From quinn@fazigu.org Sat Jan 17 13:47:18 2004 Return-path: Envelope-to: quinn@fazigu.org Delivery-date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 13:47:18 -0500 Received: from constr1-host1.corridor.net ([66.100.236.130] helo=yami.57thstreet.com) by requiem with smtp (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian)) id 1AhvTZ-0004NN-00 for ; Sat, 17 Jan 2004 13:47:17 -0500 Received: (qmail 98172 invoked from network); 17 Jan 2004 18:58:11 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO moo.ghostmoo.org) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 17 Jan 2004 18:58:11 -0000 Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:58:11 -0400 From: "Quinn@Ghostwheel" To: quinn@fazigu.org Subject: Ghostwheel Message(s) 198 - 212 from *storylines (#5236) X-Mail-Agent: Ghostwheel (moo.ghostmoo.org 6969) Message-Id: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.61 (1.212.2.1-2003-12-09-exp) on requiem X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=ham version=2.61 Status: RO Content-Length: 24543 Lines: 488 Message 198 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Nov 18 05:01:49 2003 EST From: Rill (#37114) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: Paid in Full Everything has a price. She'd heard that saying her whole life, but on the night Rill had purchased Red Fang's freedom she'd had finally understood the truth of it. Everything has a price, and if you want to buy you'd better be willing to pay in full. And she had paid. A simple enough bargain, on the surface of it. Red for her. Moonheart would restore Red Fang's soul to his body, and in return she would bind herself to Moonheart, become property and possession. It wasn't an easy price, but she'd paid it and paid gladly. Problem was, she hadn't reckoned on those hidden costs. At first, Red had been almost childlike. Wolflike really, the man-soul cowering within while the wolf-soul interacted with the world. She'd led him by the hand, guiding him through the Wastes like a mother with a child. That had been difficult enough, but when his mind had awoken, when he'd been a man again--that was worse. He'd clung to her, held on to her as the only fixed point in his world. And she had soothed, and stroked, and encouraged him with every new step, trying to still the part of her that exulted in his dependence. After all, dependence can look so very much like love. And then he'd said it, the one thing she'd dreaded and prayed for, the one thing that ruined it all. "I think I'm falling in love with you." >From there it had been a single, unending tumble of inevitabilities. As soon as those words were spoken, the end was foreordained. Red sought out the storyteller, learned his own past. And learned as well the bargain Rill had struck, and the price that had been paid. The confrontation in Moonheart's hidden keep, the even more hideous shouting match in the Claw. "Flaunt your whore to me, you own her now. It means nothing to me." Those words would never be erased. They were burned into her now, indeliable as Moonheart's brands. And now it was over. Red Fang was lost to her, everyone knew the bargain she'd made (or would know as soon as the gossip mill caught up), and her illusions of her own freedom were shown for just that--illusions. She tried to cling to the knowledge that Red was free, and here, and as whole as magic and love could make him. He might hate her, he might even hate himself, but at least he was hating from the real world and not some metaphorical prison of Dante's devising. Maybe he didn't get what he wanted, but--hell, everything has a price. -------------------------- Message 199 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Nov 18 05:17:33 2003 EST From: Red_Fang (#5907) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: Full Circle. If Red distrusted magic before all the things of the last months had happened he was in total fear and hate of it now. Playing with peoples souls and asking for peoples souls as a price was far more evil than any weapon a man could wield at him. But that was exactly what had happened. First Dante's manipulation of Red's and Nenana's souls. They where together now so it was hard to imagine what had transpired or what exactly was lost to them both. But for the fair sweet Rill to have to pay a price for Red's soul was more than his heart could bare, and more than he would of ever allowed. He wished upon all he was and had that it could all be taken back, that he was dead to the world and the girl was free to live as she wanted. He did not fully understand what had happened but he knew how he felt and how he longed for the girls love. But Owen had explained it best to him, she was a sweet flower who was more than willing to give of her self so all would be happy. The birds, the bees, all comers could drink from the well and she was to young to know it was draining her youth and vitality away bit by bit. She kept giving to those who could not return what she gave and that made it even harder to bare seeing as he was responsible for draining most from her. Her soul. So, to love truly and unconditionally was to let something go and to allow it to become its own beautiful thing in time. So Red granted that to her as harshly as he could muster. Turning a cold shoulder to her and throwing her things at her and telling her to find a new home was the hardest thing to do but he knew deep inside that it was the right thing to do. No pretending no selfish thinking that would only bring misery to him and his friends. And to Rill. Moonheart was his friend, a soul who Red knew deep down was true and honest no matter what face he tried to show the world or himself. He hid from people not because of his great powers, but because of the fear he held that might do others harm if he used those powers. So he had chosen to take Rill and be her protector. To be her teacher and guide. He had better do right by her is all Red could think. Because if she became lost to the world, to his heart. Nothing would stop him from killing the Magus. Nothing! Falling weakened from the days drinking and roaming, the wolf awoke and cried into the night. A lonely howl for a lost soul and mate. A howl so sorrowful the tears that tried to wash it away only added to its stinging resonance. -------------------------- Message 200 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Nov 18 13:52:07 2003 EST From: Ceri (#24980) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: Prices Ceri sat in her home, replaying the events of the evening. It had been so very long since she had been on dryland. The language even seemed halting to her as it had when she first learned it. She sighed and prepared herself a nice warm cup of tea. To remember it all, she had to relive the last time she was in the Claw. Red had been getting increasingly more and more agitated for the smallest of things. Finally, he seemed to run off whenever she or Grady had come around. Owen had found him, and brought him to the R/T Infirmary where she and Grady were waiting. With Ceri blocking the inside, and Owen blocking the outside, Red was trapped and simply HAD to pay attention. No matter how much pleading Ceri had done, Red refused to talk to her. He sat there on the floor, screaming his fool head off demanding his freedom and to see Moonheart. Not wanting to be like any of the women in his past, Ceri refused to give him what he wanted. She loved him and would stand by him no matter what the price. Red demanded that Grady kill Ceri. He ranted about slitting her throat every chance he got, he blamed her for Jaimie's death, for the fact that Jaimie left him, and for almost every other thing he could imagine. Still, Ceri would not deny him of her love and help. It wasn't until Moonheart showed up and whisked Red off that Ceri finally left. When she returned to the Claw, she talked over all the preceedings with Dante, Owen and Mirg. Was there something more she could have done? Then it happened. The unthinkable. Red walked in from the Wastes and told Ceri in the most calm and definite manner he could muster. He told Ceri that he wanted her to leave him, to move out, and not to come back. He simply couldn't hold on to the charade that he loved Rill and not her. Ceri thought at first he was lying and grasping at anything to get her mad. But when she looked in his calm eyes, she knew he wasn't making it up. He didn't love her. He never had. And now he wanted her gone. Dante laughed at the way things had turned, and Ceri had offered herself, soul and mind to Dante in trade for Red. But Dante didn't have any use at all for her. She was of no use to anyone. So she left, and Grady followed her back to the Ocean. Now she was back, purified by her months of sacrifice and purged of the shame of rejection. Now, to learn that Rill had gone through the same offering and rejection, it was too much. "Prices seem to have doubled," she thought as she let herself finally rest. "I will think about it all tomorrow. Nothing is going to happen today to change things.," she told herself. -------------------------- Message 201 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Fri Nov 21 19:28:31 2003 EST From: Rhianna (#37042) To: *storylines (#5236) It was the same dream again. And even though she knew it for a dream, it was not any less terrible. It was the only dream she'd been having for weeks. It was the reason she'd asked Owen for a tisane that would stop her dreaming so that she could get a few decent nights of sleep... once she'd had this dream, she could never get back to sleep. \\ She was kneeling on stone, and it seemed she'd been there a long time. Her knees hurt, and her back felt stiff with tension. Wind whipped past her, and it seemed as if she was on the Mount, but she was not any place she recognized, so maybe it wasn't the mount. Her hair whipped into her eyes, stinging, and when she tossed her head, tossed her hair back, she saw the pile of crystals glowing there, in the midst of the pool of blood. She got unsteadily to her feet, sick with the sight of it, with the smell of blood. Her gown -- she never wore a gown, why was she wearing a gown? -- stuck to her body. She looked down at herself. She was covered in blood, thick and shining and congealing all down the front of her body and clothes. It covered her hands. She held her arms out stiffly from her body, trying to sort out whose blood was where -- was any of this her blood? What had happened? She was so confused... but through the confusion, the knowledge rose up to meet her. None of this blood was hers. He was dead. It was -his- blood, all of it. It was -his, and -he- was dead, and she had not been able to do anything to stop it. The wind threw her hair back into her face again, and before she could think about what she was doing, she reached up to brush it away, laying a long streak of his blood across her face, in her hair. It began to seem that there was nowhere that was not covered in his blood, and she felt herself falling, falling, falling. \\ The fall always threw her, with great force, back into her self. Awake, suddenly, and gasping as if she had been holding her breath underwater for a very long time. Sometimes, she wept. Sometimes, she didn't. Tonight, her face was slick with tears and sweat and she felt too hot, all over, as if she had a fever. Maybe she did. It was very dark. Owen's breathing was steady and even. She must not have cried out this time, she must've wept silently. She closed her eyes a moment, trying to wipe the images away, trying to calm herself by force. It was, after all, only a dream. It did not have to come from the sword or the Awen. It could be just a simple nightmare. A nightmare she'd been having every night for the past three weeks. She slipped from the bed, slipped into her clothes. She went out into the garden to breath the night air. Spring was coming -- it was not the same here in the wasteland as it had been at home on the Mount, or in Drach'nal, but she could still feel it, here in Owen's garden. She sat there, in the garden, watching the sky and not sleeping. Waiting for the sun to rise. -------------------------- Message 202 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Nov 25 02:16:33 2003 EST From: Owen (#15637) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: Might have been Owen paused for a moment and leaned heavily on his shovel, stretching some of the ache out of his shoulders and back. He'd been up all night and there was a sandy soreness in his eyes and a bone-deep tremor in his muscles that had nothing to do with the pre-dawn chill or the exertion of digging. He avoided looking at the bundles of white cloth set off a little way to the side, fearing that if he started thinking about the smallness of them, the pitiful lack, he'd disgrace himself entirely. Instead he concentrated on the dull pain across his shoulders and the loose weakness of the muscles in his arms, and on the slowly-lightening seascape before him. The sun was just beginning to rise, false dawn warming the waves and swells. The sound of the ocean was like the womb. And finally he could delay no longer, and it was time to lower the two tiny white bundles into the holes and cover them over. Only a few shovelfuls apiece. It ought to have taken more earth to cover those bundles. It should have taken a world to weigh them down. When the dirt was well-tamped and the small mounds covered with stones, he drove the deeply-carven wooden marker into the ground, slamming it down with his shovel to seat it securely. Dawn now, and the cleanly organic smell of the ocean sharp in the air. Owen slung the shovel up onto his shoulder and turned away, not bothering to pause and read the sign he'd erected. Here lie Delta and Epsilon And all that might have been 3/11/2658 -------------------------- Message 203 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Nov 25 10:44:20 2003 EST From: Dauthi (#10660) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: The waiting. The dark halls of the tower of Chronomancy were more quiet then they often were. Dauthi for a change was sitting cloaked in his robes as he looked over a plan carefully. "Coreen has stepped to far, and the others know more then they are letting on." Tracing a glyph into the fully developed tree, the Adept strode past into his room and stared at the chest laying on the floor. "She knows very well about the amulet, and I wonder how long she has been acting against me." Drawing his glaived hands into a tight fist as energy crackled between his fingers. "The reckoning must be soon, she will learn that even she will never be immune to my tamperings." Resetting the safety on the gun he replaced it at his side, waiting for the opportune moment. -------------------------- Message 204 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Nov 25 18:22:07 2003 EST From: Red_Fang (#5907) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: Going to school Realizing life was what you carried with you and what you contained in your soul or souls. Was all that was needed, it was something that had happened along with everything else that had gone on. Red knew who he was and where he'd come from, but he knew he did not need anything but what he could carry with him to be happy. So he commited himself to giving away some of what he had. So in building the school was his way of giving back to the world. Making a place for others to enjoy and to have a place to go and learn whatever their desire was. A whole wing would be devoted to magic, and a library for the scholars of the world to record their thoughts. The other would be devoted to other skills needed to survive and to rebuild a world. So the plans where laid and the work was beginning. Red had to smile to himself and they looked forward to seeing what would come of this new tool to the world. -------------------------- Message 205 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Nov 25 21:04:38 2003 EST From: Patience (#37139) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: More than I was looking for Out for a walk..I wasn't expecting to find what I did. It started out just being a button that lead to a door..Once I entered I immediately wished I hadn't. Surrounding me was babies in tubes..Some didn't look alive..I couldn't get in close enough so I had no choice but to leave them.. Who would do this? I had to get to them, help them, hold them, but I needed help. I grabbed who I could and led the way to the horror behind the secret door. As we entered the room the anger and shock showed on almost every face that was there. We were surronded by 6 tubes. 3 of them had submariner babies in them floating in water. 2 of them had the remains of two more babies who had not surived and the last was empty. I grabbed up two of these precious babies, cradleling them close to my chest. "Who would do this?" Rill read some kind of message on the computer that had metioned a project gone wrong..and disposing them..It was all too much..Here in my arms were 3 healty very much alive infant girls, they didn't deserve this. I needed answers...Skywalker was kind enough to look the babies over and run some tests. Until then they need someone to hold them and keep them safe..Even if it costs me love. -------------------------- Message 206 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Sat Nov 29 12:21:07 2003 EST From: Ylaerin (#16541) To: *storylines (#5236) She sat at her usual spot in the Mounts library. Shed already spent most of the morning gathering her materials together the right inks, the right pen handle, the right nibs. A stack of clean parchment paper almost a half-foot high the last of what shed bought in DrachNal before the destruction of the village. She wanted everything to be just right. Now that it was all gathered, spread out on the desk before her, with tea at her right hand and the soft glow of the lamp at her left, she found herself simply sitting, hands folded in her lap, staring at the arrangement shed made. She had only two weeks to complete this. It was beginning to seem that it might be the most important project she had ever taken on either inside bounds of her duties to the Circle, or otherwise. She hoped she was overestimating; after all, it wasnt the most pleasant idea shed ever had that her daughters love for her might hang on this one manuscript. In two weeks, her youngest living child, Rhianna, would be eighteen. She had thought, only a few months ago, that on the occasion of Annies eighteenth birthday, she would offer her the choice of becoming a full member of the bardic Circle. As she had done for Rowan, so would she do for Rhianna. But the last few months had been a long, hard climb more often than not, it seemed Rhianna did not even want to speak to her, let alone work at her side. And Ylaerin had felt ever more purpose-less, ever more lost in her own past. Lost in the events and times that she had, more than once now, thought were behind her. And so, instead of offer her daughter something that she may or may not take, she had decided to offer to her daughter the very thing she had always known Rhianna wanted. The thing she had always been too afraid, too weak-willed, to give. She would offer Rhianna the truth the truth about Ylaerins life, the truth about her choices. The truth behind the events that had so forcibly shaped the life of her child, in spite of all Etras attempts to protect and remove her from the past. She could not sit her daughter down and say these things, and so she would sit herself down and write them. All of them. As carefully and thoroughly as she could. Luthes presence in her mind send pulses of support, encouragement. She might have scowled. If he were here in the room with her, she mightve told him to go away. But instead, she took a long sip of her tea, stretched in her chair, took up her pen, and, in her best sepia ink, began to write. -------------------------- Message 207 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Dec 2 19:33:43 2003 EST From: Dante (#10660) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: The dreaming. Stirred from sleep, the shadows creeping around the adept. Dante was a man without a past, and perhaps one whose past had come back to haunt him. When a person reaches a certain age in their lives they have come to accept that perhaps one day, they will die, and they accept that which is inevitable. The duke of Kiasyd never truly recognized this presence, but instead death stalked him now from beyond the grave. Haunting is such a relative term, it designates a certain level of appreciation of reality that is not physical, not whole. Dante was haunted by a appirition that was flesh, blood, and soul. He embraced, released and was consumed by it, and relatively it would make no difference whether he was dead, or alive at this moment. His life was in her hands, and it would never be the one he knew... ever again. -------------------------- Message 208 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Thu Dec 4 09:21:47 2003 EST From: Ceri (#24980) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: voices The voices in Ceri's head were getting a bit more defiant. She imagines them as her conscience, but in reality, she was wondering if she was having a breakdown. They were telling her to get back to the Wastes. To extract retribution on anyone that ever harmed her or the ones she loved. They told her to KILL, and to mutilate and to leave them hanging to life by a shred. Ceri knew this wasn;t right, and that she must deny those voices. Well, she knew wxactly what she had to do. Ceri thought about young Kijindei. She packed up all of her weapons, things of destruction and put them under lock and key in the Armoury Chest she owned. After a quick call to Kijin, Ceri sent the chest on its way to Kijin. There! Now she couldn't harm anyone. And now the voices would have to stop. As Ceri lay down to sleep that night, the voices tapped at her mind. "The Sea Sword she carried was also a means of vengeance" she heard. But she just couldn't part with that. Red had given it to her. When Red was still himself. She would think of that tomorrow. -------------------------- Message 209 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Thu Dec 4 12:42:10 2003 EST From: Kijindei (#25075) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: The cascading waterfall. Little did the young man know that when he woke up this morning, pieces of furniture would be dropping on him from above. The day started off unremarkable, and turned simply bizaree the moment the mariner girl contacted him. Most normal people would meet at a bar, but she insisted on the waterfall. Kijindei wasn't completely resistant, as he figured she needed some help. That's when everything went crazy. Dropping from 30 feet up, heading straight for him... was a giant armoury cabinet that the insane mariner had flung at our young hero. He could do very little to evade, as the piece of furniture smashed into him knocking him unconscious. Now, you'd think that would be enough but noooo, the water from the falls carried Kijindei, and the cabinet over them and down he went. He woke up a few hours later along Jizo beach, the cabinet besides him. "Okay, the moral of this story is, hire experienced furniture movers, and not insane submariners." With a subtle click of the lock, Kijindei's jaw gaped open as he set it down. "I think I just hit the mother load." -------------------------- Message 210 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Mon Dec 8 11:48:21 2003 EST From: Shandryl (#24740) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: all things balance Shan had been awake and working on this spell for far too long. SHe knew what was needed. IT was the control of the spell that kept eluding her. But she wanted to try it just one more time before scrapping her idea. SHe sprinkled what was lefto f the ashes of the demon that was inside Devon and she called to the wind to help her. She felt the air doing what it was asked as she enveloped in a whirlwind. SHe called upon the spirit, and then the fire to meld this demon ash into her own spirit. What happened next is for others to tell. Shan tried to scream, realizing her very essence was being ripped apart atom by atom. WHen the spell finished, not even a speck of dust was left. Yes, kiddies, Shan has done and blown herself from this world. You will find the things she owned scattered around. Good luck! -------------------------- Message 212 from *storylines (#5236): Date: Tue Dec 9 16:13:13 2003 EST From: Kalia (#37133) To: *storylines (#5236) Subject: Kalia's Return Kalia flopped down on her bed and smiled. When she first decided to come back home, she wasn't sure if she should go or not. With the events surrounding her leaving in the first place, she didn't know much of anything anymore. She only hoped that everything was back to "normal" and that Rill and everyone was back at home as they should be and that by now everyone knows that neither Kalia nor Scorch had anything to do with her disappearing. Kalia laughs when thinking what was said about her and Scorch, the woman who took her in as her own when no one else would. The only one who understood her looking at Owen as being a father-figure when she had no one else to turn to. Kalia sighs softly and gets up from her bed, time to go see what all has happened in the time she was away. --------------------------