A Silent Rage

Re: A Silent Rage

Postby catch » Mon Aug 04, 2014 3:57 pm

"Important," he says, only. "You - you are imp-p-portant."

They are that, ever since the Wormwoman Agnie had, through inadvertent whim, introduced the idea of worship, the idea of Gods. And he, who has been worshiped a thousand-times-thousand over, should find his wistful worship in a flame-haired girl, in a mapmaker lost, in a black-feathered boy. In a desert girl-storm. These were his gods, and they led their lives, and they ignored him or adored him, entirely within their whims. They looked to the core of him, peered through his Scar, and knew his thoughts.

He was lost, now, in this vision, fire-haired woman and lanky, red-haired girl, already showing the long limbs and large hands and feet for the tall woman she would be. His mind knew no other; awake or dreaming, it mattered not at all. With Genny's hand to support his cheek, he could stand - and, in the standing, his crooked shoulders crowd against the sky, and the earth moans at his weight.

"You are important." It was hard to speak, past the bells, his voice still carrying a hint of their power. It was hard to speak past the fleshy, smoke-wet protuberances that curled and dripped and gummed together the broad lips of his animal muzzle.

"Everyone has a horn."
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Re: A Silent Rage

Postby Tolleson » Tue Aug 05, 2014 4:50 am

Worship had all but left her life, the polite blessings, salutations, and curses remained, though empty. Yet here she was, rested in dirt upon her knees in submission to a creature she loved. Was this not rapture? Was it not utter submission to a power beyond control? Whether it were he or herself the God, perhaps they were both to themselves, to one another, and to the world no more than fools in mud.

The sky pressed, the earth moaned, and all seemed in place. Was this then the waking world or a dream? Perhaps it is both, a time and place of mere perception precariously perched at the very precipice between, stretching the thin membrane that divided the mind and body. Unreal and lacking sense, it was merely air for the inhabitants. Nothing here seemed strange, not after nightmares, not after isolation, or the voices and memories of so many; each one tasted before it was buried into the ever expanding catacomb of her mind. For all her glory and grace in this idilic body, the simplicity of her child-self remembered, yon lay a crumpled woman. Her physical form hugged the earth and loam, thin, pale flesh stretched over long bones and a smothered flame. It was mere hair in the mud, a body abandoned.

'I am not,' the small girl needn't even speak, the conviction of the mind with whom he spoke resinated with the utter belief of it. 'And if I had one, it must be lost,' the child pulled at the silent flame-haired woman, her fingers falling away from the creature. 'I've no intention to hurt you more,' no intention to be Gloria her mind whispered, the anger rippled, it pilled like an animal under tight restraint. But a measure of control was exercised, she dared not let the flood come again, not for how it had hurt him.
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Re: A Silent Rage

Postby catch » Wed Aug 06, 2014 1:46 pm

"I c-c-can find it." As much as he debases himself, as much as he denies, there are certain ways that he can, must speak, ways unknown to his consciousness, a hint of the confident, competent creature he had once been, a sad man, but possessing his wits. And he had none, now, not in the wake of her anger, her psychic blast. Even now she pelts him, but though it pains him, he lies before it, a rock to part the mere ripple of what she possessed. It danced across his skin, the squamous, dazzling, and faintly-noxious colors, fanning out like brief cloth in a breeze.

She moves her hand away, but he reaches for it. If he should grasp it, that hot, hot, blood-worm paw - near-burning- would bring it, and, bowing his head, he brings his ruined forehead to kiss the back of her hand. It is brief. He does not know this sort of Fixing, because there is nothing in her to be Fixed. It is smallness, a nicety only. His eyes do not see the crumpled woman, only these, manifestations of mad eyes.

"Why are you angry at Miss Gloria," he asks, for he has finally tasted from whence that pain comes.
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Re: A Silent Rage

Postby Tolleson » Wed Aug 06, 2014 2:31 pm

His colors are mesmerizing though she tries to hold back the deluge of her mind. For a moment she is calmer, watching him, as if believing he might find something she has no reason to believe exists. But has said it does. And so it must.

He grasps the hand of the flame-haired girl, the lovely, hollow thing. Without a hint of resistance, she is his completely. But this warden of her mind is only a projection of some half remembered thing, a memory of his. And this mind, while reaching and jumbled is far from broken. Rather than missing pieces, it had so many extra bits all plenty intact, beautiful and scattered, unquantified memories and hopes and dreams of others. She had adapted, grown, expanded the space of her mind to fit the other bits in. This was not a mind that needed to be Fixed.

Zilliah hadn't meant to make her cry, but she had then, upon learning of Gloria's abhorrent actions. And she did now; though it was the silent tears and came from terrible dreams of loss and pain. Small, hot lines that rolled over freckle covered cheeks and into the dirt. Of course the lovely fire-hair would not cry, nor her child self. Crying to the mind was a very different affair and so while he might not see her physical tears, with some certainty he would feel them.

Raw anger clenched, hard, heavy, and hot only to be soon doused with oceans of grief. A lustful and selfish teenager passing her judgement and spouting gospel with ease only to take advantage of her friend. No, more than that. Did Catch even know what she had done?! Her upset is more than anger, it is hot thick air that is hard to breathe, it is trembling muscles and a rising fever, it is a visceral thing. Never before had she been so struck by such a thing as this misunderstood act between friends. Gloria hadn't the right to call him that!

'Cloud-hair told me what she did, how she came to be with your child,'

Did not knowing make it more forgivable? Hadn't she been in the very same position under difference circumstances, seeking Gloria's forgiveness? No. No, because Catch was simply more important. He was more than Gloria or Tennant, more than Glenn or James. In a very real sense, he was a fundamental piece of her, comprising a great deal of her own mind - but even before that, she loved him. Truly, simply loved him.
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Re: A Silent Rage

Postby catch » Sat Aug 09, 2014 2:20 pm

"My child?"

Catch had a difficult enough time dealing with his own emotions. Genny's thin-veiled control filled his blood with teeth. Her grief caused ever more tears to fall, thick and silver, moistening his face before they dangled as smoke-tendrils from his jaw. He wanted nothing more to flee, to run, from the hurts, from Genny - from himself - but he was in thrall. His question, choked with tears, is a quiet whisper. It is a choked genuine. She would know, in her moments of Clarity, that he truly does not understand.

Cloud-hair.

"She said all th-the proper words," he says, again, telling her, telling himself. "I m-m-must ha-ha-have, have n-n-n-needed it. I m-m-must have."

"B-b-but I was g-g-g-g-good. I held so st-st-still -" He weeps, again, because Genny's emotions - and his own - were so raw. He weeps because it hurts, and he does not know why it hurts.
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Re: A Silent Rage

Postby Tolleson » Sun Aug 10, 2014 3:07 pm

They fuel each other’s tears. And even as he asks, his question is so honest it feels as if it is an emotion of her own. He doesn’t understand, and so for a moment she doesn’t either. She doesn’t understand sex or love, how or why, what had even happened. Perhaps she even feels the confusion and pain she causes him. She might have torn free at this moment, again to forget all that she had learned. Content in whatever obliviousness would grace her, however temporarily.

But then there was Gloria, the vivid memory of a hot breath upon her jaw, a kiss upon her lips, and her voice a grating echo that pulled her back from the mercy of ignorance, ‘friend.’ Every memory of her since played back in disorganized chaos, pieces here and there as if the audio and image were out of sync. But still, it was always Gloria's voice, always the reassuring words of how she was his friend, how she would look after Catch, even so far back as when Rhaena reigned and the summer of red and gold. It was more than mere anger, outrage, betrayal; for herself and doubly, as if she felt it on behalf of the man who did not understand what had been done to him.

‘Friend,’ Gloria’s voice was so full of joy, as if proclaiming a momentous occasion. But all it brought was a seething rage.

‘Men carry the seed for children and you are a man,' in this she almost pleaded that he understand, despite his mutated form. His ignorance about what had happened was heartbreaking, a weight nearly matching that of her anger towards Gloria. 'Her stomach is swollen, filled with a child growing from the seed she has stolen from you,’ quick to explain she all but yells, sobbing. But even then, this was why she perceived him, despite all his capability and independence, as a child. Someone she would and needed to protect. Yet here, unintentionally, she hurt him.

‘I held still, I was good,’ he had said.

With his words her breath escaped as if she had been hit solidly in the gut. With it the deluge slowed, the weight of her rage began to subside and everything simply fell. What anger she carried, like water in a basin, fell, shattering. All the things that were not real began to crumble. All that she had created fell as if gravity had been returned to a place that hadn’t realized it was gone.

The young Genny fell too, like heavy water vapor to the floor, nearly smoke as she vanished. The flame-haired girl took a tentative step back in retreat as if distance made a difference here, in this space, and then she flickered too. Her presence truly like that of an apparition, semi-opaque as every emotion that had radiated out was reigned back. Upon her shoulder a fine glove covered hand clapped, her sleeves a light and colorful fabric, her lips, hidden with a tissue thin veil that shimmered with golden thread.

Rhaena, seemingly whole and alive slid her hand to hold that of the flame-haired Genny. Her tiny bells, tinkling and chiming even though she was still and her voice, soft and sweet, a mere whisper, "focus."
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Re: A Silent Rage

Postby catch » Wed Aug 13, 2014 4:10 am

She tries to explain, as Gloria had explained, and Cherny, using the horse-book that Catch had been given. In the turmoil of their shared emotions, Catch tried to reach for her understanding, a physical grasping for that truth, the tendrils stretching for Genny, falling far short, and yet their movement was a lewd, noxious flicker, a gesture to mirror the memory of what Gloria had done.

Gloria took something from him. That was her nature. She was Jernoah, and that is what they did; they took, and they took, and they waited for everything to grow once more before they took again, with sharp and little knives, and the Black Milk a thick sourness in his throat.

But he fell short of the truth of it, and Genny could feel the moment when he withdrew, bewildered, from what she tried to show him. That was horses, and it was cats, and water-dragons, and men. But his understanding was flawed, damaged. He could not imagine himself, made small, put in Gloria's belly to emerge as a little lamb. He shrinks from her, he from her, large and powerful and the Majesty that he was, cringing from her explanation, fearing the pain that might come because he failed to understand something essential that she wanted.

"I held st-st-still," he says again, as if that would soothe Genny's anger. "I was - I was - "

"I was a Good Citizen," he whispers, a taboo statement, a falseness from a summer's bygone age -

And like a Number, like an Eight, it summons a reprieve. It shatters what was unreal - but it was all real - and the unreality's undoing breaks what reality Catch held. It was wrong. It was all wrong, and when Catch can tear his hands away from his eyes, there is fox-fire dancing in a garden of green, a suspension in the blackness, a surface of a star and the curved egg of a star that encased them, even larger. It was a single, pure crystal-place, and it was a sound, a sound that began in Catch's throat, and it rose, and rose, a threat-peal of ancient bronze.

He reached for Genny, and this time he did not stop short, his neck curving, greater and greater, stretching from a broken body as the rippling tendrils lining a velvet nose, velvet lips, shoot wrathfully towards what must by an apparition of red and gold.
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Re: A Silent Rage

Postby Tolleson » Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:46 pm

He reaches for her and the anger in her swells, no longer merely angry at Gloria. Perhaps she was angry at the world, for how it had made Gloria into who she was, what she had done. The whole series of events that had lead to this. But no, perhaps she was angry at Catch, perhaps she grew impatient and frustrated that he could not defend himself when surely he should be able.

No. And again no.

She was mad with herself and the moment for not listening. For not quieting enough to see or hear him, he falters and falls away the manic emotion subsides. But there is Rhaena now.

‘I held still, I was a good citizen,’ the words were all wrong, but then everything here was.

His clarity is piercing. Stretching towards Rhaena, towards the beautiful woman who helped bring Genny’s mind peace, she watched, almost dumbly. The moment he touches Rhaena he will find it is Genny in his grasp, her flames dancing like silk curtains caught aimlessly on a breeze. Where she once stood now stands Rhaena, unscathed, and behind her appear not one, but two of Ariane. And they are very different from one another; one with rough edges and a mistrusting mouth, the other with lace and a saccharine smile, neither moving or threatening. Then, as is conjured from nothing, rising to her defense, solidifying there stood a glorious Lamai, Zilliah with his long hair in shifting shades of purple, James in his armor, and even Catch himself. He stood, his mismatched eyes and rough scar, yet he stands almost straight, tall and broad shouldered. A man, a pillar with a gentle smile, and dominating presence, he is very nearly handsome among her ranks.

If once these half-formed memories, impressions, and pieces of the visitors to her mind had been prisoners, they were no longer. Each figure stood behind the flame-haired girl and looked on. Even flickers of Gloria appeared, half-formed, in the back of it all. Hers was the only face that shifted, blurred, and changed, she couldn’t stand so much as shimmer in and out of being.
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