sinding,

I have always despised the heat and the way that the smell of a hard, stale rain seems to linger like the afterthought of yesterday's nightmare. Its the kind of smell that is light and has long sharp claws; nails that clench the skin between sharp, shiny tips and pinch -- I can feel it now as I meander this way and then that way, going anywhere so long as its neither here nor there. The way the heat writhes through the air, moist and thick, and against my skin is like breathing in the shadows at 3AM: I can feel it there where I don't want to feel anything -- piercing deep, perforating, permeating. I can't shake it. Shrugging my shoulders won't knock it away. A cold, hard glance won't freeze it dead. It's a feeling that I know well and have run from before; that I run from every time the rain stops. It's the same kind of feeling that seeing her again gives me -- the unshakable, relentless battering of a wave that nags and nags and nags at the back of my skull until my mouth unzips and I have only this: salt in my mouth, burning holes in the scabs her memories have left behind. She erodes against me even now, Mikali. She tears me down piece by fickle, feeble piece, and I can feel every stroke, each dilated streak of her fingernail down my spine, while the contours of her marbled face and marbled words tangle in the bedlam erupting so unforgivably in my head.

Mikali: I could call her demoness and sea-witch. I could chase her down with blood-lit torch and glistening pitchfork. I could bind her to the stake and set her aflame; hope that somehow I can make her feel even a single drop of how I feel right now. She is a vampire though: she feeds from me, both in my memory and then, just moments ago, when I saw her again. I would that I could cast her from sight and do to her all the unthinkable horrors to which I, for the next thousand years, shall suffer myself. I wish, and I would, but even as I damn her to the very pits and the oblivion of ice and fire, I cannot completely bring myself to loathe her as, once, I would have done so eagerly. Had she not shown me hurt then, as I left her again (and as I will again and again?) And if it hurts her then why, why must it hurt me? For it does -- it did! -- hurt to see her face with every shutter of an eyelid; that look of barely contained despair, which I . . . oh, how I know that look so! Yet if Lady Luck should place her hand on me this day or the next, I ask it then that she give her what she has never given me: release. Let Mikali forget me while I lose myself in her afterglow. Let Mikali run from me now and run from me always. We were children, we are children still, but we are children who share too much hate between us to go on as we should. We are not lovers and though I would take her somewhere to keep to myself, she is nothing more than a lioness, a she-wolf, and a bow-less hunter. I, I am her prey, and I hate her, I hate her, I -- (love) -- her.

Lost as I was, in both thought and actuality, I noted indifferently how the sun had dipped from its perch and sank at a slow and viscous rate. A thin, wavering branch of clouds stemmed from the midst of the blue abyss; it curled like a tail after the sun and within the white plume I thought I could see her face (she is everywhere). Blinking slowly, I look to the long stretch of grassland that rolls out before me; it turns silver beneath the caress of the wind, the grass bending and breaking in rhythm. It was not so unlike home that, for the briefest moment, I forgot where I was and thought I was home again: Mother would come around the corner with her care-worn smile not too far behind, and she would lecture about how long it had been and how long it better not be ever again. It was just for that moment, though; then the image dissolved into thin air, eroding as I, too, was eroding, until something in the distance shifted and caught my eye. I tensed, but stood still and waited -- lingered with my roots sunk and my eyes alight, for I was not home. I was not with her. I was, instead, lost, and who knew where my foolish feet had carried me this time.

ooc -- herd leaders first, please, and then it matters not. I am hoping to have Sinding become apart of The Grey

sinding,

I was the son of a General, the product of fruitful loins and a spine molded from iron. I was also the son of a philanderer, the kind with a loose, tacky smile and the gunshot charm of a man who knows ever trick of his trade; for that matter, a man who was also so bored with his life and the shiny medals pinned to his shoulders that he sought amusement in the studying of skin -- the skin of women in particular. Did it matter he had a wife at home? Did it matter that his wife waited for him devotedly after every civil war and international conflict? Did it matter at all that, while he was busy spreading the legs of others, tasting what he ought not taste, that she was growing sicker and sicker and sicker? No, quite frankly, it did not. I was the son of a man who came through the front door after all the lights were blown out, a man who crawled into his bed and into the care of that wife who loved him endlessly; she knew it too; she knew the smell of sex as if it were just another award glistening on his soldier's suit, yet she said nothing, did nothing, and waned in the wake of his love gone cold. And while she waned, I waxed bitterly, angrily. I threw myself into my training until there was nothing left, so that one day I could tear him down; let his proudest creation be his unforeseen ruin. I was the one who did not see it coming though. I wanted to hurt him for everything, but he beat me to the punch. He took her into his shadow and she let him. She let him do it, even though she was mine.

Mikali (girl, you got me bad).

I knew this was no time to be brooding and, quickly, stored those thoughts away in a deep, dark crevice for another time, and turned my eye onto his approaching figure. He was the color of ink and the night, with a spiraling light blue horn protruding from his forehead; his hair was like soot, or a plume of dark smoke, which hung about his neck and high-cheeked and blazed veneer in a tussled mess. Instantly, I regarded him as one who was sturdy, steadfast. Lingering about him was this air of simplicity and an amicability that made me relax just so; I knew I was not talented as a good judge of character; if anything, it would be best to turn now, run as fast as I could until there was no one left to know my face, my name. The temptation to do just that was high, and my legs quivered with anticipation; however, I did not flee; I did not budge a single, desperate step. For all that my father was and was not, he had taught me one thing that I could now never disobey -- cowardice was not in my blood, and to run from anything -- a stranger, a fight, her (because that's who it always comes back to, isn't it?) -- just would not do.

"Greetings, stranger!" Came the call, his voice like the smooth toll of a bell in the afternoon, "is there something that I can do for you?" I wanted to nod and say, oh sure; there's this and there's that, and then there's this girl that I can't shake, can't quit, but that I hate and loathe and deplore -- do you have a cure for that? But, that might have been too personal for a first impression. "You look a little ... lost." I assumed it was easy to see; I'm not someone who wears my heart on my sleeve (not when she has it clenched in her right hand, her holy hand) but I did not like to be put in a position where I had no advantage. He, after all, looked like he knew this ground very well; he smelled like the earth and like the last rainfall; and he moved as though he were this place, as if it were more like a second skin than a place to grow old in. "You would be correct, sir: I am lost." As someone with so much familiarity, perhaps I was safe to remain on lower ground, though I held behind my back a dagger, sharp, shining, and ready to kill should the need arise. "Where exactly am I?"

ooc: Thank you for hopping in. :D