Topic: The Search Continues

Lerida · Date: 2007-09-13 06:12 EST

The wind had changed.

In the outskirts of Rhy'Din on a damp September night, Lerida was leaning against the post of an old gallows, a rotten noose swinging with the chill breeze. The air that carried signals, cautions, directions. But on none of them was there a scent to the unfolding drama of one of the city's icons. Upon her return, Viki would never be let go.

Lerida did not know anything other than her brief interludes with the Sandman, and what his similarly riddle-encripted guidance had awoke in her. Now that she was back in town, to live, and to base herself for a good long while, she knew that all her resolve had to be breathed into the gutted fire of Viki's possible discovery. The WANTED posters hadn't ruffled enough feathers, and the taste of something disconcerting still lurked in the same air that offered nothing of the chasing colours of a Seer's skirt.

Leaving the Gallows, having been drawn to them from a distance, she let out a deep breath and promised that little dear that she would find her. It was a gut feeling, and being in this place of death had reminded her of the precious intellect of time, knowing full well how long to wait, and from the look in the Sandman's eyes, that feral omen and silhouette she'd failed to forget, time was slipping further from the searcher's reach.

Getting in her old bomb of a car, rust coloured and dusty wheeled, she took off down that sharp bend and long lonely road, headed for WestEnd. The seeking was on, well and truly. No one was going to distract her. All her matters were finished or in the dust itself, nothing but history. The vibration of that seer's energy haunted her dreams always, and the show would go on....

Another time.

Victoria Chylde had to be found. For Lerida did not break her promises, not ever.

Lerida · Date: 2007-09-13 06:25 EST

A thin vapour of fog hung about the bridges and balconies of WestEnd as her car crept in a near silent chitter down the main street. She passed all the familiar, well known attractions, from Isis Manor to Club Blue, her eyes peeled for anything that tugged at the senses, including her sixth.

The dawn was not far off and yet she felt distinctly awake. Parking her car down from Club Blue, she got out and walked towards a lightpost, staring up at the electricity wires which swayed in the cool, pre-sun hour. She spotted a few young things huddled on a corner a few blocks down, a black cat passing an old, boarded up fence, a raven perched on a chimney which had seen better days, and a man with ponytail and shades watching her from a building at least four stories high. But she didn't watch any for too long, and took off down the street, her boot heels making staccato the silence of this eerie, badly lit part of Rhy'Din.

"Aye Viki, sugah, where the hell did you get?"

She whispered the words, frustrated at the lack of energy being poured into this search, or perhaps it was more the fact that so many people were actually looking and nothing had come up, no one's horrible joke had come apart. She chewed her inside-lip and crinkled her brows, her peridot eyes sliding east to west in a slow scan. Repeatly, the striking character of the gallows, tall and sinister against that yellow-murky sky a little earlier, replayed in her mind. It made her walk faster, look meaner, want to find that poor girl more than ever. It made the reality of it sharpen against her emotions, making her angry, reminding her that the discovery of Victoria Chylde may not be as she hoped.

"Damn this odd town, damn it! Where you Viki, where you", she said curtly as her eyes wandered up and down the buildings and crannies she walked by, until finally her swaying saunter came to a stop on a curb. Standing there, she fell to a crouch and placed her head in her hands, rosered curls spilling about her cheeks and neck, whipped about in the wind. The mist of the last evening's rain stained the sky with a sickly rainbow, and made this place all the more uncomfortable.

But finally, with a searing blush of desire to find her, she stood. Her entire body was prickled with anticipation, and by the very point of each of the slim, sheer silver, miniature daggers she had affixed to the underside of her figure-hugging shirt and clipped to the garter worn beneath her loose trousers.

Empowered, keen, daring, she spun and stalked off down the street, jumped in her car, slammed the door, and took off down the street, heedless of the loud track of her tires burning rubber, and she headed off to Apartment 13, Valcroix's home away from the road, parked outside and went in. She'd spend the night here, her home away from this, and come morning, hit the neighbouring streets.

Lerida · Date: 2007-09-13 19:20 EST

Number of the Beast

Surprisingly, she had slept like a log. Out as soon her head hit the pillow. When she awoke, there was quiet, and that feeling of desertion. Val had been gone for so long, and yet she could almost smell him here, his imprint on this townhouse. Thinking on him heavily she pulled herself out of his bed, and naked, walked to the sole chair in the room where her clothes were draped. After dressing, she hurriedly moved about, making the bed, brushing her hair and finding some toast and spread in the mostly empty fridge. She was chewing it when she heard behind her a door open and watched as his room mate, the bloodless looking fellow, emerge. He smiled quickly and crossed to the bathroom, and it was then she took the opportunity and left, out into the street and the cold pavement, hot sun. The memories in there still flowered and the room mate gave her goosebumps. Both she could do without.

She spent the morning driving around the streets nearest, as it was a decent walk from Rhy'Din this part of the Westside and she knew that the buildings stretched a good few miles and that there was plenty to keep a look out for in what would be a perfect place for privacy. That urging worry seeped further through her mind, and she felt tense her entire round, driving in slow circles and getting out occassionally to watch for something, get a closer look at a boarded up warehouse, a bright colour flickering beneath a door, when it was just a rag, a torn cloth, nothing that hit a nerve.

By afternoon she was hungry, having only stopped for a milkshake and fries earlier which she had hardly touched and the flavour of which she couldn't remember what she'd had; strawberry, chocolate, vanilla? Everything was dimmed in her world except for this promise. In her mind, when she closed her eyes, where the droplets of panic gathered, she would see Victoria's childlike smile, her hair unruly and coiled about her shoulders, those Eyes. And it left an awful sadness in her heart, and she didn't know quite why.

Lives in tnis town had been so interconnected. Mish, Maia, Viki, Domikai, Irrykin. They were all embroiled in this, all somehow a pawn or a player, and now she had decided to recreate this horrid destiny and be a hunter. The fever of impatience raked at her constantly, and with her hands tapping the wheel of her car she sat feeling helpless. And it then that it came, like an unexpected gush of wind, knocking her from behind. Her knees felt weak, her throat dry, and then strength and clarity stung again, and she hit the accelerator and squealed off down the street, her tires wild as a banshee in the quiet of the Westside district.

Lerida · Date: 2007-09-17 02:34 EST

OOC:

Posts from here on in will detail Lerida's meetings with various characters amidst this time of searching. Posts under this series will be titled in subject as 'Hunters Moon'.

Enjoy the ride.

Lerida · Date: 2007-10-01 02:30 EST

There is a moon out my door, and because it is the desert, a sandy hole in Rhy'Din, it is still hot, and I am burning up, little windchime, off of me steamed thoughts, and now in this aperplexy I rage against door handles and my knives and am again bloody and liquid in this time.

I haven't been back to the city in many days. I left the Inn in the dress I still wear, ankle length mauve, I looked like a dove, swaying on my bare feet. She's a bride with a horrible husband, married to this fate, yes, i see my own reflection and abhor it as much as I am satisfied.

It is grim. There is a void, a deluxe, a many million faces, each idea swirling, the dark side of the knife, I hold on my finger, if I close my eyes a bit and try to see hard enough, with my white arm stuck out at the sky, the moon, I hold her, Selene, and /she smiles, dreamily/ Sid, or Luna, like a prism of white light, dancing naked across my skin.

I left the house and walked back to my home, dressed, forgot about the gallows and washed all the blood from my body.

One day someone will ask me what I've been doing out in the desert for so long, what machine I am building, and why my hands are covered in blood. I won't tell them, I only tell the angels that come to me in my sleep, the ones that make love to me, nude, but for the feathers arching from their shoulderblades, and I tell them all about me and the dusty dimestore that is the desert, tokens, talismas, lost lost lost..

And am I to be found?

Who is looking for who.

Viki..are you hearing me?

Penned and sent into the wind out the window of her car as she drives through the city, thunderstruck by a Hunters Moon.

Lerida · Date: 2007-10-15 23:30 EST

Like a cheering group of trees releasing birds into the sky at twilight, her laughter bucked and echoed down the alley as she walked drunk, sidewards, to lean into a wall, laughing hysterical now, eyes crinkled closed in enjoyment, fingers lazily darwing patterns into the cold, wet brick.

"Yeah, damn thieves, gotta watch yourself, might get 'napped by the wind next, aye, yeah, so true... Damn fuckers!"

She coughed, swirled and fell, a heap of unbuttoned cotton and a missing shoe, some seriously trodden Cinderella. She sat unkempt and with the stink of gin stuck to her throat, her hair, the sour fragrance of too many cigarettes. Beneath that, sandlewood, and the woods themselves, clinging tenaciously to her skin. She fell asleep there, wasted, over tired, delirious.

Lerida · Date: 2007-10-18 20:15 EST

Boundless, she strode the streets, looked, feared, kept on, tracing a night that was a blur. The days came and went, all one endless stream of light. And in its she was a solitary gleam, cast out from the shadows, into the blur, in and out of alleyways, stairwells, watching, smelling, believing. Voices, echoes, howls, yips, barks, yells, hollars, cries.. The night had become a draped opera, the curtains closed, and the instruments of nocturnal design trembling onwards. The highwire was no safe a place, and in amidst the dischord of the opening number, she was able to disclose her self to some occult understanding of the vibrations on the air, a mystical link, a dark place led to.

Placing her hands on a railing she stared into the building below, nearby where the guard had been killed. She swallowed, a loud, uncomfortable sound, and shivered. Hands gripped tightly the metal, cold, stinging her palms, and she watched the cerulean dark toss and turn like blankets over a giant, eyes filled with tricks, devious journeys into this oblivion place.

She started down the stairs, breaths short, eyes wide. Like every other night she was a black, slinking cat, no different, sinuous and slow, with ease she crossed the interplay of streetlight and neon, of tar and gravel, to the place where blood had spilt. And there she stood, vulnerable to the hunting eye. A product herself of the Hunters Moon.

"Vik...", she whispered, and closed her eyes.

Listening.

Lerida · Date: 2007-10-18 20:17 EST

The clatter of street trash and passing footsteps.

But Viki was not a part of tonight's symphony. She was hidden. Fast, her colourful spirit, like a kite, was misty in clouds, illusion.

Lerida opened her eyes.

For now, from various locations, she would watch.