Post by Joliette Thorne on Mar 11, 2010 3:32:43 GMT -5
Fear courses through her veins a thick, intoxicating drug allowing Taeme to crest the storm of her emotions and retain her wits, fighting against odds she ought to have fallen under long before. Even now as the darkness cradles her entire body like a second skin her control ebbs away with the passing of seconds. Comfort? Is that what it would have been to know her mother as a mother and be held and soothed as a child? Would she have been different even now, untainted by the wolves bite and free of the burden being rounded bore her? So many questions answerless as illusion plays before regained vision to what end? Perfumes fill the air consuming the senses as muscles relax in the cushion of feasting thing daring he to reach out and test the realism of what she sees. Bidden and unable to refuse that siren, nimble fingers snake out, plucking a single red rose from its stalk. Thorns slash padded fingers leaving shallow tears in flesh that ooze rubicund only to be ignored by the lycan as she lifts the bloom to inhale its fragrance.
Insidious as night, the dark tendrils wormed their way into Taeme's psyche; all the while, something was happening in the ring of ruins scattered over the hundreds of yards' radius from where she lay. As if the demolition of the fortress was being observed slowly and in complete reverse, the stone blocks tumbled up to lock into position with their fellows and a deep, black mist seethed from the ground to be-night the sundry crowd gathered around the sineater's apprentice. Deep in the midst of the ruins, a young woman was wandering a corridor, following the steps of the very man from whose flesh and soul all this was wrought. An eyeless illusionist was ensconced in a pocket of Dark, trying to reason with a force that knew none. A one-eyed assassin was rapt in the joy of his loving wife, a snake slithered through a perfect swamp and a monkey had met with a cageful of her fellows, presently picking fleas from their backs and munching on them happily. All this was going on around the flightless avian, who scented the delicious, deep musk of the rose while her fingers bled. A soft voice whispered to her, close to ear, "We're going flying soon. Will you come, Taeme?"
Taeme shivers, a slow tingling working its way from the base of her skull down each separate vertebrate to the edge of her spine and back again leaving her shaken. Flight. The feel of air currents catching at even the smallest of feathers as they rend the skies, bodies shooting like bullets through the clouds or gliding smoothly as eels through water. How she had missed the gust of winds whipping at her hair until it lay in knotted clumps near impossible to untangle, her feathers ruffled and flesh flushed from its caustic touch. Slowly she stands still cocooned in that skin of darkness, imagining her once great wings spreading wide at her back. Lashes fall closed veiling her eyes though the garden is imprinted into her memories forever. Muscles bunch, knees bend and without a second to spare on rational, she leaps into the air trusting her wolf to catch her if she falls. That momentary burst of freedom, of free falling sends her spiraling into euphoria giving her own power a burst that shoots outwards in tremor-like waves.
The sky was abruptly black, as a host of gravid clouds stampeded the atmosphere, and lightning forked like the tongue of some vast and excitable snake-god through the darkness. The wind was wild, and as Taeme ascended like an arrow into the morass of that sudden midnight she'd find herself not alone: hundreds of other winged beings, avians, owls, crows that were hardly visible against the darkness, foolish pigeons, merciless eagles, all swirling in spirals through that strange air, banking and shrieking into the gale. It was a wild celebration of flight, martins forming clouds that shimmered like fleet schools of fish, slow-flapping pelicans and, amid them all, a small female whom, it soon became obvious, was the guest of honour as the winged host gradually came to surround her in wide circle that echoed the ring of stale earth on the ground below. None crossed that line, all keeping within as though there was invisible wall preventing them. On her back the inky growths that kept Taeme aloft grew fibrous roots, wended deep into her musculature, grew thick around the stumps of cartilage where wings long ought to have been. "Fly, Taeme!" came the shout, and somebody
grasped her hand.
* * *
Mommie was smiling, the smile that always lit up him up like a sun, standing by the chattering monkey cages and a low-walled place where he glimpsed fat penguins poking their beaky face out of a cave, as though waiting for permission to emerge. "Hey, little guy!" Yellow couldn't figure out why he was crying, only that he thought he'd been lost and was so, so glad to see Mommie. His arms wrapped around her skirt and he'd cling for the longest time, while she patted his blond head and cooed words that made his heart glad. Finally, Arius looked up, craving to see the blue of her gaze. His sniffles stopped, and his forehead wrinkled with a frown. "Mommie?" His voice was a squeak, as he looked into Darkness. "What happened to your eyes?"
Shishi 's son had so much to tell her, stories about dangerous adventures with Blue and Terra that would certainly earn the vampiric father some ire from the mother, the low down on all the new pets; their names, quirks, and why Blue hates them. However he's unable to tell her any of this as he looks up into empty, dark eyes that remind him more of his old Undead Guardian than his loving mother. No, this wasn't her, no matter how much he wanted it to be. A small step backwards is taken while a squawk from a penguin and a simultaneous screech from a monkey has the boy jumping, startled inside this illusion, "Mommie?" he asked again, more distress in his voice this time as if he's trying to will her blue eyes back to her.
The blonde figure he'd clung to shivered, as though the boy's retraction caused it pain. "Arius.." it beseeched, arms out wide to collect him again if he'd only step forward... if it only he would need it, as another boy once had. "Come to Mommie." But in its thick and depleted intellect, somehow the Obsidian Pool knew it would fail. The woman-figure it had created at once unravelled, a terrifying deconstruction into a pile of ropy tendrils that twitched and writhed, sunk and became a lump amongst which could be made out the form of a huge, sad face. It simply sat there for a moment, in resignation. But if the young shadow-cursed lad had not fled by then, it would perk up of a sudden like a large and ugly canine, tendril snaking toward the penguin enclosure. Making their odd, piping cries, the flightless, waddling birds paraded out of their boxy den and onto a pool of black ice to begin a graceful show of figure-skating. Behind this bizarre scene, a cageful of monkeys gibbered and swung. One among them, alone, did not share the jet shade of the rest. Belulah, so lonely for her own kind had until then been content with her 'wish', albeit fulfilled behind the black iron bars of a cage. But in Yellow's pocket, where he'd stuffed it, was that bag of peanuts. And Lulah loved few things more than a crunchy peanut. In fact, she might love those more than these odd shadow-monkeys who didn't smell right and couldn't pick a flea properly to save themselves. Her history, by necessity unspoken, as the lock-pick of a cruel and hook-handed pirate, came in very useful, in achieving her escape.
Shishi 's Family's Curse activated within the boy. His eyes, without his knowledge went through their change, shifting from calm blue to that dreadful glowing crimson as Arius watched his mother change into that mess of tendrils. This was perhaps the curse itself threatening to protect the boy from something it perhaps did not understand. He frowned at the thing that snaked towards the penguin enclosure and took another cautious steps backwards. Lulah's escape from her illusion cage must have gone smoothly because the spider monkey is scaling the boy's back with foot and hand holds on his clothing. Making it to his collar the animal reaches up and tugs on his hair, cuing the child to reach into his pocket and supply the primate with a single peanut, "You found a weird zoo..." The boy says through some tears that are the result of watching the illusion of his mother melt while penguins danced across unnaturally colored ice...
The Pool was becoming a little bit desperate now. The penguins, all of them odd for missing the tuxedo-like white front a normal member of their species exhibits to render them a solid ebony shade, put on a most spectacular show. This ended in a pyramid of penguins, not easy for the fat waddly birds to achieve, which slid about the dark ice awkwardly, while the penguin at its pinnacle flapped a flipper madly at Yellow. Belulah munched her peanut with relish, tugged another little strand of Arius' hair, and leaned down to put her little monkey-face close to the boy's ear. "You're telling me," she said.
Shishi 's son couldn't really help watching the display put on by the dark penguins, both in the sense that is was very captivating and because of the fact that he didn't really know any way to leave this illusory zoo gone mad. When Lulah tugged at his hair he sent his red stare sideways to try and catch a glimpse of the monkey as she... spoke into his ear? He shook his head, surely this was still just part of this pleasant dream turned nightmare he was having. This doesn't stop the boy from whispering excitedly to himself, "Talking monkey..." and then asking the mammal on his shoulder, "How do we get out?"
* * *
Taeme near screams in pain as the inky blackness sinks deep through flesh, taking root within her body to keep her aloft as she soars higher into the air. Pain wars with joy as the things attached to her body, now secured to her back, cut the currents she flits through like so many years ago. That hand that reaches for her own she clasps to, clings to allowing her emotion, both good and bad, to show in that simple touch. "Freedom" She breathes, fear slipping away until she feels nothing save for the ecstasy of flight.
The blustering clouds sunk low, lightning struck in zagged streaks. "We'd better get back!" somebody shouted, and wheeled off to make a graceless descent, half-blown away by the winds. The birds scattered, to everywhere and nowhere, becoming one with the clouds that seemed to loom after Taeme, great dark beasts of things that opened their pillowy maws in grey gapes. The wings on her back grew firmly now, rooted deep in her flesh, though they changed from white to black even as she'd flown her wild circumference of that enclosed sky, and were somewhat tattery at the edges, where they bled off into smoky tendrils. As one, the flock of avians swooped back to their garden, where all the flowers were denuded, petals swirling madly around, wet with the spatter of a dark rain just now falling, sticking to everything.
Taeme hisses in surprise fear as the weather changes suddenly into a whirlwind storm lifting flower petals and other bits of plant from the garden below. Darkened rain droplets splatter pristine flesh as she spins, diving for the bare ground below only to land on one bent knee. Finger-tips curl into the obsidian soil pressing it into useless balls in her hands. The beat of her heart races in her ears and veins, the roar of wind still roaring until all other sound drowns out save for her pulse and the, possibly, imaginary beat of the ground below her.
The newly re-winged avian would find herself enclosed not in a garden but a dank passage composed of rock slabs, cut to fit together at many angles, each with many corners. The ceiling her was low, the space stuffy, and in her hands was rock dust not soil. And at either end of this passage were two more corridors that twisted oddly, the ground rising to twist in places so the floor became a ceiling she walked on, and back again. And though the tunnel-like paths went on and on there were no doors, was no sign of them ending, and no obvious way out of the fortress that held her still, only now in a bigger and more complex version of itself.
* * *
Belulah bounced excitedly on his shoulder. "I can hear it, you know. The whispers." The monkey cocked her head as if listening, though she was just illustrating her point. The penguin-pyramid had disassembled itself now, each bird plopping back to the black ice, carrying on with pirouettes and pas de deux routines, except for one, who bore a vaguely sad mien, which waddled to the edge of the enclosure, flapping its flippers. Lulah leaned in again, tiny lips pulling back from her yellowish teeth in a monkey-grin, which was not a happy expression. "It wants something from you. Something important." Her beady eyes rounded and she sniffed the air. "I'll ask it, if you give me peanut." The penguin was making a strange motion, hopping up and down on its little, webby feet, its flippers flipping up and down rapidly as if making a futile attempt to fly. And in fact, it did, in a way-- the last hop never landed, its pudgy frame dissolving into another of those ropy blobs, which unwound from itself and streaked through the air toward Arius. About half-way there it coalesced briefly into a caricature smiley-head before the tendrils again reached out, seeking to tangle around the boy.
* * *
The Pool, in its various parts, all occupied in feeding from the souls who'd followed the sineater here, or had traipsed on their own steam, was starting to slow. It had fed, sufficient to its task, and all around the people present sprung up walls, archways, towers, weirdly angled, all creating a terrible din, none of them disturbing the occupants more than that, simply building around them. So, where once there was an open space now stood a fortress, which shifted and changed as though seeking a comfortable shape to rest in. Within its confines, a young girl lay down on an obliging chair to dream while a man made of shadows-- and from whom shadows were made-- watched her, frowning.
* * *
Shishi 's little blonde murderer raised one brow towards Belulah, looking a bit put off by her ability to hear 'whispers'. Some Stranger put into the role of the monkey asking for a peanut would have had the boy running in the opposite direction, but this was a monkey. A talking monkey! And if the pet-accumulating boy was convinced of one thing, it was that you could trust animals... in or out of nightmares. A single peanut is handed over, "Here. Ask." he said anxiously while watching the penguin lose its shape and take on a more undefined one. A rather feeble looking, futile swat is taken at the approaching tendrils, which instead of being deterred take the opportunity to wrap around his outstretched arm before continuing the entanglement, to which the boy's struggling is minimal at the moment... for whatever reason.
As Arius' arm flapped, not unlike the flipper of the former penguin now wrapped around his limb, Belulah crunched on her nutty treat and then tilted her head once more, black-button eyes scrunching shut. "You. It wants you, Little One. It's lonely." Her gaze popped open and she leaned over, body balanced on her clingy back feet and one hand using his hair for an anchor, to peer at the lad. "If it takes you, who will give me peanuts?" The arm-enclosing tendrils formed a lump that dripped hastily back to the ground, and moments later there stood a penguin, its beady and somewhat stupid gaze staring up at Yellow with a sort of blank adoration. Belulah studied the shadow-bird thoughtfully. "Maybe... you can take a bit of it with you?" The penguin wobbled violently, nestling up tight against Arius' legs as the zoo roared its mad and cacophonic agreeance. Cages swung open. An inky giraffe lowered its lofty head, and tried to lick Yellow. Belulah swatted at it. "Perhaps we ought to try to find Big One."
Shishi 's son only began to panic when Lulah spoke of the thing wanting to take him. The struggle was mostly contained within the boy, Arius attempting to activate cursed eyes that had previously changed color without him knowing and pleading with the things wrapping around him, -Don't!- as he attempts to see if this is the kind of darkness that listens. There's no response other than the thing dripping off him and onto the ground... With a frown that he tries to hide Yellow answers Lulah, "It can come with us..." The boy dodges the giraffe's lick with a duck and starts moving in the direction he feels Belulah wants him to, "Big One... Blue?"
Lulah hissed, "Yes, yes, the Big One. Hurry." Her urgency was obvious, but still she'd yank a handful of blond hair to add a painful exclamation point. At the boy's heels waddled the penguin, which had swelled to half to the height of Arius himself, and was growing larger with every minute spent running through the madness of a zoo where ebony tigers roared, jet lions stalked their steps and obsidian elephants plucked his clothes with trunk-tips as they passed, perhaps hoping for a peanut.