Posted on December 14, 2021 at 09:03:45 AM by Nzingha
ooc: backdated so it's still autumn, for reasons 😏
hapo ambao asaa  There were ghosts in the sea that threatened to swallow her. There was darkness in the deep. It was rising, rising. Rising like (a graveyard of twisted stone from the sea) the tides that crept up the pale beach of her home. The Shore. Nzingha remembered; born again in the emptiness of the desert, she remembered. She remembered the Warrior-Queen she’d vowed to serve, the evil she’d sensed (and the child, she remembered the child, pale as death and doomed to that fate). The shaman remembered— she remembered surrendering herself to abluvion (come with me into de water), sinking beneath those inky waves with a soft sigh. She remembered shadows drifting all around her, and then— And then she’d woken in a different sort of sea; a sea where waves of golden sand rippled beneath the sun’s hot, fetid breath. Nzingha had no means by which to measure the time that she’d lost…save for the effects of its passage on her body. But that atrophy— patches of fur stripped from skin, pads of flesh stripped from bone— might have marked days, seasons, or even years. There might be nothing left of the life she’d known; she might be too late. She had to see, she had to know, she had to— to— (she had to find herself again, had to turn back to move forward) Rising into a shaky stand, the black Marwari followed the spirits’ whispers to an oasis. Rested there until she was well enough to continue. And then staggered on to the next, stopping again to recover. The cycle repeated and repeated and repeated until she inevitably found her way back to the sea. And at the end of that journey (a stone bowl, a faint spark of hope), there was only the beginning of another. But abluvion remembered the spirit-speaker, and he was merciful. With gentle hands, he supported the slender shadow of her body, so that her strength was only spent in swimming north and east. Strength that— when it began to wane— was bolstered by the sight of Atlantis rising tall and fierce and proud (a guide carved from earth but warm as flesh) from the waves. And, most importantly, untouched; whole. Swaying drunkenly, the dark woman stumbled up the shore, pointing her skull-masked face in the direction of the Shore (Nyumbani, mwanangi akarudi nyumbani). Inhaled deeply of the sultry, salt-tanged air. Then froze, the hairs rising into a stand along the ridge of her spine. From the dense jungle ahead, Nzingha heard the faint whisper of something sinister, something wrong (darkness in the deep). Something that even a creature who’d beaten death would be wise to fear. Because this was more than the end of one. It was the end of many— no, the end of all. It was the night that never ended; the eternal absence of warmth and light and life. It was a thousand hungry wolves howling through the woods. And if she did nothing, it would consume these islands one by one. The shaman was weary and weakened by her swim, but somehow she ran. Somehow she fled. Not away from the darkness that had taken root everywhere in her absence (I fear it be growing and spreading), but into it. Heedless of the vines that lashed her, of the roots that grabbed at her slender limbs. Heedless of the cavernous silence that echoed both within and without. Her mind was filled instead with memories of Mzuka, her Mzuka, who would perish with the rest when Atlantis fell. With thundering heart and thundering hooves, the coal-black mare raced against time and reason and hope for the sake of her world, and prayed that she was not too late to save it. NzinghA mare . ten . black sabino overo . marwari . 16.0hh  |
Replies:
- Use caution when the Wolf comes aknockin; - By Rougaru January 3, 2022 at 04:48:39 PM
- kufa ni yetu sabili - By Nzingha January 10, 2022 at 11:38:24 AM
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