Riptide Isles played it so nonchalant - Printable Version +- the Rift (http://riftrpg.net) +-- Forum: Archives (http://riftrpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=20) +--- Forum: Year 1173 (http://riftrpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=29) +---- Forum: Incompleted (http://riftrpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=26) +---- Thread: Riptide Isles played it so nonchalant (/showthread.php?tid=635) |
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played it so nonchalant - Melita - 08-27-2017
Before they’d fallen into the Rift’s jagged catacombs and consuming void, Melita had been brave, stalwart, and intrepid. Her smile burst like the sun, kissed by fire and temptation, her motion, her movements, abrupt, haphazard, and silly – exuberant and filled with heartwarming endeavors. Her essence had been whittled from adventure and audacity, plunging herself into sea swirls or monstrous caves, dancing in puddles, remarking in wonder, in delight, at the mystical properties and illusions Helovia had always offered; but here, here where snakes crawled and demons loomed, she was out of her element. She’d been cherished and protected by her mother, by her sister, by the intoxicating hums of the Throat and its draconic declarations – apprehension had only built in her veins when the unknown had been too vast or grand. Amidst this untamed, savage wilderness, however, she couldn’t remember a time where she wasn’t on edge, where her eyes didn’t follow the lines of shadows, where she didn’t turn at the snap of a twig, at the haunting promise of barbaric beings (just around the corner, always watching, always waiting). It’d reduced her to the child she was – Helovia had given her a sense of everything all at once, and the Rift sought to snap it away from her puffed chest and her emboldened throngs, chipping until she was naught more than a babe lost in the woods. She’d seen phantoms and wraiths, she’d heard infidels and cretins, she’d watched friends flicker, falter, and splinter apart, and she didn’t want to be the same. The little honeybee girl strived for persistence, for fortitude, to be able to instigate that might, that valor, that strength she’d embodied since her birth, but it’d been spun into chaos, rebellion, and fear.
It was all she felt as she maneuvered around the riptide pools and the colossal waves, struggling not to whimper, not to lower her head, not to cower at the ways of this ridiculous earth. She’d yet to see her dam (the demonic form didn’t count; still trailed her in murmurs of despair), she tried to protect her sister and Iskra to little or no avail, attempted to reach out past the rubble, the ruins, the lines of constant, unwinding bombardments, and everything continued to escalate. It drew against her shoulders, her senses, her mind, so even as Sila reached out with her fledgling beak and wings, the girl shuddered, moved away, tried to find a sanctuary amidst bedlam. “I’m sorry,” she said softly to the little bird, trembling like a leaf in the wind – weak, so weak, and the notion made her skin crawl, because she’d never been like that – a being made of action and fortitude, not of terror and trepidation. Her mind raced and her motions were a frenetic, uneasy dance, skirting along the darkness, presuming there were eyes in the wood, in the sea, in the great beyond, hungering, breathing down her neck until there’d be naught, she’d be nothing (just bones, just ash, just dust careening across the shoal). She begged for release from the tethers, from the blight, from the damned, forsaken chains splitting and nailing her to the sepulchers; nearly screamed, shouted, and cried for help (but there’d be none – there was hardly anything, anyone, to trust, and the rest of the world were preoccupied with their own dilemmas and strifes; she wouldn’t dare ask Iskra, Clementine, Otem, or the scores of strangers). In an instant, she ran across the sandy shore at a maddening tear, limbs flailing, wings outstretched, ready to leap, ready to jump, into anything that would rid her of this plague. Her eyes fell to a shrub nearby, and in some fanciful moment of clarity, she remembered her mother’s abilities as a healer, how she sometimes tended to inhabitants of the Throat with more than magic. Her motions ceased abruptly, lowering her maw towards the bush, pondering if this would be enough to sate her wishes, or drive her to the brink. Sila screeched out several warnings, alarms, shaking her head, but the girl was beyond listening, staying true to form, diving headfirst into either calamity or sanctum. Melita’s maw sank over the blooms, chewing methodically, hoping for some salvation in the coming burst of flavor (somewhat sweet), but when the paranoia wouldn’t cease, when the eyes continued to watch her, when the buzzing, the droning, didn’t stop, she went further. In desperation, in destruction, she uprooted the entire hedge, sinking her ivories into the roots, yearning to cry out for her mother. {For Melita’s trial!} Melita the fires found a home in me @Savera RE: played it so nonchalant - Zubari - 09-28-2017 RE: played it so nonchalant - Melita - 10-07-2017
There were a few, brief moments where nothing happened – the droning was still there, buzzing between her ears, unpleasant, raw, and blistering, crawling across her skin like pungent notes and persistent chords. She nearly folded and broke apart, because she had naught else she could think of, no magic to curb the restless, unrelenting acrimony, the disastrous sounds, the incredible, disturbing paranoia (a hiss - we’re coming for you). Then she breathed, gulped, and gasped for air, and seemed released from the obstinate prison – no feral calamity rushing towards her, no spiraling waves of apprehension, and she couldn’t recall feeling so relaxed, so at peace, caught and lined in repose. The girl nearly laughed, shaking her head, incredibly pleased with her abilities, with her notions, finally cured of the malicious zeal; but then everything spiraled before her, the sun, the moon, the stars, the heavens, and she didn’t know which way was up, which way was down, where lines crossed and if there was a center, a whole, anything beyond the void. Her legs shifted beneath her and she had no control, forelegs drifting at odd angles, so when she looked down they seemed disconnected, surreal, parts of the phantoms and wraiths – giggling, flustered, incapable of doing anything other than staring into the abyss. “Why-“ she started to utter, gaze attempting to focus on Sila, yearning for answers when the rush of hysteria left her and the unknown, the savagery, filled in the empty spaces. But little Melita couldn’t get past the first word, grinning stupidly into the day, into the night, chasing down petals and butterflies and warbles of a different time, a different place, calling out with singsong tunes and whimsical, mercurial motions. She could almost feel Sila reaching out to her, warning her of no more, but it was already too late for that, and the world was spinning, spinning, spinning, and she’d be lost, she’d be gone, and naught would matter any more-
A voice called out through the haze, and she blinked, focusing on shifting shadows, on a darkened, horned presence she couldn’t remember (not that she would; her mind was mush and her methods were inept). His voice sounded far away and too close all at the same time, and this was monstrously, wickedly funny to her, a fairy delight in the den of demons and heathens, so even as she stumbled and fell upon her side, she kicked at the air and giggled, smiled in a drugged delirium. “Mother gave herbs to others,” the honeybee child proclaimed, as if this explained everything, drove away the questions, the lecture, the omens, the inevitable irritation. “The droning is gone now,” she sang, pupils dilated, eyes roaming from color to color, hue to hue, darkness to darkness, incapable of focusing on one thing or another, a piece of the fluttering breeze and the incoming storm. They only rested on him for a moment before drifting to either Sila or the sky, asking the air rather than his being. “Are you a monster too?” {For Melita’s trial!} Melita the fires found a home in me @Zubari {Thank you so much Dressy!} |