Sea Glass

Sea glass is mighty cool, like. When the bottle first breaks, the shards are dangerous. Time, that rotten shit fuck, doesn't break or bend or melt the jagged edges. Instead, time just rubs things smooth. So, by all means, indulge in mourning the autumn leaves as they drift by the window. But remember, the damp, crumbling core of a dying tree brings no spring buds. A dead tree's final duty is evanescent; the cockroaches, the beetles, the earwigs, and the grubs will enjoy the trunk for a season or ten.

Radasanth, its populace, was mostly sea glass and rotten trunks. In such a circumstance, among such a substrate, the saplings could be forgiven their anemic endeavours. After all, the debate of "effort" ends with the realisation that sum is never more, nor less, than the parts. Asking the pieces to fall in a different pattern is utterly absurd. Hence, the word and the concept of "blame" should be eliminated from our society.

The animists, what do they make of a dead tree? If a rock contains a spirit, and so does a vibrant (i.e. living) oak, then surely a dead willow could be a home to more than just creepy crawlies: it could be the scabbard of a wretched ghost. But, as chunks of the decaying bark tumble, do they take pieces of the ghoul with them? Who knows.

For fun, let's pretend that devils multiply in the rotting tree trunks.

It's fun to finally understand why old forests are always so haunted!

"I done found me a drinkin' partner," a piece of old sea glass said to a scruffy mutt.

The hairball hound had wandered up to the stoop sheepishly, and offered a timid tail wag in a hello's lieu. "Buddy," said Muddy (the name of the shard in question), "I feel exactly the same way." The setting sun married the troubled fellow's kind sentiment to the stray's hopeful plight—and it did so with an orange slick; the sky's palette was all marigolds with a dab of sticky marmalade (added for sweetness).

The dog buried his lump of coal nose in a bowl of sloppy people food. Meanwhile, drink in hand, the troubled one recounted those troubles. A teenager's broken heart was cast as drama then and comedy now. His grandparents, wise and patient, gave lessons and he gave impertinence. But, he became keener to give those same lessons himself, especially as the years slipped by. It all came and went: homes, money, places, and—worst of all—people. But, he explained to the dog, if you loved it all then, truly, it was nothing to fret over. "Love the homes, the money, the places, but—most of all—love the people." He ruffled the dog's shaggy head as he recalled the dogs of his youth.

Those dogs, as far as he remembered them, were all sweeter than that marmalade sky.

"Gosh, I wanna see them again."

The wind, unyielding and wild, had swept the clifftop evergreen from seedling to sapling, and treeling to contorted tree. The unlikely survivor's twisted trunk was punctuated with half-branches, snapped in the gales. Its foliage—blooming, sparsely, on three healthy but sagging branches—was hardly verdant, instead it was determined and dark. Routed by the westerlies and drenched by the monsoons, the rugged tree gripped the rocky cliff with exposed roots. Born on the edge of death, the sun beckoned it upwards, into the midday blue. While, at the other end, its roots grew into the ground and across the face of the cliff.

Alone, each of the tree's features might seem ugly. But, together, they combine to active human hearts; aesthetics, strange.

"We're at a crossroads."

Those words were deep in the rotten woods over the hill. The lumps and humps of the lurid landscape concealed the faceless ghosts within their arboreal fortress. Light as a leaf, the lost wander from their urban nightmares and into the deceitful forest. Well, they feel as though they wander, but the truth is troubling: the malevolent spirits inhabiting the thick oaks and warped junipers lure melancholic dreamers with wind whispering in the willows. "If you can just get out of the city," he whispered while his feet mumbled the cobbles. That wasn't all! "People? They're posion!"—vile thoughts! These toxic notions oozed from the tainted trees and corrupted fungus; along invisible vibrational conduits, the thoughts would waft into Radasanth.

"Break it up."

Sweat drops spoke from the brow to the quivering heart. "In our immediate future, I only see darkness—the worst war humans will ever know." It was a bleak assessment, but sweaty brow and quivering heart were in concord: it was blood chilling, it was dreadful.

The army of raging skeletons were riding the forgotten woods, atop the living's most vital stallions. The sound of hooves on the solid earth—mud compressed along the deer trails—echoed the rumble of fast-flowing thunderheads above. Then, the rain fell like a lake inverted. Heartbeat and beaten brow ran. Down which of the four corners, they didn't know. The bone hunters were coming, the bone hunters were riding, the bone hunters were beating down a horrible pulse—faster. And faster. AND FASTER.

The duo came upon a rain-drenched mansion in a lost corner of the forgotten woods. Rags, once curtains, swished in the broken windows. There was a bell dinging in the thunderstorm's squalls. As the slave bell rang, they considered troubling the banshees and spectres inhabiting the old home. "Are they getting closer?" sweaty forehead asked. Of course the bone riders were getting closer, but that's not what he meant. The grove itself was tightening around them. Quaker, the one with the troubled heartbeat, replied. "We don't have any other choice—we have to hide inside," as the words trembled from his lips and into the murk, he knew that the forest and its demons wanted them inside that house of horrors.

Regardless, they went in.

And so did the swords!

Just steps into the mansion the serrated steel of an unremembered generation pierced their flanks, their legs, their arms, and their feet.

The two fools bled all the way to the basement. In the damp, they were jailed! And it was there that they waited for judgment—bleeding, forever—while the flaky-skinned master guarded their cells.

That bastard cackled with the best of them.

Thread Title: Sea Glass
Judgement Type: Basic Rewards


Gum do Mugu receives:

416 EXP
39 GP


Rewards Added