Tweak

InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "rip it! rip it!"

Username: 
Password:    
Remember Me
  • Create Account
  • IJ Login
  • OpenID Login
Search by : 
  • View
    • Create Account
    • IJ Login
    • OpenID Login
  • Journal
    • Post
    • Edit Entries
    • Customize Journal
    • Comment Settings
    • Recent Comments
    • Manage Tags
  • Account
    • Manage Account
    • Viewing Options
    • Manage Profile
    • Manage Notifications
    • Manage Pictures
    • Manage Schools
    • Account Status
  • Friends
    • Edit Friends
    • Edit Custom Groups
    • Friends Filter
    • Nudge Friends
    • Invite
    • Create RSS Feed
  • Asylums
    • Post
    • Asylum Invitations
    • Manage Asylums
    • Create Asylum
  • Site
    • Support
    • Upgrade Account
    • FAQs
    • Search By Location
    • Search By Interest
    • Search Randomly

. ([info]sharaf) wrote in [info]caeleste,
@ 2011-03-16 11:46:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
the watch tower (petra)
There were always stories bandied about qa Yvutha Pharath. Hell, Sharaf had even told one or two himself, once upon a time. Objects in the desert could be swallowed entire by the shifting sands. A strong, sustained wind could uncover them as quickly as they'd been buried. The one thing you were always certain of was that these so-called 'ghost ships' were almost never worth exploring. They'd reveal themselves in sandstorms, but by the time the storm died, they'd be buried again. Sometimes in a matter of minutes. If you weren't fast, you could find yourself buried alive inside of them. Sharaf stared hard at them whenever he saw one, determined to match the fanciful stories of the other fellows the next time ghost ships were mentioned. This time he was staring at the thing for an entirely different reason.

They were being followed.

Nothing about Petra had him at ease. She'd refused to tell him anything worthwhile despite the anger and frustration he'd displayed. She'd been angry at him for being angry at her for being angry at him, and... well, it was just like old times, wasn't it? She was mixed up in something far more sinister than a simple theft. She was throwing out seemingly random hints, she was refusing to fully explain anything, and she was now using him as a pawn in her game. He was going along with it because he thought there was an arrest worth making. He was trusting his reflexes to carry him through all of this. But in the main he was just hopeful that she wouldn't end up being the death of him.

Add to that, she was right. They were being followed. Sharaf had not a single guess as to why someone would be following them, aside from the obvious - it was something to do with Petra or with the alchemy that had been stolen. What alchemy? Why was it worth killing a man, turning his son against a tracker and then trying to frighten a girl? None of this made any damned sense. Petra seemed certain that she was being followed before they'd even left the city. Sharaf supposed he could ask her now. Only he doubted she would be any more forthcoming now. He'd told her that he wouldn't ask what she'd been working on. To ask her now would be to invite her to throw it in his face. This was all nonsense. He was trying to prove something to himself by not asking her. He didn't know what it was. Or why it mattered. It could have been a bravery thing.

He doubted it.

"Any idea who they are?" and his tone was foul.

So was his mood.

The sand soared through the air around them. His cloak and mask concealed his skin - kept him safe from harm - but breathing was an exercise in sometime futility that he did not want to engage in at that particular moment. You couldn't stop breathing. At least, not forever. Breaks in the massive streams of sand revealed their pursuers. There were ten, and they were moving quickly. Too quickly. At this point, they had abandoned subtlety. Alone, in the middle of a sandstorm. Their prey was not meant to live. They were meant instead to die. The sand would consume whatever remained when their pursuers had finished. Sharaf had seen the same thing attempted on unwary travelers before. These could be simple brigands. What about this was simple? He doubted they were so unlucky. You took a great chance, operating in the desert this way.

Something about the chance had to be worth the reward.

There was that structure behind them. Perhaps it had been a guard tower in times past. Now it was a skeleton of metal over which some stone had been applied. The rest was weathered away. What stone remained was smooth and rounded. Difficult to climb. They'd have to use the metal and whatever ladders or stairs remained. If they could reach the top of the thing they might be all right. THey might be able to simply sit this one out. The entire tower could be buried in a matter of twenty minutes. Sharaf took that moment to wonder if they were even seeing the whole of the tower itself. There could be another twenty layers underneath the thing.

Who knew?

"Follow me," Sharaf shouted to be heard, now. "Stay close!"

The tracker broke into a run. Or as near to a run as he could manage on the shifting dunes of the desert. Their pursuers were growing closer all the time. The last thing that Sharaf wanted to do was give them a reason to strike and kill. It was as though all of his reason had abandoned him. If there were any survivors - Sharaf could not imagine killing a man, but the desert might do the work for him - then he would ask them who they were and what they were doing here and now, chasing a pair of travelers across the desert. If there were any survivors. He sadly included himself in that question. It was sad - worse than sad - but there was nothing for it.

Taking their chances was the only option left to them.

(Post a new comment)


[info]alchimia
2011-03-18 03:19 pm UTC (link)
Petra normally would have been quite happy that she was right, her ego would have inflated and she may have proudly strutted around. One of her former lovers compared her to a bird once, in that way. Not to mention she could bend in an unbelievable sort of way in order to.. It was a long time ago, and she didn't really need to think about that right now. Here she wasn't strutting, or 'preening', or anything bird like, perhaps she had the eyes of a hawk now, watching the figures in the distance when she could. Her goggles made such things easier, but it was because she was more worried about losing Adward in the shifting sands, than losing their tail right now, that she stopped looking and kept following him as closely as she could. She had been right. They were being followed. She was being followed. They wanted to kill her and him, or just her out here where no one would ever find her body.

She'd never given much thought to how she wanted someone to deal with her death. Burning would have been the way to get rid of her body, she thought. Considering how many times she'd nearly been blown to pieces by her own work, burning would have been nice. She certainly didn't want to get buried out in the sands. Or laid to rest in some kind of terrible set of catacombs. She couldn't recall if Perava had them or if it was another distant barbaric country now. Maybe she was panicking a little more than she let on. Catacombs sounded ghastly. When Adward asked who they were, Petra wanted to say she was wondering the same thing. They knew about her project, which leaned toward Alchemists, but they were travelling the desert as if they had been born into the shifting sands. That leaned her toward Trackers. A dangerous mix of them? What profession, or job, would put the two of them together on a team? Both marked for different reasons, but normally not the kind of people who mixed company unless the job really required it.

That was one of the reasons she was, and had been, so attracted to Sharaf in the beginning. The challenge of overcoming their vast differences laced with the fact that well, he was highly attractive and active enough to keep up with her. Actually, sometimes she felt like she needed to start running around more, or getting into random drunk fights with ten unarmed men in order to keep up with him. Attraction and his stamina was probably enough to keep many women around, the fact was he was cocky, full of himself, and out to prove his worth to someone who wasn't his family. Or maybe, like her, thinking that but really trying to show his family that he was better than they were. Like her. But not. Their vows different. Their jobs making them so incompatible. She rallied and tried, just as he did, but in the end their own egos did what egos do. Drive each other apart. He blamed her.

She blamed herself.

"I was leaning toward Alchemists, and now I'm leaning toward Trackers, or a dangerous combination of the two. Shall I ask them, sirs what are you?" Petra sounded just as frustrated, but for different reasons than his own. Or maybe the same. Why the swirling sands and pressure of the situation were causing her to think about them, but not think about actually keeping them alive..

Strange days.

Petra made a sound in her throat when he began to run. There was little else she could do, but follow after him at as fast of a run as she was capable of. Sharaf had no idea what she was carrying around with her at all times. Oh the potions and different ingredients yes, but the alchemic device stored on her back was heavy and made it more difficult for her to freely run. She'd thought of using it here, but the winds were hardly pushing in one direction and she'd never tried it in a storm and she hated using it when she didn't have all those equations figured out. Not to mention, could it hold them both? Could she hold onto Adward and keep them in the air without killing the both of them accidentally? She would not leave him behind to die. She was not selfish. She was going to prove that man wrong about her. She cared about somethings.

It was just that she mostly cared about her things.

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-03-18 09:32 pm UTC (link)
The skeletal remains of a gateway hovered over them. Sharaf could see it as it must once have been, humming with vibrancy and urgency against the attacks of the desert nomads who'd once called this area home. They must have been young men, with little to lose on the frontier - or so they thought. There was a stone wall that continued past his head up there. They would need to climb it or find another way in, if the gate were closed. Sharaf did not think that he could trust a mechanism after so long a time - but given that the wall went on as far as he could see through this blasted sand storm, he thought it was worth a chance to heave that rusted portcullis into place and find out what happened next.

"Look for the chain!" he instructed, while gesturing wildly at the heavy iron hanging over their heads.

It looked as though they were passing through the maw of a terrible beast and into death itself. Sharaf wanted to leave this place and never return. There were stories of the young trackers who came here and never returned. There were stories of death as much as stories of wonder. Hard to tell the difference between the two at times. Rath had even mentioned seeing one of these ghost ships and being properly appalled by it. Sharaf imagined it must have been an impressive sight to suck a dickless fool as him. Only one tracker claimed to have entered a ghost ship and survived. That was the number that kept coming into his head.

One.

And he wondered if that was why a part of him - however small - was excited to see if he could make it two.

Along behind them trailed the evil-doers, those misguided fools, one man streaking ahead of the others. He wore a uniform something like a tracker's - drab brown and gray colors that sank so easily into the desert day or night. There was a mask, and a hood, and goggles. You could see nothing save the fellow's midnight skin. He was hurtling toward them at an incredible rate. Enough that Sharaf recognized his training, if not his current status. Why would a tracker be involved in this? It made no sense. It made less sense when you considered... but there was little time to consider. The fellow was closing in. There they were, two chains, holding fast even after all these ages. Running down from top of the arch to heavy brass-and-iron wheels on either side of the gate, obscured almost entirely by the storm of sand, holding fast even after all these years.

Petra would hopefully have something to melt them.

Sharaf set his feet far apart as the forerunner charged ahead, scaling the exposed stone steps with alacrity. He was going to get past the gate before it closed. And Sharaf was certain he saw a flourish of steel in the fellow's hand.

It was going to be close.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-03-23 05:33 pm UTC (link)
Her heart was beating against her ribs, not just because someone was behind them even if that was most of the reason, the rest was that she'd been running and while Petra was in good enough shape for what she normally needed to do she was worn from just running over the sands. It wasn't an easy task, and it wasn't something she did for fun or for her job, that was an Adward thing. What Petra really wanted was a break from all of this. She didn't want to be chasing after something, or having anyone chase after her. It was also difficult to breath freely from the mask covering her face. She knew it'd be impossible without it, but it was difficult to get a good gulp of air underneath the mask and all of the wraps she was wearing to keep the sand out of her clothing and away from her skin. As quickly as the thought of needing a true breath was there it was gone because they needed to find the apparatus to close these ancient gates. If they could close.

Did Adward wonder if the things were glued in by ancient sand by now? Sand stuck in the rigging and workings of this once gate. She didn't know if it'd work, but it was a formula and a set of calculations that she had no time to run over or through. She didn't even pipe up because being negative in her way didn't help him and normally annoyed him. She recalled once, giving him a run down on odds and the math of a fight. If someone was larger than him vs how fast he was and how slow they were because of their size, times it by two if there was another, take out some other figures out and by the time she was done his face was pinched with annoyance and he demolished something.

She thought it was a chair, it might have been a random sparring match, it could have been some one's face. Perhaps to prove her math wrong? He indicated, in his own way, where the chains were, by looking at them. Petra opened her bag and found herself digging through it once again looking for something that'd help. Melting them would help. But did she have anything? It wasn't like she brought acid around for fun! Making it was even more difficult. Those compounds volatile on their own. No, maybe some fast fire? Some kind of her.. oh she had it. One hand in the bag, while she moved from her place to be close to one set of the chains herself. She pulled out a bottle. Normally she used this compound as a quick way to get the heat she needed in the desert to stir up something else, but it should work on the chains. Maybe a little slower than she'd have liked, but it would work.

She uncorked the bottle with one of her gloved hands and poured half of the bottle onto the chain as fast as she could. The sound it made was a crackling sort of thing. And the moment it was free of it's glass confines it seemed to glow just a little red. She quickly hurried to the other side of the gate, but not before looking. She thought she saw a flash of something from the man running so quickly to catch them.

She could have suggested she kill him with something she had in her bag, but the suggestion would have enraged Adward so she stuck to the chains. The second set, much like the first was coated in the remainder of the liquid she threw the bottle down, it was empty now.

"Come on come onnn.." She fidgeted there beside the second set of chains. She didn't even know if this would work. if the gate was glued shut by sand then they were.. Well.

There were other ways of escaping.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-03-23 06:06 pm UTC (link)
The first attack was a wide, horizontal slash of the knife. Sharaf danced back on his heels, keeping his center of gravity fixed on some invisible point just behind his hard-bouncing boots. A second slash, upward. Avoided in the same way. A third feint. Sharaf shifted forward now, planting a heel and swinging that invisible balance point forward. It drove power into his leg, through the twist and vicious turn of his hips. The right leg went sideways. His boot heel slammed into his opponent's leg, directly above the kneecap. A violent snap was heard. His opponent screamed in agony as he fell to the ground. Sharaf planted his right boot on the man's knife-hand. The left foot kicked, hard, into the man's face. A second hard crack. The screaming died abruptly. Petra might not even have heard it over the wind.

The second one was coming on in a rush, his hands clutching a wide axe blade.

Sharaf hurtled forward, his running step off-balance at first. A hand tapped the ground to keep his balance alive. The timing would have to be exquisite on this one. It was obvious that the axe-man was just following his comrade's footsteps. If he saw something, he was going to attack. Sharaf's steps became quicker and longer as he forced his boots up the side of the wall. No one could have vaulted it completely by running alone. He made it halfway up that barrier of stone. Petra was shouting something at him - he thought he could hear it over the wind. Stuck. The tracker caught the lip of the wall with both hands. His legs were together, heels jammed close, swinging back and forth in a pendulum motion. The third swing gave him enough momentum to drag them onto the top of the wall itself.

Axe-man was coming closer.

"The gate is stuck!" she was shouting.

He was climbing the gatehouse as fast as he could, half-ruined stone sliding beneath his gloved hands. That iron had been pulled into the top position. There it was hanging, brutal and foreboding, despite the destruction of both chains. That axe-man was almost to the gate now. Sharaf hauled himself up, onto the very top of the gate house, and his hands immediately traveled to his belt. Looking for the square phials that lurked upon its leather surface. They were potions of light and stunning intensity. Meant to shock and startle, to incapacitate briefly. Not to kill. Sharaf found one. His eyes closed - even in this terrible wind it would be bright enough to send him to the ground.

Step one. He hurled the phial down, toward the pursuer.

Step two. Sharaf flung himself off the gate house, eyes closed.

Step three. The light seared the axe-man's eyes. It was bright enough to stun those men behind the axe-wielding maniac. Only having his eyes closed at the moment of ignition kept Sharaf from falling senseless to a broken bone, or worse.

Step three. Eyes open.

Step four. His gloved hands seized the iron bars of the gate. Sharaf's weight and momentum gave the iron a hard jarring pull. In the instant before it could slide down and trap him outside, The tracker swing beneath its snarling teeth, toes hooking on to the inside of the gate with alacrity. His hands released. And as the gate roared downward, with a tug and shout that could startle the bravest of men, Sharaf jumped for a second time. The height was much reduced. His momentum was generated by the pushing of his feet, off the iron and into the air. He hit the ground on those same feet and immediately launched into a shoulder roll. This kept him from breaking his ankles. A great cloud of dust stirred behind the tracker as the gate slammed shut. He sprawled out onto the stone, laughing hysterically.

They were alive. For the moment. And what a way to do it.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-03-23 09:48 pm UTC (link)
If Petra was not an alchemist her eyes would have been open that entire time, the moment she saw the flash of glass she shut them tight. Training was the only thing that helped her through that, of course, the wall had been in the way. Still. She thought it was about time she found a way to make the glass in her goggles prevent such assaults. Not that people attacked her much, oh it helped with normal sunlight, but a blinding flash? Where to begin? She should jot that down for later, would she remember later? Petra stood there, eyes shut, and then finally a breath opened them. The sound that reached her ears over the sound of the sands was the creak and finally the slam of the gate down. The yell, the sound of Adward taking the ground in a roll. She rushed forward, unsure of if he was okay, or if he was hurt. But he was laughing, laughing! Petra sprinted from behind her mask and goggles, not that he could tell.

"I suppose that means you're alright." Petra said softly, mostly to herself, she didn't know if he could hear her or not. She was looking now out through the gate. They wouldn't give up so easily, and the more she thought about it, as much as this was keeping those people out, it was trapping them inside. In the middle of a sandstorm! She was mentally ticking off the ways this was terrible. They could be buried! She knew stories, but she'd never experienced something like this. She barely left her apartment, let alone the city she called home. She wanted her notebook back, she wanted her project back. Or did she? She mostly wanted to know the why, more than the how. Of course the how was important, it always was. But why her, why this project? There were thousands of projects done by alchemists every single day that were more dangerous than her particular one.

In the wrong hands anything could be devastating. Of course rain could be dangerous. But so could fire. Or lightning, imagine lightning striking whenever one wanted it to? When it came to the desert it made fantastic glass out of the sands. Alchemists kept it in their homes, fantastic glass trees made by lightning, the natural power of the world. Weather, in it's rarest form was more beautiful than any gold, any jewel that someone could hone and make into something. Of course the world had beauty, but that raw form. Where it turned the seas of the world, changed the tide on it's own accord and made something real that someone could touch. Something that, yes, could be copied carefully, was never as fantastic or beautiful or.. She wasn't thinking about now.

They were as much trapped as they were safe. She could blast down a wall, she thought, maybe. Or if the wind was strong enough, but Adward. She looked back at him, trying to get a good measure. Did he weigh more than he did the last time he'd been..

Hum.

"So they're out for this second, but we're stuck in, Adward, and it seems like they're here to kill you. I don't think that's why they're here after me. Maybe. But the man had seemed eager to tell me that if I wanted to join them.." She shrugged her shoulder and pressed her gloved hands to her sides.

"For another time."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-03-24 04:58 am UTC (link)
Cheating death was something you did every time you didn't choke on food, or managed to not die of a chest pain. There were a great many ways that the ordinary person cheated death without realizing it, simply because it was an easy thing to do. Sharaf had learned that in his years as a tracker. You were always cheating death, making the odds work in your favor instead of against. Yet to do it in a way so spectacular as the one he'd just entertained. Well, that was something special. Sharaf doubted that one in ten trackers could have done it. He pushed himself away from the ground with his hands. Limbs were still a touch shaky - too much adrenaline flowing in his veins. He wasn't as calm about the whole affair as he should have been.

With his equipment weighing him down, even.

"Up," was what he finally blurted.

There were decaying stone stairs spread out before them now, clinging in places to the remnants of the wall and rising into free air in others. Sharaf was frankly surprised they were still even somewhat intact after the years and the elements had been given a chance at them. Petra did not realize how lucky they were. Already sand was beginning to collect in the corners of this floor. He would guess another two or three minutes before it was submerged entirely. Petra might have been able to give him a more accurate number. She would tell him the odds of their survival, and that would just make him angry. If they were going to survive, they were going to have to make it to the top of the blasted thing.

"This is a ghost ship," Sharaf called, above the wind, running in place to try and work off his nervousness. "Towers that were consumed by the sand. A storm can expose them, but it usually swallows the thing whole again before it ends. That gives us a few minutes before we're part of the collection!"

Petra was always good with numbers. Not so good with panic. What if he told her that no one had ever made it out of a ghost ship alive save Rath himself, and that no one believed Rath was telling the truth? What if he told her that she looked beautiful when she was worried about him? What if he told her that he hated her, and every single potion she'd ever made instead of attempting to spend even a moment of time with him? It was utter nonsense. He did not believe for a second that any of that would make a difference. He wanted to say it all the same. Instead, he adjusted the heavy goggles on his face, and jerked his head toward the stairs.

"We will be the second and third persons to live through something this stupid," Sharaf couldn't resist. "We're making history, Petra!"

Laughing over his shoulder, the tracker began to job toward the stairs. They would scale the wall in moments. Hopefully it was enough of a head start.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-04-01 09:03 pm UTC (link)
Petra didn't know how it was possible for Adward to laugh and act so calmly. She could see the sand gathering along the ground of the exposed stone. She knew that every time she looked more was there and it was rapidly filling up this level. She could calculate the rate without touching a sheet of parchment. Without needing to use the crude abacus that many Alchemists carried upon their person because they either disliked figuring the math out on paper, or because they simply could not do numbers in their head. She could, and she was, and the results were not good for them. Not good at all. She was quickening her pace with every step, running to keep up. Adward might have been shorter than she was, but he would always be faster. Every one of his steps was like three of hers. Oh, if they had all the time in the world this would be different.

She didn't know how he could laugh. How he could just be like this! Didn't he know they were going to die here, buried under the sand. And it was her fault. He hadn't gone, she should have left him behind. Her breathing was irregular now, panicked beneath the mask she wore. When she turned her head she saw it, men climbing that gate, clutching onto the wall. If she believed in gods she probably would have been cursing them right now. As it was, Petra was trying to run the math again. There had to be some kind of slim margin, where they could actually escape.

"Are you.. are you insane?" Petra said. "We're going to die in here. We're trapped in here. We were better off out there I could have done something to stop them out there but we're climbing this thing and we're going to die out here in the sand Adward. Buried alive. a ton of sand would collapse my ribcage, puncture my lungs, and as they filled with fluid I would drown under the sand. Not die simply from being buried, drown in my own blood." Petra shrieked.

She was absolutely frightened.

Something had to give, she had to think of something, some way for them out of here. She was supposed to be intelligent! She could get herself out of anything, talk herself out of anything, figure herself out of anything. Petra was brilliant. Why was nothing coming to mind? The wind was too wild to attempt, well maybe if she positioned herself really awkwardly, but then if she hit the wall or...

And what about Adward?

"How much do you weigh now? Relatively the same?" Petra asked in a much more calm manner.

There was little time.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-04-02 08:29 pm UTC (link)
Taking the steps three at a time wasn't something you practiced. At least, not in the way you practiced cheating death. Yet it was something that was carried along by endurance and agility. These were two things that he had in spades and Petra did not. This would be one such thing. She was falling behind, calm as she was attempting to be and brave as he knew she was. She was falling behind. She was falling behind, the sand was beginning to follow them as the wicked winds picked up, and all things equal he did not believe that she would be able to outrun the shifting deserts. Hell, he did not think his chances were better than half and half. So why had he done this in the first place? Some kind of misguided sense of adventure?

No, not misguided.

He wanted to be a legend, didn't he?

"I'm very petite," he chimed in.

A hand closed on his boot. He turned. One of the men had been climbing up the sides of the stairs, springing back and forth between them. Sharaf might have done that, if he wasn't concerned for Petra's ability to run. This fellow had covered an amazing amount of ground. The tracker, the one that Sharaf had stunned so ably, and back on his feet quick as you please. With Sharaf sprawled on his belly the tracker was turning for Petra. Sharaf's frantic attempts to regain his footing called the tracker back to him - another flash of steel, here - with alacrity.

For a handful of seconds they were poised against one another, balanced on the balls of their feet, searching for an opening. Any opening. The tracker lunged, knife extended. Sharaf's kick was faster, extending straight in front of him. A straight, standing kick that snapped like a whip was supposed to be slow all the same. Yet the hard toe of Sharaf's boot struck the man full in his face. A vicious snap. A gout of blood. The knife clattered to the stone, and there the former tracker would stay. He had to be former. Any tracker who would use a knife in a fight was the worst sort of trash.

"All of that," Sharaf laughed. "To go down with one kick. Come on, Petra."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-04-07 08:57 pm UTC (link)
"Petite is not a proper method of measurement, you're shorter but outweigh me, damn it Sharaf I want a real figure!" Petra angrily replied, looking as she did when she was trying to figure something crazy out. It wasn't that she enjoyed taking risks, no, she didn't really enjoy risks. Not without being completely comfortable with her safety, but right here and now seemed like a good enough time to try something completely stupid. if he could do it, she could do it. But there was no time to run figures, or even to attempt what she wanted to attempt. She could feel how hard the wind was blowing and if her estimations were correct, as they normally were, they were going to be buried and soon.

However she stopped in her tracks when the man took Adward down. Petra didn't even have the sense to reach for anything in her pack, the flash of the knife was as petrifying as a sudden steep cliff would have been to someone who was afraid of heights. Oh Petra could do things to people when she had time to consider, and sometimes she was great on the go, but she was terrified already of being buried beneath the sand. Quickly enough though, the ex tracker was distracted by Adward and they were looking at each other like beasts looking for a meal.

Petra really wanted out.

She grimaced behind her mask as the man went down and returned to running once Adward was clear of it.

"How are you laughing, still?" She said, still panicked, maybe more so now. But at least that closer fear of death had put some life into her steps. She was trying to climb the steps two at a time. Her legs were longer than his, she just didn't have his endurance, his stamina. Well, not here at least. Running a race was a lot different than staying in a bed for a few days.

"We're not going to out run the sand. My figures, my measurements. We're going to be buried and you're laughing and kicking people around. You might make it, I certainly won't even come close."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-04-08 12:01 am UTC (link)
She was right. Sand was surging up the step behind them, nearly sloshing at their feet as water might, alive in the same way. He'd read books about the sea and felt no fear for it. Water could carry you, sustain you. Sand choked you. Drowned you. Crushed you oppressively beneath its weight. For every single terror the water held, there were five of greater peril clutched in the firsts of the desert. Life here was hard, and for a reason. So he paid the sand the ultimate compliment when he said that it quickened his step. But not hers. Petra was not trained for this, and she was beginning to fall behind. Her boot was stuck for an instant in a drift of sand that came from nowhere. Soon it would be half of her leg. That quickly the sand was overtaking them. He had a decision to make, then, and not an easy one.

They were committed, now, because anything else would have been death.

Only now death still chased after them. By now the sand had swallowed his unworthy opponent, hadn't it? The man would wake up and be buried beneath a few hundred pounds of sand.

Don't think about it.

Sharaf swept Petra from her feet as quickly as he could. For all her talk of weight, she seemed heavier than he remembered. One arm cradled her legs behind the knee. The other was across her back. On instinct, those slender arms shot around his neck. Yet she was not pleased, all the same. Sharaf did not blame her. How long could he move at the same speed with an extra person cradled in his arms. Agility was a concern. Still his knees were churning as fast as they could, and his legs were keeping him ahead of the sand as he continued to climb. This tower had a ceiling, and it would be found. What they'd do when they arrived was anyone's guess. Yet there was a chance, up top, that they could evade the charging sands.

Down this way, they were as good as dead.

"I'm sorry," he gasped as he moved. "But you're fucking heavy."

Her, or that mobile alchemy room she called a bag. Sharaf was not going to criticize her too much. He still couldn't resist the joke, or the wheezing laugh that came out of his throat. She didn't realize how close she was to becoming an incredible figure. There was only one worry, and that was that she'd punch him in the gut before they reached the top.

Nobody was that foolish, were they?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-04-08 01:43 am UTC (link)
"I, weigh less than you do by far, and I haven't gained an ounce of anything in the years between the last time you carried me to your bed. You are feeling the weight of my bags, and I'll have you know they're very important. Once we're not about to die I'm going to hit you with one of them."

Probably the heavier one. The alchemic device which could have saved her life. but no, no she was concerned about him and terrified of being thrown into a wall or tossed into the great winds and lost forever. Instead she was allowing him to carry her, even though she hated being jostled about. Her side crashing into his pelvis every time he climbed another three steps. He had a very hard pelvis. Bony is what he was, even with all of his muscle. Even with all of the strength years of training had given him, Adward was bony.

She should have told him so. She'd never slept with a man as bony as he was, and it was a wonder she didn't end up covered in bruises every time they'd taken a pleasant tumble and God she was just thinking of it because he was strong enough to carry her and her packs. People complained when they had to carry one of them and she carried two of them all the time. not only was he carrying her, along with her two packs, but his own pack and weapons and if she lived to see the blue skies again she was going to draft a letter to any woman that wanted to sleep with him in the future and tell them to back off, or if they wouldn't to at least appreciate what he was capable of doing. Hags.

No, she wouldn't do that. that would be complimenting him and he was making crude jokes about her weight as if such simplistic veiled stabs at her ego would ever work. Petra knew she weighed little. She also knew she had legs for days. She knew that men wanted her. Wanted to be with her, and that they did stupid things in order to get a chance. He'd been one of those men once.

Once.

"You're going to have to move faster with the added weight, you don't even want to know the figures and odds now."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-04-08 02:45 am UTC (link)
The wind died.

There was no other explanation for it. One moment it was howling as though the end of the world was come. The next it was gone. Sand was falling all around them, rain to the sea of the sand, and Sharaf did not think he'd ever been so grateful for such a punishing rain in his life. The dunes were not being raked over, their sand not pushed farther and farther in search of a resting place. Almost as soon as the howling in his ear died Sharaf deposited Petra quite soundly onto her feet, with a jarring rattle of bones that would have shaken anyone. She didn't deserve it, but he was annoyed, and he wasn't going to let consideration get in the way of expressing his annoyance. She would recover from the jarring.

"Run!" and he still needed to shout, so loud was the sand-rain. "Fast as you can! This break might not last long!"

One winding staircase to the top of this ancient tower seemed like not enough, now. It seemed as though they should have had ten lifts carrying them up faster than the sand could fill this place. Well, there was a difference between engineers and alchemists. What the hell was a tracker doing here-? He wasn't going to guess or speculate. He wasn't going to wonder about something that didn't matter. The tracker was dead because he hadn't the sense to run or defend himself from attack. That meant that - Sharaf looked over his shoulder, just in time to see a shape surge out of the sand.

Impossible.

"This is getting ridiculous," Sharaf grimaced at nothing, before he turned back to Petra. "Run, I said!"

How in the hell had the ex-tracker survived?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-04-08 09:06 pm UTC (link)
"I'm trying to!" Petra snapped back at him. It wasn't easy, running so quickly after getting a small break. Or after the fact that he'd dropped her on the ground so hard her heels ached. She needed different boots for such things. She needed different everything. Maybe she needed to reconsider what kind of device she should carry with her at all times. Her packs were heavy, and they did weigh her down. Enough so that running felt like more work than it should have. She was sweating beneath the shawls and beneath her goggles and mask. Such things could not be prevented, but felt disgusting all the same.

There was good sweating and then there was this. With the sand raining down upon them like rain did during a thunderstorm. thick heavy drops that pounded down so hard it made noise even through the rough stone walls of their homes. Or tinged against the metal and glass windows the finer homes had. Like her apartment, or like her childhood home. Tinged and banged in equal measure. This was worse.

She knew the sand was going to be everywhere in her clothes by the end of this, even with all her precautions.

She turned her head on a whim to look at what he'd been looking at and gasped loud enough to be heard.

"I thought he was dead!" She exclaimed. Shocked, and also impressed. "Apparently he really wants us dead or you didn't kick him hard enough!" She laughed this time, mostly because she didn't feel as though death was coming swiftly with the break in the sandstorm.

It would be back eventually. for now she kept running as fast as she could up those steps.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-04-14 05:17 pm UTC (link)
The ex-tracker's fist nearly struck Sharaf in his jaw. A practiced lean, from the waist. Sharaf's body snapped forward. His left elbow collided with the ex-tracker's jaw. They both lurched perilously close to the rail then, as the sand continued to rise. Perhaps fifteen or so feet below them. It was one thing to know the desert was capable of such feats. It was another entirely to see such a thing in action. Sharaf thought he might have panicked, if he were even one day younger or one day more foolish. As it was, the old stirrings of fear were there for the first time. The ex-tracker had seized Sharaf's cloak. Attempting to force him over the rail, and into the sand, from which there was no escape.

Sharaf planted his heel on the top of the ex-tracker's foot. The second leg came behind Sharaf's body, and kicked hard into the side of the ex-tracker's knee. A simple move, and lacking in permanence, but it staggered the ex-tracker. Convinced him to release his hold on Sharaf's cloak. They two of them were spinning off into the stairs again, sun and moon drawing closer to one another, angrily searching for even the slightest opening. One of the ex-tracker's fists hammered into Sharaf's stomach. This doubled the young Immortal over. Now the ex-tracker's second hand darted in. Seized a handful of Sharaf's cloak a second time.

Sharaf's forearms became blunt instruments. The first crashed down on top of the ex-tracker's extended forearm. The second raised up from below. The lower strike was near the wrist. The upper strike, closer to the elbow. A paralyzing pain shot through the ex-tracker's arm, and his fingers slipped. Sharaf used the upper arm to strike hard and fast, jamming the back side of his hand into the ex-trackers' throat. Wheezing, that staggered the villain, and Sharaf went in for one final blow. The right leg extended, coming from left to right; it was a child's fan kick, and it was off-balance, but it turned the ex-tracker's head.

A crack of bone.

Sharaf did not turn to see what had become of the man. Blood was streaming from the ex-tracker's nose, and mouth. His eyes were red. He was clinging to the railing as the sand continued to rise. And in ten seconds, Sharaf hoped that everyone's troubles would be solved.

Petra, he was thankful to see, had continued to run. They were near the top now.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-04-25 11:16 pm UTC (link)
Probability and Rate of Success was never a good thing to take into account when fleeing for your life. Petra knew that, it was probably making her slower instead of faster, but she couldn't help herself. She liked to crunch numbers, she enjoyed the thrill of that moment where everything fell into place and you had the perfect formula for something. But here she was, fleeing for her life, for their lives, as Saraf wasn't about to leave her behind, and seemed to be taking on anything that got into their path. Even if that thing seemed hellbent on just killing her. How did this happen? There were plenty of questions and no answers. The curse of being an alchemist. Always questions, never enough answers. Oh but then when they made something that was perfect, better than anything, there were a thousand more questions. how did it work exactly? She was getting side tracked in her own mind. Wonders never cease.

Petra chanced a glance backwards and was happy to see that Sharaf was at least free of that terrible man and catching up with her. She really needed to take some time to learn to run faster. she was gasping behind her mask, and try as she might she couldn't force herself to breath in through her nose and out her mouth. That was supposed to help! She was trying! Petra kept climbing the stairs as fast as she could. Sometimes two at a time, but it was difficult even with her long legs. She was getting tired. More than that, she was carrying an awful lot, but there was no way she could lighten that load. If she left anything behind she'd freak out about it. She might need it!

If Sharaf could hear her own thoughts he'd probably berate her, or laugh. Either would have been terrible right now.

She just hoped that they made it out of here alive, but the numbers didn't seem right. they just could not make it out of here alive. Oh why had they gone this way? At least out in the open she could have done something for them. Something.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-05-03 11:24 pm UTC (link)
Both of them erupted onto the tower's top level with sprightly intent. Yet for all of that boundless energy there was nowhere to go. Sand glistened all around them as the sun attempted to penetrate its blinding cloak. They were in the center of the whirlwind, now. Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Sharaf could feel the tower shifting beneath them. The severity of the wind was pulling the tower away from its moorings. Buried in sand as the bottom two-thirds were, it would not fall.

He thought.

Leaning over the edge Sharaf saw something he'd never witnessed in all his years as a desert rat. Sand shifting beneath him as water did; the first and only time he'd seen standing water in such quantities as he saw the sand, Sharaf had been convinced he was going to die. Was this what it was like to stare over the edge of a water ship? He thought again about jumping. This was the only plan that had made sense. It was also the plan that was going to ensure they died. Someone else had died below. He hadn't killed them. The desert had. He was still clean.

Still clean, for the moment.

"It's dying down!" Sharaf shouted above the wind.

He didn't believe it, either.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-06-06 07:58 pm UTC (link)
"No it's not!" Petra yelled back at him. "But it isn't getting faster!" Correcting him probably wasn't the brightest thing Petra had ever done, but there was little else she could do here and now. She was still considering her device, but throwing both of them into the whirlwind would just get them buffeted against the side of the tower or they'd spiral up and out and then Petra wouldn't be able to keep them up long enough to glide down. The weight of both of them alone would be too much.

Oh there were potions she could mix to save them from falling to their deaths, if she'd known they'd be at such a blasted height she would have made them. She spun in a circle and tried to gather her thoughts. Something, anything. He was supposed to be the one able to handle tough situations like this! Petra was supposed to be the one to solve puzzles and make things explode. Not think of diving off a tower.

"My device can't help us in all of this stupid wind!" The slew of curses that left her mouth were in all the languages she knew, and some of them were much more colorful than she normally spoke. It wasn't intelligent to curse, but it was supposed to help tough situations. It wasn't helping!

"If this tower would just fall over we'd have a better chance!"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-06-07 05:47 pm UTC (link)
Sharaf was reaching for his rope even as she scolded him. It was one thing to suggest that he was wrong. It was another thing entirely to suggest that he was wrong and that this was somehow his fault, which she seemed to be implying when she shouted about towers and falling down. Sharaf knew as well as he knew anything that if this tower fell, both of them were going to die. If they jumped, they were going to die. It wasn't slowing down, but it wasn't getting faster - their window was opening. Someone had died down there. Was it Sharaf's fault, for leading them into the tower?

He did not believe in meditation or prayer - the same way adults did not believe in Sanso the Blightbringer - but he thought, for just a moment, that it might have been a wonderful thing.

"I don't want your device in any case!" Sharaf shouted back.

The sand was like water in one way. Hold your breath when you went under, or you were going to be in for a nasty sort of surprise. Were they going under? Sharaf didn't think he'd accepted that as a reality until this instant. They were going beneath the sand, and they needed some way to find their way to the surface again if they were going to survive. How long could he hold his breath? The truth was that he'd never even tried. How had that other fellow survived this? Sharaf made a quick loop - then two, with a two-fisted knot. That should hold.

The tower had four outer rails that were the spines of the entire thing. Fingers ascending into the heavens, grasping for any sort of purchase, and in that instant it was hard not to think of them as fellow escapees. Yet one went higher than the others - and it still retained a rough, granular surface.

Sharaf shoved the makeshift lasso half into his coat. Then he took a running start at the highest of the four spines. His fingers grasped the back of the thing, and began to slid upward. His feet propelled him. He was walking, feet and hands, up the side of the thing.

Suddenly, the wind felt much more intense.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-06-07 06:13 pm UTC (link)
"But if it wasn't like this we could just glide!" Petra shouted back knowing fully well that he had no idea what she was talking about. But if she was going to die right here and now she wasn't going to go quietly. She wanted to be right about something. thus far she had been very wrong about a lot of things and she was pretty sure she was going to die and she couldn't die wrong and silent. A terrible way to go. Horrible considering how much failing she'd been doing lately. Sand was clinging everywhere along her clothes, kept out from her skin mostly, but she could feel the patches that had been exposed during their run and climb. Raw now, worse later.

What in the name of Goref the Dwarf of Industry was he doing?!

"Are you insane?!" Petra shouted after him. "If you get caught in the wind you'll blow out then back in and every bone in your body wills tart snapping. there's a lot of them but hitting a tower over and over again will get them all!" Petra cupped her hands around her mouth as best she could, the mask prevented a lot. "I don't want you to die! Are you purposely trying to get yourself killed now? Are you leaving me behind?" Petra didn't know what he was trying to do.

Of course she really had little clue what to do with this entire situation. There were things she could have done with all the time in the world to consider the problem. Potions, devices. Hooks would have been nice right now. A hook and a rope, or something stronger. To hold the tower and get down, and something to propel them out into the wind fast enough to launch them out into the part of the desert that wasn't like water.

She knew where to begin, but time wasn't on her side and thinking about that wasn't helping either of them currently.

"I don't want to be left behind."

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-06-07 08:30 pm UTC (link)
The wind was barreling into him. He could feel it pressing the contents of his pockets against his ribs. The pack was catching more of it; every blast nearly pulled him off-balance. Sharaf looked over his shoulder and down. Goggles were keeping the sweat out of his eyes for now. Sand was climbing faster. Maybe a minute? The wind was slowing down now. Yet not enough, and not in time. They were going under the sand. Sharaf thought back to his days as a youth, when the desert sand was little more than a glittering surface in the distance, and he was nothing more than a child waiting to find his place in the world. Until now - now here they were, and the world was turning black, and all he could think in that moment was that he should have kissed the nearest beautiful girl before he started climbing.

He would let her have it if they survived.

Sharaf seized the top of the massive beam with one hand, while the other dipped into his coat. This was the most precarious part of the thing. If he... the lasso slipped over the top of the beam and he let go. His weight carried him down, the wind carried him sideways, and a sharp tug on the rope pulled the lasso closed. It caught on an aberration in the metal. Who could use metal this large? Who could make metal so large? Sharaf for a brief moment had two hands on a rope, and nothing else anchoring him to this world. The wind almost carried him away - never to be seen again. For a moment that thought was not unpleasant. It was only when he began to slide down the rope, closer to the ground, that he realized how mad the thought was.

They would have to climb the rope. And try to stay above the sand as long as they could. Sharaf collided with the ground and instant fell to one knee, clinging to the rope desperately. A great length of seemingly spare braided cord lashed against him, and against the beam, seeming for all the world to be alive and attempting to escape his clutches. The wind was madness. He took a half-second to fully experience the pain in his legs. That was all. Then he was on his feet, and bounding toward Petra - the spare rope was indicated with a savage wave of his still-clutching fists.

"Loop this through your belt!" Sharaf barked. "Tight as you can!"

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-06-09 03:36 am UTC (link)
Petra knew it was better not to argue with him right here and now. She took the rope quickly and looped it through her belt several times before tying the most complicated knot she knew how to tie correctly. Anything to hold her tight. Had to be tight. She was beginning to see what he was planning and it was utter madness, but she had nothing better to offer as a plan. Nothing at all, which was horrifying.

"That's as good as I can do. Do you really think this'll work?" Petra called over the roaring wind. she wasn't sure. But she didn't want to say that. She wanted him to say this would work so her heart would stop pumping so frantically and she could breath again. She'd never considered actually dying herself. Immortality was too long of a lifetime. Sure she wouldn't live forever, but thousands of years was basically forever when one thought about it. Much different from her mother.

So much so. She hadn't thought of her in ages. Not considered what she'd think of this situation. "I can't die." She barely said above a whisper, which meant it was likely lost to the wind. "I'm not finished." She wasn't. Her mother wanted her to be someone and she had tried to be someone. But what had she really done with her life? She'd only messed up every relationship she could. She'd shoved her father so far away. Shoved Adward until he hated her. and the others.

She was going to die in the desert with someone who hated her and only one person far away who would miss her once she was gone. That was it.

It wasn't much of a life.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-06-10 10:18 pm UTC (link)
Sharaf laughed. "No!"

One of the first things you learned as a tracker was the obvious to anyone who knew of their laws. Do not kill. To bring a person to safety was of greater concern than apprehending a bandit. The man who died below... had been trying to kill both of them. Petra would have been taken by them, if she'd stayed. If she'd stayed because he'd struggled to carry a grown man, they all would have died. Saving Petra took priority. That was what he told himself.

He would lay himself bare before the elders, one day soon, and he would know their thoughts.

"Hold on tight," Sharaf shouted above the wind. "And try to stay above the sand for as long as you can!"

It was rising, around his ankles now. Sharaf was stepping oddly, high steps that brought his knees to his chest and dug his heels into the sand. Yet in this way he was able to stay atop the sand that was clearly rising beneath them. One hand was on the rope as the wind tugged violently, but the truth was that he did not fear letting go. This was as exciting a thing as one could hope to find. Ghosts of the desert could bring terror to a man's heart, but also a thrill to his chest, and this more than anything Sharaf was glad to find.

How exciting.

Sand was starting to blow under his coat, under his mask, but not under his goggles. She knew her craft well. He was still sprinting and high-stepping in place, while he praised in his thoughts alone her skill, and he'd not felt this alive in a long time. After this was over, perhaps he'd give her a kiss. He would not be cross with her.

This was the gift of ages.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-06-15 03:34 am UTC (link)
Petra's mouth was hanging wide open behind the mask but it was impossible to see much more than the surprised look in her eyes. He didn't know if they were going to live, or if this was going to work. he was as mad as she was when it came to experiments. She knew the thrill all too well, and had nearly blown herself up several hundred times. But she didn't like playing with her life out here in the open like this. She didn't find this nearly as thrilling as attempting to make a new potion. This was Adward Sharaf's sort of madness and she wanted nothing to do with it. There was, of course, no way to avoid it here and now, but she wished she could.

Petra tried her best to copy his ridiculous walking, it was keeping him out of the sand, but it was barely working for her. She was much more weighed down by her packs than he was. But she was a lighter person in general, so she kept high stepping and holding onto the rope for dear life. She couldn't die here. She couldn't avoid it either, could she? The wraps, the leather jacket, none of it was helping her. She could only really see, even breathing was difficult in the thick of it.

"You're telling me we're going under no matter what!" She screamed over the roar of the sand. "What then!" Master of plans.

Master of surviving the desert. Who mocked her star charts as flawed. All of her education be damned, she couldn't transverse this desert like he could, which was true in part. She could follow the stars, but she was terrible at actually getting around in the sand and the sweltering heat. The heat itself didn't bother her, but the sands. She knew she'd seen grass and mountains and lived among that for a part of her life, but she could hardly remember it besides in public gardens and from paintings.

Right now she wished she had grass and mountains to worry about and not shifting sands. She'd even settle for an ocean even though she didn't have a clue about swimming.

She could figure out how to float though. It couldn't be that hard.

If only the same could be said for sand.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-06-18 04:36 pm UTC (link)
His clothing filled with it, until his person had been replaced with sand, and his skin was become rasping dryness. Each grain was a count for him. Each forced attempt to keep himself from sucking down a lungful of harsh earth was at best, a delaying tactic. He had no idea when he'd agreed with himself that this was a sound plan. He was having second thoughts. And yet he was climbing, quick as he could, pulling on the rope. It was the only thing that gave him any measure of orientation.

The reason for its existence was simple, then. Without it he might have tried to climb out sideways and lost his bearings. He would have suffocated under the sand. Petra was not moving as quickly as he. Panicked, probably. His goggles revealed a world full of brown and beige and black before his eyes. Dust clouded the lenses. Sharaf felt air on his fist as it broke the surface, clutching tight to that rope. Despite the heat of the desert this air felt infinitely cool. Nothing could have prepared him for how cold it felt on the surface, when sand that had baked all day no longer pressed in urgent around him.

His first gasping breath was a miracle. There was sand on his tongue. Sharaf was spitting, furiously, even as he took a knee.

Petra was not conditions for this sort of thing. Sharaf felt his shoulders burn with each heavy pull of the rope. Churning as they were, hotter than the sand and the clear blue sky, he knew he was racing the seconds marked now by sand. There was not so much as a kiss of wind on his neck to relieve the heat. Petra was going to live.

He'd never felt more alive, for himself.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-06-21 05:56 pm UTC (link)
As the sand pressed against her Petra felt the panic race through her. Logically speaking, it was bound to happen, but that didn't make it a good sort of thing. She hated to panic, and she knew in the end it'd make things harder to deal with. And yet here she was panicking with all of her might. Higher and higher it rose. Finally when all she could see was sand, that was it. The panic shut everything else down. Her fingers gripped the rope for dear life as she began to pull herself up, trying to fight away the pressure of the sand. Later, when she had it in her to think, she'd wonder if this was what survival, and the will to survive, were about. Those things an aged tutor had told her of, surviving the wilds. She never thought she'd have to deal with it herself. Theirs was an age of discovery and machinery. There was no need, simply, to fight to survive. But here she was, fighting against hot sand. It felt as though it was burning her skin, probably just raw from it against her and rubbing against her skin. But it was hot either way.

She fought the urge to breath. Even with her mask as it pressed, she'd suck only sand. There was no air to filter in, just sand. She'd choke on it and die. Petra felt the rope moving on it's own accord, pulling her up faster than she could pull herself. Adward must have been alive, and pulling her because she couldn't pull herself. Perhaps she'd thank him, or kiss him. Only if she lived. She wasn't sure she would until the first kiss of cold air touched her exposed wrist. Then her arm, soon after her face, or what the wind could touch. She was covered in sand. It stuck under everything and coated her hair in a thin layer of it. Likely sticking to the sweat she'd gained from all the running, and all of this climbing and panic. Still she grasped onto the rope until she was free. Somewhere in there she'd gasped in a lungful of air and a half mouthful of sand.

She sputtered and spit, rolling onto her knees in the sand. Gagging and choking on the sand. She could feel it between her teeth and the only urge was to get it all out in one go. Coughing and gagging did little but make her lungs burn more fiercely. Tears rolled and collected behind the lenses of her goggles, but she was alive.

Which was pretty unbelievable.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]sharaf
2011-06-21 06:57 pm UTC (link)
She was coughing. That meant she was alive. Or at least, on her way to being alive again, after a very near brush with death. Sharaf left her to those coughing fits. Having someone pound your back sometimes helped. It could also rattle the sand around in your gut. He'd give her as much time as she needed to work things out. Sharaf instead let the rope slide out of his hands. The rasp was still ringing in his ears when he turned to face the remnants of that column.

Perhaps two inches of it stuck out of the sand. This was how close they'd come to perishing.

He stared at it for a long moment. Disbelief was as close as he could come to describing his feelings. Shocking, to think that this was all the space between himself and death. It was not a very large space. They did not prepare you for this, in the schools of the tracker. If it was anything, qa Yvutha Pharath was an organization in which you were expected to see and understand for yourself. This was not part of that expectation.

This was something... strange.

Sharaf landed heavy on his back. At first, his laugh was one of surprised disbelief. How could anyone believe that such a thing was possible? It was short, and it was incredulous, despite the fact that he'd watched it happen. Came the second laugh, this one deeper and more satisfied than the first. A sharp sort of rolling thing. And finally the third laugh, sustained and higher, almost gleeful in its intensity. Relief. Relief at survival.

He didn't even ask if she was all right. This was why he stayed in qa Yvutha Pharath.

Where else could you find such excitement?

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-06-21 07:40 pm UTC (link)
She finally stopped gagging, and took a few deep breaths to clear her senses. She pulled the mask off and shook it, she tried to shake the sand out of her hair but it wouldn't go and she knew it. Sand clung until you could fully wash your hair. And even then, two or three washings later and you'd still be grinding sand into your scalp. It took awhile, and in Perava it never quite went away. You just got used to it. But not this much sand. this much sand was unbearable. She pulled the goggles off to let the tears roll out finally, the water would fog them up if she didn't The fog would make it impossible to get anything done or go anywhere. He was laughing.

He thought this was thrilling, didn't he? She couldn't be mad right now with him or with any of this. She was alive. She was alive because of him. The fact that he was laughing and breathing meant he was alive and that was what she wanted. They were alive, against all the odds. And there were a lot of odds stacked against them there. She would write about this one day, sometime soon. Write about this experience and calculate the odds again, figure in everything, from his skill to her lack of it. And still she'd likely wonder how such a thing was possible. Even after living through it.

It only took a moment to cralw over to him, but felt longer because she felt unstead on top of the sand after their ordeal.

"Are you okay?" Obviously he was, but she had to ask. It wasn't just the polite thing to do, it was the honest and right thing to do. He'd saved her life. She had to make sure he was okay.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]sharaf
2011-06-26 01:28 am UTC (link)
She was already stringing words together. Sharaf couldn't help but be shocked. He was still bubbling sand and spit together on the edges of his teeth, then spitting the disgusting mouthful onto the ground. She was coughing like hell a moment ago. Women might not have been cut out for this sort of work, but every so often something gave him pause. A lady tracker who lasted more than a year was always surprising. A woman who recovered like this... now, what would his father say, if he could hear such things? This was not a progressive attitude to have. And it was so...

...true.

Sharaf started thumping his own chest with an open hand. This accelerated a rasping cough that had been coming on for some few seconds now. He rolled onto one shoulder, and continued spitting harsh clumps of wet sand out. The goggles did not move. He would take the time to remove them once he found the time to clean all the dust of the adventure from his body. Charisat was not far away, now, and that was where they would find something approaching normalcy. The bath would be nice. Sleep would be better. For his part, Sharaf did not think he would rest until they were safely behind a locked door.

An ex-tracker.

An assassin.

"Fine," and his voice was rough as he expected. "Fine. How could I not be? Did you see that? I'm going to shame that old man when I see him next..."

Sharaf's index finger and thumb came very near to each other now, skin only a breath apart, and it was between this very narrow gap that Sharaf stared at her with narrowed eyes. She probably would not appreciate the manner of his indication, but she would hopefully see the humor in their situation. To be the ones doing a thing only one had ever done before!

And to do it with such style. Such beauty.

"We were this close to dying. I almost want to do it again."

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]alchimia
2011-06-27 07:44 pm UTC (link)
Petra thought the margin as far slimmer than his fingers indicated, though right now she simply felt too elated to be alive to point such a thing out. She simply tried not to smile because it felt wrong to feel so good about being alive. Serious thoughts had a way of invading her much easier than other people, and she was severe in the worst way, but right now there was a twist of a smile on her lips. He was going to brag for ages about this, assuming they lived long enough to brag about such things. She didn't know if they would or if they wouldn't. There were dangerous things in the desert, and worse things likely waiting for them in their destination. Petra pulled her goggles back over her head but didn't put them on yet.

Instead she nodded along with his words and pulled her gloves off and shook them out. Her skin had red lines where the gloved stopped, rubbed raw from sand. The tattoo of Amasa's hourglass was still the angry black there on the back of her hand. For any to see normally, she still thought it looked odd. Considering she didn't follow any God. She looked at him again.

"Well I don't want to do it again. Thanks. I'm covered in sand, it's in my clothes, Adward. I think we've had enough death defying for one day. Maybe tomorrow?"

Neither of them knew what was coming, but Petra owed whoever had gotten them out of that sand a favor. She thought it was Adward, or maybe simply that luck people spoke of Immortals having. She didn't think of herself as lucky, considering she'd failed a lot lately. But maybe..

Petra reached out and caught the side of his face with her hand and moved in, a hairs breath from his mouth. They were covered in sand, but she had promised whatever it was that saved them, or maybe herself, maybe she promised herself. She pressed her lips to his for a long moment, just enough to close her eyes and feel that. They were alive. The moment was there, and gone. She didn't really know what she was thinking. Finally she pushed off the ground and stood away from him.

"We better hurry because there are probably more people after us, and the faster we move the faster we can find somewhere out of this sand."

Unsteady on her legs, but she didn't want to stop for longer than they already had. Even if resting would have been welcome, they couldn't. She also, didn't want to tell him why she'd just kissed him. He'd probably ask. She'd just have to say it was the heat or the moment, or..

Maybe he wouldn't ask.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

Home | Site Map | Manage Account | TOS | Privacy | Support | FAQs