It was a day's journey to this lost land. Broken and destitute. Dismal and inhumed.
The lady was not lost, a thin gossamer shawl wrapped over her head and around her shoulders that veiled her from the heat. She wore no shoes, yet her feet were not calloused and did not bleed. The desert was her and she was the desert. Her white gown flapped in the hot breeze, burdened with diamond shards, a remnant of the mighty maelstrom. She needed to get away. She needed to escape the life she had created for herself for a little while. Her face hidden beneath the serape was scarred still, giving her the false image of a Glasgow smile. She could have healed away the scars that Shouki had inflicted, like those on her thighs or those she had done to herself such as her wrists and her ankles but she had not done so. Deep and circumferential, these scars laid bare - fresh and purple still. She would not heal them. Not yet. It was a disgrace that she wished to endure for a time. She needed to be reminded about who she was. Not this image she falsely portrayed - that of a simple human enamored by the Kazekage. Her love utterly unrequited, her sentiments jealous and pained with each passing day as the strain of what she was and this utterly mundane life meant for her taxed her soul. Her pride insulted. Her future bleak. She wished to look behind her rather than ahead.
There was a time when man once lived under the sun. The great celestial space and all of its wonder ruled by Fuujin reached into eternity. That ended when the wicked storm crossed the desert, forcing the tribes of man to the outskirts of the desert or beneath the gilded surface in their hidden holes. The ever shifting sands and the brutal devastation that was the diamond maelstrom assaulted these ancient structures. Even after centuries of negligence, years of human affront and three decades where an endless sandstorm assaulted what little remained, remnants of 'home' still existed. 'Home' being a relatively loose term to describe Godsfall, a place seared into her memories as the site of her brothers' death. Existence was nothing more than a stream of regret, her losses insurmountable over her protracted lifespan. The last of her kind, less one. Her heart ached for her lost kin.
She brought with her rations, slipping away from the Steward's home in the dead of night. He was easy to avoid by now, she knew his patterns. She knew the melody of his heartbeat at rest. The rhythmic sound of his breath. She knew him in ways he would never discern. He wished her away, into the arms of another - 'a gentleman.' She reviled the notion: that love could be bartered or planned. In the deepest, darkest parts of her heart she was starting to feel something besides love or even lust for the Kazekage. A festering sense of hate had started within her. It was slow to start but it was growing. She remembered the moment she felt the first pang of enmity, it was when she learned that Sousuke had tethered her brother to his will. Then his rejections stung all the more and a sense of fear erupted within her, fear that she too would one day share Mikaboshi's fate. It made her angry, resentful of her 'cousin' and all that he was. His gifts, his power and authority despite his lacking skills. His small and balled into a fist as she finished her journey.
There should stood among the broken relics of structure that jutted out from the gently sloped dune. At one time, in this very site there was a massive temple made of crystal and stone that seemed to pierce the heavens. She remembered fondly the pale rainbow-like reflection the tower left in the desert as the sun's shadow graced the ground. The halls were of alabaster and gold. The walls were carved with their history, their likeness etched into those rooms. Her name in their native tongue rather than this bellicose language humanity shared. The earth then was bountiful and green, the blossoms in the courtyard opened only at night but they would fill the air with the sweetest perfume. Now there was nothing but broken hunks of dull stone, twisted tangles of thorny plants and low cacti that sparsely occupied the once grand garden. The gilded images from the temple walls were long ago sanded away. The rubble, buried under crystal-like shards, some fulgurite and some the shattered remnants of the temple tower mixed with the sand. The temple did not entirely survive the efforts of man as they plundered and burned any reminder of their former masters, yet the stone walls remained long after everything of value was stripped but now they too were taken away.
Look on my works, ye indomitable heros, and despair.
Shiori fell to her knees, at the site of her fallen kin. At the land upon which her brothers died. All that had remained of her reign, half sunken and shattered. A pair of trembling hands planted on the desert floor as her tears salted the earth. Now weep. Nothing beside this detritus remained. Round the decay of that vast wreck, effaced... amaranthine and bare these rolling halcyon dunes reached for infinity. This was the most lonesome place in the world.
WC: 907
Using ASP Item: Contract of Choice (800 ASP) as purchased Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:26 am. I am in possession of 2 of these cards, this will reduce me to 1. Seeking Youkai.
Papertrail:
It would seem that his primary objective was fulfilled. Subsidence, something most consider to be nothing more than bundled nutrients. Consideration made for 'taste', an evolutionary step to ensure that the body craved the densest options to ensure survival during times when such resources would prove scarce. Yet even in the case of such a feast, one can only contain so much before they have exceeded their fill. A vessel can contain no more than its fill, a basic law of physics that even an Ancient could not deny as this mortal shell began to crack. Spiderweb thin, it ran down the side of her face. It forked into impossibly fine tributaries down the side of her jaw. She did not scream, her voice box had already turned to dust. As her mortal body broke away, all that remained was her true form. The ethereal form she had obscured from mortal purview for centuries.
The silken vines and beautiful flowers, things of nature and beauty ensconced her still.
