Topic: You Have but to Ask. ((Your inner child and You SL))

Sulissurn

Date: 2011-04-25 10:46 EST
The problem with magic was that it was wild. An unstable thing that much like waspish woman, harmed child and betrayed lover--lashed its way across many without caring whom its barbs landed upon. It did not care, for example, that one moment the drow it had affected shimmered away memories and adulthood, leaving a smear of little-black confused and hateful in a world that she did not understand. The strange, piping language, harsh and disgusting was all around her. Threatening.

The problem right now, is that there was a child creeping along the shadows, bare foot on cold stone. And the child with white hair was as black as any sin, but terribly tiny. (They always say evil comes in small packages.) Trying her best to come closer, closer, closer still to a place that smelled of food. Food and sweat and stink--but mainly food. To which her empty belly growled and she almost did too. Until she remembered of course, she was on the surface, surrounded by disgusting surfacers. Was this my test? Is this my rite of blood? To be surrounded by rothe or kill them all? Befuddled, the sleek-skinned dark elf child tried to remember something just at the tip of her head. There and gone.

If she kept her eyes slit until white lash almost met, she could hide the glint of gold in shadows too, making her even more (hopefully--as hopeful as a dark elf can be, at any rate) difficult to spot in the dark. Two daggers, nearly ridiculously over sized were clenched gray-knuckled tight. They may be too big for her hands, but she clasped them with enough know-how to make the wary pause. When she climbed over the railings and landed on the porch, one knee down and one knee up--she was a mess of coltish limbs. Old enough to have lost her baby fat, this one, but not old enough to grow into muscle yet.

She waited. She timed, actually. Watching people move past a half-opened window like flickering shadows cast from candles. Stink, stink and more stink. It followed her outside even now. Spider-itsy-bitsy style side-ways crept to the open window, eyes peeled to distant and abruptly noisily puking human mail leaning over the railing. Disgust colored her features. Only a second and she literally backs up the wall, a small hissssssss uncontrolled rattled from her mouth. But she realized her mistake almost instantly, and, exactly like a little black widow, wriggled herself into the window backwards in double time, dropping to the floor by the window and darting under a table in the shadow immediately. She chose to breathe through her mouth instead. That way, guessing what that smell was would no longer be her pressing concern. But the noise...The noise. It made the knife-sharp construct of her face pinch and squeeze in near pain. How can they hear one another when they are so busy making so much noise?

A dart of small face upward to check out where she was, how close anyone else was. How far it was to follow the faint scent of food. Right, left, up, around gold eyes went. Too big even as angular as they were in little-elven face.

Gabreal could vividly remember words said and feelings left behind. It left a foul taste in his mouth. He hadn't touched a meal in weeks. Perhaps it was better that way. He stopped at the top of the stairs, the red of eyes staring down at the small world from behind a veil of white. May as well. He started down the stairs, dragging in his wake a waterfall of white hair, pure as driven snow, not yet marred by mud.

Unbeknownst to Suliss'urn, she had caught the eye of a woman with talents in magic. Watching the drow for some time, the woman's eyes drew a line from drow under table to kitchen door and back. Just like that, the obstacle that had kept the drow hesitating under table flew wide open and--

--the door just opened and for several seconds Suliss' had to steady her breath and calm twitching muscle 'lest she bolt ahead in childish rush. Her stomach said run for it but every good drow instinct said Trap! Despite the tingling sense of ill omen at how easy doors flew open with no one there, she hesitated still, bare black feet shuffling along the dirty floor boards. It was then perhaps, a speck of dirt or a whirling feather made her tick eyes away from the kitchen and catch sight of.... A wisp of white? White hair? Long white hair.

She blinked lizard-like, rapid and several times before she shook her head side to side quick. As she follow the endless wash of white hair up, up, up, up and up--the young female seemed puzzled and intrigued all at once. As if she recognized him but could not pinpoint, at all, why she did. There were also too many things to watch. Kitchen. Hair. Legs. People. Stink. Hungry. Must decide. Trap or no trap?

Gabreal's long white hair a train for the ages. There's enough to hide in, and it smells glorious: of freshly turned topsoil, of the rot and offal. Things grow in that sort of soil. Off the last stair, he stopped. His eyes consider the room. There are bodies and masses, tables, chairs. Black thing scuttling beneath, and - Red eyes snapped down and to the side, narrowing. Perhaps distant relations had altered his view of the world. Perhaps it had made him keener to certain possibilities, particular situations that could arise.

That smell is what ultimately cinched something deep inside of her. (If it indeed could be filled with anything but guts and hatred). It reminded her of caverns deep below where she should be. Why am I up here? What have I done to be left here? I can't remember...why can't I remember? He smelled like the only home she knew; roaming in packs of wild children, fighting and killing for a scrap of food while Matron's looked on as they looked down into pits filled with males. And he smelled good. Like memories to feed the belly. Skin as brown as some she knew--

"Dos! Jaluk!" Hissed quietly. Full of an ego that spanned countless miles, for here she was a tiny female commanding a male. From under a table. In the shadows, gold eyes flashed hateful. "Xun dos inbal cahallin?" Quick as a dagger her words were thrown. Now, with tickling worms of strange recognition and fear in her belly, she waited to see if the male would understand being commanded by one of his betters...and hoped he would.

She was hungry and he was too big to try and eat and kill.

((Adapted from live play log, featuring Suliss'urn & Gabreal. Suliss'urn was affected by the Your Inner Child and You SL and currently still is, thanks to the slow elven aging process. Timeline is considered to have happened BEFORE candidacy for Governor was announced.))

Sulissurn

Date: 2011-04-29 21:11 EST
Gabreal has watched the times come and go. He has listened to the voices roll by, from young to old. It is new, however, for one to rewind, work in reverse. And so, and so, when he turned to her, it was with livid eyes, eyes that burned in his skull like fires. "...Suliss'urn?" He seems both confused and, perhaps perversely? Delighted. He wound and coiled, sunk down into a crouch, the impossible spread of his fingers splayed across black-clad knees. The leather protested.

Suliss'urns features went entirely slack a moment, a little heart-bow of blue black lips, whole and unmarked parting as her jaw decidedly formed a small o. The years it took adult-Suliss'urn to give the world an obsidian mask, it seems, had not yet taken place as the expression remained from hearing her name from lips she did not recognize. Quick to anger, however, appeared to remain the same. Fury clouded the little female's face.

"Dos zhahen fris ulu elgg uns'aa!" And just as quickly as that washed over the girl, her small face clouded then with uncertainty and she backed away, took stock of the male bending down.

"Nindol zhah ussta zud'dar?" He is...he was...He is so big. Why would Matron send me such a challenge? Why would Matron send me to such a place, anyway? Is it because she likes me best? Better that Skikudis? It must...I..

When in doubt, try to kill. And so miniature Suliss'urn with a voice as pretty and pure as everything she wasn't gave a little rumble-grown and

...Tried to shank the Gabreal's foot. If all went well, she could pin him to the floor, slit his throat, then run for the kitchen.

He was huge, even to an adult. To her, he must've seemed monstrous. Needless to say, this probably did not end well. She lunged: he tore. Bone shot through flesh, fingers made into skewers meant with a sole purpose. She could shove that bone wherever she pleased. Lightweight and impervious to damage, he'd made it. He found irony in the fact that she was using the weapon he'd given her, no less. He felt it dig into his flesh: the sound he made was perverse, delighted.

"Next time, little one, aim for the knee," he purred, bones clatterclacking together in both warning, and chide, like ruler on a desk.

She had been aiming for his foot. One of the rings around her neck grew hot against her skin, warning her of something magic--someone watching the two of them, drow and man cast a spell--displeased, Suliss'urn found that her mark had missed. The hiss of anger, reptilian and odd in its way, turned to a small bit of pleasure seeing that at the very least, she'd hit something. Anything was better than nothing.

"Vith dos," she said clearly, so strange to hear in sing-song of elven lilt. At any rate, his knee caps would have been too difficult to stab properly, pinning him to the floor, had it gone right, would have--"Belbau uns'aa rath ussta velvel. Lu'oh xun dos zhaun ussta kaas? Alu tarthe!"

And then, heatedly. "Usstan phlith dos!" Ah. The age of drow maturity.

It had not yet happened to Suliss'urn.

He reached down, his still whole hand curling around the blade in his foot. Drawing in free, he offered it over, calm and cool, as if he hadn't had a piece of bone shoved straight through him.

"You have always had a talent of confusing me. I have no idea what you're saying, Suliss'urn. I gave you this." He held up the blade, a pale brow arching. "Do you not remember?"

He stabbed the blade into the floor, before making a gesture - and held out the bone cruelty of his other hand. Curling fingers around a calcium construction, he began to slowly pull at it. It stretched like taffy...before physics took over, and the finger just released from the rest of his hand. That, boys and girls, was a serious trick.

A small animalistic twitch at something metallic falling near the fire. She couldn't rightly go anywhere at the moment with one of her daggers stuck in someone. And frankly, she wasn't willing to surrender it. It was the lightest, sharpest, and easiest to wield!

"Nau!" The single word spat more than said, but at the very least, the single response was perfectly clear in connotation no matter what language. She glowered at him spitefully. She perhaps, would have said something horrific and mean, as she'd been taught too. But her stomach at that point in time let loose the sort of growl that traveled up from her belly, curled along her middle and made whatever sound she was supposed to hiss turn into a gyrgle. Which, let us all admit, was slightly less threatening than--

"Kat nindel jivviim? Lu'oh xunus dos xun nindel."

Do you know what the most confusing creature in the world is? Women are a close second, children first. The drow put her eyes level of his foot and stared at his toes. And if her eyes slightly crossed in order to do such a thing, it did not detract from her tiny dangerousness at all. Not one bit.


((Adapted from a live play log, with thanks and permission to Gabreal's player and mentions of Marissa's observance and spell))