Quote:
Originally Posted by
IncoherentEssay
Congratulations to Rysc for making it 18 weeks in the Challenge, you've earned a prize.
Woah, it's been 18 weeks already? :smallbiggrin: PMed you with my decision.
Now, for this week's submissions:
Spoiler: Seeking Solace - 768 words
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The sunlight dragged dusty fingers over the tumultous array of decripit wood which had once passed for furniture. No one was here. She hadn't really expected anyone, and that was good. No one came here anymore.
She catiously stepped across the groaning floorboards. There was no one else. Good. She needed to be alone. Alone with herself and the books.
Another mournful mound of canvas and wood, and then a door. The key in her hand had been rusted by waves of rain and time, but it still stayed strong. The door was open, now. She slipped inside and gently closed it, then exhaled deeply. She was alone. Now, finally, alone.
There were more windows here, more streaks of sunlight, just enough to display the massive bookshelves that stood proud like sentinels in rows across the room. The room itself wasn't too large, but it made up for that by having almost every square inch not occupied by window or door lined with shelves. She hadn't been here in so long, and the dust was plain evidence of that. Brushing off the lid of a chest in the corner, she pulled out the equally aged blankets. Old and slightly threadbare, but enough. They held so many tales, almost like the books.
The books. Laying the blankets in a corner of the wall of windows, she slowly walked over to the first shelf. Running her fingers over the many beautiful, beautiful spines--embossed leather and linen and channels of gold and silver--brought back so many memories, so many afternooons of solace. Then she had gradually drifted away, but the books waited for her. And here they were, waiting still. She smiled, and continued down the row.
So many books, so many portals to other worlds and minds and lives. So many places of escape, so many refuges. Closing her eyes, she inhaled the scents of wood and dusty sunlight and old books, luxuriating in the wonder and silence.
Where were the others now? She could remember so many times when one or another of them would retreat back here, sometimes sitting on opposite sides of the room, quietly traveling to other places, sometimes alone in the silence. They never talked in here. Or at least, they rarely did. The stillness was a precious thing, and they had already done enough damage when they came in: the creak of their steps on the floorboards, the rustling of the old paper pages, the feather-softness of their breaths magnified to fill the room.
They never needed to, anyhow. Sometimes they would whisper choice books, favorite tales to the others. But other than that, they understood each other in the silence.
She could remember the last night she had been there. Most of them had grown and left by them. Only she and her younger brother were left, and she too about to leave. Her bags stood packed and watchful in her room, already stripped to the barest furnishings. She couldn't sleep. Neither could he. They had shared one last night of tales, for once breaking the unspoken rule of silence, in hushed tones reading aloud from old tomes. They had flown away on the wings of ancient myths and younger fairytales, on the rhythmic patterns of the poets. The stars faded, and they watched as dawn broke, the red and orange spilling over into the skies.
Day break. What a strange phrase. The day never actually shattered into tiny pieces as it pushed the night out of the way. Or maybe it did. That day it had, anyway. Their past lives had all broken into tiny shards. Irrecoverable. Irreplacable.
She looked down in the book in her hand, not rembering when she had actually grasped it, remembering the so many other times that she had, long ago. The lettering on the cover was faded, but the tiny channels and grooves were clear enough. Had the others ever come back, at some point, the tiny channels and grooves etched in their minds? Or had they all forgotten, the waves of time and care and worry and presumptiousness having worn away the lines? She should have kept in contact with them. The youngest was out on the coast somewhere, but that was all she knew. Sad. They had been so close.
Perhaps it was for the best. This intertwined reliance, a trellis for young vines, then a gradually drifting away as life pulled them apart, became more important. And then one day, maybe, they would come drifing back, one or two at a time, seeking solace.
She inhaled the dusty memories, and began to read.
Spoiler: The Watersinger (Character background/ info - 372 words)
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Esen. A woman whose pale turquoise skin and finned ears mark her as an undine. Her sea-green hair is kept pulled back in a braid, and her webbed hands hover in the air like eager birds. She wears no ornamentation-- save a smirk on her face.
Sharp, adaptive, and willing to bend every situation thrown her way for her own good. She's especially adept at hiding her true feelings, which aids her a quite a bit in this. This doesn't mean she won't look out for others, though she'll probably do so with an ulterior motive in mind...
"Well. You'd like to know more about me? I suppose it's only fair." The blue-skinned woman seated in front of you, her back to the ship's rail, laughs. "There isn't really much to know. When the rains started and didn't stop, I wasn't overly concerned. Perhaps one of the gods had taken a preference to the plane of Water, and was trying to recreate it here. It rather made life easier for me, in fact.
"The waters had called me from a young age, more so than others of my kind, if that was even possible. I used to spend hours listening to the music of the waves, and sometimes adding my own. And then I found how to make the water dance." Here she pauses, and hums a few notes, which soon weave themselves into a melody. Behind her, a torrent of water separates itself from the waves, spiraling upwards and then seemingly freezing in place. She stops her tune and laughs again.
"And the ships were lovely. Now I could hear the waves all the time. The whole covering-the-land thing did pose a problem to supplies, I suppose. Not to mention the wildlife. But the sea creatures are happy." Over her shoulder, you watch as the water splashes back down again into the seas. "And I am a creature of the sea."
She abruptly rises. "Well, I hope you enjoyed that. The night's old, and I'm marine, not nocturnal. Though I must warn you, half of what I say is only believed by fools, and half most believe to be foolish." She smirks at you, and walks jauntily off, humming again. "G'night!"
Spoiler: The Ones Beyond the Stars (more character stuff - 720 words)
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A tall, thin, young woman with strangely pale skin and black shoulder-length hair. She could be called "pretty," but something about her seems a bit...off. Perhaps it's the fact that her eyes are oddly mismatched--the right one gold and the left dark brown--and that she perpetually seems to be focusing on someplace beyond you.
Though at times she can appear distant, Sol is nominally soft-spoken and friendly. This doesn't mean she's easily swayed, though; she's got her own opinions and she'll keep to them, regardless of what people think of them. She's not afraid to expound on them to others, either.
And on the whole, while she'll converse with others (though these conversations often take odd turns), she tends to keep her thoughts to herself. This is partly a result of many negative reactions, and partly because she believes that no one else could really understand her calling. It probably doesn't help that her calling is to--or from--unfathomable beings of alien power.
Due to the constant and often conflicting voices and urgings in her mind, Sol can be rather distracted at times, and confuse people and happenings with what she has been told by the voices. She tries her best to listen to the ones from the beyond the stars, and this can lead to strange or sudden actions by her.
--Very, very, focused, almost to the point of fanaticism...at least with regards to her mystery, though this devotion can sometimes be apparent in other parts of her life.
--Curious. Very much so. But again, usually with regards to her mystery.
--Has a problem with self-doubt; afraid that she'll either end up like her monstrous mother, or that she'll fail the Ones Beyond the Stars.
"Why do you say that? The night is not evil. It is not any more evil than the day. And shadows are not any more evil than the light."
Ever since she appeared on the doorstep of a couple living in a tiny village in the upper regions of Malduvau, Sol had displayed some rather peculiar tendencies. For one thing, she was completely unafraid of the night. While others huddled in closed houses and tried to beat back the dark with fires, Sol would stare eagerly out at the stars, ignoring her parents' warnings, and, indeed, even some first-hand witnessing of the monsters that came in the night. The night whispered secrets to her. The Ones Beyond the Stars had chosen her. And she was theirs.
As she grew older--perhaps as a side effect, of sorts--she became almost fanatically interested in the old tales and lore, the esoteric...things that were sometimes found deep in the wilds, the histories of the world and the paths of the stars. Her parents disapproved, to say the least, and the other villagers began to whisper stories about her. Sol didn't care. She had more pressing concerns. There was always more to learn, so much more. And she had began to hear another voice, not from the stars. It began as a whisper and grew until it was almost a physical force, causing objects to mysteriously shift around her, always telling her to go forth, and learn--not about the stars, but about where she really came from. Sol was already restless to begin with, having long since exhausted the store of relevant knowledge in the village and surrounding areas. The stars were telling her to move. All these voices, coupled with an accidental display of the magical knowledge the Elder Ones had shown her, led to Sol leaving the village. In actuality it was more akin to being driven out, but Sol didn't care. She was following the stars.
In her wanderings around Alathania, Sol learned much. Too much, perhaps. The Voice was a hag. Her mother. She was a changeling. But she was different! She was not, would not become a hag. She would follow the stars. And there was more. Glimpses of the power of the Elder Ones, of the alien geometry of the Dark Tapestry. They were telling her now to travel, to understand, teaching her mysteries, and the Voice was cajoling her, calling her to travel, to return to her origins, and they were there constantly, no more quietness, no more stillness. But she would follow the stars. That was all that mattered.