Closed / To be Deleted

[Iilyda]

{Lol, no worries. ^^}

Whether it was because of Joke or her own injuries, Biddy didn't take very kindly to being petted. Her whines rose to a howl, and she threw her head back, sending her yowls up into the night air. A flock of crows took off from a nearby tree at the sound, squawking indignantly.

Mortimer was practically crawling along the ground, but for all the leaves and twigs littered across the forest floor, he was quite silent. Mortimer worried Bruiser would catch his sent, especially whenever Mortimer dared to catch up with them, but he must have been downwind, and Bruiser didn't seem to notice Mortimer's presence. Yet. Mortimer's heart hammered within his rib cage. The man in the flannel shirt was going the exact route he had described - over the hill, and then a turn left. On that side of the forest, Mortimer could see the quarry mentioned earlier by the thinning of trees, and Mortimer could see the mountains of rock deposits, as well as the crescent moon glinting off the surface of the water. Suddenly, ducking behind the trunk of a tree to avoid the man's notice, Mortimer went still...
Laughter coursed through the hot, muggy air, muffled by the humidity of the late June night. Everything seemed to be slowed, the world moving through amber, sluggish and unwilling to pass by. Each star was a laughing planet, a crystal face that looked down on Mortimer and all his friends with unrepressed glee...
Mortimer tried to shake himself, but he found himself inescapably drawn by the scene set below him. It wasn't that quarry, he told himself. And yet he wouldn't move. Mortimer looked back at the man, seeing that he was just about to disappear beyond a copse of trees, and then back at the moonlit water. His hands shook.

Ezra let quiet descend in Alex's room. He knew he should be encouraging her to try and go to sleep, but they might make a breakthrough. You couldn't put a time on these sorts of things. Ezra took a breath. "I may not understand cutting," he said slowly, his hands wringing one another. "But I do understand how hard it is to just... forget it. For a long time I thought that was they key to making it all stop. The voices and all. Forgetting." Ezra shook his head, his mouth twisted in displeasure. "It's just not that easy, is it?" he said to Alex, looking up at her again.

[*-Insano-*]

Alex shook her head. "It's not easy at all. And the cutting is a thing you can only understand when you do it. I don't know what the key to getting rid of the voices is but I will always wonder where I will be if I had never had them."

[Iilyda]

Ezra decided not to answer right away, instead thinking out his response. "It makes you feel empty, once they're gone," he replied. "And terrified. I always wondered if they would come back. And they did. Whenever I was feeling the slightest bit surpressed, or infuriated, and sometimes even happy - they were there again, demanding a punishment for being the awful person I was. They never really leave. You just learn to push them aside consistently. It's tiring." Ezra realized what he had implied by this statement - that he in fact still did hear those voices. And it was true, amongst everything he said. You couldn't ever undo what had been done. To this day, even though in several months' time he would be happily wed, Ezra could sometimes hear the thoughts forming in the back of his mind - nagging doubts that never truly slept. He wasn't going to lie to Alex: these things never went away.

[Dradogo]

"Shh," Joke muttered to Biddy, unsure of what he had done wrong. "You need to be quiet." He looked around quickly, worrying that one of the guards may appear and take him without Mortimer knowing. It was extremely dark now, and that only added to Joke's worries; he wouldn't be able to see who was around.

[*-Insano-*]

"I'm stuck like this forever. I'm not strong enough to do this. You know that and I know that. I'm not strong enough to be able to deal like living with this either. I just can't do it." Alex was crying again. She had lost all hope when he said that they never really go away.

[Iilyda]

Biddy continued to be distraught, yowling into the night although it seemed no one could hear her.

Taking a quick breath, Mortimer forced himself away from the scene of the deserted quarry, but it was too late. He'd already lost sight of the man in the flannel shirt. He began to panic, quickly scrabbling down the incline and towards the copse of trees where the man had disappeared, and nearly exploded with relief. Sitting in a small clearing of trees was an old hunting cabin, with a giant pine growing right beside the front porch. A light was on in one of the windows, and as Mortimer watched, a shadow moved from within it. He ducked back down, satisfied to know where the hunter's house was now. Now he had only to mark the path he had taken back to where he had left Joke by the stream.

Ezra felt terribly guilty now - he knew he aught have told her to get some rest. He stood up from his chair and knelt by her bedside, cupping her smaller hands in his and shushing her gently. "You are strong, Alex. We all are. And I do know it, because I believe we are all born the ability to be strong or weak, bad or good - but that isn't what defines us. What makes us is what parts we choose to act on - the weak or the strong, good or evil. What is that quote again?" Ezra paused, lost in remembering. "Oh yeah - 'Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear.' Do you know what that means?"

{Such writer's block. DX}

[*-Insano-*]

Alex didn't respond. She didn't think that she was strong enough. Even now, as she was trying to fight the voices back they were almost all that she could here. She closed her eyes against the tears and took a deep breath. She didn't know how to just tell them to stop. She just wanted them to go away.

[Iilyda]

Ezra looked apologetic, placing Alex's hands gingerly just below her chin and then releasing his hold on them. "Try to sleep now, Alex. Think about other things. Even if it's so boring as how many cracks there are in this godawful ceiling. Just let your mind stray elsewhere." Ezra sat back onto the floor beside Alex's bed, ready to offer support if she still had troubles.

[Dradogo]

"Biddy, please." Joke begged, wondering why the dog was making such a noise. "You REALLY need to be quiet right now." Joke soon gave up trying to calm Biddy down, looking down at the water. He hoped that Mortimer would be back soon. Joke just wanted to find somewhere safe to hide as soon as possible.

[*-Insano-*]

Alex knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. She was still crying and she was afraid she would be like this forever. She pulled her blanket closer around herself.