Post by Spirit on Jun 7, 2005 20:43:05 GMT -5
OoC: I know I've been gone for quite a bit...quite a long bit, actually...and I never really got to properly know everyone...or the rules for that matter. ^^;; Well! Please tell me if I'm doing wrong by posting this, and /please/ tell me if no one intends to reply. XD
His eyes shimmered brightly with the gleam of tears in the soft brush of dawn, his heart hammering so forcefully in his chest, his ribs ached, bruised by the severe battering. The touch of metal was frigidly cold against his skin, freezing the goosebumps that ran all across his arms. There wasn't enough air to fill his lungs, and the world kept spinning as the bile rose in his throat, continued to rise even as he continued to push it down. This was a dream, a nightmare, it had to be!
"No! No, for the love of Aya, please no! Gods, please! Nooo!!" He screamed wildly, and threw himself fiercely against the chains that bound him, the metal violently rattling but the air was suddenly filled with arms and wings and they held him down, angry voices reminding him to remember his dignity, but no! To the bowels of hell with dignity! He couldn't - he wouldn't! - allow them to do this to him! Never! The very idea of it horrified him to no end, and the thought of such a fate in store for him...no! "I'm innocent! I'm innocent!" He yelled, his pleas of innocence lost among the tumble of voices that fell all around him. Angry voices, pleading voices, stern voices, commanding voices, all of it melding into one and washing around him like the furious sea.
Hard eyes and stone hearts met his plea, not a shred of mercy or an ounce of sympathy in their cold, cold eyes and his heart was sent plummeting to the ground so very far below. How could they? How could they even consider this? How could he?? Reason left him, and all thought was bent upon his own survival, the survival of his soul, because without his wings...oh!
"Father! Father, please!" He cried, begging, with tears streaming down his eyes. To hell with shame, to hell with the renowned Ava dignity! There was no noble dignity in how he pleaded now, no pride in how he held himself, as he fought tooth and claw against his captors with a mad, desperate gleam in his eye. "Father!" He cried, the word breaking in half as anguish threaten to break him.
The stone man's face betrayed nothing, lips set in a thin line, eyes cold with a ruthlessness he had never known to exist there before. "You are unfit to bear the Ava way." Even his words were cold, and so very dead. "From now on, until the day you are Reclaimed, this council has no choice but to sentence you to a life on land."
"NNNOOOOO!!!" With a rush of maddened panic and frenzied strength, he crashed upon his imprisoners and broke free of them, the world lurching beneath him but his legs carried him away in a frantic, stumbling gait, his wings shook off the chains that had held him - Just one good wind! He could see it now! The sky, it called to him, it summoned him, he would be free if he could just touch the blue...!
Then it happened.
A great crack like thunder rent the air in two, and he was hardly aware when his screams followed quickly on its heels, agony rendering him into a mindless being that only knew of pain, of the unending anguish that was being wrought upon him now as he felt the bones upon his back shatter and break, an invisible force like the hand of Aya Herself ripping from his body the one thing that made him what he was. She could not have done worse, had She reached out and plucked away his soul.
Falling, he was falling amidst a torrent of feathers, blood, and tears. He felt the harsh ground rush up to meet him, nearly heard the cracking of more broken bones, but nothing hurt so much as his heart, for he felt it torn in two, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding his precious life away. He lay in a heap upon the ground, screaming in mad anguish, screaming in pain, screaming for the pure sake of screaming. Illusion meshed in with reality, and he was shaking so hard, twitching and jerking back and forth on the stone ground, screaming his lungs out.
"...that arm, grab it! ..."
"Heal...uch blood..."
"...Aya, forgive...infirma...now! ..."
His eyes rolled up into his head, and sweet, sweet darkness took him. He knew no more.
~*~Four days later~*~
His feet tripped over one another for the third time that morning, and he fell in a pathetic heap on the ground, his grief a naked burden that sat so heavily on his shoulders it drove him to fall to gravity's will. Oh, this hated ground! Snarling through his chest-heaving sobs, he clawed at the miserable dirt, ripping at the grass, breaking his nails on rocks until once again his fingers were left a terrible, bloody mess, stinging with pain, and the man was left to beat his fists uselessly on the hard, hard ground.
At last, when he could rage no more, he buried his bleeding hands in the folds of his once sand-gold tunic, now mussed and dirty with the carelessness of his travel. The wind that stirred the stalks around him caught him, caressing his bronzed torso through the twin slits tailored so perfectly on the back of his tunic, now lacking a purpose they'd once fulfilled smoothly. Fingers still fouled with blood, he ran his hand through his hair - once a gleaming, chocolate brown - now a dirty mop of hair, smeared with earth and blood. Light, hazel eyes were dulled with grief, and rage, rimmed with red from so many hours spent weeping. So many tears...the tears would never bring back his wings, he thought bitterly.
He curled up into a fetal position, his weeping wracking his body so violently, his jerked back and forth on the ground. He'd woken sometime in the dark, lying beside a tree in a vast plain, the stalks of grass rippling in the wind in waves, making it seem as though he were stranded in the sea. He knew not the place, and for a moment - for that one blissful moment - he hadn't remembered the terrible fate that'd befallen him and he'd scrambled to his feet with no thought. Suddenly, he'd lurched forward, having stood up with too much strength and he'd meant to spread his wings to save himself to falling only to find...only to find that... Those miserables bastards, those insufferable swine! A furious rage seared away those last remnants of pain, and he'd risen to his feet again, determined to seek out the mountains from whence he came, and give them a word or two he'd forgotten to deliver before.
But...as he spun on his feet in an awkward grace, a cold fist clenched around his stomach. This...where was this? The plains stretched on far beyond him, a dirt road curling through the slight rises and bumps some measures away from where he stood. Straining his eyes, he could make out the pinprick lights of villages in the distance (human? elven? demon? He couldn't tell.) and looming at the horizon, there were great mountains that reared up into the beautiful night sky. Though...they were covered with the fur of Evergreens and snow capped their tops. With a certainty, the knowledge echoed dully in his head: These were not his mountains.
All at once, the deadly realization, the acute loss of it all...it struck him with its full weight. He no longer belonged. Anywhere. No Ava would ever give him a second look, he would find no welcome in any mountain where the winged flew. They had taken his wings...that which mattered so much to the soul, the ability to fly, to soar, to glide amongst the stars and clouds, to race the wind and feel such a rush of life that it was impossible to fall. No other society would ever accept him. He may have looked human now, but he was rich blood, meaning that his psychic strength was one of the most powerful in many lands. No other race would welcome him, no one would give a damn about a...a Flightless. He let that word float in his mind, then dared to breathe it.
"Flightless."
Trembling, with hand shaking so fearfully, he reached back slowly...and felt the long, wide scars, first one, then the other. Touching them made his flesh crawl, created such a self-loathing he'd never known himself capable of possessing. They were...gone. With the dark cloaking him, he'd fallen and screamed until there was no voice left in him to do with.
Countless the hours flew past him (as he never would now) and his eyes watched the sun rise and set with a dull glaze over them, unwilling to stand and live because there was nothing to live for. He fell into a painful trance, a stupor from which he could not rouse himself from, nor wanted to. Betrayed by those he'd dearly loved, wronged by those he'd trusted, abandoned by those he thought had given a rat's tail about him...oh, how sweet the sound of death would be. But...was he to lay there, and wait for death to seek him? For two days, he contemplated this, his broken heart writhing in his chest, his mind lying in so many tatters that he could hardly keep his thoughts focused. He'd heard so many stories...wild stories of those who lost their wings. They went mad, many said, raging at the imaginary, screaming and wild, their souls so broken it was a mercy to send them more quickly upon their way to Aya in the sky.
No...
He could not say when he'd made the decision, or if it had really been a choice at all, but the Flightless knew he could not lie there and fade away so quietly as the summer does to fall. He'd never been particularly stubborn, or brave-hearted, or even foolish...but on the fourth dawn since that fateful day, the Flightless found himself rising to his feet unsteadily, his eyes enraptured on the mountains in the distance. He remembered his home, his dear, dear home, the red-purple hues of his darling Aimon Mountains. And as he stared, illusion melded with reality, and he saw them there in his mind's eye, and the sight wrenching a sob from his lips, and again he cried with an overflowing grief. To be home once more! To feel the west wind greet him so cheerfully, to feel the sky at his fingers, the wind beneath his wings...but he had no wings. He had no home. And the sky was forbidden to him now. But not for long...just one last time...
Muttering half-crazed beneath his breath, words thick with sorrow, the Flightless forced himself again to his feet. Some show of will? Some glimpse of strength? No, he knew not. His fate called him on, summoned him, pushed him to go on. He was so weak...who was to know how tiring walking could be? But he pressed on, keeping the mountains before him, walking on to them as though led by some siren's song. He being led there by Death himself...for he was going there to die. To leap one last time, to feel the endless sky and the life-giving air one last time...to feel free one last time. He would plummet back to the ground, as if he'd espied something there but it would be his death he lunged for, and he would find it in a lover's sweet embrace. So, he pushed on, pressed on towards the mountains, dreaming of his last flight.
His eyes shimmered brightly with the gleam of tears in the soft brush of dawn, his heart hammering so forcefully in his chest, his ribs ached, bruised by the severe battering. The touch of metal was frigidly cold against his skin, freezing the goosebumps that ran all across his arms. There wasn't enough air to fill his lungs, and the world kept spinning as the bile rose in his throat, continued to rise even as he continued to push it down. This was a dream, a nightmare, it had to be!
"No! No, for the love of Aya, please no! Gods, please! Nooo!!" He screamed wildly, and threw himself fiercely against the chains that bound him, the metal violently rattling but the air was suddenly filled with arms and wings and they held him down, angry voices reminding him to remember his dignity, but no! To the bowels of hell with dignity! He couldn't - he wouldn't! - allow them to do this to him! Never! The very idea of it horrified him to no end, and the thought of such a fate in store for him...no! "I'm innocent! I'm innocent!" He yelled, his pleas of innocence lost among the tumble of voices that fell all around him. Angry voices, pleading voices, stern voices, commanding voices, all of it melding into one and washing around him like the furious sea.
Hard eyes and stone hearts met his plea, not a shred of mercy or an ounce of sympathy in their cold, cold eyes and his heart was sent plummeting to the ground so very far below. How could they? How could they even consider this? How could he?? Reason left him, and all thought was bent upon his own survival, the survival of his soul, because without his wings...oh!
"Father! Father, please!" He cried, begging, with tears streaming down his eyes. To hell with shame, to hell with the renowned Ava dignity! There was no noble dignity in how he pleaded now, no pride in how he held himself, as he fought tooth and claw against his captors with a mad, desperate gleam in his eye. "Father!" He cried, the word breaking in half as anguish threaten to break him.
The stone man's face betrayed nothing, lips set in a thin line, eyes cold with a ruthlessness he had never known to exist there before. "You are unfit to bear the Ava way." Even his words were cold, and so very dead. "From now on, until the day you are Reclaimed, this council has no choice but to sentence you to a life on land."
"NNNOOOOO!!!" With a rush of maddened panic and frenzied strength, he crashed upon his imprisoners and broke free of them, the world lurching beneath him but his legs carried him away in a frantic, stumbling gait, his wings shook off the chains that had held him - Just one good wind! He could see it now! The sky, it called to him, it summoned him, he would be free if he could just touch the blue...!
Then it happened.
A great crack like thunder rent the air in two, and he was hardly aware when his screams followed quickly on its heels, agony rendering him into a mindless being that only knew of pain, of the unending anguish that was being wrought upon him now as he felt the bones upon his back shatter and break, an invisible force like the hand of Aya Herself ripping from his body the one thing that made him what he was. She could not have done worse, had She reached out and plucked away his soul.
Falling, he was falling amidst a torrent of feathers, blood, and tears. He felt the harsh ground rush up to meet him, nearly heard the cracking of more broken bones, but nothing hurt so much as his heart, for he felt it torn in two, bleeding, bleeding, bleeding his precious life away. He lay in a heap upon the ground, screaming in mad anguish, screaming in pain, screaming for the pure sake of screaming. Illusion meshed in with reality, and he was shaking so hard, twitching and jerking back and forth on the stone ground, screaming his lungs out.
"...that arm, grab it! ..."
"Heal...uch blood..."
"...Aya, forgive...infirma...now! ..."
His eyes rolled up into his head, and sweet, sweet darkness took him. He knew no more.
~*~Four days later~*~
His feet tripped over one another for the third time that morning, and he fell in a pathetic heap on the ground, his grief a naked burden that sat so heavily on his shoulders it drove him to fall to gravity's will. Oh, this hated ground! Snarling through his chest-heaving sobs, he clawed at the miserable dirt, ripping at the grass, breaking his nails on rocks until once again his fingers were left a terrible, bloody mess, stinging with pain, and the man was left to beat his fists uselessly on the hard, hard ground.
At last, when he could rage no more, he buried his bleeding hands in the folds of his once sand-gold tunic, now mussed and dirty with the carelessness of his travel. The wind that stirred the stalks around him caught him, caressing his bronzed torso through the twin slits tailored so perfectly on the back of his tunic, now lacking a purpose they'd once fulfilled smoothly. Fingers still fouled with blood, he ran his hand through his hair - once a gleaming, chocolate brown - now a dirty mop of hair, smeared with earth and blood. Light, hazel eyes were dulled with grief, and rage, rimmed with red from so many hours spent weeping. So many tears...the tears would never bring back his wings, he thought bitterly.
He curled up into a fetal position, his weeping wracking his body so violently, his jerked back and forth on the ground. He'd woken sometime in the dark, lying beside a tree in a vast plain, the stalks of grass rippling in the wind in waves, making it seem as though he were stranded in the sea. He knew not the place, and for a moment - for that one blissful moment - he hadn't remembered the terrible fate that'd befallen him and he'd scrambled to his feet with no thought. Suddenly, he'd lurched forward, having stood up with too much strength and he'd meant to spread his wings to save himself to falling only to find...only to find that... Those miserables bastards, those insufferable swine! A furious rage seared away those last remnants of pain, and he'd risen to his feet again, determined to seek out the mountains from whence he came, and give them a word or two he'd forgotten to deliver before.
But...as he spun on his feet in an awkward grace, a cold fist clenched around his stomach. This...where was this? The plains stretched on far beyond him, a dirt road curling through the slight rises and bumps some measures away from where he stood. Straining his eyes, he could make out the pinprick lights of villages in the distance (human? elven? demon? He couldn't tell.) and looming at the horizon, there were great mountains that reared up into the beautiful night sky. Though...they were covered with the fur of Evergreens and snow capped their tops. With a certainty, the knowledge echoed dully in his head: These were not his mountains.
All at once, the deadly realization, the acute loss of it all...it struck him with its full weight. He no longer belonged. Anywhere. No Ava would ever give him a second look, he would find no welcome in any mountain where the winged flew. They had taken his wings...that which mattered so much to the soul, the ability to fly, to soar, to glide amongst the stars and clouds, to race the wind and feel such a rush of life that it was impossible to fall. No other society would ever accept him. He may have looked human now, but he was rich blood, meaning that his psychic strength was one of the most powerful in many lands. No other race would welcome him, no one would give a damn about a...a Flightless. He let that word float in his mind, then dared to breathe it.
"Flightless."
Trembling, with hand shaking so fearfully, he reached back slowly...and felt the long, wide scars, first one, then the other. Touching them made his flesh crawl, created such a self-loathing he'd never known himself capable of possessing. They were...gone. With the dark cloaking him, he'd fallen and screamed until there was no voice left in him to do with.
Countless the hours flew past him (as he never would now) and his eyes watched the sun rise and set with a dull glaze over them, unwilling to stand and live because there was nothing to live for. He fell into a painful trance, a stupor from which he could not rouse himself from, nor wanted to. Betrayed by those he'd dearly loved, wronged by those he'd trusted, abandoned by those he thought had given a rat's tail about him...oh, how sweet the sound of death would be. But...was he to lay there, and wait for death to seek him? For two days, he contemplated this, his broken heart writhing in his chest, his mind lying in so many tatters that he could hardly keep his thoughts focused. He'd heard so many stories...wild stories of those who lost their wings. They went mad, many said, raging at the imaginary, screaming and wild, their souls so broken it was a mercy to send them more quickly upon their way to Aya in the sky.
No...
He could not say when he'd made the decision, or if it had really been a choice at all, but the Flightless knew he could not lie there and fade away so quietly as the summer does to fall. He'd never been particularly stubborn, or brave-hearted, or even foolish...but on the fourth dawn since that fateful day, the Flightless found himself rising to his feet unsteadily, his eyes enraptured on the mountains in the distance. He remembered his home, his dear, dear home, the red-purple hues of his darling Aimon Mountains. And as he stared, illusion melded with reality, and he saw them there in his mind's eye, and the sight wrenching a sob from his lips, and again he cried with an overflowing grief. To be home once more! To feel the west wind greet him so cheerfully, to feel the sky at his fingers, the wind beneath his wings...but he had no wings. He had no home. And the sky was forbidden to him now. But not for long...just one last time...
Muttering half-crazed beneath his breath, words thick with sorrow, the Flightless forced himself again to his feet. Some show of will? Some glimpse of strength? No, he knew not. His fate called him on, summoned him, pushed him to go on. He was so weak...who was to know how tiring walking could be? But he pressed on, keeping the mountains before him, walking on to them as though led by some siren's song. He being led there by Death himself...for he was going there to die. To leap one last time, to feel the endless sky and the life-giving air one last time...to feel free one last time. He would plummet back to the ground, as if he'd espied something there but it would be his death he lunged for, and he would find it in a lover's sweet embrace. So, he pushed on, pressed on towards the mountains, dreaming of his last flight.