04-05-2014, 06:29 PM
By the time that Sid returns to the alley the creature is gone. The biker has gone off with Pan. Leonhard and Kalen and Sera, they've all gone. It's quiet when she comes back, footsteps scuffing sometimes on the concrete. The night is cool, too cool for someone in short-sleeves. Goosebumps threaten to ripple all up her pale arms, which she holds down before her, dirty fingers curled around the hem of her shirt. Holding it up a little, letting more cool air slip up along her stomach, creating a makeshift carrier of the cloth.
And inside of that bend of fabric? Clippings, sort of. Cuttings really. Leaves and blossoms and even bits of grass, some cut with her knife and others pulled from the ground. Growing vibrant, gloriously green for a moment under Sid's touch before she breaks them from their stems or pulls them from the earth.
She makes her way slowly back to the alley. Where she woke from her grief and her guilt to stall a creature bent on vengeance, and to guard people that she knows from such a thing. She ducks inside where it's cold and dark and full of unknown shadows. She doesn't know where it happened, where a botched deal went down or where a life was stolen and then forgotten. That life will not be forgotten again, at least not while she's alive to remember. Not while Kalen and Sera are alive, either, though she doesn't know that.
She looks around, scuffing her sneakered foot until it catches on something. A crack in the pavement. A hole that leads down to the ground, to the earth. Kneeling, she folds the edge of her shirt over the plant things. She finds her knife again in her bag, and she uses its hilt to bang against the concrete. Seconds, minutes, time goes by as she works and works at the manmade stone until she's widened that hole. Then she drops her cuttings on it - there aren't that many, all told, she didn't expect to make this very large. She uses her knife to prick her finger again, only this time the spilling of her Life has a purpose. Digging her bleeding index finger into the dirt, she Works. Her power takes hold of those clippings, those broken green things, finds their roots and it drives them down into the earth. It straightens their stems and opens their blossoms.
And so. Where there was Death. Now there is Life.
When she's finished Sid sits back on her heels and wipes her palms on the fabric of her jeans. She stays that way for quite some time despite the cold.
She will come back often and she'll take care of this small memorial. In this way she'll remember a life that was lost.
=====
[[for reference: Sid's rolls for the effect are at the bottom of this transcript.]]
And inside of that bend of fabric? Clippings, sort of. Cuttings really. Leaves and blossoms and even bits of grass, some cut with her knife and others pulled from the ground. Growing vibrant, gloriously green for a moment under Sid's touch before she breaks them from their stems or pulls them from the earth.
She makes her way slowly back to the alley. Where she woke from her grief and her guilt to stall a creature bent on vengeance, and to guard people that she knows from such a thing. She ducks inside where it's cold and dark and full of unknown shadows. She doesn't know where it happened, where a botched deal went down or where a life was stolen and then forgotten. That life will not be forgotten again, at least not while she's alive to remember. Not while Kalen and Sera are alive, either, though she doesn't know that.
She looks around, scuffing her sneakered foot until it catches on something. A crack in the pavement. A hole that leads down to the ground, to the earth. Kneeling, she folds the edge of her shirt over the plant things. She finds her knife again in her bag, and she uses its hilt to bang against the concrete. Seconds, minutes, time goes by as she works and works at the manmade stone until she's widened that hole. Then she drops her cuttings on it - there aren't that many, all told, she didn't expect to make this very large. She uses her knife to prick her finger again, only this time the spilling of her Life has a purpose. Digging her bleeding index finger into the dirt, she Works. Her power takes hold of those clippings, those broken green things, finds their roots and it drives them down into the earth. It straightens their stems and opens their blossoms.
And so. Where there was Death. Now there is Life.
When she's finished Sid sits back on her heels and wipes her palms on the fabric of her jeans. She stays that way for quite some time despite the cold.
She will come back often and she'll take care of this small memorial. In this way she'll remember a life that was lost.
=====
[[for reference: Sid's rolls for the effect are at the bottom of this transcript.]]