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Post by khrys on Nov 3, 2009 1:40:20 GMT -5
He rose smoothly from the bed and stepped over the topsheet that was bunched on the floor. A smooth smile appeared on an equally smooth face as he remembered the look on his companion's face at the knots he had roped the sheet with late last night. Reaching for his clothes he began dressing in the dim pre-dawn. It was when he was buckling the theorbo strap on that he noticed a single open eye peeking from a bunched pillow. " Goin'?" He nodded. " When 'r y'back?" He turned his green eyes back to the buckle and said nothing. " Ah." A three second silence altered time making it feel like minutes before the next muffled question came from the pillow. " Deveon...?" Sitting down on the end of the bed he grasped the first heavy leather boot and slipped it on. It took a moment for him to remember the falsehood and respond to the name. " Mmm?" A hand slipped out from under a duck down pillow and the tanned farmer's hand reached to stroke his back, " Yeh said...yeh said yeh luved meh." He finished snugging on his calf-high footwear and rose. Turning back to the bed he pulled his cloak from the end of the mattress and swirled it over his shoulders. The heavy cloth settled in it's usual place and complied with the clasp. " I did." Straightening up he slid a hand through his hair and nodded politely. " But that was last night. It's dawn now." Habitual vanity took over and he smiled sweetly before bending down and kissing the cowlick part in the middle of a forest of black hair. " Truely enough, it's been almost four months now. For Man, that's a long time, yes? You knew the dawn would come some day. So that day is no longer in the 'morrow." He stepped to the door before he heard the wretched, single sob. " Yeh ken I cannah go back! Meh family, they m'ain't knowin' - but ah'll alwehs do! Meh marriage'll be farce," the wet sound mingled with a growl of despair. " Now ah won' be whut ah was 'afore. Yeh kil't in me theh desire an' gave me a shamin' one!" Berenloth opened the rented room's door and stepped out. " Ah shud kill yeh!" the last sentence slipped out into the second floor hall before the door closed and truncated the rest of the threat. They were all like that - they came to know themselves and in doing so found the life they lived was now a farce. The elf shrugged and headed down, intent on making it to Bree by nightfall. It wasn't his problem that they lied to themselves before they lay with him. He nodded to the inn keeper and handed her a small bag of silver - enough to keep the room in rent for another two days, " Please extend the visit. Whether it's used or not." His feet creaked on the wooden floor and he made his way past the dead hearth and out to the promise of a cold, sunless morning. Wasn't his fault that they believed the pseudonyms he gathered from taverns, then gave out like raspberries. Wasn't his fault that they believed love was forever. He glanced back over his shoulder to the second story window, half expecting to see a venemous, splotchy, infuriated face. Those lips were not the first to spit threats at his back. And his taste for the unusual still wasn't sated, so it was safe to say that they wouldn't be the last. Perhaps it was time to find a place to hide. A haven of folk where he could blend in and keep low until the tales of his past few liaisons came to an end. He made a note to begin asking around the guild houses once he arrived in Bree.
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Post by Tallaith on Nov 3, 2009 14:50:03 GMT -5
BWAHAHAHAHA! Awesome post. Deveon, I had no idea you were such a pimp! I can't wait to hear more from this character!
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Post by khrys on Nov 4, 2009 21:24:37 GMT -5
It twisted in his head and the agony began to mangle his memory. Over the next two days he drifted in and out of sleep while heartache rewrote what had happened. At first it told him he was rejected, then whispered how he had been manipulated, then finally it insisted he had been controlled. On the third day he woke to the sound of a fist banging on the thick wood of the door, heralding the end of the room's rental period.
By mid day he had returned to the farm. His unshaven face, red rimmed eyes and gaunt face told his wife to keep her distance and she did, asking nothing of his absence over the past three days.
She didn't drift away from him as much as just came to accept the distance he locked between them. Day or night, he didn't hide the poison that swam inside. His face was now continually blank and inexpressive and he never spoke to her, even when she returned from the forest with a day's worth of chopping bundled on her back. His work in the oat field continued but at a snail's pace and with apathy. She had given up smiling at him or speaking to him: it brought no result and didn't change his path into the woodshed where he would spend his evening by oil lamp. For the next week he came to bed an hour after she had begun her walk with the sandman.
During the night he tossed. Fitful, she would wake to his muttering and occasional flail, catching a word. Unintelligible at times, the cruelty was clear in his tone and once when she caught the outline of his face in moonlight she saw his eyebrows arrow together in savage expression.
This went on for a week before she decided to return early from her woodcutting and investigate what it was that was making him bitter and thinner each day he lived.
Despite the midday sunlight she still needed to take her own lantern to see in the cool gloom of the shed. Once she was inside she closed the door behind her and took inventory of the wooden chair and desk and the barrels behind them. Oily hides were draped over the tabletop and barrels - they had the stink of fresh tanning fat and oil - and blocked light that attempted to peek between the wall slats. The smell had her putting a hand over her nose. Neither of them had ever skinned before and looking at the poorly edged skins and ragged shapes left her feeling that these had to be from his own hand. Stepping closer she held the lantern up to his handiwork: rips, cuts, chunks missing from the standard four-legged pattern. His lack of skill was apparent...and suddenly so was the source of his skins.
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Post by Tallaith on Nov 5, 2009 11:45:23 GMT -5
Oooooooo... *waits with bated breath, then starts turning blue*
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Post by khrys on Nov 5, 2009 20:56:44 GMT -5
((I'm about to hit a point where the use of Deveon's name as Berenloth's pseudonym becomes important. Before I continue I'd like to ask Deveon's player's permission to continue with this falsehood. I promise no god-modding of Deveon and at any time the player can demand that the lie be exposed.))
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Post by khrys on Nov 9, 2009 18:59:55 GMT -5
The hoe slid down between his palms (a smooth thigh) and bit the dirt (teeth on his shoulder) and a new divot was created. He opened his palm and tossed a handful of oat seed in the fallow. Pausing for a moment he allowed his body remembrance of the perfectness of past nights. Then ice water flooded his veins and the chill rushed to his heart, buckling it, dropping him to his knees. As had happened each day since his return to the farm, a sob escaped followed by hot, angry tears. " Killed meh, killed us," he whispered, " kill yeh." Shaking, he rose once more and wiped his unshaven face with a soiled hand. An earthen smear cut a line across his face. He lifted his other hand and wiped it across his face as well, another swath of brown. A moment later he was clawing at his face, leaving a war paint of grime across his features. His nails slit ribbons of skin and blood mingling with tears, tears mingled with mud. It was time to find peace. Time to put his heart to rest. A last time for their flesh to come together. He turned and headed to the farmhouse. He needed his blades and hide scraper before beginning the hunt. " Meh flesh." he began rambling, " Our flesh. Yer flesh."
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Post by khrys on Nov 12, 2009 0:55:43 GMT -5
The corner of paperwork peeked out from the edge of brown fur. Stepping up to the table she tugged at the stack of notes and pulled them into the lamplight. Unlike her, he was illiterate so she was not surprised to see crude drawings of the human form without any identifying text. Each picture was done in charcoal on paper smeared with oily fingerprints and flecks of blood - amateur, almost laughable if not for their subject matter. The oil in the lantern waned on the wick and made the golden light dance so the pages were in shadow. She held the diagrams closer to her pale eyes and a moment later the instructions became clear. The top one had the clearest lines - an image of the back and shoulders with a kite shape - that started at the neck and travelled the expanse of shoulders before tapering to a point at the bottom of the spine. She moved it to the bottom of the stack and examined the second one. The second detailed peeling lengths of skin from legs and arms. The rough charcoal drawing was far from deft but the image of skin curled back like paint escaping an old wall, was unmistakable. He shook his head, at first in an attempt to rattle himself free of the mind control that he came to believe he was under. Then the head shaking took on a new purpose - it became a metronome keeping the rhythm of his words. Keep them from flowing into one long string of babble. Words and thoughts stayed evenly paced, in sync with his feet, driving him back to the shed where a traveller's backpack and tools of retribution waited to begin a journey. "Yer be...th' monsteh! Yer be..th' pervertah..ah man! Ah'll be..yer banisher! Ah'll be..th' clensah!"Her hands shook she turned the page aside to examine the third and then the fourth..each one an amateur tutorial that directed how to remove flesh from muscle. Frightened now, she slid the papers back into place, replicating their original position under the hide that had first failed to secret them. She then went through the barrels and under the hides that were strewn over the desk, uncovering his tools. Flensing knives, small paring daggers, a bone saw. In the barrel: fatty tissue floating in preparation oil. He had been neat in his clean up: no bones, no muscle and the only blood that remained was that which stained the tools and diagrams. But the skin...the skin was just that. Hairless, pink skin that had been tanned thin. He had already been working his butchery of art. "Ah diahmond! Ah longstrip! Everah inch! Ah'll wrap yeh around meh an' meh around yeh an' weh'll melt a-gethah an' head ta hell inna one skin!" The wooden shack was now in view and his hissing, whispering plans began insiting that he put them in order. They demanded to know the order in which they would be executed - jockeying to be the first desire sated.She reached out to the lid of a barrel and was about to lift it free of the wax-cracked rim when her eyes spotted something hanging from the ceiling. Deeper in shadow so the oil lamp couldn't illuminate it, she peered for a moment. Straightening her spine she forced her hands to turn to the chair and move it under the torso-sized object. Lying to herself was the only way to coerece herself to step up onto the seat and she used the same tactic to get her hand to reach out and touch whatever this was against the ceiling. Cold, hard meat met her fingertips and she lost her balance for a moment as her legs tried to run away while her mind demanded she find out. Panting now, her eyes wide in the dark, she confirmed that the torso was hanging from a rope and hook. She pulled out her wooding hand axe and swung a chop at the cord. The pink hairless skin swayed like a plumb now. Too unnerved to reach out and stop it's swaying she waited for it to pendulum away before she took another swing at the creaking cable. The pig corpse crashing to the floor, it's spread ribs striking the edge of the table and cracking it in half down it's spine. He slams open the door." Weh kiss theh back, then cuts it! Weh folds knees undeh chin an openserup! Inanoutaninanout!" She leaps rather than falls - her arm returns from severing the rope and rises again. An offense, not a defense. Her scream. His scream as his precious papers now cascade to the floor, "Nonononono!" and he rushes forward to save them.
She slams the hatchet down. He brings his hands up against his face. She topples backward to the barrel, knocking it over. The wet thunk then dry crack as a hatchet splits meat then bone finally registering in her ears. The sting of thin ribbon cuts on his unshaven face is irrelevent now. His split lips slide the name "Deveon" out before he falls.Too horrified to scream, she slips and slides. Her feet finally find grip amid the pooling red and amber of blood and tanning fluid. She rushes out the open door and stumbles for the next hundred meters. She can't stay. Two days later her bags are packed. At her first shared campfire she's asked for a story and she replies only, " Ta bronach orm". Misunderstanding, they assume it's her name and leave her to her privacy. She accepts their unintended gift of her travelling name. The next time someone asks, she replies "Bronachraen".
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Post by khrys on Nov 12, 2009 0:59:23 GMT -5
-~= FIN =~-
* Ta bronach orm is Irish, literally, "I am sad."
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Post by brendur on Nov 12, 2009 8:04:44 GMT -5
;D Bravo m'dear Bravo. A real class act.
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Post by Tallaith on Nov 12, 2009 12:06:56 GMT -5
Very, very nice! Sad to see it's over though. I'm looking forward to seeing more writing from you, I hope!
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Post by Deveon on Nov 12, 2009 16:14:27 GMT -5
Agreed! Fantastic! Well done, can't wait to see more from you.
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Post by amerlynn on Nov 15, 2009 18:43:58 GMT -5
I think it's an interesting little tale. The woman, Bronachraen has a unique and traumatic origin that's unlike what most characters have. It's dark, and frightening.
As to the character of Berenloth, he is a rather unique and peculiar elf in himself. In fact, virtually all of his character features contradict the standards for elves in Middle-Earth, in particular his sentiments on love. I wonder if he's considered an outcast of some sort? Elves typically mate for life, but this fellow seems a rather selfish sort.
While both of the characters are unique, I find it very hard to like Berenloth. Bronachraen is a seemingly unspectacular woman forced into the worst situation imaginable, and I'd be very interested to see how she would react if she learned the truth of her ordeal, or even just where she goes from here. Would this tragedy spur her on to greatness, and prosperity from the ashes of horror, or would the ordeal itself drive her to the brink of despair... and beyond?
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Post by khrys on Nov 18, 2009 20:35:14 GMT -5
Thank you all. Despite all your wonderful kudos I'm still shy. Bronachraen was 10 feet from Amerlynn a couple nights ago and I was too afraid to RP, fearing that I didn't really know Bronach well enough to stir a reason for her interacting with a stranger.
Initially, I was going to use this story as my intro and an attempt to get Berenloth an IC guild invitation but as the story grew I found I wanted to explore and play Bronachraen and find a way to get her an invitation...but then it went haywire and I couldn't decide who I was more interested in playing.
And now worse comes to worst: I am getting this twitch to write yet another character into this plot. So now I'm torn on who to apply to your guild with: my arrogant and unstable elf, my wandering victim-of-her-own-made-circumstance female or the man who will now chase her?
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Post by Tallaith on Nov 19, 2009 12:18:35 GMT -5
You can put any and all characters in the Kinship. We don't judge based on who your character is. We accept new folks based on their skills as a storyteller and their OOC compatibility with us! You're also welcome to join our OOC chat if you'd like. Send a tell to me or to the Officers for instructions on how to join.
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Post by khrys on Nov 20, 2009 16:56:00 GMT -5
The chill was in her heart, not on her skin as she made her way west. For the first two days she camped alone - the kindling of the campfire from her own harvesting efforts. The third night was spent on the roadside in the company of six mercenaries going the direction that she had come from. They asked for news of the roads east of Kingsfell and traded to her their advice that her ability to weild a woodaxe was nowhere near as valuable as her ability to travel. Bronach listened and nodded and when the coals became ash and the sun rose she rolled up her bedding and turned her eyes north to the forest's edge of Kingsfell. For the next day she split and lumbered quality wood from the forest ground, eventually filling a shoulder-sling with what she hoped would be enough to vend for a few silver. After that, she continued her trek westward, hoping to reach Trestlebridge in the next couple days. In the south fields of Fornost she tried to barter the bundle to a stable keeper. " Nah, nah. Is not wood I need fer the business. Saddle leathers or fur liners fer th' horse's blankets, now that I kin make use of. Fer them, I'd barter ya a ride to Trestlebridge where they'd be more than 'appy ta offer best coin fer yer lumber. Their rebuildin's goin' slow without proper timber." Bronach listened and nodded and gratefully accepted the picnic of his bread and cheese. After thanking him she turned her pale eyes east, back to the forest's edge of north Kingsfell. The first kill was easy, skinning it was not. Her hands shook violently, turning out an edging that looked like a jagged jigsaw puzzle. At first she was tentative, unnerved as the blade let out a slow hiss every time she pushed it along. It jarred her palm and jammed to a stop at every curve, lump and turn. Once the skin (" hide, not skin...hide") was off there was barely a quarter of it left. After examining her first-ever attempt, she turned her head aside to bring up the bread and cheese lunch. On the next one she tried to rush through the job. The tool chattered loudly as it skipped over the corpsemeat, splattering fluids across her leggings and jerkin. Her hand slipped numerous times and the softest fur near the head and paws was lost, mangled beyond use. Camping alone that night, she spent hours with his only estate to her, running a whetstone over the notched iron edges and chisling at wooden handles to better shape them to her grip. By the time her eyes closed the butchering instruments were as new. The morning's hunt produced better than yesterday and this time she had product to show for her efforts. But never could she get a clean line - the tools were in better state but her nerves were not. Though her food stayed down, her hand continued to shake each time she pushed along the muscle to create a void between the skin. More than half her work that day was left on the forest floor and when she approached Amon Raith that evening she could offer only six of the dozen kills she had made that day. By fortune or kindness, Pothlir deemed it enough for barter and she passed through the Greenway and arrived safely in Trestlebridge that evening on horseback.
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