RuneScape Forum Archive | Suite of Seasons

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The manner the wind whipped around the tree trunks produced a thinly drawn whistle, a scream on the briskness of the piercing air. It gave voice to the woman. The velvet ceiling saw her still as a snow-speck, but now she was swirling around the atmosphere, not entirely in control of her chosen path, but in motion nonetheless. When she traversed sections of forest less guarded by the imposition of the frozen soldiers, her blonde locks spun about her head on their axis, each tendril fully extended before being manipulated back into place by fragile roots; each strand was too at the mercy of the arbitrary weather.

The first open expanse in the cabin’s path was approaching. The woman’s footprints belied the pace with which she was moving, and though she had covered some distance since her stop on the lake, her effort was still laboured with invisible encumbrance. She would need to be swifter to traverse the opening of the forest and avoid the shadows which stalked her.

Where steadfast figures had previously shielded much of the breeze from attacking the woman, the subtle incline of a snowy hill aided the sweeping cold which engulfed the vulnerability of the landscape’s sudden nakedness. A dry tongue was pressed to broken lips, and heavy feet shuffled on a repeated plane. Then, in one movement, the woman left the sanctity of the forest and moved forth.

Immediately, her pace could not be maintained. The swarms of snowflakes attacked in malicious clouds, surrounding and then lancing at flesh in controlled waves, at the whim of potent gusts carrying the malice of the cold. In a second retreat, the woman’s hands and feet and face let blood redirect itself to her torso, her body desperately attempting to counteract the quick-acting effects of the bitter frigidity. Limbs stiffen, clarity fades, life thins.

22-Dec-2014 02:44:20

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

At this point, the woman has crossed only half of the exposed land, staring at the outskirts of the next forest sanctuary which forever backs away from her procession. In sporadic fits, immense squalls lift piles of frozen debris and launch it at the woman, her inflexible limbs doing little to hide her face from the trauma. Without the trees to whistle eerie songs, an unyielding howl shrieks deep into the lady’s ears.

Then silence.

Collapsing at the base of a tree, the woman curls into a ball. As skin colours a crimson hue once more, her eyes wander to the situation of the cabin a little way down the bank, hidden in one final group of trees. Before it is another open expanse.

More time passes, the moon skating across the sky to ascertain a better view of the woman, the cosmic stadium filled to capacity, clusters of older and younger stars filling the windows of view, jostling in the cloud breaks to follow the woman’s plight. Again, she takes pause to steal liquid from the lake, each mouthful a reservoir of hopefulness which unites with her body.

The pace set is initially more controlled than that of the previous attempt. Every lance of a leg—frozen into place as though planks—comes with persistent rhythm, drum beats which supplement the rapid ticking of her internal clock, counting down the time left. Though the wind has been tamed since the earlier proceedings of the woman’s venture, the shrewdly laid blankets of snow are far deeper in this span, with far greater adhesion to each footprint than previously encountered.

The lady began moving leisurely but even still she began to slow. Eager to find solace within the cabin, she cuts a more direct route and is forced by desperation to wade through a frozen marsh waist deep, the wind has gradually intensified again such that it now kicks the snow in behind the woman as she moves, and, as though trapped in an icy quicksand, any progress toward the cabin has effectively been thwarted.

22-Dec-2014 02:44:28

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The woman collapses on to her back, sinking gently into the secret ministry of frost. Only halfway to the other edge of the glade, where the cabin waits, any chance of completing the endeavour has conducted away from her like the heat from her fading faculties. Her ears, ensconced on either side by walls of snow, yield to the silent icicles which hang from the trees on the clearing’s perimeter, dangling delicately in the swirling breeze, shining to the quiet moon which remains fixed on the woman’* position.

From her eyes flow tears, fighting the arctic air to avoid arrested viscosity, disappointment and regret and fear, all manifested in the paltry offerings to a superior force, circling her limp body held only by the powdery blankets beneath her resting body.

In one final epiphany, however, her tears and, along with them, the emotional burdens, are absolved. Lying there, under the grace of a glowing ball, the woman finds herself in perfect control of her psyche, contented by the dancing snowflakes sustained in flight between brilliant beads of silver which beam favourably upon her.

Had the woman allowed herself to find refuge in the forest*s cabin, she would never have come to such a beauteous conclusion, embracing the inevitability of one’s life in a manner of total peace. Such is true of her thoughts, curtailing and closing like the threads of her life, tying final knots, that no greater accomplishment has been recognised than to embrace the splendour in rawness of the—not bitter—but mighty forces of a freezing night.

The woman closes her eyes, snowflakes tracking her soul from the heavens, the image of the stars forever burned into her gaze.

22-Dec-2014 02:44:36

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
--Percy Bysshe Shelley

My position atop a glacial peak refined the ease with which I could observe the vast landscape around me. Not obscured by the unsurmountable haughtiness of a storming cloud, the panoramic spectacle gave way to a horizon of ocean, though such a lapse in the continuity of land came only to fruition through the great height at which I had situated myself. As I grew restless and my judgment clouded with the splendour of any infinite vista, and due to the lack of consideration made toward the traction that could be established on an icy surface, I duly toppled from the crest of the alp and made a hasty descent, abutted by a myriad of limpid droplets which recurrently coalesced and separated as the torrent of a waterfall; calmly aloft in its fine mists were the seven vivid ribbons of a rainbow.

22-Dec-2014 02:46:43 - Last edited on 22-Dec-2014 02:52:25 by Sick Stakes

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The manner in which I landed, in a pool carved by time, was not so savage to crease the spirit, and instead the mountain venture spurred me to seek what’s sweet to the scent beyond the summits of prior ambition. The pace first set was leisurely. Now in jade prairies yonder, shunning the craggy peril confronted just prior, kaleidoscopes of variegated butterflies flitted through the air, delicate patterns dancing about a twirling axis in permanent pirouette, pausing transitorily to sample the saccharine nectar of flowers freshly bloomed on a canvas of deep green. The pollen-rich ether tickled the senses as the scene in its totality did to my heart, and overwhelmed it with that to which a body cannot adjust.

As I traversed the setting, in a custom employed to mar naught, I mourned for the departure of a moment more precious than my own existence, each second a transitory glimpse at accidental purpose, in a greater realm than my own faculties could surmise. The mien of benevolence and bliss to behold illuminated my own visage of relative repugnance, enriching an internal savvy in the finest renown. So, in acknowledging the requirement of all’s ephemerality, my sustained speed carried me into the bounds of a wood.

Having intersected the border at a suitable break in the foliage, I quickly ascertained the percolating stillness that operated in contrast to a world devoid of canopy concealment. Where trunks of trees were barely visible from their emergence at the ground, small clusters of spherically domed mushrooms rejoiced, a local humidity wrought by cones of needles favourably choking them. It was near silent. From where I had positioned myself, surrounded on all fronts by penetrating transects of vegetation, sound, like memory of music fled, behaved in a routine quite unlike that of the meadows. Scarce hoots and coos were the only calls to rouse my notice, but they spoke softer than my thoughts. The luxury of sensory provocation was not in tune with this place.

22-Dec-2014 02:46:54

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

For great durations, my keen eye could discern nothing from the ubiquity of the prospect around me, save for the wary hare who irregularly dashed from sumptuous tussocks in my presence, too acute to the danger in darkness. This fact stirred a waking epiphany within me, and with it, my gaze irradiated the forest until it shone, and the echoes previously unheard came to life in fervent mellifluence, for the environs were not bereaved of embellishment for the senses, but engineered to attune them. A new world was unveiled to me. Where nothingness was previously met with comparable mention, the drum of a woodpecker’s beak gave a pulse to the boscage; the oft ray of dazzling light streaking through diverging branches warmed its blood; the varying frequencies of a cricket’s chirp subsisted as the intonation in its voice; the harlequin greens of each tree formed the freckled tint of its iris; its countenance established by the fickle engagements of all that worked within it.

Immediately after I had recognised this, I was met with the full yet subdued embrace of a temperate sun once more. The sky was no longer a bold shade, and with a sun sat lower, began to adopt a vermillion fringe, blurred briefly by a teal vignette which framed flocks of birds on the wing.

As I witnessed the unfolding events of a curtailing day, the grassy terrain which I had enjoyed for the overwhelming majority of the expedition gradually shifted to rocky outcrops strewn across clay-like flats, somewhat barren, yet burning with a copper sheen in the oblique direction of the diminishing light. Diminutive bushes dotted the land sporadically where circles of loamy earth distanced themselves from the encroaching mud. On each of them, vibrant yellow blossoms attracted the late swarms of bees, invading in sizeable groups to seize honeyed goods, before retreating in clouds of vivacity.

22-Dec-2014 02:47:06

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

By the time the last of the mini-colonies had withdrawn for the evening, the iridescent sky had faded to a leaden black. Hanging precariously on its tip, a phosphorescent crescent illuminated the tips of larger boulders, giving gentle outline to indistinct features in my field of view. The light intensified as it climbed towards its apex. Burning white specks sparked to life sluggishly, each aiding the visibility I had in my locale, and once the height of the night had commenced, I had procured view of the terminating biome.

The chill of the nocturnal hours descended austerely as an imitative desert opened up ahead. I had come to no more exciting a conclusion that this leg of the venture would serve not at all as stirring for one’s passion, so it came as due disbelief when cacti, metres taller than I, appeared in abundance, adorned in alluring white blossoms which glistened in the silver illumination of the evening. The fact that such a circumstance could frame this anomaly, in a night dimly lit alongside an unseemly cold, would seem most peculiar. Had it been day, the delicate florets would surely shrivel under a sweltering sun, and yield the vigour they possess in luminescence.

Conceivably, perception is but governed by a moment’s whim, whisked away by what is, not what could be, in any present persistently turning to past. Even now, as curling fists eclipse the moon in a starlit sky, situational awareness is in constant flux, forever at the mercy of nature’s unpredictability. From sands to grass, and now more clouds obscure the celestial candlelight, gliding with consummate smoothness. Each captured the tranquil eeriness of night as it navigated the heavy firmament.

Only when the night began to dissipate did the ocean come into view, with an orange hemisphere burning low in the distance, leaking coral hues into the water which pulsed and skated across the surface. Around it, thinly drawn wisps adopted a salmon tinge, an endless stage for a saffron backdrop.

22-Dec-2014 02:47:14

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The regular calls of local birds in early conversation embellished the rhythm established by the waves as they crashed softly into the shore, surging forth before retreating back to sea. The beach was a long strip of white, curving around the bay and concluding at a far point below the sun, a truncated circle of yellow in a scorched sky.

I had no choice but to comply with the forces applied of me as I crossed the span of the estuary and into the fringes of oceanic liberty. From the mountain I descended, through meadows and forests and deserts: all ends at this point of irrevocability. I dispersed into an infinite ocean.

22-Dec-2014 02:47:24

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Mutability

From low to high doth dissolution climb,
And sink from high to low, along a scale
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;
A musical but melancholy chime,
Which they can hear who meddle not with crime,
Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care.
Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime,
That in the morning whitened hill and plain
And is no more; drop like the tower sublime
Of yesterday, which royally did wear
His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain
Some casual shout that broke the silent air,
Or the unimaginable touch of Time.
--William Wordsworth

Above an expanse of dense forestry and dust plains, a scintillating disc embedded in a cerulean ceiling gazed scathingly from its zenith. Fruits with propensity to quench and revitalise resisted gravity with derisory grip, husks which swung hazardously on a dry wind; intermittently, cyclonic funnels of earthen debris would tear at the woodland’s outskirts, carving barren trails of dismantled foliage. Beleaguered tufts of grass bit feebly into parched soil, offering little sustenance for the grazing natives.

The eagle which seldom soared overhead, bereft of the refuge of clouds, had full sight of the perfect circle of blue, the polished lens of a magnifying glass sustained in focus. Smoke prognosticated the advance, some casual shout that broke the silent air.

Like waking to caterwaul, litter-strewn clearings flashed yellow to red, a guttural roar intensifying as its disposition angered. Taking pause to collect itself, the coruscating sphere swelled to seem the aerial ball’s doppelganger, before hollowing to race outward, gorging on dehydrated leaves until the glade was cinders: an hors d’oeurve for the emergent inferno.

22-Dec-2014 02:47:43 - Last edited on 22-Dec-2014 02:52:33 by Sick Stakes

Sick Stakes

Posts: 38 Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

The successive course came at the perimeter of a copse, trees armoured with thick bark to defend the frontline of their steadfast army. Flames licked at the trunks fiercely, and though there came resistance for some period like the tower sublime of yesterday, the soldiers were not nourished with equitable water to offer continued struggle, and each combusted in a display like that of fireworks, crimson arms racing up the length and devouring canopy leaves left a sickly olive hue by persistent drought; her outward forms that bear the longest date do melt like frosty rime.

Gnawing away at the woody core of the trees, the heat of the blaze strengthened, and rapidly grew uncontrolled as fire skipped from branch to branch until the battalion was surrounded on all fronts, consumed wholly as black smoke billowed into the sky, blinding the sun. From the coals and ashes left rose what may have been an enraged phoenix, from low to high doth dissolution climb, which burst into the sky in a fiery display of ardour, dancing until it swooped down and scorched the tips of a larger conglomeration of shrubbery. Dissolving into an inferno, it engulfed the vegetation left as firewood.

At this point, no might could quell the forceful heat which bounded across the landscape. Animals, too, vaulted. A herd of wild horses manoeuvred through a small clearing demarcated on both funnelled sides by searing blazes which kicked out as the beasts galloped past. Perceptibility was still an impossibility, and individuals unfortunate enough to lack discernment between the cooler pathway and its singed outskirts met an inevitable conclusion as they crashed clumsily into the expansive fire pit, lost in a more veracious sense than the few that still attempted escape. Flocks of fleeing birds had no easier departure, and fell mid-flight from the safety of the sky to the smouldering soil, ill-equipped for the burnt air which packed their lungs.

22-Dec-2014 02:47:54

Forums

Suite of Seasons