Post by Tzigany on May 28, 2010 23:53:27 GMT -5
((Part one! Since this is turning into a book too. Oh well, the faucet of muse is still running! Read, and be merry! And patient, tra la. -x-))
The mist looked... ghostly.
Hell, the mist felt ghostly. It pressed along his spine, sent long undulating tendrils to curl around the branches and his hair. It roiled behind his eyelids and in his nares. He breathed it, and he could feel it unfurling in his chest.
Mmmmnnnn...
He took a deep breath and leaned his head back. This was perfect. He could feel the dew clumping his hair, the fingers of the fog riffling through it. It was blind, unthinking - but oh, so very conscious.
Hello, spirit of the mist, Dante thought, more to himself than anything. The spirit of the mist - well, if it was a spirit of the mist, anyway - wouldn't answer. It was like a wild animal, watching his every motion with bright eyes but walled by silence.
A wind came in through the trees. It had a hollow, hissing ring, like the tone you get from blowing across the mouth of a bottle. Only larger. Much larger.
He imagined giants in the mist...
The thing with spirits, was you had to be firm. Friendly, dead slow, and unceasingly firm. You had to show you were there and that was that - but you weren't going to do anything stupid and were interested in being friends. It really was like dealing with an animal - they'd push you, to see how far you'd go.
Dante was going in.
A wild excitement prickled across his neck as he paced forward. He was up to his knees in murky green water (and up to his ankles in mud, at that). Below the surface, his white feather floated in nereid whorls. Some little accountant at the back of his mind was saying, you're going to get it bog-burnt if you keep this up. To hell with it, he was saying. He'd never seen a living, breathing, waking place so alive with ghostly light. He could sure as hell part with a little hygiene.
The piebald draft paced forward, one mottled form among many in the deepening night. Chittering black shapes swarmed in the mangrove trees. He wasn't sure if they were rats, or squirrels, or some kind of bird, or something else. Probably all four. An owl - err, it's eyes, he couldn't see anything but the yellow globes - appeared, dark as magic. It wasted no time in flapping off sideways, hooting like an ape. The sound echoed: careening off sheets of shale, reverbating in every hollow log, and then -gloop!- disappearing like quicksand into archipelagos of moss.
Hmm, apes. He wondered if there were any monkeys around here.
Damn, he was gonna be up for days just playing with the acoustics in this place!
He was looking forward, peering around curtains of spanish moss trying to figure out what did what to the noise, when he saw the first light.
Poof. A little lightning-white ball popped into the air. It bounced along for a bit, its reflection shattering in diamond scales over the water. Then -ffuf!- it was gone. Like it'd never been at all.
Dante froze, craned around a curtain of moss.
Poof. The next one showed up, completely in the other direction. He caught it in the corner of his eye -through his bangs- but by the time he turned his head he'd lost it. Just one second before he gave up, it hovered out from behind a tree, lighting up its feathery bark in blue relief.
He stood stock still. Marvelled (got a gnat in the mouth for that one), but didn't move.
Foxfire. Will o' the wisp. Ball lightning. He'd heard of a thousand phenomenon, and not enough of any to tell them apart. But whatever it was, the superstition was the same. He knew that backwards and forwards.
A floating light found in bogs, meant to lead travellers to their doom.
A restless soul?
He blinked, slowly. Shut his mouth (smacked it a couple of times to dislodge the taste of fly). He pulled his eyes back into his head, and gave the darkening trees a very. keen. once-over.
A test, was it? Well, he was waiting for that.
With utter deliberation, he started forward again. Dead ahead. Prowling. His dark forelock slipped into his eyes. His eyes darted - tree to tree, limb to limb, root to log to bramble.
And they flashed, pale harvest-moon gold. His own hauntlight.
He stalked forward for he knew not how long. The dark forest closed around him. Its fingers netted to dome the sky; it sent runners to ring the horizon. Ents and Huorns: he was sure he could hear them clittering by, see them flashing through the gaps of trees that stayed as immutable as pillars. Black descended, absolute and underground black. It was dark as a cave. He waded on. The lights popped into existence on either side of him, playing across the water like skipping stones. He didn't turn to look. Behind him, the purple maw of the open night fell back and fell back again.
Though, he never was as far from it as he thought he should be...
It's keeping the way out open. Strange. I didn't peg you for the merciful type. Dante quirked an eyebrow, his face in a sour deadpan. He was asking for it, thinking that. He knew it. Hell, though, he didn't care. He wanted it that way. To know the spirit of the swamps was taking it easy on him, felt...
Well, considerate of it. He kinda felt like an ass for throwing it back at it. But. More than that, he felt...
Underestimated.
And that rankled.
No, not the storm of gnats that was alighting on his shoulders and back. A long twitch shuddered through his skin. The bugs took off.
As the tremor faded, he felt an entirely different prickly weight blanket him.
Ah.
((J-bry, do you have any amazing Floridan anecdotes about swamps?))
The mist looked... ghostly.
Hell, the mist felt ghostly. It pressed along his spine, sent long undulating tendrils to curl around the branches and his hair. It roiled behind his eyelids and in his nares. He breathed it, and he could feel it unfurling in his chest.
Mmmmnnnn...
He took a deep breath and leaned his head back. This was perfect. He could feel the dew clumping his hair, the fingers of the fog riffling through it. It was blind, unthinking - but oh, so very conscious.
Hello, spirit of the mist, Dante thought, more to himself than anything. The spirit of the mist - well, if it was a spirit of the mist, anyway - wouldn't answer. It was like a wild animal, watching his every motion with bright eyes but walled by silence.
A wind came in through the trees. It had a hollow, hissing ring, like the tone you get from blowing across the mouth of a bottle. Only larger. Much larger.
He imagined giants in the mist...
The thing with spirits, was you had to be firm. Friendly, dead slow, and unceasingly firm. You had to show you were there and that was that - but you weren't going to do anything stupid and were interested in being friends. It really was like dealing with an animal - they'd push you, to see how far you'd go.
Dante was going in.
A wild excitement prickled across his neck as he paced forward. He was up to his knees in murky green water (and up to his ankles in mud, at that). Below the surface, his white feather floated in nereid whorls. Some little accountant at the back of his mind was saying, you're going to get it bog-burnt if you keep this up. To hell with it, he was saying. He'd never seen a living, breathing, waking place so alive with ghostly light. He could sure as hell part with a little hygiene.
The piebald draft paced forward, one mottled form among many in the deepening night. Chittering black shapes swarmed in the mangrove trees. He wasn't sure if they were rats, or squirrels, or some kind of bird, or something else. Probably all four. An owl - err, it's eyes, he couldn't see anything but the yellow globes - appeared, dark as magic. It wasted no time in flapping off sideways, hooting like an ape. The sound echoed: careening off sheets of shale, reverbating in every hollow log, and then -gloop!- disappearing like quicksand into archipelagos of moss.
Hmm, apes. He wondered if there were any monkeys around here.
Damn, he was gonna be up for days just playing with the acoustics in this place!
He was looking forward, peering around curtains of spanish moss trying to figure out what did what to the noise, when he saw the first light.
Poof. A little lightning-white ball popped into the air. It bounced along for a bit, its reflection shattering in diamond scales over the water. Then -ffuf!- it was gone. Like it'd never been at all.
Dante froze, craned around a curtain of moss.
Poof. The next one showed up, completely in the other direction. He caught it in the corner of his eye -through his bangs- but by the time he turned his head he'd lost it. Just one second before he gave up, it hovered out from behind a tree, lighting up its feathery bark in blue relief.
He stood stock still. Marvelled (got a gnat in the mouth for that one), but didn't move.
Foxfire. Will o' the wisp. Ball lightning. He'd heard of a thousand phenomenon, and not enough of any to tell them apart. But whatever it was, the superstition was the same. He knew that backwards and forwards.
A floating light found in bogs, meant to lead travellers to their doom.
A restless soul?
He blinked, slowly. Shut his mouth (smacked it a couple of times to dislodge the taste of fly). He pulled his eyes back into his head, and gave the darkening trees a very. keen. once-over.
A test, was it? Well, he was waiting for that.
With utter deliberation, he started forward again. Dead ahead. Prowling. His dark forelock slipped into his eyes. His eyes darted - tree to tree, limb to limb, root to log to bramble.
And they flashed, pale harvest-moon gold. His own hauntlight.
He stalked forward for he knew not how long. The dark forest closed around him. Its fingers netted to dome the sky; it sent runners to ring the horizon. Ents and Huorns: he was sure he could hear them clittering by, see them flashing through the gaps of trees that stayed as immutable as pillars. Black descended, absolute and underground black. It was dark as a cave. He waded on. The lights popped into existence on either side of him, playing across the water like skipping stones. He didn't turn to look. Behind him, the purple maw of the open night fell back and fell back again.
Though, he never was as far from it as he thought he should be...
It's keeping the way out open. Strange. I didn't peg you for the merciful type. Dante quirked an eyebrow, his face in a sour deadpan. He was asking for it, thinking that. He knew it. Hell, though, he didn't care. He wanted it that way. To know the spirit of the swamps was taking it easy on him, felt...
Well, considerate of it. He kinda felt like an ass for throwing it back at it. But. More than that, he felt...
Underestimated.
And that rankled.
No, not the storm of gnats that was alighting on his shoulders and back. A long twitch shuddered through his skin. The bugs took off.
As the tremor faded, he felt an entirely different prickly weight blanket him.
Ah.
((J-bry, do you have any amazing Floridan anecdotes about swamps?))