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 Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2025 10:09 pm
January 2025 - Death (WC: 1000) - [x]
July 2026 - The Wretch (WC: 1000) - [x]
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Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2025 10:13 pm
Prompt: Quote: It's a new year in the Kawani lands! Winter is in full swing and much of the land is covered in snow. Does your soquili do anything to acknowledge or celebrate the new year? Are they part of a herd or family that has a tradition or ceremony? Have they made a promise to start the new year with a clean slate and change themselves for the better?
Or did they simply try to stay warm and wait for the snow to melt and spring to arrive?  Spring had never been her season. New life, fresh green shoots springing up from the mud, long-legged babies stumbling through the grass. All things that were completely out of her wheelhouse, things that didn’t belong to her.
Yet.
Summer was better. Droughts, hungry predators, mothers trying to keep their young fed. After the initial shock of spring, cooler temperatures and milder nights, the heat of the summer was a welcome friend. She didn’t have to work as hard as in spring; the blistering sun did the work for her, sapping energy and burning the grass to a crisp under her hoof.
Autumn was a season of celebration. The nights were frigid, and the days—oh, the days. Leaves falling from trees, the insects going to ground, dying off in droves. Violence among the creatures of the forest, fighting for rapidly declining resources, for shelter, for mates. Autumn was a time to be the carnal beasts they were always meant to be, selfish and cruel in the face of what was to come.
Winter. Oh, winter. The frost took the weakest creatures quickly, too fragile to survive long. As snow blanketed the lands, she would find those who couldn’t gather supplies in time, those who hadn’t found shelter from the storms, covered in a fluffy layer of white. Preserved in the cold, spilled across the land when another creature came to take what it needed to survive.
This time of year—just after the new year, when the nights howled with a bitter wind and no matter how long one stood in the sun, one never stopped shivering—was her favorite. Despair filled the air like a sweet perfume; supplies had run out. The grass that crunched under the snow devoid of nutrition, and the careful layers of fat and insulation whittled away by a body desperate enough to consume itself to survive. The beasts that relished in this season were of another world, fueled by instinct and a moral code that would make the average Soquili shudder.
But not Death. Death blended in with the snow, her pale coat barely visible, a ghost in a blizzard. She didn’t have to work so hard in the winter; while the summer sun picked off the weak, the winter moon claimed the unlucky, the ill-prepared, the careless. All it took was one night below freezing temperatures, and a watering hole reduced to ice, to claim a life. All it took was the wind blowing in the wrong direction, or a biting wind, or an avalanche.
All it took was a predator, so focused on its own survival that it would risk its life to take another.
Many of the Soquili she had stalked during the rest of the year had fled the lands in search of winter grazing, places to shield their expectant mares and ragged elders from the elements. The ones who stayed behind were thinner than they were the last time she saw them, whittled away by the howling gales. She could see the heat dissipating above them like steam, their tails tucked as they turned with their backs to the wind.
All she had to do now was wait. She didn’t have to manipulate winter to take a life; winter claimed what already belonged to it without deigning to think of what it cost.
But, as entranced as she was by the season, as much as she reveled in the beautiful violence of it, she, too, was mortal. She curled up at the edge of the forest, tucked away behind foliage dense enough to block the worst of the wind, as she watched the herd in the distance.
Soon, one would drop. One of that year’s foals, perhaps, or an adult past their prime. Then she would rise from her bed, stalking across the plains to guide the poor soul across. To where, she could never be sure, but it had to be somewhere kinder than here. She would sit with them until she was sure every last whisper of their memory was gone, and then she would move on to find another, and another, and another, until the first green shoots of spring signalled the beginning of a new life.
Years passed this way. She was a loner by nature—one had to be when one was the usher of lost souls—but this year felt different. Lonely. Hopeless in a way she had never felt before.
Soquili were not meant to be alone. Herds ensured continued survival; sharing body heat, passing provisions between them, being protected by stronger, more capable herdmates, kept the weaker ones alive despite the chill in the air. She lingered on the cusp of life and death every waking moment, so close that all it would take to send her over the edge was a gentle push, but she had grown tired. Weary.
As close as she was to death herself, she wanted to live, if only so the poor lost souls of the land would always have a kind and gentle hand to guide them home.
She longed for a family to call her own. Someone to protect her when she was weak, someone to look after when she felt like her only purpose in life could never be fulfilled, someone to keep her company on the long, cold nights. There was only so long a lone Soquili could survive without outside assistance. She could only stare into so many blank, lifeless eyes before she found herself wishing that they would stare back at her, to see her as more than just an apparition in the snow. To see her for what she truly was; grief, and love persevering. Kindness. Mercy.
As soon as the moon began to set, the new year upon her, she made a vow. This year would be the year she found a companion, someone to guide her in the realm of the living while she helped souls cross over into the next.
After all, every year was just another year closer to Death.Word Count: 1000
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Posted: Tue Jul 14, 2026 10:24 pm
Prompt: Quote: How to Receive Your Fortune <----- Prompt
Choose One Bloom:
A single flower reveals the strongest force currently guiding your path.
Create a Bouquet:
Combine flowers and colors to uncover a layered fortune. Each bloom adds its own blessing, challenge, or hidden truth, creating a unique reading that no one else can share.
Or Leave It to Fate:
Draw a random bouquet (RNG) from the Flower Oracles and discover the message destiny has prepared for you (can be however many flowers you wanna pick 5d20, 3d20, choice is yours).
"Every petal whispers a secret. Every bouquet tells a story. What future will your flowers reveal?"
The Fresh Beginning
Flowers: Daisy + Daffodil + White Lily
Meaning: Innocence, rebirth, purity, and new opportunities.
Fortune: A chapter is ending; another is about to bloom. Release old worries; something beautiful is waiting just ahead. Content warning: body horror  Darkness. All he could see was darkness. All he could smell was the cloying scent of decaying earth, and something else… something sickly sweet that made his stomach churn uncomfortably.
An overwhelming, all-encompassing feeling of suffocation washed over him, and he realized with a jolt that his eyes had been closed. With great effort, he pried them open, recoiling with a snarl as the too-bright sunlight made his eyes burn and water.
It took him several seconds before he was able to open his eyes again, forcing them to remain open as he adjusted to the light. It had been so long since he had seen sunlight—or had it? He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt the sun on his skin.
His skin. Pain snaked across in jagged lines, surrounded by the white hot feeling of inflammation. Some of his skin felt stretched tight, pulled to its absolute limit, while some felt loose and unattached, like it had been torn from the tissue underneath and left to heal itself. He didn’t have the courage to look down at himself, to assess the damage that had been done, but it must have been significant enough to cause his confusion and memory loss.
He remembered nothing. It was as though his life hadn’t begun until this very moment, waking up and feeling his retinas scorched by the sun. But it had to have begun before, right? He squeezed his eyes shut, trying in vain to find anything in his head that was familiar, growing more and more frustrated when all he knew was the present. He didn’t know his own name, or if he even had one.
He growled. Lying there in the grass and letting himself get baked in the sun wasn’t going to help anything. Some of his skin prickled, chilled by the breeze that caught in the open air, while some sweated uncomfortably, lathering just underneath his coat.
Before he could second guess himself, before he could lay back and accept his fate, he forced himself to his hooves. His legs were shaky, unstable—understandable, given that he wasn’t sure when the last time he had eaten or drank had been—but they held him up well. He angled his head to peer back at his body, to take inventory of the wounds he apparently carried, when he noticed a tranquil, clear lake only fifty paces from where he stood.
His legs started moving almost of their own accord, the call of the fresh, cool water too strong. Hydration was important, he knew, and given that the scent of old blood was in the air and wafting around him, he also knew that he needed to get himself clean before a predator scented him too.
The lake was crystal clear, the surrounding shore dotted with an odd assortment of flowers; daisies, daffodils, and white lilies, all swaying gently in the breeze. Somewhere in his mind, the meanings of these flowers made him scoff. Innocence, rebirth, purity, and new opportunities. A chapter is ending; another is about to bloom. Release old worries; something beautiful is waiting just ahead.
It was a bit too on the nose, he thought. He wasn’t sure where the meanings had come from—some past life, some bit of knowledge he had collected—but he couldn’t help the sour feeling that rose in his gut at the thought of them.
New opportunities, my tail, he thought bitterly.
He watched the flowers dancing lazily as he dipped his head to drink, shutting his eyes as the cool feeling of the water slipped down his throat. He hadn’t realized just how parched he was; he drank greedily, wading into the water up to his knees and ignoring the painful sting of it on his wounds.
He opened his eyes. Staring back at him from the crystal clear water was a monster, an abomination.
A Wretch.
He jumped backward, momentarily startled as the Wretch disappeared. He glanced around, heart hammering just under his ribcage; where had it gone? Carefully, he watched as the water he had churned when he jumped away began to calm, and the Wretch’s face appeared in its glassy surface.
It was no monster, rising from the tide to swallow him whole. It was no demon hunting him, nor ghost haunting him. It was his own face that stared back, wide-eyed and bewildered. His eyes were blue and hollow. A wound stretched across his face, healed though the stitches remained in his skin, connecting two different coat patterns that looked like they had come from separate creatures.
He felt all the blood rush from his face as he stepped out of the water, whipping his head around to see the patchwork horror that his body had become. Strips of flesh crudely attached with stitches, the skin grown together underneath. Chestnut, grey, black, bay, spotted, dappled, golden… even his wings, spread in his surprise, had been cobbled together as though made from spare, discarded parts. Feathers and leathery membranes, held together attached with surgical precision. He could feel it all—the pull of the stitches, the heat of the swelling, the mismatched muscle and sinew underneath.
He was made from the bodies of dead Soquili. That’s why he smelled the rot and decay everywhere he went, clinging to his nostrils and following him like a cloud. That’s why he had no memories; they were never truly his in the first place. He wondered if the rest of him—the parts of him inside, the organs and knowledge and personality—were his, or simply borrowed from someone who no longer had use for them. He wondered if any part of him was his own.
He was no ordinary Soquili. He was a monster, an abomination. The Wretch.
The flowers danced innocently. Daisies, daffodils, white lilies, faces upturned and watching the horror that he had become. Staring. Staring at him.
The world turned on its axis, and the flowers rushed up to meet his face, smothering him as he fainted into their fragrant bouquet.
Word Count: 1000
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