The River (LSU's Accepted) - M

[Plantae]

The River

The sign up and its plot and forms can be found here. Please do not repost your character forms, as it is unnecessary. If you wish to join, we have unlimited non-human spots and three human spots remaining.

[u]Law
1. The only limitations to what you create in this world are:
1a. There are no other humans, though humanoids are acceptable.
1b. The time period of The River world is medieval.

2. Try your best not to manipulate another player's character incorrectly, but if it happens, it is unnecessary to give any information for future reference or send them a private message to tell them to change it. In this situation, simply write your own reaction so that it shows that the player's character misinterpreted your character's actions.

3. The Mature tag does not stretch farther then implied sex, semi-graphic violence, and moderate profanity.

4. If you do not notify me via a method I will take notice of (private message or the Away Topic are preferred), I will boot you from my roleplay if you do not post once every five days. I understand that there are extenuating circumstances, but these will be under extreme scrutiny for their validity.

===

As is, the only thing you need consider as a human with your first post is the fact that you must be inside the River World by the end of it. Everything else is your call. The order in which you post determines who is in The River World when.

For non-human characters, just begin as you please. If you need a little guidance, think introduction. Tell us "who" your character is. What is their purpose?

= Joseph Faust =

A single lolling tongue of frigid water rolled itself over in my mind, a wave of nausea that bit at my senses and threatened that my will (for once) might incapacitate my body. Each time I blinked I saw it for a split second, a sea goddess' breath upon the barren wasteland that was the inside of my head. The broken plain with all its little cracks... A single notion dissuaded my normal function, tripping my thoughts in a cruel cabaret of a mountain lake's lucidity. There are two reasons a man cannot sleep. The first is a conscience that longs to finish its path of righteousness. The second is a conscience racked with guilt. At this point, it was all too fluid for me to tell which it was. A throbbing awoke me a little, pain reminding me that I, at least, was alive. A few drops of blood fell to my hand, and a spark like that which started a storm traversed the length of my spine. The blood... it was... mingled.

Suddenly the surrealism dropped away in a liquid moment, the shards scattering and my brow raising. Risen to the sweltering heat. In the distance there was a single sliver of woodland, or at least that's what it appeared to be. I wasn't in the desert, but the fields might as well have their own ability to create mirages. Of course, a sane man sees mirages. An insane one sees nightmares. Choices, choices...

I reached the road and did a double-take, skimming across the areas the piercing rays of the sun touched. Searching... searching for any signs of life. Nothing. Then... a field mouse emerged from the thicket at my right. The brush was tangled and obtuse, jutting from the ground like a miniature forest. The rodent took one look at me and bounded back into the underbrush. I waited several seconds and felt a pinprick of pain, like a mosquito bite. Then, a cat trotted out of the briar with the dead mouse clamped in its maw. After that, I didn't stop again to look behind.

I was running again in a minute and I reached the stripe of woodland in record time, taking into account the steep incline of the forest and jumping rather clumsily over several rocks on its outskirts. Fragments of some ancient rock wall, one the forest had reclaimed over time. Among these convex artifacts stood a single metal stake, a pink ribbon fluttering drearily in the light breeze. This was clearly private property, but that concern was above me. In my mind's eye, the ribbon turned red and was thrown to the wind in a fierce gust. No more. Trespassing or not, however, I couldn't help the deep sense of foreboding that overtook my heart. I had never trusted emotions, intuition. Symbolism and vague messages had their time. It was time for me to take control over whatever tattered remains of a cushioned existence remained. Forget the deeper mysteries. Today was a day for logic... and reason. Discarding the foreboding, the only warning I knew, I took a single cautious step into the wood. Another followed, my right foot slightly lame. My limp had manifested early, which only meant bad news. I would travel at night.

Carefully now, still a little startled and not knowing why, I took a few more steps. It must have been me and my own preferences, but in the forest the light faded away as suddenly as it came. Under the trees the sun wasn't as hot. I wasn't ready to take full reciprocity on my notion that it was causing hallucinations, though, as the calls of strange birds invaded my hearing. Once I thought I saw a flickering image of a maiden, even. She was in a white dress, or had it been black? As I tried to recall the details, her memory vanished. The pit-a-pat of her steps among the wood echoed in my head, soft and sound, loud and purposeful. They changed as she did, and then she was gone. I was left alone again, following the tree line deeper.

It wasn't long before the last sign of the hay fields faded and I was left only with trees and silence. Wait, it shouldn't be silent. Unless my presence was disturbing them, I couldn't understand a place where the animals weren't avidly about their business. Silence was golden, indeed, and I cherished the moment. My suspicions from my first steps here reaffirmed themselves, but I shunned them away. There was safety here... or at least I thought so. There were far more places to hide among the green.

=

I was amazed at the wood's size. I had imagined it small, but now it seemed the size of my cynicism. As the day drew on, and the hours passed away, a sliver of shadow began to grow on the horizon. Like a single canoe on a placid lake, my footsteps were hardly interrupted by the call of the wild. It was not as dead as before, but it was if a tension hung in the air... slick and implacable as ice. Still, even with my fostering freedom, nothing shook this meandering. Over every crest was another tree, tall and towering. The floor was even gloomier for them, but I didn't mind. The melancholy in my blood blended well with the fallen leaves. All was little, until a distant trickle caught my attention.

It persisted. I tried to leave it, to walk away, but it remained clear. It never faltered, never hastened, never increased in volume. However, the sound of water was unmistakable. I gathered up my canteen and peered inside with an evil eye. A few stray drops were all that was left. I would need water if I wanted to get anyway, especially if I hoped to find my way out of this green snare. Gradually, I gave in and followed its lilting voice. Gradually, I climbed a steeper incline than before. The terrain grew a bit rougher, and I nearly fell face first into a few upturned boulders. They were in an odd position, even without significance as they were. It was long, but time slowly gave away the secrets of the noise. A little stream came into view.

The sound did not grow louder. It never faltered, as I said. However, as I closed upon this little stream... I found it was not so little. It would have been a roaring river had it not been for the meager wave of its bowels. The surface was clouded, not mudded, but gray. It was as if a smoke bomb had gone off and hung itself in the cords of the creek, growing and infecting the whole length of it. I didn't bother to pull off my clothes, as I had reached a point where it seemed sufficiently shallow. Only in to the knee, it took but a moment to casually stroll to the monster's center. Here, it was strangely calm. I could hear rapids up ahead.

I bent over and filled my canteen with no fuss and no hassle, uncharacteristically. Realizing, I removed my sandals and strode to a portion of the river just a little deeper. Diving under, I washed the stain and pungent scent from my clothing. I left them on, refusing to lose the only thing I could carry on my back for the time being. They would dry like Satan himself had bestowed them some heat as soon as I found the sun again. I came up for air fleetingly and grappled with the tide for the dirt bank, finding it and putting an arm on it. I brought myself up to eye level and rose out of the water. It was but a footfall before it ended.

My soul skipped forward a leap and my heart stopped. A choking sensation rattled my body and what I saw in horror as some sort of seizure overtook my limbs. Ghoulish and garish images circulated my vision, portrayals of man's accomplishments and strange, runic messages I couldn't understand. Memories I hadn't know raced through my head. In a single teardrop, I felt a bit of my brain tear. Suddenly, I couldn't remember what my voice sounded like. What my face looked like. I couldn't assure I was whole. I struggled with all my will to reaffirm these things, to return to fact. It wasn't the case, and I couldn't. My eyes were a vice as soon as the urge to struggle had reached my nerves, and my feet no longer stood on solid ground. It felt like I moved, but didn't. It was as if I had phased from one room to another without really leaving. A melodious cry rattled my throat, but I wasn't sure if it was my own. Feelings, tastes, textures, pungent scents and fragrant disasters, an eyeful of tender horror, all mixed into one. And just as it started, it stopped...

=

My body was still standing, stock still. My eyes were shut. My mind was shut. I could feel solid ground but disregarded it, wondering, and trying to catch one wisp of that experience. Had I disliked it? I supposed I had, but suddenly everything was gray. And then... vision.

As my body awoke, never really having slept, a sudden realization rocked my body with avid hesitation. That time in darkness, and that sensation, had been only a blink of my time. The blink of an eye, and it was different. It was as if someone had swept the hand over the Earth and said, "Change!" A snowflake burst my reverie, oddly warm against a pallid cheek. I stood, no longer in a forest but looking at one about half a mile away down a wintry knoll. Everything had fallen away so fast, that all I could do to comfort my senses was stick my tongue out like when I was young... a single flake graced my tongue, and melted. Then it was real, and as a fickle mind took its time to come to its senses... I rebounded. Turning, I faced a rock wall, towering but not to the sky. Long, but how far I didn't know. The end was obscured by gray sea mist. The atmosphere was buttered with sorrow. Staring into that blank stone, I muttered words I didn't pay attention to. I looked deep into it, searching for some crack or texture. There was none. A second later, I was just alone. That was all. My abilities became nothing except... "wait and hope."

=====

[Asilynne]

Your amazing post inspired me Plantae ^-~
Oh also, you forgot to add my character into the list of humans.

~Lily O’Keefe~
Dreaming your life away...

Just drifting through life. Drifting, like a river, always changing, never changing. Always the same thing but never the same water. Some say I just let life pass me by, I just let things drift past. Was that really a bad thing? Should I let myself become disturbed over little things? Didnt everything always work itself out in the end?

They always said I was a dreamer. They said I dreamed things, and saw them in the world around me. They said I made my dreams on paper, to show to other what went through my head. What drifted through I should say. Like a river. Creativity flooded everything I did. Dreams constantly flooded my mind, so it seemed to be my own reality. The truth of how things were flowed depending on the day, depending on my thoughts at any given moment. I surrounded myself with the beauty of what I could never live. For though I dreamed I knew what reality was.

Reality was waking up to a face-less world. Slaving yourself to a nine to five schedule, everything scheduled, everything structured. Reality wasnt curved flowing lines, it was blocks, angles, everything perfectly measured and perfectly proportioned. Reality was ordered, tamed. I hated it. Every day waking up a little part of me died, every time I went to my boring job, did the menial tasks I was assigned, I wanted to die. Or I should say I would. But I didnt live on this Earth, in this reality. I made my own, one that changed every day. One that was never boring, one that had curved lines and soft edges, misty regions that left parts of the world to the imagination. You could never see the whole thing, and I liked it that way. It always left you wondering what was out there, what lay past the mist. If anything lay past the mist.

Id often go to that misty region in my mind, walk to the edge of the flowing river, but Id never put my feet in. It was as if I was afraid, as if once my foot touched the water I would never be able to leave. But one day I realised, what if I didnt want to leave. What if I wanted to plunge in the misty depths, sink to the bottom, let the flowing waters drift around me. What if I liked the idea of looking up at the surface, seeing the pale light filter down, and know I could never rise up again? What if I were to become entangled in the green undergrowth of the rivers bed, cucooned, sleeping in my dreamland? Would I be lost, or would I be truely found?

I stood at the edge of the river again, but today was different. Today I was going to jump in, despite a lingering silly fear of the unknown, of not knowing exactly what I was getting into. That was part of the reason, I was sick of the predictable life I had until now. I was going to find out what that river was like today, find out how warm or cool the water was, find out what was beyond the mist in my mind. I was going to, literally, plunge headfirst into the unknown. Closing my eyes, I stepped to the edge of the mist in my mind, and jumped in.

Then reality kicked in. A sudden new reality, I felt the water, felt it swirl. I felt the burning in my lungs as I tried to breathe like I had been a moment earlier, sitting in my boring house. But I felt I was no longer there. Opening my eyes I saw water, gray water with green growing things on the bottom of the river. Looking up I saw the pale light filtering down. I was no longer dreaming.

Gasping for air at the surface, I looked around. It was all there, like the place in my mind. Only it was real. The misty edge was there, the flowing waters. However it happened, I had gone to that secret place in my mind, only it wasnt in my mind anymore. And something else was different this time too. Always this place was my solitary one, I went here mentally to be alone. But today someone else was here too, a guy, standing wet and dripping at the edge of the river, looking as if he was lost. I smiled, because even though I was confused as to what had happened I knew I wasnt lost.

I was finally found.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hope thats ok for first post ^-^()

[Drusilla]

Oooh, I'm so damned pissed... *kicks computer* I had half of a post and this piece of shit locked up on me… and now I can’t remember most of what was in it.

For the full effect of this post, check out the song "Dig Up Her Bones" by the Misfits. The video, which I haven't seen, is on launch.com.

[color=#a0ffff]Sara Raize

Life is unpredictable. It can go so fast from frame to frame that you can’t even see the movie in the making, or it can be so slow that it makes advertisements during a sporting event seem exciting.

Sometimes it's like a lazy river, and other times it's like a white-water rafting trip. Unfortunately, there isn’t any sort of warning as to when a relaxing life is about to take the plunge into chaos.

Like my life. Right now, I ran both literally and metaphorically, my feet blistered and thoughts jumbled as I tried to tear from the snare that my life had become. I wondered as to my sanity, and I wondered what would become of me. All I knew is that nothing would get me to go back, to return… I would keep running until…

I didn’t know exactly ‘until’ what, and it mattered little to me at the moment. If my feet became half as broken as my spirit, then I wouldn’t be able to run anymore… but I could run for now, and that was what I did.

I didn’t know where I was. I had run from… back there… and I was going to whatever was before me. I had left any semblance of civilization far behind me and it was a wonder that I hadn’t fallen and twisted or, even worse, broken my ankle as I ran through forested wilderness in my boots. I had left before sundown, and sunrise wasn’t far off. My endurance amazed me, but fear was a powerful motivator. The only traces of the tears were part of the saline residue plastering my hair to my face; sweat stuck my hair to my neck as well.

I had to get out, no matter where I ended up.

I couldn’t hear, could barely see, and, thankfully, couldn’t feel much. I blundered through the predawn darkness, unaware of my surroundings; my only impulse (for it was too strong and too undefined to be a thought) was to survive.

Then I was aware of the ground dropping off beneath my feet, and I was thrown down the bank of a creek to fall, face down, in the water. The current picked up, and rather suddenly, as if it was waiting for me, and I was swept downstream. The water became deeper, and the flow of the water tumbled my body about as if I was a doll. I was helpless against the pull and gave in, letting the current, like life, to take me where it would.

My head was thrown against a rock and searing pain shot through my skull; the water around me was tinted slightly red. I drifted in and out of consciousness and eventually became vaguely aware that the river’s course had slowed… I should have died by now, drowned, but I was alive, or at least I thought so. Again, I began to wonder, unable to do anything about my condition, when I was lifted out of the water and turned over onto my back. Someone was giving me cardiopulmonary resuscitation, trying to get me to breathe again… I coughed and opened my eyes to a blurred world.

[Krystalline Kabutops]

|/-< Dezerae Forsan >-\|

The woods are a sinister place. I don't care what the naturalists or the poets have to say on the subject - they're wrong. In the woods, it seems like the trees have eyes, and their branches try to grab at you, pull you into the undergrowth to be slowly consumed. But most important of all, the woods are cubic. You know that you're in an enormous space, but it's something that you can't verify. And this all-encompassing, if unprovable, sense of space, brings something very unpleasant with it.

It's easy to get lost in the trees.

This was, unfortunately, my current situation. I had gone mountain-bike riding on the trails that filled the woods around my neighborhood, despite the fact that almost everything that possesses a domicile here will leap at the chance to bite, sting, maul, or fall on me. I needed to clear my head. Life was not pleasant at the moment, and I had finally realized that the outdoors could provide the perfect escape.

If only I'd known how right I was.

My bike's back wheel caught on a root, or maybe a rock, or, I rather maliciously hoped, a squirrel. Whatever it was, I didn't get the opportunity to see it; I was flung by my own momentum off of the bike, through the air, and in what must have been the first stroke of good luck my life had ever held, into a river.

I was grateful for not having had my head rammed into a tree, or shattered on a rock, but it was with growing tension that I realized that this river was stronger than I could cope with. I had swum a lot as a child, but as I had grown older, I had abandoned the water for the cliffs. Fate, or karma, or whatever, seemed to have caught up with me, as I was pulled under by the powerful current. I struggled for a moment or two, trying to get my hands or, better yet, my head above the water, until my vision finally went black, lack of oxygen forcing my brain to shut down.


~~~~~~~~


When I awoke, I immediately realized that something was amiss. The sky was gray, as was everything else in my range of vision. Sitting up, I took in what little there was to see; Mists, water, and a gray landscape, devoid of vegetation. If I had been in a better mood, I would have made a comment about not being in Kansas any more.

[Weasel Overlord]

[COLOR=palegreen]~Tryfan Wen~
‘When the stars threw down their spears, And water’d heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see?’

I padded through the darkened streets, my feet not feeling the small shards of glass and muck that littered the ground, grown so accustomed now to the rough feel of the ground beneath them. I breathed in the unnatural scent of the city and knew I wanted more. Smoke. Unnatural. Tarmac. Abhorrent. The hordes of faceless people wending their sorrowful ways through the unfeeling crowds.

‘In every cry of every man, In every infant’s cry of fear, In every voice in every ban, The mind-forged manacles I hear’

Had not Blake once written those words? And never a truer word was said, in my view. I hated the city with an all-consuming passion and every minute of my time was spent inventing ways of escape. In my dreams I ran the wending routes, once so familiar to me, but in the Dream-land, they twist and confuse until nothing is certain. Nothing ‘cept the fact that I must escape. The urgency fills me more every day, and, like a jug that is full to the brim, one day, I must overflow. How I pray for that day, not prone to religion, I hope with a blind faith that some higher power will strive to grant my wish and spirit me away from here, never to return.

I long to hunt as I meander the streets. Hunt as men once did before they were confined to their concrete prisons of the mind and soul. The prison was everywhere. Especially in literature. The writers whose words I felt deep within me knew. Call it what you will. London. The Wen. There are many names for our folly, but all mean the same in the end.

Prison. Whether of the mind, the body, or the fragile soul. Orwell knew it in his 1984. Wilde knew it in his Dorian Gray. The prison is everywhere and I long to escape.

Freedom

A simple word, but one that means so much. I toss and turn in my Dream-land, walking the paths of the city once more. I feel as if I will walk them forever...something inside me snaps at this thought. Like a wild beast tears at chains, not understanding that there is no way out, only caring for the freedom that awaits him. I sleep as I wake. Walking. Ever walking. One day, maybe I will be free. Maybe I will walk the paths of the city until my bones grow old and grey. Maybe I will take a chance upon freedom. Dive into the River, as it were, of freedom. A dam opens within me, rushing and whirling. Tearing away all memories and Dream-thoughts. I wince away from the water’s edge. Fearing that which I have wished for all my life.

Freedom

My inner voices mocked and taunted.

”You wouldn’t dare...”

I scream in defiance, my slow lope turning into a helter-skelter run. I will not walk the city any longer. No longer will I hunt the elusive freedom.

I dash to the city edge, all Dream-thoughts gone from my mind as if they had never been. I threw off the shackles...the mind-forged manacles...and I run. I run as if the very jailers of my prison chase me. Headlong and blind, I wend my way between trees and natural things that could never make their home in the Prison. I breath in the green air and sigh as I come to a cliff.

“Freedom.” I taste the word with my mouth. Turning slightly, I run a little way back towards the Prison. Stopping, I shudder and turn back...towards the rushing that encompassed my freedom.

Gaining speed, I ran, and with a blithe shout, I performed the most perfect swan-dive over the pinnacle. Heading towards the deluge that awaited me, rocks gleaming like a perfect set of teeth waiting in a gaping mouth for my fall. I tilted my body slightly, arcing towards the River. Plunging under, I gasped, the cold taking my breath away. Recovering, I swam a little way, to escape the current. By this time, I was too tired to stroke properly and I let the current take me.

As I whirled by the banking, I saw a small group of people, their ashen faces stark against the greenery. One was upright in stature but she looked slightly confused, as if she had been plunged into an alien community. Two others were nearby, one wandering near the forest and the other kneeling on the ground, as if in shock, and then there was a third. She was, well, buxom was the word I'd usually use, but I felt like being respectful. And plus, she looked kinda battered, as if she had lately had a brush in with a hard wall.

I grappled with a passing rock and slowed my progress enough for my screaming muscles to do their work. A few tired strokes later and I was laying on the grassy banking, gazing at the dull sky. One of the others appeared in my field of vision, upside down from my point of view.

I grinned slightly, despite my exhaustion, as she grew closer, her eyes seemingly magnified, as if I were looking through a telescope. She proffered a hand and smiled in return. Reaching up, I grasped her arm and she pulled me into the sitting position.

“It seems I am not the only one finding my way here today...” I grinned and gazed round at the others. A motley bunch they looked, but I couldn’t be more grateful...

“Free”...I whispered.

-----------------------------------------------------

Hee hee...this is fun!! *claps* I'm gonna enjoy this RP!!!

[Emotional Faun Chiko-sai]

-----------------
Hela
"I am only practicing the
way to say goodbye
to you."
---------------------
Hela remembers her father constantly. Maybe not the important things, but always the smallest details of him: the way he couldn't smile without his smile being crooked, the way he never had to hide, his bravery that hinged on audacity, the pointedness of his nose and ears. The way he made everything all right. Propinquity his favourite word. It was the propinquity of this, the propinquity of that, all the time. As if using a bombastic word made him smarter than others, which he was. Father always had a clever look about him. The reflections of firelight in their wattle and daub house disappearing in the depths of his eyes, which held an internal fire that never burnt out.

He had left her one day when the island was covered with fog from the sea, thick and heavy, impossible to navigate through.
"You won't miss me," he told her with his crooked smile. He gave her the dagger, then, and walked away into the fog. No promises to come back soon. No witty little anecdotes about the proper use of blunt daggers. He did not turn behind.
"I will," she said in a small voice to his retreating back.

She still does. She asks herself why he left. She only ever wanted everything to stay the same. She travels back and forth about the island looking for him. She is nearly satisfied that he has left this plane, crossed the river, but where? why? how? and she does not know enough of what her father is, insufficient to question others about his presence. People don't remember crooked smiles. They need a species. A history. A name. She doesn't know her father's name.

She doesn't like to go back to their house in the fire country. She only goes back when it rains, because in rain the whole island is wet and dangerous except the fire country. The fire country is a glade of dead trees in the hinterland of the island, and their house is in the middle of the circle of dead trees. Dryads will not live where there have been fire creatures because of the ever-present danger of themselves catching fire. So all the trees are dead near their house. This loneliness is partly why she avoids the house, but it is not the main reason.

Every night she finds a different place to sleep in. The animals don't bother her because of her fire, and the other creatures keep to themselves, mostly. She likes most to perch on the top of the tallest trees in the forest, if the owner of the tree lets her. The feel of the hidden spark in the heart of any tree is comforting.

Fire-making is a skill she has had from birth. She was born in a breath of flame, burning so violently that her legs were consumed in seconds. Her father found her new ones but they were dead. Because of this she is sometimes frightened of her own fire. She uses it sparingly and her magic is underdeveloped.

The only spell she uses with any sort of frequency is the divining of oracle bones. Father always used bones from the unicorn's graveyard, because he had done the unicorns some favours in the past, but she is not sure if they would accord her the same delicacy, and she uses her dagger instead. She kindles a small fire on the floor of the cave she is temporarily occupying for the day and throws the dagger in.

When the cracks and bumps rise on the blunt blade she reaches into the fire and runs her fingers over them. Oracle bones rarely gave coherent answers to what she wanted to know. She can usually find out the answer to her question, though, because there is only one question that she asks and with daily repetition of the same patterns of cracks she has grown to understand what kind of answers she will get.

My father is not here. That was for certain. But there was something else, a crack on the end of another crack. A sort of postscript. Insignificant and unnoticeable unless you were familiar with the feel of the bone.

There are new creatures present...
----------------
Argh, first-post pointless drabble. The biology trials kind of pan-fried my brain all over again from last time... please feel free to make noise if there's problems with the geography of the island that I made up in my post.

[Arnen]

Sorry, but I'm going to have to withdraw from this RPG. I'm just not feeling any inspiration for it, and I don't feel I'd be capable of making quality posts for it. So yeah... You can just open up the spot or whatever

[Plantae]

I ended that on a bad note, so I'm reposting it with a slight change to the ending. Would one of you mind taking it from here? Feel free to follow, or disagree with my character as you please. It is your choice, after all.

= Joseph Faust =

It was an ironically short span of time before another crossed the wall I had entered through. At first, the only thing either of us had been able to do was exchange glances. As if to say, "Who the hell are you, and where the hell am I?" It wasn't in my nature to be friendly, but when the girl offered a hand I was obliged to accept it. "I'm Lily O'Keefe," she muttered, both of us still a little obtuse from our personal encounter with the river. As first impressions go, there didn't seem anything curious about her at all. Light red hair and green eyes, and a supple body. Her apparel accentuated her curves seductively, and I shot a quick glance up and down the rest of her body. I just couldn't help myself. Whether I was attracted to her or if I was just taking it in, preparing myself for seeing that near constantly, I didn't know.

After a pause in which she let go of my hand with a small expression of mock embarassment, I managed to eke out my name, but my subconscious intervened, and the words that came out were, "Mathias Hausen." Pressed for a name, a bit of German had connivingly wiggled its way in. She nodded, pleased at the introduction. She opened her mouth, seemingly to elaborate, but it was but a moment before a battered woman fell through the wall seperating the worlds.

Lily was briefly shocked, and I quickly bent over to gather the severe fair-skinned woman on the ground. She flailed as if trying to swim, likely a device of the river, as I moved her several feet over into a more comfortable position. Her deep red hair dangled wildly, and at any other time I might have noticed her voluptuous build. Gently, I checked her pulse, and when she appeared to still be breathing, reached deep into my memory in an attempt to remember resuscitation techniques. An expert would have looked at my attempt and laughed, but she came to in several moments by herself and sat up, spluttering and clutching her head.

"Where am I?" She asked feebly, but a dignified tone was already returning to her voice along with a rather sultry expression.

I allowed Lily to reply, remaining quiet and observant. "Neither of us really know..." she trailed off, before inserting, "This is Mathias and I'm Lily," she said, gesturing to herself, and I nodded slightly in acknowledgement. "What's your name?"

"Sara." She stated it simply, choosing to leave out her surname, likely waiting for our own before she made a move. In the dead silence that followed, I glanced at the darkening sky as Lily struggled with some kind of response. She was cut off as yet another entered our motley crew, this one falling straight through the wall and onto her side with a dull "thud!" Upon impact, she immediately awoke and made a brief upward motion, clawing for something. Then she was calm, caught an eyeful of the three of us, and scrambled up into standing position. She teetered, a little dizzy. It might have been the light, but she seemed a little younger than the other two. Lily, who was more or less becoming the official greeter, shuffled over and stuck out an awkward hand to the black-haired teen, moving from one foot to the other in the process.

"Hello, I'm Lily."

The newcomer pulled her hand back at the sound of Lily's lilting, polite mannerism and quickly muttered... "Dezerae."

She gazed upon Sara, who gave a slight wave and her own name. Passing to me, she smirked as I refused to greet her. Instead, I offered, "It's getting late." I turned my back to the group and walked a fair distance away, peering downward towards the forest.

I wouldn't have backed away, but I was struggling with a sudden hearing acute enough to hear the grain in the rest of their voices. Suddenly, I literally felt another fall through the wall. This one, I decided, must be the last one. It was more of inherent knowledge, but I just hoped that there weren't any more.

“It seems I am not the only one finding my way here today...” Lily muttered, and I heard skin on skin as she pulled the newcomer into standing position.

It was lighter, softer, quieter then that I heard the male that had just entered. He hadn't bothered to introduce himself yet, but across that span between us, I heard the barely caught word, "Free." At that moment, I realized just what this world was. Suddenly, I didn't care to return at all. Suddenly, it was an escape. My reason, survival instincts, returned in an instant. Quickly now, staring at the lowering horizon, I strode back to our little group and commanded.

"We need a fire." The new arrival pointed at the forest suggestively, I shook my head. Appointing myself temporary leader, I ordered again, "Gather some kindling from the edges, the far edges. I don't like the looks of that place." Turning out my pockets, I showed the group a flint stone and piece of steel from my pocket. "Anyone keen to using these?" I flipped over my hands, displaying blistered palms. "I'm not exactly capable."

=====

[Drusilla]

Sara Raize

"And who made you leader, boy?” I shot back at the young man who had taken charge. Given, someone needed to, but I didn’t like his attitude at the moment, and there was something about him that really didn’t ring true.

I frowned, my forehead wrinkling in concern. "Where the hell is this place, anyway? And why are we all here? I mean, what are the chances of five people ending up in the middle of nowhere at the same time?”

I struggled to my feet, something that, under normal circumstances was difficult due to my top-heavy frame and was nearly impossible with my head spinning the way that it was. I was still taking in my surroundings, and my companions. Two men… three women…

If there was something as freaky going on as I suspected, we’d be here awhile. One girl was going to be the odd one out, and it wasn’t going to be me. My inner voice kicked in and reminded me of what I had gone through since dusk of the previous day… or, what would have been the previous day, I supposed. Then again, old habits die hard.

Snapping back to the present, I took the steel and flint from his hand, just barely brushing his skin. I sensed a slight flash of discomfort from him, but ignored it. For now, we needed to set up for the night. Once that was done... well, then we'd have to see.

"I can do that; we need tinder, you know, light twigs, leaves, something that will catch quickly. It needs to be dry, though..." I said, surveying the surrounding ground and kneeling to gather dried plants and create a tent-shaped pile. Lily was eager to help and got a little to close to me; I shot a glare at her that would have stopped even the bravest man in his tracks.

Too many women... and I was a lusty whore.

[Plantae]

Way to develop your character, Drusilla. "and I was a lusty whore..." Brilliant!

= Joseph Faust =

Apparently I'd irritated Sara. That was a mistake. I needed to switch strategies, and immediately, as being a sarcastic bastard wouldn't get me anywhere. Even if it came naturally, that is. I needed to invent a story, and quickly. It would only be a matter of time before the more open of us five began sharing a bit, and not saying anything would only look incriminating. If I wanted to keep my nerve, I needed to think like a lawyer, not a convict.

In my contemplation, the other four were busy. Lily was tenatively approaching Sara, who shot back a glare in response. Despite the situation, that reaction made me smirk jovially. It was one of my skills to be apt at judging emotions, so seeing the look of lust that was so misplaced on Sara's face was rather hilarious. I was one of those people everyone was annoyed by, due to their quality of reading minds. You couldn't explain your frustration when someone finished your sentence.

Setting my own inside jokes aside, I strolled a little too purposefully over to Sara. She posed another of her glares that might become infamous in time, but I didn't move a muscle. I made brutal eye contact, but neither of us was about to look downcast. "I apologize for my insolence earlier. I don't want to be making any rivals, and I can see that you were perturbed by my 'survival' attitude." She emitted a loud "hmph" as she studied my eyes, but if she was unsettled, she didn't show it. It'd be pretentious of me to say I was quite deceptive, but I could hope that she didn't sense anything but sincerity behind my words. They certainly came out like a genuine apology. That was important, as it reminded me that I was (more or less), still human. Finally, she resumed setting the tinder and working at the flint and stone, likely satisfied. My gait was dignified as I retreated, nearly sure that she had given whatever forgiveness her demeanor was allowing.

I resumed my watch of the forest, and gave a slight turn of the corner of my mouth when a twig snapped in the pitch cathedral of trees. A single pair of blue eyes, likely deer, penetrated the gloom. We had company, it seemed. The question was: were they hostile?

=====

[Krystalline Kabutops]

|/-< Dezerae Forsan >-\|

Wordlessly, I began collecting wood from the edges of the forest. The others in our group were tense people, and I sensed that they weren't entirely truthful. I had never been one for joining groups - I preferred to watch the hierarchy, not assume a place in it. It would be no different now. As soon as I had found a sufficient amount of wood, I brought it over to where Mathias and Sara were getting a fire going. I dropped it next to them with a dull "thunk", and took a seat on a stone nearby.

Not much, but better than nothing... Been busy >_>;

[Emotional Faun Chiko-sai]

Hela
"Propinquity"
----------------

There are a lot of things that Hela can read from fire. She may not be able to create burning infernoes, or massive walls of fire, such as her father had told her of and never shown but once, but she sees the nature of fire, which in turn reveals the nature of the ones who made it. She does not hesitate to read the innate character of people, which just goes to show how much of a child she still really is.

Her father had found her innocence refreshing. He had never told her about the darker side of things, a regrettable slip on his part. Through her eyes, the world is still the proverbial rose-tinted panorama.

In the fire of the five new creatures she sees hope and confusion and resignment and all the dark things she doesn't know the words for but feels instead and she is afraid. She shouldn't have come here in the first place, but she wanted to look for herself and be able to tell herself for certain that her father was not there. Even bones can be mistaken. Maybe she had read the cracks wrong. Maybe the creatures knew where her father was. In Hela's vocabulary maybe is a powerful word.

Of the five creatures two are taller and dress differently from the others; she takes these to be male. The other three share the similarity of being female, but their countenances vary widely: one, with ruddy hair, seemed friendlier than the other two; one more had a stern sharp face and looked to be courting in an odd manner; and the last one was quiet and dark. Between the two males she likes the green-haired one better. The thin one with the shifty eyes was dangerous.

She is hiding high up in the hollow of a tree that nobody wanted much to live in any more after it had been struck by lightning in one of the few real thunderstorms Hela had weathered in her relatively short life. Hiding: hiding is her only talent. She can move so quietly that a unicorn could not sense her footsteps; live in a hole in a rock for as long as it took to get a rabid wolf off her trail; disappear in the winding fog-paths of the swamp with ease. These were things she could not learn because her only teacher never hid, would not hide, announced his arrival with whistles and stompings and talk.

After the fire she thinks she wants very much to hide, properly. Far away. She is thinking, maybe the house. Maybe again. Does she want to risk the house, to hide from these creatures that are like her but not like her? The house and its rooms that go on forever. She slept once in the house since her father had gone and she had a dream that she didn't want to have again. With her father there it was fine, he was the owner of the house, and he'd made it, after all. Without him to hold it in check strangers invaded her dreams. The dark things overwhelmed.

A unicorn, its blue eyes fire-bright, brushed past the spinney below her, making twigs crackle beneath its cloven hooves, with the fearlessness bordering on arrogance that all unicorns had. The lowest of creatures knew not to disturb a unicorn. It was noticed by the shifty male, but just the slightest change of expression could be seen, and only then if you were watching carefully.

Hela deliberates between the house and approaching the creatures, and through all this she keeps watch in her unoccupied tree.
---------------------
More character-history-drabble. I need to rewire my head.

[Weasel Overlord]

~Tryfan Wen~
‘When the stars threw down their spears, And water’d heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see?’

The girl who pulled me up said that her name was Lily and I smiled in return. Squatting and then standing, I extended my hand to hers and clasped her slender fingers in my larger paw.

“My name’s Tryfan. Tryfan Wen, in fact.” I grinned in my usual lopsided way, hoping all the while to gain a few allies in this mysterious place. Glancing at the other faces I gleaned that there was one other male and two women other than Lily. The tall man seemed to have assumed a leader position, but I could tell from the face of the buxom one that she as having none of it, and her following outburst proved my instincts correct.

“We need a fire.” The guy had said, and I had pointed in a vague way towards the forest. It seemed an obvious choice to me, but he shook his head. I decided that I disliked this one…he reminded me of the Prison lawyers, smiling at the mouth, but cold and calculating at the eyes.

I had always believed the eyes to be the window of the soul. I would watch this one.

He delved into his pocket, and producing flint and steel, proclaimed that he was inept at handling them. The buxom woman had taken a disliking to him and it showed from her impatient movements and sharp looks.

“And who made you leader, boy?” She demanded imperiously. She then proceeded to voice what we were all no doubt thinking. “Where the hell is this place, anyway?” I had no idea, and I was prepared to bet that no-one else did either. She snatched the flint and steel from his hand and, kneeling, began to gather flammable substances. My companion, Lily stepped forward to help but was soon subdued by a ferocious glare from the buxom one. She stopped in her tracks and backed away, not wanting to provoke a confrontation. The buxom one had eyed me and the other guy almost proprietarily. Eyeing us up as a slave trader checked out possible purchases. When her eyes lighted upon me, they glinted in a way that I could not interpret, and maybe didn’t wish to.

I turned to Lily and offered my hand. “Come. We can gather some wood.” She shook her head slowly, as if afraid to decline my offer, and she sank to the floor. I shrugged and wandered over to the majority of the group. Some introductions were needed and I could no longer go on referring to the group as ‘that tall one’ and ‘the buxom one’.
However, I felt that the two arguing ones were best left for the moment, so I approached the quiet girl who had taken a seat on a handy rock. I coughed to advertise my presence, as in the Prison, I had often managed to sneak up on people without even realising I was doing it.

“You’re the newest one, aren’t you?” She enquired, quietly, looking up at me from her perch. I sat down next to the rock and smiled gently.

“Yes. My name’s Tryfan Wen. Have you any idea where we are?” She shook her head regretfully, but a strange smile lit her face, as if she was remembering an old joke she had heard. She muttered something under her breath that sounded like ‘Kansas’.

“I’m Dezerae.”

“So…do you know any of the others?” I glanced towards the tall man. He was watching the forest, a strange look on his face. He reminded me of a tiger that had caught sight of its prey, stalking it in the grass. He half-turned and caught me looking at him. His face returned to a mask of unreadability, blank as an unwritten book, and he turned back to the forest, eyes fixing on the same spot again. Slipping a sideways glance at Dezerae to see if she had noticed anything odd, I slipped to my feet and padded towards the enigma of a man. I imagined myself a hunter, as I had in my Dream-land. Stalking my prey as a tiger, flattening in the grass, making not a sound. It didn’t take long to reach him, but it seemed to take an age, and when I crept behind him, he made the slightest of twitches. Turning, he scowled.

“I didn’t hear you…”

[Asilynne]

Gah! Sorry for not posting, I was away for a week on a very unplanned adventure x.x I didnt know I would be gone for more than a day so I didnt notify sorry ;.; *begs forgiveness* Am I still allowed to post? -.-()!!!

[Plantae]

I understand your predicament, so it'll be an exception this time. Feel free to continue posting.

= Joseph Faust =

“I didn’t hear you…” And it was true, which happened rarely. However, at that very moment, my eyes had been able to focus and see through the moist black velvet that was the growing night. I had sworn that what I had seen in the forest below was a... unicorn? Any other day I would have doubted it, but I had always been a realist, and it easily fell into place in my head. Likely, this world was going to be very different.

I quickly turned my apparent scowl into a wolfish, but friendly, grin and pointed behind my hunter at the growing newborn fire. "I see they have a fire going." The man, or possibly boy, turned to look as I had. It was at that moment that I pulled a strange face behind his back, wondering what had possessed him to dye his hair green, even sparingly. However, I thought I saw his features curl into a smile as he saw the fire, and then he revolved a step and faced me directly. "I'm Tryfan. Tryfan Wen. Who are you?"

If only I could tell him the true answer to that question, not a name, but a story. "Mathias Hausen," was what came out instead, slightly accentuated with a German dialect. Pulling his hand into an iron grip with mine, I shook it tightly and stared directly into his eyes. It was a sincere gesture, but one that was meant to slightly intimidate. When he didn't draw back, I smirked, and continued, "Pleased to meet you."

Ending our handshake, I strolled carefully over to the fire and announced loudly, "I think I'll rest a little. If anyone needs me, for watch or anything like that, feel free to wake me." To me, the inflection of my voice sounded jovial, and I modestly reminded myself that the test hadn't even begun yet. Sara grunted in reply to my inquiry, Tryfan, who had followed me back to the fire, yawned a little. I retreated almost beyond the glow of the flames, and bedded myself in the snow that was neither wet nor cold. "G'night," I muttered to the darkness.

=====

[Weasel Overlord]

~Eleiamae~

I lifted the waters to my mouth and tasted at my realm. Something was different. I tasted it in the mud and the roots of the plants that were mingled with my palms.

Inhaling, I smiled. A strange, crooked parody that would have sent a mortal fleeing.

New flesh...I tasted them. Five. Two of them male...

My tongue snaked over my full lips in anticipation, and I smoothed at my shift. Male flesh was good...it brought new seductions and a life into me that my swamps could not provide. At this, I sighed, mouth turning downwards. Even to the Naids, love was elusive, and a vain but shining hope gleamed in my mind.

Maybe one of them would love me truthfully...with all his heart. I ask only for one, but none ever come.

No one ever opens their heart willingly to my flesh, willingly tasting my damp and willingly feeling my claws in their skin.

Maybe this time...

The hope gleams in my mind like a beacon, leading me, I knew not where, but it lead me to the edge of my kingdom. My swamps.

Glimmering like a glorious sun. Hope.

[Asilynne]

Thanks, Im glad you understand ^-^ Even so I wont let it happen again.
And Im glad you liked my first post ^-^
~Lily O’Keefe~
Your senses swim, drinking the mist

It was strange. Though I still had no idea how I, or any of the other four got here, I wasnt the least bit upset by leaving my life behind. I was actually happy, and I felt as if I were finally home. The wind called to me, beckoning me to run through the darkened woods. The still waters of the river asked me to swim and bathe in it. The mystery the excitement, you could feel it in the air, feel it in every tree trunk, in every speck of dirt. My mind longed to jump deep within this dreamland and explore everything it had to offer.

But for once my body took precedence. It was night and the air had a slight chill, probably because my clothes were still wet from my river-swim. Sara had managed to coax fire out of the dusty dry wood, despite her best efforts to keep anyone from helping her. Briefly I wondered why she was so hostle, we were all stuck here same as her. Maybe she had someone waiting for her back where she came from. Maybe she had a decent life and wanted to go back to it. Whatever the reason, I wasnt going to let her get me down. I was home, this was my place. I was no stanger to this river or these woods or this mist. It was in my mind, and as far as I knew, these people were in my mind too. As far as I knew I was still sitting in my house in some sort of weird coma. But deep down inside I felt that that wasnt likely.

Mathias had gone to sleep, in the strange warm fluffy snow. I didnt really know what to make of him, but he seemed to have been the first to come to this place. When I had first met him he looked at me strangely, looked at me the way some co-workers at the office had. If he had been a woman Id have said he was sizing me up the way most of them did, but no, it looked more like he was examining my body, which made me both embarrassed and uncomfortable. I never knew what to do when a man found me attractive, though it happened pretty often. I had always been taught by my Pops that most men only wanted one thing, and it seemed to be only that type of man that ever was interested in me. I couldnt see myself with someone like that....probably the reason why I had no one to go back to. Quietly I envied Sara, because she probably did.
Tryfan....he seemed like a nice person. If I had known him in the world beyond this one I could safely say Id be his friend, if I had been able to get up the guts enough to talk to him. He was friendly, which was both refreshing and which also slightly scared me. I didnt know what to do when someone was nice, too many people were shrewd and only wanted to be your friend because of what they could get off you. Genuenly friendly people were rare, and so when I came across one I didnt know what to do. But we would be here awhile, and sensing that I had been open and friendly with everyone. Hopefully this would help me learn.
Dezerae seemed quiet, and though she had given me no reason to dislike her I was glad I wasnt here alone with her. If it had been just us no one would say a word and it would end up being quite boring. Of the whole of them she seemed most like me, but she was also the most mysterious. I didnt know what to make of her either.

Not being able to stand my own teeth chattering anymore, I knew I had to do something. Sighing a little to myself and steeling myself for what had to be done, I pulled off my shirt, leaving myself to sit by the fire in my bra. Normally I would never dream to do this but this was survival time, if I got sick out here there would be no doctor or antibiotics. So embarrassment and modesty would have to take a back seat. Plus one of the guys already went to bed, I reasoned. So certainly the nice guy wouldnt try to check me out right?
“Oh well arent you little miss whore?” A voice from across the fire rang out, bitter sounding and harsh. Looking up with mild surprise I saw it was Sara, gazing at me with a look of hostle distain dancing like the fire gleaming in her eyes. The red glow of the fire made her face look even more hostle. Shaking my head, just knowing I was blushing from the attention that was called to me, I said in an even voice, “Im cold.”
“Oh I can TELL.....and Im sure the men can see as well.” she said, obviously indicating something about my body. Crossing my arms over my chest I started feeling a little mad. “Im not going to get sick just because Im embarrassed, and Im embarrassed enough. If I wanted to put out the message ‘screw me now’ I would have taken everything off!” Cooling down a bit as I saw Mathias raise his head to look my way, I spoke in a lower voice. “All of you are wet too, its not good to stay in wet clothes, especially with how cool this night air is. I dont think well be able to get to a doctor if we get sick. I know its embarrassing but look at it this way. We dont know how we got here and we dont know how or even if we can get back. So we re going to have to do what we can to survive. Its not like we have a house to go to or a change of clothes.”
Nothing I said seemed to make sense to her, because she looked even more furious than ever. But before she could retort with anything another voice spoke up.
“I have a house....”
A sudden feeling of apprehension rose within me. That voice didnt sound like anyone that was in our group, which meant we werent completely alone here. Shooting a look into the woods where it came from, I saw eyes gleaming, but through the dark I couldnt see anything else. I was already feeling vunerable with my embarrassment, and now this new voice/eyes from the forest was tensing me up. Covering myself as I stood up hastily I almost fell into the fire had Tryfan not caught me by the arm. Too thouroghly embarrassed and startled to thank him, my eyes locked on the glowing eyes in the forest and in a shaky but still curious voice I called out.
“Whos there?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kinda crappy but oh well ^-^() Sorry again for my lack of posting. Ill let Chiko decide whether or not she wants Hela to make herself known or not, I wasnt sure ^-^() Sorry if I Rped anyone character wrong, but I figured that Sara would be sort of catty towards Lily since she seems to hate women and Lily is semi talkative lol ^,-,^ This sort of reminds me of Cube and Cube 2 Hypercube if any of you have seen that, I love the plot so far ^,-,^

[Emotional Faun Chiko-sai]

Sure, Hela wants to make herself known. =^^=
Hela: *extreme panic attack* H-huh?? What?!?!
-----------------
Hela
"Nightmare/Propinquity 2"
---------------------

The dream Hela had in her father's house was this:

Darkness. Two patches of shadow blacker than the surrounding dark prowling around her head. One is smaller than the other, and somehow, oilier. It speaks.
"So this is the faerie gift. A little scrawnier than I'd thought she would be..."
There is a horrible growling sound from the other shadow, churning and aching and ravenous. "I eat faeries."
"Not this one. And she's not a faerie. Note the absence of any semblance of glamour."
"Taste of candy something wonderful, faeries do." Again the awful gurgling, like the sound of the stomach without food in it, but a hundred thousand times worse.
"I'm perfectly sure they do, Gevaudan. Perfectly sure. But we're not here to look for faeries. Where is her father?"
"He's gone. Beat it before we could crack his bones and share his marrow." A loud sound of sucking teeth.
"And it is just so convenient that this... place... he lodged in appears impenetrable except to those it chooses to accept through the river. We must also consider the riddle of the dagger."
"He was always a clever bastard."
"Hn. He was foolish enough to make the house. Come now, Gevaudan."
The feeling of liberation of the mind, dusting itself off after intrusion. Two black velvet shadows darker than the darkness vanishing into the void.

And she had woken up, sweat evaporating off her in great wisps of steam, the ghosts of flames pooling in her eyes as tears do, cradling the instinct in her that said she had escaped, just barely, although from whom or what she did not know. Outside of the house she sleeps now, and she has no more dreams.

So when she hears the nice-looking ruddy-haired girl lamenting about the lack of a proper house, and she says, to nobody in particular: "I have a house", she is surprised at her own daring. The jerk of the girl's head quick as anything towards her dead tree unnerves her almost immediately. The girl is scared. No one has been scared of her before.

"Who's there?"

Hela raises her head from the hollow of the dead tree, so that the woad tattoos about her eyes can be glimpsed from the light of the fire (and what a fire it is), and replies timidly: "Me. Hela. I didn't mean to startle you."

The lady with the snappish disposition and ample bust that was arguing with the friendly girl a moment ago tenses immediately. "What the hell are you?"

Hela shies away into her tree, intimidated by the woman's tone, and says in a smaller voice: "'m just a fire spirit... can't hurt anybody..."

By now the other girl has recovered, and all three of them, the green-haired boy, the girl and the stern woman, are staring at her. Or rather, the tree where she is hiding. The girl says in a friendlier voice, still a little bit frightened but reassured by the fact that the unknown creature in the hollow tree is far more afraid of them than they are of her: "Um. If you promise not to burn any of us you can come closer if you like."

"That creature could be dangerous," objects the contrary-minded woman, "and you are inviting it to please, do come and wreak havoc on the lot of us poor defenseless humans."

"I didn't say anything like that," the girl replied evenly, then turned back to Hela's dead tree. "I'm Lily. You said you had a house?"

Hela, scared out of her wits, obeys and creeps out of her wooden enclosure and stands at the edge of the circle of firelight, teasing the hem of her shift with her grubby fingers. "It's r-really my father's house. I-it's warm, but it's not a really good place to, uh, sleep in..."
-----------------------------
Bully Hela as you like, (she can't be killed by throwing her into the fire though *sweatdrop*) and you can make her lead you guys to the house if you want, but be warned that it is REALLY not a nice house (make up whatever scary things you can think of about the house if you do go there...)

[Plantae]

= Joseph Faust =

I had dozed off as quickly as I had woken to the sound of the others' voices, but my ears perked up at what could have been mistaken for the wind, and then to Lily's voice. "Who's there?" By now, I was sitting up, watching and being careful enough to avoid anyone's notice.

"Me. Hela. I didn't mean to startle you." The voice was timid, feminine, but certainly afraid.

"What the hell are you?" We were falling into our own respective roles all too quickly, it seemed. I might have asked pardon for my language, but Sara was an awful bitch. At least, that's what she seemed at the moment. I wasn't about to have prejudice, especially since my cynicism told me that I'd be in close contact with each of these people for a while. I hadn't even tried to go back through the wall, in fact, and hadn't even thought it could work. Regardless, Sara's tone, whether irritability or habit, intimidated the creature. Her comment was marginally justified, but I immediately corrected myself, thinking, she. It was human, roughly, and had feelings. I'd be an imbecile to think otherwise.

I only caught a couple words of the humanoid's shy dialect, but I managed to decipher, "M'... fire spirit... can't hurt anybody." Even with this feeble sentence, however, Sara remains relatively unconvinced. The three others calmed a little, and I listened intently as Lily spoke, obviously assured that the spirit was the most estranged and a little terrified. She kept jovial, but her voice shivered, saying, "Um. If you promise not to burn any of us you can come closer if you like-"

"That creature could be dangerous," Sara immediately corrected. Still unprepared to lay down any of their character, I sat up a little straighter to better hear her continue, "and you are inviting it to please, do come and wreak havoc on the lot of us poor defenseless humans."

"I didn't say anything like that," replied Lily, attempting to dislodge Sara's own disgruntled hostility. "I'm Lily. You said you had a house?"

As she became more accustomed to us humans, Hela had been slowly making her way towards the fire, at a crawl really. I was amazed that those almost undead legs could even function, the helter-skelter arrangement, debiliated and sewn with what appeared to be leather. However, the flickering firelight served the purpose of obscuring them perfectly. "It's r-really my father's house," she began, and I came to full standing position and made a modest "crunch" as my feet packed down the snow. My velcro sandals were a little mudded, but their enslavement was preferred to bare feet. As I tiptoed leisurely towards the light, I regarded Hela's tribal tattoos curiously from the gloom. Her entire appearance was odd, and she looked young. There was something interesting about the "girl," but I couldn't place it.

"I-it's warm, but it's not a really good place to, uh, sleep in..." She trailed off, gazing frantically at her surroundings and realizing her vulnerability (or so I assumed) away from her dead tree, her hiding place. I must have scared her... er... not socks... off when I answered, dignified and now standing just in view and behind Dezerae. The five of us wreathed the fire, Lily being closest to Hela, and myself farthest away.

"That's alright Hela, I think it's a little late to find shelter. We'd probably only end up getting lost in this black velvet," I waved a casual hand, gesturing to symbolize the humidity of the night,"but you're welcome to stay..."

"Oh... no... Hela can't... I... um need to, er... I can't... the fire... and oh, Hela isn't... um-" she glanced quickly across all of our faces, shuddered, and fell silent. Lily, thankfully, intervened.

"I suppose we don't know each other very well, do we!" With this, she smiled, elated, and pointed at each of us in turn. "This is Mathias, Tryfan, Sara, and Dezerae." Tryfan gave a little wave, but Dezerae continued to stand rather stoicly.

"Um... Hela." The fire spirit was put off, torn from a turn of phrase or just a polite word. While she had been drawing closer before, she now backed away, analyzing each of us and running her grimy fingers over the hem of her shirt.

"Don't worry Hela," I offered, attempting to remedy a lost cause. Hela merely twitched a little. "Have all the space you need. None of us will bother you, and if you desire to come near the fire, we can back off a bit-" Sara scoffed, mouth dropping at my expecting she would part with it. "but you can always stay in the forest, or wherever you prefer. This isn't our island, so you can do what you'd like. See you another time?" Hela shivered, then nodded, and in a moment, gallavanted off into the woodland and out of sight. I managed to catch her bright eyes in the darkness, and her's locked with mine momentarily. I might have been paranoid, but I could have sworn she was looking right into me, and she was rightly suspicious. With her finally gone, I turned to the group and asked curtly, "Do we need anyone to keep watch?" I hoped that the change in my manner from frigid and fargazing to succinct and polite wasn't too sudden. I hoped that none of them saw anything in me like I knew Hela might have. Survival depended on deceit.

=====

[Weasel Overlord]

~Tryfan Wen~
‘When the stars threw down their spears, And water’d heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see?’

So. We weren’t alone in this strange place. This Hela character was as strange as I could think of, although I had just navigated a river while escaping a Prison of a city and arrived through what seemed to be a wall into a clearing with a gathering of people who appeared to have made the same journey as me. I wasn’t inclined to be surprised about much after that, so when the small girl edged her way into the clearing and nearer to the fire, I just sat up and wiped the sleepiness from my eyes.

As per usual, the girl Lily had introduced as Sara was being catty and unnecessarily nasty, but I had grown accustomed to her ways by now and I shrugged off her enmity. Lily, however, seemed to dislike her intently. Her body language was quite hostile towards her. I had no idea how I could tell about her body language…it just came naturally, for some reason. Along with my new silence.

As Hela came closer, the group stood and we arranged ourselves around the fire, so as to not be threatening. I could sense the child’s fear, so I gave her a little wave as Lily gave the introductions. I sensed something more, too…the tall man Lily had called Mathias gave off a scent of deceit. It had been strongest when he was watching the forest earlier, and when I had managed to creep up on him. He had seemed quite disconcerted about this, but his attitude was jovial towards me. Despite his outward behaviour, I had smelled anger and a slight undertone of fear, and I wondered if he was all that he said he was.

“Don’t worry, Hela. Have all the space you need. None of us will bother you, and if you desire to come near the fire we can back off in a bit” Hela looked terrified at the prospect of staying with us and she backed away slightly, holding out her hands as if to protect herself from us. Mathias continued. “…but you can always stay in the forest, or wherever you prefer. This isn’t our island, so you can do what you like. See you another time?” He looked hopeful at this idea, but the scent of lies wafted powerfully towards me and I wondered what he was up to. Hela seemed to sense this too, and she took the opportunity to scarper, only glancing behind when she was safely in the forest.

Mathias watched her go, and then his attitude changed again. “Do we need anyone to keep watch?” I narrowed my eyes at him, and held up my arm.

“I’ll do it.” I felt the need to think. Not only about this enigma of a man, but about Hela, and what her presence could mean. Also, I wasn’t particularly tired anymore, my short stint of sleep being sufficient.
Mathias looked relieved at my volunteering, and promptly lay down in his snowdrift. Lily smiled my way, and did the same, shortly followed by Sara and Dezerae. I shrugged and wandered over to the edge of the clearing to keep my night-vision intact. I sat facing the forest, wondering what else was out there. If there were Fire Spirits, then surely there could be a possibility of other exotic creatures. I found myself excited at the thought of the forest lying before me. Unexplored and unspoilt, and a sudden urge to go running into the wilderness overcame me. I got to my feet, nearly falling over in my eagerness, all thought of watch gone. Overpowered by the heat of the hunt, I ran through the trees that marked the border of the forest, and it opened to me, like a parched flower opens to rain in the desert at night.

I ran, not caring, for a while, before slowing to a silent jog and finally to a soft walk. All around were the sounds of a forest at night, chirping and rustling. But instead of distracting me, I became one with them. Bathed in the noise, I became the forest.

I came to the edge of another clearing, this one containing a pool and a small waterfall, and something inside me told me to stop. I paused, still as a lioness on the hunt, and scanned the clearing. From the other side, a silvery being was approaching to drink, bathed in moonlight. I gasped under my breath. A unicorn. It ducked its majestic head to drink, long twisting horn almost touching the water, and its eyes flickered up to meet mine. Pale blue, like twin pools of perfect water, I fell into them, entranced. Not caring whether I was seen, I went forward slowly. It felt as if the unicorn was inviting me, spellbound, to share the water. I fell to the ground, tripping over an unseen root, and the spell was broken. The unicorn reared and bolted, leaving but a silver tail hair entwined about a branch and a pair of hoof prints in the soft ground at the water’s edge.

I unwrapped the hair from the branch, shining ethereal in the moonlight, and pressed it to my face. It was soft and still held some of the warmth from the creature’s body, and I held it like a child cradling a soft toy.

On the soft ground, I slept, cradling the sliver of hair close to my breast, unknowing that I was being watched. Just before I fell into dreamless sleep, I glimpsed a pair of yellow eyes, gazing on me as I lay. I cast all worries out of my mind and, embracing oblivion, I slept.

[Drusilla]

Sara Raize
Now I lay me down to sleep... Pray the worms my soul to keep...

I lay on my side, my back turned to the rest of the group, and shivered in the cold. My mind and body ached from physical and emotional fatigue; I wanted this nightmare to end... but my instinct told me that it was only beginning. I didn't want to get close to any of these people... closeness leads to hurt. I would not let myself be hurt again... not after last night.

At least sex didn't require closeness, not of the emotional kind, anyway. No, I would not fall down that trap again, I would not be used again. I didn't need anyone... and they definitely didn't need me. I saw the dislike in their eyes... it was almost loathing. It would be loathing before too much longer, I was sure of it. My inner soul cried out against my desire to protect myself from the world, but my mind could not both follow my soul and protect my heart. I wanted to be free, to love and live, but that was what had gotten me hurt in the first place.

No more of that. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't afford the luxury of emotions; only animalistic lust would I allow from now on.

And how much did I want that now? I could almost feel it, the urge was so strong... Which of the men would I target? Both of them were alluring... perhaps I would just play with them both and see which responded. If both responded, all the better... for me, at least.

Tryfan was supposedly on watch; he wandered off, perhaps for a few hours, then later returned and lay down, apparently to sleep. Some watchman... I sighed and sat up. Despite my fatigue, I feared sleep and what might lie in wait for me in my subconscious. If I stayed awake, at least physical problems that might arise could be dealt with physically. Mental problems... they didn't have rules that applied in any way, shape, or form. Dreams could not be confronted...

I glanced to the side sharply. I thought that I saw... yes, there was something off in the brush. It was impossible to tell what, though... I could sense slight curiosity, maybe a slight amount of malice. Shivers ran up and down my spine as I glanced around. The other people were all asleep, or at least seemed like they were, but there was a heavy, yet unseen presence hanging over our makeshift camp. We were being watched, measured, appraised... but by what?

I jumped at sudden movement behind me, ready to run, when I saw the one who called himself Mathias moving near to me. I glanced at him, neutrally for a change; he was strange and didn't ring quite true, but then surely each of us had something that we were hiding.

"I can't sleep..." I murmured quietly, suddenly shy. Other than the watching presence, the forest was still, and the calm was reflected in my mood. I coyly looked at Mathias out of the corner of my eye. "I'm sorry for my attitude, but.." I trailed off. There really wasn't any excuse, and Mathias didn't seem to be looking for one.
-----

[Plantae]

The best luck with your Rita predicament, Drusilla. Mother Nature hasn't been very kind lately. Oh, wait, she never is.

= Joseph Faust =

For a moment, I didn't grace her with a reply. It was more a matter of thought than lack of etiquette, so in a moment's time, I responded, "I can't sleep either-" I broke off, wondering if it was safe to say more than that. I made the slightest of movements, but enough to catch the coy look from Sara's eye. I smiled wryly. There was calculation, and even... emotion... beneath that haughty exterior. Satisfied, I murmured, "images beneath my eyelids..."

Her expression didn't change anywhere but her eyes, which exhibited a look that could have been surprise, or disinterest. Either way, she didn't reply. It was a mixed blessing, but displaying some recognition, she uttered pensively, "hmph."

"We seem to be on the same wavelink," I remarked, chuckling, but I shuddered as I heard it ring hollowly. Turning my head as if to catch the full moon, I glimpsed three sleeping bodies out of the corner of my eye. I watched momentarily, likely appearing to be languidly staring at the constellations (which were actually well obscured), before revolving to face Sara.

If anything was my weakness, it was relying on symbolism. With a life bleak as mine- I always expected a sign from someone that cared; what was faith? But so irony had it that when I turned my head, the first projection that caught my eye was Sara's... crimson... hair. It just took one stimulus to audit my entire homeostasis, and the world blurred for a mere millisecond. Memory... and I was almost too far gone to hope that she hadn't seen that single salty droplet run down my face. I clenched my eyes as her gaze dropped, and then followed her eyes. "Drip..." In the open air, the sound spread outward with ease. It had struck a single smooth rock, the only piece from the wall that I had seen. The rest was flawless. Attempting to dull the awkward sensation in my bones, I cradled the small rock a second, and stuffed it in my pocket quickly.

"Night Mathias." It was drawn out from molehill to mountain, the time before she uttered it. Even when it came, it was quiet, contemplative and disconcerted. I could have sworn that the feeling that passed between us as she stood was longing. She took several hesitant steps.

"I never did learn enough German to justify-" I broke my comment purposefully, but knew that she would not guess the cryptic meaning behind my sentence. She continued her pace, softly padding her way to the snow just far enough away from everyone else. "Night Sara-" Those words coalesced physically, almost, and she stopped first, then shrugged as if they had been some embrace. It was only behind her back that I would complete my phrase in a whisper. Both day and night had proved to be fickle this cycle; "sweet dreams."

=====

[Weasel Overlord]

Why am I suddenly feeling the need to post constantly??? *looks aghast* It's just not like me!!! Anyway...here's Eleiamae! *does crappy 'here's Johnny' impression* She just wants to be loved...*dripping swamp creature holds out arms for huggles and bares fangs in the semblence of a smile*

~Eleiamae~

He had found the unicorns. After my first taste of the newcomers, I found myself craving more. Obsession-like, I worked my way slowly towards their camp-site, their gleaming presences illuminating the dark.

On my way, I had stopped to taste the waters and found one of them was on the move. In all probability, hunting. A further taste told me that he had found a unicorn and, communing once more with my life-blood, I saw that he had possession of a single hair from the tail of the beast. My heart pounded strangely in my breast, shattering the silence in my ears. Creeping forward, I saw a figure lying on the ground near the water, clutching something slivery to his chest. For a moment, his eyes met mine, and they shone with pent up sleep. Unicorns had that effect on humans, I had been told by a God from long ago. Possibly Pan himself, whom I had memories of courting in my younger days when my swamps were new.

The boy’s hair framed his face with green streaked white, and his lashes lay on his cheeks, eyes flickering slightly beneath their curtain. He was obviously dreaming, but the forest wasn’t safe at this hour, if any at all. And especially not for a human untrained in wood-lore. A snap decision seemed to make itself in my mind, flicking from synapse to idea in an instant. I would make him safe.

I fancied the role as protector, and sleeping, he would be immune to my charms, however reluctantly laid upon him. I felt no need to use my charms on this one. Lately, an overwhelming longing to be truly loved had flowed through me and I had resolved to leave the use of my wiles for a time. I went closer to him, the ground was quite damp, so I lost none of my powers, and I kneeled next to him. My placing my hand over his eyes, I gleaned that his name was Tryfan. Normally, I would have trouble with this side of my powers, but this one seemed particularly receptive to my intrusion, opening his mind subconsciously to mine. I passed my hand over his eyes and face and willed him to sleep longer. A slight groan and a shuffle were all the signs of his awareness, and I gathered him into my arms, cradling him close as he cradled his unicorn hair. I bent once more to saturate myself in the muddy waters, and standing, I set off to find the mysterious camp, Tryfan held in my arms. It was not long before I reached it, but I could go no further than the forest’s edge. Already I had spent most of my power and I would need a long session of immersion in my waters before I was back to my old self. I placed a small glamour on myself so I faded into the background, and, propping Tryfan up against a trunk, I tapped once on his chest to break him from his trance-like sleep. He snorted gently, and his head lolled to one side, resting on his shoulder.

I sensed some of the newcomers were awake, so I placed one last glamour on Tryfan to ensure that he sleep-walked his way into his makeshift bed. I wanted no outings of discovery to my swamps.

He tottered over to a hump of snow and fell, lopsidedly into a laying position. I sighed quietly, and with one last glance at the camp, I left for my swamps and some rest. Despite my glamours, I secretly hoped that one of them had seen me, and I made an effort to make some noise on my way back. It had been a long time since I had taken a lover…

[Plantae]

= Joseph Faust =

"Night Mathias." The first words I heard in my dreams, as I watched the scene of myself and Sara play out again. Deja vu. However, as I made my own night goodbye and later, whispered comment, my caricature began to play a very different role.

Suddenly, the black sky was tinted with crimson, the most striking I had ever seen. However, it blended, menacingingly, with the dark. A pool of water stood before me of... melted snow? What force could touch the pure white of this knoll? It had seemed so dry... and warm... the force to heat it would be-

Then there was fire. It was one tree, a gray birch, that somehow stood from the rest. The tree was covered in wintry flakes, and then... burning. I felt compelled to watch it, for what would have been hours in real time, until it burned to the ground. The ashes were tossed to a sudden chill breeze, and spread across the canopy in a way that horrifically reminded me of pieces of... flesh?

I remembered, suddenly, the blues eyes in the evening light. The creature of the wood. I glanced at that spot, intensely, and felt a different presence. As a writer, I would have considered red for evil a trite color. And so it was, coincidence had it, that the eyes that did stare back at me were blue as the ones before. I sighed of relief, yawned, and felt myself seceding into the darkness past dreams again. But then... just as the stark world of my sleeping conscious, a reality where everything was opaque and clouded, those eyes swirled into one, and then to a fatal mixture of blue... and red.

Quite abruptly, the image jerked again, and the apple of my eye was a bleak surface. I realized now that I stood atop the wall, and on the hidden far side, there was a void of white. It wasn't barren, lush as rainforest, but the trees were pine. And then, I saw the importance of it. It was sunny here, but the nimbus above made it nearly invisible. Ironically, the picture was clearer in darkness. Somehow, this clarity made me afraid. And then... the sound of water.

I had heard somewhere that water was the universal conduit. It allowed things within it, through it, all manner of things... sea monkeys, humans in our group's case, and even-

I couldn't finish that thought. Images flashed in the water, a house briefly, but terribly so. And then...

Black. The River was murky momentarily... but something emerged slowly. A shadowed form, humanoid and covered in murky reeds, which made it all the more fearful. It raised its head, cackled. It narrowed its eyes, and I could hear it. It wasn't a sound you could hear, but I did. Magnified, it sounded like raking claws. Slowly...

"Awaken." It spoke, quietly, muffled and... intrigued? Louder. "Awaken!" As if to banish me from this terrible pentagram, it finished. "Awaken!"

Then, the dream ended. A second of darkness. Two. Three. My eyes slipped open, gently, and I remembered the claws. My vision was so clear as I rose to sitting position, that seeing the sun out of the corner of my eye blinded me. A bird, the mocking, mimicking, type, murmured. Somehow I knew it wasn't close by. I was awake, and I felt that sensation again. Something had changed.

=====

Unless you feel the need to make your dream drastically different, you don't have to have one at all. You can skip right to Day Two, and memories from a similar dream, if you so choose.

[Plantae]

I would just like to remind everyone of the five day death penalty rule. Krystalline Kabutops, I don't want to be a hard-ass, but I need to stick to the rules I have set.

I will give you a one day grace period, ending at the time of this post tommorrow, and then the curtain call. If any of you have an issue with any of your characters, it is in your repetoire to switch as you like (even if the number of humans becomes somewhat lacking).

23:59... 23:58...

[Krystalline Kabutops]

Sorry about my failure to post. I'll strive not to let it happen again.

|/-< Dezerae Forsan >-\|

I watched the events of the evening impassively, from the appearance of the fire sprite to the exchange between Sara and Lily. That reminded me... I was very cold. In fact, I was shivering to such an extent that I wondered whether I had hypothermia. Well, one thing that was certain was that I needed to warm up. Surveying the fireside, I decided that no one was awake.

I pulled up to the glowing warmth, and quickly removed my shoes, shirt, pants and tights. Once the tights were off, I settled back into my jeans. I wasn't so cold as to sit there in nothing but my underwear. Propping my boots up next to the flames, I spread out my shirt and black/white striped tights on them. I then huddled, Indian-style, as close to the fire as I could prudently come, in a desperate attempt to warm myself.

Indian-style. What a curious term. It really is rather demeaning to the Native American culture, and it's pretty stereotypical as well. I've never known a Navajo or Apache to cross their legs when sitting on the ground. But then, I've never known a Navajo or Apache, which could be a bit of a factor... As I pondered these sorts of things, my eyes slid out of focus, the fire forming patterns in my vision. Then, something far and away out of the ordinary occurred. Some would later say that it served as a neat summary of the events that occurred in the coming months.

A figure, tall and thin, appeared in the fire. It stood on the edge of a great chasm, dark as oil. Spreading its arms wide, the figure slowly, imperceptibly, tilted towards the pit, until gravity took over and it plummeted into the darkness. The pit flared a bright violet, and then returned to its former darkness.

The image disappeared, but I remained staring at the fire, trying to interpret what I had just seen. As slowly as the figure had tilted, in increments I fell asleep, as the sun slowly rose on the horizon.

[Asilynne]

~Lily O'Keefe~
Is it possible to dream within a dream?
I shivered to myself in the night, as everyone in our rag tag group went to lie down in fitful sleep. Though it was not completely from the cold anymore, being dry by the fire had helped, and even now I was pretty close to the fire. Camping I had learned that fire deters wild animals from harrassing you in the night, and I didnt want to be harrassed. Especially since I had no idea what kind of wild animals were in this place.
My shirt had dried somewhat, and I now was using it as a sort of blanket. But I shivered not only from the strange place, or the cold, but because I had never felt so alone and so very NOT alone at the same time.
There were people from my world here, but I could tell I was alone. They were all so different, so strange, while some were unfriendly some were, but it wasnt the same. I didnt know them, it was like we were all watching each other with suspicious eyes, like prisoners do, knowing each had done something to make it here and not knowing what. I had only dreamed, had wished for a better life, and suddenly I find myself here. Was it better? I couldnt really tell. But right now I felt a little sad, not in longing for my old life, but in longing for the place I could call home. I didnt even know if I truely belonged anywhere.
But I was also NOT alone, none of us were on this island of Mist. The creature, no, little girl...she definately wasnt human. What she was however was, well, in her words, a 'fire spirit'. But her legs....she looked like something straight out of surreal art. Only she was real, and so was everything else in this place. Who knows what other strange things were here.
Despite my thoughts tumbling around in my head, the soft crackling of the fire lulled me to sleep. Snatches of incomprehensible dreams flashed through my mind in a jumble, unable to grasp most of it, but one scene came out crystal clear...
The rhythm of the night was in my head...music seeming to come from the very heart of nature itself. It reminded me of the drums and flutes of native peoples, a rhythm that would make your heart long for the wilderness. In my dream it made me long, made me yearn for the place where the wild creatures played and killed and struggled for survival. In my dream I rose from the fire, eyes wild and gleaming with the firelight, and I started running through the woods. The beat pitched with a fever that burned in my heart, and I ran, my voice singing to the sky in wordless song. Stopping near a lake, panting from my wild racings I bent low to take a drink from the cool waters---and saw the head of a wolf peering back at me from my reflection. Forgetting my burning throat I stopped and stared, disbelieving at my new self....

The pale yellow sunlight shone through the mist signifying early morning. I had slept the whole night without waking up once, something that was very rare. Sitting up, feeling extra embarrassed in the light, I pulled on my stiff dry shirt and poked at the dying embers of last nights fire. I avoided looking around, my mind still on my strange dream and the happenings of the night before. I resolved I wasnt going to try to force myself on people that had already shown they didnt want me around. This place was my alone place before and it would be again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tah dah lol

[Drusilla]

I apologize in advance if I make some strange typos; this keyboard is rather strange to me, so I'm going to attempt to keep an eye on what I'm typing out, but somethings may escape my attention.

Oh, and I also hope that I don't cross any boundaries with this post... I think I leave it at "implied", so I believe that it's OK.

Sara Raize
Sitting in the dark, drinking my own blood, and a voice, it whispers, "Hello, my love."


Dreams of darkness and shadows... moving, following me. Soft laughter, gentle caresses, light kisses... I was running from them, though, for as pleasing as they were, there was something cold underlying it all. Something like death... not quite death, but similar... it was unnatural and I was afraid.

I was almost like... like last night... But this time I couldn't outrun my pursuer.

I woke, sweating, sobbing, petrified. I sat up, my heart pounding in my ears, feeling for the world that I had in fact been running again from that unknown terror... I looked around, trying to convince myself that I hadn't, that it had all been a dream... or had it been? Even now, I wasn't sure, despite the sunlight now flooding through the trees that it hadn't been real...

Reflected light from something next to me caught my eye, and I lifted a perfectly balanced stiletto from the ground and stared at it in wonder. Where had it come from? What was it doing here? The thin blade was flawless... a thing of beauty, a thing of power... a thing of death.

I shivered at the thought, but this time the shiver had a slight tinge of anticipation with it, and, strangely, I wasn't chilled by the idea of taking pleasure in death. I mentally recoiled in horror at this revelation, slightly sickened, but slightly fascinated as well.

Things were getting stranger and stranger...

By this time, the others had been staring at me for a few moments. I smiled weakly and waved, slightly embarrassed that I hadn't noticed their attentions turned towards me. A few glances passed between them and they lost interest... except Mathias. His eyes lingered on me for a few moments longer, and I met his gaze, unsure as to what it meant. He turned away, leaving me curious... even hungry for more.

Images flashed through my mind, images that I couldn't account for the origin of. Images of my naked body entwined with his...

I threw the images from my mind, blushing slightly. Mathias looked back at me, almost appraising me, as if he knew what I had pictured, and I flushed further. He couldn't have seen what I had, and it was ridiculous to even entertain the possibility. Still... there had been something in his eyes that made me wonder... and the timing of his second glance.

What the hell was going on here?

[Plantae]

= Joseph Faust =

It had taken me an imperceptible amount of time to come to my senses, and so I merely sat and stared into the inky gray. It could not have been ten minutes before the sun rose entirely, during which Dezerae stirred once and opened her eyes momentarily, but fell asleep again. It was then, only then, that I noticed the weight in my lap.

I had always had perfect vision, but somehow, the oddly lukewarm metal in my hand was a little sharper. As the a few rays of light touched it, colors I hadn't known existed criss-crossed each crevice, testing the water of their glimmering new habitat. So deft was the fan that when I folded and unfolded it slowly, it made no sign of movement. I lifted it to eye level holding its leather grip and made one quick flourish of my wrist. It responded fluidly, unfolding and startling me as the grinning razor of an edge fell into my line of vision. For a moment, all that existed in the world was that masterwork weapon and I. I stroked it fondly and chuckled, bemused by it. The longer my eyes bore into its surface, the more texture that appeared to me. This craft reminded me of the unicorn, as even if I knew little about the item's history, a barely perceptible aura of mystique lingered on it.

I didn't know how long I spent that way. Admiring the fine alloy and its inherent toughness, and trying to uncover all the secrets it might have. I was vaguely aware of others waking up around me, and also the shock of finding their respective weapons, but I dismissed all this. One of them stood, and then I heard a denying and cruel cry of despair. It startled me so soundly that I found myself in standing position, not knowing how I had gotten there, and holding my ears with the intensity that they might crumble into dust at any moment. Only to block that hideous... As my sight finally caught up, my peripheral vision noticed that Dezerae had just trodden on a large weed; was it a weed? I dropped my jaw in awe, disbelieving that anything less than a stampede could have had such volume. To my terror, she raised her foot and brought it down in one fluid motion... on another weed. I clenched my ears so hard that I felt my eyes water, but no sound came. I slowly released my death hold, and upon hearing nothing, could only surmise that my brain had already adjusted to its newfound reach. However, as I walked nonchalantly over to where three and a waking Sara were, I made sure to swerve to avoid clomping on whatever I could. Likely, I would have looked like a gazelle, zigzagging in unnatural sway as if to escape some vicious predator.

Usually I would not be so selfish to miss the emotions of others, but while I could tell some of them were distraught and others even resigned, it did not matter to me. They half stared, half looked away from Sara who was holding a stiletto. I couldn't help but feel that it looked... correct, somehow. I had shoved my war fan into one of my belt loops, and even having done it subconsciously, it was engineered to fit. As I glanced downward, I was aware that I was looking at Sara, but she looked... different. Somehow... more elegant? Was it my opinion of her that had grown? In a moment, it no longer mattered. Suddenly, I was quite caught up in being the only one still glancing at her.

My field of vision moved up and down her body too casually, as somehow I knew that even if I was looking where I shouldn't be, the movement of my eyes couldn't be followed. My now more than ample perception allowed me to make the subtlest movements, of which I was gradually growing accustomed to. I stopped after a second or two, and lingered on her eyes. The eyes had always been the most fascinating of a person's attributes to me, but I could see deeper in Sara's eyes than I ever had before; they were different. I pushed past all of the walls that guarded her core, that projected her outer mannerisms, and touched something that might have been... sorrow?... that was weighing her down and possessing her thoughts with an iron fist. There, I curled the corner of my mouth in an unnoticeable grin at the notion of an intelligent mind. I brought myself to trail my gaze slowly away as I saw her lip curl in discomfort, her subconscious knowing I had seen, but her conscious still unbeknownst to that fact.

As she came to such a corner of my eye that even these new senses had to make a stretch, I felt an obstacle. An ebb of power grappled with my mind, and I allowed it in without hesitation. I could no longer see her, but in my mind's eye, that was a very different tale. I accepted it with ease, though I grimaced in both pain and pleasure at what enveloped each of my thoughts.

Discarded clothes, a trickle of water in the background... crimson hair... a look passes between green and green eyes. There were two bodies, grafted into a strange medley of appendages. All was laden with the sweet smell of grass, the trees, and the nearby stream. Behind it, a bare, hard to find, fragrance of blood. It was a primal feeling, lustrous and lustful, and limitlessly tempting...

Then it stopped, and my mind had already come to the conclusion that the only reason for this was because she had disallowed it to continue. I refused this for a mere millisecond before I was forced to give into the conclusion that what had passed between us was almost a suggestion, one she had made, and one I had accepted...

I could not yield from taking one... last... long... look at her. The fantasy did not linger, but her body reminded me of it. I followed the curves of her body, and once again settled on her eyes. Her face flushed, and I just understood that she had seen the same. For the first time, I noticed that she smelled pungently of leaves and thistle. Discomfort and awe occurred in both our faces until I made myself able to tear my will to appraise her.

I revolved and put my back to her, stumbling with my first step, but quickly regaining balance. I both feared and rejoiced that the place I was strolling towards, purposefully, must have been where it had happened. Somewhere... in a clearing... in this forest... had been that seductive dream. Today, though, even if I wanted it, it would not become reality. I was to traverse the wood with my footfalls, yes, but alone. I heard one of the others call to me, but I did not look back. I pressed onward, and when I decided to about face backwards, the snowy knoll seemed to be swallowed by the trees. I was already so far in that all I saw through the gaps in the branches was a few speckles of white at the bottom of the hill there, but it was nearly gone. I sat for what was a second, but stood again with renewed vigor. Turning in a direction that would lead me in the straightest path from the fire pit and the rest of them, I began a slow gait. I picked up the pace. I was jogging. I was running. Then, my legs pushed into a full sprint.

=====

[Emotional Faun Chiko-sai]

Hela
"Stitches"
------------------------

In the still of night the house looms more than ever. The house is fairly large, constructed of ash (both wood and ashes), fitted together with no nails but joints, with a floor of packed earth and hardened mud, and finials on the high shingled roof carved with long serpentine dragons and large squat wolves. There is only one door on the outside of the house that leads to the inside, and it is wide, oak-paneled, thick, strong; and there is no doorknob unless you know where to look. It does not forbid nor does it invite. It just is: a house, in the middle of a dead forest, in the middle of an island, all governed by the river. Until you go in.

A diagram of a labyrinth, daubed on in red pigment ground from terracotta, covers the whole of the back wall of the house on its outside.

Hela moves, quickly and silently, and shimmers into the clearing. The man Mathias had told her that she was to go, and she did not wish to confront him at the time, not without the surety that she could have gotten any sort of information that was not garbled or glossed over with lies. She can tell when someone is lying, or if someone is a liar. Her father had been a habitual liar, though at least not to her. Lily had been sincere, and Sara had not tried to conceal her disbelief, but this man was a little bit dodgy, in the same way that rats were a little bit furry.* Also she was scared of him. Him and his false niceties. He had been courting too, only not properly yet. Mighty scared.

She was also scared of the courting lady, but that was a rational kind of scared - you knew where you were when people said unpleasant things to you that they actually meant. Truths have power, but lies have more. Her father, realizing this in the days when he was young and just newly a fire creature, used them to his advantage whenever he could, and used them well. She had never quite got the knack.

Whenever she ran into packs of wolves she avoided those that had recently chosen their alpha male and his mate. These were tenacious and, more often than not, were not put off by her fire, not at all.

She decides that she might try asking Lily, one day, about her father, but only if she finds her alone.

Hela came back to the fire country because there she had power. More power than elsewhere, because of the dryness of the timber, the absence of water even in the air, and of course the house. She had found that if she spent too long away from the fire country the rotting of her legs inevitably intensified. Once, early on in her father's departure, she had foolishly run through the marshes in a desperate attempt to cover her trail, escaping from a tribe of dryads whose sister's tree she had unintentionally burnt. These days she picks through the marsh, going slowly from one hank of mud to another, but back then she ran and ran and the murky water splashed up seeping into her legs, and when it was over she saw the beginnings of mildew blooming greenly, expansion unhindered except where inlets of blue interrupted the smooth surface of skin in abstract flaring curves.

In the shadow of the house, she crouches in another hollow tree, picking at her legs and fingering the leather seams reminiscent of some other pattern she cannot place at the moment. They had all stared at her legs. Why this was she didn't understand. They all themselves had legs, two of them, not unlike hers only that theirs were alive and had not been sewn on. They had called themselves humans.

Perhaps it is the influence of the house, or the country that her father called his own, but she falls to comparing her stitches to her father's smile. A crooked smile because of the marks on his mouth. Lips scarred in regular places, indelible marks of someone's awl, crisscrossed and maliciously made. She strains her thought, and reaches to pluck a name out of the jumble of Things that she knows about her father-

(Scar-lip).

There. She has a name. The next morning, she will ask.
------------------------
* Direct Neil Gaiman reference, from "Neverwhere". ^^; and I realize that Hela's timeframe is slow, as she's still technically on the night before, sorry bout that.

[Weasel Overlord]

Gah! Lateness…Apologies all. And also…YAY! Neil Gaiman! So…how many people have I influenced to his genius…?

~Tryfan Wen~
‘In which Tryfan finds a part of himself he never knew existed’

Curled up by the fire I slept, unaware of how I had got there, my last memory being of a strange figure approaching me in the mud by the waterfall. The figure had picked me up and laid some sort of enchantment upon me so I did not wake, nut my senses were still keen. I could hear the world as if I was hearing it underwater. Sounds were unmistakable, but slightly blurred. After a time, all I could feel was the dampness of m bearer, and an irresistible scent of the forest about it. Some hidden sense told me that it was female, and not human, but then I fell into a deeper sleep than before, only aware of a sudden warmth tingling through my body.

Suddenly, my eyes snapped open, aware of a benign presence dead in front of me. I gazed in its direction, and realised that it was the unicorn, come to reclaim its tail hair. Its eyes encompassed me, but this time they seemed malevolent and unkind. Not at all like the unicorns of legends. Its gentle gaze tuned to a foul glare filled with hatred. I could sense its dislike of me and the rest of the group. Invaders of the forest. I reached out in supplication. We had not come of our own accord. The unicorn bowed its mighty head, and I saw that its horn had become dirty and tangled with weeds and various rotting plant-life.

This was not the unicorn I had encountered earlier. Its head shook in anger, and it charged, horn forward, hell bent on impaling my sorry soul.

I could do nothing. Rooted to the spot by something deep inside me. A primal terror too awesome to escape and the unicorn grew ever closer.

I Caught a glimpse of its bloodshot eyes and there was madness in them. A madness wholly embraced by the unicorn, a sight which I remembered seeing once in a zoo, in the eyes of a lion that had been imprisoned too long.

Nearer and nearer it came, until I was sure that I was going to be spitted on its once-mighty horn. At the last moment I turned tail and fled. Unsure of whether I had enough headway, I blundered through the forest, unaware of where I was treading or what path I followed.

I screamed my fury at this wild hunt as I ran, and suddenly the forest changed. Before, it was an entrapping thing, bent on leaving me in its labyrinth until I became food for its inhabitants. Now, I was a part of the forest and it opened gladly for me, wrapping me in its leafy grasp and hiding me from the unicorn’s wrath. I stopped, panting, in a clearing that had sprung open as if just for me. The floor was scattered with fallen leaves, dead and crispy, they rustled as I stepped on them. Or rather, they should have rustled. Instead, I realised that they made a sibilant whispering sound that encased my footsteps and made me silent as a hunting predator.

Dropping to a crouch, I touched my fingertips to the ground and waited, silent. A noise to my left alerted my senses and I whirled to face it. A pair of feline yellow eyes watched my progress. The more I gazed upon those eyes, the more I realised that they belonged to no animal. There was a higher consciousness behind that stare the belied my own. Not only that, but the eyes changed in the light. Tawny yellow, then the glorious glow of sunlight and back to tawny again. They were the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and I reached forward desperately. The creature, startled by my movement, leapt away into the forest, and I fell to my knees, howling in misery. I wanted her…I knew she was a her…there was a strange quality about those eyes that told me as surely as any physical inspection could have done.

Leaning forward, I tumbled through the forest floor, grasping at leaves to slow my fall…

Snapping back into my body with a gasp, my eyes opened again. This time, not to a dreamworld. I was curled in front of the fire, comfortable in a pile of snow and closer to Lily than was decently possible as she pulled on her shirt. I looked away, embarrassed, before realising that there was a strange weight in my lap. Before looking down, I glanced at the others, to find them in a similar dilemma. Mathias was examining a fan-shaped object that glinted viciously in the dying fire-light, and Sara was clutching a long, knife-looking thing that I didn’t know the name of.

Daring to look down, I found a long, double ended spear. It was tipped at both ends with a leaf blade, wrapped at the base with a pair of green ribbons that trailed off in streamers. Gasping gently, I gripped the centre of the stave, finding it perfectly fitted to my hands. Running my fingertips down the wood, I found a series of carvings looping the stave depicting leaves and vines and all manner of natural things. Near each blade was a small, rune-like design, a different one for each. One of the blades was larger than the other, and this one had a smaller rune. I ran my finger around the design, and something in the back of my mind told m that it meant speed. It was shaped like an arrow with a pair of parallel lines coming from the centre. The second blade was smaller and more slender, and the rune near this one meant stealth. A pair of zigzagging lines crossed each other with an insignia of a tiny leaf in the centre.

Standing, I twirled the weapon, delighting in its balance and lightness and the slight swishy noise it made as it passed through the air. Lifting my hand, I glanced along the stave. It was perfectly straight, and I began to remember my javelin lessons at school. Holding my left hand in front of me, I sighted along and chose a stump near the edge of the forest. A hop and a slight run and I powered forward my right arm, sending the spear directly into the centre of the stump with a loud crack. It wobbled slightly, and I grinned. Padding forward on now silent feet I grasped at the stave. It freed from the stump with a shower of splinters which I brushed from my hair. Glancing down at the old wood, I gleaned that this stump was dead, and so didn’t mind being used as target practice. I made a mental note to be careful where I threw my spear next time. I didn’t want the wrath of the forest to come down on me again.

Turning back to the camp, I noticed Sara and Mathias engaged in what appeared to be some sort of mating ritual using their eyes. Mathias broke off and ran into the forest. He was fast. But I wondered whether he was as fast as me.

I had the forest on my side…

[Plantae]

= Joseph Faust =

The trees were not yet so thick that I could not tell green from blue sky, but the sheer volume of branches and protruding plant life was enough to slow me down. Eventually, I stopped altogether, and could only breathe heavily as the leaves rustled around me.

I smiled. I was not about to judge the inherent nature of this wood, but I felt strangely sadist inside of it. It could have been my own true nature, or just a trick of the mind, or even the mass of information I fought to process, but I found it wickedly satisfying that I was being pursued. My ears perked up at the distant sound of Tryfan following me with a deftness I would not have expected. The green dye in his hair might have been less misplaced than I had surmised, as even to my magically attune ears he was a faint whisper. It was not in my nature to know, but I had gained new light on the perception of not five senses, but six.

The very fibre of his being, I realized, pulsed with magic. Mine did as well, I noted, but his was easily notable. Why? He might not have even known it yet, but the forest breathed in step with him. As I heard his soft steps, I knew that he didn't crush one insect. They scurried underneath his foot, making way for one who fit into their very structure of life. What else could explain the array of noise? Any other creature would have been easily picked out, but the only reason I could tell Tryfan was pursuing me was because of the murmur he left in his wake.

Even if I had assumed some of his newfound power, and thus associated that all of us five who had entered the River world also possessed it, I had no clue as to how far it extended. However, this pursuit was soon to turn a game, and we were equally challenged. I possessed the power of perception, his the same in the forest, likely stronger. It was of my "nature," I inserted thought-wise in a subconscious pun, to be calculating. It was also then, that I already had a plan.

I picked myself up, making sure to approximate almost accurately where Tryfan was, and then preceded onward. I kept near the same pace; with one step, I intentionally crushed a flower underfoot. As I progressed, I slowed gradually, and I was sure he noticed. Then, when I could tell he was but a hundred yards away, I halted entirely.

Silence. Neither of us could see the other; he would camouflage well in this environment, I was sure. Briefly, his head appeared in my eyeline as he strained as if to hear, but I could not tell what he was doing. Suddenly, his eyes flashed in my direction and fell exactly on my hiding place. I had been found.

With an avid bound of agility that surprised myself, I tumbled perhaps twenty feet, avoiding tree roots that seemed to be intentionally trying to insinuate a faceplant on my part. Wasting no time, I pulled the fan from my belt and dismissed it with a flick of my wrist and a kiss placed on its edge. In the motion of throwing it, I managed to wipe the slight dribble of blood on my bottom lip.

Time did not slow for anyone, but I knew I would remember that strike as a photograph. Each frame passed through my head, and I grinned as it skewered several hanging branches on the way to its destination. Their white sinew was visible from the fifty yards I was from some instances, but my sadistic pleasure was not over. The unforgiving blade of the fan flew the last ten feet, and struck a tree midway up the trunk at human height. My vision was like an eagle's even from here, and I nodded in approval. It had followed the pattern as I expected, and one pale white finger lay on the side of it with a crevice in between and four fingers beyond. My expectancy was fulfilled. Tryfan had managed to recuperate his power at that moment, and he had all his fingers to show for it. If he had moved his hand but a millisecond later, the blade would have pierced flesh.

The problem now was recovering my implement from this little test, luckily, Tryfan was distracted; sap oozed thick as oatmeal from the pine's gash. I could tell that Tryfan clutched his head in agony, which I could only imagine was caused by the tree's wound. It was so then, that my preoccupation of him allowed me to ignore the weapon that returned to my hand magically and for him to almost entirely miss it. I would have been startled, but having such ease of handling was only correct for such a perfect craft.

With celerity unbounded, I did a light backflip to a tree branch, and plummeted the ten foot drop behind it with ease. A small drop off was the end of the forest, and the start of the marshes. My estimate had proved correct, and now that I had passed from the wood, I was nearly sure that none would follow me into the depths of this bog; I had known it by the smell. It was no fragrance, filthy, but bearable.

Only denial allowed me to miss the flashing yellow eyes from a rotted stump some twenty feet from my position.

=====

One word: meh.

[Weasel Overlord]

Oo...but why the 'meh' dear? Now, I'm not sure whether I've taken any liberties in this post that I shouldn't have...just let me know, yah?

~Eleiamae~

I felt the forest groan. Something alien was hurting it, and it was both angry and in pain, like a wounded tiger, unknowing what to do. A slight rustling accompanied the forest’s pain, and I felt the alien being enter my marshes. So. He wanted to play, did he? Picking up a handful of water, I tasted, tongue flickering out gently. It was not the one I had rescued and later found in his dreamworld. It was the other male. I remembered seeing him when I left Tryfan at the clearing’s edge, curled up asleep by the warmth of their small fire. I had caught a single glance of him, but it was all I needed to be able to tell that he was deceitful. And now, he had found his way to me.

I let the waters flow from my palms back into the swamp, and setting off in a low run, I went to meet this stranger. The waters had told me that he was slightly North East, and I knew a perfect hiding place where I could observe him unseen.

Leaping lightly over every well-known log and rush, I made swift progress and arrived just in time to see him bound out of a tree and fall into the waters, twisting and landing on his feet like a cat. Crouching behind a rotting stump, I watched him, flourishing a strange fan-like weapon as he walked cautiously further into my territory. Darting ahead of him, I reached a small tree and climbed it in a second. Holding out my hands and muttering quietly, I placed a glamour on the ground beneath me. It became quicksand to all eyes but my own, and was sure to ensnare the human.

I could hear him coming before he even came into view, obviously not used to walking in soggy mud that sucked at your feet he made quite a racket. A good job I was there or he would have attracted the attention of one of my pets. They glide so silently in the shallow water, appearing as logs. Such perfect camouflage, they kill any predator that strays before I have to deal with it, but in this matter, I had left a few signals mentioning that I didn’t wish for their specialised talents, and they would stay away until I allowed them their prey.

When I had probed Tryfan’s mind, I had sensed a disliking for the one that prowled my swamps so inexpertly. I knew instinctively that Tryfan would be unheard here, but this one seemed to enjoy making noise, splashing and crunching through dead logs and wet mud. He was easy to trail, and I finally saw him creep into my trap, unaware. I crouched eagerly in my tree, watching as he came. He was quite careful, obviously not believing himself to be making noise, but to an experienced woodswoman like me, he was making enough for a herd of elephants.

He paused at the edge of my trap, listening intently, his head on one side, and finally glancing at where my glamour held. He looked at it for a second, and then stepped around it with a sigh. He had seen through it! No human had ever been able to tell my glamours for what they are…illusions and nothing more. They were not the height of my power, but they were one of the strongest, and this human had just looked at it and seen it for what it really was. I was infuriated, and making a low whistling noise that rose and fell like a howling wind, I set off after him, intent upon following him. Only this time, he would find his way to my den. And then I would find out why he could see through my glamour.

Padding silently after him, one with the waters, I whistled, leading him on.

[Plantae]

I can guarantee that there will never be a six day gap again. Even busy like I was, I find my own behavior unacceptable.

= Joseph Faust =

You think I cannot see you marsh nymph? Do you find your steps silent, your swamp a grave in which you are but a corpse of sound? No. Your magic is visible, even if you are not, and I see you behind. You darted fluidly, one with your wetland, beneath the gray cypress. To find you? I have but to close my eyes, and there is there, and you are there. I grow tired of your attempts at checkmate.

I let each thought coalesce in a silent breath as my footfalls halted, and then yelled to the wind. "Cyane was a lovely creature of water, but she failed to make the god Hades yield in abducting his bride, Persephone. She collapsed in a pool of tears. Are you to do the same, my fair swamp mistress, now that I have found you?"

As the last word was spoken, I heard a faintly audible splash. I had seen through her illusion, and I had seen her. The truth, however, was that her presence in my mind was magical. My perception was not as keen as she was now likely to believe; she could have struck from the shadows, and it would be difficult for me to pinpoint the instance of her magic until she was almost too close. My own attunement was all well and good, but still, in this environment, she had the advantage. It was just luck that she was more interested in me than interested in analyzing me, which was a bit of a paradox.

It was so that the marsh spirit appeared, straggly mud brown hair and a pale face that seethed of peat. She was slender, and with a face of chiseled beauty, but she was like a piece of art that was only appreciated by some. The sharpness of her chin and nose, the odd hue of her eyes...; she was like a work of Picasso, being so abstract, but somehow so curiously inviting.

"You invade my homeland, human." The words may have been spat at any other time, had it not been her interest that overcame her emotions currently. As she said the word human, I wondered how she had come to know what a human was. As far as I knew, there was no one in the area of our group's race, but that could change.

"And what a fine home it is." It was suggested as flattery, but their was a tinge of sarcasm deep beneath. Slight annoyance flashed in her eyes with a tint of blurred bronze, but bemusement as a grin crossed her face and the color of each iris turned dandelion yellow. I continued, slowly gaining a feel for the "woman's" personality (calling her beast might have been derogatory). "I apologize, I will leave with all speed if you wish it." The words were jumbled almost, as I struggled with a newfound sense of etiquette.

The look that undermined her eyes was uncharacteristic and impossible to read, possibly because she struggled with more than one thought; she replied in a nearly sincere matter, but there was a bit of deceit in her voice as she said, "My hospitality is your's if you'd so wish to follow me back to my den. I have questions for one of your race."

"I will accept your invitation..." she sighed, likely of satisfaction, "if you could sidetrack my pursuer." Her frown was deep and her eyes flashed yellow wine. It was blatant that her mood was anger.

"You invade my territory and you ask a favor! Is there no end to you humans' insolence? I could have one of my servants eviscerate you in several ways before you took another step!" I tapped my foot, impatient of her wiles. Her features were again unreadable.

"I will do your favor, but I decree that you not move from this spot."

I resisted the urge to smirk in victory. "Deal."

=====

[Weasel Overlord]

~Eleiamae~
=====
Playtime
=====

He wanted to play…well then.

“I will do your favour, but I decree that you do not move from this spot.” Feeling that I had trapped him, I allowed myself a smile, and dropping to my knees, I pressed my forehead to the mud and sang to my lands.

He will not go where I do not want him to go.

Satisfied, I turned back to him, the enigma, to find my parting smile echoed on his face. Bemused, I fled, to deal with his ‘pursuer’. My anger at his request was righteous. I felt a link with this Forest-walker that I had felt with no other…and yet, this new enigma was just as fascinating to me. I would put my dealings with Tryfan on hold while I examined this new plaything.

Leaping fluidly through my territory, I paused by a fallen tree. Sniffing, I sensed the presence of the one I hunted. He was good. Almost undetectable, even to me. But I had the advantage of home land, and he had to splash though my waters. Bending, I scooped up a mouthful of mud doused water and rolled it around my mouth. Interesting. Despite Tryfan’s woodcraft, it would not be hard to throw him off the scent. He had one single weakness…one that was easily exploited, much as I regretted doing so. But a promise is a promise, and I sighed as I padded the last distance to where Tryfan crouched, listening intently.

He will not hear, nor will he see, until I have finished with him.

Muttering, I cast a small glamour over him. He heard a noise, far to his left, and swaying into a hunter’s crouch, he followed, eager as a lion cub on its first hunt.
So easily ensnared, I made the noise grow quieter, as if it went away from him, leading him out of the marshes and back to his camp, bewildered and finding nothing.

Brandishing his double-ended spear, he was fearless as he went. How I admired him, with his natural instinct for my environment…but back to the problem at hand. Now that my enigma’s ‘pursuer’ was dealt with, it was time to play.

I had not had a sport for a long time. Not since Pan walked these lands and the wines of Bacchus flowed free as water. I was going to enjoy this, and my plaything was an interesting one indeed. I made my way back to where I had left him, yellowed hair shining in the few rays of sunlight that found their way into my swamps. His eyebrows rose, questioning me as I came.

“He is dealt with. Now…” I purred slightly, applying a little charm would do no harm. “Come with me. And no tricks, I can sense your deceits half the forest away.”
He nodded, that smirk still apparent, although not showing on his face. He believed he was going to get the better of me.

We shall see…

[Emotional Faun Chiko-sai]

A little filler post until I decide what, exactly, to do with Hela... *runs away*
--------------
Hela
"But he's gone, No reason. No sense.
He just wandered off one day,
past the onions, past the fence."
----------------------

The oldest creature she can think of lives very near to the river, where the waters cascade about caverns that no one has explored before. Just as there is a clearly invisible line sectioning off her house into the fire country, there is another line dividing this, the river country, from the rest of the island. Although if you wanted to quibble about it the whole island could theoretically be called river country.

Here the clouds are close to the ground, their pinkness in the morning sky fading to mist against the crashing wildness of the river, and Hela is very careful, very on edge, because then the air is damp with moisture, the ground is wet and slippery and muddy, the sparkling drops of the river attack her from every side. One wrong step and she was gone. And maybe in the late afternoon one of the humans would find her legs floating down a stream, decaying badly, trailing leather. Her real body already consumed by the water.

She shakes her head and tries not to think morbid thoughts and concentrates on the pebbles in the path. On the memory of her father and one of his names. She never doubted that he had many. In her hand she clutches the dagger. You can't trust water: it changes.

The cave she is going to is the one deepest in, the one half-submerged in water, the one that she doesn't want to go to the most. There are eight symbols carved in the living rock in the innermost chamber. They are all lines, broken and unbroken, and in these lines the world was summarised into eight essential concepts by a man who married his sister. Because he did this, and because enough men saw the logic of it, he was made the first emperor in the world. And in the cave lives his horse.

Generally, with legends, you see what you believe. If you had been European, and looked at the First Emperor's horse, you would have seen a unicorn with mottles on its back. If you had been Asian you would have seen a qilin, a dragon-horse, and the scales on its back would have looked like a multicoloured map. So because Hela is receptive to most things, she sees all of these, the images shifting seamlessly to make a collective whole.

The First Emperor's horse had no gender, no function anymore since its master had also left, no one to look at the river's map on its back, and it was lonely. A comrade of Hela. Both abandoned by their owners. Born from the waters of rivers, it had not originally been bitter. It became bitter, the taste seeping into it slowly but surely over the days that turned into months and years and centuries and eventually millenniums, because Fuxi had broken his promise and forgotten to come back. Life in the modern world intoxicated him and made him forget. It knows this deep in the marrow of its watery bones.

As Hela sidles (she always sidles in places with walls) into the chamber with the symbols the horse says in its tinkly watery voice: Hello you. What are you doing here?
"Um. I was wondering. If you know. Um. My father."
I shouldn't think I do. But it does. He came to it some years ago, wanting to know about the nature of the river. He had mentioned his daughter. A pleasant child he had called her. It won't tell her until it has to, though. What is this talk I hear about strangers?
"There are, uh, five of them. I think. Three girls and two boys. They're not like us. They're not, you know, safe."
Really. They came through the river. I felt them.
Hela thinks: then why did you ask? but her mouth says: "Maybe you'll recognise him if I give you a name. Um. My father that is."
Tell me. The horse looks concerned.
"Scar-lip."
Now that the name is out the First Emperor's horse cannot lie because names have power, more than lies more than truth. And its eye is riveted on the dagger, on the crudely carved flames on its hilt. Maybe it really is growing old because the flames
flicker
just a moment and then the unbasised euphoria washing over it was almost like Fuxi was reading the map on its back again, parting the waters here and there, making settlements. Teaching it to fish with a net in its mouth, laughing at the results. The days when it was important. Then cruel as a hook the feeling was gone, torn away, leaving it weak and vulnerable and hateful.

It tells her, angrily, a little of what she wants to know, the most that is in its power to tell. He went. Through the river. He did not come back, at least not this way. I suggest you ask the bone. Burn it. Burn it till it gives you answers. I could care less. Leave me.
"B-but it says he's not here-"
And where exactly is the here that you mean when you ask the bone? You foolish child. It remembers not to be overly helpful, then turns on her, baring teeth. I said leave.

Hela leaves, running fast as she can, hopping from stone to stone in the submerged hallway. She would look for the humans, out of curiosity, to see if they had been menaced. Then she would lose herself in divination.

[Plantae]

Apparently "filler" is synonymous with "eloquent" in your vocabulary, Emotional Faun Chiko-sai.

= Oiyg (oh - yig) =

The light of the campfire waned in the bright morning light, not dead, but muted. The sun overshadowed fire, means for enigma. How did the gray birch Oiyg know this? She did not know. The will of the universe bid that all plants would have no eyes, no ears, but that was not of Oiyg. No, when her great father birch, a pallid white who she remembered only through this special magic that coursed through her, had spread her seed that winter day she had not been expected to survive. She was one sprout in a field of white, but here, on the knoll, she had prospered. With the true sentients, it might have been known by those in such echelons that the snows on the knoll were a chill lake, frigid birthright of the engendered deity that flowed through this island.

Is this then life? Oiyg's branches moved with the wind in what might have been a tree's version of a laugh, but the emotions of flora were unreadable. Only by the will of others did they move, sway, or show any semblance of life. It was so that in this breeze she tried to whisper, pressing her conscious to extend the gap to the wood. Why was this "speech" so hard to create, she wondered.

A low masculine moan did exert from her limbs and her newfound consciousness drew back in surprise. Movement! What incredulous finding! The trees had always known that their cruel mistress was Gaea, and that they had no will over themselves. It was Oiyg's delight that she had grown from this imprisonment. A shrill, and more female, screech emitted from her limbs. The humans heads flew upward in surprise, or so did she describe it with her ineptness at the human words.

Gaea, or whatever force was distanced far beneath her decided that Oiyg had overstepped primeval and unbreakable bonds. She was a tree! To think she could press the natural order! She was not to move!

Gaea was not one for fire, but the scarred ash of Oiyg was all that remained in moments. Her blaze had attracted the eye of each human, and they did not know it, but Oiyg was screaming it in her head. They stared at the horrifying sight and could not see their own eyes red with the blood of a dying independence. She had been stopped from breaking her bonds. Chains were human! In the process of her burning, Gaea had done what she had not wished. As each ash scattered to the wind, they did appear as flesh as the human Joseph had seen. Why? They were. Somewhere, in the depths of the forest, each piece came together. In unity, a grotesque figure would step from the ruin. She was rebellion! She was wrong, Oiyg knew. She did not care. In her sentient flesh, she marveled at each flexing muscle. She was whole! She was newborn!

Oiyg was demon.

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The "burning tree" of Joseph's dream. With the enlist over, it is perfectly in your ability to create playable characters with a simple introduction.

[Asilynne]

Going to try to post to forget what happened today ;.;

~~Lily O'Keefe~~
Wherever our souls may wander, may they find each other in the dark
The others awoke, and slowly, began drifting away from the tiny dimming campfire we slept fitfully at the night before. How quickly things can change overnight, yesterday was filled with mass confusion, fear. Why were we here, how did we get here, questions gone in the matter of a night, never to be asked again it seemed. When once this world was feared by them, they embraced fully, and ran headlong into the graying woods that surrounded the edge of the world, leaving me alone to my musings. Silent and alone once more, I gazed around the scattered camp and the world which was both familiar and strange, and saw something I had not noticed the night before.

Beside me was a crossbow, perfectly fit to be worn on the arm, the wood smooth and soft was the leather of the glove that was attached to it. Slipping it on, knowing it was mine inside, the leather formed a perfect fit around my hand, being neither too tight nor too loose. Perfect. Something that was mine, something that could not be taken from me.

Feeling a strange emotion well up inside me, I had the urge to cry. No...crying was weakness, you should know better... I told myself, but I always found myself doing it whether I liked to or not. I always wished I could yell, scream as loud as I could, call to the heavens as if rain would pour out of the clouds to hide the sun and cry for me. I longed to shout in a sad and wordless song exactly how I was feeling, but I always worried who would hear me, who would judge me for my outburst. I no longer cared, this place was mine, whatever would hear me shouldnt care either. The others, the strange little girl, if they heard and came it was of no consequence. And so my emotions poured out through my voice into one long howl to the heavens.

When I was done, drained but feeling better, I realised I had changed. Physically I was no longer human, I had paws instead of hands or feet, fur instead of bare skin and clothes. Instead of my new crossbow being on my hand there was a tiny symbol of an unknown language. Not caring how or why this happened, I ran off into the woods, catching the scent of the others and pinpointing their trails perfectly. For some reason I felt myself wanting to visit the little girls house, and so I nosed around the woods, searching for a trail that was a day old.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thats all for now, its something at least -.- Ill try to do better next time when I feel better -.-

[Weasel Overlord]

~Tryfan Wen~
…In which Tryfan is lured…

Padding through the forest, Tryfan feels whole for the first time in his life.

During his time in the Prison, he felt like a part of himself was missing, but he knew not what it was. Only that there was a hole in his consciousness that needed filling, else he would go insane. Plunging through the River and fading through the wall into this country had been Tryfan’s best moment, and he was whole now because of it.

He lopes through the forest, not too fast and not too slow, hunting at a peaceful and leisurely pace, his goal, to find Joseph, is clear in his mind, but he feels no need to rush. Enjoying the feel of the forest beneath his bare feet, he clenches his toes, gathering muck between them. It felt wonderful. Breathing in deeply, Tryfan closed his eyes and stood, swaying slightly in the breeze, divining where Mathias had gone. He could not be evaded in this, his territory. No one could hide from the Forest-walkers, and Tryfan had become one of the best, only surpassed by the creatures and sentient beings that had lived their lives here, long before his arrival.

He remembers the unicorn, and its peaceful majesty. In his mind, he gazes into its eyes again, no longer mad, filled only with peace. Throwing back its head, the unicorn thrusts its horn into a nearby tree trunk and Tryfan understands. Mathias is keeping high, thinking to elude him by leaving no trail. But Tryfan needs no trail, and he presses his hands against a willow, leaning over a ravine trying to graze the bottom with elegant limbs. He feels what the tree has to say, and thanking it, he leaps off due west.

He can not be eluded. The trail is coming closer now, but then there is something…

Something obscuring Mathias…

Something familiar in its scent and the feel of its glamours. Tryfan had met this being before, but she obviously had ulterior motives for leading him away, so he succumbed to her charms and allowed himself to be lead.

A false trail leading back into the camp, but this is a different camp. No fire burns dully, smouldering gently in a circle of sleepers. There are no people here.

Tryfan grips his spear and walks into the centre of the clearing. There is a scent of glamours here, once again familiar to him and somewhat intoxicating to Tryfan. He feels like he has been lead here to await her coming…but he is not sure who it is he waits for, only that he wants to wait…

He wants it so desperately…

Slumping to the ground, Tryfan puts his head in his hands and weeps.
Spear drops at his side, forgotten, and Tryfan weeps.

[Plantae]

= Oiyg =

"Me?" I speak, gazing at my reflection in the water. I giggle in the way only a human can, and further observe the subtle curves of my new body. I poke what anyone else would understand as "eyes" and flinch as a sensation runs the length of my body.

"Ow," I mutter, testing the word with another fervent giggle, even though the situation does not call for it. My fascination is unbounded. I see myself, and think myself pretty. I am pretty, I decide.

My skin is pallid, a sickly gray. Sickly? I do not know the word, but somehow I have a hunch that it is the most ample description. My nose is slender and bold. My ears are pointed and sprightly. The hair on my scalp is matted, white with clumps of black dirt far from blending with the whirling mass. It is long, I decide, after much deliberation. It is not the sort of white they call "pure," I also place, but sown with a darker tint.

Each eye is empty, livid gray and bottomless. My feet touch the water as my stare draws me in, and I stumble and chuckle again. It is a snorting, ugly laugh- but I am pretty! "Am I naive?" I wonder aloud, mispronouncing the final word as it rolls off my tongue. Where did I procure this knowledge of language? I entertain that it might have to do with the circumstances of my growth as... ugh... the word feels horrid in my mouth. No, I dismiss this notion quickly.

In curiosity, I move one of my new appendages and snap my fingers. I had always wanted to do that, I surmise. As I do so, however, my appearance in the water changes. My demeanor is almost inverted, pale skin and obsidian colored hair. Neat and tidy, with eyes of a deep and foreboding slate. I gasp at my image, and snap my fingers again in wonder; I have red hair and a stout waist. This strange magic coalesces again, and I learn that I feel tire with each use.

What is that!? A tree, no, in the tree. I see it! I see it! What is that!? A... chipmunk! I marvel at it as it scurries along the branches, oblivious that the correct name for the creature is squirrel. Quite suddenly, I find myself upon it, and then grasping it in my hand. I give a death hold to keep the writhing beast in my palm, but then it bites me!

Anger! I am angry! I squeeze. I squeeze harder. The little animal gives out a little rasp, but I do not care! It wheezes... wicked creature. Then, a little blood froths from its mouth. It goes limp.

What!? What!? "I've killed it! I've killed it!" I scream, uncaring as to who listens. I glare at my long fingernails, clawlike almost, in reproach.

I snap my fingers again, watching the pond reflection for movement again. Tears well up in my eyes as this does not work. Had I imagined it? Tears well up in my eyes, and I put the little chipmunk down.

I mutter, "sorry, sorry..." and dig a small hole for the tiny guy. I place him in, and gaze sorrowfully downwards as I push the soil on top of his body. "Poor, poor, beast..." I look at my reflection once more, and the eyes staring back at me are hard and unforgiving. "I am not pretty, I am not pretty-" I cut off abruptly, hearing movement.

A creature I recognize from my days as an... ugh... walks in. She is red haired, green eyed, and carries an air of haughtiness. What did they call her? Sara. "Sara," I mumble, before she sees me. I bare my serrated teeth as she enters the clearing, and she draws back. She stares and I hallucinate my eyes glazed over red. She stands up straight now, she does, and ejects a careful response. "Demon," she says, "demon..."

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Feel free to take the initiative and continue the Eleiamae and Joseph interaction, Weasel Overlord.