Re: The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 1: Parallels/Perpendicularities]
01-29-2011, 02:48 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by whoosh!.
Dying wasn't hard. It didn't even hurt.
Perhaps death was just a dream, stretching into eternity.
As Nemaeus crouched on the ice and watched the snow fall softly around him, it was all he could rationalise it to be. Sure, it felt real enough. The warm breath billowing lazily in the freezing air looked as it should. The ground made just the right crunch beneath his shifting feet. If this was a dream, it was the work of a master dreamweaver indeed. His thoughts wandered to the Counsellor. Her words.
Yes, indeed.
The man's shaking hands grasped the lush fur of the Wolf and drew it tighter around him, waiting until he shivered a little less before he slowly rose up and stood on his own two feet. Trembling, the dead man stumbled through his first steps as a dead man. Nervous, he stared around him and straight into the shifting white. It didn't feel right, not yet. The woman in the room said the others would join them, and yet he was alone.
Alone.
And this was his hell.
The fear – or perhaps just the memory of it - hit him like a sucker punch from a train. For a brief moment he stared into that dark abyss, the abyss duly staring back into him. His mind was gone, his breath stolen, and all that was left in the small jutting piece of him that was left was the fear.
But it was for a moment, and only that. A second later the feeling had passed. Nemaeus gasped in the snow, hunched over and rapidly trying to convince himself that he wasn't afraid. Entering this strange death may have been easy enough, but falling into the embrace of the noose had the worst part of that sodding life.
He blithely cursed the white (if he was angry, looked angry, he wasn’t scared, couldn’t be) and stood again, walked again. At some point the snow whipped away and the huge unending sky loomed over him instead. The sun weakly shone on where it could, but he just felt himself becoming more and more numb. Whether that was a result of the cold or the bleakness of the land was something Nemaeus didn’t know and didn’t care about.
So when the landscape changed, if only slightly, to allow for a small bump of white to rise above the flat rest of it, he hardly reacted at all. When he came close enough to see it to be an igloo, he didn’t question that either, merely leaning against it. His silver eyes stared out into the passive paleness of the world. Sooner or later he slumped into a sitting position.
Then he just watched.
Dying wasn't hard. It didn't even hurt.
Perhaps death was just a dream, stretching into eternity.
As Nemaeus crouched on the ice and watched the snow fall softly around him, it was all he could rationalise it to be. Sure, it felt real enough. The warm breath billowing lazily in the freezing air looked as it should. The ground made just the right crunch beneath his shifting feet. If this was a dream, it was the work of a master dreamweaver indeed. His thoughts wandered to the Counsellor. Her words.
Yes, indeed.
The man's shaking hands grasped the lush fur of the Wolf and drew it tighter around him, waiting until he shivered a little less before he slowly rose up and stood on his own two feet. Trembling, the dead man stumbled through his first steps as a dead man. Nervous, he stared around him and straight into the shifting white. It didn't feel right, not yet. The woman in the room said the others would join them, and yet he was alone.
Alone.
And this was his hell.
The fear – or perhaps just the memory of it - hit him like a sucker punch from a train. For a brief moment he stared into that dark abyss, the abyss duly staring back into him. His mind was gone, his breath stolen, and all that was left in the small jutting piece of him that was left was the fear.
But it was for a moment, and only that. A second later the feeling had passed. Nemaeus gasped in the snow, hunched over and rapidly trying to convince himself that he wasn't afraid. Entering this strange death may have been easy enough, but falling into the embrace of the noose had the worst part of that sodding life.
He blithely cursed the white (if he was angry, looked angry, he wasn’t scared, couldn’t be) and stood again, walked again. At some point the snow whipped away and the huge unending sky loomed over him instead. The sun weakly shone on where it could, but he just felt himself becoming more and more numb. Whether that was a result of the cold or the bleakness of the land was something Nemaeus didn’t know and didn’t care about.
So when the landscape changed, if only slightly, to allow for a small bump of white to rise above the flat rest of it, he hardly reacted at all. When he came close enough to see it to be an igloo, he didn’t question that either, merely leaning against it. His silver eyes stared out into the passive paleness of the world. Sooner or later he slumped into a sitting position.
Then he just watched.