+- Wolf RPG (https://wolf-rpg.com)
+-- Forum: In Character: Roleplaying (https://wolf-rpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5)
+--- Forum: Archives (https://wolf-rpg.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11)
+--- Thread: Blackfeather Woods And I'll keep it safe (/showthread.php?tid=36981)
And I'll keep it safe - Anansi Melonii - October 07, 2019
Anansi was too close to the willow again.
That was something of a ritual for him: he would hang around on the fringes of the clearing, watching the tree. Lingering in its vicinity with no ill effects would cause him to grow more confident, which in turn made him less mindful of the tree's toxicity. He would wander closer then, testing the boundaries of illness, attempting to draw a specific border around where the tree affected him and where it did not. This was done on a daily basis. The older he got, and the greater his exposure, the closer he could get without suffering hallucinations or sickness.
He'd drawn too close again and was staggering through the woods, vision swimming, when the ground shook violently. Anansi was thrown forward, which to him seemed to be a great distance. If his mind wasn't so muddled, maybe he would have marked the creaking of the trunks sooner. Maybe he would be steady enough to pull himself up and out of the way in time. He struggled drunkenly to his feet, and by then it was too late; a proud oak was already looming over him, its roots severed by the force of the quake. He couldn't have escaped even if he did see it.
It fell on Anansi with a heavy thud, and his scream was a sudden burst of sound as it crushed him, snuffing out the life of another Blackfeather Woods wolf. The only part of him visible beneath the fallen trunk as it settled on his body with a groan was his ink-dipped tail, unmistakable to those who knew him best.
RE: And I'll keep it safe - Maegi - October 07, 2019
Blue was still missing. She was searching for the grackle, assuming the worst (that he'd been killed in the quakes) and hoping for the best (that he'd taken wing and gone south). Her ears swiveled far forward as a scream rang out, cut off nearly immediately by the sound of a heavy impact. Another tree. . .another wolf? Oh god, oh Jaes. . .who was it?!
Maegi rushed toward the noise, heart hammering in her chest, her throat, suffocating in its intensity. The willow. . .the willow was near. She caught the sharp smell of fresh blood in the air and turned, only to stop dead for an instant at what she saw.
Then it sank in.
NO!the Nona shrieked, a terrible sound ripped from her maw, lifting through the air like a banshee's call.
NO, 'NANSI, NO!She hobbled at her quickest speed to him, scrabbling at the dirt, trying to free the rest of his body from the fallen tree. His tail. . .just his tail. White-hot pain shot up her injured leg as she dug and dug, and then she began to hurl herself against the trunk to no avail, sobbing.
HELP! HELP ME! MY SON—MY BABY!!Her cries rang through the forest, rattling off the trees. Whatever birds remained scattered at the noise; other than that, and the groaning of the ancient oak, now atop Anansi, it was dead silent.
The daedra had done this.
And all the while she continued to scream, and strike at the tree, and she couldn't stop.
RE: And I'll keep it safe - RIP Sobek - October 07, 2019
Sobek had kept close to his little family when the forest had split apart, when Maegi had been gone for days, keeping himself calm through the ritualized patrols around the areas of the forest that were still safe; if he wasn't with Rowan he was with Anansi, and on this particular day there wasn't a worse place to be. The willow was not luring him close. He knew his brother was fixated on it, had been for a while, but without an adult nearby Sobek was cautious of it. They visited because Anansi wished it (and Sobek would never refuse him anything).
He looked away for a moment. Just a blink - a breath. Watching for signs of the ravens return, missing them so deeply, and their calls, their watching eyes. That was when the world upended itself. Something shook, something shifted and Sobek did what came naturally - he stood up and bolted a few feet closer to his brother, eyes wide, at the exact moment something went wrong. He saw a great gnarled arm slamming down against the forest floor; he heard a shriek, cut short.
His ears were ringing as the debris settled, and through his shock Sobek heard shouting. He was still just standing there, feet away from where Anansi had been, and watched as his ghostly mother rounded upon them. He didn't move, didn't breathe, for the longest time - but then pitifully, his voice pleading softly, he called out:
A ..Anan...si?
RE: And I'll keep it safe - Sakhmet - October 07, 2019
The earth was angry, dangerous, vengeful. Still it would seem the Melonii children lurked in unsafe places. Sakhmet took her chances lingering near crumbled parts of the earths (never had caves seemed more interesting or haunting) and her brothers seemed to lurk near the trees that had not yet given way. But they were children! Young and relatively lacking in sin, what had they done to be deserving of the earth's vengeful ways?
She did not hear the tree crack or her brother's final battle cry. No, it was not the sound of the event that summoned her. It was the wails of her mother that surely scared off any birds who still remained. Admittedly she wondered if another brother had gone rogue, stolen off into the night but...there was something haunting in that call that had been been present when Sobek had gone missing.
So she pattered ever closer to the source of the cries, of the startled birds, of tragedy. It took a few beats until she spotted it. Her mother was not grieving some fallen tree. There underneath the tree peeked out an ink dipped tail. The tail of her ghost and oh...oh. A warbled cry built up in her throat as she let out her own wail. But she did not get closer to morn or comfort her own remaining family. She bolted without thought to where she was going.
She could not stay, she could not handle seeing her ghost become just that.
RE: And I'll keep it safe - Maegi - October 08, 2019
No one was coming. No one but her other two children, whom she wanted to protect, cover, shield them from the horrors of the trees and the earth and the damned daedra. She watched, still sobbing, as Sakhmet fled, and as Sobek stood stunned. Soon, words meant nothing to her.
She couldn't have called for anyone if she tried.
Instead, Maegi crumpled to the ground, giving up the digging, taking Anansi's tail between her paws.
Tresy,she moaned, balling herself up like a shrimp and rocking. Like a tree with roots loosened, back and forth. . .back and forth. . .she'd killed him, she hadn't been watching close enough. . .who would be next?
One eye, the fiery orb, flickered toward Sobek and landed on him in quiet invitation; still, she said nothing but her dead son's name, a quiet, broken mantra, the pain that gripped her entire body, viselike, more than unbearable.
RE: And I'll keep it safe - RIP Sobek - October 08, 2019
Sobek did not know what to do. His ears wouldn't stop their ringing until he heard his mother's voice moaning just beyond where the tree settled, and beyond that there was silence—except something moved behind him, and the wind said it was Sakhmet, but Sobek could not move to look at his surviving sibling, his twin. He was staring slack-jawed at the place where their brother had just been standing. Maegi was holding on to the dark-tipped tail as if it were a reliquary and she were praying over it, begging the forest to give her back her son. Sobek stared. He didn't know if he should chase after Sakhmet as she fled—or stay with mother—or rescue Anansi, who most assuredly could not have been gone, crushed like a bug beneath a boot—?
The boy turned, feeling his body lock up, his mouth dry. He moved as if in slow motion and glimpsed where his sister had been standing, spied the path she'd taken on her retreat, and then turned back to where his mother sat sobbing, reciting some sort of spell over the remains. One step, two, it felt like someone else was propelling him because he did not want to see this, and he did not want to be here, just as much as Sakhmet; he couldn't fathom seeing what had become of his beloved Anansi, yet the boy was drifting closer, closer, closer, and when he came alongside Maegi, he collapsed against the forest floor, his pale eyes empty, hard, like shards of glass.
RE: And I'll keep it safe - Maegi - October 14, 2019
Every instinct screamed at her to draw Sobek close when he fell beside her, but her paws would not move from Anansi's tail. Clutching it, like a talisman. Like frozen in mid-pounce. She could not let him go, lest the tree and the earth swallow him up entirely.
Like Nirgali, Ninazu. . .
Maegi blubbered nonsensically, at least shifting her frame to press against Sobek's smaller form. How long she stayed within this catatonic state, she wasn't sure. Hours? Days? It was the tunnels all over again, but a thousand times worse.
Another child gone. Another soul she held dear, gone.
By Jaes, when would it end?!