Rainforest Cliffs
08-29-2017, 02:41 AM
 this town is only gonna get worse Vegetation claws at your flanks. The farther you journey, the thicker the forest closes in. Shadows scurry and press against the trunks just beyond the scope of your vision. Pricked ears follow their movements with care but you don't know what you're tracking. If they're even alive. The horror of this place rubs off on your skin and clings to you like grease. You want to go home, but for the first time in your life, there is no home to go back to. It aches. Like colic would feel, you think: a sick sucking pain buried deep in your guts. But pain at least is easy to spin into other things - into action. It's a reason to hate this place, to learn whatever gods made it and then teach them the might of your own deities, true deities. You want to break this new world open at the seams. It keeps you going, at least: through the dark, past the sickly lights dancing like winsome faeries between the trees. The farther you go, the heavier the air pools in your lungs: damp and green. Despite the cool touch of the air against your flanks, lines of salt crust your black skin like the cliff sides back home. Exhaustion is an anchor, a steady weight. It cries against rage for dominating force in your psyche. A vine slithers over your back. Wings raised in alarm stare bleakly, blackly, brokenly out. Rage wins. Still you're gritting your teeth when you reach the apex of your climb. And.... what did you think you might find, again? Was it the salt on the air calling you forward? Reminding you of home? But this is not home. This is a sheer drop overlooking the dance of foreign waves, and your stomach churns as your neck hangs over the edge. Once, once upon a time (a couple of hours ago) you'd have grinned to yourself and unfolded those beautiful god-given wings of yours and you'd have soared out to the distant speck of land rising from the tides. But not anymore. Not - here. Ill temper, already filling you, overflows, and breath heaves from your lungs in a long, angry grunt. "...Fuck." You are not about to turn around and haul your sorry ass back through that hell thicket. No. You're.... you don't know, and you're angry about it. The feeling shudders out of you and your face snaps toward a floating point of pink light a few yards away. "Where am I supposed to fucking go?" you demand. Punctuating the sentence with a vengeful kick at nothing in particular, you send a piece of branch hurtling back into the darkness like a poorly made boomerang. Your attention follows its progress until it progresses no more. Then the light is gone. Maybe it was never there. The cliff still is, of course. And the water. And the jungle. And you - you're thinking you could really use a nap. VIRGA |
