April 26, 2021
It was a staring contest.
With a box.
Well, more precisely it was with the object that was contained in the box.
Salvador had not gone into his fight against the elf planning to actually win this thing. They had given him a grant that he had not specifically been trying to acquire. He only used it because he could, because it was his, because he had earned it, and why not? The choice had been totally random. An eenie-meanie-miney-mo pick of the four he had not yet met.
The last one had been annoying. Despite his having lectured it to behave itself, when it was here in his house he had constantly been able to feel it brushing up against the barriers in his mind. Tapping away. Always looking for a crack or a chink, some way to break through and speak to him. He had even been able to feel its frustration.
And then Snubs had eaten it, turning the damn thing into a nightmare. It was a relief when Matt had come to take it away from him. Life had been so much more peaceful since.
Now he had another one, but this was one was different.
There was something about this one.
The very presence of ShadoWeaver in his vicinity, even with the barrier of a box between them, made his fingers tingle. Salvador felt himself actually wanting to touch this one. At the moment, he was pressing his chin onto his hands to keep himself from giving into the compulsion. He sat on a stool at his kitchen island, eye level with the box, reminiscing while they both waited for one of them to blink first.
Who would it be? Salvador Delahada, or ShadoWeaver?
---
Mart darted in and brought up an arm, but found his legs had gone on vacation without him! He hit the mat, and let his arms fall to the ground at his sides, laughing again. "That was an excellent match! I am relieved that she was able to change hands, and in an earnest challenge." He rolled up to his feet and began to speak quietly to himself then, almost a whisper.
---
She.
It was strange to think of the Opal as a sentient being, maybe with an actual gender and not simply a rock, an it, a thing, a nothing. They had powers. He could taste the magic rolling off of them, trickling through the seams of the box. Part of him wanted to touch his finger to the tendril of energies he could feel and unravel them completely.
Undoing was his Power. He wondered if he had enough of it in him to reduce something as storied as this stone to dust, like he could so many other things. Trying would require him to touch the damn thing, and he was pretty certain he did not want to do that at all.
So many other hands before his own had touched these things. People had been corrupted and gone out of their minds for these things. These Opals—they might, he reasoned, be even more dangerous than him.
But there was something about this one.
---
Mart turned towards Eden and lifted a hand, "Thank you for officiating, Eden!" Then he turned towards Sal. He now had a wooden box in his hand, with a slide-locked lid and a little stand indented into its back. He held it out to the Spaniard. "I have noticed you do not tend to handle them, so I had this prepared ahead of time. You have my thanks for the challenge, it was quite enjoyable!"
"Oh." Salvador’s brows shot up, surprised. "Thank you." Slowly stated, as if he was quite unused to saying those words. He flipped a rag over the palm of his hand, though, which he held up and toward him. "I'll trade you." The faintest bit of humor and an almost smile as he held a bottled water, given to him by his companion the gatito, to Mart in exchange.
"Simple consideration, my friend! Think nothing of it." Mart passed off the case, and took the water with a jolly little laugh. "A welcome exchange!" After it was done, he cracked open the bottle and took a long drink, and one of those 'ahhhh' breaths in afterwards. "I needed that!"
That jolly little laugh, and statement, won something like an actual smile out of the Spaniard. Faint and soft, but no less touched by the Elf's thoughtfulness. He closed his fingers over the box, with the rag acting still as a barrier, and after a curt nod he turned aside. Sal crossed to the ropes and the gatito, offering the box and the rag to him, as if it were on fire and he couldn't be rid of it quickly enough.
As Sal came back to the edge of the ring, the young man straightened up and reached to receive the rag-wrapped box with both hands. Tempting though it was to unwrap it and have a look at the black Opal, he instead tucked the parcel away in the pocket of the leather jacket he had appropriated.
Sal exhaled tremendous relief as soon as it was no longer in his grasp, despite the barriers of box and cloth.
---
And yet now—and Salvador could not believe this even of himself—now the Spaniard was seriously considering opening this box.
Unlike the other one, there was no intrusive pressure trying to wriggle its way into his skull. This one, he felt, if it even had eyes, was staring back at him with the same kind of curious wonder. Thinking to itself. Tempting him with its quiet, so like his very own.
“Do you like the sun?” he asked it softly. “Like I do?”
Salvador wasn’t quite sure he actually heard the Opal answer him. Maybe he only imagined it saying, Yes.
“Doesn’t seem right,” he mused, “keeping you in there. I don’t like being put in boxes either.”
Lifting his chin from his hands, he sat back and gave into the whims of his idle hands. He unlocked and slid open the lid. As soon as air trickled into the box, his fingers tingled, needle sharp with a yearning sort of ache, and yet he resisted.
Carefully, he tipped the Opal out onto a kitchen towel, draped over the palm of his hand. With a touch and a small flex of his Power, he disintegrated the sides of the box that lacked the attached stand, and then gently placed ShadoWeaver on the base that remained.
Later, he thought, he might move her to the piano where he had left MoonBeryl. For now, though, she could enjoy the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows from the kitchen. Assuming she even had eyes to see at all. He squinted hard at the Opal. There was a faint difference in shading on her surface that did make her look as if she had at least one.
“Hn.” Pushing back from the counter, he stood, saying, “I don’t think I have to tell you to behave, but…”
Salvador only shook his head, let the words die, and walked away. It was late, he was tired, and his bed had a warm boy waiting for him in it. Anything else could be dealt with in the morning.
(( Some bits modified from live play. ))
the one that resonates
Moderator: Delahada
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Delahada
- Expert Adventurer
- Deputy Director of Dickery
- Posts: 915
- Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:07 pm
- Location: Rhydin City
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Re: the one that resonates
-interlude-
Months of companionable silence had followed. Salvador asked nothing of the Opal, and it left him alone. May passed, and so did June. No challengers surfaced to try to take it from him.
Her, he had to remind himself. No one came forward to try to take her from him.
It was possible she could not reach anyone from here, safe behind the walls and wards of his domain, to tempt them. It was just as possible that she was enjoying the peace and quiet, like him. They never spoke about it. They never spoke at all.
More often than not he forgot the Opal was even there. At some point he had moved her from the kitchen island to the piano, where she, like the ivory keys, would have collected dust had someone not kept up on keeping his place clean. She hadn’t tried to entice any of the other residents and guests of Matadero either. Perhaps none of them were worthy. Perhaps she was only biding her time.
Patience. They both had this in common.
He hadn’t known any of them before their shattering, though he had been present to witness them being brought together again. Sometimes he still felt the magic boring into his skin, heard their howls as they were reunited into their stone bodies, and the whispers of a thousand promises made by those who had concocted the ritual to reshape them. People still wanted to use them, regardless of what they said.
They both had this in common, too.
They were tools and they were weapons, but they were sentient, too. Salvador knew this about them from simply observing how others had handled them throughout the years. Some people went mad with the power they gave them. This was why they were so coveted and fought after. This was why he had vowed never to physically touch one and give it a chance to consume him.
He respected them too much for that. No matter how skilled a person thinks they are, even the sharpest of blades can cut them if mishandled. He knew this from experience. He had cut too many people himself in his time.
ShadoWeaver bonded with him without speaking, without touch. Their mutual agreement to tolerate each other’s existence might have moved her. Maybe she had lived through trauma, too. Whatever the case, there came a day in mid-July where she decided he was worth talking to.
A pulse of familiarity broke through the portals of another realm and washed across the surface of the world. This energy sang to her. She knew it, for it was her, or at least a ghostly version of her. A memory made real. Intense enough to trickle in through the wards and walls of Matadero to whisper to her.
Salvador was sleeping, and his dreams somehow were connected.
Months of companionable silence had followed. Salvador asked nothing of the Opal, and it left him alone. May passed, and so did June. No challengers surfaced to try to take it from him.
Her, he had to remind himself. No one came forward to try to take her from him.
It was possible she could not reach anyone from here, safe behind the walls and wards of his domain, to tempt them. It was just as possible that she was enjoying the peace and quiet, like him. They never spoke about it. They never spoke at all.
More often than not he forgot the Opal was even there. At some point he had moved her from the kitchen island to the piano, where she, like the ivory keys, would have collected dust had someone not kept up on keeping his place clean. She hadn’t tried to entice any of the other residents and guests of Matadero either. Perhaps none of them were worthy. Perhaps she was only biding her time.
Patience. They both had this in common.
He hadn’t known any of them before their shattering, though he had been present to witness them being brought together again. Sometimes he still felt the magic boring into his skin, heard their howls as they were reunited into their stone bodies, and the whispers of a thousand promises made by those who had concocted the ritual to reshape them. People still wanted to use them, regardless of what they said.
They both had this in common, too.
They were tools and they were weapons, but they were sentient, too. Salvador knew this about them from simply observing how others had handled them throughout the years. Some people went mad with the power they gave them. This was why they were so coveted and fought after. This was why he had vowed never to physically touch one and give it a chance to consume him.
He respected them too much for that. No matter how skilled a person thinks they are, even the sharpest of blades can cut them if mishandled. He knew this from experience. He had cut too many people himself in his time.
ShadoWeaver bonded with him without speaking, without touch. Their mutual agreement to tolerate each other’s existence might have moved her. Maybe she had lived through trauma, too. Whatever the case, there came a day in mid-July where she decided he was worth talking to.
A pulse of familiarity broke through the portals of another realm and washed across the surface of the world. This energy sang to her. She knew it, for it was her, or at least a ghostly version of her. A memory made real. Intense enough to trickle in through the wards and walls of Matadero to whisper to her.
Salvador was sleeping, and his dreams somehow were connected.
-
Delahada
- Expert Adventurer
- Deputy Director of Dickery
- Posts: 915
- Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2009 6:07 pm
- Location: Rhydin City
- Contact:
Re: the one that resonates
July 14, 2021
The world was an undulating sea of blood and ashes. A buzzing resonated constantly over the horizon. They were everywhere, skittering and crawling, consuming everything in their path, reducing the earth to the dust from whence all things came. Countless numbers of them blanketing the earth in a living, breathing shadow of promised death, and one of them was climbing his leg.
“Wake up.”
A dream. Of course it was a dream. This one, Salvador immediately reflected, was new.
He heaved a sluggish breath, feeling the weight of a body half slung across him rise and fall with his lungs. The scent of sugar and sex infiltrated his nostrils. Turning his head, he pressed his face to his lover’s hair, pulled his fingers gently through the curls at the back of the young man’s head, and breathed in more of him, deeply.
“Go to the Isle.”
Salvador barely managed to restrain the irritated growl that bubbled in his chest. This one was louder than the other one, strangely enough. Though it didn’t feel as if it were trying to get into his head. There was nothing intrusive about this voice. Somehow he heard it all around his head, like a whisper across his ear instead of an infiltrating thought.
Not that it made him any more comfortable. With a wordless, nasal grumble, he tipped his head toward his shoulder so he could rub his ear against the bone. He hadn’t wanted to wake his gatito, but the young man was already stirring atop him.
“Can you hear it?”
His initial thought was to cuss the Opal out, and he did, in his own head. Bitch, hear fucking what? Your yammering is all I hear. But then he did hear it, a something, and he went still to listen.
The buzz from his dreams. A symphony of infinite wings twitching and countless little legs skittering across dusty surfaces. A hum of an endless crowd of pests.
“Feel it.”
Salvador held his breath. Under the lethargic thump of his heart, he could. A prickle in his veins. The icy pin stabs of some familiar thing making the hairs on his neck and arms stand on end.
“Crawling in your blood.”
Yes, it felt very much like that. All the magic, the essence imbued in every cell was singing, reaching, telling him to get up and go find this thing.
Something was calling to him. Something that resonated. Something that had been hidden for far too long, and it was free now, waiting to be collected. Something that belonged to him.
“Go to the Isle.”
“Ngh.” The motherfucking Isle.
Historically, that was Salvador’s least favorite place to be. The few times he had been there, he remembered feeling smothered, overwhelmed by the thickness of the magic. It was everywhere, including in the very air he breathed. All of it conflicted with the magic in his own blood, which wanted nothing more than to break through his veins and his skin, to gobble up every last drop. To destroy. To undo.
To reduce everything to a field of blood and ashes, like he’d seen in his dream.
Like he was seeing now, with his eyes still closed.
Grumbling further, he scrubbed a hand over his face and then nudged the gatito into movement. The young man slid off of him with a wordless mewl of protest. Then he asked, sleepily, “What is it?”
“I’m going to the Isle.” It was a harsh, grunted confession, and it seemed to wake his companion up more quickly than a cold splash of water would have done.
The gatito sat up quickly, wide-eyed. “What? Why?”
“There’s … something.” Salvador found he could not explain. He had never done well explaining feelings, of any sort whatsoever.
The young man looked pensive for a long moment. He sat, propped up on his elbows, and watched Salvador slide from the bed. As the Spaniard started to move away, toward the bathroom, the gatito got up to follow him, deciding almost too quickly.
“I’ll come with you.”
Salvador did not protest this decision.
(( Continued in "Heart of the Dragon: like calls to like." ))
The world was an undulating sea of blood and ashes. A buzzing resonated constantly over the horizon. They were everywhere, skittering and crawling, consuming everything in their path, reducing the earth to the dust from whence all things came. Countless numbers of them blanketing the earth in a living, breathing shadow of promised death, and one of them was climbing his leg.
“Wake up.”
A dream. Of course it was a dream. This one, Salvador immediately reflected, was new.
He heaved a sluggish breath, feeling the weight of a body half slung across him rise and fall with his lungs. The scent of sugar and sex infiltrated his nostrils. Turning his head, he pressed his face to his lover’s hair, pulled his fingers gently through the curls at the back of the young man’s head, and breathed in more of him, deeply.
“Go to the Isle.”
Salvador barely managed to restrain the irritated growl that bubbled in his chest. This one was louder than the other one, strangely enough. Though it didn’t feel as if it were trying to get into his head. There was nothing intrusive about this voice. Somehow he heard it all around his head, like a whisper across his ear instead of an infiltrating thought.
Not that it made him any more comfortable. With a wordless, nasal grumble, he tipped his head toward his shoulder so he could rub his ear against the bone. He hadn’t wanted to wake his gatito, but the young man was already stirring atop him.
“Can you hear it?”
His initial thought was to cuss the Opal out, and he did, in his own head. Bitch, hear fucking what? Your yammering is all I hear. But then he did hear it, a something, and he went still to listen.
The buzz from his dreams. A symphony of infinite wings twitching and countless little legs skittering across dusty surfaces. A hum of an endless crowd of pests.
“Feel it.”
Salvador held his breath. Under the lethargic thump of his heart, he could. A prickle in his veins. The icy pin stabs of some familiar thing making the hairs on his neck and arms stand on end.
“Crawling in your blood.”
Yes, it felt very much like that. All the magic, the essence imbued in every cell was singing, reaching, telling him to get up and go find this thing.
Something was calling to him. Something that resonated. Something that had been hidden for far too long, and it was free now, waiting to be collected. Something that belonged to him.
“Go to the Isle.”
“Ngh.” The motherfucking Isle.
Historically, that was Salvador’s least favorite place to be. The few times he had been there, he remembered feeling smothered, overwhelmed by the thickness of the magic. It was everywhere, including in the very air he breathed. All of it conflicted with the magic in his own blood, which wanted nothing more than to break through his veins and his skin, to gobble up every last drop. To destroy. To undo.
To reduce everything to a field of blood and ashes, like he’d seen in his dream.
Like he was seeing now, with his eyes still closed.
Grumbling further, he scrubbed a hand over his face and then nudged the gatito into movement. The young man slid off of him with a wordless mewl of protest. Then he asked, sleepily, “What is it?”
“I’m going to the Isle.” It was a harsh, grunted confession, and it seemed to wake his companion up more quickly than a cold splash of water would have done.
The gatito sat up quickly, wide-eyed. “What? Why?”
“There’s … something.” Salvador found he could not explain. He had never done well explaining feelings, of any sort whatsoever.
The young man looked pensive for a long moment. He sat, propped up on his elbows, and watched Salvador slide from the bed. As the Spaniard started to move away, toward the bathroom, the gatito got up to follow him, deciding almost too quickly.
“I’ll come with you.”
Salvador did not protest this decision.
(( Continued in "Heart of the Dragon: like calls to like." ))
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