[Seasonal Event] Charity Meat

The lack of snow and seemingly perpetual serenity does a decent job of attracting the ground nesting types of birds and small rodents  - pheasant or ptarmigan, ducks, squirrels, groundhogs, even the occasional wild pig. Everything needs to eat and everything needs to drink. It’s amazing what will tromp through the Glade if she’s still enough. Wessex slows her fake breathing down to nothing, making the telltale puffs of warm breath disappear in the frigid night air. Her eyes narrow as she perches on the edge of the open area, bow and arrow at the ready. She scans the eerie quiet around the water- wearing more than usual but still less than the average human; with LongNight so close, the daylight hours are rapidly shrinking, the nights growing longer and longer. This is her time, now. Her time to play in Caido. As for what she’s hunting - it isn’t for her, exactly. Well, it’s for someone - she won’t let meat go to waste. But for whom is still very much up in the air. WESSEX She whispered back, I am the storm

 

M E L I T A

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They returned after a successful fishing expedition; Melita had been hoping to acquire more berries or meat, and Fangorn had been only too happy to oblige in bouncing and scaring a few birds out into the open. Their first few rounds weren’t quite successful, and though the girl prided herself on her speed, she hadn’t notched the arrow on her haphazardly-constructed bow quite fast enough, and the partridge had flown off into the distance, cooing its desperate call.

She sighed, but it didn’t stop her – tenacity and stubbornness had crafted their way into her movements since the day she arrived on the earth. They crawled their way back into the long grass, remaining idle for a time, figuring given enough moments, the birds would return or calm down, and they’d have another opportunity. The honeybee child took those plodding moments to tug at the feathers on her arrow, to practice her release of the bowstring.

Then Fangorn hissed, staring off into the distance; where it seemed peaceful, tranquil, naught the matter. “What is it?” The youth whispered in return to her companion, drawing closer to the gourd and its eerie, enigmatic intonations; her eyes narrowed, trying desperately to see what he saw, to sense what he sensed. Was there something else out there – far more dangerous than the birds?

Wessex

Just why the girl is wandering around in the dark, Wessex will never know. For all her tenacity and good ol’ fashioned pluck, wood-smarts seem to have gone out the window. Of course there is something dangerous out there, this is Caido right before LongNight. Aside from that week, the days preceding it are arguably one of more dangerous times of the year, when the darkness seems to stretch and loom and throw shadows on all things that could shine a glimmer of hope into its inky crevasses. Melita is one of those hopeful sparks, something plump and shiny for the world to savor as it slowly rips her apart. That is, if Wessex doesn’t accidentally shoot her first. The Ascended woman cannot hear the words the girl whispers to her companion, but keen eyes pick up a flash of something that is not natural, that should not be out there, in the dark. Annoyingly aware of what happened last time she shot into the dark, Wessex has to make a quick decision on how to proceed. She could purposefully aim for someplace wide of the thing/person as a warning shot, or she could stand up and give herself away, saving the things life and simultaneously ruining her chances of hunting by the pond. Well. It doesn’t take long to decide, and rather than ruin everything, she decides to take aim: deliberately aiming for a tree trunk about seven feet from Melita and a good three feet above her crouched head. She hopes that it won’t go astray like last time. Some people just have to learn their lessons the hard way. WESSEX She whispered back, I am the storm

 

M E L I T A

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No one seemed aware that Melita had already been ripped apart.

It hadn’t been in slow gestures, or leisurely strokes. It’d been a cold, merciless fury, stoked and fueled and incensed upon hundreds of beings all at once, and the chaos embroiled far down into their sanctions, made them flee, made them sob, made the yearn for an escape they couldn’t find. She’d lost a multitude of things in a matter of moments – had watched one push them into freedom, had attempted to salvage the other every damned day – and then was brutally reminded of their effect for years afterward. Her mother’s ghost had wrapped its gnarled hands around her throat. Her sister’s songs had haunted her dreams.

She remolded, resculpted, reshaped herself; carved her motives and ambitions into mercenary tendencies, into seditious splendor, into becoming a monster the other fiends feared. She protected her friends and family, what was left of them, as best she could. She strove to shield anyone brutalized. She attempted to become something other than the shrieking, pleading, begging child left in the dust, ash, and soot. She simply didn’t allow herself to become a ruin. The girl had too much fire, too much vehemence, too much potency to ever let something take her down for long. Otherwise, she would still be sunk, down at the bottom of a lake, pushed and shoved and drowned by the weight of memories, wraiths, and phantoms.

Alarm shot through her heart, a jackrabbit rhythm suddenly pulsing through her chest, as the flick of an arrow launched itself into a tree feet away. It was a warning – the honeybee child knew that much. The problem was that she was a stubborn, incensed youth; her time in the Rift had taught her to fight back at any cost (otherwise one was dead, the story over, forgotten about moments later). She managed to stifle a laugh, a chuckle, and danced further into treachery and danger, because it was how she’d lived for years and years. The pair had the nerve to skirt closer to the marked timber, and wrench the arrow out of the wood. Her eyes followed the make and mold of the feathers, but she didn’t recognize it, didn’t ascertain it belonging to any particular being. She put it amongst the other arrows she had nestled on her back; could put it to use in the future if the stranger intended to be wasteful.

Then, she volleyed one of her own – straight back at the location where she thought the arrow had come from. It was an emboldened show of savagery, a keen raising of the hackles, a noted intention that she wasn’t going to back off. Thereafter, Melita grabbed hold of Fangorn and sidled back into the darkness, forgoing the current location in case another one yearned to sail closer. This was probably what the other predator had intended – to ensure no one else hunted on their turf, to make sure they were undisturbed; but Melita frankly didn’t care. She did the exact opposite of running away, and instead, attempted to follow the line of sight, the flick of the arrow, she’d envisioned through the darkness. They could follow the direction, and hopefully come upon the other hunter. It was ridiculous that they would get to occupy the entire oasis, with so much game and supplies to be had.

So she finally embodied the footfalls of silence, Fangorn following, intending to find the fellow hunter, treading into blankets of needles and long, pine boughs, bow and arrow ready to strike, one already notched on the string. She’d never taken threats lightly.

Wessex

The older woman hisses to herself, baring her fangs to the emptiness as an arrow comes launching back at her; she watches it sail through the air and land in the empty grass not to far from her. A decent try, but it must be difficult to aim at night. Which is precisely why it’s so infuriating that someone else is out here. This is HER time to hunt. Wessex owns the night. Fucking little Outlander shits can hunt during the day, just leave the darkness and her home to the Naturals. New Gods, if she were Attuned, she would shift into something big and predatory and hunt that little fucker down. Buttt she isn’t. Instead, all she can do is smell and see and follow the trail to the other. So Wessex remains hunched over and slinks, one step at a time, through the crunchy snow, the cruel wind doing little to dissuade her move into the open. It isn’t until she’s at the water’s edge, hopefully hidden amongst the reeds, that she actually sees the ‘other.’ And then she’s all grumbles. “I could have killed you,” Wessex says with an audible growl, standing up and revealing herself. Her arms cross over her chest as she unwittingly epitomizes the disapproving mother; a fierce lioness just about ready to bat her half-grown cub upside the head for literally ruining their chance at dinner. If Melita goes hungry this week, it won’t be Wessex’s fault. WESSEX She whispered back, I am the storm

 

M E L I T A

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It didn’t take long – hunters were perpetually alike; eager to exploit, to savage, to coil mercilessly against another. The youth wasn’t even remotely surprised to see Wessex’s form come out of the shadows; her head tipped out of respect, the slightest smile managing to coil its way across her lips. Fangorn, at the very least, had the wherewithal to look abashed and ashamed, hissing but puttering behind Melita’s skinny legs, awaiting the inevitable. The youth though, for she was a savage, ridiculous little thing, had spent too many nights, too many days, wandering and surviving, and didn’t play directly into the scolding, lecturing tones. They passed by and sailed through her brain; eventually, one day, one hour, one minute, they would scald and simmer, blister and break, and she’d see the error of her ways too late. The impulsive, impetuous arts were too vastly coiled around her soul – and an impish declaration of defiance lifted her chin, and told her to never back down. She used the same argument and rebuttals as she’d tried with her mother, repeated measures, an echo of the poor, trying patience of a gentle woman struggling to raise whimsical, mercurial children (you could’ve died, her beautiful mother’s catch phrase for when the girl had sunk beneath ocean waves or gallivanted off of high-rise cliffs, and the open, beckoning smile of her daughter’s that instinctively told her she’d do it all over again). “But you didn’t.” She shrugged, as if the whole event had been for naught, meaningless and dramatic nothings. If Wessex intended to slit her throat, she would’ve done it a lot sooner, a lot quieter, straight for the jugular, done away with in the blink of an eye. Melita would never have known or realized it; she’d seen it before, in the twisting, infernal way of shadows’ motions, had tried to mimic it when selecting her own prey, had embodied enough demons and infidels, sinners and saints, down the lengthy, cumbersome road of her existence.

Unruffled, unfazed, she bent down to look through her sack, ruffling a few items before remembering she’d put the artifact in her quiver. That unfolded before her too, while Fangorn looked on, and she smirked when her hands found the chosen arrow. She raised it, and it glinted in the dark, in the patches and thatches of moonlight. Her golden eyes flicked over to Wessex, a picture of innocence when she was anything but. “This is yours?”

Wessex

It’s true, if Wessex had wanted to kill Melita, she would have done so, with an arrow or otherwise. But the little firebrand has weaseled her way into the stoic woman’s ‘more good than bad’ list, so really it’s more that she could have lost someone she’s ever so slightly fond of that makes her growl. There is no and how do you think I would feel if you had, following the girl’s cheeky comment, because the older woman recognizes the irony in the statement before she says it. Which is not to say that Melita cared about Wessex and her death… only that it would be borderline hypocritical (and disgustingly maudlin), and she takes such great care to not be a hypocrite. While Melita rustles in her rucksack for something, Wessex takes stock of their situation. It’s likely that anything they might have seen has fucked off now, thanks to their little exchange. She listens. Nothing. She smells. Nothing except the two of them and the all-encompassing blanket of snow and ice. Welp. Time to call it. Is this yours? floats up to her, and the Ascended’s attention is drawn back to the Outlander, who is holding her arrow with a smirk on her face. “Yep,” she answer briskly, taking the shaft from her outstretched hand. “Hate to waste one of these.” And without further comment, she reaches around to tuck it back into its quiver. Two can play the innocent game, and in entirely different ways. One day she’ll ask the girl about her past, and then she can spill her guts about how brave and strong she is and the violence she’s seen, the blood on her tiny hands. But until then - until the girl speaks up for herself, Wessex will continue to take her at face value. “Let’s call it a night,” she says with a jerk of her head towards the settlement. “Come on, I’ll walk you back.” WESSEX She whispered back, I am the storm

Ok, this one will actually be my last post <3

 

M E L I T A

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There were no apologies exchanged, no hostile maneuvers, and no bristling, fuming, smoldering comments. Melita often regretted many things in her youthful mind, some tinged with innocent bouts of good fun turned ridiculous and inept, and others discolored, disjointed, with the essence of you could’ve done better and you weren’t enough. This was neither of those ventures, and she didn’t have any remorse for raising her hackles and granting a silent altercation. No one had been hurt. No one had been damaged. It’d been a cycle of poor timing and ineffectual hunting, but otherwise, no harm had come to fall to either of them. The only thing currently suffering was Melita’s empty sack tied to her quiver, meant to hold game instead of pockets of air and midnight, twilight oils. Wessex received her arrow, and the honeybee child’s was lost in the grass somewhere, not likely to be found come spring, when the snow melted and thawed, and someone came across its poor design and used it for kindling. But she smiled in the depths of the evening, seemingly innocent, but along the depths of her etched lips were a signature of mischief and devil-may-care platitudes, as if the entire evening hadn’t been spoiled – amused, despite every hazardous notion in the world barking at them for their silly madness.

But even impish, roguish particles had to come to an end, the rest of the void basking on the fringes; she bent down to pick up Fangorn, and nodded, the sensation of agreement, following Wessex back into the settlements – no secrets passed, no burdens lifted, no shields and veils dropped. It’d been action and reaction, and the girl had to wonder what would come next.

Wessex