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Post by Nala Winston on May 4, 2009 19:32:33 GMT -5
The spring air had always held a strange fascination for the young girl. She loved the way if felt on her skin, loved the way she could go out in a pair of faded jeans, a floral top, and a light crocheted over shirt in light ochre. The air was shifted by a wind, a spring wind, which was so different from a summer wind, a fall wind, or a winter wind, and it blew strands of her platinum blonde hair around her small face as she laughed at the beauty of the world. The leaves were just unfurling, and the growth on the trees was the best color she had ever seen. The sky, which for some reason seemed so much larger, and more profound, deeper even in the spring, had been darkening as she had been exploring. Although she could have taken a horse out on a trail ride into these woods she did not imagine that the mount would enjoy the coming storm as much as the girl, so she had walked the trail, and, finding a dense copse of trees, strayed into it. The center of Pinewood Forrest, somewhere off of Pinewood Trail, was magical to a fourteen year old who had refused to allow the world to break her spirit or take away her joy, no matter how hard it tried.
The dark sky, which would have looked ominous to an average person, was like a promise to the girl. It was going to storm; she could feel it, smell it, taste it, hear it. Through the symphony of the rushing wind, the crackling leaves, the animal sounds, she could hear the storm coming. It added an element of base to the winds high oboe, the leaves violin, and the traps from the wildlife. The music swelled around her, the thunder like Steele drums, played far in the distance. It electrified the hairs on the back of her neck, this composition of nature swelling and ebbing around her. It was amazing, the music she heard in the everyday world. Who could say this was all an accident? As she reveled in her music and in the world her god had created for her she finally felt at ease in Pinewood. She had been missing her mother terribly, and the old pains from her brother’s death had remerged when she had left the base, exascerbated, though she would never tell him, by the brotherly ministrations of Max. All of the memories she and her family had made had been erased as quickly as the people who she held dear, but now that she was here, in this awesome world, this awesome song, she could make new memories. The thunder grew louder, and the wind intensified. In her personal symphony the oboes rose in pitch, followed by the violins as their young leaves were thrown hither and thither in the intensifying gusts. She could almost feel the electricity tingling in the air. The thin hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up as she breathed it all in. The rain was coming; she could feel it.
Instead of heading back home the little girl rushed further into the deserted forest until she reached a large clearing. She stood in the center, arms out, head to the sky. She would have made a strange picture if anyone had stumbled upon her. The first fleck of rain began to fall. Each was the solitary note of a xylophone, a single middle c, and then another, and another. The tones intensified, adding to the low thrum of the Steele drums, the screech of the oboes, the twang of the violins, and the light fugue of the traps. More and more complex got the xylophone part, until the girl was drenched and radiant. The rain ran in her eyes, over her hair, and in her open mouth. It tasted, imagined the girl who’d never taken anything stronger than a soda, like the finest wine. As she stood, chilled to the bone and happier than she could remember being in weeks, the first bolt of lightning struck the ground not far from her. The hairs on her neck had a field day, and a cymbal crash punctuated the intensifying melody, quickly followed by the sound of boards breaking with the base turned she always got from thunder. She spun wildly on the spot, laughing in a near maniacal way. With each successive lightning bolt and crash of thunder her laughter became more hysterical, until she finally opened her eyes. Her face was split by a smile, and she was spinning so fast she could barely make out her surroundings through the rain.
Only then did she realize the time. It was getting late, and she was soaked. Not that she minded either, but the Travises would eventually want her home, and Max would worry. She allowed her music to swell to a great crescendo, and turned on her heal, not in the least bit dizzy. As she retraced her steps out of the open area she had been inhabiting another bolt of lightning hit, this time catching a tree. She watched in awe as it split the magnificent trunk, and laughed with childish joy. Her laugh had a bell like tone, much like the music she imagined the rain made. She let the joy wash over her in waves; much like the water that ran off her small body. She turned her back on the site of the power of nature and made her way back home. Her cheeks were flushed with the excitement of the storm, and her hair was plastered darkly to her pale skin. She realized she was shivering, but it only served to heighten the intensity and experience of her natural high. Why, she wondered, did people need drugs when it thundered nearly every two weeks in the spring here? She shook her head, smiling, extinguishing her bright laughter as she watched a last bolt strike the ground. She had heard somewhere that lightning on sand made glass, and, knowing of the sandy soil, stooped to investigate. Her hands in the dirt, she looked much the small child she seemed to the outside world, not the young adult she truly was.
Time Of Day: Late afternoon Month of RP: Mid-April Others in the RP: OPEN! Attire: See?Words: 1045[/size][/color]
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Post by Toby Richardson on May 10, 2009 10:54:05 GMT -5
 Warn your warmth to turn away
Here it's December, Everyday
Press your lips to the sculptures, And surely you'll stay
For of sugar and ice,
I am made. What was he doing in the woods? It was off limits, yes, but that was what intrigued him. Lately he had been feeling like breaking a rule. It wasn't his typical self, but yet he still listened to the foreign voice at the back of his mind. Toby looked at the dark sky. It stood, gloomily, over him. The black clouds seemed to be swirling with anger and just as he took a step deeper into the woods, the sky disappeared. He shivered as a brisk wind blew past him. Leaves swirled around his feet, crinkling and crackling as they danced across the wet ground. He looked up just in time to see a girl heading deeper into the woods. He rubbed his eyes, before looking up again. Sure enough there she was. But she had just dropped out of sight seconds after he glanced again. He hesitated, before walking off after her.
He watched where he stepped, as not to step on a branch and startle her. He walked for about ten minutes, winding between thorny bushed, and ducking under low branches before he approached a clearing. He felt like he was going around in circles, but he clearly remembered his way back. There she was again. The girl had stopped at a clearing and Toby hung back near a tall oak tree. He watched her before, walking down the small slope, before stepping onto the lush grass. He cleared his throat.
"Hey, sorry if I startled you." He said, just in case he did so. "I'm Toby." He said politely. Displaying a plain smile.
Song: AFI "Love Like Winter" |
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Post by Nala Winston on May 11, 2009 19:44:46 GMT -5
The rain had battered the face of the child overflowing with joy and spirit. She had rushed at the wind, daring it to knock her down, daring the world to fight what she was, what she knew, what she believed. It was an amazing creation, a symphony of life and love, a high more powerful of that achieved by any drug. Crackles of excess electricity played over her body, making the tiny hairs covering her arms come alive in a tumble of magic. The sounds of music, heard only by the deity in faded jeans, crashed and ebbed, filling her world with light and joy. Like the first words transported by telegram, she was reveling in the joy that god had wrought. She felt thunder, heard lightning, and knew rain. The wetness against her hot face was comforting, and the strange tug of unshed tears she had been ignoring since August -- evaporated as she was baptized again by the storm. There was no question as to the symbolism, and it wasn’t wasted on the religious girl. Baptism, like it said in her raged bible, was like birth. And, what she had just done was much the same. Death. Birth. They were all the same. Part of her, though she hated to admit it, would never show it, had already overcome it, had died that hot August day, in that stuffy, sterile room, with the woman she loved more than life itself. Truth be told, another part of her had died the day she and her mother had lowered the empty coffin into the Virginia soil, and received the folded flag.
As the rain ran in little rivers over the small curves of her body, shuddered over the light crochet of her cover-up with each rise and fall of her thin chest, splashed in stars off her eyelashes and the split ends of her darkened ash hair, and ran like wine into her slightly parted lips, Nala felt baptized. Born anew into the world, ready to face life in a new town, with a new family, and no point of reference. She was, now in the heart of the storm, one with the energy pouring from the sky, crackling like liquid fire from the clouds, rumbling from heaven itself. She was a part of the music and the power, a creature ephemeral and wild, but human at the same time. She felt more acutely than she had in months. Nala had needed a thunderstorm. The days when it rains so hard she couldn’t see the horizon, and the thunder sounded like splintering with the base turned up, and the world was split by shear power uniting earth and sky were the days when she felt the most alive. Though the girl felt that life here an adventure, and saw beauty and joy, and magic in the smallest things, a thunderstorm was like a ---- to her. It transported her out of her life, turning her into something more, though the transformation was transient and incomplete, it was perfect. Thunder days were the closest Nala came to being heavenly; in the same ways that swimming was the closest she came to flying. Something, perhaps an inaudible footstep, brought the deity back to earth, back to a shivering, rain-drenched body and gritty soil.
Nala knelt, hands thrust into the soft earth, feeling around for anything hard. A snatch of storm churned fall wind caressed her flushed face, twirling a strand of soaking hair into her eye. She laughed, an addition to her symphony, and blinked hurriedly, to remove the tendril without mudding her face or stopping her search. The stars which had settled on her pale eye lashes left small trails down her chapped cheeks. The pale mouth blew a small gust of warm breath up towards the eyes, laughing droplets away, thanking them silently for their service. The hairs which had clung so desperately to her lash were finally expelled, and the light coating of water left on the delicate lashes dusted her vision with a corona of rainbows. Nala, free of the pesky hair, and unaware that she was being watched, returned to her gentle digging. The soil did have a high sand content, as she now lived in a place relatively near a coast. Her thin fingers scrabbled in the dirt, searching out the tree of glass she hoped to find in the lightning’s wake. The symphony, never forgotten, began to ebb, the oboe, violin, traps, Steele drums, and mallets fading. Nala let the music go, wising it well, and knowing she would miss it until she chose to open herself to the score again. Her left middle finger bushed against something firm, and she excavated it with her other hand. She was slightly disappointed, but not overly so, to find, not a forked glass, but a small dark stone. She pocketed what she thought to be a bit of flint, and returned to digging.
As her hands brushed away more grassy roots, like the mane of some strange subterranean creature, she felt a presence in her clearing. Stopping her search she shifted to look at the not-unwelcome invader. A boy, perhaps a few years older than she, was standing near the edge of the clearing looking at her. His face was graced by a smile, plain and polite, but lacking real feeling. He looked, to her untrained eyes, more lost, and, perhaps, confused by the sight of a teenage girl worshiping a storm. As any watcher should be. For a moment, she felt uncomfortable, in his presence. This feeling, however, passed as quickly as it had come, his easy smile making her think she had imagined the moment’s unease. He spoke ‘Hey, sorry if I startled you. I'm Toby."’, and she laughed. The water bathedr her upturned face, plastering the few strands of hair that were about her face to the pale skin and reddened cheeks. Sitting back on her heals, and rubbing her gritty palms gently on her jeans, she replied “No, you didn’t. Not really.” Again Nala laughed, her face crinkling in joy and at her own reply. She was elated from her storm. Thinking how strange she must seem to the boy, a lone in the woods in the center of a huge storm, she explained the tail end of her strange actions. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Nala. I’m new here. I live with the Travises.” She laughed at herself, the bell tone musical to her ears. “It’s an amazing storm, isn’t it?” She hadn’t meant to speak the thought, but her euphoria was so great that she wanted, more than anything, to let this boy who she had just met share in her joy .
Time Of Day: Late afternoon Month of RP: September Others in the RP: Toby! Attire: See?Words: 1123[/color][/size]
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Post by Toby Richardson on May 11, 2009 20:29:35 GMT -5
Warn your warmth to turn away
Here it's December, Everyday
Press your lips to the sculptures, And surely you'll stay
For of sugar and ice,
I am made. Toby smiled at the girl. He remained where he stood. As the girl spoke he cocked his head curiously. He wasn't sure why he had followed her, but, it was probably the idea of a girl, who appeared to be younger than him, wandering around in the woods. But, yet it wasn't his business as to what she was doing in the woods, she probably was just outside to enjoy the stormy weather. See, that was the thing about Toby. It could be a very sunny day out. With blue skies and a slight breeze, but yet he wouldn't go outside just to get out, he would go out because he had something to do. When the weather was stormy like it was now, he would go out to feel the rain on his skin. To see the bolts of lighting, to count until the thunder responded, in order to tell how far off the storm was. Of course he would go inside when the storm go dangerous and rough.
"I actually love storms. I have a strange urge to come outside whenever there is one." He laughed softly to himself, before walking up to Nala's side. He looked at the black sky and sighed with contentment. He felt so peaceful when a storm approached. Now all he couldn't wait for was the rain. The smell of rain comforted him. He would always open the windows in his room when it rained, when it rained he could fall asleep to the steady fall of the rain drops. When it rained he could slip away into his dreams, and forget the rest of the world even existed. |
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