Flashback As The Sun Sets (Una)

[Alia Beaudouin]

23rd of Summer, 506 AV

Why didn’t the other kids understand?
They were practically adults now, all of them, by age twelve they were supposed to be mature, right? And in order to be mature, you had to be an adult. So did that mean they were all adults now? And if they were all adults, did that mean F’Ian was right?

Thinking hard about what had happened throughout the day, twelve-year-old Alia thought back about what she could have done wrong. They had been telling stories before their schooling finished, the topic that day being parents. Since the children were well past the age of eight - the time when they left their parents - Most of them were past missing their relatives. They had gotten used to being alone.
Alia hadn’t.

Sure, she could live quite well, and quite happily, without interaction with the other children, but without her parents? She remembered, years ago, how hard it had been to leave them. The challenge hadn’t been the same for the other children, she found. They told stories about how proud their parents were of them, about what their parents did and what caste they were in. Most of all, though, they bragged about how they were going to be eagle riders, or about how their parents already were.

Alia never found eagle riding so interesting, she much preferred her mandolin playing skills over her academic and glass working skills; The latter of which she had almost none of. She had tried molding the glass as others did, to no avail. Her lumpy, sagging piece of glasswork was nothing like her friend’s pieces. Namely, F’Ian’s.

F’Ian was her friend, right? Therefor she would never lie to her… Did that mean she was right? About how stupid Alia’s story had been, about how stupid Alia had been? She had told a story of her father, about how he didn’t fit in in Wind Reach. About how he was brave enough to be proud of that fact. About how Alia was proud of that fact.

F’Ian had called her father stupid, if she was her friend, how could she be wrong? Alia loved her father unconditionally; She ventured out from her Yasi caste quarters more than anyone else she knew to visit him almost every day. But how could F’Ian not see that, how could she only see how impure Alia was, if she was impure at all?

Right now, Alia dragged her troubled thoughts with her, away from her parents and all of the other Inarta, secluded place near a cliff that had a great view of the sunset. Even with the opportune view, Alia still hadn’t seen the sunset, as she was always a little scared to stay up so late. This time, though, Alia was determined to stay.

As always, Alia had brought her mandolin with her. Her father had given it to her as a sort of moving-out present on her eighth birthday, and she had cherished it ever since. It was a bit worn out, but her father had recently fixed and tuned it, so it sounded much better than it had before. Plucking at the notes, Alia novicely strummed a simple tune she had taught herself as she waited for the sunset. Her thoughts wandered back to the children, about how they had teased her when she told her story about her father. Alia didn’t understand why the kids with two Inarta parents hated those with only one Inarta parent. It wasn’t as if it made her any different… Right? According to her father, only 3% of Wind Reach’s population was human, so that made him different from everyone else. Even so, different didn’t mean bad, did it?

She was almost certain it wasn’t just because of her father that they teased, Alia had never been really interested in their pretend eagle-riding games, and she had never worked with glass in her free time if it could be avoided. Sure, she didn’t like a lot of the things her peers did, but why didn’t they accept that? She didn’t have to grow up to be an eaglerider, right?

Maybe it was something about her speech they detested. Since she had grown up more around her father than her mother, she spoke common fluently, and Nari only half as well. She requested that the other kids speak in common when she was around, though most of the time they refused. That was another reason why she avoided them; Most of the time she barely understood what they were saying. She was sure they used words she didn’t know just to spite her.

Drawing her thoughts back in, Alia let her worries stop troubling her for once, and focused more on the song she played on her mandolin. She reflected on both the day, and where the day would end. On a little hill by the ocean, just as the sun kissed the bottom of the sky.

She had been dragged down to the beach by her mother, who had been determined to collect sand and shells for a glass piece she had planned. Not that Alia didn't love her mother, no, she loved her very much, it was just her mother was the stereotypical Inarta, and somewhere, deep down, Alia knew her mother didn't approve of what she had become. That's why she was so close to her father. Unfortunately, her father wasn't there. No, only the ocean, and this stupid sand-collecting trip.

The sun was near setting now, so as Alia sat on her sand dune of solitude, she let the feeling of loneliness take over, and the sound of mandolin notes take flight.

[Una Tanta]

Unas heart pattered as she slid through the water tinged pink by the setting sun. Her mother had increasingly spent her days locked up in the protective cave of her room. It tore at Unas heart to watch such a treacherous bastard so easily leave her once strong matronly mother a white shell of her former self. Her father totted his mistress about their family with unchallenged ease, his conscious no seeming barrier.

Why doesn't she scream? Why doesn't she stop him? I would never let a man treat me so... Una thought vehemently as she put as many nautical miles herself and her family as possible.

Little did she know the man she would fall in love with would steal as much of her as her father stole from her mother, or that a dark little niggling secret would turn enemy into victim and victim into pained hero.

But for now, in her adolescent 17 year old mind, there was nothing as evil as her father and nothing as righteous as her mother and nothing as weak and pathetic as herself. The waves broke over her heels and back as she slid toward the surface of the waves and the purple of the sun broke over her white back. Cliffs rose, entrapping the ocean, on her right side as she followed the curve of the ocean.

Endals and their eagles soared so high above her they were as small and unintelligible as a wayward chickadee in a thicket. Returning from a days hunt, or a scouting trip she imagined their aching thighs where they clasped their partners, the ache in their eyes from gazing so far below. Her heart soared miles above her, joining their ranks in the dream world of her mind.

A lovely sound flicked over the tops of the waves, a deep reverberating string. Unconsciously Una turned toward the sound, chin breaking the water in a gentle v, she moved toward the hill that arched over her realm. Two pale legs cross legged at the top of the hill, a scrap of a child atop it. Soft musical notes came from the hollow curve of the unrecognizable instrument.

Focusing on the long pale legs with no name she sent out her malicious fury like her own long tentacles toward the girl. Rising from the water, tiny foaming rivulets poured from the tips of her tentacles along her collarbones and down over her plump breasts and stomach. Built for the cold of winters night her body was plump with blubber stretched taunt over her body like the skin of a dolphin.

Wandering languidly up the hill embracing the sexuality that moved beneath her skin like a torrid river inspired and empowered by the rage within her. If I cannot control my mother, or my father, or the sea around me, I can at the very least control a child.


OOCSo sorry I took so long with the response! I completely forgot about out plan to do this and didn't subscribe when you sent the PM. But I added it now so bombs away!

OOCI hope we fixed everything now and you like my response

x

[Alia Beaudouin]

There are loved ones, in the glory
Whose dear forms you of-ten miss.
When you close your earthly story,
Will you join them in their bliss?

It was a melancholy old tune, one that her father used to whistle while he behind the small house Alia called home. He thought she didn’t hear him, that she was fast asleep in bed, but she almost never was. No, Alia was sitting behind a tree, her tiny frame hidden by the wide trunk, in the perfect place to close her eyes and listen to whatever her father had decided to sing that night. Sometimes, she even fell asleep, leaning against the rough bark, but somehow, she always woke up in her bed, convinced it had been a dream.

For now, the song remained wordless, though Alia hummed along, the words taking flight in her mind. For a while, she even closed her eyes, her fingers flowing across the strings easily, as they had done so many times before. She could never keep her eyes shut for long, though, as switching chords was hard enough when she could see. Alia had never been very good at switching chords. No matter how much she practiced, her fingers always somehow got all mixed up, landing on a string miles away from what she wanted. It was never good enough, never perfect. She always missed a note, always let someone down.
Never ever perfect.

Angrily dropping her mandolin and pushing it to the side, Alia sighed, feeling defeated.
”Never. Ever. Perfect.”

With the newly introduced quiet, it took Alia a few ticks to realize that her breathing was matched by someone else. She was not alone. Spinning around, Alia took in a sharp breath, shuffling back to the hill edge. The action knocked several rocks into the ocean below, and Alia realized just how trapped she was. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place, or, really, a monster and a twenty foot drop.

The girl moved her lips to scream, but nothing more than a squeak escaped. She was in a state of shock, faced with this new being she could have never imagined existed. Alia had never seen such a thing; Despite her natural curiosity, she had been quite sheltered from the varying races of Mizahar. Really, besides humans and the Inarta, Alia knew nothing of the many, many different people that lived in Mizahar. She did, however, know of the monsters, and the teenage Charoda standing in front of her seemed like quite a monster to Alia.

Shifting her body so that she could stand up, Alia raised herself off the ground, meeting the young woman’s gaze. Despite the age difference, Alia was slightly taller than the Charoda, though the stranger had something about her that just made her presence seem all the more… Important. A grace, of sorts.

Struggling for words, Alia dug her toes through the sand underneath her feet, drawing tiny lines in the ground. She stood in silence for several ticks, staring at the Charoda’s glass-like eyes. She found her tongue soon enough, however, once she realized the figure wasn’t leaving without whatever it had come for.
”What… What are you?”