Topic: Parting the Veil

St Croix

Date: 2009-09-25 08:21 EST
The white of her eyes was visible, chasing away the blue as she shivered and trembled with the claim of addiction. Tequila and peyote ran through her veins. Chasing lightning.

Her soul maybe was chasing lightning bugs in open fields. Racing after them as in a dream's thick hallucination her wheat dark hair seemed molten gold and her eyes brilliant jewels. A shining vessel of sun and sky.

The highs and lows. St Croix had come from the bed of death and found it had taken a bit of her soul and made her different.

They might as well have said her name was a summon. An incantation of invite for power to something surreal and serene.

This wasn't magic but something more. Something she couldn't escape.

Life and Death she'd seen both sides. Parted the veil till the prairie dove seemed more meant for omens on the black wings of a bird.

They had taken so much from her. Her body, even her mind at times. She had given it over so willingly.

They had gone to far. And the panic had set in. Leaving her discarded like a toy no longer desired on the side of the road. Broken. Dead.

So they would think. That day she had died she did not see the white light or a long blazing tunnel. Instead she saw wolves and the vision of a man that seemed not meant to belong in this world. Unnatural.

He took every waking moment of her thoughts. Raven black omen bird with the dark hungry eyes of a wolf. Captivated by hallucination she lost herself to the self depreciation of addiction.

It would silence that cry in her spirit.

St Croix

Date: 2009-09-25 21:29 EST
Obsession. Addiction. Claiming her ever and always. Sprawled out on the floor she felt like she was in a field of wheat, the wheat blond of her hair spilling all around her to intermingle. Naked in the wheat but not alone.

He was there. Raven black hair spilling around her, covering her, falling all around her. Soul dark eyes.

Even on the ground she felt she was falling.

"St Croix, damn it St. Croix wake up. Damn it. I think she overdosed this time!"

Her shoulders were shaking. Was she in tremble from the hallucinogenic drugs or was someone physically shaking her back to sobriety.

She groaned as the vision, the hallucination faded at the edges. She felt him all around her. His mouth on her lips. Taking the fever sugar from her. Cleaning out her soul. Breaking that addiction. His hair was all around her. A dark veil and she gripped on to it....gasping out a sound between desire and fear, pleasure and pain

Those blue eyes as jaded as sapphires snapped open. The needle tugged out of her arm as she sat up, staring wide eyed and dream drunk at the motley bunch of drifters she kept company with.

"Jesus, St. Croix. We thought we lost you."

Her smile was somber, eyes haunted.

"No. Not yet...I live to see another day."

St Croix

Date: 2009-09-27 13:23 EST
Dancing the music was lightning through her veins. She felt manic and electric. St Croix felt alive.

The pills were chased with a thick swallow of tequila and her world was spinning around. Bright vibrant colors washed her flesh in a rainbow's afterglow.

Bottle dismissed as the high took over. Eyes closed, head fell back and her hands were in the air.

Spinning circles till she was dizzy and wild with the sensation. Vivid intensity as her eyes opened again and those sapphires saw so much more.

Squinting in the shadows of the club. Where the light didn't touch it's pulsing radiance there was the outline.

Soul drifted towards it as if summoned, called and beckoned. Perhaps it was just the drugs making her see shadows and apparitions of that which was not there.

She rushed towards it, that vision. Shining black hair and dangerous dark eyes.

St Croix was there. Close enough to touch him. But she was alone in the shadows, playing shadow dance with nothing more then a ghost.

A scream of frustration was swallowed whole by the club music. Her fists pounding savagely into the wall until they came away broken and bloody. Until she was torn away, nails like claws scratching at the faces of those that took her as the drugs went wrong with her. Like they had before, like they always would.

Tossed out on the street like a rag doll, she stared up at the sky with the realization that it was beginning to rain. Washing the blood away, but never the pain. Never the pain.

Ghost Walker

Date: 2009-10-01 13:42 EST
Night time.

Alone, he sits before the flames of his small fire, the light from the flames flickering against his closed eyes.

But he cannot see it.

All he can see is dancing lights.

Doves, floating up from a sea of waving gold.

And in the midst of them, the lithe, dancing figure of the woman who has haunted his visions for some time.

It is hard work, restraining himself. Reaching out to her has proven fruitless in the past, only serving to make her disappear.

The light around her is strange, as well, pulsing and flickering lights of many brilliant colors, her laughing eyes and smiling lips taunting him, daring him to close the gap between them. Her hand reaches out to him, beckoning him closer. Fingers splayed, as though she were finally, for the first time, trying to reach him as much as he'd desired to touch her.

The act is instinctive, without thought or consideration for memory of other visions. A long arm comes up to reach out towards her, fingers splayed in a mirror image of her reaching out to him.

Stretching, leaning towards that lithe figure, his dark eyes locked on her blues, and for a moment he can see the want, the desire, as though she were actually wanting to figure out the reason behind these strange visions as he...as though she'd been seeing him.

But just as he reaches out to her, just as he could swear he felt her soft touch on his fongertips, all goes dark.

His eyes fly open, dark, the flames flickering from his fire within them.

The roar that comes from his throat echoes through the clearing he sits in, one fist knotting and swinging overhead to come crashing down in the midst of the flames. A shower of sparks, like a sudden swarm of fiery insects, scatters and swirls up around her as he stands.

For a long moment, fury shivers through his body as he looks around for something to tear apart, to take it out on. Finding nothing, though, it fades to a deeper remorse, an emptiness he cannot explain as he sinks to his seat again, head bowed, his dark hair a curtain around him.

As he sits there, he feels the first cooling drops of rain on his bare back.

St Croix

Date: 2009-10-01 17:23 EST
Huddled and starving in those moments, St. Croix tried to avoid that cold drip of rain as those blue eyes lifted to the sky. Her friends had left her behind lost in their own self induced reveries that came with whatever addiction they could find to fill the gaping holes in their lives.

She needed a fix. The shine long had left her and the sobering sensation left her melancholy. The vision of that dark haired male that tormented her dreams seemed so much closer to her. Especially tonight, she near felt like she could have touched him if he hadn't disappeared.

Everyone had their reason that they became addicted to some vice or another. St. Croix could have blamed it on the fact that she had died and been brought back to life but it wouldn't be realistic. The addiction came because the shine of those drugs in her system brought back the visions of him. The dark haired male that had haunted her dreams and her drug induced visions since she had been brought back to life. She had to wonder if it was perhaps him that had pulled her from her crossroads and left her in between without him.

Wearily she rubbed at her arms as withdraw from the drugs left her skin crawling. She needed a fix, and soon. Still those sapphires could not help but notice that this itching at her arms felt different, felt like a burn. St. Croix could only stare in horror as her arms developed little pink blisters as if her flesh' had been set on fire. Almost like she had buried her hands in the hottest part of a flame in test to see if she was truly alive?

A faint whimper escaped her lips, closing her eyes as she searched her pockets in a frenzy for something to take the pain away. She would do anything to have that shine back.

St. Croix would do anything, all means necessary to have him back. No matter the cost. No matter the risk. Even if it meant her very soul

Ghost Walker

Date: 2009-10-07 11:33 EST
The cooling drops of rain on his skin is what pulls his mind away from the despair, the rage in his heart and spirit.

She had been so close, this time. Close enough to touch, to feel that phantom sense of heat when her skin ahd nearly touched his, radiating outward, beckoning him closer, nearly pleading with him to touch.

Lost in the memory of the vision, it takes a while for him to register the throbbing pain of his arm, the one he'd plunged into the fire. The fire is still burning - it isn't raining in earnest yet - and the light shows him the blisters raised on his skin from the extreme heat.

He sighs, closing his eyes and trying to focus. For a long moment, his eyes closed, he can see her again - a flash of sun-kissed skin and golden hair in brightly colored flashes of light, laughing blue eyes on his own - and without thinking, he reaches out again, as if she were there before him, close enough to pull to him.

The movement makes pain stab through his senses, wiping out that lovely vision again, and he hisses softly. Focus, Daniel.

Clearing his mind, he focuses on wiping out the pain, his flesh - always as protean and pliable as a potter's clay - beginning to flow and change, to heal.

After a long moment, he opens his eyes again as he feels his flesh reforming, looking down at his arm.

And discovering, to his dismay, that the burns are still there.

What the..."

Brows furrowed, he touches one of the burns softly, and winces at the pain there. It shouldn;t be this way - he should be able to simply shift his form there, and one it firms back into reality again, the burns would be gone.

Fortunately, there's always another way.

He reaches into the pouch at his waist, ignoring the now-bigger drops of water landing on his skin and hissing in the fire, the rain beginning in earnest. he takes from the pouch a smaller, supple leather bag and removes from it three crystals - one quartz, one amethyst, one agate - and holds them in the burned hand, before taking out a another pouch with the other hand. He takes from this one a fine powder, greenish white in color, and dusts it over the arm, whispering words in his people's tongue softly as he does so, passing the free hand over the arm as he focuses.

Little by little, the blisters and charred patches begin to fade, healing rapidly.

Finally, it is done, and he sighs, suddenly sleepy, but not wanting to rest in the least.

Why had the burns remained" He hadn't had to use that technique in years on himself. It had certainly worked well enough, but that's not the point, really.

He places the crystals and pouches back into the bigger one, still confused. First the girl in his dreams and visions, and now this...could the two be connected?

St Croix

Date: 2009-10-10 06:57 EST
Somebody has to shine for me. It's difficult not to shine for me

St Croix would do what she had to in order to get by. The itch festered along her skin. The blistering burns bonding so well with her descent. The drop from the Shine.

She did what she had to do. Tears in her eyes that would never fall left her blue eyes blazing, pleading even as she struggled so hard to hide the pain.

No money to offer you could only go by what you had left. Flesh.

None of it mattered anymore.

Her fingers curled around the small handful of pills that her body had bartered for her.

Like a dancer finding the edge of the stage she would sway. Spin and swallow down those pills. The streets would know her flesh, her sins better then any.

When her eyes found her reflection and the haze that overtook them when the Shine came along she had no choice but to look away.

Until euphoric bliss came through and she was safe, and high, and free. No one could touch her now.

Gold blazing at the wheat-gold of hair, blue eyes summer jewels. She savored this moment as she closed her eyes and the place she knew....the in between. Was hers again to know.

Ghost Walker

Date: 2009-10-10 23:46 EST
The rain had stopped.

Not long after it had started, actually - a brief squall, nothing more, and then the day had come.

Still, he sits there, before the coals, occasionally offering the hungry heat with more food to feed its appetite. As each piece is consumed, time and again, the coals grow larger, hungrier, warmer.

Like an animal, patient nad waiting, waiting for the moment when he would be so foolish as to attempt to put his arm in the embers again, or to otherwise be so careless.

And as night falls once more, completing the cycle of the day, the moon slipping above the trees here in his private grove, he adds more fuel to the flames, building up his fire. Gradually, it grows, tossing light and warmth away from it in waves.

He reaches into his pouch, then, finally succumbing.

He had known he would, ever since the first vision he had of her. Not being able to touch this ghostly, beautiful vision before him was enough to drive him near to the point of insanity, might actually succeed if he lets it go on too long.

What he needs now is something that will make the vision stronger, make it transcend the flesh.

The flames had taught him soemthing.

The vision needs to lift him out of his body, to a place where emotions will not snap him out of that sacred place, but will instead propel him further along.

As he looks for the small pouch within his larger one, he remembers.

That vision had frustrated him as much as this one, or nearly so. He had been young, impatient, not wanting to wait, not wanting to deal with all the foolishness of waiting for the vision to come to him in the fullness of time. He had known little, then. Time has seasoned his patience now, but then, he had not wanted to listen to his father's words of waiting for things to come to him as they would.

The powder of the death vine was only to be used in special circumstances.

He had stolen some of the precious powder from the shaman without his knowledge, had not told his father what he had intended.

But, as she always did, his sister had found out, reading him through their special, intimate connection, that bond of twins.

She had looked horrified.

"You can't, Ghost! You don't know what you're doing with that, it could kill you!"

"You worry too much, Feathers."

She had not been convinced by the falsely confident tone of his voice. She had gone from being horrified to angry and worried in the space of a heartbeat.

"NO! What will happen if you..." She could not bring herself to say it, could not utter the word. "Do you know what it will do to Father if you should be killed doing that?" And then her voice had softened, pleading, her doe-dark eyes large and beautiful. "Do know what it will do to me?"

He had turned to her then, seeing that look. He had never been able to say no to her, and that look and tone always made him melt for some reason. But this time, he had to know, had to try for himself.

"Honestly, sis, I'll be fine." His own voice had been softer, pleading with her. "I told you, I'm not leaving you. No one could ever take me away from you, not even Death. I promise."

It had been a close thing, though.

He pulls the small pouch from the larger one, slipping it open and wetting the tip of his pinkie on his tongue before dipping it in. Bringing the finger back out, there is a small quantity of grey-green powder on it. Carefully cinching the pouch closed, he touches the tip of his finger to the underside of his tongue, rubbing the powder into the tender, thin membrane before putting the small pouch back and laying back, closing his eyes, and waiting.

It doesn't take long before he feels that heady rush, that sense of spiraling out of control as his mind leaves his body behind, seeking out a vision of sapphire and glowing gold...

St Croix

Date: 2009-10-23 17:44 EST
Drifting in a down spiral. A twisted banner of colors where the Shine would burn like tiny clusters of stars.

Sprawled out in the park she stretchecd out her limbs and sighed in the moonlight. Watched as her breath became blue sparks as they were exhaled.

Under the Shine.

Blue Moon born.

Everything was color to her.

"Where'd you go' I miss you so. Seems like it's been forever since you've been gone....please come back home."

A sing song whim of voice as she smiled dreamily up at the sky. Fingers outstretched. Reaching, playing in the night sky.

Perhaps it would be a palette. She wondered if she could paint the stars.

If she could would she paint the vision of that man in the sky and stick the image of him like a note that says "Missing."

A lost soul.

Like herself.

She closed her eyes, drawn by the shine. Breathed out another breath that tasted of sorrow and tears if her breath would have a taste.

If color could have a flavor.

Hers would be blueberries and cream.

Ghost Walker

Date: 2009-10-31 18:25 EST
Floating there in the darkness, apart from his body, looking, searching. Seeing nothing, for the moment. If there is anything even to be seen, really.

Perhaps he shouldn't try...only see what he is meant to see. Searching for a vision can result in it's eluding you, slipping out of your grasp like sand through the fingers.

So he forces himself to relax his mind,his thoughts and feelings, in this place where the body matters not. Drifting, he finds his peace, and patiently waits.

It doesn't take long before something happens. No vision, this time, strangely, but a voice. A voice of an angel, perhaps, sweetly touching what passes for his hearing in this place of the spirit.

"Where'd you go' I miss you so. Seems like it's been forever since you've been gone....please come back home."

There is no confusion in his mind as the song touches his mind, for it is one he had heard before. The voice of the artist singing it, though, he doesn't remember being this sweet. This touching, this mesmerizing. The funny thing is that the rest of the song isn't nearly as nice, the male counterpart almost seeming angry.

And he is not, in the least. Frustrated at the elusiveness of this vision, perhaps, but not angered in the least.

A smile touches his lips as he remembers a snatch of verse from a song he had heard that seems to capture the way he feels every time he sees this vision of gold and sapphire, and his low voice seems to thrum around him as he sings as well, almost as if in response.

"When our lights meet, will you know me then...And will you want to know it' It feels like I've known you for so long..."

St Croix

Date: 2009-11-01 06:11 EST
The voice poured through her. The highest rush. The strongest pull.

A writhing shudder in the grass. Fingers in curl to the grass. She knew the shine was fading.

Breath in exhale. Taste of blueberries in her mouth. She licked her lips and dreamed. Held that vision in hallucination as something wild and delicious.

It was a time was it not. She was the crossroads drifter why could she not part this veil that separated?

Frustrated and reckless she stumbled to her knees, rose to her feet. Hands out to the sky in vain attempt for those tiny hands to press through the fabric of time and space itself.

Grasping those strands, wild eyes when she saw him there. Close enough to touch. Perhaps she did.

He felt so real. So solid.

Then the shine faded, tore that vision from her and left her collapsing to the grass. Screaming out her dispute of being torn away as her hands pounded as fists to the earth.

Blood born offerings yet tonight she did not know which god to worship...

Ghost Walker

Date: 2009-11-22 10:20 EST
The smile that touches his lips as the song reverberates around him in time and space broadens as he realizes that the barriers are shivering with the force of thought, of feeling, of voice. Trembling the foundations of the place where his spirit now dwells, he can feel the wall about to fall, the veil about to part.

And suddenly she is there, the vision of gold and sapphire, blueberries and cream. Right there! Close enough and real enough touch.

For the faintest fraction of a second, he is nearly afraid to reach out to her. Every time before, he has reached out, she has slipped away.

Like grains of sand in a fist.

As it has so many times before, instinct and desire take over for conscious thought, and he reaches out to her, hands seeking hands, seeking contact at long last.

Ready to pierce the veil between their worlds.

And to his surprise, with a shock so strong it borders on the electric feeling of a lightning stroke, there is touch.

Palms kiss, fingers entwine. If breath could be drawn in this place, it would be.

With that touch, so many things become clear.

And in the same instant, she fades. Is torn away from his grasp, just as he is drawing her near.

So real! He had felt her heat, her fire. Had felt the near-lethal doses of hallucinogens she had taken to assist her with her own vision, her own talent, not unlike his. So similar, so many ways.

As she fades away, he is left alone in the darkness, alone...

NO!

A connection had been forged, one that he can use, in even that fraction of a moment.

Months, years of frustration and failure had led to this moment. After all of this time, so many times of reaching for that lovely vision and failing, he will not allow her to go so easily.

The power is touched, drawn upon, taken into himself, and those trembling walls begin to crumble to dust. It is mere moments before the veil is pierced and he is through.

Powerful hands catch those fists as they are thrust to the earth a second time, stopping her in mid-stroke.

No mere vision this time, but flesh and blood and bone, dark eyes find the gold and sapphire of his visions, kneeling before her.

He can feel the strange distortion of the death vine in his veins, magnifying the effect of his vision. The world around them dark and grey and wet, the vision of beauty before him starkly bright and shimmering as if with its own light.

A whisper, soft and near lost in the wind.

"Beautiful..."

St Croix

Date: 2009-11-22 20:06 EST
Hands claimed her wrists and she fought them till words cut through her senses and she found those sapphires snapping up violently to the face before her.

"Lemme go."

A ragged corn silk protest falling dead on her lips as St. Croix found herself face to face with the man that had tormented and pleasured her nightmares and dreams.

"You're not real. You're not real. I'm just coming down. It's all it is. You can't be real."

Tears spilled over, choking back a sob as she moved to struggle and pull back even as she yearned for an embrace. Some sort of comfort.

Desolate. It was so cold and grey here. Dreary and damp all around her and she was shining like a beacon even without the shine.

Those Sapphires snapped up, quivering with energy and light and so many emotions as they sought those so dark eyes.

Swallowing thickly.

"This is a dream."

It had to be. He was far too perfect. Far too extraordinary to be real.

Ghost Walker

Date: 2009-11-26 15:55 EST
Her denial should have stung him. Should have made him let go.

And would have, if he could not so earnestly understand why she says it. For even though he knows her wrists in his hands to be flesh and bone, can feel her weak initial struggle, can see and smell and hear her there before him, the potent effect of the deathvine in his system makes him question the reality. Is this a dream' Or is this real"

For a long moment, he merely looks at her, caught up in the shining vision of her radiance. The flyaway cornsilk golden hair, the sapphire of her eyes, even dulled as they are by the drugs, still the most beautiful jewels, rivaled only by one other that he has ever encountered.

This is a dream."

Those words are what drive him to action. He knows this is real, but the dreamlike state he feels himself in makes him want to prove it is not, as much to himself as to her.

Standing, her wrists still in his grasp, he gently pulls her to her feet with him.

"You may be right. But if this is a dream, tell me...why does this feel so real?"

A gentle pull, a drawing of her to him, he releases her wrists to wrap his arms around her and fold her in his embrace.

As he does so, the sudden racing of his heartbeat, blood singing in his ears, and the feel of hers in his senses are confirmation enough for him. Sight may lie, hearing can decieve. Even smell and touch and taste can fool.

But his other, more eldritch senses...they have yet to be wrong.

"I have waited...so long...for this moment." The words are spoken in a near reverent whisper, a fervency that cannot be denied.

St Croix

Date: 2009-11-28 15:36 EST
A pulled embrace. Contact of skin and a claim of arms wrapping around her. He was warmth in an otherwise cold circumference of everything that seemed artic winds and winter hardships.

A hand pushed through the wild wheat-gold curls as those drug-fevered sapphires came to rest upon his own dark eyes.

So much was seen in those eyes leaving her brows in a thoughtful furrow.

Roads. Paths. Lines.

Crossing and turning. Intersections and Divides.

There was much seen that would remain unspoken for the knowledge of what it was that was seen. Something that could not be broken, something that she could never take him from.

No matter the connection, no matter the bond he would never be hers. Not completely.

No matter the words. No matter the feelings he was sworn. Soul bound and claimed.

Yet she knew that where those roads were they would cross. Four roads in intersection.

Crossing.

A vision seen. She wondered if the one drawn to his heart sworn and soul bound as St Croix was to this strange man before her.

Still she breathed him in, snuggling into his warmth.

St Croix almost pitied the fourth party in this path they had found. Did he understand like she did....that some roads....even when they crossed....eventually ended at a point where only one road could continue on?

"You are as real as I wish you to be."

St Croix

Date: 2010-07-21 20:18 EST
Hallucinations had seemed reality but with the haze fading she had lost the vision that had seemed so real of the man that had been across from her. Bronze skinned and mouthwatering to behold. A vision of a man that could leave her finding herself drawn to another addiction that was far more carnal, known to the ways of flesh and touch and nothing more. But the vision, the height of that high hit a sharp descending down spiral when the bronzed skinned male was joined in the vision by another. A doe eyed beauty of a woman, with skin of warm dark honey and the rich ebon of hair. As soon as she had come to the vision, the man was taken away. Drawn into the foggy haze of St Croix's hallucinations like a ghost....a passing spirit. The rage of withdrawal snaked through her to smother the loneliness of her spirit that was growing so consuming with every passing day. The drugs were not becoming enough to sustain her through the night to keep her distracted and parted from those suffocating and stifling emotions she constantly felt she was drowning in. She tore through the streets, doc martens pounding a violent cadence on the sidewalk as she ran near blind with that spark of craving, the drug withdrawal searing through her mind like acid. She shuddered and itched at her arms when she finally managed to stop to catch her breath, eyes wildly crazed and frantic. St Croix needed to get out of here. Needed to get some place else but this. Running across the railroad tracks and into the shadows she frowned at where she found herself. The Cross Roads. It had been so long since she had come here. The drugs had stopped the pull towards the place for so long she had almost forgotten about the mind numbing madness of the call and soul tug she felt towards that place. Here she existed and yet did not exist. Here she was everywhere and nowhere. Here she was alive and here she was dead. Behind her all the illusions and hallucinations, all the truth and reality was knocked away and pulled apart. Taking the vision of the Ghost Man and the Spirit Woman from her as she looked around her. Walking counterclockwise and then clockwise as a restless, wary creature as she looked upon the intersecting paths. One dark, one light, one gray, and one nothing more then the common dust and pavement she was used to. The last road was watched as she frowned as that voice crawled through her mind again which she knew was the voiceless greeting of none other then the Cross Roads themselves. Guardian of the Cross Roads this place called her once. The first time she had heard such spoken of her she had avoided it, had run from that damnable fate, giving her life over to sin and addiction if only to avoid it all. Yet here she was back again. Sighing she shoved her hand in the pocket of her jeans and pulled out that antique coin. It wasn't heads or tails that could be called on that coin, it made up its own mind. The coin was neither silver nor gold, not black with age or white with pallor mark....like the cross roads the coin stayed changing and indifferent. Its will made as it was thrown into the air. St Croix waited restlessly for whatever path it would send her on now. She had no choice. No matter where it led, she was meant to follow. It was her duty, her obligation, her birthright to Guard those Roads, no matter where they would take her. Far be it for her to know that it led to Guardians, and a Man of the Old Ways. The road took her West. To the dust, to the dirt, to the desert, to the sand. To the Heat of a man that would be named as Guardian.