Versus Herself [Loru]

[Oathkeeper Emi]

August 12, 2011
--

Days and days and days had passed. Loru had entertained herself by stealing morsels of food, shouting at people in the market place and conversing with the voices, spirits and hallucinations that haunted her.

Eventually, she grew restless. Radiant Garden was a quiet little town in comparison to Destiny Islands, or travelling with Ethan. Without the constant stimulation that Destiny Islands had brought her with its summer storms, ocean and crowds of people, her mind was desperate to distract itself and as a result, the hallucinations and spirits grew stronger. With nothing new to distract her from them, she was slowly becoming more and more enslaved.

It was in the middle of the night. Loru was lying, wide awake and flat on her back, in the middle of the marketplace. This late, no one was out. She was alone. Buttons lay curled on her stomach, and though he was quiet, the other voices bothered her. She would cry out to make them stop every once in a while, slapping herself on the ear but Buttons didn't like it when she tried to make them go away and punished her by digging his claws into her stomach. Her empty stomach. She was so hungry, and the little food she had been able to steal was only enough to keep her alive. She had not had a filling meal in probably years, but it was worse now that she was in a new place and didn't know how to get food.

Go into a house and take some, whispered a voice in her ear. Loru shook her head. "That's bad. Loru is not a bad girl. They are the bad girls.[/color]"

Buttons dug his claws painfully into her stomach again, and she cried out. She didn't want to break into someone's house, but she needed food. Buttons wouldn't let her disobey, because if she starved, he starved.

[Oathkeeper Emi]

Chocolate? CHOCOLATE!?
--

Loru picked herself up off ground, Buttons disappearing as she did so. Unblinking green eyes looked to the left, and then the right. She pushed her jacket back up over her exposed shoulder and shuffled along out of the center of the marketplace. She didn't know what she was looking for. A house, with food inside it. There would probably be people there, too, but that was just a detail.

There was a house not far away, still light by a single candle, though very dimly lit. Loru pressed her hands against the glass, trying to see through the shades. There was no movement inside. Everyone was either in another room or asleep. Hopefully the latter. Breaking into the house was not hard. She merely drove her shoulder into the door and felt it crumple like paper beneath her.

It was time to act fast before the noise disturbed the people who lived there. She dashed inside, light on her bare feet, and didn't bother to shut the door behind her. Her mind was on one thing and one thing only. Survival. And that meant food.

She stumbled into a kitchen, a small one. She could hear voices, and they weren't her own. No, it was the inhabitants of the house, presumably coming to remove her. Loru ignored them, throwing open a cabinet where she found a loaf of bread. She shoved it into a coat, and weighed her pockets down with some apples she found in a bowl in the table.

There was a man in the kitchen now, in the doorway, yelling at her. And he had blunt weapon of some kind. She knew it wasn't a gun, the spirits told her that much even when she was reaching blindly into another cabinet. What was this...? It was... chocolate! An actual chocolate bar! She hadn't tasted chocolate since she was a very small child, and barely remembered it. Oh, she almost broke down and ate the whole thing there but the man with the weapon was grabbing her arm now, and still yelling at her. She couldn't really hear- or understand- what he was saying, but she winced at the loudness.

The next thing she knew, she was fighting back. Obeying what the spirits and hallucinations told her to do. She reversed the man's grip on her arm and kicked his weapon away. Needless to say, he was surprised... even more so when she picked him up and swung him into the cabinets. He didn't get up. He didn't move.

Loru hunched down over his body and took a bite out of one of the apples, juice dribbling down her chin.