One Foggy Night (6) - As the seasons shift, the temperature changes too. It’s not uncommon for fog to roll in, sometimes from the mountains, sometimes out of nowhere. This fog is particularly thick and difficult to see through; Destiny City has issued several weather warnings and cautions being out or driving at night. It’s easy to get lost and difficult to see obstacles. Not to mention the strange, smothering sensation of dread and fear that rolls in with the fog. While there is sometimes the sensation of being watched, it worsens when the sun goes down. Some have even said they’ve caught glimpses of a tall, horned figure traveling with the fog. The news has reported that this is probably just a side effect of climate change and suspects that weather patterns should return to normal towards the end of the month.
Even with a human glamour that made her "safe" during the day, Grieve preferred to spend the nights in her truer form, that of a senshi. Well, the lesser version of a senshi. Her uniform and magic may be basic, but her bones had long been saturated with the power of an eternal. It was just a matter of monsters until she got it back.
Even in its basic and uncomfortably pristine condition, the uniform was still magic enough to keep her somewhat warm in the increasingly cold nights. It also painted an auric target on her, and in general, she'd made a point of being hard to pinpoint. Irregular movement and trajectories were coming back to her after centuries of not needing to bother.
The fog tonight would have made it even easier, especially given its strange nature. There was some sort of magic ******** involved in this weather, and it'd be no trouble to slip away from this aura. It was stronger than her (<******** off) but also normal and without the lingering oilslick of chaos about it (boring).
But before she left, there was, in the corner of her eye, a certain gait. A certain swing of a braid. It was unlikely to be anything, but nostalgia was something Grieve in indulged in often and without hesitation.
In the fog, a croaking rasp of a voice began to sing in a language that hadn't touched these lands in over a thousand years,
By the weir, in Terring Town, the damsel and the thief,
They sat a-sipping a godly piss, the Lord's most golden heat!
And it burned while they burned! And they burned, oh they burned! Til they was all hands'n'feet.
An old drinking song, increasingly bawdy right up until the reckless couple's execution. it was a favorite of sorts, one shared many a time with friends.
daekie
Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2023 8:34 pm
Objectively, like they did on many other fronts, Alexis did know better than to wander around in magically-induced fog. It didn't stop them, but they were well aware of the absurdity. Anything could be hiding in that, and they'd healed up well enough from the General's axe, but an ambush wouldn't do them much good. Besides that, their mind and senses were prone to taking any chance they could get to lie, it was the only explanation for half of what they knew, and they'd --
Most of the ghosts they saw these days were more mundane things. Hybris, with the same face he'd always had, falling for the same tricks he'd always fallen for. The way their scars ached as the weather changed, and breaks and sprains that hadn't healed quite right protested when they didn't have the presence of mind to drown the useless bits of noise out. Colors and gaits and expressions and faces that they'd known mirrors of a thousand years ago. People, moving in the same patterns as people had always done. And the longer they spent on Earth, the less likely it became that there were others like Urania, like them, who'd lived. Who'd survived. Who could remember a different way of things. Who'd made it across the universe just to bleed out on
They were not bleeding. Not unless someone had done it without their notice, which wasn't impossible, but was exceptionally unlikely. Hadn't bled in weeks, even; whatever wight of a memory had crawled through their skin was -- Róka shifted from heel to heel, doing their best to ignore the phantom sense of wetness against their side. Just a memory. Just their mind calling up a sensation that had never been able to fade and die. If they told themself that, perhaps they would believe it, and stop being convinced it was seeping through their shirt and vest; if they didn't look down, they needn't have to face anything about it. Practicality didn't mean much to knowing.
That was really the way of it, wasn't it? They couldn't hold any nostalgia for people and times who had left them for dead, and who had very nearly succeeded. The fevered blur of those memories was so close, and so real, that the other ghosts were shapeless in comparison. Just another ghost. Just another memory. Just something else haunting them, revenant that they were, something that knew full well it was dead and dying. Something watching them. Someone watching them. Someone? Was it paranoia, or was it the tall figure out of the corner of their eye?
That shape in the fog was not a shape their mind called up often, these days, these hours. Not clear enough to be made of remembrances. They'd shared enough blood with Grieve to have kept a half-ready certainty that if she had wanted them dead, she wouldn't have bothered selling them out. Most days she didn't haunt them at all. Most days they would ignore any ghost who didn't actively talk to them first, because that was the proper way to deal with ghosts, but something about the fog -- something about tonight --
They turned on their heel, arms folded in front of their chest, and made unerring eye contact. (After they found her eyes, anyway. Gods, she'd always been tall. Good climbing if she'd brace them, but she was half as likely to fling them off and see if they landed on their feet.)
"I'd thought you died," Róka said, and did not sound like themself at all, every bit of their diction too precise; their back too straight, their posture too good. They swallowed down the impulse to touch her. What would that prove? Their mind could well lie about that, too.
lizbot
i start writing a roka tag and then it's half an hour later and i've written six hundred words without realizing. where's this energy when i need to write your solos, roka!!
An ugly bark of laughter, "Everything else died too easy, instead. You mad about it?" They seemed a little mad about it!
Closing the distance cleared the fog a little, just enough to give the two a little space that was set apart. Outside of Earth and time. "Did you kill your world too?" Her uniform was strange in that it was whole, no tattered edges or holes, no bedraggled feathers constantly shedding a trail. It was pristine, but now Grieve's horns were cracked and broken. the teeth of her grin dull as their own. But otherwise that smile was much the same, forever hungry, often laughing at another's expense, and never bothering to overthink a single ********' thing.
Reaching out one gloved hand, she poked at Roka's face, "Be glad to see me, you vicious little ********." The latter was said with a disgusting amount of respect and fondness.
xDaekie
Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2023 4:36 pm
Too imperfect, too different. Real? Couldn't (shouldn't) be. But -- "I'm not," Róka said, which was not necessarily a lie but it was certainly not a truth. It was a strange, alien sort of feeling that they didn't fully recognize, something that bore only the slightest resemblance to loathing. Everything should have rotted to dust -- and here they both were, walking around alive and well, for certain values of 'alive' and 'well' -- and she'd never looked like this. But neither had they. Róka's uniform had always been a thing for politics and masks and other faces; it'd never been something so comfortable.
They didn't flinch. It wasn't that sort of game. And they'd beaten out all their flinch reflexes that they could reach years ago, so it really didn't matter, anyway. "It died," they said very deliberately, "and history will have to be undecided on whose fault it was." Probably theirs. Likely theirs. But memory was too imprecise a vehicle to convey a yes or no, and it was a weakness. Not that they could pick at Grieve's wounds on that front; it wouldn't hurt her and they both knew it.
"You'll have to work harder than that." Róka smiled, slow, purposeful, and pointedly insincere.
"We're the dumb ******** who survived, we write the history." Well, they could. She couldn't write for s**t.
That did it. Hoisting them up by their waist , she held up Roka like a prized child or fancy new doll, "Too good for an old friend now, huh?" She waited, and even hoped, for the kick or the knife. Something more excited and direct from them.
They were stronger than her now, at least as far as rank went, which both pissed her off and utterly amused her. She remembered always having a small bit of an edge there, just a little ahead, a little older and more experienced. And now, potentially, they could beat her a** with ease.
Daekie
Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2023 9:37 pm
It was tempting! Old habits always were. It could well be beneficial, even, to be what she expected and who they'd been. But there was no knife in their hand, no harpoon at their back, and their aura -- this was not the right face to wear.
They might've managed, if they'd tried. They could've tried. It was a voice they hadn't let loose in quite some time. And wasn't that song still under their skin, louder than their pulse? What if they hurt her? She could take it. They could take it. If anything, what stopped them was the fact they were so reduced, so dulled, so weaponless, would they even be able to hurt her; enough of their pride still remained that it'd rankle too badly. It rankled to even think about. They wanted to hurt her so badly, and that was -- normal. Something like it. The undertow was different; there was something of jealousy, and something of some hungry, raw, want.
Some of us had to shed our skin to survive, Róka did not think. Neither did they think you lived, and I didn't, and how dare you, because that was an old argument that they'd had years ago, both of them were, and no point rehashing buried things. Let them lie. There were better people to discuss philosophy with, somewhere in the universe.
"They don't kill, here. Senshi don't use weapons. Take a blade or break a neck and you've stopped playing the game." They were still smiling, that liar's smile, even as their voice turned to bitterness and rot. Hands spread wide; nothing held there, just their blunted claws. "Can't carry them anymore." Not a single knife or weapon or poison anywhere on their person! Amazing, wasn't it, how much it stung.
Could they bite her? Not from this angle. Not with their dulled teeth, like a human's, like some prey creature. Gods, they wanted to bite her.
With a dismayed grunt, she did toss them aside, watching to see if they could still land on their feet. "Whore's spit. First Mau I saw here was asking for chaos lives n'ears as a trophy."
But if anything, they still knew how to perfectly kill her mood. It was Earth and there was the White Moon above it, and it wasn't surprising that it was still a bad place to kill, to do the wet work they both knew best. Grieve didn't mourn the loss of her world as she knew it, but she did miss her life, and there was a deep and keening sorrow from hearing the loss of other worlds, even Roka. A new life, full of new obstacles and dangers was exciting, yeah. Better than what she'd left, yeah.
But it was all being built over a grave that was well beyond thinking, and so she fished out an ancient clay fire jug from her space and held aloft, much the same way she had Roka moments before. "<******** it all then. Let's have a drink...and some food. I got a fire in a barrel and rats on a stick ready for roasting."
Daekie
Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2023 4:09 pm
There was what might have been a stumble, when their leg decided to ache at exactly the wrong moment, but Róka still knew how to land on their feet. It was, similarly to running very fast and being a b*****d, one of those skills they had in perpetuity. "I could punt a Mauvian thirty paces," they drawled, acidic, "their word's worth nothing, they're dreck."
It would've been so reasonable and so foreign to say no to her offer. But it could get them out of their own head -- and if she'd wanted them dead it would've been so easy. "...fine. As long as the supplies're yours."
