Elemental
Prospero Storm

"All my dreams pass before my eye, a curiosity."
--Kansas Dust in the Wind






In a strange, twisted way, Renne thought of returning to the Labyrinth.

He knew the Labyrinth in the far-western deserts. He knew its place on the barren, featureless landscape where life either became tough or didn't survive. You either survived or you didn't. If you didn't, the wind scoured everything away until only dust remained.
Dust.

Dust and the Labyrinth.

Renne remembered the intense exchange with Oobie in the back alley. He'd gone there after the sea had roared at him and he had screamed back. He had told her one of his ancient legends; one that had been well known. He told her about friendship and its tenuous grip here in Rhy'Din. They had ended up in tears out there in the quiet of the back alley. Coming to grips with one another was the easy part. Coming to grips with his churning emotions? It turned out to be the storm that a bardess had sung of later that night.

Yes sir, ready for the storm

A storm had come down through the Inn that night; one that he wasn't ready for.

The bardess had sung, so he had sung with her, offering an eerie countermelody to the song of a sailor in his tempest. When they had silenced, the Red Dragon's door opened with an onslaught of emotion. He had heard a familiar pair of Humans enter; his happiness at first barely bridled.
It was in fact, the quiet and the way of them that sent warning bells into his head.

Albatross is flying

Thunder and wind lashed in his mind.

Renne had felt his skin and eyes turn to tiger-eye amber. He hoped the amber didn't turn into full-out brown and he kept an ear on Oobie. Sometimes literally when the jesterette took up a place on his head. The emotions swirled about; he tasted and felt them all.
The metallic denial in Harold's voice, he heard it and his skin flashed. The deep warning of something between a sickening gray and bloody crimson. He knew Fear and he was beginning to feel it again as the winds of emotion danced around him.

Quietly, Renne wondered how Humans understood Emotion.

He was caught in a hurricane indoors.
The winds only howled in his ears, across his amber-gold flashing skin but new voices thundering from somewhere upstairs made him whimsically think of the few Deities he'd heard in his lifetime.
It sounded like an angry god unleashing his wrath upon an otherwise oblivious world beneath him.

Wrath of the gods.

It seemed somehow fitting in the torrential swirl that made up the noise he felt.

Renne curled in, covering his ears as if he could block out the howls that couldn't be heard. The storm was felt, understood and he had a choice. He knew the choice well enough.
Oobie's voice caught him off guard and he flushed a little as her words rang through.

Part of him cursed but he made up his mind.

He didn't run from the storm indoors; the emotions washed around and through him. His skin flashed amber, gold and tawny as another instinct presented itself. Renne held onto it and kept his promise.
Memories relived in the middle of an indoor storm; a Prospero-voice chanting at the edge of the hurricane.

I shall not run.

Elemental
What Means, the Sea and Rain

"Misfortune shows those who are not really friends."
--Aristotle








The rain wasn't a thundering storm.

It was a steady kind of rain, somewhere between a mist and a driving sheet. With the sun reflecting off of the sea and sky, Nature gave Renne a blazing light show whose beauty he'd never know. They did it never knowing the emotions they so well blazed for the world.
Their audience which remained on the beach oblivious to their spectacle thought of things. Reconciled things.

-The sun and stars wept as they put on their show. Their single-entity audience was bound to never see it, never know it but they put on their show anyway. Sol reflected a blazing blood-red from his sister the sea and she answered back with diamonds. You see, the sea and sky knew that Renne wept. The sky wept but aimed to cleanse him. To finally rid him of the shadows that had plagued him for the last three years.
Polaris shone and the Star-Shepherd's sheep followed. They were like ice-silk drops that foretold a musky dance partner in the Blood-sun red.
Blood-sun red streaked across an azure floor, perpetuating a strange cold-warmth. The stars above dropped diamonds into ephemeral clouds. When the clouds wept, the sea became quiet.
Below the celestials, a life form struggled to hold on and let go.-

Renne crawled to the place that had begun a walk through Hell and back. He remembered almost a year's worth of things said here. The sea dissolved most of them into the forgotten expanse -- not that words to the dead are ever meant to be heard.
Here, he had become a cynic against a pathetically deceitful thing called faith. And yet it was always here he returned, to understand why. To understand where he was to go...or not go anywhere.

Names still whispered in his mind.

Old names however, whispered with new.
Something whispered that maybe these whispers weren't warning bells to run away from despite their Human voices.

He sat there in the glow of a sunset he'd never see and turned parallel to the ocean. Renne could never leave here fully, nor forever -- he'd promised. And unlike many, too many, he had learnt well to take promises seriously.
...called him Friend...
So it was parallel to the sea he faced when his legs shakily strove to stand him upright. It was time to try again, time to become stronger, to be the one to do more than just pick up the pieces. Part of him wondered where Matrim was by now, where Cinder was. Where 'Nathan was and what Kyra might say if she saw him now.
I'm trying, Pendrell.

The rain slowly drenched him to the core but eventually, just as the blood-sun sank below the horizon, Renne lifted his head. For about ten seconds, ankle deep in a slowly rising tide, Renne stood up on his own two shaking feet.

When his legs gave out, sending him to the ground, Renne quietly found the strength to try again.