Tribe

[Hawthorne]

OOC: Open to all. Pick a character and play. Set in a jungle in the half demolished city of Le'entha. Thousands of years old, but gradually its inhabitants are leaving, as outer civilisation infringes on the jungle.

Shepa De Le'entha
Age: 22
Orientation: Straight
Hair: Bleached out blonde and, with natural dyes, dyed blue/green.
Eyes: Blue
Character: Violently impulsive

IC:
I was born in the trees.
On the outskirts of Le'entha where the canopy is still thick and over nourished. The old people have built flat pleateaus, hands outstretched between neighbouring branches. They are thatched with mud and shit, sticks and old leaves, then covered with a layer of ground moss. It was on this that I was born.
I suppose it is not a knowing good start to life, but our world has seen worse. And will.
Daily the smoke grows darker, cheek to ground we feel the rumble of an oncoming peoples far stronger than our own. They have years, practices and rules, following guidelines not written on stone but on escapable pieces of paper. We sit in our high mast and watch them, those men and strangely dressed women picking through the forest and decapitating the life within.
Miles away yet, we see them. The men are strong, strapped into their garments, handsome, blonder and whiter than my people, but murderous. We see their hands are red with blood.
"Shepa," mama, calls me, tugging on the wooden beads of my scrappy jerkin. "Leave it be, not today, you know, not worry today."
I look down at her, little woman, as she stands on the flat ground of the upper canopy leaning one backside cheek on the boundary walls of the city. Lion gargoyle under her fat hand, her thumb in its mouth and a trail of ants skirting the edge.
"Mama, closer, you see." I point, continuing to grip the trunk of the tree top between my thighs.
"Not today." She says again. "What you do, you know? Look, Shepa, go to the city and marry. I no want you any more." She approaches, rubs a strand of my butchered hair between her fingers and tsks. Her cheeks are red with berry juice, she will marry too in days, my father's death in the ground is still fresh. She marries to be given a safer home than the rotting canopy.
"Soon there is no city, mama." I explain. My inner thighs feel the shivers of their movement. It is so unlike our own, rough where we are smooth, lacking the direction we have dug like roots and canals into the land.
"Time escapes."
"Not today, Shepa." Reiterated, once more, her back turns on me and she prepares the leather of her wedding dress.
I descend, stand behind her in my smaller, thinner garments. The jerkin and short skirt are coiled in wooden beads and gold trinkets. These latter to match the heavy piercings in my ears and the sliver of gold wedged in one nostil and bottom lip. Eyes, dark kohl rimmed to hide the lashes and disguise the smudgy face just as the blue green hair disguises the ancestry.
"Why you hide from the city?" Mama asks.
"The city is dying, it falls apart beneath us. The ancients are gone, our beliefs are inside their graves."
"Not true, eh, not true. You tell me truth."
I stand, silent, pensive as she carves off old meat from the animal hide.
"You know why I not go to the city."
"Shepa must forgive."
"Never," I say calmly. "His blood to drink before I move."
She sighs, tsks again and mutters under her breath.
"Your blood before, Shepa. Careful be."

 

[Hawthorne]

OC: Just to keep it going...

IC:
Maxwell Rove
For days they have pushed through the dense foliage, their small camp becoming bloodied and bruised by the thick hands of the forest trees. He remains to the front, but his thoughts are to the back, dithering behind in a perpetual confusion as to whether he has made the right decision.
At home, in his small house in Cairo, he would have been married. Charlotte Prepyt is a beautiful, cultured English girl that any one of these men would give their right hand to marry. But not Max... he was starting to forget why that was.
He stops, wiping a sweaty hand over his khaki shorts and asks for the binoculars.
Lens to eye he can see that the foliage they battle grows no thinner, only broadening and deepening to dark, bottle green over the rows of jagged mountains. An attempt to fight the natural inhabitants of these lands is infutile, and yet, someone has. A people, covered by the mask of lush undergrowth, have, for thousands of years, erected and ihabited a city here.
It is Max's intention to find it.

 

[Hawthorne]

B]Aerda De Le'entha[/B]

He rises from the throne as the man enters. Inigo De Le'entha, small, stupid, but fast on his feet.
Aerda descends three stone steps to meet the man... mosquitoed face, dark rimmed eyes.
"News be?" He demands in his low, gravelly voice.
Ingo looks up at his King, Aerda. If the timbre of his voice were not enough to instil fear the hollow, grey of his eyes split by the ragged, chalk white scar would be.
Inigo bows his head a little.
"Closer." He says.
Aerda nods, it is what he expects.
"Away." He says, "talk later." He turns to the back of the room where his attendants await him. Like Inigo they are - small, stupid, but obedient.
"Bring son." He says, reseats on his throne clutching circles inlaid in gold. A moment's hesitance before they return, bowing low so that their silk robes brush the roughly hewn floor. The old woman pushes the little boy forward.
"Kine'ab," Aerda says, smiling, the first of today, bright, white, to dent his cheeks, warm the little heart under his big hands as he lifts the boy on his lap. Kine'ab looks at his father with bright blue eyes, uncommon to the Le'entha. Nose short, turned up, lashes long but smudged with kohl, lips pursed to be rosebud and licked wet. All the love Aerda has is for this boy. Women, he despises, wants nothing to do with. Kine'ab is his heir, brings future to the city, will grow strong and determined as his mother is, wherever she be. Aerda doesn't care.
He strokes his sons tawny coloured hair away from his face and blows on the sweat prickled brow. The eyelashes flutter up, eyes are happy, bright blue eyes, the only remains of her inside the city of Le'entha.

 

[Hawthorne]

Shepa
"You go with me to the city," mama says, one hand curled into the rope, foot hesitating off the edge. Ants on her ankle.
"Ritual, need you there, Shepa. Don't disobey."
I fold my arms over my chest, turning my face defiantly away into the sunlight as of it we get through the canopy. Striated, watery, movement of light.
"Rituals like cloud." I say. "Change their shape."
"Shepa." The warning tone. She reaches out her hand, claws of it, pulling me toward the edge so that I slip on the fat, prickly tipped leaves fringing the plateau. She knows I will not fall. Reflexes here are faster, stronger, instinctive, and likewise, I cling to another rope, dangling my legs toward to the dark ground. I smell the dirt already.
"You be there one day and return." Mama says, it is a compromise. I nod sharply.
"If we not near the citadel."
"Agree."
And we descend, wriggling out way down the beard husky ropes, past dark then light, wet foliage and some cracked and orange, until the scent of decaying vegitation reaches our nostrils. We make faces and with despising steps, land on the ground that sinks beneath the foot. Mama keeps her hand on the shoulder, leading me along the stone wall, pillared by cracks, we see through. Little rivers of escaped city light, straw smells, and animal and metal being burnt into shape. It is not far to the front, the poor people, limbs severed, lay in bloody rags at the doors, and scuttle into the darkness as we approach. They have shelters erected against the wall. Own homes have crumbled.
Into the city, the main courtyard, springs up a fountain and birds flutter upward, snapping at each other. Monkeys starts hollering and naked children run after them, toward the archways spreading in all directions, climbing with lianas.
Mama stops, breaks off a large pink plume and tucks it in her hair. She is proud. Marrying wealth. Living further into the city toward the citadel where the stone houses are intact. The cracks are in the ceilings, but patched with clay and covered over with river pebbles.
The man stands out the front we greet each other, then I drift, looking slyly toward the immaculate citadel
I do not want to be here. Be near. I imagine him, little boy, three years old now. Inside the walls and waiting for me.
My hatred will crumbled the rest of the city walls.

 

[Hawthorne]

Aerda
"Disturb me not." Aerda says, waving off the young attendant. She pauses, lifts the hem of her skirt and head bows offers her hands in supplication.
"My king, these news you wait for."
"News of what? City falling, the outer swamps invade to swallow Le'entha. Know all of this." He turns his back on her. She is used to his cold shoulder.
"My king, the boy, his mother, she returns to your grounds."
Aerda's back stiffens.
"On your command..." the girl continues. He cuts her short with a wave of his hand.
"Don't mistake me for the one of you." He rises from his desk, stepping around his stone bust to graze it with his chains of gold. Five square mats from here to the window, pulling aside the thatched shutter and looking through a Liana arbour.
"Shepa," he murmurs. He feels hatred for the woman, deep and rooted, hatred as part of his veins and organs. Reflexively he touches the scar running from his temple across his eyes. Sees the jagged flash of metal held in her hand as he advances. She clutches her stomach, and falls from the pain. Though the wound she makes trades sight for bloody vision, he pries her legs apart and delivers the boy.
This he remembers.
Watching, unknowing is the young girl. Her body has resumed its former state, tall and willowy, high, heavy breasts, legs and arms sinued from pleasure. She angles her face toward the canopy, startles God with her blue eyes, pushes away blue green decoration from her profile and there is not hatred, there is something else. His groin tightens, stomach shudders, heart collapses. Thick vines of anticipation an artery rigor mortis. He swells toward her, knows the place where she has already been open to him. The sticky spot, warmth she reveals, a parted fabric, hands that guide him and coax him, his own warmth, to penetrate and animate.
"Arrest Shepa," he says. "Burn the canopies."

 

[Hawthorne]

Shepa
The heat of the day sits inside us, we are aware of her as she creep from our armpits, the back of our knees. The flower wilts in her hands, mama pushes it away from her eyes.
The forest is cooler than sun on stone, a thatch of damp leaves nestles as a coccoon of deep vegetation into the walls and floors of one's dwelling. Structure, brick erected upon brick, bright and harsh on the body.
It is many hours since we have arrived when we smell the smoke.
"Mama!" I cry, she turns, the jewels in her hair hit and erupt, fragile glass exploding from the vaporous heat. Her face is lifted, husband by her side, hand on her shoulder already to constrain.
I run to the firmament wall, ripping the thin skirt in two to hang, each hand and foot in their place, and to scale the length. My breath forces forth into the fear, rips from my lungs and my heart as i accept the layers of the many tiered surroundings. Head of a goat, grip its eyeballs, one ankle in the liana vine, twenty metres above everything else.
They look up and see the blue green against the pink bloom, the movement of thin leather jerkin and small briefs, notice tiny gold jewels unhinge and batter down.
I press my breasts to a bust of Aerda, put my thigh around his neck and hold his stone expression against my groin. The time is too late. Aerda's men stand below with arrows of pulsing flame, standing back, in line to wait and do as he instructs. Embankments of black rotting structure crumble on the forest floor. They cover the grave of my father, they hang from the shrivelling ropes.
Our belongings disintegrate halfway on their journey. Floors, rooves, thatched, the mud, the strats, the walkways. The people of these forest rooves climb down, screaming, standing back in horror, back against the brick and face to the fire.
"Shepa, move away." Mama calls up.
But she sees only a skinny girl with her knees and hands against the firmament boundary. Inside, invisible, the anger and hatred.
I pull myself upward, a tiny ledge, slips and almost strangles toward the tower where he waits.
"Shepa, leave it be. Come down."
Her cries are distant as I weave my way toward the thatched window. I balance precariously, aware of drops either side of me, length ahead, hot hard wind from the roaring flames, the flush of water and it is extinguished. Corpses of homes flap and snack on ground mulch.
One flat foot after the other. Arms outstretched.
This is Aerda. This is who he is. A consumer, a great man who takes that which he desires. He is the poweful current of a river, power that succeeds the river way and breaks new territory.
I crave his blood. Wish much for it.
But not to be. Though this thatched window is in near distance it is opened before I can strain the extra strip.
A small boy with bright blue eyes looks out, afraid, unaware of my precision. I feel hot, hard wind, I am still heavy with the pain of this initial degradation. And his little, upturned face, very white skin, very blue eyes, very Shepa, spills the rocks one after the other. They are not where I imagine them and the ground becomes nearer than it once was.
The dirt is dark below, the bed is a grave, as the child calls out for his father, the mother slips from her love.

 

[Hawthorne]

Aerda
4 years earlier
The girl is brought to my room. She is only eighteen years old.
Her skin is waxy from the drugs she has been given.
"Do you know who I am?" I ask as she is layn on my bed.
She looks up at me with eyes very blue.
"I've known you all my life," she says. "Aerda." She reaches out, places her hand on my cheek. "Your mother was a good woman, the greatest loss when she died. Like your mother, you are a good man."
The words disturb me. Their inaccuracy. I am her king, she sees this face and not its true nature. She knows me not as a brutal murderer, or my father as a failed being. She sees beauty in maculinity, clearly delineated lines of health and rich life. But my hands are as red as the invaders. Political assassination. I have kept them from this city for so long.
I move the cloak away from her body to expose her gold toned flesh. She doesn't shiver when I put my hand on her stomach, it is large against her brittle frame. The other women I have had winced, shifted away, grimaced at contact. Suffered it.
shepa moves her hand from my cheek to my front, unlaces the jerkin and helps me guide it up off my body.
"Aerda," she says again. "You do this why?" My face is brought near to hers. An animal has bit into her jaw. Tiny teeth marks, a dusty white. "Any woman you can have, their legs and arms opens. You choose Shepa. Shepa for your bed tonight? A woman whose father is a waning life, depending on your city, a mother whose love is too swift and often given, half the peope between these walls are my brothers and sisters. I have nothing to give you. My home is in the trees, my objects disintegrate in time, wash away under the rain, build only to break and become one with the thing they were formed of. What can I give you. Why did you ask for me?"
Her heavy breathing, hot on my cheek, her naked body, warm under my hands. I touch her taut nipples tentatively, see the pucked flush where a baby would suckle. Instead I fit my head into the crook of her sternum and open my fierce, naked lips over one hard edge. She makes a murmur of approval.
My hand slips from her stomach, feeling her pubis, fondling the mons and parting the damp lips.
She rises to meet my fingers, two, three of them which I push inside her and stroke up and down on the inner walls. Is my touch rough? My touch has always been rough. It is the crude nature of my love naking which she seeks. It is the crude nature of her person which has chosen her as mother.
She is fertile, young, healthy, beautiful. Body sinuewed, cheeks glowing, eyes alive, her reactions are swift and bodily. She pushed me further onto her breast as I bite it, releasing little beads of blood into my mouth.
Her own hands are the ones that take my hard length and ram it into her, breaking the virgin veil. She sits up, straddling my thighs, though I am larger than her, older, more cruel, she pentrates herself with me. She cares little that the blood of her first union covers my thighs.
Her fingers are in my thick hair, her mouth suddenly, arcs over mine, opened there and we breathe each other in.
I can feel the fertile egg, I can sense my way inside her. Rocking her up, she bears herself down, rocking her up, she pushes on my shoulders and my hips to drive down once more. Pulse and flex over the base of my hardness, lips sucking at the sac, our bellies hit each other, nails into the muslces of the other.
Release each others animals in one violent storm. I am caught up with it. I can smell the canopy moss in her hair, the liana pollen caught in her eyelashes. Her mama has drawn with henna, he figures of forest animals all over her back. I press into a tiger, she rotates a gazelle. She rises once more above me, blue green hair falling forward over my face, the smell of beeswax.
Then down, over me, all the inches of me, and I come hard in the little wet cavity. So much that it trickles out of her.
She puts her own fingers to the spot and tastes it, reaching out with her greedy arms so that I am pulled over her body and she is cradled against mine, sucking on a finger that is covered with the seed for our baby boy.