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This is a lot darker than the stuff I usually write. Just a random insanity drabble for my main RPC. It's...interesting.
*~*
Water was in everything, when you really thought about it. Obvious places, like oceans and rivers, of course. And then, it seeped into the soil with every rain or every overflow or tide. It existed in the air as invisible vapor, in the atmosphere as clouds. Plants took it in to carry out their self-sufficient feeding process. And, of course, water was in every living creature. It rushed through blood, fell in the form of tears, evaporated off perspiring skin. Water, when you got right down to it, was life, plain and simple. The world could not go on without it. It was a proven fact that one could live longer without food than water; that only helped prove water’s imminent necessity to all Earth-dwellers.
She dragged unwilling vapor from the air and wrapped it in on itself into a throbbing globe of translucent blue, studying it as it turned and morphed, hovering just above her palm. She barely twitched, and the liquid froze into solid ice, seeming to smoke as the chill met the warm twilight. The ice settled into her palm, beginning to melt into the crevices of her palm and running over her hand, dripping off her skin and soaking back into the soil she lounged on, returning from whence it came. Her expression was almost bemused, maybe even awed (though by the water’s malleable nature or her own power, one could never know), and then something darker flashed across her features, blackness flitting into her bright eyes, and she reeled back, hefting the ball of ice with all her strength. It shattered against a sturdy maple trunk and she growled low, displeased with the outcome. She rose, a hand outstretched and palm held vertically, and glowered at the tree. The leaves began to tremble, as if truly frightened, and then the spindly branches, and then the sturdier ones, and then the trunk, and then the very roots, until the entire tree was swaying as if subjected to hurricane force gales. A smile quirked the sides of her mouth upwards as the tree was ripped from the soil, its very connection to life, so simple to destroy. She didn’t need the mental strength she possessed to do this; toying with the water within worked well enough.
She let the tree drop back into the space it once occupied, and it immediately toppled over into the identical tree beside it, cracking off branches and knocking leaves off their insecure twigs. This was amusing, but not what she wanted to see. Pure power coursed through her now, now that she’d let it, and tossing trees around in a forest was boring her. Water was in plenty of other things, which meant there were plenty of other things to hold her attention.
She turned and strode slowly through the forest, bending grass, shrubs, centuries-old trees, anything that annoyed her out, of her way. She was in no mood to be held back. She wouldn’t allow it.
Her friends…ha! No friends of hers. And her parents. God, she would be better off without them. All any of them did was hold her back. Rules, regulations, laws; in place for some, but not for her. She had been restrained all her life, a slave to her society, her stupid idealism, her faith in everyone and everything that crossed her path. She trusted blindly, loved unconditionally, protected to the death. She had proven herself capable, caring, a fool. She had lived life the way others saw fit for her, had followed every rule laid out before her and done as she was told. She had thought rebellion had been striking out on her own, but that had been nothing. All it had done was lead her right back home, right back to the same patterns with new faces, right back to the same rules and orders and commands and demands.
They would never understand her need, this need, for freedom from reason, liberty from the mundane. She was entitled to a day without logic. She was entitled to use the power she had been born with, for so much of it had gone untapped for so long; too long. She was entitled to temporary insanity.
She came across a village, a tiny place she had never been to and never would have cared to visit, a place that never would have come up on her radar. Yet, here she was, following where her feet and her instinct led. And in this village, she came across a man, a man she did not know. She’d never met him; she had no opinion of him; she found him uninteresting. She raised her hand again as the man came forward, grinning despite her ragged clothing and the wild gleam in her eye, waving brightly despite the sword at her hip and the power emanating off her like sparks from a live wire, hospitable despite the mad smile on her lips and the blood streaked across her tunic.
“Dance for me,” she whispered, and the smile bloomed into a full grin, the beautiful expression of her utmost joy and exhilaration, as she splayed her fingers and the man froze, limbs thrown wide from his torso. Her eyes danced, brilliant sapphires in the fading light, and no one had seen her smile like this unless she was laughing or with the people she loved (had once loved, but now chose to forget), but now this man’s anguished cry and tormented face, a mask of utter pain, made her smile this way. She could hear the blood coursing through his veins, the water sloshing through the cylindrical tunnels of his inner workings. She saw beads of sweat break out along his hairline, his upper lip, on his palms and the balls of his feet. Tears rolled silently, unconsciously, down his cheeks, as she moved her hand through the air as if conducting a grand symphony, and his stretched limbs wiggled and bounced to her insane rhythm. She twirled him and tossed him, a wild giggle breaking through her grinning lips, and then she was laughing uproariously as she smashed him into the ground and pulled his left arm from its socket and made his eyes bulge with excess fluid. She hummed as she had him perform a split, a cartwheel, a messy back flip, then spun him, twice around, then two times the other way for good measure. Abruptly, the same feeling washed over her as had with the tree: boredom. He was just another toy, and toys, whether made of wood or fiberglass or flesh and bone, soon went out of style and had to be replaced to keep children happy. So, she imagined the blood rushing through his veins and arteries, coming and going from all parts of his body, following the normal routine. But, then the pressure began to rise in his brain, the veins overflowing with extra water from his intestines. She forced perspiration back into his body. She shoved water vapor through his pores and into his aching body. He screamed; she laughed.
“‘And when we go back to the sea,’” she murmured, “‘we are going back from whence we came.’” Her hand tightened into a fist, fingers curled in on themselves and knuckled turning white as she crammed as much water she could into every spare inch of his exhausted form, and then, as abruptly as her moods changed, she spread her hand wide apart again, and the man exploded in a shower of red-tainted water and folds of limp skin. She grinned as fresh blood and saltwater ran over the dried bloodstains on her ruined clothing and stood watching as the man seeped into the ground, just as her melting ice ball had.
“Enjoy the return trip,” she told him, and giggled madly again, truly enjoying herself. She didn’t think of it as killing, per se; it was, to her, just plain fun.
She left before his cries brought other villagers out of their comfortable homes. This had been practice and amusement; time for the main event. She turned and walked off, still giggling, then let herself collapse into pure water and disappear into the ground, flowing freely and easily through the soil, turning and tumbling and laughing even though she had no lungs to gather air for the sound and no mouth to convey it. She reappeared just outside a palace, a grand place, and stumbled drunkenly inside. She wondered if she was expected, and giggled again.
She roamed the halls, until she came upon the one she sought, and then she was grinning again, back in her element. The tigress turned, pleased to see her back at last, and opened her mouth to say so. But even the powerful queen could not avoid the fact that the same saltwater blood roared through her veins with every beat of her mighty heart, and she had her pinned against the wall in an instant. Her hands hung easily, limply, at her sides; she was getting better at this. The power, now allowed to exist and exert, could easily be channeled through her manic mind.
“My little girl,” she said through a toothy grin. “My little girl, off in your little battle. My little girl, my little Callia, my youngest, littlest child, and when she made one little move against you, you made one little flick of your little sword, and that was that. Her little life was over.”
“Amadahy, you didn’t see it happen; you don’t understand.”
“I do understand!” she yelped, the first time she’d raised her voice, and she liked it. Letting her anger free, setting it loose to roam and rumble and avenge, only made her feel stronger. “You murdered her!”
“I defended myself!” the tigress roared. “There was nothing I could do. She was under a powerful influence, and it only told her to do one thing: kill. It was an unfortunate accident that…”
“Unfortunate?” she echoed, and laughed, nay, guffawed, as if it were the best joke she’d ever heard. “Unfortunate accident, indeed! An unfortunate accident, indeed!” she sang, wiping tears from her eyes. “An unfortunate accident, yes, my friend. Unfortunate, in that you killed my little girl. And unfortunate, in that I must now kill you.”
“Amadahy, ple--” The tigress’ voice was cut off by her jaw being forced shut and her body slammed deeper into the stone wall.
She was grinning again, and gave occasional, spasmodic bursts of laughter. “Look before you leap, think before you do, just say no, and all that jazz!” She raised a hand, panting, stance firm. She scrunched her nose, considering her helpless, mute prey, then flicked a finger and dislocated her elbow. Another flick, and her arm popped out of its socket. The opposite arm met the same fate, as did both legs. The tigress twisted as best she could and gave muffled cries in agony, pleading for forgiveness with her crimson eyes, as her tormentor's mind was otherwise occupied, closed to any and all reason and fact. Amadahy shook her head, wagging a finger at her. “Uh, uh, uh, Shiva, dear. You murdered my daughter; you must face the consequences.”
She swallowed hard, just a little despair inserting itself over her glee, and then squashed her fingers together again, as she had with the man, forcing water into the tigress’ body and building the internal pressure. “Bye, bye, pretty kitty,” she whispered, face hardening and then the edges of her lips straying upward again into the tiniest of smiles. She splayed her fingers out before her, and the tigress’ eyes exploded in a splat of fluid and blood. Her body was ripped apart by the explosion of separate internal organs, and Amadahy did not stop until the queen was utterly destroyed.
“That’ll teach you to kill my children,” she muttered, and giggled again, watching blood rush across the marble floor. “That’ll teach everyone.”
And, bored once again, she wandered out of the massive castle, just another lunatic out for a midnight stroll. Insanity, some would say, suited her, was her only possible end. Such a tragic soul deserved such a blood-spattered, tragic end. Everything was according to plan, carrying on as it should, on the natural path.
Who needed friends? Family? Queens or kings of brothers or sisters or soul mates or children? All she needed, she came to realize, was this power. Power overtook love, grief, hatred, rage, kindness…every emotion under the sun.
And that suited her twisted little mind just fine.
 OuEstLaCraie · Mon Aug 25, 2008 @ 04:30am · 2 Comments |
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