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Post by Harpsdesire on Jun 28, 2011 16:01:09 GMT -5
 A day of relaxation at her Jack’s suggestion, including an unreasonably long and unusually thorough bath, had made a marked improvement in Alicia’s outlook as well as her appearance. Her coat was snowy again, and her mane, now shown to great advantage by a gracefully lengthened neck and golden wings, now gleamed with something almost akin to the burnished shine she coveted in does’ hair. Does who she would soon join as an equal. The thought almost made her smile despite the solemn nature of her errand. She was to go out to the back of garden as Aleah had asked, saying her last goodbyes to the warren’s former ruling pair. She felt only a little sad that they were gone: it was regrettable that good (or good-enough) rabbits had died, but she had not been close to either Ashta or the Czar, her superiors. As the memorials that marked the pair’s final rest came into view, she felt no urge to weep, but something else entirely. A cold chill crept up her spine between the metal wings and settled, prickling unpleasantly, at the base of her spine. A wide-eyed glance around reveled no obvious reason for her sudden dread, and she shook herself, making the gold at her back clink softly. Alicia set her mouth in a firm line and resolved to ignore the sense of foreboding. This sudden squeamishness about graves—ridiculous! It must be a side effect of her traumatic experience. ”Oh, grow a backbone.” The rabbit told herself firmly under her breath. ”It’s not as if old Vikenti is going to rise from the earth and go after your brains.” Her childish fear, she thought, was ridiculous and quite unbecoming of one who would soon be a doe. Yes, think about that and not the ice-water dread in her veins. Think about that. With a sigh, the increasingly nervous leveret pressed forward towards the Czar’s final resting place. He was dead and buried. What did she have to worry about, really? ((MWAHAHAHA.)) |
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Post by Nako on Aug 1, 2011 14:28:04 GMT -5
Layla was spending one of the rare days outdoors, not tending the gardens but rather organizing the tools in the shed. It would be a rare day that a leveret was allowed to do more than move earth from one point to another, or some other menial task. It was always Aleah that tended to the delicate roses that grew within this sacred area. Due to his injuries though, the gardens now looked slightly untended, with the creeping vines spilling over into the walkways. Perhaps when they went into enough disarray, he'd finally give in and let Layla do some trimming… or that was what she hoped, anyways.
A voice caught her attention, ears quirking toward the voice as she hopped closer. Alicia? What was she doing out here? Not working, that was for sure! But…. Layla wouldn't snitch. Not unless she did it all the time. Every leveret could be relaxing during the day every now and again.
"Who are you talking to?"
((Aleah will come in later after all hell breaks loose XD))
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Post by Harpsdesire on Aug 9, 2011 15:33:00 GMT -5
"Layla." Alicia's voice came out a little strangled, her usual smooth tones ragged-edged with nerves. She wasn't thrilled about being caught in a compromising state of panic muttering to herself, but seeing another leveret was at least a minor relief from her serious case of the heebie-jeebies. "I was just," She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry from fear, "Just going to pay my respects to the Czar."
She hadn't properly answered the question Layla asked, but the cold chills down her spine were rather a distraction, and Alicia was seriously considering running right back into the warren without even a cursory farewell to her former Jack. She could come back later, perhaps, when the feeling of wrong had passed.
Uncomfortable, she shifted her weight from one paw to another. "I've never been to a proper grave before, and I suppose I find it a little unsettling." That was an understatement, certainly, for she was getting the same sense of horror from this that she had when she had uncovered the rotting corpses of the does in that strange abandoned warren...
Despite her best efforts, Alicia found herself trembling.
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Post by Nako on Aug 9, 2011 21:55:23 GMT -5
Layla tried to seem sympathetic, but something about the other leveret's demeanor was unsettling. Layla's ears wavered on top of her head, making her insecurity known. "Well, I suppose I can understand that. I don't think I've ever seen a grave, either. I don't think it's a common practice."
She made a motion to move forward, but stopped dead. The earth that had still not even settled from the burial was now moving, roiling up like a volcanic eruption. Layla's jaw dropped, but no noise came out, at least.. not until the face of the dead Doe broke from the soil.
Screaming.. screaming was all that was in the air. Layla's voice cracked and blood vessels burst in her eyes as she scrabbled backwards away from the scene. The Jack finally burst from the soil but they weren't alive. Their sightless yes stared onward and their fresh bodies dragged lifelessly toward the Highland leveret. No words were said, the leveret turning tail and running as if for her life back into the warren.
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Post by Harpsdesire on Aug 9, 2011 23:22:19 GMT -5
Alicia was about to reply, but the sudden fear in Layla's eyes mirrored the crescendo of terror in her heart, and she turned in time to see a pair of corpses trailing useless limbs and coming right for her. She wasn't sure if the screams in her ears were her own or Layla's, but she froze for a second in wild-eyed horror before instinct kicked in and she bolted, running about the gardens in a zig-zagging frenzy of mindless terror.
The bodies seemed fully intent on affixing themselves to her, or perhaps reaching out to make her one of them, and she was almost immediately panting desperately in her attempts to keep ahead of them. It was chance as much as plan that finally led her to dash back towards the safety of her warren.
It seemed the door was miles away, although it took her but a moment's easy walk on her way out to the grave site. Alicia gagged as much from the ragged screams that tore from her throat as the smell of death that was already beginning to waft from the recently deceased rabbits, and put on a further burst of speed as she neared the warren entrance. A pair of gleaming golden wings beat furiously, adding to her propulsion, if not actually lifting her from the ground.
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Post by Nako on Aug 10, 2011 13:49:11 GMT -5
Aleah had been napping when he heard the intensely loud rabbit scream trailing through the warren. His first reaction was rage, at being woken. It had taken a healthy dose of painkillers to knock him out in the first place, that and with the extreme fatigue of his body, he'd actually been able to sleep. Well, all that was all taken to hell. Oh.. here comes the second reaction. Pain. He jolted up from his seat, his broken collarbone immediately protesting.
Layla all but slammed Aleah's door open. "The dead! Alicia has risen them from the grave! Oh by the White Rabbit it's that a-cursed warren all over again!"
In other circumstances, the Jack would have been furious by the intrusion. But this was… horrific. If what the leveret said was true, then he'd have been more furious if she'd knocked as if to ask him if he wanted tea.
Despite his pain, Aleah made his way to the back door, pushing it open. He didn't expect a practically flying leveret to bum rush him. The leveret's body clipped his knee, causing the leg to buckle and nearly fall. The sight of two lifeless dead bodies rushing his way spurred him to slam the door.
Something in him churned sickly when he heard their bodies slam into the door, the heavy wooden barrier creaking with their weight as they desperately tried to come nearer to what was drawing them. His parents…. pulled from their graves.
"What…. sort of damned sorcery is this?" He growled, eyes squinting shut as he leaned heavily against the wall. His shoulder was on fire, and he didn't want to deal with this shit, emotionally or physically. Especially rebury the bodies with a broken clavicle. "ALICIA. Don't you dare think of running off… come here, and explain what you have done." It was easy to assume it was Alicia with his Cook's screaming her accusations, but even as he screamed at her for the leveret she was, it was a disciplinary voice, pained, but not pure rage like could be expected. Yes, he was desperately trying to stay objective, and not start shish-kabobing leverets left and right.
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Post by Harpsdesire on Aug 10, 2011 14:28:09 GMT -5
If anything could have made this situation more traumatic, it was her Jack's anger, which was precisely what Alicia rushed into when she reached the warren. She hardly noticed the contact she made with his leg in her headlong rush, and might well have passed him entirely as she fled all the way to her little leveret bed if he hadn't bellowed her name.
She skidded to a stop in an almost comical way, losing her footing and landing hard on her tail with a thump and a whimper. She cringed as if she expected the corpses to be on her in an instant, and when there was no further sound of dragging or attack of any kind, she slowly turned. The bodies had been stopped by the door, and instead she faced the only-slightly-less-terrifying prospect of a furious Jack.
She crept back toward him, tears of fright clinging in her fur and posture submissive, almost groveling. "I-- I didn't do anything!" Yet something had happened. It was a weak excuse. "That is, I didn't mean to do... I would never..." That sounded even worse, and she tried to stop herself trembling and present herself with at least a tiny bit of pride-- she was mostly unsuccessful. "M-my Lord, leverets don't have magic... I don't know why they... they came after me..."
There was a wobble in her voice, but Alicia scrubbed the tears away with a paw and mostly composed herself. "I was just going to s-say goodbye, and all of a sudden they started chasing me." If not for the bodies even now plastered against the door, it would sound like an impossible tale. She whimpered, her ears sagging.
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Post by Nako on Aug 10, 2011 15:10:25 GMT -5
The prostrating of the little Highland leveret was enough to soothe his mangled nerves at least by a small margin. He righted himself more fully as he regained some of his composure. "Don't speak the obvious to me, I know that leverets don't naturally have magic. But there have been a lot of unnatural things to happen over the past week." His tone was not quite accusatory so much as it was disbelieving.
His gaze now turned to Layla. "You will go out and see if the bodies chase you; to rule out the possibility that these corpses are not after merely what is closest to them."
Layla's horror was unmistakable. "But Sir, I-"
"Trust me, Cooky, when I say the alternative is far worse than staring death in the face."
The leveret's mouth snapped shut and she quickly backed away. "I.. am sorry, Sir. I'll take the front door."
Well, at least Layla had made a decent decision on how to go about it; Aleah had not been very keen on opening the door again.
A few moments passed in awkward silence as they awaited word from Layla. Finally there was a shout from behind the door. "They are not chasing me at all. They look stuck to the door like they are drawn to it!"
Aleah frowned, deeply disturbed by this finding. "You will stay out there to watch them. If this…. spell or whatever it is will wear off, they are to be put back into their graves. Use whatever leverets you need for the job. And you…" He dropped a glance toward Alicia. Even as they waited, little specks of dust and flecks of bone from dead creatures in the earth had slowly been pulling up from the ground, swirling around the leveret's feet.
"This… is a disturbing situation, Alicia. Tell me, do you remember anything that had happened to you during the last week that you think could have altered you magically in some way? Obviously something has changed your appearance. Perhaps you ran into something more.. sinister." Most of his rage was gone now; he wanted answers, but that look he gave her… it was disappointment. Great disappointment.
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Post by Harpsdesire on Aug 10, 2011 15:35:00 GMT -5
"And you..."
The tone of his voice and the look he gave her made Alicia want to drop through the floor. She fantasized for a moment of becoming nothing but the ancient dust that wafted around her ankles. She crouched even further in her shame, making her petite form look smaller still.
"I saw... many strange and horrible things, sir. Dead does... a leveret the gave birth to a card... there was... a Jack mad with the Need, and some of the others, leverets, found magical things only a Jack should own... There were cards, too, and one was made all of ink... I saw the one who killed the Selkies. A Card." She gulped, upset by the memories and ashamed to be speaking such craziness in front of Aleah. She recalled the feeling of dread she had experienced when she saw the mangled bodies of the mad Jack's murdered does, very like the feeling that had come over her in the garden. Could it have been... a curse? "I- I opened a door, hoping to find a way out to safety when I was in the mad Jack's warren, and I felt like cold spiderwebs fell all over me, and I was very afraid... I thought it was just that the sight of.. of the does... was so horrible." She shivered miserably at the memory, "Maybe it was a kind of magic."
His look of disappointment cut her to the bone, and silent tears began to track down her fur again, although she was too proud to sob aloud. He was going to trade her, probably to lesser Jack for a cheap price just to be rid of her, and she would never recover from the shame... and worse still, she would never have the heart to make the Change with the memory of him looking at her that way stabbing into her mind...
"I'm sorry Aleah... Sir..."
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Post by Nako on Aug 27, 2011 21:48:09 GMT -5
Aleah stared as the leveret weaved her terrible tale. A part of him was enraged that she forgot to mention this. Despite his compulsion to backhand the leveret then and there, he steeled himself, his haggard face forming a thin-lipped scowl. He hadn't seen her there, at the Jack's warren. But then again he had gotten there much later. What horrible magic it all was. And it seemed she had become a victim of it. A terrible, cursed victim. His little Lowlander cook had found magic too. A disturbing trait but… nothing as disturbing as this. He closed his eyes. Grief… that was almost the expression. What a terrible predicament he was in. The very leveret he hoped to woo and have her become his Doe, and here she was with this affliction
He'd have a lot of thinking to do, and his sentimental heart weighed heavy enough that it would be a particularly difficult decision indeed.
"I don't want your apologies." He muttered, letting out a long sigh. "You will stand here until they stop. If they stop. Then, you and the Cook will rebury then and after that I do not wish to see you in that garden ever again."
Damn it. It even hurt his heart to say it. To see those tears streaming down her cheeks. He grimaced, stumbling away from her. "I… need. To rest…"
He made it only halfway down the hall before he couldn't control his body any longer. He crumpled, vomiting on the wall before losing consciousness.
((LOL omg so much freaking drama. We can either close it and assume that he was helped and is okay, or continue this thread into the whole 'her becoming a Doe' and whatnot with a time skip after this. Either way, he won't wake up for several hours. It has been a long day for him.))
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