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

“Git away from me, ye great dolt.” Ember had stopped and turned to stand down Henry, and the deep chestnut horse stared back at her stubbornly. “WHY CAIN’ YE LEAVE ME BE?!”

Henry flipped one ear back and only wiggled his lips in response. But he didn't move from her side. Ember gave an exaggerated sigh and turned around to trudge onward. She didn’t even know where she was going, as long as it was in the opposite direction from this idiotic horse. Her body was becoming problematic as well, which only added insult to injury. She was stuck with this horse who, for whatever reason, had made it his life’s goal to irritate her, and to top it off, she had to force every movement, coax it from her stiff and heavy body. She neared the umbran moongate and narrowed her eyes, scheming.

“If Ah goes through tha’ gate, ye won’ be able to foller me. On’y pets are bonded so well as to stick wi’ their masters through tha’ gate.”

Henry only stared at her expectantly. He looked from Ember to the gate and back again. He didn’t notice the lesions on the girl’s body. He didn’t see how the flesh split open at her joints, spiderwebbed up one cheek, or rotted away from the bones of her fingers. He saw his girl. The flash of red hair as the wind tore at it fiercely, the wide peridot eyes, now bereft of sparkle. And he saw, from time to time, the way something flared brightly from her body when she struggled as if against quicksand to will her body to move. This sometimes startled him, but only for a moment, as it was gone as fast as it appeared.

Ember thought for a few seconds. Any destination would do, as long as she could scrape this horse off on the gate. She stepped into the moongate and felt it sucking her in. She coerced her tongue to form the word. “Minoc.”

In that instant, she felt something tear loose. She was a ten – no, a hundred – times lighter. The rush of the moongate gave her an unfamiliar disjointedness, the likes of which she’d never known. When the new shimmering blue moongate spat her forth, she fell to her hands and knees. She had a horrible feeling, like something fatal had befallen her, and she had not yet begun to feel the effects. This she had felt it once before….she searched her memory, trying to recall it.

Shouted words, fierce and tragic green eyes, so like her own. A flash of flame, and then more words, spilling over her face, pouring over her with urgency and deep sadness, words that had made no sense. Then the pain had come, violently ripping her from her flesh. Those eyes…those beautiful, tragic eyes…

“Steve!” Ember screamed with gutteral intensity. She rocked as the world spun around her. She looked frantically around her trying to find a constant, something to hold onto so the world couldn’t slip away. Something was blocking out the sun. She squinted to see as the chestnut horse lowered his head to snuffle her with concern.

“Ahh, rubbish…” Then the world went dark.

Cezanne Abella · Seasoned Veteran Joined: 24 Apr 2009 Posts: 475

Cezanne flounced out of the moongate, arms loaded with rolls of parchment to use for wedding announcements. Her pack was slung across her shoulders, resting and bouncing merrily on her rump with each buoyant step. What was happening before her stopped her dead in her tracks.

A young girl swayed precariously on her hands and knees. Her deep crimson hair spilled down her back and over her shoulders as she tried to get her bearings. Cezanne dropped the scrolls, allowing them to scatter haphazardly at her feet as she rushed to help the girl.

The girl’s head lifted and she squinted into the sun. Cezanne froze. The girl was one of them. The not-quite-living who were so prevalent in Umbra. Her skin was pale, and rotting away. Delicate cracks laced their way up her porcelain cheek. Cezanne stood paralyzed as the girl’s strength wavered.

“Ahh, rubbish,” the girl muttered, and collapsed in a heap. A radiance shone along the surface of her pale skin as the horse snuffled her, then looked up to Cezanne with a start.

Cezanne stared at the crumpled form of the girl in the dust, and looked back up to the horse, who was staring back at her, eyes huge, even by horse proportions. The girl was wearing a brilliant dress the colour of flames. She had never seen an Umbran in such ostentatious clothing. She had certainly never seen one not-quite-living who could gain the loyalty of a noble animal. She was torn, unsure of her next move.

Then something moved in the crumpled heap at her feet. Cezanne stepped back as a misty light swirled lightly over the surface of the girl’s flesh. The girl awoke and stirred. And yet at the same time, she did not. Cezanne struggled to make sense of what she was seeing. The one was now two. The broken, rotting flesh lay uselessly in the dust, and a pure, translucent and much perfected form carefully stood and looked wide-eyed at what she had left behind.

The girl looked to Cezanne, panic-stricken, and then back to the shattered body on the ground. She held out her hands and looked carefully, front to back, then down at herself as she stood. The girl was clearly as bewildered and terrified as Cezanne.

The horse trembled and balked as he looked from the translucent form before him to the rotting corpse beneath her. Cezanne’s shock began to thaw, and she spoke to the girl. “What is happening? Are you…” She trailed off. There was no way to ask that question without looking foolish. Of course she wasn’t all right. There was no explanation that could possibly make this all right.

The girl looked up to Cezanne, her clear peridot eyes wild with confusion. Her lips moved as she spoke, but there was no sound. The girl placed her fingertips over her mouth, looking even more terrified than before.

Cezanne calmed her thoughts for a moment and took a deep breath. Maman Sabine would know what to do. She had to. Cezanne reached out to take the girl’s hand, but her own slipped through the translucent figure. She flushed, feeling foolish, and spoke as she gestured to the girl. “Please, come with me.” She gave a regretful backward glance toward the corpse lying amongst dozens of scrolls of parchment scattered on the ground. For now, it would all have to be left behind.

The two raced toward the tent city on the outskirts of Minoc. The dark horse, looking from the body that lay in the dirt, then to the new and radiant figure that raced ahead, made a pained decision. Hesitantly, he left his girl for a second time. This time to trail behind this new form, and cultivate the glimmer of hope that someday she still might remember.

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

In that instant, everything was calm. There was darkness as her lids veiled her eyes. What felt like hours, or possibly days, passed. Soul slumbered within corpse, but there was a frenetic energy that built slowly, one layer at a time, until the intricacies of the network were a beautiful tapestry that was Ember.

Memories floated in like vapors or smoke, interweaving with the threads and layers of energy that filled the space within her like a mold. Memories, now bereft of the emotion attached to them: the day her mother and father died, leaving Steve to promise that he’d always take care of her. The day that Steve left with the fat man from the city, to mine black stone, leaving her a skinny chestnut horse to keep her company. The day she had made the decision to follow the sounds to the north and see to it that Steve hadn’t died in vain. And the day that she had found Steve – the day he killed her with a fire spell and then pleaded with her even as death rent her spirit from her flesh. And finally, the day she awoke. The Lady Ceinwyn standing over her, calling her forth from rest and repose, attaching her again to her corpse. Being cursed to wander, an unwilling slave to mortality.

And when at last the final threads were tied off, Ember sat in awe of the radiant tapestry, allowing her energy to run from head to toe and back again, reveling in the rush of swimming through the entirety of her life like a dolphin in the sea. The energy reached a higher level of vibration, and finally could no longer be contained.

She opened her eyes. The light around her was astoundingly bright. She could hear the sounds of the tiniest living things all around her. And the great thudding of a heart, woven amongst lighter, fluttering heartbeats. Slowly and carefully, she tried to stand. It was both harder and easier than she had expected. Easier because she did not have to struggle to force her body to its feet. Harder because she was no longer bound to the ground beneath her. She wavered for a moment trying to get her bearings.

A woman stood before her, looking astonished. Henry lowered his head and backed away. Ember looked down at her hands. She could see through them. She could see through her whole body! Her body…was lying in a crumpled heap beneath her. She looked at the woman who looked as confused and frightened as Ember was. She tried to speak, but no sound came. Of course not, there was no vessel to bear her voice…

The woman motioned to Ember to come and Ember could nearly isolate the woman’s voice from the sounds around her. Nearly. The woman broke into a run, motioning to Ember to follow. Perhaps she knew someone who could give some answers. Without hesitation, Ember followed swiftly behind the girl. She did not bother to give Henry a second look. She knew without a doubt that he would follow.

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

Silence. Still only silence. Weeks had passed, or maybe months. Ember paced this way and that through the empty tents outside of Minoc. The girl who called herself Cezanne still visited from time to time, but she had come less frequently as time drew on. No one came from the camps of Ilshenar to help her, and Ember could still not find a way to make her voice heard.

In the dark Minoc night, she screamed and wailed until her form shimmered and faded. But even she could not hear her own voice. That must be why Cezanne stopped coming around so much, as well. And for that, Ember was glad. It must be hard for someone to watch day after day as Ember struggled to communicate, unable to help, unable to even understand what was happening. Ember didn’t like the helpless and troubled expression that furrowed Cezanne’s brow.

Ember wasn’t even sure she existed anymore. After all, she had seen her own body, even uncooperative as it had been, crumpled on the ground. But surely there was truth to the energies, the light, and the shadows around her.

However, there was an upside to losing her body. Her spirit was light now, and moving from one place to the next was as easy as breathing. If she still breathed. Sparks and connections formed now and again within the ether that she now called ‘self,’ and she began to weave them together and try to make sense of who she had once been. Before the corpse fell away. Before those dark and instinctive days in Umbra – before she awoke that day in the temple with a dark being standing over her.

But the horse still followed her. A friendly gypsy would sometimes give him a handful of grain or hay, perhaps an overly ripe apple. But she couldn’t find voice to tell them they were only encouraging him. He kept looking at her as if he expected something, but she knew that yelling at him wouldn’t help now. Hell, it never worked before, either.

She looked at the horse, and he looked back. Flustered, she shook her head and wandered driftingly toward the other end of the deserted camp.