"...and his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming..."
- E. A. Poe
Thread Status: Open | Suggested Soundtrack: Memoirs of the Forgotten
- E. A. Poe
Thread Status: Open | Suggested Soundtrack: Memoirs of the Forgotten
The lady was sewing.
She was seated by the fire, just outside a mud brick hovel with a thatched roof. Her handiwork the labor that produced the clothes on their backs. Around them was a small farm.
It seemed a simpler time. Not a dream so much as it was stepped back through a half-remembered memory of a time long ago.
He'd been a girl then. He'd been alive then. The woman by the fire was the girl's mother. She would raise her head and look over at her daughter, but there was no face. The haze of time shrouded the recollection. The girl could turn her head and see silhouettes out in the field, laboring, toiling with the earth, but couldn't discern who they were. They were just shadows.
The girl turned back to gaze at the faceless woman that was sewing by the fire.
She would hum while she worked, but the girl knew only silence. The melody playing just out of earshot, it's memory forever at the tip of her tongue yet never recalled.
The girl would return here -- this place, this memory -- many times. And on each such occasion it was the same. Shadows in the field. A lady without a face. Music without a sound. But this memory, however poorly remembered, was precious to her. This was life.
This was life as she knew it.
This was life as she had known it.
"LAND HO!"
Red eyes opened. The gaze behind them was nothing human. It was a predator. Something not entirely of this world. Not the world of the living in any regard.
"Look alive! Man the rigging. LAND HO!"
Gone, now, was the form of the girl. Her physical form broken and left behind like the forgotten parts of the memory. In her place was a boy, if he could be called as such. A spectral wraith whose cherubic face and deceiving form masked a killer that had stalked across the Warring Plains of Katakarthia for ten thousand years.
Above him, the wood planks of the ceiling rattled with the sound of feet pouding over the top of the deck. Rolling to one side, the boy dropped from out of the hammock where he had been resting. The ship was listing more now. The roll and ebb violently jarring the child as he worked to find his balance. The sound of the ocean beating against the side of the ship echoed through the interior.
As did the sound of birds.
Land ho, indeed.
The child-like wraith dressed in a simple tunic, pulling a shock of raven black hair through the neck. A pair of short horns stood out from the scalp. Dark lines ran from the base of his eyes along the contours of his cheeks toward the jaw, as though he were crying black tears. A double wrap belt cinched the waist of the tunic, to which a sword of Angelic construction was girded. His feet were shod in leather bindings that wrapped halfway up his shin.
Daylight stabbed at him as the child stuck his head above deck. Grimacing, the boy grit his teeth and squinted painfully through the garish light as he made his way out onto the topside deck.
The view from the side of the ship was spectacular. In ten thousand years, the boy could still count on one hand the number of times that he had ventured from Katakarthia. Only one other time had he come to Seliel City. The voyage here from Death Fortress was nothing if not annoying, even for a wraith who need not bother with food or drink. But the sight of the city on the horizon was no less impressive a second time.
Drifting over to the railing, the soul hunter raised a hand to shield his eyes from the brilliant sun that radiated overhead. The gesture nothing if not made in vain, as the light seemed to pass right through the bluish flesh, revealing the spectre for what it was and what it wasn't.
Ordinarily, the boy would have used a spell to disguise himself when arriving in a public port such as this. But Seliel City was no mere city. Magical creatures of all type occupied its walls. His poor illusion was a mere trick of the light. Shadow and shadowplay. In a place like Seliel City, there was no need for such a parlor trick. On those who would take notice, it would offer no protection. And most wouldn't take notice because there would be a dragon or some other equally inhuman creation passing through the streets as well.
How much time had passed since he had voyaged to this port, to these canals? He wasn't certain. One year seemed the same as the last, the child mused quietly, as the boat he had ridden in arrived at the dock.
He would voyage on foot from this point on.
Stepping up on the dock, the child had to pause and wait for a break in the crowds moving along the waterfront before he could begin to step across the bustling market. Seliel City was a true metropolis. The boy knew of no other city like it. And with crowds as stifling as this, particularly for one as small as he, the child-wraith wasn't certain he would want to discover a busier locale even if one existed.
Of course, part of what made his voyage difficult was that the soul hunter didn't stop for just the living traffic.
The ghosts of merchants. The wailing of widows crying out to a sea that robbed them of their lovers. There was more taking place in just the docks of Seliel City than most living here would ever know.
But the dead could always recognize one another.
The child's footsteps continued, then just suddenly stopped. At first, the boy couldn't have even said why he had stopped. The hair stood up along the nape of his neck. An eerie sensation washed over him. Deja vu. Or the feeling of someone walking over his grave.
...or, her grave, assuming his progenitor or past host had such a dignity afforded her. More likely not, though such was not a line of thought that the soul hunter desired to dwell upon.
The boy turned his head. The realized too late that he had looked the wrong way and turned around instead.
Standing at the edge of the dock was a lithe form wrapped in a white funerary shroud. That was it. Just standing there. Waiting.
Strange as such a sight may have been, the people passing by paid her no mind. Several walked right through her, as she wasn't really there.
A ghost.
The hooded figure turned to regard the small wraith. As their eyes met, the boy recognized the ghost as that of a young woman. A person he had never met before.
A person that had some connection to him.
Whatever the cause of their relationship to one another, the boy found himself averting his eyes a moment later. Head down, he started to move back through the crowd.
He didn't look back.
