A Proper Gift

Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Mon Sep 09, 2013 8:21 am

It called to him, it pulsed in his brain and nagged at his limbs. It had him sitting by this lake for days, his eyes piercing the tons of water and shallow waves as if in the depths he saw it. Surely he could. And she needed it. But it was not the horn, it was the memory of it. Perhaps the only piece of it that stuck. After all, she had taken the pain from him. Made his life simple again, made him better.

Gloria wouldn’t lie. And it wasn’t there. Why was he here then, trying to fight the fear this lake had given him in the first place? He was trying to get it, had he already tried, of course, Catch was upset with him. Upset with him for something. That must be why. Hadn’t he known? Of course, the memories began to fall into place as if they had always been there and a momentary lapse had caused him to forget. The sensation is not unlike suddenly recalling the name of an old friend, he had known, he did know.

“We are both G’leuse, Gloria,” the words barely escape his lips, a trembling whisper just as she pressed off.

The memories were not concise, seen from behind a fog, years and distance far greater than time’s natural and steady progression. All of who he was, somehow askew, disconnected, disparate pieces that could not be linked. Entire chapters censored and removed and the only clue to inform them is the context around the space from which they were taken. But in this moment, it is potent. In the drowning Jerno he sees a child so like the red haired girl, a mirror of himself at that age.

The waves were growing, a storm building and one moment she is standing in the shallows and the next, she is crushed by the swell. He withstood it, the undertow pulled fiercely to take out his legs but he had dug in, leaned forward and braced against the savage ocean that sought to claim them. But she simply disappeared.

The bed gown slips through his fingers, but is it not a diaphanous thing and he was not slow. Grasping forward wildly he might catch it, he might tear it; for a moment the frantic action of his arms is all he can do to try and stop her. His legs petrified, solid, holding their ground as if he expected that wave to come, to eat him alive.

“Gloria!”

She hadn’t even screamed, the wave had come and the pale, freckled face vanished, the long flames engulfed and extinguished. What had he done? Nothing. So close to her, the best chance that she might be saved. It was his responsibility and he had dug in, resisted, stood and watched. Terrified.

It is a matter of seconds before he follows. But they are long seconds, his legs and the water fight his will. Even so, he is swift. His limbs are long, sure, and carry him easily to where he might even still stand at the depth where she has vanished. Don't let it happen again. Get her and get out. Get out. Get out. The wild grasps more purposeful, more focused as his hands tangle into fabric and his hands search for a body he might pull up.
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Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Mon Sep 09, 2013 4:11 pm

A girl should not sink.

"By the Nameless," said each girl down the line, kneeling upon the sandstone with their palms clasped together in front of them. They were all such dark skin; they were all such black hair, eyes of fading color burnt to a nothing-gray by the sleepless Sun. Prismatic hues danced in through the clouded glass of the jerethedral's needle-shaped ceiling, a focused heat as violent as the jaws of any vicious stonebear. Had the angles not been right, had the architecture not been perfect, the Nameless would have rained scorching light upon the Sisters and Brothers in their prayers.

But glass shone upon glass shone upon glass, a brilliant and cleverly-directed system of natural panes that cast the greatest brunt of the brightness to the topmost joints of pillars and ceiling-vaults.

In the shadows, they all leaked their black sweat and down the line ate their helpings of sand. "By the Nameless," said another girl, and then another. The Jerno choirgirls consumed handfuls of the holy grain until their teeth were scraped brown and rough. It shredded their stomachs, roiled in their guts, but thank the Nameless, thank the Nameless, they devoured it anyway.


She sank until her knees struck edge-rocks and her arms and legs thrashed up a wild white froth. They were both G'leuse, he said; Gloria, he said too, a frantic gasp of her name that somehow seemed calmer, more serene beneath the blanket of water. She clenched shut her eyes because she was suddenly afraid of the dark -- there's no Sun down here, there's no Crawl Moon to light the way. There was no certain up or definite down; she twisted, fingers splayed like wild claws, cutting through water barely tall enough to suck her down--

--and even after years, years, there was still so much sand in the tissue of her stomach, lining the ribbons of her intestines, that she could not hope to float the way a body should. Her muscles were water-desperate tissues, ever-dehydrated. Years-old sand knocked in her joints, clogging her veins -- Glour'eya Wynsee, a good little Jerno who'd eaten it as she must, eaten it as the Nameless deemed proper.

Tennant's fingers tangled in her bedgown, snaring it as if it were some kind of fluttering dream. Her hair was a dark weed crawling across the water. He scrambled to grab hold of her. Her legs cycled, trying to find purchase on some outcropping, but Silver Lake's bed was a deceptive gambler, a craggy-faced greatman with divots in its pliable skin. Had the water been any less deep, she could have simply stood, but it felt bottomless, hopeless, hungry.

Only a few more feet and there would be mud. She tried to breathe and sucked in whole oceans until her skull and lungs started to strain.

Tennant was a bearded blur above the surface. He managed to catch her wrist and the hem of her black glove. She was beautiful enough without bonnets, he'd told her; she'd be beautiful enough without a glove, wouldn't she? He caught her, but the glove was a sopping wet slug in his fingers and pulled free--

--revealing a hand of wild, polished silver wholly different from the rest of her. Reaching out for him.

And if mirrored fingers could scream, they might shout Tennant, Tennant.
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Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Tolleson » Tue Sep 10, 2013 12:14 pm

Simultaneously that flailing grasp took hold, pulled free Gloria’s glove and tossed it aside; careless to where it landed or sank. For a moment he might have seen the silver, a frantic blur caught by the languid moon on this otherwise quiet night. But the splashes are loud, erratic and tossed a thousand small reflections over the already reflective surface. But the glint of it, the screaming mirror upon that strange limb is nothing compared to the girl attached to it, made of sand and sinking, sinking, sinking to the bottom of the appropriately named lake. There to rest without him. Because of him.

And so he dove. His legs leaving the safety of what was left of the shore. The action is swift, practiced and graceful. Rather like a dancer who by trade wad made beautiful, nimble, and spry. A boy from the sea, a life on a boat, and facing waves more fierce than these, he glides through the water.

No room for doubt or error, better to bruise her than to miss or risk her knocking him unconscious with trashing movement. Propelling himself down, he slams into her cycling, sinking body. One arm wrapped about her hips and bottom, holding fiercely as the other propelled them both up.

He swims, perhaps not nearly as gracefully, but easily until his legs could find the ground and carry them both. And he would carry her until they returned to land, turning her gently, laying her out, lowering her to the bank. Hair slick and dripping the curly beard, somehow, still voluminous and hovering just above her face as he looks for life.

“Gloria?”
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Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:30 pm

One day, she might understand Tennant's aquatic talents with more clarity. She might come to learn just why this moment triggered so many thoughts for him.

A torrent of recollections.

The chance to relive a moment, make right what had been lost.

His arms were a warm cradle. He surged through the milky water, then heaved her like a sack of wet grain onto the muddy shore. With the spongy earth trying to suck her down into its summer-warm bosom, she still tried to twist, thrash. A whooping, hoarse cough ran her chest ragged. She managed to claw over onto hip and ribs to put her cheek into the mud and disgorge a glut of water and wine. The fluid was frothy, a brew blended haphazardly with the air in her lungs.

The black trees spun like dark ribbons of a springtime maypole above her. The Crawl Moon was a blinding fixture, a distant and lonely face that peered over the curve of his shoulder as he hovered above her, saying her name, her name--

A silver hand desperately tried to hide itself in the folds of her muddy gown. Her bare palm launched up and hammered against his shoulder -- not a hateful or forceful motion, but only one that meant to shove him away, push him aside so that she could turn, clamber on elbows and knees several feet away, and empty the water from her guts at the feet of the brown-cone cat-tails. Her spine was a jagged perforation along the back of her nightgown, peeking through the watery fabric. Her ribs heaved.

"When will they do it," she breathed, her voice a winnowing rattle in her throat. "When, for -- for all the lies, for all the mistakes, for Niall's life, for -- for the insults, the friends I've spit upon, for the bonds I've broken, for the terrible things..."

She looked up to Tennnant, the whites of her eyes suffocated and red, her egg-shaped face framed by crawling snakes of hair.

"When will they let my guts boil in the Sun? When will they whip me until the skin is gone, Tennant? When?"

She needed to know. When would it be made right?

Her wrist already bore the blotches of bruises. Traces of his fingers. She gripped the wheals with her shining hand like a precious stone, unwilling to let them go free. The girl slumped into the dirt and watched him, nearly a child who refused a decadent lullaby--

He was H'zlz.

"When will you stop being so -- so beautiful?"
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Re: A Proper Gift

Postby Rance » Thu Jan 09, 2014 4:11 pm

Months later, twelve pages of parchment were folded very neatly, clean save for little streaks of black where brave and reckless fingers had folded folio-sized pages into letter-sized secrets. A droplet of crestless wax ensured no other eyes but the writer's had fallen upon the text within.

The topmost letter was written in a hesitant script; it was, if anything, a poor preface to an even more dully-written narrative.

Tennant,

Day before last I called you idiot, I called you fool, and that was biyond my right, I wish that you would know that I do not wish to see your sister hurt, but rather that I have done enough sinful and foolesh things things that in my fright I cannot trust even myself to be fair or gentle with her, so I would rather not be in the posishon to be impulsive

and perhaps I will trust myself less now that I give to you this--

there is nothing more frightful than losing the control of ones mind, this is why I am scared, this is why I am angry. it has taken me two days to write this bed of elevon pages below this letter; it is a story which has happened, a part of my memory I cannot bare to lose. you will not remember it. you were a Swaint and now you are not and this is when you were. my Standerd is very poor I hope you will forgive it, I am not a writer of storeys but I have tried my hand very hard at it. I have remembared the words we said very well, but though sometimes I think you are much more to me you are my friend and I wish you to have even this, one of my very happy memories that while it may not have truly been you, you are always you to me

you are my friend. I would not harm your sister, she too is dear but i am angry at her, I am so very mad with her, and so i do not further upset you, I have put my focus into writing this thing that has made my brain smile.

yours in hope you will unnerstand,

glour'eya wynsee

The eleven pages that followed were this: a girl's sentimental recollection of a night beside a lake, occasionally embellished, often misspelled, whole sentences regularly lost to strokes and characters too obscurely written to be anything but gibberish. In her mind, it was beautiful and frightening and gentle; on the paper, it was scarcely a shadow of reality. But for all she could remember, the words they had shared were there.

On the final page, one last little note.
If one day you remember how it ends maybe you may write it; if maybe one day you remember how it ends and wish it to be another way anyway, I will read your fickshion with a smile. me, I am too scared to put it into words,

sometimes real hurts.
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