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Home » Search » Roster » Whitepages » Records » FAQ » Guidebook
Burn Card
RP Wanted The Portal 
Otem the Hopebringer
Currently championing:
#1
there are no markings on her country roads
no signs that show the way back home


This is what you see.

A girl the colour of autumn, well, but that wasn't quite right, and if we're going to start this again, we might as well do it properly. Otem couldn't be the colour of autumn, for autumn holds the warm and whispering winds. It conjures sentiments of sun dappled lazy afternoons. Autumn is warm and inviting and promises an eternity of laughter and magic. In comparison to that list of adjectives Otem really had no meaningful similarities.

Otem was various shades of brown and a few splotches of what (if we're being generous) might even be called gold. She is somewhere between girl and woman, adorned with horns and wings and a companion she calls Pandora.

And she is simply standing and staring.

But, if you could really see, you would see self-pity and self-importance mixing in equal parts in her bi-coloured eyes. Whispers of wanting and longing and loss cover her, making her elegant and long frame appear slumped and hollow. Otem holds her wings around her shoulders and if asked why, she might poetically try to say something about how there was no one else to do it for her.  But that wasn't really what she felt, it just seemed like the type of thing she ought to say.

The truth was, she just felt empty. 

Gazing at the place where the Helovian's had been birthed into this place, Otem tried to silently demand answers from the world around her. She had once trusted the Rift, but then youth and pride had quieted the voice of the Rift that had once guided her. 

"I'm tired." She said to the owl on her withers as she drew a long breath. 

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You may always use magic/force on/against Otem.
Raein
Currently championing:
#2
I wished impossible things on blue stars that never came true
There are few things in the world quite as beautiful as youth.

At first, the world is shining brightly.  Every petal on every flower, every leaf upon every tree, every hair on every living creature - all of it shines with the wonderment of discovery.  The sensation of newness pours loose from every crevice of the world, filling your mind and lifting your heart until it soars.

Just as youth is full of discovery, though, it is also filled with sharp pain.

You begin the world new, open and ready to discover what it has to offer, only to discover quite abruptly not everything is joyous and shining.

You remember your first heartbreak in excruciating detail.  You remember your first real injury so well you can still see the scars long after it's healed.  You remember the first rush of disappointment when something - or someone - fails to meet your expectations.  Each blow hardens your heart, slowly turning it to stone or encasing it with ice.

Anything to drown out the pain that comes with living.

Supposedly, there is a way to return your heart to the same naive beauty that youth has, but I do not know how.  At least, not anymore.

As my teal eyes fall upon the earthen maiden, they linger longingly on the plumage of her wings, noting briefly the avian companion sitting upon her shoulder beside them.  I want to ask her to raise them high, as high as she can, and take flight, but not a sound escapes my lips.  I stare at her half-grown, half-child image with a solemn expression instead, allowing the envy to flow through my veins freely.  Ah, how wonderful it would be to return to a day when I was so young.

The impossible is almost always what we desire the most in the world.

I'm tired.  My ears catch her voice, breathed into the air with a weariness defying her apparent youth.  I wonder how the world has already managed to tear apart the heart of this young lady.  Perhaps, I should count myself blessed for the years of sweet, ignorant bliss.

"Are you going to give up, then?" I ask, a question often reserved for myself in times of difficulty.  When I wanted nothing more than to shrug off the mantle I wore through life, I would stir forth some sort of stubborn resistance through the simple question.

I doubt she will respond the same way.
Yet, most young people are strangely similar and stubborn.
Maybe, it is what she needed to hear.

"Would that be easier?"
RAEIN.
Otem the Hopebringer
Currently championing:
#3
there are no markings on her country roads
no signs that show the way back home


It was the odd necklace buried beneath Otem's tangled auburn mane that answered the golden stallion's question. The voice was that of Isopia, but of course you don't know who that is, do you? Otem does, and the sound of her mother's academic tone resonating outwards makes her body stiffen.

"Giving up has its own obligations and difficulties." The necklace began, "Why should anyone think that it is easier? One can find assistance typically, if they are going on, but not if they are giving up."

Otem holds her breath, wondering if the necklace would continue. But it falls silent, and Otem can feel her heart wanting to pine for all the lost moments between mother and child. "It does that sometimes." Otem forces herself to say, unconsciously trying to mimic the academic cadence of the now-silent necklace. She doesn't bother giving a name to the voice, for as she turns on awkwardly long limbs to face the stallion, she does not recognize his face.

Not a Helovian then.

"I'm not sure I know how to give up." The girl begins, bi-coloured eyes moving up and then away, finding it hard to stare into the stranger's eyes for more than a few moments at once. "It doesn't seem like there's anyway back.." Her voice trails off, and it doesn't occur to her that if this man is not from Helovia, then he probably does not know about the portal that once appeared here. Instead, she merely unconsciously accepts that he must have some sort of sight, for instead of offering her a bed (the literally meaning of being tired), he instead interpreted her as being mentally tired (quite correctly too).

And so, instead of elaborating further, the tribrid allows her shoulders to rise and fall, bearing the weight of the words that are too hard to say.


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You may always use magic/force on/against Otem.
Raein
Currently championing:
#4
I wished impossible things on blue stars that never came true
A voice.

It's sounds far too mature to belong to this girl, this half-grown woman before me.  My ears flicker uncertainly, eyes warily scanning the area for the outline of another.  Had I been so mesmerized by the fall toned girl and her plush wings, the thoughts of youth, and the apparent agony of her mind that I lacked my normal caution?

But there is no one else here, at least in the immediate area.
No explanation for the studious voice.
Then I see it.

A necklace, odd in shape, seems to joustle with a voice resonating from it.  Now, I am already growing more accustomed to weird things since arriving here in the Rift, but this is just fucking creepy.  Was the necklace possessed by some disembodied voice?  Whose voice?

The shock of it renders my ability to listen to the words null.  I have to struggle to capture the syllables in the recesses of my mind before the shoot away, into the abyss of forgotten sounds and sights.  The girl seems  to have halted to listen to, and I almost feel as though the necklace had scolded us both as a mother might have foolish children.

I smirk.

It does that sometimes.  As if that explained the strange phenomenon.  I do not pry for more answers, though, and instead just watch as the young girl turns to face me.

Her warm eyes might have sought familiarity in my figure but clearly found none.  I already know that I have been torn from my world into another, so I seek no one familiar.  Even if this place sat in the same universe as my home, would I even bother to look for my kin?

Her gaze drops from my own, as her words trail off into silence.  "Aye," I nod my head knowingly, for I also never could give up.  I shouldered my pain, the grief and guilt of my father, and the loneliness boring a pit into my heart through the years until I could no longer feel the weight on my body.  I never managed to let it go, though, so like a phantom, it followed me from place to place, and I ran like a scared child from it.

"Would something await you, if you could return?" I ask, genuinely curious if she had something tangible in the past.  Nothing positive awaited me back home, so I ceased wanting to return to my world.  I dealt with this strange, broken universe because the monsters here were not half as awful as those awaiting me back home.
""
RAEIN.
Otem the Hopebringer
Currently championing:
#5
there are no markings on her country roads
no signs that show the way back home


That he doesn't press her for more information makes Otem's mind temporarily long for the world in which he had asked. A world where she could have bragged about her mother, that she was a demigoddess, and that some part of her vast mind was now hidden inside her necklace (regardless of whether or not that was true). He could learn through mere deduction that she was the grandchild of a god, and that was something, wasn't it? But he didn't ask, and so the easy way she might have embellished who she was disappeared.

"I don't know-" Otem answered, her youthful mind already dispensing with the alternate world she had imagined. "I just can't imagine an entire world just disappearing." Before she could say more, the necklace spoke up once again. However this time instead of a clerical and informed-sounding voice, the tone was screechy and shrill. "Just because you can't imagine it, doesn't make it not so!" The necklace tittered and then fell silent once more. Otem sighed, eyes closing for a moment as if trying to stifle a surge of rage inside of herself, and then released the air. "It does that too." She offered, trying to inject amusement into her voice but probably failing.

Still not really being able to look into the stranger's eyes for very long (he was a man, and a sort of handsome one, and they were alone, and on one had ever taught her how to do this), Otem shuffled her wings awkwardly against her flanks, trying to buy herself time to think of what to say. "Even if there was something left of it, I'm not sure how I would get there."

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You may always use magic/force on/against Otem.
Raein
Currently championing:
#6
I wished impossible things on blue stars that never came true
Honesty is a natural feature of youth, as well.  Some may believe only fools speak the truth so freely, but I find her uncertainty charming.  How long had it been since someone spoke with such genuine apprehension?  So many spoke only to bolster themselves in your eyes, and even that was only to garner your strengths for their own use.

Since leaving my seclusion, I had become rather adept at reading the intentions and hearts of others; however, it is no magical power or sight.  I am just observant.

This girl, this half-grown goddess of auburn and gold tones, is clearly lost in her painful ride through youth, and now I know why.

I just can't imagine an entire world just disappearing.

So, she is one of the Helovians that Roscorro had mistaken me for.  I remember his brief description of what occurred - the Rift had devoured her world.  I said it then that this world must be terribly violent and awful, but I cannot imagine what her own eyes had witnessed, what her ears heard, what sort of madness ensued when the fabric of the earth was torn asunder by the ravenous roots of this one.  At least now I understood what had caused her heart to rupture.

The previously studious voice in her necklace sounds more like an unpleasant shrew now, and it shocks me out of my silent musings.  My eyes are wide, revealing that it was quite the shock to my system, but the girl's eyes are closed, as if she is swallowing some sort of anger before it can escape into the air toward that nagging necklace.

I nod, accepting her forced humor and explanation, watching as she starts to awkwardly pick up our conversation where it had been interrupted.  She seems nervous, but I am clueless as to why.  I had been fully grown before being thrust into society, so while I am fairly adept at reading others, I fail to understand things remotely related to romance.  Women were just other beings to me, with no special purpose.

I missed out entirely on the dreamy illusions of love in my youth.  Now, in adulthood, I simply deny the existence of such a gentle feeling.

"You should not wish the impossible, then," I say, my voice austere, perhaps even coming off as cold.  My expression does little to weigh in any other direction, since my face always tends to look morose at best.  However, my advice stems from my own experiences with the world.  It is not meant to make her feel foolish or sound harsh.  I simply learned the lesson long ago.

Hope only leads to disappointment when you squander it on the impossible.

"Your world is gone, but you can still make this one your home."
""
RAEIN.
Otem the Hopebringer
Currently championing:
#7
there are no markings on her country roads
no signs that show the way back home


"No, of course you're right-" Otem answers quickly. His words are so close to the philosophical points her mother might have made in this situation, and so the child reads-in her mother's criticism of her intellect as well. "I didn't quite realize that it would be impossible until I came back here." She concludes, feeling childish for the need to offer a justification for her behaviour, but hopeless to do anything else.

For a moment Otem considers asking what it takes to make a place your home. But she thinks that Isopia (or her necklace facsimile) would think the question pedantic and so she moves on to another question, albiet a related one. "So you live here then?" Her eyes raise as she asks, and then dart away. There's something about holding someone's gaze for too long that unnerves her to her core. 

On her back, Pandora begins to grow restless. The owlet is pleased that her bonded has decided to give living a second chance, but is just as eager to actually get on with it. Still, not wanting the girl to become a marred image of her mother, Pandora judges it beneficial that she spend some time socializing. Given the girl's lineage, in the days immediately following the Helovian's entrance into the Rift, it was nearly impossible to bump into someone that Otem was not related to. 

"Does everyone still just ... roam around? When we first came there was no order to anything. I think that's why so many of us lost each other. In Helovia we had herds, and so everyone knew where they could usually find everyone else. Does that not happen here?"

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You may always use magic/force on/against Otem.
Raein
Currently championing:
#8
I wished impossible things on blue stars that never came true
Seeing is believing, I guess.

I understand the feeling of wanting to confront reality with your eyes, so I offer a solemn nod in response to her hurried justification.  I am not here to judge her, belittle her, or make her feel the fool.  I am truthfully uncertain why I am even here, having this conversation.

I know why I lingered at first around this young maiden, melancholy and alone in the woods, but now, I can no longer justify my presence - much less my unsolicited advice.  I guess there comes a time in life when we must accept certain flaws about ourselves.  Apparently, my flaw is that I have a tendency to lecture youths about life in the middle of forests, whether or not they wanted me to.

So you live here then?

I pause at the question, for I am really not certain if my existence in the Rift thus far can be considered living.  "As much as you, I suppose," my answer is honest, much the same as her own have been.  I think we are past the point of where I need to play with pleasantries and falsehoods.

The shuffle upon the girl's shoulders shakes my attention for a moment to the ruffling owl, apparently displeased with standing in one place for too long.  I wonder about the creature, for back home we had no such companionship with the fauna native to the forests.  Having an owl as a pet is hardly the strangest thing I have encountered thus far, though, so my gaze returns to the girl's face as she speaks.

She is seeking answers I am not sure I can provide.  For all my lecturing, I am still new to the area and know very little to offer in the way of our shared home.  So, I take a deep breath, considering how to best deliver the rather disappointing news that the land felt largely empty to the lost child before me.

"The natives do not seem particularly welcoming or helpful," I say, thinking back to the detached nature of Watcher, who I met not far from where we stood now.  "Much of the land seems to be vacant, and rarely do you meet with anyone else.  No one seems to have any particular authority over anyone else."

"I have a lot of experience being alone, though.  Personally, I much prefer the peace not having a herd or several to fight with over power," I take a pause to look her over.  "If you seek a herd, why not gather others together and carve out your own?"

"Not sure what stopped you Helovians from sticking together and doing just that.  You must be a rather dimwitted lot."
""
RAEIN.
Otem the Hopebringer
Currently championing:
#9
there are no markings on her country roads
no signs that show the way back home


Otem is glad that she doesn't interrupt her interlocutor. The question, "So you weren't born here?" rises to her lips but she holds her tongue and teeth closed and lets him continue. As he does, she is able to deduce the answer to her question. The natives do not seem particularly helpful or welcoming.... The natives. Surely it would be odd to refer to them as natives and to critisize them in that manner, if he was one of them? "I was attacked by one seemingly without reason." She mumbles, looking down at her shoulder. What might have been a scar is now nothing more than slightly darker flesh: her body is still nubile enough to do a rather tidy job of healing itself. "Later I found out his magic was activated by blood." Grimacing slightly, Otem pushes the memory of Tamlin into the back of her mind.

Having been too young to experience any of the invasions and wars in Helovia that she had learned about, Otem's lack of first hand experience makes her numb to the ramifications of having herds. For the girl, having distinct lands meant stability, family, and purpose. Most of all however, it eased her anxiety. For better or worse, you could at least count on a herd, even if what you were counting on was war. Herds offered expectations.

As he suggests that she should start a herd, the earth coloured girl's lips pulled back in a smile and she laughed hesitantly, waiting for Raein to join in. He did not though, and the sound was cut off in her throat.

"Me? But I"m too young..?" Her voice rises marginally at the end, hinting that perhaps it's a question - and if it was, perhaps the answer would be no. Sparks of imagination exploded in her mind, creating images of bossing others about, wearing a crown, and standing near a waterfall. That's what being a ruler of a herd was, wasn't it?

The bubble snapped as Otem's necklace decided once again to grace them with its thoughts. "And stupid." It chided, sounding as though it was trying to keep from laughing. Otem's face fell flatly in embarrassment. She reached out with a wing and tried to tuck the charm into the folds of her mane to try and shut it up.

"Before Kisamoa said he needed our help to heal these lands ... but he didn't really say what to do. I'm sick of just wandering around, maybe bumping into someone who will try to kill me, or stumbling upon monsters. I want ... I want there to be somewhere I can go for help, or company or just ... you know, to be." But then again maybe he didn't know. Raein had said that he had quite a bit of experience being alone, which Otem interpreted as his preference, rather than a choice forced upon him.

Image credits

You may always use magic/force on/against Otem.
Raein
Currently championing:
#10
I wished impossible things on blue stars that never came true
His magic was activated by blood.
Magic.

I resist the urge to laugh at something which sounded so ridiculous.  Magic was a fairytale sung to children in order to send them to bed, to fill their heads with hope and wonder.  Never before had I witnessed something such as magic, at least not to my knowledge.  I think back to K'yarie's swirling, dancing coat.

Maybe the young girl wasn't crazy and such a thing existed.  It would tie together her possessed necklace in a neat little package, for sure.  Besides, we had no reason to lie to each other.  I decide to believe the impossible, which is unusual, if you know the slightest thing about me.

The next bit of the puzzle  I hardly have time to consider, because the small chirp of a laugh dances across her lips before she falls silent.
I guess she realized I am serious.

She claims to be too young, yet here she stands, alone in a haunted forest with nothing but an owl and a stranger for company.  However, the bauble within her mane agrees with her, a snide insult floating into the air and falling into the space between us, clearly shaking her confidence.  I wonder who would have so much influence over the young girl, but I think I already know.  Her mother.

It explains the similarity in their voices and the failed attempts of the adolescent to copy the studious tone.  Ah, parents could really be a pain in the ass.  I watch as she shuffles her wing to try to stuff the necklace further into her mane.

Her explanation begins, as to why no herds exist, as if it really explained to me.  Kisamoa, I think back to the shadowy figure in Solanis and inwardly cringe.  He didn't really say what to do.  I smile, though it is hardly an expression of joy, but simply affirmation of my former thought.  Helovians sound like a hopeless bunch of morons.  Oh, well.  So is most everyone I've met.

"So, your people did not form herds because some disfigured vagabond never told them to?"  I look at her with something resembling amusement in my eyes.  I nod, to myself, before clearing my throat and looking out over the forest; neon lights and a million eyes dance in the distance.  They are still rather unnerving.

"The beauty in having your world destroyed is that you have a chance to start over, to do with your new life and home whatever you wish," I say, sorely needing to take my own advice.  If anyone holds too tightly onto the past, it is myself.  I disappeared into someone else's position, someone else's life for years. Ah, but how difficult it is to view yourself from an objective stance.

"You may be young and stupid, but if you have the motivation, you can gather the crumbling pieces of your Helovia and make a home.  What are your other options?"  I ask, looking back at her with firm, teal eyes.  "Wait for someone to give you permission to live how you want?  Wait for someone else to take initiative?  Continue living like you have?"

"Find others you can rely on, if you need help, but someone has to take the first step. Better you than no one."
RAEIN.