hourglass

Talitha de le Poer · 07-01-2011, 03:51 AM

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Date: 03Jul2011 (Forward dated)

Setting: Moaning Woods

Time: Midday

Character Form: Optime

Requested Participants: 1 or 2.

Ideal Participant Speed: At least one reply per week, if not more.

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Bit of a crappy post.

Word Count →307

What had possessed her to do such a thing?

Her mind tried to twist around her own thoughts with difficulty as she pressed onward, cream-colored feet offering change to the charred remnants of the earth. There were no memories for here in the dead forest — she had been too young to know the world on the other side of the jagged peaks before the fire consumed it. That hadn't stopped her journey. Without permission from Ezekiel, though she knew she should have explained, she'd left Inferni to make the trip from her present life to the long dead past. What had possessed her to do such a thing? Her home was the wastes, with the coyote kingdom found there and those damned creatures inside of it, not the lost shadows that now stared back at her.

Crimson eyes watched nothing, for there was nothing there for them to see, as her curiosity grasped her mind forcefully. Years. Years had passed, causing her faint memory of ash and smoke to fade into nearly nothing, but there it was in plain sight. Blackened trees, fallen from the destruction of the fire itself, were strewn throughout the region; the world was dead there. Though it was not the home her parents had held at the time of her birth, she felt sympathy for the remnants of the forest — sympathy she didn't extend to the breathing Luperci encountered in her days.

She found a place to rest, her back flush against the damp, charcoal trunk of a tree as she pulled the time-worn journal she'd used to mark her life from the careful folds of a makeshift bag. There was charm in the dead world, and her fingers captured the ghosts of the present with careful strokes from her broken pencil, marking another memory to show her Golden Saint on her return.

Razekiel Lykoi · 07-02-2011, 08:51 AM

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ohi

And long live the legend that greenery loves conversation!

He made quite the noise, moving along with guitar in hand, scouring what he remembered clearly as the very same Moaning Wood of his childhood, so many years prior. Of course, that was in name only; much had changed to the dear old forest since he'd grown, left the original Inferni and missed the great blaze that razed the land. Perhaps more now than ever, its name was eerily appropriate: Razekiel himself heard the wails and moans of the long-dead plant life in one ear, while the other heard only the cries of newborns: the planted seeds and dancing sprouts reviving themselves ever so slowly. It was a glorious occasion, to stroll through and hear their desperation, knowing that despite the terror that had ravaged them they lived on still, hidden away beneath soot and sand.

And thus he whipped out the lovely acoustic Aube de Musique had so graciously gifted him in the stead of his lost guitar somewhere in the mountains, and with smoking joint between teeth and bejeweled fingers at the strings, he sang — hollered, really — to the dead land around him. His voice would revive them, encourage them to grow once more, for plants loved conversation! And why would they not listen to the child of Mother Earth, to her most faithful of followers? The forest's wails and cries numbed, and in his head he believed them to be listening eagerly to his every word and note, and in their remnants he breathed inspiration and life back into their roots.

Spinning and dancing in step, his singing remained hardly on tune but with great enthusiasm in substitution; he believed himself to be alone with nature, one with the land both dead and alive, until mid-verse his rose-tinted straw eyes fell upon a rosy, curvy figure nose-deep in a journal. Razekiel did not halt his singing, no, that would be far too predictable! He continued strumming and singing wildly as if nothing had changed, but his direction shifted to her, and still dancing and yodeling he drew near, then plopped down beside her as if friends for eternity. One last hollering note and chord and the music rang to silence, and with that the red-faced coyote smiled teeth, eyes and joint at her undauntedly. "My, look at those peepers," he said, ducking up and down to try and see into her gaze. "You're as lovely as the newborn spring in this place of death! Tell me, tulip, what's to write?"

image © beautyredefined @ Twitter ; table by lin

Talitha de le Poer · 07-02-2011, 09:50 AM

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Word Count →408

Though she drew with discipline, she was not deaf to the world around her and the start of someone's unusual singing voice caught her attention as it would have anyone. Talitha paused only a moment, crimson gaze raising to peer into the world around her; finding nothing, as she expected, she simply returned to her graphite sketch of the dead woods. It didn't matter that the sound grew louder, closer, or that she caught a new scent on the air. It didn't matter that she saw movement in her peripheral. Talitha half expected it to be her imagination — in a place that reeked of the dead, even if only metaphorical dead, the mind was susceptible to many a trick.

It was a voice that made her realize the reality of the presence. Complimentary as it was, it only served to surprise her. Her eyes shifted from the filled, worn pages of the symbol-infested diary to the face of the stranger at her side. Golden eyes, golden eyes, golden eyes. Always, her gaze met golden eyes it seemed, even in the unholy place of the forest. Having only truly seen her uncle for brief moments during his life within the borders of Inferni, the falu-masked face didn't register as family — that didn't matter, of course, for he was a coyote and therefore possibly kindred.

Without hesitation, she turned the scribbled-and-sketched page to show the vast expanse of the ashed lands to this strange new companion. "I wasn't writing." The fact that she couldn't write, at least not in the legible sense of the word, impacted the situation — this, along with the simple oddity that a perceived stranger would simply approach her in the middle of nowhere, crafted easily read frustrated intrigue in her mother's red, red gaze. What a flaw in her design, that she would be such an open book, and she chose to hide it in the moment by looking to the man's guitar. Her own, a battered and weather-worn instrument, was missing strings and sat, collecting dust, in her stone-walled den.

"I'm not really a tulip, more like a weed — you play well." She ran through her words without hesitation, the sentence itself fading as quickly as it was spoken. Such negativity wasn't uncommon in the de le Poer woman, though she found lately that positive ideas about herself had risen to the surface. Why they didn't come out of her head was beyond her.

Razekiel Lykoi · 07-02-2011, 10:42 AM

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PP with permission! :3

Seemingly undaunted by his melodies and close proximity, the woman — whom he now easily detected the scent of Inferni upon — flipped through the journal, revealing countless pages of sketches and doodles he raised his brows and whistled at. He had never been much of an artist, despite his time in the very imagination-driven Juniper Peace so many years ago; rather, the prince had dabbled in music, horticulture and general spirituality rather than devoting his time to the arts. Of course, he had never discouraged it of his children, and to his knowledge Sage had taken up painting, and Micah had at least expressed an interest in it as a child, though he hadn't expressed that same interest in his father...

"Impressive, impressive," he smiled, nodding as his straw-hued eyes browsed the journal entries, the paper painted pink through the aid the rose lenses on his nose. His gaze raised to her at her next words, for a moment reading those scarlet red eyes that flashed faces before his vision — the very same red in the evil eyes of Samael, or the the innocent and loving red eyes of Nayru. Which would this Inferni girl's turn out to be?

He smiled sweetly, then reaching with ringed fingers and wrists coated with jingling bracelets, he gently slipped the journal from her fingers and set it aside. "Nonsense, tulip," Razekiel said, unfazed, as he raised back to his feet and collected her now vacant hand, pulling her up to match. He took one last inhalation from the joint then spit it and rubbed it into the ground, making a mental note to pick it up again later. "If you are a weed, then you are a weed more beautiful than any rose, man, trust me — the flower's right in your eyes," he murmured, swinging his hand around the bend of her back while clasping her hand, and forced her into a rather impromptu dance, smiling sheepishly to himself yet charmingly humming as he swung her around nonchalantly, even if she was a little messy on her feet...

image © Sean R @ Flickr ; table by lin

Talitha de le Poer · 07-02-2011, 12:16 PM

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While she liked to believe that she could read the Luperci body language better than most, she found her judgement of the man's opinion clouded as he smiled and gave a nod in response to the cluttered pages of her journal. Impressive, he claimed, but were they really? She'd met few within Inferni who possessed talent for visual art, really only able to list gentle-hearted Sage and the dark Cotl Ulrich, so perhaps they were impressive on that basis alone, but this man was not of Inferni. Surely, he'd seen artwork before, artwork of far better quality than her smudged sketches on poor-quality paper? The thought was lost as she caught sight of golden eyes once more, hidden behind the thin wall of rose-coloured glass that turned them vaguely orange.

She didn't stop him from taking the book, though she was staunchly attached to the material thing — once, Halo had thrown it away, and she'd spent sleepless hours in search for her precious item. Somehow, she felt this man wouldn't harm her writings or drawings at all. Still, red eyes focused on the fading Chaos star that coloured the cover. They didn't falter from their place even as she was lifted to her feet — the easiest she'd risen to her feet in nearly a week. Her pregnant frame stood shorter than his own, which (despite the fact that her own father was quite large) surprised the princess, as she so strongly believed him a coyote that she expected far less height. Silence overtook her, reaching down as far as the crimson irises that watched the odd man curiously while he spoke of beauty and flowers. Something in him reminded her of her odd cousin, whom she knew would never truly fit in as a piece of Inferni's puzzle; flowers and beauty and such strange turns of phrase caused subtle comfort to fall over the fragile-minded Infernian. She didn't believe it, of course. She was far too cynical a creature.

Talitha managed to prove, as the falu-masked man swung her in a sporadic dance, that not all women were creatures of grace. She tripped over not only her feet, but his as well, more than once; embarrassed by the show, black-rimmed ears fell backwards into the thick curls of auburn hair that tumbled down her back. "I've never seen a pretty weed, charming prince, so I think you're quite wrong in judgement." Her vanity was hidden for the time being, for she would have agreed at any other moment that the russet body she inhabited was somehow a beautiful thing, covered up by references to her internal workings. Though he might not have seen it as they danced amongst the dead foliage, his arms held a siren of the worst kind, who had caused strife amongst her own family for her own selfish reasons.

Razekiel Lykoi · 07-03-2011, 09:08 PM

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Perhaps it was due to the massive amount of marijuana he smoked on a regular occasion, but Razekiel had mastered the drug's hazy ways to the point that he recognized the Inferni woman's pregnancy almost immediately as he pulled her up from the ground. The man might have been surprised that she was so willing to sway about with him in her condition (or at all, really), but hey — just because he'd mastered his own brains over his joints' manipulation didn't mean he was completely untouched by the idiotic pastime.

He chuckled as he waved her about, unfazed by her tripping and two-left-footery; each time she stumbled he offered a lofty chuckle and a reassuring squeeze to her palm. At times he would spin her, careful and guiding her through, for the last thing he wanted was to endanger the little angels in her belly, the fruit of the dear Mother herself. The coyote would not lift and spin her like he would Nayru or Sage, but he was quite pleased she did not scold nor push him away in his mile-high antics. "Am I?" he smiled, voice lowering as if cooing. "Do you forget the dandelions? Simple yet beautiful, countless yet one-of-a-kind. I could call you a dandelion over a rose, love, but that's like calling the ocean a pond."

"My mother, my sunshine, called me a prince, man," Razekiel continued, raising her hand above her head and spinning her once more. When he pulled her close again, he cocked a wry grin — "These peepers saw that journal constellation," — and pulling his hand from its position at her lower back, he pulled down his lower lip, grinning still as he revealed the Chaos star tattooed within.

Perhaps he had known all along, perhaps not — but only those knit within the redblood clan would be unconsciously drawn to the charred remains and embers where the cult had began.

table by lin

Talitha de le Poer · 07-03-2011, 10:11 PM

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With all of the compliments she received in the world, it was a wonder she didn't have a larger ego. The falu-masked dancer continued on with the (supposedly) asinine idea that the princess was a beauty; she didn't see it, she couldn't see it, and found the concept of being related to a flower laughable — again, it brought faint memories of earth-loving Sage, who never really made any sense to her less peaceful cousin. Of course, that made the attitude of the charming man all the more comforting as he went on to speak of his mother. Her smiles faded into near nothing, cool eyes turning chilly as they gazed into the space about the two of them absently. "I don't think my mother ever called me anything...but daddy called me a princess once." Once, only once, and she was certain that he never would again.

"I used to call my brother a prince, but he's a King now. It's a bit silly, really; I'm too old for such foolish fantasy." This was something she had started to come to terms with, that her internal world of kingdoms and castles and kings and knights and beauty were falsifications of the brain that she couldn't truly achieve. It was as her mind turned to her own immaturity that she felt his hand move from its settled place upon her back; curious, she followed the movement as it came into view. There, beneath the surface of one black-rimmed lip, was the symbol of her people — and his as well. Her mind turned to the scarred-and-inked star at her own hip, mind trying to rationalize who this unusual Lykoi was.

It took only a moment for her faint, vague memories of her uncle to surface back once more. Razekiel had been, supposedly, lost during the storm, though he had never really come down from the mountains anyways. All her camaraderie was lost, replaced with intrigue and wonderment — it had been the same with lost Samael, who was not desired within the walls of Inferni by anyone who would willingly voice opinion of him. The question was a simple one, and it was voiced with whispered words: "Why did you leave them?" Them, spoken like an outsider. Inferni. Inferni, she was coming to realize, was Hell.

Razekiel Lykoi · 07-04-2011, 06:25 PM

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A foolish fantasy? "Nonsense," he said again, only then releasing her from their odd little dance. Gingerly the man reached and collected her hand, placing a kiss on its surface before breaking away for the tree she'd been seated beneath beforehand. He moved with wobbly steps, still under the power of marijuana, and chuckled a little as he went.

"Adults think they're too old for fantasies, man, but I think just the opposite." Razekiel reached his long, gangly hands up and gripped a limb, then scratched his hindclaws against the bark as he scampered up the trunk. "Isn't love a fantasy, tulip? Deities, lovers, wanting the best for your children — just fantasies for grown-ups. If we can't dream a dream to aim for, how would we know what happiness is?"

By the time her breath of a question had been posed, the coyote hung upside-down from a thicker tree limb, clearly undaunted that the thing could break at any given time due to the fact that it'd been burnt alive in the past. Straw eyes gaped at her a long moment; why had he left them? Ah — he recalled it was hardly on purpose, but most likely the Great Mother's hand guiding him to greater things, only the beginnings of which he had accomplished, just to the west of where they stood now. How might he address such a question? It had become quickly obvious that she was a member of that clan, and that in her heart dwelt some level of pride in calling herself one suitable to bear the Chaos star.

"I am Lykoi and not Lykoi," he grinned, the joint still in his teeth still smoking and wagging as he talked. "I am family and not family. Inferni and not Inferni. A child of the earth, a child of fantasy, you dig? Not all Lykoi must be Inferni. Most do not realize." Sage and his other children, perhaps, would be the last to.

Talitha de le Poer · 07-04-2011, 06:37 PM

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His ability to rationalize what she had forever considered immature was astounding, and it left her amazed that someone could think in such a way. How had his mind turned to that? How could any of the ones who felt the same have come to those conclusions? All of her life, she'd been warned of the dangers of those outside. Gabriel had been the first — be careful, they'll hurt you — but certainly not the last to instill this in his fragile-minded daughter. Years later, there she stood. A pinnacle of coyote supremacy when she herself was not one. Yet another of her foolish fantasies.

She remained silent as he answered her question, locking the information away for the future as she did everything else that could be the slightest bit relevant to her sanity. Careful steps carried her closer as he hung upside down. "Love is idiocy." His earlier words hit a spot in her chest that she had not tried to think of. "Fantasy is charming, and all that love manages to do is hurt people. Fantasy doesn't hurt people." If anything, it'd helped her cope with the present. She hefted a sigh from between black-rimmed lips and took a seat beneath the tree with care to stay away from the branch he hung off. "If that's what makes an adult, I'll forever be a child."

Razekiel Lykoi · 07-15-2011, 09:38 PM

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"Ah," he pricked a finger though still upside down, "but if love is fantasy and fantasy hurts no one, then is love still idiocy if it is harmless? Hmm, perhaps." He adopted a contemplative look about his hanging features, and after a pause swung himself back up to sit more comfortably on the tree's arm. Razekiel wavered clearly, giggling amidst the onslaught of dizziness, and yet with a fashioned skill he still clung to the joint between his teeth seemingly effortlessly. Such a strange assortment of talents, this one had.

"Something tells me you are afraid to love," he considered aloud, straw eyes peering down at her rose-washed form, thanks to the colored lenses at his nose. "And children are children because they refuse to grow up, man, refuse to bask in the Mother's light and see what they got goin' for them. You're smarter than that, aren't you? The sister of the king; though I think that's a great understatement."

Razekiel, even in his cloud of joviality and sweet-smelling fragrance, knew to resist lecturing (even if his words were very watered-down). If she desired his wisdom further, she would request it and it would be given, but he hardly worried — what worth did the ramblings of an old treehugger have, anyway? "Love is a wonderful thing," he smiled, pulling the joint briefly from his lips to blow a few contented smoke circles into the air. "You should give it a swing, man."

table by lin

Talitha de le Poer · 07-20-2011, 10:47 PM

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Mm, a bit rambly. Sorry 'bout that.

Her fingers rubbed against the sweep of her muzzle, crimson eyes focused so intently on the strange-speaking Lykoi man. His contemplations made her head ache from an overdrive of thinking, and while she had remained passive enough, her frown deepened. She was afraid to love, he said, and his voice continued to speak about children and something about Mother and other things that didn't make sense outside of her relationship as the sister of the King. Was it really an understatement?

A sigh, fast becoming a trademark of the de le Poer woman, found life on the air. "Love is dangerous. And foolish, and there's no reason to love when God kills everything that I touch anyways." It was true enough, it always seemed as though the things she loved and cared for died either literally or metaphorically — Caillen was an example of both, though God had struck him down through the hands of her own brother.

His smile was calming, though, and it saved her the misery of remembering how she had facilitated the death of her one lover. "It's hard to love in Inferni," she admitted. After seeing what love had done to her father, she wanted no part it in, but she could remember what it was like to be with her vagabond in the mountains. Of course, she hadn't loved Caillen, but it was the closest thing she expected she would ever feel. From her place on the ground, she watched the sky, trying in vain to see his face through the dead tree tops. "Love doesn't last anyways — God takes everything away. He's a cruel thing, but father says it's simply how He's always been. He tried to tell me that Saints suffer as I do, but I don't think I truly believe that." And she didn't. She might have been a flower, but she would never be a Saint.

Razekiel Lykoi · 08-05-2011, 11:39 PM

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"You have touched me," he said quietly, a smile about his honest features. "If I loved you, my rose, I would never fear to be struck down." He bowed his head. "Perhaps I would be proud, to know God was so jealous of our love to remove me from it permanently."

The coyote recognized that talk of religion and its relation to her father's teachings; she was not unlike Gabriel, though the Seiryu had never quite gotten to know the old Aquila well. Was he not still head of the firepit Inferni — though surely this woman would show him more respect, if that were the case. It seemed she did not so as a father, but perhaps her attachment to the clan would change that perspective should Gabriel more literally reign over her. The coyote chose not to dwell on the concept long, for in the end it mattered very little to him who was leading that clan, when its members were still visibly struggling with concepts like love and beauty. Who ruled them now, Gabriel or not, had not taken strides to see to its members' personal welfares, or so Razekiel wondered.

"The saints loved their God," he shrugged. Near-Buddhist or not, Razekiel had had his share of christians and believers in his time. He had learned well the ways of religions. "To love a god... is not to love another. It is more, and yet it is less. I love all; I love you, my rose, just as I love the sun in the sky and these ashes." Fingers drew circles in the dust. "Yet I have only loved once. Sage, China, Clover, Micah... yes, they were quite born out of love."

He closed his eyes, an airy smile at his face. "No, that love did not last, but my children did. That is all that matters to this old treehugger. They are evidence of what was."

table by lin

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