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 Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 11:25 pm
 Mina walked quietly through the forest outside Clarus Arbor, she had heard that there were some animals that sounded wounded around the forest at night. She chose to investigate and to try and help whatever was hurt. Even though it was really late, she always felt safe in the forest, it was so different than the city. There was a lot lower chance of a Witch Eater popping out of nowhere in this forest than in the alley of a city. She hummed quietly as she made it deeper into the forest.
Another hour passed as she kept walking, she smiled to herself in the darkness. It wasn't very hard to see even though the stars just barely glimmered through the tree tops. She slowly whistled the lullaby her mother used to sing to her when she was little. It was so beautiful out her at night, there was a dewy gleam wherever the starlight hit the grass on the forest floor.
Mina sat by a hurt fox that laid at the middle of a fork in the forest's natural path. She healed it and the sat next to it for awhile. "Hi there little fella, you're all ok now. Nobody is gonna hurt you while I'm around." She gave it a few pieces of the biscuit she had in her pocket. It was nice just sitting there with the little fox. "You're a cute little guy aren't you?" She pet it's head as it ate. It was like back when she was little and her father was out doing business. She had spent hours playing outside with the foxes and all the other little creatures that lurked around her house.
After awhile she felt like there was someone around somewhere. She looked around for any signs of another person. "Hello? Is anyone out there?" Her voice seemed almost to die in the darkness, engulfed by the surrounding trees. It didn't scare her at all though, she was used to the way the forest manipulated sounds.The small fox's ears perked up as it looked around with her. "You heard something too didn't you little guy?"
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Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 2:10 pm
 Salem watch the sun set with a single unblinking eye, a pool of quicksilver, liquid and reflective and utterly devoid of discernible emotions. It saw the world, and the world saw it, but like one-way glass, only Salem, on the inside, could see through. All else, people, animals, or otherwise, see images of themselves, and this lack of readability forces them to ascribe their own meanings to him. They are almost always wrong. Salem is empty. Once, he was full of energy and , but no longer. Like the useless, stitched-over socket that once held his other eye, Salem is empty. Empty and filled with intense hunger. As he sat perched high in a country barn, among the eaves, staring out the large open window that offered an unparalleled view of the horizon and the great globe of fire sinking below it, the void that filled Salem rumbled with an eldritch howl, silent and internal and grating.
For empty does not mean without purpose, nor does it make one beyond want.
When the sun slipped low and the sky was filled with bruised purple dusk, Salem shifted in the lofty upper reaches of the barn, where shadow had already turned all to black. The daytime was no placed for one such as he, but when nightfall came he was free to wander as he pleased. With a motion that could be considered graceful and effortless or dead and limp, Salem dropped from his seat, the tail of his coat fluttering and flapping, his arms angled just barely away to assist in balance. His feet connected with the ground without a jolt, as if he had fallen three feet rather than thirty. The cows who called the building their home spoke up in quiet protest of the intruder, which faded away into idiotic apathy within moments. Salem was reminded of his distaste for animals, both their foul smells and their sheer lack of intellect. He moved from the barn with a disgusted sneer pulled across his face.
In the woods, things were far less unpleasant. As he walked among the trees, Salem could feel the night-things and the dark-things waking and shaking off their weariness, hunters going to their perches as the smaller fare of the forest scurried and scampered away in fear, reminded that when there is darkness, there is no safety. Things were watching from high above, things like Salem, things that could make great fun out of the weak. Things that were hungry like Salem.
He smelled pain on the breeze, not sweet or sour or bitter but unmistakeable.
He made his way to the source, if only because he was curious. The woods went silent as he passed, perhaps in respect or perhaps in fear. When he closed the last stretch, the silence was broken by what he at first assumed to be the cries of whatever was making that scent, but later discovered to be the one standing over it, speaking softly. His bare feet made no more noise in the undergrowth than did the rest of the forest, but still whoever it was looked up and called, “Hello? Is anyone out there?” A girl.
“There is now,” Salem responded, not breaking pace. “You're out awfully far from town.”
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Posted: Thu Jul 07, 2011 2:07 pm
Mina heard the light footsteps as Salem approached, her hearing had gotten better over the time she had spent in the country. She focused on the noise and stood up carefully, holding the fox in her arms. She wasn't sure if it was another animal or a person since the steps were so light. It was only when she heard his voice did she know it was a person. A very odd person at least, it was hard to tell why he was out here. She took a step back into a darker part of the clearing to get her eyes adjusted to the dimming light.
"Who are you? I'm out here all the time healing animals that people hurt. Half the time they don't even bother to see if they killed it. They just leave them to suffer. Why are you out here? Are you one of those hunters?" She glared towards the direction the foot steps came from. She was ready to use anything she had with her to hurt the person if they were a hunter. She hated the hunters who were too pompous for they're own good. She understood the ones who only hunted every once in awhile for food but despised the ones who killed for sport. She pet the fox a bit and waited, it seemed a little unnerved.
The pace of the steps was continuous so she knew they were obviously not nervous about bumping into another in the forest at this time of night. The quietness of his footsteps unnerved her to in a way, only someone with bare feet would sound like that. Walking this deep into the forest with no shoes at night wasn't something someone would do causally, he was here for a purpose and that was the thing Mina was unsure of. "I'm not afraid of you Mr. Bare-feet!" She wasn't afraid but she was nervous of what was coming towards here at this time of night.
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Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2011 5:58 pm
”Healing the animals...” A sort of dreamy amusement coated Salem's words, like glossy veneer or maybe like the glaze that coated the eyes of the dead. He repeated what she said, seeming to taste the words this time, rather than miming them. “Healing the animals... How noble.” A brief, thoroughly deep, and almost believable, chuckle rolled out of Salem, riding on the still air of what had now become entirely the night. When he stepped foot into the clearing that would soon be filled with moonlight in addition to foxes and girls, he stopped. “I stand here for you to see. I'm none other than me! Though... I wonder. What would you do if I was one of these hunters, girl? Would you do me harm?” He gave her no time to respond, instead launching into a response to the statement that followed.
“Not afraid of me?” Again with the mimicry and the detached amusement, as if repeating a quirky saying or perhaps a the words of a toast that had struck him as particularly thought-provoking. “Why would you be afraid of me, if I may be so bold as to ask?” The girl was terribly defensive, and in a way that tickled Salem to no end. She had wandered out, far into the forest, and then acted surprised and intruded-upon when another denizen of the forest had had the nerve to investigate what she was doing. To see what had brought a human out so far from any place where the humans gathered, like hives of aggressive zealots, quick to push themselves against all around in attempts to expand, convert, or destroy.
The irony that lay in the notion was not lost upon him.
“I suppose some truth lies in your suspicion, Ms. Fox Savior.” His internal monologue seeped from his mind and became part of the external. “People... they are inherently terrible creatures. They bring great pain to those they don't identify with. The hypocrisy is delicious.” A charming grin spread across the portion of his face that was free of stitches, grafts of skin, and ruins of what had been. It belied neither malice nor mischief, only hungering curiosity, howling to be satiated. His eye roved over the girl, drank in every aspect of her, sought emotion, intent, and purpose where her lips betrayed nothing. Her tension, her nerves, her position... Salem saw her filled with youth and ignorance and great deals of life. The sigul upon the back of his hand thrummed lightly against it.
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Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:46 pm
She watched him quietly, she wasn't sure what he was exactly. He looked so stitched together, much like someone had made him like a rag doll. She took a step closer, trying to figure out what he was. His questions floated in one ear and out the other for a moment as she ran through a few possibilities. We first off, if he was a human he must be really in pain or maybe he's not human. She stopped walking towards him when she noticed that there was less than a yard between them. The fox in her arms buried its head in it's tail, she tilted her head and thought of the questions he had asked her finally.
"Well with a voice like yours, I expected you to be a hunter or a Witch eater. Either of which are bad for the forest and the people living in Clarus Arbor. If you are either of those, you'd leave me no choice but to stop you from whatever you were doing to harm others." She tried to look tough in front of this guy, she really was ready to do whatever it took to stop him short of seriously harming him. Now that she could see the man, she looked for weak points that could be used against him. She eyed the stitches and pondered if they could be pulled out, causing him to fall apart like when you pull the seams of a stuffed toy.
His grin made him giggle a bit, it was so odd to her. "That's a nice smile ya got there." She pondered what he had said about hypocrisy, he didn't really think about it the same way she did. Not many people thought alike in the end though. "I'm ok with hunters that only kill once in awhile within rules of hunting. Those that hunt for sport are the problem! They would kill off an entire species if they had the chance, just to sow that they were better than others." She watched him closely now, there were a lot of odd things about his appearance. "Don't those stitches cause ya pain? What happened to ya? I mean were you attacked by a Witch Eater or someone else? I mean if you want I can try and heal some of the minor ones."
She giggled a bit at his grin again, it was really something she wasn't used to, something a bout it was so odd. "What are ya grinning about though? It's a little silly based on what you're talking about."
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Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2011 11:04 am
Mina stared at him long and hard before speaking with the skepticism Salem saw on the face of every human he met, unsure of what to make of him, what with his stitches and his ruined face that made him a monster. Skepticism that turned to dull fascination, a distracted glassiness climbing up into the girl's eyes as she trudged forward, slowly, her two eyes locked on his one. The fox in her arms cowered at the sight of him, but didn't know enough to jump down from his perch, or perhaps lacked the facilities. When Mina realized what she was doing, realized that she was caught in his glammer and was being pulled towards him like comets caught in gravity, she focused again and stopped short, nearly jumping out of her shoes, Salem had no doubt. Seeing the look on her face that was so akin to a herded animal draining away made him throw back his head and laugh, perfect white teeth hiding behind pale lips.
“Your ears deceive you, then, for I am neither hunter nor witch eater.” Even as he spoke, the girl puffed up, and Salem could only assume she was attempting to make herself look competent, or even better, intimidating. Laughter bubbled forth again, spilling from Salem and filling the clearing with the sound of it. “My, what confidence you have in yourself! To spit your threats at me when we have only just met! You may call your forays into the forest brave and compassionate, but sitting in a clearing, by yourself, surrounded by the very quarries of the hunters you mean to do something about, I call that stupidity.” Salem spoke all of this in an amicable voice, one that seemed better suited for swapping thoughts on the weather or theories about the year's harvest.
As Mina called them to attention, Salem looked down at the stitches that crisscrossed his body, seeming surprised himself to see them marching up his arms and exposed torso. “Oh, yes, these. No, no pain. I am... unfamiliar with pain.” He looked away almost as soon as he had even glanced at them, with the sort of distracted dismissal one uses when speaking of something out of place, like all the paintings on the wall being hung upside-down.
“I smile because you amuse me, girl!” All at once, the laughing and the humor were gone from his voice, even if the smile remained, though it seemed a great deal cooler than five seconds prior. “I laugh because you're a hypocrite. You come into these woods with your morality and your righteousness, like you've been appointed sheriff and given free reign to lord over all within. I'll say it again, girl, you're awfully far from town.”
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Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:17 pm
Mina looked at him, she had hurt her where it counted. She looked down at her fox friend and sniffled slightly for a moment. He made her feel horrible in every way possible, there was even a bad taste in the back of her throat. She whispered something softly to the fox, it was her only friend here. He was different than anyone she had ever bumped into, he was cold-hearted in every way she thought. She just wanted to leave him be so she wouldn't think of what happened in her past. He reminded her of the bullies that had teased her when she was little for spending all her time with a small fox that lived in her backyard. "I'm not stupid..."
She sat back down with her fox and pet it quietly, she tried to wipe the painful memories out of her mind. So many odd things about him, they all spun around in her mind as she sat quietly. Her eyes were closed in case she started to cry. She was right in protecting people and animals, he was wrong about her. She knew in her bones that she was doing the right thing. The way he laughed and spoke, he wasn't normal. She looked at the fox a bit and smiled halfheartedly at it as she pet it. She distracted herself as she remembered the fox she used to hang around with. She was in her own little world as she sat there, oblivious to him for the moment as she mumble something quietly about her fox friend.
The whole time her face looked as if it was in a trace in a far off place. The fox sat up in her arms and licked her face after a minute, she snapped out of her world and looked up at Salem. She smiled sweetly and pet her fox once more. "What brings you here then? Just a normal walk on a fine evening like this?" She changed her sitting position and and let the fox sit on her lap, she gave it a little more food. It ate quietly and swished it's tail as she scratched behind it's ear. She wiped the crumbs offer her pants and fiddled around with the charm on her belt strap. It was silver and shaped like a fox too, her father had given it to her when she was little.
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Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2011 10:26 am
Salem smiled softly, confidently, victoriously as that look of defiance fell from Mina's face, swiftly shifting into a mask of resignation. He hadn't broken here, not nearly, at least not yet, and that was alright, because Salem wasn't entirely sure if he even intended to make a meal out of this girl. When they were this stained by sorrow, the sensation of energy plucked from any witch's Witch Heart was deadened and dampened, like hearing sweet music through cotton earplugs. The pain and sorrow wouldn't be called a curse, exactly, for it was less like a barrier and more like an obstacle to be overcome. Sometimes overcoming obstacles make the experience that much more enjoyable.
As Mina drifted off into whatever place her mind had created to shelter her from Salem for a moment, she mumbled something, and in those three words Salem heard his ticket to do what Salem did best. “No,” he said, while she was still far away in her past, “Perhaps you aren't stupid. But you have done a few very stupid things, yes, some very unwise things indeed. Most importantly of which, you provoked me, a very poor choice, but how could you know? We've just met, of course. Perhaps I spoke too harshly.” Salem didn't hate humans, not even a little bit. But he would not tolerate rudeness among them, especially not to such an exalted being as a majin like he. He imagined that no farmer would tolerate his livestock taking up an attitude, and Salem was no different. They simply needed to be reminded of their place as the darling pets of the majin.
As she looked up, snapped out of her daze, it seemed that she hadn't heard him, but he hoped it would sink in eventually. She seemed to have forgotten … just about everything, it seemed. Or at least, it SEEMED. Salem watched her with something of a skeptical eye (the pun not lost upon him) when she smiled. People who switched that fast tended to be... unstable. Watching her fiddle with her clothes absent-mindedly cemented his theory. No reason not to be polite, though. “I am but a man of the land, you see, young miss. I go wherever the winds may drop me.” A pause from him. “I suppose it would be polite if I introduced myself, hmmm? I am known as Salem. What do they call you, then...?”
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Posted: Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:06 pm
Mina nodded quietly and thought about him. She had acted a little rasher than usual earlier, probably because she was always expecting the only other people out at night to be bad. Her moment of calmness that she had caused her to think things through instead of just rushing through randomly without thinking of what should and should not be said. She calmly thought about what he had said about himself. She had seen many wanderers but no one was as odd as he was. Many people came and left from the bus station near where she lived. Each with a story on their face yet Salam was hard to read. Curiosity about his story started picking at the back of her mind as she looked up at him from her seat on the forest floor.
"Salem.. Such an interesting name. It sounds kinda cool. I'm Mina, it's a little normal sounding I think but I like it." She brushed a little hair out of her face as she saw it wiggle in front of her eye. "How many places have you been too? I travel around a bit but I prefer staying in the country-side. Something about the city seems a little scary ya know? Kinda like it's too packed full of people." She thought of how small of a backyard she had at her old house that was in the city. She wasn't sure what to ask him next since she knew he could speak harshly once more. She really did like talking to others but, she had a habit of making bad first impressions to people. She looked down at the fox in her lap for a minute, it was looking up at him still.
Mina looked up at the trees for a moment, they were almost impossible to tell apart at the top of the forest. Each tree's leaves had tangled together, causing the moonlight to break up into small spotlights. Salem seemed like a traveler that she could maybe learn something from but, she was almost positive that he would give only vague descriptions though. Anyone else that bumped into someone in a dark night like this would probably be the same way. She wanted to ask though so she looked at him once more. "Where was the last place you were? I mean you probably go a lot of places but do you like the cities or country-sides more?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2011 4:16 pm
The girl had apparently calmed significantly, though for what reason, Salem could not discern. For all his observations, he couldn't quite place a description on her. She shifted through moods and temperaments like a dancer through steps, never quite staying happy, or sad, or confrontational for long. Her wild mood swings were almost as quaint and amusing as her over-idealized philosophy, and at this point they interested Salem just as much as the notion of how exactly her magic would taste going down.
But now she complimented him, so he let his musings taper off.
“Mmm... a compliment deserves a thanks, so I give mine to you, Miss Mina. It is a very old name.” Part of him wanted to say, 'But that isn't my name, so sorry,' and his sigul shrieked silently with sudden force against itself, attempting to wrest some form of control, but lost purchase and died down again.
“Yes, the city can be a terribly crowded place,” he commented, hand on chin, staring off into space again, up through the interlaced leaves that had begun to block the light as the night wore on. They had been speaking a long time, apparently. He didn't mind the city, though, not much at all. Any place where humans congregated en masse was his sort of place, if only because finding a suitable witch to feed upon became so much easier when he could sift from among thousands at any one time.
“I can understand the claustrophobia, to be sure, but that's what all you people out here are like. I can bump shoulders every now and again. After all, a man has to eat.”
She had no idea how to continue the conversation, which made sense, given the fact that they lived in different worlds entirely, for the most part. However, she had unwittingly played right into his ego, giving him the chance to pontificate about his past, the parts he allowed people to know.
“I've been just about anywhere you can imagine, Miss Mina,” he said, smiling. “I don't stay in any one place long. Last place that you'd know is Lumena. I was visiting some … friends.” Salem's mind turned for a moment back to the successful trip he'd made through the town that night in the city, picking up a fetching boy he'd drained into a coma. Hexed the lad, he had, making himself appear as the Robert Corey who was.
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Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2011 7:31 pm
The small fox in her lap began to calm down as Mina pet it. It moved its ears up and down as she ran her hand over its head. She wondered where she had heard the name Salem before as he spoke. But as he spoke of the cities it seemed like his name was just mixed into the jumble of people who roamed the crowded city streets and alleys. The small shriek caught at her ear but she was not sure if it was the forest playing a trick on her senses or not. The fox had heard it too and had pointed its ears towards Salem to listen for the noise again.
"Did you hear that noise too Salem or was it just one of the noises the forest makes at night?" She looked up to follow his line of sight, the trees were eating up the moon light as the night wore on. His mention of Claustraphobia reminded her of why she left the city again. The massive amount of people had been no problem to her besides the amount of noise but the loss of her mother had been the reason for her leaving, she wondered if should bring up a topic like that to someone who she has not known for that long yet.
"The cities were really too noisy for me one I finished at the Academy. I go back there every once in awhile to see old friends and to visit the library." Part of her wondered about what he meant by 'a mans gotta eat' but, another part had a bad feeling about what his answer would be so she decided not to ask about it. It was nice talking to another person from the city for this amount of time although she was not sure what topic to bring up next since the moonlight would vanish soon and leave the forest pitch black.
"I haven't traveled much since I've been on my own, too much stuff to worry about around my house. Have you been to the Library in Lumena? I like going there to read every once in awhile but I tend to forget where I place books if I bring them home with me." She laughed a bit as she thought back to her room with piles of books and papers scattered all over the floor. She had a hard time organizing things, especially her drawings which covered a majority of her wall.
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Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2011 2:44 pm
No sound no sound, oh Salem you grand fool you're slipping, you're losing control, isn't that silly? He'd suppressed the uppity little thing so quickly, he couldn't imagine it made a tangible noise. In fact, was SURE that Robert didn't have the power to cross the planes, not yet. Implications both unsettling and horrificically irritating at the same time, like the buzz of a hornet at the base of your neck, a sound and a feeling but no way to be sure of the shape or the nature of the thing. Just a feeling. No, the sigul had shrieked in his own mind, and he didn't know how she heard it. And the audacity of mentioning it...? Little games, little lies, big lies, where are the lines drawn, when do the differences start?
“Sounds?” He turned his head only to look at her, but it was less of turn and more of a strange swivel, making the angle of the tilt far more pronounced, to the point where it strained the tendons in his neck. Salem in full control now, master of the body again, with strange mannerisms to go with it. Almost stilted, jointed movements, one part at a time. His one eye cast upon her, drinking in the glow of magic he could nearly see hanging over her like a cloud. Hungry, suddenly, wanting to drink her in, drain her under and be done with her. Done with this whole affair, to head off and deal contemplate on the nature of this meeting. Control, though, remember, Salem, old boy?
“No, you are imagining sounds. Salem hears nothing.” Perhaps to reinforce his point, or perhaps to attempt at confuse her, he mutters to himself, “They call ME the crazy one. Hear nothing, hear no-thing.”
“Oh, little graduate, eh? How darling, how precious, yes.” Salem laughs, then. Many many student witchlings, an ever-growing group of schooled witches. He hated them all, and their little establishment, and their whole society. They made tasty snacks, though, Salem didn't mind the undertone of education to their magical essence, as an wine conosseiur can appreciate the conditions that effected a certain year at a vineyard. Thinking of alcohol...
“Yes, I have visited the Library. Been banned from it, as well.” The grey witch grins, then, with a vicious little memory of chaos. “How was I supposed to know you're not allowed to stumble among the bookshelves whilst inebriated? Those books are absolute s**t when you're sober.”
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 4:09 pm
Mina watched him carefully, he looked as if he was having an argument with himself. She contemplated stepping back but she was unsure of what he might do. She stood up and let her tail flow back and forth behind her, taking a few steps towards him to get a better look as he contorted his body like a marionette. She knew she had heard a noise but he was acting even odder at her mention of it. Her hearing was pretty good and she knew the fox had heard it too with it big ears.
Oh.. ok. I didn't think you were that crazy?"
Mina pet the fox softly and wondered why he had spoken in third person for a moment. A chill went down her spine as he said how darling and how precious but she was slightly miffed at being called little. Being called little just pushed her buttons because she wasn't really that short compared to other girls. She had graduated awhile back but she still hadn't gotten over being called shortie and other names during her time there.
'What? You were drunk at the library?! That's a hoot! I hope you didn't knock too many things off the shelves or fall."
Mina giggled as she pictured him stumbling about as the other visitors watched and talked about him for the rest of their day. He was right though, a lot of the books were really dull with the exception of fairy tales and other stories. She had read so many of the textbooks that left others sleeping and could probably name all the rows that are full of them in the Library.
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