A Search For Silence [Screenshot Heavy]

[TeaLulu 1783]

Noise.

 

 

Here it was everywhere.

 

Every treetop, every river, every bush and path of grass.

 

She could not know where they were, nor how they’d gotten there. The only thing to her that indicated any difference in the blur of existence was the noise.

 

 

She’d stumbled down the road from the Temple in a stupor, though awake enough to know better than to turn right at the fork. Klik-klik-klak-klik was the noise from her left, causing that ear to twitch uncomfortably. Crabs, leviathans of the beach, tottering to and fro, burying themselves in sand, speaking to one another in their own manner.

 

 

She did not stop to try and decipher their tongue, though her steps did not hasten. The path was wrought with pine trees, and in them lived many things. Chirping, happy, belligerent winged things. Tkk-tkk-tkk, of beak hitting wood. Her lips parted, a silent sigh escaping them as for once her pace quickened at the frigid air rolling down from the mountain pass.

 

 

This was someplace different. Someplace new.

 

 

Someplace noisy.

 

 

There was a loud rabble from her left, of cups against wood, and laughter and chatter. She paused, turning her head to stare. An inn, a tree, a bar inside. There was a pounding, a series of sharp, sudden pains running from the back of her head to the front, and instinctively she closed her eyes, lifting her hand to her forehead. Something familiar. Something sad. Something noisy, noisy, noisy.

 

 

Someone may have stopped to help her. If they had, she ignored them and continued on.

 

 

Her path took her past the boisterous city of Annil’sul, of the Mali; Chatting and clattering, noise noise noise. The sound of people living.

 

 

She wandered into the woods of Fiandria, dark and peaceful...but not silent. For within lived countless beings, elks and beavers, spiders and sparrows. Even as night fell, all of them made noise.

 

 

Noisy, noisy noisy things.

 

 

She trudged on.

 

 

Even in the stillness, even in the quiet, every place was alive.

 

 

The woods...

 

 

the hills...

 

 

...even the swamps.

 

 

No silence, only noise, noise noise.

 

 

What made this place different?

 

 

As she walked, she began to think, for lack of anything better to do.

 

 

What had changed?

 

 

They were someplace new, new, new…

 

 

Every place before was but a blur.

 

 

Wandering absentmindedly, unresponsively through.

 

 

There was noise then, but it was bearable. Here, something begged her attention. Demanded her consciousness.

 

 

What was the difference?

 

 

Here was…

 

 

Alive.

 

 

Everything was alive.

 

 

Everything thrived.

 

 

Every place, and every little thing.

 

 

A breath, a heartbeat...

 

 

Save…

 

...For one.

 

 

One place of silence, devoid of noise.

 

 

Yet louder than any other before did it turn her away, a pain behind her eyes and a ringing in her ears. This was not a place for rest, no.

 

Not even for those to whom death was rest.

[Heff 2460]

((Great read!))

Fumble rolls around in his bed as the sounds of crickets chirping click outside.

[TeaLulu 1783]

The air was stale and still, and the composition of it cause for the sore, dry feeling in the back of her throat.

 

 

Mushrooms and fungi grew in abundance here, reveling in the damp, dark conditions of the cave. Their spores were in the air and likely the cause for the Mali’ker’s despair. It was Exhaustion and Lethargy which birthed her brief slumber, causing her to collapse to the damp, cool floor. She had no knowledge of how long it had been since then when she awoke; No clock nor sun to see. Merely the dry, harsh patch on the back of her throat, a parch feeling that did not pass no matter how often she smacked her lips, swallowing nothing but saliva as she ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth repetitively, uselessly.

 

She had opened her eyes some time ago and they took little to adjust to the dark. It took her longer still to finally force herself up, sitting in place on her knees, her legs folded underneath themselves. The cavern was dark, damp, and comparatively silent.

 

There were living things here, as all else save one, but they were quiet things, mostly. Bats and rats and fungi, the latter of which thrived off not life, but death. Birthed from rot and nurtured by it, and while the dampness of the cave may have explained away as much, their size and the pervading stench that wafted through the cavern implied a mother other than simple moisture.

 

 

She sat idle there, still. As nothing else was quiet, nor was she; Her breath was raspy, itchy, and her heart beat seemed loud in that still cave. For naught to do she did not move and what life in the cave took no notice of her; A rat scampered up onto her lap, thinking her part of the scenery. It sat a while and only moved when her chin sluggishly dipped to allow her sight of it. It let out a squeak, one which forced shut her lavender eyes in a grimace, before it scampered away.

 

It was gone from her sight by the time her eyelids parted, but so too was it from her mind and memory. Only the pain resided in her thoughts, no longer the cause for it.

 

When it was gone and only the pain remained, she remained still. Absentminded and idle, she stared. There was no silence here, but close approximation. There was no purpose here, but sitting and waiting for one seemed useless.

 

 

Distraction, distraction, distraction.

 

One came in the form of a pang of pain in her stomach, a low rumbling noise. Her stomach asked her head when last she’d ate, and her head asked of her stomach the same query. Both came up blank. But then so many queries these days did. Nearly all of them, in fact.

 

Questions, questions...answers? None. Her hunger was not sated but distracted, quieted for a moment as she silently listed her questions.

 

Where was she? How had she gotten there? What was this pain, ever present, in her head? What was her name? What couldn’t she recall? What was she forgetting?

 

Most pressing of all, what was that noise, noise, noise?

 

Her ears twitched and her face contorted into a grimace, crinkled nose and shut tight eyes.

thmp-thmp-thmp.

 

The noise echoed against the cavern walls, killing what silence there was.

[Glyc 234]

Moved to the Great Library. It shall be sorted into appropriate category shortly.