Mon Jul 23, 2007 7:35 am
[[OOC: This is my first time posting, so I really hope I am doing this right.]]
Lirya sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in the thin towel that the inn provided. Her skin was still wrinkled from too long spent in the bath, and the tiny towel had not been enough to dry her waist-length hair. So here she sat, on the edge of the bed, watching her wet hair hang down almost to the ground and listening to the steady drip of
blood. There was far, far too much of it on the ground, beneath a thing that looked like it had once been her father. He was still tied with what she incongruously recognized as the silk curtain pull from the library curtains, strapped to a chair where he had spent the last moments of his life, alone and afraid. Even in death he looked so large, so towering and powerful. When she was a little girl, she thought he was a giant, and now he was made giant again. Slowly, her mind began to process what was going on; he looked so large because she was laying on the ground before him. She had fallen, on her hands and knees on the ground before him. She had fallen because the ground was so
slippery with the steadily growing pool of water that gathered around her toes. She wished she had another towel, or a cloth to wrap her long hair. There was something so terrible about the water drip, drip, dripping, but she couldn't stop it, couldn’t silence the last sound in the terribly still room. Shakily, she stood, looking down at the simple homespun coverlet. She pulled it back, considering the bedclothes. Perhaps she could use a
sheet from the bedroom to cover him. She couldn't bear to leave him like this, naked and bloody. When she was a little girl he had been a giant who let her sit in his lap and learn to read his history books. Now he was so small and ruined and she could not bear it. Somehow this seemed more important than anything, even though in the back of her mind something awful hummed.
'Where are my brothers? Where is my mother?'
She was halfway to the bedrooms when she thought of it; the hall. The hall which could be barred from the inside or the out. They might have hidden there, if someone had attacked. They might be there still; mother and Haran, and Mitok and little Dar who was her favorite even though she would never admit it. They could be hiding there, waiting for help. She turned and ran headlong towards the other side of the house, not looking as she passed the overwatch that looked down on the courtyard below. Not looking at the men and women who had served her father's house, laying out like so much driftwood to be washed out to sea. Below her, Matiya, her sweet little maid, lay with neck broken, a huge, rough gouge rending open her delicate
stomach turned as she used the sheet to sop up the pinkish water. As a child she had fainted at the sight of blood, now she was disgusted with how commonplace it was becoming. She stood, slowly twisting her long hair and wringing out the excess water onto the sheet. It felt as though she would never be dry or warm again. Even in the heat of the summer evening she felt so
[I]cold. A frigid breeze rolled out through the doors as she opened them. The hall had not been barred, and so her hopes were already dying, curdling like sour milk in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the hall so dark, and her small voice seemed to fill the space.
“Hello?â€