Topic: The Very Scientific Matter of Emotion

NightRunner

Date: 2007-11-30 02:09 EST
The Very Scientific Matter of Emotion

"What is it to be human? I do not know and there are times I shall rather not know. There are times though, that I should like to know what it is to be human beyond human greed."






Jarrod Beckett was a strange, confusing Humanoid.

Still, when he had come back it was a surprise.

Tonight, he sat reflecting upon the meetings thus far and found himself taking on a stone-cold expression. The prison cell walls he knew, logically, stood still but something within suggested that they were steadily closing in at a pace so slow as to not have been detected until now.
He didn't know how he managed the clinical detachment with the memories still so fresh in his mind. He was however, proud that he did.

-------------

-He walked along the familiar bone path and listened to the dogged, repeated questions. Once, his foot stepped into a pile of marshmallows but he didn't stop. He never stopped moving here on the bone-ground.

The familiar blood-rain began to fall again. The almost-sky above turned from a deep crimson to a brackish gray.
He kept on going.

As Renne moved along toward the familiar fortress/tavern/micro-world, he let an ear perk toward the sound of the thick, molasses-dark ocean. It was an ocean he knew well and loved well -- who could not love a sea one could walk upon?
On a whim, Renne turned off of the bone road. He felt the rain come down harder but didn't seem to care.
He was listening to the water and the voices.
The questions.

-Who? Why? When? How did that happen?-

He answered some quietly.
Others were answered without such quiet.

He didn't say any names at first.

-Who?-

He managed to speak only two names.

-What happened?-

He didn't trust himself to speak.
His mind did it for him.

Renne walked onward. He never flinched as the bone road turned into a dry stretch of dead and wilted grasses. The rain turned the dry land into something close to a mangrove.
He walked onward.

Bones lay scattered across the steadily drenching landscape and twice, his feet got tangled in the almost-mangrove grass. Soon though, the grass thinned out into a wet, saturated sand.

He stopped at the water's edge and listened to the rain. The voices. The sea. The wind. The guttering flame.

He didn't answer every question out loud.-

------------------

The sky outside of the Port South Holding House was almost too calm for the turmoil inside a storming mind. Still, appearances played their best part for the night.

Renne sat in the middle of Cell Five's floor without his yeti furs and with nothing in his hands.

NightRunner

Date: 2007-12-02 03:33 EST
The Very Scientific Matter of Emotion
When the Dead Never Rest

"Dulahan, Dulahan your terror, I shun
With black cape and horse, you're the Devil's own son
Don't speak my name or my life will be done
Dulahan, Dulahan, I see you and I run."
--Dulahan; Self-titled album







The past was never something he liked dealing with when it came to the darker memories. However, he couldn't escape it tonight -- part of him didn't want to.
Tonight was a night of deep analysis. Tonight was a night of placing himself into his own hands for something beyond mere survival.
Tonight was a night of looking fear dead in the eye.

----------------------

-The water dampened his feet as he stood at his ocean's edge. The rain steadily soaked him, dripping down the strands of his shorn hair. Above him he heard the wraiths known so intimately screech their torments at him.
He heard them and didn't flinch.

Renne listened to their cries and felt the rain.

He wasn't surprised when the rainfall intensified and came down in great, driving sheets. He wasn't surprised when the ghosts swooped down at him.
He wasn't surprised when he heard the Hunter's voice within the deep thunder.

You are alone. The Humans --
-No. Be silent. Analysis must be completed.-
You are evil. You are a taker of life.
-Be silent. Away!-

It was a brief exchange between himself and the Hunter's voice but the Hunter kept speaking. He spoke in the deep rumbles of the thunder and the steadily growing roar of the sea.
Thick seawater churned at his feet and soon came up to his high ankles. He didn't move.
he listened to the wraiths above him and let the rain come down. He let the sea churn around his ankles.

He chose one spectre from the dead-alive maelstrom.

It howled and whispered all at once. It asked him questions too swiftly for him to answer.

He listened in the rain.-

----------------------

Port South Holding House, Room Five was calm in the beginning. But in the beat of a heart Renne didn't have, it became a storm. The ever-present camera recorded all that its glass lens saw.
It recorded a violent, torrential rain within Room Five that never touched the floor. It recorded the sound of a low, steady thunder. It recorded a still figure sitting on the floor and facing down ghastly whispers woven into the blood-rain.

NightRunner

Date: 2007-12-05 18:52 EST
The Very Scientific Matter of Emotion
Dancing Fires on Becalmed Sea

"The stars are the lighthouses in the sky. The sea is the road upon which any may travel. The fire is the dream upon any may take their passion."







There was no explanation for it. Was there ever, when the moonlight shied away from the caged beast in Cell Five?

Jarrod Beckett had returned, beginning the questioning as usual.

At first, he asked about the rain.
The rain was harmless enough -- it was a simple breakdown of control within himself.

Renne didn't move around much as he was questioned. He had gotten used to having questions asked, repeated and even explained when they touched on something fearful. Taboo.
He didn't understand why Beckett persisted so.
"But his duty will not be complete..."

Those words chilled him to the bone.

He tried to refuse, even warn Beckett of the Hunter and the evil that was represented. He spoke of thunder and often relayed what the Hunter whispered into him at night.
Renne wanted the figure gone.
But that night, he wondered what it might take to be rid of this shadow that had become manifest in the wake of tears.

-----------------------

-Do you wish to be rid of the Hunter or not?

The question haunted him as he walked along the churning sea inside his mind. He thought over the questions he was asked and shuddered.
The ultimatum was the frightening part. Still, what could he do? Life within a single prison cell wasn't ideal to survival. The place he'd called home for six long years was gone. Safe, that was true. But it was still gone and whether it would return -- let alone if he could go back to it -- was a frightening shot in the dark.

He walked onward along the churning, roiling coastline toward the fortress he knew so well. He felt the rain intensify with each pace. The wraiths above him screamed and howled.
They were screaming the same things by now -- names, places, people. They howled in the rain.
The ghosts railed against him.
He railed against himself.

Renne turned away from the boiling ocean and moved through the forest of bone. He didn't say a word as the ghostly wailing faded down to low, psychotic whispers. They danced and swirled around him now instead of high in the cloudless, raining sky.
The ghosts pushed him onward to the fortress.

He didn't wish to go there.

There was no reason for that growing refusal beyond the growing wish to turn away from the fortress.

He just didn't wish to be near that place.

Renne knew fear of others.
Renne knew fear of places.

Ducking and rolling to escape the ghosts, Renne turned and ran westward away from the crumbling former refuge. He ran west into the winding, thorn-riddled maze of where his past and present merged into one sick labyrinth.
He didn't think about getting lost within it.

Renne now knew the fear of one's own self.-

-------------------------

The rain began again in Port South Holding House, Cell Five.

And this time, it reached the floor to bathe the stone in a low, simmering fire. The rain met the flames and hour by hour, the fire grew in its height and smokeless beauty.

From a distance, it looked like a candle in a window.

From up close, the flames were a metaphoric inferno.

NightRunner

Date: 2007-12-13 01:20 EST
The Very Scientific Matter of Emotion
The Past to Rest and to Rise

I. Ancient Ways

"Finding your way in the dark alone is a long, hard journey. When fortune smiles and grants a light, go to it and the way will be made straight."







The fire-rain continued for an undetermined length of time. Cell Five looked, from outside of its window, like a flickering blaze that the water was only holding back. Each flame that rose and each drop of rain that fell met, turning into a ghostly whisper.
Eventually, the whispers were all that remained.

The fiery inferno dimmed out.
The rain faded into mist.

Renne sat for many hours on the cell floor but soon enough, he came into awareness long enough to wrap into his yeti furs and crawl up onto his cell bed.
Lying back covered in his furs, Renne closed his eyes and folded into his mind.

--------------------------

-He was dreaming and not-dreaming.
He was walking onward in his world away from the fortress and to the west. The west, he knew, eventually led back to the fortress but it wasn't for a long way off. He needed that long way for now.
The ghosts had to be confronted.
They had to be confronted but he'd do it on his own terms.

The first one came as he crossed the border of a burning cold desert of stuff that was but wasn't sand. It circled him like the ancient predator it represented, laughed as Renne flinched once upon touching the deceptively fine-looking ground.
The ground was not as powdery-soft as it seemed. The grains bore more resemblance to little barbs of some metallic deposit. Renne didn't care. He knew his path.
And this wasn't the Spires. Not yet.

-You left us. You did not know us.-

Renne kept on walking as he spoke. His eyes were dry but he knew the tears would come as they always did.

-You left us.-
I had no choice. The Pull was broken from the ground.
-You made no move. You heard us.-
I was bound. The ancient laws were broken!
-You left us.-
I was taken! I was not Documented.
-You cannot return to us.-
What is there to return to?
-Has the Bright Warmth been cast into the Cold Silence?-
Yes. She took the Warmth and the Bright.
-You released pain.-
Yes. Many tears.
-You still grieve.-
Yes.
-Keep us. Tell of us. Uphold the Tenets.-

The spectre cried out a brief song and drifted away. Renne moved onward and cried silent tears. He didn't cry for the sand that cut his feet to ribbons. He didn't cry for the fading warmth so close to the Spires.
He cried for the People. He cried for a culture lost and held only within himself.
And he wondered how Humans could think they are so alone.

The Spires loomed ahead of him. They seemed to have shot up from beneath the sand like some grotesque wound inflicted upon the ground. Mountain ranges were always perilous and these spires were no exception.
They were as he remembered them -- smooth as glass and cold like ice. They held no colour and sapped the warmth from the body. Their colour drew in light, never letting any reflect.
The Spires were once called the teeth from which the ground feasted upon the unwary. And how apt the name was, for no mercy did these crags have, even upon the most wary of souls.

Renne flattened his ears back and faced them down.-

--------------------------

Port South Holding House, Cell Five was quiet now. The rain and fire were gone but the prisoner's mind was far from controlled. Shields had been destroyed and without such protection, this inner quest was visible to the camera and any who wishes to see.
It was a twisted play of memory, emotion, thought and history that had no definite conclusion.

It was a play still in composition.
It was a production with no promises of a happy ending.

~<>~

-This sequence may be a little slow due to Mundane circumstances and will, be forewarned now, get a little on the graphic side. Warnings will be posted at the top of each segment when that comes.-

NightRunner

Date: 2007-12-17 00:36 EST
The Very Scientific Matter of Emotion
The Past to Rest and to Rise

II. Salvation and Mercy

"The price of salvation is high and sometimes, others pay it."







-The Spires seemed to stare him down.

Rationally, he knew this to be a false feeling -- his eyes never worked and stone was not gifted with sight.

Logically, he knew now more than he did weeks ago but it didn't make anything easier to deal with. It made all things, in fact, colder and a shade darker. Still, he had little choice but to proceed.
For as much as he wanted to run, retreat and fall back into a silver age, he couldn't do it. He was not allowed that mercy.

He was not allowed the mercies Humans were.

Flesh met the stone with a fevered vengeance as Renne began his ascent. There were no false imaginings of ascending these sharp, unforgiving crags with any sort of ease. There were no illusions of facing these alongside anyone -- none could handle it alongside him.
He held no more youthful faith that his ascent would be some sort of victorious march into the sunrise.

He just knew what they were and why he had to get up to the summit.

The rock was as he remembered -- dark, cold and smooth like obsidian yet in its fractures sharp like a knife's edge. These rocks afforded no one any mercy. He put his mind on the rocks and pushed out other thoughts.
He reluctantly pushed down the brighter, warmer thoughts -- Cider, Ty'Rekh, earthen laughter --
He ruthlessly beat back the darker, colder thoughts -- the weakness of Humans, the innate betrayal and greed, the thunder --
All of it was pushed away.
Fingers and feet clung desperately to the rock face as the mountains grew steeper and colder. Already two of the webbed joinings in his hands had torn and let blue blood stream down his arms. Already his feet bore the telltale sting of the cold-burn to come.

The winds began to howl as he knew they would. His world always had wind -- never had he known a becalmed day or night. But what was true close to the ground was all the truer up here. The winds blew steadily, then with more fury.
The winds did not like any life-form upon the Spires.
The red sky darkened as the four suns set one by one. Two set in the South and two set in the West. The moons, both of them, always rose together. One rose in the North and one in the East.
He dreaded the moon-rises.

Moon-rise was when the Spires got their coldest.

He continued on.

His voice never made a sound but his mind couldn't be so quiet. It railed with thoughts and the war of keeping those thoughts away. One straying move this high up would do him no good.
Renne chanced a twitch of an ear.

The winds howled below him. They roared up here.

Not much further along, the winds' roaring turned into a blasphemous shriek.
And when he got there, he shrieked back at the wind.-

---------------------------------

Port South Holding House, Room Five was this night awash with noise and a spectacle. The air was thick with a smell somewhere between volcanic rock and cold, lifeless wind. The prisoner lay unmoving wrapped in his furs but his mind had long ago shuffled off its control. Blue spots were beginning to seep through the white fur and the room itself took on the appearance of the mental hell within.

---------------------------------

-The four suns set and cast a sickly purple haze through plumes of gathering cloud cover. The twin moons rose only after an interminable moment of something between pitch black and dawn's first light.
Renne was hanging on by his fingertips on a ledge by now. His feet kicked at nothing but the screaming air below and around him. Warm blue blood still made bright streams down his arms. It made his hands wet and slick; forcing him to exert all of his strength on merely keeping hold of this well-hated overhang.
The Spires afforded him no mercy.
Kicking inward, Renne managed to latch his feet onto the rock and thus he inched his way up beyond the hanging piece. He had always hated that spot on the rocks more than any other.
The first time he encountered the overhang, he had fallen.

Renne couldn't afford to fall this time.

Relief wasn't expressed as the overhang was conquered. Renne kept on going until he felt the Spire's angle tilt forward. The vertical clawing way finally surrendered and he crawled to the cold, smooth summit dragging the thin native air into his single lung.

-Last time you saw the Spires, you had a heart.-

Renne growled in frustration.

He wished once, only once, he could be afforded the same kind of mercies Humans prided themselves on having.-

NightRunner

Date: 2007-12-22 15:34 EST
The Very Scientific Matter of Emotion
The Past to Rest and to Rise

III. Misanthrope

"Were that faith stood strong as its reputation, then perhaps the world could not thrive so upon forsaking its own."







-It was beyond moon-rise by the time Renne dared to move. The few minutes he was still, he lay on the flat summit and felt the cold against his back. In some ways, the numbness burned the sensation away from his scarred skin. In others, the cold made the scars a more vivid reminder of what he was. What he had been.
He thought back on each scar that was on him.

This one came from running away the fifth time.
-Down the left leg-
This one came from the pit where Graz'zt resided.
-Across the shoulder-
These were created to please the Humans.
-Notched ears-

The thoughts were pushed from his mind as the chronology became more and more recent. Each of the recent scars, like his older ones, had a spectre attached to it. And already, the ghosts were howling.
-Found you again, we did.-
I sought you.
-Why?-
To put you to rest.
-Buried hatchets come up again.-
Not you.
-Humans line your memories. Tell us, how many of them lie pleasant?-
Few do. This is known.
-Why turn to them then? They strip you of everything.-

Renne stood up and turned his back on the fleet of wraiths accosting him with words. He walked along the cold summit until it began to descend.
Once, he had made it this far but had never reached the other side. He had been found before his feet could touch the ground beyond the Spires. This time however, he'd touch down.
He'd touch down and run.

His fingers curled into the cold rock. Talons at the ends of his feet extended and bit into the stone to keep him from falling. The winds didn't scream at this side -- the silence reigned here. The rock here was smoother and lent not the sharp cutting edges; rather a smooth surface with nothing to hold onto.
He had to make his own clawholds.
Descending in the utter silence, Renne knew better than to disturb this. The warnings still rang clear in his head after so long.
-The silence must not be broken.-
Why?
-It is the silence. A reminder of what once was.-
Is the silence not an evil thing?
-Not always. This silence quells the laughter of those that would betray you.-
He remembered this and descended in perfect silence. Even the ghosts held their ethereal, wailing tongues. He remembered the pure and the dark sides of the silence. When his feet touched onto the ground beyond the Spires, Renne turned away from the cold peaks.
Better now to face the past.
To hell with an uncertain future.

The ground beneath him was a great, sprawling quagmire of things long dead and solidified mist. Each step forward became a tug-of-war between his feet and the ground. And more than once, Renne grit his teeth against the sickly sweet smell of the place.
The Deadlands were no place for living beings.
Few had ever known much about this place except that this was, by legend, the place where the Severed came to reside and not-reside. This was the place for killers, freedom-takers and oathbreakers. Betrayers.
Renne recalled the tales he had heard whilst working in the last place that those stripped of freedom once worked. In the days when slavery was a thing of existence, the Deadlands did not exist.
After the Cataclysm, the Deadlands came to be.

The first to be sent here had a name once. The first to be sent here committed the worst of all evil acts. Betrayal. It was said that his act of betrayal was why the People devised such horrendous punishments for those who committed evil. Renne was proud of his People, proud of his lineage and his culture.
He never held the illusion that it was without its dark side.
The ghosts came to him then and whispered.
-You remember why.-
Yes.
-The Unnamed lie here.-
Yes.
-You remember the punishment for Betrayal?-
The name is stripped. Thus, the memory of him is stripped. He exists and does not exist.
-Correct. It is here he exists/not-exists. Name, forgotten. Signature, forgotten. Memory, sheathed in anger.-

Renne shivered.

Such sentences had been exceptionally rare and rightly so. The pain of existing yet not existing was said to be one's undoing. It was said among the People that those sent here knew only guilt, pain and dishonour. And aloneness.
Behind him, as he pulled his right foot out of the sickening muck to step forward, a wraith whispered.
-He belongs here.-
Renne shot back with a glare of useless, yellow-gold eyes.
He does not.
-He does. Humans belong here.-
Not him.
-Why? The Event.-
I know of the Event.
-Then perhaps you belong here?-

Renne stopped and turned his face skyward. The clouds here went unseen in their violet-gray splendour. The stench was inescapable and the ground seemed to pull his feet down into it with ravenous greed.
In the silence, his mind strayed and he thought about this. Memory served him well as he began walking once more.

Miles lay ahead of him in the Deadlands.
It seemed only inches lay behind him.-

----------------------------

It was high noon by the time Renne's eyes dared come open. Distantly, he was aware of the sun streaming through the window, the furs around him, the ripped webbing of his hands and feet. He too, became aware of 'Nathan asleep beside him.
Somehow, he managed a half-smile.

It was only distantly he could register the outside world -- for him, he was in the Deadlands, deep in his own mind. For the world, Cell Five looked like these Deadlands in the same production that his mind could not shut the world out from.
It was only distantly he could comprehend the path he set upon.

In a silent, twisted way, Renne felt the sun and wished for the rain.