Smoke & Mirrors: Circle Keeper's Dream
4/6/2006
06:28 PM
Logfile from GarouMUSH.
Currently the moon is in the waxing Half Moon phase (56% full).
It is currently 18:18 Pacific Time on Thu Apr 6 2006.
Currently in Saint Claire, it is mostly sunny today. The temperature is 57 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the south at 8 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 30.08 and falling, and the relative humidity is 47 percent. The dewpoint is 37 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius.)
[Somewhere on the Bawn.]
When the Uktena ahroun sleeps, he is granted with a deep feeling of rest. Doesn't matter where he is at the time, as the black feeling of quiet is interrupted with soft sounds of bird calls and other noises of the forest. The scents, sights, sounds, they are familiar to the Guardian, with the weather clear and sunny as a good day. A stray woodland gamebird flitters up from a bush that the fullmoon passes by on patrol of the bawn, drawing his eye towards the blue sky above, through the branches of the trees. There, wisps of smoke float upwards, carried along by the breeze.
Circle Keeper's tail follows along behind the wolf buoyantly, more like it was floating along that actually attached to him in any sort of way, the uktena clearly irrationally pleased with nothing at all. The sudden, sharp movement of the bird seems to do nothing to startle him, jaw dropping open slightly and tongue lolling out. The wisps of smoke don't seem to fully command his attention, the Uktena sniffing idly at the air.
The smoke's scent is riddled with the urban. Gasoline. Cars. That scent that sticks to the insides of delicate noselining like gum underneath a chairarm in the theaters. When did the city get so close?
Circle Keeper clearly isn't pleased with the interruption in his happy little world, and the wolf's hackles start to put on end fairly quickly. A few more minutes of sniffing at the air, and he starts to make his way over towards the source. His tail lifts a little stiffer, and his each step seems just a little more abrupt.
As he gets closer and closer, through a particularly dense copse of tree and bush, the Uktena finds his paws contacting with hard asphalt. Before him stretches the city, dirt and grime stuck on the building sides, likely ingrained into every nook and cranny, every crack in the bricks. It is a sick feeling that weighs heavily on the spirit and the senses. There are people. Faceless, fuzzy outlined humans, blurring by as they walk to and fro on the streets. A steady stream of them come from behind the ahroun, simply passing him by without any notice of his white furred wolf form. The smoke billows up from a point in the city, and the reddish orange tongues of fire reach towards the sky in the distance. In front of the white wolf, at a distance down the street and looking towards the fire, is a black wolf. Its fur doesn't catch the light - rather, almost seems to absorb the light into its being.
He becomes increasingly ill at ease as he finds himself in the city, Ciuraq totally and completely uncomfortable with the crowds of men. His lips pull back and up, almost grinning in a silent snarl... until he catches sight of the stranger. His diminutive posture presses outward, ears shoved forward as he barks at the stranger: His! His! Go away and take your apes with you!
The faceless masses continue to stream, ignoring Circle Keeper like he were a rock in a slow moving river. They walk past him, some too close for comfort, into the forests. Others walk out and pass the Uktena from behind. The shadow wolf turns to look at the ahroun. On its face, its eyes are nowhere to be found - in their place, a pair of silvery mirrors. The feeling of illness gets heavier when the Uktena feels the black one's eyes upon him.
Circle Keeper's nervousness pronounces itself in all the more aggression. He takes a few choppy steps forward, assertions of territory becoming all the more urgent towards the unnatural wolf... thing. His! he tells the other strenuously His his his! Leave! His his his!
The black one stares still, showing no emotion but a reflection in its eyes. The smoke and haze stir as the wind picks up and fans the fires. The sky is no longer blue, but thick with black smoke and red flames. Bits of grey ash sweep by on the whipping winds. It's getting harder to breathe in this city choked air, and everything feels dirty. A feeling slithers into the Uktena's fur, a weight settles on him. From behind him, a snake hisses into his ear. Should he turn around, his muzzle comes face to face with that of a serpentine creature's. This one, too, has mirrored eyes in which he can see his own reflection. Or at least, it would be, except that his face is lacking in eyes of his own. In the snake's eyes, he can see his eyes are not there, replaced by silvery pupiless surfaces.
Circle Keeper starts to back away as the filth settles down on him, giving himself a few hard shakes while he retreats. The serpent stops him dead in his tracks though, the Uktena staring back at his own reflection with slowly dawning sort of horror.
The serpent is large. Bigger than the biggest reticulated python and a thousand times more menacing. Its head has horns too, but nothing like those of Uktena's. The mirrorgaze is mesmerizing, keeping the ahroun's stare as it coils up around him. As the head of the snake gets closer, the reflection of the ahroun flickers. One moment, it's his human face with mirrors instead of eyes, and that image lingers . The next moment, it's his lupus face again.
Engrossed in the shock and dismay, Circle Keeper seems fairly oblivious to coils wrapping around him. He starts to quake, and he starts two quiver, trembling in place as he stares all the more intensely. When his human face flashes before him, he waits a pregnant second, before he does the only reasonable thing to do: He shifts to crinos, and reaches up to tear out his eyes.
The shifting does little to loosen the serpent's coils, but it hisses angrily. As he desperately claws his eyes, the last thing he sees just before the lights go out is the shadow wolf, somehow having appeared in front of him. Then his eyes are jabbed into, and fire bursts into his being. A hard white noise accompanies of shrieking sound, vaguely like it's from his own throat. The burning sensation of being suffocated compounds the shock, and in a snap, the fullmoon wakes to reality. There is no city where he sleeps, just the woods where he laid down to rest. No fire. No humans. No grime. No snake. No wolf. No smoke. No mirrors.
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