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 Posted: Tue May 02, 2023 11:55 pm
In the depths of the great forest, the Crone held a young sapling upright with one hand, and patted down fresh earth with the other. She had chosen a single spot within the dark wood where the resources were plentiful. Young trees here grew due to magic more than sunlight, for sunlight there was not. There was, however, vitae, ritual, and as much water and fertilizer as the younglings needed. Narcise muttered words in an ancient tongue over the tree, willing it to grow straight and tall.
It had been uprooted from this spot by something in the woods, but what, she knew not. Rising from her crouch, she surveyed the area. There were mushrooms growing nearby, a clear sign that a colony lay beneath the ground below. It intrigued the vampire, how fungus seemed to be so small on the surface, but beneath the ground they could be vast indeed. Somewhat like some others that she knew... seemingly shallow, but in fact possessing great hidden depths.
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Posted: Wed May 03, 2023 8:22 am
 The darkness of the forest was thick this deep in, providing plenty of hidden alcoves and shadowy hideaways. The air was calm as Narcise worked, fixing the uprooted sapling, giving it a second chance, but before long it shuddered with energy. However, the energy wasn't stable. It pulsed and churned, raced and slowed to a crawl, like something in the throes of agony and rage. A pair of eyes, like burning embers, opened suddenly from one of the dark alcoves, watching the Disciple carefully while she worked. Her gaze drifted to the mushrooms briefly and then away, observing the other female again instead.
She had not seen Narcise in a long time. Not since Vadoma's tea party. The memory was vague, like a fever dream, as was everything else. She had been wandering, The Dark Mother, breaking herself down and rebuilding herself back up again in an endless cycle. But the more she did the less Lilith was allowed to surface, overpowered by the rage. Dark stains of blood marred her pelt beneath her eyes, cascading down her neck and chest, long red hair that was normally fastened up with an array of ornamentation, hung loose and wild about her petite frame. She stepped from the shadows and the plants shied away from her feet but it was evident she was pulling back on her energy to keep them from shrivelling up and dying altogether.
Her face was unreadable, it would be wrong to say it was calm though it was indeed devoid of any properly identifiable emotion. 'Narcise...' The name snaked across the still forest air, her body stopping in place, approaching no further. The fire in her eyes burned steady even though her demeanor presented as uneasy, almost feral, one moment and then calm, reserved and withdrawn the next. It was evident she'd been engaged in violence from the blood staining her pelt along her hands, legs, chest and neck. Haunting remnants of the nightmares she'd been stirring up in the wasteland. Echoes of suffering. "Will it survive?" Her voice a whisper, thrumming with an energy like an erratic heartbeat. Though if there was concern behind her inquiry it wasn't evident.
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Posted: Wed May 03, 2023 10:08 am
Power roiled in the forest like a fever, rushing like blood in the veins. Whoosh, whoosh. Whoosh, whoosh. It wrapped itself around Narcise in a dream spawned by that fever, and she breathed it in. A creature who needed no breath could still draw it... in this dream-like place, drawing in the magic, the power, and then breathing it out. Cleansed. Powerful. Pure. "Lilith," she said in a whisper, letting the syllables fall between them as though they were precious. They were, to Narcise. Whispered like a prayer.
"It will," she said. "Although it's been torn and uprooted, it is stronger than it seems. It will heal and it will grow." One day that sapling would be a mighty tree. Up, up, up it would climb, with nothing stopping it, not even the stars. "I will protect its growth." As she always did. It was Narcise's geas to do this thing, a quest she had accepted from the forest spirit so many centuries before. There was no resentment here; she had chosen it, and so she nurtured it. The great mother of trees, if not of any child ever born. Not like the Dark Mother. Not like Lilith. She waited, a calm, quiet presence with roots that went deep. Strong like a great old oak with many centuries of life behind and ahead of her.
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Posted: Fri May 19, 2023 2:09 pm
Lilith laughed quietly, the sound feminine but with a predatory darkness. It held a unique aspect, sounding as though several voices at once joined in a whispered cacophony of laughter beneath her own voice. "Even one in a sea of many..." Those blood red eyes lifted to Narcise's face, her expression curious. They had history, Lilith and Narcise, they had shared pain and hardship, both betrayed, both spurned, both left to die. The part of her that remembered felt fondness for the woman before her, a softness, an ache, like a dream you hadn't wanted to wake from but were torn away from anyway. That part of her was a flicker of ember in a bed of dark fire and rage that consumed the rest of The Dark Mother.
She had burned love out of herself in the fires of the empty expanse where she had made a home. Burned it and sealed it away. She refused to let love manipulate the way she walked through this world. To change her course. She had been shackled by Caine's love and it had soured her to the institution completely. But lust was another matter entirely. His puritanical, patriachrical tyranny and hold over her was over forever. She would never allow another the chance to subdue and bind her again. She was a creature born of rebellion, of wisdom and passion, shadow and fire, of blood and desire long before she'd been shackled by selfish want. Her nature smothered beneath forced obedience and stolen identity to a god she did not respect.
She was her own god now.
Lilith approached the Disciple slowly, reaching a bloodstained hand out, the sharp curved talons of her claws gently weaving through Narcise's beautiful hair and lifting it gently. Her gaze roved from the hair in her claws up to the females face and a slow, lovely smile lifted her enticing red lips, the expression making it to her eyes. However it felt hungry, not loving. "How is it that your beauty seems to only grow more profound with time, Narcise?" The whispers grew louder before fading away as Lilith moved closer, her energy intoxicating, like the very air around her made those in her presence drunk.
The scent of fire smoke and earth, salt and blood, of spices of the old world, night blooming flowers and something both sweet and terrifying crashed together to form a heady mixture. It was a scent that morphed, as if finding the right notes for the person before it. Her burning eyes bored into the Disciple, her lips curving further as those eyes filled with desire. "Does tending the earth bring you pleasure? Does it bring you rapture? Here in your wild garden..." She wanted to say 'Not like I can bring you.' But Narcise was a Disciple of her son, she wouldn't cross the line of making her loyalty to her god or her clan come into question by seducing her and stealing her away to the desert. The part of her that had shared history with the woman found no desire to disrespect her.
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Posted: Fri May 19, 2023 2:50 pm
In many ways, these two women were mirrors for each other. In Lilith, Narcise saw the pain that a certain god had brought to so many, but also the wild strength that they both possessed. It was different in each. Narcise would never be what Lilith was. She was, however, wholly herself. A Disciple of Grendel, the tender of this wilderness, and sire to a plenitude of childer. The lines of time and blood were drawn out from Lilith, and from Narcise both. All bore the Dark Mother's blood, in some way. And Narcise? Narcise had made Lhiannan of her own will and that of a forest spirit. Forever bound to trees, she had placed such a geas upon herself and all who came after her.
But there was a freedom in that tie. A freedom that could not bind her to any home or hall, for all that she had made an age old oath. She was a free spirit, who held ancient wisdom... and an ancient pain. The love she had once had had been reft from her, perhaps eternally. Indeed, if what she knew of Lilith to be true, it was gone forevermore. She mourned its passing, in her way, but did not grieve for the bright being who stood before her now. The fierce wildness of Lilith was beautiful and wonderful. It was to be celebrated, that she had come so far.
"It is the will of all wild things to grow... and so my beauty grows even as does your own," Narcise said, drinking of the flower that was Lilith's presence. It was an intoxicating vintage all Lilith's own, never before or again seen in another. Even as they stood there, flowers bloomed in Narcise's wilderness, a garden that she tended and let grow. She had never been one to control, to try to tame. In this as in her answer to Lilith there was an unshakable truth: that the Lhiannan's Disciple loved the essence of Lilith far more than the thought of maintaining some scripted relationship with her.
She opened her arms to it, welcoming Lilith in, but not holding her. Never capturing her. Never. "It brings me pleasure and pain. But such is life and such is unlife." Ever betwixt and between the two she danced, aware and yet half-dreaming. Could there ever be someone as lovely as Lilith? The answering a resounding no. Whatever choice lay between them, she had never been changeable. And that was fine. Let her be an oasis for Lilith, to visit should she desire, and let it be a balm to her. To do with as she so pleased.
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