NationStates Jolt Archive


The Dream, The Dawn... And The Fruitcake

Ma-tek
27-12-2003, 19:25
Four Years Ago - Before Dawn Year 3

Agrid charged through the street, dodging bullets as he ran. Of course, 'dodging' in this case was a rather unusual concept; he didn't so much dodge as - metaphorically - cross his fingers and hope.

It was working, though. He heard rather than saw the thudding crunch as bullets rammed into the thick wall to his right; he saw and heard the smash as glass ripped asunder; and he felt the rip at his flak jacket as a bullet embedded in the material. As he ran, he felt warmth at his waist...

Had he been hit?

A few seconds of internalized checking made him certain that he had been - but that the bullet was lodged in the flak jacket, with the tip rubbing against exposed skin beneath.

That was not comforting in the least.

Agrid leapt rather than ran through the door that opened; a door, a haven, a hopeful entrance - or an exit from the nightmare that had erupted on the street behind him. Blood ran freely along the street, now; blood that had no right being there. Blood belonged in veins; blood belonged in donor bags, on racks in clean and crisply white hospital rooms; blood did not belong on the cold dank streets of Turath. It was a simple fact.

His wand pressed against his third-right rib, an exclamation of fear without words; a weapon of devastating power...

...useless.

He pressed against the wall inside the damp building in which he had taken refuge, breathing hard. Sucking in the warm, wet air of a building too long left without maintanence; chest rising and falling in a slow, sweaty ryhthm, a wordless warning of exertion rising from his chest in the form of a dull thumping in his throat as his heart pounded against his sternum, and his veins rattled with hot fluid flushing throughout. Blood in its rightful place, thank the Stars.

It took him a few moments to realise that a face was several inches from his own.

It could have been the warmth of the breath on his face, or the dim amber glow of the semi-reflective retina-backed compound eyes that gazed into his; it could have been the moving lips, the sound of words reaching him through a thick haze of resounding gunfire reverberating through his skull...

Whatever it was, he finally took note.

"...boy, you sure pissed them off!"

He stared at the youthful face before him, dumbfounded at the lack of care or fear in the tone. He did not speak; words failed him, and he wasn't sure if his voice would be clear and steady just yet anyway...

"What, they cut out your tongue, boy? Or you deaf?"

His lips moved, but no words passed beyond the velvet confines of flushed cheeks.

"You better not be dangerous, or I'm a goner, eh," the voice continued, as it waved a hand in his face, before pointing out 'back'. It had to be 'back', because 'out' was forwards. The face vanished, replaced by a cool light washing over frightened and paranoid eyes; blinking away the fear proved more difficult than he would have thought - he was...

Agrid. He was Agrid. He reached down, found his centre, drew out the rage that threatened to boil over and scald everything that he was and had been...

And calming breath was sucked in, cooling the rage, denying the fear. It was a shocking sensation, a rabid pressure in his chest that threatened to overwhelm him; it passed quickly, subsiding into a gentle sensation, like salt tears dropping into a bowl of blood. The smell of iron, the fear, remains - but the overpowering nature of the stench is relieved by the salty smell of despair released.

His echoing footsteps sounding behind him in a surreal counterpoint to the shouts outside - sounds apparently delayed by the thudding pain in his skull - Agrid followed the feminine face that knew no fear, out into the 'back'.

And when his forehead met the jagged flatness of the plank of wood, the darkness that descended was almost mercifully calm and silent...
Ma-tek
29-12-2003, 01:31
...and the the light was so bright that it stung his eyes - his eyes watered, the wetness staining his cheeks and his forehead... no, that wasn't right. His eyes weren't watering, because water just doesn't run upwards. He opened his eyes to the world, again, even though they were already open; but the veil lifted, and the light dimmed...

And beautiful eyes awaited his own. The feminine face from earlier met his gaze, but she had a quality about her he had not seen in his blind panic; her very gaze bore into his soul, lighting the dark places with a brilliance he had thought impossible...

Her voice sounding a warning as she moved away, she spoke: "Don't-"

He sat up, sharply, quickly...

...and fell back down, groaning at the fierce pain in his skull that threatened to crack his cranium open and spill his brains...

Well, perhaps that was a touch dramatic.

"-sit up too quickly," the woman finished with a small smile.

"You might have warned me," Agrid moaned softly, realising that she had been in the process of warning him only as the words he frames escape his lips.

She merely smirks, and then frowns. "I'm awfully sorry about the, uhm, beating. Well, it wasn't really a beating. More of..."

Agrid raises an eyebrow, but finds that even that movement hurts; silently he curses - that must be one helluva bruise on his forehead. "A battering of my skull?"

She laughs softly, and Agrid tries to focus on her following words instead of the soft echo of the tinkling laughter that she had just blessedly bestowed upon him...

What the hell is with that? Agrid wondered. And then he was aware of the gentle caress of his mind, the warmth surrounding him, and he knew: the Nenyan woman was a powerful, potent empath. One of the Cursed, if he wasn't incorrect. Hastily, but gently, he erected the barriers that he had learnt to build so long ago, and blocked the influence on his mind - with great effort.

The woman didn't appear to notice, which further drove home his supposition that she was unaware of her effect upon him. She was, however, Agrid noted, no less beautiful without the influence than she was with it; it was just much, much easier to concentrate. The Curse would subside once her fertility left her - which reinforced his guess that she was quite young.

[OOC: Damnation! No time to finish this post just yet - I'll edit it tomorrow. Consider it a teaser... if anyone is reading this, that is. :P]
Ma-tek
29-03-2004, 18:53
They had sat, in relative silence, for some time. Either one would occasionally murmour some polite comment regarding the tea and biscuits that the woman had brought for Agrid and herself, or wasn't it warm this year, or whatnot. An uncomfortable unease hung in the air; it was the Curse. The inevitable. The woman knew that if she spoke, her mind would immediately, instinctively extend outwards, attempting to soothe and draw the individual whom was in her company to her - for mating, principally, really. The Nenyan feminine sex drive is potent indeed - but far more subtle in those who suffer the Curse.

Quietly, Agrid noted, "You haven't told me your name, fair lady."

She did not look up from her tea; her gentle eyes bored into the slowly rippling surface of the dark brown liquid resting in the ornamental one-handled cup. Perhaps the tea gave her enough resolve to prevent the overwhelming inevitability of the Curse; Agrid doubted it. He had felt its effects already; it was not quite overwhelming, but if he were not careful, and she were not careful...

"Tarya," she told him softly. Her voice had a cooing gentle quality; it captivated him, just in those two syllables. Dimly, somewhere at the back of his mind, a voice protested that this was not real - that he was being driven to imagine these things of her, that his heart was pounding and his muscles felt like they were trembling inside not because he was actually, truly, truly drawn to her... but because of the Curse.

Agrid heard himself mutter, "The Curse," beneath his breath.

Tarya's head lifted abruptly, and she gave him a sharp look. She didn't look exactly irritated - or did Agrid's slowly warping mind disallow him from seeing anything but the undying beauty of all the stars weaved into a single, luminscent-

Agrid heaved himself back from the reverie; Tarya was speaking with annoyance. "...I don't know what it is with you men! Every single one I meet is obsessed with the Curse. Don't you know what it's like for me, you foolish little man? I don't want every man in sight! I don't want them to drool over me! And, by the Stars and thanking the Stars, am I glad that they don't physically do so!"

Lifting his hands ineffectually and (apparently) placatingly, Agrid murmoured an unheard (unspoken? he wasn't entirely sure if he had spoken, actually) protestation. Unfortunately, it was lost in the continuation of Tarya's rant, which continued. After several moments, Agrid simply stopped paying attention. Instead, he noticed small details: the way her breasts swayed ever so slightly as she paced; the vibrancy of her eyes when she was angry, as she most definitely was now; the musky odour of her scent, the gentle, constant semi-conscious push against his mind from her mind, which did not tally with her claim that it was merely the Curse at-

He felt her slap him, but he wasn't entirely aware of it until his face began to sting several seconds later. He blinked rapidly in confusion. He protested, "By the Stars, what did you do that for?"

"You were staring," she informed him, but her voice had lost its edge. She sounded displeased - but her displeasure didn't appear to be the same as before. "Sorry," she added, sounding almost mortified (it was difficult to tell - the haze over Agrid's mind and the heat that flushed through him was most distracting).

"Sorry," he murmoured, turning his eyes downwards to the floor.

The silence extended; awkward, lengthy, almost annoying in its intensity. "So," Tarya said softly, "why were they shooting at you?"

A strange question, under any circumstances.

Agrid considered the question for a moment - or thought he did; but in actuality, he blurted the first thing that came to mind: "They don't like me." He tried to ignore the fact that that was perhaps the second most inane thing he had ever said - although he couldn't remember the most inane thing, possibly because he was too busy glancing at Tarya's elegant, sensual calfs when he thought she wasn't looking.

Except, of course, she was - and she let out an exasperated sigh. "I figured that from the fact that they were shooting at you," she informed him, "which generally isn't a good indication of friendship."

He shrugged, tried to think of how to put it without giving himself away-

"You're Resistance, aren't you?"

The question shattered the haze settled over his mind, and he sat up, alert. "No," he said cautiously-

"So you're a criminal? I really should report you if that's the case-"

It was calculating of her, he observed, to back him into a corner like that. Then again, it wasn't difficult, considering his level of distraction. "No, I'm not. - Either. - It's complicated."

"So you're not Resistance, and you're not a criminal. Hmmm. I don't think I ever heard of Commonwealth intelligence agents - don't look at me like that, they're as obvious as plainclothesman: it's always written all over those stupid hats they think that are still in style - just shooting people for the fun of it. Have you?"

"Actually," Agrid stated flatly, "I have. - But..."

She stared at him. It was indeed common knowledge that the Commonwealth was not a bastion of freedom - but it wasn't spoken about. Such talk was dangerous. The fact that he would voice those thoughts, without even thinking twice about it - she suddenly felt rather nervous in his presence. She plucked at the hem of her skirt, subconsciously crossing her legs (and only now registering that she hadn't had them crossed to start with).

"Look," Agrid began, "it's very complicated. I'm not with the Dominion of Ax-turath, if that's what you're thinking. I'm..."

He broke off, lifting a hand to pluck at his lip nervously.

"You're what?" Tarya pushed.

"RISE," Agrid whispered softly, "but you won't have heard of us. Waitamoment."

He stared at her, as if some pieces in his mind were clicking into place, surprise evident in his eyes - she felt her nervousness growing under that gaze... How could he know?

"Tarya ux-Rihad," he muttered, the sudden realization lending him an air of calm that he had lacked previously.

She stood up, quickly, knocking her tea from the table. Her anxiety increased tenfold: "What?"

"Tarya ux-Rihad," he re-stated, confidently, "your father-"

"Died, fighting for the Resistance," she stated defiantly, the very act of speaking of the (familial) taboo subject giving her greater confidence.

"Yes, yes, that's what everyone believes. You know..." Now he looked nervous. "They're looking for you," he said softly, searching her face with a piercing gaze.