"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
10-03-2021, 10:26 PM (This post was last modified: 10-03-2021, 10:33 PM by Jassal.)
His blazing eyes remain trained on the cauldron as his reflection turns instead to visions. Jack observes the spellbound equines don their costumes and he can’t help the shrill cackle of glee that comes bursting from his jagged, carved mouth. Wait a minute. Not one of them chose the three he made perfectly abundant. Not one vampire? Not a single ghost? And what, praytell, was wrong with a sexy glowing skeleton suit? Oh, but they’d rather be vermin and mediocre white men peddling INSURANCE. Well, so be it then.
A thin, wispy hand reaches for the lid to his pumpkin head and he pulls it aside with a moist fwop before plucking a handful of seeds from within his noggin. Jack replaces the orange plug and casts the seeds into his bubbling potion. Immediately, the concoction erupts into purple steam. Slowly, painfully, they become their costumes through and through: a mouse, a classically handsome man in a Superman leotard, a puppy, a mountie, Sexy Jake from State Farm, a child in a hood, another child with pigtails, some kind of teenage boy who will undoubtedly have many online friends, a 30 story tall monster from the cretaceous era who hassles people for money, a dirty man with scurvy, a possum, and a horse. He finds himself amused by the last one, truthfully.
“You made your choice, you chose your fate.
My monsters now all lie in wait.
Escape the woods and cross the river,
Avoid the things that make you shiver!”
Their bodies are awkward and new, he knows, so he bestows each one with a gift, a little something to help them make their way through this first trial. Jack snorts and hacks and spits a gooey pumpkin-flavored loogie right into the cauldron that seems to calm it a bit. From the woods, a sort of cackling can be heard as witches mount their broomsticks, and spells are whispered through the trees. Trees groan and begin to flex their branches, testing their strength. Massive pumpkins bob and bounce in place despite the river’s vicious current. Jack, meanwhile, sips his cocoa and settles in to watch their efforts.
The rules for round two are a bit tricker, now, so ask questions if you’re confused!
1. The gifts are as follows: @Rare is a giant mouse but she can shrink herself and return to normal twice. @Saffron can use super speed for a total of one minute, divided as he sees fit. @despoina may charm enemies with her puppy-dog eyes one time. @Anuya may summon a moose to fight for her one time, and she’s maple-scented. @Cyan gets the power of insurance, so if he’s mortally wounded, Jack has him covered. @Elliana has a basket of goodies that she may distract enemies with one time. @Llorona has super strength that she may use once. @sawbone can use his depressing lyrics to make enemies cry themselves to sleep once. @gaspard is a horse-sized plesiosaur who has both fins and four human legs sticking out of the bottom of him. The legs are very hairy. @Sintra has a magical jar of dirt that lets her become undead and therefore unable to die or feel damage for one minute. @Beechbone is a horse-sized possum who can play dead and hide things in her weird skin pouch. @Etojo may become a Trojan horse, of sorts, in that he can deploy a small squad of miniature people from his belly to help him fight twice.
2. Everyone’s normal traits/defects/abilities have now been taken from them.
3. End your post at the base of the mountain, facing either a cave or a path up the mountain itself.
4. No more than 1,500 words per reply.
5. This round will end on October 10th at 11:59 pm. Late replies will receive a penalty in the third round.
Fear is not necessarily a familiar friend for Despoina. She knows sadness—an endless, yawning chasm of sorrow—and she knows loneliness. She even knows jealousy. Rage. All of the negative emotions that Torryn can feast on, gorge himself on until he is sick with it. But for all of that, she does not often feel fear. (Perhaps one has to have some sense of self-preservation, self-worth, to feel it.)
Regardless, fear comes to her now in thick, nauseating waves.
Pain seizes her as the costume seems to shrink and wrap around her and then her bones bend, contorting. She rolls onto the ground, whining and crying low, paws coming up to scratch at her face in confusion. It is, mercifully, a short transition. She rolls onto her side, panting, and then rises up—her body still canine and yet distinctly other. Confused and more than a little sore, she glances down to see paws that are not her own. Soft brown and the thick fur turned velvet, she realizes that she is significantly shorter than before and that tail that had grown in a pair behind her is now one solid piece, hanging low.
If she had the words for it, or the knowledge, she would know she now stood as a young Rottweiler puppy, the build round and playful, her face distinctly softer than it had been as her usual hound.
But she doesn’t have the words for it.
Just the feeling of being trapped in this body that is so similar and yet so alien.
Yapping, her voice a higher pitch than usual, she springs forward into woods that come alive with motion. Shadows that take on their own shapes. Laughter that whistles through the wind. She catches sight of strange orange gourds dancing in the wind (pottery? on a night like this?) and she ducks her head, dipping into the shadows—moving as quickly as her young, uncoordinated legs will take her. She stumbles, more than once, rolling over, but her body is as limber as it is unstable, and the aches do not stay for long.
Something swoops down above her, cackling, and she freezes. She catches sight of bandages whipping around a corner, a low deep groan following, and then a howl that splinters through the night coming from further away—the sound hitting her low and hard. The fear comes again. Swift and fierce, and she rushes forward, wild with abandon, as she forgoes her previous plan of remaining quiet and unnoticed.
Twigs snap beneath her paws and the wind sluices against her face, but she runs as quickly as she can on short legs, whimpering with every step as the trees begin to struggle above her. The river comes quicker than she had thought and as she approaches it around the bend, realizing that she hadn’t thought far enough ahead to how she will get beyond this. She comes to a halt, mud digging between her toes, as the river roars before her, and she begins to whine under her breath again, pacing before the current.
She doesn’t hear the sound of a witch swooping down on her.
Doesn’t hear it until there are thin, spindly hands grabbing her by her ribcage and yanking her up, up, up and she smells the rotten pumpkin and bitter bite of poison. Despoina twists in the arms of her captor and glances upward, finding the face of the wretched creature looking down at her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, or what’s happening, but her soft face crumbles, dark brown eyes turning liquid. When she squirms again, this time, it is against the chest of the monster and when she whimpers, it is a plea.
It works.
Somehow, it works.
The witch sighs, pulling one knobbed hand off the broom to stroke Despoina’s head, before cursing under her breath and adjusting the broomstick. They take a hard right, wind whipping by them, and her grip on Despoina loosens. Several moments pass with idle strokes from the monster before they reach the mountain and the witch dips down, gently depositing the puppy on the path. With a confused, perhaps even frustrated smile, the witch nods before spinning the broomstick and shooting up in the air.
And Despoina is left, equally baffled but safe, staring at the path up the mountain.
I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do
He isn’t certain what he might have expected from this strange interlude, but whatever it was, it certainly isn’t getting transformed into an ungainly two-legged creature. At first he’s not sure what is happening. He knows only that his bones crack and shrink, pulling painfully into an upright position. His vision shifts, blurring until he can see only what is in front of him. He stumbles, whipping unsteadily around as he tries to figure out why he can’t see his wings or sides.
Saffron nearly falls over as he tries to balance on two appendages rather than four, only managing to catch himself by grabbing a tree. He blinks as his front appendages snag on the rough bark, bending at all the wrong angles. Jerking back with a gasp, he stares at them in dawning horror.
Which, of course, makes him topple over.
With an audible oomph, he lands on his back, blinking up at the creaking, knobby branches overhead. As he lays there staring uncomprehendingly, the whispered prose begins the filter through the trees once more. He only half-listens as he tries to come to terms with what had just happened to him.
It’s only when the branches begin to flex overhead and a cackle echoes through the trees that Saffron jerks into reality. A shudder races down his spine as he realizes that he would not be allowed to lay here forever.
Clamoring clumsily to his feet, Saffron grips a nearby tree for support, testing his wobbly legs. He’s not sure how anything manages on two legs, but somehow he would have to figure it out. When a skeletal branch plucks at the perfectly coifed hair on his head, he flinches. It seems he would have to figure it out fast.
Another creeping branch tugs sharply on his cloak, and with a yelp, Saffron blunders forward in a sudden blur. He doesn’t even realize how fast he’s going until he trips over a root and tumbles head over heel, limbs flailing and dirt spraying around him until he collapses into an ungainly heap against the trunk of a tree.
The creaking around him sounds suspiciously like laughter as the offending root sinks slowly back into the earth.
For a moment, he stares up, stunned. When the tree he’d collided with starts groaning ominously however, Saffron quickly scrambles to his feet. He ducks as a branch hurdles towards face, almost sprawling back across the earth before catching himself with a wince. He knows now he can go fast in this form, but experience makes him hesitate to do it again.
Taking a few unsteady steps forward, he stays clear of the grumbling trees as best he can while taking in his surroundings. He’s well and truly ensconced in this creepy forest now. He had only run for about thirty seconds, but it seems his speed had carried him deep into the woods. As he makes another slow circle, he notices a faint glimmer through the trees. Narrowing his eyes, he takes a few cautious steps forward as he tries to work out what it is.
Eventually he creeps close enough that he realizes it’s water. Sucking in a breath, Saffron tries to recall what the ghostly voice had said. Something about a river, he’s certain.
He doesn’t make the mistake of racing towards it this time. Instead, he moves carefully, avoiding grasping branches and toe-stubbing roots. When he finally reaches the water, he frowns at it. It’s choppy and swift, the current unpleasantly strong. Despite that, pumpkins bob in a leisurely manner on the surface.
How the heck is he supposed to cross this?
Saffron is so distracted by the conundrum the river poses that he doesn’t notice the creature dipping swiftly overhead. He only glances up, startled, when it releases a loud cackle and swoops toward him. He ducks, the creature brushing over him with gleeful giggles. He jerks quickly around to find it had somehow pivoted in midair and is now banking directly towards him again. It’s face is terrifying, green skin covered in lumps, hair in tangled clumps beneath a ratty, pointed hat, two ungainly limbs clenched around a wooden stick with branches bristling from the back.
With an alarmed shout, Saffron stumbles back, forgetting the river behind him. At least, until his foot slips on the steep bank and starts to fall, arms pinwheeling in a desperate and hopeless attempt to stop himself. The moment he splashes into the water, the vicious current drags him under.
He doesn’t know how to swim in this form.
Saffron thrashes helplessly, briefly surfacing only to be sucked immediately back under. When he surfaces again, he makes a desperate grab for a floating pumpkin. It bucks and bobs under his weight, but panic makes him hold tight. It’s only when the orange gourd settles that Saffron is finally able to start thinking again.
Mentally, he kicks himself for forgetting his speed.
Kicking his legs, he and the pumpkin zoom across the water. They crash against the bank, and Saffron quickly lets go of the vegetable in order to grab the reeds and heave himself onto the muddy bank. Dirt streaks his already filthy and torn costume, but he doesn’t notice.
He is given no time to catch his breath however. Moments later, the witch is back, a menacing cackle echoing over the rushing water. Groaning, Saffron hobbles to his feet and takes off running with all the swiftness he can muster. Just as his speed is beginning to decline and his breath to come in pants however, he finds himself facing a sharp incline. There is a stitch in his side when he slows to a halt, breath heaving as he stares at the looming mountain. His eyes dart desperately sideways, and he notices a path leading up into the mountainous terrain. Then he notices a cave. He considers them both with a frown, but a quick glance in the direction he’d come from makes his decision for him.
With those dastardly flying creatures patrolling the sky, he would much rather take his chances in the cave. Straightening resolutely, he starts towards the yawning maw.
Something is different, and Anuya doesn’t just mean because she’s wearing clothes for the first time in her life. She collapses to the ground with pain, her bones shifting and reforming into slightly-different shapes. Which doesn’t sound too bad, I know, but it certainly feels bad while it’s happening. When she goes to stand, she’s aware that her hind end is significantly higher than her front and her gait is all awkward. Everything feels super off.
Until she rears/stands up and discovers things make a little more sense on two legs than one.
She’s walked on two legs before, but it’s been a few years and also those were bird feet. Not these black-booted monstrosities. She twists around, discovering her lovely dusk-sky coat has been replaced with brown and black and red and she's got this weird yellow racing stripe down the side which is almost as confusing as the weird bulge around her hips.
The scent of maple is also nauseatingly thick. What was she, a Canadian $100 bill? This was a little ridiculous. And worse, she can’t even use her telekinesis anymore. Something she discovers when she tries to move a branch out of the way only for it to remain stationary and she walks right into it.
“Trees are disgusting.” Anuya remarks as she detangles herself clumsily.
Maybe she would have made it through the forest without incident if she had not made that little comment, maybe not. But the trees seem to rotate to follow her progress. There are few maples here, but the others don't like being reminded about those rather sweet, superior trees. Especially not by someone who just insulted them.
It takes her a little while to realize she's being followed, and a little longer to notice that the path she's been following keeps disappearing and changing as the trees shuffle around. When she stops to scowl and re-evaluate, wooden limbs grab at her. A loud, undignified shriek escapes her and she snaps a few of those finger-like appendages trying to escape. Now, finally, she notices that the trees all around her seem very, very sentient. And very pissed. But what do you say to that? They have her maple-scent now and she becomes very aware of the fact that they will hunt her wherever she goes. She returns to the direction she had been heading with more determination, scratches raking down her cheeks and neck as she tries to shove her way through brambles and thorns. Those puffy hips snag and tear and she nearly loses her hat - but manages to hold onto it. Some instinct tells Anuya that if she loses her hat, she'll just be a loser in a red coat.
And she definitely does not want to be that.
The once-fae-now-mountie makes some headway before the branches and vines grasp her again, twigs like claws digging at her. But her blood is even more maple scented and that just seems to make things work. She should be scared, she really should be, but this whole thing is just so damn weird she can't even get to being scared. She screams, because that seems like something she should do, and hears a strange bellow come from deeper in the woods. That bellow seems to give the trees pause, and they appear to share glances with their non-faces. Everything seems to freeze for a few of Anuya's rapid heartbeats until she starts to hear the sound of trees very quickly moving out of the way. Which sounds like nothing, really, if you're curious.
Suddenly the trees immediately around her move and a giant bull moose is there. Anuya has never seen a moose before. You would think that being around various types of horses her whole life would prepare her for seeing one but it has not. Maybe it's the weird shape she's in, maybe it's that this day is already so weird, but she just... she just did not expect it to be so god damn big. The moose pauses and snorts at her, so she scrambles back to her feet, and then it continues to barrel its way forward - shredding the animated trees like paper.
Once the trees give up, liking their bark and limbs attached more than they hate maples, the moose just turns away without a word. The nerve, right? Just leaves her standing on the edge of the river, in the dark, when it could've given her a ride over! She's dressed for it and everything.
There's really only one thing left to do in the sudden absence of her savior - so Anuya very gracefully doggy paddles across the river, slipping a little downstream and inhaling a lot of dark water in the process - and climbs out on the other side absolutely soaked down to the skin. All she can think is she might as well continue, this is already one wild dream - she wants to know how it ends so she can tell her sister all about it. So she makes her way to the base of the mountain before she sits unceremoniously on the ground and takes a break. There is a path that seems to go down into a cave but Anuya has her sights on another - one that will take her up and keep her in the air. Which sounds like the much better option when you're smelling as sweet as she is.
With each breath his costume tightened. Compressing and constricting and squishing. Uncomfortable at first, like a nagging itch, but then it built into something akin to fire. It burned. The material becoming his skin, melding around flesh and bone, his nerves tingling hot as if lashed by a thousand tiny flames. The pain ebbing away once there was nothing left to merge with.
He felt a shift inside him too, a gurgle in his belly that craved neither flesh nor blood. What was this? A craving so anciently old he'd forgotten almost what it felt like. He craved grass. Juicy, delectable grass. The saliva already pooling on his tongue.
Snapped from his thoughts, that bodiless voice rang out again into the night. Be it in his own head or out loud, Etojo was unsure. He was decidedly sure of one thing though as he processed the words, he didn't feel particularly keen to be a part of it. Monsters… no thanks. He'd had enough of those. Finally shed of that monstrous form, it'd been easy to form an alternative plan. Back to the river he'd go, fatten up on grass and bathe his hide in the sun.
Ahead the woods thrummed with a clear and present danger. Perplexed he watched as the others - now far odder looking than he - stepped stupidly into the trees. What possessed them he couldn't possibly fathom. Well he wouldn't be following. Etojo turned to go, or had meant to… except he couldn't? Instead he'd unwillingly taken two steps forward. What? There was an invisible tug, and he stepped forward again. No! Then another... The trees wriggled open, invitingly evil. And Etojo entered the woods very much against his will. Branches and plants crossing and twisting, sealing shut his entry point with a tangle of impenetrable foliage behind him.
Still, this was not insurmountable. A blip in the night and no problem. He'd become decent enough at killing all sorts of plants. Without so much as a blink and sporting a scowl, Etojo willed those branches away. Willed them to wilt and untangle, to weaken and break.
Branches reached for him instead...
He tried again. Harder, with more mental omph. He willed those damn plants dead. The woods pulsed darker, the branches reached closer, and an unnaturally high pitched sound erupting from many mouths rode the air. Laughter.
Oh Bugger. It hit him as an angry branch thumped him brutally across the chest. He was a changed beast in more than appearance and hunger, his abilities had vanished too.
The laughter came again, layered in waves, surging loud and fading soft like an ocean tide. Time to go. Any direction would do. And Etojo didn't walk, he bolted. Semi awkwardly. For the darkness was almost blinding, the woods thick and trees angry. He punched himself through the thinnest part of foliage that would let him. Forcing his way through webs of twigs and scratchy leaves as they clawed at him, leaving shallow crevices on his chest. The laughter trilled hot on his hooves, giving chase.
Somewhere ahead there was a soft light, warm and homely. An exit perhaps? An escape? Etojo forged towards it, the branches parting unnaturally the closer he came, revealing an orange orb shimmering semi-transparent in a section of woods thinner of trees. What is that? He wondered, its ghostly orange glow beckoning him near. Too easily enthralled, Etojo drifted closer, the creepy laughter of thousands fading to childish giggles.
Slowly, discreetly, his sense of urgency began to slip away. The woods grew calm around him, a feeling of serenity tinged the air. A part of him realised he was no longer grounded but floating. A bigger part didn't care.
The closer he drifted the stronger the orb solidified. But it wasn't an orb, rather a giant pumpkin - a voice whispered. He'd never seen one before. It had eyes as big as boulders, with a mouth opening impossibly wide like a cave. So pretty… he gawked, as he floated beyond the triangle teeth and into a throat of impossible darkness. The jaws closed in his wake - carefully so as not to shatter his trance - once he passed.
Darkness reigned…
Who really knows how much time passed until he came to his senses. But Etojo came back to himself as a crumpled heap with a rumble disturbing his belly. A sensation small at first but it built soon enough, uncomfortably so. And whilst he was certainly hungry, this feeling, it wasn't the same.
His belly bulged and rippled, the lumps somersaulting beneath his skin. It was almost as if something was trying to cut through his intestines from inside to out. Shit, something was! Sharp as anything he'd ever felt before, his flesh began to tear. A tiny hand punching through his underside, followed quickly by another. The pair of hands gripping his flesh and prying it further apart, wide enough for a small body to follow. And then another. Little figures squirting from his belly started as a trickle which turned into a gush.
They surrounded him in the hundreds, too many to possibly count. His mini men, his trojan soldiers. And reaching towards their mother - him he supposed - with pokey fingers prodding, urged him up. They led him to a solid wall in the darkness. And hoisting themselves upon one another's shoulders they began to feed. Could this become any more bizarre? Had he known the dark wall to be edible he would have been first. Etojo pressed his teeth to the wall and started munching.
They ate their way through. Many mouths chewing and swallowing. A foul bitterness lathered his tongue, stringy threads of vegetable catching between his teeth. He fed for what seemed an eternity, his belly full and bloated. Yet soon enough a lighter darkness funnelled through a hole big enough to fit through. And free of whatever it was that had enthralled him, Etojo and his mini men soldiers ran.
Almost instantaneously laughter punctured the night once again, before bleeding into a scream. The giant pumpkin he'd left behind exploded. Chunks of pumpkin, some big, some small falling to the ground behind them like rocks from a volcanic eruption. Etojo chanced a glance behind, hang on… they weren't chunks, but pumpkin heads. A few surged through the air riding sticks, the rest hovering just off the ground. All cursed with pitless eyes flickering yellow as they chased with what he figured must be invisible and very fast legs.
But he and his men were fast too. Their little legs impossibly powerful, how they kept stride with him he'd never know. But then again he birthed them, of course they would be strong. Unfortunately for them his paternal instincts died there, for Etojo had a mostly self serving soul. His hooves digging into a mix of damp soil, rock and sand, pulling up on his haunches, his escape momentarily thwarted by the river's edge.
Violent and wild, he wouldn't swim across. The pumpkins closing behind them with an avalanche-like momentum. There was one way to save himself! Save himself, and not the rest.
"Form up!" He barked. And linking ankles and wrists together, they formed a tall tower ten little men thick, building higher and higher. His men were like ants, seemingly capable of incredible feats. And also like ants, he had more than enough. So when the pumpkin heads buried themselves amongst the tail end of his stragglers, angular teeth gnashing the slower soldiers to shreds. Etojo shrugged his shoulders and with an air of indifference barged the base of his man-made tower with his bloody chest.
Within three breaths there was a thump and a sacrificial splash as his men hit the other side. And without much care, Etojo leapt on his soldier's bodies and proceeded to cross, his weight probably crushing the unfortunate ones at the top.
"Disband!" he yelled once across. The bridge fell in parts into the water. The soldiers either swept away, drowned or eaten. Sacrifice had always served him well in the past.
And Etojo turned away, his normal brown eyes tracing the track of what looked like a particularly perilous mountain path before him.
The spotted child’s scream has barely left her lips, the echo not yet faded, when her body begins to change. She doesn’t know if it started after or before, and with nothing else to do she keeps on screaming. Four legs fuse into two, her back bends weirdly and small appendages sprout again from her new shoulders. The faded yellow dress still clings to her but it is tight, so tight, and then her face flattens and she subconsciously brings her hands to her face in horror. ”I can’t see!” It is not entirely true, but the loss of her peripheral vision into a more focused one makes her jerk her head left and right to try and see what is happening. All around her, horses are turned into what she assumes were their costumes, though she frowns at the bay horse that - under loud protest - is walking into the forest. What on earth had he dressed as?
The pain fades as quick as it had come, as if she had been struck by lightning again - nothing new there. She lies on the ground, disoriented as she tries to see and smell but finds that she has dulled senses in exchange for these suddenly sensitive appendages.
When the rhyme reaches her ears - belatedly, only through Five repeating it kindly for her (again and again and again) - she realizes that she has to cross. Well, thankfully Llorona knows how to run, for she has done so most of her life.
Too bad she only knows how to run on four legs.
She contemplates this, truly distracted by the thought, but then the groaning and creaking of living wood alerts her to the branch-fingers reaching for her and she has no time to lose. She starts to run in the only way she knows how - on hands and feet. It is hurtful because the hands are so sensitive, and inefficient as well, but at least she stays mostly out of reach. Her red hair frequently gets caught however, and oftentimes she is yanked to the forest floor. But Llorona knows that to stand still is to be struck - no, to die here, but she doesn’t have time to think about it.
It doesn’t take long for a witch to hit her with a spell. Green smoke explodes in her face and she lies on the floor, stunned, the roots of a tree grabbing her left stocking in an attempt to draw her to them, to bury her, eat her or otherwise bring her to her demise. She doesn’t care how they want her to die and really she shouldn’t; she cries and screams and when the stun-spell finally lets go, she yanks her foot free with a force she didn’t know she had. A loud snap tells her she broke it, or she broke the tree root? She couldn’t tell, but she continues on a limp.
She knows she isn’t going to make it. Pumpkin heads and trees enclose her, and another witch knows to hit her with a purple spell. She deforms, or so she believes, for this spell is all in her head. Her limping foot and hands full of thorns and scratches seem to melt before her eyes, and she can only crawl, crawl, then roll and slither until somehow she makes it to the river.
She slides into the cool water and welcomes death.
But the river disagrees. It is here to challenge her, not to give her respite. Piranhas and crocodiles come to her and bite her ankles, so that she wakes with a start. Flailing wildly, she sort-of surfaces, catches hold of some broomstick dropped by a with, and floats to the other side, where the river meanders onto a sandy, no, bone-dusted shore.
Eight is cackling again - or if it is not Eight, it may be one of those witches - the broomstick comes alive and smacks her backside until she moves. She crawls through the dust, coughing loudly, then makes it to a mountain. There is a cave and a path upward - caves had always been her hiding place when hiding from the lightning strikes, so she moves in that direction, still on hands and her one non-limping foot.
er stomach flips and flops, a fish gasping for air, wide mouth, gaping, eyes rolling in the back of its head. She is only now all too aware how dark it was. In the middle of the night, in the dead of night, the evening gloom. She is frightened. Elliana is scared. Scared and yet intrigued. There is something lurching in her chest, a line casting a hook into that fish’s mouth and yanking in forward in a shriek of pain. She is resistant, standing there with a hook in her mouth ready for the sharp tug, and yet she flies forwards, flying limbs. And Elliana makes her way into the woods, singing:
“And we all sit around the fire
We feel a little warmer now.”
Her body kicks and tumbles and rolls and twirls.
“And we all sit around the fire
We feel so much better now.”
She spins and sa-shays, and cartwheels, and frolics.
Until those steps become skips and those jitters are shaking hands, a goody basket suddenly grasped in her palm. Elliana has always been a little girl with wide eyes as if trying to take in the world in its entirety. And she stands as such as she halts in her trail. It is as if the sudden recognition of her body having morphed into something entirely different causes her to grow uncoordinated and imbalanced, in much the same way a cut doesn’t hurt until you see the blood. She crashes into the forest floor, the crunch of leaves rippling around her like the cracking of bones. The red hood slides down and onto her shoulders, revealing long blonde hair that quickly streams down her shoulders.
Shakily, she places those strange two feet underneath herself and rises up on knocking knees and unsteady arms that reach out sideways to balance herself. An invisible tightrope springs in front of her as she walks carefully one foot and then the other. Eventually, she finds that steady skip as she throws that hood back over her head—least the wolf finds her.
It is terrifying, exhilarating, chilling, and gratifying, this feeling in the woods. The girl with those devastatingly glass blue eyes. Strange things swoop down and close to her head and the girl ducks down, laughing. And whether those are giggles of enthrallment or terror, I will not tell you.
Trick or treat.
The tree branches, she had not imagined it, those arching branches reach towards her. She thinks for just a moment, let them take her, let them take her far, far away. To where Po fights gods, and where twin unicorns sit waiting for her with a rose to plant inside her chest. Let them reach into her chest and pull out her heart to make room to grow a garden.
(Of dread.)
(Of trepidation.)
The rushing of a river is seemingly the only thing to back those shaking trees away from her. Blue eyes close with a sweeping blink of long lashes before opening once more to the scene before her. As a pumpkin bobs past her like a bouy of fear rather than one of hope, Elliana steps into the current because she is more her mother’s daughter than she would ever want to be. But it is not Elena that comes to Elliana in this moment—but her flower horse. “Elliana,” Po says to her in a whisper brushing the back of her mind. “Stay clear of the River, but should you come too close: flow, do not fight.”
An enigma to the end, both too trusting and too apprehensive, that little girl lets go, shuts blue eyes. She raises an unfamiliar hand and pinches it against her nose, a strange action for the once equine, but one that feels right in the moment. That face is scrunched in an unattractive way, from fear? From concentration? She thinks she would rather be any where but here.
Even at the top of the world.
Elliana was raised on first a cliffside and then a castle, but dancing next to the edge of cliffs is where her heart will sing. So when the girl emerges from the river unscathed (teeth chattering, new skin bumpy with cold, and limbs shaking with ice) she looks to the mountain path and thinks of it not as a challenge—
But just the dance partner she has been waiting for.
She avoids the other partygoers out of habit, keeping far enough away that they are only lumbering shadows, far enough away that she does not have to see their faces when they become monsters and men, and they do not have to see her.
The first inkling that something is very wrong is the taste of pomegranate thick on her tongue. Without thinking, she raises a filthy hand to her mouth and it comes away dark with blood. Her gums are bleeding?
Hands.
Sintra stares at that bloodied hand for longer than he should, his breath quickening. Panic is creeping over him with burning electric fingers, tingling at his scalp and crawling down his temples. What magic is this? The shape is familiar, if only because it is the shape of the men on the battlefield, the shape of Hera, scowling from above with her thunderhead eyes and voice like lightning. Is he one of them, now, to fight in the gods' battles, to die, again?
There's an unpleasant tickle at his chest that the now-pirate thinks is sweat but when he looks down, he sees it is more blood, seeping from the spear-shaft wound in his chest that has broken open. It does nothing to soothe, not even knowing – how? - that it is the scurvy unhealing these wounds. How bad will they become? Will he die of them again? There’s laughter in the air, hideous laughter and the sound of wind moaning something too much like real words. The parrot squawks, still on his shoulder and badly agitated, and flaps its green wings hard against the man's head.
"AVAST! SCURVY DOG! DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES!"
Sintra jerks away from the bird's shrill voice in his ear and as he does so, trips over a large jar of dirt placed neatly beside his feet, narrowly avoiding being decapitated by a Reaper flying just at eye level, its scythe gleaming cruelly. It turns its faceless head, but does not stop to finish off the man on the ground. It has another victim in mind, perhaps, one less… unwashed.
“Any more bright ideas?” he grumbles with reluctant gratitude to the bright bird settling back on his shoulder with a pleased ruffle of its feathers.
*microwave beep*
Guess not. Sintra climbs clumsily to his strange legs, taking the parrot and the jar along (unsure to which he actually owes his thanks,) and ducks off the wide path into the forest, after the distant sound of water. The flat-bladed sword hacks ineptly at hawthorn branches, angering the trees enough that they redirect him to an ocean of low-lying fog, white and obscure in the moonlight.
“BLIMEY,” the parrot says, and, *fart noise.*
“It’s just fog,” Sintra says, knowing full well that it is not, but he wades into it just the same, clutching the jar with a white-knuckled grip. Halfway across, the bubbling begins and leafy tentacles wrap around his ankles, flinging Sintra back to shore where he lands with a yelp and the sound of breaking glass. Impossibly, from the shallows, an enormous kraken rises, its tentacles made of whipping green vines and its body a carved pumpkin with light pouring from its eyes and its crooked, horrible, grin. The beast roars into the night making the stars quake and the trees pull back from its fog-sea bed, and Sintra, on the bank, looks desperately for a way out but those wicked trunks pull too tightly together and there’s nowhere to go but across. He looks at the broken jar and wonders why he even brought it. The parrot lands above it on the rock that cracked the thick glass in two and pecks at the dirt.
“HEAVE-HO! IN YOUR GOB-AWK!”
The man stares at the bird and wonders if he is really going to take its advice. It had saved him once, maybe, and he has no other ideas. He has to get across the misty pool and he is either going to die cursing this bag of feathers, or he is going to live because of it, so he crawls to the pile of soft, ashy dirt and with cupped and filthy hands, does indeed “heave-ho" it into his "gob.”
Is he more startled that it does not taste like pomegranate, or that he wishes – desperately – that it did? But he swallows as much as he can before his stomach revolts and boils and a strange rushing feeling rises up against the back of his throat that he forces back down with a strangled sound, and then he stands up again and steps back into the mist.
The parrot, disturbingly, flies off to perch on a nearby branch.
Vine tentacles wrap around him again, around his waist and chest and arms, around his neck, and they pull him under the surface where everything is white and damp and cool, then abruptly he surfaces with just enough time to know that he is being pressed into a bright, fiery mouth. He can feel the moment his heart stops beating. The teeth are sharper than he expected but their edges mean nothing to deadened skin. The fire cannot burn his too-cool flesh. Instead, the livid furnace within darkens where he touches it and the krak-o-lantern makes a guttural whine. Like a grain of sand in an oyster, he's encased in something wet and mucus-y and then spit unceremoniously back to shore where he lands with a wet SPLAT.
The creature screeches again and disappears, leaving him on the other bank at the mouth of a cave, covered in pumpkin guts and seeds. Shamelessly, the parrot drops from the sky. It lands heavily on his chest and plucks a seed off his face which it eats with relish, pausing only long enough to cock its his to one side and focus a dark eye on the slimey, orange, pirate.
For a few rapturous minutes, Sawbone and the other party-goers all remain as horses sucked into ill-fitting costumes. For those minutes, the colt hardly moves, only stamping his front hooves anxiously into the leaf-strewn earth. He swears he can feel the faintest smattering of pumpkin-scented liquid (he opens his mouth to get a taste), before the too-tight clothes suddenly feel much looser. Saw breathes a sigh of relief while taking a step forward, smiling softly down at his platform—
Wait, where are his hooves? Then he blinks and he’s swinging fingers—fingers—up to his face.
“I am a hostage to my own humanity,” he whispers, then blinks again, because those were definitely not the vulgar words he was trying to say. “I am a hostage to my own humanity,” he says again, but the simple what the fuck won’t come out.
“There’s a story at the bottom of this bottle?” he says next, then sucks in a decidedly freaked out breath.
It’s in the moments he takes to understand why his thoughts are repeating the words welcome to the black parade that the cackling of the witches registers in his ears. Sawbone looks up from his shaking, pale hands just in time to see a fully nude, broom-riding woman hurtling at his face.
“The angel from my nightmare!” Saw screeches, then lurches into the mud and leaves and dirt. He flies into a rapid crawl, only hurling himself into a sprint when he’s certain the witch has passed. They close around him, though, he realizes. The echoing laughter isn’t the magic of one woman, but a plethora of them. They zip by as they cackle and call, leaving Saw to heave out breaths as he screams in fear, “You’re already the voice inside my head!”
The teenager is not faster than enchanted brooms, unfortunately; and the earth scratches his hands and legs as he falls over an arching root. Those frightened orange eyes peer up through strands of pink and black hair, watching as he counts at least eight magic women. “It’s not a war—no, it’s not a rapture,” Saw squeaks out on labored breaths.
“Hope dangles on a string,” he aches out, rolling to his side and curling into a ball.
They close in, growing more excited as they realize their plaything has given up. Their cackles and rhymes begin to drive Saw mad. He thinks he is to die tonight, cold and stuck in some foreign, emotion-struck body.
But those whispers and promises, the hissing and giggling of the gaggle of women—the effects are madness, crackling just beneath Saw’s skin. When the first drags of cruel fingers pass over the teenager’s arms, Saw launches upward, staring at the startled women with wide eyes.
After two heaving, desperate breaths, he screams:
“I chime in with a "Haven't you people ever heard of Closing the goddamn door?!" No, it's much better to face these kinds of things With a sense of poise and rationality I chime in, "Haven't you people ever heard of Closing the goddamn door?!" No, it's much better to face these kinds of things With a sense of Poise and rationality Again.”
The women all look at each other, then look back at him as if they might start laughing. Then they all fall to the ground one by one, a chorus of snores following. Saw drinks in the breath of a war-hero, then turns around. At the treeline is the Mountain, and directly in front of him is a cave. He stares at it as he approaches it, triumphant.
10-10-2021, 10:17 PM (This post was last modified: 10-10-2021, 10:19 PM by Beechbone.)
I think you are wearing part of my cothtume...
The words barely leave her lips when something happens to the girl in front of her. The change is so startling that Beechbone does not even notice that she has changed, too. At a year old, she is used to the clicking and popping and the unexplained pain of growing. She snuffles softly, staringly at the stranger who has suddenly turned into an absolutely enormous mouse, and whose ears are definitely not part of her own costume.
"Oh, my mistake, I'm sorry. Those are obviously your ears. And they're lovely round ears, they don't look costume-y at all." Her long whiskers tremble with the thought that she might have insulted the large mouse and she bunches her hand-paws nervously together, pressing them anxiously against the curve of her jaw. It's only when she does this that she feels how long and narrow it has become, how filled with needle-sharp teeth, and Beechbone, so used to being too large and too strong, finds herself to be another kind of monster, something that kills to eat, with a strange patchy coat and creepy clawy fingers and a long tail that curls like a snake around her. She grabs it up and hugs it close to her body then, on an impulse, she shoves it into the skin-pouch on her belly to hide it.
FLEE!
She turns, hissing, and trots away into the night, but she doesn't get far. It's just too awkward to run with her tail stuffed into her belly so the yearling soon stops and pulls it out again. In the distance she can hear the witches laughing and somewhere, there's a parrot screaming, but in the woods where she has stopped it is deathly silent, not even the dry leaves rustle on the ends of their bran--
Ooh, a piece of candy. Brightly wrapped in red cellophane, it shines mutely in the autumn starlight and she snatches it up as she did her tail before and shoves it into the recently vacated pouch. Nice. Being an opossum isn't that bad. An opossum? Is it an opossum or a opossum? The girl ponders the grammar of her new body idly, plucking more fallen candy from the ground. Where on earth did this all come-- Oh my god a full-size Snickers. It's fallen into the river, caught up on a couple of rocks forcing Beechbone to scurry across the gravelly banks to gain her prize. She looks across the river but it's deep and fast here and she does not feel confident in this body's ability to swim, but Jack had said they must cross the river and he seemed like he knew what he was talking about. The opossum shoves the snickers into her pouch (and also a pretty, smooth agate stone,) while her gaze runs up and down the wild banks. So much of the world dissolves into dimness, her vision is so poor, but not far upstream she sees lights and movement and so she heads for those signs of life. Perhaps someone there will help her?
As the lights come into focus, she can see better what is happening. Torches cast their yellow light fitfully, belching tarry smoke into the air and a slew of the undead are crossing back and forth, slowly. On the opposite bank, a half-built pyramid is taking shape. On the near bank, muffled shouting coming from a larger group of them at the top of a pyre, screaming that turns bloody and dies back to a soft whine when one of the zombies lifts something small and wet and lays it in a box. This happens again and again and when they are finished there is not even any groaning anymore, and the wrapping begins. Beechbone frowns and hugs at the candy in her pouch possessively. They are not getting it back, that's for sure, but she does need to get across and their bridge is so convenient.
How perfect is it that she is an opossum right now and can play dead? The large opossum stands up on its back legs and begins walking stiffly towards the bridge, its forelegs outflung. When it reaches the crossing the undead army begins to swarm around her, ready to grab up the intruder. Their Pharoah requires more mummified servants and mounts and women and food and... opossums? Why not? But Beechbone parts her wide, terrifying mouth, and with a dying groan that would do any normal-sized opossum proud, she begins chanting.
"Imhotep," the undead around her shift, unsure. She says it again, "Imhotep."
"Imhotep," one replies.
"Imhotep," Beechbone says again and is answered by a legion of voices.
"Imhotep. Imhotep. Imhotep. Imhotep." They cross the bridge slowly, chanting the name the whole way across, and when they've reached the other side, Beechbone slows until she's at the very back of the crowd, backing around the corner of the pyramid, her Imhoteps becoming a mere whisper and then nothing at all. When the crowd has passed, she darts back into the shadows, pausing between a pair of old elm trees to crunch up the red candy and peer at the dark trail meandering up the Mountain's side.
