[Acquaintances]
Lizzyfer
O.D. 10.20.1999 [12:27 p.m.]
(This is REALLY going way back. It's a scene Jess and I played with her air-sylph (parseimeinwsifm?) and my bagheera tekhmet...this is also the scene where Jess more or less knocked my socks off with the quality of her writing. Forgive the crappy formatting. From here on out, it'll be the norm.)
>~Swirling confusion of colors, all taken directly from the sky, lie inside the
october winter day blue of her eyes. Perfect marble orbs because of their
imperfections, which only seem to make them even stranger. Firecracker is a girl
full of slender graceful curves and easeful airy motions, light as butterfly
wings and butterfly kisses, as she climbs up on her castle perch overlooking the
lake.
>
>
>With her comes the wind.
>
>
>It starts up from the east, and shivers it's warm caress over the ever shifting
sands... touching gentle on the mirror surface of the lake, sending velvet
smoothe liquid ripples breaking the reflected star light into fractured
fragments. Slender ears, pointed? perk up and wriggle with the sounds.
>
>Does the wind talk to you? No, the question is - do you talk to the wind?
Firecracker is always accompanied by noise... the whistling song of the wind
against the cavern of thine ears, the whip lash of gentle churned up polluted
water against the sides of the marina and the further 'desert shores.'
Jingle-jangle, clink clink.... Tiny chimes ring out, bang against each other,
tinkle like fairy footfalls against a chrystal spider web... pouring out into
the air to be carried by the breeze and tossed like a fistful of gold coins over
the darkened landscape.~
>
>[Jarl Thane]
>Tue 23:43 PDT The wind, stirring, destroys the mirror of the lake, and the
sleek young man stirs. Slowly. Ever so slowly, turning upon his back to stare at
the true stars above, one arm flung carelessly to the side, the other rolled
behind his head. Scantily (scandalously scantily, as some anal Garou would say)
clad as always, his skin shimmers faintly in the moonlight--but it is nothing
compared to the shimmer, the shine, the resonance of his amber eyes, so
glowingly bright even in the midnight hour.
>
>Those eyes turn, then, from the heavens, to follow the invisible trail of the
wind. Those eyes, ever perceptive, follow the wind, and fall upon the castle,
and the girl atop. And he merely watches, languidly, lazily unmoving. Graceful,
too, was he--but slinkingly, sensuously graceful where Firecracker is airy and
ethereal. The blessings of each their kinds, no doubt--or cursings, depending on
how one looked at it.
>
>~To talk of curses to this one would to be to cast a heavy weightt, to snare a
summer alpine breeze with a net. To try to cage in the roaring of the storm. And
she is nothing 'heavy'... with her everything is light. But then, we all bear
our curses do we not? And to look closer some would see the lurking sickness...
the wasting disease which taints what she is. Polluted eyes, tinged a fimly
yellow green around the core. Whispers of exhaust? Smoke? Beautiful none the
less.
>
>Pollution makes for stunning sunsets. We all carry our curses.
>
>And to talk of blessings with fain be as bad. She is, herself... and she is
everything imagined by the imagination of the air before it's peace was
shattered by the invention of modern things. By airplanes.
>
>Imagined by a wind which saw dragons born aloft.
>
>Firecracker pulls herself until she's sitting crosslegged and combing back long
free flowing hair. Brown and gold both, as though both scalps fought for
possession and neither won. Maybe both won? Or maybe it was a draw? Rippled and
straight with the strain of being captured in a messy braid for most of the day,
and the night, it brushes back against her skin - for there is far too much
skin exposed for decency. Then again, who defines decency when the 'anal' are
not around? Too light for it's thickness. Something is wrong, to the
perceptive.
>
>She grew careless and she throws her head back and laughs. Pure, easeful, and
innocent. -Innocent-. Innocent like the memories of child hood dreams or the
blissful blush of the first rose whose head peeped out from the cold hard
earth. Freedom... No constraints. It's a laugh of joy. Glad to just be free...
Almost a song in and of itself. A deep indrawn breath of air she needs not, and
then it's released...
>
>It's all about release.
>And curses.~
>[Jarl Thane]Wed 00:08 PDT Laugh. Laugh. The song of the stars, yes? Innocent
and pure and wild. Oh, he knew that song, the cat disguised as a man, lounging
by the lake. He knew it as deeply as he knew time, as he knew the sun and moon
and stars, as he life--as he knew himself. He knew the song of the Wyld, be it
embodied in cat or man or woman or sylph. And he rises, rises in a line of fluid
grace, swinging his legs silently off the rock. Bare toes find the sand, and he
stands, flowing, pouring directly into a long, long stretch.
>Stretch. Stretch, beneath the moon. Long, languorous, luxurious extension of
sleek cat-muscle, before the ripple of relaxation--release--translating into the
ripple of motion. Slinking stride: low-slung, easy-swinging gait, velvet-footed,
across the soft sands. Across the sands and about the mirror-lake, disturbed now
by the wind. A curse, for the reflection of the stars were lost? No. Blessing--a
call to look up, to look past the imitation, and marvel at the truth.
>Truth and riddle, spelled in the scatter of stars, spilled in the scatter of
moonlight across sand, and written in the liquid lines of feline form, as the
cat approaches the east wind. And looking up, he offers a small smile, ever so
small--the knowing, recognizing smile of one magnificently wild creature to
another, untamed as the wild, untameable as the sea.
>There was no pretense here. It is not spoken; nor must it be spoken. It is
known. He knew her to be something over and beyond that which humans could
comprehend, and she, in turn, knew him thus.
>~Some one once said, and whether or not he was a wise man I leave up to you
though others may not bother discerning a fools words from a saints, that to
know something truly deeply is to know something not at all. It's possible to
drown and find yourself gasping - not for air - but for self, the further into
secrets and nameless things you delve. It's also possible that to know something
truly, is to really know yourself. No one knows themselves.
>
>That's what change is for.
>
>Winds were always bringers of change, no? A tender touch which is meant to be
firmer but does not manage tucks - never tames - one gold/brown....
browned-golden autumn russet lock of hair back behind one delicately pointed
ear. Careless, she grew - as seen by the betraying mark. Innocence even as she
finally notices the cat pretending to be man. She knows about pretending, about
cloaking oneself in a skin not natural. To fit in. Strive for a facade
acceptable though you could care less. You could care more, but you could
definatly care less. Careless...
>
>A friendly smile touches her lips... lips which could only, simply, be
described as imperfection perfected. Paradox? The world was created whole - was
not it created to imperfect? If so... then is it now, gradually, slowly,
haltingly, creakingly, moving towards a new Perfection. Defined by rigid sets of
reality, like one of Michealangelo's sculptures. Is the world to be 'David'?
....
>
>Is perfection really perfect? Her lips are perfect when they smile, a smile
likesunshine - and bird-like she tilts her head to the side, appraisingly.
Intelligence honed by ages, and that timeless innocence.Someone wh see's the
world... differently. One gets the feeling that she could fly away in a moment.
One could get the feeling that she never moves. Silence never, ever, ever dares
to encroach on her territory and her finger tips swish,swish,swish catch on the
grains of sand blown onto her rock-made perch. A small noise, but a noise. When
she moves to hook one be-sneakered (a sneaker...?) foot on the edge of the rock
more chimes grace the air, coming from one sagging too big pocket as bits of
metal are flung against each other. Tiny differences make the sweetest of music.
The worst of music. Thus situated she waits, though she won't wait for long -
change never does. Silence can never reign here, not on her castle...
which is only an outcropping of everyone's castle.
>
>Freedom, remember?~
>
>[Jarl Thane]
>Wed 00:36 PDT Wonder.
>Pure wonder, from the cat, bearer of such a heavy and wondrous legacy. Pure
wonder, from the keeper of secrets, the guardian of mysteries. Pure wonder, from
the Sphinx in the sands, silent for all eternity even as the world rises into
great towers of glass and steel all about him, even as the towers crumble again,
crumble and fall, back into the sands from which they came. Pure wonder. Legacy
or no, heritage or no, he had never, ever seen anything as she. There had been
one other--one other of her breed, her changing breed more transient, more
volatile than even his own--but she had hidden her nature so much better.
>A careless moment was all it took to reveal the wonder. Curse. Blessing.
Release.
>A careless moment, and wonder, now, from the wide-eyed cat standing beneath, as
his exotic, tilted features brighten with the slow-spreading smile, as he
speaks, at last. No 'good evening' tonight--none of that human foolishness.
Merely the question which he so desperately needed answered,
>"Who are you?"
>
>~A Keeper of Secrets, his Self claims to be. Secrets can not be kept, and that
is the closest guarded 'secret' of them all. That they may not be trapped. And
they may not be hidden. They are only themselves, like every mask is only itself
and every person is only who they are. Who are you? It's a harder question then
one might first think, all because it's so easy to answer.
>
>Another paradox, for nothing in this world - this ever changing world - is
easy. Perhaps she knows a bit, perhaps she's seen a glimpse of his own treasure
trove. Perhaps she hasn't. More music dancing on the air in swirling eddies -
tornado's, as she leans down. Breathing pure simple delight.
>
>So innocent.
>
>Because he knows. He isn't cold... like the rest. And it's all about freedom.
Human foolishness did not extend to greetings, when there were breeds and kinds
and spirits and mysteries whose greetings were all the more 'foolish.' Needless.
Needed because without them they lose structure; miss out on their attempt to
carve out a piece of the world in their image. Their image which turns too
look exactly like the person living in the cubicle beside them.
>
>Sad times.
>
>Her eyes are just as wide, intense... with the cool feel of a caress. The
happy glow of the stars as seen from a high up mountain, where pollution does
-not- have it's tentacle hooks. Her brow creases in a thoughtful frown as she
ponders his answer - and his question, and while no words spill forth as yet,
she isn't silent. Finally, quietly, musically her voice rings out... sweeps
out... breathes and curls like a gift and a reminder of the sting of fresh pine
around the cat-man's stomach. Around his head. ~ Who am I? I don't know. Who
are you? Name's are a precious commodity, but I can give you two if you choose
to borrow them when you want to talk. Most people only use one of the other,
neither is the one which I'm known by, but you understand don't you? I'm
called Firecracker - at least today, tomorrow I might be Kelly but we'll see
when the sun rises and decides, don't you know?
>[Jarl Thane]
>Wed 01:04 PDT He shakes his head, slowly, and he laughs. Wind, is her
voice--wind through the pines high on the pure peaks; wind through a seashell,
softly whispering, singing, ringing. Wind, over the lush, sliding ocean of
his--low and hushed and laced with an accent of a world past, a world yet to
come; crushed-velvet soft, drenching as autumn rain. "No...that is not what I
meant."
>That was not what he meant at all. Names are meaningless. Names are power, but
spoken in human terms, they are meaningless. He asked not for a word, or two,
though he could well give her a thousand that would not tell a thing of what he
is. That was not he meant, and well she knew it.
>"I meant...who are you?"
>Eyes, eyes as golden as the Sahara, as muted-brilliant as amber, sunlit,
sunkissed, sun-caressed and sun-embodied--eyes dance in feral, wild bemusement,
as he holds a lean hand out in invitation, though doubtless she needed no
assistance in moving from her perch to the soft sands below. Eyes dance and eyes
glitter and eyes sing, as one's panther-wyld heart calls to the other's
wind-wild soul.
>"Who are you, beyond the masks and behind the names?"
>~Amusement ready and waiting below the surface, lava in the volcano, bubbles to
the forefront. Completely transfiguring the sunny clean surface, simmering like
fire in the cool depths of her eyes. Another layer. Perhaps that is the mistake?
The dismissal of things human - because humans rule the earth and chain in the
rulers. Chain them in with 'rules' and regulations and other nonsense.
>
>Nonsensical!!! Just -be- here. Eyes meeting eyes - doors and gates the inner
workings of the soul. Empty? What are you if all you are is a dream? Do you
really have a soul? The riddle which her kind has long, long, long, sought to
unravel. The silken fringes of the sliding strands of her hair melt away into...
air? Just plain wind. Breeze. Summer leaves dancing as they are shaken from the
skeletal boughs of tree's with the turning of the seasons. Reminiscent of that
dance, of that sudden force. It's all in one amused - itchingly curiouss -
expression. She knew.
>
>She knows, a sweet-soft breath and she moves again.. one slender hand reaching
inside the gaping pocket to retrieve the wooden mouth flute. Wind flute, to
stroke it's solid length and feel for the grooves as unblinking she stares...
Smiles, provokes another dream - one hopes~ Who do you think I am? You may be
right, and if told you would be wrong. Misperceptions are easy to come by, no? I
still ask - who are you? ~An innocently cheery grin~ And why are you looking for
answers before finding a question?
>
>[Jarl Thane] Wed 01:30 PDT The feral cant of head to one side, as the slanted,
lovely-slanted amber eyes, threaded with gold, study her. The smile is returned
in slow curve of wide lips, in slow shift of weight from one lithe foot to the
other, the easy twist of lean spine, the graceful balance, intrinsic and
instinctive and cat-natural.
>"I think..." and he shakes his head. "I know you are more than you would admit
to. And I?" The smile widens, as he takes a slight bow beneath the waxing
gibbous moon, the poet's moon. "Jarl Thane, you may call me, as much the world
does." The name, though meant for the mundane world, carries a slidingly exotic
edge, a purred, rolling accent. "Or you may call me Jhak'thal, as a few have
known me as. Or you may know me as I am--though I, too, cannot tell you.
>"A secret given is a secret lost." Such was the belief of the cat-man and all
his kind, who hoard secrets, who reap secrets from the wind and call it their
own. And such, too, was their belief: "I look for answers because I know they
are there, buried in your shifting words, whispered in the winds." A gentle
smile, as he inquires, "Or would you say me wrong, lady?"
>~Silence?
>
>As she listens too him speak, and watches with light-felt intensity to much for
one body to hold. Silence? Never, there is always noise as she folds one
long-limbed leg under neath herself, tattered shreds of ripped up faded jeans
hang down in ragged strips. So much skin, perfection flawed. She lifts the
wooden-natural pipe to pursed lips, then pauses, hesitating in the motion....
Her hands fall again, one trailing langorously down with sweeping easeful grace
to reach - if he will, to touch her hand.
>
>A curious glittering look as her elfin face tilts to the side, long curling
golden brown lashes highlighting the wonder. The breeze picks up, again, and
tosses whispers almost heard around the pairs scene, around their stance,
around their looks, and around their glances. Innocence. What interludes one may
fine in the desert sands, what magic? Never known - but a piece glimpsed now....
Her fingers reach, and with a child-like pure wonderous smile studying the can
mans face as though to memorize it. Not a lovers look, something... different.
>
>Like she is. She speaks, again.. more music. And the flute remains clutched in
the other bird-boned hand.~ I would admit to much, if the time called for it.
And I would tell you more - but the divining the truth is something you would
have to do for yourself, for I'm not supposed to always speak it. Misleading,
you know? I think I'd like to know you. But I shall call you by your other
names, since I can't hear the first except in echo's. Funny things echo's, don't
you think? Instead of looking, try to see. I'd say you wrong, but I'd lie as
well. Or maybe I wouldn't, I don't know who I am today, remember? ~Another bird
light cant of her head, staring at the cat-man. Wild to wild, such is the
way of freedom.
>
>Of change, as blown forward by the beating of butterfly wings.~
>
>[Jarl Thane] Wed 02:03 PDT "Would you like to know me, before you know
yourself?" The smile, soft and enchanted, ferally canted--the secret smile of a
leopard on the African veldt, of a Sphinx crouched in the Sahara, lost and found
in a desert so like this one, and so different. "Perhaps you will have to wait
until I know myself, as well."
>
> Her fingers reach--and he stretches up, one long ribbon of animal
loveliness, silvered by the moon, silvered by the mysteries of the wind. He
stretches, and his fingers unfurl from his palm, the blooming, delicate,
carnivorous rose--and the son of the oldest Wyld touches, for an instant, the
daughter of the wyldest wind. It is no more than the contact of fingertips, soft
as a breath, soft as wonder, sliding past one another like the sea over the
sand, and the sand over time.
>
> "I look. And I hear. But I do not see. And I do not listen." Still, he
smiles; still, his eyes are amber, are haunting. "But I will. I will see the
invisible, and I will hear the silent." Wild to wild, the almost-promise passes;
wild to wild, the almost-linger of hands slip apart, as his lean fingers curl,
and his slim hand falls to his side.
>
> "I should like to know you," he murmurs, as he takes a step back, and
another. "And I do know you. I just don't remember you. Yet."
>
> Wonder. Wonder and wild and the world fallen aside, silent and awed, by the
whispers of the wind, by the sliding of the moonlit sea. Wonder and wild and
easy turn, easy swivel, as his tawny gaze drops away, as he moves away over the
desert lakeshore sands, sidling away, the panther into the night.
>
> At the edge of the beach, where sand met scrubland; at the edge of vision,
where reality met imagination; at the edge of memory, where time met
eternity--there, there, he lingers, nature's flawed perfection beneath the poet
moon. There he lingers, and there his amber gaze rises to the moon; there is he
framed by silver light, by wind; there is he caught out of time and beautiful,
and wild--slantingly, exotically wild, a beast, a god, a cat, from a world
beyond the sphere of human knowledge and comprehension. There does he
linger--and there does he shift, suddenly and completely, until one must wonder
if he had been human at all, ever--if he had been there at all.
> Silent, the cat-man turned cat slips away into the dappled shadows.
>
>~A touch, a simple fleeting second who none bear witness to, but these people.
These hearts, these dreams, these beings. A meeting at a crossroad, by a rock
seeped in blood crimson shades, stole the sunset from the sky, and whose
lingering warmth melts away as finally midnight passes. 'Mere' instants.
Treasured none the less, the way things are forgotten to treasure.
>The touch.
>
>Such a simple thing but yet - not simple at all. Warmth felt pooling from the
inside in an expression of what lies there in, but too delicate. Too painfully
delicate, as though hollow. Gentle, just a brief touch - but it says worlds. It
makes worlds. -They- make worlds. Doesn't everyone? And still she smiles, the
corners of her eyes crinkle up in tiny joy-filled ripples. All innocence and
delight at learning something new, even though it was already known. New and
wondrous.~
>
>But you begin to realize, and I think, perhaps, you will learn something...
Sometime. ~Impishly enticing~ Though you may not know it!
>
>~Poetry given a mockery - a tribute - to life. Wild, to wild. Is wild and a
song and a heart beat which thrums along the surface, not hidden. Just
forgotten. Beneath the silvered crying moon, the moon whose light is swallowed
by the velvet black heavens, as surely as the snake swallows it's own sinnuously
sinful tail in a circle neverending, an omen impending. Her fingers curl in on
themselves with his absence, fresh as springs very first breeze and the childs
very first laugh - the one which was thought to inspire peter pans faeries. A
breath... and words spoken, which carry after the cat-mans sleek lean figure.~
First, my friend, realize that not even the silence can be silent.
>
>~Watchful, the creepingly diseased sad eyes are. This relic of an age gone by
watches, this fragment of a sky gone to bedlam, chaotic madness. A slow close
of eyes acknowledging the shadows as she lounges backwards with a nod of
acknowledgement to what happened here, this night, and then staring.
>
>Staring unblinking at the edge of the darkness, the edge of one precipice, the
girl brings the flute to her lips once more. Preceeds to play, invoking memory
of skill, invoking the wind. The wind which again plays upon the almost stilled
mirror-lake and sends puddles of star light pooling along the shore. Out of
place in the sand, capturing the over-lying vault of night sky.
>
>Not capturing. Freedom. It's this that the flute sings of. The raging
freedom.... the roaring of the four winds when they meet in the center, and
become a heart. The piping eerily ethereal sound of which winds along the ever
changing sands, the hard cold concrete pathways - the bridges given by the
moonlight and the rippling transforming ripples of the water. It dances, like
everyone does.
>
>Heard. Carried - a gift to what is. She plays the memory for a while more, only
good because of the pureness. The heart. The innocence.
>
>Wind brings with it change.
>
>No?~
