[/html]2nd july. the waste. private. <3
His thoughts and feelings swayed back and forth with the cool breezes of the summer night. Guilty and uncertain, then indifferent and weary. The darkness was still young and glittering with stars, but his body had not rested since morning, and his mind had not rested in months. Kharma had never had the endurance to be a wanderer. The newness of unfamiliar places and people exhausted him, and he had difficulty quickly processing such experiences into the logical compartments of his mind. He liked too much the comforts of familiarity, but while the rocky shoreline of the Waste one he had walked before, it would never be a place to find comfort.
Moss and sandy weeds had grown into and around the rock. It did not look like a gravestone any longer, camoflouged among the dozens of other broken stones and littered driftwood. His brother was something to be forgotten. There were no happy memories buried with him, only terrible ones, sad ones, empty ones. Kharma remembered best the day he had tried to kill him. Distantly, he wondered how they each might have fared if they had been able to clash again when older. The traveler sat down, as he had years ago, in front of the rock and shed his hood. There was little feeling to be seen in his red eyes, but it was dark -- the moon was only a sliver, the stars were a little shy, and there were no fireflies this close to the sea.
ten nights of the beast
|
07-04-2011, 03:47 PM
[html]
07-07-2011, 07:29 PM
[html]
He's in lupus form, if that is unclear. <3 While it was certain that Ezekiel’s pelt favored the day, with its colors pulled from the sun itself, he was a creature suited for night. His journey northward had been taken mostly at night, when he was least-likely to encounter strangers. Solitude had served him well those long months, as had silence. Inferni’s land was one he knew now by heart, and so his feet traveled without any need for direction or cause for slowness. At night he took on the lupus form as to make travel easier, finding the supplies he oft carried cumbersome for hunting or running as he often did in the witching hours. The ocean he preferred at day, for it was welcome relief from a cruel sun, and at night he found it a different beast entirely. Riptides and the dark inky depths of forever were frightening, even for a grown man. He feared those unfamiliar waters and so respected them, keeping a healthy distance from the shoreline. However, it was the tangy scent of mint that caused his course to diverge, bringing him down from the plains and towards the unknown. Having not been present for the death of his uncle, Ezekiel knew little about the area that he neared. Neither his sister nor his father had divulged much, and the Aquila did not desire to ask about such dark tidings. Yet the man he saw at the burial site could have been his ghost, for the vague memories he had of the faceless stranger. Ezekiel halted abruptly, making no effort to hide his presence. If this man was a ghost, he would find out soon enough. .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
07-13-2011, 11:52 AM
[html]
[/html]
07-19-2011, 01:19 AM
[html]
bad post is bad There had never been a significant loss in Ezekiel’s life; he had not suffered death as other living souls had. The third child his parents had created had never known life. While Talitha had vanished many times over, she always came home. She was not dead. She was sometimes barely living, of course. Yet there were reasons for these things, that sensible part of his brain so often reflected on. Talitha had suffered in ways he would never know. A dead man had wounded her so terribly that she sought comfort in any male that would bend to her wills—all of them more unworthy than the last. Two strangers regarded each other in the dark, both shadows of their fathers. Ezekiel relaxed slightly at the familiar red gaze. It was similar to his sister’s, if only slightly. He was less welcoming to the voice, recalling the lore of devils and demons who spoke with cherub’s tones while they twirled dark magic under cape and cowl. Still, he was not a child any longer—he was the Aquila, and it was his duty to see what this stranger was doing on their land. Several well placed steps carried him down towards the rocky beach. He found the scent of mint heavy in the air. Perhaps this man was some sort of talking ghost. “What are you doing here?” Ezekiel asked, though there was no malice in his tone. .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
07-19-2011, 11:13 AM
[html]
[/html]
07-27-2011, 04:48 PM
[html]
I don't think Zeke really ever met Arkham. <<; Tell me if I'm wrong. One cannot escape fate simply by running away. Gabriel had tried. Ezekiel had tried. In a way, all of those bound to the eight-pointed star and the place made from fire and bone were called back. What made them unique, as it had made men unique, was the most terrible gift of free-will. One could turn a blind eye to heaven and ignore the grace of God. One could abandon all hope and bury themselves in a lie. One could destroy their own world and do so laughing—it was this gift that made men go mad. Control was needed. Anarchy and free-will served only discord and did so willingly. For now, at least, there was no madness in the boy. He had been lucky so far. His suffering would come in time, when the curse unfolded. No ambition or dreams of heaven made him mad, though. No inherited blood made him mad (though it was most certainly there, waiting to grow). Ezekiel was not Gabriel, though. The memories were hazy, for the memories of children often are. Ezekiel slowed and sat on his haunches, staring at the stranger who was not a stranger, eyes gleaming in the starlight. “Who are you?” .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
07-27-2011, 05:20 PM
[html]
[/html]
07-30-2011, 01:09 AM
[html]
Yeah, I thought that was the case. Sorry this is so short. There was something so desperately familiar about the stranger. He was dark coated and had red eyes, but they were not the same as Talitha’s eyes. It was so strange to him that the color of things could be alike and yet they could contain different things. Souls, perhaps. Someone had told him that once. It might have been a book, for he had read so many and the facts and fiction all blurred into one. Philosophy and religion were cousins, alike and forever at odds—Ezekiel had filled his head with words as much as he had filled his soul with the savage places of the world. So that part of him understood what the ghost-stranger meant, and that part of him smiled a smile that did not meet his eyes. There was too much forest in him to become a scholar. “I should know you,” the young man said, though he did not rise to meet him. The smell of mint overpowered all other things; trying to break through that would do little. “You look familiar. You look like a Lykoi.” Samael had red eyes. Maybe that was who this man resembled. .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
07-30-2011, 03:30 PM
[html]
[/html]
07-31-2011, 12:22 PM
[html]
This man was no ghost. He was not even a memory, only a stranger whom shared his blood and knew of the blemish within it. The blame did not live simply with his grandmother, though; the faults of fathers are so often passed down to their sons. So too, it seemed, came the burden of blood. Ezekiel’s eyes turned vicious at the mention of the dead thing that had once been his uncle, hating him still. Andrezej had infected Talitha, body and soul, and she continued to rot despite everything Ezekiel had done for her. Alaine was right about him—he was no healer. “He raped my sister,” the Aquila said coldly. There was terrible hate within his heart. Hate that it had not been he who had slaughtered the beast, hate that he had never found his sister when she was oh-so-close. Some nights he hated himself for these things. Philosophy couldn’t save him, though, for the world was cruel and what became of the pnemua mattered little. God knew his own. Of this, Ezekiel had no doubt. .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
07-31-2011, 12:54 PM
[html]
[/html]
07-31-2011, 01:13 PM
[html]
A pair of eyes that belonged to his father watched the dark-coated stranger with curiosity and mild anger. What gave the lot of them the right to abandon home? Why had it taken him, of all people, to hold together a legacy of brutality and savagery? Ezekiel was not cut out for the job. Someone else should have taken this place. He was not his father’s son—he belonged to the forest and the beasts and the dark-winged birds. Samael was a plague forgotten by Ezekiel, who had not seen him since before he abandoned his post for the final time. His lips pulled away from his teeth in a smile-snarl and curled his whiskers up to his nose. A wolf lived in him still. “It’s a vicious circle,” he explained plainly. “It’s not this place—it’s the fact that when we’re with our family we turn cannibal. I think I knew that, before,” the young coyote added, his voice trailing off. The smile-snarl faded, and hurt and all those unwelcomed feelings he identified as weak burned in his chest. Ezekiel’s ears turned back. “What’s your name?” He asked again, suddenly desperate to know. .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
07-31-2011, 01:29 PM
[html]
[/html]
08-02-2011, 11:16 AM
[html]
This stranger—Kharma—he spoke of the things that bound Ezekiel as if they might simply be cast away. He knew little. So few of them did, he had come to realize. No one, certainly, would understand the ties that bound him to his russet sister. Fewer still understood that he would need to suffer in order to be cleansed. Demons lived within them all. This was the truth. “I won’t abandon my sister,” he explained. “Without me, Inferni would fall apart.” Pride, oh perhaps. Something that he had once known and since forgotten; his father had known that devil, and his father had said those words before. Inferni was weak without an even-headed leader. Halo would destroy them in her grief and her envy. Perhaps this was hell. “If you’re right, and it is all in the blood, then we’ve been doomed since birth.” .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
08-02-2011, 12:19 PM
[html]
[/html]
08-03-2011, 08:18 PM
[html]
They had to love their family, sickness and all, because they were blood and blood bonded them. Ezekiel watched the stranger, with his bloody eyes and dark pelt, and wondered if he had truly been saved. Gabriel would never forgive him if he fled. Perhaps, neither, would God. He knew he could run; he had done so before. Talitha might go with him, but what would she do out there in the wilderness? She was weak. Her heart and soul were too weak. “Death finds everyone, one way or another,” he said, remembering the beasts, remembering the dead men, the time his sister had almost been killed by the winter. “Why did you come back?” Came the inevitable question. If there was nothing here, why would this stranger—this man he was certain was related to, even if his name said otherwise—come back to Inferni? It seemed contradictory and foolish to return to a place hated, after all. .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
08-04-2011, 01:05 AM
[html]
[/html]
08-06-2011, 10:04 AM
[html]
This man could have been Ezekiel’s shadow. He had left for one reason only, and she had ground herself to this place now with feverish hold. He both loved and hated her and knew in his heart that she alone mattered. Talitha was his moon, his Shadow, his whole and his opposite. Yet he had seen what she truly was, and part of him withdrew from her as all wild beasts might do. She was not pure, not entirely good—but he loved her yet. So he returned the sad smile, understanding what it was to know that endless quest, and looked back to the Waste. “I used to think that too. Mine came home. Yours will too.” Even now, with the weight of a thousand days upon his shoulders, Ezekiel knew what hope was. That single vision had kept him alive while he journeyed through endless nights and days, turning feral and strange in the process. Hope, like faith, was so fragile; it was a test to hold to it. .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html]
08-09-2011, 10:36 PM
[html]
[/html]
08-25-2011, 02:12 AM
[html]
Ezekiel had once been the light to his sister’s shadow, but Talitha had not always been what she had since become. Ravaged and broken, it had been this brother’s dead shadow that had infected her. A disease had made her ill, turned her into the wicked thing she had become. His own light had become tainted by a demon’s hand. Twin scars remained, displaying this fact clearly. Corvus had brought shadow to a boy who had only ever known pretend war, pretend conflict. Since that day his rages had grown to catastrophic size. One day they would destroy him. “Then go home,” he said flatly, his smile remaining but no longer warm. He had been pretending so long that he sometimes forgot to drop the mask. “If she’s alive, she’ll come.” Talitha had returned, and he came after, as if summoned. The warrior knew so little of the depths of this bond between them, but it was a strong one. If Kharma and his sister were anything alike (and oh they were) then their blood would rattle and call for one another. This was the truth. Amber eyes gleamed in the starlight, as savage and simple as the boy-king himself. .zekelion b {font-weight:bold; color:#000000; letter-spacing:1px; } .zekelion .ooc { font-style:italic; padding:0px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:11px;} .zekelion .wc {text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:bold;} .zekelion p {text-indent:25px; padding:5px 10px; margin:0px;} .zekelion {margin:0px auto; width:420px; background-color:none; background-image:url(http://bloodandfire.sleepyglow.net/publ ... kelion.png); background-position: bottom center; background-repeat:no-repeat; border:none; padding: 0px 0px 150px 0px; font-family: georgia, sans-serif; font-size:12px; color:#111111; line-height:16px; letter-spacing:.5px; text-align:justify;} </style>[/html] |