Dark Crow Rising

My time impatiently and idly standing around comes to an end as a handful of white cloth is presented to me. Nearly leaping, I snatch the mind-saving fabric up and start to wrap my arm with it. The fact I am feeling slight resistance rather than tearing it is enough to make me flash a smile. But, with how awkward it is to use my left arm, frustration takes a more permanent place on my face.

The arm's too bulky and I lack the control and dexterity of my right hand in my left. I can't get it to wrap around properly... It keeps snagging on the plates. They keep pinching and trapping it!

"Grrr..." I let out before I start to sob as the cloth refuses to behave. I don't want to see this hideous arm let alone so many others...

The rose-haired woman steps close and she does it for me.

"T-Thank you..." I weakly say as she applies a few finishing touches in the form of a finely done bowtie. She smiles at me and then places the wrapped-up arm between her chest. Smushing up against me, she hides the most catching of details with her pair of dark, shining, precious eyes.

"Better?" she asks and I nod, repeating my answer to her before she starts to pull me out of the tent. My heels naturally try to dig themselves in, but, otherwise, I go with her wishes once I grab my crotch cover again. We step out into the light of the Orbital-Halo and it enamours me. Falling in love with the once-forgotten sight, I try to blind myself with it as its warmth soothingly bakes me.

However, for all that I can see, no matter how much heat covers me from the sky or from the one next to me... I cannot stop hearing the great mass of people all around me. Sharp, narrow taps sing in the air and stop abruptly. Lights of all sorts flare up around us, even the woman's head glows brightly.

Blinking away the lingering image of light in my eyes, I settle on her rose-red hair and smile. She's enjoying this moment to her heart's content and I shirk away as I grasp just how big the crowd is. Nightmares of public speaking compare nothing to this... Bright and wide-eyed, they look at me like a divine-famed celebrity descending even just one floor down.

Armoured needle-legs surround the area and many fail in their duties as their gazes land on me...

My still-human hand twitches and convulses and I am unsure if I should wave 'hello.' In fact, I don't know how to respond at all. Taking the red-haired woman into account, several of these observing eyes are clearly full of lust. Others are full of amazement and wonder. Few are clinical in their observations.

I am the universal constant for all of them.

My nervousness starts to get worse, I try to slink back into the tent, but the rose-haired woman stops me. My stomach hurts, my head is dizzy and I feel like something is escaping me. Whatever is going on, the great, endless crowd is taken aback by it and the woman clinging to me moans gently. She starts to sprawl a little more over me, just to really rub it in.

"Oh... Champion, be a little prouder." she purrs, confusing me further. What is she on about and what is everyone looking at!?

What reason is there for a sudden rise in clearly jealous looks!?

I know she mentioned something like it earlier... However, why did it have to be while I am outside with a naked bottom?

"Can... Can we get g-going?" I ask the rose-haired woman as I try to respect my own boundaries and catch her attention. Though, I just seem to encourage her and I get a mouthful of hair for the trouble.

"Of course, Champion." she thankfully answers, though.

I groan with uncertainty as we start to move, I can't really handle my current state right now. Protecting my front takes up one arm and this woman is hogging up the other one. I really wish that the people here would just be like they're from Tobaballe... If I really am the Champion, they can just look down at the ground because I am better than them!

But, I'm not... I didn't save anyone. I tried to run away and only found them again because I was immediately struck by the gods with a vengeance. My cowardice was paid in full return by that armoured bug, wherever it is now...

I try to distract my mind with the sights about me, with how I am in a city of tents. Tents, tents, more tents, endless tents! The main street is dually run alongside by tents... The distant sights are nothing but tents!

I get to see all these tents while a beautiful woman clings to the world's ugliest limb...

"I really wish we could travel through the tents..." I barely mouth as flustered guards come daintily jogging in from behind us. Glancing down at the marble ground, I try to relive my earliest experiences on the highest floors of my home. I know they're all staring at me, the weird feelings are here, but, my eyes are focused at least... They're focused on something.

Though, staring at so much marble is making me wonder a little. Why is such a valuable stone, high-floor worthy stone, carrying tents? Why do they even have such a large, longgoing floor of marble...? Holding tents of all things...

There's something off about this marble as well, it feels weird to walk on. I can feel something pulsing through it, like a heartbeat, it shivers up through me. I feel like I am supposed to be able to see something, but it is alluding me. I have a feeling these black-eyed creatures can see it, though.

The marble comes to an end and we step down onto hole-covered dirt and chopped-up grass. I quietly follow the rose-haired woman as it gets noisier around us. The sounds of dangerously close, orbiting footsteps and hands are gone. Whatever is going on around me, there is a crowd being kept under control.

The further along we go, the more violent it gets...

"I am so, so sorry, Champion... But, I am afraid we will have to... We will have to go through the..." the rose-haired woman struggles to answer as she shivers with disgust against me. Almost as if I am her final bastion for something good. I try to escape her clingy grip a little.

Thinking back to the so-called root from earlier, I frown as I look up, "It's fine, doesn't look that long a walk."

I glance and then turn around. All behind me there is so much vibrant, bright colour. All kinds of shades of tents, each styled like the flowers they share their colours with. But, down here, it's all thick, brown leather. An endless neighbourhood of stuffy, uncomfortable slum houses.

The kind of stuff I'd expect the very lowest of Tobaballe to be like.

"I do not want to spend any more time here than I have to. Let's go, the thorns will do their jobs well... Or else!" she explains to me, then warns to the armoured needle-legs around us. I watch their spikey armour rattle and raise a brow at it. I guess I can see the justification for the name.

Though watching all this, I am not getting very pleasant memories of home...

"So this is how it feels to be from the higher floors." I remark to myself as the thorns violently beat back the curious hordes of leather-covered needle-legs. I watch them with uncertainty as they get brutally pushed back, but, even then. They still rush up as close as they can manage to at least send wide-eyed gazes at me. Their little bulbs light up excitedly, though, notably dimmer than everyone back on the marble platform and in between.

All this violence, for my sake, supposedly.

I continue to watch uncomfortably as they are attacked. Wincing at a few as the metal tubes the thorns wear thrust down right on top of them. In a way, I feel like I would best fit in here with the roots, I can see myself in their position easily enough. They don't have the way we Tobaballians denote rank, but, wearing clothes like these is similar enough.

I wish my mind is a little different, right now, I don't like what I am seeing... Thankfully, the amount of brown leather tents is coming to an end. We are leaving them behind us. All of it.

"Thank the gods and goddesses, freedom from that distasteful oppression of inferiority!" the rose-haired woman exclaims as if she just stopped holding her breath.

"Agreed..." I say, for completely different reasons as I tuck my left thumb into a fist. We will need to go right back through here, we will...

"You're cute, Champion. It is nice to see that your mind and heart are in the right place." the rose-haired woman giggles and I stare back at her. I nod as sarcastically as possible.

"Yeah... Sure." I say to her as I rub my right arm and feel its hard surface. Within my bug arm, there's some kind of phantom ache, it is a part of me, but, I can't seem to feel it. I am watching it move, actively thinking how it will move, but I can't feel anything it does.

Like it belongs to someone else and it just happens to be on me...

I look away from it just as we move through a vast, field of severed stumps and brightly marked trees. Up ahead of us is some kind of building and it is surrounded by many others. Particularly on my right, which has what looks like some form of military facility running up a ramp. Cloistering on the top and near the bottom of a modest cliff.

I spot nothing notable on the left, however.

"So, where am I, exactly, is this your home city?" I ask her as I look back at the few buildings that aren't just tents. From the great mountain up ahead, a stream is raining down into a walled area.

"City? Only humans have cities. This is our flower, a flower of the Ahnelges." she explains to me, though, my clarity of the situation only gets worse.

"Yes... You mentioned that word before. Who, or, rather, what are the Ahnelges?"

"My people. Me. Those around me, but not you, Champion." she answers seriously at first before a grin accompanies a light tap on my nose.

My confusion vanishes slightly and that makes her giggle some more.

"Your innocence to our ways is something, I must admit, Champion." she tells me as she sighs into a smile. Staring at her bulbs as they light up once again, my head tilts as I look deeply into the light. She seems to squirm a little under my gaze, but I have no idea why.

I look away, far too sensitive to the idea of genitalia for the moment and I spot a group of dancers in the distance. Rather, a group of thorns doing something that looks similar to dancing. They're very elegant in their manner and they do so with glowing ribbons that somehow stiffen even in motion. They whip up all kinds of chlorophyllic light and I watch them for a bit longer.

"Training thorns." the woman answers and I nod a little. Catching onto the gentle tune in the air, my head moves slightly in motion with it. For the violent purpose thorns have, it is quite soft music. I like it.

I turn away from them as I pick up on a far more guttural sound. My eyes widen and I look away as the rose-haired woman spots what I just saw. Some of her people are enjoying themselves a little too much just a few trees away. She does some form of gesture in their direction but then, a suggestive gaze finds its way to me.

"If there is any service that I, the Ivy-Mother of this flower of the Ahnelges might provide... Please, tell me." she clarifies as she picks up on her efforts to press herself against me. Taking a slight step back, my face burns hot as hers takes on a pinkish hue. All to the ambience of pleasurable gasps for Aahtha's blessing, so that they might please Motrtha in the end...