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+--- Thread: The Breath of Thal [closed] (/showthread.php?tid=7194)
The Breath of Thal [closed] - Twinflame - 05-18-2014
D'aijeen arrived on the ship from the Silver Bazaar in the late afternoon. The cool wind from the sea stirred up the heat of the desert and they spun around one another, pulling on her robes and the bangs hanging out from under her green hood. Her face was downcast; she didn't even look up as the boat moored itself to the small pier and the ferryman disembarked. The burly Hyur who stank of salt and old fish lingered near the boat, beckoning for D'aijeen to step out and telling her over and over that they had arrived. She heard him, but she couldn't move, sitting with her face down, staring at the blood that still stained her clothes beneath her green traveling robe.
Her clothes, which had always been so immaculately white, stained now with the blood of her... What would she even call D'ahl, now that she was dead? A passing acquaintance? She had loved D'ahl, but had not thought of her as... and in the end... the hound...
The Hyur man stomped on the edge of the boat, making it sway to get her attention.
"I am aware that we have arrived!" D'aijeen leapt up. She didn't feel the motion, but she was on the pier in a moment, dizzy but standing steadily. Her stance was wide, the muscles in her body so tight that she might have been stone encased in skin. Her tail stuck out straight behind her, her ears squeezing her skull, the muscles on her face palpably contorted into hideous shapes. She listened to herself shouting, "Such a barbaric, empty-headed animal to not give a woman a moment's peace! Where are you in such a hurry to? What grave or miserable pit must you so urgently drag your massive, hideous carcass to that you would protest to me! Your voice is like the belch of a corpse cut open, but I pity the insects in whatever pit you go to, for your stench exceeds the breath of Thal himself!"
"Shit, lady," the man stepped back and raised his hands. "You're the one who smells like Thal's breath. Calm down."
"Begone!" Something ripped out of the shadows between D'aijeen's robe and her body, falling through the planks on the pier and sliding outward. The wood beneath the Hyur man broke upward, throwing him out over the water. He landed half-on his own boat and then slid into the water with a confused wail. In the shadows beneath the pier, a man-faced, ink-black Voidsent retreated like a snake returning to its hole.
D'aijeen took a step back from it just before the thing melted and rose back towards her, slipping beneath her robe once more. "Stop! I don't want you!" She shouted, shifted, spun and stumbled to try and get away from it, but she could feel the chill of the Baalzephon pressing against her skin. "You killed her! It was you, not me!" She ripped the robe from her body and threw it towards the water. the Voidsent remained inside of it, resigned to the shadows. But as D'aijeen crossed her blood-stained arms over her chest and ran down the pier towards the town, sobbing quietly, others moved in the small shadow beneath her feet, chasing her. The cactuar earring bounced beside her tussled hair, its face dappled with dried red droplets.
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Ildur - 05-18-2014
Crescent Cove's coastline was littered with fishing nets hanging over the beach, hurriedly placed over wooden frames, with both men and women going from one to the other to capture the catch of the day and clean them from all the other messy junk the sea threw at them. The town itself was nothing but a handful of wooden shacks and houses, with no tavern or inn. Travelers had to rely on the good will, and greed, of the locals.
K'airos had been such a traveler for some time. She was ways off to a side of the village, perched on a rock overlooking the nearby beach, deep in thought. Close to her was another, smaller rock with two long protrusions on the front, two really wide ones next to them and about half a dozen smaller ones to each side, clawing their way into the sand. Nearby, there was a large brown sack, and a scimitar resting against the sand, at arm's reach.
Besides moving rocks, there was something else odd about K'airos. The miqo'te woman was lying on her stone viewpoint with the head hanging from the edge, staring at the limbed rock a few falms away. She was dressed in strangely white clothes that didn't fit her shape: they were too tight on the sides, and the front. And everywhere, if she payed attention. A white bilaud with a carefully tied pink bow, a white hat adorned with a silver ornament on the front. At least the hat fit comfortably over her head. Her looks were broken by the sudden black boots covering her feet. But there was something else. K'airos' red hair was now a pale green, and so were her lips.
From the pier, the woman looked like a bright white smudge against a brown cliff.
"I should teach you tricks!" she said cheerfully to the living rock. It did not answer, but she felt the need to continue. "Maybe you could open the door for us. Or peel potatoes! Your pincers are good for that, right?"
The rock raised its antennae slightly and, for a brief moment, it looked like it looked at its own limbs in confusion.
"Great! I'm glad you agree with the idea!" the girl said, clapping her hands together and rolling off her rock. With this action, she noticed another mostly white figure with green hair and a tail arriving on the piers and moving quickly across them. She smiled, took a deep breath and brought both hands towards her mouth.
"Aijeen! Over here!"
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Twinflame - 05-18-2014
The voice pierced through all the panic and screaming thoughts inside of D'aijeen's head, and she stopped in her tracks, leaning forward and bending at her knees. She coughed and brushed tears at her face. The sleeves of her robe were almost more red than white, all with blood from the night before. For a moment, she was almost afraid to look up at K'airos, unwilling to face the sister that she so adored, and that had chosen someone else over her. Everything D'aijeen had tried to make that right had failed. They had collapsed dramatically that somehow, something inside of her had twisted until she had summoned a beast to... No. no, that hadn't been her! She hadn't willed that! She'd been desperate to stop it!
Part of her blamed K'airos' betrayal for what had happened to D'ahl. If K'airos hadn't lied to her, D'aijeen would not have tried to renew the love between herself and her mother. If she hadn't done that, D'ahl would not have felt betrayed and would not have tried to hurt the woman. Then D'aijeen would not have been so angry. She would not have chased D'ahl down in the night. She would not have...
D'aijeen pulled on her ears violently. Her mind was suddenly full of images from the night before, of the silent fountain, of D'ahl crying alone in the dark, of the monster stepping from the shadows summoned by D'aijeen's fury. D'ahl hanging from its teeth. Her body dashed against the stone again and again, ripped into, split nearly in two. Blood flying everywhere. The dead look in D'ahl's eyes. Screaming.
Voidsent stirring beneath her feet, D'aijeen lifted her eyes to look at K'airos. And D'aijeen broke.
She collapsed to her knees at first in sobs, but only for an instant, and then threw herself forward in desperation. K'airos stood in the sunlight, in the beach she'd been so happy about visiting together. The woman's red hair had turned green, her lips painted green, her Brass Blades uniform traded out for a too-tight white ensemble obviously stolen from D'aijeen's own wardrobe. The girl had disguised herself as D'aijeen. It was ridiculous. It was annoying. It was adorable. It was K'airos, and everything she loved about her.
D'aijeen cried out wordlessly as she ran, embarrassed by the base disregard of the gesture but unable to contain it. She was still crying, felt herself shivering and numb all the way to the tip of her tail, but she didn't care. She ran to her sister, threw herself bodily at the woman and clutched at her, and just cried.
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Ildur - 05-18-2014
K'airos smile broke down into a thin line when her eyes noticed that the red on her sister's clothes was actually blood, and then her expression broke again into mild despair.
"What happened? Are you hurt?" she asked, eyes wide open. She glanced at her without letting go, and she quickly concluded that there were no wounds to worry about. Only a gross red color covering her attire. She knelt down, letting Daijeen rest her head against her shoulder.
"What happened?" she asked again, her voice lowering. Behind them, the limbed rock moved closer to them and stared at the shadows below them.
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Twinflame - 05-18-2014
"I don't know." D'aijeen collapsed against her sister, pulled herself as close as she could get, and then closer still. If it weren't for her weak body,s he might've crushed her sister from her desperation to pull herself into the woman's lap. "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know I don't know I don't I don't I didn't do it! It wasn't me!" She couldn't stop herself from crying or talking, blubbering senseless words at her sister. D'aijeen choked, tried to hold her breath, tried anything to stop herself from crying and reclaim her mind, but nothing changed. She felt like she was bleeding out her sorry, coughing it up like blood. It was not that the warmth and closeness of her sister was not reassuring; it was strengthening beyond compare. But it merely promised that she would recover. It could not stop the sadness before it was exhausted.
"D'ahl is dead!" she finally managed. "She died! I couldn't stop it. I wanted to stop it. I didn't want it to happen! I didn't want it to!" She pulled at the bow on her sister's chest. "K'airos, say it's not my fault. I didn't do it! I wouldn't do something like that! Tell me I didn't do it!"
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Ildur - 05-18-2014
"Of course you didn't!" K'airos' answer was quick, a reaction from her instincts. She had no idea what had transpired. Her sister was stained with blood, but she dared not to imagine anything. It didn't matter right now. She felt that her duty as a sister was to soothe D'aijeen first and ask later. Or perhaps never ask about it. She rubbed her shoulder reassuringly.
"It's not your fault. Do not blame yourself." she said, and repeated those words two more times, moving her body back and forth, cradling her in her arms. "Just cry until you feel better, alright? Crying will do you good. Don't hold it!"
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Twinflame - 05-18-2014
She did cry. She wouldn't have been able to stop herself, but with K'airos' permission, she stopped trying not to cry. She tried to cry all the more. D'aijeen cried for her sister, shaking in the woman's hands. As she cried, she tried to say, "I wanted to fix everything. I wanted everything to be better for us. I went to mom and talked to her, but D'ahl got jealous. And then D'ahl and mom fought, and D'hein got angry, and that Lalafel attacked D'ahl! Everything just fell apart. I tried to fix everything but it just fell apart! It's not my fault. I tried. I tied. Everyone was so terrible and I couldn't do anything." She wailed, "I wanted to make everything perfect for you but I couldn't! I'm sorry." D'aijeen hadn't expected herself to apologize, had almost forgotten that it was for K'airos that she'd been doing everything. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Ildur - 05-18-2014
K'airos had trouble understanding the words mixed with the crying. She catched glimpes of it, and made a mental picture with what she got: There was D'hal, a lalafell and a fight. That tiny creature must have been her murderer. But there was also her mother. It could not be the woman called Antimony, for she wasn't her mother, and D'aijeen had just said "mom". Not a pretender or a fraud. Not Antimony. Just "mom".
She almost smiled at that.
Yet she did not. While she was forming these images in her head, she immediately threw them all away, one by one. There was nothing to think about. Nothing mattered more than her crying sister.
"That's alright. You did nothing wrong!" the words came out quickly, pushed by her sisterly instincts. "It wasn't your fault." she told her once more. And then again: "You don't have to apologize. It's not your fault!"
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Twinflame - 05-18-2014
The words helped. K'airos was the only person in the world whose words meant anything anymore. D'aijeen closed her eyes and held close to her sister, feeling the movement of her chest as she breathed, smelling that unmistakable scent that had been with her for all the best parts of her life. Truly, if there was anywhere in this world that love existed, then it was where K'airos was. If any person who was truly capable of it, then it was only K'airos. And herself. For what else could this be?
It was exactly what her mother did not feel for her.
"Airos." D'aijeen lay her head against her sister's chest, lay her hands flat against her body. "Why are you dressed as me?"
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Ildur - 05-18-2014
She failed to see the change of subject coming, and so her words strumbled into each other awkwardly, forming a meaningless sound. She tilted her head, looking into the sea. "Well, you told me nobody but you should find me." she started after a short cough. "So...I thought...after a while...that if I was here as a Brass Blade somebody could recognize me. Then I dressed up as you, because if anybody was looking for me, they wouldn't be looking for you! And you wouldn't confuse me with you, because you are you and you know that I am not you! So you could recognize that you were really me! Except I wasn't...you, so you couldn't really confuse me with yourself! But others could...you know, confuse me with you and then they wouldn't find me."
K'airos felt satisfied with her logic once she was done explaining it. She turned her head again to look at the odd living and limbed rock behind them. It clicked its pincers together. She thought that it must have been applauding at her cleverness.
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Twinflame - 05-18-2014
"That's very clever," D'aijeen said, playing with the bow on her sisters chest. She sniffled, the crying having slowed by the tears still flowing down her cheeks. She pressed herself firmly against her sister, closing her eyes again. "Airos, I command you to forget every comman I've given you. Think whatever you want about anything."
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Ildur - 05-18-2014
It took a very long moment for her emotions and thoughts to catch up to each other. Her mother, K'piru, and the imposter called Antimony were the same. She always knew that, but just now her mind could actually accept it in the same way she had accepted it as a fact, back in Drybone. Her tribe was alive and well. D'aijeen had lied to her about her own't family's death, and of her tribe.
K'airos remained there, kneeling by her sister, cradling her between her arms.
After what must have been a full minute, she tilted her head and looked down, smiling. "I think...!" she cheered "...that we should get you cleaned up. and changed! And then we can eat something. But not here. All the food gives me a tummyache. So we should go to the Bazaar, or to Vesper Bay. Spend a couple of days there by the beach! We could even go swimming! Or rent a boat! Shelly will be our first mate!"
She finished by looking and pointing with one hand to the living rock. It was still clicking its pincers together. K'airos smiled broadly, identifying it as another proof of smallshell aproval.
"See? He agrees! It's a good idea!"
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Ildur - 05-18-2014
((Ugh! Double post))
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Twinflame - 05-18-2014
Wishing she could cry again, D'aijeen just curled up tighter against her sister, eyes pinching shut. "You still want to," she breathed, her tone embarrassingly high, cracking. Knowing everything, having a clear image of it, completely in control of her every thought and action, she still chose D'aijeen. It was real, her real sister, really loving her.
"Airos." D'aijeen lifted herself away from her sister for just a moment, grabbed her head in both hands and turned the woman's face to look at her. And then she lay her body against K'airos' body, and her lips against K'airos' lips, still crying, but happy.
RE: The Breath of Thal [closed] - Ildur - 05-18-2014
That was the second thing K'airos had not seen coming that day. Her instincts kicked off again almost immediately by demanding a sudden and forceful action. But how could she? Her sister had witnessed someone's death, and she had come to her, broken, covered in blood and tears, looking for reassurance and soothing. Pushing her away could destroy that. She had to react firmly, and yet she couldn't.
She placed her hands on D'aijeen's shoulders and gently pushed her away, creating space between them. Her eyes were anchored at D'aijeen's shoulders. She frowned and opened the mouth twice, and twice she failed to say anything. Then she tried a third time, and something did come out of her. "Is that a...a thing of the Dodo Tribe?" she asked, trying to find excuses for her sister's behaviour, even though she had no idea of what any of that tribe's customs were actually like. "That's not something that sisters do. We should talk about that..." she said, and then quickly added in a forced new cheerful tone that was almost the same as the real one: "But first we should get you a new set of clothes! And introduce you to Shelly!"
She stood up, and tried to make D'aijeen stand up with her. She didn't wait for her to answer or say anything, interrupting any possible reply with more words that were increasingly upbeat.
"Maybe we could learn to sail! That'd be a nice change from Thanalan. Oh, and go shopping! Vesper Bay must have some Lominsan wares before and cheaper than in the city! And I hear they have a pretty statue of a lalafell lord. Some...Lolorito guy? I don't know who he is, but he has his own statue!"