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Post by Apronia Silvanus on Mar 7, 2006 4:10:04 GMT
Apronia crept cautiously beyond the first rings of trees, eyes darting into shadows and pools of light. This close to the castle, the Forest seem friendly, even to that sense that tickled at her mind. Birds flitted about, small creatures shuffled through the mast, and the smell of decaying leaves was pungent and familiar. As she stalked deeper, flitting from tree to tree, pausing for long moments to listen and strain every sense (if the centaurs should catch her with bow and sword, she was in some deep merda), the sunlight seemed duller, the shadows stickier. The small sounds of animals ceased, and the air smelled stale. Instead of clean leaf bracken, she smelled a more rotten scent. Death. A smell she had not missed, and wished to forget. It was not strong yet, just the barest hint on a breeze that seemed terrified to rustle branches. The trees seemed to be straining to move closer to the perimeter, and she jumped as a branch touched her arm.
Did that move? she wondered, and shook the thought off like water. Inch by inch she crept, brown eyes tracking the panicked flight of a dormouse, fleeing the deep forest and burrowing under roots. She fancied she could hear the hum of its little heart, beats blurred by panic.
The deeper, the denser, the darker. She headed inward, inward, and the rotten smell got stronger. The trees no longer seemed afraid. They looked twisted, though her eyes admitted that objectively they were normally shaped. But something in her cried out at the sight of them, grieved and frightened by what was happening to this place.
She noticed after a time that the miasma of death was lessening, and cursing, she turned to seek its source. She paused once to string her bow, nocked a shaft and stroked its wood like a talisman as she walked. She could feel this...perversion of magic try to grasp at her, but she pulled her already-weak magic further within her, and its fingers passed through her like a ghost, chilling her but leaving her unharmed.
She noticed a glint of gold, bent down and brushed aside some soggy leaf mold to reveal the key she had given to Ethelion. He must have passed this place. How could he have missed this sickness? I wonder how it is affecting the creatures here? Where are the centaurs? She lifted it from the dirt, cleaned it with rough swipes against her leather tunic, and hesitated only a moment before clasping it around her neck, at last assuming the decoration of her office, which from Hagrid's (nearly illegible) records, signified something important. But he, not the most scholarly of Gameskeepers Hogwarts had ever employed, never specified to whom. She had put this off, hoping the older records would yield an answer, but all were oblivious or vague. The clasp snicking close shivered down her spine with finality.
The walk was interminable. She jumped at every sound, tucked herself behind trees and raised her weapon, ready to let fly. Nothing. A cricket hummed for a moment; there was a squawk and the noise stopped. She clenched her muscles tight for a moment, took a deep breath and centered herself. Just like one of Moroyoto's obstacle courses. she told herself sternly, and moved on.
She almost tripped over it, got a noseful of death and stumbled away gagging, dropping her bow and falling to the ground, gagging and trying to clear her lungs. The corpse of a lion, sprayed out over two metres of the earth. The Forest floor here was wet, slimy, and Apronia had to breath shallowly through her nose as she stole glances at the dead creature. A lion?! She glanced around, saw a tiny, furry Burzad, Blatulus serpentius, scavenger, only mammal capable of unhinging its jaws, magical abilities - mild hyponosis to distract other scavengers she recalled, and watched it move closer and closer to the corpse.
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Post by Erich Aubry on Mar 7, 2006 4:32:01 GMT
What No One but Centaurs Can Hear:
The woods are a whistle, and I am worse. Leaves crumble under their own weight: this is the sound of laughter. I am laughing. I am laughing at you.
See the small creature. I am inside it. I am home. Look how it moves for me, reaches the hurt of my body. Unlocks its own jaw, stretches its maw to devour the first sacrifice. We are so hungry. We are looking at you Apronia and we see what makes you ashamed.
***
A Burzad, its fur matted with sod and rising well waters, thick already with the seedless poison, feeds on the remains of the conjured lion. Looks up, tests the air with its small peaked nose. Its wide eyes are luminous and empty, they see all and see nothing. They settle on Apronia Silvanus, and the Burzad's jaw unhinges once more.
The trees giggle and grow vines.
***
What does it matter what we save? This is the fury.
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Post by Apronia Silvanus on Mar 7, 2006 4:40:55 GMT
The eerie blank stare of the Burzad, standing in the midst of the lion's entrails with its bloodstained mouth gaping open obscenely, sends ripples of disassociation over Apronia's skin. She squashes it quickly, edging from behind her tree, reaching out with an arrow to touch the scavenger, which looks paralyzed. I don't remember them having fangs, she thinks. The Forest presses closer around her, bushes, trees and vines leaning, pulled by the warped gravity of the dark magic sprouting here, a flourishing miasma of decay. The Burzad doesn't budge as she moves the arrow towards it, so she recites the mantra of compassion to steady herself and ask forgiveness and jabs at one huge unblinking eye...
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Post by Erich Aubry on Mar 7, 2006 4:51:12 GMT
Keep her. Keep her. Keep her. This is inevitable loneliness. I became cellular and my body rose and fell again with the weather. I was water and worse. I am worse. I need you. I need you. I need you. I have always needed you.
Can your body stop the hunger? Let me weigh your heart, the broad wings of your lungs and I can be sure. I am the forest. I am a foreign ocean and worse. I was his once. What has symbolic value when you are the wave that crushes a city?
The forest is full of a loneliness. Stay.
The burzad makes no noise. It is a naturally silent creature. What is unnatural is the bodily fluids that spread up the shaft of the arrow. It digests the threat and becomes. Apronia jerks her hand away and watches as the burzad tests its new horn.
This is how I remember hope.
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Post by Apronia Silvanus on Mar 7, 2006 6:01:57 GMT
Apronia recoils, fascinated and repulsed. She whips out her wand, stabs it furiously at the creature, which snaps rigid and topples over. The shadows become more threatening and the golden key burns at her throat. She slips her bow over a shoulder, picks up the Petrified Burzad by a clawed foot, and has to suppress a sob. This twisted glade...sickening and rank with Dark, but something pulls at her, a tragic lonely sadness. It feels like an orphan, a neglected abused creature, with a taint she cannot identify. It feels like it wants to hold her, and she wants to comfort it. But she is afraid of the darkness, and it seems every moment to shift from pleading to vengeful, and back, and she dares not linger. As she begins to leave, slow and cautious, thick vines fall across her path.
She stops, looks up, hoping to find a cause, seeing only branches and shadow. She ducks under them, snags her bow, and tears herself away, turning back to her path to see more vines. They wave gently and as she nears, twitch. She whimpers, clutching the Burzad closer and fingering her sword hilt. She swallows, eyes closing, as she brushes the first vine. It pushes back but she continues forward until she hits the second. It coils around her almost lovingly, like a torque. She perseveres. The third and fourth too provide only a modicum of resistance, but as she peeks through one fear filled eye, a web of them lies in front of her. She begins to run, charging into it. The vines snap around her, crisp as Iugum curse bonds, and she lets out a muffled screech of fear and fury. Her sword is slightly trapped by greenery, and she claws at it until she can snatch it free, swings wildly, screeching and panting like a wild thing. The more vines she cuts, the more fly at her, her body is dissipating, the frozen Burzad teeters on the solid part of her arm, she runs, ever and ever through the hostile forest until she - at last! - stumbles into a brook in the sunlit outskirts and she tumbles into the water, gasping and wiping tears from her face. The key is quiet, and the Burzad glares at her where it has fallen on the bank, face half in the dirt. A bird chirps, unsure if it is appropriate to do so but bravely breaking the silence.
Apronia finds the strength to stand on trembling legs. The trees murmur forlornly behind her,
don't leave us.
Her head whips around, but no one is there. She composes herself carefully, piecing together her composure, cleans her sword and sheaths it, wipes her face with a damp sleeve. More hesitant now, she gingerly lifts the Burzad, tucks it under her arm. She checks the glade, empty. Slowly she drags herself out of the Forest, towards her hut.
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Cain
Centaur Foal
Posts: 49
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Post by Cain on Mar 7, 2006 22:46:10 GMT
Cain prances nervously at the edge of the woods, peering into their depths. He is terrified of going in, but if he has to he will. For Apronia. To save her. "Apronia!" He calls. "Aprooooooooniaaaa!" No answer.
He stops, standing stiffly on all four legs, tail straight out behind him. He takes a deep breath... and barrels into the forest.
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Post by Erich Aubry on Mar 7, 2006 23:14:34 GMT
These are bad times to be a hero. You are a little one. Eve laid on her side for you, spilt herself open to make a doorway and you always charge through. You are a little one.
Don't turn. Don't blink. Your hoofprints disappear inside us, a step or so. She is in me and I am in her, I will grow a willow tree in the place of your mother
-and she too will take part in the violence. We are your home.
*** The forest is still and unaggressive. Sunlight moves over and through the branches, lays the path for him. The creatures retreat and vines lay limp as Cain pushes through.
The dream moves in to motion. Everything is spring-loaded, a trap.
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Cain
Centaur Foal
Posts: 49
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Post by Cain on Mar 7, 2006 23:25:04 GMT
Cain trots through the forest, head sharply lowered, his large grey eyes slitted. He subconciously follows a path he has taken hundreds of times through-out his life, his attention focused on listening for Apronia, smelling for her. He dares not call out for her. The forest feels wrong. Smells wrong.
He stops just on the edge of their territory, scent markings jolting him to attention. Oh, phooey.
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Post by Prof. Rainer Freundschaft on Mar 9, 2006 3:02:52 GMT
This was the last place Rainer wanted to be. The trees are still and the landscape holds its breath. Erich has quieted the wildlife, given it unnatural pause. Its an old trick and a dirty one though Rainer doesn't recognize him or the curses he whispers in their thirteen languages from behind every tree.
There is this another memory. His own school, another quiet. Crawling on his hands and bleeding knees, waiting to be saved. There is water everywhere.
Everything lasts in it stillness and his footfall means nothing. He expected curses, barbs, acid for dew. There is nothing and no one. His shield flickers in the cold, a spell pressed to his skin by the secret names of a demi-god. Rainer wards himself carefully and steps in to the territories.
Algernon is waiting and Erich wishes he still knew how to touch Rainer as mist in the forest. There are better times.
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Post by Erich Aubry on Mar 9, 2006 3:13:51 GMT
Oh Langley.
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Post by Apronia Silvanus on Mar 9, 2006 3:45:50 GMT
As she nears, she catches a glimpse of a robe sweeping beyond the trees, thinks she sees the German professor´s profile, cries out for him to beware as she runs, but the Forest catches her sound and flings it back at her. She thinks she can hear a flicker of a laugh tagged on the end.
She runs beyond the trees, following the glowing tip of her wand. She spares a thought for Professor Freundschaft, but surely he is more equipped to deal with this evil than she. Certainly more than little Cain. She continues to run, coiled and speeding with worry and fear and fury.
¨CAIN!¨ she yells reckless. ¨CAIN, where are you?!¨ after a while her voice is hoarse with screams and she has forgotten every word except his name, sobbing it as a prayer to keep him safe. ¨CAIN!¨ she cries as she trips over a root and falls.
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Cain
Centaur Foal
Posts: 49
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Post by Cain on Mar 9, 2006 3:49:15 GMT
Cain spins around when he hears her voice. "Apron--!"
But the tip of an arrow is already at his throat.
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Post by Apronia Silvanus on Mar 9, 2006 3:58:15 GMT
Apronia finally sees him, standing on a little hillock in the moonlight. She moved closer and a dark silhouette obscures her view. A centaur´s broad back blocks the way, but she is so panicked she dives beneath it´s feet and scrambles to Cain. The shadows hid the large male who´s arrow tip nearly pierces Cain´s throat, but Apronia barrels into the small figure, bowling him over and startling the ring of adults around them.
¨Cain.¨ she whispers, hugging him. ¨Are you all right?¨
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Cain
Centaur Foal
Posts: 49
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Post by Cain on Mar 9, 2006 4:05:09 GMT
Cain throws his arms around Apronia, unmindful of the centaurs now that she is here. She will protect him. He burries his face against her, hiding his tears. "Oh, Apronia!" he whimpers. "I had the baddest dream and I was so scared but now you're here and it'll be okay and you'll make them go away, right?"
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Post by Erich Aubry on Mar 9, 2006 4:18:29 GMT
You see them. There are twelve and they know you though their eyes are ruined for the vision. Look at what sunlight makes of their strong backs, the muscled harpcords of the stomach that curves out and downward in to their animal other. You are a common denominator.
You are all animals.
***
Cain trembles in her arms. They stand as statues, tall as trees. Their blindness makes them marble and they wait for the sound of prey. Apronia can watch their individual breathing, see their noble chests rise and fall again. The centaurs circle her in eerie, stumbling quiet.
"The forest. The stars." their leader begins, his face fallen and smeared with the ash of the leaf bed. "We cry out to be avenged and both are silent. This is the work of man. We are practiced upon, his astrology makes stranger shapes behind our eyes." They draw their bows then, aiming wildly in to the center of the circle, at each other, the sky. "This is our sorrow. Please forgive us." Apronia does not know who he addresses.
His hand shakes before the first arrow flys from his grip.
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