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dark tower - randall flagg

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[A traveler might, some night in a dream, happen upon a desert road. It lies in sunset light, and the road stretches away into the distance like a black river, like black ribbon. Beyond are hills and cliffs and stones. They rise against the flatness of the desert before them and the order of the road below them. It is sunset, but the heat of the day still rises from the road and the air still shimmers with the heat a while yet. Behind the traveler the sun squats on the western rim of the world in the blooming colors of the red clouds.

Let the traveler walk along the road a while. The road progresses. The road moves.

In the utter austerity of this landscape all shapes and things are given a strange equality and no one thing living or dead or never to live nor die nor bird nor tree nor plant nor animal can make a claim of superiority or ownership. The very clarity of these things inverted their familiarity, for the eye of man understands the whole of a place beginning with some first part and here was nothing brighter than another and nothing more shadowed and in the lucid and luminous democracy of such places all preference is made irrelevant and a man and a stone find between them unexpected and hitherto unknown shared blood.

This is a place where iron will not rust nor tin tarnish.

The ribbed frames of dead cattle under their patches of dried hide lie like the ruins of primitive boats upturned upon that shoreless void and the traveler will pass lurid and austere the black and desiccated shapes of beasts who had died with their necks stretched in agony in the sand and now upright and blind and lurching askew with scraps of blackened leather hanging from the fretwork of their ribs they leaned with their long mouths howling after the endless tandem suns that passed above them.

Cross now a vast dry lake with rows of dead mountains that ranged beyond it like the works of enormous insects. To the south lie broken shapes of stones from some fallen or ruined mountain as far as they eye could see.

Strange how fast the night falls. Strange how quickly the darkness descends. Strange how the darkness swallows up stones, sky, all.

The hills and cliffs rise up in the dark, drawing closer now. The shadows lie blue and black in the stone folds of those corrugated mountains. Beyond them there must be more, crushed in butcherpaper folds or standing blue and footless beyond a field of salt. The ribbon of road curves and draws the traveler on along now, snakelike, writhing. The road moves but the road does not move.

It is dim, but not dark. Against the last light of the sky, there rises the line of smoke from a fire, etched and straight in the still air and an answer to the road--indeed its twin, for both straight, black lines are signs of man (are they not?).

Go into the hills. Seek the brightness of a misplaced star among the hills. Find then, traveler, a fire and come into its light.

It is built from the dried wood and dry desert plants and the wind moves the embers as though with the heartbeat of some immense beast dead and eviscerate upon the ground. Go it all the same. For each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last ever to be. For fire does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles.

The traveler shares this fire with a man under a black hood who sits on a stone on the opposite side of the fire and says nothing at first, but only shuffles a deck of cards and waits.]

[ooc: This is an open dream post, with no requirements for continuity or reason. Fletcher (Flagg) will be present in this dream, but it won't be clear that it's him (that hood is staying up!). To be quite honest, dreams are kind of his "thing," so he's actually rolling along with all this fairly well. In the context of this dream, if you would like, he'll turn over some cards and tell your character's "fortune" (or tell something, at least) because it's been a while since he's been The Man In Black in the desert. Ping me if you want something specific to turn up. Furthermore, based on the turn of the cards, the dream could go from dream to nightmare and the nightmare could itself be based on the turn of the cards. As before, ping me or leave an OOC note and we can make it happen~ Sweet dreams~]

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[He doesn't know yet that it's a dream, perhaps he'll never know, because if he knew it was a dream, he'd know that it was somehow unwise to approach anyone who sat in a dark hood like that, shuffling cards, waiting for something. In the dream, though, it seems only natural to approach, to be curious, to draw closer to the fire.]

Who are you?

[This question seems reasonable, too. Not a greeting, but simply a query. All he knows is that he very much wants to know what is contained in the cards the hooded man is shuffling, and that his curiosity must be satisfied.]

Hail and well-met, fellow.

[It's a bright voice, and cheery. Then comes the soft sounds of cards, shuffled and shuffled again.]

I'm only another traveler, the same as yourself.

[The cheery voice seems a bit at odd with the fact that the stranger is hooded, but perhaps there's a reason not to see his face. Either way, he steps a little closer.]

A traveler with cards that are going to tell me something, I think.

[He doesn't know why he knows that. He just does.]

Like as not, like as not. They always say something. Whether they'll tell you something...

[A neat trick, a magician's trick, snapping the cards from hand to hand before him]

...well, that's another matter entirely. Perhaps it depends more on whether you're listening to what they have to say.

Sit down, do sit down. We'll have a, hmm--we'll have a palaver [A bit of a laugh] you and they and me. What say you?

[He sits down, eyeing the stranger with a mixture of suspicion and anticipation.]

I'm listening.

An auspicious start.

[He holds out the cards.]

Cut the deck, if you would be so kind.

[He cuts the deck, hands obviously comfortable holding cards -- even the dream version of himself has had quite a bit of practice in dealing with cards.]

Now what?

Now I deal, of course.

Cartomancy, fortune-telling by cards, surely you've seen the like of it before, yes? Perhaps you've even the seen the cards with their wands and swords and cups. Even these are so. But this is a deck of my own devising.

[ooc: Anything you want to have turn up in particular?]

I've seen it before, but I've never believed it.

[But of course, he's more suggestible in this dream, more prone to believing that whatever this stranger turns up in his deck may be true.]

[[OOC: Something creepy? Perhaps something to do with death, specifically implicating Meyer as a murderer? Basically get as dark and sketchy as you want. Because I love to torture my characters.]]

Then don't believe. Merely watch. Consider this only pointless ritual if it eases you and cools you to do so. Like church.

Seven cards will be turned and read in conjunction with the others. A constellation will be formed, if you like to consider it so.

[He turned the first card.

A prostrate figure lies in a barren land under a red sunset. Ten swords have been plunged into his back. There is blood to match the sunset. It is a scene of desolation and sorrow.]

The Ten of Swords.

[Long fingers spider the card to face the other at the fire.]

What think you?

I don't go to church, either.

[He studies the card intently. It's not a pleasant scene, to say the least, but he's skeptical -- does it truly mean anything? How could it? Cards can't say anything about a person one way or the other. And yet... there's something about the stranger that impels him to listen, even if his response is flippant.]

I think that guy's having a bad day.

[He gestures to the stabbed man on the card.]

It is destruction, it is ruin. It is tears and sadness. I would show you the Ninth card of this kind, where a lady lies weeping while nine swords hang over her. Perhaps she weeps for what was done here. I wonder what lady she was. She's here somewhere with us.

The next, then.

[And he draws out another card.

A grasping hand, painted in red though not wholly as though the red were on the skin of the hand, as though the hand were dipped in blood, issues from a cloud at the bottom of the card. It is like the ace cards of the four suits, and yet also entirely unlike them. Again, a stormy sunset colors the sky behind this hand and a desolate landscape of mountains and cliffs stand in silhouette against the sunset. There are lights to be seen in the cliffs one one side.

This, it must be assumed, is one of the cards of his own devising.]

The Red Hand.

[The hood turns as though its wearer is considering the one who sits opposite him.]

There is the scent of death here, sai.

[The card that the hooded stranger draws next unsettles Meyer far more than the first one he drew, and he can't quite put his finger on why. All he knows is that the way the stranger is looking at him -- or the way he assumes he's looking, he can't quite tell, given that hooded -- makes him feel uncomfortable.

Still, he does his level best not to let it show on his face, even as he instinctively leans away from the cards, away from the stranger, away from the fire.]

Death is a part of life, isn't it?

[Another flippant answer, but his tone isn't quite as nonchalant this time.]

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lmao massive account fail! sorry about that!

i loled

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