Citizen 230 Agrippa

Agrippa remembers the day she got her scar like it was yesterday. It is no fleeting memory but a nightmare that taunts her every so often at night, resonating in her ears and whispering horrible things about her failure. This night was just like that, laying in her bed, unable to sleep as the memories kept crawling back into her mind, putting all the sounds, smells and shady imagery of events right in front of her. Although she was blind now, she could still see this...

It was like a day any other for her young self, not expecting anything different to come out of it. It was a bright, sunny day, and everybody was getting ready to do their jobs. Her parents were farmers, of the poor kind too. They had to work day and night to be able to afford their things, and there were days when there was simply not enough dracm for food. Luckily for them, Agrippa never noticed their struggle. She would go to the nearby forest to collect various berries to bring home, so even if they could not get anything warm, they could still munch on something. On that day, she had done the same. She picked up her basket and went into the forest. Hours passed as she tried to find the best and ripest blueberries, indulging in them frequently too. If she was there, she might as well eat a few, yeah?

Then she smelled it. The smell of smoke and burning flesh penetrated through the natural scent of the woods and tainted it as if it was a sort of plague. Agrippa initially grimaced at the smell, not knowing where it was coming from, but when she saw the smoke in the sky, her heart sank. It was coming from home...

She dropped the basket as she put herself on all fours and sprinted for it - through the branches and poison ivy she ran, only to face the gruesome reality of her home being set ablaze. The entire village was up in flames. Adults ran left and right, either screaming in agony or trying their best to help. The water splashed as they tried desperately to quench the flames into submission but to no avail. Agrippa watched in horror, her eyes constantly looking for her dad or mother. She did not see them. As a last-ditch effort, she decided to try and look at their house, but when she arrived, she saw it collapsed. However, she heard something. Her mother's weak voice echoed from under the rumble despite the flames crankling. Everything else got quiet.

Agrippa panicked and tried to move one big piece of charred wood away. The wood was hot upon her palms, and at first, she took it back with a hiss, but her mother's cry forced her to do it again. This time, she did not pull back. She tugged and pushed with all her might, the fire now crawling towards her steadily. She could feel it drooling upon her scales, but she did not care anymore. Seeing that she did not have the strength to get her mother out, she cried out in panic.

"SOMEBODY, PLEASE HELP!" She whined towards the adults, but none of them heard her. She repeated herself over and over again, yet no one heard her. The fire was basically towering above her now, and the drool of it was not its fangs as the heat slowly started melting her scales and skin. It was a warning for the wise, but at her age, she was not that.

She could no longer hear her mother. She listened hard, and she could not. A new kind of panic took her mind over, and she forgot about the fire seeking to claim her soul. She started digging. If she could not move the building, then by the ancients, she would dig until she went underneath and pulled her mother out of there. The smoke suffocated her as she worked, and as she stared into the flames and smoke, her eyes began to fall. It hurt like nothing before, but she could not leave her mother behind. Her tears tried their best to protect her vision and cheek with their salty liquid, but it was to no avail. The smoke and fire were stronger.

As she dagged, she managed to make a hole that was big enough to stuff her head in. She stuck her torso in there and continued, the flames now directly maiming her lower back as she kept on pushing. She could feel herself weaken as she desperately worked, hoping that she would hear anything from her mother. And then, she was yoinked out of the hole - just in time before the rumble collapsed on top of it, claiming all of her hard work as theirs.

Truth be told, she did not remember much more from that day. Her mind blocked those parts out, but not the ones that hurt the most. On top of it all, her burn marks made her remember whether she liked it or not. The smell of smoke and burning flesh, the screams echoing... and above it all, she remembered that she had witnessed it all before her sight left her.

ForgottenCerberus

Agrippa breathed in the fresh and cold morning air as her feet took her on a path that she was not yet accustomed to. She was a grown female now, at least biologically, as her armour plates were not hardened, and so were her body and mind. A stranger would have argued that he had a chance to not make it here will all the misfortunes that have befallen her in her childhood, from the loss of her parents to her blindness and being raised by a mercenary. And yet, here she was, doing something that one could consider a mundane task; trying to collect clay for her newest project.

Sculpting was something she picked upon between the gruelling training that Bearohn put her through. She did not blame him; by all means, it was her who asked her adoptive father to train her based on how the world would treat her. And so, he did. Despite her blindness, she proved to be a very much capable fighter and hunter, who easily could turn the tides based on rexals thinking less of her due to her eyesight being gone. Between all the violence, however, sculpting was something that always gave her a piece of mind. She had no control over the world around her; hell, if she did, perhaps she would not be here in this state right now, but she had control over the various matters that were handed to her. To be able to sculpt was to get control, and she lavished the feeling of it. She has never worked with her own found clay before.

In all honesty, she had no idea where to look exactly. She just set out to the world while carrying a bucket, and listened, smelled and felt. She knew that fresh clay was common on river banks, so naturally, she sought out the river that was nearby. The only problem was that the river was found right in the middle of the nearby forest. Luckily for her, she knew that forest more than anything else at this point. As she walked through it, she felt the forest breathing upon her skin as the birds chirped around her, how the wild, untamed deer scattered when they heard her approach, and when her feet would crush a branch under it. She was part of the forest and yet an outsider. By now, she knew how to navigate between the trees and bushes without running into them face first, something that she loved doing as a child. When she could feel the ground become more moist under her toes, and when she could hear the wind's whisper become louder, she knew that she was getting close to the river now. Soon she could hear the flow of the water too, how it gently but persistently ground the rocks, how it bubbled and how fast it ran. Years of experience have trained Agrippa's ears, which became her primary senses. She found that this allowed her to see more so than any other sense she had left. Everything had a sound to it, and it told her a lot. Based on how the flowing water sounded, she could tell how fast the current was, which was important. This river was known for being dangerous in certain sections, and she needed to be careful from this point on. She slowly shimmied into the edge of the river until it covered her ankles, and she moved her toes around to try and get a feel for the ground. It did not feel quite right to find clay, so she walked out of it and started following the river, with each step digging her toes just slightly into the ground to get a feel if she was getting closer or further away from her goal. Being able to collect clay of her own felt inspiring. It was her and hers only.

As she walked, she began to hear and feel a change in scenery. She was still walking next to the river, and she was sure how, but the sound of it changed. As if the river slowed down next to her, it was more quiet now and also sounded...deeper? That was the jackpot that she was looking for soundwise. She was getting close to a riverbank now, and as she walked, she started to notice how the dirt she walked on weakened. Not by much, as it could still easily support her weight, but it was softer and moister. Agrippa decided to be brave and gently got closer to the river but stopped when she felt an edge come up. She was most certainly at a riverbank now; the only divider now between her and her clay was the question of how deep the river was running. She could not see how tall the riverbank walls were; she had to trust her ears on this. The water sounded calm and slow, so she took her chances and slowly descendant into the river and was relieved when she found that it only reached under her waist.

Holding onto her bucket, she put her hand on the bank's wall and continued walking now within the water itself until the feeling of fresh clay was upon her fingertips.

"Found you", she smiled to herself as she dug her hand into the claw, feeling it up nice before taking a good chunk and tossing it into her bucket with a loud "clunk" sound. It did not take her a lot of time to fill the entire bucket up; clay basically surrounded her, so it was easy to feel up the highest quality part of it and to collect it for herself.

She put the bucket up on the wall before washing her hands off in the river and climbing out. Her ears perked up when she heard the distant sound of lighting before she sighed to herself. A storm was surely approaching, and she could only hope to get home with her clay before it caught up to her. Either way, she got what she wanted.

ForgottenCerberus