[html] mall-caps;color:#555555;">She looks so pretty that it's such a pity
That she won't be needing help for this beating.
A million years had passed since then and now; a thousand decades separating the past from the present. But the sight of a river still sent memories flooding back like the flow of a current, seeing the child beneath the waves and a silent scream held high above the crashing water. It had only been a year since then, and only two since she'd first come into this world, but it could of been a thousand with the way she'd aged, seeing sorrow enough for anyone in this world. She'd always been a wanderer, taking after her father in that way, lost since the moment they were born.
He'd told her how he'd killed his mother, his birth bringing about her demise as her body failed at his first breath. Illegitimate children of an exiled queen, their kingdom long since crumbled into dust and forgotten to time. Kezia had been raised where her father was born, among the ashes of a forest burned by a mad queen, her life lost to her own insanity. It was a faux-royalty from the beginning, filled with the rejects and outcasts of other societies, banding together and claiming themselves the kings and queens of a kingdom built on sinking sand.
Her breath exhaled slowly, appearing before her muzzle as a plume of crystallized air. Rain and snow had been falling all day, turning the ground to a frozen muck, churned beneath her feet with each step. Yet even as she turned her head toward the skies, sunlight broken through the trees and she shielded her eyes against the glare, blinking vaguely against the sudden light. Finding a fallen tree leaning against one of its brothers, she seated herself on it's trunk, the creak and moan of trees around cutting through the otherwise silent air, sounding almost like a chorus of lost souls.[/html]
[html]
indent Royalty had never been a concept that boded well with the former exiled prince, as they had often called him. Ahren did not consider himself special because of that, or any other reason. The crown he wore had been stolen by his father, and his father before him. The blood which had not yet fully faded from the stone he was staring at had not belonged to a de le Poer (though his grandfather had abandoned his name, and his children, long before then). A devil had carved the symbols on this stone, a devil who had once been his father’s confidant. The last time he had come here had been the day he had taken this place as his own. Three days later, he had been attacked. His arms had never completely healed, even after two years.
indent Touching the signs did nothing. They were cold and lifeless, not as he remembered them. Chimera was dead. Even though its ghosts walked the earth and refused to sleep in their graves, Chimera was dead. He drew his hand back, a faded off-white that had begun to blend with his no-color fur. Ahren was fading. His eyes were the only things that did not fade, and he doubted they ever would. They had aged, but they had not faded. They were far too alive; just like the forest, which was never silent.
indent Living here had made him immune to the noise. It did not bother him when they spoke to each other, though he couldn’t understand the words. Only his cousin, his cousin who had lost an eye here during her rule and whom Ahren would swear had fae blood in her, she alone understood them. Still, it was not the forest that caught his attention, but the movement to his right. For one brief and terrible second, Ahren thought that perhaps it was his father’s ghost. Instead it was a young woman. He spared her only a glance for a moment then turned his head back towards the great stone, tracing one darkened, blood-stained rune with his pointer finger.
[/html]
[html] mall-caps;color:#ffffff;line-height:7px;font-size:10px;">Day dreamer, deceiver, lay waste the true believer.
____Ghosts had haunted her father. Like the green-eyed woman who merely smiled and watched, as though holding a secret she'd never tell. Ghosts had haunted her. But they had all faded with time. The only ghost that had ever remained was that of the little girl, blue eyes wide and questioning, as though unable to believe. But she doubted that spirit would ever leave, unable to pass on to another place where she might find peace. Kezia wanted to cry for her, to feel sorrow for her demise, but she couldn't bring herself to feel it — to be able to love the pale-haired child who now lay buried in an unmarked grave beside a river somewhere far away.
____This forest seemed haunted, like the one place she'd ever called home. Possessed by a thousand souls with stories untold, crying to the living to be remembered. She half lived in the world beyond, her father so vague and distant he may as well of not been there most of the time, leaving her with only to keep ghosts and shadows as company. His love was cold, buried beneath an inability to break free from the walls and chains that bound him, leaking through in only brief moments of comfort.
____She wondered if he was still alive, still wandering the world like the shadow he was, never emerging from the darkness to seek light from another soul. A small, brief, movement caught her eye and the girl turned, watching as a pale-haired man traced a shape on a stone with his finger. Shifting on her seat, head tilted slightly to one side, dark hair cascaded around her shoulders as she quietly observed the stranger. [/html]
[html]
indent Only once before had Ahren explained the meaning and history of Chimera to a stranger. He had done so without regret and without remorse. This was a dead place, he knew that. He would never bring Chimera back because he couldn’t stand that thought. This wasn’t home anymore and he didn’t want it to be. Clouded Tears was neither home nor comfort, but he remained there. Why? For reasons even he did not wish to address.
indent The girl did not move and did not speak. Ahren frowned slightly as he continued to stare at the massive stone which stood more then half the height of a man. Even now, that bright and terrible memory was pushing against his skull, causing his arms to ache with renewed vigor. He drew his hand back as if it was on fire, and then turned his face to the young woman. “Do you believe in fate?”
[/html]
[html] mall-caps;color:#ffffff;line-height:7px;font-size:10px;">Cut the strings, cut the strings..
_____He turned away from the stone, hand withdrawing quickly as though it'd been burned. His voice broke through the air, rising above the constant creaking of the trees with a single question. "Perhaps," she replied lightly, gold eyes lingering on the stranger. "Though I'd like to believe I control my own destiny." There were things in this world that couldn't be explained away by mere logic; coincidences that left behind a lingering question. They were all connected in some intricate way with a web spider-thin, touching each other in vague ways they didn't even realize. Faith was another matter. Kezia couldn't bring herself to be devoted to a belief that chained her to her knees, searching so hard for an afterlife she'd forget to live in this world at all. But she believed in things the logician would frown upon, casting aside as mere fantasy.
_____Rising to her feet, Kezia moved toward the pale-haired man, turning toward the stone to cast her gaze across it's surface. A moment passed before her vision shifted, again facing him. "Is it fate that brought me here?" she asked with the ghost of a smile, humor lingering beneath the surface of her voice. She was a wanderer. A rogue, and a lost soul who's only home was the dusty road beneath her feet. Strings could be plucked, gently tugging and luring the girl like a marionette toward a destiny unknown. But if fate was true and the gods real, they sure had a fucked up sense of morals for the lives they granted their children. Or perhaps they just liked to amuse themselves using mortals like pieces on a chess board, watching them fall and crumble beneath their careless fingers, laughing all the while. [/html]
[html]
indent Sometimes he felt as if his life had been a case of manifest destiny. His mother had wanted him to assume the pack from Damian, and by all rights he had. He had been prince, rogue and traitor, anathema and leader. Now he was what he had become, unwilling or perhaps unable to assign himself any title. Belief in a larger force or greater power controlling destiny was a concept he was familiar with all too well. It was cut deep in his memory warehouse, as deep as the carved number on his hand. He remembered these things. He remembered all too well.
indent Ahren had seen the line only once. He was not as aware of it now as he had been then, and he was never able to see it the way Mab had seen it. The line had come and showed him only a path, but one that he had to take. “Maybe,” he said, gaze lingering on her face only for a moment more before returning to the stone. “There are more things in heaven and earth,” he offered, smiling lightly.
[/html]
[html] mall-caps;color:#ffffff;line-height:7px;font-size:10px;">Up ahead there was a curve approaching.
She made no indications of slowing.
_____"Maybe," she agreed, unwilling to answer either way. Kezia believed only in what she saw, and what she'd seen showed nothing of a benevolent creator drowning his subjects in goodwill, but rather monsters and devils born of mortals themselves, tearing apart and destroying everything they touched. They were all the gods and demons and sinners themselves, looking to the sky for answers when the world around them failed to serve their fantasies. Failed to show anything but the pointlessness and misery of life. She was the nihilist willing to search for something more, yet unable to believe. The agnostic who crossed himself when entering a church, hushing his voice simply for the sake of others.
_____Once again attention shifted to the stone before them, quietly regarding the thing before lips parted to break her silence. "What is it?" she asked, gaze not breaking from the carved surface of the rock. It was a dead thing, this she could tell. Once alive, perhaps, but now it was just cold stone, rough and silent beneath her touch, if she so dared to reach out and brush her fingertips across the surface. But she didn't. It wasn't hers, and so she'd keep her distance, reminded vaguely of the place her father had raised her. The place that was the closest to anything on this earth to being hers, yet wasn't. The forest had been like a scar on the land, burnt to ash and cinders from the green-eyed woman who'd attempted to destroy the world, choosing suicide over life and trying to take everything and everyone else with her. It'd never grow back, even after a hundred-thousand years, cursed forever by the malignant, malicious nature of the mad pseudo-queen.
_____Her's forever, until the end of days when the sun fell to the earth and burned everything in it's wake. [/html]
[html]
indent The power of faith was strong for those who had nothing. It had warped the ruined women of this land into frenzy once, and driven them to kill. Ahren’s own mother, who had known herself as the vessel and voice of God, led that charge. When they cut her down, it had been swift and without mercy. She was gone now, she was a ghost—nothing except the necklace he wore could ever prove she had been real. She had vanished as her son had tried to do for so long.
indent He could read the hesitation in her body, as if she sensed something wrong. “It was called a polestar. There used to be a pack here, a long time ago…this was where their leaders would call them together,” he said, as if he had never been there. “It was marked by demons.”
[/html]
[html] mall-caps;color:#ffffff;line-height:7px;font-size:10px;">I want to see the look in her eyes,
when her body parts ways with life.
_____Gaze didn't break away from the stone even when he spoke, taking in the marks etched on the surface of the rock. Listening, taking in the words the stranger uttered despite giving no indication she even heard what he said. "Demons?" she repeated, gold eyes finally turning back to the pale-haired man, a cold smile tracing her lips. Her expression was devoid of warmth, yet filled with an evident humor and laughter — mocking herself more than the story this man had told her. Demons were a notion she could understand. An entity she could believe in, though her's were more mortal than anything else, cast in flesh, blood, and bone [at least, at one point], rather than the whimsical shadows that lived in nightmares.
_____"What happened to them?" she asked, questioning about the fallen pack, yet hardly caring about a bunch of wolves long since passed into dust and memory. It was nothing more than a story to tell. A narrative bearing the souls of creatures dead and forgotten, longing to again be heard, if just one last time. Kezia was nothing more than a ghost. Hardly even a memory, leaving behind nothing as she walked the land without a true purpose, like a corpse without a soul, moving and speaking, yet holding nothing behind eyes so blank and hollow. Yet, unlike her sire she longed for something more. She longed for a place in the world, if just for the time that she lived and breathed until death took hold and buried her beneath a blanket of six feet of dirt and time.
_____Her soul may had been stolen, but it's ghost cried for something more, calling out for a creature once called Kezia. [/html]
[html]
indent Demons were real. That much Ahren could say for certain. They could be flesh and blood or some darker, ancient force, like the one in his heart. Born of superstition and vehemence, they tore apart the status quo without cause or concern. Several times over had the blonde man with the peculiar red eyes seen this happen. Far too often he had been helpless, trapped within his own impulses. Far too many times had he woken somewhere he was not supposed to be. Far too many times had he come to his senses covered in blood that was not his own.
indent It was not until she spoke again that he blinked, refocusing on her face. “The original pack fell to a vampire,” he claimed, though he was smiling faintly. That had been true, in some way. “A devil and a siren claimed this land soon after his fall. The siren vanished, and the devil lost his crown to a witch. She passed it on to another demon, but he fled this land. His apprentice tried to hold things together but could not.” Had it really been that poetic? No, it hadn’t. Bloodshed and turmoil, lies and vicious, meaningless aggression—that was what Chimera had thrived on. “I thought the trees would have told you that by now,” he added, still smiling a peculiar smile that did not meet his eyes.
[/html]
[html] I want to see the look in her eyes,
when her body parts ways with life.
Kezia Havokshort + late. i suck! D:_____"How poetic," she replied, once he'd finished with his narrative. And that was all she would know: a story passed on from the lips of this man, with characters that held no soul or meaning to the dark-haired girl. What had once been was no more, and she'd never know the full story—nor care to. "Perhaps I wished to hear it from the lips of a mortal," Kezia added, own false smile lingering on delicate features. "A change from listening to ghosts and lost souls." But weren't they all just lost souls? Beings existing without a true purpose, wasting away their time with silly fantasies? "What's the point of living," she mused, gaze tracing the runes carved into the stone, "if we're all just going to die?" And be forgotten, as though you'd never existed. [/html]
[html]
THE THINGS THAT I'VE LOVED
______THE THINGS THAT I'VE LOST
THE THINGS I'VE HELD SACRED
______________THAT I'VE DROPPED
_____ He offered her a wiry grin, smiling as if there was a joke she wasn’t in on. Chimera had never been poetic; it was a deceitful place full of rage and desperation. Shifting his feet he shrugged off-handedly at her comments. Not until she asked him a question he had heard a thousand times over did his jaw tighten and his eyes go dark. He heard Laruku asking himself that same question. What had he told him then? That the point of living was to live. Did he believe that now? Yes, despite everything he had seen and everything he had done. “To be foolish to believe the best is yet to come,” he offered her quietly.
I won't lie no more you can bet
I don't want to learn what I'll need to forget
[/html]
[html]
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/ ... 2fab4a.png) bottom right no-repeat #0D0D0B; color:#fff; border:4px solid black; filter:alpha(opacity=80); -moz-opacity:0.8; width:325px; padding:5px; padding-bottom: 15px; margin:-55px auto 0 auto;" align=justify>edit; switches tables all ninja!like. >__>;
"Good answer," Kezia said lightly, turning away from the stone to peer again at the pale-haired stranger. "Do you believe that, though?" she turned away, brushing a strand of dark hair from her face as she seated herself back on the trunk of the fallen tree. Ankles crossing, arms folded across her chest, she regarded him from where she sat, allowing hair to again fall across her thin features. "So you got a name? Or are you just a nameless ghost like the rest of them?" girl asked, tilting her head and allowing a crooked smile to grace her lips. [/html]
[html]
THE THINGS THAT I'VE LOVED
______THE THINGS THAT I'VE LOST
THE THINGS I'VE HELD SACRED
______________THAT I'VE DROPPED
_____ “I believe you shouldn’t expect anything,” he said with the quiet reasoning of a man who had seen the world. From the gritty backstreets to the rolling hills, he had come to know nothing and everything. She sat like a Buddhist in some strange meditation, and he watched her from where he stood. “Ahren.” He had stopped giving his last name. Sometimes he found it better not to claim that title. “How about you?”
I won't lie no more you can bet
I don't want to learn what I'll need to forget
[/html]
|
