((Site Write 21: Insanity. My original concept for this story was to see the world through Cynes’s eyes, to look at the shifting realities and voices and jumble that she perceives from her point of view. Buuuuuut I got stuck on it, and busy, and banged this out instead. Poor crazy, crazy dead girl))
Cynes didn't dream anymore. Didn't really sleep anymore, either. Didn't need to...didn't want to.
When she did drift a little into something like a reverie, there was a big, dark bird that swept over the land, over Gilneas, over Lordaeron, over frozen lands. It would tear the ground apart with its pointed beak and slashing claws. The sky would bleed, cold and black, through rips and holes.
It took a lot to keep the Raven down low, where it couldn't come crawling out. The voice of the Raven whispered in her head constantly. She had to draw her focus with pointy things driven through her skin, the almost-feel of it made things sharp and red again. If she concentrated, if she fought hard, she could make the blood under her skin start to move again. That made the scratchy, cold voice of the bird inside her fade to where she almost couldn't hear it.
It made her feel alive, even if she knew that she was just pretending.
Little broken pieces like little broken birds, hopping and fluttering, couldn't get off the ground. That was how she felt most of the time these days. Her wings were broken for her own safety. Hobbled and clipped.
She didn't know what would happen if the Raven took her again. It would probably tear the last pieces of Cynes Weathersbee to bits, fluttering and ragged in the wind.
You're not a bird. You're a girl. They tried. Tried to remind her, the voices that were real. But it was hard, so hard sometimes, to tell the difference.
((Site Write entry 3! This retreads some of the same ground in my other Cynes story, but eh. Another story about Nili and the destruction of Draenor would either do the same, or not be suitable for the forums >_> ))
The stoic Death Knight wandered the streets of Stormwind like a dark shadow, reviled but steady, icy corruption spreading at his feet and yet steadfast, loyal to his cause. Steadfast against the blackness in his cold heart, he was emblemetic of those with his affliction. Those that had 'survived' the service of Arthas, raised from the dead into terrible purpose. Utterly typical...
And then there was Cynes Weathersbee.
"Down, down, derry derry down..." the girl sang to herself cheerily, spinning. She was also clad in dark saronite. She was also very visibly dead, with a gaping hole with jagged edges where her cheek should be, showing her teeth through the space. But she skipped, spun, and danced her way through the streets of Stormwind, a place that she had never lived before...
Before that vague time in her memory, when things were different. They were memories that she pushed down, because then and now there was something large and dark that roiled and seethed on the edges of her recollection.
"Hey...HEY! Girl! You just knocked over my--" A merchant started to bellow, fruit spilled out on the cobblestones, but stopped abruptly when she turned, seeing the ruins of her face.
"...they all fell down," she mused as she looked over the scattered apples and oranges, vague and unfocused. Only pain made things sharp again, but she wasn't supposed to do that for some reason...
"You...you need to pay for that, girl..." the merchant started again, gathering his resolve.
The full force of her attention fell on the man, wild and grinning too wide. "Oi'm not a girl..." Cynes whispered, conspiratorial and low. "Oi'm a bird."
All the man could do was stare as the girl picked up a single apple, placing it in his hand gently. "Dun lose tha'. You'll need i' for later."
There were times when the birds spoke to her, they told her things. They called her The Raven, Cynes Ravensblight, and they whispered terrible tales to her of towns razed, people slaughtered, and the secrets of blood and the dead.
"Down, down, derry derry down..." Cynes sang to herself as she continued on, spinning in a slow circle. She chose instead to listen to the music in her head, memories of a place farther back than the dark bird in her mind, and ignored the scratchy voices urging her to remember what it felt like to fly.
In the sun-dappled graveyard on the edge of Stormwind, a little girl named Margaret who doggedly clung to her full name despite mostly being called Maggie by other people clutched a ragged, makeshift bouquet of flowers as she picked her way through the jutting headstones, counting. She had made this trip many times, often in the company of her mother but sometimes not, and had learned to count to fifteen specifically for this purpose. There were probably numbers bigger than fifteen, but if there were she didn’t have any use for them yet.
As she approached, though, her feet slowed and her head tilted in confusion. There was a big black shape on top of the gravestone, and it was...singing? “Down, down, derry derry down...”
As she got closer, Margaret saw that it was a person. A girl, like her, but older. But not very old. And she was wearing heavy metal armor like the guards around the city, only thicker, and black. There was an axe almost as big as the girl was leaned up against the side of the grave, giving off sort of a white...mist. She was very very pale, and her hair was messy.
“...you’re not supposed to play on the stones,” Margaret said gravely, fully aware of her responsibility to make sure the Right Thing was happening. She’d been scolded for the same thing before.
It took a second for the girl to focus and look in her direction, frowning a little. “Oi’m not playin’,” she said, but there was a hint of a question in her voice like she wasn’t quite sure. She didn’t quite look directly at the girl with the flowers, but near her without focus. “Oi’m perched.”
Margaret’s nose wrinkled slightly. “You talk funny. Like mommy’s new friend. Mommy says he’s a wolf sometimes.”
The girl’s brows drew down, or at least the one that Margaret could see from the side. “Oi’m not a wolf,” she said firmly, as if she was convincing herself of this fact. “Oi’m a bird.”
Margaret gave her a steady look. “You aren’t a bird. You’re a girl.”
“You dunnae,” The girl said with a slight huff, lifting her chin. The light filtering down through the leaves overhead glinted off metal on her face...loops and studs, pierced through her eyebrow, her lip, her nose.“Fings aren’t always wot they look loike.”
Margaret watched the perched girl, taking in the dark armor and the axe. “Are you one of those Dead Knights? Mommy said that some of the people who died, they got made into Dead Knights by a king who’s dead now, and so they came back...”
The girl swung the full of her attention on Margaret now, sudden and grinning. It was a grin that was ghoulishly too wide on top of being manic, she was missing a lot of her cheek on one side like someone had scraped it out with something sharp and Margaret could see her teeth all the way back. “‘e’s not dead,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “‘e’s just restin’.”
Margaret frowned at this, glancing down to the flowers in her hand and then at the grave that the girl was crouched on. “I wish that he’d made my daddy into a Dead Knight,” she said, carefully placing the flowers. “Mommy said the Dead Knights killed him.”
The girl looked briefly confused by this, her hand lifted to her ragged cheek and scratched, idly. “Dun remember...could’ve done,” she murmured, going vague again.
A dark shadow fell across the grave and the girls, Margaret turned to see another wall of black armor and a man inside it watching them. There wasn’t even a little bit of expression in his face or in his eyes, he just...stared. “You shouldn’t be on the graves,” he said flatly, his voice had that funny wobble in it like he was talking from the bottom of a well. Margaret nearly preened at this, having been proved justified in telling her the same thing earlier.
“Oi’m perched,” the girl said stubbornly, her vowels wandered petulantly.
The man moved closer and picked the girl up by her hips. Even though she was as big as a grown-up and in all that armor, he lifted her as easily as Margaret’s mommy lifted her. “You are not a bird,” he said simply, patiently. Like he’d said it a thousand times before.
Once she was on the ground the girl picked up her axe, letting it swing idly from her hand like a toy. His arm moved to still the motion. “Wot are we gonna do tonight, Brilly?” She singsonged, smiling at him like she’d only just noticed that he was there.
“Try and find a purpose, I suppose,” Gaebril said, in the same often-repeated tone.
When Arthas had lost control, it had been unilaterally decided to send the Knights back to their countries of origin. Not all of them had been deemed suitable, however. And some...some were on the cusp of potential disaster, and needed extra minding. Despite being pardoned, their position was precarious.
If there was a bird left in Cynes Weathersbee, known during her time in the service of the Lich King as Cynes Ravensblight, it was best to keep it contained for all of their sakes.
Margaret watched the two Knights in dark armor move on and crouched down to her father’s grave, arranging the placed flowers just so.
As she followed Gaebril’s steady path, Cynes sang to herself softly, extended her arms, closed her eyes and slowly started to spin. “Down, down, derry derry down...”
