the time of your life (you just can't tell) - 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: the time of your life (you just can't tell) (/showthread.php?tid=3661) Pages:
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- Laruku Tears - 09-30-2008 [html]
This post is craaaaaaaaaaaap. Shattered Coast.
He had a feeling that perhaps he should be worried. The last time he had been lost, he hadn't made it home for more than eight months. But he hadn't really intended to go home at all; he hadn't been looking for it then. And now, well. He didn't have a place he called home anymore. He refused to acknowledge Esper Hollow as his home. He convinced himself that he was only staying there because they wouldn't let him leave, but the fact was that he had left, hadn't he? He wasn't there at the moment, so he must have left. No one had stopped him. Maybe no one would look for him. Perhaps Rachias would. Perhaps Ahren would. Perhaps not. If he really, really tried, he could probably backtrack his scent trail back to the forest. But Laruku, for the moment, decided that he didn't care. The shore was nearby, and it must have been cloudy because he couldn't feel the sun on his back. The ground was in that strange transition state between grassy and sandy, and there were small pebbles around as well. The coyotewolf lay his head over his forelegs and sighed, facing the distant ocean and the beginnings of the sunset. It was strange knowing that it was sunset without the bright colors -- they were even more beautiful when it was cloudy, right? - Jefferson Soul - 10-01-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-02-2008 [html]
Depression was a funny word in that it didn't really apply after a while. If it was defined as a lower than average point, and the average had become low enough, then it wasn't really depression anymore, right? Laruku did not consider himself depressed or really sad even, for a change of adjectives. He did not feel particularly upset, only empty. To believe in nothing was to be nothing, and the longer he lived, the more he gravitated towards that mindset. To believe in the idea that there was nothing to believe in was a paradox, equally empty, equally meaningless. The hybrid didn't really think he had anything to be upset about anyway, just like he had nothing to be happy about. Things happened. He lived through them. Life went on. It was a rhythm he couldn't seem to break, so he didn't try anymore.
An oversized and tattered ear flicked backwards at the sudden sound, having been completely oblivious before. The voice of a stranger. Like many others, the very scarred man thought for a second that the other sounded familiar, but as soon as he thought that, the feeling was gone, and he was half-sure that it had only been his imagination. (Everything is your imagination, remember? Even yourself.) Laruku turned to glance behind him -- it was a habitual thing; as soon as he did it, he realized that it didn't whether or not he turned his head because he couldn't see -- and shrugged. Do I look so depressed?he wondered. His voice was even and bland, like an old recording, without feeling. I wasn't aware. - Jefferson Soul - 10-05-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-06-2008 [html]
He could only shrug in response. Truthfully, Laruku had not spent much time contemplating his loss of eyesight. At this point, it was just another thing that had happened, something else he had to deal with and move on from. He didn't dwell on the inconvenience it caused, though almost everything he did reminded him of it -- every accidental turn of the head, as if he could still see, every blink of the eye, as if clearing dust from them still mattered. He could picture the world in his mind, but the present and the future had disappeared. He could only see things from the past: people and events that were long gone, that no longer mattered (that had never mattered in the first place, you mean). But he couldn't dwell on them either. Anything but that. So he thought about nothing. And therein was the basis for all that he'd become, which was, quite frankly, nothing at all.
Maybe he appreciated the other's sympathy, or empathy, how could he tell? Perhaps the stranger was alluding to knowing others who'd also lost their vision, or perhaps he had lost his own. But for the latter, he'd surely have to have only lost one eye, otherwise how could a blind man tell that another man was blind? He might have laughed if he'd been in the right mood, but it seemed like every other person that'd ever been relevant in his life had ended up losing an eye. A lover, an ex-lover, the ex-lover of the demon in his skull, or the mother of his children. Who was this here now? Of course, the hybrid could never be sure of all the people he'd inadvertently slept with, but oh, wouldn't that just be too ironic? But a bad memory and no vision kept him from any sort of confirmation. Nothing really changes in the world,he said with another shrug, sitting up. He didn't know if he believed in what he said anymore. People seemed to change, sometimes, though never for the better. People grew up, and then nothing ever changed after that. Life's hell anyway.There was no conviction in his voice. He wasn't sure if he believed in that either. Hell was what you perceived it to be. Maybe his life was perfectly normal. Maybe everyone's life was like this. If that were the case, what would be classified as "hell"? If everything was bad, what was worse? And it's better if I stay away from other people.He would only hurt them in the end. That never changed. The other's scent drifted to him when the breeze shifted. Familiar again, like his voice. Laruku frowned, but a name wouldn't come to him. Maybe that part of the past was too long past. Maybe he just didn't want to remember. Maybe he was still just making things up. Are you from around here?he asked decidedly. - Jefferson Soul - 10-06-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-06-2008 [html]
Laruku had never been a wanderer. Both times he had left home had been involuntary. A make-believe father who hadn't really cared in the end and a fire that had consumed his entire life -- those had been the only reasons, though there had been so many other things that should have driven him away. For reasons he still had trouble understanding (so much that, like most other things, he had given up on trying), he had chained himself to a place he had never belonged, though arguably, he didn't really belong anywhere. They'd been his family, or they'd told him they were his family, but they were distant and they were different, and he had never considered himself part of that tree. He should have died long ago with his real family, but he didn't really dwell on that either anymore.
Laruku was not used to being a loner, but it felt natural (since it was what he should have been all along, if not dead). He flicked an ear and stiffened a little as the other elaborated on his current living situation. Phoenix Valley was undoubtedly the pack Iskata had spoken to him about on that rainy day, named after a mate that was apparently no longer around. Oh, definitely,he said with a hint of something unidentifiable in his voice, She would have a place for me. Iskata would be thrilled out of her mind if I went to live with her.The slightly younger hybrid was not familiar with Deuce's racial intolerance, but wouldn't have remembered if he did anyway. Their encounters had never been important to him, and so he'd forgotten them quickly. Maybe he should have been surprised that someone that was against hybrids was leading alongside his cousin, who had a mixed child of her own, but the thought came and went, and he decided it didn't matter. Laruku,he answered absently, turning back to the sea. The stranger's name did not stir anything in his mind, unlike his voice and his scent. He had encountered amnesia before, of course, in the case of aforementioned cousin, but it was not common enough for him to jump to that conclusion first. It was easier to believe in his own madness, which was a tried and true conclusion. My father was a coyote,the blind man said, I would have killed him if someone else hadn't already. Nothing to be proud of in that bastard.It didn't occur to him that his words might be taken as anti-coyote, but he probably wouldn't have added anything even if it had. - Jefferson Soul - 10-07-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-07-2008 [html]
Sometimes, the hybrid questioned whether he'd really met Arlo that day. Everything surrounding the encounter now seemed surreal, dream-like; it had been a strange fantasy meeting with a grey knight and a haunted library that had somehow turned into a ghostly forest. The thing he'd seen there could have been a dream, a nightmare, just like everything else. The voice and the hatred and the fear -- it wasn't Arlo he attributed them to anymore, really. Laruku closed his eyes and tried to just think about his father because that was the subject at hand, not Tsunami. It was hard, and he opened his eyes again because it felt more normal and because closing them felt too much like the same dream. It made him feel like he would lose his balance and fall because he couldn't see the ground.
He raped my mother,he explained simply. These days, he figured it didn't matter if the world knew everything about him -- they had every right to know, and he had no secrets anymore. If they could realize that he was a monster on their own, then all the better, right? Maybe they would leave him alone then. Maybe they would let him die. She died giving birth to me. I was given to another couple in the pack that'd had a litter two weeks before.A pretty little pseudo-family. He'd gotten a mother and a father, a brother and a sister. All of them had abandoned him, though he didn't fault any of them now. Perhaps they had known all along what was destined to be, that Clouded Tears was doomed to fall under his reign, that he would grow up to have a demon lurking in his skull, that he would do unfathomable things. That he would destroy them all if given the chance. - Jefferson Soul - 10-07-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-08-2008 [html]
I like this thread too.
He laughed, though it was that bland, mirthless laugh that didn't sound much like a laugh at all. He wasn't bitter. He didn't feel sorry for himself. But the idea that he'd had a pleasant childhood was amusing. Of course, he'd be lying if he had said there hadn't been pockets of childish innocence, a few months of play before being hurled unfairly into the uncaring world. But no one had a nice childhood, it seemed. Not really. No one was special. Clearly, he didn't know the stranger's story, but if he couldn't remember his parents and wasn't raised by anyone else, then something must have gone wrong. If you want to call it that,he said, My adoptive father took me and dumped me in the middle of no where when I was three months old. I still don't know why. When I finally did make my way back some months later, my adoptive mother not only didn't remember me, but apparently had it against hybrids as well. Laruku couldn't keep the devil's sliver of a smile from his face. He had hated Colibri for forgetting him, and then later, he had hated her more having pretended to be his mother, only to remove herself from his life time and time again. And then he had decided that it didn't matter. And it still didn't matter, just like he didn't care anymore why Acid had abandoned him. Just like he didn't wonder where or why both Akeni and Maluki had gone. On good days, he assumed they had found some rare slice of peace, like the place the grey wolf had spoken to him of once. But on bad days, or most days, he believed that they were all most likely dead after having found some other horrible civilization, wherever it was. Bleeding Souls had been miserable. This new land was no better. Most travelers seemed just as worn and weary, so why should he think that they were the exception rather than the rule? It doesn't really matter though. All of them are gone for one reason or another.Pause. What happened to you? - Jefferson Soul - 10-09-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-11-2008 [html]
The tawny male wondered what it would be like to lose his memory. He wondered if he would care, if he would have a completely different personality, if any vestiges of his past would cling on to him (or if he would cling on to them). He wondered if he would try to get them back, or if he would just try to start over. He wondered if the demon in his head would still be there, if perhaps he would just wake up as him one day instead of himself (of course, they were the same person, in the end). He wondered what it would be like to be free, as it were, of everything he'd gone through. He wondered if he would still know that he deserved every scar on his body; he wondered if he would still want to die.
Iskata's lost her memory once,Laruku told the other, I think she's gotten most of it back now, so maybe she could help somehow with that.He shrugged. Iskata had also had the help of her telepathic mate-to-be, but she'd still gone through the experience of losing and regaining memories. And if things are starting to look familiar, then maybe you're from around here. Or at least, from the other side of the mountain before everything caught fire. He gave another haphazard smile, Everyone that leaves here seems to come back eventually. It's like some kind of curse.Oh, that again. Distantly, he wondered when exactly he'd started believing in that (if he even actually did). After all, hadn't he told Maluki so long ago that he didn't believe a word of it? He couldn't remember. - Jefferson Soul - 10-11-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-12-2008 [html]
It would have been hard to not notice the other's reaction. Laruku could hear the teeth click together when his jaw shut suddenly. He could hear the uneasy shifting of his body. He could feel it, he supposed, the sudden anxiety, nervousness, whatever it was. Something he'd said had struck a chord, it seemed, though the blind man could only regard it with a mild interest. No one was unique; whatever this Jefferson's story was, he was sure he'd heard it before, somewhere, somehow, with someone else. The curse, the fire. They were both things that should have meant a great deal to the coyotewolf, but he felt distant. They were far away, like everything else, even though he could see them both in his mind.
Laruku shrugged again. I don't know. Maybe I made it up, but it always seemed like people who left that place couldn't help but come back. I saw it a lot in my pack, but it seemed to apply to the entire valley. Everyone came and went. M'pack had another "curse" that was supposed to be more unique -- our alphas all died in shitty ways -- but I don't think you'd have to look far to find another pack that could say the same.And the laughter in his head still could not help but continuously point out just how ironic it was that Clouded Tears' curse had bestowed the contrary on its last reluctant leader. The scarred hybrid would live forever, but it would be a shitty existence. Perhaps it was because all the others had wanted to live, and Laruku just wanted to die. The real curse was never having what you wanted, but that was just life. The whole world was under that curse. There was a crazy wildfire back in spring. Destroyed everything, I guess. Everyone came here. I don't remember much of it.He hadn't meant to leave. He had wanted to die there in the only place he'd ever pretended to belong. He had wanted to burn into nothing but ashes in the wind. Another shrug. I was there, and now I'm here. What else is there to say? - Jefferson Soul - 10-12-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-15-2008 [html]
Sometimes he felt like perhaps he had lost his memories, or at the very least, his sense of self, somewhere along the way. Perhaps he had been someone else entirely once upon a time, and it had been so long that he couldn't tell anymore. There was nothing left to remember, and he would never be any wiser. If it had been such a clean break that nothing was left behind, then it was certainly possible, but it seemed as if everyone retained some vestiges of the lives they left behind, whether they wanted or not. The hybrid felt like he could relate to that, at least a little. Those little flashes of things he should remember better, little moments of things he'd forgotten juxtaposed with little moments that never went away. That was the state his own mind was in now; just little pieces of everything, but he still supposed that most of it was true. He knew where he'd come from and what had happened. Mostly. (You pretend you do, baby.)
He turned his head at Jefferson and perked his ears half-heartedly at his apparently painful reactions, or what he could only guess to be painful reactions. You know Cercelee?Laruku wondered, and wondered further, how his cousin's child was doing now. Of course, Cercelee could have never been alpha of Clouded Tears; she was far too young, but Ceres. The similarities had always been there, and there seemed to be little doubt now that the stranger had been a member of his pack at some point. For the first time, the blind man wondered who exactly the other was, though it was a muted curiosity at best. Mostly, he decided that it didn't matter, like most things didn't matter. Other than his haphazard "family," there were few people he remembered or knew well from the Clouded Tears. Indeed, few people from anywhere had ever mattered to him enough that he remembered them now. Related though? Cercelee is the kid of a cousin of mine, Iskata's brother. Do you know if you're related to either of them?It was hard for Laruku to guess at who this Jefferson might be even though his mixbreed heritage and age should have made it more than obvious. There weren't very many hybrids in the Sadira clan. It basically boiled down to Acid's litter, Maluki's litter, and DaVinci. Age ruled out the former and the latter. Gender ruled out Akeni. It should have been easy. But Laruku had always been distanced from the prevailing family of the pack; his tie to them had always been minimal; he did not have a direct blood link to the litter he'd once known to be his own. And after the last of them disappeared, he had stopped thinking about them for a long time. Perhaps, in that sense, he had lost his memories also. - Jefferson Soul - 10-16-2008 [html]
- Laruku Tears - 10-27-2008 [html]
SO sorry for this wait. ;; Maluki/Jeffy can try and stop Laruku from leaving if you want; s'all good with me. :3
Of course, Laruku had no choice but to remember eventually. Memories had always been memories, and while much of the time now, they chose to elude him, they never really disappeared. Things he'd thought he'd forgotten long ago would come back to him, even if sometimes he wasn't sure if they were really memories or something he'd made up on his own, in a dream somewhere. It was impossible to confirm, and there was no one to tell him yes or no other than the cackling laughter in the back of his own head, speaking to him in his own voice, and sneering at him with his own face. Who would trust such a face? The hybrid did not have much faith, least of all in himself; those that he had placed his faith in were scattered and far. He did not want to see them again; he couldn't, in a way. Once upon a time, he had had a family. It had been a false family and a real family simultaneously, and he had loved them. He had loved Colibri as his mother and Acid as his father. He had loved Maluki as his brother and the only person that really played with him in their litter of disconnected siblings. And even later, when their perceptions came to change and the world started its slow descent, Laruku had cared. He had been stubborn then, childish, but he had cared. And perhaps it could be said that he still cared -- too much, as always, but he had withdrawn to the opposite end of the spectrum. He used to overreact. He used to speak his mind. He used to be assertive. Times changed. People changed. Suddenly beside his make-believe brother again, Laruku wanted nothing more than to disappear. There was no need for Maluki to remember who he was. It would only hurt them both. Ceres,the scarred, blinded man said quietly, Cercelee looks very much like Ceres.Laruku stood up. Your name is Maluki Soul. Your mother's name is Colibri Soul. Your father's name was Acid; he was Ceres's son. You belonged to a pack named Clouded Tears.Your parents left a long time ago, he refrained from adding. You left a long time ago, he didn't say. And Clouded Tears is dead. Go talk to that alphess of yours,he said, She'll be able to tell you more.Including, of course, Laruku's identity, but the hybrid could disappear by then. He started to walk away. - Jefferson Soul - 11-03-2008 [html]
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