Revenant Lights [A14, NSW] (chapter 3)

[Tiana Calthye]

Revenant Lights

[CRITIQUE ENCOURAGED. Read the author notes first, though.]

 

Rated: A14. This is not a nice, happy story. There is swearing and violence and squick and horror and stuff. Also, it has a terrible ending.

 

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is a Nanowrimo first draft. Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month. That means this entire thing was written in just under a month. The. Whole. Thing. There were places where I went ADD and introduced new plot elements just to keep myself writing, the pacing is absolute shit, there are inconsistancies, things happen that are utterly unexplained and... and... it ends, but it's a first draft. It really ought to be rewritten before anyone reads it. I have not edited it, spellchecked it, or looked at it more than twice. It was basically written in one long burst of writing, stream of thought over a month. It is 111,000 words long. I wrote it in a month. Think about this. The quality is exactly what you expect. I haven't looked at it since Nanowrimo (last November). It is as bad as you may expect it to be.

 

But I guarentee an end! Go ahead. Critique it. Just keep in mind that this is a piece of work at the absolute lowest quality you're going to see from me. As this is the case, I would prefer you look at the story as a whole, and at the storytelling, rather than the grammar and spelling.

 

Also, the story improves dramatically after the first few chapters. It's pretty awful in the beginning, while I was floundering and trying to establish the weird society you're about to be thrown into.

 

I hate this chapter/prologue thingy so much. Both of them could probably be cut and the story would turn out the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prologue:

688 MST — The Highlands of Naldhastar

 

 

“Let me tell you a story, boys and girls. Of a world that was before our world, a world within, a world—a world that was.

 

Once upon a time.

 

Once upon a time, in this world, there was a king and a queen and their names were Demhen and Lithia. They ruled with wisdom, and they ruled honourably, in a world of magic. And though their world was magical—they used it wisely. Things were peaceful. There weren’t secrets. People could walk into the courtyards and request an audience and their audience would be granted. It wasn’t like it is now…”

 

“Now? What do you mean, now, Storyteller?

 

People didn’t vanish. Let me tell you a story about these fair rulers, about the history of our people…”

 

The door flies open.

 

“Hey! HEY? What?!”

 

“You’re under arrest for High Treason against the Court of Our Supreme Justice! These treasons will not be forgiven!”

 

“Hey! The children! Don’t!”

 

BANG.

 

“You won’t poison their minds any lon—”

 

<><><>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part one: the Highlands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Chapter One: Dynae-

691 MST – The Highlands of Naldhastar

 

It was cold again, lights dancing in the sky that she could barely make out through the trees. She’d had shoes once, but they had fallen apart, but that was okay—her feet were larger than she’d ever thought they would become when she’d first wandered her way into the swamps from the tinker village. Once upon a time, she remembered there had been a city and the city had plenty of shoes. Now she just froze her feet, stumbling through the icy swamplands, following after the Dusks.

 

They talked to her down here. They told her when to run from the guards from the other place—the cities, she guess. They told her when animals were near. And they were like her parents, like the people she’d known before she had watched them be killed by the soldiers too.

 

Her clothing had long since fallen apart.

 

Today she was looking for firewood. They told her what to do to survive. They told her when to get firewood and what kind of wood to look for. They told her how to find food so that her stomach stopped hurting. They told her that she was eight years old and that she needed to find some place safer to live than here, that they could not help her.

 

They couldn’t help her.

 

They weren’t things she could touch.

 

Dynae tripped over a root and splashed into the cold swamp. Ice water splattered everywhere and she winced. “Why didn’t you tell me there was ice there?”

 

[We didn’t know.]

 

She looked up at the Dusk. This one was a girl who followed her, a girl whose spirit transformed into a little fairy when she had enough power to do it. The fairy Dynae could touch, but the ghost she couldn’t.

 

Dynae brushed her knees off. “How much further do I have to—”

 

There was a loud shout. Laughing in a language she didn’t understand, three men with weapons walked into the swamp, sloshing up water and muck as they walked. They did not look like the guards and they did not look like the tinkers. They wore brown clothing with red and green patterned trim of some sort.

 

[Don’t say anything, just stay down…]

 

“Ho!” one of them called, pointing to Dynae. The Dusk vanished. Dynae cried out. “Wait!”

 

There was talking in a language she didn’t understand and the man ran forward and swept her up, wrapping his jacket around her. “It’s okay,” he told her, speaking her language roughly. “Where did you come from?”

 

One of the men said something in the words she could not understand.

 

“Are you a tinker?” He said something back to the other man.

 

“M-my daddy was a tinker,” Dynae stammered. She hadn’t spoken to a real person in a long time. He was very warm, not like the swamp and not like the Dusks who were really only breaths of air. He held onto her as she continued. “H-he was k-killed by soldiers.”

 

“It’s okay… all right…” He sloshed back towards the other men and gave them some orders, again in the words she could not understand. “I’m going to send you back, can you understand the rest of what we’re saying?”

 

Dynae shook her head.

 

“Damned language barrier,” he growled. “Most of us cannot speak Imperial Common, honey. What’s your name?”

 

“Dynae.”

 

“All right.” He ruffled her hair before passing her to one of the other men. “You won’t be able to understand things. We’re going to take you somewhere safe.”

 

<><><>

 

She didn’t speak their language but one or two of them spoke hers, so as she grew, she learned to speak the language these highland people spoke. Dredhan, they called it—and they were Draothn, the people of the mountain flatlands. There were many clans and this one was Galthren. The Galthren clan was a smaller clan, and they had strict rules about what could and couldn’t happen.

 

And because Dynae continually broke those rules, she had next to no rights. Privileges were things to be earned. She rarely earned the privileges.

 

The others were mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters—mostly brothers and sisters, and she was considered a sister in all but name, as she was not one of theirs. She did not look like them or act like them, she was a wild thing in nature, even though, as she grew up, she settled down enough to do dishes and chores and cook with the rest of them, while being refused the right to speak.

 

She smartened up when they refused to let her have a room until she started behaving properly, and smartened up a bit more when they refused to let her eat with the rest of the family.

 

It was a strange lifestyle. Once in a while she tried to run away. She’d preferred the swamps, with her feet freezing and her hands turning blue if she couldn’t find firewood. She’d preferred the company of the Dusks. But even as she learned the language, they would not let her run. They told her it was dangerous, the mothers did, and they correlled her into the house. Dynae spent days indoors, her only activities involving dishes and food.

 

That wasn’t so bad, she preferred the dishes to some fates.

 

It didn’t matter, anyway.

 

She was—she wasn’t sure how old anymore, but they told her it was the year 699 and that was something special—when the attack happened. It was heralded by Dusks. Late in the afternoon as she stood in the kitchen, washing her hands to move on to the pies for supper, three butterflies swept into the window, attacking her hair.

 

Dynae could hear them screaming things.

 

When they screamed, sometimes she remembered that she was supposed to hurt.

 

But this time, their screams were of danger—they weren’t talking to her or simply enjoying her company as one of the few who could actually see them when they were not trying to manifest. Rather, they begged for her attention.

 

“Who’s where?” Dynae asked, ignoring the strange looks from her sisters as she tried to tug them out of her hair.

 

[THEY’RE COMING!] the Dusks screamed.

 

“What’s coming?” Dynae asked. She straightened her apron—she was getting too big for her own clothes again, so she was wearing one of the older sister’s today, and that one was too long, but it kept bunching up awkwardly.

 

[THE THINGS RELEASED BY THE AETHER!]

 

There was a sweeping breath of black wind through the window. It was like sand, and it caught up the butterfly formed Dusks and they vanished. The sand began to build up, taking on the shapes of wolves.

 

Dynae stared at them in horror.

 

Remember… them…

 

But she didn’t remember them. She backed off, one of the sisters in the room screaming in horror. As Dynae backed away, another grabbed a knife and hurled it at one of the wolves. It swept through and slammed into the wall. There was a horrible thud.

 

The sister stared and then turned to run.

 

The shadow-sand wolf bounded onto the screaming sister. It looked as if it was made of the rumoured Nether, but Dynae had never seen the Nether to be certain of what it looked like. Its claws tore into her skin, scattering blood. Dynae winced and turned, fleeing after the other sisters.

 

“What are they?!” she yelled.

 

“Maybe Dusks!”

 

“They’re not Dusks!” Dynae yelled. “Dusks aren’t so black, they’re kind of gray and they look like…”

 

“It doesn’t matter!” The sister who’d reacted with the knife grabbed a table and slammed it against the door, trying to lock them into the kitchen. It didn’t matter. The same shadow-sand was piling up against the windows. “Aren’t you supposed to not speak until you earn the right to be a person, anyway?”

 

“Hell,” Dynae muttered. “Doesn’t matter.” She ran and drew the curtains. The sand piled up around the windows, rattling at the seams of the door. “What happened?”

 

“I don’t know.” The sister shook her head. “Mother! Mother!” She dashed up the stairs, banging on a door. “Mother Frodma!”

 

One of the mothers stumbled out. “What—oh. Hells.” She turned to dash back into her room.

 

“What do we do?!” the sister yelled.

 

Dynae caught up to them as the mother pulled a wall panel aside, popping out some sort of strange machine that made odd noises. A tinkering of some sort, she supposed. She was given no time to reflect on its nature, though she was inclined to spend far too much time considering the nature of objects and the meanings of life and anything and everything her mind could set curious eyes upon.

 

The sand had grown too thick.

 

The door burst open in a rush of thick sand that almost looked like liquid as it flooded across the floor, reshaping to form wolves of sand and shadow. They sprinted up the stairs, twisting around the sister’s feet, and lashed out against the mother.

 

The mother didn’t fall so fast. She grabbed one of the chairs in her room and hurled it against the wolves. “What do we do?!” the sister screamed again.

 

It took a few hits to knock the wolves back into their loose sand form, and the mother climbed up on top of them, pulling things off the shelf to try cover the sand up. “I don’t know!”

 

“What is it?!”

 

“I don’t know! Something… the Dusks summoned or the Nether or some sort of aether monster! Werewolves, maybe!” the mother cried. The tinkering machine stopped and dang and she jumped down, quickly pressing buttons on it and clicking. The sand underneath their feet grew more furious, flickering with many colors but still being so very black. “I’ve sent for help but it won’t come fast enough!”

 

“Nrraghh!” The sister screamed something incoherent as she swung her fist into one of the reforming wolves.

 

Sand backed up around her and reformed to make a new shape. It twisted around her ankles and jerked her down, a wave crashing over her. Dynae watched in horror as the sister fought back, but the sand held her down. There was a strangled scream and the sand surged through the sister’s mouth.

 

Dynae took a horrified step back and stumbled on the quavering pile of sand. The mother jumped over to her and pulled her out of the sand, setting her on the bed. Blood leaked out of the sister, streaming out of every pore and turning her and her clothing quickly red. Dynae turned away to vomit.

 

It was coursing through the house now, and it took hold of every room, every person. It only took so long before the mother couldn’t fend them off anymore and she too was pulled under. Once she too was down, covered in thick blood, the tide turned on Dynae.

 

It surged over her.

 

Dynae felt course grains trickle across her skin and face as the sand wolves remoulded around her struggles, holding her down to the floor, teeth lashing out against her neck and arms. There was one bite there, another on her ankle—her neck was bleeding, she thought distantly, and that was bad because one of the brothers had died from that.

 

They screamed.

 

“This one’s marked!” it gagged in the language she knew from birth. “Real—and she has the sight.”

 

“What sight?” Dynae gurgled.

 

It laughed and the tide of sand pulled back from her, leaving her on the floor, bloody and weak. She felt that she was losing blood and that she couldn’t really move quite right from some sort of paralytic poison they had injected into her veins, or perhaps that was just her own fear. She knew some animals did that, they poisoned things—especially spiders, but these were wolves.

 

Wolves didn’t do that, did they?

 

She wasn’t sure how long it took until someone opened the door, gasped in horror and crumpled beside her. She was sure it couldn’t have been all that long because they pressed something to her neck and she was still bleeding, but it felt like a forever rather than a few moments.

 

He had a blue colored tartan rather than the red and green of Galthren.

 

“Are you the help they sent for?” she tried to manage. Through the blood, it came out as a gurgle.

 

“My name is father Henry,” he told her, quickly moving to bandage her arm and leg wounds. “A request for help was transmitted to all near systems, sister. Are you the only survivor?”

 

She gurgled again, this one to mean that she didn’t know. Either he understood or he wasn’t concerned with understanding.

 

“We were hunting near here. Shit, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen something like that from a mine,” he murmured. “I don’t know how you survived.”

 

She wasn’t going to try tell him, even if she would have been capable of talking clearly. He picked her up, standing up with a grunt. “I’m going to get you back to my clan, as you appear to be stranded here, and your clan surely won’t have the facilities to deal with an attack from werewolves.”

 

Aren’t werewolves supposed to be related to the moon? she wondered, but supposed the storybook term was the best they had for the sand creatures. Aether summons, that was what the Dusk had said—something created by the mines, Henry had said.

 

Aether monsters, because the mines were for aether.

 

But Dynae didn’t know what aether was, because none of the books ever said what it did and no one ever answered her questions unless they felt rather generous.

 

“I’m from clan Indigo,” he told her, “and it’s a few days away, but it’s probably the nearest other choice and we have medication back in our camp. We’ll take care of you, sister.” He didn’t sound threatening at all about it, either, and she relaxed, closing her eyes. “Trenthan! Search for other survivors!”

 

In the end, they found none. It didn’t matter, anyway. Dynae didn’t mind the chance to start anew. Perhaps Indigo could be convinced that she was a sister, and not some wild child from the swamps who may not have been a sister or a brother.

 

Still, she was sad, and cried for a long time once she’d recovered enough to even cry from more than just the wounds.

 

She had rather loved mother Frodma.

Edited October 8, 2009 by Guest

[Lord Ar-Pharazon]

Not so much critique, but just comments and musing...

 

I thought this piece was really interesting. The beginning was especially good I thought, with the storyteller basically being silenced right off the bat. It reminded me of a parody movie trailer some of my friends made for Great Expectations, in which most of the brief clips result in someone being shot unexpectedly. (Don't ask.)

 

I really liked where the story went. There were a lot of proper names and terms thrown around, which were good, and inventive, but I'll be the first to admit that I always suck at keeping those terms straight until I really get immersed in a story. So, hopefully more terms will click as I read it again probably tomorrow. Some of these names give me a real Eastern European feeling, so that's cool, because it helps me visualize people and settings.

 

Dynae took a horrified step back and stumbled on the quavering pile of sand. The mother jumped over to her and pulled her out of the sand, setting her on the bed. Blood leaked out of the sister, streaming out of every pore and turning her and her clothing quickly red. Dynae turned away to vomit.

 

That part, in which the body is described as bleeding profusely from each pore, was a nice touch too, and I had sort of a Silent Hill type feeling, which was cool, because it certainly affected me as a reader and conveyed the strong horror element. It worked well with the fact that your world seems gritty so far, which is nice, because it's also easy to visualize. Not like Naples, during the garbage strike, but along the lines of what FF7's North Corel would be like if it weren't a shithole, but not in the desert like the original one that turned into the prison.

 

And ”œcoursing through the house.”

[Tiana Calthye]

It does get really bad. There's a point about halfway through, or something, where I totally hit writer's block and went **** THIS and started writing something totally different and ended up tying it into the overall story. Actually, at least two points where I do that. One's more obvious than the other. But if I thought the whole thing was bad I wouldn't be posting it.

 

Yeah, good call on the lack of capitalization. Mother and Father are titles and they ought to be capitalized, but likely I forgot.

 

I'll be the first to admit I can't keep proper names straight either, for anything but my own writing. Even now I only know the major characters from the fandoms I enjoy. You're forgiven.

 

Oh, yeah. Visuals. I forgot about that. I'll try pull out some for the characters, I have drawn most of them.

[Jidai Geki]

Interesting disruption of the framing device, as Ben pointed out. The jolt of the narrator apparent being shot was a good way of defying reader expectations.

 

Not really sure where this is heading at the moment, but I look forward to finding out. Intriguing set-up.

[Amidala Skywalker]

Intruiging start. I'm definately interested to see where this is going, and props to you for being brave (or just not caring what we think ) and posting stuff that hasn't been looked at in a long while.

 

I think it's clear that Dynae is different, and I'm interested to see just how different she is, and what that means for her and the people.

 

Not much to comment on that hasn't been said. There were a few jolts or awkward sentences, but you predicted that.

 

BTW, I adore your new sig.

[Tiana Calthye]

Interesting disruption of the framing device, as Ben pointed out. The jolt of the narrator apparent being shot was a good way of defying reader expectations.

I find it interesting that you guys as readers LIKE that bit. I absolutely hate it. My reason for not liking the prologue blurb is because in my mind, it's a history dump.

 

Not really sure where this is heading at the moment, but I look forward to finding out. Intriguing set-up.

It's heading nowhere. I just hope it's an interesting ride. (I expect it'll be more like a train wreck.)

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Intruiging start. I'm definately interested to see where this is going, and props to you for being brave (or just not caring what we think ) and posting stuff that hasn't been looked at in a long while.

Looked at in a long while? I've never looked at it. Okay, well, no, that's not true. I just read the entire thing. I won't be changing anything for you guys, though. You get the full horror of draft one.

 

I think it's clear that Dynae is different, and I'm interested to see just how different she is, and what that means for her and the people.

Yes. Read and find out!

 

BTW, I adore your new sig.

Thanks! It's original art.

 

 

 

 

 

Aaaanyway! This was originally the first chapter I'd written. (It went from the italicized prologue to this.) What you saw as chapter one I wrote a bit later during one of my more blocked moments near the end of the story, trying to make a more coherent prologue. Note the date: this occurs years later. As this is the actual first bit I wrote, I feel that it's a lot more... directionless. It's one of my least favorite parts of the story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Chapter Two: Gabriel-

700 MST — The Highlands of Naldhastar

 

Gabriel started awake. Everything was silent, that dull sort of silence that fell on the common houses after midnight, when all the sane people slept. He shuddered. That nightmare again, he didn’t need that nightmare… but it was reoccurring. It’d been so many years now, since the storyteller had been taken away. He still had a scar on his forehead. The healer had tried to erase it, but it didn’t go away.

 

He didn’t even understand why. There hadn’t been a reason for it, just some travelling storyteller who told children stories and then he moved on, leaving his tinkerings and little toys for the kids.

 

Not anymore. The tinkers weren’t allowed to travel; there were no nomads and gypsies wandering the highlands.

 

He pulled himself out of bed, dropping the quilt back onto the mattress and walked over to the window.

 

The sky was alight with fire.

 

Most people didn’t wake up this early… what was it, he wondered—it had to be hours past midnight, the moon was bright in the sky, but the moon was the only light. There was no real reason for him to be up, except for the dreams. He remembered the storyteller’s face so clearly, bold blue eyes, wide behind gold frames. They had glasses, the tinkers. They said it helped them see better. But Gabriel didn’t necessarily understand why they said it helped them see better. He knew people who saw just fine, and he could see just fine, and when the tinker had let him put on a pair of those glasses, it just made everything so blurry.

 

He ran a hand through his hair.

 

But they didn’t wander the highland prairies anymore, and even if he wanted to know what it was that helped them, why they needed glasses to see better—he’d never know now. The nearest camp was at least a day’s walk away, and he wasn’t going to be getting there any time soon. Not while there were crops to harvest and aethers to mine and magic to study and books to copy and shoes to polish and bread to bake.

 

The lights danced in the sky. He leaned against the glass window, nose pressed up against it. He didn’t see the Northern Lights very often, because usually he was fast asleep. Except for when the nightmares hit, again and again.

 

And sometimes, he’d stare out at them and they’d hesitate, and he’d hesitate, and it seemed like time froze.

 

Colors. Red, blue, green—mostly greens, and they were intense, and they covered the sky.

 

The spirit lights, the elders called them. Spirit lights, because they were the voices of the dead, calling to the living. Gabriel touched the window, and wiped away a bit of fog. His breath was steaming it up, and he couldn’t have that. If that happened, he’d have to clean it later on, because Mama would catch him at it. She had eyes everywhere. Or if his Ma didn’t catch him breathing on it, surely Elithia would. Or maybe one of the sisters…

 

Oh, they had eyes everywhere. Gabriel groaned and stalked back across the floor, careful to not hit the loose board with the creak, and sank back onto his mattress. No time for light watching, no time for hesitations and daydreaming. There were crops to take care of in the morning, unless it rained—and if it did, his brothers would be pissed off but at least they might get a day of women’s work. Women’s work was more fun, because then they got to eat some of it afterwards, unless they were caught.

 

He pulled the quilt back over his legs, shifting a bit on the ancient mattress and trying to find a comfortable position again. It was so lumpy. Gabriel closed his eyes.

 

Just ignore the lights. They’re not really dead people. It’s just a legend. Just like old Gabron’s tale about the kings and queens of old.

 

<><><>

 

Morning came, and it seemed like he’d barely blinked before someone—one of the sisters—was in the room and banging on a pot, yelling for him and the brothers to get their lazy bones out of bed. “Hurry, hurry! There’s clouds on the horizon!”

 

Gabriel groaned and sat up. “Shush! Shouldn’t you be doing some girly work out there?”

 

The girls always had to get up a little earlier. But then, they got to go to bed sooner. They weren’t out in the fields from dawn to dusk, raking and sowing and haying and if that was all done—they weren’t down in the mines, pounding and digging and…

 

His muscles ached at the thought.

 

“Girl’s work is just as hard as yours, so stop your fussing!”

 

“You don’t have to do the grain!” Gabriel complained, struggling out of bed along with the three other brothers. “You just have to cook it.”

 

She shrugged. “And you get to eat it, flyboy. Out of bed! Come on!”

 

He couldn’t remember offhand which one she was. She had black hair and soulful brown eyes and thick eyelashes, and thick eyebrows, and a heavy build. He didn’t know her name, at least, not in the sleep haze. She’d come from another village down the highlands. Something had happened. He didn’t know what. It wasn’t like they actually talked about it.

 

He pushed her out of the room. “Oh, go back downstairs. You have food to take care of.”

 

And I have to get dressed.

 

He searched for his tunic—wherever it had went, usually it was under his pillow, but the nightmare had taken it away. No, not the nightmare, just his flailing in the memories, he supposed. And it was there, shoved back behind his mattress, right where it didn’t belong. He pulled it over the light sleep shirt and then slipped into his shoes, kicking them on without bothering to tie the laces. Eventually he tromped down the stairs and waited until the mother served breakfast, and he and the brothers could sit down to eat before running out in the early morning to start on their work.

 

One seat was empty on the long table.

 

“Where’s Darian?” one of the other brothers pointed out. Gabriel hadn’t remembered which brother sat there. He only knew the brothers who stayed in his room.

 

It was one of the younger brothers, who’d aged enough to earn either brother or sister. It had to be a younger one because he didn’t know.

 

No one stayed past twenty years.

 

It was just how things were. There were the elders… but that was it. And the elders came from Elsewhere. The family was always broken. They always disappeared. The elders said it was the Dusks, and some of the others said it was the Imperials who took them away for better work in the cities. Gabriel didn’t know who to believe.

 

He didn’t really care.

 

Even though he was already nineteen.

 

<><><>

 

Separate from the boys, the girls ate their meal and it wasn’t in relative silence. They chattered, where the boys didn’t. The sisters talked about quilts and meals and the new recipe book that the elders had brought in from the city and all sorts of trivial things that didn’t really matter in the scheme of things, Dynae figured. But no, that was what they talked about and that was what she returned. After all, they had to talk about something. Girls chatted. The sisters talked. That was what they had to do, or they would appear suspicious—or she would appear suspicious. She didn’t need to have her cover blown this early on, though she hated to hold this cover.

 

It was such a backwards clan, though the previous one she’d been a member of wasn’t much better. A member, well, that was a stretch, she thought. It was a stretch to consider herself a member here, but this clan had been quite welcoming of the stranger who stumbled in from the rubble of the previous clan Galthren, holding the clan crest and pleading for a place to stay in the wake of her family’s trials. She shuddered a little and continued to work on her pancakes. They were good pancakes, at any rate, smothered in whipped cream and syrup with a few apples sliced thinly overtop. Delicious, and not bad for her, either—if dream food could serve as something filling.

 

Dynae prodded at one of the apples. It tasted right, anyway. It tasted just like an apple was supposed to look. They looked just like applies were suppose to look. After all, they were applies. Apples were supposed to look red, and round—and they were too red and too round. They didn’t have that rough realism of real apples. They…

 

They were too real.

 

They looked just like someone would paint a picture of a perfect apple, and they tasted like eating that apple too. But no on else noticed that these applies were so very apple-like. So unrealistically apple-like. They just ate them and continued to talk about—oh, the topic at hand. What was it, it’d changed somehow from the recipe book that had all these outlandish recipes in it… to lace.

 

Dynae tried to listen up. If they were talking about lace, she needed to also talk about lace. If they were talking about quilts, she could offer her opinion on skirts. Hey, she had good ideas, they were just outlandish at times, and the other sisters giggled a bit at her wild opinions. Why would the brothers and sisters and the elders all eat together? They had plenty of room for two long tables in the room, and they could all be separate, and the elders liked the quiet and hey, the brothers weren’t necessarily that quiet all the time.

 

And the brothers, they proved that thought. A small war had broken out on the other end of the room, on the brother’s side, food splattering across one of the walls. One of the sisters nearer to them yelled out: “You know you have to clean that up, right?!”

 

There was a shouted apology, but the war didn’t stop. Dynae shook her head. Well, boys would be boys. That was always the excuse they used, as if it really mattered to her now. Boys, boys, boys… she kind of liked boys, but they were kept so separate here. As if there was no real physical attraction. Baby brothers and sisters had to come from somewhere, but she hadn’t seen a single child-bearing aged woman yet. Just the elders, who weren’t really all that old. And then the rest of them, who were all teenagers.

 

She hesitated on stabbing her pancake again. Mmm, pancake. She tried to focus on that. It was a good pancake, it wasn’t a suspicious lifestyle.

 

It’d been this way in the old clan, except she hadn’t been a sister. She hadn’t earned a name yet. After all, people who stumbled in without a clan didn’t deserve to have a name or a rank or the right to speak. She supposed no one would really care that she’d stolen a sister’s clothes from the wreckage of the clan hall before stumbling out across the highlands, underneath the lit up sky, and to the new clan hall, and claimed to be a sister from that clan. No, no one would care, because there was no one left alive from the clan where she’d sat under the table and ate scraps and couldn’t speak because she hadn’t yet earned the right to speak.

 

No, no one would care, because no one would ever know.

 

After a while, she finished up her pancake and she picked up the plate and carried it into the kitchen. The kitchen was a nice and peaceful place, it smelt like the pancakes, with their fluffy, wheaty and slightly nutty smell—but she was full and it wasn’t all that appealing anymore. The brothers would head out into the fields, and the sisters would keep baking. More bread, and today they were doing tomato sauces and once that was done, on to the jams. By that time, the harvest should have been done, and then they would move on to…

 

And in the rush of all the things to do, no one ever thought to ask questions. A boy had vanished—a young man. And more than one of them. There were no pictures on the walls, and only occasionally were the vanished ones mentioned by the people who lived in the clan. Only occasionally, because no one really cared. Just like eating a big breakfast before tromping out into the fields was the norm, people vanishing and never ever returning was the norm. Except for the elders—the elders were a strange anomaly all in their own right.

 

Dynae wondered exactly what was up with them. There had to be some answer. What was an elder, what did they do—besides bring back things from the cities. The elders were the only ones who really travelled. Everyone else had enough to do in the clan’s marked off territory. Hunting, farming, fishing, and if they had done everything to make sure there was enough food in the house, then they would move on to mining and the women would move on to sewing. The excess sewing was sold in the cities—and they never saw where it went, it just sort of vanished into he hands of the Imperials. The higher ups, the royals, the regal, the Justice, the Reeves, the—oh, so many names, they had but no one really knew what the Imperials were. They just knew that in the cities, the Imperials worked and lived and fed off of the humble offerings of the highland clans.

 

She eyed the window. The brothers were filing out to work. So many brothers, and they never questioned why some of them looked nearly identical, and others looked so very different. Some were black, some were gray, some had slanted ears and others were very simply human. There were so many colors and varieties in the clan, and only some of them looked like they could be related to the four clan elders.

 

After a while, she reached forward and opened the window, only to be hit with a blast of cold air from the south. At least it wasn’t icy, it only felt cold. She inhaled slowly, before taking a step back and closing it again. It tasted good, refreshing, after the hot and sticky air in the kitchen. Some of the sisters were bringing in dishes. It was time to take care of the washing, not time to stare at the golden sky.

 

She rubbed her eyes, blinked hard, and headed back into the common room to help out.

 

<><><>

 

After all the washing was done, Dynae finally slipped away from the sisters, as she was wont to do, and walked out the door, collapsing out onto the grass and stared up at the sky. The sky was a pleasant shade of golden blue today, the clouds golden and the sky a deep blue. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes it had a red color to it and sometimes it was purple and sometimes it was gray, as if someone out there was playing with the settings on the sky. It was interesting to watch—and no one ever questioned why. She supposed that was why the previous clan hadn’t permitted her the right to speak. She always asked questions, and no one here seemed to want answers. No answers to be found, no books with anything useful. Just cookbooks, medication books, first aid books, how to fix the sink books, how to dig an outhouse books, how to mine books… so many books on useful things, and there was no history, no legends, no rumors, no myths.

 

Nothing.

 

She held out one hand and whistled lightly into the wind.

 

Come.

 

The wind seemed to whistle for a moment before it twisted around her fingertips, slowly making a form, and that form pulled something towards it. But that something only took on the form of an insect, a butterfly that delicately landed on the tips of her finger as she whistled, a whistle that was almost subsonic. A whistle that echoed in the winds. It landed on her fingers.

 

Dynae whispered to it.

 

“What’s happening?”

 

There were no words, but the wind howled around her ears.

 

“What’s happening, father?” she repeated, and the wind grew louder, more wicked and wild as it continued to drone under the current whistle, a whistle that caused the butterfly to grow tense. Its wings stiffened, almost like plastic, and it and eventually drifted back in the swirl of colored winds. Dynae sank back into the grass, her eyes falling shut. There was no word yet, no words yet. Maybe they couldn’t speak. Maybe it was just a normal insect. It was so hard for them to speak, they were so drained, the spirits…

 

No, they weren’t drained, they were just so used.

 

She gasped, and closed her eyes once again, watching sparkles dance on the inside of her eyes and she sighed. Her sigh was lost in the wind.

 

There was a tickle on the end of her nose and she opened her eyes to see another moth sitting on the end of her nose. Dynae crossed her eyes slightly. “Well, what do you want?”

 

The wind whistled.

 

“Is that the only way you can speak,” she breathed. “Did they take it away from you, the right to speak? Or is this just too high…” This was a world where the right to speak mattered and people could speak and take it away. The highlands had that power. Or maybe it was just the Imperials, harnessing the Highlands as if they could actually be used as some sort of power source. They seemed to be a magnet for powers, but moreso, the lowlands. Dynae used to live there, she remembered vaguely. It’d been, what, a year or three, struggling through the swamps without anything but the voices to guide her and she’d been lost and the Dusks had guided her and eventually they faded away as she got higher and further away from the cities. But the Highlands had mines.

 

It scared her.

 

Mines to dig into what? The aether, they said. But they never said what the aether was. They never said what the aether was for, they never said why they needed it. It was just one of another of the many things that they shipped off to the Imperials in their cities, never to be seen or heard from again.

 

And people vanished…

 

They dug mines, but the girls didn’t have to and the harvest came first, especially up here. The air was slightly thin and even if the ground was good, they were still not that able to make decent crops. Dynae sighed. Well, at least the food tasted good, and with all the clan working hard for the sake of the entire family, the entire family was always well fed.

 

The moth was still on the tip of her nose. She blew up at it and it shuddered a bit, but it didn’t leave.

 

“Did you hear my call?” she whispered. “Are you here to help me? Are you going to lead me back down into the lowlands?”

 

No answer. Just the wind. It was always just the wind, out here in the bare prairies, where the wind was harsh and only the mountains to the south and to the easy kept them sheltered from the cruel winds. She sighed. Winds, winds, at least in the other clan building she’d had trees, but there were no trees here. Just people, living their robotic lifestyle, obeying the reeves and obeying the elders and slaving away to keep the Imperials nice and well fed. She hadn’t been in the cities for a good few years, but her father had taken her there once, before he was killed. She hadn’t been very old then, maybe five, because she remembered it as a huge haze, everything taller than it needed to be, everything too large to really matter. It was a child’s memory, out of proportion. She mostly remembered the horses. She’d liked the horses, it didn’t matter what her father was up to and why he had to be in the city. She wished it had mattered. She couldn’t remember her mother at all, but he said she’d been beautiful. At least, before he’d been killed and she’d been alone to wander in the swamp with the Dusks.

 

It was quiet there. It was quiet here. It was quiet everywhere and she wondered why she couldn’t hear the screaming. Most other places screamed, the Dusks and told her, and they’d said that they screamed but no one else could hear them, and she wondered if that wasn’t because here—here they couldn’t speak.

 

The moth hadn’t moved.

 

“Who are you?” she whispered.

 

“Who are you talking to?” The voice shattered her focus on the moth, and she glanced up.

 

“Oh… uhm…” Dynae’s voice trailed off. The moth fluttered off and into the wind, which had seemed to be painted before but now it was just wind, normal, ordinary mountain wind with the bit of a sting the mountain winds so often had. She shivered a little bit and eyed him. She didn’t really recognize him, but the family was large, too large for her to know everyone’s name, she hadn’t been there all that long anyway. She knew more of the sisters, because they talked a lot, but the brothers were usually busy, and when they came back in at midday to grab their lunches, they were already getting tired, and when they tromped in after everything was said and done, they were far too tired to converse and usually headed straight to bed.

 

They did work hard, but they weren’t trapped in a room all of the time, without being able to get out and breathe. There was only this brief break between breakfast and lunch, and then between lunch and supper—and then to bed. Then they could lie out here. Most of the other sisters didn’t, they preferred to stay around the fire and talk and read the few books that just lay around the clan hall. There were a few interesting ones, but Dynae had already pursued most of them. They were all so boring, if they weren’t how to books, they had no hope of really being intelligent books either. They were children’s stories, innocent and useless to her search for answers.

 

Her father had occasionally given her answers, but he wasn’t there anymore. The Dusks had talked to her but they had trouble articulating human speech.

 

And she realized the boy was still looking at her. The brother, she reminded herself.

 

“I’m just… you know… singing.” That was the first thing that popped into her mind and it burst out before she could fix it. Singing? She hadn’t been singing and they all knew it. “Uhm… reciting poetry. You know… like that.”

 

He shook his head. “Don’t be silly, you were talking.”

 

“What are you doing back here?”

 

“Brother Jon slipped in the field and cut his leg on a branch. A couple of us came back, we brought him back for first aid. He needs to have it bandaged.”

 

“Oh… was I supposed to do that?” she wondered.

 

“Of course not. The healer has him. But we have to wait until she cleans it to help him back out.”

 

Because, after all, no one got a break. No one had money here, the right to eat and relax was earned by how much work you did. No one ever got to breathe on the highlands, except for the sisters in their moments between sewing and quilting and cooking and baking and laundry, oh, there was so much laundry and there were so many dishes for the clan. Fortunately, there were also a lot of sisters. She wondered, though, if it wouldn’t be better to be a brother. At least the brothers got to be out in the sun and the open air for most of the day. It wasn’t so stuff.

 

“You really are distractible.” He sat down beside her.

 

“Oh… am I supposed to be talking to you?” She paused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t… I mean… I’m not… I mean… uh… I’m sorry. Yes. I’m distracted. I’m thinking about… uh… shoes. Yes. The elders might bring back some shoes next trip into the cities and I hope I get a pair! These ones are wearing out.”

 

Which wasn’t a lie, her boots were worn thin, so thin that she could barely walk without thorns sticking into her feet these days. They wouldn’t hold up to travel. But almost everyone’s boots were that bad. Maybe it was a way of keeping them in the hold, the clan hold on the highlands.

 

After all, any way to keep people on the highlands was a way to keep the Imperials happy and dry and well-fed. But the mines, now, that was what kept her curious, and kept her gazing at the red-haired boy who loomed over her with a slightly curious look on his face. He had to care somewhat, or he wouldn’t be there and trying to talk to her, he’d be off doing whatever it was that boys in the clan did. Farming, fishing, whatever. Or he’d be off trying to snatch some freshly baked bread from one of the mothers, or perhaps waiting for the other brother, the injured one.

 

He shook his head. “Are you flustered? You know, if you let the elders know that you’re interested in men, they might let you go to the cities. You can only have children if you’re accepted into a city. That’s what they say, anyway. To keep the clans from being full of children. Clans are no place for a baby.”

 

She hesitated. That was the first time she’d heard anything about where baby clan members came from, baby brothers and sisters. Wandering, the Dusks hadn’t had any answers for her, but this seemed to be some sort of an answer. Dynae glanced to him. “Really? You think I’m flustered because I’m interested in you?”

 

“It could be, yeah.” He sat down and brushed her hair back. “That’s what the elders say. Hey, I remember you. I saw you this morning.”

 

“No kidding, flyboy.” Her mind made the connection. “You were the one who wouldn’t get out of bed.”

 

“I was disturbed in the evening hours.”

 

“Disturbed?”

 

“I had a nightmare.” He gestured broadly. “I couldn’t help it. I didn’t hear the cock crow. I’m sorry you had to chase me down when everyone else had got up, all right? I just don’t like being waken. Not after a dream. It’s hard. They grab, you know. Just a little bit.”

 

“I can tell.” She giggled a little bit and batted away his hand. Dreams. Well, that was another topic for another day, but dreams were something precious and she wasn’t going to pry. “Okay, so say I did like you. What happens then? Maybe it was different in my old clan.”

 

“Oh, I doubt it was all that different. Most of the clans have the same sort of ways and traditions.” He clasped his hands. “I don’t think it would really matter if you were interested in me, because I’m probably not going anywhere soon.”

 

“Is that so? How old are you?”

 

“I’m nineteen,” he noted. “I’ll be twenty soon.”

 

“Isn’t that when most people vanish?” she asked.

 

“Yeah. So I guess I’ll find out what happens to the people who disappear, then.”

 

“Doesn’t it worry you?”

 

He shrugged. “Not really.. why would it? I mean, all it is is disappearing, and there’s the elders. Elders wouldn’t exist if people died.” She wondered if everyone was this easygoing about unexplained disappearances. “So I suppose you just get taken to the cities. After all these years as a clan, we might as well. I think that’s how it goes, anyway. We get schooling, and a few years as a nothing, and then we get told whether we’re a brother or a sister. And then we get to do brother’s or sister’s work for some more years and then we get taken away. I mean, why would we be taken away without purpose? This is training. I guess.”

 

It was terrifying, listening to him talk about it nonchalantly.

 

“But back to the other topic. What if I thought you were cute?” She poked him in the ribs. Tell me things. Tell me, tell me what you know. You’re curious, I can see it in the quirk of your eyebrows. “My clan just sent people to the city.” That was a guess. I never had a clan. “With the elders.”

 

“Like it is here, I told you. Every clan is the same, just with different colors and different tartans.” He poked her back. “If you’re interested in boys, you probably won’t want me, anyway. You already seem to be a little bit ticked off by how I act.”

 

“Ticked off? You weren’t up and Sister Alethia sent me to wake you up!” She waved, a light sort of wave. It made the wind whistle around her fingers again, though, and she dropped her hand. Be careful, she reminded herself. You don’t want to start any new magic. A chain reaction would be bad. The nether’s mists are strong up here… abnormally strong. “What about you? What do you do?”

 

He shrugged. “We’re doing the hay, now. It should only take another day or two; hopefully it doesn’t rain. Then it’s back to the mines.”

 

“When’s your birthday?”

 

“It’s in the twelfth month.”

 

And people seemed to vanish between the ages of twenty and twenty-one, but it didn’t seem to revolve around their birthdays, but something else entirely.

 

“Ah, okay.” It was the tenth month now. Dynae opened her eyes and sat up. “I was born in the sixth month.”

 

“How old are you?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Then how do you know when your birthday was?”

 

“They told me.”

 

“Who’s they?”

 

“You know…” She froze, with the realization that he probably didn’t know who they were. And if she told him, he would reveal her and she’d be an it once again, without the right of speech. Because people who cosorted with Dusks were seen as possessed, as demons, as monsters who came from the swamplands down below the mountain flats and prairies.

 

The sky danced with color for a moment, and she grew distracted once more.

 

“Did they ever say what caused the sky lights in your old clan?” he asked.

 

“No.” Dynae shook her head. “They just said it was spirits or something. Or gasses in the air.”

 

“What do you think it is?”

 

“I…” She paused. She wasn’t sure. There were so many theories, though the prevalent one was the old myth that it was the spirits speaking in the skies to one another through their language of a million colors, and as the skies danced, so did the spirits of the dead. It was, in a way, a beautiful myth and one of the few that they were permitted to speak about—not that the other women did. No, the women only talked about childish things…

 

Dyane took a deep breath. “I think that if a legend is so well spread, throughout clans and tartans, that it probably has some basis in reality.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I think it has something to do with the spirits of the dead.” She smiled broadly. “Why else would everyone say it does? And then there’s the other stories… but spirits of the dead speaking in a language of paint and light, using the skies as their canvas to communicate… well, it’s sort of pretty, don’t you think?”

 

He shrugged. “I suppose. Oh.” The door opened and the other brother, with the injured one with his bandaged leg stumbled out. Dyane glanced over to them and then back to the red-haired brother with his messy hair and his patchy clothing. His boots were as thin as hers.

 

“I suppose you have to go,” she noted.

 

“Yeah…” He got back up and offered her a hand. “Were you going to go back in, sister?”

 

She took his hand. It felt strange, touching a brother. That wasn’t usually done, unless you were a healer—she wondered about the cities and mating, then. How did that go? Maybe an elder would answer some questions. But it wasn’t men and boys that made her stammer, though sometimes she felt like she was so much older than her sisters, anyway. It wasn’t that. She didn’t think that was what would make her happy.

 

No.

 

An archive, full of books and knowledge and answers to the questions that haunted her every time she stepped out of the clan hall—that would make her happy.

 

She stood up and released his hand. “Sister? My name’s Dynae. Are you permitted to call me by name, brother? Or is that a right to be earned, as well?”

 

“Only if you give it to me.” He grinned. “Dynae. My name’s Gabriel.” He gave her a half salute. “You have the right to call me by name. I’ll see you around.”

 

“Yeah, if you keep sleeping in, flyboy.”

 

“Gabriel,” he reminded her, and headed back to the fields with the other two brothers.

[Amidala Skywalker]

I hate it that your worst writing is better than my best writing.

 

Honestly, I really enjoyed this chapter. It showed how she really hasn't changed, and I like that she's getting the chance to at least open up a tiny bit. I have a feeling she'll eventually get to the city, but it will be even more interesting to see what she does there. And the hint that she could possibly use magic is curious too.

 

I hope she helps the Dusks...I'm looking forward to more!

[Tiana Calthye]

I hate it that your worst writing is better than my best writing.

I think the reality is more that what I think is my worst writing isn't as bad as I think it is--and your writing is great.

 

Honestly, I really enjoyed this chapter. It showed how she really hasn't changed, and I like that she's getting the chance to at least open up a tiny bit. I have a feeling she'll eventually get to the city, but it will be even more interesting to see what she does there. And the hint that she could possibly use magic is curious too.

 

I hope she helps the Dusks...I'm looking forward to more!

Good to know that to a reader it falls in well from the introduction. I'm glad she comes across as more open now, too... I was worried about the chapter coming across as mostly fluff, compared to the horrific first chapter. But I think it develops their culture well.

 

As for the Dusks... minor spoilery rant. The one thing that bugs me most about this story is that by the end, I feel I didn't resolve their storyline well enough. Though I think I tied off almost every loose end, albeit terribly in a few cases, and even tied the story in with the place where I went WOO HOO SCREW THIS STORY and started telling another one and then tied all that off too... I feel like I left the Dusks too open. I'm not sure if it's for the good or for the better. I think you guys are going to see that by the end I was really rushing the story, which explains why I sort of forgot to finalize theirs. Maybe an epilogue... aha.

[Tiana Calthye]

Okay, okay, I hate every chapter of this story.

 

 

 

 

-Chapter Three: Gabriel-

 

Everything went just the way it was supposed to go. People shuffling in to eat, people putting their dishes in the middle of the table, the brothers collapsing to go back to sleep, and the sisters cleaning back up their messes before they also shuffled back to sleep. The hay came in and the wheat safely tucked away and everyone safely in their beds while the masses in clan Indigo slept. And Gabriel sat off to the side, quieter for once as he considered. If the hay was in, they didn’t have as much to do. Some of the other brothers would need to do further farming work but the rest of them would likely be sent back to the mines the next day. The elders would tell them.

 

He watched Dynae sometimes. She made him curious. Just a little bit curious, because of the way she walked and didn’t always talk and when she did talk, she stammered and babbled and wound her sentences in circles to avoid making whatever her original point was. She was a strange person, and he almost liked that. It was like she actually cared about the northern lights and what was in the mines and what the crops were. She should have been a brother, he reasoned. They must have mislabelled her in the namings. She couldn’t be a sister. Because sisters cared about food and dresses and shoes and making new types of pies. It was the best time of year for pies, after all.

 

He sat and watched her for a while, even though half of the brothers had collapsed. The sisters were permitted to go to sleep earlier than the brothers, once all of the cleanup from supper was done, but most of them didn’t. Some of them sat around and knitted, some went off to their rooms in the east wing of the clan hall, and some talked with the elders who also sat in the common room around the fire. Dynae didn’t do these things. Dynae tended to sit in the corner and pick through books, she’d flip them around and stare at the pictures and put them back. Gabriel wondered if she could read, the way she treated them. She seemed intelligent enough.

 

But could she read? The way she talked… no, she had to have been educated; the clan she had come from had to have educated her. There was simply no way that she couldn’t be. She must have had some other reason for peering so intently at the books, even if they were of topics she—a sister—shouldn’t have cared about. A sister wasn’t supposed to care about the crops. A sister should just care about how to cook them, he reasoned, but this one didn’t.

 

No, she must have been mislabelled. She had to be a brother, and he wondered why she wasn’t.

 

Maybe her previous clan hadn’t been all that together. He knew she’d come from another one, somewhere east or south or maybe it was west—though he was sure it had been a place higher up in the mountains, so it wouldn’t have been west, towards the valley and the cities. He admitted after a moment, he really didn’t know. He just knew that Sister Dynae had been accepted in as an outsider because her clan had been injured in an attack by some sort of monster. Werecreatures, the ones who were turned by the Nether’s mists into monsters and then back into ordinary beings.

 

Maybe she hadn’t been a clan member, he considered. Maybe she was one of the Nether’s monsters, and she was just waiting for her chance to strike against his clan.

 

He wondered…

 

The thought was shattered by a loud yell. One of the brothers had dropped something. A pot, a pan, whatever it was, it had been full of steaming liquid, and it spread out across the floor. The sisters in the area jumped back and the elder continued rocking in her chair as it scattered.

 

“Clean that up!” one of the sisters barked.

 

“Yes’m!”

 

“No more cider for you!”

 

There was a scatter to get the mess cleaned up before it sank into the floor, and then Gabriel found himself sinking back into his thoughts. He was more distant than normal. Usually, the thought of cider would’ve cheered him right up—or in this case, cider dripping into the floor would’ve depressed him. What a waste of good apples. But it didn’t. He found himself mindlessly gazing at Dynae.

 

She was… so interesting.

 

Maybe I should talk to the elders and see if they could tell me more about the mating. How the youngers come into the clans. I’m being distracted by a sister, after all, and that’s simply not done…

 

He paused a moment and got up, considered going to speak to one of the fathers before he turned and headed up the stairs. No, he wasn’t interested in her like that. He couldn’t possibly be. He just couldn’t. Women were not his interest. Farming was. Mining was. And…

 

And the skies that lit on fire were.

 

He tramped up the stairs, a short ways to his room, and gingerly avoided the two mattresses with sleeping brothers before collapsing back onto his own. He stared at the roof for a long moment before kicking off his shoes and pulling off his tunic. The tunic dropped, he stared mindlessly at the window on the wall, and the skies on fire with sun’s fading light before closing his eyes.

 

No, it wasn’t her. It was her mindset that interested him. She seemed to exist, where so many of the other sisters just floated from chore to chore, doing things because that was what sisters did. He hesitated in his thoughts, imagining what it would be like to speak to sisters more often. Maybe they were all so intelligent, and didn’t just bark orders at the brothers who worked to make sure they had enough food. Maybe the things they talked about mattered and he just missed it every time. Maybe…

 

Yes, that had to be it. Gabriel decided to listen more to the sisters and their conversations, instead of eying brothers and throwing food at them. It would have to do something; he knew that they had to have something to say that mattered. Maybe. Possibly.

 

He let himself drift off to sleep, the thought of sisters floating through his mind. Yes, they could have something to say that he’d missed all along. Maybe they knew what caused the spirit lights in the sky at night…

 

And he had the dream again.

 

The storyteller, the Imperials bursting in, the words he didn’t understand exchanged before the tinker was dragged off, being thrown against the wall and slamming up to it, things scraping against his cheek and blood, and there was a long scar on the side of his face from being thrown still.

 

He dreamed, and the dreams grew more extensive, more encumbering, more terrifying. He dreamed that there was a place where people screamed, and this place was muffled so the screams never reached out. He dreamed about the old storyteller, in this place where people screamed.

 

He dreamt about the tinkers, wandering, and then chained to trees. They were chained up, and then the trees were lit on fire.

 

He opened his eyes, and the dream didn’t seem to stop. There was still a burning in his mind.

 

And there was a burning in the sky.

 

Gabriel stumbled out of the bed, tangled up in his quilt. It took a moment before he was able to push it aside and fall to the window. No, where it seemed that the sky was on fire, it wasn’t really. It was just the sunset, a bright, blood-red sunset that laughed in his face and in the dream, still running in the back of his mind. Gabriel shivered. Maybe he could get another few minutes of sleep, but it was hardly worth it now. It would just make him drowsier. And he could already smell the beginnings of the day’s meals drifting through the floorboards.

 

He slipped back into his shoes and his tunic before quietly slipping out of the room. Back down the stairs, and then back down to the common room. A couple of the elders sat in their chairs, and the sisters were busy at work preparing coffee and eggs.

 

It smelt good and most of the people disregarded him as he stumbled down into the dim room and collapsed into one of the common room’s chairs. Usually they were all crowded up in front of the fire, a game board or two and people talking and making a bunch of purposeless noise, but at this early time of the day, the sisters were busy preparing breakfast and only a few of the elders were up. Not all of them—there were four female and four male elders in the Indigo clan. He stared at the flames, flickering back and forth in the fireplace. Soon winter would come and they’d have to burn more wood to keep the clan hall warm. Soon, but it wasn’t winter yet. First they would have a season of good food, and too much cooking for the sisters, first they would have the snow beginning to fall and everything beginning to taste like ice, and then it would begin to snow and they’d hope they had enough food to keep them through the winter. Gabriel shivered. He knew that his birthday was coming up and now Dynae had him thinking.

 

What if disappearing wasn’t a good thing? Everyone did it but did that mean it was a good thing to inexplicably vanish? Did it mean something good, or did it mean something bad? Did it mean he would later on come back as an elder? That’s what he’d assumed happened to those who vanished, because everyone did. There was no reason for anyone to vanish if it wasn’t for the good of the clan and for the good of the country. The Empire certainly had no reason to take them away, after all, the clans were what fed them and brought them clothing...

 

Gabriel continued to mindlessly stare at the flames.

 

The flames froze.

 

He paused. A strange look crossed through his green eyes and then he leaned back, closing them tightly. If you close your eyes it’ll go away…

 

The flames are moving. Right?

 

He opened them. The flames were still stuck.

 

Gabriel blinked, rubbed his eyes, before reaching out to touch the flames. He screeched and pulled his hand back. Yes, they were still hot, they were still flames, they were still perfectly ordinary fire, but they weren’t moving.

 

He stared at them.

What?

Gabriel blew on his hand before jumping up and running to the kitchen. There was a pump in there and the water was cold. Good for burns. So was butter, they said.

 

All of the sisters were frozen.

 

He waved at them. “Sister!”

 

Nothing.

 

No responses, no actions, just a frozen clip of time, one bending over the oven to slide out a loaf of bread, another one with her hands outstretched over the sink, rinsing a bowl. Another one sweeping, another two busily copping up food for breakfast. One was frying eggs, and the eggs weren’t sizzling. The smells began to fade away, and he began to panic. What was going on? This wasn’t natural, this wasn’t right. Gabriel sank against the wall, trying to figure it out. It was illogical… none of this should’ve been…

 

The nightmare still weighed on his mind.

 

He tried to ignore it. Tinkers, bound to trees and the trees on fire. And then they dissolved into ashes, and the ashes turned into wind, a painted wind that painted the skies with the memories of the fallen tinkers, burnt by the trees.

 

Nothing was moving. There were no sounds or smells.

 

He took a deep breath.

 

It was fine, it was all good. Dynae was in the kitchen with the rest of the sisters, still and unmoving. He could name a few others, but she was the only one he really cared about…

 

A shadowy figure slipped through the front door—he heard the creak and turned to see it slide up the stairs. No, it didn’t slide, it glided, as if it had no feet and could walk on the air. And behind it, a stench followed. It smelt like death and of onions and mushrooms and wet dogs. It was an inexplicable sort of smell, and it turned Gabriel off, and he covered his nose, trying not to gag as it grew stronger. And it smelt like earth and ashes and like dead creatures and plants, with a bit of vanilla behind it, as if it was trying to pretend that it actually smelt good.

 

He watched it slide up the stairs and along the wall, a trail of oily mist following after it. The mist sank heavily to the ground, dissolving into the wood of the clan floor, and leaving a streak that slowly faded away as the oily mist continued to sink downwards. The mist stank as much as the creature.

 

Gabriel’s fingers closed around a butcher’s knife. He didn’t understand why he felt the need to arm himself, but it still was a sort of desperation. He took the knife and tossed it into his other hand, slowly walking towards the stairs.

 

He stepped where the mist wasn’t. He didn’t know if it would have any effect on him and he didn’t want to find out.

 

As he followed the creature, the smell grew stronger. He shuddered and continued the deathly walk after the wraith.

 

It stopped in front of one of the rooms and the door flew open, slamming into the wall.

 

It made no sound. No real sound. But Gabriel heard it anyway and it was like the voice of death ringing in his ears. The wraith reached out to one of the sisters and its pale hands rose out of its ghastly cloaked shell, fingertips long with pointed nails, curved slightly, and far longer than any human’s fingers should have been. It was the nails of a monster, stained with blood and stained with ashes. He couldn’t see its face, but he could only assume that its face was like its hands—pale, with blue veins clear as day underneath its almost transparent skin, ash and blood staining it, and a stench that smelt like a hundred foul; smells trailing underneath its robes.

 

He didn’t want to know what it looked like underneath its bleak, oily robes.

 

It sounded out a word. The word broke through the frozen air and through the frozen time. It was a word that echoed in Gabriel’s mind like the darkest of nightmares and it ripped through his thoughts and all good and hope and innocence that was still there in the reaches of his thoughts. It hurt, it stabbed and it felt like ice shredding his skin, and it rippled through his blood and down to his feet, where it felt like tacks holding him in place, a prick from the inside out as he stood and shivered.

 

The knife was still in his hand, and he finally managed, with a gasp, to make his hand move again. His fingers, through his fingers to his hands and his arms.

 

A second word, but this time Gabriel was prepared for the shock of a hundred deaths carving through his awareness, and it only made him freeze for one mere second before he slammed the knife into the back of the wraith’s cloak. It hit something solid… he hoped.

 

He wasn’t prepared for its banshee scream. The wail cut through time and space and Gabriel crumpled, his hands over his ears and his eyes closed tight. Maybe it wouldn’t see him, maybe it wouldn’t hear him, even though he’d just stabbed it…

 

And he found that for one second, he thought to scream—

 

And then there was time.

 

The sun was out and suddenly things were—well, it had to be at least an hour later, because there were no marks of sunrise left, and the sky was golden once again. Just like yesterday. He was still sprawled in the sister’s room on the hardwood floor, one of the younger sisters still sleeping. But he remembered there’d been more than one sister still sleeping in this room. The younger ones didn’t have to rise as early, and older ones often stayed with the younger ones, as they tended to be afraid of the ghosts and ghouls and take the occasional stories seriously. For a little while once a month, some sisters would take time and just sprawl. It was like they got sick. But they always got better.

 

The older sister was gone.

 

Maybe she was just downstairs…?

 

That had to be it. Gabriel looked for the butcher knife—it wasn’t there—and headed back down the stairs.

 

Things hadn’t really changed since he had left the room, but they had woken up more. There was more activity, more bustle, the long tables were laid out with food and the eggs the sisters had been cooking The fire was still burning and it wasn’t frozen, like he had last seen it. And there was no trace of oily grit in the floor from the wraith. He headed over to the kitchen and the butcher knife was gone.

 

It wasn’t in the rack, not where he’d taken it from, but it hadn’t been on the floor either. And no one used butcher knives for eggs and pancakes and toast. And if it wasn’t there… then…

 

Gabriel shivered. All right, now things were just getting creepy.

 

He glanced briefly around the kitchen before another one of the sisters shooed him out and he was back in the common room. No food and snacks yet. Breakfast would be on soon, where were you? Why were you collapsed in one of the sister’s rooms?

 

Oh, so that rumor had gotten out already, had it?

 

He sighed and collapsed into one of the empty chairs by the fire, vaguely conscious that the fire was what had started this in the first place. Or had it been the fire? He stared at it once again and wondered if the fire had been the cause.

 

No.

 

The first had just been a symptom. The fire had only gone out—no, not out, but gone still—because of the wraith, it had to have been the wraith, the wraiths had to be what… no, well, he didn’t know. Was the sister one of the older ones, one of the ones old enough to be vanished? Were the wraiths what made them vanish? But the wraiths smelt like the opposite of good. Was it her birthday? Why had she vanished, and why had he watched it?

 

Maybe she was just somewhere amidst the bustle in the kitchen and the common room.

 

The fire continued to flicker, acting normal, acting just like a fire was supposed to. Gabriel held out one hand curiously and it still felt hot. And it hurt a bit more than he was comfortable with, and he snatched his hand back, holding it close to his chest. That was odd, that shouldn’t have happened, he knew better than to touch the fire…

 

Yet now he was doing silly things, like touching the fire.

 

He stared out at it once more.

 

No, it was normal, it was still exactly what a fire was supposed to be. Yet something didn’t seem right here.

 

Time had simply stopped, and he had walked outside of it, with a creature of the dark that lefts and oily shadow behind it, and walked with the reek of death. And then it’d vanished. Maybe his knife had something to do with that, but he didn’t know. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out, either.

 

He stood back up, leaving the chair empty.

 

One of the elders gestured to him. “Lhaaaee.”

 

He thought he heard the wraith’s voice, and started, the voice of death still ringing in his mind. Its creepy tones, dragging and deadening and haunting, forever speaking in the curse of the grave, speaking from beyond life and not yet in the silent sleep of death…

 

But it wasn’t, it was just one of the elders, one of the older ones. “Lhae.”

 

Gabriel nodded to the elder and headed over. “Good morning, Father.”

 

The elder nodded in return, and Gabriel said down on the floor in front of him. His legs tucked underneath, he gazed thoughtfully up at the elder before finally bringing himself to speak. “What do you want?”

 

He worried about how rude he’d sounded and hesitated before nodding again. “I mean… ah… you asked for me, Father?”

 

The father nodded. “I hear you were seen in one of the sister’s rooms, brother.”

 

Gabriel nodded and glanced away.

 

“Are you interested in the girls?”

 

“No, father…” Gabriel stammered for a moment, his eyes floating back to the kitchen where the girls were. Where they walked around with their skirts brushing the hard wood floor and hummed and activity ran wild, and all the good smells of food came from. None of the smells of death. Nothing disgusting. The sisters smelt good, the sisters were good. “I mean… I… I suppose, just a little, father. But not in that way!”

 

He hesitated.

 

“I mean…”

 

He sounded like Dynae and he knew it.

 

The father smiled. “It is nothing to be ashamed of, brother. You may understand that as you grow older, you may be more attracted to the sisters. They are not for you, though. Only for your eyes. You mustn’t grow near to them. You shan’t be with them forever, you know, and nor they you.”

 

“What about the mating?” Gabriel inquired absently. It was what Dynae had been asking about and her questions had led him to realize that he really didn’t know as much about it as he would’ve liked. And suddenly there were questions in the back of his mind that hadn’t been answered yet. “What if I was attracted to them? And wanted to go to the city?”

 

“Perhaps, perhaps…” The elder nodded. “After all, I did, and the other mothers did… it’s how a clan grows, yes… perhaps. I thought you were a stronger boy than that, but perhaps its time you were considered for a candidates… I never thought you’d be one of them, mind, but perhaps…”

 

But those who mated didn’t always return either. Just another way for people to vanish. Gabriel wondered if that was what he wanted. “But I don’t want to yet. I just wanted to know more about it, Father.”

 

The father nodded again, glancing to the windows. “You’re a curious boy, aren’t you.”

 

“I suppose, just a little.” Gabriel glanced to the window as well. Dynae was there, setting out utensils on the table with seven other sisters. She was oddly fair, and he found himself more and more interested in her by the second. But not her body, it wasn’t her body that he was attracted to, but her spirit. How peckish and snappy she was, and how she stammered when anyone approached her and asked her questions, how she seemed to dance around the sister’s smalltalk, how she just did things. He liked watching her move, how graceful she was, moving around people and objects like some sort of dancer. She seemed to glide, and her skirt seemed to be like wind, dancing in a way that fabric wasn’t supposed to. And yet, she was so awkward. Her golden eyes would glance away if she noticed someone watching her and then her gait would falter and she’d stumble away, and sometimes she’d nearly drop things when she grew nervous like that.

 

Was being attracted to her movements being attracted to her body? Was her body somehow related to why he should be considered for the mating, just because he watched her move and liked seeing her quick alterations from graceful to crude and stammering?

 

The father smiled. “You like that one, don’t you? You realize you were in the wrong room, if you were trying to grow nearer to her. She also gets up earlier, she isn’t one of the children’s helpers.”

 

“Why do we have younger children here, but not babies?” Gabriel asked curiously. As if curious wasn’t what seemed to define his very thoughts by nature, these days.

 

“The clan life is no life for a child. It’s organized and structured and not so hard that an older child cannot handle it and still have time for school, but with that structure, the erratic nature of a child would simply be out of place,” the father noted. “The children grow up in the cities. It’s simply better for them there, to not be here in the wild.”

 

“I see…” Gabriel sighed. “So was I born in a city, father?”

 

“Yes. All of us were.” The father smiled. “You know, she seems to react quite a bit around your brothers. All of them. She may be sent off to the cities sooner than you. You’ve only barely shown interest, but she continues to react to the people around her in a much more… adult way.”

 

“My way is not adult?” Gabriel inquired, curiously.

 

The father shook his head. “No, you’re still a bit more of a child. A curious child, mind you. Are you done asking silly questions?”

 

Gabriel almost shook his head before he caught the dismissing tone in the father’s voice, and then he stood up and bowed slightly. “Yes, father. I’m sorry for bothering you. I would be glad to know more about being sent to the cities, though. After the rest of the harvest is pulled together, though. It’s so nearly done. I can’t possibly waste… time on… anything else.” He trailed off.

 

Because, after all, the harvest was all that mattered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE HARVEST OF SOULS.

 

And...

 

Wraiths and shit.

 

In retrospect all that stuff about people being mated is really freaking creepy.

 

Nano 2009 is coming up and I figured I'd start reposting this to get a feel for writing again.

[Amidala Skywalker]

LOL....the HARVEST OF SOULS!!!! *dun dun dunnnn*

 

Okay, okay. Creepy stuff. Me likey! Now I'm super intruiged...what makes Gabriel different? What did he do to that wraith? What did the wraith do to the sister? So many questions...*sigh*

 

Good update! MORE!!!