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Darrow Masterpost
Mar. 23rd, 2030 04:32 pmCharacter Tag (Main Community)
Taglist (Character Journal)
Legend:
currently active
*not yet linked to main community
( Threadlist )
Character Tag (Main Community)
Taglist (Character Journal)
Legend:
currently active
*not yet linked to main community
( Threadlist )
law of inertia
Mar. 23rd, 2024 02:18 am"Mada ikite no ka?"
Abijah Fowler's Japanese is as repulsive as the man himself, brutish and blunt, thick with the feculent vowels and coarse structure of a tongue too arrogant to learn. He towers, a terrible hulking mass, over the limp body of Taigen and demands roughly, "Naze da?!"
Mizu hears the wet crunch of his fists at some great, impassable distance. Taigen offers no resistance, his body empty of spirit, maybe finally dead; but Fowler strikes him again and again, as if he will not be satisfied until there is only steaming, rotten meat beneath him.
It is over. Only Fowler will have his sick satisfaction today. It was a doomed venture, perhaps from the start. The fault lies with Mizu, whose poor focus, weak will, distracted heart, and impure skill could not withstand so great a challenge. It was a failure before it began, written in the echoes of all those dead and wronged. All evil dreams and angry words, too many and too vivid to banish. A fire in the woods. A blade thrown to end a life that had never been earned and could not be kept. The broken body of a bird lain soft upon her nest. The quick, quiet crack of an innocent neck. A silver bell on a string in a closed, bloodied palm.
If Taigen is not dead already then Fowler will kill him. Mizu's sword is shattered; Mizu's will and body are broken. Only death waits now, a constant companion in unfaltering patience, the other side of the promise: to succeed, or to die.
A silver bell on a string in a closed, bloodied palm. Placed there in heartbreak and clutched tight. Signal of a pact broken, a wish spoiled. To be the ember of another, lighting his way in the dark. A responsibility so carelessly cast off.
If there is one thing that ought to change, one thing in Mizu's power to change, it would be this. To uncurl that fist. To open that palm. To give back the bell and to keep its implicit promise. It means little now. Gone, perhaps irrevocably. But it is a reason, thin and fragile, not to die.
"Wakatta," Mizu whispers across time and distance. "Oshieteageru."
Mizu's fingers close, instead, around the katana's hilt. The blade is broken but will not be abandoned. Mizu rises from the floor, momentarily outside Fowler's awareness, and beholds a sliver of opportunity. Taigen hangs from the white man's grip, dangling like a huntsman's trophy before the broad, breakable expanse of the ninth floor window.
Mizu lunges.
For the second time tonight, Taigen's body shatters glass as he and Mizu hurtle out into the night, down, down, nine floors of death and violence down, until they burst through the ice and into freezing waters. Mizu rails against the shocking cold, twice burdened with dead weight and broken sword, breath gushing out in precious, wasted gasps. Too cold, too tired, too weak. Gripping the edge of the ice Mizu summons whatever final strength might remain to drag Taigen up, to pull them both out.
The ice breaks, betraying them to the deep. Mizu's last breath drifts to the surface in gentle bubbling foam. The moon watches, cold and indifferent.
A shadow darkens the water. Big, soft, familiar. An arm breaks through the surface, reaching down, fingerless and deceptively deft. Mizu does not remain conscious long enough to know what follows.
Wakatta. Oshieteageru.
Okay. I'll teach you.
Mizu wakes with a sharp, agonizing gasp. No longer drowned but soaked and freezing. The air smells different, wrong, flooded with a thousand overwhelming unfamiliar scents. There is a breeze, cool but not winter-cold, and it burns their frozen body. They lie on their back on the unforgiving earth, staring into a grey dawn. Agony and fire threatens to overtake them, to submerge their thoughts again. Everything hurts. Everything is broken and they can no longer bury it beneath furious action. They lie there as if weighed down beneath it all.
They are not thinking right.
Thoughts form but they form incorrectly. Inelegant ideas, words they shouldn't know. They are not thinking in Japanese.
There is English in their head.
Mizu screams, or tries to, more of a faint, consumptive groan. English. Jarring and dissonant and ungainly and vile. They have not lost their Japanese, but the English crowds it out with ruthless tenacity, colonizing their thoughts as if it intends to destroy them from within. A poison like nothing they have ever known.
The sky is cut by the shape of tree branches, too tall and too green, budding with signs of early spring. There is something else, too, a pole, a totem, some sort of obelisk topped by a metal beam arching out to one side, which culminates in a strange glass oblong, the purpose of which Mizu cannot determine. And there is noise. Aggressive, unending noise, a rumble and roar that seems to shake them down to their fractured bones. They tilt their head to one side, even so small a movement numbingly painful, and watch for a few uncomprehending moments as strange brightly colored shapes speed past along the black, hard ground. It is all too fast to understand, and Mizu is too tired to try. They look away, dizzy to the point of illness.
Ringo followed them. It was his shadow above the water. They know it.
But the bell is still in their pocket, a weight they cannot and could never ignore. Something has happened and they cannot answer the questions billowing up in their chest. The world has shifted within and without and there is no greater defeat. Mizu shuts their eyes against it and wills themself to wake from this nightmare, or, failing that, to finally die.
Abijah Fowler's Japanese is as repulsive as the man himself, brutish and blunt, thick with the feculent vowels and coarse structure of a tongue too arrogant to learn. He towers, a terrible hulking mass, over the limp body of Taigen and demands roughly, "Naze da?!"
Mizu hears the wet crunch of his fists at some great, impassable distance. Taigen offers no resistance, his body empty of spirit, maybe finally dead; but Fowler strikes him again and again, as if he will not be satisfied until there is only steaming, rotten meat beneath him.
It is over. Only Fowler will have his sick satisfaction today. It was a doomed venture, perhaps from the start. The fault lies with Mizu, whose poor focus, weak will, distracted heart, and impure skill could not withstand so great a challenge. It was a failure before it began, written in the echoes of all those dead and wronged. All evil dreams and angry words, too many and too vivid to banish. A fire in the woods. A blade thrown to end a life that had never been earned and could not be kept. The broken body of a bird lain soft upon her nest. The quick, quiet crack of an innocent neck. A silver bell on a string in a closed, bloodied palm.
If Taigen is not dead already then Fowler will kill him. Mizu's sword is shattered; Mizu's will and body are broken. Only death waits now, a constant companion in unfaltering patience, the other side of the promise: to succeed, or to die.
A silver bell on a string in a closed, bloodied palm. Placed there in heartbreak and clutched tight. Signal of a pact broken, a wish spoiled. To be the ember of another, lighting his way in the dark. A responsibility so carelessly cast off.
If there is one thing that ought to change, one thing in Mizu's power to change, it would be this. To uncurl that fist. To open that palm. To give back the bell and to keep its implicit promise. It means little now. Gone, perhaps irrevocably. But it is a reason, thin and fragile, not to die.
"Wakatta," Mizu whispers across time and distance. "Oshieteageru."
Mizu's fingers close, instead, around the katana's hilt. The blade is broken but will not be abandoned. Mizu rises from the floor, momentarily outside Fowler's awareness, and beholds a sliver of opportunity. Taigen hangs from the white man's grip, dangling like a huntsman's trophy before the broad, breakable expanse of the ninth floor window.
Mizu lunges.
For the second time tonight, Taigen's body shatters glass as he and Mizu hurtle out into the night, down, down, nine floors of death and violence down, until they burst through the ice and into freezing waters. Mizu rails against the shocking cold, twice burdened with dead weight and broken sword, breath gushing out in precious, wasted gasps. Too cold, too tired, too weak. Gripping the edge of the ice Mizu summons whatever final strength might remain to drag Taigen up, to pull them both out.
The ice breaks, betraying them to the deep. Mizu's last breath drifts to the surface in gentle bubbling foam. The moon watches, cold and indifferent.
A shadow darkens the water. Big, soft, familiar. An arm breaks through the surface, reaching down, fingerless and deceptively deft. Mizu does not remain conscious long enough to know what follows.
Wakatta. Oshieteageru.
Okay. I'll teach you.
Mizu wakes with a sharp, agonizing gasp. No longer drowned but soaked and freezing. The air smells different, wrong, flooded with a thousand overwhelming unfamiliar scents. There is a breeze, cool but not winter-cold, and it burns their frozen body. They lie on their back on the unforgiving earth, staring into a grey dawn. Agony and fire threatens to overtake them, to submerge their thoughts again. Everything hurts. Everything is broken and they can no longer bury it beneath furious action. They lie there as if weighed down beneath it all.
They are not thinking right.
Thoughts form but they form incorrectly. Inelegant ideas, words they shouldn't know. They are not thinking in Japanese.
There is English in their head.
Mizu screams, or tries to, more of a faint, consumptive groan. English. Jarring and dissonant and ungainly and vile. They have not lost their Japanese, but the English crowds it out with ruthless tenacity, colonizing their thoughts as if it intends to destroy them from within. A poison like nothing they have ever known.
The sky is cut by the shape of tree branches, too tall and too green, budding with signs of early spring. There is something else, too, a pole, a totem, some sort of obelisk topped by a metal beam arching out to one side, which culminates in a strange glass oblong, the purpose of which Mizu cannot determine. And there is noise. Aggressive, unending noise, a rumble and roar that seems to shake them down to their fractured bones. They tilt their head to one side, even so small a movement numbingly painful, and watch for a few uncomprehending moments as strange brightly colored shapes speed past along the black, hard ground. It is all too fast to understand, and Mizu is too tired to try. They look away, dizzy to the point of illness.
Ringo followed them. It was his shadow above the water. They know it.
But the bell is still in their pocket, a weight they cannot and could never ignore. Something has happened and they cannot answer the questions billowing up in their chest. The world has shifted within and without and there is no greater defeat. Mizu shuts their eyes against it and wills themself to wake from this nightmare, or, failing that, to finally die.
