Title: Earth
Author: Keeper of Tomes
Song: "Earth," by Second Person
Summary: 53 of the 100 Challenge. "Welcome, reader. Sit and be warmed by the cold indifference of death itself." A story in seven parts.
Words: 881 (current chapter only.)
Pairing(s): TBA
Rating: T for Teen.
I am a plot bunny w----. That is all. OH GODS IT IS A MULTICHAPTER. HAHAHAHAHA. (Don't worry. I'm working on Perennial Rose and BLuSH. Patience, young grasshoppers.)
First chapter, always short. Love it. LOVE IT. Looooove iiiit.
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:Earth
a story in seven parts, regarding, among other things:
six black crystals
a book of spells
one thousand blood-thirsty humans
a knight
an empress
and a good amount of dying.
-
welcome, reader.
sit and be warmed
by the cold indifference
of death itself.
000
In the Beginning, there was the darkness, and there was the light, and in between, nothing but the void and the beasts and the men.
And men and beast were one being, pulsating in its own great right. The beast stood on seven hills and the man was resting somewhere in the center, swaddled in great breasts of nature, drinking the white milk he paid for with sloth and misery.
Someone was going to die.
The ground was opening up like a coffin.
The men standing around the hole were no gardeners, and they planted no seeds.
-
She smells like guns and roses, the way he always imagined she would.
Hair is soft and shines wet as she steps from the rain of the Far Side onto the Condor, hands bound by crystal energy.
The water clings to her eyelashes and rolls down her cheeks with every blink, yet he knows that if the liquid were to roll into her mouth, she would not taste salt.
Only the empty, hollow flavor of rain at midnight.
Piper has jammed small crystals into the ground to guide Stork as he lands, a make-shift runway that casts an eerie red glow onto their faces. And she looks like a ghost. She looks like a beautiful, dangerous ghost who's out of souls to haunt.
One pale hand reaches forward and grabs the frame of the hangar bay door, steadying herself as she is led slowly into the black.
He watches Finn disappear with their prisoner and stands in the rain a little longer, letting his hair sag and feeling his stomach churn in its own emptiness; they have not eaten in days. And they have been here for weeks.
The ground is now rich and thick, spun like chocolate into a dark mixture of goo that climbs up his calves and rests in the hollows at the back of his knees. And he can smell the damp, that mind-boggling aroma of clean.
In the crimson light, he raises his hands to his eye level and notes, not without disdain, that they appear to be soaked in blood.
-
It is impossible to fly in such weather, much less open a portal to another world, so Piper has placed her crystals into a drawer in her desk and is now sitting on her bed, fingers folded softly in her lap.
She is the color of cinnamon after it has melted in intense heat, no longer that light and dusty color she bore as a child.
Sixteen and yet older than she has ever been able to imagine; she now knows that age does not mean how many years one has lived, but how many trials one has weathered.
When she entered this world, she was a girl.
It can now be said that she will exit as a woman.
Hands find her eyes and cup them. They hurt, and her vision is frustratingly blurry. There was an accident during a Binding, her sight is fuzzy… She does not wish to dwell, however, on her own physical fallbacks.
She waits patiently for someone to knock on the door and enter, waits for someone to encircle her body with arms, and yet, as usual, there is nothing but the swelling silence and the cold. The cold, which is embedded in the space where her ribs meat her torso, somewhere inside her, just below her heart.
When she breathes, something rattles in her chest cavity, and she knows that the butterflies in her stomach have died trying to escape.
-
The cage door is slammed shut.
Finn glares through the bars and watches her lean against the farthest wall, cringing away from the light like some pathetic cave creature bends from day.
He rattles the metal a few times, for good measure, then storms off towards his room, because his stomach will twist itself into knots if he stares at her for too long.
-
Junko and Radarr are both in Junko's room, and are both watching Aerrow as he drowns himself in the deluge.
Junko is silent and Radarr even more so; the Wallop strokes the top of the creature's head in an effort to calm himself, yet manages only to elicit a sharp nip on one of his fingers. This is not surprising, seeing as Junko's strokes were nearing the realm of "stifling pats."
There is a sigh. It fogs up the window and Junko lifts his hand to draw a sad face upon the glass.
"Now there are three glum faces," he notes, staring at his artwork.
His and Radarr's respective reflections stare back.
-
She is alone with the dark, and in the back of her mind, where logic meets imagination and they both say hello to premonition, she can hear the beast, and it is merging slowly, (softly,) with a permeable and corrupted visage of man.
And somewhere below it all, rumbling like an afterthought that should have been fore,
is the sweet stench of
death.
000
A/N: Prequel to "Birds," which is still to come. Like, yay. This will be good. I promise. And I'll finish it, too. (Ha. I know. I can see you rolling your eyes right now. STOP. It.)
Review, please? I don't ask that much, so when I do ask it, it means I really want feedback.
Love you all.