In her dream she was dying...

The coils of a massive serpent were wrapped around her. She had welcomed it, embracing it like taking a lover. Passionately she entwined herself with it, wrapping her legs and arms around the great bulk of it; kissing, moaning, sighing, caressing in feverish lust. Its scales were cool and dry against her skin. She tried to arch her back, to press herself more urgently against it in need and desire, but found that she could not move. She found it hard to breathe. She raised her eyes to it and found it looking back at her. Cold, uncaring, predatory...

She began to panic when her ribs cracked, and what little breath she had was squeezed out of her in a rush. Her caressing hands became desperate claws that scratched and scraped ineffectively at her captor. If she had been able to scream, she would have. The scales of the serpent became hard ridges that cut into her skin, ripped her fingernails from her hands, and made each slight movement an agony. She felt her right leg break under the pressure of the tightening coils, and then her hip. Pain lanced through every nerve of her body and her head swayed back and forth helplessly. She kept fighting the grip, her fingers torn and bleeding and losing skin, flesh, and blood as they pushed at the dagger-sharp scales. More pain, as her body was slowly and inexorably being crushed. There quickly came a point where she could no longer think around the pain, she could no longer summon the energy to fight, where the lack of air had her teetering on the edge of unconsciousness.

As her vision started to fade, and her body gave out, a great black abyss opened up before her. Death and decay emanated from that doomed place, and far below her she knew laid the twisted bodies and tortured souls of the serpent’s victims. For the last time she sought its eyes.

Cold, uncaring, predatory...

Unknown "Pirate Queen" Frisky - 15 years, 4 months, 23 days ago

"You didn't have to help me. You could have left me there." The Ahroun took a menacing step forward, her chin held high. Her tone of voice was aggressive, challenging her metis sister to deny her statement.

Arianwen whirled on her sister, her red eyes glittering angrily and her face contorted in shock and rage. "You must really think I'm some kind of monster, to leave my sister and pack mate to die over such petty things! How dare you...!" She could not finish. Swiftly she turned away, bitter tears stinging her eyes, her throat choking up on all the things she could not say. Rage swept through her, and the urge to slip into Crinos and attack was strong and near overwhelming. A long moment passed as she struggled with her Rage, and then...

"So, you're really leaving, huh?"

Her Rage left her in a sudden cold rush at the quiet emotion in her sister's voice. Unable to believe her ears, Arianwen slowly turned back to face her. Her sister was not looking her way, but instead had her gaze turned upward, following the flight of an owl across the starlit sky, her face expressionless.

"I am," She answered simply.

"I...I feel we will never see each other again." Her sister sighed heavily and met Arianwen's gaze.
The words stretched out between them, taut as a bowstring and trembling with a sad, terrible truth. Overheard the owl hooted a long, mournful note at the coming dawn and disappeared into the canopy. Every sound seemed magnified, and the Garou sisters shivered in the touch of a chill breeze as it passed through the clearing.

Finally her sister broke the tense silence between the two, reaching to embrace the smaller woman in a quick hug.

"Fare thee well, Aria. May Gaia protect you."

There was nothing else to say. By calling her sister the pet name they had used when they were children, in happier times, she had given all the apology she was able to. The fierce Ahroun shouldered her labrys and loped off into the still-darkened wood to rejoin her pack sisters.
Arianwen was alone then, and would be for some time.

Unknown "Pirate Queen" Frisky - 16 years, 17 days ago

Her smile is rare and quick; seeming to bloom across her lips quite suddenly before disappearing behind a coolly polite, if disinterested expression. Perfectly poised, graceful, and gracious - the consummate noble woman. After all, the span of years hidden by her ageless face has given her plenty of time to create an art form of courtesy.

She is pretty, as is most of her kin, if not remarkably so. Her features tend to the elegant and patrician, than any sort of real beauty. Still, her skin is smooth and unblemished, her teeth white and straight, and her hair dark and silky fine. The glowing green eyes, also common to her kin, are framed by curled dark lashes that dip alluringly, offering empty promises.

Petite, but not exactly delicate. After all, the sword on her back is no mere decoration.
Unknown "Pirate Queen" Frisky - 16 years, 3 months, 10 days ago

It was the dull glitter of a kitchen knife. The slight resistance of muscle and bone against the cutting edge, wielded by a small girl with unusual strength. And the blood ... so much of it. It dripped from the walls, from her eyelashes; it puddled on the floor. The heat of a lazy Louisiana summer night, the slight buzzing annoyance of mosquitoes. The girl's hand, pale as fresh snow, and her eyes, dark with malice, peering out of a face too young to hold such cruelty. That hand smoothed along her cheek, smearing the blood that dripped from the several slight lacerations the girl had made to her face. Trembling, weak from blood loss, from the heat, from fear ... she could only stare. Somewhere in the distance a radio was playing. Smiling, the girl hummed along. "Shiny happy people holding hands, Shiny happy people laughing." The knife was brought up again, crusted with dried blood from the use of several evening's worth of slow torture. Still humming, a sweet childlike sound so out of place, the girl placed the tip of the knife at the corner of her eye. The woman tried to cry out, to make some token attempt of resistance, but she was drained. There was nothing left but the fear, and strangely, acceptance. Her eye shifted to watch the sharp point. With the skill of a trained surgeon, the girl slowly and carefully inserted the thin tip into the woman's eye socket.

Fresh pain tore through the woman's body, making her kick and twist against her restraints despite her exhaustion. Despair brought a scream beating at her throat, but it could not bypass the gag of wadded socks and newspaper that filled her mouth, and so it died in a strangled gurgle of hopeless agony. Consciousness faded, in and out. The woman had once welcomed the blackness, the retreat from pain, but now, each time she awakened alive with only new pain to endure, the numbness no longer pleased her. Still, it was preferable to staying aware as the girl cut at the tiny nerves and membrane that held her eye in its socket. Blackness, in and out. "Shiny happy people holding hands” With a cry of delight, the girl now cradled the intact eye of the woman in the palm of her hand. It would be added to the shoebox that already housed the eye she had removed from her the day before.

The blackness was there all the time now, and the woman could never be sure when she was conscious or when she was gone. The pain continued, and now the woman could feel the colors she could no longer see. Red was prominent. The red of blood - the blood she lost from her wounds, the blood the girl took from her to sustain her, the blood she was fed to keep her alive and bound. Sometimes there was blue for the icy cool touch of the girl's skin, so cold and unnatural. There was always the black, but it now had its own variations too. The black of the darkness of her lost vision, the blackness of overwhelming pain, the blackness of the girl's presence.

Slowly the pain lessened. The girl put away the knife and the ropes. The woman was dressed in something soft and warm; her hair was washed and combed out neatly. The small chill hand of the girl slipping over hers. The woman felt the silky touch of the girl's hair brush against her cheek as she laid her head on her shoulder. The voice, singsong and high-pitched, sweet in its childish purity. "You'll never misbehave again, will you Mommy?"
Unknown "Pirate Queen" Frisky - 16 years, 3 months, 10 days ago

You see your wife seated on a rocky promontory, surrounded by dark clouds. She is dressed in the white robes of the seppuku ceremony, and holds her wakizashi, about to begin the ritual. Suddenly the dark, swirling vapors seems to condense around her, gripping her arms with shadowy fingers and preventing her from completing the cut. She looks up and her eyes meet yours, pleading with you to help her complete the ritual with honor, but you cannot seem to reach her; your feet are rooted to the earth and your limbs feel as heavy as lead. The shadowy hands wrench the wakizashi out of her grasp and snatch her away into the darkness, and the last thing you hear before you awake is her piercing scream.
Unknown "Pirate Queen" Frisky - 16 years, 3 months, 10 days ago