Because it's fun, because I need it, and since I love to get my texts slaughtered.  I've been impulse writing the history of a character that popped up in my head and screamed for attention, and since I felt nice and attentive I kindly wrote down what he wanted me to write. I don't plan on playing him at all, but since I kind of like the way he made me write I'd like to show it off, get it criticized and perhaps even learn something from the process. Please don't mind the more technical details, I went on what I could remember of the Eth when writing this, so not everything is correct. Please focus on the flow of the writing, the chose of words and formulations, so on, since they are what I need to have revised. Thanks for your help! And here we go. He came with the spring. From the sky he came, birthed through water. that almost became his death, for the ice still lay like a thin sheet of glass over the sea, casing it within a deadly grasp and cutting a thin, solid line between heaven and a cold, frozen hell. He couldn't breathe. Thoughtless, mindless he reached for the light, palms pressing upwards with a weakness that coursed through soul and frame, mated with the pain that already filled him. The light, so beautiful and so unreachable, would he ever be able to touch it?
Something resounded within him, a pulsating like the heartbeats that had thrummed within his ears but now was beginning to fade. Slow at first, then faster and faster until something dark shielded the light from his view, hands much like his own pressing down from above. A face, blurred and shocked even through the cracked barrier of the ice filled his periphery and their eyes met, silent messages passed between souls that was similar and yet so profoundly different. Moments passed. Heartbeats faded. The pressure of water crushed around him in a deadly embrace and the light faded from his eyes, darkness closing in from beyond. Then suddenly a beat echoed with his own, hard and demanding. Thick lashes pressed against cheeks and opened once more, but the darkness remained. A second, a breath before the drumming of his chest, so stubbornly refusing to give in. Then another, and another. Cracks spread under sensitive fingertips, his senses startled awake and urged him to push, press upwards with long limbs struggling against the liquid that encased him. A hard smack against the ice, then a second and it caved from the strain from above and below, could no longer hold its cold prison closed.
He burst through the surface and felt his chest expand, felt the painful sensation of life rushing into lungs for the first time. Light returned to him all at once, eyes looking, up, up into the blinding light in an ecstasy that made him numb, encased him in an awareness too great to contain, and he smiled...
then the world came rising towards him and smacked into his chest, pressing out air and water from within. Coughing and shivering he crawled up onto the ice, burning hot hands aiding eagerly by tugging at long and pale limbs until he was out of the sea. Water streamed from hair and skin with shades of porcelain and marble, or like the ice that stretched out as far as he could see. And then awareness faded from him, clouding but not soothing the loneliness that cut through him like a blade of ice, the first awareness of the horrific loss that he had suffered.
When once again life returned to him and shadows brushed against eyelids, he was in a different place. The light was faded and red and came from a flickering fire placed at the center of a hut, small and filled with smoke that made his eyes sting and the lungs burn. Sloping walls had been crafted from wooden poles and hides, sewn together into one cloth that was wrapped around to provide shelter from the elements. Bright figures had been painted all over, dancing shapes of red and black that slowly circled all the way from floor to ceiling. Lines criss-crossing the roof held small bundles of grass and flowers, dried and drying ones that lent a distinct scent to the air, that he later would come to recognize as late summer and harvest. And everywhere that the flames could not reach were the shadows, dense and heavy as the blanket upon his chest. He coughed, shivering from a sudden cold that shook his body and made the limbs feel weak, he tried to push them away and felt was surprised to feel his own skin burning under the touch. Suddenly a woman appeared from the shadows and held him down, voice speaking soothingly in a language he almost could understand. A bowl was pressed to his lips and liquid gushed into his mouth, thick and rich with tastes that overwhelmed his newborn senses, clashed on his tongue and made him swallow greedily, eagerly accepting more until there was nothing more to have. He searched for her face and found it with with his gaze, taking in the features and the long black hair, the color that mingled within the dark silk and how dark her skin was. Eyes widened and in a heartbeat their eyes met, recognizing one another from once before. Her changing eyes were so beautiful, like the heavens in all their glory had settled within them... Then he fell back onto the thick furs, awareness lingering for a moment before the lids fell over his eyes, once more bringing the darkness down from above.
Her name was Tenra. She was Vantha, and yet she was not; choosing not to live with her kin, her devotion went not so much to Morwen as to the nature that surrounded her, to the earth and the sea and all the creatures that crawled over its surface, swam in the ocean or flew through the air. She was a witch, twice chosen by Caiyha to caretake the sea and the frozen tundra and everything in between. She had found him beneath the ice while fishing for the last time of the season, before the pack-ice melted and opened the ocean to boats. He had been lucky, another day and he wouldn't have survived in the frigid temperatures that still lingered in the area.
She slowly nursed him back to life and taught him how to eat and drink for himself. Once strength returned to limbs and spirit she gave him clothes, laughed as he learned how to stand and walk and move with grace. Through listening and following her every move he learned her language, Vantha, and slowly began to speak. He asked questions, more and more about this world that seemed so familiar and that he had so little understanding of. And she answered, taught him about the tasks she performed, the animals she cared for and the herbs she used in her work. She spoke about the city she had abandoned and the customs of her people as a whole, of the gods and goddesses they followed and the ones they feared. He discovered music and she taught him how to play on a creaking old harp that all but fell apart under his eager fingers. Once it broke for good she packed up the camp and loaded it onto the back of sturdy little horses, slowly but surely steering her steps towards the city where they could acquire a new one. There he was presented with new sights, new impressions and slowly his mind formed, shaped by impressions and knowledge, that many times made an echo resound through his mind, as if they had been known once before and only forgotten.
Slowly spring melted into summer and his colors changed, from a hair pale blue like the sky at dawn into a silky black and the delicate horns transforming from translucent white into shimmering vibrant hues of green. The novelty of being alive slowly started to wear off, and as they once more left the icy city the days settled in routines of work and sleep, eating and speaking. A longing that had always been present became sharper and clearer than before, and he started to spend long nights staring up towards the sky, eyes like liquid silver expressing a sadness and pain that tore at the heart of the woman that watched. He began to question, demand explanations for the things she told him about the Valterrian, about where he had come from, of the sun and the moon - she couldn't answer and so instead she told him stories, weaving his questions into ifs and maybes and tried to still his hunger for something she couldn't understand. Restlessness caught him, a desire to know more about people and their true intentions grasped him, until he pushed her into teaching him something she didn't want to teach; auristics, to view the emotional states of the things around him. He read her, he read the animals around them and the ground the walked on, saw the colors of the earth and every living plant. For a time it captivated him, but as he gained more control over this ability and learned the downsides of it in several cases of overgiving, that too seemed to loose its delight. Slowly he changed, the childishly open and impressionable man closed within himself and begun to brood, only participating in conversation after much insistence and probing. His replies to questions were vague and half-hearted as if not even he could understand what was getting at him, but what he did manage to convey was a tearing feeling of being lost, so strong that the pain weighed down each limb and made it difficult to breathe. His mortal weakness seemed to annoy him, and only at night when his form shifted and changed did he seem to lighten, the occasional smile being brought to his lips.
It pained her to see him fade from the world she had given him, and she tried many things to brighten his heart, with little success. In a final attempt to ease this numbing longing she brought him close, took him to bed and taught him the pleasures of the flesh, opened her heart to him and gave him all the love she possessed within. For months it seemed to work, his mind grounded once again and the smiles that had faded returned, his eyes looking to hers and melting their souls into one...
Then as summer slowly began to fade she was struck by illness. A long cold lingered and dragged out into a stubborn cough, and no healing potion she made seemed to help. His attempts at aging the illness only made it worse, and soon she begged him to stop, the treatment only bringing her pain. Bewildered and lost he watched her loose her strength, the once beautiful woman wilting like the wild flowers until she was forced to stay in her covers at all time. It was then that her mind began to cave, the enforced stillness changing her bright and patient mind into something bitter, listless and defeated. He nursed her like she had taught him, placed all his energy into bringing her strength back. Autumn came and went and brought strong cold and snow, more snow than he had ever seen before. As the winter progressed and his colors changed she grew worse, a second cold devastating all his attempts at aiding her. And when the storms finally stopped, when the moon shone brightly down upon the lands and the stars gleamed beyond the dancing northern lights, she drew her last breath in his arms and left him alone.
His grief was one without words, cold and numb as the world around him. For days he stayed by her side, watching through the darkness how her beautiful shaded faded, the warmth of the fires allowing the flesh to rot and decompose. He stayed by her side as the earth reclaimed her, his mind slowly plummeting from the light. The moon no longer brought him comfort as it only reminded him if the night he lost her, the sun brought pain in its clarifying, unyielding light. Time passed and slowly she was brought back into earth, and when nothing remained except cold bones and empty clothes he burned the shelter they had shared, only keeping a small fragment of her in form of a wrist bone, hollowed and thread on a string around the neck. He watched as the fire consumed the only thing that had brought him relief from the longing, and as the flames died out he cursed the sun and the moon and tied cloth around his head, definitely shutting out all their light from his eyes. He swore he wouldn't gaze upon them again until they returned what had been taken away, he cried and blamed the moon for the pain he was feeling from lingering in the world when he had known paradise, his colors of spring and summer faded into something listless and dull, matte black and soiled white resembling the shades of lifeless stone froze upon his flesh. And then he stopped crying, a coldness lowering over the beautiful face until every emotion was locked away deep within a soul that never would cease to ache.
He took a horse and what little he could carry of belongings, and blindly he began to travel, using his auristics to find the way through barren lands. His heart was empty and void, depraved of laughter or warmth. All he had left was a hunger, a longing to know why that kept pushing him forward, ever forward until the wastes of Taldera shifted into forests of Sylira, the seasons change anew and a city finally came into view. Maybe he would find what he sought after here, in the floating city of Ravok where humas dwelled...
And there you have it. Rantings of someone with too much time on their hands, please don't mind. ^^ Or well, I suppose the whole point with this is for you to do just that... Eh. I think I'm just embarrassed to show it off. ^^; |
by Strix on November 6th, 2011, 11:17 am 