[m] [p] our guilt, our blame, our blood, our fault - Printable Version +- 'Souls IPB Archive (November 2007–October 2012) (https://soulsrpg.com/ipb) +-- Forum: Dead IC (https://soulsrpg.com/ipb/forumdisplay.php?fid=110) +--- Forum: Dead Topics (https://soulsrpg.com/ipb/forumdisplay.php?fid=21) +--- Thread: [m] [p] our guilt, our blame, our blood, our fault (/showthread.php?tid=30521) |
- Myrika Tears - 08-26-2012 [html]
No, we're not, she agreed. The truth of that was written in the cringing; the averted eyes and sometimes the looks, more terrible; the strange distance Myrika did not know how to begin bridging -- if indeed it could be bridged. She would have done anything, if only she knew where to begin. Perhaps her sister could not provide this knowledge herself, though. Maybe the only way to fix things -- to the degree they could be -- was to leave herself.
There were too many things binding her to this place now, least of all her leadership -- maybe she might have left months ago, before Vesper and before leadership, before the deaths she'd inflicted. She looked over with blue-green eyes, trying to will something into existence which might change or help things. There were so many silly and useless material things she could have piled atop the cloak, but perhaps in giving them, she would have given her guilt form and substance -- physical reminders of the absence and its petty attempt at atonement.
The tawny-hued coyote moved, with exaggerated slowness, to put an arm around the pale form. I don't think you're fine, either. Her voice was very quiet, for she did not think asking again or being less than satisfied with avoidance or silence right, but she needed to try. She could not disagree with "will" -- the future was not hers to divine. But just now, she did not think Cassie was just fine. There was more than just lost time and broken promises in the schism. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-26-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-27-2012 [html] 380
Maybe not, she agreed, albeit without conviction. She turned and put her muzzle to her sister's arm, the side of her muzzle resting above the bandage, hovering without contact. The faintly sweet smell of the paste and the clean smell of the bandages drowned out most other scents. Perhaps it was better she did not know, but she still mourned this loss of trust, for she did not immediately understand the protective nature of the gesture.
She could not, however, be convinced there was nothing more to be done. She could not redo what had been done or left undone, but the present and the future were a different thing entirely. The redhead lifted her nose, pointing it back toward the windows a moment. She resolved to attempt a different tactic. Eira was captured after the storm, she said, voice distant and slow with memory. Farmers, I guess. One told me they'd done a lot of work and effort in catching and keeping her, so it was only right I stayed and helped. So I did.
There was a pause as she considered her departure, how best to phrase it. One of them -- I guess, he -- you know, she said, ears flattening with shame. She couldn't say "wanted her" and certainly not "desired her." There was no way to put it that did not make Myri want to sink into the ground. I didn't, though. I liked his sister. I didn't really understand how much until I'd already left.
She would not have even said that much were it not for just who was seated beside her -- only that it was about the best she had to offer in the way of kindred tales, and even then she did not know just how radically divergent their tales were. The worst part of her tale was not when the brother had cornered her; it was the sister's refusal to accompany her, and that look.
Stupid, she muttered, shrugging only the shoulder further away from Cassie. She was not entirely sure whether she referred to her own past actions and thoughts or the idea that she might share this tale in comparative offering of her own hurts and think it the equal of physical scarring. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-27-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-27-2012 [html] 347
No, I told her, she said, shifting her weight awkwardly -- though still carefully, as not to jostle the injured shoulder. Even despite the squirming sort of feeling she had in her chest, the acute pressuring and clutching sensation of discomfort, she pressed on. And he didn't hurt me. He... cornered me, she started. He had my hands. She had wanted to bite him and make him let go, but the fear that he might bite back or worse had stilled her jaws. But the brother -- she could not even remember his full name, other than that it had started with "Lami" and so he was called most frequently -- was not even the worst part of her experience; he was an added detail, the spark for her departure.
He was standing there, just looking at me for the longest. A few minutes, it felt like. And then Tyveni -- the sister, Myri clarified. She came in and yelled, and he stopped. I told her I liked her and wanted to leave with her, but she -- looked at me funny. Her ears dipped and her head bent with the memory of it. Disgust, hate maybe? She hadn't been able to bear looking at it long enough to tell, though the murky few seconds she remembered that face were probably seared permanently into her head. Thinking of it now, for the first time since perhaps before the first of the Boreas attacks, Myri realized again how much that look had bothered her. She said something... I don't remember. It was no, though. So I left. She'd left running and whimpering, and guilty even then for failing to extract Tyveni from that environment. For the most part, that had left her -- if her friend had wanted too leave, she would have by now, Myrika or not.
She did feel small and stupidly childish, contending with half-wit brothers and unrequited love, while her sister fought off bandits and thieves, her father ate his horse from under himself, and -- well, no one even knew what had happened to Rachias. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-27-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-27-2012 [html] 314
She might have been called an idiot for the inverse, for an apparent failure to find attraction where it was natural and as most did. And part of her perhaps still even liked Tyveni too much to call her an idiot, but she could at least smile and carefully squeeze herself into the offered embrace, glad for its comforts. She had, for the moment, completely forgotten it was to be the opposite -- she was to have comforted, rather than being comforted.
And, she could at least agree that Tyveni had not known her loss, for Myrika believed, with profound idealism, it would have been easy to ignore her admission and continue with their friendship as it had always been; she was ignorant of the difficulties of avoiding one's romantic feelings with continued friendship. Though this was a lesson later learned with Thamur, most of their awkwardness was attributed to her discovered sexuality rather than the individual involved.
But thoughts of Tyveni were swept by the wayside with another name, and Myrika's smile turned more toward dopey rather than amused. No, she feels the same way I do. That is... Myrika paused, trying to puzzle out how to describe the way she felt about the scarred Centurion. Umm, she murmured, and a second later, gave a quiet laugh. There were still no words of hers that could adequately explain her feelings.
Vesper's great, just great, she said. It's just -- I can't really... it's really hard to describe, she finished, stammering a word or two and tripping badly over the second instance of "really." Her feelings hadn't been possible to describe even to the mottled coyote's face; why should it be any easier here, even to Cassie? Have you loved someone? she asked meekly, thinking it was the only way to understand. You'll know what I mean. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-27-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-27-2012 [html] there were no less than three red squirrels in this post. fuck yeah moment: one of them was a real word
It was the quiet that brought her head out of heaven, all the warm and gooey thoughts and feelings induced at the mention of Vesper dissipating with the prolonged quiet. She hunkered down a little, though did not seek to extract herself from their sideways embrace, glancing at Cassie now and again. Her eyes seemed to be looking through the schoolhouse and everything in particular, and Myrika was growing more and more uneasy with the quiet.
She was perhaps steeling herself to whisper her sister's name when Cassie spoke, a word that seemed much louder than it actually was. There was a smile, but it seemed small and somehow not altogether there, as if her thoughts were still faraway as her eyes had been a moment ago. She remembered, in the quiet, just what had begotten her gushing about Vesper, and the track their conversation had taken.
Did you like someone very much, then? she suggested, feeling more coy than she actually was. An idiot? Like Tyveni?
You said no, but I don't think it's no, she wanted to say, though her questions were still gentle and given in the mild voice of a commiserator rather than an interrogator's cold tone, though part of her now well-remembered grief and strangeness was turned to angry hurt. That small thing wanted to throttle the hurt out of her sister and smash it to pieces on the ground, as if hurt was some diseased and vestigial organ so easily removed. She wanted to help and was not allowed that much. Better yet, she believed in knowing and listening, there was help to give. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-27-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-28-2012 [html] dis post = meh forever
She was sorry for the question, for the palpable trembling it provoked. But in Myrika's mind, words and expression were still a tool of healing, and she earnestly believed both might soothe some of the hurt apparent in the ghost-pale form. The sand-colored coyote had listened to Sparrow's disjointed story, shifted to show her the painlessness of the process, and watched with triumph as the coyote repeated the process. This memory of the power of words was strong within the hybrid. It still twisted something jagged and sharp inside her to hear the quiet, low voice and self-deprecation and feel the quavering in Cassie's limbs. She held fast and hugged more tightly again, still observant of visible scrapes and bruises.
No... not you, never you. She could not imagine her sister gazing on another with the sort of look Tyveni had given, let alone acting in a more despicable manner. She needed no words, no tale, to tell her that much. Though the flinching creature was a stranger, there was too much of the child Myrika recalled from youth left in voice and countenance and scent for her to separate the two. She bit back and swallowed more words threatening to bubble from her copper-streaked muzzle, allowing herself only the murmured disagreement. Quiet could not be derailed, and Myrika would keep it so, at least for a little while, and dare to hope it might provoke further words. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-28-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-28-2012 [html] --
The quiet was not so much stillness or lack of noise as it was lack of speech -- she could hear many things quite well, least of all the near panting of the smaller figure beside her, the thundering of a too-loud heartbeat, and even the fainter noises of something giving way beneath sharp claws. Her blue-green eyes glanced down, and she herself wanted to extract herself from their half-embrace and prostrate herself before Cassie and beg for forgiveness, but she refused the urge, however powerful it was. The gurgle of hurt in her sister's voice was only a small and disjointed piece, something she did not understand as of yet, and Myrika needed no superior perception to ascertain it was just that -- a very small piece. None of what else?
She rubbed softly with her one hand and reached out in offering of the other, crossing it awkwardly across her tawny body so her sister might easily reach without stretching the wounded shoulder too much. It's okay, she said, quietly, repeating the phrase a few times. She knew the feeling too well, though -- she should have never told Tyveni anything. If she had simply offered to go away with her as a friend, maybe there would still be some chance for them?
You can tell me, she added. Nothing bad can happen if you do. Her voice was awfully soft, as if she herself was afraid to drive away with speech and questions the small part of Cassie's hurt given to her. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-28-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-28-2012 [html] 347
The twisting thing in her stomach pierced more, and she hated herself for having wrought this with her questions and words, though perhaps even then part of her recognized the inevitability of such a thing. Sorrowful as she was for having provoked such things within her sister, she was also infinitely relieved it was hers to know, too. She held fast and squeezed the hand, her own breath an increasing heaviness in her lungs until she realized she was holding that, too.
The fawn-colored hybrid exhaled slowly and suppressed her own whining and even growling, though they threatened within her. She was grave-silent in her listening, finding even the noises she wanted to make inadequate to express the things she felt. Anything Myrika might have said or done was only so much bathetic gesture, the most minute and insignificant thing swept up in the wave of things spilling from her sister.
The names and the they were unknown to her, but she conjured images of them and tore them to pieces all the same. If she could not do it herself, Ithiel could have for her, the rest of Inferni, too. In that moment, given a tangible and known enemy, she would have echoed a predecessor in seeking the worst monsters she could find to exterminate her sister's monsters. She quivered with her own anger, incapable of suppressing that much. Her jaws were set together, clenched tightly. With the shake of Cassie's head, she released and drew back, uncertain if her holding and closeness was wanted. Her other hand hovered over a bone-colored back, but she dropped and withdrew it, instead curling both into fists.
Myri still believed, too, in catharsis -- even if she understood part of that included, irrevocably, taking some of that feeling into herself. She would have stolen it all away if possible, if only sorrow could be siphoned with things small and ineffectual as words. There was no turning away now, though -- it had been too late the moment she saw her sister bloodied and bruised and scarred. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-28-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-28-2012 [html] 533
Her curled fists twitched several times throughout, and she jerked all over when Cassie laughed, though it was not a gesture of surprise. She was dimly aware of tingling numbness in her hands from the force of her clutching them together, tingling in her fingers as she tightened them so much she thought tendons would surely snap and bones crack under the pressure. Her teeth ground together and clenched so forcefully she was surprised they did not shatter and tumble, in hundreds of miniscule pieces, from her muzzle.
She sprang to her feet and paced rapidly to the end of the room. She turned around and paced back, then back again, though this second time she stopped midway through the room, and abruptly turned to smash both hands into the desk. The bone jumped off its surface and landed awkwardly, clattering to the floor a moment later. Myri wanted to put her head through its surface, too, and kick it to pieces -- she wanted to destroy something, but her strength was not so great against the desk. The single strike aching through both hands and reverberating through her arms and even up to her shoulders was enough to temper her anger -- she'd never really known real anger until now -- at least to the point of control.
The Aquila hissed a breath out of her nose, still clenching her teeth too hard to even open her mouth. She wished she did have a pet monster to send seeking after these creatures. She did not know a word foul or cruel enough by which to name them, but she wished she could burn their bodies and hang bones all the same. She had killed to protect and defend her home and her cousin before, but she had not wanted to. This impotent desire for simple malice was new to her. She wanted very much to reject and hate that desire, to turn away from it and consider herself above it, but staring into the wood grain of the desk, she realized she could not -- and relented, relishing it and letting it sink into her.
No, no, no, she said, and six or seven times more, when her tongue returned. She was still staring down at the surface of the desk, glowering and glaring as if her eyes could burn through it. She straightened, though, with the cessation of the single word, and turned back toward her sister. The sandy-furred coyote crouched down again in front of her sister, wanting very much to touch and hold and hug.
It's not your fault. None of it. She gave in to only a light touch on the uninjured arm, acquiescing readily to the possibility of a flinch or even worse reaction. Please don't think like that, she whimpered, pleading with a thought process she did not know how to otherwise combat. Given a hundred years of uninterrupted thought, Myri might have been able to deconstruct just why and even put it to words, but she hadn't so many years to live and there was only the deeply set knowledge that Cassie and any other faulting themselves for such acts of violation was wrong. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-28-2012 [html] [/html] - Myrika Tears - 08-28-2012 [html] 457
She wanted very much to ask Cassandra to stop, to look up and agree, and smile, though she was fully aware how absurd such a hope was. The tawny hybrid refused to yield to the compulsion to ask her outright to stop. Perhaps it was the cold tallying of this clan's history -- the observational and dry way she'd written death, war, and rape -- even using her grandmother's polite phrase: have against her will. That phrase, echoic in her head just then, very much needed to be scratched out, perhaps the whole page torn out and rewritten. Such coldness had no place in descriptions of brutality. Those deeds needed to be laid bare, visible for what they were to the world.
All the fur along her shoulders and neck was fully roused. A shiver ran through her arms, and the rattling brought a sharp stab of pain in her hand. She looked down and saw a smudge of red against one tawny-hued knuckle but paid it no mind. She touched her sister's hair, running her fingers along the long silver-pale locks, brushing them away from her face and tucking them behind her head. It's not your fault, she said.
I would have done the same. Would she have? I wouldn't want them. You didn't want them, she murmured, unable to keep the words away. They never were. She didn't know if the words even mattered -- there was blankness in her sister's face. She kept talking all the same, some of the same phrases and sentiments repeating. I'm sorry, she said, and it was one of the things the fire-haired coyote said again and again -- for what had happened, for making Cassie relive it, for thinking she could have helped, and many other things. There were many pleases, too, though Myrika did not know if she was pleading to be heard, believed, or right.
Listen -- please, she said, louder, clearer, and less a babble than the rest when one very clear and very rational thought arose above the jumble. If anyone ever touches -- if anyone even looks at you or anything else -- tell me, she said, authority sliding unintentionally back into her voice. Tell me -- and I'll tear them to fucking pieces. It wasn't so monstrous to seek vengeance, however -- what made it so was the quiet cold all her anger had turned into, fire frozen into a solid chunk of ice in the center of her. It was too easy to mislabel the feeling as protectiveness and too easy to turn all that cold into its fuel. Maybe she had her pet monster, after all. @import url('http://sleepyglow.net/rp/post.css'); </style>[/html] - Cassandra Asylum - 08-28-2012 [html] [/html] |