[mature] what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Forest (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=73) +---- Thread: [mature] what a cunning foe we've met; sabra (/showthread.php?tid=27507) Pages:
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what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Balto - 08-01-2020 i’ve been both a saint & a viper Balto @[Sabra] RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Sabra - 08-02-2020 It's a bad day. Which isn't to say that I have many good days, but today I can hardly think for all the screaming in my head. I blame it on the meal I had, lush green leaves and sweet grasses that tempted me into a full belly. Without hunger to distract me the Voices rant and rage. Have you lost your daughter again? Of course she has. Haven't you noticed? The stupid whore has always been better at spreading her legs than keeping track of their product. I have a daughter? Blinking distressed at the trees around me. Trees in every direction, but no child to be seen. No flash of pink and lavender, no sparkle in the shadows. Or... My eyes lose focus. Is it black and white I should be looking for? A ragged snort explodes from my muzzle as I stomp in frustration. Fragments of memory weave themselves in a haphazard tapestry. Bits and pieces of my life, with touches I can't be sure aren't just pure fiction. Where I've been, where I'm going. Even where I am right now. Trees, many trees, green as green can be. Thats not right. They shouldn't be green. I spin in a slow circle. They shouldn't be green. Where am I? North, East, South, West, which one do you love the best? Not that it matters. You're lost, lost, lost, never to be found. "I'm not lost," I say, walking with as much confidence as I can muster through the darkening woods. Then where are you? Not even the gods could find someone as lost as you. Not that they care to. Not that anyone cares. It's true. I've heard it so many times that I can't disagree any longer. No, not when it's been proven right so very many times. The fight drips out of me, my head dropped almost the ground. Shadows lurk, a deeper shade of black than the ones they emerge from. Not for the first time, not for the last, I wish for the end I'll never see. The thought teases me. Hangs before my eyes with soft colours and warm light. My body, nestled in welcoming bed of leaves, soft mosses growing over the desaturated remnants of my skin and bones. Even the cursed spear in my breast decays eventually, never to harm another soul. I blink, and the vision is gone. It's only me and the Voices in the dark. Mocking, bitching, hateful Voices that never cease. I used to think I could outrun them, starve them, talk my way out of them. It never lasts. Always, they return with their vengeance, and I am weary of it. "No, I can't feel anything." I snarl wetly into the dark. It's a lie. I feel everything, every shift of the splinter in my heart, every swollen joint and cracked hoof. Why not disagree with the Voices, though. They aren't any kinder when I'm submissive to them. @[Balto] RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Balto - 08-03-2020 i’ve been both a saint & a viper Balto @[Sabra] RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Sabra - 08-03-2020 It's the rustling that gives him away. The dry rasp of dead leaves brushing against each other without wind to move them. My subconscious realizes I'm no longer alone before I register it, freezes my hooves to the rotting mulch without warning. My skin twitches with the weight of unseen eyes. Always I am followed, but now the Watcher seems closer than they've ever been. In a gust of hot breath, I release the air I've been holding, my chest pinched with ramping anxiety. One way, then the other, my skull swings from side to side to catch a glimpse of the one following me. He's here. I know he's here, I can feel it, I can sense it, he won't escape me this time. Eyes rolling in their sockets, the leaves shuffle at my feet, whispering their death words beneath me. The glassy pools of my eyes skitter over the shadows, frantic. They skip and slide and then. Slowly, slowly, until they land on a shadow unlike the rest. Darker, or paler, the vaguest gleam of moonlight reflecting from its depths. "Luck has nothing to do with me," I rasp, mouth dry as ancient bones. Trance-like and shambling, I take steps until the figure is solidified, a horse of night against the blacker earth. Cold fear trickles down the base of my skull, along my limbs, until it burns hot at my core. I've been waiting to find him. The shadow haunting my every step, taunting me and biting away at my sanity. It doesn't matter that this voice is not one I've heard before. That the one's that usually hound me have gone ominously still. There's only my heart pounding, the steady drip of blood down my chest, and him. Always him. My patchwork wings spread wide, filling the space and revealing the cobwebs of lightning scars that map out my sides, my throat. Decades of abuse and bad decisions made into a flickering, cracked painting on my skin. It's my own light that illuminates us now. I can see myself reflected in his eyes, a shabby, electric skeleton. A vicious grin splits my lips at his suggestion. "I thought you'd never ask," my voice is the crack of distant thunder, and then the lightning strikes. My yellowed teeth reach for the gaunt planes of his face, snatching for any scrap of flesh that I can find. He will destroy me, I'm sure of it. But I will get my pound of flesh before we're through. The Voices crow in delight. @[Balto] RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Balto - 08-04-2020 i’ve been both a saint & a viper Balto @[Sabra] RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Sabra - 08-20-2020 It is a shock to find flesh and blood beneath my tongue. Cool to the touch, and dust-tanged, but as real as anything I've ever tasted. My snarl flickers for a moment, doubt eating sluggishly at my mind. His voice rings in my ears as I stumble back, flecks of red on my lips and panic in my eyes. This isn't right. This isn't right, I war against myself. I want him gone, destroyed, ended, because that might end my own internal riots. I have to touch something to destroy it, this I know so well, but the reality of it is far away from mine. Do it! See if his blood is real enough to sooth your broken mind. Enough to chase us away. They echo him, begging for release that one only finds in the darkest of places. His eyes gleam in the shadow, as blue and fractured as my own. "No," the word leaves me like a ghost, pleading into the night. "NO!" Again, and I swing my head wildly. It collides with the rough barked trunk of an oak. The pain, like hunger, is a clarifier. Again I throw my face against the biting tree until blood runs into my eyes and the ache in my head outweighs the Voices. "I won't do it again," my wheezing voice whimpers. I'm a wreck of a creature. Bloody, cracked and hanging by the last threads of my mind. My world has dissolved into violence and anxiety, mistrust and fear. Memory of who and what I once was is harder and harder to recall. Through my blood tinged vision though, I can see in this stranger's eyes the same hunted, haunted things. The fragile, spidery thread that weaves us ever tighter to our ends. @[Balto] probably time for a mature tag.. RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Balto - 08-22-2020 i’ve been both a saint & a viper Balto @[Sabra] RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Sabra - 08-23-2020 Electricity sings in my veins, calls out to the sky where a storm is brewing. If it will be enough to drench the burning around us, only time will tell. The yellow light casts tall shadows around us, and I can almost catch a glimpse of the shapes of monsters in their dance. Stretching limbs and gaping, slavering jaws and- "Too?" I ask, blinking the smear of blood from my eyes. Everything is tinted red and gold and he is no exception. My wings shake and spasm of their own accord, like wringing hands. Yet another nervous tick that I've collected over the years. A step toward him, then away, the heat of the fire touching my back as it nips closer to where we stand. An inconvenience only, when I look at this stranger with a bloodied eye. My scraped jaw clenches in a rictus grin, lips stretched over worn teeth. "Who are you?" I demand, a spector of my old imperious nature lifting its weary head. "Give me your name or I will leave you here with Them." A threat if I'd ever made one. Because if he hears the Voices too, that means They aren't only in my mind. It means They're real. That realization shakes me to my hollow core. There are a great many things in this world far worse than death. I know it, and it seems that so does he. If They are real, then we are in greater danger than I had ever guessed. Or else this is a trick. One They have created to unhinge me further, and it makes me bare my teeth again to think that he is Theirs. A puppet or a slave, an enemy or an ally. They bicker behind me, dulled by the throb in my head, but never really gone. By the Dark God, what I wouldn't do to have them gone. Any means, any price. And perhaps this haunted stranger feels the same. @[Balto] RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Balto - 08-29-2020 i’ve been both a saint & a viper Balto @[Sabra] RE: what a cunning foe we've met; sabra - Sabra - 09-04-2020 My lips are sore and cracked when I lick them, iron taste sharp on my tongue. I'm not sure if it's my blood or his that's being tasted, but it doesn't matter. It's red and it's mineral-edged and I consider taking more of it. Why not? When we stand here illuminated with fire and flags of lightning and the sheer exhaustion of being seen. My legs shake erratically, never still for long. Being still is being trackable, being findable, and we can't have that. No no no, we can't. I can't be found, not unless I want to be. My teeth grind against each, the anxious thoughts milling in my mind endlessly. But the fire is ganging up on us, and I am unwilling to burn. Not when I will only come back again, as lost as ever. The length of my tail is scorching, hairs curling and turning to white ash where the heat touches it. Another few moments and the whole thing will ignite. My eyes flicker with the firelight while Balto watches, while he bemoans his fate. Burning debris falls from the blazing trees. Sticks, clusters of leaves, pinecones glowing with red eyes only till they crash into the ground and explode into showers of sparks and flame. Hungry, starving flame that will consume whatever it touches. My gaze fixes on a kindling brush. On the way it catches with aching slowness only until it is engulfed, and then it burns like it will never go out. My name... I turn to him like a sleepwalker stuggling to wake, eyes far away from where we are now. With slowness that argues against the peril surrounding us, I move close enough to press my face lightly to his. To run my tongue across his cheek, where my teeth caught his skin. "Sabra," I answer, and I think I had forgotten it until it left my mouth. "My name is Sabra." I whisper it like a prayer, insectile humming in my ears. A tree cracks behind us, sap boiled past the point of bearing. I flinch at the noise, fingers of rage reacting to the sudden sensation. I am tired of this place, of the scent of smoke and charring feathers. But. I do not think I am tired of him. Not yet. A smile like glass cracks my lips, and I take in a searing breath. "Follow me. Or don't. You could see how you like your skin split and blackened, for all I care." My head falls to one side listlessly, eyes drifting to some place past his shoulder. "Or. You could come with me. And we can see exactly where this fire burns out." My feet lift as a branch comes crashing down, and I'm moving. Running. Smoke floods my chest, the staff in my heart waving at everything we pass. The Voices screech like a murder of crows, louder than the roaring flames. Louder than the question that asks so gently what I am doing. @[Balto] |