'nother Changeling
May. 4th, 2005 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thehappyfangirlThis is the character history for Cascara Blythe, the only Sluagh I ever enjoyed playing :)
Enjoy!
Description:
Her hair shines with blue highlights, falling to the middle of her back in an ebon sheen. Her dress clings to her gaunt, pale form, turning her arms to almost stick figure caricatures ending in pallid, long fingered hands. Icy blue eyes lined with kohl peer eerily from their sunken sockets, seeming almost white against her ashen skin. She has a drifting, detached demeanor, her distorted gaze seeming to look into things instead of at them. In her Fae Mien, she grows even more gaunt and sickly, her lips puckering in and her eyes seeming even more bleached. Her hair is shot through with streaks of silver, which gives her the air of someone beyond her teenage years. She reeks of formaldehyde and brimstone, with hints of rose and rot and unknown spices. Chimerical spiders skitter unnoticed to and from her hair and sleeves.
History:
In almost all respects, Carrie Benson seemed an ordinary child, if a bit preoccupied. She would often play alone with dolls or small toy animals, making up stories in her mind and acting them out with her toy players. However, there would come a time where she would stop her games and tilt her head for a moment, as if listening to something. What she would say after that earned her the eerie reputation among her family.
At five years old she told her Aunt Clara, "It's such a shame about Bob, really. He didn't even look sick." Mama scolded her for that, it's not nice to say things like that, Carrie, now apologize to your Aunt Clara. Three days later Uncle Bob (Clara's husband) dropped dead of a heart attack.
Nobody wanted to go near Carrie at the viewing.
Carrie didn't know why she said the things she did. The words just came, like the stories she made up with her toys. All the same, it made people listen to her, and the one thing Carrie longed for was attention. Mama and Daddy worked for such long hours, and the sitters didn't read her stories or play with her at all. So, she would make the sitters go away. Then Mama and Daddy would stay home and play with her.
Even if the words didn't come, it was easy enough to sit and stare at them. When they asked her what she was looking at, she just smiled and started humming. She could tell when they wouldn't call again when they started sending her to her room far earlier than her bedtime. Sometimes she would quietly pick up the phone when they called their friends. She smiled when she heard the fear in their voices as they talked about her, but the next week she'd have a new sitter instead of her parents staying home.
Sometimes the words did come. She'd told one sitter, in her sweet, child's voice, "It will be days before they find you, you know. I hope you wear warm clothes." This one didn't even stay after that, and her parents came home to an empty house and one smug six year old, sleeping on the couch. The sitters never came back again, though she didn't know why.
When she was old enough to go to school, things did not improve. The children called her "Spooky", making fun of her near-white eyes and her frail appearance. Her mother called her a baby when she told her about them, and Daddy was too busy to care. The teacher broke it up when she could, but Carrie never got a turn at the swings or the slide at recess. She did well enough in her studies, though, and brought home good report cards each term.
She started spending her recess time in the library, or more specifically, the stone lion outside the library. She would sit astride his back and read him stories that she brought out from inside. She named him Aslan, after a powerful yet gentle lion from one of the books she read, and she read to him of kings and queens and evil courtiers and damsels in distress after school until the street lights would come on. Not that Mom and Dad noticed her coming home late, save for when they could blame each other for it.
She was in the fourth grade when the words came to her next. In English class, Mr. Briehl was writing a poem on the blackboard.
"The men in blue come for the candyman, but all they will see is red," She blurted.
The teacher turned and gave her a sharp look. "Do you want to go to the office, Miss Benson?"
Her eyes widened. "No! But--" She wanted to tell him that the words just came out, but he cut her off with a wave of his hand.
"Then sit quietly and--"
The shot was loud in the hallway outside, and the screams started even as the teacher ran for the door. The coppery scent of blood reached them the second the door was open, and the teacher slammed the door shut again as the students crowded forward to look.
"Get back to your seats! Get..." His gaze found hers and held it. One hand rose to point at her, and the students in her class recoiled from his scream, then from her as he collapsed. She started to cry, somehow knowing that she had something to do with the screams.
She found out what happened in the hallway, it was in the paper. A police investigation finally had enough evidence to arrest Thomas Reilly, the thirty-two year old janitor at Benedict Arnold Elementary School. A child had at last come forward and said that Reilly had lured her with a candy bar into his closet and molested her, threatening to kill her if she told anyone. When the police hailed him in the hallway, he turned and ran around the corner before pulling out a pistol and turning it on himself.
Carrie was kept home from school the next day, and when the school re-opened for classes, she was told not to come back. No more Mr. Briehl, no more Aslan, and, as she saw the "FOR SALE" sign in front of the house, no more home. In her child's mind, she knew that it was her words that was the cause of all this. If she didn't speak, the words would find another mouth to say them.
So she stopped talking.
No, the doctors said, there was nothing physically wrong with her. No, the counselor said, she shouldn't be forced to talk. She's had quite a trauma, seeing that suicide. She'll be all right in time, you'll see. Carrie listened, and knew they were wrong. Her words had killed that man, and she wouldn't give them a chance to kill anyone else.
The new school was informed of her silence, and the teachers were accommodating, given the circumstances. Her peers, however, were slightly less than accommodating, tormenting her ceaselessly when they caught her in the hallway, pinching and poking at her to startle any sound from her. Through middle school she simply endured, finding comfort as she did in her childhood, from stone.
This time it was a gargoyle perched atop a township building. He didn't mind her silence; he lived in silence himself, watching everyone from his lonely guardhouse. She clung to his friendship, and even gave him a name during her frequent visits to the building. Tesque, she called him, for Grotesque. Any time things got bad for her at school, she simply pictured Tesque standing next to her, his cold clawed hand on her shoulder, and she was able to endure. Soon she didn't even have to imagine him, as she would see him through the day, always hidden, watching and grinning at her with his patient stone grin. Sometimes she would sneak out and visit him on the rooftop, crouched with him on the stone sill as they watched the people below.
She was fifteen, and in junior high when it all came crashing down. She was going to her locker after school, when an arm snaked out from an empty classroom and jerked her inside. She whipped around as the door slammed and saw Mike Middleton, one of her usual tormentors. He smiled at her, and she backed away from the look in his eye.
"You know, I was just thinking," he said, walking towards her slowly, "For three years nobody's been able to make you talk, right?" His hand strayed to his belt and he loosened it. "Then you won't say anything about we're gonna do."
She tried to run, but he caught her wrist and shoved her face first against the wall, knocking the breath from her lungs. He grappled with her skirt, jerking it up, his hand sliding between her legs and clutching at her thigh. He laughed at her silent struggles. "Hey, maybe I'll make you scream, huh?" Her mind screamed even then as he groped clumsily at her, and suddenly she felt it...the words rushing into her, through her.
"You'll piss yourself when you find her hanging there, twisting above the stairs. You thought she was getting better, when really she'd finally decided to do it."
He stilled against her at the sound of her voice, his hand frozen in the act of violation. She felt a chill flood her, and clapped her now-freed hands over her mouth as she pushed him back from her. She turned and saw him, as pale as she felt, his mouth gaping.
"What did you say...?" He gabbled at her. "What--how could you--" With an inarticulate cry, he fled, the pounding of his sneakered feet fading to the slam of an outside door.
She started to shake, then, and collapsed to the floor, sobbing hoarsely. She had lost herself to the words, and another would die from it, she knew it. She wrapped her arms around her knees and cried in helpless rage. She'd tried so hard...
Suddenly there was a shadow behind her, and she felt cool stone arms encircle her with wordless comfort. She leaned back against the granite embrace of Tesque and whispered to him, "What am I going to do?"
"Learn, child. You will learn."
Even as she looked up at the voice, saw the gaunt, solemn form of the teacher above her, she felt no fear. Tesque held her as she shook with the memories that flooded her, burning in her belly and clawing at her throat. As she reeled, the teacher's form shriveled, his eyes sinking into his skull as she felt her own form do the same. When she spoke next, her voice was a harsh, hoarse whisper, but her mind was clear.
"Sluagh."
And so her teaching began. When the next day's paper had Mrs. Middleton's suicide on the front page, she knew in her now-shared soul that it wasn't she that had killed her, it was the way of D'an, and in time she could learn to occasionally bend it to her will. Such a power came easy to her Kith, and was the reason that so many Sluagh were sought out as Seers. Not without price, however, for with the secrets she learned, her silence was enforced by the Dream, allowing her only to speak in a whisper.
Tesque had left his perch on the township building, and became her guardian and friend, and his silence continued to give her comfort. He didn't run when the words came, now nobody did. In fact, everyone paid attention when she spoke, for from her lips came the voice of Fate. Her Saining revealed a name, Cascara, and with it she was adopted both into Kithain society and the Court of the Waning Moon.
In her mortal guise, she works at a library, where silence is golden and nobody finds hers anything unusual. Tesque accompanies her everywhere, a silent stalwart companion.
Enjoy!
Description:
Her hair shines with blue highlights, falling to the middle of her back in an ebon sheen. Her dress clings to her gaunt, pale form, turning her arms to almost stick figure caricatures ending in pallid, long fingered hands. Icy blue eyes lined with kohl peer eerily from their sunken sockets, seeming almost white against her ashen skin. She has a drifting, detached demeanor, her distorted gaze seeming to look into things instead of at them. In her Fae Mien, she grows even more gaunt and sickly, her lips puckering in and her eyes seeming even more bleached. Her hair is shot through with streaks of silver, which gives her the air of someone beyond her teenage years. She reeks of formaldehyde and brimstone, with hints of rose and rot and unknown spices. Chimerical spiders skitter unnoticed to and from her hair and sleeves.
History:
In almost all respects, Carrie Benson seemed an ordinary child, if a bit preoccupied. She would often play alone with dolls or small toy animals, making up stories in her mind and acting them out with her toy players. However, there would come a time where she would stop her games and tilt her head for a moment, as if listening to something. What she would say after that earned her the eerie reputation among her family.
At five years old she told her Aunt Clara, "It's such a shame about Bob, really. He didn't even look sick." Mama scolded her for that, it's not nice to say things like that, Carrie, now apologize to your Aunt Clara. Three days later Uncle Bob (Clara's husband) dropped dead of a heart attack.
Nobody wanted to go near Carrie at the viewing.
Carrie didn't know why she said the things she did. The words just came, like the stories she made up with her toys. All the same, it made people listen to her, and the one thing Carrie longed for was attention. Mama and Daddy worked for such long hours, and the sitters didn't read her stories or play with her at all. So, she would make the sitters go away. Then Mama and Daddy would stay home and play with her.
Even if the words didn't come, it was easy enough to sit and stare at them. When they asked her what she was looking at, she just smiled and started humming. She could tell when they wouldn't call again when they started sending her to her room far earlier than her bedtime. Sometimes she would quietly pick up the phone when they called their friends. She smiled when she heard the fear in their voices as they talked about her, but the next week she'd have a new sitter instead of her parents staying home.
Sometimes the words did come. She'd told one sitter, in her sweet, child's voice, "It will be days before they find you, you know. I hope you wear warm clothes." This one didn't even stay after that, and her parents came home to an empty house and one smug six year old, sleeping on the couch. The sitters never came back again, though she didn't know why.
When she was old enough to go to school, things did not improve. The children called her "Spooky", making fun of her near-white eyes and her frail appearance. Her mother called her a baby when she told her about them, and Daddy was too busy to care. The teacher broke it up when she could, but Carrie never got a turn at the swings or the slide at recess. She did well enough in her studies, though, and brought home good report cards each term.
She started spending her recess time in the library, or more specifically, the stone lion outside the library. She would sit astride his back and read him stories that she brought out from inside. She named him Aslan, after a powerful yet gentle lion from one of the books she read, and she read to him of kings and queens and evil courtiers and damsels in distress after school until the street lights would come on. Not that Mom and Dad noticed her coming home late, save for when they could blame each other for it.
She was in the fourth grade when the words came to her next. In English class, Mr. Briehl was writing a poem on the blackboard.
"The men in blue come for the candyman, but all they will see is red," She blurted.
The teacher turned and gave her a sharp look. "Do you want to go to the office, Miss Benson?"
Her eyes widened. "No! But--" She wanted to tell him that the words just came out, but he cut her off with a wave of his hand.
"Then sit quietly and--"
The shot was loud in the hallway outside, and the screams started even as the teacher ran for the door. The coppery scent of blood reached them the second the door was open, and the teacher slammed the door shut again as the students crowded forward to look.
"Get back to your seats! Get..." His gaze found hers and held it. One hand rose to point at her, and the students in her class recoiled from his scream, then from her as he collapsed. She started to cry, somehow knowing that she had something to do with the screams.
She found out what happened in the hallway, it was in the paper. A police investigation finally had enough evidence to arrest Thomas Reilly, the thirty-two year old janitor at Benedict Arnold Elementary School. A child had at last come forward and said that Reilly had lured her with a candy bar into his closet and molested her, threatening to kill her if she told anyone. When the police hailed him in the hallway, he turned and ran around the corner before pulling out a pistol and turning it on himself.
Carrie was kept home from school the next day, and when the school re-opened for classes, she was told not to come back. No more Mr. Briehl, no more Aslan, and, as she saw the "FOR SALE" sign in front of the house, no more home. In her child's mind, she knew that it was her words that was the cause of all this. If she didn't speak, the words would find another mouth to say them.
So she stopped talking.
No, the doctors said, there was nothing physically wrong with her. No, the counselor said, she shouldn't be forced to talk. She's had quite a trauma, seeing that suicide. She'll be all right in time, you'll see. Carrie listened, and knew they were wrong. Her words had killed that man, and she wouldn't give them a chance to kill anyone else.
The new school was informed of her silence, and the teachers were accommodating, given the circumstances. Her peers, however, were slightly less than accommodating, tormenting her ceaselessly when they caught her in the hallway, pinching and poking at her to startle any sound from her. Through middle school she simply endured, finding comfort as she did in her childhood, from stone.
This time it was a gargoyle perched atop a township building. He didn't mind her silence; he lived in silence himself, watching everyone from his lonely guardhouse. She clung to his friendship, and even gave him a name during her frequent visits to the building. Tesque, she called him, for Grotesque. Any time things got bad for her at school, she simply pictured Tesque standing next to her, his cold clawed hand on her shoulder, and she was able to endure. Soon she didn't even have to imagine him, as she would see him through the day, always hidden, watching and grinning at her with his patient stone grin. Sometimes she would sneak out and visit him on the rooftop, crouched with him on the stone sill as they watched the people below.
She was fifteen, and in junior high when it all came crashing down. She was going to her locker after school, when an arm snaked out from an empty classroom and jerked her inside. She whipped around as the door slammed and saw Mike Middleton, one of her usual tormentors. He smiled at her, and she backed away from the look in his eye.
"You know, I was just thinking," he said, walking towards her slowly, "For three years nobody's been able to make you talk, right?" His hand strayed to his belt and he loosened it. "Then you won't say anything about we're gonna do."
She tried to run, but he caught her wrist and shoved her face first against the wall, knocking the breath from her lungs. He grappled with her skirt, jerking it up, his hand sliding between her legs and clutching at her thigh. He laughed at her silent struggles. "Hey, maybe I'll make you scream, huh?" Her mind screamed even then as he groped clumsily at her, and suddenly she felt it...the words rushing into her, through her.
"You'll piss yourself when you find her hanging there, twisting above the stairs. You thought she was getting better, when really she'd finally decided to do it."
He stilled against her at the sound of her voice, his hand frozen in the act of violation. She felt a chill flood her, and clapped her now-freed hands over her mouth as she pushed him back from her. She turned and saw him, as pale as she felt, his mouth gaping.
"What did you say...?" He gabbled at her. "What--how could you--" With an inarticulate cry, he fled, the pounding of his sneakered feet fading to the slam of an outside door.
She started to shake, then, and collapsed to the floor, sobbing hoarsely. She had lost herself to the words, and another would die from it, she knew it. She wrapped her arms around her knees and cried in helpless rage. She'd tried so hard...
Suddenly there was a shadow behind her, and she felt cool stone arms encircle her with wordless comfort. She leaned back against the granite embrace of Tesque and whispered to him, "What am I going to do?"
"Learn, child. You will learn."
Even as she looked up at the voice, saw the gaunt, solemn form of the teacher above her, she felt no fear. Tesque held her as she shook with the memories that flooded her, burning in her belly and clawing at her throat. As she reeled, the teacher's form shriveled, his eyes sinking into his skull as she felt her own form do the same. When she spoke next, her voice was a harsh, hoarse whisper, but her mind was clear.
"Sluagh."
And so her teaching began. When the next day's paper had Mrs. Middleton's suicide on the front page, she knew in her now-shared soul that it wasn't she that had killed her, it was the way of D'an, and in time she could learn to occasionally bend it to her will. Such a power came easy to her Kith, and was the reason that so many Sluagh were sought out as Seers. Not without price, however, for with the secrets she learned, her silence was enforced by the Dream, allowing her only to speak in a whisper.
Tesque had left his perch on the township building, and became her guardian and friend, and his silence continued to give her comfort. He didn't run when the words came, now nobody did. In fact, everyone paid attention when she spoke, for from her lips came the voice of Fate. Her Saining revealed a name, Cascara, and with it she was adopted both into Kithain society and the Court of the Waning Moon.
In her mortal guise, she works at a library, where silence is golden and nobody finds hers anything unusual. Tesque accompanies her everywhere, a silent stalwart companion.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-05 06:02 pm (UTC)She put me in mind of Peter Straub's rather enigmatic strange ladies.
And I always got the mental image of dingy sheer attic curtains stirring slightly, even though there was no breeze.
Just creepy.
And oh, it was great fun to play my large Troll as being scared to death of her and that awful gargoyle companion...*L*
no subject
Date: 2005-06-07 02:34 pm (UTC)Ce la vie.