Sister Dark

[The Dream Child]

One fell in dreams and slept in serenity...the other swallowed alive by shadows and manifested through death and black feathers.

Her body ached as it did every time she awakened from the night that held not dreams and no nightmares...just silence. Her mind like the river Styx. Cool, still, and deadly. A trap to so many and yet so strange and innocent for herself. Still so much to yet discover and learn.

The thought had her jerking up swiftly, grunting in pain as muscles worked and writhed beneath dried blood and feathers caked in viscera. A sigh...she still couldn't remember... a touch to her side, fingers spilled out and ran trails. Tracing.

One thing she could not forget was a certain touch. The soul she did not have and the heart that did not beat ached.

"Cael..."

Lifting to her feet she was no clumsy colt. Quick and vicious in every movement. A bird of prey ready to take upon its next kill... but this she was not aware of. Nothing but her grace... nothing but her tranquility within her confusion.

A stumbling back as something flashed and flicked...a hummingbird's heart of light beating at the back of her mind. Something like a vision, perhaps a memory...

There the man of red...but not really a man... as much as the pale girl of spiderweb hair was not much a girl as she was so much more.

Solah collapsed to her knees, eyes bleeding to reflect the darkness of her very soul... eyes that could devour the world if given the opportunity.

"She has returned..."

A whisper from a voice not her own...and she gave in again with his name whispered like a match striking against her tongue to set her spirit aflame.

[The Dream Child]

It was a rare time and period where Solah had spoken in tongues. Other languages would come natural to her. She was the Soul Collector after all... the international trade agent for the Soul Market. It wasn't just the River Styx like the old stories spoke of. Entirely different. She had to deliver the souls in order for the souls to be separated. Good, Bad, Not quite sure. You wouldn't manage how many would barter for a soul.

The Eaters of the Dead, the Despairing Ones, the Shining Ones... all wanted and tried for the souls that Solah collected and carried to the Higher One... but none would get them.

Some had tried, Some grantedly had been successful... now days though... Solah was stronger.

These days the Soul Collector had far more time to analyze her dreams, gather her thoughts. It was a slow day and the delivery had been accomplished without detour. She sipped her coffee, pitch black as the darkness itself and stared thoughtfully out at the garden maze that loomed before her.

A nonchalant shrug and she ventured within. She knew the maze like the back of her hand and she had no fear of Minotaur's coming to devour her or tear her apart. She knew there were far worse evils.

"Perhaps it is time to find the other. Not me, but like me... Different and yet the same. Perhaps soon... but not yet... no not... quite yet."

A Sigh. She was beginning to feel like a Gothic Alice that had just fallen into the rabbit hole.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ July 28, 2006 05:59 PM: Message edited by: The Dream Child ]</font>

[HellsHound]

His head had been aching for days...weeks.... he couldn't remember how long. It was a sick sort of punishment for the thoughts that he'd been having for so long. They had been tolerated as long as he had done the tasks that had been set to him, but as soon as he had considered slipping away from Him, shunning Him for the chance to relive the life that had been torn away from him that day in the village so long ago.
The headache was the reminder of just what he was and what he had been sent here to do. He was the one that could do this job like no other. That was not a surprise to him, even if the task did make him feel the cheat while he did it. However, it was the task itself that allowed him to come to this point in the first place, something that had driven him all along.
It was time to attempt just those detours again, build up the feelings, the sensations that it had taken him so long to work on before. It was like starting all over again, and while the task sounded arduous from the beginning, it was something that he was going to enjoy every moment of. Making his way forward, that long, self assured stride took him right along, that dark form all he needed to see as he was easing himself around the tables that were in his way.
The chair opposite was swept out with the light grind of wood on the floor and soon his large frame folded into that seat, nothing needed in his hand now as he was already starting to smile a bit as he was watching that contemplative form in front of him. As he dropped down, a small smile was starting to toy with the corners of his lips as he reached across the table, both of his hands closing around the mug of dark coffee and her hands that held to it. Dark eyes turned up and searched the expression of the one in front of him.
"I found you again... "

[The Dream Child]

"I am not surprised."

A murmur, elegant tilt of her head. If any other Bird she would have stared at him like a raven ready to pluck out his eyes from his very living form. Instead she regarded him with eyes like darkness impaled by starlight. A fragment of a smile to show her only sensory of emotions and affection. Deep down she recognized the fact that neither of them were meant to be together. To be paired, and yet both had shunned the ones in charge for something that was strange to them both... alien and peculiar... feelings.

A crooked smile touched her lips as she leaned back, examining him as thoughtfully as she once had the maze outside the window. "You are hurt." Not a question but observation.

Smooth the motion then, a lean forward as her palm captured her own awaiting chin as seemingly fragile fingers touched his own face, thumb smoothing along the structure of his jaw. There was the brief realization that if she wanted to, she could easily dislocate his jaw with a slight quiver of her palm and fingers. A raven's blink of eyes as she chuckled quietly.

"Ah Cael... it seems we both have paid our dues if not to see each other again..."

Quietly. Shadows and Tears her words seemed forged of,perhaps the only emotion she could muster came through the vibrations of her voice. The corners of her eyes touched with weary exhaustion. The distant realization of the life they had lived together before they were both torn away from that option.

"If only we could turn it back... but neither one of us is Time..."

Almost sarcastic that as her hand brushed along the back of his neck and came to rest there.

"We do as we have to, but I do not forget."

A whisper again and for the moment she was peaceful even as she could taste the fear and anxiety of the others around her as if it they were a flavor on the tip of her tongue. It's not often that Death and Discord would have coffee in the late afternoon in such a place like this...

Oh the Irony.

[HellsHound]

"What.... I find you once and it's a miracle... I find you twice and I don't get a second bat of an eyelash?"

A small amused smile had begun to show up on his lips with that as brows shot up slightly, watching the way that she was watching him so clinically before she made that little observation. It was the slightest shrug that was given for a moment before he was shaking his head slowly. "It's a reminder that I need to stay on task and do what I've been told. You can hardly fight your own nature sometimes." His smiled turned slightly sardonic with that before he was gesturing lightly back across toward her.

"I'm not interested in turning back time. I'm much more interested in taking advantage of the time that I have now. Immortality is hardly what it's cracked up to be." However now when she was responding he had to chuckle a bit as he was reaching out, his fingertips touching to her cheek, then the line of her jaw before he was giving her a faint little nod.

However when she mentioned that she no longer forgot his brows were jumping again, caught by surprise now as he was watching her for a moment before he was leaning closer to her, his voice lowering only for her now as he nodded faintly. "Is that a fact. Well there might just be some hope after all." For what though? Them? It was already too late for that.

[The Dream Child]

"I remember...what I am... what you are... what we were. To each other."

Midnight blue eyes stared at him thoughtfully. Clear and practical those eyes were. The lack of passion in her eyes was clear statement for those that might know her that she felt far more. A clearing of throat and she looked down.

She knew it was wrong to speak or even think of who or what they had been before who and what they were now. Ever since the dream where she saw the one that seemed like her twin but not... the Dream Keeper and the Soul Keeper stories untold...things had come clear.

"I remember... what happened before we were what we are now..."

Blue eyes snapped up at him.

"We knew each other... before... we became what we are now... before our duties from Them... came to be."

A furrow of brows, jaded images in her head of a past she was meant to forget. Of a time where she had been a farmer's daughter and there a man like Cael that was Cael and not Cael... who wished to be hers as much as she wished to be his. Lovers. Human.

"They mean for you to take me ... back to them."

Pretty little bird, Death Raven of their flock and they wanted her caged again. There the infamous raven tilt of head.

"But... you do not wish to. You wish to keep me."

Her voice was musically then. Alive as the stroke of midnight could be before death would crawl and snare up the darkness and devour it. Her laughter was joy as much as it was pain. Realization never hurt as much as it felt so good.

She wanted them to get lost in the maze and disappear...to find that other place...to free from the cages that both seemed ensnared by. If only...

[HellsHound]

Oh... wow. He would have invoked a God that he knew existed but he'd been forced to turn his back on that particular being long, long ago. All he could do now was consider that he had her now that that she did indeed remember. Not only that, but she remembered it all. He had worked so hard to achieve this very moment and now that it was here he was just sitting there like he had the moment she had been taken away the first time. It would take him a moment to begin to recover and then he was beginning to smile, the curve of his mouth curling just the corners of his mouth now as he leaned forward just a bit.

She even seemed like she felt emotions about those memories, a sensation that really got to hmi more than anything else did. And so he was pausing for a long moment again, still not managing to come up with words as he wrestled with the idea that he might have actually gotten what he wanted.

But was that really possible? Of course it wasn't. Now there were obligations, duties and responsibilities that hadn't existed before. This was wholly new, but there wasn't much to be done about them anyway. It was like trying to fight the tide, and even though he had tried that before, well that was certainly the explanation for the headache.

Not that a mere headache would stop him. Not now that he realized just how close to his goal he truly was. This was why he'd signed up in the first place, struck the deal that had given his soul away. And as he watched her while she was explaining that she knew why he was there he had to begin to nod slowly, confirming her assumption.

"They send me to do many different things. Yours sends me to bring you back. Mine sends me to take what I can from you in the process. As for me..." And now he needed the moment to try and figure out exactly what he did want. It only made sense after all. He knew that he had to be very careful when it came to making any sort of suggestion that he could make to her. "Yes. I want you. I want to remember what it we could have had, not from some age old idea, but from the sensation, the tough of the now."

Dark eyes searched hers at that point, trying to find the glimmer of understanding, of a shared desire for that sensation now as he leaned forward, his hands folding around hers, taking it firmly and watching her for a long moment.

"It may not work, but what do we really have to lose?"

Now that was a question that he couldn't bear to answer.

[The Dream Child]

"What do we have to lose... Indeed."

A soft whisper and she sighed deeply. For the first time ever, Solah felt helpless. Felt like she could scream out her anger at the world and shed a thousand tears. All of this she had once had been taken from her... and now that she had it... she didn't know what to do.

She was terrified.

"What if they do something to you..."

Midnight blue eyes licked by fragments of shattered stars widened at the notion. The sensation that tore through the core of her being at the very thought.

"No."

Dark eyes scanned the building. Tension building into her shoulders and pinching arteries that forged such a harsh structure around the wings they had grafted into her skin.

"We have to get out of here. They're coming... they will find us."

If they were going to run, they had to leave now.

A jerk of his hand and she was up, a scream like a raven cry as black wings tore from beneath her shirt and snapped out to full wing span. She could carry him with no trouble. Lifting him up even though she knew he easily could move on his own she spoke only two words.

"Trust me."

Just before they smashed through the glass window and went soaring into the air, heading straight for the labyrinth. For some reason she believed they would be able to lose them there.

[The Dream Child]

The night had arrived as a dark lover, slick and mysterious with dangerous thoughts. Once the certainty was made that they had lost whoever had been watching, she had traveled long into the night. They moved now mostly by day in disguise as such would throw off the higher powers that they were contracted to. After all, who would figure the Soul Claimer to travel by day?

Now they rested. Solah was reflective as she settled down before the small fire they had brought to life. The area around them was isolated and dead, one simple fire would not draw attention as they were amongst a den of thieves. The pretty jewels that man was so fond of had been spared.

A full meal and a night of thief vowed protection was good enough to relax. A thief's word was as good as gold in these parts. She felt strangely at peace, but the back of her mind still itched with a trigger concern that there was danger still waiting to be released. A bird not yet set free that would be a vicious predator.

Midnight soaked eyes of blue washed over Cael as she smiled lightly, poking at the fire with a stick.

"We will have to travel again in the morn... I do not know what we are heading towards, but I know that it will have its price as much as it's trophies. For tonight though, let us rest."