The Endless Sands [Closed/Skullyton]

Silence. Perfect utter silence. There he waited, in the blackness, in the cold. This was his game, no? His clever ploy. The wind did not touch him, but he could feel its subtle vibration in his new world, his gentle earthen womb. How many days had it been? How many weeks, months, years? There was no true way to tell. Time passed strangely in the skeleton's perception. It was difficult to gauge. But he had waited, patiently. And finally, it seemed as though he had waited long enough.

Something approached. Something that was more than the wind, more the the thickness of the air but only by a small degree. Red could feel it like a coming tide, nearly washing over him. Now was his moment.

Up from the sands sprung Red, completely naked (as skeletons were sometimes wont to be) aside from the tattered cape tied about his neck, some sort of beige linen he had no doubt procured from reaching through an open window on his travels. "Surprise!" He shrieked, throwing his hands into the air as the pebbles and particles leaked from his porous body, sliding out of his jaw as his skull slowly emptied, cascading down his ribs.

"Oh." A pause. "You're not who I was looking for."

Just who Red was looking for, he could not seem to remember for the life of himself. If there ever was a person to begin with. It was not altogether unlikely that he had just been buried in a sandstorm and made up a justification for not digging himself out right away. His memory played strange tricks like that from time to time.

This thing seemed interesting enough though. Definitely not like himself. Definitely not like Robert or Tomie. It felt like Tyrant, the dragon, had. Though, it certainly didn't look like Tyrant. "You there!" Red boldly proclaimed, jabbing a skeletal finger up towards the thing's generally... shadowy mass. "What are you and where am I?"

It was at that moment that Red realized his finger was not pointed towards the thing, but was actually pointed... in... the thing. It was almost as unsettling as it was painful. He snatched his hand back with a squeal. "Hey! How dare!" Nursing the finger between rows of pearly whites, Red hissed at the malignant cloud. "Assault me here, in the desert.... dessert?" Red pondered for a moment. His curiosity was offset only by the fact the the living aura seemed to threaten him by even touching him. It was vexing, because Red found himself wanting to touch the thing more and more now that he knew he couldn't.



The skeleton tipped his head, examining the mass with the empty black sockets he called eyes. "Are you an Espada?" That was the term, more than most others, that Red had learned could be flexible. Shinigami felt a very specific way, but Espada could feel like many things. Specifically, Red denoted though, that Espada normally felt like more. They were solid, monolithic, walls of power. This thing, though. It was subtle, soft. A breeze.

Puzzling.



Words: 522 (Total: 522)
GP: 10 (Total: 10)

The creature was given pause, what he had encountered was intelligent, conscious, cognizant, self-aware, mindful. This was surprising, not only because it was beginning to realize that other creatures like itself existed and were aware of this fact but because the nameless creature knew how strange it was something would be so careless to nearly be devoured by its massive drifting form. It was practically a beacon, a warning away from all that had a mind that the creature did not seek to devour them.

Surprise. It's eyes stared passively at the skeletal creature as it emerged from the dunes and exploded a shower of pebbles and sand as it leapt upright. No it was not a skeletal being it was a skeleton, fleshless but like the nameless creature it was dead.

It was dead, both of them were dead, and that meant that beings existed that were alive, another steady realization like a checkbox being ticked on a massive checklist that one might use to inspect a mammoth machine before service.

It was talking, saying words that moment after they were said registered but strangely it knew what it was saying.

Why?

"I AM SORRY" it intoned.

It apologized because its presence was some measure of disappointment. Not that it felt bad about this fact, it did not feel anything at all. Did it?

Emotion.

A single one resonated out of the inky darkness away from the other ones, rose and bubbled up to the surface of the nameless creature's consciousness. Discomfort, it was uncomfortable. Not simply because of the skeleton that stood before it but because its existence, it's awareness, the challenge at processing all of the bizarre and new, although it knew it was not entirely new, sensations.

It snapped out of the moment of monolithic self reflection and its wavering gaze turned back sharply towards Skeleton with an eerily mechanic focus. The eyes dim yellow hew had brightened from the start of their conversation.

What am I? It had asked the question of the creature but now it was being asked. For a long moment it said nothing, puzzling over the nature of the question itself. What was it? It was nothing right? No, it knew that was not true now it was...it was...a thing...something.

It was.

As for where it was, it's yellow orbs drifted lazily in examination of the surroundings and found that this too was a difficult question to answer.

Before it could answer the Skeleton declared some sort of outrage and for a moment the nameless creature felt another emotion surface. Fear. It drifted back a few feet, orbs shifting from yellow to a dark black color as its form shuddered and the edges darkened losing its surface translucency. It hesitate for a moment as the fear threatened to overtake its new consciousness and force it back into what it was before, mindless, unaware and it feared even greater than the threat of this creature losing its own existence.

No, there was no true threat here, the creature was not going to retaliate it seemed to already have forgotten the sleight. It's eyes flickered back to the yellow hue it had moments before.

"DO NOT TOUCH ME" it declared emotionlessly. Despite the booming voice it was not a command it was advice, hopefully that the skeleton already understood.

"DESERT. WE ARE IN A DESERT." A desert, endless drifting rolling dunes of sand. The desert encompassed all of existence, everything everywhere was sand, so it was easy to say that where they were was everywhere and a single place at once for desert was all there was.

A castle loomed in the distance, representing an awareness of knowledge it shrank away from and ignored.

"ESPADA?" it questioned but hesitated. That was the first word the skeleton spoke that it did not know and that told it was a name, a title, a creature it had not met, a place it had not been, a thing it had not encountered, a title that it did not have.

"I AM NOT ESPADA," it began and realizing it had the answer to the question it had posed earlier continued, "I AM I AND WE ARE HERE." It seemed troubled, its eyes flickering slightly, part of that answer was unsatisfactory. "I AM NAMELESS." All things had names, like the two things that existed, sand and skeleton. There might have been others but the nameless creature did not think that this was so. The nameless creature did not have a name and thus it was nameless, like a drifting void across the whole of existence.

Appropriate.

"YOU ARE SKELETON?" it began, "YOU ARE ESPADA? YOU ARE HERE?" This was how conversation worked, the nameless creature was almost certain of that fact.

Yellow eyes brightened ever further.

801/16/29 GP Total

"Okay, but does that mean that your name is 'Nameless' or that you don't have a name?" It was strange to even consider. Why did everything in these new worlds insist on existing in a state of complication? Everything had a name, even if it hadn't been called by it yet. Names were, inherently, what something was. Red had named many things many times over in the darker place, the world of silence and aura glow. Even more hues of color and angles of stone had been defined by Red's languages than Hollows could have imagined. The precious few things that made up that world had been catalogued and labeled indiscriminately.

And yet, here he was.

Something completely nameless, an entity that claimed to exist without label. It was abhorrent as a concept. It simply would not do.

The creature posed a very curious question. Was its name...Nameless? or was it without a name. It went to say the latter but hesitated. Names. Names? What were names for. The Nameless being considered this for a long moment even as the seconds dragged on. Things that existed...had names. The sand that it travelled along was sand, that's how The Nameless was able to traverse it, if it had no name then it would be nothing and thus The Nameless wouldn't be able to travel upon it.

There was an appealing trick to this line of thought, one that gave a pleasant sensation.

That pleasant sensation quickly faded. If it didn't have a name, then...did it not exist as well? It considered this for a long moment and found that this was an acceptable condition. It did not exist.

No, that wasn't quite right.

The nameless, but likely existent, creature realized it was being spoken to and worse yet, it was being rude by not paying attention. Its form shuddered and began to lower to the ground, darkness spilling to the side, elongated the shape strangely but making sure not to devour its new companion. Not that it was likely, even at this the nameless creature moved at a glacial post.

"UNCERTAIN. I AM NOTHING?" A collective? Belonging? These terms were alien, rattling around the being's mind in a strange way that unsettled him. "I HAVE NEVER...BELONGED."

The strange thing had a name. Or no, it did not have a name. "A SKELETON? YOUR NAME?" It pondered that for a moment and wondered if perhaps it too could have a name. Was it...a skeleton? No, it did not look like a skeleton.

A shame.

Answers of where here was continued to elude, but this too was fine.

A conversation! And very likely a good one, not that it had any reference to frame it against.

"DIRECTION." It repeated dutifully, as if it understood but it most certainly didn't. The nameless creature had direction, it was moving...in that direction. Or perhaps that one. It didn't know why it was, but it was.

The skeleton asked a good question, but if it didn't know what it was, how could it know what it was? The yellow orbs darkened for a brief moment before brightening.

"SPOOPY."

The voice bellowed in its usual booming way. It did have a name, it was Spoopy.

Hm. Somehow that didn't feel right, but at least the nameless creature was certain then that it existed, which was deeply relieving.

"YOU HAVE ALREADY ANSWERED THAT SKELETON. WE ARE HERE."

Its gaze turned upwards, towards the massive castle. That draw, magnetic, alluring. Every day it found itself a little closer.

"I AM GOING THERE."

460/9/38 GP Total

"I am Red." The skeleton chittered with edge and glee. It seemed, almost, thanks to the shadows and the new, dangerous angle of the animated skull, that the sockets tightened into a cunning glare. "And I have also never belonged. Never here. Never there. Even on the spire, I was different. In that place. In these sands, you are different."

Red stepped forward again, extended a hand towards the shifting mass. He did not touch it again, not willing to feel the negative feedback, the burn and sizzle of flesh that was no longer there. However, the skeleton did feel it. Spoopy, this nameless thing, this discovery... He was flux, shifting waves. A marshmallow balloon of pain and flow. Red could feel that.

"And that makes us collective. It makes us belong in difference. We are 'other.'"

With a flick, the porous bone visage snapped back up to match the will-o-wisp eyes that haunted Spoopy's field.

"You're right. We are here now. Whether we belong or not, we are." A step forward, careful, tenuous, with hand still outstretched. Red could feel the pressure, faint, that emanated from the surface of his friend. And, with a flex of his own spirit, Red attempted to push it.

These signatures around him, these flames that emanated from other souls... Red could feel them, could feel their taste in his bones, feel their color, their temperature. The stimulations from this creature were different only in that they were bland, watered down. They were too loose, allowing Red to pass right through. That's why it was not surface, was not solid.

With a force of will, Red attempted to make it solid in that tiny place he touched. Or, at very least, communicate with it, to make Spoopy want to be solid there. There was no science, no reasoning that made it make sense. It was simply gesture, and even if the bony hand passed through, even if it scalded at the tenuous surface of the thing, Red held it there. To connect. To illustrate.

And then, in a calm and cool voice...

"If we're going there, we should probably get moving."



Words: 360 (Total: 1,240)
GP: 7 (Total: 24)

"RED" it declared with a flash of brightness appearing in its eyes. It seemed to pass, for some with a nod. Never belonged, her there, or a place known as...the spire? Information processed, was absorbed and added, or perhaps awakened it could hardly be certain which or even why there was a distinction to begin with. Different from the sand, which meant it was not of this place.

It was not where it belonged, and now it knew that neither was Red which meant there were others places that he might.

"WE ARE OTHER. WE ARE TOGETHER." The same, but different. What was that word? The one of a union of individuals, a common purpose. Words words words. Elusive and fleeting but slowly the nameless creature was aware that more of them existed.

The nameless creature watched as Red studied it, as it studied him in return curious but uncertain as to what it's aim were. It felt resistance, pressing against its forms a for a moment that yellow glow flickered briefly red and stopped, the surface once formless like smoke or air became solid to the touch as if to allow Red to do so, as if it knew, or perhaps simply that Red had with a brief effort of will made himself resistant to its touch. When it felt solid, it did not harm him, though the capacity of that pain remained contained within.

"WE" it repeated in its massive sourceless voice. For a moment it paused, yellow eyes brightening once more. "LET US NOT DELAY THEN, RED." The words came without intention, called by something deep within. Without hesitation the nameless creature began to drift steadily onward.

281/5/43 GP Total