the plumewarden

The hair raises on the back of her neck at about the same time Rosie’s feet fully settle against the ground; hands absentmindedly gripping tight to the reins wrapped around the goose’s neck. Feathers bristle at her fingertips, which gives her enough indication that her own gut is telling her the truth: something is wrong.  There’s no birds chirping as they get their morning meals, no soft crunch of dried shrubbery as rabbits scurry back to their dens to hide.  It’s silence in its truest form, and it’s something that Peony has never heard before.

She hates it.  It’s not natural. Anxiety twists her gut.

Everything else in the forest seems perfectly fine, other than the fact that even the air is still.  The morning air is still cool, the sun still filters through the canopy above; rays warm against her skin.  But there’s no wind, either -- uncharacteristic for the region, even in the summer months like it is now.  A soft rumble comes from Rosie’s throat, intent to pull the Plumewarden from her thoughts; already eager to leave as soon as possible.  Thin fingers run through the threads of the bird’s feathers as Peony starts to move.

“It’s all right, big guy...just, give me a minute.”  She gently coos as her own feet settle against the ground.  They both know that something isn’t right, at least, not in a natural sense.  Tension and dread hangs far too heavily in the air, anticipation builds up in their guts.  Now that they’ve settled and the air is still around her, an acrid smell fills her nostrils: rotting meat.  Had something made a fresh kill?  Is that why everything is so silent?

“Stay there,” she continues as bare feet pad along the forest floor, briefly holding a hand out behind her to command Rosie stay.  “I’ll call you if I need you.”

Rosie follows anyway, wings flicking outward briefly; his feathers fluffing up.  Peony doesn’t question it.  If anything, it’s a comfort.

Around a nearby tree she goes, and there’s nothing -- but the smell is stronger now.  So much so that it makes her visibly flinch; eyes shutting tight, nose wrinkling, fists clenching. The pause isn’t long, and she continues onward.  Around another pairing of trees, across a clearing, rounding some bushes.  It’s not until she reaches a decline in the land, leading down to a small creek, when she sees the source of the entire problem:

Corpses.  Three of them, two adults.  One child.

At least, that’s what she can see from the short distance away and the state of their decomposition -- which is all wrong to begin with.  Black and putrefying threads of skin and muscle desperately cling on to bone that looks cracked and withered, discoloration heavy in the bones.  Long bones are bent in strange ways, too -- in a way that wet wood warps, some thigh bones having a distinctive curve to them, while ribs look entirely too straight to be normal.  The water around them even looks gritty and tainted, the liquid a strange gray color; and the shrubbery around the water looks dry and dead.  Needless to say, it’s nothing that Peony has ever seen before in her life.

Maybe that’s why when she finally does hear the sound of leaves rustling, it nearly feels like she jumps out of her own skin.

The slap of bare feet against mud suggests that her assailant is still alive, undaunted, and back on the hunt. Sure enough, it’s not long before a massive shadow lumbers into view, blocking the doorway and blotting out what little light streams into the barn. For a moment, the creature just stands there, looking everywhere and seeing nothing before continuing his search, despite the fact that he hasn’t the faintest idea where she went.

Guessing it is, then. Might as well.

Teeth gritted with pain, the doctor sets about examining his surroundings, overturning rotting planks and digging through debris. The knife is still there, stuck between his misshapen ribs, left untouched for fear of accidentally making matters worse. It will have to come out eventually, though, and when it does… maybe that would be a good time to start praying again. That and hoping to God that Grandfather was right, that he will be resurrected along with his family and see them one last time before facing an eternity of unearthly punishment.

“An old cart… Is this where you are hiding? I think it’s here. Or… maybe it’s over there? I don’t know. Maybe…”

Trailing blood from his wounds, he shambles towards the barn, having finished searching the nearby tool-shed and finding it dishearteningly empty. The barn probably is, too, so he doesn’t bother with subtlety, practically shoving past the door and sucking in a sharp, whimpering breath once inside. Still no sign of his prey—or so he assumes, with his senses being as dull and unreliable as they are.

“Fuck… not again… please, not again…”

He’s, he’s searching the wrong building, she realizes.  Forcing her breath out into one, concentrated huff, Peony quickly sucks one in the next second, looking over her shoulder.  She has time, and with time she can do just about anything.

Steps carry her across a filthy barn floor, dirt and wood gone black -- likely from the animals that once inhabited it.  To their dying breaths, her observations make her briefly realize, as she occasionally spots skeletons curled up in the stalls, mostly picked clean of any edible and usable parts save for a couple scraps left behind.  As bad as she feels for the long dead creatures, she pushes her mind forward to her task.  Across the way is a ladder that leads into the loft, which looks just as rotten as everything else.  But if luck is with her, then maybe her size will give her an advantage where it had failed her just a moment ago; she reaches out to begin climbing up.

Pain flares like lightning bolts through her chest and arm, and it almost feels like the point between her lungs has been hit with a sledgehammer.  The brief flare of urging to collapse onto the floor then and there, to curl up and wait to die is far too strong.  But you can’t, her mind pushes.  Peony’s hands wrap around the rungs of the ladder.

Determined, isn’t she? Lying with that amount of conviction, all the while struggling against a drug-induced stupor… It’s difficult not to be at least a little impressed, but her efforts are lost on the doctor, who bunches his shoulders and takes another step forward. He’s close now, well within touching distance, snorting like a furious bull at what he perceives as continued disobedience.

“I asked you first, rat, and I’m still waiting.”

A cold, sweat-soaked hand clamps down on hers, seizing her right forefinger and trapping it between the pliers’ bladed jaws. Ten seconds, and he’ll snap off the first joint; ten more, and he’ll snap off the second, then the third, until she either confesses or runs out of fingers, in which case he’ll turn his attention on her face. Trim those feathers, those ears… Anything to get her to speak the truth for once in her goddamned life.

“Where is the exit? You know precisely what I mean, and it’s not that fucking trail.”

All it takes is the feeling of flesh against her budding feathers, and there’s an immediate jerk as she tries to pull herself away.  Not that the bindings get her far, but they sure do strain against the sudden thrashing.  Adrenaline is suddenly pulsing through her veins, throbbing in her temples, and even though he has her finger in that vice-like grip it’s damn obvious that he won’t be able to take it without a fight.  Namely because all of those fingers try to clench into the tightest fists they can possibly make to keep him from them.

That same thrashing, that same rush of adrenaline, it all causes a sudden snap of anger and indignation towards her captor -- and it’s all an anger that she’s never quite felt before.  Peony speaks, her words leaking through both sets of teeth and her lips before she can fully think to stop them.

“Clean the goddamn sh-- shit out of your head!  I’ve told you multiple times that I don’t fucking know -- at least, I know just as much or less than you.  I’ve even offered to show you all the spots I’ve per-- perso-- went to and tried myself, but that doesn’t seem to satisfy you either and I’m getting super fucking confused as to what you actually want from me.

Looks like you’re doing better, by the way.

Subtle. Nonchalant, almost. He can appreciate that, but it doesn’t cushion the impact of the realization that she knows him, that she is most definitely the woman he doesn’t want her to be. All those attempts to murder her, and here she is, offering him a water bottle and a healthy helping of sympathy, neither of which the doctor thinks he deserves.

“I am. Don’t worry. I just… I just didn’t expect to see a familiar face so far from home.”

He’s still not looking at her. Anxiety keeps his gaze wandering, first to the uneven pavement, then to the opposite side of the street, and finally to the… roots?… that stretch between the bars of a nearby storm drain. The longer he looks at them, the faster they grow, slithering across the ground like gnarled, unnaturally agile snakes that are racing right towards her…

Ignore them. Ignore them, he thinks, and they will go away. So he does, turning his head and forcing himself to meet Ptaszek’s eyes despite everything in him screaming not to. It’s not that he is afraid of her—on the contrary, as strange as it sounds, he finds her presence comforting. Maybe it’s her undue kindness, or maybe it’s the fact that deep down, despite everything, something in him desperately craves her forgiveness.

“Is this where you live? In this city?”

There’s a certain cold quality, deep in those brown eyes.  Wariness.  Yes, she’s fine, but even if instincts stopped serving her all those years ago, they’ve flared back up as if no time has passed at all.  But there’s also a warmth to them that even during their time in those damned woods never managed to fully extinguish -- and in that, there’s already traces of that same forgiveness he’s searching for.  For a moment, Peony looks back at him with silence, obviously thinking; the presence of the strange roots out of sight, out of mind.

“Yeah,” she answers.  “For now, anyway.  Parents live a good clip out of town -- got a farm and everything -- and they’ve been asking me to come back since I got home.  I refused them for a long time, but...”

There were -- still are -- a lot of reasons why she resisted going back to them so much.  Visits were fine, but the large family had always been simple in that drama-free sort of way.  It’s been years since she got back, and she still feels like she’s some sort of potential corruption in that.  They don’t need to see their daughter and sister freaking out in the middle of the night when one of the dogs bark, or the visible shiver that crawls up her body when trees scratch and scrape against nearby buildings.  And yet, with her sister never coming back, there was that longing for a permanent familial presence.  At least for a while.

“You’re a shitty liar. Did you know that?” Scowling, the doctor dips his chin, tightening his grip on the pliers until his fingers ache and his knuckles flush white. “It’s out there. I know it is, no matter how many times you clueless bastards try to convince me otherwise. I saw right through your companions—right through their fucking lies!—and I see right through yours.”

It wasn’t even difficult, either. Military rats are all the same. Liars, cheats, and charlatans who care more about themselves than anything else. And to think she expected him to fall for that goddamned sob story… An innocent backpacking trip turned tragedy, complete with an unsuccessful escape attempt and a lost sibling. It’s almost insulting, really, that she would stoop so low. Insulting, but hardly surprising. The only thing worse than a lie is an uninspired one, and her kind always have plenty of those to go around.

“Let’s try again: Tell me where the road is, this time without lying through both sets of your teeth.”

“Companions?”  Genuine confusion leaks through her stupor, head raising up to get a better look at him -- and away from that damned tool.  The more she pulls her thoughts away from it, the more distance seems to grow between the two of them.  Yet it still feels like it’s something akin to watching a dagger flying at her face, just in the slowest motion possible; the feeling in the pit of her gut that’s almost tangible, the dread that sooner or later he’s going to use it on her to cause some pain to get what he wants.

And then what.  Lie?  Beg?  Thrash with every ounce of energy she has left in the hopes she can get away from him and live another day?  All of them are shitty options for a shitty misunderstanding.

“No, no, there’s just my sister, and I’m not lying,” she adds quickly after, trying to keep her voice even as possible (and somehow managing it).  “I broke an axe I found trying to get out from chopping so much, and -- well -- no dice, really,” she mumbles, the words seeming more like a thought manifesting through words.  Another shake of her ginger head follows in another attempt to clear out medicinal cobwebs from her head.

“I’m only interested in what you know. More specifically, where you came from and how to get there.” Pressing another strip of jerky into his mouth, he approaches the room’s sole furnishing: a wooden table carrying an empty bucket and a rolled-up cloth containing his old medical tools. Rusted and filthy but still functional, even after so many years of misuse and neglect.

“The wall of trees surrounding us on all sides is impassable. Cut one of them down, and three more sprout in its place. It takes less than a minute. You could be crushed, suffocated, or trapped between the roots that often grow to be thicker than the trunks they are attached to. The only way to get out of here is to follow a road, but they have all been overgrown. All except one: the road home. The one you took to get in, not out.”

Pausing, the doctor turns to face his captive, carrying a pair of pincers in one hand and a thick, blood-soaked rag in the other. She can’t possibly be stupid enough not to cooperate, but in case she’s stubborn, well…

“I’m not wrong, am I?”

“It it was a trail--”

Damn, her head hurts.  And her jaw, but mostly her head.  Maybe she hit it when she hit the ground, or maybe he knocked it when he moved her.  Could even be the junk he pumped into her veins, which would explain why the hell it feels like she can’t much form a coherent thought -- not enough to articulate into words, anyway.  Doesn’t stop Peony from trying.

“We were backpacking.  Tansy and I.  Stopped to get water at a stream after we passed through some brush, and then -- then couldn’t get back through.  Tried the hacking, too, like you said.  With, the uh...whacky-thing.”

Axe, her mind fills in.  “Axe,” her lips supply a second later.

Peony sees the pincers and the rag in his hands, and she sees the signs of use and the resulting neglect all over them.  And she knows that he’s making a very clear albeit silent threat towards her -- so she’s definitely doing her best to give him a clear but vocal reason to promptly not follow through.  There’s no reason to be stubborn about it, because it isn’t like spilling classified secrets to him or anything.  On the contrary, it’s helpful information that she’s happy to give, regardless of threat.  So Peony thinks.  

She shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts again, and maybe shake her vision back into place.

“Look, I’m just -- I’m trying to find my sister, and I’m trying to live...wherever this is.  I’m -- I’m stuck here too, and if I knew of a way out, I would show you.  I can show you the exact spot we came in at so you can try hacking it too, but we both know how well that’ll go.

Her trust, fortunately, turns out to be well-placed. Not once does the doctor raise a hand (or syringe, for that matter) against her, preferring instead to keep his head down and his arms at his sides. Nothing in his demeanor suggests violent intent, but there is a tenseness in his gait, in his gaze, and in the muscles of his face, which is slowly but surely regaining its color.

A breathy, barely audible “thank you” is given in exchange for the water bottle, which is just what he needs: something to clear his head and take the edge off this dreadful heat. Yet instead of partaking, he just holds it in his hand, staring at the cap like he’s reluctant to touch it. Not for fear that it might be contaminated (he believes her when she reassures him that it’s not), but for fear of overstepping a boundary. If this woman really is who he fears she is, then he has taken enough from her already. Supplies, time, and what little mental health she had left when their paths crossed, plunging them deeper into the nightmare that no doubt still affects her too.

“Your Polish is very good.” Without looking at her, he takes a seat on the bench, as far from the flattened wad of gum as is possible. Then, at long last, he unscrews the cap and takes a sip of water, partly to slake his thirst but mostly to show the stranger that he appreciates her kindness.

“Maybe you don’t realize, but… you shouldn’t apologize for it.”

“Uh,” comes the ‘eloquent’ response from the woman as she thinks for a more proper one, keeping her distance well enough away from him, deciding to stand on the opposite side of the stall.  Her thumb brushes underneath the strap of her satchel, an absentminded gesture meant to give her sensation, a distraction from raging nerves.

“Dziękuję.  That’s, that’s ‘thank you,’ right?  It’s--”

...no.  No, no, no.  She can’t keep skirting around this, and surely, he knows they can’t either.  It’s too weird, too convenient, and they’re just going to keep dancing around it until they part ways, and then not getting any sleep later in the night.  Mostly out of worries that the other is gonna find where they live and jab a knife into the other’s throat.  She knows that this is her assailant, and he knows that she’s the one he’s terrorized.  It should be so simple, so easy to say something.  And yet...it isn’t.

“--it’s been a while since I’ve had to speak it.  Shit, did I say that already?  I, uh, learned a lot of it in passing, when I was backpacking over in Europe with my sister.  You know, those long trails that they hype up for ‘self-discovery’ and ‘discovering spirituality,’ and all that jazz.  Looks like you’re doing better, by the way.”

It’s such a nonchalant slip of words that to anyone else, it’d be two old acquaintances meeting back up.  But he’d know what she means, Peony made sure of that.

Like the fact that he isn’t bleeding out somewhere, or a grotesque facsimile of a humanoid covered in pustules and random pockets of fat ready to burst through skin so thin from stretching that it had almost been transparent.

“And you don’t have to worry--” she quickly adds.  “I’m fine if you are.”

It’s nigh impossible to see anything through the flurry of violence, but judging by her assailant’s furious howl, which is accompanied by the patter of blood against mud, the woman’s aim was both true and formidable. It even rids her of the hand on her head, which rises in an attempt to wrestle the makeshift knife from her fist. That is his first mistake; the second is to sit up a little straighter, exposing his vulnerable underside seconds before she attacks again.

This time, there is no scream—only a rasping gasp at the realization that the shiv has lodged itself between his ribs, so deep that he fears for his vitals. For all the Mire-Mother’s blessings, he is no less vulnerable than the fiend lying below him, who must be so proud of herself and her dirty outsider tricks. He should have killed her when she was sitting in that chair, alone and helpless with only the clothes on her back, but he didn’t, and now…

Fuck… that hurts… that really—

Wide-eyed and white-faced with shock, the doctor lets go of her arm and glances down himself, attempting to gauge the severity of his injuries. It never crosses his mind that in doing so, he allows the goose-girl to escape like she has done so many times before. His focus is solely on himself and that fucking knife, which makes it excruciatingly painful to even breathe…

Yeah, you fucking take that too--

A brief, bitter thought that escapes amid the chaos and panic brought into her head, before its all suddenly wiped clean by instinct.  The mud is slick and sticky around her, making it difficult to move -- but his weight is dwindling.  At least, for a moment.  She has to make her move, if she’s ever to get out of his clutches.  Because now, she doesn’t have another knife.  If he gets another surge of energy, of anger, that’s it.  It’ll be game over, with no continues.

So Peony moves, fingers digging into the mud so hard her nails ache, using all of her upper body strength to slip her legs out from underneath a massive blob of flesh.  The barn is so close, and she can easily slip inside, tuck herself away in the rafters, make it look like she gave him the slip through a window or something.

Easy.  Easy.  It’d be easy.  It has to be.

Feet slip against ground, and hands push herself upward.  The fact that she can breathe again and open her eyes to see the world around her -- dark as it is -- makes it feel like the weight of the world is gone.  The bird-girl ignores the pulsing in her temples and the throbbing in her arm as she starts making her way towards the dilapidated barn, one leg causing a brief hitch in her gait.  It had hurt a little before his attack, and now it hurts worse.  Just short of a sprain, if she’s judging the pain correctly.  Means she can still work with it.

Darkness engulfs her as she enters the barn, but Peony doesn’t breathe any signs of relief.  If anything, she sucks in a breath and holds it, as she makes a line straight for the stables, through a doorway that has a sheet metal door on a slide attached; left wide open when it was abandoned.  The sections where animals once sat have long since rotted into piles of rust and wood mush, and Peony finally breathes out through pursed lips.

“Like it about the same as everything else I suppose.  All seasons have their fantastic advantages and their unfortunate disadvantages.  The ice and wind usually aren’t that great -- gets all stuck up in the corners of the village and weighs everything down.  But the quiet that comes with it?  Almost worth it.”  A laugh escapes, the sound of joy being just brief enough to make her shoulders hunch up from the action.

“They’re all right!  But there’s so many things that constitute as a sport anymore?”  Peony squints as she purses her lips.  “But most of it is pretty good under the right circumstances.  Tend to be the last one picked though because of the height, though.  Can’t think of many sports where being short is a legitimate advantage.

“Oh, I love them to bits and pieces!” The woman practically chirps.  “And they’re such good ones -- who else could’ve raised five rambunctious scamps that tend to come home with unexplained bruises and manages to whittle the whats and whys within five minutes?  Mom’s always a sweetie if not a little bit too serious from time to time, and dad, he plays around as hard as we did and still do; as well as he can on a bum leg and one arm.”

“Sometimes it’s necessary,” Peony answers, shoulders hunching up briefly in a shrug; a corner of her mouth quirking upwards with it.  “I mean, there’s stories about how a hero saves the day and loses their life for it -- but if he didn’t?  So many other people would have been died, the bad guy would’ve gotten away, and you know.  Yadda yadda.”  In a move of blitheness, fingers and thumb press together and separate again; the good ol’ gesture of rambling.

@plumewarden

The sky grew dark drawing Tseng’s attention away from the instruments in front of him.  Cautious maneuvers worked to use the increasingly strong wind to his advantage, masterful in the way he handled the vessel despite the sudden signs of rain.  When drops began to tap against the canopy, he considered setting down somewhere safe.  It was odd for there to be rain in Cosmo Canyon during this time of year, but it appeared that some things were still getting back to normal.

The Turk gazed calmly towards the ominous clouds rapidly bearing down on his position, soon consuming the chopper as a blanket of rain crashed against him.  Flying in any kind of rain could be tricky, and often downright dangerous to even some of the most skilled pilots.  Being trapped suddenly in a rainstorm hell bent on dousing the lands in the water it most desperately craved, was a risk Tseng would have preferred to avoid.  Despite his confidence, he was more cautious than not.

The wind slammed against him throwing off the propellers above and flexing them strangely sending him spiraling briefly out of control.  Quick thinking sent him back on course, but left him searching in the blinding storm for somewhere safe to set down.  With the monsoon already upon him, he needed to find somewhere that looked stable enough not to break away or outright flood.

Claps of lightning caused tiny hairs to lift across his form, prickling against his neck and on the tops of his hands.  A flash directly in front of him was near deafening despite the headphones he wore.  It wasn’t so much the sound, however, as the sharp light that assaulted his vision.  As the spots began to clear, his instruments started to malfunction making it difficult to ascertain which direction was up, and which was down.

“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday—” Tseng called over the radio, “ShinRa ATC, this is–” Another flash forced the man to wince back, using the direction it had gone in the brief time he saw it, to figure out which direction the ground was.  It was his best shot given the instrument malfunction.

Keep reading

The quiet coo from the chocobo cuddled close to her sleeping form is the first thing to rouse her from her slumber, but the will to get up is quickly stamped out by the gentle patter of raindrops against the exterior of her tent.  Black feathers bristle against her, and a beak gently bumps up alongside her head as the bird settles back into place.  “Is okay, Rosie,” the Plumewarden mumbles sleepily as she blindly reaches up to pet the the bird on her first point of contact -- just so happens to be the back of his neck.  Beady black eyes close again as the chocobo attempts to go back to sleep, but even then, there’s that quiet tremor to him.  An indicator of something close.  Something that he doesn’t like.  Even in her state of half-sleep, Peony knows that.

It all makes sense a couple of seconds later, when the patter turns a dull roar.  And a few seconds after that, a cacophony.

Training and honed instinct taught her previously that settling down at a reasonably high level is the smartest way to go.  Down low, there’s predators.  Or more dangerous still, the potentiality of flash floods.  With the gentle slope the tent rests on, she won’t wake up in a puddle of water, either.  Trees and small cliffs above will protect her from the lightning and wind.  They’re both as safe as they’re going to be in this spot, and the storm could last all day, she reasons.

So it doesn’t matter if I sleep in-- Peony’s mind starts to supply itself, before it’s interrupted by a crash.  An unnatural crash, metal against stone, screeching and shrieking rending the air and sending both woman and bird into a mad scramble to get outside.  An accidental shove with a large foot briefly mushes Peony’s shoulder and face against the pliant material of the tent as she once again fumbles with her hand for the zipper that dutifully keeps the elements out.  With the tent flap out of the way, physics and overgrown bird cause her to tumble out into the storm; tumble turning into a clumsy crawl as she makes her way to the edge of her perch to see what in the hell could make such a racket.

A helicopter.  A helicopter?  People are definitely inside.  Fully awake now, Peony starts to move with a purpose, reaching out for her spear and checking her waist to make sure her securing rope is still in place.  Another failsafe.  This one learned less out of training and instinct, more out of experience.  Stupid, stupid experience.  Still useful now, though.

Lightning cracks above, and Rosie snaps his head to look up at the lightning arcing across the sky in a brief panic before turning back to the Plumewarden -- aaaand she’s already moving, the rope coil is unraveling the further away she climbs and hops towards the wreckage and the quickly forming rapids that flow around it.  The same large feet that accidentally pushed Peony out a moment before settles on the final inches of rope, and the chocobo’s feathers pin themselves back against his skull.

It doesn’t take long at all for bare feet to press against the surface of painted metal, and less time still for her fingers grab against the windowsill.  Most of its accompanying window is gone, but that could prove to be something of an advantage if anyone is still alive in there.  “Hello?”  Her voice rings out, barely heard over the rush of water all around and she does her best to adjust herself so she doesn’t slip into the flood.