Completed To The Edge Of Death And Back

[Tazrae]

Timestamp: 45th of Fall, 520 A.V.

It happened so quickly. One moment Tazrae was kneeling carefully weeding the flowers of Kihala's Shrine. The next moment pain, sharp and concentrated, penetrated her hand straight through her weeding gloves. She pulled back, crying out, and saw the cause much too late. The snake wasn't big - not in the least - but was instead a delicate green thing thinner and more fragile than she would have imagined. Stark gold eyes stared at her unblinking. Its rough scales flared out above its eyes giving the impression of it having eyelashes. Its green hues blended it in completely with the plants it was coiled through. The snaked had gathered itself up, head up ready to strike again, defending its living space.

Tazrae acted without thought. She backed up on all fours like... well like she'd been bitten by a snake... then rose up cradling her injured hand with her good one. Tears filled her eyes. The pain was like nothing she'd ever felt before. Her lips parted and a sound came from her that she didn't even recognized as one she could make.

It was an agonized half cry half sob as fire burned up her wrist and well into her arm. She turned, instinct driving her, and ran. She left all her gardening tools at the shrine and pounded through the remainder of the shrine towards somewhere... somewhere a logical side of her brain told her there would be help.

There was no time though.

She'd been warned of snakebites when she first came here. Mostly they were supposed to happen out in the jungle, where one was vulnerable and everything was hostile. But they never talked about a snakebite here, in Syka proper, where everything was beautiful and people went about their business barefoot and often naked. One died out there in the jungle, bitten with no one to help. But here, in the settlement, it was supposed to be safer and there was someplace she could go. Her feet became a fleet jungle deer as she ran, swiftly in that direction like a dozen of those little delicate snakes were after her.

She was too young to die. Tazrae had just started building a life for herself here. But the pain felt like a death. It felt like she'd lit the end of her hand on fire and it was being consumed with flame. Tazrae headed south at a run, finding the cobbled pathway. Where she needed to be was thankfully just a short distance away. But that distance stretched out forever, her fear and pain turning the path before her elastic and strained as if it pulled away in her vision like taffy. Tazrae cried out again, a strangled sob, as the throbbing burn of her hand began spiking with the beat of her heart.

The Innkeeper ran like she'd never ran before. And as soon as she saw the sign to the pathway, she turned towards it, skidding to a halt in the middle of the rudimentary deck and open-aired treatment center of the Panacea. She careened to a stop, hitting one of the beds and grabbing it with her good hand to keep from falling.

Word Count: 530

[Tazrae]

"Please... Jansen? Kalum? You here?" She cried, cradling her inflamed hand with her good one. Pressing the wrist hard cut off the nerves and gave her a chance to speak. "Please... there was a snake. A little green one with rough scales. It looked like it had eye... lashes." Gods the pain was horrible. "It bit me.. and now my hands burning on fire..." She said to the open air, praying he was around and within ear shot. If the two men occupying one body weren't here, she was a dead woman.

Tazrae had just enough time to see a big blue-skinned man with a toned bare chest burst from his Bungalow at a run. He stopped when he saw her. And as she opened her mouth to repeat what she said, her vision tunneled down and the Innkeeper crumpled onto the floor. She remembered thinking the wood planking of the floor was hard and silky smooth. Her disconnect was such that she dwelled on this for a full breath trying to decide how that was possible for a floor to be both things at once before darkness overtook her.

Tazrae lifted her head from where it lay on the floor and climbed to her feet. "Did I fall?" She asked. But Jansen or Kalum... she wasn't sure which one he was at the moment... didn't respond. He was working on a patient. A girl had collapsed in his clinic and he was busy searching for her body, pulling off her gardening gloves. He narrowed his vision on her left hand, hissed in sympathy, and muttered a curse. Tazrae could see Kihala's Guardian Mark on the underside of the girls wrist.

"Easy Taz... I got you." The big man said gently, examining the bite. "You did good girl. You gave me enough information to help. "What did you say? Your hand was on fire... small green snake with rough scales and eyelashes? Eyelash Viper for sure." He said, studying her bite wound and wincing to himself. He picked the girl up as if she weighed nothing and deposited her on one of the beds.

Tazrae followed. "Can I help?" She asked, crowding close, though the Akalak continued to ignore her. He took the woman's hand in his own and belt low over it, a glow forming where his hands touched the bite. The bite may have looked tiny - as small as the snake had been - but the flesh around the bite was already red and angry. The young woman looked so familiar to Tazrae. Her wild curls reminded the girl who looked on of her own untamed masses.

The Innkeeper reached down to touch the woman's shoulder as if to reassure the woman but her hand passed right through the snake-bitten girl. Tazrae gasped, tried to grip the woman again, then turned to the man working at the woman's side. She tried to touch him and he said nothing - reacted not at all - as her hand indeed passed through him as well. She stared at her own hand, noted the matching angry bite mark on it. She turned and noted the identical bite mark on the woman the Akalak poured his gnosis magic into. He spoke, but Tazrae didn't really hear the words. He was working on HER.... and that was HER laying there dying of a snake bite.

Tazrae turned with a sob and fled.

Word Count: 566

[Tazrae]

It wasn't fair. The woman sobbed as she ran, not willing to stay and watch herself die. There were so many things unfinished. She had too many firsts in front of her. Tazrae had plans for her life. She wanted to learn and be more of a contributing part of Syka. She wanted to grow to swim like a fish and traverse the jungle like Bree could. She wanted to dance naked with Marino, as unashamed of her body as he was. Tazrae wanted to expand her Inn so she had her own apartment above it. She wanted to fish off the completed dock and know that she'd built it with her own hands. She wanted to be an expert marksman with her bow. She wanted to make love to Marino and take his body into her own and carry a blue-eyed child into the world. And now she wanted to help solve Syka's obvious snake problem.

There was so much left to do.

She didn't know where she was going, but Tazrae ran effortlessly through the settlement. People were out and about and she tried to talk to them, stopping first in front of one then in front of another. No one seemed to see her. Was she dead already? They all ignored her presence as if she wasn't there. she tried to touch other living souls, but her hands passed right through them.

Curiously, in her panic, she stopped trying to dodge the people that couldn't see or feel her and just ran through them continuing on her search - for what - she couldn't understand. Tazrae abruptly halted when she realized she was in full fight or flight mode, skidding to a stop without disturbing any of the substance beneath her feet.

"I've died." She said abruptly as the thought occurred to her. She was back at Kihala's Shrine again. She took deep breaths she didn't seem to need and stared at the flowers she'd always carefully maintained. "Gods, I've died!"

"Don't be so dramatic. No you haven't. The snake venom is causing your spirit to roam without your body. I know all about death and you are definitely not dead." A little girl's voice said from the seating area by the shrine. Another woman, taller and looking exactly like Ines but transparent and tinged a darker richer skin tone snickered along with her. The two seemed to have been playing with a ghostly kitten between them.


"How do you know I'm not dead?" Tazrae demanded. It hadn't occurred to her to bother to be frightened of the two transparent beings... three counting the kitten.

The older ghost woman pointed and Tazrae turned to follow her gesture. The stone statue of Kihala's head moved - lifting itself from its respite - to blink and smile at the young Innkeeper. The statue of the Goddess shook her head of hair made of hanging vine flowers and spoke in that lyrical voice Tazrae remembered. "Eyelash Vipers are some of my most lovely creations. Delicate, fragile and yet deadly. You should learn more about them, Tazrae. You don't need to kill them to keep them away from the settlement so people are safe. You just need to fight fire with fire and learn what they dislike and cultivate that." Kihala whispered, her lovely curved stone lips turning upwards in a smile as she gazed at the young Guardian. "This is a lesson you should learn from if you survivie it." She said thoughtfully, then slowly lowered her head again to return to the playful resting position it had been originally carved in via Reimancy.

Tazrae stared, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.

The young Innkeeper turned back to the two spirits, but they were ignoring her again. They almost seemed like they were a family, the togetherness the three showed gathered like they were. Tazrae felt a pang of loneliness in her heart. She longed for a family too.

The ghostly kitten clawed at a long-tufted piece of grass the older girl dangled in front of it. The younger girl called encouragement to the kitten which seemed to spur the kitten on. Tazrae blinked in confusion, turned, and wondered if it was time to get back to her body if she was indeed not dead. She didn't feel like she belonged here, not with them like this, and certainly not even in the shrine that seemed currently devoid of snakes.

Word Count: 739

[Tazrae]

As soon as Tazrae had the thought of returning to her body, she instantly knew exactly where her body was. It was an odd sensation, the understanding it was vaguely 'that way'. She wondered how far she could travel before she'd lose that sense? Tilting her transparent head first one way then the next, she concentrated on where her body was and took a step. She immediately felt the world contract and expand around her like it was stretching and she found at the end of that step, she was standing behind Jansen. Tazrae blinked in surprise.

The world had warped there for a moment. She thought of The Protea Inn instinctively and took a step backward. The world heaved again as if she were standing inside giant lungs that were expanding and contracting around her and found herself standing on the deck of the Inn overlooking the sea. Bree, who was lounging in the shade with her head tucked up with her tail curled over her nose lifted her head and snorted. She stared directly at Tazrae and frowned. Taz laughed. She'd never considered Ixam able to frown, but Bree did it beautifully.

"Where is your body?" The lizard demanded, asking Tazrae in a very careful voice.

"I'm fine. At least I think I am. I got bit by a potent snake but I managed to make it to Jansen's before I collapsed. HE's been working on me since. I should be okay. But for now, I'm doing this...." She mused.

Bree nodded. "Snakebites do funny things." Tazrae couldn't help but agree. She gazed around herself and noticed there were more colors than she ever remembered knowing. The world was painted in hues and tones she had no name for. Instinctively she knew what black and white were. She knew the other seven colors of the rainbow and things like brown. But the colors she could now see seemed to have their own identity, vibrant and shining unlike any of the other colors.

"Living humans have such poor eyesight." She said abruptly, the lizard that had been sleeping in the shade nodded.

"You are really weak-eyed creatures. Our world is far richer than you can know." Bree said, laughing. 'I've seen the world through human eyes. I don't know how you survive it." She said with a small laugh that turned into a yawn. Tazrae was convinced Bree spent most of her free time sleeping. This just reinforced this belief.

Tazrae turned from the Ixam and looked around... really looked. The world was truly a gorgeous explosion of color. There was so much to Syka that she couldn't see without being like this - without her body. She turned from Bree then and the Protea Inn and walked to the beach. Again, it wasn't ten steps or twenty but a single step with the strange elastic vision and she was there, standing in the sand - toes bare - water washing her bare feet. She could see the water frothing about her feet and the sand swallowing her legs ankle-deep, but she couldn't feel it. She felt nothing. She supposed, in that instant, she needed skin and bones and flesh and blood to really interact with the world more than as a spirit. Tazrae wanted those things back. The sea was not the sea without its wetness washing at her.

The breeze was not tingled with salt when she had no nose to smell it with. She turned, felt the pull of the direction of her body, and took a single step. She was there then, by Jansen's side, as he pulled the last of the poison from her body and urgently called her name.

Tazrae started to tell him she was right there, standing beside him when suddenly she wasn't. She was trapped in darkness, struggling to open her mouth, to take a deep breath... air filled her lungs as her lips parted and she opened her eyes.

"Gods, Jansen. What.... What.... oh gods... a snake..." She whispered. Jansen nodded. "Indeed, it was a snake. A nasty little eyelash viper. You are lucky you got to me so fast. It would have killed you, Tazrae." He said, reaching out with strong arms to help her sit up. She did so, carefully, then ran her hand through her curly hair and looked down at her hand.

"Will I be okay?" She asked, scared now, knowing how close that had been.

"You should be. I got to you quickly. Did you kill the snake?" He asked even as Tazrae started shaking her head. She didn't even remotely think of killing it.

"It was in Kihala's Shrine. That seems wrong somehow, to take a life there." She whispered. The big Akalak nodded, reached out, and gripped her shoulder.

"You are okay now, Tazrae. Be at ease. Go home. Rest. No strenuous activity the rest of the day. Stay away from snakes if you can, especially poisonous ones. I'll send Randal by to see you tomorrow. He's a snake expert and can teach you a thing or two about them. Maybe knowing more will help you." He added.

Taz nodded, swung off the bed, and tentatively put her feet down carefully. She smiled, gave Jansen a brief hug, then started slowly home. For a moment, she missed the single step travel to and from where she was going instantly. When she got home, both Creech and Bree carefully looked her over, the lizard particularly concerned.

The events of the day left Tazrae sipping iced tea on the deck and thinking about what could be done to stop snake bites like the one she had just received.

Word Count: 941
Total: 2776

[Tazrae]

Tazrae-

Observation +5, Socialization +2, Running +1, Endurance +1

Snakebite: Painful, Deadly, Creates Near Death Experience, Ghosts: Syka has at least two - Veronica, Inez, & a kitten, Humans: Vision Limited, Bree: Can See The Out Of Body, Kihala: Charged Tazrae With A Task