been there several seconds before. But before I could retaliate verbally, she queried, shakily, "Your eye... it's changed color. How?"

I swiveled and there reflected at me were two eyes. One green-gray and the other deep blue and I tried to keep myself from gaping. I searched the ground at our feet, running my hands through the dirt until I came across that lens. How indeed? How had that dislodged it? What were the chances? But here I was, putting a continuous wear contact lens of green-gray back into my eye after wiping it casually on my similarly grimed shirt, thus negating any real use.

I stood and faced her, donned a murderous leer, and asked, "And you hallucinated? Correct? You saw nothing." I hoped she understood. Her features turned as if she was entertaining a reply, but then my gaze was distracted by a white form in the trees and before I knew it I had leaned around her and loosed my war fan, it whirling in the beast's direction.

We stood then, over the carcass of the dead and still majestic equine, its silver blood hemorrhaging and spilling across the rough terrain, the setting almost blasphemy for its glory. But there had not been even a whinny; not chance for it to express its death throes. And but this moment later, the brilliance of its horn had vanished, claimed by the pale flag of death.

Seezeit's responding gaze embodied several emotions. The first was anxiety, as her irises gleamed with a somber air. That sorrow too, that frustration. The third was terror. I returned hers with equal virility and asserted, "Assist me in dragging this corpse. We shall partake in a feast of sweet meat this evening."

=====

[Weasel Overlord]

[color=palegreen]~Tryfan Wen~
wow, he’s been neglected
or
I thought I was a fool for no-one
but Ooo baby, I’m a fool for you
[b]or
the paradoxical loop of doomy woe

[color=palegreen]Woken in the night by the woman I had grown to love in such a short time.

She had shaken me gently. A soft touch indicative of her gentle nature, and everything about her that I loved.

Her voice, well, that seemed different at the time, but I had put it down to a mere awakening in the night, everything fuzzy about the edges. Nothing seemed to make sense when you are woken from a dream. And mine that night had been particularly spectacular.

Yet another dream of a Unicorn Blood spilled from the neck of this one. Silvery blood, which seemed to portend a darkness falling upon the forest, the River world.

But now I was awake. And, with the dragging, shlurping, dripping sounds that entered my ears, I felt like I had had one of those bizarre dreams, where you wake up after a nightmare, only to be still asleep, and then wake up again, ad infinitum. It was like a paradoxical loop which I was stuck in, haunted by that damn unicorn consistently until the beast gored me through with his bloody horn.

Shlurp. Eyes empty of sleep at last, I gazed in astonishment at that bloody unicorn. Dark with its own blood, I was perversely pleased to see the confounded beast dead, but I was also filled with the suspicion that the bugger could rouse itself at any time, and come shlurping after poor old me, determined to finish off the job it started in my dreams.

Shaking my head, I glared at the beast balefully. It’s eyes were clouded over with death, but not clouded enough for my liking. It’s beauteous mane was clotted full with its own blood, but I was not sated. It’s limbs were slowly being torn off and, with a delicious cracking sound, the bones breaking under the strain, they came apart from the body itself, leaking goo in the most satisfying way.

“I’ve got us some meat.” Mathias said, matter-of-factly and quietly, as if he didn’t care who heard him. “Tree-man, can you get us some wood?” He raised an eyebrow at me, and I smiled gleefully.

“I most certainly can.” Standing up, I gave myself a moment to crow over the corpse, before getting spooked again and scuttling off into the forest. I swear, that thing looked at me!

Forgetting Lily and the unicorn for a moment, I traversed my realm happily, lost in the moment and the search. Letting off small tendrils of questioning, I determined which of the trees had dropped branch lately, and whether they would mind my taking of a few for our sustenance. Following my intuition, I found a goodly pile of dried wood; small branches adequate for our current need, and bundled them together with a long vine. Humming a little tune to myself, I was oblivious. Lost in my task.

So when the sharp pokes in the side came, I, taken unawares, dropped the branches and promptly squealed like a girl.

“I’m ticklish!!” I yelled, while trying to stop giggling and regain my manly composure. Scooping the branches up, I blushed slightly as I realised who was the ‘poker’.

“Oh, hey Lily! Um...you seem different...?” I looked at her questioningly. Surely she wasn’t as... short before. Or as, um, (blushing) undeveloped. My face went very very red and she smirked at me, in a very undirty way, which was odd, cause Lily had been somewhat implicating dirtiness over the last few days, and this change seemed odd to say the least. Coupled with the whole eleven-year-oldness that seemed to emanate from her, this change seemed to be significant in some way.

“Weren’t you...taller before?” Blushing again, I was certain that she could read my thoughts as she stared thoughtfully at me. Chewing on her lip, she twizzled a bit of her hair between her fingers and then smiled again.

“Yeah, I’m a bit changed.” She giggled. “But there’s no need to look sad about it! It’s funner like this...” Dashing up to me, she poked me once more before running off back to the camp. My brow furrowed slightly, as I attempted to stop myself thinking dirty thoughts.

Damn, she’s eleven! I grimaced and vowed to suppress all thoughts concerning Lily until she was at least returned to normal. I hoped that she would return, anyway. She had promised me some things that I was having trouble forgetting about, and which had become somewhat inappropriate considering the current circumstances.

Grasping my sticks, I wobbled my way back to camp, and to that delightful corpse (shudder) and a tasty meal.

Lobbing the bundle onto the ground, I went to slouch in a corner, as much as a wooded clearing could have a corner. Kicking at a rock, sulked and moped and smelled the delicious scent of my enemy cooking on a fire. Turning, I glared at the flames, where the malevolent eyes of the beast pierced me with its malevolent stare.

Flashing momentarily red, the fire licked at the unicorn’s eyes, engulfing them and blackening them to irreparable ashes where they could haunt my dreams no longer.

The smell of the meat was succulent, and no-one seemed to mind that we were about to devour the flesh of an innocent animal of legends. The unicorn was always a beast of purity, though I knew this one to be tainted. Lifting a large shank of meat, I bit into it with a satisfying crackle and tear. The flesh was juicy, untainted thankfully, and we all ate with relish around the fire, enjoying our first proper meal in days.

=

Yeah, lame ending. So sue me.

[Plantae]

The Terraforming and The Million-Voice Repose

It came, as all such portents do, as a bump in the night. There was no eerie silence. In it the insects stirred and chirped calamitously. This was no calm dusk- it was not your sure evening or your smooth twilight- but alive with the sounds of the forest and the plain, and of an island which was full of life despite its haughty residents. Even with the late Fae, the presence of viridian entities was not lessened. Nymph and nature-walker alike could sleep soundly in this norm. So when the first echoes of that first hint entered the picture with a sound of a snapping twig... not a human moved, even those awake, and not one was ready for the coming monsoon.

It rose like a phantom, a fata morgana of a shape, and seemed all too unreal. It formed a circle, soundlessly, and only then when birds were in flight did it become noticed. By then the opportunity for action had gone. The only choice was reaction on it, for with motion the entirety of the water table was stirred for her one act. The dancing grasses and the trees, winded by the force of it and split apart if in her way, were as minor characters in some grand drama. The major characters have been introduced. The villainess is waiting for her barrier's completion; like a white-crested wave, or was it that, in a sea of green land. Here lay her device, her boundary, her limit; for with that wall, it was assured that only that which could fly, and only one, her frivolous, would make any means of escape. It served as a tool of intimidation, too, as those human faces watched it enclose them, liquid streaming from that Aquan shield. They were trapped, and almost literally: drowned rats.

In a lair, in the mountains yonder lay that pool of scrying. She had etched the runes in the seeing water and readied herself, watching through her water's influence (for her domain did only extend as far as its puddles). It was by no means a perfect well, a hodgepodge of pebbles and rocks of all sizes, but refinement was an unnecessary luxury. It looked feeble, like any other pond in stone; but it was hers, it was this one, which was all that mattered. And so she had seen a blonde-haired man and a scramble-face twin about; she had searched for the others but they had been cleverer. Still, it had only been a step and a skip step about a pooling trail of blood, one of her unicorns, or in her lands at least, to find their little camp. They had come so close to her mountains. Her river they had neared, now riverbed as its power had been usurped, its reason for being walking about like a common piece of human filth. She'd been a human once. But now she was a shadow, a shell, a doppelganger. She was a gray-skinned freak and her own memories, dreams, dashed to the wind. No, this was no campaign of greed; this was utter hatred, to those humans that had entered. They would be fools if they thought she had done it herself, for she had not. It was an accident, like slipping through the cracks, into the plane beneath theirs or from whichever sort of place they had come. A solar system far or a parallel world- for such was possibility- made no difference in the larger scheme. For that harpy formerly known as Zhila, the only good human was a dead human. There was not another card to play but this. If her actions were suicide, then she went to her peace with the world, to be put from her wretched misery.

It was no surprise to her when she passed wall, through and through, gray skin dull. Her eyes did not burn like fire. Their flame had gone out and in their place stood what might as well have been two empty sockets, but which was really a brace of eyes that had seen far too much of the world. She strode not quickly but not slowly, not powerfully or gallantly, but purposefully; she had a reason yet to be and she had the devices to fulfill it. But if it had not been beating she would have had no heart. If she would not have twitched as those at the camp prepared themselves, one could have hypothesized her to be sans hearing. She was mute, certainly, though the curl of her lips told all that was necessary: intent to obliterate her opposition. It was her mantra, her every step, and her last shred of dignity. For that could not be found in her wrinkled carapace or her wiles. She had none. The time for tricks was done. The dance was over. What would follow would be a bloodbath- hers or theirs- until one side stood dead. She saw the extras, those two recruits from the other side, and it drew not a smirk from her apathy. Even her appearance made no difference, for they knew each other without a word.

There are two types of battles in this world. There is a public fight. One side or the other, both seem aristocrats, flaunting abilities like rapiers and making it seem as if the gruesome parts of life were to be played out on some stage. Both parties strut, throw their weight around, and try to make a point of style, of panache. Then there are the private melees. Frenzied, quick, a brawl between an ever-changing winner and loser until one lies dead. A fray like that is one of not heroism, nor bravery, but cowardice and dirty blows and the cheapest shots around. It is to survive that matters here, when the life of one can be lost so fast. And the greatest trophy is the head of your enemy on a pike. This was truth. It was a personal war, not a jest. That was what ensued this day.

A spout of water is thrown forth, a deluge- a woman shape-shifting near, to a wolf again- and its dirt blonde-haired target moves with some measure of agility. War fan drawn, spear drawn, newcomers (the demon scouts) melting like a foul toxic sludge. It brings some shock, but not much surprise warranted due to conditions, when they leave themselves piles of ooze and slither over, appendages and ears and eyes and mouths floating in the goo, and entangle about her legs. "You trespass in my lands and you receive as you deserve!"

She washes them away furiously and strikes the druid-like, pinning him to the ground with her water and bruising his hide. But her concentration breaks as she is forced to contend with a vengeful beast, down upon her with claws and biting ferociously, first blood as the animal tears into her right leg. She kicks it mercilessly, ruining its hold, and attacks its unprotected eyes with water, blinding it temporarily as it frantically shakes its head. "This is no end. You will not survive my domain."

The twins in human form again and words, ripe and almost without language, flowing forth like the disgruntled sounds of the boar, but smooth. The water listens and her next-thrown torrent freezes in midair and clatters to the ground and fragments. With the opportunity allowed the woods-runner is up and swinging his spear with wild abandon, she manipulating her water to parry like a sword of its own. He slashes through it, dashing her garments (once a robe, now tatters) but not digging into the skin as she nimbly moves back. The fan sails over her head, missing only for her dive, part of her escaping the blow of Tryfan. "You brought yourself here; it was not my hand. It was but a tear between worlds. It just took a step where the current was good for you to arrive here."

Now the three descend upon her and she soars skyward, borne by a pillar of the liquid. She sails above, pelting them from range with whip-like tendrils. Bruises about their skin, their faces lashed, and the wolf whelping in pain is the portrait. The twins, out of reach, but the other two find themselves in pain too. They are all tiring quickly in this humidity and with but scant nourishment. She lays further into them, but the twins swirl about in their gel-like form again, up her cyclone of water, and twist into her lungs. She chokes and expels them but tumbles from her advantageous high ground, catching herself only with a bed of water, and muffled amongst her aggressors. "I should have kept away, let you wither, and not thought your power as a tribute to exemplify my control..."

As she struggles, the spear-wielder lands a severe slash across her thigh. The fan slices there too, and she tumbles to the ground, temporarily disabled. She screams, and in its echo comes a spiraling spray of created-rain. The oozes have tainted it with their substances and the acid stings the skin of the others, groaning in pain and inept as she, tamed by her own rage. The wall grows lower and spreads forth, she using its excess to push waves at them, collecting it again and again, and knocking them to the ground where the very force of the water chokes all of their lungs and bruises their bodies in its repulsion for their forms. They fight its push, the young couple finding themselves out of its track; the twins speak again as they flow away, from afar, shouting in accent the means for division. Winds push back, returning her own and allowing that deceiver to roll away. He stands, and wolf turns to eagle, swooping towards. "The Fae gave you weapons when their will was still theirs. But they were mine at the end, when they died."

He tosses his fan- it finding its mark and causing her neck to spurt a blood black in this light- and the other charges, spear readied, and she but nearly blocks it. He duels with her, and her strength is failing her. But he too is limping from the lashes of that whip-like water, and the bird flies with a stumble in air, and Joseph relents as a bruise leads to an incision, blood dripping down a long-since-soiled black tee. The others bleed too, dashed against the ground and the twins are quite spent. But there is no halting and though death is near to them, its pull is instead being gradually pushed to her.

She strikes, concentrated blasts of it, to their skulls; Lily is pushed from the sky, transforming again human as she strikes the ground. She clutches her head for the migraine caused there. And her battered body is worse still. She is barely walking. Joseph has all but collapsed for his own headache, though he galumphs forward, a step at a time, and Tryfan too, in best condition of the three. The twins wheeze violently from the strike she has landed to their chests. The scene is grim, the tangibility of it quite clear. Both sides bleak, dry of hope, and exhausted.

One last effort is needed. These five, they have the will to live. A metamorphosis to a greater eagle, majestic this time, and all the more for its wounds, and his spear raised high in defiance; the fan sails through the air restlessly, even at each attempt of hers to block it. They close in upon her as she can but back up at a pace that does not serve any escape. She can hardly hold her weight. The oozes are again about her ankles and this time she lets out a dire howl. Her feet begin to dissolve as acidic material eats away at them, the oozes devouring her hungrily. Suddenly Tryfan is at a side, and then the pike digs into her lower chest as she looks at the blood in awe of her own fatality. But her eyes are better turned elsewhere, for she can do little as a bird of prey gores her eyes and ruins her resolve, her muttering in anguish at her utter blindness.

She makes a last fatal gesture and the water wall collapses into nothingness as she sucks it inward, preparing some defense in her last moment of desperation. She can live blind, if she lives. But she can only cry out in pain as her arm is severed clean from its socket by that wicked fan. She throws out her arms, spread eagle, and ignores the acid and her own innards spilling from that great gap by Tryfan's piercing blow. She is alive for a moment: they feel it leech at their souls, and in all, their thirst is un-sated, as they feel the water in their bodies sapped from them. It is siphoned from everywhere.

Trees fall into ashen piles. The grasses are a field of gray until they collapse into dust and blow away. The cries of a hundred myriad of animals of all kinds, death throes that haunt the nature-walker's ears and even those of the hardest bastard, the boy-with-contacts, are spouted into the night like the bellowing of demons. The roar is deafening as all water disappears and those foes of hers, they hang onto to their dire thread of life, the oozes disbanding and the others prostrated as they pull themselves away from the fold, escape the whirlpool centered upon her. Sands whorl and whirl with a ferocity but they open not their eyes and keep their ears covered. But they have heard enough. They have heard her bitter words at the end, after everything has been blighted and everything has died around her. As she destroys what her waters nurtured in one fell swoop. Beautiful equine, avian kind, and mammals are atwitter and then lying dead by her fruitless revenge. Only tatters, now, yes; not even a vulture can feast, for not even a buzzard could survive the purge. A thousand voices... a million voices... an insurmountable number are not allowed even their last breaths as they fall into nothingness. And it is all naught too. And even she, after her own shriek of agony is loosed, so much deeper than all the others and with more a history, states: "I am nothing." And she is. Only by their resistance do they stop her madness from racking them in the same.

But now it is five forlorn wights, shells of men and women, breathing but just, at the epicenter of refuse and sand. The mists have dispersed and finally: a zephyr overhead, a breeze, and the reverberation. Somewhere in the distance the surf crashes against the coast and its fragrance beckons.

=====

Now that the namesake of the RPG is dead, the next chapter can begin. The Jungle is still in the planning stage. I am going to do a final post for Joseph later, likely; the rest of you should do one also if you can find the time. But inevitably the only way to go is towards the wall and through it to escape the desert now created.

[Drusilla]

*sneaks in*

Tell me if Ryan's coming... I have a bunch of things I'm supposed to be doing for him...

This post kind of backtracks at the beginning, sorry about that, I've been meaning to post but haven't gotten around to it... Oh, and I'm falling in love with The Dreamside; I'm listening to the song "Open Your Eyes" while I'm writing this ^_^;;;

Sara Raize
Open your eyes now, my love...

[color=#a0ffff]I awoke, my whole body numb in it's entirety, and realized that, for the first time since entering this strange land, I was completely dry and there was no hint of humidity in the air. It was very airy... I opened my eyes and saw moonlight sparkling on the granite floor of a cave. It was dazzling; the cave itself was open, and the breeze kept it from being claustraphobic, at least at this point. A passage went deeper, dissappearing through rock into silent darkness. I lay on a ledge near the opening, though I could not see anything outside.

I tried to move; my limbs fought with me, and I wondered how long I'd lain here, immobile. The cold, tingling sensation was coming in waves, now, and I wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing. Perhaps cirulation was returning to my body... or, was it leaving? The sensation should be becoming weaker if the condition was improving... I looked around, searching for something, anything, that would help me to my feet, but I saw nothing but glittering granite walls... so bright in the moonlight...

I saw it all in exquisite detail, and I lay there motionless, staring at the walls, then at the floor, and finally to what I could see of the stars outside. Like tiny, perfect diamonds laying in rich black velvet... I could see them like I had never seen them before; each had its own tint of color, and each blazed through the dark right into my mind, pinpricks of concentrated light, so bright, so intense... If I could just raise my hand, I was sure that I could touch them... slowly, my arm came to life, and I looked at my hand. Each little line and crease that made its way along my skin was so very real, so very intense. I felt I could be lost for hours following each line with my eyes...

Movement outside broke my trance, and I moved to my feet so suddenly I was caught offguard. I braced myself for the usual rush to the head that would accompany such a foolish move, but none came. Instead, the numbness was gone, and I felt limber and mobile, more so than I had felt since I was very young. I turned my eyes to the source of the disturbance, and the dark figure stood there, completely motionless yet graceful, like a shadow frozen in time. I stared, knowing that everything in my mind should be screaming for me to run though those instincts were, I now knew, forever silent. There was no danger that I should fear now... though what that meant, I had no idea.

Fear is an instinct for those who are prey... you are preditor, now, you have no fear for anyone but the greater hunters, and they are few, my new instinct said, rising to the surface. This was so strange... I stepped backwards, quickly, and cowered, shielding my face, trying to block it out.

He lifted my chin, and I let my arms drop as he led me into the moonlight. I opened my eyes, and I could see them reflected in the mirror of his dark ones... They were blue, but such a light blue that they were nearly colorless. My face itself was practically colorless, almost glowing in the faint illumination from the heavens and framed by the burning color of my hair. My hair itself was fuller than before, richer in color, though I couldn't tell yet. It was as if all of the imperfections of my body had been washed away, and I was left with a perfect porcelain shell...

That's what I had become, wasn't it? I was only a shell... it explained my strange, detatched, empty feeling... Just a perfect little doll...

I closed my eyes and blinked, expecting tears to flow but finding nothing. Only the emotion echoing in the vacant shell I had become...

"Is this not what you wanted, beloved, to be flawless, to be lovely beyond compare?" He whispered, slightly taken aback by my reaction.

"Beloved?" I asked. "I don't know you... how can you know what I want? I don't know myself... but, there are others... where are they? They might know me..." My memories stirred beneath the surface, and I reached for them, but what knowledge I held was too far to regain yet... "I must find them, the others..."

He shook his head. "No, they are doomed, the River will not let them live... I had to rescue you, you who turned to me always..."

I looked at him with my soulless eyes. "You are the shadow, the night, aren't you?" It all made sense, now. He smiled, gently. "You have always known me, Sara, and you took me inside of you to shield yourself from harm... Now, I have made you safe for eternity."

"Sara..." I whispered. Yes, my name... part of who I was... a beginning, if nothing else. I knew my name... and I knew that part of this was what I had wished for; I had wished to forget the past.

"The past is gone... What I wished... and now I have the future before me to discover who I am, not who I was..." I murmured. "No, to create who I am. I am not who I was... and I know not who I was... a new chance..." I turned to the Night. "Thank you..."

He smiled again, kissed me gently on the forehead, and disappeared. "If you must find them, then go; I have made you partially immune to the curse Zhila will lay on them. Just go, and do not forget to seek me before dawn comes, for the day's light will kill you. My protection comes with a price, I fear... but I can take you away to my realm before the sun can touch you, at least while you travel the wastes..." his voice lingered on the wind.
~~~~
I watched from the shadows as they fought the River, wishing to help them... but knowing that I couldn't. Why, I didn't know, but I didn't want them to see me like this. They would eventually, yet that didn't stop me from hanging on to every last second of hiding I had left...

And then it was over, and Zhila laid her curse, destroying everything but my three former companions and the two that they traveled with. They themselves whithered, denied the water that their human bodies needed to survive, and I... I was revealed. Eyes, barely alive, turn slowly to me, standing, changed but not like them...

"The battle is ended," I whispered. "And the horizon streches before us... come, my friends, we have a journey ahead..."

[Vulpix.ck87]

Hee hee hee.

(Since you're posting irrelevant SPAM entries Jobie, i'll help you out with it)

[Asilynne]

Sorry if this sucks, I just worked all night and Im trying to stay up one more hour so I wont wake up too early again x.x Also sorry it took so long guys x.x
~~Young Lily~~
Even the strangest things make sense in the eyes of a child...

I vaguely knew that once I would be worried. We were leaving the River behind. The point which I came into this world was far behind, perhaps never to be seen by my eyes again. Thus, the only chance we had of ever getting back to the real world (what was the real world?) would possibly be forever out of our reach. Also, I knew the River. Intimate with its trees and its calm cool waters. The mists always wrapped me in a blanket of peace, it was my alone time, my only sanity admist the bustling of human society. And now we were following these strange people to an unknown place.
I knew once I would be worried. Filled with fear and apprehension. But this was just a fleeting thought, wherever I went I was home, I knew that, though she had once forgotten.
She will remember again, one day.
Suddenly my mind flashed back to another Young One. The fire child Hela. She was still in that house, because Old Lily was too scared to go back in, she wanted out and forgot everything else through her fear. Poor Old Lily, she had been through so much, she forgot how to deal with simple things. And everything, to me, was a simple thing.
There was no debating, I knew instantly what had to be done. A desperate feeling ran through me, knowing I had to get back to the house of Fire. We had already travelled too far to get back, but I knew I couldnt leave the River without her. It would not be fair, or right.
"No!" I called out, my little girl voice defiant as it rang out in the misty dreamlike world. I made a dive for the invisible border separating the River and...this strange other world, determined to go back for her, the innocent little girl that was so much like me. But strong arms held me back, and in one fluid motion lifted me up. Tryfan. He held me in his arms and started walking with the rest of the group.
"No Tryfan! No please let me go! We cant leave Hela!" I looked into his eyes, tears brimming within, but he sighed sadly and looked away. "We cant go back." He said quietly. "We can never go back."
"Noo...." the tears I rarely saw sprang forth, and I buried my face in his warm shoulder. "Its not fair..." But I couldnt cry in despair for long, I vowed that Tryfan had to be wrong.
I will go back one day... I thought defiantly, as I watched the invisible barrier shiver and coalsce into mist.
No matter what anyone says, I will find a way.

[Plantae]

A post long overdue is this; the Jungle is regrettably on the backburner.

= Joseph Faust =

She stood there, sounding the need for a journey. I was withered, but a husky grumble signified the barest hints of laughter; in all Zhila had done, she hadn't broken so well the will of the only ones she had wanted to blight. The water still coursed through my veins and I imagined the others' too. But that was not what was on my mind at the moment. It was instead the figure- one I had known as Sara who was no longer- standing like a china doll with irises shining like twilight. What would have made any other look fragile made her look inhuman. She was terrifying in a way, but only because she was the first.

I wanted to say words to her. I wanted to assure myself that she was as she had been, somewhere within that carapace. But all I could see was an aura of apathy about her features, like mine, and I then comprehended what it was that drove my own to be so insufferable. Any inklings of like, of lust, burnt in the fire of her hair and floated upwards as paper sparks for just a little while before plummeting and going out as my stomach did. With senses beyond that of normality, I too could sense the taste of power, idling beneath her frame like a flame: so haughty a blaze it was. She was as lifeless still as a marionette and she hung on the strings of indifference; the pyre that was once her emotions had been snuffed. I let the words slip from my tongue.

I walked on coals. I could sense all of them and their status, as if Zhila's fall had heightened my power and perhaps this was true. But I could tell anyone that it was not a pleasant fragrance or a tinkling of bells to hear the hopes of a few come crashing down. I had already given up and gladly discarded any need for homeward bound travels, or at least I thought I had. But Lily was not absent of her feelings, her desires, and her dreams crushed; she would and wanted desperately to return to our world which seemed to trail farther into the darkness of our minds with each breath, step, shudder, and sweat drop. She cried out and Tryfan comforted her- and my facade allowed me enough to see what they had was blessed- or tried to. That was what he wanted to do, at least. But the phrase that came was finality incarnate.

She spoke of Hela and I, betraying my lack of sensitivity, chuckled silently to myself. Hela, somehow, I felt, was not here. That house would have taken her, swallowed her up, and spat her out somewhere on the edges of all reason. And then deep within the cogs of my ever-whirling factory of a brain, it all clicked. Spinning tangents, seeming unrelated, seeming unimportant, "Hela-" "fire spirit-" half-zombie legs and malnourished build reminiscent of a certain: was she? She seemed so different and out of place with this all, that; but if she was...

"Lily!" I bellowed, getting her attention through this curtain of darkness. For it was still eventide and we only walked by the full moon overhead. We feared nothing in this great expanse of dead sand dunes. Travel in morning would be worse.

Lily fell back, still looking distraught but determined too, "Yes?"

"Tell me about the house and about Hela. Speaking her memories will ease your mind." I tried my best to be beguiling and it was seemingly potent. Lily looked momentarily frustrated at our inability to return for Hela, and then she took it in her stride.

"Alright." And so she spoke it like it was a novel, remembering almost every word. I thanked her intermittently for being so obliging and encouraged her on when she wished not to. She was growing weary of it, though, and suspicious of what I had wanted to know it for. I did not stop her. I even hid my surprise when she spoke of the carvings which she called "almost Scandinavian" and of the phrase heard, "my father's dagger." Perhaps it was not surprise, but recognition.

She finished and I smiled, sheepishly, and intoned, "She was a brave soul, Hela. Maybe she is safe, now, at this end. She was a hider. If any were to escape a fate like Zhila's, I would bet on her to accomplish the feat."

"She just went through the door and was gone. To find her father, she said." Slight worry for Hela's well-being crossed her face.

"I am sure she found him. And then she is safe." Lily seemed somewhat eased. She went forward to be again with Tryfan. I kept my gaze focused all around, watching and waiting as the rays of the sun washed over the sands, hillsides above the first. I contemplated briefly and let the strings tie themselves together in an eternal, circular knot. So Hela was Hel, then, or so I believed. And she had left the world. But somehow I dared think there was more to be encountered with that woman in the future, or so she would be now, if she had met her father as I had guessed. It was all a hypothesis, but my gut ached with intuition and logic too. Maybe I was indeed brooding as if I were Hela's father, now, taking one scrap of information and discerning an entire story from its contents.

But I put it from myself and instead watched all that there was to see. The five of us looked to the horizon. At that spot, far in the distant, coming up from behind the wall it was. Daybreak came with first light... in all its scarlet glory.

Clouds gathered almost out of thin air, or at least we had never seen them there. And then it began to rain.

It took us hours perhaps, a lifetime of what was left in time's course here. We all slipped in the mud at least once, clumsy or agile as each of us was. Seezeit and Kaesaht reveled in the muck. There was a terrible bubbling noise from somewhere far away, unknown of origins. Or at least it was until we saw the flood that rushed over the sands, ocean water rising of its own free accord. We scrambled up the knoll, almost to the wall. The roar of the seas would have swallowed up any of our attempts to speak or even scream. We all just followed instinct of survival and ran. As the deluge fell and high water grew closer, we began to worry when any tumbled into the mud. But even as the overflow ringed the base of the knoll, we were at its peak and the wall where a lucky crack had became one larger and crumbled the foundations. We hurried into the jungle air beyond.

Zhila's domain sank as Atlantis or the old world in the great flood. The water flowed onto this new terrain and formed a slight beach before the rise ceased. We took cover under the trees and watched and listened to the washing of the waves and the groan of stone as the weakened wall tumbled into the rising tide.

We rested there, even in daylight, and the others slept beneath the canopy. I pretended to. When the world of dreams quickly closed over them, I sauntered exhaustedly into the wilderness.

I did not look back.

=====

[Weasel Overlord]

wheee! *crashes in with post* this was a long time in da makage...

[color=darkgreen]~Eleiamae~
in which all things come to an end, and Eleiamae says a final goodbye to her love

I had watched their battle from afar with eager eyes. The River hag was finally defeated, and I felt the group’s exultation as a beacon striking the skies.

The consequences, oh, they had not thought of those. Zhila. Dead. And now...

Now, there would be no more swamps, no more water, no more world.

Hidden in the trees that were left, I observed with a strange calm as the small, ragged group coalesced in front of the swirling barrier that marked the end of the River World, the end of my world.

Dispassionately, I regarded my only love gather his only love into his arms and stride through the quivering portal to the beyond.

A split second, and I considered following. Where this path lead, I did not know, but, shaking my head, I knew it was not for me.

My place was here.

Born of the swamps, I would die with the swamps and have no regrets, save that my love could never be a reality, and that it would, finally and inevitably, kill me.

But I had come to terms with that already, though it pained me so to admit it. Too many haughty, untouchable years had taken their toll on me, and the struggle within upon Tryfan’s rejection of me had an irreparable effect on my mind, leaving me unable to accept his lack of love, and sending me in the direction of a lovelorn child having a tantrum.

But now I was at peace. My love had gone, the pain flared once, then, deadened by the experiences of the past months, it flickered into nothing once more; quashed as if it never were.

A single tear rolled down my cheek, free of any glamour for the first time since I had laid eyes on Tryfan. I gazed down at my bulrush fingers in disgust, then wiped away the tear harshly, sniffling slightly before I took a hold of myself.

Leaping from the tree in a single, graceful movement, I landed cat-like among the last remnants of leaf litter and swamp water that were my home. Kneeling, I scooped up a handful of leaves and held them to my chest.

Home.

But home was gone now; gone the same way as my love, and Eleiamae could never follow. She was not meant for love, and she cries now, for a final time, accepting her fate as she grasps for the tiny knife coddled in the small of her back, strapped secure by her belt.

Tearing at the strapping, the knife comes free, blade glinting sharp in what’s left of the sun’s light.

Weak now, it gives barely enough light to illuminate the scrap of land left.

Yellowing, fading, the sun’s light blinks out, as if someone flicked the mystical light-switch of the universe.

And the world went dark...

[Asilynne]

Can you send this to the RPG archives? Its too good to lose :>

[Weasel Overlord]

Hot damn, I sure can. *archives*