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Alone at Last

Sun May 27, 2018 2:00 pm

Time stood still for so long, ebbing and flowing around her while she held her breath and waited to feel whole again.

Many years ago, when a young girl stood on the precipice of womanhood with flat lines maturing to soft curves over coltish muscle, the whelp had come to an abrupt decision that would change the course of her life. Through sheer luck, after walking free of the thick woods around Myrken and into the Inn, she managed to gain herself a warm place to stay, several strong friendships that she treasured, a mentor more mother than anything else, and a soft love for a boy who mirrored the mercurial nature of her own soul. With the creature coiling ever-tighter around her mind, whispering deceptions into her ears with every interaction, she made the difficult decision to leave Myrken behind for its own safety.

In the dark of night, with nary a moon to fall upon the mousey brown of her head, she gave Bernice the skull headdress a funeral service befitting a Queen of great stature as she said a teary goodbye to her life as fireflies lit the night around her.

Then, she was gone with no word at all.

For a time, she lived carefree and alone in a silent little grove as she breathlessly chased the wisps until she collapsed. Later, she was hired aboard a fishing vessel somewhere in New Dauntless until calluses toughened her fingertips and the sun kissed her skin brown. And finally, she tried her hand at farming as she raised goats alongside her strawberry fields in the idyllic Amasynia countryside. Each attempt was met with catastrophe as the creature's malevolence dashed each chance at happiness. Sheer boredom led the darkness to set the grove aflame. Noura, stricken and trapped within the confines of her own skull, watched as the trees burned as It lectured her on neglected destiny. Toxic whispers from a silvered tongue fell upon the ears of all who would listen on the small seafaring vessel and led to bloody mutiny. And the creature's protective nature was unearthed by a foolish, ambitious Lord and his men who came to demand a greater tithe from the lone woman farming at the borders of his lands.

Desperation led Noura to find a witch of great power to finally lock the elder one within the safe confines of her mind where It could do no more harm. When the whelp awoke, it was to the stern mage who ordered her to leave and never return, her gaze fearful and haunted. Noura was too-familiar with the furious, burning pit of the darkness' resentment in the back of her mind. It raged, but there was naught but silence. Days later, Noura realized that the magic that had come so easily before the ceremony had abandoned her as well, kept dormant with the creature. The runes scarred into her palms were silent. Perhaps one last bane from the now-silent entity. An unforeseen consequence, but one she could live with.

With nowhere else to go, Noura drifted back into the thick, untamed woods surrounding Myrken with no real plans to contact those she'd left behind. They had probably grown beyond their need of her and the mere memories of them kept her warm. With no one to talk to except herself, she unearthed Bernice for company and spent her days hunting the wild animals and making daisy chains.

That was enough.

It would have to be.

Re: Alone at Last

Mon Jul 02, 2018 1:06 pm

Nowhere else to go.

They had shared so many things, why not this as well?

She'd had somewhere to go, once. Somewhere she would have done -anything- to get back to. But that had been years ago. Years. Even she, who did not bother to count the passage of time with the same obsession as most realized she'd been -here- almost as long as she had ever been -there.- No. She couldn't go back. Not anymore.

She couldn't go forward, either. Where, even, would forward be? She'd traveled, wandered, tried this and that and the other. And eventually she'd ended up back here.

It had been long enough that there were some who wouldn't remark on her scarred face, hands that were bandaged against prying eyes. And so she'd turned her hand to some menial farm labor for a time, but when the harvest was done or the planting finished, there was always the woods.

Was it enough?

It would have to be.
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