Monday 31 March 2014

Element Part Five.

After I finished screaming I sagged against a tree, trying desperately to not look at the saturated ground where the child used to be. I didn't want to be there, plain and simple. My mind kept supplying the image of the child melting. So, I left the clearing as quickly as I could without becoming any of the Elements. Water, I need water.
 
Go through that grove of saplings, there is a stream over there. Said my annoying/helpful powers, but I didn't particularly mind at that moment.

I stumbled to the stream, bent over to drink, and saw my reflection in the water. I had never looked so tired, bedraggled, dirty, scared and angry in my life. My hair was greasy and tangled, there where shadows under my eyes, and my once lovely purple dress was in rags. How long had I wandered around in a daze? I went through all the nights I had spent in the woods. Unlike the days I had spent out there in the forest, I remembered the nights with absolute clarity. I almost laughed when I realized that I had spent a week and three days in my post traumatic stress trance. But I was alive and breathing, not in jail, not at the gallows, so to heck with how I looked. As long as I was very much not dead it was good enough for me.
 
I drank. A lot. Water had never tasted so good. Being alive had never felt so good. I was happy.
 
I stopped guzzling water. Was that...? It was. I could hear someone whimpering in the trees. It wasn't scary, it was weird. I stood, titling my head in the direction of the noise. It was coming from a large yellow birch, whoever was in it was hidden by the dense greenery.

I walked over on tip toe, careful not to startle whoever was up there. I peeked up into the thick foliage. There was a child in the tree. She looked to be about six, with bronzy cocoa colored skin and a bob of black hair. Her clothes consisted of a white tank top dress that was ragged and torn, as well as covered in dirt stains and water damage. She was curled up in a fetal position, clinging to the branches beneath her. And protruding from her back was a pair of russet colored eagle wings. They where beautiful.

"Oh..." I breathed.

At the sound of my voice the child gave a yelp, flinched away from me...and fell out of the tree. I dove underneath her, catching her before she hit the ground. I moved faster than my brain did apparently, as it took me a moment to process the fact that I had transformed into the half wind half person thing again. The child was trembling in my wind arms. Up close, you could make out the fact that her hair was in fact made of long skinny black feathers, the width of a hair strand. Her eyes startled me just a tiny bit, they looked as though they belonged to a hawk, but they were wide with terror and didn't look threatening at all.

"You aren't," She whispered, cocking her head and pulling off an amazing bird imitation. "You aren't going to lock me up, or take my feathers, or," Her eyes got even larger. "Or call me a freak?"

"Of course not." I found my self saying while trying desperately to pull my particles back into human form, and finally succeeding.

"Oh good. " She said, wiggling out of my arms and landing neatly on the ground. "You are very pretty. Your hair looks like chocolate. I have never had chocolate before but I imagine it to taste like heaven and dew. And sweet. Whatever that means, because I have never had a sweet thing before, though I would like to try one. Your eyes look like trees too. Fairy tale pine trees. The ones with soft needles, that the princesses sleep in and wake up smelling exactly like the tree."

She smiled at me, waiting for an answer. Unfortunately I had been rendered speechless by her small declaration of why I was pretty.

"I haven't freaked you out have I?" She said anxiously. "You are the first person that I have met other then the guards or the Prince that has been nice. Mia and Lina don't count because they are like me, only different."

I continued to stare at her. She stared back. I tentatively broke the silence. "Are you thirsty?"

"YES!"

"There is a stream over there you can drink from..."

She dashed over to it and bent down to drink, then froze. "Lina says I must not drink without a cup because it is bad manners. And I must not slurp because that it is bad manners, too. Do you have a cup?"

"No..."

"Then I cannot drink." She said sadly, before falling silent and staring forlornly at the stream.

I sat down beside her and scooped up some of clay that lined the streams banks. I shaped it into a vague cup shape, covered in lumps and cracks. It was very soggy.

Ok powers, please turn this into a cup. I don't know if you can do this but if you can...

And why should I do this?

Because this kid will not drink without a cup and she really wants to have some water.

There was no answer but suddenly I was holding a dry handful of clay. A clay cup to be exact. It was the most flawed ugly cup on Captera, but it was a cup.

"Here." I held it out to her.

"How..." She gasped, then leapt to her feet. "Your her! Your the Element! The Prince accidently mentioned you one day, and that we would hold you with our might and stuff like that and that he needed my feather and Lina's hair and Mia's whisker and that he was sorry but he had to and with you he could stop the war and what is a war and I ran away so he couldn't because he said that we needed to be in the circle so we could bind you and " She heaved a breath and I jumped in so I might have the chance of being heard.

"Wait, what is the Prince calling me?"

"He called you his Element." She said slowly. "Because you can control the four elements. And he calls you his because he created you with magic. Just like he created me."

"Why does he want me?" I could here the confusion in my voice.

"So he can stop the war that he started. He doesn't like it."

"Oh." I was still confused but not as much as before.

She reached out and took the cup from me, cradling it in her hands. "I don't have a name but Lina called me Aspen."

"I'm Lillian."

"I know."

"Um."

"The wind told me, because I am it. They told me like bees, buzzing in my ears." She dipped the cup the cup into the river, then brought it to her lips. She paused.

"Bzz, bzz."

I swallowed. She drank.

"I'm going to sleep now." She informed me, then curled up on a patch of moss.

I looked at the sky. It was getting dark. I lay down a few feet away from her, and watched her for a bit. Eventually, I closed my eyes.

Good night.

Good night yourself.

And I was asleep.

                                                                  *  *  *  *  * 

The Abyss was almost gone. The last threads of her mental state where slowly dissolving, reminding her of her past body, that had long since vanished in time.

She shifted, theoretically. She had to imagine all of her movements nowadays.

Theoretically, she closed her eyes.
  
Theoretically, she sighed.

Theoretically, she opened her eyes again.

Theoretically, she spoke, whispering to the Prince to please, please hurry, for she
                                                                                                                              was
                                                                                                                                    almost
                                                                                                                                               G
                                                                                                                                                 O
                                                                                                                                                    N
                                                                                                                                                       E
                                                                                                                                                           .

                                                             To be continued

Wednesday 12 March 2014

Element Part Four

I drifted through the forest, eating the few berries that I could find and drinking stream water. I was in a daze, my mind replaying the battle field scene, a never ending mental horror. My powers tried hard to pull me out of my mind but it was all in vain. I was wasting away, utterly destroyed by what I had seen.

It was melodramatic, I agree, but the prince had led us, his people, to believe all was right in the world. He lulled us into an oblivious stupor, lied and most likely forced our husbands, sons, fathers and brothers to fight in a war they hadn't known existed until then.

There was so much I didn't know still and I was already battered by the secrets.

I eventually did rejoin the physical world, but it wasn't very gentle or reassuring. I had been lying in a clearing, sunbeams and butterflies decorating the air, grass and moss lacing the ground. I had meandered in and out of consciousness, and I then I heard footsteps.

"Miss..."

Go away, I want to be alone, I thought. But only my powers can hear my thoughts so protesting was useless.

"Miss, the Abyss, she be waiting."

I don't care. My thoughts where bitter and hurt.

"Miiiiissssssss," Whoever was speaking had turned their accented voice sing-songy. "She be waaaaiiitinng."

I realised the voice belonged to a child. I sat up. The most unearthly terrifying child stood at my feet. She was about three feet high but she seemed much bigger. Her black hair was wild and tangled, yet she also looked flawless and combed. There was a feral glint in her unnaturally blue eyes and a quirk in her lips. She was skinny and slight. Her loose, long sleeved blue dress hung off  one of her shoulders. I was frozen with fear.

"Miss, I was sayn' that the Abyss be wanting to wake and you be'n too slow ain't helpn'."

"I-I-I-!"

She leaned over me and I scrambled up and back, slamming into a tree.

"We is alllll getting impatiiieent!" She had gone back to a sing-songy voice and was grinning from ear to ear at my fright.

She walked over to where I was standing.

"Get away from me!" Panic coated my voice and threw it up three octaves to high.

She plopped down on the ground, then looked up at me. Her voice started to waver. It went dusky.  "The Abyss, she be sleeping, but she wants to be waking. Miss, she be waking."
The strange child.

Slowly, she began to dribble out of existence. First her eyes trickled out of her face, then her face trickled into her neck, on and on, slowly, carefully. She was liquefying. A living, melting candle. I screamed and told myself to look away but I couldn't. All I could do was scream.

                                                                    *  *  *  *  *

"Why is it taking so long?" The voice said.

The Prince's back was arched, his head thrown back, eyes wide. Mist was streaming out of his mouth and the voice was coming from it. From him.

The prince went back to normal. His throat was raw and sore but he answered the mist. "She got away, I told you. We are looking, but she is evasive. We know that she is at the south end of the Kingdom, somewhere in the forest."

Silence.

The prince gasped, then went back to the arched back pose. The voice rattled from his mouth once more. "Very well. But hurry. I do not wish to sleep any longer. I do not have much time."

The prince fell to the floor, heaving breath after breath. The possession had come suddenly, and not at the best time. He had been in the dungeons and the Forces would have seen it. The prince got up and strode to the exit. He tried very hard to ignore the sounds the Forces made when they moved in their cells, lost in layered shadows . The sloshy sound as Water shifted around in the stale puddle she slept in. The rustling of cat's ears that came from Earth's cell. The soft noise of... The prince stopped walking, and stood frozen beside Wind's cell. He looked inside. There was no one in it. Just a large hole was where the small barred window had once been. Stone walls. Stones are earth, which means...

He whirled around in a panic, seizing the bars of Earth's cage.

"What -did -you -do!?"

"I let her go." The voice of the speaker was catlike, and each vowel was a hiss. The face was hidden by the darkness of the cell. "She wanted to fly. She has rights. Its your fault we're like this."

The prince jerked back as though she had swung a poisoned blade at him.

"Be quiet!" He snapped at her. Then softer, sadder. "Be quiet."

He turned around and left the dungeon.

For a few moments the only noise was the drip, drip of the water leaking through the roof. Water was the first to speak.

"Thank you." Her voice was soft and gentle with a hint of underlying power.

"I didn't do it for you." Came Earth's huffy reply, "I just wanted to see his Cruelness in shock."

"I know that you cared about her too... Mia."

Earth bristled, "Don't call me that. She is the only one who can call me that."

Water smiled. "And she called me Lina."

Earth smiled flatly, "And you called her Aspen."

There was no answer from Water. Then she leaned forward into the light. Her face was moist and frog like, her hair forever wet and dripping, long seaweed like strands trailing on the ground.

She stared at the dark cell where Earth sat, hidden from view, but you could tell that Water saw her despite that.

"Only I call her that." Water snarled.

Earth didn't move, didn't speak. Neither did Water. Then,

"Water..."

"What?" Anger simmered under her voice.

"I'm Earth right?"

"Yeeeesss."

"You're Water, she was Wind..."

"Earth what are you getting at?"

"What I'm getting at is that the three of us, you, me and her, are Three of the Four Forces. So my question is..."

"What Earth, what is your question?" Water was getting impatient.

"Where is Fire?"

"I- I don't know."

"Exactly."

Both where confused, and both hoped that whereever Aspen was, she was safe.

                                                             To be continued