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 Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:09 pm
She winced just from his tone and sank further into her self-shielding position, staring determinedly at the ground. Hearing footsteps again, though, she couldn't help but look up as she grudgingly followed, not wanting to be left behind.
"I - Alice?" She gaped, then broke into a jog, trying to get closer now. "What's going to get me?"
And now that she thought about it, what were Alice and Cain doing down here in the first place?
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Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:23 pm
"You can't say its name!" Alice told her matter-of-factly, balling her fists up and placing them on her hips. "It's the, the thingy." She spread her arms wide, indicating the vastness around her, and then twirled further away, arms curving to a circle above her head in a non-sequitor.
"The XXX," came a voice at Amaris' ear, her mother's again; her brain registered that it heard noise, but try as it may it could not and would not translate whatever was lost. "You don't believe in us, so we will show you, where we belong."
"All of us," Cain agreed, at her other side, and then they were both gone.
Alice began to sing in the distance. "Amaaris, Amaaris, the bird in the cage, when will you come out? In the evening of the dawn, the crane and turtle slipped. Who stands behind you right now?"
The black swirls, as Amaris descended into them, billowed into images that lived only for a second before collapsing back into obscurity: half-eaten oranges, artificial gumdrop trees, rusted railroad tracks, dolls with dead eyes. Alice's figure was barely visible through the 'fog'.
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Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:31 pm
How surreal was all that she could think as the voices echoed in her head. Something in her clicked and she wasn't quite so afraid any more, just apprehensive.
First one to look behind 'em dies!
She hesitated at first, but descended into the shadows - or whatever they were - still holding her arms protectively in front of her belly, an animalistic urge. All she could think was that she needed to follow Alice... beause there was nowhere else to go. She stepped lightly and quietly, trying to ascertain whether there really was something behind her or not.
"A is for Amy who fell down the stairs," she mumbled, mostly to remind herself that, yes, she was still alive.
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Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:40 pm
"B is for Basil, assaulted by bears," Alice agreed, appearing beside her mother and slipping her hand into hers, pulling her back harshly. By now she was covered completely in the 'soot', so that nothing could be seen of her but two glowing slits for eyes. Her tail swished at her feet, kicking up the shadow-goop like a broom.
"Hey, hey, I want you to name us, 'kay? You look, and you name us, and you will go back and tell everyone our name, so that they will know, and wait. We want a name."
Before Amaris was a pit -- a gaping maw -- a hole so deep that it seemed endless. At her sudden halt, rocks slid down and into it, and no matter how long she waited, she would never hear them hit bottom.
Where the hole met the rest of the.. the Underworld? It swirled, mixing and becoming anything of substance, and that mixture moved, with faces and hands reaching out, but they made no noise no matter how much they wanted her attention. She saw, for a brief moment, Callix; then he escaped, emerging completely from the goopy mixture and disappearing like a flame in a wind.
And the hole itself moved, it turned and looked at her with no eyes, and it saw everything. It was an absence, a not-god-thing, and it hungered so greatly that Amaris could feel it radiating into her, starting from her toes. It had the same taste, sense, sound, smell, of everything, everything that had infected the HQ.
The sound of running water was strongest here, she could hear it directly below her.
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Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:10 am
She spun as Alice pulled her back and blinked twice, staring at her daughter's tail, hypnotized.
"A name?" She murmured, then snapped out of it and looked back up at the two grey pinpricks that remained of Alice's eyes. "Why..?"
And then she looked down.
"Oh," she said thickly, her throat clogging up out of fear as she lost willpower.
She stayed silent for a long time, just looking, looking back at the nothingness. "Once," she said suddenly, playing nervously with the ties on her jacket. "When I was little.. I was friends with a boy.. we played together a lot. ... But he was reckless... kept breaking things.. destroying. He pulled away from me when he started his training.." She paused, then sighed, running a hand through her hair (and leaving black streaks in it).
"I don't know what happened exactly, but one day there was news of murder - then later his father came to me and told me to forget I ever knew him - not to grieve, but to purge him from my memory forever lest I become.. tainted, also.
"Honor," she said numbly, kicking more pebbles into the pit. "I always - I always had to abide by those damn rules, always had to honor my mother and father and my fellows in our art.. and now look at me," she said suddenly, her tone turning cold and quiet. "I did not take my mother's life to protect my own as ritual went - I left her to die to flee that world. I do not honor my hu - fiancee. I've produced.." she took a deep breath. ".. an illegitimate child... to the bloodline.. the holy bloodline of my people."
She just stood there for a while, gazing into the pit.
"Oblivion," she concluded, drawing her hands from her jacket pockets. "The only thing that dishonor could ever be met with. Burn all trace and memory of your existance, a smear upon the righteous bloodline of your peoples, take your life quietly, and burn in the deepest pit of fire reserved for you. No name ever remembered, no sympathetic whisper over your cold, dead body.."
She shook her head, then leaned down and kissed the forehead of her daughter's image. Facing the pit once again, she took a deep breath and crouched.
"And now my time has come to join the damned," she said finally, and jumped.
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Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2006 12:18 am
Oblivion, newly named, rose up to meet her -- but where they touch is left empty, cold, as if there was really nothing there at all. Alice waved to her as she fell, her eyes blue and pupilless, until Amaris could not see her either, too far gone.
She landed on the Oblivion and slid, colors smearing beneath her as gravity abruptly reversed and began spinning upwards. For a brief moment she saw the source of the water: rivers running at the very bottom, their surfaces catching the light (from what?), waters all mixing and pumping through like veins.
Then that was gone too, oh well. There was not really much to look at now; dying was kind of a trial. Her whole life spun backwards before her eyes, each image lost as quickly as it was concieved.
Fourty five minutes ago, Amaris was still alive.
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