The disease that wiped the earth of mankind has returned, and it's starting to change its hosts somehow. Reports of unearthly powers are arising all over Toren while more and more become infected.
updates
< 11 JULY 2017 > The staff auditions and OTMs are officially OVER. I'd like to welcome our two new staffers - Lutheus and Crowenth! There will be some new events soon, as well as a big announcement - so watch this space.
< 20 JUNE 2017 > ATTENTION! Staff auditions are up and running. Please click here if you are interested in helping me run Clash.
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< 07 MAY 2017 > CLASH has officially been reopened and is ready for action! The plot, rules and canons have been revised - read more about it here.
Never once had Alixra actually considered returning to the place of her birth.
How could she, when her presence in this place only plagued her mind with the memories of her mother? How could she, when Tenebris only ravaged her sense of smell with the reek of rotting flesh? How could she, when her father had laid hoof here and when every worn path splattered with hoof prints only reminded her of it?
Her dark blue eyes stared fearfully into the pit of darkness that burrowed what seemed like deep into the mountain, her auds tipping back closer and closer to her skull as she stared. With every passing moment, it seemed like the shadows were creeping closer and closer, waiting until she blinked to lunge out at her and drag her into its suffocating depths. It felt like it was calling to her, past the thin columns of rain pouring over its upper edge, hiding its contents with a veil of mist as it waited for her to explore it.
The water ran down her pelt, finding that her fur could take in no more water. Her deep cobalt mane clung desperately to her neck, its hairs made wiry by moisture directing the cool substance down its length, sending it down her body in an extensive myriad of concentrated rivulets. Her matted tail clumped at her rump, wrapping around her legs in thick, intertwining vines. Her forelock began to slip over her right eye, hiding her vision, and yet she could not bring herself to budge at the slightest. She knew that she should enter the cave. She knew that it was here, standing out in the rain, that she would grow sick.
I don't have to go far into it. I can stay at the opening. I don't have to go far into it. I don't have to go far into it... She chanted this into her mind many times, over and over. Her feeble attempt to work up courage began to succeed, and she took a slow, hesitant step toward the awaiting darkness.
Any progress made was quickly and completely destroyed as a rumble of thunder rolled over the mountain. Though it was gentle and far, far behind her, in her mind it registered as violent and very, very close in front of her, roaring from the depths of the cave. She was soaked to the bone and the relentless rain continued to pour down mercilessly upon her back, every single cold drop steadily tormenting her nerves. It was as if instead of water, it was nothing but endless slivers of ice slicing into her skin, cutting her forehead and slicing her back and trimming her mane and tail.
She knew she had to move, but she couldn't.
It wasn't the cave she was born in. She knew it wasn't. It was too deep to be that cave; the one that she had been expelled from the dying womb of her mother within was much more shallow and much less dark. The lid of her left eye twitched slightly--a nervous trait she had adapted after she lost sight in it completely. Paranoia swept over the normally calm individual. What if a stalactite came dislodged itself from the ceiling and took out her right eye. Her legs quaked with fear at the thought. What if she was bitten by something? What if there was something deadly in there?
Alixra was quite certain that there weren't any poison dart frogs in there... but what if there were? The thought suddenly occurred to her that there may be someone else taking refuge in the cave.
"Hello?" she called, flinching as her voice echoed several times, dulled by the shield of rain obscuring her view. She wasn't sure why she found it suddenly so important to see if anyone was there. For all she knew, it might not even be equine. It could be a wolf or a bear or something else dangerous. Alixra certainly wasn't scared of a wolf. Sure, she was wary of them, but there was no way that she was scared of them without good reason, and it so happened that she had not yet been given a good reason to be terrified of them. Her instincts weren't a factor, as she had pushed those to the back of her mind long ago, after her instincts had told her to love her father and forgive him for what he had done to her. Alixra felt the jagged scar that marred the smooth skin of her stomach burn at the thought. She shook off her pelt in hopes that she could clear the terrible feeling in her gut, even though she knew that the effort would be in vain.
And so the blue dun stood there, looking like an idiot with her eyes wide and gaze turned into a harmless cave.
words; 814 muse; 08/10 ooc; A bit of a rambling post, but oh well.
(View full size image and stock credits here: birdily.deviantart.com/art/POND-313282509) Here, in the home of darkness, shadows cast their own shadows. It was impossible to see what was causing the damp underfoot. One supposes that an absence of light can't create rivulets of water splitting themselves in two, gliding around a hoof.
At any given moment, Pond fully expected to run into something. All things considered, he would much prefer that something to be an inanimate object. His steps were rendered so small by caution that scraping noises accompanied every inch forward, instead of a customary 'clunk.' Seeing as he was unable contemplate the appearance of his surroundings, Pond considered his stance. There was the strong likelihood of a rogue bat materialising to defend his neighbourhood, and he must be prepared. "I say, my eyes are wide open. Wide open, I say. I have heard of eyes being completely destroyed by particularly territorial bats. Yes sir, I'd be wise to protect my blessed eyeballs." Preferring to alleviate the risk, Pond tightly closed his eyelids. They were closed so tight, in fact, that the tips of his teeth were exposed to the cold cavern air circulating around him. He stuck those selfsame teeth into the air as a kind of navigational beacon and began sliding forward once more. In a feat of perfect timing even Pond's erratic brain could appreciate, he collided with a slippery rock wall at the exact moment a clap of thunder romped above. The huge boom that accompanied the clash magnified the pain, which for a normal being would be minute. After all, he was travelling at a rate of around 5 cm per hour. Pond wrapped his tongue around his thoroughly ashamed front teeth and opened his eyes to chance a glance towards the ceiling. More thunder wrapped itself around the mountain and snuck its long fingered gloves into Pond's cave. The sounds triggered the memory of a song, and Pond thought that a bit of music would be just the ticket for a traverse down such a cold, lonely cave.
He cleared his throat. He arched his neck. He moistened his lips. He inhaled...
"THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTNING, VERY, VERY FRIGHTENING ME!."
The echo astounded him. He had never heard such power resonate from the depths of his voice box. And for the sound to carry on, carry on, and carry on. This discovery would be the 'great success' of his current expedition. There were such possibilities that accompanied this superb sound amplification - a theatre for croaking bullfrogs, opera for crooning birds. The opportunities carried on, and on, and on, just like the vague experimental 'do - re - mi's' that Pond was expelling. Satisfied with this part of the cave, he was keen to perform a point-to-point examination of the area - starting with the entrance - in search of optimum reverb quality.
Pond wheeled around (eyes still tightly closed) and started back down the path he had just scraped in the rock. He belted out every lyric he could think of in no particular order, headed for the mouth of the cave. He wasn't aware of the presence in front of him until he was screeching out a particularly vigorous "GALLILEO, GALLILEO, GALLILEO, GALLILEO!" As his echo died away, he became aware of a timid 'Hello?' mixed in. His eyes jerked open and were shocked to register a blue dun mare standing, soaked, at the entrance to the cave. Pond wasn't sure whether her shocked expression was to do with the singing or some internal conflict, but he thought he should chance an introduction. He sidestepped a few of the numerous shadows which clad his body until he was quite sure of being seen.
"What ho! Terribly sorry if I've alarmed you with the sing song old chap, just testing out the capabilities, don't you know. Step in, step out of the rain. It's hardly any warmer and the damp all through the place hardly makes it drier but at least you won't have the wind on your back. Say, what's your name?"
Pond walked forward again in way of greeting but stood a few metres away, giving the confused girl a chance to make her mind up.
| OOC | main text. thoughts. "speech." tagged: alixra | starsight. words: 691. notes: well, there's a first time for everything. first post on clash, first post with pond, first post in about 3 months. :L hopefully it doesn't disgust you too much and you're able to eek out a reply to pond's complete randomness. and his english accent... which was unintentional but still how it reads. at least to me, anyway. (random post is random.)
Any normal being would generally turn tail and have absolutely nothing to do with an equine clopping toward them and yelling out random song lyrics, but instead of making her afraid or wary of him, it made her more curious about him. After she recovered from her initial jump at his suddenly loud voice she was able to push her ears forward and listen to his welcoming reel. He had a pleasant voice that Alixra found quite humorous, and any suspicions of bad intentions dropped as his words spilled into her auds. Nevertheless, the shy creature took slow steps inside of the cave, still remaining opposite of the stallion. Even though her rational mind was already convinced that this musical creature did these things in nothing but good intention, her habitual cautiousness still made an irritating presence in her actions. She had been betrayed too many times in the past to drop it completely.
She shook off her fur, careful to be gentle about it as she did so that she would not soak him as well. As she moved further away from the curtain of rain it was indeed warmer, though it was darker. She ended up facing the mouth of the cave, though, for she didn't like having her maimed, sightless left eye facing the darkness. A single blue orb trained upon the stag, who she saw resembled her in a way or two. They shared a similar pelt, though his was of roan origin and hers was of dun or grullo, but it was difficult to tell the difference at times. While her legs faded to solid navy, his gave away to alabaster socks.
"Alixra," she introduced, her reply but a murmur. She shook her wet mane a bit, closing her eyes as she cleared her throat. The sound was rough and echoed loudly in the vast, empty expanse of the tunnel, but it was soon followed by much more gentle lyrics.
"I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream," she sang. There was one thing that Alixra had always secretly loved, and that was singing. From the moment Alixra had been born her mother had sang to her, all of the way up to her final breath. Something inside the foal had urged her to memorize the lyrics, and so she had. "I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam," she chimed. She had quite a lovely voice when it came to the middle range of tones and above, but she couldn't make out lower tones to save her life. She sang these words in a pitch that wasn't too high but wasn't too low--just like the mama bear's porridge, it was just right.
Though her demeanor had remained somewhat serious throughout her singsong chants, she could not keep it as such for long. Her smile widened slightly as her song gave in to a chuckle. She stared curiously at the equine before her with one eye, the other, crossed with a smoky scar, doomed to forever be sightless and thus not taking in the features of the beast before her as the good optic did. Her countenance wavered as lightning flashed nearby, the boom of thunder rattling the cave. It seemed as if the mere downpour had morphed into a storm, or had carried a cell with it. She stepped a bit further away from the entrance, sighing and moving backwards. Gaze turning upwards once more and resting upon the stallion, she pushed her auds forward to pick up any possible reply.
words; 595 words muse; 08/10 ooc; Inspired by this. cx And your post was wonderful! I love it so much; Pond is so awesome. XDDD Sorry for the wait! <3
Last Edit: Jul 27, 2012 23:40:18 GMT -5 by Deleted
(View full size image and stock credits here: birdily.deviantart.com/art/POND-313282509) The expressive qualities imbued in the subtle movements of a horse's ears are fascinating and useful to those adept at interpreting them. Pond is far from being an expert in behavioural psychology, and is scarcely able to react appropriately in most situations. As a foal accustomed to being ignored, he craved a reaction of any kind from his peers. When they turned their back, he began to be forceful with words and ideas but could not triumph in any kind of physical combat. The beatings were attention, even if it was precisely the worst kind he could have been granted. With an absent father and a mother unable to meet her son on an intellectual level, Pond had no mentor and no companion to separate him from the pain in his body and his being. Having been made to leave his herd at a young age, and losing his mother soon after, Pond was not educated in social protocol. This was why he greeted strangers with garbled song lyrics and rambling introductions. It was his own brand of conduct, but for some reason it was agreeable to this soaking wet mare.
Delicately rippling her body in order to expel some of the rain from her coat, the mare stepped into the shelter of the cave, though remained facing its mouth. She directed one blue eye toward Pond and seemed to appraise his appearance. Pond noticed that they both looked similar in colour, though her pelt was dark with the weight of rain. Her hair was plastered on her in a webbed pattern below where it fell from her poll, crest and dock. While noticing the shapes that tangled tresses created when pressed upon a hide, Pond heard a murmured introduction. Her name was a pretty one that Pond had never heard before, and he liked the sound of it as it rolled off his tongue. "Alixra," he repeated. Alixra coughed roughly in order to clear her throat, and Pond was concerned she may have caught cold from the inclement weather outside. He was soon set at ease on that point as a poetic melody was buffeted toward him on the wind entering the entrance to the cave.
"I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam."
The sweetness of her tones accompanied by the bass of the thunder outside weakened Pond's joints as he stared in disbelief. She maintained a serious note in the mid-tone range of her melody, but as soon as her last note faded away she smiled and released a chuckle. The cold, bitter air was momentarily sweetened by her lyrics, and Pond longed for the atmosphere to be as such again. As he processed the words she had just serenaded, she moved away from the entrance, showing to him the scar that crossed one of her eyes. Before Pond could think of a reply, lightning and thunder once more embraced the outside world as a foreboding warning of worse weather to come, but he felt at ease with Alixra.
She brought her gaze upward to invite his reply, but her music had moved him so it was all he could do to stammer at her inquiring stare.
"G-good gracious me. I have never… I'm sure I could never… but I say, I'm sure I, Pond, could learn your song. Dear Alixra, would you treat me to a duet?"
| OOC | main text. thoughts. "speech." tagged: alixra | starsight. words: 577. notes: idk if I lost his character a bit here, but I'm sure I'll pick it back up again. I hope you and Alixra enjoy. xx
A single, sea-colored orb was constantly but tentatively set upon the other stallion as she sang timidly, lyrics flowing from her maw with uncertainty at first, but increasing in substance as she went along. The brute seemed... stunned, almost, and it took great effort to not shy in embarrassment as her soft chuckle shook her form. She wasn't that good of a singer--she had her own particular and flowing style, yes, but if her tune had drawn her above the octave range in which she had sung, her voice would have cracked and screeched in a variety of non-equine sounds. Had it lowered below the said range, it would have been a mix of coughs and rumbles and strange yawning noises that vaguely resembled words. Luckily, though, the song she chose was purposefully just right for her, and she hoped that he would never have to hear her earbleed-inducing voice when they were outside of such parameters.
He finally spoke, and his stammer accurately reflected the dumbfounded stance in which his structure was molded into. She found his own expressions mirrored on her countenance as he requested a duet, and her mind almost allowed the rest of his words to slip into one aud and out the other. She snatched them back into her conscience, and blinked rapidly with her one eye, attempting to process his words. Alixra quickly broke his speech down, collecting what information she would glean from it to form a proper reply. Pond?
[/color] she inquired of herself, reviewing the calling. Strangely fitting,[/color] she noted, and replied quickly to make up for the several seconds that had passed in her contemplation.
"Oh-- Uh, um, yes. Sure! I mean, here, let me sing a little bit more so we have something more than a few lines, and then, um..." She lowered her head bashfully, shaking her soaked mane out a little to clear her self-induced awkward pause. "I guess if you pick up on them, we can, well, s-sing them?" She hesitated, giving him a few moments to process this proposition, and then continued into the song, repeating the lyrics she had previously uttered and continuing with more.
"But if I know you, I know what you'll do; you'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream. Once upon a time I dreamed we'd be together--in love forever. Once..." Here she stopped, the first syllable of the next verse dying on her lips as she realized that she was getting carried away and any more may be too much for him to remember immediately. She paused, hoping that he recalled most of the words, and began to release them into the air to roam free again once more, ears attentive to any accompaniment.
words; 459 words muse; 06/10 ooc; yaaaaay. <33[/size][/blockquote][/blockquote] [/td][/tr][/table][/center]
(View full size image and stock credits here: birdily.deviantart.com/art/POND-313282509) Pond had seen many beautiful things. Landscapes, figures, flowers, the ocean gently kissing the shoreline tide after tide. He'd gazed up at the stars and seen the sunlight outline tips of grass early in the morning, when the moisture of the night still dampens the world underfoot. But he had never heard anything as sweet and beautiful as the lyrics spilling out of the blue dun mare in front of him. The snippets of songs he had previously listened to never before filled him with such a desire to hear more. Alixra must sing, and Pond must sing along.
When he made his request for a duet, the mare seemed as blown away as he himself had been when she first sang. Her features seemed to sink into a dumbfounded look as she processed his question. Her reaction was not indicative of her eventual answer, and Pond was terrified she would refuse him. As she considered his request, Pond lost all interest in exploring the mysterious echoes that the cave created. This mare, this song became his 'great discovery'. He forgot that it was storming outside, and the thunder became for him a drum beat to help him keep time. The lightning was a stuttering spotlight that highlighted Alixra, as if she was a performer on stage. In a sense she was - Pond had placed her on stage in his childish mind, a pedestal she would find it hard to dismount. Even if the pair never met again after this day, the memory of her would be forever singing 'Once Upon a Dream' in the show reel of Pond's mind.
From the contemplative pause, her answer spilled hurriedly into Pond's ears. "Oh-- Uh, um, yes. Sure! I mean, here, let me sing a little bit more so we have something more than a few lines and then, um…" Alixra lowered her head and shook her mane again before continuing her invitation. "I guess if you pick up on them, we can, well, s-sing them?"
She paused again, and anticipation rose in Pond's heart. Alixra was the conductor with her baton poised for the fall that would begin the music again. He pushed his ears forward as she continued in her song.
"But if I know you, I know what you'll do; you'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream. Once upon a time I dreamed we'd be together - in love forever. Once…"
She stopped there, and Pond realised from her concerned look that she was unsure if he would remember the words. He saw her chest rise as she released the lyrics once more, and her eyes seemed to invite his accompaniment. Singing in a natural baritone, he began to harmonise and the pair sang the first verse of the song together.
"I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam. But if I know you, I know what you'll do; you'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream. Once upon a time I dreamed we'd be together - in love forever…"
| OOC | main text. thoughts. "speech." tagged: alixra | starsight. words: 529. notes: this thread is just too darn cute. loving these two! ♥
Lightning danced like endless pairs of fevered lovers riddled with lust behind her, tangoing on pointed toes of burning hot plasma, their light flickering and flashing about the cave. And yet, the mare, terrified of caverns and storms alike, wasn't quite aware of the terrifying, almost deafening sounds and the violent swaths of lightning momentarily banishing the darkness around them. Her ears were too focused on his voice, and her eyes too deeply set upon his lips as they moved, forming the words she so desperately wanted to hear him sing. No one had even done as much as hummed a simple tune with her since the death of her mother, and she was suddenly paralyzed by the event, her own kissers contorting gracefully into the song's lyrics without her telling them to. As if forged as pairs from the beginning of time their timbres melted and mingled, harmonizing steadily and leaving ringing echoes in the front ends of the song's natural pauses.
Had she not known better, Alixra would have assumed that this creature--that this magnificent being named Pond--had known the song all of his life with the words engraved as deeply into his nature as instinct. As they came to the end of what she had fed him, she couldn't speak. How could such emotions ever begin to be explained in words? In anything fathomable, whether tangible or nonexistent? Even actions could not amount, despite their power over speech. At the final ascent of these emotions, she felt gratitude. Overwhelming gratitude, rising and swelling in another crescendo, trickling up into her hooves until it forced its way up her neck, pushing her voice from her locked throat and out above the drone of the rain and the booming thunder.
"Thank you."
The words were simple, but the meaning behind the over-used phrase was as unique as the stallion before her, pulsing with endless, sincere gratitude rarely seen in a world so corrupt with disease and misfortune. It was as if he'd saved her life--as if he'd drawn her from the lip of a cliff where she had tottered, threatening to plummet to her death. Had her species been one of more versatile and light, agile movements, she would have jumped or done some sort of jig, or maybe just sort of bounced upon her hooves, as bucking was too extravagant for the normally subtle mare, but instead she contented herself with shuffling her daggers, single lid flicking over her lone good eye rapidly.
Its might finally drawing her from her momentary (but seemingly endless) trance, the sound of ear-splitting thunder caused her to jump and shuffle further inward to the cave. She maintained a still respectful distance from the brute, their bodies facing opposite directions but aligned parallel. The lass let out a shuddering breath, glancing nervously outside at the storm, and then offered the male a fond smile.
"For, uhm, singing with me, I mean. It's been a... very long time. Since someone's done that." She lowered her head sheepishly, and then peered uneasily into the darkness that brooded and swirled within the near depths of Tenebris. Was it in this cave she was born? No, it couldn't be--it was too large. Maybe somewhere down the mountainside, or up, or no, maybe somewhere at the base.
No, she interjected in her mind, halting her thoughts immediately. I don't want to find it. I don't know what I'll do. What I'll become... Suppressing a shudder at the thought, she shoved such musing out of her conscience, and flicked her damp, whip-like tail against her flank idly.
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Last Edit: Jan 23, 2013 22:38:43 GMT -5 by Deleted
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