Travelling For: Sand

Subject: Travelling For: Sand Sun Apr 03, 2011 12:34 pm

No sound. Not a single sound. It was so silent, it seemed as if the silence itself was reverberating off the air; off the grains of sand on the desert floor. The hot sun glared menacingly from above, reflecting its rays off the sand. Even more menacing was the rotting bones lying half-buried in the sand; whether human or animal, it was impossible to discern. However, it was possible to discern a certain pattern. Some of the bones seemed to be smashed and crushed into the shape of a heart - a heart broken in two pieces. And even these bones emitted a kind of white flare. Thusly, one could not stand staring either at the sun nor at the glaring sand; only forward, forward towards the light blue sky. Not a single cloud was present, only blueness. And utter silence; silence so powerful, it seemed to be material.

There appeared to be nowhere to go from this position. However, any desert traveler would know... in the desert, you never stop traveling until you see something of interest.

Objective: Make a well-composed travel thread, that lasts at least for 5 posts and has a word count of at least 600. Naturally, you'll be going through the desert, so... keep going. That is all!

Subject: Re: Travelling For: Sand Tue Apr 05, 2011 8:07 am

The first thing Bookwoman knew when waking up that morning, was that she was being called by some strange presence. She had ignored it for a few hours, while she took her shower, ate her breakfast and tried to do some clumsy chores with her blind eyes.
It wasn't a voice of some sorts, nor some apparition in her mind. It was just...an intuition. And that intuition of hers was becoming annoying as hell, not stopping to fill her already busy mind with information she didn't want to know.

At two in the afternoon, while she was trying to write something in braille on a special scroll, she got enough of the feeling and shoved in irritation everything off her desk, letting stencils, pencils, papers, scrolls and books clatter on the ground with great noise.
This was pissing her off. She had enough difficulties already to concentrate and to avoid any spelling or grammar errors with this slow way of writing while she had some many to put down.

She stomped over to the window of her room and let her pale green eyes wander over the chakra traces that filled the houses, walls and people around her. The desert wasn't at peace she noticed. The sand was filled with a purple, dangerous looking chakra that came from the horizon. It wasn't normal and certainly not from a human source nor that of a Bijuu.

She glanced back at her messy room and the door. She hesitated still to go to satisfy this "intuition"; Yakate was downstairs, doing whatever he did. He'd worry if she suddenly disappeared without a word. She groaned and walked over to her door, opened it and screamed towards the ground floor:
"Idiotic Rapunzel! I'm out for a while! DON'T destroy the house and don't die!"

And on that, she stormed off, jumping from out of her window, onto the roof in front and ran towards the exit of the village at full speed she could muster without running into anyone or anything.

_____________

Word count : 341
Tags: Leaving the village
Notes: Up to the Two Dogs Valley~!

Subject: Re: Travelling For: Sand Thu Apr 07, 2011 3:09 pm

The Desert was boring. Maybe that was mostly because Bookwoman couldn't exactly see anything except from the purple-ish color of the strange chakra that lingered around. It had strange, cloud shapes and drifted like mist over the place, hovering like a menacing presence.

It annoyed her, the whole thing, the whole presence. The tugging feeling was gone now, but still raging in her mind, like a wild animal in cage trying to escape. She just couldn't stop wondering was what going on in there, far and deep in the desert. Usually, the place was dead, apart from the usual animals and caravans and travelers. What for ominous was going on in her birth place?

The two dog heads dunes were a familiar meeting spot for the Desert Shinobi. She had been there often with her brother before...Before "Asako" disappeared that is. Her alter ego - Bookwoman wasn't sure if she should say herself, since Asako and her were two different person who were sharing the same memories- was fairly familiar with this place, even though she hadn't ever "seen" it properly. She had only noticed vague shapes of the desert and it ended there. Bookwoman had seen the land, when she traveled with Yakate back home.
Now, now that she saw it with Asako's eyes again, melancholy engulfed her as well as regrets. What she regretted, the red head wasn't sure about that. Her memories weren't fully back and faces on which she failed to put a name kept on popping up in her mind. The face of Chomesuke, the man that was loved by Bookwoman, and not Asako, appeared in her mind and the young woman stopped for a moment.

She hadn't atoned for the murder of that man yet.

Burying that thought deeply inside of her again and locking the door again, Bookwoman looked up once more and walked forward towards her destination, whatever it could be...

__________
Word count: 316
Tags: Leaving the known territories~
Notes: Up to the first signs of the dead in the area~

Subject: Re: Travelling For: Sand Thu Apr 07, 2011 3:25 pm

The scent of death was close.

You know, it was a stench, that just kept on lingering around you, giving you the creeps and shivers, be those be of fear or excitement, depending on the person. It was a smell that even the innocent could recognize; it meant the end of life, pain, horror, gore, blood, violence, war, illness, dearth, murder and all those other things that lead up to the end of someone's life path.

Bookwoman wasn't unfamiliar with it. She had smelled like that for weeks after all; it was as if the blood of Chomesuke had refused to let go of her, as if it had wanted to mark her for the unforgivable sin she had committed.

Bookwoman stopped again in her track, frowning at the memory. What was this? A guilt trip? Hell with those memories, she wasn't there to write down her personal experiences but what was going on in this place! She was a Bookwoman, part of the greatest historians' clan! She wasn't an emotional person nor was she affected by some random's person's death, even if she had been the one who had pushed him to his premature death!

Scowling, the flat chested woman stomped forwards, deeper into the unknown territories. It had been a while that she couldn't recognize the place anymore; in fact, she should have reached the mountains already. But, the desert seemed to keeping on stretching itself, becoming deeper and deeper, bringing her into a burning inferno of hot sand and hitting sunlight.

Tired and annoyed with her mind, she stopped again and plopped down on the sand. She heard a crack from under her and searched for the cause of it. With a shiver, she felt a bone broken into several pieces and she threw it aside.
She couldn't care less about Chomesuke's death.
She couldn't care less...

_______________

Word count: 306
Tags: First bones appear!
Note: Meh, guilt trip takes place up for the posts~ xD

Subject: Re: Travelling For: Sand Thu Apr 07, 2011 3:42 pm

The smell was close to being unbearable now. It was sticking to her, like some dirty slime of a huge slug would. It was disgusting and freaking her out.

The purple substance, the devilish chakra, was more present than before, becoming thicker and precise. She could almost put a shape on it. But right now, it wasn't what was bothering her. It were the bones and heart shaped objects that were around. They were everywhere and pieces of stained cloth were attached to half rotten bodies and bones, a large hole in the middle of the chest, where the beating organ should be, gaping at the young shinobi, inviting her to admire a horrible sight.

Her medical instincts where kicking in and she stopped in front of a body that shouldn't have died more than a week ago. The processes of mummification had already started; the heat and dry air were helping nature to embalming the body of the poor man. From what she saw of the deteriorating chakra system, it hadn't been a ninja nor samurai; probably a nobleman, considering how nicely the kimono felt between her fingers.
Her hand moved up, to the chest of the guy and touched to hole, her pale green eye observing it with a frown; the hole was made as if a hand had plunged into it and gripped the heart, squeezing it to break the chambers and then ripped it out without any effort. She could feel the rests of the veins and muscles being torn apart rather violently.

The question was now, who had done it. It couldn't be a normal human - she had never heard of a person without chakra or any other supernatural abilities (like demonic powers, goldy ones and all that) being able to break so neatly into a rib cage. It thus left her with the vague thoughts of a ninja or other type of skilled person. No knife had been used here, the fractures weren't proper enough; the bones had been pushed and forced until they broke to the inside, leaving pieces of bones in the chest, which she could feel on the lungs for example.

Bookwoman stood up, frowning and using the dry sand to clean her hands; not having taken any water with her had been rather stupid. Well, who would have known she'd find such interesting bodies? What would be interesting now, it would be to know who had done such horrible thing to those men, young or old, rich or poor, who ever they were.

And on those thoughts, she kept on walking, entering more deeply the lion's lair.

___________

Word count: 432
Tags: Almost the last post!~
Notes: Well, dun think Bookwoman is a necromancer - she's merely playing detective and pathologist. Blame the fact I saw too many crime series lately~

Subject: Re: Travelling For: Sand Thu Apr 07, 2011 3:58 pm

The silence was heavy. Heavy to bear with, to live with.

Bookwoman was almost wishing to hear a single sound, because she couldn't even hear her own footsteps. It was deafening, crushing her, cutting all air that should get in her lungs. And the heat, the hard sun rays were creating war in her head, pounding so hard that she thought that at some point a heavy, lead ball would come out of it, maybe then liberating her from the pain.
She couldn't even hear herself breathing nor her heart pounding. She wasn't thirsty nor hungry, those two basic needs didn't even seem to pierce through her body and brain. It was what was around her that brough her down, dragging her down into an inferno made of sand and the smell of death.

The wind wasn't blowing and the number of corpses became bigger with every step she took. The bones were crunching under her footsteps and her rests of tissues rotting and stinking, leaving a heavy mark on her clothes and body. Bookwoman swore to herself that she'd change outfits immediately after she was done looking for whatever she was looking for. The purple chakra seemed now to originate from two points, one bigger than the other.

Old instincts - that of laziness and that of taking care of her own wellbeing - kicked in and made her look for the smallest source of the two.
She had walked now for an hour and was now quite close of it. And it was the fact that she came closer that the sounds of life had died more and more out. Even the wind didn't seem to dare to come closer to it anymore.

Suddenly, a clear sound of a human body moving, along with a shadow. Bookwoman looked up and saw a clear opponent waiting for her, standing at less than a few feet away from her...

_________
Word count: 313
Total word count: 1708
Tags: Up to the next stage!
Notes: I had fun writing this I guess~ :3 And I'm done with the travelling posts!

» From Aurora to Sand
» Trials of Sand
» First Round: Sand
» Travelling for : Ice
» Trials of Sand Part two