the longest night

Siv Helsi · 12-23-2011, 04:20 AM

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Backdated to the 22nd. <3

The night had come quickly. Siv knew such a thing was to be expected. She had spent the day gathering supplies, ensuring that her daughter would be watched for, and ignoring the gnawing hunger that came with the fast. It kept her mind clear.

Steady steps carried her into the woods, but she walked without a destination in mind. She knew that the place would find her; it was simple logic, this thought. Magic worked best when it was not guided. The ebb and flow of the universe and of the worlds was not one she truly understood, but she was young yet, and she was an infant in the eyes of many, and she was nothing in the eyes of more. Siv was humbled in this respect, though one would not think it from her confident steps or the way she carried herself. Master of her domain, the she-wolf knew her body well and trusted the instincts and the trail that the gods laid out for her.

She found the place after an hour. It was dark by then, and this was why the rather unremarkable patch of woodland became mighty. There was a gap between the bare boughs, and while small, it was enough to see the sky clearly. Siv took a singular, slow lap around the area—if this had been claimed for a fairy ring, she would have fled the place. Superstitions had clung to her even when the faith had not; it was a funny thought, really.

Both had returned, though, and she settled near the center of this grassy circle and began to prepare the fire. It took her a long time, clearing out a space and setting the branches just so. The flames struggled against the cold wind, but she coaxed them gently and with low-whispered words. In time, the small campfire burned stalwartly against the cold, but Siv knew this was not the end of it. She would sit vigil until dawn and ensure the fire burnt on.

China Rose Lykoi · 12-23-2011, 05:10 AM

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She awoke sharply, her maw split in a soundless cry as muscles rebelled against the stillness, the immovability, of her dreambody.

The nightmare died in her eyes as they slowly focused, pupils engorging themselves in the darkness to search the interior of the place where she had been sleeping. Recognition came back to her, slowly, and the girl felt the warmth of the furs around her, and smelt the golden man on them. Her large ears listened, but she had known upon waking that he was not there - The nightmare rarely came if he was, and if it did, she awoke to concern and comfort.

Rising slowly, the girl bundled up a heavy fur about her thin shoulders and headed out into the open. Stars flecked across a clear, dark sky, and the cool night air stung her nostrils until they adjusted. Her feet were silent on the cold ground, ephemeral still, graceful in spite of all the wounds that had befallen her. It had taken a long time for Itachi to nurse her back to health - It would take a longer time, still. He hunted regularly to provide her with fresh meals, but her body still had the fragile, hollow look of someone who knew famine. Her bird bones had almost departed her, but life had held on, and she had been found just in time.

It was not the first time she had pulled herself from her carer's sleeping quarters - He had been unable to be anything more than a carer to her, yet, for he handled her as though she were liable to break in his hands. Regardless, she never strayed from the place, and as yet, she had not met any who belonged to Itachi's pack. Many days ago, when the fever had still been with her and she had been too weak to show herself, she had heard the conversation of the fallen prince and another man somewhere beyond her sleeping place. She had not caught any words, but the other man's strangely smooth tone had been rough and disapproving. He had left, and not come back since.

Guided by the light of the moon, she began to wander. Although the air was crisp and held within it a hard bite of winter, her thin pelt was protected for the most part by the heavy, thick deerhide. She had discarded her denim skirt, and wore nothing else, a silvery wraith disguised as a doe as she slipped into the trees of the nearby woodland.

She had not walked for long before deep and haunted eyes, the color a delicate eggshell blue swamped by the black of an enlarged pupil, saw the strange spot of light flickering ahead. At first, she thought perhaps a star had fallen in the woods - On closer inspection, it was a fire. A woman sat near to the fire, her back to the approaching girl.

China wondered if her presence had been noted. She was a quiet creature by nature, and without her voice, seemed destined forever to a grave silence. However, the fur held Itachi's musk and her own sweeter scent, and a coy wind tarried them in the direction of the unknown woman.

She ought to have known fear by now, but a peculiar curiosity had stolen the girl, the first such mood she had felt in quite some time. So she continued her approach, but hesitated at the line of trees, lingering silently. Her round, shadowed eyes gazed at the woman with owlish intensity, before lifting longingly to the fire, whose warmth she could almost feel.

Siv Helsi · 12-23-2011, 05:22 AM

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She had almost lost herself in the flames. Siv stared into them silently, her eyes losing focus, her mind drifting from this cold body and this colder earth. There were no drugs to carry her, though she was certain they could have been supplied. Intoxication would not do, not while the night tarried on. Yet while her attention wandered, it was never quite so far—she kept both ears open. No assassin would make it this far into Salsola’s land, but there were other things that lurked in the shadows and Siv knew them by old, ancient names.

So while she did not hear the girl, she felt her. It was a terrible thing; it was a soft and broken sorrow that whispered without a voice, and it brushed against her ears and the fine hairs there as if she alone might hear. Both eyes, while open, refocused on the flame and left it. Her head turned, and there she found the silent, cold presence she had imagined.

A girl, a frail and tiny shadow of a girl, lingered just within the glow of the fire. Siv did not rise for fear that she might spook her. How appropriate she had a deer pelt; there was some fate in that, Siv was certain, and she smiled warmly at the bright-eyed thing in the trees. Though dark and foreboding in the night, her pale eyes gleamed like moonstones and sought to capture and hold the flighty bird watching from the wayside.

“Come, sit. This is not a night to be alone.” Not at all. This was why Siv had left her daughter inside, where it was warm. The thick pelt of the still fattened woman could keep her safe, but even if this night was not to be harsh, there was more to the darkness than simple cold.

China Rose Lykoi · 12-23-2011, 05:56 AM

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The woman turned to her, and she froze, becoming for a moment the creature who's skin she had donned. Rounded eyes of Lapis Lazuli gazed unblinkingly into those of a striking amethyst hue, and the strange woman's gaze met her own easily and without abandon. There was a deep calmness within her eyes - an entrancing quality that, for a long moment, held China spellbound.

At her voice, the girl jolted, brought to life from her stonelike stillness by the accented tunes breaking the forest's eerie silence. She was right; Darkness was all throughout this land. She had been foolish to ignore it. Foolish to leave Itachi's den. She was vulnerable out here, weak and beautiful and shattered by her misfortune.

It was easy to accept the woman's words as a command, for although they were voiced as a question, the timbre to her voice echoed with a power that China had sometimes felt tremors of, deep within her. Once, the music she had made had sounded like that power - Women's power. But that had been stolen from her. In a habitual gesture of nervousness, China's delicate blush-colored hand lifted to the small laced scars over her throat, hiding them from the all-seeing eyes of the stranger.

However, she obeyed docilely, drawn towards the woman by the motherly coo to her words. Instinctively, the girl sought comfort, and perhaps this dark woman would provide it. But she was not ignorant of her shortcomings, and her sweet gullible nature had been stolen along with the songbird's song. 'Suspicious' was too cunning a word - 'Fear' was what China knew, and what drove her now.

She moved, and hesitantly squatted nearer to the fire, unwilling to sit in case she needed to leap up and run from here. Her shadowy eyes darted from the flames to the woman constantly, as her small hands were held palm-out to the fire. In her nervousness, China did not notice the fingers on one hand get too close to the open flames - They were numb with the cold, and she did not feel it for a few moments as the fiery tongue licked at a few of the digits. Then, with a sharp inhale and an expression of terror, China recoiled from the fire, clutching her hand to her breast and crumpling her sweet features into a picture of pain.

Siv Helsi · 12-24-2011, 12:11 AM

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A part of her magic was the ability to see and to read people. It was instinctive as much as it was learned. People betrayed themselves in such subtle ways—she had seen it happen a thousand times over now, and knew what signs to look for. Every gesture, every shift in tone, it meant something. Magic was the art of manipulating these. She had done so in the Hearg, and she would do so again to secure her future (and in turn, her daughter’s future) in this strange Thistle Kingdom.

The girl was no different. In her steps was the wariness of a startled doe, in her breath a bird once bitten by a serpent. Siv watched her hand out of the corner of her eye, wondering what it meant to touch that snow-gray throat. She said nothing and asked nothing. As she had with Sirius, a great and dark bird waited behind a mask made of amethyst and slate-brushed shadow. It held aloft and kept talons wide, searching, for there would be a way to capture and command without ever raising a hand against those she sought.

Siv stared at the girl as she settled, but it was not with any true ease. She was jumpy, but yet…

The scent of burning fur broke her reverie and Siv bristled. She was on her feet as the girl cried out, her face twisted into a savage frown but it was not truly aggressive. One hand shot out and grasped the wounded wrist. Though firm, she was not cruel. Siv drew this forth with the strength to fit her size. Thick and pale-streaked hair tumbled abound her as she bent her head and looked for the wound. It was slight; she sighed and leaned back, releasing the girl. “Brush your hand in the grass. If they are cold, sit and place them here,” she demonstrated, lowering her own hands towards the supple triangle formed by her pelvis. “Your body will warm them.”

China Rose Lykoi · 12-27-2011, 04:26 AM

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Dark fingers leapt from the flickering flamelight, grasping the wrist of her singed hand. Cold terror flooded the girl's veins. She had been held before, caged by clawed hands that rent the light and had made her bleed. They were the hands that had carved narrow tracks across her delicate, soft throat, forming shallow but permanent scars there. They were the hands that had, in this way, so effectively stolen the dove's song.

The moment of blind terror passed as, with a sigh, her wrist was abruptly released. Fear, not politeness, was what held her still as the dark giantess returned to her seated comfort - Still poised between the motions of fleeing and sitting herself, China could merely gape in her muted silence as the woman's attention returned mildly to the flickering flames and her own body, as she spoke and gestured of where to warm her hands. China surprised herself with her obedience - Her transgression to this land, the perils and horrors that had torn her apart, seemed lesser in this fire-lit glade. The dark woman held her, momentarily, spellbound; The witch luring the wounded unicorn. Whether it was malice or kindness those amethyst eyes held in store for her, the girl did not yet question.

She obediently placed her burnt fingers in the dewy reed-grass, the slender shoots cooling and salving instantly. The wound was hardly prominent, and would be healed before the sun rose. Regardless, the hollow woman-girl delicately ripped up a chunk of the longer blades and held the thick wad in one clenched fist, fingers pressed into the cool foliage.

Then, slowly, she crept back to the woman and sank down again, this time drawing her knees up to her chin. The lesson had been learned, and she sat further from the leaping and twisting orange dancers than she had before. Again, rounded eyes looked to the stranger, this time less weighty and shadowed as whence she had first arrived. The little doe's trepidation was less, now that the sting in her hand could distract her from her abstract fears. The corners of thin black lips twitched up once, echoing a splendid prettiness that had once been hers, before flicking back down into a timid and unsure line.

Siv Helsi · 12-27-2011, 02:46 PM

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Medicine, as she knew it, was a base and almost primitive thing. Her faith was one of war and of savagery, and it had little room for easing the pain of the sick. A wound could be more acceptably treated than a disease, for wounds were earned and diseases low, miserable things. Siv, therefore, knew only how to ease pain from wounds and close them when the blood refused to slow. Simple things for a culture whose foundations were in combat and blood; this at least, she believed as truth.

The dark haired woman was peculiarly silent, but Siv was used to this from her own daughter. She did not know why Draugr was quite so still or quite so silent, but she could see the ghosts that clung to this frail little thing very well. Why else would she have come here? They would have killed her had she not had value, or used her as a slave, but she was a free woman and one that reeked of the man Siv had only glimpsed once or twice in passing. Perhaps he too, was a ghost.

Siv’s peculiar eyes watched the girl intensely, but it was not an aggressive stare. The witch did not need to use intimidation when it came to influencing the course of things, though her size alone could do such a thing. Seated as she was now, this was not apparent. Perhaps it was for the best. “You’re a pretty little thing,” Siv said, and a sad smile crossed her face. “I think a shadow must have taken your voice. But it is best not to speak of these things tonight,” she said quickly, and looked out into the darkness as if something else might be there. “Do you know what dark eve this is, you pretty thing? Winter comes on the heels of The Hunt. I would not wander alone if I were you.” Even though Siv herself had done so, she was still a realistic woman. No fallen warriors or one-eyed god would come sweeping over these lands, but it was the though of such a thing that needed spread. Religion to her was still a double-edged sword, and one that she wielded with trepidation. While she believed in their existence, the stories of old were simply that—stories, intended to teach. The gods had grown old and weakened without faith, and until those stories became truths, they would hold no power.

China Rose Lykoi · 01-17-2012, 01:38 AM

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She could feel the weight of the woman's eyes upon her, although she dared not meet them. There was power within her dark companion - Some deep and thrilling thing that China could not grasp with her tainted, frail mind. Her instincts were frayed by stress and the repetition of near-death; They could no more detect what it was about the woman that soothed her than the girl's wet button nose or her deep, haunted eyes.

Regardless, it seemed to China that she was dreaming, yet awake - This forest was only as real as the thoughts that circled in her head, and the dull ache of pain across the burned pads of her fingers. Abolishable, by a shutting of the eyelids, or a shriek or shout. There was only one place in which she felt totally real, and not a wisp of a ghost or a few notes of music on the breeze; When she was with Itachi, she felt real. When she could feel her blood run warm, her heart beat faster, she new she was truly alive.

The woman's voice caused her large satellite ears to perk up, swelling their cups in her direction to catch the lovely sound. Nervous eyes of soft eggshell blue lifted quickly to the misty hues of the face and fell away again, bony shoulders lifting up in a selfconscious shrug. A shadow prince had stolen her voice; A wicked Queen had kicked it out of her. Such tangible faults mattered only in passing to the mute songbird - She wouldn't dwell on them. Couldn't.

Engorged pupils followed the gaze of the other as she searched the nighttime darkness, her words foreboding. An ominous shiver rippled through the little silver nymph, her rounded eyes full and gullible as they soaked in the words of the wise woman. The Hunt. Her lips mimicked the shape of those the witch had taken, soundlessly whispering the title of a horror that she did not know. Wary as she was of the stranger, she seemed a much more welcome danger than whatever lurked in the darkness beyond her fire. China crawled closer, leaving a smaller distance between them before she tucked her knees up to her chest, and curled the dun hide closer about her. Innocent yet terrible old eyes looked again to the woman, seeking more knowledge that she could absorb. Her voice was pleasant enough, her company moreso; It seemed China had grown tired of her self-confined solitary imprisonment.

Siv Helsi · 01-17-2012, 03:01 AM

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She saw a woman before her that was but was not. Hollow and birdlike a peculiar beast settled before her, a pale thing streaked by red and black. Siv’s purple eyes burned in the firelight as she watched her companion draw close. She made no moves of comfort, no sign that she was to touch the thing. For all she knew, the coyote might vanish into the gloom. Black lips parted as she opened her mouth once more, teeth gleaming in the firelight.

“Yes my dear, The Hunt,” she whispered the word, her deep voice rolling across the flames. “My Father travels across the sky tonight. He and all those who follow him call for others to join; hear, listen,” her voice dropped and she cocked her head dramatically. The wind howled across the sky, making the branches chatter like a thousand wings of birds. Siv lifted one palm and pointed skyward, though her eyes returned to the girl quite quickly. While she was a storyteller by trade, her magic was in capturing the mind of those she tempted. This was magic in truth, and magic in practice.

“Any can join him if they only go. They take the shape of black wolves, all of them; massive, bristling things with eyes wide and burning. Some ride black horses, others black goats. All across the sky they run, and oh how they hunt. Massive ghouls and giants and ghosts, you can’t even imagine.” She leaned back and brushed her hair from her shoulders. Her hand followed south and rubbed against her throat. She swallowed and sniffed at the air. They were still alone. While she did not doubt the borders of Salsola strong, it was not only the living she feared this night.

A stick snapped in the fire and sent sparks skyward. Siv’s ears rose at the sound, the fur along her spine rising quickly. She sighed and let out a low laugh. “Oh enough talk of darkness. I’ll sing for you; it keeps the spirits away, same as the fire.”

The dark woman rocked back and closed her eyes. She felt the cold around her and the heat at her chest, and slowly began to hum. It was a low growling sound, deep in her throat and low in her chest. She often sang wordless songs like this to her daughter. This one, though, it had a strong tune and words that rolled forth from her mouth. “The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown, of all the trees that are in the woods, the holly bears the crown,” her voice began low and first and began rising, building up as the rumbling in her chest grew.

“O, the Ivy is a Maiden, the Holly is her love, as they entwine at Yuletide, the Lady smiles above,” she smiled at the girl, thinking of the first time she had learned the song. They used no names, but the Hearg had always known of whom they spoke. “The holly blooms in glory when solstice-day is near. We burn the Yule log to make the new-born Sun appear…” Siv waved one hand over the flame, gesturing blindly to brush the smoke through her fingers and up to the sky above. She breathed out and opened her eyes. “'Tis at Yule when the Mother gives birth to coming Spring; in the midst of winter-cold; the new-born Sun, the Holly King.”

The dark woman lifted her head and looked to the forest ahead. Her eyes lost focus between the light of the fire and the darkness of the woods around them. Her voice rumbled forth, strong and powerful now. “Throughout the land She wanders with the new day-lit god, and in the spring, sweet love is made where'er Her foot has trod. Now blessed be the Earth at rest beneath our feet, as we have hope of rest one day, our Lady for to greet. Out of darkness shall come dawning, out of winter shall come spring, out of the toil of striving comes the peace our Lady brings.”

Her voice lowered and fell, and with it, the wind stilled. Siv breathed out into the cold air and looked to the pale girl, her eyes gleaming.

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