Subj: [ffml] [MW] A near-regression Date: 98-10-21 14:19:00 EDT From: jandoc@hawaii.edu (Schala) Reply-to: ffml@onelist.com To: ffml@onelist.com From: SchalaSchala broke out in a cold sweat. She sat up, shivering. There was that urge again...she fought it down. Her throat was choked, her chest heavy. Her hands began trembling, eager to grab hold of something... She reached for her belt, then remembered she no longer had a weapon. She closed her eyes, took deep breaths, then opened them again. She got up and made her way to the sleeping Frog. She knelt beside him and shook him gently. "Frog...Frog..." Her voice was raspy, trembling. Frog stirred and opened his eyes. The sight that met him got him up in an instant. "Schala! What's wrong?" He stood up and so did she. "I...I don't know," she whispered. "It's just...this feeling again..." "Come." He took her gently by the arm. "Let us just walk around here a bit...I do not wish to go far because of Kaitlin, but it may ease you somewhat." She nodded. They didn't really walk anywhere, just around the edge of their camp, keeping the sleeping druidess in sight. Schala kept her arms tightly around herself, and she watched her feet kick up the leaves. Frog said nothing, leaving her to her thoughts. After awhile, she paused and took several deep breaths. "Feeling better?" Frog asked. She nodded. "A bit," she replied. "The feeling is gone. But I...I can't go to sleep yet..." "Let us sit by the fire." The fire was by now a heap of glowing embers, but Frog built it up again until it was a small blaze. They both sat down. The flames danced eerily on Schala's face as she stared into the fire. Her expression was so mindless. But Frog knew that was just a facade. Who knew what lay behind that seemingly stupid countenance? He watched her for some time. Finally he spoke. "What happened?" he asked. "What brought this...feeling...to you again?" Schala turned to him slowly, like a person in a dream. Her eyes glanced at him, then looked away. "I don't know," she said slowly. "It was like something inside me had grown during the night and was crying to be let out...like a screaming infant that won't rest until you've fed it...and that's how it felt...It was...hungry...It was demanding to be fed...and the thing that feeds it...is DEATH..." She turned back to the fire. "It were as though anger itself had been bundled up and became a living being...Anger and hate are the only things it can feel...And all it wants to do is destroy...to kill...to make others suffer the most intolerable pain imaginable.... "But...as it goes on its rampage, its feeling is never satisfied. It...it *grows* instead, as if killing were a drug that it needed to get more and more of. So it constantly wreaks havoc, stimulated by the death it causes...but never knowing that in the process, it's also killing itself..." Schala's voice faded away. Frog studied her intently. "And this wish to kill...that is what you feel as well?" he asked softly. "I...sometimes...yes..." She buried her face in her hands. "I always thought I would get used to death because I was in a war. But the difference is that *I'm* not the one doing the killing. I don't have it on my conscience. And when I'm faced with the choice to kill, I always know it's the right thing to do. I know there is no other choice. To preserve myself, I must kill... "But now...now, this feeling in not discriminating. It doesn't care what's right and what's wrong. It just targets anyone...anywhere... anytime the feeling pops up." Schala looked up again. "That's why...also ...I'm afraid for you and Kaitlin's safety...because I don't know when this feeling may strike or what I may do under its influence. It has such control over me...but I've never felt this way before! And...and I don't know where it came from!" She dropped her head and dissolved into tears. Frog put a hand on her shoulder and came closer to her. "It is easy to see the results," he said. "It is difficult to find the causes. If...if you like, I could...help you." Schala smiled up at him. His heart felt a strange pang. She was so beautiful when she smiled... "You do help me," she said, her voice interrupting his thoughts. "You're easy to talk to...and you listen...and you let me wake you up in the middle of the night when I'm having problems that I really have no right to bother you with..." He shook his head. "I swore to protect you," he said solemnly. "If this is part of my duty to guard you, then so be it." Her smile this time was a sad one. "Thank you," she said faintly. Schala leaned against him and sighed. "What is wrong with me?" she murmured. "Why am I like this...?" He put his arm around her and hugged her. "You said before you had nightmares. What are they of?" Schala merely shook her head. He frowned, knowing there was *something* to the dreams that had woken her up so many times before. He remembered her confusion when he had asked the same question some days ago, and he had every intention of getting an answer this time. "Schala, if you want me to help you through this, I need to know..." His voice was gentle but urging. "I know..." she said softly. "But...it's...hard..." She shook her head fiercely and wrapped herself into a tight ball, shrinking away from him. "Come now...You can trust me..." Receiving no response, he stroked her hair. "I...am worried about you...because I do not know what it is that tears away at your soul and turns you into an angry, murderous demon. And I will always worry." Frog touched her arm. "Please tell me..." After a few moments, she uncurled slowly. Schala looked at him with eyes filled with confusion and indecision. She bowed her head. "I...I do trust you," she said, her voice hoarse. "But if...if I tell you, you must promise never to tell anyone else..." "You have my word," he swore. Her eyes searched his for a good while. Then she turned back to the fire. "My dreams...are of an event that happened while Kaitlin and I were at the Moogle camp...We were...in the Darklord's tent, prisoners of the Alliance...We didn't know what would happen to us, if we should try to escape or what..." Her breathing became heavy, her hands started to shake. "There were...some Moogleboars there...and...they were drunk...they...they came in the tent...and..." She suddenly broke down into sobs that racked her whole body. Frog held her tightly. She didn't need to finish in order for him to know what had happened. Drunk Moogles were a recipe for disaster...Moogle style. He was disgusted. "Schala...I...I'm sorry..." He felt like hitting himself for saying that. It seemed so inadequate, so stupid. He hugged her and rocked her gently, letting her cry. Her tears slowed and finally stopped. "Do you dream about this every night?" he asked softly. She shook her head. "No...I haven't dreamt of it in some time now...but every time I do, I get that feeling, that urge to kill..." Frog looked at her. "I think, then, that that is the root of it all," he said quietly. "You...you hate them, don't you? I would if something like that had happened to me...I think it has built up to the point inside of you where you cannot contain the anger any longer. And so you lash out..." He tilted her face up. "How many people have you told about this?" Schala sighed. "No one...but I think the Darklord knows...he had a strange expression on his face when he came back into the tent...after it was over..." "Was Kaitlin with you?" "Yes...but they didn't touch her. I...I made sure of that..." So she had sacrificed her own body to protect a friend. Frog wondered if, in that kind of situation, he would have been able to do the same...From what he had seen of the Moogles, the mere thought of them was enough to disgust him. How much worse would it be to actually live through such a thing? Schala had...but she had not come through it unscathed. And now it was killing her slowly, eating away at her... "Oh, Frog..." Her voice was soft. "I...feel so much better now..." She wiped away the tears. "Thank you for listening to me..." He hugged her. "I only wish I could do more," he answered. "I can do nothing to ease your pain..." "Oh but you have." She touched his arm. "I kept this a secret inside me for so long. It was a part of my being. And now I feel...a part of that secret has been released, never to return...Thank you..." She paused. "I...I think I can go to sleep now..." Frog smiled and kissed her on the cheek. "Pleasant dreams," he said. "I certainly hope so..." The way to meet your fate is to try your hardest to avoid it. --- Wilma Jandoc aka Enya *ICQ: | "Life can only be understood jandoc@hawaii.edu *14710984 | backwards. But it must be lived nabiki_tendo@geocities.com | forwards." http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jandoc | - Binkley, http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/9800 | "Bloom County" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from this mailing list, or to change your subscription to digest, go to the ONElist web site, at http://www.onelist.com and select the User Center link from the menu bar on the left. ----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from relay07.mx.aol.com (relay07.mail.aol.com [172.31.109.7]) by air09.mail.aol.com (v50.22) with SMTP; Wed, 21 Oct 1998 14:19:00 -0400 Received: from onelist.com (pop.onelist.com [209.207.164.13]) by relay07.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with SMTP id OAA02645 for ; Wed, 21 Oct 1998 14:18:58 -0400 (EDT) Received: (qmail 21549 invoked by alias); 21 Oct 1998 18:20:09 -0000 Received: (qmail 21533 invoked from network); 21 Oct 1998 18:20:07 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO relay1.Hawaii.Edu) (128.171.3.53) by pop.onelist.com with SMTP; 21 Oct 1998 18:20:07 -0000 Received: from [128.171.44.52] ([128.171.44.52]) by relay1.Hawaii.Edu with SMTP id <149589(3)>; Wed, 21 Oct 1998 08:18:37 -1000 Received: from localhost by uhunix4.its.Hawaii.Edu with SMTP id <135668(7)>; Wed, 21 Oct 1998 08:18:33 -1000 Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 08:18:30 -1000 From: Schala X-Sender: jandoc@uhunix3 To: ffml@onelist.com Message-ID: Mailing-List: list ffml@onelist.com; contact http://www.onelist.com Delivered-To: mailing list ffml@onelist.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: ffml@onelist.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: [ffml] [MW] A near-regression