Picture Challenge #22: Marionettes

[redblood]

INFO: They say that a picture can tell a thousand words. How many can you find?

Each week a new image will be posted, and your challenge will be to write whatever the image inspires you to write. It can be anything as long as it relates to the picture. A plot, a scene, a short story, a poem, a character, etc. You can write as much or as little as you wish. It's not the length that matters, it's what you put into it. There is no time limit to these challenges, so feel free to jump in at any time.

(Source)​

 

[Greenie]

"We're all pawns and puppets of a higher force, whether we like to believe it or not. While we live real lives, they watch us from above, playing their little game, watching, waiting, betting, hoping to trump over the other-"

"Seriously Mariene..." The mage helping his companion out of the marsh seemed iffy if he would rather let her stay there. "I really doubt any god planned for you to step into that murky water."

"You never know!" Mariene retorted.

"Let's just go, alright?"

"Right this way," called their dwarvish guide. "Once we're out of the marshes, we'll be makin' our way through through the fire fields of Randria, but we can bypass those and head the through the Herian desert instead..."

"Pawns, I tell you, pawns and puppets!"

 

[PoetLore]

Dragna watched as Malik helped Faren from the miry waters of the river. Even with her staff Faren seemed to always be stumbling into some danger or another. it was tiresome and disappointing, and if not for the woman's abilities to heal, she would long ago have urged that she be left behind. Still, she could feel herself being spurred on by some unseen hand to continue westward with this group. She could not explain the compulsion, but it was irresistible.

"Let us continue then," Malik said once she was safely on solid ground again.

"This way," pointed Hengar though he knew not why, "Can you feel it? It is this way."

 

[Doctor Jax]

The gods had their chosen, and there was something bitter in the brew about this fact. As much as they knew it, there was the fact they could not help but feel a sense of kinship to the deities who had tied their fates to their mortal frame. Yet, there was still the fact they had no recourse but to follow the path laid down from the beginning of time, to let themselves be pulled along to play their part in this theatrical display between the Heavens and the Outside. Even the gods, it seemed, were subject to Destiny's Wheel, their own motions set into action the way the stars had been ordered to spin in tandem, the planets aligned to perform their eight-year-long dances.

So they forged on, knowing that their decisions were illusion, their actions decided by the gods, the actions of the gods decided by something even they could not or would not understand. They were marionettes in the hands of forces they did not understand, and only because they had not peeked at the back of the script did they continue without a sense of hopelessness. For the Author was the only true agent, the Outside their one enemy, and it was in its hands that they cast their very souls.