Detritus

Detritus

Postby Rance » Wed May 29, 2013 12:37 pm

Even in peeling the freshest orange, there is waste -- the hollow, orange skin, the stringlets of white membrane meant to be thrown to the compost. There is, in the building of a new monument, the rubble of the old one it replaces needing to be swept away. One might say the same of minds: they are not clean things, or perfect, but cluttered with any manner of debris. Even the most precise hole could not be cut in the layers of a conscience without some trash trying to push its way through.

And with some minds, that was the case more than others.

Murder without reason is a sin.

Rhaena Olwak had a mouthful of sand. When she chewed upon it -- and she knew to chew because the tongue must get all of the taste, that was simply the way it was done -- it pierced the top of her mouth and the fragments split off the edges of her teeth. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was a chip of bone and what was a stubborn grain. But she must chew it. That was right. That was obedience. There was a little trowel pushing down her tongue and pouring it into her. And a voice. Male. It spoke in another language, a hard and unforgiving tongue, but she knew the language innately, as if she'd been raised under its tutelage.

"Swallow it, Oro'me. All of it. It is the stuffing--"

"No," she said, and while the voice was not Rhaena's, the words were hers, as if she'd no control over her tongue; like this moment was not hers at all. "I've had enough I've had--"

A hissing overflow of sand was scooped into her mouth. Strong fingers squeezed her jaw like a vice, forcing it wide. The glass edge of the trowel scraped the rough scaling across the bridge of her mouth. "It is the stuffing," the voice said again, "by which we insulate ourselves against the wrongness of the world. You must have it all, you must have your daily due."

The sand was burning, filling her, scalding her throat and clogging her nose as it worked its way up through her cavities with every breath. Plugs like half-wet granite-meal filled her nostrils from the back of her mouth.

Rhaena -- Oro'me -- could feel grains trickling into her eyes, falling off the hand of the overzealous sand-feeder. Blinding her. Turning to mud in her tears. The taste of blood and earthy sand filling her mouth. Steel and glass. The crunch of a trowel-point jabbing up, up into the meaty mouth-top as the base of the spade tried to press the jaw down further, straining, until bone wanted to shatter and all of her teeth creaked with the pressure.

"Just do what I ask, Oro'me. Just be a good girl. Stop flailing, stop struggling, do what I tell you--"

Too much torque. A cracking tooth, an unhinged jaw, the force of a trowel thrusting high into the back of her thr--

"Oro'me. Oro'me?"


That was not a taste that went away with water and mint. It would be there, clinging, lingering well after the flickering thought left. Hot, dry sand and gummy blood.
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Re: Detritus

Postby Jirai » Wed May 29, 2013 1:28 pm

"No."

It is a word that Rhaena Olwak knows all too well. Childishly at first, her brother might say; a stubborn girl, refusing the path that tradition laid before her feet. Demanding to accompany him on his travels to Myrken Wood and see where that has landed her.

"No."

It is a word she has clung to, refusing all advice from her brother, from Lamai, from all who knew better as the girl grew into a woman. See what that has gotten her.

"No."

It is a word that cost her a hand, yet made her the governor's lady. A word that cost her her family but gained her Myrken Wood. It is the word that she will break fate with. So it is no surprise that this is the word she chooses, even as this sand is shoveled into her mouth.

"Just do what I ask, Oro'me. Just be a good girl. Stop flailing, stop struggling, do what I tell you--"

Rhaena has never been one to do as she was told.

"No!"

The word is spat out, with tooth and blood and clawing violence.

And later, as the governor's lady goes about her business, she might wonder at that taste in her mouth, clinging despite the cups of mint tea, and the anger that went with it.
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Re: Detritus

Postby Rance » Thu May 30, 2013 2:49 am

Some residue was hard to wipe away. It only caught the light at certain angles, like streaks of water left across a pane of glass.

Collusion with those who seek to undermine the Nameless is a blasphemy.

"Will you give us the word," they asked her, all of them at once, their eyes illuminated in the dark, thankful for her guidance. There were four of them, all barely teenaged boys, their shoulders planked with the cloudy glass of Jernosta armor -- but they were a little too young for it, soft-eyed and swollen with bravery. Some of their armor bore spattered streaks of blood like tattoos of initiation. That gear had belonged to other men; the knowledge of this was wholly natural to her, inherent, that they were scarcely of an age to have passed their
Odos let alone wear the warclothes of their betters.

"Down with the established order," said One, reciting an old rebellious pamphlet.

"The Nameless are snakes; we are here to cut off the godshead and cripple this damn country," said Two.

Three said, "I will poison the stores of jerethedral water,
Menna, and let them know we show no quarter even to women and children."

And Four, ever-excitable Four, with his nose like a sunstone and his foreheaed a lump of hairless skin, said, "And before we burn down the Birthing Pens, I will have my way with each girl there. I will make them all fat with children and do what I wish to them, in the name of a godless Jernoah."

The other boys cheered. They were bloated with idealism. They were her gray paint splashed across a world of black and white.
She was their figurehead, a mother of orphaned boys she bred just to break down what had shattered her. Rhaena Olwak was the surrogate of their defiance. They looked to her for a command--

In her palm, the too-hot memory of a sweaty sword-handle, her skin sticking to its hide-wrapped grip -- but it was never truly there. She had never inspired rebellion like that, after all.
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Re: Detritus

Postby Jirai » Sat Jun 08, 2013 9:14 am

Bloodless atrocities.

This, though, is not bloodless. This is anything but, and the sword hilt in her hand is both utterly alien and completely familiar.

Meant to be.

No. Nothing is meant to be, and what is meant to be is hers to change.

She dropped the sword.
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Re: Detritus

Postby Rance » Sun Jun 09, 2013 5:10 pm

A sword fell. The echo of its glass tang knocking against the floor was the last thing to be heard--

Some memories were not meant to be tampered with; some things happened as once they had. They were stories loosed from their books, the words scraped out of unknown pages and spilled to the floor for Rhaena Olwak to pick back up piece by piece and put into full sentences.

Each was only so long as a blink. Sometimes, a fleeting dream. Never an invasion, but the bubbling-up of some hot, wretched oil from beneath the surface of her mind. With the truth of a Dream had come other things. Stragglers. Stubborn, tenacious memories that had squeezed themselves through the hole she'd created. The stringy guts of residue-thoughts from that place where the sand burned with the bleaching sun and there was glass everywhere, everywhere.

And if comes a False God to speak against the faith of our Pursuit, then we shall do as we must to ensure that our people's eyes will not be blind, that their hands will not be pressed together in prayer to something that tries to usurp their belief.

"Do you think, Rhaena Olwak--"

(Her name was a muddled inclusion, a superficial patch replacing the identity of someone she suddenly embodied)

"--that you will die tomorrow?"

There was nothing but darkness. No moving air, a veritable chamber of suffocation that broiled in the unforgiving heat of an endless summer. Back and forth, she rocked, back and forth, as if the tiny room that contained her -- no larger than a crate for cargo -- had been cast out into a wild sea.

There was someone else in there, reaching for her. A friend. A girl's voice. Afraid. Their feet and knees touched, barely conserving what little space separated them. A sliver of dusky light crept into the cramped crate. The other girl trapped with her was A'etta. Her only companion.

Desert light crept in through that crack in their miniscule prison and splashed across
the gowned woman's hand, showing the dull vision of metallic knuckles and fingers, replacements for a fist that had once been taken by a dark elf's blade.

"Your new hand is a miracle," A'etta whispered. "The Nameless gave it to you."
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