Completed Bones

(This is a thread from Mizahar's fantasy role playing forums. Why don't you register today? This message is not shown when you are logged in. Come roleplay with us, it's fun!)

The vast mountain range of Kalea is home of secret valleys, dead-end canyons, and passes that lead to places long forgotten or yet to be discovered.

Bones

Postby Seju on December 29th, 2013, 11:17 pm

Image
forty monkeys drowning in a boiling sea
everywhere I go it rains on me
- tom waits

50th of Winter, 513 AV

Pines jutted from a bluff.

Seju shambled over the sepia plateau, chafing his hands together as he slipped through undulating grasses. Drizzle slanted against his scruffy cheek. Rolled off his shawl, chilling him. There was little to see. Thin ice and jumbled boulders. The yellow bones that poked from the grass. The bluff that never seemed to get closer.

Doggedly, he kept going. There was a bow at his side, but he hadn't used it yet. There just weren't any animals. They'd eluded him.

The fog was rolling in.

Djinns jostled with devils in his head. There wasn't anything to do but think. Detached from the drizzle, with the barren plateau stretching before him, he hopped over a drained creek. Bones mixed with the pebbles. Then kept going over purple thistles. Dirt partially covered a skull. Horns jerked at his baggy pants as he disturbed it.

Seju gazed down at it, then hunched over. Rocks jabbed at his knee as he yanked the horn out. Ran his thumb over the whorls. They were cold and rough, not smooth as he'd been expecting. They might've belonged to an antelope. Dropping the horn, he scuffed at the frozen dirt. Kicked at a stone but it wouldn't yield.

Spirits whined at him upon stirred winds. Amorphous with longing, they inundated him with the jabber of the creek. The kiss of light on his cheeks. The rumble of stampede in his ears, and grit upon his lips. Pelts pressed over his shoulders. Not quite illusions. They'd come from somewhere. Pieces of a summer that'd passed. Seju tensed. Tried to hold it all in. Pale men in hides slipped before him. Yipping mongrels ran around the legs of horses. Jade beads clacked together.

They seemed so overwhelmingly real. The noises and the smells jumbled, and he staggered under the deluge. The spirits were brittle, though. They cracked as he began to walk again. The drizzle returned.

Seju was troubled. He didn't understand what he'd seen. He just walked the maze of bones, tugged at his shawl. Took a look at the bluff, but he couldn't see it any longer. The fog had swallowed it. There was a dullness in his gut.

Puffs of white swept up from his face, and he scowled. Trundled over a jut of a ridge. The grass slipped under his heel as he reached the apex. Then he looked over an eroded basin with a skim of ice. There was a yak on the other side.

Seju slowly reached for his quiver, but the yak didn't startle. It just gazed at him. It had a shaggy black pelt and was missing an ear. Its horns hadn't grown in yet.

Seju gazed back, still fumbling with his bow, but then he thought of the spirits. His jaw clenched. There were so many bones on this plateau. That was all the spirits had got left, just dirt and grass and memories.

The yak dipped its head.

Seju turned and crouched staring across the plateau until it vanished into the fog.
Image
User avatar
Seju
I like to grumble
 
Posts: 17
Words: 23291
Joined roleplay: December 7th, 2013, 10:40 pm
Location: Alvadas
Race: Human
Character sheet

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests