[O] CANDLELIGHT

[murkle]

jackal

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The light flickered above him with the typical buzzing of a cheap fluorescent bulb that needed to be changed. It swayed back and forth behind his vision, though only just out of reach. Jackal sighed. Just like everything else in his life he seemed to be unable to reach out and take hold of the simplest things. The tiny things humans took for granted each and every day he could not even touch. A whisper of words, the feeling of arms being wrapped around him, the voices that cooed softly in his ears. Had he truly reached this point? The point where he could not even feel? The boy laid flat on his back, his dark hair was tousled across his features, hiding the dark scar that ran down the side of his face, slicing a perfect line through his eyebrow and sharply twisting and winding to a halt by the edge of his lips. Green eyes stared skyward, at the empty black around him. His limbs were heavy, he could barely feel the slightest of tingling that alerted him that he did indeed still have feeling in them. This had to be the effects of the pill he had taken, he guessed. Though not many ever had made him feel like this, and none of them had pulled him into such a black and bottomless pit before. He should have been frightened, he realized...but instead, he felt calm and relaxed. As if all his worries had suddenly been lifted from his shoulders and passed onto someone else to carry. It wasn't even a satisfying feeling...he just felt...numb. Clenching his eyes shut he left the darkness swallow him entirely.

'Jack...'

'Jack you fool, wake up.'

Like a hand, the voices seemed to reach down into the bottomless pit and grab a hold of the collar of his shirt. He felt his conciousness being pulled, lifting out of himself. Out of this pool of darkness and despair.

'Wake up! Jack, wake up!'

The hand gripped tighter and tighter and for a moment Jack wasn't sure what was happening when finally his body seemed to be slammed back onto solid ground, as if he had been drowning in water and a life saver had pulled him out just in the knick of time. He felt the oxygen rush into his body and he gasped. His body did not cough up water however; it didn't even shake from the exertion he was sure he had put it through. In fact...he felt perfectly normal, as if he had simply woken up from a good night sleep. "Either that stuff was bloody good or..." he trailed off, giving his head a scratch. Rolling over onto his belly, Jackal finally opened his eyes, his head rested on long, black paws; one of which was rhythmically rubbing across his ears and face. He stared at them for what felt like a long time, when finally he sighed. Giving a yawn and stretching out his body like a cat would, the african wild dog scrambled to his feet. Now that was one strange dream. He had felt on the edge of bliss and pain, teetering slowly between one or the other, but not quite meeting them. Everything had seemed to slip away from him, his identity, his life, his...what? What did he have that could be shed off like a coat? Jackal frowned, trying to reach past the confines of his mind into that brick wall he had faced ever since he had found himself in Purgatory a few days? Weeks? Months ago? Time seemed to stand still in a place like this, it was unnerving, even more so than the amnesia he seemed to have been suffering from. "How can I only remember waking up and nothing before that?" He wondered out loud, his dusty brown eyes scrawling lazily across the bleak land around him.

The Rotted Badlands was what it sounded like. A dead pan. Nothing seemed to be able to support life here any more, all around him stood lone dead trees. Every single one of them were as bare as a bone and nearly the same colour as one too. The earth had taken on a sickly grey, the kind of colour you would see when mud dried. The sky wasn't light, nor was it too dark, it seemed to permanently be covered with long drawling grey clouds that were rarely seen behind the mist that crawled along the floor of the dead forest. There really wasn't anything interesting to look at in such a place as this, everything was as bland as unflavoured noodles. Jack sighed once more, wondering how much longer he would have to painstakingly wander such a lifeless world.

word count;; 785
notes;; eh kinda crappy xD it'll do though~ they should get better as they go on :3
tagged;; open!

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[Kunabee]

Acadia

A ferret, a weasel, it made her feel sick. As a human she could laugh off such words - "You're a weasel" when she had cheated someone of money - but now she was this... different... being. Someone who wasn't herself, who was instead locked into a body that told her she was four-legged and hunted her own food. It was a pain she could feel. She wanted to be human again, damn it.
But wishing for that would do absolutely nothing. It wasn't just something she could be. Not anymore.
It was odd how in a place where time was seemingly endless, you found yourself so caught up in thoughts that you'd really never think of. Acadia never had thought this way before. Even now she wondered how she could be disgusted with her new-found species. There was really nothing wrong with the species, a polecat was just fine. But here she was and wondering why and frustrated with herself and things she couldn't change.
It was useless. So that's why she was charging through this horrid and empty and dead place, a bit angry and frustrated with life and all. She stopped mid-stride, her eyes settling on an African wild dog. Cautiously she slunk to the side, trying to be unseen by him. People were both good and bad. The question was, or rather, there were two questions, would he help her? And was he naive enough to trust her?
One way to find out, a normal person might say. But Acadia preferred to learn through watching, not jumping up and drawing attention to herself. Now that was just a waste of time.