This forum uses cookies
This forum makes use of cookies to store your login information if you are registered, and your last visit if you are not. Cookies are small text documents stored on your computer; the cookies set by this forum can only be used on this website and pose no security risk. Cookies on this forum also track the specific topics you have read and when you last read them. Please confirm whether you accept or reject these cookies being set.

A cookie will be stored in your browser regardless of choice to prevent you being asked this question again. You will be able to change your cookie settings at any time using the link in the footer.

Hello There, Guest!

| Register
Home » Search » Roster » Whitepages » Records » FAQ » Guidebook
if you and I can make it through the night
RP Wanted The Portal 
Taivas the Hopebringer
Currently championing: Reszo
#11
Ah, this is contentment.

Sitting before the fire with her companion beside her, Taivas has of sense of being home, something she has been missing for weeks now.  Even thinking back to the state of the Fields prior to her leaving, she would guess this feeling had been missing for longer - months, even.

This sensation grows inside her as the boy answers, granting her a name to match his face.  Waker, a curious name, to be certain.  The title seems to match his coloring, a dark, dreamlike name.  An ocean at night.  Taivas nods in recognition that she heard him, watching as he struggles to draw in another breath, deeper into his lungs.  I'm Waker.

He surpasses her expectations of conversation in his current state.  The small collection of words hardly anything, but more than enough to assure her that he would be fine once the cold was sapped from his skin by the fire.  At least, he would be fine physically.

Taivas had no way of knowing where his thoughts took him.  Judging by his level of exhaustion, even taking into account the hypothermia which wracked his body with violent shivers and threatened his life, he had travelled long and hard prior to ending up here in the Rift.  The shaman knew her own journey here had been long and arduous, which is why she had not realized her universe shifting into this fractured world at first.  Fatigue blurs your vision and dulls your senses.

While she had been seeking refuge in her mother's former home, what had Waker been after?  Why had he run his body ragged?

She doesn't ask.
Curiosity doesn't outweigh her naturally quiet disposition, at least not today.  She suspects it could be nothing positive, for desperation rarely arises from pleasant circumstances. All the more reason not to bother with questions.

So, she settles on remaining a quiet companion for him.  Nodding once more, the moonlit girl turns back to look at the fire.  A sense of pride that she sparked it into life warms her cheeks all the more.
""
So seize the day 'Cause you have come so far
Watched a million frowns turn into smiles
Lost all track of time Felt the energy of a million stars
You'll feel love again after the rain
Taivas
Waker
Currently championing:
#12
WAKER
Warming up is not a pleasant experience. You've known this for a long time, but until tonight, it has, mostly, been a theoretical knowledge. You've been rain-soaked and shivering many times, but the discomfort has been brief—your strangely numb skin itching, cold beneath the tentative touch of your plush muzzle, yet it felt as if you were on fire. Your homeland is not a cold place, but you've heard tales from wanderers, about the dangers of the snow and the freezing season. How, as your body temperature drops too low, you'll actually feel warm again, too warm, and, perhaps, mistakenly stumble out of whatever shelter you had.

You don't think you ever came to that point today. You think, but you're not sure, that you stopped shivering for a bit, but as the fire breathes life back into you, you certainly started doing it again. It makes you feel very strange. There's just too many sensations, and they contradict themselves.

Taivas doesn't answer after you give her your name, twice. You're not sure you expected her to, and somewhere, you agree with her, that maybe it is for the best. You are, after all, awfully tired and worn.

Eventually, she looks away from you, back at the little fire she's made. You gaze absently at her face a little longer, before you follow suit. Your eyelids droop. The flame flickers beyond your eyelashes.

You don't want to admit to having failed, to having lost; you don't want to let go. You want to shake yourself awake, to force yourself up on aching, stumbling legs, take wing in the dark winter night and fly back the way you had come. You want to make it to the southern rampart, you want to do what little you can.

You don't want to waste time.

But you have to.

You're not going to just swallow that you're stuck here, but for the moment, you definitely are. You've been unable to save patients before—it's a bitter feeling coursing through your veins as life goes out underneath your touch, but in those cases, at least you did something. You were there, even if you were too late.

Now, you're not. It stings. You let your eyes close against the soothing fire, pressed tight in denial. You know what you should do—you should forgive yourself, and drift into the darkness of healing sleep, but you're afraid to. What if you can still return, but your chance will be lost in a few hours..?

It is a pointless argument. You can't even stand, Waker. Tears sting the corners of your closed eyes, mixing with the rain and sweat and snow drying there, and silently, calmly, you cry yourself to sleep.
Taivas the Hopebringer
Currently championing: Reszo
#13
She does not notice as he falls into a fitful sleep. Instead, her soft eyes are focused on the fire, dancing cheerfully amid the gloom of their hallowed out trunk.

When Taivas finally does notice her company is asleep, she smiles. A wane expression, it barely qualifies to hold the title. Quietly, she slips up to fan the flames, feeding it more kindling to keep it bright and merry. The crackle and hiss sound more like laughter in her mind, for through her fatigue she feels satisfied and pleasant.

And thus begins the cycle. Looking toward Waker's softly breathing figure every once in a while, then back to the flames decorating the walls with kaleidoscopic patterns of light and shadow, lifting up occasionally to build the fire and fan the delicate tongues to life, and finally settling back down to the earth - only to repeat until morning.

As the first pale light breaks through the branches, Taivas looks to Waker's formerly sodden form. She stands up, walking quietly over to him before dipping her head low toward his body. The glass beads woven into her mane chirp along with the fire in the cool morning air. Her dark, starry eyes scan his body to see he is more or less dry, though perhaps still damp where flesh meets the earth.

For a moment, the shaman pauses, hovers beside the boy strewn across the floor indelicately. She thinks of staying until he awakes from his slumber, but knows the morning will chase away the fearsome creatures of the night. The fire in front of the little cove will be less noticeable, and also serve to ward away smaller predators. She deems him safe, whether or not she is here to offer her own meager protection.

The little moon takes another look at the sleeping boy before turning. She feeds the fire one last time, fanning gently before walking out of the entrance, lifting off into the sky without looking back.
""
So seize the day 'Cause you have come so far
Watched a million frowns turn into smiles
Lost all track of time Felt the energy of a million stars
You'll feel love again after the rain
Taivas
Waker
Currently championing:
#14
WAKER
She's gone when you wake up.

You can't fault her for it—you're a bit of meaningless driftwood washed up on shore, something she fished out of the ocean, shook out, and hung to dry. In the absence on the sun she made one herself, and at some point, satisfied that the sea would not take you back, she left.

If it wasn't for the embers glowing hotly in their cradle, you would've thought her nothing more than a fever dream, but as it stands, she has to be real. You wouldn't have made a fire. You wouldn't have thought of it. You wouldn't have known how.

Still, it's a bitter way to wake up, abandoned by your savior. She picked you up at the doors of death but left you in a black ocean of a different kind. You blink in the pallid light of the new winter's day. You still can't fault her for it, and the disappointment stinging your heart is a brief whisper. After all, you know nothing about her. She put you back together and got you somewhere warm; what more can you ask? For her to mother you? For her, a stranger, to guide you through the darkness you feel beckoning on the edges of your still-fuzzy mind?

You're insane, Waker. She was right to get out while she could, without having to feel guilty about having killed you by leaving you in the awfully cold world.

You lay where she left you for a long, long time, sprawled on your side. You ache all over. You want to stretch. You need to piss. You're hungry. The embers cool and flicker and die to dull gray sparking with red and orange each time the breeze finds your shelter. You wish sleep would come back, so you can forget in the blissful oblivion, but you know it won't come. For better or for worse, you're awake now.

Hours pass, and light begins to wane. You waited for her, but she didn't come back.

In the end, you get up, hesitantly, like a newborn colt stumbling on awkwardly long and weak legs. You drag your wings to your sides and make it to the lip of the shelter, resting a feathery shouldered against the rough, old bark. The world beyond is foreign and frightening, and smells of things it shouldn't.

Eyes flicker in the trees. The shadows seem to glow with light, a perplexing contradiction of the very nature of shadows, and you shiver as the cold air slips through your thin summer coat. You need food, and you need it fast, or your saving will have been for nothing.

Feeling both mulish and dejected, you trudge into the white world, wings close for the warmth trapped between the feathers. You've lost everything but yourself, and as you disappear from the shelter and the memories of yesterday, you're thinking that you might as well lose that as well. You're not sure you'll be wanting the pieces of yourself.

[ The end. <3 ]