<span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua'"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#336600">Though the figure that huddled around the crackling firelight that danced across the glistening walls was diminutive in size, more feminine in its design, the shadows that painted grotesque pictures on the cave walls told a different tale altogether. With every flicker of the flame, the shadow changed. First to the great grizzly that occupied these very woods. Then the exotic tiger residing in the lush jungles far to the east. Next was a fiery plumed bird seeming to rise up behind her before shifting again to a great fire breathing lizard whispered in legends older even than her. And yet the figure sat stock still and seemingly out of nowhere except for the exhaustive rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in deep the tainted plumes of smoke that danced up to the cave’s black ceiling. Somewhere in the distant, a wolf gave its final cry in the night, lone and longsome, signifying a final foray of the evening. Perhaps it would deem to come in close to her cave, where the flickering shadows on the wall flickered and formed. <br/>
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She took on the shape of a young woman here in the cave. The cloak that rested around the slight figure was tattered, rags barely held together to stave off the chill of the night and early morning. A plain dress in a similar state she wore underneath it with a pair of boots whose soles were nearly worn through. Underneath a cap she had on her head, her dark hair was wild and unwashed, like she had been living away from civilization for some time. Her dirty face was streaked with the elements, leaving a pair of large luminous eyes to stare into the dancing flames her hands were extended towards. Dirt and other things were caked underneath the beds of her nails and her face had an over cast of gauntness to it, suggesting negligence or malnutrition. Only her eyes seemed to crackle with some sort of sinister darkness, while at the same time reflected the dancing heat that dwindled, hissed, popped, and sputtered while it ate through the kindling she had fed them. Only the fire was greedy, wild. It demanded much and there was nothing that was too much for it.<br/>
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She was there as a stranger, or as simply a girl lost in the woods and had stumbled on his shelter as a means to survive the night. She relied on the blackened memory of the villagers to obscure their thoughts to her arrival. She relied on heavier enchantments still to hide the truth, something only she had clung to, and had for many ages. There was power that bled deeply into the marrow of her bones, no matter how frail she appeared sitting on the rough packed dirt inside that cave waiting for them all to rouse. And no matter that she claimed the face of youth – a girl who shared the same kind of beauty of the one that haunted their grandparents still – she had been walking the world for longer than generations before any of them had been alive. And would continue to walk it long after they had died. She arrived there as a Visitor, but the conclusion of her stay depended on how they reacted.<br/>
</span></span><br/><div style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: 'Book Antiqua'"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#336600"><a href="https://blackdahliaroleplaying.com/attachments/5638/" target="_blank">View attachment 5638</a><br/>
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<a class="username" data-user-id="757" data-username="@Laz" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" href="https://blackdahliaroleplaying.com/members/757/">@Laz</a> </span></span>​</div>