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Post by Gareth MacKay on Jun 21, 2014 14:45:52 GMT -6
The ice had been melting for a while, now. And while Gareth knew this was only good for the tradesmen that relied on the seas, he could see the writing on the wall. Moving goods through the Deadsands was going to be a needless risk for most of the few regular customers he had accumulated throughout the past year, and so he had to begin to change with the seasons. Recently this included taking on more protection for other traders. It did not come with the same amount of independence moving his own cargo did, and sometimes the company was too ill-equipped. No survival skills at all. Too accustomed to the city life. And that didn't bother Gareth too much, but some did not seem interested on learning. They couldn't always rely on mercs like Gareth to show them the ropes, because he knew that his profession didn't always attract the highest caliber of people.
It was one of these jobs that had taken him to Aster. He was helping some traders move their cargo from farther inland to Aster's ports to be shipped out toward something or other. The group didn't say, and Gareth didn't ask. It was long and tedious, but rather uneventful, aside from one of the traders leaving out their food overnight. Not an ounce of common sense in that one. Or maybe he just really wanted to see some wolves? Who knew what ran through some people's heads? Regardless, they had reached their destination: Lower Aster's port. The sun was well past it's zenith, slowly working itself toward the horizon after a hard day's work. It had been unusually hot today, and Gareth had looked forward to cooling off within Aster's shell for the last leg of the journey.
He finished unloading the boxes from the worn wagon that had been carrying them before hanging around awkwardly the group awkwardly for a moment, trying to find a good way to say "give me the rest of my money". Instead of continuing to fidget with the bandages on his left hand, he settled on finding the head of the group, a small and shrewd woman with a calculating gaze that sagged due to lack of sleep on the home-stretch, and telling her, "About the rest of my pay."
"Oh, of course. I must have forgotten. It was a long trip, after all, but I suppose I'm preachin' to the choir here." She pulled out a small purse that she kept tied around her belt and pulled out a handful of gold coins. She counted each one as she dropped them into Gareth's hand, with each small jingle causing her to blink as if wincing. He shoved the coins into his pocket and nodded, shaking hands with her before exchanging good-byes and good-lucks. Gareth slung his bag back over his shoulder and slowly began ambling down the docks, before he stopped and looked out over the port from the edge of a dock. He adjusted his bandages on his face and, with a more exposed nose inhaled deeply. The salty breeze brought with it the smell of coal. It was Hryst through and through: grainy and inviting, who promised a fair place to live as long as you gave a hard day's work. Gareth knew from experience that it didn't always end up that way, but the promise was always something comforting to indulge in now and again.
Gareth squatted down and balanced on his heels as he looked down into the water, able to catch his reflection among the gentle waves. He put his bag down beside him and rearranged the strap of his sheathe into a comfortable position. His bandages were getting dirty--he would probably have to replace them soon. Considering he finally had money, he could afford to do so, but he would most likely end up just washing them instead of spending his coin. He could spend that on food. Glorious, glorious food.
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Post by Grayson on Jun 27, 2014 10:47:44 GMT -6
i've lost who i am~ 356 WORDS | GARETH | OUTFIT | NOTES |
Gray inhaled deeply, content where he sat and watched the docks. He still had no idea why he was drawn to this place, but maybe Brynne would tell him one day. Until then, Grayson would do what he'd always done, for the past six months at least, and that was wander around Hryst. There were times when he got curious about the rest of the world, about what the other countries looked like and what those people were like. He knew there were others, because Brynne spoke of them often. But Grayson had never seen them. Not with his own eyes.
His gaze fell on a group that seemed to have just arrived, not by the sea but by the land. One seemed out of place, thought, and Gray's attention went to him. There was something strange about this one, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. It wasn't the bandages that seemed to cover the other... it was something...else. He listened in on the conversation, shaking his head. Money. While he understood that things, like food and drink, cost money, he didn't understand why it was so important. Wasn't there enough money to go around? After all, there were so many people in his country alone, didn't that mean there was enough food? "What are you doing?" he asked curiously, almost under his breath. The question was intended for the man he was watching, who was now kneeling by the edge of the dock. A mischievous grin appeared on Grayson's face, and he stood up, adjusting the cord around his neck before his grin widened into something similar to that of the Cheshire. He vanished from sight.
"Hi," he said from behind the bandage-wrapped man. With a quick shove, Grayson pushed the man into the water. This wasn't meant to be seen as mean or cruel - Gray jumped off the dock as soon as the other hit the water. Surfacing, his bright blue eyes looked around for his new friend. "I'm glad you put your bag down, there might be things in there that you do not want to get wet."
HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Jun 27, 2014 23:15:54 GMT -6
Gareth thought he heard a whisper behind him, but shrugged it off to the ocean breeze. It was only until he heard Grayson's greeting did he realize that he was not alone, and then it was too late. Trying to meet the voice caused him to shift his weight to the balls of his toes which coincided poorly with the push. Gareth didn't have enough time to throw his pay onto the dock where it would be safe from the waves and saline. All he could do was fall. Down into the sea. If five feet could feel like an eternity it had then. Gareth always hated this part. He crashed into the water and immediately began flailing and reaching for the sun with each wild stroke; when he reached the surface he realized that his bandages had become a suffocating bubble around him and he had to tear his bandages away from his mouth and nose. A pronounced burn scar peeked through. The struggle was still not over. He was still out of his element.
He looked over to the face behind the voice. He had willingly brought himself into this hell. Oh, this guy could swim, that's why he wasn't struggling as much as Gareth. There was a lot of things that he did not want to get wet, stranger. Everything, for starters. Gareth was not much for wasted effort, but the efficiency of each stroke left much to be desired. It was fitting that he had a fear of water and an inability to swim in it. His head bobbed up and down in the water at the mercy of the waves brought in from the sea and the wakes he was creating with his thrashing. He attempted to make his way toward the dock, trying to reach up at the wood in vain. Could he make it to the next post? It was a decent distance away from the man and it was going to have to be his objective. He'd be damned before he crawled--thrashed, really--back to the man for help. Through much hassle he did reach the post, keeping peripheral vision with the man who had jumped in after him. He hugged the post with one arm and felt the slimy wood on his exposed fingers, using the crevices formed by the barnacles as finger holds. The other hand patted his pocket beneath the surface of the water and granted him a minor sense of relief. His gold was still there, so at least he would be eating easily tonight. It was going to be a pain getting out, especially with his sword and other equipment on him. But he would have to do it. "What...the...hell?" Gareth said as he caught his breath.
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Post by Grayson on Aug 5, 2014 18:59:15 GMT -6
i've lost who i am~ 454 WORDS | GARETH | OUTFIT | NOTES |
The bandage-covered man had heard him, Grayson just knew it. But why didn't he acknowledge hearing him? Why did the man simply shrug him off?
And why was he not enjoying the water as much as a lot of the people here did? Many possibilities went through the young Speaker's mind. Maybe he wasn't orginally from here, which would explain the dislike of water. Then Gray's mind went off on a tangent, thinking about how much he liked the water and wondering if it was because he had originally been from this area. A frown formed on his face. That couldn't be. Brynne had created him. She would have told him.
What...the...hell?
Pulled from his thoughts, Grayson stopped moving. He wasn't even treading water. He didn't need to tread water. Instead, he was processing what the man had said to him, trying to piece it together and figure it out. What the hell. A question, easily recognized from starting with the word what. He shook his head. This whole figuring out the people that Brynne loved was proving more and more difficult as time went on.
His eyes widened. "I'm sorry!" he said quickly, hoping he hadn't hurt the man. Apologizing was something he had paid careful attention to while studying people. He hadn't meant to hurt him, just have some fun. "I'm so sorry!"
Without even bothering to ask the man's permission, Grayson reached out and grabbed hold of the man's shoulder. In a fraction of a second, they were gone, relocated to the shore, about a stone's throw away from the beginning of the docks. Gray let go, allowing his arms to fall to his side for a moment before bringing one hand to the opposite elbow, rubbing his arm in a nervous manner. "Is that better?" Brynne had been amused by this little traveling trick of his - would he have the same reaction?
"I'm Grayson, by the way," he continued on, as if moving several dozen yards was perfectly normal. And for Grayson, it was. But there was a chance that his companion would think differently. That didn't cross the Speaker's mind, however. "Did you drop anything? I can go back into the water and get it if you did. What about your bags?" He just remembered that the man had set his bag down before their impromptu swimming adventure.
It only took a moment or two for Gray to disappear, reappear on the docks where the bandaged man had gone into the water, grab what sat on the wood, and return to his new friend. "Ta-da!" he said in a delighted tone. Grayson was rather fond of his trick. "Here you go," he said, holding out the man's belongings.
HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Aug 10, 2014 23:55:03 GMT -6
Gareth adjusted his slipping arms again. He was constantly battling the lack of friction and the presence of gravity, now. The stranger kept staring at him. No, he was staring through Gareth it seemed. This bastard didn’t have to focus on swimming—now, was he hallucinating? This man wasn’t even swimming. He seemed to exist in the water as a matter of fact. Like how a cloud hung in the sky. Gareth tried climbing up the post. He focused his eyes and his energy upwards on the post but found it impossible. Gareth shook off each apology with an angry stare and fruitless grunts. He could never manage to keep his center of gravity out of the water for long and that meant he would have to swim—thrash, really—to each post until he could find a ladder. He was about to push himself off of the post as Grayson grabbed him.
And he stood on the shore. Gareth pulled himself away from the stranger vehemently and then stepped back again. His arms swung wildly around him. His eyes scanned the shore quickly and without rigor. Pulled open wide against the sea breeze. Gentle waves rolled onto the sand and his feet. Gareth felt the water against his boots and moved back inland. He struggled to find a center of balance. The sand and shells spun beneath. Better? What the hell was that, teleportation? It had to be. The man was gifted. Gareth found a point of focus in a broken shell and stared at it. The spinning stopped and he looked back up at Grayson and would have fixed his face bandages if he wasn’t soaking wet. His mouth tinged on its left side on the exposed scars. He hated swimming. Gareth looked up at Grayson with eyes narrowed, “Better?” The man at least had the decency to engage in pleasantries. Before Gareth could process what the man had asked him Gareth blinked and Grayson was gone.
And he was back. Gareth clutched his fist and looked at his things and they no longer had any significance to him. He was angry and his blood pumped and he itched for a fight. This teleporting psychopath had pushed the wrong man into the water. He walked toward Grayson. Feet dug into the sand with hard footsteps. His shoulders pushed forward. His head lowered and his forehead protracted. He raised his clenched fist and put his body weight behind his punch and swung at Grayson like he was some atavistic human loping on all fours propelled by some primal instinct.
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Post by Grayson on Aug 25, 2014 18:21:38 GMT -6
i've lost who i am~ 275 WORDS | GARETH | OUTFIT | NOTES |
He had only meant to have a little fun. So when his new 'friend' just stared at him, Grayson couldn't help but feel like whatever he had done hadn't been seen as fun. He shook his head, the light breeze ruffling his hair as he moved. This wasn't supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Every single time Gray uttered an apology, he was met with a glare that could spoil fruit and unintelligible grunts.
"Woah!" The young Speaker scooted back as the human began thrashing his arms around himself. Grayson kept out of arm's length from the man, his bright blue eyes ever so carefully watching and observing. The human didn't like the water that lapped at his feet. Grayson's eyebrows furrowed. Why didn't he like water? Maybe being pushed into deep water wasn't everyone's idea of a good time, but what made this man not even like the very edge of the water, where it wasn't even an inch deep?
Not even retrieving his companion's belongings seemed to help his case. Grayson assessed the body language of the human before him; this man was not happy. By the time the man had charged the Speaker, Grayson disappeared, re-appearing four feet behind the human, bright eyes wide, hands clutching the man's belongings to his chest.
Someone just tried to hit him.
What...what was this? What had he done wrong? Was...was it really... His shoulders dropped, realizing that this wasn't going to be a friend made anytime soon.
"What are you doing?" he asked with a shake of his head. He didn't know how to fight... What was wrong with this man?
HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Aug 27, 2014 9:45:43 GMT -6
Gareth was left throwing his arm through the air where Grayson had used to be. His weight threw him forward and he stumbled for a second because of his momentum. He looked through his peripheral vision for Grayson before quickly whipping around himself to see the speaker standing behind him. His heel dug deeply into the cold and packed littoral sand as he spun around in his soaking boots. Grayson was a juxtaposition. He looked gruff and seasoned by a life of hardship and Gareth could see kinship in that but he just acted so…childish. Gareth had a tendency to overestimate his own maturity at times but Grayson seemed naively innocent about what he had done to the point that it contradicted his physical appearance. He was strange.
“I’m about to kick your ass is what I’m doing.”
He walked forward again with each step resounding with the slosh of his socks squishing inside of his boot. He no longer protracted his body forward hostilely but his eyes were still thin with anger. “What the hell is your problem?” He stepped toward Grayson and reached out his hands open and tensed toward the bag that Grayson held tightly to his chest in an attempt to tear it away from him ungratefully.
The sun hugged the horizon now and Gareth only noticed it as a matter of fact because his newfound acquaintance was between the two of them. It was hot and red and behind him was the oncoming pastels of purple and blue that trumpeted the return of the night. It was cold from the sea and from his wet clothes and Gareth resisted the urge to shiver. Even though he was soaked through his skin and cold everywhere that he had a name for, he would not willingly shiver. It would have only served to satisfy whatever sadistic urge this man child had even more than he had already done. But he did. The spasm that would not be silenced rippled through his body and he could only mitigate its visible effects. He could hear the last calls of the seagulls as they made their way to nests that they had built around and on top of the city and he could hear the gentle lapping of the waves onto the hard sand that bordered the water. Any other situation and they would have been calming noises but now the sounds and the situation existed in clashing juxtaposition. |
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Post by Grayson on Aug 30, 2014 0:05:32 GMT -6
i've lost who i am~ 310 WORDS | GARETH | OUTFIT | NOTES |
I'm about to kick your ass is what I'm doing.
Grayson could only back up with every step that Gareth took towards him. He was taking a while to process the words that he heard, "I do not understand... why are you doing this?" Hadn't he apologized? Wasn't that what he was supposed to do? He'd seen it done time after time while observing the everyday actions of the humans in this country. Why wasn't it working now? This...this wasn't right.
Gareth wanted to hurt him. This was a completely new and foreign concept to the young Speaker. He didn't keep company with malicious individuals. The very concept of someone wishing to hurt another... Was this man even one of Brynne's? How could someone that Brynne loved act like this?
The Speaker shied away when the bag was torn from his grasp, wrapping his arms around his body as if he were cold. He felt the cold that crept into the situation, not just the chill of the sun disappearing to parts unknown, but from the unfriendly individual standing in front of him. His shoulders dropped, immediately making him appear to be several inches shorter than he actually was.
"Are you cold?" Grayson wasn't about to just give up on befriending Gareth, however, and gave him a chance to admit that he was cold. "I can take us to where it is warm," he was trying to be helpful, to think as Brynne would, but it was difficult. There was something inside of him telling him to forget this guy, that he was only going to attempt to hurt him again. What part of a divinity would say that about someone in their country?
He felt defeated, though, and Grayson took a deep breath, his own clothing already halfway dry. "I am sorry," he said, apologizing for the umpteenth time.
HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Sept 1, 2014 20:42:46 GMT -6
Gareth stuttered through his opening sentence as he ripped his bag from Grayson’s clutches. He had held it like one holds a cherished memento but there was nothing Gareth particularly cherished about the bag. His words were slowed by Grayson’s viscous brashness. Or ignorance. He could not tell which. “You just pushed me into the water. The least I can do is punch you in the face.” He slowly annunciated each word that he stressed as if it were a foreign language he was communicating. It was an angry and violent language whose words would eventually evolve into body language but not now. He seemed momentarily sated as he allowed his bag to fall with his extended arm before staring intently back at Grayson and slinging it over his shoulder like a cross.
His gaze turned indignant. His eyes tried to stab through Grayson’s with abstract violence but the notion was futile and the premise false. “I’m not cold. I don’t need your charity.” Matter of fact-ness muddled with enmity. But he lied because he would not be weak and because he did not need charity. He would not lead a life getting by on charity. He would not be weak. Gareth suppressed the chill that ran down his spine by turning his head and rolling his neck slowly before he turned back to Grayson. “Who the hell are you anyway, guy?” he asked. Trying to punch him again would be futile. Grayson would blink out of his sight as soon as he tensed his fist like a rabbit jumping away from the cock of a gun and Gareth would be left with his fist swinging through the empty twilight air like a bat flying in daytime. He wished he could have forgotten about it and punched anyway but that would just have been stupid and wasteful of his energy and time. He was better than throwing fists through empty darkness.
And how much he wished that he was dry. His mouth exposed felt the outside air and it was not something that he enjoyed very much. He had grown used to his bandages in public and even displacing them this long took from him a sense of social security that had been precariously constructed. It was only a piece of the scar—his left half of his mouth marred by pink skin. The scar looked like slightly crumpled laundry. Why did his bandages have to be wet? It was all stupid—the ocean, this man, his wet bandages.
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Post by Grayson on Sept 2, 2014 10:58:14 GMT -6
i've lost who i am~ 329 WORDS | GARETH | OUTFIT | NOTES |
You just pushed me into the water. The least I can do punch you in the face. Grayson's shoulders dropped a little more as the man's belongings were ripped from his grasp. "I said I was sorry!" The young Speaker seemed much smaller now, eyes on the ground in front of him.
He didn't have to actually see someone to know where they were - another perk of his abilities that he continued to learn about. Not as flashy as his disappearing act, but definitely much more useful in certain situations. Keeping his eyes lowered was a sign of nonaggression, something that Grayson didn't have to observe to know. Something within him told him to keep his eyes down, to not provoke the already angry man. Everything about Gareth, his stance, his tone, his pattern of speech... it was almost as if Gray could feel every word that was enunciated hit against him, and his body tensed up with each syllable.
Grayson risked a glance towards the man's face, only to be shot down with a glare so malevolent that he flinched as his eyes met Gareth's. I'm not cold. That was a lie. He could practically feel the man shivering. "Why will you not let me help you?" he asked, understanding that the man blamed him for being cold. The impromptu swim had only been all in good fun - why couldn't he see that? I don't need your charity. Charity? He wasn't offering Gareth money.. why--- Who the hell are you anyway, guy?
It took the young Speaker quite a bit of time to answer this, convincing himself that until he looked at the man's face, he shouldn't answer. After several moments, his blue eyes meeting Gareth's through his bandages. "My name is Grayson," he said, spine straightening and he stood to his full height again. Who he was was something to take pride in, and he did. "I am the Speaker for Brynne, Goddess of Hryst."
HAYANA OF CAUTION 2.0
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