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songsofbloodandfire · 5 years

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Awake (Old Content)

(Part two of a multi part writing exercise focused on retelling the past through A’sana’s eyes. As before, a warning to adult themes in the text.)

Arnica, lavender and cypress were the scents that coaxed me from sleep, their presence in the air thick enough that I could taste them on my tongue. The first deep breath of waking as I stirred sent a shock of pain through me that, if not for whatever alchemy had been used to dull my pain, would have sent me right back into the abyss of sleep. I hurt, but it was a distant pain, one that I didn’t care to chase after. The fogginess of the drugs was a much better than facing whatever hell they were covering up.

The events that led to those injuries were nothing more than a void as I tried to reach them and I wasn’t sure if it was a trick of whatever had dulled my pain or my mind refusing to let me remember. For that matter, I wasn’t even sure where I was, my surroundings foreign to me as my eyes finally began to focus enough for me to see clearly. Or as clearly as I could with the hazy shimmer of my aether-sight creating eddies and whorls that were real and yet not that distorted my physical sight. Where were my glasses? They would have made my aether-sight dimmed to the point of being non-existent and I rarely went without them.

Even as my mind lingered on the question, a memory rushed to met it. I was blind! Panic rushed through me as my eyes struggled to make sense of the purple-black abyss that I stared in, just barely making out silhouette of things in the distance. A blink followed by another as my eyes started to adjust. There was no familiar blue-white sheen of hazy aether that I was used to, but the dark oppressive taint of Void. That realization came with another. Voidlings. My mind started to make sense of the silhouettes and instantly I wished it hadn’t.

“I wonder how long you’ll last? I’ve heard many don’t last more than a few minutes. Of course, it’ll feel like an eternity to you, R’shana. I’m counting on that, beast.” Xavion’s voice was cold and anger filled in a way that I had never heard it before.

“Xavion, plea-” A scream, my own scream, stole the words as I felt myself falling into that void…The Void. I wouldn’t survive there! He had to know that! I needed him to understand that I-

There were hands on my shoulders, pressing me down into the soft warmth beneath me and not the cold hard ground I could vaguely remember from my time in the Void. Even as I struggled to reach for that memory, to try and remember fully what had happened, it fluttered away like a twisted butterfly. Why couldn’t I remember what had happened to me?

“Careful there, lass. You’ve been through the seven hells and back if your body tells its story true.” The voice that spoke was weakened and raspy with age but no less commanding in its own gentle way.

I knew that voice, even if I hadn’t heard it since childhood. When I had first heard it, it hadn’t been so aged but had still had the same gentle sense of command to it. Araceli wasn’t a commanding woman physically, but she was the type of woman that seemed to fill up a room with her presence and quietly demand attention from those around her with her subtle confidence and pride. She was the only woman I had come to trust as much as my sister and someone I considered almost a mother.

Settling back into the bed, my eyes finally focused on the elderly Hyur, finding her presence comforting in the midst of my confusion. It had been over a decade since I had last seen her and time hadn’t been kind to her, though many had been left burdened and aged beyond their years from the terrors of the Calamity so that wasn’t surprising, even as sheltered as her life had been within the Thaumaturgy Guild.

Still, there was a hint of the beauty that Ara had been in her youth with the graceful, patrician features of her high cheekbones and the delicate slope of her nose still pleasing to the eye. I had been told she had been high-born Ala Mhigan before city-state had fallen to Imperial control and I believed it. With her black hair silvered with age and wrapped in a stately coil around the crown of her head, and her dark brown, almost black eyes watching me with quiet patience, I could see in her the nobility she had never claimed in earshot of me.

As I settled, she seemed to relax and the tension I hadn’t noticed in her body faded some. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? I was better at reading body language than that, more so from someone I knew as well as Ara. I was off balance, and as much as I wanted to blame the drugs for that, my mind screamed at me that I knew better.

I hadn’t realized that I had tried to speak until I found my vision blackened with red frayed edges from the pain that blossomed in my ribs as speaking sent me into a coughing fit. Ara held me gently and I felt something cool pressed to my lips as instinct took over and I drink. Earthy marshmallow root and the sticky sweetness of honey coated my tongue and throat and eased the cottony dryness that the painkillers had caused. It was only then that I realized just how much my throat hurt and it was a familiar pain. I had screamed hard and long, enough so that it had damaged the delicate folds in my throat.

“What happened?” My own voice was foreign to me, harsh from the damage that had been caused to it. My mind danced away from the question of why I had been screaming, not wanting to risk another memory stealing Ara’s answer from me.

“To tell it true, Sana, I do not know.” It had been over a year and a half since anyone had called me by my real name and it was comforting that it came from a familiar voice. As she continued to speak, Ara settled the herbal infusion she’d had me drink to the side, her hands gently checking over the various bandages on my body. “I found you two nights ago stumbling through Pearl Lane, naked as the day you were born and looking like you decided to pick a fight with a wolf and lost. Gods be praised I found you and not someone else. I doubt you could have fought your way out of a wet towel in your state.”

A comfortable silence fell as she focused her attention on her work and I couldn’t find the strength to speak again. Instead, my mind drifted on the warm haze of the drugs, trying to grasp at thoughts only to have them dance out of reach as soon as I tried to focus on them. All I had were indistinct impressions of what had happened. All of it centered around Xavion and none of it pleasant. He had tortured and violated me. I knew that and that was a solid thought that I could hold to, as ugly as it was, but what exactly he had done my mind couldn’t face.

“-you stopped breathing and I truly thought I had lost you if my woman hadn’t been quick to pull you back to the land of the living.” Ara had been talking and it seemed for several minutes while my drug addled mind had been pondering the atrocities that Xavion had done to me. “As much as she wanted to use aether to heal you, as heavily tainted as you were, we were afraid if might have done more harm than good. I know you, Sana. I know why you left the Guild but gods, Void magic? I taught you better than that, lass.”

The old guilt I felt for dabbling in the “forbidden arts” was nowhere to be found at Ara’s words. I wasn’t a practitioner, not like she seemed to think, but I knew that I had been tainted. Another mentor had speculated that the tiny sliver of void that was nestled so deep into my own aether that it couldn’t be removed was likely the remnants of some old pack that had left my bloodline tainted. That I knew of and had used in my own dabblings in blood magic, but from the way Ara spoke, it had been more than that. The only thing I could figure was either Xavion had done something to taint me further or being in the Void had caused harm to me.

“I didn’t…the man that did this…” My voice broke from the damage caused to my throat, but enough of my point had been made and Ara simply nodded as she helped me drink again.

“I rarely wish death on anyone, lass, but I sure hope you killed the man that did this. It took work, but we rid you of all but a little bit of the taint.” The disapproval of having to leave me even slightly tainted was clear in her voice. I was too tired to explain my bloodline or argue any point about avoiding a source of power being ignorant and dangerous. As if taking my silence as invitation to continue, Ara went on speaking while she worked. “As long as you avoid such magics, you will be fine, though I worry it might make you even more enticing to the critters that have been coming through since the Calamity.”

I had heard the rumors that weaker voidlings were coming into our realm in larger numbers since the damned moon had been pulled down on Eorzea. Ara out of anyone I could have thought of that still remained of those that had taught me at the Guild would have been the one to know such things. Her knowledge on the void was purely scholarly but she likely knew as much about it as any void mage, even if she didn’t practice that school of magic.

My mind drifted to her first words though and whatever showed on my face seemed to convey the knowledge that Xavion still lived. Even as I had the thought, I realized I couldn’t explain why I knew. Somewhere deep within my fractured psyche I knew without a doubt that Xavion still lived. That realization brought a distant anger but also fear and memory stole the world from me for a moment.

“It’s true then. You are nothing more than a petty, common thief.” I froze at Xavion’s words and my heart broke at the raw pain and anger in his tone as well as the panic that came as I understood what those words meant.

He knew.

The irony of the moment wasn’t lost to me as the book I had wanted from him, that had brought me to target him and work my way into his life was laid out in front of me and I wanted nothing to do with it. I would have given it and so much more to not hear the hurt in his voice. Hurt that I had caused because I had been too much of a coward to tell him the truth.

“Xavion, let me explain, please?” The tribal accent I had been using was gone in my panic and that only seemed to anger him more as I let the facade drop.

Instinct had saved me, allowing my body to react and put a hastily erected shield of aether between me and the blast of void infused lightning that had been thrown my way but I realized too late my mistake. Tendrils of void energy wrapped around my torso from behind as others captured my wrists and ankles. Any aether I tried to channel was drained away by them and just like that, I was helpless before him, unable to do anything but watch as he walked to me and started tearing at the dress I wore.

Pain brought me back to the present, cutting through the memories cleanly and leaving me breathless from it and threatened to steal my awareness away in its own fashion. Ara had paused in her work to look at me with that motherly concern, looking as tired and worn as I felt. Her lips drew themselves into a thin line as she quickly finished changing the bandages at my ribs, leaving me trembling and sweating in pain once she finished.

“You’re safe, lass. Stop fighting the drugs and just sleep. We’ll talk more when you’re in a better way.”

For once in my life, I wasn’t too stubborn to be contrary and prove a point. With open arms, I welcomed the blissful abyss of sleep so I could escape not on my physical pain, but the mental as well. For all that Xavion had done to me, even if I couldn’t remember it, I mourned the loss of his love the most.

#oldcontent #asana dorel #xavion sauvageau #mateus rp #ffxiv rp

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briannadeberry · 3 years

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#blogger #oldcontent #pastcontent

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dvmnchris · 3 years

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#oldcontent

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heavensarmy777-blog · 4 years

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FIRE!!! Is what they say haha. Final Fantasy VI #fire #finalfantasyvi #oldcontent https://www.instagram.com/p/CEw5WLqAHvP/?igshid=cmixfpp1tn6v

#fire #finalfantasyvi #oldcontent

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exploresmallworlds · 6 months

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A Sabbath for us all

As a child I was frustrated that on Saturdays we didn’t do anything because we were Seventh Day Adventists and we had the concept of a Sabbath. This was frustrating because I couldn’t do the things that I wanted to do. Most Saturday afternoons were spent by my parents napping because it was the end of a week and they needed rest. However, we were kids and we didn’t understand that this was actually a good idea.

I’m a little older now and I’m fully a proponent of naps and no time to take them. The idea of the Sabbath is the most visceral thing that I miss. The rest of my background and former faith identity comes and goes in its intensity. But the idea that now that I’ve left that version of faith behind means that I have also left behind the intentional rest period is something that I want to institute back into my life and I often cannot. Hospitality, where I work is unforgiving, between that and a full time university degree I have gone weeks without significant periods of rest because the next thing just comes along and needs to be solved. It never really ends.

I was completing assignments hours before I was supposed to go on placement. And I had just finished paid work. It's no wonder that I miss it. It's something that most working adults do get some version of but in this whirlwind of unpaid placements and full time university work and the fact that I have to pay endless continuous bills I don’t get the luxury of. And if we are honest with ourselves, the stresses of modern life are stripping those periods of rest away from those other working adults - it has increasingly become a luxury.

I took a holiday because I knew that the bullshit couldn’t last forever, and it was a sabbath from a state and its associated worries but it was also a sabbath away from the people I loved and kept me there. So I'm back now. And the bullshit is still here. The reminders of failure because I didn’t have the time to rest are catching up on me now. That is why I write. The sabbath came at a relief and rest but it also generated its own concerns.

Work for the sake of work, without sabbaths from mind and body is not the way that things have to continue. In ecology - plants and other non-human beings are afforded periods of rest and recuperation in a way that I don't think that our society appreciates or at least in their most natural forms. I’ve worked in industries that are relied upon for other people’s sabbaths and never their own. I am angry and disappointed that this continuous workload is the expectation and the norm. Rather than just an abnormality in times of crisis and maybe this shouldn’t continue. We are in a crisis - or the intersection of a few. The idea that this is inevitable is something that I am groaning against.

The economics of infinite growth that destroys the earth and its inhabitants needs to be stopped. And we all deserve a sabbath. A sabbath for us all.

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rsauud · 4 months

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#silent _ comedy_vie #video #blacque #wombman #black #woman #blackmoms #blacksinglemoms #music #meditation #shorts #Youtube #blacksolomomsarerelentlessteaches #black #blackwomen #domestic #violence #dv #domesticviolence #surviors #awareness #wherearerealblackmen #real #realninja #ninjas #keke #blackmoms #blacksolomoms #solo #moms #are #relentless #teaches #blacklivesmatter #idontwearbonnets #onedubiousmama #blacksmartsmatter #paralegal #perspective #paralegalperspective #tashak #old #content #oldcontent #howisyourmentalhealth #daily #dose #dopeness #devotional #motivation #grwm #prayer #serenity…

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apintsizedlife · 6 years

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I don’t always repost older blog content, but when I do I follow the steps I posted in my newest post. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Do you repurpose blog content? 📸: @styledstocksociety . . . . . . . #reposted #oldcontent #littlethingsblogged #bloggedit #justblogged #newblogalert #ontheblogtoday #laptoplifestyles #handsinframe #cupinframes #linkinmybio #wanderfuladventures #postitfortheaesthetic #photosinbetween #thatsdarling #abmlifeissweet #pursuepretty #bandofun #todayslovely #lovelysquares #sobestfriendsforfrosting #solovelysofree #flashesofdelight #darlingmovement #mybeautifulmess #abmhappylife #reblogged #txblogger #TheHappyGrams #apintsizedlife https://www.instagram.com/p/BorgL8kAwU1/

#IFTTT #Instagram #Me

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gnbcosplay · 4 years

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Hey Dexter...What does this button do? 💋👅💦 . . . This cosplay is why your dad texts me "hey" 😂😂😂 . . . . . #dexterslaboratory #cosplayingwhileblack #cosplayphotography #animeconvention #cosplaygirls #cosplayer #cosplay #sexycosplaygirl #cutecosplaygirls #blackcosplayerhere #throwbackcosplay #oldcontent #pink #blondehair #cartoonnetwork #oldschool #oldschoolcartoons https://www.instagram.com/p/CAn-bN6j8A7/?igshid=1bhciujb2euww

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sparrowatheart · 5 years

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More “hidden treasure” content (so to speak) that I found in my phone! I want to bring this boi back, but I kinda want to revamp his outfit before I do. #sparrowatheartcosplay #sparrowatheartoc #PirateOc #Pirate #PirateCaptain #Cosplay #Cosplayer #WanderersLost #wandererslost☠️ #CaptainLeoFireheart #Tiktok #videos #oldcontent #contentdump #PrettyBoi https://www.instagram.com/p/ByJh9zYHIvX/?igshid=9k2zl4qmn5kd

#sparrowatheartcosplay #sparrowatheartoc #pirateoc #pirate #piratecaptain #cosplay #cosplayer #wandererslost #wandererslost☠️#captainleofireheart #tiktok #videos #oldcontent #contentdump #prettyboi

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songsofbloodandfire · 5 years

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Ruined (Old Content)

(Part one of a writing exercise focused on retelling the past through A’sana’s point of view. Warning for this and any entries to follow. Adult themes including violence, and sexual themes follow.)

Of all things, the sound of rain woke me with a start, something I would instantly come to regret as pain shot through my body like a wildfire. At first the pain was all consuming, stealing all sane thought from me. Without that clarity, that sanity, I found myself in a downward spiral of panic that I knew would do me no good. Panic got you killed. I had learned that lesson the hard way in the past and I did not care to learn it again.

It took effort to force my mind away from that panicked state it had been in where thoughts and the mere concept of them flitted through my minds eye too fast for me to comprehend. I needed to focus and the pain gave me something to focus on. Something to take stock in.

The protests of my ribs as I breathed was the first thing my mind took hold of to focus on. They were, at best, badly bruised but I was willing to guess at least one was cracked. That rain that fell on me brought attention to a myriad of cuts and scrape burned in the cool water. A wiggle of my feet told me they worked though my legs protested the movement and then I tried to lift my arms only to be blinded by pain momentarily. My right arm was broken and it took effort to turn my head to see the odd angle it was bent at in the wrong place for it to bend. Fantastic.

Even as the thought to heal myself crossed my mind I knew it wasn’t possible. The familiar fatigue of being physically and aetherically drained weighted on my body. I couldn’t remember casting spells, not enough to leave myself that drained.

The moment that thought went through my mind, I realized I couldn’t remember how I had gotten into this state. I wasn’t even sure where I was or how i had gotten here. I knew I was alive, but that wasn’t going to last long in the wrong areas. Still, I fought to push down the panic once again as I realized I didn’t know a lot of things that I should have. The date. The time. Where I had been.

There was one thing that I did know. My name. A’sana Dorel. One of the infamous Sultanas of the Sapphire Market. The silly moniker helped, gave me strength and the memories of better times to lean on. The memory of my beloved sister to cling to, even if I could hear her voice gently chiding me and calling me a sissy for staying down instead of fighting to get back up. I would have given anything to have her there right then, but she had been gone for three years at that point. My situation didn’t allow for idle wishes.

Everything in my body protested movement as I pushed myself to sit up, cradling my right arm to my body. The pain alone darkened my vision and threatened to steal away my consciousness for a few moments before I was able to fight it back. Braced for that surge of pain, I started to stand, thankful I was near enough to a wall to get myself up by leaning on it. It seemed an eternity before I managed to find my feet.

My vision was fogged by ambient aether, which told me I was without the glasses to filter out the “gift" I had been born with. Being so sensitive to aether that I could see it was more often a curse than a gift and in that moment it was useless to me. Even so, as I focused I realized I knew where I was. Intimately so.

Pearl lane. I had grown up here. I had run these streets with my sister at one time, staking our claim and taking what was ours. We hadn’t started that way and those humble origins would be a boon to me now. Being small and defenseless meant knowing how to hide when the time to hide came. I knew those places just as intimately as any other part of these streets.

Progress was slow and not particularly steady. More than once I was forced to stop or risk fainting. Being in familiar territory was a boon as much as a curse. I had enemies here. People who would have loved to catch one of the Dorels at a disadvantage if only for the glory of saying they took out a Dorel. Even locked away, I knew that kind of news would get to my sister and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want my death to be someone else’s trophy and bragging rights.

I found the spot I wanted. A small hollow hidden by the odd angles of the walls that created it. One of the walls was worn away enough that you could get to a small empty space behind it. It wasn’t a well known spot which made it perfect to hide in. It also required me to get on my hands and knees to crawl into. Even as the thought crossed my mind, I could feel my consciousness starting to wane.

A voice called my attention. More specifically, my name. My real name and not the assumed one I’d been living under. That woman was dead. She had to be. Even as I had that thought, the reason behind it was gone, lost in the mire of memories that weren’t coming easily for reasons unknown to me.

The movement to face that voice were too fast and the instant I did it I regretted my actions. I heard myself say “Oh. It’s you.” before the yawning void that had been just at the edge of my existence since I had woken finally consumed me.

#oldcontent #asana dorel #mateus #ffxiv rp

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