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 Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 2:54 pm
The Description~
Zion Island is perfectly circular, and the mountains resemble the waves and ripples formed when something is dropped in water: there is a peak in the center (which blooms at the top like a sculpted volcano) and a range all around the valley between the central volcano and all other mounts. Technically, there is only one circular shore, a white sand beach followed inland by a field of common herbs which, further inland as the elevation slowly starts to climb, flows into a grove of fruit trees, bushes, and vines mingled with vegetable and nut bearing plants.
The orchard fades into a peaceful meadow with a river in the center that flows clockwise around the island, fed in four places by waterfalls from the mountains and, forty five compass degrees away from the falls (assuming the center of the compass is the central summit of the island), four streams carry water out to sea to keep the river from flooding. The waterfalls are directly north, south, east, and west of the central mountain and the streams are northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest of the same point (which is what I meant by forty five degrees from the falls). The river and meadow are both teeming with life, and everything living in them is good and customary for eating, except perhaps for the grass that feeds the wild animals.
The meadow fades into a forest as the hills climb into the mountains that make up the circular range surrounding the inner most parts of the island. At the fringes of this forest, skirting the meadow, are moderately rare herbs, all of which are harmless to the touch. (The creators of this island weren’t attempting to help people make weapons, but even grass can be used in a harmful potion if you know how.) The woods quickly become uninviting to those who venture in further, though, growing beautiful white poison oaks wreathed rich, deep green in poison ivy and its floor carpeted in abnormally thorny blood red rose bushes. (I said uninviting, not ugly.) The further in one goes the more treacherous it becomes, not to mention it’s a steep uphill climb the whole way. Eventually the forest gives way to barren stones, all razor sharp, for the rest of the way up to the bladed top. The stones behind the waterfalls are just as sharp; they aren’t immune to steady erosion, but elementals come to sharpen them almost daily.
The inner side of the mountain range is the same, barren and bladed, all the way down to the hills where it finally smoothes out and fads in to a new garden. This one is made entirely of rare and very rare herbs and plants (most of which you should be very careful about using, even touching, because of their potency) which populate the valley as thickly as a dense jungle. A river runs around the middle of this valley garden as well, fed by weaker waterfalls from the same mountain top springs as the others and absorbed by the surrounding plants too quickly to flood. In the center, of course, is the volcano, which is most always smoking.
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Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 2:55 pm
The Creation~
Goe's ship was whisked away by wind and waves so quickly they might have passed their target spot in the ocean far enough away from both the mainland of Nippon and The Isle of Pain to lose them and be lost by them over the horizon within a minute if it hadn’t been for the little twister of wind elementals Aero had left there waiting for them. While traveling (as short a time as that had been) Kabuki had removed his robes, leaving himself wearing just a multicolor tie-dyed fundoshi, and secured all of his belongings firmly in his cabin so not to be moved by the most violent shaking of the vessel he could imagine. Well, almost all of his belongings. Other than the fundoshi, he kept with him the sword given him by the late phoenix elder because it was filled with elemental power that would surely prove useful.
Once there, the mage lost no time in setting right in to his elemental incantations, and Aero and Hydro went jumped overboard to start their part of the creation ceremony. His enchanted blade glowed bright white and blue and supercharged what would have been week spells. The twister started getting bigger and a whirlpool formed just under it. The mage’s chants, at first glance, didn’t seem to be doing much, but they grew in power over time and very soon their effects became evident. The water elementals Hydro had befriended found themselves immensely strengthened as they danced in their ever strengthening storm. The wind elementals would have, too, if it weren’t for their immunity to alchemy; instead, the wind around them continually dramatically accelerated and they fed off that power to grow themselves. Geo was still working just to hold the ship together as it was whipped around the cyclone, soon to be pulled in, and Pyro waited with his gang of elementals in their cabin where it was safe and dry.
The storm started expanding outward as it grew in strength to hurricane, but with the help of his pets the mage kept what would have otherwise been damaging effects to the other lands at bay within the area that would soon be their island. The hurricane went from level three to level four to level five and then for a while it seemed their ability to intensify the storm leveled off. What had really happened was the laws of nature were being challenged by each other thanks to the strength of the wind and sea. In order to help push their power further, Kabuki would need to get in the middle of them where his voice would have far more influence than from the outside where the winds swallowed his words before they could reach the elementals. He signaled Geo to stop struggling and the winds immediately pulled the ship right in. The weretiger had to dig his claws into the deck to keep from being violently thrown off (one of his hands clung to his still glowing sword and he drove the blade into the deck as well), Pyro and crew were none too pleased with the sudden turbulence, and Geo retreated completely into the wood.
Aero spotted them tumbling around in the wall of the storm and pushed them into its eye. The eyes of most storms are peaceful. In fact, I’ve heard it said by a storm chaser that the eye of a hurricane is the most peaceful place on Earth. Even he would have been taken back by the peace in the eye of this one. The air was swirling around but it was too thin to move anything heavier than hair because most of it had been pulled into the wall of the storm which sort of had a vacuum effect on the center. Fortunately for Kabuki, whose lungs might have failed in trying to extract oxygen from so little air, Aero knew that already and followed them into the eye to provide a constant supply. The heavens above were entirely void of clouds. In fact, it was almost void of atmosphere all together. The sky was so clear one could readily make out the stars trying to shine from behind the blue.
Their ship crashed into the blue bellow. Other than the ripples coming from the vessel and the wall of the storm, which could at this point have easily surrounded the city of Ako, the waters were as smooth as glass. One could see straight down to the bottom of the sea for its crystal clarity, not to mention that it was oddly shallow for being this far out in the ocean. Most of the water from in here had been pulled up into the storm, and Hydro had seen to it that all of the sea life had gotten out of the way before the storm got this ridiculous.
The weretiger retracted his claws, stood up sopping wet, and thanked Aero with a wide smile as he yanked his enchanted blade from the wood. He’d thank all four more literately later, but he knew the elementals wouldn’t keep up this dance forever. He started back in on his invocations and his voice carried through the thin air splendidly, echoing even, which made the power of each syllable multiply. The swirling light from his blade actually spread and surrounded him because of the intensity of the energy. The storm again started increasing in strength. With regret, Aero had to leave Kabuki to keep the storm and its effects from expanding beyond where they needed it. Kabuki had just enough breath left in him to complete his spells and then passed out from lack of oxygen, a problem he hadn’t foreseen.
The eye of the storm became powerfully peaceful, if there is such a thing. The vacuum effect intensified to the point gravity could no longer fight it, and the ship and the water it sat in started rising off of the ocean bed to fill in the would-be-empty space. The water was all pulled into the wall of the storm, which was still being controlled by Aero, Hydro, and their elemental friends (who were immensely enjoying this, by the way) which left only the ship, a little air, and a little mist floating in the center of the storm about a mile up from the rock bed which had quickly become as dry as a bone. Geo and Pyro and the fire elementals under Pyro's command came out of the ship. It frightened them significantly to see the walls of the storm, now several miles away on all sides, looming and threatening to release the sea onto them, but they trusted their brothers to keep up the storm until they were done. After taking a moment to build that courage, they dived to the dry ocean floor. A volcano came into existence thanks to Pyro and crew and it grew and erupted straight up. Geo made sure to move their ship out of the way as he helped form the land that would be their island.
Aero came back just long enough to revive Kabuki, give him enough air for a few more spells, and went to keep the storm under control again. The weretiger wanted to just enjoy breathing again (his poor brain was too oxygen deprived to have the energy to come up with a new idea like creating air to breath for himself), but he uttered the spells he already had planned as quick as he could before passing out again. He had to or else risk Geo and Pyro not having enough power to do their job. The sword still firmly in his grasp glowed green and red, his magic strengthened them, and they formed the island as planned, growing it from almost nothing and shaping it according to the blueprint they had laid out in their minds.
When all of the land itself was finished, Pyro retreated into the central volcano to furnish his new furnace of a home and the fire elementals joined him. Geo signaled the others they could stop the storm by starting the last faze of perfecting the island - growing the plants. There was a slight problem, though. The elementals not under Kabuki’s control didn’t want to stop. Aero flew to Kabuki again and tried to revive him. The mage stayed blacked out. He meowed rather loudly for help and the other three all came to him. Geo still needed schooling in the art of using herbs, but tried using what he knew already. Hydro splashed his face with water. Pyro stood on his chest and shocked him and that’s what started his diaphragm moving again. The weretiger gasped and sat upright, looking around with a most disoriented expression. Aero and Hydro immediately went back to controlling the storm. Kabuki gathered his wits and realized the gravity was still shut off in the eye of the storm. He lifted his sword, which he was quickly beginning to think of as a bladed wand, and focused into existence a gentle breeze so he could keep breathing. (Geo and Pyro, by the by, had kept from fainting by assuming completely elemental forms, so their cat sides could go for some time as if they didn’t exist. Pyro, though, was most grateful for this breeze because even fire craves oxygen so he had been limited to the form of lava until he came in Aero's presence.)
Kabuki seemed a bit absent as he looked over the barren island bellow them. “Geo, would you please dock our ship,” he whispered. His voice still carried, so he was heard clearly despite how softly he spoke. Geo obeyed and the mage guided himself to the edge of the island, the brink of the wall of the storm, which would shortly be a clean, white beach. He still seemed out of it, but he was all there. Out of his mouth next were gentle hypnotic spells. If he had to charm the whole sea into his command to end this storm he would. The water elementals started calming down. The wind elementals were still immune to alchemy - nothing he could do could change that - so the winds kept blowing even after the sea calmed down as much as it could with the winds whipping at their surface and stirring up waves. Next he looked to Geo, who was still at his side, and concentrated earth elemental spells on him, causing his enchanted blade to glow bight green. Geo felt himself growing to peak strength and beyond and suddenly understood what he must do. His element was one of his weaknesses of the wind elementals; it was up to him and Aero to end this storm.
Allow me to skip ahead a bit, as this post is already quite lengthy. Eventually the storm was ended, and no harm befell mainland Nippon or the Island of Pain. Kabuki’s hypnotic spells quickly wore off, so the only elementals in his power are those in my bio, and Pyro (though he still considers himself in charge of the volcano) has no more control over the fire elementals on the island than anyone who knows how to command those weak willed beings. Plants were grown, rivers, springs, and waterfalls were put in place (all the water used was drawn from the ocean and somehow made to continually be drawn through the mountains to feed the springs which fed the falls which fed the rivers which flowed out to sea again), and the animals they brought on the ship were released to multiply and populate the island so they would always have something to eat (provided, of course, that they didn’t over hunt). As of the last edit of this post, the island still isn’t really done...
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Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 5:03 pm
Geo slept in the jungle of herbs in the inner circle of the island. Pyro slept in the volcano. Aero slept in the clouds above the island. Hydro slept in the river in the inner circle of the island. Kabuki couldn’t sleep. He, too, was exhausted. They had taken only an hour or two (or five, but Who was counting in that chaos?) to build the island they sat on (or in or above), and it had sapped all the energy they would probably be able to muster for a week. At least, that’s how they felt at the moment. But Kabuki couldn’t sleep. He could hardly move, and he couldn’t sleep.
The man sat on the beach, staring blankly over the horizon. The man, not the weretiger, for the tiger, if he had his choice, would surely be sleeping in one of the newly formed caves, and so the inner tiger of the overall being on the beach was sleeping inside, its wishes and desires all silent for the time being. Its claws were retracted, its breathing was slow and deep, its tail didn’t move, its muscles didn’t tense; it was completely, soundly asleep. But the man couldn’t sleep. His mind was wide awake and tumbling over inside of his conscience. The tiger’s jaw didn’t want to move, but the man’s voice managed to utter two slurred words as if just to assure himself all he had seen had been true. “…I died…”
In the midst of the storm, the weretiger tasted death. His lungs had failed, followed by his heart, and his mind and spirit simply abandoned ship. The spirit of the man and the spirit of the tiger were still alien to one another at the time. Animals have spirits. They do not have souls. But what is animal and what is “human” is not defined, in my language, by the appearance of the creature, but by what goes on inside. Thus something that looks totally human might indeed be inhumane, and something that looks totally alien might indeed be human. The tiger Kabuki had managed to fuse with was an animal through and through; the feeling of being tied to a soul was still foreign to it. I wonder if one can even begin to imagine how that spirit must have reacted to finding itself pulled up to the gates of Heaven right along with Kabuki’s soul…
Heaven. A more beautiful place than anyone can imagine unless they’ve seen it themselves. The man was in awe, and no words known by man can describe the feelings of the tiger. I shan't bother going into detail about Heaven, for I would get caught up in the moment and rattle on too long. If anyone wishes to know what Heaven is like, read His Word for yourself or see it analyzed by John Bevere in “Driven by Eternity.” I will skip straight to Kabuki’s meeting with his Master. Or, at least, Whom he had claimed to be his Master…
“…Let’s get to the point. Not everyone who calls Me Master will be saved-”
“-‘but he who does the will of My Father,’ yes, I recall, so how do I fair?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Kabuki was taken aback.
“Master, are You not all-knowing?”
“I will rephrase. I know the future but you don’t, and if I tell you the future I will seal your fate. Because you have not sealed your fate yourself yet, I will respect your free will.”
“Is my name not in Your book of life?”
“It has been written.”
“Then I’m in, right?”
“Names in that book can be erased.” Kabuki was shocked speechless for a moment. After this truth sunk in, The Master demanded, “Kabuki, give an account of your life.”
Stuttering, the man offered back with a pleading tone, “Father, I cannot give a full account. You know I-”
“-lost your memory? Kabuki, when were you born?”
Confused, the man answered, “Sire, You know I do not recall.”
“Fine, I will remind you. You, Kabuki, were born only some months ago.” The man was utterly perplexed until The Master went on to say, “Katrick, by contrast, has the birth date you do not remember. For you have been born again and again. You had a new flesh to discipline and a new spirit to submit to me, and yet you’ve been riding on your old spirit’s salvation to get in. The name that was in my book was Katrick. I have erased all but the K to see what you would do from now on, and if you put your life back in My hands I would fill in the ‘a-b-u-k-i’.” There was a short silence.
“Sire, did I not continue to live for you?”
“No, but you did promptly start living for yourself.”
“Sire, I had to take some time to train my new body, or else what would have become of me if I got in a fight?”
“Did I not keep you from fights during that time?” There was a moment of silence.
“Sire, I tried to help that young man in the market, but-” The King shrugged.
?Old habits die hard. You didn’t have witnessing on your mind, just charity. I might have moved him toward you if I saw any benefit.? In the silence that followed, Kabuki recalled the next thing that happened was he decided to create for himself a fitting set of pets. Obviously selfish and unjustifiable. He kept thinking until he hit the next ?good deed? that came to mind.
?I spoke to that man in the inn-?
?-about?? Kabuki instantly knew he should have asked the man if God was in the relationship. He had told the man to keep love in the relationship, which was good advise for God is love, but the man probably had his own, flawed definition of love and so to only mention love was, effectively, to not mention God. It wasn’t selfish, but it was worthless. For sometime after that, life was again about him and his pets.
There was unforgiveness and hatred in his heart toward Doomby, fear toward Gypsy (which was quickly covered by The Blood of The Lamb as he recalled repenting of that fear), and more selfishness and worldly love in his heart during his stay with Damian. Finally he remembered their last conversation. ?Master, surely my witnessing to the elder of the phoenix clan, effectively every elder of that clan that has ever been, must count for something.? The Master quoted Himself from Matthew 7:22, 23 ((NIV)).
?Many will say to Me on that day, ?Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform miracles?? Then I will tell them plainly, ?I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!?
?But You knew me!?
?I knew Katrick. Have we met? Until now, had we spoken? There was the one moment you repented of your fear, I remember you doing that. But have you repented of your other sins? Have you lived for Me? Have you died for Me? No, you have lived and died for yourself, building yourself a lush island paradise with which to waist away the rest of your years. Away from me, you evildoer!? Heaven fell away from view so fast Kabuki thought he’d go blind from the shear speed of the light being pulled from his eyes. He correctly thought he saw fire in the distance and mistakenly thought it was the fire of Hell.
?But You said I hadn’t sealed my fate yet!!? It was then he found himself awake and looking into the eyes of Pyro, who had revived him.
The man couldn’t sleep. It was a wonder the tiger could?
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 5:16 pm
Awakening from a deep slumber, Nick rubbed his eyes and looked up only to see a giant black wolf hovering over him. "Whoa!" exclaimed Nick, "haha, you scared me for a minute there Orion..." Orion was Nick's only friend in the world. As a child he was shunned away from society because of his abilities. "Well Orion we better get going, we got a lot of stuff to do today," Nick said as he stood up looking out towards a massive forest.
After Nick left the cave, he and Orion set out for a village. Swift they went, jumping from branch to branch, tree to tree seemingly disapperaing and appearing here and there.
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 4:16 pm
[ Message temporarily off-line ]
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 8:50 pm
[ Message temporarily off-line ]
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Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 10:34 am
((um... Yea, Akois on the mainland, which is a good distance across the water from here, but okay... Considering this island was just created not at all long ago, I'm still not sure how you got here, but so long as you know I'm sure all's well...))
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Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 1:33 pm
Gypsy appeared on the beach with Yiya and the cheetah on either side of herself. She was stroking the cheetah’s back affectionately, and the cheetah purred in response. The woman looked with a smile over the water to her brother. From the fire burning within him, it was evident what had just happened. She could wait. He’d be back soon.
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Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 7:33 pm
Kabuki looked to the shore as he started to wade back and stopped when he saw his sister there. “H-hello!” he called nervously, blushing under his fur. “C-could you come back later? I’m not decent…”
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:00 am
Gypsy shook her head as she replied, “I don’t care.”
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:01 am
The weretiger blinked in surprise. “Well, I do!”
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:01 am
“Why?” the woman queried with her chin resting on one hand.
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:02 am
Pure shock. “Why?! Why not!?”
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:03 am
Mild amusement. “Did you know the Lord commanded one of His servants to go naked and barefoot for thee years straight?”
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:05 am
Kabuki’s face became emotionless. There was a pause. The reason he cared was that the idea of being less than dressed on the beach with a woman enticed him, and it felt sinful. In realizing this was the first time in a good while he cared about that kind of thing, he was glad to be assured he was part of The Kingdom, but he didn’t want his sister to know all this. He attempted to turn himself off by focusing on her negative physical aspects (which may have done more bad then good when he realized even what wrinkles she had somehow accentuated her beauty), crawled onto the beach, and shook himself dry. His fundoshi was still intact, but that was it; for the most part, he was completely exposed. He grinned and blushed under his fur again. He liked it.
“Alright, how can I help you?” he asked as he sat on his haunches in front of her. His forepaws dug into the sand neatly between his legs inadvertently covering his only covering; he really looked bare now.
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