SUMMER

Angkar: Wet season. Precipitation is common during the late afternoon and evening hours. Vegetation grows significantly during the summer, but flooding is a danger due to the monsoons that ravage the country. The rainforest sees evenly distributed rainfall throughout the season.

Ashoka: Desert: Extremely hot and dry. Violent, heavy downpours following long dryspells. Jungle: Hot and humid with frequent, violent rainstorms.

Morrim: Relatively hot and dry, but with a chance of thunderstorms from time to time. The heat may cause forest fires.

Soto: Hot and humid, tree cover is dense while ground growth is restricted. Thunderstorms see the most amount of rainfall during the season, and it can be very windy. On occasion, there are flash floods that can destroy homes and farms built on flood plains.

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March 30th, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has changed hands and is now under new management! If you have any questions, please direct them to DaringRaven! As for the rest of the announcements, including a season change, you can find them over here at the following link!

January 16, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has a new skin, all thanks to Mel! Don't forget to check out the new OTMs as well!

December 2, 2017 Winter has settled on Elenlond, bringing sleep for some and new life for others.

September 26, 2017 With the belated arrival of autumn come some interesting developments: new OTMs, a Town Crier and the release of the Elly Awards winners!

July 14, 2017 After a bit of forum clean-up, Elly Awards season has arrived! Head on over to make your nominations!

May 31, 2017 Summer has arrived and so has activity check! That's not all though – we also have some new OTMs for you and some staff changes!


WHAT IS ELENLOND?

Elenlond is an original free-form medieval fantasy RPG set on the continent of Soare and the Scattered Isles, which are located to the south in the Sea of Diverging Waters. The four chief nations of the western side of the world—Ashoka in northern Soare, Soto in western Soare, Morrim in eastern Soare, and Angkar, the largest of the Scattered Isles—continue to experience growth and prosperity since the fall of the Mianorite gods, although power struggles within the countries—or outside of them—continue to ensue.


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    And One Alone Upon the Sea; Nausicaa~
    Topic Started: Jul 16 2013, 07:17 AM (444 Views)
    Nevneni
    Member Avatar
    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    (TRIGGER WARNING: This is some of the darkest stuff I've ever written, including talk about rape and its aftermath, suicidal ideation and just some generally depressing and upsetting thinking. Be careful.)

    Nevneni's mother paced around the kitchen of their old home, cradling something in her arms like it was a baby. Nevneni never seemed to see it; perhaps her eyes slid off or maybe she simply forgot upon waking. What she did remember later was a vague sense of revulsion, as if gazing from a distance at something shocking. Long after the baby was gone, she still felt the disgust. She could still feel its presence.
    Nevneni asked Alleis, "Who is that?" and in that moment she could feel the despair and weariness that poured off her mother, seeping from her sky-eyes, her lemon-hair, her lily-skin.
    "It's a wind egg, Nevneni," she said, "Just another wind egg."
    Nevneni averted her eyes in disgust and horror, and for a long time she picked thorns out of her skin and tossed them to the ground. When she looked up, Alleis was angry, standing over the table with a livid red face. Her arms were empty. Nevneni leapt away and saw her feet drag in the blood that was seeping out from under the table. She recoiled but her mother advanced, her voice loud and strident with barely-contained rage. "You have to find him," she told her, holding up a long, straight finger, "You have to find him and make him repent, make him pay. Do you hear me?"
    Nevneni cried for a long time. She did it again and again, in various rooms, under the bed, in the forest, always rocking in spot, holding herself. Every time her mother found her and she raged, she told Nevneni that she had failed first of all by getting herself into such a situation and now she had failed by not doing something about it. "Always rocking and crying, rocking crying" she hissed, pulling Nevneni's hair, pushing her against the walls, "But never doing. He needs to pay. To pay!"
    It was all so familiar. This had all happened before, Nevneni thought, but it had been so different.
    Finally, she stood in the kitchen again, scraping the blood off her shoes, and she listened to her mother and ran out the front door, through the garden, through a whole tangle of thorns and out into the town. She stood on the main street, the empty main street, and looked at the buildings around her, which were derelict and in shadows. Desperately, she looked for clues as to where he might be, scanning the earth, opening the window shutters, pushing open broken doors, but there was nothing, and now she did not know where to go next.
    Edited by Nevneni, May 23 2014, 12:47 PM.
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    Nausicaa


    It was a dream, but she didn't know it was a dream—it was a dream that which blended seamlessly with her reality.

    The old, worn, rundown, even, buildings did not phase her as her bare feet pressed into the cobblestone, rough against her delicate skin. The empty street did not perturb her as an eerie silence pressed in, her long skirt swishing gently against her legs—a reminder, one that she wished she could forget. Her sapphire eyes surveyed the insides of each building when they had a window to offer, and in each building she noticed almost nothing. Had the people abandoned this place? Maybe. What for? She couldn't even make an educated guess.

    Growing tired of the cobblestone scraping at her feet, Nausicaa took interest in a tack shop. She didn't own a horse—in fact, she couldn't even ride one—but maybe she could find some sort of clue as to what had happened to the denizens of the town—where they had gone and why they had left at all.

    When she entered the shop, whose door had been left unlocked, odd but not quite unexpected, she found that all of the tack—bridles, bits, saddles, everything the owner of a horse could ever desire—had been left in pristine condition. Odd, she thought, not the first time she had encountered that word since she'd stumbled on the town. If the buildings were so neglected, why not the shop's contents, too?

    Nausicaa was surveying a particularly elaborate saddle—fit with drapes embroidered with someone's family crest—when she heard the shutters at the window bang. The sound made her jump, and the naiad whipped around, reaching out to grab her glaive—which she didn't have. Panic welled up inside her for a moment, before she breathed deeply, fully, into her belly, squared her shoulders, and walked slowly to the window. The shutters had been only partially ajar; now they were completely drawn back, and one appeared to be hanging from only one of its hinges. Peering out the window, the naiad could see a lone figure in the street. Although looks were almost always deceiving, Nausi decided to trust her gut—which told her the entity was not a threat—and venture back onto the street. As she gently closed the tack shop's door behind her, she could feel a light breeze tugging at both the long-sleeved blouse she wore and her skirt.

    "Excuse me," she called to the figure, shoe back was to her. "Excuse me! Do you know what happened to this town? It just seems so... forgotten."
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    Nevneni
    Member Avatar
    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    Nevneni was about midway up the main street when she felt a haunting presence near her. She stopped, aware of a confluence of life in the air. There was someone else here, but it wasn't only that. It was as if some sacred spirit had descended upon the place, like a fluttering veil released to fall upon the town. The spirit had a guiding hand; this she felt moments before it told Nevneni where to look.

    The shutters of Osibos' tack shop slammed open of their own accord, just as she had been throwing open windows not long before. The next moment she was closer, peering in to the lonely darkness, and she saw a strange woman, quite unlike anything she'd ever seen. She had horns and for hair, a glimmer of water that seemed to flow like a never-ending stream.

    The woman called to her, asking what had happened to the place. Nevneni had to think about it -- what had happened here. The story wove itself out before her in the very next moment, she told the woman. "I used to live here, but I left and now it has died. If I remember it as empty, and I'm the only one outside there who remembers, then who is to say that it is not empty?"

    Because, when she had left, it had been nighttime and all the people were gone and there was no one to help her. She hadn't been alone, though: he had been there, supported on her small, young shoulders. They had been going somewhere, but where? If she could remember that, then she could find him, because that was what she was supposed to do. Her mother had told her so.

    "Who are you? Why are you here?" she asked, and then after only a moment's pause, she said, "I'm looking for a man. He might be the only person here, aside from my mother. Have you seen anyone? Do you know where he might be?"
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    Nausicaa


    Nausicaa felt a degree of uncertainty creep into her thoughts. The answer about what had happened here seemed so... cryptic.

    "I was just passing through," Nausicaa replied. It wasn't a lie, but it entirely ignored the fact that she was an intruder in someone else's dream and that "passing through" meant something not unlike being a casual observer. Observation tended to work better, however, when the dreamer had more people present in her dream. "My name is Nausicaa." The woman's questions felt intrusive, but was that not the very nature of what the naiad herself did? She couldn't blame her; she probably hadn't expected anybody else to be here, if the town was supposed to be empty.

    The naiad shook her head. "I haven't seen anyone. I can help you look, if you like." It seemed like the good thing to do, and if the barrage of questions was an indication, the woman sounded as though there was some urgency, or that maybe she'd already been looking and had been unable to find him. But Nausicaa could only guess how large the town was—maybe it was a city, instead; she'd only seen this one street so far. What places the dreamer had checked and which ones were still left to be checked was uncertain.

    "What does he look like? Would he be anywhere in particular? A favourite hiding place?"

    She was taller than the dreamer, and as Nausicaa took a moment to examine the person she'd now offered to help, noting the sadness that flickered in her eyes, the hunched posture, she could see that something had wounded her deeply; it showed with little restraint. It made the naiad feel more resolve in her decision to help the dreamer find the person she was looking for, to ease her mind just a touch.
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    Nevneni
    Member Avatar
    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    What was her name, what should she call herself? Somehow, that very thing was in question, and she wanted to say a lot of things, like I am...dying, or I am not here, or I poisoned myself with belladonna, that's why I don't remember. There was a long moment of hesitation where she tried to find her given name, rather than finding the one that fully described her, and finally: "I am Nevneni."

    Nevneni smiled, glad that she had found help. She thanked Nausicaa, thinking that the sooner she found him, then sooner this would be over with. "His name is Aravin," she explained, "He is tall, brown hair, dark eyes, wide waist, always looks angry. He's usually drunk. He had a home, but where was it? Somewhere along this street, or off it, or...?" She looked around wonderingly, her brow furrowed.

    Surely she had been there before, she had guided him there once when the town was as empty as it was now. Then everything had happened and she left. But she'd come back, hadn't she? And she had gone down the empty street again, but why? It had seemed a lot like this time, in that she was doing something her mother had told her to do, but she had been angry too. She just needed to remember this, and then she could find him.

    The wind blew, and from some distant place came the roar of the ocean. There was no shore near Nevneni's hometown, but she didn't bat an eyelash at it. She hardly seemed to notice it. "Well, I think it was this way," she said, pointing down the street in the direction she had been going, "We may as well keep walking until I remember a little more. I don't know why I've forgotten...it's very strange, isn't it?"

    As they walked, Nevneni was silent for a while, ruminating as she peered here and there, craning her necks to see into windows, past the crooked shutters that hung open like mouths. After a bit, she suddenly spoke: "Well, where is it that you were passing through to? It's not like you'll get much from this place, it's empty. Has been that way for a while." She hesitated, looking at the buildings, and said, "Though it doesn't look like it...still looks pretty nice...Well, whatever. There's not much around here to be going to. Are you seeing family somewhere? Or are you trying to find someone too, so you can make them pay?"
    Edited by Nevneni, Dec 18 2013, 11:51 AM.
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    Nausicaa


    The way Nevneni talked about the person she was looking for said volumes to Nausicaa about how the other woman felt. Despite her quietness and uncertainty, there was a sense of pain there accompanied by perhaps even rage. But the naiad didn’t dare ask. She knew better than to be a trigger—she knew better than to give someone the opportunity to relive their suffering and to end their life because of it. So she didn’t say a word and only nodded when Nevneni finished explaining what he was like by appearance and temperament before she took to following. In a matter of steps their pace matched.

    “Have you ever had a word or a thought on the tip of your tongue? And you know it’s there and you just can’t quite remember it even though you know it should be easy? Is this like that? Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to make the connection, or remember.” Nausi, of course, had a guess that it had something to do with being in a dream, but she didn’t make a habit out of telling the dreamer where they were. The issue with doing that was that a semi-controlled environment—or as controlled as dreams could get, which varied greatly—could become entirely unpredictable. Nausicaa couldn’t help but feel that Nevneni’s dreams could quickly head that way if her emotions started to get the better of her, or if she let the pain creep in.

    Nausicaa looked left and right as they walked, making quick glances at and through shop windows, down alleys, around crates and barrels if they were left abandoned. But she saw nothing, no life at all, and was beginning to doubt that Nevneni would find the man she was looking for. It probably didn’t matter anyway because of the unconscious nature of this adventure, but she had to maintain appearances, nonetheless. She was ruminating on how best to reply when the other woman expressed her vendetta. Nausi glanced at her sharply, frowning.

    Of course there was somebody she wanted to make pay. Two somebodies, in fact. But the first was the worst, the man she’d given her heart and soul to after she’d spent so much of her time in his dreams. He’d figured out he was dreaming when he awoke time and again and she was never there, and when he finally confronted her about it, she’d explained and, after he’d pressured her, agreed to meet with him in the physical world. The end result, after a few of those meetings, had been the most agonizing weeks of her life, both mentally and physically. It was to her benefit that Nausicaa didn’t dream; if she did, she would have been plagued by nightmares.

    “No, I’m not out to make someone pay. He’s already done that.” She said it with little feeling, as if she were completely detached from the ordeal. That was the product of years of training, of forcing herself not to react to the thoughts that sometimes passed through her mind. “I’m not really visiting family, either. Just wandering to the next stop, and then the one after that, wherever I end up. Somewhere nice, I hope, and with more people.”

    The streets were still barren, the houses still desolate. “Is there a place he likes to be?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper, soft and uncertain. “The man you want to hurt, does he have a favourite place?” Nevneni could take that however she saw fit.
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    Nevneni
    Member Avatar
    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    Nevneni frowned. "Yes...it is exactly like that. Normally my memory works so well – too well, even – but not today." She, too, peered through windows, craned her neck to see through the spaces where the doors hung ajar, but there was no one. Just the two of them: the woman who needed to make someone pay, much against her own will, and the woman who was simply passing through.

    Nevneni meant to ask why someone had to pay, but it got lost somewhere in the moment, in the swelling and falling intention of the dream. She nearly forgot where she was and what she was doing, because something else happened and her mind was pulled to it. "I think he-" she had been saying, but then she realised how far ahead the road stretched and where it led. The town was tapering out, there was the town bridge up ahead and the the river in which she had washed her filthy body, crying, scraping herself with sand. They had passed Aravin's house and Nevneni hadn't even realised it; it was empty, just like the rest, and that didn't matter, because that wasn't the place where he lived in her mind, not any longer.

    He didn't live up there either, not up that long, straight, road. There was something against the grey sky there, subtle as the moonlight on the rafters of Aravin's home, back when she had clung to that image, dragging her soul away from the agony of him fucking her. The tower pierced the heavens and it was pale and so frustratingly indistinct. Not that it was hard to see, but she couldn't put her mind to it. It wavered in and out of her attention even as she tried to talk, her words an indistinct ramble about Aravin and his home, Aravin and his wife, Aravin and everything he had done. Aravin and the moonlight on the rafters, Aravin and the cricketsong, Aravin and his crushing arms and his suffocating darkness. Aravin and Nevneni, Aravin and Nevneni. But it was always there, this tower, waiting for her to notice once it once again.

    It filled Nevneni with a lingering dread. The road went there some day, but when would she arrive? In the foggy history of that dream, she had tried to go up that road so many times but was always stopped by something. When she considered that foggy history in the moments when she had no words, she thought that she had come farther up this road than ever before. It was only a matter of time–

    But then, movement at the side of the road, amongst the trees. "It's him!" she cried, and she took off running. She plunged into the forest, moving in weird leaps and bounds, pushing herself against the air and wending between the trees without ever getting scratched. The forest opened itself up to her but he was always ahead, little more than a hint of brown hair, a scrap of white shirt glimpsed between the leaves. Somewhere in the chase, misty day became deep night. Autumn clouds gave way to the openness of a starry summer sky. The crickets sang once again.
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    Nausicaa


    The silenced that stretched between them was not unlike the endless road ahead of them. And it was long and punctuated by loneliness and even pain. Nausicaa peered down it, the only sound Nevneni’s voice, but what she said didn’t leave much space for Nausicaa to say anything in return. Her words were more like idle musings and incomplete thoughts. The naiad realized that there was something distinctly sad about this dream, but she couldn’t figure out what that was. It had to do with the man Nevneni was looking for, though—of that she was certain.

    The bushes ahead rustled. Nevneni gave chase after she’d declared it was him, and Nausicaa followed on her heels, ducking into the forest. The movements of other things, whether they were sentient or not, was almost always different in dreams, like gravity didn’t exist or only some sort of sub-par version of physics operated. The trees bent away from them, especially Nevneni, but they seemed to do the same for the man she was looking for, too. Day became night in a matter of seconds, but the naiad didn’t really hear the cricket song or see the clear black sky as she kept her eyes trained on the man. Focusing intently on the dream, she conjured a wall, introducing it far ahead of the three of them. It sprang up instantly and seemed to extend endlessly, and unlike the trees, it would not bend out of his way. It would for her and Nevneni if the dreamwalker so desired it, but Nausi had no intention of letting him get away. If she had to, she would make more walls until he was boxed in. She didn’t understand what his relationship to Nevneni was, but she knew he’d hurt her, and if this was the only way Nevneni could get her revenge, Nausi would make it as easy for her as she could manage. It didn’t matter if the vendetta had already been dealt with in the real world—sometimes catharsis came from exacting it over and over again.

    “Unless he turns back, he can only have gone left or right,” she said as they reached the wall. She glanced left and right before she saw a flash of his white shirt and pointed. “There!” Nausicaa connected with the trees in the dream, bending their strong trunks towards him so that they impeded his progress. She called on the shrubs, too, to tangle up his feet to either slow him down or trip him. And the roots of those shrubs and trees arched higher from the ground to make more hazards. He probably had endless stamina because of the dream, but eventually they’d find him.

    Run, run, little rabbit. Sooner or later you’ll be caught.

    Nausi generally tried not to interfere in dreams too much unless it was a life-or-death situation, but the more time she spent with Nevneni, the more she became certain she needed to help her.
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    Nevneni
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    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    A wall threw itself up in front of Aravin and, a moment later, she saw Aravin's form flickering to the left. He ran along the wall, never looking back. Nevneni adjusted her course, running the length of the hypotenuse between them, her chest bursting not with the exertion but with a rare and red feeling: anger. Gods, he deserved the fears of the hunt, he deserved so much worse than that because he had caught her in a trap, hauled her away like a frightened deer and slit her throat. She truly remembered herself as that deer, bleeding out on his bed for years and years, watching the tide of her blood flow endlessly away. She had spent decades dying, centuries even; he could pay for the rest of his life and never understand.

    Had he ever had an ounce of regret? She'd come back to her home town, she remembered that now. Her mind abandoned the chase for that moment, slipping into some memory that poisons and misery had kept obscured for this past year. Nausicaa was there too, but Nevneni didn't notice because the memory burst out like water from a dam and stole her away. She sat in the kitchen a year ago, the summer heat floating in through the front door and then Aravin came in through the door too, and her mother had greeted him with a smile, her sister with jokes. Her father did not greet him because her father was nothing now, sitting in the corner with closed eyes, his breath rumbling and sick. Her father did not know who Aravin was, her father was not even the same person who, on the night of her birthday, had told Nevneni to walk the drunken Aravin home, not knowing that he was throwing his fawn into a trap. Aravin smiled at Nevneni and she felt his eyes ripping off her clothes, stabbing into her flesh and gods, how toothsome she was to him, even as she sat there with her eyes like holes and her back collapsing like an old cathedral.

    And when Aravin sat down by her father, how dare he, that thief pretending to care for his king, another shape came in through the door, small and thin and nervous. A woman, his wife, how dare he, how dare he? She was like Ysmail made young again, but not for her appearance; no, this sweet possession was blonde and creamy and small. She was like Ysmail because Nevneni looked in her eyes and saw her dying too, in just the way Ysmail had been dying long before she breathed and shat and vomited her last on this same kitchen table. Nevneni saw the wife holding a hand to her ribs, the spot where Aravin had doubtless hit her and the spot from which she bled and bled like a trapped deer. The dream could not handle the pressure of her emotions: the walls of the room warped inwards, casting deep shadows, while the timbers screamed with weight and heat. Nevneni felt that same hot, red drink boiling up in her, she thought she'd finally die from such rage and it would all be over. How dare he? How dare he?

    Nevneni had lived, of course, she had lived with that rage for quite some time, waking up in the night groaning in fear, staring Gweson in the eyes and sinking closer, sitting up in her old tree under the moon and holding herself. It was always there, even when she pretended that it wasn't, pounding through her veins, fucking her just as much as Aravin had. She'd died for centuries, why couldn't she do this for centuries as well?

    But then her mother sat with her in the kitchen one night, a candle between them on the table where Ysmail died, and she begged to know why Nevneni had really left. All the lies about being a fledgling bird, about being curious about the world and flying away had never really convinced her mother, and so Nevneni said it, expressing herself in flowered euphemisms because she had never, ever, been able to say the word that defined what he had done to her. Alleis said it of course, she cried and raged and, in a moment that filled up her dream, she pulled her face from her tear-soaked hands and stared at Nevneni and said, "He needs to pay."

    So here she was, chasing that man down in the forest and then, quite unexpectedly, she was on top of him, knife in his breast. She wrenched it out and blood fountained out of his body so quickly because he was no dying deer, he was lucky and died away fast as such men were wont to do, never having to suffer for what they did. His eyes were as wide as moons, his wet mouth groping for words, spitting, bleeding. The blade came up again, darted down, glanced off ribs and penetrated his organs. He lurched up, almost as if he invited the blade into him. Of course, isn't that what he had thought of her when he fucked her and she tried to get away? It had been the only reciprocation he'd ever needed. "How dare you? Do you understand yet, do you?" she cried, her wet face crinkling with the effort. Such ignominy, that she be crying for his last moments, that he would die thinking her in some part remorseful. Couldn't she just be like him, never regretting the life she'd stolen?

    The blade came out again, sucking at the flesh until it was free. Another gout of blood came, soaking her dress where it covered her knees. He rattled, struggling with the air, his eyes on her contorted face, and then he gave up. His body was still there, limp and bleeding, but he was gone. How lucky he was, she thought, dropping her knife and rolling away. Blood soaked from the leaves into the back of her dress and it was something about the sickly heat that brought on the fear and remorse. What a lucky man he was, to pay with his death. She'd paid with her life for so long, could she not die to pay for this murder?

    But Nevneni stood now, staring at Nausicaa. Nevneni was clean of blood and still alive, this had happened a year ago and she had never quite paid enough. The distant roar of waves on the shore was not so distant now. She had only just become aware of the tide thundering through the trees when the water snatched her feet out from under her. She slipped under the ocean's surface, unable to fight the undertow's fist. The dark waters filled up the forest, they washed away Aravin and his blood and cast the knife away to the bottom of the sea. They swept Nevneni away, then thrust her up above the stormy waters. She struggled to stay up, her murderous eyes casting about in the night as she screamed Nausicaa's name, seeking her because there was nothing else left.
    Edited by Nevneni, Aug 6 2014, 06:40 PM.
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    Nausicaa


    The dream shifted rapidly as they chased down the man Nevneni looked for. The forest scene melted away and became that of a kitchen, and there he was, entering through the door. There were other people in the vicinity, people Nausicaa could only assume were Nevneni’s relatives. His smile sent chills down the naiad’s spine, making her stiffen where she stood now in the corner, catching her breath. She considered trying to end the nightmare in that moment as she watched him cross to where an older man sat. Another woman coming into the household caught Nausicaa's attention, however, and she looked over, watching her. The woman was small, skittish—she reminded Nausi of a deer. The naiad’s eyes returned to the man as the walls caved inwards and the timbers shrieked their pain and the room felt as if it were going to boil them all to death.

    But the image lasted but a second longer, winked out of existence. The shift was quick, seamless. Nausi still stood in the kitchen in the corner, but now it was just the one woman and Neveneni. The woman held her face in her hands and the dreamwalker guessed she must be the Nevneni’s mother. And as soon as the mother uttered three words—three critical words—the dream shifted again.

    They were back in the forest. Nausicaa blinked, jarred for a second by the familiarity of the forest, even though she’d been in it for maybe a few minutes. She turned her head, looking for Nevneni, when she saw her close to the ground, wielding a knife. Nevneni stabbed the person on the ground over and over again, blood spraying. It soaked her clothes and the knife, and the person underneath of her. She screamed at them, and Nausi knew without a doubt it was him. And Nevneni kept stabbing until his last breath. The wheeze stopped and the forest was quiet again. Nevneni rolled off of him, the leaves clinging to her dress and her body, sticky with blood. The smell was pungent in the intense heat of the dream; it took everything Nausi had not to turn and vomit. Instead her stomach did flips and spirals. She tasted warm bile in the back of her throat and swallowed it. Barely.

    They stared at each other for a moment, Nausicaa’s eyes searching Nevneni’s. She still hadn’t said anything, wouldn’t say anything. But she knew as she stared into the other woman’s eyes that Nevneni had killed her tormentor at some point in the past. She still hadn’t quite grasped what had happened between the man and Nevneni because the dream had moved too quickly to piece it all together, but she knew without a doubt that he deserved it. She could see that as their gazes held. It was only the roar of the ocean that pulled Nausicaa’s attention away from Nevneni.

    The water crashed through the trees and swept Nevneni up. Nausicaa imagined the ground beneath her was actually rock. She dropped to a crouch with her hands, white-knuckled, gripping the jagged edges as the current grabbed the slab and drew her up. The wind whistled through the naiad’s ears and her hair whipped in her face. She heard Nevneni call out for her before the waves swallowed the other woman. Nausicaa had no way to pinpoint where Nevneni was. Concentrating, she tried to redirect the waves to a place where the dreamer might be able to wash up, like a shoreline. But there was so much power behind those waves, and power within the dream itself. The naiad fought against them both, trying to force it towards a more peaceful conclusion.
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    Nevneni
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    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    Nevneni had tried to die so many times and had never succeeded. How unfair was that? She'd left home – that was trying to die – as was eating handfuls of bitter rue in the forest, as was healing people and never healing herself, as was feeding her blood to Vorkael, throwing herself in the ocean, coming home, getting poisoned, loving Vorkael, trying to live happily...It was all a matter of trying to die, in one way or another, trying to kill the piece of her that had been fucked by Aravin either by living on without it or dying along with it. But that piece of her was all of her; why hadn't she paid attention to that fact all along? There was no part of her not fucked by him, there was no way for her to live unless that lived too. To the ocean then, that pounding sea, to let that fuck her too, to beat her to death the way Aravin couldn't.

    She turned her face up to the sky, which was as dark as a veil of velvet. Spots of fire illuminated the distant, wavering horizon, showing her one fleeting glimpse of the white tower's thick base before she dropped under the water. She'd give up once again, knowing what she had done. There was no Sinadryn now, and maybe Nausicaa, who had knew her secret would simply let her die. "I am so sick of this," she said, feeling her gross flesh getting dragged downwards, feet first, "I am so tired of dying." Why was Aravin so lucky? He had lived entirely, wholly, until the blade struck his chest; and then it took him only seconds to do what Nevneni had been trying to do for years.

    The tides under the water were gentler. She drifted down, swaying only slightly, her naked flesh white and corpse-like in the dim light that filtered from above. She believed herself to be drowning, but of course she was only asleep, and so she still breathed, even under the ocean, even as the waters deposited her at the bottom of the sea. Only the smallest of things of moved here, such as a gust of silvery fish or a crab dragging its pair of claws dryly across the sand.

    "Is this what it is like to die?" She'd asked Vorkael what it was like once, and now she couldn't really remember exactly what he had said, but it seemed to have been something like this: sitting where there was nothing, or close to nothing, with only a slight, slow tide tangling through her hair and spreading it out like a halo.

    So why wasn't it gone? Nevneni could still feel a the thorns bundled up in her chest, scraping at her fleshy cavities and drawing the blood that simply would not stop flowing through her. She stared at the crab that hefted its claws across the deep, thinking that maybe it had died too, only to find out that death was life carried on somewhere else. She felt her throat clench up, hot as a ring in the fireplace, and began to cry, her tears hot on her cheeks. She cried in her bed as well, though she did not know it; her soul and her flesh wept together because she feared they always would.
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    Nausicaa


    Nevneni disappeared under the waves. The sea roiled around the naiad. Her hands hurt from holding the slab so tight. She looked into the water, looked for Nevneni, couldn't find her. It was a dream. The dreamer would not die, and unless something catastrophic happened, neither would the dreamwalker in this environ. Breathing deeply to steady herself, Nausicaa took one last look before she half-dove, half-twisted off of the slab. If the waters had been still, not a single splash would have followed in her wake.

    She was a creature of fresh water. She lived and breathed in water; it nurtured and sustained her—it kept her alive in a way that no human could ever understand. It was her lifeblood.

    It cleansed her, even when it hurt.

    She swam. She struggled and fought against her blouse and her skirt. She managed to kick off her sandals. The deeper she sank, the easier it became. She wished to shed her clothing and embrace her heritage—horns or not, succubi blood or not—and fully give in to the naiad half, but the thought caused bile to rise up the back of her throat. Chit, her stalker, flashed through her mind, and the demon from the forest, and a once-upon-a-time love interest. Nausicaa may not have felt that pain much, but it was there in her subconscious. It guided her behaviours.

    There, at the bottom! Nausicaa kicked harder. She angled her body so that her feet lightly touched down in the sand. How odd that dreams let her do what basic principles in the real world said were impossible.

    Nausicaa couldn't see the tears, but she could tell by Nevneni's expression.

    "I..." What could she say? Nothing. But there must be something. Anything. "I... A man beat me once. To an inch of my life. I didn't give him what he wanted. And another... he tried to do to me what happened to you. It's ok. There's no shame. He deserved to die. If I... If I could find the man who beat me, I'd kill him. I would make him feel what I felt." Nausicaa's tone hardened, though her expression remained soft. She reached out, the sleeves of her blouse billowing from the currents. A fish swam into her cupped hand and she watched it.

    "But I'd make sure I finished the job."

    She glanced at Nevneni.

    "If you compare yourself to him, he'll continue to make you feel miserable. He holds no power unless you give it to him. Life, death, it doesn't matter—our imaginations give life to the dead. Suffering is revenge drawn out. You did him a kindness killing him quick as you did. You were a better person—are a better person. Pry his fingers from around your heart and your soul. Drown his memory and let him go."
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    Nevneni
    Member Avatar
    Asperges me hysopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

    Nevneni looked up to see the dim light rippling through the surface of the water far above her. Then, in defiance of the pattern of crumpled waves, a silhouette descended. Nausicaa dropped down to the sand, light as an angel, and after a moment, she found the words she needed.

    So she knew this suffering too, in her own way. No matter how it happened, she had once had her own existence imprisoned and abused by another. Nevneni's aching chest opened up to this strange woman: she wished that, somehow, there had been no one else in the world who had suffered what she did, but she was so glad that she was not alone down here.

    In those moments, Nevneni understood and believed what Nausicaa said: she had done what she needed to and she was not to suffer for it and she could live on, she could be absolved. It was the conviction that would be lacking in the later months of her life, for, though she knew the reason of the argument, she always failed to feel it settling into her chest, and instead she'd feel it sitting at odds with her insides, which so rigidly rejected truth.

    Nevneni never said anything in return. Instead, she noticed that there were others there in the deep with them, their indistinct shapes far off and faceless. Out of the curtains of dark water came two women: the two wives of Aravin, Ysmail and Rumi, walking hand in hand. The slow currents of the ocean caressed their bare bodies and sent their hair fanning out behind them: two veils of black and palest white. There were so many people down here, Nevneni realised, men and women who were sad in this one way, but were far away from the ones who hurt them. It was not the way they'd imagined their lives going, but it was at least a haven and, if they could find each other in these shadows, they'd have each other.

    It was then that Nevneni woke, her damp gaze rolling about her darkened room. She caught a glance of the flash of moonlight across the ceiling and desperately closed her eyes, trying to sleep again so as to recapture that beautiful moment beneath the waves and to forever forget the harsh barbs that she accepted – wrongly – as truth. For a moment, she thought she saw that distant haven again, but sleep would not come, and slowly she poured into wakefulness.

    So much had changed in a few hours of sleep. She pushed herself up to sitting and stared blankly across the room, remembering again and again the jolt of the blade in Aravin's body and the hot blood that poured so fruitfully out of him. She could not retain that feeling, that true feeling of guiltlessness. Every time she thought she nearly had it in place, it slipped back out again, and she felt cold and tingling and ill. But the dawn came eventually, and the days went on, and she lived still.
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