Deeply. Madly. Truly.

[..Steffie..]

ALKOTRAZ


^{Deeply. Madly. Truly.}

-------------------------------

Everything was still. Too still. A dying sun far off to the west bled red light over an already red world, saturating everything it could touch, and where it couldn’t reach, long sable shadows hid, and grew… and grew. Thick skeletal trees stood in silent solitude; each trying to tell their own sick stories but all that was heard were the creaks of their dead limbs and the occasional rattling of dead leaves as a stealthy wind disturbed them. Brutal wind was more ordinary than common in this hell bent land but today there was a rare absence of its moaning and howling, leaving everything bizarrely still and demented looking. In this windblown absence a winding pair of prints in the crimson sand were able to exist. They zigzagged around colossal trees and over fallen logs, and every hundred paces or so it looked as if the possessor had struggled for some god-unknown reason. Upon following these twisting tracks something far more interesting was revealed…

-+-

Welcome to hell… The words repeatedly crossed my thoughts in a kind of irritating blur. Everything here annoyed me the kind of way and itch you couldn’t scratch would. I knew exactly why I had ended up here and as much as this place aggravated me it was where I had chosen to be. I was seeking my usual solitude, and here was the only place I thought I could find it. I tried not to think about why I ‘craved’ isolation, or about the loneliness gnawing away at my soul; I just focused on putting one hoof in front of the other… out of nowhere something grabbed at my tresses, yanking my cranium backwards. I cursed under my breath as I stumbled and acted as to free my dark tresses with a few good yanks away from the gnarled branch that had snagged them. After leaving a nice clump of ebony tresses still tangled in the branch I snarled and continued walking, mentally noting how that was the 9th branch that had snagged me since I’d been here. How did I not notice them before they grabbed me? Guess it was just my luck…

-+-

He continued on his seemingly endless way, moving as if the devil himself were at his heels. He stood out against everything around him for he was the only thing that moved in this dead land. Maybe if he were to stay still like the rest of the world he would forever go unnoticed, for he bore a coat as red as blood - but taking up residency was not his way. He was a wanderer. A vagabond.

_{A life alone is a life unlived
…but an unlived life is all I own.}

[Vejshwyre]

All was red and crimson in this place. Hot and dusty, dry and drab. The air was thick and humid and the temperature quite high though the sun was making a slow decent to the western horizon. Ash and dust wafted about to choke the lungs and stifle the breath. There was no moisture to be had, nothing green, nothing alive; the air was heavy dry, like that of an oven, lacking all compassion, sapping all energy, strength will out, leaving the world acrid, empty, nothing but sand and heat and toxic air. All was still and blackened and dead, as though a great fire had burned here for so long a time as to completely destroy any hope of any life retuning. No green, non at all, but red sand, dust, blood red, bright and burning hot to the touch. It was a place that devils and dragons could call home. But to a innocent mind, lost and alone in more than just physical being, it was a play ground. This is a magical place where the ground, the sky, even the trees, were the wrong color, red and black and gray.

Vejshwyre, in his shining dapple gray coat looked quite out of place in this landscape. He, however, cared little for the dismal land around him, in his blissful innocence he cantered about kicking up the red sand, playing amongst the chard trees. He whinnied and laughed, charging about to tag imaginary friends, chasing his shadow, and roweling about in the red dust coloring himself pink. He was like a bright star in a sea of sorrow and waist. He would not, or could not, see the depressing world about him, all he saw was beauty, wonder, new and bright things, nothing was wrong with this world. Vejshwyre was eternally in his own wonderland, a long lost traveler, trapped in his mind, kept blissful only because of his own bleak tragedy which his mind hid from him.

[..Steffie..]

ALKOTRAZ

^{Deeply. Madly. Truly.}

-------------------------------

Every breath was agony to me. I inhaled dust and whatever else was floating around in the still, dry air. It stung my delicate sensatory system and I winced with every lungful of acerbic air. More and more things about this place were crawling their way under my skin, aggravating me and making things worse than they originally started. I kept noticing things – things that just bugged me. Maybe I shouldn’t be he—”UFF!” A lungful of caustic air was forced out of me as something large and… quite solid… crashed into my side, making me stagger.

Air evaded me as I tried to inhale the pungent stuff and regain my breath, but all that I gained was a couple hollow wheezes. Temporarily I forgot about the thing that had struck me; I was too busy worrying about why I couldn’t breathe. Finally after several more gasps I was ‘blessed’ with a lungful of smutty air. I couldn’t have been more grateful. I took a few more lungfuls of air, testing to see if it was going to try and escape me again. Satisfied that the air won’t try to play that kind of trick on me again for at least a little while, a flicker at the back of my mind made me remember that something had struck me. It took me a minute to process the thought. I half-heartedly looked in the direction of where the thing had come from and immediately regretted what I saw.

What stood before me was a joke; and it took the form of a hoary grey stallion. He was slender from scar laden hark to red dusted hoof, but this was not what made his existence so hilarious to me. It was his countenance. I could tell he viewed this hell bent world the way an innocent child would – not aware of what this place was capable of. He also carried himself the way a child would, the way someone would who had never had anything bad occur in their simple life… o, lucky him.

Since the last thing I wanted was company, especially that of a happy-go-lucky moron, I lifted my head arrogantly and snarled in the most harsh tone I could manage, though of course, it came out more like a strangled choke, ”Watch where you’re going, Moron!” I flared round crescents and pulled my lean legs under me in a squared stance and flagging my ashen banner, trying to look as intimidating as possible.

_{A life alone is a life unlived
…but an unlived life is all I own.}

[Vejshwyre]

At the sound of a voice Vejshwyre froze his playful antics, his long gangly form stiff and awkward legs spread wide he looked like a startled deer. For a moment his wide dark eyes showed a flicker of life behind them as his nostrils flared and the dust he'd been kicking up slowly settled on to his splotchy frame. But as the air cleared slightly his eyes came to rest on the horse that had spoken to him and the light of awareness that had lit behind his eyes, faded and died once more. He blinked, foggily at the other horse, staring unseeing at him with eyes that saw and were blind, listening with ears that would hear and never understand.

There was an awkward silence as the air cleared of the red dust and Vejshwyre stared as if seeing though this new comer. His dreamworld broken, his stray thoughts brought suddenly back to reality it was hard for the gray stallion to concentrate. So he stood frozen in place, his wondering mind lazily trying to remember; was this part of his dream, did he know this other being, what was it, had it spoken, what had it said . . . ? The thoughts were jumbled and confused, all questions, no answers, in this foggy place he could remember very little, understand even less. And yet . . .

Vejshwyre blinked his huge glazed eyes, tilting his head to one side, he leaned for ward to be nearly nose to nose with the other red horse. This motion was strangely show and dream like as if he had to think very hard to perform this simple act. Then gazing with those wide unseeing eyes he said in a voice as soft and drawn out as a ghosts, “Oh, hello. Did you lose yours too? I think I stepped on it, I am sorry to have gotten you all wet. I am . . . I am . . .”

But here he struggled and frowned, unable to recall that one thing. “Oh I suppose I don't remember my name.” This he said with perfect cheerfulness a gentle smile returning to his face.