New Roots Don't Mourn [SE]
Nat haniel Sterling
Hunter

Age: 37 | Height: 6'3" | Race: Abandoned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: 1 - Strg: 14 - Dext: 9 - Endr: 16 - Luck: 6 - Int:
Played by: kae Offline
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Posts: 63 | Total: 255
MP: 0
#1
sons could be birds,
taken broken up to the mountain
Some time in the night, Nathaniel passed his thirtieth birthday. He celebrated in the usual way: drunk, alone, with the fire smoldering in its grate and the dog snoring somewhere near his feet. Or maybe his birthday passed before the drinking. Or after; hard to tell when your years turn over in the middle of Long Night. There is really only the before and the after. No middle worth remembering. Just darkness, of the sort best forgotten even as it happens.

Nathaniel has never been very good at forgetting.

Even now, with sunlight cascading over his shoulders in fragile waves, his mind is full of shadowed, prickly things. The scrape of nails on wood. The groan of hinges. The rattle of windows. The smell of dead livestock in someone else's barn. He grips the handle of a shovel so hard his knuckles turn red and white.

He does not know why he is still alive.

He cannot name a single reason, except malice on the part of the gods he cannot worship. He is staring at the ground, his hair a dark halo around the aggressive angles of his face. And he is staring at feathers, and splinters of wood. He remembers building this chicken coop. He can still smell the cut wood. The turned earth. The straw, as he bedded it down so carefully before the sun said its last farewell - sweet, warm, safe. Except nothing is safe in Caido.

Teacups, the dog, wanders in lost circle around him and around the house and around the coop, bending every now and then to sniff at feathers or gouges in the mud. But there is nothing left for her to guard. Something destroyed it all in the night. Nathaniel can only guess at what - or why. Maybe it was an accident. Collateral damage. Maybe a strong wind, a sudden storm, a spooked animal from one of the nearby farms. All that really matters is this: the coop is gone, the little building smashed all down one side, the straw blown out and scattered in the newborn grass.

There are feathers, here and there. Two bodies inside. The rest - Nathaniel cannot find the rest. Maybe he will find them later, in the woods. Maybe even alive. But he isn't thinking about that. He's thinking, instead, about how every good thing gets demolished. Every little act of defiance eventually crushed.

He is here, at the end of another Long Night, and he doesn't know why.


(( seasonal cleaning thread in case anybody needs one ))
Harper Quinn
the Stalwart
Teacher

Age: 33 | Height: 5'10 | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Nomadic
Level: 5 - Strg: 15 - Dext: 15 - Endr: 27 - Luck: 19 - Int:
Played by: Brit Offline
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Posts: 1,036 | Total: 6,169
MP: 9427
#2
HARPER
Here, in this sprawling land with buildings that reach for the ground more the sky, with its citizens and their kindness, their humble ways and bartering systems, there seems to be no place for Harper. He is left without a purpose, a job, a mission. Even from birth he had known what he was meant to do, how he could help. From learning to fly the trapeze and walk the tightrope to put on a show and support his family, to the rigorous schedule the assassins had kept him to, to his mentor's nightly regime around the city. Downtime is a foreign word to Harper, and he is left with this: wandering, meandering, exploring. Vainly hoping in some small way that as he traverses this unfamiliar paths that maybe he will find his place. Or perhaps help someone, if only to feel useful for a moment in this foreign land.

Of all the things he expects as he walks through the undergrowth, a chicken is not one of them.

The two stare at one another in some sort of Western stand-off. Harper blinks slowly, wondering if maybe he's hallucinating, but nope. That's...that sure is a chicken. As if to emphasize this the feathery little thing clucks and tuts at him before striding away. Harper stares after it, mouth slowly falling open as he gazes around almost frantically for someone else to have seen that. Of course there is nobody, but he hastens his pace towards the wayward fowl nonetheless. It is far too well-fed to be wild (are there even any wild chickens in the world? He's a city boy, what does he know) and used to human contact at the very least he discovers as he coaxes it towards him and swoops it up. Footballs the little chicken under his armpit, and hopes it doesn't peck him to death before he can find an owner.

The farm he comes across shortly after seems like an appropriate place to start, and he ventures nervously across the fields, hoping he isn't trespassing. There is a tall, dark-haired man staring at the wreckage of some sort of structure, and Harper approaches and clears his throat softly, hoping to catch the man's attention. It's natural to come forth with a smile as warm as noonday sun, hoping he's in the right place. "Hello there, sorry for intruding. Uh...is this little gal yours?" Here he gestures to the hen sitting grumpily under his arm, sheepishly staring at the other man and hoping to the Gods that he's the owner. The hen may just kill him if he has to carry her any longer.

Nathaniel
some things take insane bravery
but after that, you'll be free


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