Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Stories, continued and interrupted, of beings from wherever the sky calls to the dreamers, the wind whispers to the wanderers, and the road calls to the determined.

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Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Post by Pharlen »

This is writing game started a few years ago by M.P., founder of Greater Realms. I'm reposting here as I get permissions, and then hopefully, restarting the game once the re-posts are up! :)

M.P.: This game is simple.

Player's interested should respond by volunteering their character(s) to be written about from other players; as if those other players where the actual player's creations. Be it a small paragraph, a few sentences, a hilarious scene, a harrowing scene, happy or sad.

The object of the game is to stretch your creative brain-pans and have fun and see how other people see your characters in a different light. Since the character's are being volunteered by their creators, there's no worry about a right or wrong here. It's all about perception and so it's very much okay not to know, understand, or be 100%. All that matters is that players try :)

If someone volunteers a character that sparks your interest, please write something!
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Suliss and Skid, by The Redneck (Thorn)

(This was when Skid was running for Governor, btw)

When the cigarette girl shied to the left from her smile, the drow woman chuffed her shattered laugh and felt the flagging cold of her spirits lift just a touch. Leaning against the scarred wall, gold eyes scanned the crowd in boredom.

Nothing and nothing and nothing again.

She came here sometimes to listen to the music, watch the flow of color and fabric. And eat goddamn cupcakes at will.

No one knew her here, and she meant to keep it that way. With fine kid gloves and silk thin suede covering her from neck to toe, with her mask on she might have been anyone. With the artfully crafted, bee stung lipped angel's face imposed over her own, she was anyone.

Here she could try figuring out what it was that drew people to not subjugating their peers or contemporaries. As of yet, it was beyond her.

With a snarl that bled into a sneer, Suliss slipped the mask back over her features, and began prowling the perimeter of the dance floor once more. Maybe someone would show enough weakness to need culling; her stomach was aching from the sweet.

Skid swung in through the door, sailing in with equal parts knowing confidence and actual curiosity. The music had drawn him; something that sounded like a throw back to Earth's Big Band era.

That the club had a modern take on those of that era, could have been terribad, but stopped half way there. At least they had the concept kind of right. And the music, the music they got right. The tip of his tail twitched, and the threads of his mask tightened with the wild and delighted curve of his smile.

A familiar scent in an unfamiliar place had his eye widening in amazement and unholy joy. And he was off, counter-clock wise stalking the room. Sssh, be vewy vewy quiet, he's hunting a monster. Or, another monster, depending on how you looked at it.

And there she was, oh the glorious beauty of her, hiding her light under the bushel of suede that fit like a glove (temptress!) and a simpering, vapid faced mask. With a laugh to match his smile, he took her hand and tugged her into the swirl of the dancers on the floor.

Spinning and twirling, dipping and swaying.

She snarled, reared back to use one of the many hidden weapons at her disposal when some idiot grabbed her hand. And while the snarl didn't abate much, she allowed a laugh to grate free when she realized it was Skid (this may mark the last time she could come here, too many distractions).

Lithe and lethal, she flowed with him, and against him as she butted heads (literally at least once) with him to lead. The energetic maneuvers and steps of this form of dancing served well enough to keep both of their hides whole when she tried shanking him, and his tail tried choking her out, or breaking her arm.

But when he tossed her up and spun her around like a baton, or one of those fake and utterly useless guns those girls in the color guard used, all thoughts of bloodshed fled. For the span of two point two seconds she watched the already complicated sights of color and texture blur and meld in streamers and trails.

And then, when he finally put her on her feet again, and an idiot woman with more tit than brain bumped into her, she emptied her already overladen stomach, down the front of the human.

Skid laughed, wild and no little bit malicious when Suliss showed her appreciation of the woman's garb. And was laughing still as he carefully held the drow's hair while she horked up what was ailing her.

He was going to have to add cupcake offerings to Suliss to his campaign promises.
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Salvador, by The Redneck (Thorn)


He buried the shock and hurt under seething rage. Did everything he could to keep those murderous fires stoked and burning. When he felt the burning tightness banding his chest and tightening his throat, he convinced himself it was the need for blood, the need to feed. Not the squeezing pressure of hurt and fear.

The words of his Mother whispered through his mind, yanking whimpering denials from his throat even as he recognized the truth in them. And he felt them chipping away at the careful shell he'd built up against the slings and arrows his nature, his very existence, brought about.

Walking the paths Between and Behind, it was easy enough to stuff everything back and away. To hide it from himself, while hiding from it a little longer.

But when he spun out again, slipped back through into ... some place he didn't readily recognize he couldn't any more.

Couldn't beat it back, and couldn't hold on any longer.

The scream ripped past his lips, tore out of his throat like salt on raw nerves. A thousand scalpels slicing and cutting. The sound of it filled the sky overhead and startled damn near every bird within range of its reach into the sky. Their cries twining around his to create a song terrible to hear. Horrific in its torment; beautiful in its anguish. Wild in its grief.

“You are a frightened child looking for comfort where you will find none.”

Lips twisted, peeled back from his teeth in a snarl at the silent, always present sound of her voice in his mind. In his heart.

The fae-child was terrible with words, everybody knew that. Emotions, his own emotions scared him, confused him. And the enormity of them now was enough to crush him under their weight.

In all his life he'd never loved anyone as he had (and fuck it all still did in some ways) loved Sinjin Fai. What he felt for, shared with Rei was different and the same and more and less, all at the same time.

And within the span of hours they'd, each in their own way, crushed and shattered parts of him.
With twisted truth and half-lies and deflection. With misinterpretation and projection and fear.

With eyes slicked and tears tracking unwanted, unnoticed down his cheeks, Salvador took in his surroundings. Scanning, searching, hoping.

A wild place, rocky and desolate with a wind that plucked at the fabric of his pants and plastered them against his ass and legs in turns. A bite to it that wind had, chilled teeth and nails that slapped and nipped and swirled around him mockingly. The vegetation was sparse, trees few and far between. What there was was bent and twisted, stunted and tormented by the very act of surviving in this place. Forced into unnatural shapes by the winds that either sang like school yard bullies, or howled like an enraged whore while skirling around, through, between.

Far below, down a near straight incline, was lush and verdant. Green and growing, wild and thick.

Here, no.

The ridges that lay against his spine lifted and rattled as a shiver tore through him; he fucking hated the cold. And didn't have the energy, the drive, to do a goddamn thing about it.

Just wedged himself in a notch between boulders and hugged his knees to his chest. And for a moment, maybe more, let himself be what he was.

A wounded child bound up in the flesh of a man who was both predator and monster. A heart broken man weighed down by stubborn pride and a soap bubble ego.

And while the sobs tore out of him, wracked his throat and frame and wrenched free of his heart, the whore of a wind carried the sound far and away. Kept the secret between just the two of them.
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Skid by Joey DaMarco


“1, 2, 3, 4, tell me that you love me more.”

Holding the hands of what looked like a rather tattered and falling apart mannequin, Skid danced across the concrete floor of the dilapidated warehouse. Side to side, hop, and spin. Shake. Shake. “Sleepless long nights, that is what my youth was for.” crooned to the beat in a faked raspy and sadistic tone of voice.

Kiss. Kiss. To either side of the mannequin's face and then he bent her back which only served to split the worn rubber and plastic more. As the mannequin stayed dipped he looked up and out into the room, a twisted smile pulling his mouth at each corner. Sticking his tongue out, he wagged it back and forth in a way that could only be described as perverse.

“Hmm hmmm hmmm hmmm.” he hummed along to the beat still, righting the mannequin, giving her a final spin that flung her across the room to land in a heap.

Skip. Skip. He bounced through the room, dancing on tip toe with his long tail twitching dramatically behind him to the beat that was in his head.

“Ohhh, you're changing your heart. Ohhh, You know who you are.” Leaning down, a sharp claw scraped along the cheek of the husky man who was strapped to the makeshift table, blood easily beading to the surface of flushed skin. Another maniacal smile and he laughed, the rasp of it made it sound more like pressurized air slowly escaping from a valve.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, nine, or ten.” He tapped out each number in the middle of the man's forehead right to the beat. The man struggled against the impossible bindings as sweat beaded over his fleshy body.

“Money can't buy you back the love that you had then.” Skid still swayed, his head cocking back and forth, side to side as he stood over the man at the head of the table, looking at him upside down. His tongue snaked back out and tickled the man's lips over the clear tape that covered them. Sticking a finger into his own mouth, he licked and licked until a sopping wet finger was pulled from his mouth with a loud pop. The man's confusion registered in his eyes.

“Oooo Oooo.” Skid cheered as he wiggled that dripping finger above the mans eyes and then jammed it into the man's ear and wiggled it wildly. The finger was in far too deep to only tickle. A muffled screaming noise came from behind the tape as the man breathed so hard and furiously through his nose that flecks of mucous splattered on the part of his mustached not covered by the tape. Despite the painkilling abilities of Skid's spit, it did little to offer the man comfort with the way that claw was digging and poking around.

“Sweetheart bitter-heart now I can't tell you apart.” singing the words loudly and out of order, he used his free hand to tap out the beat against the man's nose. He twisted and turned his finger, scritching that claw deep within, never mind the cartilage and whatever else he was crushing in the meantime. Satisfied after feeling a crushing pop, he yanked his bloody finger free and held it up to the light to examine it for a long moment before bringing it back down to the man's taped mouth, drawing bloody lips on the tape.

“Blood red is not your shade Dahhhling.” said to the man with a tickled smile before he began to laugh again, this time loudly like a deranged carnival clown. Dancing away in a succession of pirouettes, Skid was making quite the show.

The beat that Skid hummed quickly changed to something faster. Putting clawed hands to his own knees, he began to whip his head back and forth to the beat and then leaned over to pick up the head of the mannequin that only had patches of long blond hair left. The head was held up so the man could see and then Skid began to sing again.

“I whip my hair back and forth. I whip my hair back and forth. I whip my hair back and forth. I whip my hair back and forth. Hop up out the bed, turn my swag on. Pay no attention to them haters 'cause we whip 'em off.” the head was whipped back and forth as Skid also swung his head wildly from side to side and then he sent the head sailing as he tossed it over his shoulder. As he danced, he hummed a new beat, even faster.

“Yeeeah I'm in this bitch with the terror.” his hands went back to his knees and he began to shake his butt, his tail lifting and twitching back and forth as he began to twerk. “Got a handful of stacks better grab an umbrella.” with his hands on his knees still, he hopped forward and turned around, twerking his butt at the man. While he continued to shake his butt, he lifted his hand off of his knees and quickly drew a claw against the palm of his opposite hand and let the poisonous blood pool there in his palm.

Turning back around with a hop, he quickly slid his hand across his bloody palm and began to quickly flick sprays of blood from his palm at the man's face. “I make it rain. I'm in this bitch with the terror. Got a handful of stacks. Better grab an umbrella. I make it rain. I make it rain on them hoes, I make it rain. I make it rain on them hoes, I make it rain.” sang as he splattered the man with the acid blood like a rapper would flick money from his hand at a stripper. The man continued to scream and shake as the blood hit his skin, melting into it and burrowing in deeper, bringing more pain to the man with every centimeter that it melted its way through.

Skid continued to sing as he twerked his way back to the pile of mannequin and picked up an arm, lifting it to his face and singing into the hand as if it were a microphone. “I make it rain on them hoes. I make it rain on them hoes.” He stopped abruptly and dropped the 'mic' and walked off 'stage' into the darkness of the room, bowing dramatically in the shadows. The room briefly was lit with dull light as a creaky door opened and then banged shut with the loud thud of metal against metal. Rust colored eyes seemed to glow in darkness of the room. Skid sashayed his way across the room towards the man who neither smiled nor grimaced, the only expression was the way his strange colored eyes narrowed slightly and then his pupils seemed to throb and expand.

Skid raised his hands and put his palms together in order to slowly click his claws together as one might tap their nails together while thinking of awful things. “Do ye likes its?!” asked in a voice that could only be described as Smeagolish.

“I thought I told you not to play with my food.” Finally the man with the rust colored eyes smiled and affectionately scratched a finger beneath Skid's chin.

The man on the table began to gurgle as a blood splatter ate through his neck.

“I only basted him. Think of it as a nice marinade.” was Skid's reply.


(Songs featured in this post are: "1, 2, 3, 4" By Feist. - "I whip my hair" By Willow Smith- and "Make it Rain" By Fat Joe and Lil Wayne)
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Salvador and Skid by Greater Realms

I'm so sick,
Infected with where I live
Let me live without this
Empty bliss,
Selfishness
I'm so sick
I'm so sick

Dim lights from above swung lazily back and forth in an errant breeze. Autumn was coming, it carried a bone-setting chill at night that promised smells of snow and barren trees above the stink of fetid oil; grease and something else best left not to question. The sort of scent that raised the tiniest of hairs on the back of the neck and left the skin tingling in warning. Metal gleamed in the halo of work lights set on the pit-marred cement in a workshop made of twisted fantasies. It was a strange place--where lights that gleamed like terror-opened eyes winked and machines that lay in heaps of coils or tubes may remind the wary of limbs. Veins. Biological metal monstrosities that lay in tangled heaps as if they knew they had lost some battle and could no longer care to fight.

He liked it.
He liked the way they looked like something dead.

The man who leaned against one of the digital heaps watched a glittering nightmare happy at work. His dry-blood eyes followed the sheen of scattered purple light against scales that peek-a-booed through dull grey.

"Why?" Salvador grunted finally in the silence. Skid had been elbows deep into the guts of his newest creation. A hulking nightmare of something that was once alive and alloys that never would be. Forced to intermingle and no doubt as insane as its creator. Skid gave a short shout, banging his head on a prong of a cage of metal that reminded Sal more of a stripped-of-meat rib-cage than anything else. Viscous fluid dripped from the nightmare creatures arms, bits of things better left to the dark shadows on the floor wetly dripped around Skid's clawed feet.

"Son of a bitch. Forgot you were here. And you made me drop my favorite wrench."
"Sorry," Sal said in a tone that obviously said he wasn't sorry. Not at all. A dark sort of amusement made the man's mouth tick in a corner and odd eyes gleam.

"Yeah, yeah--" Skid waved it away. Splorp. Drip. Splatter. Fleshly, jellied pieces from the nightmares skin went willy-nilly in the air. "Listen, I--waitaminute." Skid's distraction faded. "Why what?"

Salvador gestured lazily around him to encompass the mass of everything in the ruined warehouse. "Why build?"

The question seemed innocuous to Salvador, but for Skid it was another matter entirely. Another matter that made the creature feel a stirring of gibbering rise up like bile in a bloated corpse; his odd mind babbling to answer it. Why do I build why do you breathe why does the fucking sun come up why do people say such stupid things why don't I kill them all why do they scream why do I live why do I...why am I...Blood and gold eyes scattered the spotlights of too-bright working lights like scattered stars. Madness and beauty and everything technical in between. He turned away from Sal and back to the dead thing on his work table. He watched the way blue-black fluid congealed and cool along the table, roll merrily along the floor, as if the puddles were some sort of blood-rune to be read and devoured.

"Why do I build," he said quietly. "To know. To tear apart. To find. To seek. To understand. Every nook and cranny of things before me can be pulled apart and rebuilt. Every system and every vein, the very clock-work of hearts and synapses firing in electric pulse....I know this. I can understand it." He ran a hand along the tops of the metallic rib-cage like structure as a woman might brush her fingertips lightly over the head of a babe or a lover.

"I build, because then I know," Skid said unsteadily. Because at least, something in me...something of mine, I understand. From the screaming to the bleeding to the crying to the dying. I know, oh, oh, I know--

Salvador, knowing this nightmare as well as anyone could (and better than most) chose not to reply. He leaned back on the metal heap beside him and only watched and waited while the nightmare gave a little shiver as if coming out of cold water, willow-switch thin body took a shuddering breath in the silence and then half-turned to the rust eyed man.

"Hey," thickly.

"Yeah?" Sal tipped his head in question.

"You owe me a fucking wrench."
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Suliss By Skid


Two coins of gold glimmer in the dark, drawing in male and female, the proud and the bestial alike with whispered promises and ruined little half-truths in a rasp that could hardly be described as pretty.

Hardly, and yet so many longed to hear its withered croon; the lash of her tongue as sharp as the knives she drove into sides and thighs and up under ribcages and.. Ooooh… So little as the thought gave her pleasure.

Small feet and a compact, deadly body to match them drag an ocean of silver-white hair in its wake through the alleys of the city, moonlight contrasting the pitch of her skin with the mithril of the network of scarring, her badges and medals of merit, her pride and proof in survival and strength, searching for nothing in the night but quiet and perhaps a warm body to bleed dry.

Instead, she finds herself as she does on some nights, drawn to the alley’s gaping maw to stare across and so far down the cobbled street at a building so often packed to the rafters with scum and fools, but pretty things and pretty toys as well. It brings a smile to scarred lips, cruel though it may be, and she breaks from the security and solitude of shadow to approach the place, and the porch upon which her parishioners tend to congregate.

This night, however, like so many others, she is accosted by those unaware of whom it is to which they are speaking. This night, it is two Human males, inebriated perhaps. A deceitful tick of hip to one side, the toss of hair back over her shoulder, and she is ready for what inevitably follows.

“Hey, Drow. I like your tats.” One says, in an almost fumbling flirtation.

“They are naut ‘tats’.” The beautiful, terrible little rasp of her voice calls to them. Her lips curl in an inviting way, and leather clinging to her body tells them tantalizing lies. One comes closer. She had already known them to be unworthy of a chance at displaying the proper reverence.

“Well what the fuck are they then, babe? A warnin’ label?” The male steps in, and puts a hand on her shoulder; it slides down to touch her upper arm, and her skin crawls.

Suliss’urn’s smile turns vicious, “For you? Xas.” So quick she was to press up against his front, and so surgical the precision of her blade, that the man didn’t know until she’d turned to approach his friend that his intestines had begun to spill out into the cold; steam rising in the moonlight.

Unaware, eyes only on those glittering gold coins, the second male smiles a filthy smile and reaches for her while her body continues to tell him things are going his way. It isn’t until she reaches down and takes hold of his most prized possessions that he feels the sting of that metal skeleton pointing out from her finger and into something he took great pains to keep from injury.

The rage builds on his face as he looks down at her, and she smiles up at him. It’s too late, her eyes say, as she slides the blade across the hollow of his throat and the rage turns to fear. Blood sprays across her face, and the pleasure she feels is too grand to be sexual, too hot to be pride; something only she can feel and only in these moments. It is the same sort of power over the weak she’d exercised since she was young, and that she’d exercise into eternity.

With the way they throw themselves at her feet, insides pouring into the grooves between cobbles, Suliss’urn forgives them their trespasses. A delicate, cruel black finger wipes blood from her cheek, and rubs it into her lips.

She sees something familiar at the steps of the porch, so many blocks away, and continues towards it to offer the gift of her presence and the promise of pain to those few deserving of it.
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Cain by Skid

Ring around the rosie...

Spurs sing a happy little lie along the cobbles while moonlight hits a face more cruel than crazy. Battered casual is the only appropriate term for what he wears, and his gait is too lazy to be anything but unimpressive or terrifying.

Pockets full of posies...

The mutant's been avoiding him for days, hearing the telltale jingle and the nightmare chorus long before the man makes an appearance. Electricity arcs from his fingertips before they ball into fists.

"Fucking leave me alone!" He screams it to the night as he rounds a corner, stumbles over some improperly stacked cardboard, and braces himself to try and put things back together in his head. This doesn't even make any sense! Why would this guy be chasing him? This fucking psycho, he's never even seen him before in his life!

Why, then, does he feel this dread and fear every time those fucking kids start singing?

Ashes, ashes...

The boot into his spine, between shoulder blades, breaks his grip on the dumpster and probably cracks a rib or two as he slams into it.

The pair of sawed-off shotguns pressing into the joints of his shoulders as the electricity begins to build in his fists, those are the last sensations he feels before blinding white-hot agony.

They all fall down...

Cain drops the guns and grabs the now-armless man by the ribs, propping him up just enough to sink his fangs into the dying man's neck, and feeding until his heart stops. The corpse hits the ground unceremoniously.

With a bloodstained smile, Cain raises his fingers up before him and marvels at the little spiderweb pulses of electricity traveling from finger to finger. He closes his eyes, and breathes in the wind and what it carries.

Does he detect something new, perhaps?

The happy jingle of spurs carry him away from what's no longer worth so little as a glance.

Ring around the rosie....
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Sabine by Greater Realms


Mama

"Mama! Mama! Look! Do you see? Do you see?"

Sometimes she just had to go. She got this thundering pressure to not be wherever it was and run. The walls were too wall like, the clouds too thick and the sound of her own head so loud. If I keep moving, she'd think, if I keep moving it won't catch me. Then everything would be fine. But she knew it was the most ridiculous thing. You can't run from your own brain. It's in your head after all and without her head well, she wouldn't be. So she had to go. Somewhere new for a moment. Distract herself. Let the thoughts and thinking that kept pestering her run behind to keep up.

Summer's last glorious moments were fighting for all they had left. Some of the trees had already become tiny leaf-riots of brilliant autumn fire. A few tried to hold onto the green, the weather was still mild enough she could keep the shirt and forget a sweater. But the heat of July was bleeding into September's slow approach. She didn't know where she was headed until she literally headed there.

Sabine had spotted the garish plastic as well as paint colors before realizing where she ended up entirely. Random park in the middle of the most random city; she supposed it would make sense that there'd be kids parks here. An electric-bright yellow plastic slide, rubber coated chain bridges and wobbly spiny-things connected by metal. A climbing wall of sky-blue with red monkey bars, a tire swing, teeter-totters--all planted in a bed of safe and cushy sand. She picked a random bench not occupied with harried or smug or distracted parents then hunkered down to watch. Am I being creepy? She wondered a moment, then dismissed it. It's a free park. I can sit where I want. She briefly considered the slide actually with five or six seconds of serious contemplation; but the amount of children swarming, screaming, chasing one another kept her wearily bench prone.

"Mama! Mama! Look! Look, do you see, do you see?" Until the second, ear-splitting demand from high up caught her attention. Kids had a particular, special talent of being able to screech through sound barriers.

"I see," said a woman with a blond bun pinned and proper. Sabine could only see her back, but she wore relaxed clothes, a pair of baggy sweats. The only thing different was the pointed ears, of course and the pointed ears of the kid. But this was RhyDin. She was learning to adapt to all kinds.

"You're very tall," the woman said, tipping her face up to the little girl who was strutting around proudly at the top of the slide. "Aren't you afraid you're going to fall?" See. There's that conversational, Concerned-about-you-but-also-playing-I-love-you-tone in the woman's voice that was so...so very...mom...Sabine couldn't even begin to describe it. It just was. Some parents had it down to a perfected science. You could tell the good parents from the bad by the sound of th--

"Catch me, catch me, catch me, catch me, catch me!" Squealed the kid. Down she went zipping toward the sand. Sabine held her breath for reasons she wasn't sure--of course the mom moved to the end of the slide. Of course she knelt down and spread her arms wide to catch her kid. Of course the woman gathered a bundle of giggling girl-child for a bear-hug and tote her away; laughing.

She felt the twin pin-pricks of her eyes starting. In that moment, she hated that woman. She hated her. She hoped she'd spontaneously combust and then a troll would come along and pee on her. She hoped she had something awful happen to her. With such startling clarity and such a rush of emotions that it tasted like bitter ashes in her mouth--she felt the ticking begin. A twinge along her lower eyelid that spread to an involuntary grimace and then the usual head-bob sway of the world.

God damn it. I didn't mean it. I don't mean it. Just--

Did her mother ever speak to her in that tone? Did her mother ever dream of standing at the bottom of slides, arms out, catching her own daughter as she fell?

Oh mama, she thought. Mama, do you see? Do you?
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Thorn by Greater Realms


But what if I'm a mermaid
In these jeans of his
With her name still on it
Hey but I don't care
Cause sometimes
I said sometimes
I hear my voice
And it's been here
Silent All These Years


The room was anything but dark. This is an act of strength, though he might never know it. Ten years ago, twenty--all of the lights would have been turned off. All the candles murdered to welcome the gloom, there would be no sunset-warm glow to highlight the way the curve of her breasts swayed in rhythm (oh, here, the goddess in full form. Oh, here, I bring you sustenance. Oh, here, your hand fits so perfect for cupping.) No. There'd be no spill of glorious golden light to show the way her hips kissed sweet to the thickness of thighs. There'd be no light--none--to show the scars of her life lived, her live loved. Of her life: survived.

But now.

But now she turned the lights on.

She turned every light she owned on. She turned up the music and she turned up the brightness. Let him see. Let him see what beauty really means.

And though he never knew it--as he sat forward, his lungs bereft of air and struggling to fill. His eyes filled with the sweetness of skin (or sin), this light was Thorn's light. A new gift. A learning.

I am beautiful, it said. I was always beautiful, she hummed while she danced in slow rhythms. Undulating like the current of a river. My light will never be dimmed again.
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Post by Pharlen »

Salvador and Suliss by Greater Realms


The Brazen Wench was particularly boisterous on the weekend. All of the lower class; the farmers, the scholars and the mages and the soldiers knew where the best whores and the cheapest ale were--and it was the Brazen Wench that currently was the place to be on the weekend after a long harvest. Or summer of fighting. Or whatever it was the denizens of RhyDin did. There were always the line of painted men, women, and everything in between from the whore quarters leaning down to give a good show; cat-calling and enticing to the room below. And there were the typical bar brawls. Burly men, women, orcs, elves and more that drank a little too much and said a little too much until it became a yelling match of insults. Then tables were turned, fists or daggers flew and a crowd grew to shout bets on the winners and losers.

This was life for The Brazen Wench. This was life for those who had to claw their way through living and loving and life. Fighting or fucking or drinking--not everything was roses and rainbows in this realm and why shouldn't the Brazen inn and tavern not cash in on that?

This is what drew Salvador to this place. It was life in its most visceral, unapologetic form. The Brazen Wench didn't try to sugar coat shit. It was what it was--when it came right down to it, this is how most life forms lived. Strip away the art. Strip away the poetry, the games, the mathematics and the philosophy and what did you have? Fighting, fucking and living. End of story.

The man was drawn to it. He circled the jeering crowd of screaming, shouting men ringed around a half-orc female and a light-skinned elf attempting to brain each other to death with their fists. His eyes were smudged dark-rings from sleeplessness and sorrow. His face seemed lean and drawn but...hungry. As if he looked for any reason at all to lash out and crush and eat and kill and fuck and strangle and crush and--

"I ssssssssssssssee you," came the sweetest promise of a horribly, no-good-twisted fantasy of a voice behind him. Suliss'. He turned like a mad man toward the source of water and stared at her.

"He's back," was all Salvador said.

In the roar of coin wagers, knuckle bones striking flesh, the cracking of a cheek bone and the pitter patter of tiny blood-feet on the floor boards the dark elf with lantern bright eyes was eerily silent. Still. She knew. She knew and she understood in a way that might have made whatever Sal had left of his heart ache.

She said, "Dance with me."

Salvador, his eyes two dark wounds in flesh were so broken they did not show their understanding at first. "I don't--"
"Do you want to weep?" Harshly asked.
"I--"
"Do you want to scream? Do you want to tear and kill and do you--" The drow lifted fingers to where a heart might reside in her breast. "--eat? Do you wish to mourn?"

He did not know what to say. Suliss'? Did she ever do anything like this? He--
"Dance. With. Me. " It was not a polite question or request. It was a bark of a command through the bone-severe slash of her teeth.

She didn't have to say anymore. Sal drew the cherished Tantō, a gleam of wicked metal in the oily lamps of the Brazen Wench. The drow moved away from the circle of men and withdrew two of her own daggers: they were long as her forearm with a strange design along the pommel which reminded Sal of ears. Ear daggers. Appropriate.

The dark elf moved herself into a starting position with daggers raised as if in some sort of ritual. The easing of her arms, the shift of her weight, the slide of her bare feet against filthy floors became the music of Sal's mind, even as the world fell away in it's screaming, ale-soaked, piss-stained entirety.

She lunged at him with her right hand and dagger to distract him, just as her left tried to swipe at his belly. He saw the feint as soon as she made it. A tick in her arm gave her away and the Tantō rose up to block her efficiently. The sound of metal-on-metal was nearly sexual for them both.

"I will show you how to weep," she said quietly, straining a moment to push his Tantō away from her, where in the drow leaped and twirled in the air like flowers swirling in a river. She tried to come to his side, which Sal swiveled graceful as a ball-room dancer to block her once again. "I will show you how you may cry--" she told him in between breaths. "In this dance, you may push your heart into your stomach. You may learn to hide the way the tears form with a grimace of a smile. Swallow your heart and feel the blade," she told him.

Then, the both of them met with intentions to kill. The clang and sparks that ensued between Tantō and daggers soon became the only sound the two of them heard (like two bodies: belly to belly). They did not, either of them, hear the way the shouting had died in the commons. They did not see, as they began a dance as old as time--as old as life and instinct itself--the way the two fist-fighters stopped entirely to join their gazes of amazement to the two who circled each other with blades and death. Salvador and Suliss' became a whirl of dark and light. They circled each other and leapt and spiraled and side-stepped. They clashed and parted. Their weapons made a ringing like bells at a church; a song of knives and heart break. The two combatants bared their teeth in grimaces of concentration and endurance and their sweat became patterns in the grayed wooden floor. There was everything beautiful about the death the two of them danced.

She pushed him; because he knew she would not hesitate to slip one of those blades between his ribs. Because he knew, while she would not kill him? She would do everything she could to bring him pain.

And...finally...he understood this: she wept with him.

The thought almost made him stumble and he was rewarded with a skimming cut along his cheek. She dances, he thought. She dances, and she weeps for all that she has lost. And....she is trying to teach me to do the same.

In the blur of precision as well as blood; Salvador understood.

He understood. And wept with her.
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Sabine by Salvador


Okay. Okay, so. >_> Sabine was in my head this morning. And I did it. This is how I imagine her the nights she stays over at Matadero. Haha. God I hope I did okay.


Something about this place always slathered her spine with a perpetual chill, but she kept coming back. She had very few friends in this city. The nicest person she had ever met just happened to be a terrifying lunatic, but that was okay. He had literally given her the shirt off his back. To her he was nice.

Before then nobody had ever asked her if she was okay. He had. He asked. And he gave without expecting anything in return from her at all.

He gave her his shirt. He gave her a job. He gave her a key to his apartment and a bed to sleep in that was clean.
Though, to be fair, she had become responsible for the washing and changing of the sheets now. Still, it was better than the stinking stale and stiff mattresses the local shelters gave her. This bed was warm and soft and felt a little like what she imagined Home should be like, even if it was a little scary.

She lay there with the covers pulled up to her chin, clutching the edges with a fearful desperation. Please don’t disappear when I wake up, she thought at the far away ceiling. The terrifying idea that she might have been hallucinating all this kindness, that in the morning she’d wake up instead under a bridge, shivering from the cold near-Autumn rain, kept her awake.

She listened to the whispering echo of slapping and grunting and moaning trickle down the hall. A shiver coursed all through her body, and she pulled the covers up over her chin and her mouth. The faint scent of Ocean Breeze fabric softener slid into her nostrils.

Hearing the elated cry of a sexual climax rebound off the vaulted ceiling of the great room beyond made her whimper. She closed her eyes, picturing them against her eyelids.

She imagined that lean and dusky body pinned beneath the one more copper-toned and scarred, spine arching and mouth wide open as he shouted ecstasy to the stars. She conjured up the image of all that silver hair spilled out around and beneath him in shimmering waves. She could almost hear the man on top rumbling his satisfaction, and see him grinning from ear to ear like some new horrific version of a demented Cheshire Cat.

She had to imagine herself as a brick in the wall, too heavy and weighted down, missing the proper limbs to move about in any case, to keep herself from getting up, creeping down the hall, and sneaking up the stairs to spy on them. She lay so still in her borrowed bed, listening with inexplicable pangs of longing.

This was not jealousy. Maybe it was a yearning, though.

Slipping her arms under the covers, she ran her fingers over her elbow and hip, remembering the feel of his calloused fingers on her skin. She touched her own bare and smooth stomach, remembering the grooves and ridges that marked the scars he wore there himself, the feel of them under her fingertips and how he had not flinched at all to her exploratory touches.

She had to wonder what it was like to be the man who shared his bed tonight.

She had to wonder if maybe she was a little bit obsessed.

He had let her crawl into his enormous bed with him one night, fit herself in neatly against his side while that terrifying yet kind-hearted monster friend of his lay tucked and curled against the other. She had listened to his heart beat through his ribs. She had slid her fingers over his scars and he had not stopped her. She fell asleep that night pressed against cold skin and listening to a lullaby made of easy breathing.

That memory helped her fall asleep this night, too, listening finally to what sounded like water trickling gently between the walls.

Her dreams were blessedly devoid of nightmares for a change.

Instead she dreamed that those alarming rusty eyes were watching over her, and in her sleep she smiled.
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Post by Pharlen »

Colleen by Pharlen


(Because I remember when Collie was more multi-limbed.)

One moment, she was queen of the forest: She who brought renewal from death, she was spring borning of winter, she was the alpha and omega. She was Colleen, she was mighty and she was beautiful.

The next? She was a bundle of confused sticks, dazed, tangled in her own hair, mane and tail. Outraged, battered, bruised. Dumped into a filthy shack by filthy, leering beasts.

"Now get ta work, female, or we'll be beating ya til ya get tha idea," one hissed to the gracious denizen of the woods. A rarity even in the shifting realities of RhyDin, Colleen was a dainty mare, a lovely girl: a centaur with a unicorn's horn.

Kidnapped from her woods for what? To work as a slave? Colleen stared at the brutes who had taken her, burning fury bringing her tearing to her hooves. She saw them in a hellish haze of burning crimson.

Five. A miserable half orc female, boney and hunched, dispirited despite the defiance of her eyes, a hanging weight of unborn child clattering at her hips. A pair of human men, whipcord, battered, coal blackened and desiccated, broken in the endless coal mines. A young elf man with tattered ears, a twisted arm and withered leg. A dwarf woman, aged, nearly skeletal, half bald and leathery.

It would take seconds to destroy these misshapen brutes. End their existence with well placed swings of her powerful hooves. Temper was ever Colleen's stumbling block, she knew it. For long moments of rage, she loomed, terrible and beautiful, over the fools who had dared to entrap her and drag her from her pristine woods into their pithy needs.

Green eyes of ghast flame slowly tamed as Colleen forced herself to look beyond the immediate circumstances. How on earth could these wrecks even manage to entrap her, the queen of the woods, nearly a goddess of nature...?

Colleen turned on her hind hooves and smacked the half-hung door open, pausing as she reeled back from the stench of the streets. Nose wrinkled, she looked up and down the miserable slum. She started out.

A polluted stream, shattered stone, wretched souls, children dying in their mother's arms, fathers struggling to keep what they could alive, weeds blackened and crumbling. Colleen's brisk stride slowed as she took it all in.

Colleen was impossible beauty in the filthy slum. Her tail switched, her skin crawling as she took in the decay and despair.

Without warning, Colleen turned once more. She marched back to the shack where the five remained, having not moved a muscle when she left.

"I understand. Let's be getting to work, then. Be roundin' all the bairns up first, we shall heal them to take pressure from their parents, then the parents. Empty lots need to be cleared that gardens may be planted. The water needs to be purified," she announced to her captors. The two human men nodded and headed outside to begin to round up the children of the blighted neighborhood.

Colleen turned to the half orc woman and lowered her horn to the female's head, giving the poor creature and her unborn child the first true strength of health they had ever enjoyed. She turned to the elf, the magic of her heritage awaking that of his, unbending his form and straightening his arm and leg.

The dwarf woman chuckled and waved aside the offered horn.

"Now, m'lass. Tis I what brought ye here from ye borin' little perfection. Ye was made to work, Colleen, nay to sit upon ye plump and perfect arse. Ye and I, we shall work together, and bring back balance to this place of despair."

Colleen peered at the ancient, studied filmy eyes, looked beyond them to see purity and the play of ages. She abruptly laughed softly and bowed before the woman.

"So ye say it, so shall it be. Did I pass, Great One?"

"Aye, ye did. Ye heart be greater than that temper o' your'n. We has work, lass, and I do nae want to see ye doin' all for these folks. They must learn. Come along..."
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Post by Pharlen »

Jack by Skid


Smoke curled out in front of his face, and he’d well and truly lost himself in thought.

…I’m here, wasting away, caught between moments.

I’m here, but I should be there, tearing both Him and Her down.

I’m strong, I’m so strong, but whenever I need to remember I am I can’t.

I need to keep Her safe. I need her to keep shining. I need her more than anything else, even if she’s strong enough to do it on her own.

She knows I’ll disappear if she stops shining in the night sky.

I don’t want to disappear.

I want to remember.

I’ve slain the Dragon, I’ll conquer Faerie, I stand before Time and move through Space and everything I do has the Truth of a thousand meanings and even when they fight me, I’m moving towards it. I’m fighting for it. I’m going to do it. I’m going to remember, and I’m going to be strong. I’m going to get it done. I’m going to make Her proud, and see only smiles and hear only gentle bells; She’ll stay and I’ll stay and it’ll be like it could.

And when we’re done, we’ll come back here, and everyone’ll be waiting, won’t they? It’ll be just the way it should… I’ll be happy.. I’ll be True… No lying smiles, no twisting wrongs until they feel right enough to get by on.. It’ll be so… Scrumpy….

Benjamin nudged his shoulder, and Jack blinked back to the now.

“Jack, you’re crying. What’s the matter?”

Jack brushed away a tear, perplexed, and rubbed it into somber ribbons.

“Haven’t the foggiest, Ben. Jamin.” A grin split his face wide, smoke curling towards the ceiling.

He’d forgotten again, and so he went on from this moment to the next.
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

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Rei by Salvador


As soon as you said Rei, I did this >) and started writing. He comes at me from a first person point of view. Hope you like it!


It’s easy to forget he’s not all human.

There he is flipping the pancakes like he was born to work in the kitchen. He cracked the eggs and whisked the batter like a real pro. Maybe he could be a line cook at the local Rhy’Din IHOP. Do they have one of those here? I should check.

With a shirt on you could never tell. Well, at least when he had hair you couldn’t. Now that he’s gone and shaved it all off you can see the top one or two poking out over the back of his collar every now and then.

Oh, he just smiled at me. Gods! I love that smile.

What was I saying?

Right. He really could pass for any regular guy. Unless you get up real close and look him eye to eye, and you see the off color that from a distance could be mistaken for any old normal brown.

But he’s got eyes like corroded gun metal. Shined and polished pennies that glint just right in the sun and lure you in. They lured me in. I cashed in my ticket for a one-way trip into nothing at all what I expected.

Maybe they were right all those years ago when they warned me he’d be the death of me.

I’m terrified of what this Autumn thing is going to do to him, but I don’t show it. Or if I do he doesn’t say a gods damned thing.

He hated those stupid packing peanuts. I know he did. What else am I supposed to do, though? I have no idea. He doesn’t tell me anything. He goes and tells all his other friends everything. About him. About us. But he keeps me in the dark and I’m stumbling.

Oh gods! He put cinnamon in these pancakes! I wish I could cook half as good as him.

Soooo delicious!

Vith! Why’s he gotta go and smile at me like that? I’m starving, but if he keeps smiling at me like that I’m not going to be able to finish eating.

Thank the gods! He walked away.

...he’s got such a fine ass.

What was I saying?

Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s easy to forget he’s not all human. Easy to forget there’s this monster lurking deep down under the surface that he talks about all the time.

I just don’t get it. He really hates himself, the way he talks. But he’s beautiful! Glorious! I’ve told him half a hundred times how wonderful he is! Why is that not enough? Why am I not enough for him?

Fuck. How does he make such good gods damned pancakes?
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Re: Walk A Mile In Their Shoes

Post by Pharlen »

Lesinda, and Bonus Skid and Pharlen! With a little Thorn and Roan. By Pharlen



Another glorious evening.

Lesinda stretched out of the glamor of black satin sheets with dulcet little coos and purrs of wakefulness. The trailing sheer black silk nightdress presented and emphasized lush curves and intriguing valleys of marble pale flesh. Glistening blonde hair spilled down her back and bounced with every move.

Modest eyed maidens crept into the glittering windowless boudoir, swarming around the golden beauty. Plaintive mews sounded as the girls worshipped at Lesinda's feet, bringing her clothing for the day. Rich red leather bound to the perfection of her figure, strapless and laced up the sides, breathtakingly short and breathlessly tight.

Spider lace stockings were lovingly rolled up each toned leg, followed by the jealous clasp of strapped high heel boots. A choker of black satin bearing a blood red cameo bound around her throat. Gloves of the same spidery lace pulled over her hands. A leering gargoyle bearing a huge ruby ring rested on her ring finger of her left hand.

Lesinda kissed the stone lovingly, lewdly, her tongue lavishing over the stone. Her hand maidens swooned, pawed at her despairing for her touch.

"Now, now, little ones. You have not earned such bliss. Go about your business," Lesinda crooned to them in soft indulgence.

High gloss confidence flashed from Lesinda's every move as she strutted from her bed chamber, the smile curling at her lips so very slightly dipped in poison. Opulence on opulence glittered from the palace she called home, down to the lovely maids …

Lesinda seized one of the girls at random, a sudden lunge and flashing teeth, tearing the young woman's throat open so that she could feed. Blood far too precious to waste, she lapped each drop from the girl's skin, her own lips, and dropped her thrall as if she were little more than a candy wrapper to the floor.

Sated, she stepped into His office.

Her office, now. He remained pinned to the wall, a spike of cold iron nailing Him to the wall. He was empty. His eyes were sunken and white, his flesh slowly mummifying in the carefully controlled climate.

"Hello, Mathian, precious," Lesinda crooned as she sat at his … at her desk, legs crossing, presenting as delicious a sight as she could to her decaying sire, "Happy Anniversary. It's been ten years since you insisted that I rejoin you. Aren't you glad you did?"

Lesinda's voice curled into smokey laughter as she opened books waiting for her on the desk. One after the other, two shadow-hounds materialized beside her. She caressed one's head lightly.

"Didn't you realize that my dear friends and family would give me the tools to destroy you? But I suppose I really can't be too harsh with you, Mathian, you did finally show me the finer things in life. In your own plebeian little way, I suppose."

Lesinda opened the first book. Bound in human skin and written in a language that was abomination even to see, she read the words, feeling them suckling at her existence and mind as surely as she had fed from her miserable thrall.

"It's been such a long time, I can't wait to return to my dear and loving friends and family. Now that I have learned to be strong and take what I desire. Silly boy. You went to such lengths to keep me from reading these tomes of power, but now they are mine, and so are you. Soon, everything I have always desired shall be mine," Lesinda smiled, serenely sinister. "Thorn will be here soon. She will become my most cherished slave..."

Lesinda crooned to herself, shivering with delight at that thought. Another page of the cursed tome turned. Lesinda's sweet anticipation turned to blank shock.

A photograph lay upon the text. A photograph of Thorn, smiling and open. Baffled, Lesinda picked it up. She nearly dropped it, finding another photograph beneath that. Skid, and Salvador. Rei. All smiling warmth ...to her?

They seemed to be looking through the emulsification of chemicals into her eyes.

Your friends. They love you.

Lesinda jerked to her feet, eyes wide, looking around as she flung the photographs away.

"Who's there?!" Silence answered her. The shadow-hounds were unbothered, and quirked ears as they regarded her.

More photographs fell from the ones in her fingers like some bizarre magician's trick. Her friends, fellow students, pupils. All smiling and trusting, and she flung them away from her. They weren't her friends any more, they were kine, they were cattle, they were rivals, they were they were...

You did not defeat Mathian.

"I did! I killed him! He is right here rotting!" Lesinda snapped, looking around snake-swift, and still unable to see her tormentor.

He made you into him. You became him. Worse than him. He has defeated all you could have ever been, and now you are more evil than he could ever hope to be.

"SHUT UP!" Lesinda roared, and then choked, her eyes flashing wide in horror, as the last photograph clung to her hand. Forced her to see it. The image burned into her mind, into her memory, into the dried husk that her heart had become.

"NO!" she screamed, falling to her knees, sobbing tears of burning blood. "No no no... No."

Prove you are not.

Lesinda's brows knit. Prove... Prove...? Wasn't she joyous in her new life? Wasn't it all she could ever desire? Wasn't it... wasn't... it...

Crying out in revulsion, she tore the choker from her throat, leaving a red and angry mark. She ripped the ring from her finger and threw both at the body of her sire weakly.

After a moment, the shadow-hounds rose. They carried away the jewelry, disappearing into an aether of hell and brimstone.

Reality became a warped spinning of color and sound and light, roiling around Lesinda as she sobbed over the loss of a decade and more. Of herself.

"Come home now," Skid called to Lesinda. She looked up at the familiar voice and stared at his masked and wrapped face.

"Skid...?"

"Come home," he repeated, clawed hand held to her.

"But... but..." she faltered, raising to her feet despite herself.

"Shh. Come home."

Baffled, guilt ridden, Lesinda crept to Skid. She took his hand. Skid pulled sharply.

Pretty little green haired Lesinda in her modest dress collapsed into Skid's chest, leaving the nightmare behind. He snatched her up and turned away from the false reality, exhaling. He smiled wryly to his laconically smiling companion.

They stood in the Red Dragon Inn. Skid lay Lesinda back to the sofa where she had fallen asleep. The skin on her throat was raw and abraded, as was her ring finger. She shuddered and woke abruptly, throwing herself into Skid's arms.

"It was just a nightmare," Skid soothed, "You're safe. It's okay."

Lesinda hitched a few times, and paused, finding Pharlen pressing a cup of blood tainted water into her hand. She drank it slowly, lashes fluttering.

"It seemed... I..." Lesinda faltered.

Pharlen reached over and pressed her fingertips to Lesinda's brow. "Shhh," she murmured in her mother's voice, "It's over. It was just a dream. It's gone. Go back to sleep, Skid and I are here."

Lesinda smiled a bit, crookedly, but well being flooded through her being. Her knotted nerves loosened, her muscles slackened. A deep inhalation and she slumped into Skid's arms, sleep returning sweetly, with a gentle smile.

"You're pretty quick at finding memories," Skid noted. Pharlen nodded as she took Lesinda's pulse.

"Sometimes, it is critical. Do you want to beat the shit out of her for sleeping here without protection or shall I?"

"Will she remember the reality Mathian forced into her dream?" Skid shrugged, tilting his head at the lovely albino. She looked as dangerous as cotton candy.

"No. It no longer exists, and the hell hounds took his little toys for Roan to destroy," Pharlen replied.

"I'll do the shit-beating, meantime, teach me the memory trick," Skid decided.

"Very well, darling. But only because I like you."
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