Blogathon - Entry 21
Jul. 26th, 2008 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mllelaurelRusalka
[This is technically a character sheet for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
secretboston, but I think it can stand on its own.]
If you were ever mortal, you no longer remember it. There may have been a man - you've heard the stories of the ways your kind come to be. Someone who hurt you or spurned you; someone who made your life seem small and worth giving up. There may or may not have been a child.
Whatever happened before, it was a rusalka you became. Not a mermaid; not the romantic version espoused by Anderson, but a Russian spirit, wild and dangerous. You were a killer.
You're comely enough, but not specifically beautiful. Still, those mortals who saw you in the moonlight would be drawn toward you like iron to a magnet, into the lake and downward, until the waters rose over their heads and they drowned. You've the reputation of a siren, but it wasn't just men you took. Men and women, young and old; all came to you if you willed it.
You didn't know why you did it, at first, unless it was simply because you could. Later, you learned that from their spirits, unmarked and unhallowed, you drew power and vitality. You could survive without it, but why?
Why, indeed. The energy of your dead wasn't the only thing to remain within you. As time went on, you felt yourself change. Memories you'd never experienced, first in your dreams then in waking light. Feelings you'd grown estranged from resurfacing again. It seemed you had imbibed pieces of your victims souls; their life experiences along with their lives. You killed them, but they defeated you as well, slowly and from the inside out. The being you once were is now dead.
You spent centuries in this state. The Romanov throne rose and tumbled. The world shook, but you remained.
Then, he came onto the scene. An unassuming-looking rabbi. You didn't meet him face-to-face, not at first. Instead, you found bread and salt laid out on the banks of your lake. Tokens of welcome. The land was yours, but no one had ever welcomed you to it.
When he came in person, months later, you sang for him, but your voice had no effect.
Freed of each other's influence, you came to an unlikely respect. He argued with you as he would with an equal. Politics, religion, morality. You almost never agreed, but though you'd never admit it, you came to enjoy his visits.
But the world wasn't done shifting around you. You could smell the coppery tang of coming war in the air. Surprisingly enough, so could he.
In the year 1910, he made you an offer. "This world is coming to an end," he said. "My people have never sat comfortably here, but it's going to get much, much worse. And you... How long do you think you can keep this land of yours. Man has already learned to tame the wild. How long before you're driven out."
You must have looked skeptical, because he asked, "Immortal you are, but do you think yourself invulnerable?" And that was a question you had no answer to.
You were bound to your lake, unable to leave it. You don't know how he did it, but in the end you were still bound. You still felt the lake in your bones, only now you could leave it, provided you carried with you some of its water at all times.
You travelled by ship to the so-called New World. It hadn't been new for a long time now, but names live on when identity dies. It was a difficult voyage, but less lethal for you than it might have been for another. The boat to New York, then train from New York to Boston. You slept a great deal. The rabbi's family avoided you. You thought him a fool for having told them what you were.
For the first time in your immortal life, you spent years on dry land. Your powers dwindled to nothing, but your health maintained. A good thing to know. As a side effect, you had not killed anyone since your travels began. You lived as a mortal, first on the grudging charity of your rabbi's family, and later on your own steam. You bypassed the Great Depression, then began to invest small amounts of money into lucrative ventures under different names, most of them male. Those investments would pay off soon enough. They are what funds you now.
Years passed, and then the world imploded again. April 26, 1986. You woke to the scent of acrid smoke and chemicals filling your mouth. When the retching subsides, some still-sane part of you noted that the air around you was perfectly clean. The stench came from the vial of native water you wore on a chain around your neck.
Something was happening to your lake. Something was killing it and you could do nothing but curl in a tight knot on the floor, sharp, wrenching pain washing all over you.
If it was possible to kill you, you swear that night would have done the trick. And yet you lived, though you could feel the pool of life energy in your belly shrink with each day. You didn't know what would happen if it ran dry, and in some part of your soul still capable of it, terror ran rampant.
A blur of weeks. You must have been fighting a losing battle.
Vaguely familiar faces and words you could not decipher.
You woke up to cool water washing over your face. Dirty, polluted water - you could feel traces of clay and toxic metals. But water, and strangely your own. Someone had sundered your connection with the dying lake and reformed it, binding you to this pond. A poisonous undercurrent smack dab in the middle of Bostonian suburbia. You thought it appropriate.
[This is technically a character sheet for
secretboston, but I think it can stand on its own.]If you were ever mortal, you no longer remember it. There may have been a man - you've heard the stories of the ways your kind come to be. Someone who hurt you or spurned you; someone who made your life seem small and worth giving up. There may or may not have been a child.
Whatever happened before, it was a rusalka you became. Not a mermaid; not the romantic version espoused by Anderson, but a Russian spirit, wild and dangerous. You were a killer.
You're comely enough, but not specifically beautiful. Still, those mortals who saw you in the moonlight would be drawn toward you like iron to a magnet, into the lake and downward, until the waters rose over their heads and they drowned. You've the reputation of a siren, but it wasn't just men you took. Men and women, young and old; all came to you if you willed it.
You didn't know why you did it, at first, unless it was simply because you could. Later, you learned that from their spirits, unmarked and unhallowed, you drew power and vitality. You could survive without it, but why?
Why, indeed. The energy of your dead wasn't the only thing to remain within you. As time went on, you felt yourself change. Memories you'd never experienced, first in your dreams then in waking light. Feelings you'd grown estranged from resurfacing again. It seemed you had imbibed pieces of your victims souls; their life experiences along with their lives. You killed them, but they defeated you as well, slowly and from the inside out. The being you once were is now dead.
You spent centuries in this state. The Romanov throne rose and tumbled. The world shook, but you remained.
Then, he came onto the scene. An unassuming-looking rabbi. You didn't meet him face-to-face, not at first. Instead, you found bread and salt laid out on the banks of your lake. Tokens of welcome. The land was yours, but no one had ever welcomed you to it.
When he came in person, months later, you sang for him, but your voice had no effect.
Freed of each other's influence, you came to an unlikely respect. He argued with you as he would with an equal. Politics, religion, morality. You almost never agreed, but though you'd never admit it, you came to enjoy his visits.
But the world wasn't done shifting around you. You could smell the coppery tang of coming war in the air. Surprisingly enough, so could he.
In the year 1910, he made you an offer. "This world is coming to an end," he said. "My people have never sat comfortably here, but it's going to get much, much worse. And you... How long do you think you can keep this land of yours. Man has already learned to tame the wild. How long before you're driven out."
You must have looked skeptical, because he asked, "Immortal you are, but do you think yourself invulnerable?" And that was a question you had no answer to.
You were bound to your lake, unable to leave it. You don't know how he did it, but in the end you were still bound. You still felt the lake in your bones, only now you could leave it, provided you carried with you some of its water at all times.
You travelled by ship to the so-called New World. It hadn't been new for a long time now, but names live on when identity dies. It was a difficult voyage, but less lethal for you than it might have been for another. The boat to New York, then train from New York to Boston. You slept a great deal. The rabbi's family avoided you. You thought him a fool for having told them what you were.
For the first time in your immortal life, you spent years on dry land. Your powers dwindled to nothing, but your health maintained. A good thing to know. As a side effect, you had not killed anyone since your travels began. You lived as a mortal, first on the grudging charity of your rabbi's family, and later on your own steam. You bypassed the Great Depression, then began to invest small amounts of money into lucrative ventures under different names, most of them male. Those investments would pay off soon enough. They are what funds you now.
Years passed, and then the world imploded again. April 26, 1986. You woke to the scent of acrid smoke and chemicals filling your mouth. When the retching subsides, some still-sane part of you noted that the air around you was perfectly clean. The stench came from the vial of native water you wore on a chain around your neck.
Something was happening to your lake. Something was killing it and you could do nothing but curl in a tight knot on the floor, sharp, wrenching pain washing all over you.
If it was possible to kill you, you swear that night would have done the trick. And yet you lived, though you could feel the pool of life energy in your belly shrink with each day. You didn't know what would happen if it ran dry, and in some part of your soul still capable of it, terror ran rampant.
A blur of weeks. You must have been fighting a losing battle.
Vaguely familiar faces and words you could not decipher.
You woke up to cool water washing over your face. Dirty, polluted water - you could feel traces of clay and toxic metals. But water, and strangely your own. Someone had sundered your connection with the dying lake and reformed it, binding you to this pond. A poisonous undercurrent smack dab in the middle of Bostonian suburbia. You thought it appropriate.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-27 02:53 am (UTC)(As I comment you're into the second-half of your 24 hours. Well done and best luck in dealing with the second half!)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-27 03:49 am (UTC)Thank you! We're all hanging in there.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-27 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-28 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-28 02:12 am (UTC)