| Welcome to our home, a world in which anything can happen. From sprawling deserts and vast forests to massive volcanoes and luscious hot springs, Soare and the Scattered Isles are beautiful places just waiting to be explored. For the brave and the bold or the cautious and the wary, creatures of all kinds roam the earth, looking for adventure or for a place to call their own. Species of all kinds - the well-known and the unknown - thrive here, though not always in harmony. Elenlond is an original medieval fantasy RPG with a world that's as broad as it is unique. Calling on characters of all kinds, the sky's the limit in a world where boundaries are blurred and the imagination runs rampant. Restrictions are limited and members are encouraged to embrace their creativity, to see where they can go and what they can do. It's no longer just text on a page - it becomes real. Enter Our World |
| Foreign Shores; Open! | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Oct 16 2014, 12:20 PM (189 Views) | |
| Chimaed | Oct 16 2014, 12:20 PM Post #1 |
![]()
Une Fillette a qui armes ne sont pesans; et devant elle vont fuyant les ennemis, ne nul n'y dure.
![]()
|
A seal heaved itself onto the shore of Ashoka, snorting and grunting with the effort of shouldering her way through the sand. The sun gilded her fur – which was black with a white ribbon coursing over her body – with silvery sheen. The flock of seagulls that had been loitering nearby scattered away from the newcomer at her first appearance, only to come inching back when it became clear that this strange new creature could not move very fast at all. They kept half on eye on her, half an eye on the relentless sweep of the tide, and before long they learned to ignore her altogether. The seal, through her slow progress, dragged her hind fins from the water and finally beached herself on the dry sand. She rolled onto her side and breathed, her eerie white eyes opening and closing, reflecting the cloudless sky, the dunes in the distance and the nonchalant seagulls standing about her. For several minutes, the seal seemed by all appearances to be resting, but her continued grunting and snorting seemed to suggest otherwise. Then a slit opened up in her belly, and a trickle of blood spilled out onto the sand. Suddenly, those white eyes seemed detached from the skin surrounded them, as if the seal’s visage was but a mask. Soon, the eyes were gone, and the seal’s form sagged, deflating limply to drape across a form bundled up inside it. Then a hand protruded from the slit in the stomach and ran along its length to open it up. The flap of skin lifted to reveal a woman curled up within, lying there like she’d been sleeping in a wrapped-up blanket. Her skin was a rich, dark brown, but for a pale ribbon that twined over her naked flesh. She had nothing but this seal skin and a round-headed rag doll, which she clutched protectively to her chest, as if trying to protect it from thieves. She stretched out her limbs, rolled out onto the sand and stood. This sudden motion shocked the seagulls up into the air. As Chimaed stretched herself, they swirled above and shrieked their discontentment. She squinted up at their silhouettes in the sky, holding the limp doll to her chest. She scanned the dunes, shielding her eyes against the sharp sunlight, shifting from side to side as the heated sand began to burn at her feet. “There has to be someone near here,” she said to herself in the muddled language of the people of Green Turtle Key. Her voice was ragged with underuse; she only spoke now because she had spent several days in the sea without hearing any speech but for the distant, slow songs of whales. ”I passed under a fishing boat not long ago.” She swept her eyes across the dunes again and this time they caught something: a dark shape nestled between the silhouettes of two dunes. She bent over and picked up her sealskin, which was now as dry and devoid of life as if its owner had been hunted and skinned years ago. She wrapped it around her body, hiding her nudity from the sun, and set out across the burning sand. She wound her way between the dunes, gorging her eyes on the unfamiliar grasses that grew out from them like bristly hair. Sweat beaded on her skin from the heat of the air; how wondrous it was that the air could be as hot outside as it was within a fire-heated longhouse in the summer! The air even wavered with this heat, as it did above a fire. How could she ever wear clothes in such heat? Soon, the heat of the sand had her wincing and limping ahead. Finally, she emerged from the mountains of dunes and came to the flatter lands beyond, where she saw what she had been seeking: a collection of small constructions, built above the ground just as they were not built on Green Turtle Key. They were just like they were in the books, though: she remembered seeing an engraving in one of the old tomes that Aputsiaq kept and wondering how they did not sink below the earth as structures on the frozen island tended to. Aputsiaq had not known the answer, though he did not admit to it. She’d have to ask whatever people here how they kept their buildings from sinking. She picked her way across the rocky landscape, her eyes drawn to the ground that her bare feet trod, her mind swaying with heat and wonder and exhaustion. Every time she thought about where she was, she could barely believe it: she was here, she was truly here, on the mainland, on the shore of a totally new world. |
| (OFFLINE) PROFILE | QUOTE GO TO TOP |
| Jade | Oct 17 2014, 10:30 PM Post #2 |
![]() ![]()
|
[Content Advisory: Drug use.] She was one with light and sound and the music that thrummed from the depths of the earth and howled all around. All things were bliss and she was all things. Slack-jawed wonder at the majesty of existence, was the only response to the swell of euphoria that emitted from all things. Pain, sadness, regret, misery, even discomfort were all completely foreign concepts that had no place among the rainbow of white light which filled her vision even when her eyes were closed. Then it all began to melt away. She was reminded that this state of mindless glee was only a fleeting glimpse, not a perpetuity. Realizing this was the first sign that it was coming to an end all too soon. Time once more existed, and it was more fleeting than ever before. As the swells of manufactured joy began to leave her, they refused to pass quietly. Jade remembered her name amidst the assault of returning sensations, and became aware that she was no free spirit; but rather a creature in a pitiful body which ached. The rainbow of light and color was now a dingy alleyway in a small fishing town, and even the light within the shade was insufferably bright. Pain, sadness, misery, regret, and least of all discomfort came back with a vengance for time stolen from them. The foreign woman let out a piteous groan and reached desperately for a bottle nearby her sleeping mat. They were all empty, as used up as the ashen nub on her smoking stick. She had no diversions left, having saved the best for last. Jade was beginning to remember that, and she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to remember how she’d gotten it either. Most of all, Jade didn’t want to remember that just yesterday she’d earned her freedom by staying clean long enough to escape, only to spend most of what little money she had on last night’s celebration. It was a story so familiar to her aggravated mind that it made her sick, or perhaps that was the after effects of what she had put into her body. In either case she heaved on the ground near where she had slept, for what evidence implied was not the first time. Frosty eyes looked out from disheveled black hair whish she half-heartedly pushed out of her face. The urge to lay back down on her mat and just hope the sun didn’t find and bake her to death, later in the day was only resisted by the knowledge that someone would find and take her away before it got the chance. Jade didn’t have much in the way of funds; but she had her few possessions, a few coins left, and the desire to keep her freedom this time. She might not be finished with her usual line of work; but maybe just maybe she could operate on her own terms at the very least. If she avoided thinking about it too hard, it sounded like an improvement in her situation. Once her mat was rolled up and her bag was being carried by its one remaining strap, on her back, Jade realized she had no idea what time it actually was. The lack of intensive burning would indicate that probably hadn’t been noon yet; but perhaps the alley had been better shelter than she expected. Either way, it would be best to get out of the denser part of the smaller village for now, and lay low on the outskirts till nightfall when people were less likely to be overcome with sudden religious zeal and decide to stone her. Jade managed to find a well that had no one at it, leading her to believe it was very near the hottest part of the day, as that was when the wells were usually abandoned. Jade managed to fill a water skin, after drinking her fill, and so felt a touch better already. Her stomach had learned to pick its battles and so stayed silent in its hunger, as she meandered taking the shadiest route to the outer edges of town. Jade assumed the building she eventually settled on using as a sun block was some kind of storehouse, as she rarely saw anyone visit it. Hoping no one would think she was casing the place on the outskirts of the small village, she leaned against the mud-brick wall and stared out into the endless desert, expecting to fall asleep again. Just as she began to slip, letting the sweltering heat lull her back to rest, the foreign woman noticed something moving in the sands. It was slowly drawing closer, and Jade realized it was someone wandering steadily towards the village. They appeared to have no pack on them, no camel or horse with them, and yet lacked the pathetic trudge of someone lost and wandering those unforgiving wastes, barely clinging to life. Jade only watched as the stranger drew closer and closer to the town, before she was able to make out more details of their form. A woman, wandering the sands, clad in little more than a worn out pelt. Somehow, she was not surprised. Jade wondered who had discarded her, and what alleged crime she had committed to have been cast out to the sands. Yet something about her posture, her gait, seemed unlike one who had been left to die. When the stranger had gotten very near to town, Jade rose to her feet. Perhaps it was the drugs, perhaps it was the lack of them; but she felt the need to help this woman from the danger she was walking towards. Her imponderable footwear made soft taps against the hard packed and thirsting ground, as Jade strode to meet the unfamiliar woman. She cleared her throat with a cough, unsure if it would even work, hardly remembering the last time she bothered to speak to someone, and attempted to form words belonging to the common language of the area. ”Here, drink.” Jade stated as she drew near, and held out her water skin to the woman. Her eyes glanced over what they could of the incredibly dark stranger. While most people in Ashoka were dark, her skin was darker still than theirs, a contrast to Jade’s equally foreign paleness. Jade had not seen such complexion often, not since leaving angkar; and already she wondered how similar this woman’s experience in Ashoka might be to her own. ”Are you hurt?” Edited by Jade, Oct 21 2014, 03:47 PM.
|
| (OFFLINE) PROFILE | QUOTE GO TO TOP |
| Chimaed | Dec 19 2014, 11:53 AM Post #3 |
![]()
Une Fillette a qui armes ne sont pesans; et devant elle vont fuyant les ennemis, ne nul n'y dure.
![]()
|
Chimaed lifted her eyes from the earth and she saw, shimmering in the heat, the swaying figure of a walking woman. She opened her mouth, venting in the dry air, which had yet to work its way into her sea-chilled bones. She disbelieved for a moment that the woman would be coming to her. Surely she had some other destination, but was there behind her but the shore? As she came closer, she made out the pale woman's eyes, and they were fastened on her. So Chimaed looked to her unabashedly: that dark hair, those coral-coloured lips, the creaking exhaustion of her gait. It seemed to take many seasons to close the distance between them, but when they did, the woman held out a skin to Chimaed and told her, in the mainland language, to drink. Cautiously, as if she was reaching to take something from the paw of a bear, she took the skin and sniffed it. It smelled of animal, of leather, but the liquid inside smelled of nothing. Somewhat clumsily, she took a drink and found it to be water. It shouldn't have surprised her; this was what the books said, that people here carried the water around with them because there was not snow to eat, and that they always cooked their food too. She looked up to the stranger with questioning eyes. "I am not hurt. What is this place? Who are you? I have only just come here. I swam. I am a selkie." Surely this did not happen every day on the mainland, at least judging by the woman's perplexity. It was more common at home – yes, that was what she had begun to call it, even during her wordless journey through the sea – for a selkie to crawl up on land, clutching their skin. But not here, in this dry land, that seemed even more hostile to life than the deepest snows. |
| (OFFLINE) PROFILE | QUOTE GO TO TOP |
| Jade | Jan 26 2015, 11:53 PM Post #4 |
![]() ![]()
|
The dark woman seemed hesitant to take the drink offered her. While Jade could not blame a stranger for being wary, a traveler dieing of thirst is rarely hesitant when they hear the words “drink”. Having been in such a state before, she knew as much firsthand. Where exactly had she come from? Answers came in the form of questions which only presented more mysteries to Jade. How could they not know where this was, yet come from the sands? Swam? Selkie? Their accent betrayed that they were no native to Ashoka, yet it did not sound like Angkaran, or Sotoan that she was familiar with. Jade pondered for another moment before her own tale filled in the blanks for her. Jade concluded that Selkie must have been the name of this poor naked girl's homeland or tribe. She must have been taken by a slaver ship; but escaped into the ocean as it was passing by, and swam for shore. Yes, this made sense to Jade, it was not so terribly far from the shore to here. That was why the did not look or act as if the sun had been cooking them alive for days. “This place is a country called Ashoka. Water is scares, the sun is malicious, the sand is endless, and the people are cruel. My name is Jade, I was taken here against my will like you, come quickly we must get out of the sun and out of sight. This is a fishing village, kinder than most places here; but the open is still no place for a nearly-naked woman. If you do not draw predators, then you will be cooked by the sun.” Jade beckoned for the stranger to follow with haste and attempted to lead the way back to her patch of shade against the quiet building near the edge of town. While she had given in to the foolish desire to help this stranger, she was not so willing to overcome her adversity to touch on their behalf. Her ice-blue eyes darted around looking for any sign of trouble that the newcomer might have drawn; but all seemed quiet still. “Do the slavers know you escaped?” Jade asked as she continued to move towards the small patch of shade from which she had emerged to collect the stranger. |
| (OFFLINE) PROFILE | QUOTE GO TO TOP |
| Chimaed | Mar 6 2015, 03:08 PM Post #5 |
![]()
Une Fillette a qui armes ne sont pesans; et devant elle vont fuyant les ennemis, ne nul n'y dure.
![]()
|
"Ashoka," she said slowly. Yes, she supposed it must be so. She had read of the place in one of the histories in the tower, of how it had once been a land of disparate tribes but now – or at least at the time the book was written – was ruled by a powerful man called the Moghul. It was a big land, the book said, and hot and sandy, though it offered none of the information that this woman, Jade, did. "Yes, out of the sun," she said. Her skin was filmed with sweat; she was not used to such heat. Hurriedly, her feet burning on the sand, she followed Jade towards the cluster of buildings huddling together against the sun. Chimaed stared ahead, wondering which one they would go into, and what that would be like. How were they made? What did they use? After a few moments, Jade asked an unexpected question: “Do the slavers know you escaped?” Chimaed frowned severely at Jade, and spat, "I am no slave." She drew herself up, chin prodding at the air, and said, "I came here of my own will from the island that is called here Green Turtle Key. I am a shaman, and I am not under the will of any other." The dark hum of a half-lie shook in her head; she was not owned any more, anyways. She had been as good as a slave once, for all her pretensions of power. Now she held her master's sleeping soul in one clutched hand, and, though she loathed to admit it, she was at the mercy of another, even the mercy of this entire town. |
| (OFFLINE) PROFILE | QUOTE GO TO TOP |
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
![]() Our users say it best: "Zetaboards is the best forum service I have ever used." |
|
| « Previous Topic · Roleplays · Next Topic » |



















