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Stephen Cawood · Posted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 3:14 pm Post subject: A Whiter Shade of Pale

Umbra was always a shock to the eyes. Stephen Cawood stumbled out of the darkened moongate and paused to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. The night was strangely quiet, even for Umbra, and the hairs prickled on the back of Stephen’s neck. Once the darkness had setted into his eyes, he made his way toward the tailor’s shop.

Steve berated himself every time he allowed himself to enter Umbra. There was no excuse to come here anymore. He should heed the warnings of Lady Ceinwyn. Ember would not remember him. She wouldn’t look the same. He wondered if the similarities between his sister’s features and his own would even remain. But despite the warnings, Stephen stole a short stroll, now and again, from the moongate to the tailor’s shop. He told himself their larger selection of cloth was worth the risk. But somewhere inside him trembled the tiny fledgling hope that he might also steal a glimpse of her.

Night was beginning to settle into the eves of the buildings. No one wandered the streets, not even lamp lighters, and so Stephen paused to light a lantern. He raised the wick and squinted at the sudden illumination. He held aloft the lantern and turned to continue on toward the tailor’s shop. But it was here that his body froze, even against its own will to run. A porcelain white face with wide peridot eyes stared intently at him from the darkness. His lantern illuminated little else before Stephen dropped it out of shock and fear. With a shaky hand, he retrieved his lantern from the cobblestones and lifted it again, gazing into the face so like his own, and yet now, so different.

For a moment, the pallid figure before him sent his thoughts scattering, rolling away from him like a handful of dropped marbles. As Stephen composed his wits and tried to control his breath and racing heartbeat, he backed away one step to take in the vision before him more thoroughly. The girl was thin, as always. Too thin. But also too pale. Her skin was white, bereft of the blush that once played across her cheeks and skin. Her lips were a faint shade of lilac, almost as though they bore the memory of blood beneath the soft skin. And her hair – such a bright and violent shade of red against the pallor of her flesh!

But the eyes – the eyes were what held Stephen’s gaze as he nearly forgot to breathe. The pale yellow-green eyes still hinted at the sparkle of mischief that he always remembered. Yet at the moment, they were wide, frightened, and lonely. Stephen reached out without thinking, to touch Ember’s porcelain cheek. The ache in his chest broke in waves as a sob caught in his throat. It sounded like a gasp in the still Umbran night.

In the tiniest flicker of a moment, Stephen watched Ember’s light eyes darken with hate. And with that, she was gone. Faster than he had thought possible, Ember had disappeared. The image of those betrayed, angry, and sorrowful eyes burned in his brain. Ceinwyn had been wrong. Ember must remember those moments before her death. She knew that Stephen was the one who stole the colour from her cheeks, remembered dying in his arms, dead eyes fixed upon his face as if he were a stranger. Did she hate him for violating the laws of the living – of nature? For taking the life of his sister and replacing it, for his own selfish reasons, with this unreasonable facsimile? She was so utterly alone now, and it was Stephen’s own fault.

In that instant, Stephen knew what he must do. He spun on his heel, trying to shake the haunting image from his head. He ran his fingers through his tousled red hair, determined to will away his tears, then stalked off toward the west.

Ember Cawood · Adventurer Joined: 22 Dec 2008 Posts: 44

Ember weaved this way and that along the road from the mountain pass to Umbra. She had found her body less and less willing to do her bidding of late. Consciously, she forced lungs to fill with air, that she might sing a song, a melody that was nobody knows how old. She had known it since before she was reawakened. A memory lodged in the chemical bindings of her brain perhaps, for it held no particular sentimental value.

She slowed to watch the bandits indifferently as she passed their camp cloaked in shadow. Their motives were always so mundane and transparent. They watched down the road vigilantly and sharpened their blades, no doubt waiting for an unsuspecting victim to happen along. Gold, she thought to herself. Wot a damned useless endeavour.

As she reached the west bridge of Umbra, she allowed her cloak of shadows to unravel and fall away. She feared no one in this city. Pausing for a moment, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to sense the slow pulse of Umbra’s nightly routines. Then her eyes flew open. The scent came to her as assuredly as the sound of his heartbeat. There was a strange Warm One in the city. He smelled of oak and wool, and his heartbeat was strong, untouched by the city’s pallor that made the heartbeats of the shopkeepers faint and weak.

Ember followed the scent and the sound of the solid and steady heartbeat until she saw the man ambling away from the moongate. Slowly she approached, wondering what could bring the stranger to Umbra, when so many avoided it out of fear. She followed him a little while, wrapped in shadow, until he stopped and pulled out a lantern. She approached closer and watched over his shoulder, trusting her shadows to keep her safe. But once the lantern was lit and the man turned around, the sudden light sent her carefully woven shadows falling to the ground like loose bandages, disintegrating as they dropped away. Ember found herself face to face with the stranger, a young man with tousled red hair and pale yellow-green eyes.

The man startled, dropping his lantern and scrambling to retrieve it from the ground. Ember watched him, somewhat amused, but guarded. He rose again, lifting the lantern to look into her face. She fought so many urges at once that she had almost no choice but to stand frozen in his gaze. At very least he had taken a step back, a wise decision on his part. She wanted to run from the man, and she wanted to know what brought him here. She found herself agitated and lured toward him by the deep thudding of his heart. She wanted to know what horrible thoughts lay behind those green eyes, so beset with anguish and fear and sorrow.

The man did not speak a word to her, but he leaned in and lifted a hand toward her. Something inside Ember snapped, and her hand went instinctively to the dagger in her belt. His warmth was too close, his heartbeat maddening. The urge to rip his heart out and mangle it in her bare hands was more than she could stand. She spun and ran as far and as fast as she could. And as fortune would have it, her body, coiled to spring – to kill, to destroy this man – instead did as she commanded it, carrying her swiftly away until she was sure she could no longer hear the loathsome beating of the stranger's dreadful heart.

Stephen Cawood · Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 4:07 pm Post subject:

Stephen muttered to himself as he stalked across the cobblestones. “…might’a made mistakes, but by the gods I’ll find a way to set it right, in’s much as I can…”

Guilt wracked his Stephen’s heart and mind more each day. And that horse, he mourns his girl, mourns her so, he can’t be consoled. Henry had grown rail thin. Stephen had tried apples, grapes, peaches, hay, and pumpkins. Henry just snorted at them, nostrils flaring in defiance. Maybe tha’s wot ye want. To waste away jes’ like she did. An’ that would be my fault too…

Henry approached the stable and spoke quietly to the trainer. “I’ve come to claim Henry, Miss. Ye won’t be needin’ to take care o’ him anymore.” He quickly settled his account with a pouch of gold pieces, turned, and walked back toward the center of town. Henry stopped outside the stable and flicked an ear in the direction where Steve had gone. But his face he turned toward the west bridge. Something there held his attention. A flash like flames in the center of the bridge. The crouching figure of a young girl, pale beyond natural means, the wind blowing her brilliant crimson hair about her face.

“’Enry! Git o’er ‘ere, c’mon now.” Steve shouted from somewhere near the bank. But his shouts were in vain, as Henry was transfixed on the figure of the girl still crouching on the bridge.

Stephen looked back toward the stables. “’Enry!!” He knew that if he could only find a way to leave Henry someplace where Ember might run across him, the horse would recognize her, just as Stephen himself did. He tried to push thoughts of right or wrong out of his head. Henry needed her, loved her like water. He would never be happy again without her. And what if she didn’t feed him, care for him as she would if she remembered how? Henry wasn’t eating now. It couldn’t be much worse.

“Blasted horse…” Steve stalked back toward the stables, but stopped short as he watched the horse staring at the bridge. On the bridge itself, unmistakable, was Ember. She was kneeling by now, her body looking more weak and frail than before. The fabric of her dress fell in pools around her as she sat on her knees looking in disbelief at her hands….back, front…back, front. And Henry was watching her, too.

Stephen backed away as Henry hesitantly took one step, then another, toward Ember. When he had reached the end of the bridge, he stopped and lowered his head. He knickered quietly in greeting. Ember lifted her eyes and looked at the horse curiously. She answered Henry’s expectant gaze with a cold, indifferent stare. After a few moments, the girl tried to stand. She teetered slightly, trying desperately to regain her balance.

Henry deftly trotted to her side and leaned lightly against her shoulder to steady her. Ember looked to the horse quizzically and turned away from him. She took a few unsteady steps down the road and Henry tossed his head, gleeful as he dutifully followed his girl into the Umbran night.