Nenuial

(( New to being posted, older chronologically ))

Leiral asked me to sleep with her. She was having nightmares too, after our trip. Thoughts of her brother, as I am having. Unlike me, she does not know if her brother is alive or dead. Her fear speaks through her dreams.

(( New to being posted, chronologically older. ))

The hand falls on my shoulder. It is very cool. The grip is very firm. There is an unpleasantly wet sound as the figure behind me shifts. The back of my neck prickles.

Ever since we went to that haunted castle in Silverpine... I can't sleep.

I didn't want to bring him with me.

We're broken, all of us.

When it comes to an object (a vase, a gem, a weapon) you can smash a number, line them up and say "Yes, this one is more broken than that."

When it comes to people, there is no more or less broken, there are just different ways of shattering.  Different ways to deal with it.  To get along, we must realise that the differences in our pain do not make one's any more or less important that another's.  I cannot judge anyone else by my scale, nor can they judge me by theirs.

(( A note of explaination: I had to post this, even though I am not caught up to this point in the story just yet... what happens when a Non-RPer encounters two RPers who continue to play along long past the point of reason? Read and see! All of the text from "Sephrroth" is rendered exactly as he typed it, with nothing removed or corrected. The only thing that we changed was to refuse to allow him to godmode us into being bitten, having our blood sucked, or being "punchis" the face, but instead redirected everything he did to the stairs. Enjoy! We certainly did! ))

Leiral and I were just shopping, really. We'd had a... well, a rather shocking, unpleasant experience earlier. Not so much as experience as... the thing we witnessed. We were browsing in a lighting goods shop when we heard this strangly thick voice behind us. It was as if someone were talking through a mouthful of phlegm, or maybe marbles.

"its the popo" it said.

Artisania Marveloso did, in fact, believe in ghosts.

After all, she had seen them with her own two eyes.

Not just in the Ghostlands, where the spirits of dead Quel'dorei lurked, restless and vengeful, between the dark trees. Those had startled her, certainly but perhaps in the similarity of their features she had been able to put them to rest with little qualm. After all, if *she* looked like that, she would welcome a quick banishment to the afterworld. The ghosts she had seen most recently, however, were not at all like her, but rather hooded visions, floating aimlessly through a decrepit world…

My mother, the human one, always said that Ladies shouldn't fish (along with many other things they apparently shouldn't do.)  If I did get my hands on any gear, and she caught me, then it earned a rap over my knuckles with her wand.  Trying to practice casting, for so long I could still feel those blows, and it made my progress difficult.

I no longer get that, but my angle is all wrong, arms weaker, and my hands need gloves unless I want to spend a night healing broken blisters.  It's worth it to re-learn, though.  There's something peaceful to the repetitive motion.  Cast, wait, reel, catch a fish or not, start again.  It's soothing, and I've need that lately.

The little pond was one of my favorite things about Sun Rock. From the first moment we had flown in and I’d seen the light dancing across it, and every morning when I awoke and made my way across the little bridge. It puzzled me, sometimes, that there was both a stepping-path and a bridge across it. Mostly, I ignored the stepping-path, turning my back to them to lean against the railing of the bridge and feel the morning around me.

The feel of a woman’s hand descending on my shoulder was a complete shock. I turned to see Braelyn – the woman Uzil had always described to me as the “insane elf bitch” – looking down at me down her patrician nose, lip slightly curled in distaste. There was something... dark about her. I couldn't put my finger on it. She made me uncomfortable, as though a shadow clung to her somehow.

I made my way slowly to the pond at the center of the village, my feet disappearing in the early morning groundmist until I stepped up onto the bridge. It was quiet, most of the merchants and other inhabitants didn't seem to be awake yet. I listened to the birds singing, and the insistent banging of a woodpecker. The sky was a study in peach and gold, what of it I could see above the rocks. I would have to see if I could find a perch to watch the sunrise from. The lilies bobbed gently, as a frog, startled by my shadow, hopped off of the bank.

I seated myself on the edge of the overlook and dangled my legs over it. I was looking over the little village as twilight painted it in shades of purple and orange, watching the light sparkle on the little pond, peering upwards as the stars began to dimly peek out.

I am building. Not just building this house, with Uzil, that is just the outward sign, a framework, for the entire life that I'm making now, from foundations to finish. I know I won't finish the work on the inner effort as easily and quickly as we'll be finishing the outer, but all the same, the metaphor pleases me. It's good to know that I can do something like this. It's good to have faith again.

The flightmaster looked me up and down skeptically, clearly not fond of the idea of an elf on one of his windriders, nor probably of a Troll and elf cuddling in public, but when his eye fell on my shiny insignia, he shrugged slightly. It clearly wasn't worth the hassle of arguing over it. Grumbling slightly, he handed Uzil the reins of a particularly husky looking wyvern. "Don't fall off," he growled.