|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:00 pm
Drek!
Ute?
...so much as touch...
No!
Yes!
Undine stood on the highest ledge she had been able to reach, trembling and staring downward. So far. So far to the rocks below. Would that silence them, taking another step and falling, and dying? She didn’t want to, she wasn’t even that kind of person. She was far too sensible. The screams and laughs and whispers rang in her ears. No, not her ears; her mind. They talked and chattered and kept her from sleep, almost kept her from thought. She had tried resting, she had tried working but the voices grew louder and louder no matter what she did. They were inside her, poisoning her; she could hardly even function anymore.
Giving a desperate sigh that was almost a whimper, Undine sank down and dropped her muzzle between her knees. She was so tired, so very tired but the voices gave her no peace. Where had this madness come from? What could she do about it? Dahak still couldn’t sense anything wrong with her when he looked at her with his Shaman eyes, so it couldn’t be an illness, could it? No, no it couldn’t... unless he was out to get her, unless he wanted to be rid of her. What could he gain? She could see no way that her death benefited him, but then she never had understood that boy...
Maybe, just maybe he drew his power from death; that made a sort of sense, had a kind of balance but why, why, why would he choose her death? Perhaps more powerful minds gave him more strength; she knew her mind to be exemplary when it wasn’t filled with whispers. Yes. That made sense. Dahak had somehow made her mad, and now he was waiting for her to kill herself. How had she ever defended him to Xla? He was trying to kill her.
Undine set her jaw and closed her eyes; she could fight this madness, she had the strength, she knew she did. She had to.
Hhaha!
Well I don’t...
Just once turn and...
Damn!
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 3:42 am
Nah, that last one was much too boring.
He took another bite of the delicious elppa before crunching up the more hard center of it, licking his lips and thereafter ignoring the blue elppa juice staining his muzzle. He hoisted himself up onto all fours and gave himself a good shake before trotting around a cave, and peered up at the ledge where Undine rested. "Who're you, and what are you doing up there?"
I bet she's going to jump, he thought to himself. Yes, that'd be the most entertaining.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:12 am
Who’re...
Undine startled at the voice, shooting to her hooves and spinning around in one movement, her ears pinning back against her skull. She might be going crazy, she thought grimly as she studied the stallion before her, but that didn’t mean she had to take this crap.
“My name,” she hissed, “is tactician Undine, and what I am doing up here is nobody’s business but my own.” There, let him chew on that one for a bit. Surely he wasn’t so dense that he didn’t know who she was, both in her own right as one of the herd’s finest tactical minds and in her relationships. Mate to the royal advisor, mother to the Shaman. She hoped the b*****d would squirm at least a little over being so bloody rude to her.
Flicking her ears and trying, failing, to repress or ignore the voices, the tall mare looked her sudden companion over more carefully. “While we’re at it,” she went on, “who the hell are you.” Had he been spying on her? Did he know she’d cracked? No, no surely he didn’t She probably looked distinctly the worse for wear, but not crazy, surely. ...What did crazy people even look like? Well more disheveled than she, surely. Surely.
Waru?
Oh drek!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:28 am
He shifted his weight casually from his hind hooves to his fore hooves, regarding her with a skeptical eye. "Xenos," he said and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Just Xenos." He didn't have any fancy title like she did, and this probably was her, of course. He'd never actually seen her, but he'd heard descriptions of her from those who had. She certainly was blue and white, yes, but so was one of her daughters. Perhaps this was her, pretending to be her mother? Maybe.
"You are tactician Undine? Really?" He couldn't help but ask, eying her up and down once more with his chocolate eyes. "Well, you look like her. You're blue and white at least," he admitted, although he was reluctant to let the amusing idea go. "But you certainly don't look like any of the tacticians I've seen." No, she didn't. All of them looked too.... Prim, proper, well-kept, ...clean.
So, she could be the daughter, or the mother. ...probably the latter; she looked too old to be the daughter. "If you are her, which I'm still not quite sure about, what are you doing so far from your duties? I come here quite often, and I've never seen you here before."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:11 am
Well really!
Undine gave a snort of displeasure and narrowly resisted the urge to kick the b*****d in the face. “Yes,” she replied irritably, “I really am Undine, and I’m on a break. I came up here in the hopes of avoiding idiots, seen as all my usual resting spots are completely stuffed full with them.” A sneer pulled at the tall mare’s lips as she ran her eyes over the thing apparently named Xenos. “Looks like I’m out of luck here too though,” she added, meeting the fool’s eyes and wondering if she could perhaps get away with maiming him just a little bit. He didn’t look like he’d be too much of a challenge. It would make her feel so much better to bloody him up a little... At least it might. It was so hard to tell what any action of her’s or another person’s would make her feel these days.
It was the voices, she knew, the madness her son had pushed on her; it was twisting her life, tearing it apart and she didn’t know how much longer she could keep up the pretence of relative normality. How long before she cracked? How long before she shamed Xla by doing something insane in public? How long before she died one way or another and Dahak took her life force to power himself? It was only a matter of time, surely, before she did something irreparable... Like beat up some idiot for talking to her in a way she didn’t like. Damn; that had been a close call, too close. She couldn’t do this much longer.
“So what do you do up here then, Just Xenos?” the brownish-eyed mare went on, fighting the violent urges that were bubbling up inside her. “Do you keep watch over the clouds above? Perhaps you guard a sweet little grove of trees? Or maybe you make yourself useful by counting rocks, is that what you do all day Just Xeons?” She never had been able to abide the lazy ones who took from the herd and gave nothing back save perhaps foals, and the chattering of the voices was robbing her of her usual reserve on the matter. If she couldn’t beat him, she would at least let him know what she thought of him and his ilk. Perhaps he was up here waiting for some other stallion he played catamite to; it certainly wouldn’t surprise her to know he entertained such depravities.
...will rue the day you...
How could you?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:02 pm
"So, all your usual resting spots are taken, so you decide to come and take over mine? Lovely," he exclaimed casually, as if it happened every day. Which it normally did; annoying idiots wouldn't be able to find any place better because they were all full, so they came to his spot. His lonely desolate spot. Finally a day when none of the usual idiots appeared, and just his luck - they were replaced by this lovely b***h of a mare, who looked like she'd had a lovely roll in the slave water. He just loved how she was looking him over, as if she were going to beat him to a bloody pulp. Not like that, she wasn't.
"I keep watch over the little bugs on the rocks," he explained, pacing around and studying her. It probably wasn't wise to insult her too much, but his volatile nature had thrown him towards a more vindictive mood. "I make sure they get along well and play nice before they get squashed by Katilenuck hooves. Or rocks, whichever comes first," he said with a shrug of his wings.
"It isn't my fault I have little to do during the day," he explained in less mocking tones. "I offered my help many a time, but was always turned down. Seems no one has any place for someone who isn't as afraid to curb their tongue to suck up to those of higher status."
A break, she'd said. Hu. "Had a bit too much of your duties, have you then?" He piped up, wanting to push her a bit farther, and see what he could get to. "The tactician role can be very demanding, quite taxing I've heard. Could it be that the unmatched tactician Undine has met her match? I believe so, and I think its name is stress. Perhaps too much of that has pushed you over the edge? Your appearance certainly attests to that." There, let her chew on that.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 7:01 am
Talking back to the people above her, in the right place and at the right time, had always seemed to help rather than hinder her and she had been about to comment on that and let the matter of bug watching slide when the fool spoke again. Undine snorted and laid her ears back. “Forgive me for not having time to primp of late,” she snapped, “I have found myself rather busy of late and with such a high density of idiots about I really haven’t been able to delegate my duties just to go and make myself look pretty.”
Was he right? Dahak had said it might just be stress... But it couldn’t be; she’d spent more than half her life stressed, surely if she had been going to crack from it that would have happened long ago... Still, she really didn’t have a reason to think Dahak had or even could do this to her. She truly was going mad if she was blaming her son for her own weaknesses. Maybe she would speak to him again... but no, no she couldn’t let him know that her strange buzzing headache had developed into hearing things. Nobody could no that, nobody in the world; it was her secret shame. She should leave. Suicide was not for her, but she could not remain here much longer or somebody would find out and that would be the ruin of her family. She owed it to them to leave, now, as soon as possible... As soon as she was finished dealing with this idiot in any case.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:21 am
"It's not that you're just dusty or anything," he began, eying her up and down once more. "Although you are rather dusty and look like you have bathed in slave water. No, I've seen that look before, in your eyes and body and hair. Your eyes, especially. If I'm not mistaken, something must be gravely wrong. Stress, stress; it's a killer," he cooed, before turning and trotting off briskly. His insulting and vindictive mood was now gone, switfly replaced with an entertained and giddy countenance. Undine might have lost her mind, she might not have, but one thing was for sure; he had lost part of his, the part that kept his emotions in check, and it made life much more fun. "Good-bye, busy, unprimped and stressed tactician Undine. Have fun with whatever's wrong," he called over his shoulder. Whether she stayed or followed him, or, hell, jumped off the edge of the cliffs to her death, was nothing of his concern.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:46 am
Of all the annoying little worms she had ever met, he was the worst; hells she’d take the voices over another moment of his company any day. Muttering a vague curse after the retreating male, Undine shook herself, spread her wings and stepped off the ledge. As she swooped down toward the more populated areas of the herdlands, the muttering within her head seemed to intensify causing the mare to give another curse and change course slightly. She couldn’t take this any longer, she had to leave but just vanishing was not an option. She would find one of her family and tell them she was going to visit her tree; there was nothing wrong with a Nequus wishing to do that once in a while after all and perhaps she actually would do that. Who knew, it might give her a clue about what had gone wrong inside her head, might even help her find a way to recover.
It was a slim, foolish hope and she knew it but then and there, with her head full of cries and whispers, it was all she had.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
