arrivederci, megido Registered Member #1403
Joined: 3:11:09 am GMT 02/26/09
Posts: 1864
Anecdotes: Gideon Carter
Addiction
I believe that everyone in the world has to rely on someone, and if they cannot, they use an object to fill up that role – a crutch. This is how addiction forms.
I relied on my father for a long time, even if he was not always there for me to lean on. This gave me a slightly idealistic view of the world, while still allowing me to develop my independence. When he was murdered, I sank into my books and my music. I became something of an introvert for a short period of time, developed a protective shell that was not cracked until I happened upon certain interesting documents in my mother's solar, left behind by my father. The contents of those papers caused me to step outside of the courts I'd been brought up in, and begin my search for, essentially, anything. Anything at all.
I ended finding everything I needed to become a self-aware, capable person; A faith, a second family, and a cause. I often wonder where I would be now if I had stumbled along the way – if I had never met my father, if I had fallen in with bad influences, if I had abandoned my morals even once. In the end it does not matter, because what happened, happened, and I turned out alright, so far. Not everyone can even claim that about themselves.
My first impression of Gideon Carter was an ordinary one. He seemed normal, at least compared to most people I have met and heard of on the island. Bounty hunting, I suppose, is not the most glamorous job, but I have met plenty who were not pleasant – most of them had been glorified assassins, really. Shortly after we were introduced, I realized something – he was sick.
That turned out to be false.
The next few times I met him he seemed fine. There were moments of weakness one could spy littered about his countenance, usually between battles or after a long trip. I noticed him shaking often, retching rarely, and at times he would completely lose his breath. Many of these symptoms were immediately followed by an interesting set of movements – I eventually realized he was injecting himself with some sort of substance.
I am unsure, even now, if he meant to hide it, or did not care whether everyone around him noticed, but they did. Most did not mention it, but at some point I heard someone say something about the stims, which is how I came to understand what was wrong with him. The first thing I did was speak to a healer, Michaelas, who worked at the Stone Circle temple and was involved with the academy. I learned quite a bit about the substances Gideon was using, and how I could help, if the circumstances were as I thought.
I sat him down and told him what I was seeing. Of course he dismissed me at first – I thought he would be stubborn or even just walk out the door, and had prepared for that, but I was wrong. When I expressed myself in better words, he gave way almost immediately. I saw the hesitation there, but the change was orchestrated by him. It barely even took convincing. Looking back on it, I think he knew exactly what he was doing to himself and wanted to stop. I do not know why anyone else did not try and help him. Maybe they had, and he had turned them down.
In any case, I have his supply now. I have his sleeping draught, and I have his needles and his vials. I do not like to think that I am 'weaning' him – the word is commonly used for infants. I am helping him, help himself.
I just hope he finds someone or something better than stims to rely on once he has recovered from his addiction.
arrivederci, megido Registered Member #1403
Joined: 3:11:09 am GMT 02/26/09
Posts: 1864
Mutilation
Bark grates against the skin of her shoulder as she practically collapses against a thick trunk, sliding down it until she's sitting with her legs splayed out in front of her. Her legs are bare, and she can't remember why, until she does, and the world spins as her temples throbs in confusion. She looks up, unable to close her eyes, seeing all of the green in the world shining in the dark canopy of the woods, and eventually she looks away as the leaves blur together. Her hands, idle on the ground, clench into tight little fists as she attempts to summon the mental power to force herself up - eventually she does and she walks two steps, running into another tree bodily, and the wind knocks from her lungs. She recognizes that her sight and motor controls are off, but she has to go. She doesn't know why, but she has to.
She closes her eyes and walks, forces it, step after step - she bangs an elbow on a thick, smooth trunk, her knee on a gnarled one, her forehead on another. Every time she is stopped by a tree she rests for a few seconds, but soon the dull thud of her head, the ringing of an anvil in ears, the taste of fear in the back of her throat, force her forward. She has to go.
Time passes unlike it normally does. She goes through a twilight and a dawn in the span of what feels like five minutes; she knows because the spinning and the fear do not go away, no matter how hard she wills herself, steels her resolve, tightens her fist, her mind, anything. There is nothing to grasp at, and she is alone and confused, and she can't remember what happened to all the blood that she knows is supposed to be on her leg until it is there.
It happens when the sun stops shining through the trees - not a passing of day, but rather a realization that forces nighttime upon the landscape because she knows such misfortune cannot possibly happen to her beneath sunshine and chirping birds. She hears the howl first and before she even has time to wonder why, of all things, she is running from a wolf, it is upon her.
Her scream gurgles in her throat and she keeps it down, swallows it, eats it, does not give him the pleasure. Emulating reality.
The wolf's teeth are too sharp, and she feels every single one as they sink in perfect unison into the soft flesh, the hard muscle, the frail skin of the outside of her thigh. She is on the ground now, though she does not know when the wolf knocked her over. Patches are missing from her memory already and the wolf moves on after a single bite. She moves a hand over the wound, and it is slick with blood, pooling beneath her. She knows she will not die. Her fingers feel the wound, but there are no tooth marks. She feels angles, curves; letters. A word is carved into her, and finally her head is still.
Only a monster could do such a thing. She wakes when she remembers the word, and it tastes bitter on her tongue.
---
She does not usually have nightmares. When she jerks awake, sweating lightly, she is not in her bed. She is hunched over a table and there are ink spots on her hands. The table is covered in parchments, and a large map of the island. She is still in her leathers and they feel stiff on her body, like she'd been wearing them for far too long.
Glancing right, at a row of bottles on the table and some bags left slung on chairs, she stands up. A quiver and arrows sit on the table near her hand but they are not hers, and neither is the sword. It feels profound to her somehow, and a poem finds it way to her lips, but she brushes it away; the owner of the quiver and the sword was right about her poetic tendencies.
She finds a blank parchment, and as she goes to detail her dream in writing, the memory slips away. All she can recall are the wolf's teeth, and the word. Silently lamenting at the unfair reality of it, Xavia packs up her bag and leaves the room.
---
Trouble
Trouble, he will find you, no matter where you go, oh, oh No matter if you're fast, no matter if you're slow, oh, oh. The eye of the storm and the cry in the morn, oh, oh. You're fine for a while but you start to lose control.
He's there in the dark, he's there in my heart, He waits in the wings, he has to play a part, Trouble is a friend, yes, trouble is a friend of mine, oh, oh.
Trouble is a friend, but trouble is a foe, oh, oh And no matter what I feed him, he always seems to grow, oh, oh. He sees what I see, and he knows what I know, oh, oh So don't forget as you ease on down that road, oh, oh.
He's there in the dark, he's there in my heart, He waits in the wings, he has to play a part, Trouble is a friend, yes, trouble is a friend of mine, oh, oh.
Don't be alarmed if he takes you by the arm, I won't let him win, but I'm a sucker for his charm. Trouble is a friend, trouble is a friend of mine, oh, oh.
arrivederci, megido Registered Member #1403
Joined: 3:11:09 am GMT 02/26/09
Posts: 1864
The Necklace
It did not shine, though it was an array of colors. It was not crafted out of any metal, and it did not have a clasp. It was made of five deep indents. At first the five were just red marks, outlined by small cuts, welling blood. Later, when pressure had been applied and the cuts stopped bleeding, Xavia thought maybe it was just pain; it would go away with a good night's beauty rest.
It did not. In the morning she could feel her heart beating fast, and though she wasn't frightened or traumatized by the dragonkin's actions, the mourner's warnings, her heart ached. After a moment she realized it was not her heart, but her collarbone. She stood and looked in the mirror. Disheveled dark hair, wavy and messy from sleep and bloodshot eyes from the tears that escaped her eyes as she gasped for breath, bound by a crystal, metal, monstrosity of a hand. She did not care about that though - her eyes were drawn to the necklace of bruises, the five deep purple ovals, four to the left and one larger one to the right.
In time they would go yellow and green, and after a couple of weeks they would fade completely.
Another scar she would not keep. Could not keep.
Her slender fingers touched at the purple marks gently, careful not to push, to not cause herself pain. But pain was there. The dragonkin had been right. She had wanted her message to be taken easily, but more than that she had wanted to rid herself of her own concern over the morality of her choice.
Despite it all, despite the necklace, and despite the obvious enemy she had just made, Xavia could not get the memory of leading a self-injured Alfin by his good arm to his home, to his loving partner, to his quiet life, while elsewhere in the city there were children without fathers and women and men missing their own partners, because of him. Because of his childish, insensitive actions. She could not forget what the shadow had said at the Riftstone Well, when Alfin unleashed the entity. He had been dangerous, and now he was gone. And if she had to hide her collarbone for a few weeks as a repercussion, then so be it. There were more important things than her vanity, more important things than Saeva's happiness.
---
Gone
Dark the stars and dark the moon, Hush the night and the morning loon, Tell the horses and beat on your drum, Gone their master, gone their son,
Dark the oceans, dark the sky, Hush the whales and the ocean tide, Tell the salt marsh and beat on your drum, Gone their master, gone their son,
Dark to light and light to dark, Three black carriages, three white carts, What brings us together is what pulls us apart, Gone our brother, gone our heart.
Hush the whales and the ocean tide, Tell the salt marsh and beat on your drum, Gone their master, gone their son.
[ The Island of Thain ]
Harpist's Abstraction