Welcome to Gaia! ::

It had been several seasons since Give Up Forever had felt the restless need to seek more that had shadowed the early part of her life. The doe had thought it had been family that had been missing since those feelings had waned once she'd encountered her siblings and had children of her own. Lately those feelings had returned with a vengence accompanied by unusual dreams. She'd forgotten the details of those dreams, other than the feeling of unease, until word came around of Longstride's expedition; it was then the image of the Obelisk returned to her mind.

What was this thing? Why now? Was it linked to the purpose she'd sought early in her life and -- to judge by the return of her restlessness -- was still unfulfilled? It didn't take much to determine she had to go. She wasn't the bravest of kin, in fact at times she was a bit nervous and accident prone, but Give was definitely curious.

It surprised her that once the group was gathered and set out that their initial goal was reached so quickly. She stayed to the back of the group taking everything in as some ventured closer even touching the Obelisk and the surrounding stones. From overheard comments and strong reactions it seems some of the others had more detailed dreams or memories of their dreams; they seemed to be expecting something.

When on buck touched the northern stone Give was at first startled by the brighter glow, but then felt drawn forward toward the western stone. She studied the lines of it and even as the she heard the words of the buck, Give
touch the stone tracing part of the lines that formed a point, like that of a cloven hoof. "A cloven hoof, the curve of horns, or outstretched wings?" she pondering the possibilities even as her own hoof moves along the lines...

From Beyond hung around the back of the group for most of the expedition, half in disbelief that the Obelisk had somehow entered the plane the swamp was on, and half because he was well aware of his appearance. But he wasn't going to let that stop him, not for this. He watched the other kin go about their investigations, each in their own way. He the made his own way up to it, circling it like a few others, letting it fill his vision. He hears a kin call out something about scraping a stone, so he heads off to one of the markings - the one that looks like a fish tail - and scrapes it with his own hoof excitedly.

The stone before her was huge...even bigger than any dream she had encountered. She simply stared at it in wonder, her large pale-blue eyes wider than usual, and it was the first time in her life she ever voluntarily stood still. In her dreams she danced around it, but in the places she danced were stones - how was she going to dance now? She made this journey so she could fulfill her dream, as she did many others.

Unlife had always been strange - paler than her siblings, dancing to a rythm only the MotherFather knew. She'd been plagued...no, blessed with dreams of this stone - this impossible figure - for a measure of time she knew not. She believed herself to be alone in this as well, until one called Longstride called out to others for aid in a journey to find it. Finding the stone was as terrifying and hard as the dreams were to endure, but they made it, and they were no closer to the answers they all sought.

Her head tilted dangerously to one side in a curious manner as she asked, her voice disjointed and breathy, "Does it call from within? Is there a lock and we must somehow find the key?" Her hooves finally began to work again and she tiptoed, or skipped, around the stone, looking from it to the marking stones in the path of her dance. Hearing the buck call out, and seeing others follow his instructions, she aligned herself with the last marking stone and paused.

"Perhaps they need to touch..." she mused and using one foreleg she touched the marking stone and with one hind she stretched as far as she could to touch the obelisk. She was small, so she knew not if her hind hoof would reach.

The glow does not change--pale moonlight against dark stone.



She must move her entire body in a dance to trace the marking. It is as large as she and the stone even larger. Her touch, unlike Give's, causes the Obelisk's usual glow to go dim.



His elaborate hoofwork, legs crossing as he traces the marking that matches him in size, results in the glow of the obelisk dimming further.

Though they cannot be sure, it seems clear that they have not done the right thing.

Touching the stones, Soothe noted, seemed to dim the obelisk. And yet the obelisk was black and solid, looming frighteningly in her sight. Slow, she pushed off her crane stone and walked toward the obelisk, still staying on the southeastern side. She wanted to touch it very little, but it seemed as though that was what was necessary. So she stepped forward and placed her hoof at the base of the obelisk, touching it as gently as she might manage.

She watched the markings on the obelisk with bated breath. Would the markings become any more clear, now that she'd touched it herself? "Let's not touch the stones," she said. The glow had been good, right? Glow was firefly-light, bright eyes and vision. They wanted the obelisk to glow.

Oh, no no no. Ascent was fairly certain nothing good happened when the thing glowed - gravity, falling, a sense of rot - but nothing good.

Uncertain, her Kiokote form gave way to the swan, lifting away from the obelisk to a higher perch near Longstride, watching and...MotherFather help her, waiting.

The dreams that she had before had long been beyond the grasp of her memory. Though the Obelisk had once featured in her dreams, her waking self had never been able to recall its dark countenance or the exact nature of her interactions with it. In the past, when she tried to recall these dreams, she was met only with a vague feeling of the unknown and perhaps the desire to dance, but the Obelisk had eluded her desire to remember.

Even when Longstride made his call, she was only met with a strange feeling of a familiarity, of knowing. She had always danced to her own beat, so she trusted a memory she had no access to, the instinct that said to follow and to dance. The true contents of her dream, of the dancing and of the stone, had been out of reach until their arrival when her memories of the dreams suddenly became clear.

Now, here and reaching, she could only touch the stone in the ground. Even her longest stretch could not allow her back hoof to touch the Obelisk.



She feels no pain, but there is no particular brightening to the glow that had first caught their attention. In the time it had taken for her to respond to the dimming and gather the courage to touch the stone, the soft moonlight had returned, but only as bright as it had been when they had first arrived.



Though the feeling of the dreams had remained, the Obelisk itself had been out of reach until their arrival. The feelings of rot and sickness, the terrible darkness that had haunted her, suddenly had their source. Though Longstride's call had conjured echoes of those feelings, her memories of the dream that had birthed them had been elusive--the Obelisk had refused to live in her mind, only everything wicked that had come with it chosen to stay.

Here though, those memories were all too clear. What had once been a vague knowledge that a dream had been the source of her haunting, now became certainty.

The soft and wet nature of the Swamp's earth means that she does not get very far before soil, mud, and water begins to fill in any progress she makes. Though she does not manage to dig very deep, what little she does see indicates that no kin would find the Obelisk's base.