Hush Meadow what's a god to a non-believer?

At night, during a thunderstorm.
<i>Human beings in a mob, What's a mob to a king? What's a king to a god? What's a god to a non-believer, who don't believe in anything?</i>
<blockquote>
<i>Had it not been bad enough before?</i> she kept asking herself, deadened gaze roving the tall grasses that rolled through the field. On a regular day they were calm, waving easily as gentle winds caressed the green stalks and they would whisper a quiet mantra that everything would be alright. It had been like that the last time she had been here, and the time before, and every time her golden eyes had ever caught sight of the meadow. Peaceful, calm, thoughtful. There was no gentler place within the entirety of Relic Lore than the field that lay within the southern eden. Yet upon that night even the Hush Meadow was showing signs of the world having been flipped all around. The grasses whipped to and fro without heed for who was walking among them while the black sky above snarled and lit up the open plain with a yellow ferocity. Water pounded down from the sky, as though trying to force the long grasses back into the flooded earth. In the most sacred of places, there was no mercy to be found.

Despite the crash of thunder that boomed across the vast field Ava could hear nothing. Nothing but deafening silence, all around her just emptiness. And she herself was <i>empty</i>, so little of her being had function besides the motorized movements of her stiff legs that she wondered if she was even real. Did her paws even hit the ground? She couldn't feel them. Was she still moving? Ava floated by like a ghost, a dark spectre of misery. She did not weave through the grasses like one touched with wanderlust; her gait was one of straight-laced agony. The path she followed was true, a line cutting through the violent storm. Every muscle in her body was tensed to numbness and didn't allow for her to meander about easily. This was only aided by the fact that Ava was entirely lost, nothing to accomplish within her mind to take her anywhere. She had wanted to run to purge herself of the negativity, but her body would not allow it. There was nothing freeing about her trek. The grass whipped her and the wind froze her and nothing gave her any pity.

Life as a pack wolf made her healthy; life as a wolf of the mountain made her strong. Yet as the rain pelted her, soaking through her jet-black coat down and in to her skin, she felt as though she were the same rag and bones wolf that had showed up into the Hush Meadow some several months ago. Where was her strength now? Where was that resilience which she prided herself on? Some days she could fake it, and others it felt as though every ounce of her being had taken off with Rhysis and Naira that fateful day. It was clear from her automaton movements which of the afflictions had taken her today. The numbness was infectious, egged on by the violent cold that surrounded her. Perhaps the sunrise would bring her out of it; but it was hours away from coming back up. Ava was stuck in a bubble of disbelief.

A bolt of lightning snaked through the sky, lighting the entire meadow and exposing her sorry figure while a growl of thunder came to pass shortly behind it. Ava did not flinch; she had forgotten how to feel. </blockquote>

art - threads

With a title like that, how could I resist?

<blockquote>The flashes reflected in her wide eyes, tiny bolts of violent yellow there one moment and gone the next. Her vision was covered in white cracks where the light had burned its impressions, for she was staring at the sky and its anger with open fascination, barely flinching with each terrible crash. She was rain-soaked, but the cold did not penetrate her, for her own numbness was the protective kind. It shielded her, kept her safe, as her private barriers of old always had done - and yet she was not hiding any more, not from herself, and her warm strength drew from a tender form of hope.

Trisden Lyall sat upon a grassy gnoll, the green blades slick and battered from the rain, immersing herself in the tyrannical weather. The ear-shattering roars of thunder did so well to drown out her doubts - the doubts which were slowly starving regardless. In a moment of elation, her amber gaze dropped to the humbled meadow and there the lightning picked out a figure, black and cold and relentless, and a sudden childhood terror threatened her. The memory of torment, trespassers, an attack on her very soul - it all came rushing back, and yet it hung beyond her shielding, unable to take her. She stared at the figure, her eyes flashing with each yellow strike, and at once she took control of herself. <i>What is evil?

There is no such thing as evil.</i>

Her head lifted to the tumultuous grey sky, and she sang a note of defiance and victory, of personal triumph and obstacles overcome - the notes of it perfectly suited the violent orchestra, which swallowed her voice and absorbed it. Trisden and the chaos of nature were one, and she relished it.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Ava's motion was undeterred, not by the howling wind nor the pouring rain or even the crackle of thunder as lightning streaked across the black sky. The entire world was so angry that night, as if it were feeling what the dark-coated girl could not. Yet she didn't appreciate it. For the most emotional of females, she had been shocked into a hollow shell. If only all the movement could stop, perhaps then she would find peace in her wicked mind. Or perhaps peace was too much to ask for, she considered as she turned her water-stained face on to the clash of electricity above. If only she felt <i>anything</i> at all - even misery would be welcome if it could warm the blood that had become thick and slow in her veins. Despite the raging storm that surrounded her, it would appear the universe had abandonned her entirely. There was nothing to be found in the sweeping meadow, no one else but her. <i>So symbolic</i>, she thought it with disdain. She was all alone.

At least, until the cry sounded from somewhere in the surrounding area. The violent wind took the sound and warped it, transformed it into something sinister and mocking that Ava could not pinpoint, but she heard the wolf's message and felt the tiniest inkling of fury in her ashen heart. Who was singing a song of <i>triumph</i>? The very idea evoked a laugh colder than the freezing rain that drenched down to her soul to leap from her jaws, dark and twisted and devoid of any pleasant emotion. There was something brilliant flashing in her amber eyes as she swung her head, trying to pinpoint the devil that had sung such a thing, but what caused the fire in her eyes was uncertain. No warmth had been regained to her skin; no stronger did her heart beat. But her shining eyes did catch the crier.

Up upon one of the rises of the rolling field was a figure, poised like a queen, silhouetted by the thrash of lightning. Ava narrowed her eyes at the ethereal embodiment, half of her believing that she was seeing something that didn't exist. A deity, perhaps, come to prove to her that she'd been wrong all along. Nothing she did mattered; she had <i>no control</i>. She had just been a marionette and now the god taunted her, having cut her strings and let her fall into the earth without protection. It would make sense, that this was some being from the world beyond their's, howling of victory. Victory over Ava, perhaps. I <i>took</i> your <i>life</i>, she imagined the being saying to her, <i>Who is in control now?</i>

She had to blink to tear her mind from the fantastical world. Ava did not live in one of Vafri's fairytales. Ava lived in <i>Relic Lore</i>, and there were no gods here.

Immediately she turned, heading up the rising slope toward the figure who was still shadowed by the fierce storm. Her steps were far from the <span class='word'>volant</span> jaunt she usually took; and perhaps they could even be called angry had the howling wind not taken from her paws the stomping sound they made as she approached. The expression she wore was masked, unreadable, and yet there was something vulnerable hiding in the way she carried herself. As she came near, the smell was clearly of wolf. It was real, and if she drew closer perhaps she could reach a paw out and feel the wet fur and know it was tangible too. The black wolf would not admit to herself that she needed to prove this was no other-word being, but it was in essence what she had chosen to do.

But once she was near enough - a couple yards, a respectable distance - Ava found herself at a loss for words. She had to choose her words quickly, for in the back of her mind she remembered it was not <i>normal</i> to walk up to someone and stare at them in a dumbfounded silence for too long. Her jaws parted with the intention of speaking easy, but her words came out somewhat shaky from the cold. "<b>You and I both have no fear,</b>" Ava said.

If this was some god, then perhaps she'd return her words in riddles. Then she'd know there were no gods and there was no fate. Yet she held in her chest just the smallest shred of wonder - what <i>if</i>.
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art - threads

<blockquote>For a while, she lost herself in the sound. The childhood terrors, though vicious and hungry, clawed at thin air; the more powerful her song, the further the terrors slipped, and in her mind's eye she watched them fall away, helpless. <i>You didn't get me.</i> How could she have ever been so vulnerable? But, she realised, that weakness had put her on the path she walked today, and without those nightmares, she would not be crying out in defiance of them. Fear led to strength, if you let it.

Her cry wavered as her gaze dropped, just for a moment, and saw that dark figure stalking towards her. The terrors swooped forward in hostile glee, but Trisden lifted her nose and her ears pushed forwards, a picture of confidence. <i>So young, so bold.</i> No demon would command her today. With a fierce power in her bright amber eyes, she watched the dark shape, and when it stopped, Trisden braced herself for anything. If this was an evil messenger, then she could not afford to lose her guard - and if it was not... what kind of ordinary wolf took casual walks in this weather? She did not miss the fact that she fit that rhetoric herself.

Yet, somehow, she did not expect what she received.

It was the unashamed profoundness of the comment, as if somehow they had skipped all pretences of politeness and struck right at the core. Only once had Trisden experienced such a thing from a complete stranger, and it had affected her just the same then. The fear finally took her, and she inhaled sharply, afraid of what this dark shadow brought, what it meant. But then she had to remember Hjornir. He had not wasted time, and look where she was now, all for his council.

Though her head screamed at her to shun this shadow as a reincarnation of an old nightmare, Trisden did as she did so often, and ignored it in favour of her heart.

Abruptly, she was not afraid any more.

<b>"I have my fear,"</b> she corrected shamelessly, eyes flashing once more as the lightning struck far beyond them. <i>You have your fear too.</i>

<b>"We do not let it win."</b></blockquote>

<blockquote>As Ava stood, rigid on her dark legs, she stared into the face of the unknown unblinking and unabashedly. Looking back at her were a pair of amber eyes as bright as her own, and like she had grown quite accustomed to since the storm began, she read far into it. Was this a reflection of herself, of some sort? The stare was a near perfect immitation of her own, unintimidated and bolder than the power of the storm. <i>There's no god,</i> she reminded herself. Any of this - all of this - was just ridiculous coincidence. Strange circumstances. <i>This was not fate</i>. And she was quite certain of it, or had at least convinced herself to be, until the proud figure's voice cut through the violent winds without hindrance. Did she stand corrected? There, the ethereal figure lit by the snarls of lightning overhead, had returned her banter in riddles. Her golden eyes had been staticly set on the female, unwavering and callous, yet they widened slightly at the thought. There was no smile carved on to the statue of a wolf's face and any fear she claimed to have didn't dare show itself in her expression. She hardly looked to be that old, yet somehow she knew that Ava's words held little truth, and the black-coated female did not know how.

Maybe she truly <i>was</i> some representation of Ava, even if she wasn't a god. After all, how old was <i>she</i> herself? Her second birthday could not have been that long ago... and yet she felt as though she'd already lived through a lifetime of pain.

Suddenly she found the other's relentless stare overpowering and turned her head away, glaring at the grasses as they whipped at her ankles. Water dripped from her down-pointed nose and surprised her; she'd forgotten it was raining. By that time Ava was beyond soaked - she was positively saturated with water. It was hard to notice the downpour, an illusion she could easily attribute to the mysterious wolf if she wanted to. But not looking directly at her helped the magic disappear, and this time when the female's words echoed through her heads they lacked the dark shadow that had come with them before. <i>We do not let it win.</i> She furrowed her brow at the very thought. How was fear an adversary of her's? It wasn't, <i>wasn't</i>. What was she even scared of?

Her head swung back to face the figure and she lifted her chin, defiance in her eyes. "<b>I'm not that powerless,</b>" she asserted for saying it out loud had to make it true. The statement was ambiguous; not even Ava was sure what she was really trying to prove. Something about fear not being able to control her - she was proving it by standing there in a raging storm, wasn't she?
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(This post was last modified: Jun 30, 2012, 05:18 AM by Ava.)

art - threads

<blockquote>Not that powerless? To let it win, or to have fear in the first place? The former made the more grand statement, and Trisden's eyes narrowed as she contemplated it, dissatisfied with the notion. You could not be brave without being afraid. You could not understand your strength without appreciating what it meant to be weak.

<b>"We are <i>all</i> that powerless,"</b> she said quietly through clenched jaws. Only He was not, but it did not bear explaining; since Kiche had imparted his curse, she had never found a single wolf who shared her most specific of beliefs. The notion that this was no ordinary wolf still danced at the back of her mind, never allowing itself to be forgotten. In that case, this stranger would know.

Perhaps it could be a test, then. Only a disciple of evil - <i>her</i> brand of evil - would have reached the same conclusion. Even the lord of sin realised the might of Him.

<i>There is no such thing as evil.</i>

Fresh lessons harassed her, but she was too caught up in it now, too caught up in this pointed conversation with a dark stranger who brought back so many terrified memories. Still she stayed strong, head high, and with a pointed whisper, said, <b>"May He absolve you of your sins."</b>

Carefully she watched those bright eyes, the cold threatening to soak into her fur as she hoped for a sign of ignorance. She so wanted this impromptu conversation to be one of inconsequential riddle and rhetoric; to believe otherwise would undo a lot of careful work.

<i>There is no such thing as evil, girl. The sooner you realise that, the happier you will be.</i></blockquote>