Messages Not In A Bottle
Who: Elfleda. What: Observing recent events and the lack of decisive reactions, Elfleda makes the next move and decides to leave messages with Rhiannon, Fern, Noah, Roman and Celeste. Where: Across Nevada.
The Black Light's favoured did not seek destruction.
Floating within her billowing cocoon of etheric muck, Elfleda's pale form meditated like an unholy mockery of a Buddhist nun, rooted in connection to those beings and places she had blessed by foul decree. A single world could be small, yet it could be the smallest of actions which could tip the balance of an entire dimensional realm. Just a word... A thought. A thing as in flux as free will could be the most valuable commodity of all.
She did not seek destruction. She sought subversion. The mitigation of resistance through embrace and surrender. A gentle inspiring whisper to induce desire or paranoia, need or dislike. Either could equally serve. A gardener understood how best to plant their seeds to bring them, tease by tease, to their fullest bloom.
How best to pollinate.
As she had elected to inform the hunter, Elfleda had arrived in curiosity, but remained for what she had described as the gathering storm. A testing, she had said, which Rhiannon Lee and those like her would soon endure.
And Rhiannon, responsibly, had relayed that warning. Had contributed, in her own way, to a domino effect which could have all manner of consequences. A warning which, surprisingly, had yet to be acted upon. Even in the wake of Elfleda's enacting of possessive influence, leading the carnivorous Athena to murder and consume, where an angelic being had been called into battle, little but conversations had ensued. Something which, in itself, had been perceived by Elfleda as intervention, the equivalent of a pre-emptive strike. Little by little, warning signs had ensued, but outside of immediate dangers, the possibility of something larger, more detrimental, insidious, had not yet spurred true consolidation.
Waves were being made... Ripples in the water. Before long, dorsal fins would be cutting through the water.
Whether Elfleda or the powers she served found that desirable, had not yet been revealed, but it likely would be taken advantage of. Sweeping her mind across Nevada, the Black Light's Emissary found amusement in how very... Trivial things still were. How thoughts and appetites were still focused on relationships, pranks and triviality. Normality, as if such luxuries could still be afforded. The warning should have been taken heed of. The possessions, the killings, the influence, spreading like the symptoms of an etheric disease. A pace was gathering and those who were gifted sufficiently to guard against it, were making no moves to anticipate, much less slow or halt it.
Thoughts turned back to those who awaited her call. Chess pieces on the board, who each had their part to play. One of them, named Fern, who lived within that small desert town, had been calling to her beloved Lady louder than she knew.
Please. Please, give me the strength to hold on. This is for you. This is all for you.
Anything, anyone, could be prayed to. It was all about intent. Just as one could derive pain, pleasure or neutral, disconnected indifference from their actions, so could they direct their pleas. Elfleda might not yet have taken tangible action in response, but she had listened.
Even among the most loyal of mortals, Elfleda's presence still induced an effect. As the girl slept, something composed of inky blackness formed above her, allowing Fern's unholy Mistress to reach from one realm into another. The girl squirmed, could be heard to make noise and was hushed by the reaching of a pale hand to her face.
"It's time... Time you were shown the extent of things."
That familiar whisper was spoken into ears, merging into Fern's dreams. An image of James was revealed and the look upon his face as he was shown that ocean of the writhing damned, stretching out before him. "Arnette knew better," spoke Elfleda's voice and he melted away, replaced with the image of the emissary's hand being held out in invitation. In the physical world, an old doll in the likeness of Elfleda would be found sitting up on the pillow, symbolically watching over the girl. A message that she was watching. A message that she was expected to be shown something important.
She wasn't the only one. Others, too, were visited, because things were being set in motion.
Others, like Noah Restic, who would find a box of matches deposited under his sheets. Something which might otherwise be seen as unimportant, but the intimacy of placing something there, during a time of vulnerability, could carry many connotations. Roman Skye would wake to find thirty silver coins in the palm of his hand. Celeste Henry would open her door to see a crimson ankh nailed to it by burned, rusted metal, symbolic of many things, which James would likely realise was from his mysterious benefactor of occult knowledge. Rhiannon, herself, would have the unsettling sight of a knife somehow standing perfectly upright by the tip of its blade, on the kitchen counter: An inferred reminder of weapons and cosmic balance.
It wasn't yet Christmas, but something was moving through the night, depositing gifts as it went.