Thank you star! :sign5:
Leef: I am gorgeous, aren´t I...
Mystere: Great, you just HAD TO build up his ego.

awwww I love sappy and happy!!!!!!

The pictures are great too. I keep wondering though whats wrong with your game, the skin of your sims sometimes makes such pixelated spots, maybe something with graphics? Its a pity because its beautiful otherwise, we-must-find-out. :devill:

Yay update!

PART 6 - LEEF:



“Now the thing is Desperado,” said Leef, entering the house, slamming the door shut and uttering another sealing word of power, “Is that life is a b*tch. We often have to do things we don’t want to. Like staying alive, for instance. If you don’t stop wandering to and fro some dead har is going to possess you and then your troubles will really start.”



He crouched down by the troubled har. Inception wasn’t easy. Losing your preferred partner wasn’t easy. And now this. Desperado’s family had done a buck and left the poor git to his fate. It was all rapidly assuming the proportions of a theatrical farce. Leef suppressed the urge to laugh his head off. It was neither the time nor the place. “There’s no law out here,” he continued, putting his arm around the har’s shoulder. “Only the conscience of individuals, that’s the trouble. Some hara have crap principles. But don’t blame your mother, she must have thought you’d be safer as a har. That’s why she’s gone. And if she’s gone south, there’s a human enclave down there at a place called Imbrilim. She’ll be looked after.” For as long as the Gelaming deign to do so, he thought.



The young har sniffled and shrugged off Leef’s embrace. He felt like one large bruise to the captain. Leef sat back on his heels and scanned the area. There was little activity. The only creatures in the near vicinity with blood letting on their minds were foxes and owls, so he and Desperado could afford some extra burying time. He passed Desperado a handkerchief to wipe his face with and added,



“Look, I’ll make you a deal. You stay here while I dig a hole. A very large hole.” He suppressed another laugh. For Ag’s sake, what’s the matter with you, Leef, he thought. Try and control yourself! He cleared his throat and continued. “You’ll be able to pay your respects. I don’t think there’s any imminent danger but if I sense some, we’ll have to go. And here’s something else to think about. You’ll need to take aruna with me pretty soon. That is if you don’t want to go mad. If that happens I’ll just put you down, you’ll only be an animal, after all. Then you can take a rebirth into a better situation, your choice entirely, I’m just giving you the options. Now you don’t have to like me, it’s not necessary, the same as I don’t have to like you, sweetheart. It works whatever, fortunately.” He smiled, gave a slight nod, and left the house.



In the street, three disembodied spirits were still hanging about. When they saw Leef coming, they shot off to cower in the shadows. His aura was purple and gold, and not a thing to be contended with. “Yeah, f*ck off you b*stards,” he said, in passing. “Go to hell or take a rebirth.” They were leeches and now he had to bury their bodies. They’d be stuck to this place for ages, attached by memories and unfulfilled desires. Perhaps it was better that the whole place be shut down.



He reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a small box. Thank the Ag for small mercies! It contained an arunic crystal, glowing emerald in the moonlight. Good old Chelone, he thought. Always willing and able! He focused his intent on an area of the street that was relatively clear and moved the substrate. That is to say, the enhanced focus of his energies made a large hole in the earth, after which the crystal glowed much less. He placed it back in its box and began the thankless task of dragging the bodies into the pit.



He didn’t know why he was doing such a disagreeable task. Why did he care about Desperado enough to help him? He could just leave and be back in Galhea in time for the ceremony. Couldn’t he? Damn! He grabbed another corpse by its boots and dragged it down the street towards the pit. When its right arm had the ordacity to detach itself from the blood stained torso, Leef swore and retrieved that, too.

Thank you so much!!! I will!! As soon as I find out how to take pictures of some actions that are not as usual... its a pain

This was very interesting, a really good idea. I think I´ll start using the fog from now on, those pics were outstanding.

A hint for future writing: try to add some interpunction into your sentences, it will make them easier to read.

Thank you! You keep me optimistic, otherwise i would think noone is reading this...

PART 5: MYSTERE

I was close to screaming and kicking my feet like a toddler when the har was dragging me towards the door I had left open, and only the fact that I intended to keep my dignity prevented me from doing so. Okay, that and... crying for what seemed to have been hours didn´t leave me with much potential in my vocal cords.



Enemy or not, I didn´t care what he was saying. He made me sit down, pretty much pinning me to the chair until I submitted to the strenght of his arm, because straining as I was, I felt like my intestines had a life of their own, working against me. It was extremely unpleasant, if not painful. In my perfect little world, I would have still been in bed, being taken care of by my friends, with Kemese curled up beside me, his gentleness taking away the little pains left after the torture I had to undergo in the past few days. In reality, I was trying to catch breath, thankful of the little time his elated speech gave me.



The faint light from the table lamp enabled me to inspect the har who appeared to have claimed himself my saviour. Almost immediately I decided I didn´t like him. He certainly was beautiful, I couldn´t deny that, beautiful in the classy way of people unreachable for one so humble like me. I loved his jawbones, moving neatly as he spoke, loved his hair and the well-muscled body, covered with skin that had a tan of one who didn´t have to work in the sun, but exposed oneself to its rays for pleasure. The rest of him I didn´t like, because his facial features, the sligtly pouted lips, the nose and even the eyes, though lovely in color, showed superiority so clearly, that you either felt like a tiny worm, unworthy of his sight, or started to boil with anger. Mine was the second case. His behaviour topped it all. Ag, he was practically violating me, ordering me around, and every word that left those oh-so-soft lips was an offense! I could but shake my head in disbelief.



„Now YOU listen to ME, Captain", I stated with all the crudeness of my unfinished sixteen years of life, gazing into the face I longed to slap in that moment. „I may be young, but I am neither a baby, nor a member of your army. You have no right to... to come and be rude to me just because you can.“ I had to catch my breath and put my thoughts in order, and I tried to do so as quickly as possible, knowing that I might not come to word again if he started to oppose me. „I do realize that our tiny village is just a dot on the cartograph in your noble world. Very well, but for me it´s all I have. All I know. It´s where I found love – which you´ve apparently never experienced, because otherwise you couldn´t say what you had said. The one I loved is out there on the ground, and I am not going anywhere until I am sure he is burried, so that the animals wouldn´t rip his body apart."



I had to use the table as a support to help me raise from the chair. Standing, my words seemed to have more weight that if I appeared like the wreck I really was. „I am not afraid of you, Captain Parasiel“, I said softly, „neither am I afraid of anyone else that might still be around. Perhaps I don´t want to be saved. Have you thought about that? In fact, when you arrived, the first thing I wanted was to ask you to make it quicker for me. I have nothing to loose but my life, and that has little worth since there´s nothing I want to life for. Besides, I´m not worthy of your effort. My ritual... has not been completed. I have but a few days before I either join my tribe in death or become something you will not want as a travel companion.“



In the moment when I was finishing, something happened. A sudden sparkle inside of me, nourished by the anger I let out, flickered in my chest, enough to bring a realisation to my senses.



Or rather, two of them. The first one was, that although, as the captain had said, there was no HAR left, I hadn´t seen a single human body. There should have been some. My mother was still living in the village, and two other females with children. One of them had a girl of my age, the other had a boy younger than me who had yet to be incepted in two, maybe three years. „Mother...“ I whispered, thinking aloud. The second flash in my mind, though secondary in the moment, was nontheless important in the long run. I realised that I didn´t really want to die. But the first thing I had to do was see my mother´s house, without this stranger stopping me.



With that thought, I run for the door, pushing into it with all my power. The unexpectedness of my action gave me a few seconds and I made it for the cottage that had been my home for many years. It was only two buildings away from my new home – the village was indeed a very small spot on the face of the world, the har had been right there - so I wasn´t even having trouble breathing.



Yet I stopped my run, standing framed in the door, frozen in shock. I expected that mother wouldn´t be there. I thought that perhaps I just haven´t seen her body...or that she and the others were kidnapped...or that they managed to escape while the hara were fighting, and would be hiding somewhere in the woods... But I was fully unprepared for the sight that offered itself to me in the main room, that served as both living room and kitchen.



The furniture was still there, the round table, the chairs that my father had made before I was born, the oven, the cherry wood wardrobe... but everything else was gone. The door of the wardrobe was open to show the dark emptiness inside, as was the cupboard. There were no pans and pots, no pictures on the walls, no curtains, even the carpets and the tablecloth were gone. This was not a house of someone who had to leave in a hurry. She must have been ready for it. She must have KNOWN.



It was in that moment that I felt tears on my cheeks again, but this time I didn´t sob. I just felt my knees giving way under me.

PART 4: LEEF



"I'm not your enemy," said Leef, and sent it with a clear message of intent. It hit a brick wall and he hoped that the inflection in his voice had been enough. The young har was an unbound book, a half life. He hovered between one part of his existence and the next, and his inception scar was still crusted over. That meant he was new, very new and therefore, very vulnerable. Everyhar else was dead. Some of their astral bodies were outlined in the air, shocked and waiting for a guide.



Leef had seen it all before in many skirmishes and, of course, in major battles. Sometimes the dead hung around for days, waiting, waiting... for what? Did they not want to rest? It was Leef's suspicion that they were so angry their lives had ended; they were waiting for somehar to possess. How sweet life seems when it is over, even if half of it were shit. Or maybe they didn't even know they were dead. It was the ultimate self deception. "Come away," said Leef, and he grabbed the har around his torso before his hands could get anywhere near his erstwhile companion's knife. "You are not safe here."



The har repeated his warnings but Leef took no notice. He dragged him, protesting bitterly, into the nearby house and kicked the door shut. Still keeping one arm securely around the struggling har, he drew the curtains and uttered a word of power which sealed the house from psychic invasion. The waiting spirits outside couldn't move over the threshold. It solved the immediate problem. Whether the perpetrators of the massacre were still around was another matter.



Leef looked around. They were in a living room, of sorts. The odour in the house mostly resembled a pig sty, though. He could smell rotting excrement, blood and vomit. Yes, definitely the place where the young har must have gone through althaia. There were less and less suitable humans left now to undergo the process and it was unusual to find this sort of scene still. But then, Leef reasoned, they were out in the backwoods where pockets of humanity occasionally held back the inevitable. Maybe one of those renegade gangs had killed the har's companions. If so, he'd better be on his mettle.



He uprighted a chair with difficulty since the young har had regained some energy, and he pushed him down on it, kicking his feet from under him. The har sat down with an undignified crash. "Now listen to me," said Leef, "Your village is just a short cut as far as I’m concerned. I'm on my way back up north. I'm a Captain in the Parasiel army. You're the only har left in this Ag forsaken place, so you'll have to come with me, and quickly. Just accept that the whole place has died. In five minutes we are going to leave. Don't make a fuss, just do it. I don’t want to drag you all the way to Galhea, but if I have to, I will.”

Thank you so much!!! Consider this unsuspended, game runs! Will post soon

TEMPORALLY SUSPENDED.

I have about 3 parts written but game died, pictures can´t be taken.

PLEASE HELP!!!
http://www.insimenator.org/showthread.php?p=442389#post442389

:drool: damn hafise I really need those for a contest and they dont show in my game... is it possible I dont see them because I dont have pets installed?

oooohhh This is very interesting! Great idea!

Aw thank you and thank you!
Velvet, weren´t you the one who liked Laurell K. Hamilton?

PART 3: MYSTÉRE

Kemese´s body was maybe the twentieth one I discovered laying in the dust of the main street, although I am not entirely sure... I didn´t count them. I only know that a long time had passed before I finally came to kneel by his side, prolonged even by my lack of strenght... long enough for me to hope that perhaps, somehow, he had been spared. Of course, I should have known better – had he survived that pointless massacre, he would have found a way to let me know, but the child in me refused to believe the obvious less seen with my own eyes. So I kept searching... walking through the darkness, and I forgot about the complete exhaustion I had been feeling just a little while ago. Driven by madness and despair, I never stopped bending over my lifeless friends, my tribe to be, mentally preparing myself for what was to come. And come it did.



My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song. His body was not left behind in some unnatural position, nor were there any visible wounds or traces of blood on his body. One of his arms folded, he might have been sleeping, except his chest wasn´t moving in the usual calming rise and fall. Softly I laid my hand upon him, a gentle touch he couldn´t feel. I bent my head close and half enveloped him, pressing my body onto his as if I could nurse him to life by my touch. „Please... Kemese, please...“ Finally I found the wound at the back of his head, still wet, blood covering his beautiful hair, which erased the last faint glimpse of hope. And with noone around to see me, I felt entitled to start sobbing.

When I was a little boy, my mother always tought me that death is a natural part of life. I still feared it, more so after the unfortunate death of my little girl friend. For me, death was exact and merciless, an enemy to hate and fight against in that lost battle of life. No one escapes its clutches, and no one long escapes the harsh reality of dealing with the loss of someone dear, but this semblant fairness can´t lessen the pain. Not in the slightest.  



At the age of seven, I once heard someone calling it the „long sleep“. Since the moment, sleep too became my foe. Night after night, I would lay in my bed, finding countless little tasks to employ my mind with, trying not to fall into slumber, using all my willpower to keep me heavy lids from falling, believing blindly that perhaps if I found a way to overcome sleep, the same willpower would help me to keep myself alive, out of the Death´s reach. Usually, I surrendered eventually, mentally yelling at myself in the mornings, or I managed to stay awake and kept dozing off then during the day. Either way, I learnt that my efforts on that field were and would always be fruitless, but the hathred and reluctancy to go to bed stayed with me... until Kemese changed it.


I never talked to him about it, afraid that he might think me crazy, but I was in love... and suddenly I wanted to dream about him. About our future. Sometimes, he would steal into my room, or let me stay in his house overnight, and we would spend the night chatting, lauging like children, cuddling and touching here and there, knowing more isn´t allowed. Then we would fall asleep in each others arms, the sky already whitening on the East, and all at once sleep was welcome and precious, shared with another.



That was over now. Beyond redemption, like a dream, and my new life would also end as soon as it started, I knew that much. The ritual wasn´t completed... the most pleasurable part of it, the prize for my suffering was missing, and I knew what that meant. There was noone left to complete my make over, and even if I had the chance, I would never let someone else have me, never let them take what I wanted to give to Kemese. In fact, I wanted to cross the bridge to the other side as soon as possible and meet him there. What point was there to living without the one I lived for? I sat quietly by, remained faithful, my sobs fainter and fainter – I have exhausted myself. The tears though would not stop flowing.



Later, I found a better position and placed my head on his chest, like I so often did in sleep, intending to lay like that until my last breath, warming his coldness with my fever. How long would it take? Would it be painful again, delirous, or would I just fade away? Thoughts swirled through my mind like in those sleepless nights, the corpse under my body becoming stiff. His soul, his spiritual body, the eternal one... where was it? And where would my soul go? I could remember my wraeththu teacher speaking about their Gods, about Aghama, just as I recalled my mother praying to the human God, Jesus. If she was dead too, she´d surely gone to Heaven...and Kemese... he would exist in the other plane he believed in, with the dehara. But what about me? I was stuck on the way, neither human nor wraeththu... perhaps my soul was destined to wander in darkness till the end of times, an outcast. The thought made me shiver.



I must have fallen asleep or unconscious... either way I didn´t hear the har until he was just a few steps away from me, a combination of beauty and danger in the moonlight. We didn´t get strangers were often, the villige was not an area loved by tourists, and there was nothing of particular importance around. My first and only thought was that this person was responsible for the massacre and returned to enjoy the sight. Very well then, at least he would end my waiting. Come on. Finish me off.



My tongue, surprisingly, refused to cooperate with my mind and instead of this silent wish, I voiced a hysterical moan. „Get away!!! Leave us alone!!!“ My hand was searching for Kemese´s dagger. Like if there was an „us“. Like if there was someone or something to fight for.

PART 2: LEEF



Captain Leef Sariel har Parasiel was fed up, which was most unusual. He’d taken far too long to accomplish a simple task. All he’d had to do was to harvest some lignum vitae from an area of the southern forest and return to Galhea. The parsics used the rare hardwood for ceremonial swords. A new sword was needed to present to Lord Swift on the anniversary of his becoming the archon of their tribe, an occasion which was generally celebrated as riotously as possible.



After a number of weeks of trekking, he and two subordinates had taken a further week to find a suitable tree. He’d sent them back to Galhea with the precious cargo yesterday and today he’d paid the forest master for the privilege of extracting the wood by bartering his horse. Usually the parsics managed to get the wood free, but this particular time they’d been forced to infringe upon an area that was settled and farmed. If the lignum didn’t get back to Galhea in time for the carpenter and blacksmith to assemble the sword, then Leef would lose face. It was not something he envisaged as being useful to his career.



He was a day behind his men and trying to catch up. Now he’d wrenched his ankle into the bargain. That required half a day to heal so he was stuck in the forest, next to a stream for refreshment, with the weather looking inclement overhead. Just what he needed. The thought of trudging through mud for the next couple of weeks until he got back to base did not improve his mood.



But, being Leef Sariel, he was never irritated for long. The black clouds passed during the course of the afternoon, and by evening he was back on route, much fitter in body and spirit. Since he had rested for most of the day, he decided to press on through the night. The woods did not disturb him. He’d ridden through Gebbadon before and been hardly affected by the blight of the place. The only thing that had ever affected him had been when Lord Swift decided to prefer Calanthe har Aralis over him during the archon’s feybraiha. But that was the past, and the past, as they say, is a foreign country.



By ten o’clock that night, he’d come upon another settlement. He decided to walk straight through it rather than stick to the forest, as it would cut another few hours off his journey. Dirt tracks masqueraded as streets and the area seemed preternaturally quiet, as if all the villagers had left. No lights burned in the houses and no dogs barked to herald the arrival of a stranger.



Then, as he rounded a corner, he came upon a massacre. Bodies lay like heaps of discarded rubbish, strangely poignant in the moonlight. A young har dressed in a gown and boots was bending over one of them.