02-03-2018, 05:27 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-08-2018, 12:58 PM by Kelly MacAryn.)
He stood up, rising on scrawny legs - stretched by a recent growth-spurt, but still the legs of a child. The damp had seeped into the seat of his patched and faded jeans, which normally would have bothered him; right now it barely even registered.
The boy felt profoundly strange. He was hearing things, seeing things, hallucinating a vivid new order. Metals had visual weight, webs of force rippling through space, unseen but present. Synesthetic color-flavors pulsed at strange intervals, cutting across his proprioceptive awareness like disconnected phantom limbs. Alien sensations of somatic feedback boiled from his surroundings like steam from a crater-lake.
A wave of vertigo sent anti-color starbursts ripping across the young man's eyes. Canvas high-tops skittered on the pavement as he staggered. A red tail-ed hawk soared overhead, and the noise in his brain flared, whispering precision, hunger and avarice, intuitive airflow calculations - all silenced as the raptor rose on a thermal and vanished among the trees.
He steadied himself, stared at spot between his feet and ground one of his palms into his forehead. An earthworm, sluggish from the chill, was trying valiantly to cross the pavement.
"What is happening to me?" he hissed. Strands of shaggy brown hair bobbed in front of his eyes, and tears of panic stung his cheeks.
The boy stood there for hours, stooped over and frantically processing with hands on his knees until the school bell rang - then he sprinted off into the woods, fleeing the clamor of oncoming minds as though it were a wall of burning oil.
Kelly opened his eyes and pushed down the echoes of vividly recorded distress, stirred from his reverie by a subtle change in the clearing. He was no longer alone.
A pair of purple-skinned night-elves crouched in the bracken, believing themselves hidden. They wore simple tunics and leggings in forest colors with open-faced hoods, currently down - possibly in deference to their ludicrously pointed ears, the gently sloping tips of which were nearly a foot in length. Curved blades hung at their belts alongside an assortment of daggers and pouches, and a short-bow and quiver were slung across each other their backs. From the shadows they regarded him cautiously with softly-glowing blue eyes.
The traveler was embarrassed to admit that it took him a moment to find a way to distinguish them. They had pretty, androgenous faces. One had a slightly higher set of cheekbones, and the other had a longer nose, but other than that they were almost perfectly identical, even to his higher senses. On bare feet they slunk silently around the perimeter of the glen, edging closer. A breeze whispered across the ferns, a cresting wave of rustling green.
The elves' intent was easy enough to read, flickering like neon across the surface of their minds: they'd been sent here to watch the gate, and to report who came and who left. They didn't know why, and they hadn't asked.
The psychic debated pinging them telepathically, but he settled instead for simply watching what they did. Eventually, following a discussion behind a small blackberry thicket conducted entirely using hand-signals, the two of them slipped deftly through the briars and stepped out into the open.
Kelly waved.
"What gave me away?" He asked, strictly in the interest of being polite. "That I knew you were here, I mean."
The elves looked at each other, knee-deep in ferns and not a frond broken. "I thought you opened your eyes very decisively, as though something had caught your attention." said the one with the longer nose, barely containing a smile. "My sister disagreed. She owes me some wine."
The elf with the proud cheeks crossed her arms over her chest, formed a thin-lipped frown, and very pointedly said nothing.
The traveler nodded thoughtfully. He pushed himself upright using his staff, then raised it overhead with his hands spaced wide and arched his back, loudly popping his spine.
"I'm just passing through," he said, resting his favored weapon in the crook of his shoulder and leaning back against the moss-coated tree. "I'll be hitting the Nexus in a couple of minutes. There's no need to trouble yourselves on my account."
"We were not planning on it," said the sore loser, turning her back and taking up a station beside the vine-encrusted edifice of the gate.
Her brother shrugged apologetically, then moved to join her. A Cold wind began to blow from the East, signalling yet another change in the weather.
Kelly sighed, struck by a sudden apprehension that they were about to have more guests.
A pair of obviously-fresh Primes entered the 'verse from the Nexus, muttering to themselves and one-another, gawking and summoning, lighting the clearing with brilliant shades of rainbow brilliance as active Omnilium flared and pulsed. The forested world of ferns and trees was temporarily transformed into a psychedelic dreamscape of koleidoscopic chaos, rendering the merely visual world almost as interesting as the more complex vistas which danced across the psychic's superhuman sensorium.
The two newcomers, freshly minted weapons in hand, struck out into the Green engrossed in animate discussion, so fascinated by each-other and themselves that neither noticed the traveler.
He shared a glance with with the elves, unable to completely suppress a lopsided smile.
It was a strange world, but he'd be lying if he said it wasn't growing on him.
The boy felt profoundly strange. He was hearing things, seeing things, hallucinating a vivid new order. Metals had visual weight, webs of force rippling through space, unseen but present. Synesthetic color-flavors pulsed at strange intervals, cutting across his proprioceptive awareness like disconnected phantom limbs. Alien sensations of somatic feedback boiled from his surroundings like steam from a crater-lake.
A wave of vertigo sent anti-color starbursts ripping across the young man's eyes. Canvas high-tops skittered on the pavement as he staggered. A red tail-ed hawk soared overhead, and the noise in his brain flared, whispering precision, hunger and avarice, intuitive airflow calculations - all silenced as the raptor rose on a thermal and vanished among the trees.
He steadied himself, stared at spot between his feet and ground one of his palms into his forehead. An earthworm, sluggish from the chill, was trying valiantly to cross the pavement.
"What is happening to me?" he hissed. Strands of shaggy brown hair bobbed in front of his eyes, and tears of panic stung his cheeks.
The boy stood there for hours, stooped over and frantically processing with hands on his knees until the school bell rang - then he sprinted off into the woods, fleeing the clamor of oncoming minds as though it were a wall of burning oil.
* * *
Kelly opened his eyes and pushed down the echoes of vividly recorded distress, stirred from his reverie by a subtle change in the clearing. He was no longer alone.
A pair of purple-skinned night-elves crouched in the bracken, believing themselves hidden. They wore simple tunics and leggings in forest colors with open-faced hoods, currently down - possibly in deference to their ludicrously pointed ears, the gently sloping tips of which were nearly a foot in length. Curved blades hung at their belts alongside an assortment of daggers and pouches, and a short-bow and quiver were slung across each other their backs. From the shadows they regarded him cautiously with softly-glowing blue eyes.
The traveler was embarrassed to admit that it took him a moment to find a way to distinguish them. They had pretty, androgenous faces. One had a slightly higher set of cheekbones, and the other had a longer nose, but other than that they were almost perfectly identical, even to his higher senses. On bare feet they slunk silently around the perimeter of the glen, edging closer. A breeze whispered across the ferns, a cresting wave of rustling green.
The elves' intent was easy enough to read, flickering like neon across the surface of their minds: they'd been sent here to watch the gate, and to report who came and who left. They didn't know why, and they hadn't asked.
The psychic debated pinging them telepathically, but he settled instead for simply watching what they did. Eventually, following a discussion behind a small blackberry thicket conducted entirely using hand-signals, the two of them slipped deftly through the briars and stepped out into the open.
Kelly waved.
"What gave me away?" He asked, strictly in the interest of being polite. "That I knew you were here, I mean."
The elves looked at each other, knee-deep in ferns and not a frond broken. "I thought you opened your eyes very decisively, as though something had caught your attention." said the one with the longer nose, barely containing a smile. "My sister disagreed. She owes me some wine."
The elf with the proud cheeks crossed her arms over her chest, formed a thin-lipped frown, and very pointedly said nothing.
The traveler nodded thoughtfully. He pushed himself upright using his staff, then raised it overhead with his hands spaced wide and arched his back, loudly popping his spine.
"I'm just passing through," he said, resting his favored weapon in the crook of his shoulder and leaning back against the moss-coated tree. "I'll be hitting the Nexus in a couple of minutes. There's no need to trouble yourselves on my account."
"We were not planning on it," said the sore loser, turning her back and taking up a station beside the vine-encrusted edifice of the gate.
Her brother shrugged apologetically, then moved to join her. A Cold wind began to blow from the East, signalling yet another change in the weather.
Kelly sighed, struck by a sudden apprehension that they were about to have more guests.
A pair of obviously-fresh Primes entered the 'verse from the Nexus, muttering to themselves and one-another, gawking and summoning, lighting the clearing with brilliant shades of rainbow brilliance as active Omnilium flared and pulsed. The forested world of ferns and trees was temporarily transformed into a psychedelic dreamscape of koleidoscopic chaos, rendering the merely visual world almost as interesting as the more complex vistas which danced across the psychic's superhuman sensorium.
The two newcomers, freshly minted weapons in hand, struck out into the Green engrossed in animate discussion, so fascinated by each-other and themselves that neither noticed the traveler.
He shared a glance with with the elves, unable to completely suppress a lopsided smile.
It was a strange world, but he'd be lying if he said it wasn't growing on him.