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Description

Chimes, gentle, glinting, gleaming, light splintering through their colorful glass tubing, filled the air with the soft clamor of their delicate music. Bright, mid-morning sun refracted through their surfaces, bathing the small, enclosed porch in shards of pastel rainbow glimmer. As another soft breeze slithered between the hanging vines that served as the enclosure to seclude the space from the outside world, the chimes tones grew renewed, their sound reverberating through the space. Echoes of their clinking bounced around the porch, fading as they vibrated through the air.

The room in which the chimes were housed was humble, though of respectable size. The room itself was carved from deep brown wood, and was simply built, consisting of a slanted thatch roof, smooth wooden board floors, and open-air windows bottomed by an ornately carved wooden railing. Almost square in shape, the room was slightly longer than it was wide, and it was sized large enough to comfortably fit two, full-sized equines. One wall of the porch butted up against the brown board side of the house, and the only entrance and exit - unless an equine desired to climb through the windows - occupied the connecting wall. A curtain, made from coral, shells, dried herbs, and small gemstones strung together, served in place of a door. Inside, the room was always tinted yellow-green by the sun that filtered through a thick, tangled canopy of wisteria flowers. Not only did the flowers release a sweet scent, but their shade kept the room cool, and their leaves deterred prying eyes. The softly clinking wind chimes hung from each of the three windows, spreading their rainbow colored influence across the room’s interior.

Cool, fresh spring air filled the porch, bringing with it the tantalizing scents of fresh grasses and sharp saltwater. Heady and thick, the wisteria blooms hanging from the roof intermingled with the wind, coming together to become a syrupy-sweet cocktail of scent. Curling, twisting trails of incense smoke joined the amalgamation, mingling with the morning zephyr, and adding the scents of calming lavender and clarifying sage to the mix. The incense sticks were housed in small bottles made of blue-green sea glass, and one bottle flanked each side of a small, homemade altar.

The altar itself was humble, made from a series of flat gray stones, stacked atop each other. Some of the rocks were striped with accents of fool’s gold, which caught the morning light and radiated glittering brilliance. Draped across the alter, swaths of deep blue silk, embroidered with a pattern of diamonds and ocean waves, emulated the appearance of a windy sea.

Snippets of fresh wisteria flowers, clipped just moments before from the tangled thread of living branches that curtained the shrine, rested amongst the piled folds of silk, splashing glimpses of color around the central focus of the altar.

In the center of the altar, placed carefully atop the flattest stone, stood the most impressive structure. Perched in between two cloth waves, a tenderly hand-sculpted statuette of the sea goddess - Cascade - was imposingly situated. The statue itself stood nearly a foot tall, and was carved carefully from solid white marble. The surface of the statue was intensely polished, until the serene surface of the deity was as smooth as freshly cut glass. Blue veins, naturally present within the marble, enhanced its color, their spider-webbing beauty brought forward by the polished smoothness of the stone. In the carved eye sockets of the statue, droplets of rare, precious aquamarine were carefully placed, giving the Wave Mother an all-seeing blue gaze.

Pushing her way through the beaded curtain with a soft clinking sound, a palomino mare limped onto the wooden porch. Her right hoof made a hollow, heavy sound as it landed on the rough hewn boards, and the sound caused a grimace to pass across her visage. As peaceful as the greenery-sheltered shrine was, it often brought a pang of regret to the forefront of the mare’s mind. A short, sweet time ago she had been wholly intact and untouched by the ravaging side effects of war. Ah, but how quickly her health had been purloined, stolen from directly under her muzzle in much the same manner that a skilled thief would make off with some poor, unsuspecting horse’s coin purse. An explosion, one sent down upon Talorian lands by Vagabond mercenaries had brought a sudden and tragic end to the palomino’s youthful vitality. Her right foreleg had been savagely rent flesh from bone by the blast, and even if she had been in Inaria’s finest hospital, the limb could not have been saved. But she had not been even in Inaria’s finest hospital; she had been stranded near the Wilds with a rag-tag collection of survivors, whose actions were perhaps the only reason she still walked at all. She had lived through the event, thanks to the skill and kindness of her herdmates, along with some inbred tenacity on the palomino’s part. But she had not escaped unscathed. Of course, the obvious injury being the lack of limb, but there was far more than that.

Even glancing down and catching sight of the carved Lapis Lazuli prosthetic sent pain through the palomino’s heart. She mourned for her speed and dexterity, and she worried that her abilities as a Cleric were vastly diminished by how slowly she now traversed the earth. Horses like her were not looked upon with respect, but perhaps a mixture of degradation and pity. Shame, hot and cloying, often rose up in the mare’s throat as she recalled how other horses looked at her, or how they might whisper when she passed. She was incomplete. She was broken.

Often, the palomino berated herself for not being faster, or smarter, or simply luckier. Perhaps if she’d prayed harder, she would have been kept safe. Or perhaps if she’d been faster, she would have paid attention to the hellish figures diving from the sky and made haste to save herself. Perhaps if she were smarter she would have remembered the blessing she’d carried since birth - intangibility - and used it to keep the inferno from ever touching her flesh. But she was not faster, she was not smarter, and she was most definitely not the luckiest.

All of these thoughts melded together, woven tightly until they resembled a tapestry of guilt and grief. The effects of this dampening on her spirit reached deep into the palomino’s life. Often, she was unable to sleep, or when she did, she was woken suddenly thanks to violent, terrifying nightmares. Even sculpting could not calm her mind. She found it too difficult to focus on the clay, and it was cast aside to harden and crack in some lonely corner. Listlessness was a companion to her, and quite commonly she was accompanied by low spirits and frailty of character. There was only one place where the palomino appaloosa truly felt at peace: kneeling before her carefully crafted altar. Here, she found solace, sweet fragments of the happiness she had felt before the...attack. She couldn’t bring herself to call it an accident, as it most certainly had not been accidental in nature.

Twisting her overo marked head to the side, the palomino observed the leather straps that secured her false limb, carefully unthreading the thongs with her telekinetic abilities. Slowly, the leather fell away from her flesh, and she slipped free from the padded support, revealing the mass of scar tissue that was her knee. White, lightning-bolt like stripes ran up the length of her foreleg, tapering off as they reached the places where fur had begun to grow again. Balancing carefully on her three good legs, the mare shuffled across the plank floor, halting before the carved statue and falling heavily to her knees.

With eyes closed, the youth breathed in the scents of incense, wisteria flowers, and the ever present scent of the sea. Flowing through the air, the scents blended into a sweet cacophony of scent. Surrounding her, the wind chimes clamored with their simple music, each note a calming influence to the turmoil of the mare’s mind. Sighing softly, the mare knelt, staying rigidly statuesque until the last dregs of guilt, shame and pain drained from her mind, down through her heart, and deep into the earth. This place always allowed her to release her pain, if only for a few, sweet moments.

As her eyes fluttered open, the mare took a moment to gaze at the peaceful structure. Her eyes lit upon the carved railings, carefully designed by the mare, and the draping flowers, grown with the help of her mother’s touch. It was all so beautiful, so calming. The palomino could not imagine a place she admired more than this. All of her fears, her doubts, tribulations, they all dissipated in this shrine of peace. Softly sighing, the mare stood, taking one final, lingering look around her special place, before turning away. Carefully, she reattached the straps that secured her prosthetic, and passed through the beaded curtain once more.
(WC: 1500)

AP Count:

Fullbody - 2
Shading - 2
Complex BG - 3
Checkpoint - 4
Story - 4

Total: 15 (Mo)

+4 CS

Description

Chimes, gentle, glinting, gleaming, light splintering through their colorful glass tubing, filled the air with the soft clamor of their delicate music. Bright, mid-morning sun refracted through their surfaces, bathing the small, enclosed porch in shards of pastel rainbow glimmer. As another soft breeze slithered between the hanging vines that served as the enclosure to seclude the space from the outside world, the chimes tones grew renewed, their sound reverberating through the space. Echoes of their clinking bounced around the porch, fading as they vibrated through the air.

The room in which the chimes were housed was humble, though of respectable size. The room itself was carved from deep brown wood, and was simply built, consisting of a slanted thatch roof, smooth wooden board floors, and open-air windows bottomed by an ornately carved wooden railing. Almost square in shape, the room was slightly longer than it was wide, and it was sized large enough to comfortably fit two, full-sized equines. One wall of the porch butted up against the brown board side of the house, and the only entrance and exit - unless an equine desired to climb through the windows - occupied the connecting wall. A curtain, made from coral, shells, dried herbs, and small gemstones strung together, served in place of a door. Inside, the room was always tinted yellow-green by the sun that filtered through a thick, tangled canopy of wisteria flowers. Not only did the flowers release a sweet scent, but their shade kept the room cool, and their leaves deterred prying eyes. The softly clinking wind chimes hung from each of the three windows, spreading their rainbow colored influence across the room’s interior.

Cool, fresh spring air filled the porch, bringing with it the tantalizing scents of fresh grasses and sharp saltwater. Heady and thick, the wisteria blooms hanging from the roof intermingled with the wind, coming together to become a syrupy-sweet cocktail of scent. Curling, twisting trails of incense smoke joined the amalgamation, mingling with the morning zephyr, and adding the scents of calming lavender and clarifying sage to the mix. The incense sticks were housed in small bottles made of blue-green sea glass, and one bottle flanked each side of a small, homemade altar.

The altar itself was humble, made from a series of flat gray stones, stacked atop each other. Some of the rocks were striped with accents of fool’s gold, which caught the morning light and radiated glittering brilliance. Draped across the alter, swaths of deep blue silk, embroidered with a pattern of diamonds and ocean waves, emulated the appearance of a windy sea.

Snippets of fresh wisteria flowers, clipped just moments before from the tangled thread of living branches that curtained the shrine, rested amongst the piled folds of silk, splashing glimpses of color around the central focus of the altar.

In the center of the altar, placed carefully atop the flattest stone, stood the most impressive structure. Perched in between two cloth waves, a tenderly hand-sculpted statuette of the sea goddess - Cascade - was imposingly situated. The statue itself stood nearly a foot tall, and was carved carefully from solid white marble. The surface of the statue was intensely polished, until the serene surface of the deity was as smooth as freshly cut glass. Blue veins, naturally present within the marble, enhanced its color, their spider-webbing beauty brought forward by the polished smoothness of the stone. In the carved eye sockets of the statue, droplets of rare, precious aquamarine were carefully placed, giving the Wave Mother an all-seeing blue gaze.

Pushing her way through the beaded curtain with a soft clinking sound, a palomino mare limped onto the wooden porch. Her right hoof made a hollow, heavy sound as it landed on the rough hewn boards, and the sound caused a grimace to pass across her visage. As peaceful as the greenery-sheltered shrine was, it often brought a pang of regret to the forefront of the mare’s mind. A short, sweet time ago she had been wholly intact and untouched by the ravaging side effects of war. Ah, but how quickly her health had been purloined, stolen from directly under her muzzle in much the same manner that a skilled thief would make off with some poor, unsuspecting horse’s coin purse. An explosion, one sent down upon Talorian lands by Vagabond mercenaries had brought a sudden and tragic end to the palomino’s youthful vitality. Her right foreleg had been savagely rent flesh from bone by the blast, and even if she had been in Inaria’s finest hospital, the limb could not have been saved. But she had not been even in Inaria’s finest hospital; she had been stranded near the Wilds with a rag-tag collection of survivors, whose actions were perhaps the only reason she still walked at all. She had lived through the event, thanks to the skill and kindness of her herdmates, along with some inbred tenacity on the palomino’s part. But she had not escaped unscathed. Of course, the obvious injury being the lack of limb, but there was far more than that.

Even glancing down and catching sight of the carved Lapis Lazuli prosthetic sent pain through the palomino’s heart. She mourned for her speed and dexterity, and she worried that her abilities as a Cleric were vastly diminished by how slowly she now traversed the earth. Horses like her were not looked upon with respect, but perhaps a mixture of degradation and pity. Shame, hot and cloying, often rose up in the mare’s throat as she recalled how other horses looked at her, or how they might whisper when she passed. She was incomplete. She was broken.

Often, the palomino berated herself for not being faster, or smarter, or simply luckier. Perhaps if she’d prayed harder, she would have been kept safe. Or perhaps if she’d been faster, she would have paid attention to the hellish figures diving from the sky and made haste to save herself. Perhaps if she were smarter she would have remembered the blessing she’d carried since birth - intangibility - and used it to keep the inferno from ever touching her flesh. But she was not faster, she was not smarter, and she was most definitely not the luckiest.

All of these thoughts melded together, woven tightly until they resembled a tapestry of guilt and grief. The effects of this dampening on her spirit reached deep into the palomino’s life. Often, she was unable to sleep, or when she did, she was woken suddenly thanks to violent, terrifying nightmares. Even sculpting could not calm her mind. She found it too difficult to focus on the clay, and it was cast aside to harden and crack in some lonely corner. Listlessness was a companion to her, and quite commonly she was accompanied by low spirits and frailty of character. There was only one place where the palomino appaloosa truly felt at peace: kneeling before her carefully crafted altar. Here, she found solace, sweet fragments of the happiness she had felt before the...attack. She couldn’t bring herself to call it an accident, as it most certainly had not been accidental in nature.

Twisting her overo marked head to the side, the palomino observed the leather straps that secured her false limb, carefully unthreading the thongs with her telekinetic abilities. Slowly, the leather fell away from her flesh, and she slipped free from the padded support, revealing the mass of scar tissue that was her knee. White, lightning-bolt like stripes ran up the length of her foreleg, tapering off as they reached the places where fur had begun to grow again. Balancing carefully on her three good legs, the mare shuffled across the plank floor, halting before the carved statue and falling heavily to her knees.

With eyes closed, the youth breathed in the scents of incense, wisteria flowers, and the ever present scent of the sea. Flowing through the air, the scents blended into a sweet cacophony of scent. Surrounding her, the wind chimes clamored with their simple music, each note a calming influence to the turmoil of the mare’s mind. Sighing softly, the mare knelt, staying rigidly statuesque until the last dregs of guilt, shame and pain drained from her mind, down through her heart, and deep into the earth. This place always allowed her to release her pain, if only for a few, sweet moments.

As her eyes fluttered open, the mare took a moment to gaze at the peaceful structure. Her eyes lit upon the carved railings, carefully designed by the mare, and the draping flowers, grown with the help of her mother’s touch. It was all so beautiful, so calming. The palomino could not imagine a place she admired more than this. All of her fears, her doubts, tribulations, they all dissipated in this shrine of peace. Softly sighing, the mare stood, taking one final, lingering look around her special place, before turning away. Carefully, she reattached the straps that secured her prosthetic, and passed through the beaded curtain once more.
(WC: 1500)

AP Count:

Fullbody - 2
Shading - 2
Complex BG - 3
Checkpoint - 4
Story - 4

Total: 15 (Mo)

+4 CS