Poetry/Non-Rp Fiction

[Seppuku]

Longing
The sea is calm, though the wind pushes and pulls,
Weaving through the trees
“Wake up,” says the breeze.
“Wake up and be.”
The sea is a fickle creature, but so beautiful and full of mystery
If only she could believe
The earth rumbles, “Wake up, we need you.”
They say in union, “Please.”

[Alex Ayres]

She said “Good. Set your roots.”
As if I hadn’t already set my roots in her
Winding
Like strawberry vines
Around her muscles
Making their way
To her heart

Only to find out
That this was barren land
And nothing planted here
grew anymore.


She said “Good. Set your roots.”
As if she hadn’t already set her roots in me.
Winding
Like bindweed
Around my
Prefrontal cortex
Too fast
To contain

My sanity
Overgrown with her
As I try
To set her on fire.

[drew]

She said “Good. Set your roots.”
As if I hadn’t already set my roots in her
Winding
Like strawberry vines
Around her muscles
Making their way
To her heart

Only to find out
That this was barren land
And nothing planted here
grew anymore.


She said “Good. Set your roots.”
As if she hadn’t already set her roots in me.
Winding
Like bindweed
Around my
Prefrontal cortex
Too fast
To contain

My sanity
Overgrown with her
As I try
To set her on fire.

I still love this and am still eyeing that change there.

[Alex Ayres]

She said “Good. Set your roots.”
As if I hadn’t already set my roots in her
Winding
Like strawberry vines
Around her muscles
Making their way
To her heart

Only to find out
That this was barren land
And nothing planted here
grew anymore.


She said “Good. Set your roots.”
As if she hadn’t already set her roots in me.
Winding
Like bindweed
Around my
Prefrontal cortex
Too fast
To contain

My sanity
Overgrown with her
As I try
To set her on fire.

I still love this and am still eyeing that change there.

[Alex Ayres]

I lost you.
Three weeks ago, and today,
at the same time.
Even 6 months ago.

I’ve always lost you,
Never had you.

I knew it when I took the potato from your hand,
still wet from being washed
(my hands remember and become wet)
and said “I’ll peel it” and you stole it back,
“I’ve got it.”

6 months ago.

It happened officially when you were visiting your mother
in Switzerland.
Fabian, your childhood friend, was also visiting his mom,
but spent the entire two weeks in your childhood bedroom.

3 weeks ago.

You tell me as we’re sitting at Matt’s Red Rooster Inn,
and it’s busy, probably so I won’t make a scene (I’m prone to it, but this is already a scene.
It could be, at least). “I promise that I did love you, once,” you say and
I think I’ll always love you but say “I know. And I’m grateful for that time.”

Today.

6 months ago, 3 weeks ago, today. I’m experiencing all of this at the same time.

One day I’ll be old and moved off this seat but I’ll always be holding the potato, in your childhood bedroom, hearing “I promise that I did love you, once” all at the same time.

I lost you,
20 years from now,
6 months ago,
3 weeks ago,
today.

I never had you.

[pinkgothic]

(The characters in this piece are not humans, but close enough body plan that you can pretend they are. This is an exerpt of the novel I'm writing; a mostly self-contained side-scene with almost no bearing on the plot. I'm posting it here because I think some people here might like it.)

---

The unfettered morning sun cut razor-edged shadows across the plaza, each transition cutting through Duara’s gut like a hot blade. The sight of their Lashal standing proud and tall in a shaft of light made her suck in a sharp breath, her steps nearly faltering in dread. A panicked thought pleaded: I didn’t run.

Andan’s trident nipped at her spine. She spared it no glance, merely taking a hurried step to compensate, though her composure melted in the Lashal’s focus.

Please. I didn’t run.

Ygila was busy talking reverently to the Lashal, no doubt listing the litany of accusations the Hesha had against one of their own, but the Lashal’s central focus was nowhere near the messenger, burning its mark into Duara’s crinkled appearance instead.

The frantic whispers died down as Duara came closer.

“[What disgrace do you bring upon us?]” the Lashal demanded, as though she had not just been given a summary.

Andan’s trident whipped around, snapping briefly and harmlessly against Duara’s shoulder, prompting her to stop just shy of stepping out of the last stretch of shadow. Her composure shaky, she sank to her knees, desperately fumbling for a thread of hope. “[None, I swear it, Lashal,]” she whimpered.

The Lashal barked a sound of disbelief. “[And you would lie to the face of a Lashal as well?]”

The contemptuous disappointment seared a hole into Duara’s gut. “[I would not, Lashal,]” she promised, tone pleading, between gasped breaths. Please. I didn’t run. The myriad of tattoos tightly packed onto the Lashal’s skin were not even broken by a banner given the impromptu occasion. To Duara, they were mesmerising, terrifying and confounding, like a toxin blooming in her mind, registering as a threat even greater than Tamas̈elu. Each time her gaze fell on another as though seeking a flaw in the pattern, her heartbeat hitched.

“[Then explain to us why you are alive when the other Hesh on your shift is dead,]” the Lashal took a step toward Duara, filling more of the Ganhesh’s view with the unending tattoos marking her authority.

After Duara had stumbled from the building, recovering from the drug, they had found her and told her that Tuvol had died. It made no sense to her. Had he fought them harder? Had he given them no choice? Had the monstrous Tamas̈elu simply not intervened as her protégés murdered, as they were wont to do? Was her decision pure whim?

But the Hesha only saw that their Ganhesh had survived and had left her post. That she had desperately hoped to prevent the escaped kavkema from causing damage to Ginshife͡in as soon as she could move was perhaps a noble thought, but inaccessible to the Hesha who normally looked up to her and were now willing to eat her alive. They too could not comprehend that the kavkema would choose to let her live. They too doubted it was possible.

The great difference was that she had witnessed it and they had not.

Had Tuvol survived the encounter, perhaps it would be different.

Desperation gnawed at her gut. Her hands touched the ground by now, the weight of the Lashal’s stare too much for her straight posture to bear. “[I– I cannot, Lashal,]” Duara stammered. “[Please, I do not understand it, either. Perhaps it is enough for them to drug us and slow us down, and with me, it was–]”

“[Yet a Hesh is dead,]” the Lashal cut across her defence in dispassionate observation, unconvinced. “[And the other Hesha now choose to strip you of your rank of Gan – and come to me to strip you of the rest.]” It pitched Duara’s voice against all of her living peers – poor odds in a society that valued unity.

Duara clawed at the compressed earth in misplaced instinct, dropping her wide-eyed gaze onto the ground, heartbeat constricting her throat.

“[You are expected to look at your Lashal when she speaks to you, Hesh,]” the Lashal’s words whipped across her shoulders like a physical blow, driving a laboured exhale from her. With effort, Duara raised her head, anchoring an attention that wanted to flee back onto the Lashal. “[Why are you alive?]”

You shouldn’t be. If you were a good Hesh, the kavkema would either not have escaped or you would be dead. If you had done your job, Tuvol would be alive.

She could have invoked Tamas̈elu’s name. The evidence was there. The kavkem god had come and battered the building itself. All recognised it was a formidable foe – but that was simply not the question here. The accusation was that she had run and left Tuvol to die.

The question why she happened to be alive was a distraction. Duara closed her eyes as long as she was sure she could get away with, searching for her resolve past her hammering heart. She wasn’t running now. She was here, letting the Lashal speak her community’s judgement, ready to bear it, whether it was just or not. She just also wanted it not to be wrong.

“[I would not run when faced with the enemy,]” she said, her jittering voice still letting conviction shine through.

“[You will answer the question and not lie to a Lashal’s face,]” the Lashal hissed.

It took all of Duara’s strength not to curl up on herself in a desperate self-pity. There were no witnesses. No one could corroborate her version of events, if indeed she could even find the words to describe them in the present moment, the motivations of the kavkema not any more transparent to her than to her peers. She tried and failed to focus on her breathing, Lashal written across half her field of vision in a swirl of vertigo.

A resilient kernel of thought analysed the situation: They would strip her of Gan. They would strip her of Hesh by decree of her peers. The question, then, was simply how many letters to her name she would lose. If they were set on taking one for cowardice, they might take another from her for lying to a Lashal.

I’m not lying, her thoughts wept for mercy, oblivious to whether there were any tears matching their mood.

Instead, she was being made to lie.

Something twisted in her gut in lieu of tying her tongue. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, willing her panic to not manifest as bile. Her left arm clutched at her stomach. Lying. She looked up at the Lashal with pleading eyes, but there was no Nayabaru there, just a blanket of words repeating themselves: Lashal. Lashal. Lashal. There was nothing that could give her mercy, not even as much as a name she could invoke, only that horrifying title, consuming its bearer’s empathy by design.

Open your mouth and lie. She gagged at the thought, suppressing the associated motion until only a slight twitch remained visible.

“[Answer,]” the Lashal prompted. “[Would you call these Hesha liars?]”

One can be wrong without lying, a miserable part of her observed. They do not know better. They may even be acting in good faith. But they are wrong.

“[No, Lashal,]” she said. It was easy to speak the truth.

The Lashal’s icy tone betrayed that her patience was thinning. “[Then tell us why you would abandon your post.]”

“[Because–]” Duara began, tripping across her own sentence as it formed, struggling against the panic born of violating the tenets she held dear. When she found the false words, they burst forth as though hastily disgorged: “[Because I’m a coward.]” It was the closest she could get to the confession they wanted. There was a small fragment of truth to it, dulling the blade that was cutting through her ribcage: She was afraid. She was terrified. Indeed, even when faced with the monster, she had been so, though acting despite of it. She heaved a breath, gasping for air as though coming up from drowning. “[I’m sorry,]” she added, steeped in regret, dread clutching at her spine, convinced that this lie of context would somehow be transparent and doom her to exile. “[I’m so sorry.]”

Instead, the Lashal’s oppressive presence lightened a little, letting Duara’s breath catch itself. She mustered Duara as though assessing whether to grant her mercy for revealing the supposed truth. Ultimately, the trace softness remained; there would be no additional punishment for lying. “[Will you yield to the verdict with some dignity?]” If indeed you have no other. “[Or must we have you restrained?]”

“[I will make you no trouble, Lashal,]” Duara promised, mortified by the notion of any other answer being conceivable.

“[Then lean forward as you are,]” the Lashal commanded.

Duara’s tortured gut twisted into another knot, chafing against its own membranes like splintering wood. Please, not here. But there was no speaking it, not without making the ridicule worse. “[Yes, Lashal,]” she whispered, closing her eyes as she brought her head down to her hands, clutching them into fists, thumb spikes held parallel to each other.

She was dimly aware of the Lashal stepping into the shadow beside her, standing to her left. “[Hesh Ygila – we require Seklushi assistance. Inform them of the situation.]” A bare hand set down against Duara’s back. “[Hesh Andan, wait here and stand watch – in case this one changes her mind about her principles again.]”

The observation stung, but it was the truth now – she had chosen to lie. She had proven to herself that she could abandon her principles if she wanted to.

If she could lie, then, was she perhaps lying to herself? Was it all a fever dream? Had Tamas̈elu ever been to Ginshife͡in? But Duara doubted she had enough imagination to hallucinate the kind of mythological beast that had broken into the Pens, let alone that it would let her live.

Duara kept her posture, her gaze anchored to the ground. She wanted to tremble, but if she started now she would have no strength left when the Seklushi came.

She’d lied to her Lashal. It nagged at her well past its welcome, throbbing in the back of her skull in time with her heartbeat. She wanted it out, but saw no avenue to excise it. It stirred illness into her quiet terror.

The tip of Andan’s trident nestled against her spine between her shoulders, a cool, sharp point.

“[Tell us, Dara, what a Hesh’s responsibilities are,]” the Lashal prompted, intentionally dropping a sound from her name in anticipation of Duara’s demotion.

Duara’s mind faltered in its step, struggling to shift gears away from the looming fault, back to the mundane, theoretical one she was innocent of. Look at your Lashal when she speaks to you. She glanced up hesitantly, trying to obey both the command to hold her posture and that to give the Lashal her attention, compromising on capturing the Lashal in the centre of her left eye’s focus. “[To protect the community, Lashal,]” she responded with the strain of an only passingly related emotion.

“[Would you expect a Hesh or a Ganhesh to appreciate this with greater gravity?]”

Again Duara closed her eyes, willing the pain away. “[A Ganhesh, Lashal.]” Me.

“[I see it is easy for you to speak what we want to hear,]” the Lashal observed. “[But do you believe it?]” Her hand snapped down, gripping at Duara’s jaw, twisting her neck uncomfortably to the side in the process.

“[Yes, Lashal.]” The response was more breath than voice. The Lashal’s tattoos were blurring in Duara’s vision, becoming mercifully unintelligible.

The Lashal gave an embittered sound of disappointment. “[Such makes a poor mark for the Hesha of Ginshife͡in.]”

Duara felt Andan tense, tip of his trident shifting ever so subtly, and her own heart sank. A different kind of panic welled up in her, born of the thought of Ginshife͡in losing all of their Hesha, conscribing Hesha from the nearby communities or even the titleless mercenaries in their stead. She raised her voice to make it heard across the cacophony of her thoughts: “[The failing is only my own, Lashal!]”

The Lashal disagreed in a tone of serpentine patience: “[And yet you are Gan by the blessing of the Hesha, though you make a poor role model.]”

“[Please, it is no fault of theirs!]” Duara insisted. Why was Andan not defending himself or the others? They could hardly be resting their hopes on her fervent reactions, given their low opinion of her integrity.

But it was enough. Perhaps the exchange had simply been for her benefit, to see whether she would at least take on such a burden if there was no further cost to herself, to save her fellow Nayabaru from judgement. Rather than merely let go, the Lashal pulled Duara’s head back down, shifting into a partial crouch to do so. Quietly, as though it were a matter private between her and Duara, she said: “[One would hope they will take greater care in choosing the next Ganhesh.]”

The barbs died down. Duara’s arms and legs protested her posture the longer it continued, but at least her heartbeat slowed from its previous frantic pace. The cold air gently began to seep into her body. Her fear underwent a metamorphosis from the frantic panic that she had first felt to a dull dread in anticipation of the physical consequences of the situation. Her mind alternated between searching for a defence and embracing her fate. I didn’t run, but I lied to you.

Eventually, a Seklushi came – Taran, the youngest they had, skinny in appearance, slightly too small in proportion to the bucket and bag he carried, younger than befit the stern, concentrated expression he presently wore. Ygila accompanied him, tall beside him.

No doubt this would be a valuable experience for him; he would already know in theory how to stop a Nayabaru from bleeding to death as they were demoted. In addition, this was the easy version – Duara would bleed less than most other professions, having hers written on her back, where the capillaries weren’t so tightly clustered. Even the risk of infection would prove quite manageable. It was a great first case, although quite possibly also his last – the last time Ginshife͡in’s Lashal had stripped someone of their title had been four Taro cycles ago. The next Taro was conveniently close to reset the count.

Andan’s trident hitched up to the back of her skull. Duara closed her eyes, renewing the tension of her fists. She rested her mouth against her knuckles, searching for an inner calm that would hopefully be sturdy enough for what was to come.

The bucket was set down near her, its contents sloshing softly – warm water, most likely, for rinsing out the wounds. The bag came down somewhere nearby with a quiet sound of its own. Something was pulled out of it and the trace sound of metal on metal revealed that it was being disassembled, or assembled. Duara clutched at her opposable digits, dutifully keeping her premature and misplaced pleas for mercy from bubbling up. A few more sounds followed, ones she had trouble placing exactly, before the Lashal’s hand left her back, then resurfaced with a cloth, rubbing along her skin. A scent of something intense invaded Duara’s nostrils – some sort of disinfectant, a means to clean her back before they tore it up.

The cloth disappeared. She pressed her teeth against each other.

“[This woman does not befit her title,]” the Lashal announced, voice firm and loud across the plaza – the audience was pitiful, but enough to burn a hole into Duara’s gut. “[She corrupts her title and her title corrupts her. They are not in harmony, they do not agree, and it would be an injustice to keep them chained to each other. And so we will purge this title from her – this title of Ganhesh – that she may take on another and leave her crimes toward the old one behind. We take this title as that we may give it to someone else. We also take this title as to unburden you, Duara, taking also from your name, so that you are made anew and forgiven, as Dara.]”

I didn’t run. It lay on her tongue, wishing to be spoken.

“[Hold still.]” It was soft advice, given by Taran.

She expected the pain to be silent and sharp, like a blade cutting through flesh, barely painful in the first instants of damage. Instead, something whirred, and fire set down against her back, shredding at her skin like a claw tearing in deep, forcing her body to buckle down in instinct. A howl caught in her throat as a hand seized the back of her neck and clutched at it, pushing her down, a knee nestled against her lower back. Instinct wanted her arms in the fight, her spine to squirm; by supreme act of disciplined will, she instead clutched her elbows to her gut, trying to trick her body into accepting that her torso was in the way of any defence she could possibly mount.

The pain was intense, raking through her and squeezing at her lungs. The only way she could possibly hold still was to compact herself enough that her struggles had nowhere to manifest. Her head pressed against the ground, her breath in tatters. A high-pitched sound of distress slipped out between the inhales.

The burning stopped just long enough for water to patter and sting as it ran down the fresh wound, washing blood down her side. She breathed deeply, eyes wide but blind through her tears, trying to muster the strength to brace for more.

There was no bracing for more. Again the device they were using ground against her dermis, sanding its layers off, wrenching cries from her that no wish for dignity could keep contained. She sobbed into the ground, consumed by the effort of keeping herself still. The tremble belied her efforts. There was no room left to fine-tune appearances, for some abstraction of honour.

Again the ordeal paused, letting her suck in another deep breath. She had no sense how far they had progressed, but it couldn’t be far – the Lashal’s guiding hand had last still been on the left side of her back. Duara had no concept of how to maintain her sanity through the whole of it. Even the touch of the water now felt like an impossible threat, the promise that they would continue to tear her skin off her back layer by layer, leaving ugly, bloody indentations where the glyphs for Hesh had been, as well as the Gan above it.

Then the fire was back, devouring her. Her arms pressed against her ribs and gut, her joints straining. Her discomfort didn’t register, drowned out by the sensation ripping along her back. Stop. But the word would not form, lost to her frantic sobs. She felt naked, exposed, small. A Hesh was looming over her, no longer in any allegiance with her, instead there to keep her in line if she dared thrash or struggle. She was in the process of becoming no one, of losing a purpose she’d been faithful to for as many cycles as she could think back on. She had born children for the community each Taro so far, suggesting the Lashal had once held her qualities in high esteem. All that was busy being washed away with blood and water, trickling onto the ground to the tune of her agonised whimpers.

Finally, even to her animal instincts, the rhythm became predictable. The pain lasted about a resho and a half, little more than ten vemako, no more, then the water came to wash out the wound for three vemako, with the painful cycle ending on a short pause before the next. Her mind bucked against the sensations, yearning to escape.

She had lost count of the cycles when they ended. Her entire body hurt from the tension, her back stinging as Taran washed it for her. The Lashal pulled her head back, peeling her out of her foetal position and into something approaching a straight-spined posture. The skin of her back howled at the change and she quivered mutely at the abuse.

She had run out of tears, her eyes dry and burning. Her breath still jittered. Her aching gaze wandered around non-committally, hazy awareness taking note that the shadows had only barely shifted. Despite the subjective eternity, less than two paparo had likely passed. It was clearly not even the Hour of Kivanosh yet – the sun hadn’t even reached its highest point in the sky.

Her mouth was dry – she had been drooling onto the bare ground. Traces of mud stuck to her face. She had no strength to care, aware that the worst of her appearance was her naked, bleeding back. Somewhere near her shoulders, the glyphs spelled a mangled Dara. Once she had healed, the Lashal would likely paint over the scar that had eaten the circle out of her name, replacing it with a diamond to emphasise the vowel that remained to combine the glyphs for ‘D’ and ‘R’.

Taran offered her water from a flask. She stared at the offer as though unsure what it represented. Only slightly discouraged, he moved it to her lips; reluctantly, she drank, the motion mechanical, necessary but meaningless. She felt nothing as he took the flask away again.

“[Dara,]” the Lashal said, her voice soft now that she was no longer wielding the sanding apparatus.

Without the fresh memory of pain, she might have asked them to erase the ‘D’ as well, take the glyph she should have lost if she had kept her story straight, the one they refused to believe. After all, it hardly mattered if she lost one glyph or two. She was gone, erased, and in her place was a new tabula rasa, reluctant to adopt a consciousness of its own. Her perception of herself kept a disgusted distance, mutely assessing the damage on a body it had disowned.

Taran’s attention was making her twitch. The touch of cloth and antiseptic scattered inconsequential stinging across her, but she could not bring herself to care about suppressing them. The pinpricks were at least something which which she could fill her emptiness.

“[Seklushi Taran will tend to you until you are healed,]” the Lashal said. “[And then we should speak of what task best suits you.]”

I’m a Hesh, some discarded part of her insisted. It’s what I do best. She smiled weakly at the petty, stubborn notion; it belonged to someone else. With a motherly patience, she cradled the aching, empty shards of herself, whispering in silence: It’s okay. You don’t know any better, but you’re wrong.