IT SPROUTED A FEW HOURS LATER INTO SOMETHING THE COLOR OF YOUR EYES, WHICH I HAD NEARLY FORGOTTEN. IT BEGAN TO SING --
This, Septimus thinks, is the sort of unfortunate situation which inevitably ensues when mortals meddle in affairs that are beyond their realm of skill or knowledge.
There is a dead girl lying on the ground in front of him. Serpentine, floral vines are stretching out her open mouth, which has been pulled back so far that her jaw is broken; the plant seems to have taken growth somewhere in her throat. There is a dead girl lying on the ground in front of him, her body shaded by branches and leaves, and the only reason her body doesn’t stink is that the world has frozen up around them. The sun has remained in the sky for more than a day, and not in the way that the sun sometimes remains in the sky near-endlessly in some distant, far northern regions. No. This sun jerks and twists like a lightning bug caught in a clear glass jar, captive to some fascinated child.
So. There is Septimus, there is a dead girl, and there is a sun that does not behave like a sun. If he were less accustomed to such strange, deadly things (or even if he had fully acknowledged his own mortality), Septimus might have been – rightfully – terrified. He is not. He is still curious, and a bit sympathetic for the dead creature in front of his hooves. Mortals always died, of course. He’s seen them die countless times. But this one is young, very young, and it is a terrible thing, he thinks, for any creature to have its lifespan snuffed out when it is so far from its prime, when it has so much life left to live. He doesn’t dare touch her, because he does not want to draw out the vine, but he dips his head and whispers a sort of prayer in the language of the Wilds, and he wonders if this island can understand it.
(He does not pray to any god, of course. He still does not believe in them.)
With that, he strides forward, his strides so careful, so practiced that they barely so much as brush the seemingly-endless vegetation which populates the forest floor. Even if his limbs brushed against it, he knows, within a second, that it would have returned to itself, as though he had never touched it. Perhaps that was the world as it should be. Who ever gave them the right to touch it? (He always comes back to the Wilds, in the back of their mind. Even if they wanted to touch it, to change it or meld it to their will – the Wilds were a creature of their own, and they did not tolerate disturbance.)
Perhaps, he thinks, this is an act of reclamation.
(And he, the unthinking traveler – so content, like a snake crept back into its own skin, that he does not realize that comfort is sometimes a trap.)
@ || RIP this NPC, who died for the sake of me having set-up in this post, I guess.
"Speech!"
This, Septimus thinks, is the sort of unfortunate situation which inevitably ensues when mortals meddle in affairs that are beyond their realm of skill or knowledge.
There is a dead girl lying on the ground in front of him. Serpentine, floral vines are stretching out her open mouth, which has been pulled back so far that her jaw is broken; the plant seems to have taken growth somewhere in her throat. There is a dead girl lying on the ground in front of him, her body shaded by branches and leaves, and the only reason her body doesn’t stink is that the world has frozen up around them. The sun has remained in the sky for more than a day, and not in the way that the sun sometimes remains in the sky near-endlessly in some distant, far northern regions. No. This sun jerks and twists like a lightning bug caught in a clear glass jar, captive to some fascinated child.
So. There is Septimus, there is a dead girl, and there is a sun that does not behave like a sun. If he were less accustomed to such strange, deadly things (or even if he had fully acknowledged his own mortality), Septimus might have been – rightfully – terrified. He is not. He is still curious, and a bit sympathetic for the dead creature in front of his hooves. Mortals always died, of course. He’s seen them die countless times. But this one is young, very young, and it is a terrible thing, he thinks, for any creature to have its lifespan snuffed out when it is so far from its prime, when it has so much life left to live. He doesn’t dare touch her, because he does not want to draw out the vine, but he dips his head and whispers a sort of prayer in the language of the Wilds, and he wonders if this island can understand it.
(He does not pray to any god, of course. He still does not believe in them.)
With that, he strides forward, his strides so careful, so practiced that they barely so much as brush the seemingly-endless vegetation which populates the forest floor. Even if his limbs brushed against it, he knows, within a second, that it would have returned to itself, as though he had never touched it. Perhaps that was the world as it should be. Who ever gave them the right to touch it? (He always comes back to the Wilds, in the back of their mind. Even if they wanted to touch it, to change it or meld it to their will – the Wilds were a creature of their own, and they did not tolerate disturbance.)
Perhaps, he thinks, this is an act of reclamation.
(And he, the unthinking traveler – so content, like a snake crept back into its own skin, that he does not realize that comfort is sometimes a trap.)
@ || RIP this NPC, who died for the sake of me having set-up in this post, I guess.
"Speech!"
STAFF EDIT***
@Septimushas rolled a 3! He has been awarded +150 signos.
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
