-Maniacal laugher- Finished~

[TheSongOfTheStars]

/ surface
533 words
"You're quiet today, brother."
Shrring grunted and didn't look away from the window. But Ishton wasn't so easily deterred.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Shrring snapped, then sighed apologetically "I'm just thinking."
"About?"
"Nothing important."
Ishton huffed an impatient sigh followed by a roll of his eyes and a faint amused smile "I thought we'd talked about not lying habitually to each other?"
"You won't like the truth," Shrring said, flinging a meaningful glance over his shoulder.
"When it comes to you, I usually don't."
Shrring folded his hands together and resumed staring out the window. Ishton let it lie for about 30 seconds.
"So...?"
"You just don't give up?"
"How long have you known me?"
"Much too long."
When it became apparent that Ishton was going to have to drag it out of his brother, he stood up, leaving his commpad behind and came to stand directly behind Shrring. Their eyes met in the reflection of the glass.
"Didn't we also talk about personal space?"
"Human concept."
"Not really."
"Tell me."
"No."
"I'll leave you alone if you do."
"Fine," Shrring spun around, forcing Ishton to hop backwards awkwardly "If you really want to know."
"I've made that abundantly clear."
Shrring folded and unfolded his wings several times, as if unsure how to phrase his thoughts.
"I would have joined Keyvar and you, when this began, I was planning on it."
Ishton was absolutly dead silent, his face frozen in it's previous expression, which was a smirk and not at all appropriate for the revelation.
Slowly it slipped off and settled into something cold
"What?"
"I told you that you would not like it," Shrring clipped and folded his wings before turning as if to leave.
Ishton's hand shot out, clamping his hand over Shrring's shoulder, preventing him from turning any further.
"I don't understand," Ishton struggled out after a few seconds, his eyes fixed on the floor "What...what do you mean you would have joined us? You-"
"Never held any loyalty to Diocore."
Ishton lifted his head slowly, eyes blinking slowly.
Shrring sighed loudly and yanked his arm free of Ishton's grasp "Must I spell it all out for you, you simpleton? Can you really not piece it all together?"
Ishton gave him a blank, injured look.
"I allied myself with Diocore because he had the motivation to dismantle the council, but if he set himself up as a dictating king, I knew we would be no better off than before. I intended to pledge my alligegence to Keyvar at the first oppertunity. Yet, before that oppertunity presented itself, Keyvar let himself be overruled and put on a short leash by the surviving council members. The ones I betrayed."
Ishton's wings clicked together as he took in the information and he opened his mouth.
"And before you say anything, you know they would have killed me, whatever you think you could have done."
Ishton shut his mouth and pressed into a thin line.
Shrring took his quiet as the close of the conversation and stomped out to the end of the balcony.
"So...the whole time..." Ishton said as he followed after a minute.
"Didn't hate you as much as you thought."

[TheSongOfTheStars]

/ too many ticks, not enough tocks
920 words
Bryony lay her head on the sill of the train window, listening as the wheels clattered against the rails beneath her.
Ticktickticktick
Like a broken clock, only swaying to one side.
Like how it felt her life was going at the moment. If not broken, then certainly not quite right.
Another sound distracted her and she looked towards the aisle as the robotic server clattered past her.
"Tea ma'am?" it asked in a tinny voice, a copper kettle balanced in its hand.
"Yes please," she held out her empty cup and it leaned over to fill it. She could see the workings of its metal hand, gears whirling and turning over in all the tiny movements it made.
"Thank you," she said, as she'd been taught.
"You're welcome," it replied, as it'd been programmed. Then it clattered off, steel, rim-wire wheels clicking against the floor of the train aisle.

Tick tick tick.

It wasn't much longer before they reached her stop. The train whistle sounded in a heavy steaming howl as the machine itself began to slow down. Bryony listened to the heavy chug of the slowing engine, relishing the last few minutes of what she knew, before facing what was new.
They came into the station with a heavy sigh and as soon as they'd come to a complete stop, a new set out sounds arose. Voices shouting and calling, the snap of newspapers being shut as business men began leave their seats, feet on the floor, suitcase wheels tick, tick, ticking as they where pulled behind their owners.
Bryony hugged her small carpet bag to her chest and slid off her seat.
"Ah yes, little miss, this is your stop."
She tilted her head up, brushing blond wisps of hair from her eyes to look at the conductor.
"Come on, this way," he escorted her off the train and down onto the station platform, which was a swimming crowd of travelers coming and going.
Bryony wondered about that, because she was both, going from her home, coming here.
Odd thought.
"And here's your ride," the conductor led her over to a horseless carriage, were she could see her luggage had already been loaded up onto the top.
"Miss Bryony Hevenstakes?" the cabby asked.
"Yes sir," she said, in her most steady, most polite voice.
"I'm to take you to your aunt's house."
"Thank you sir," she turned back around, prepared to thank the conductor, but he'd already gone.
Shivering just the tiniest bit, the little girl followed the cabby and climbed up into the carriage with as much grace as she could, considering the high step and the restrictions of her dress.
Once inside, the cabby closed the door behind her, leaving her alone in the travelling compartment with her one suitcase and one carpet bag.
She watched him step up to the driver's seat, closed off from her compartment, and started up the engine.
The carriage went forwards with a jolt, but it smoothed out after that. In fact it wasn't much different than travelling in the train, except Bryony got the sense that they were somehow moving much quicker.
The sound was similar too, the wheels clattered and clicked on the cobble-stone streets as they rushed over them, speeding through the busy city.
Tick tick-tick tick tick-tick. Rapid, but still the same broken clock sound.
She closed her eyes, waiting for the ride to be over, because when it was, it signaled the end of her travels.
It took longer than she expected and at one point she realized the busy city ambiance had died off, leaving the splutter of the engine and the tick of the wheels as the only sounds.
Like starting, stopping came with an abrupt jolt, causing Bryony to open her eyes again and she realized why it had taken so long.
Apparently her aunt did not in fact, live in the city, but out in the country side. They had stopped in front of a massive iron gate, which had just began to swing inwards, gears turning and whirling.
After they were completely open the cabby drove the carriage through, up the driveway that cut through perfectly smooth green lawns, to the massive front door.
When they stopped, Bryony didn't wait for the cabby to let her out and instead opened the door and slid to the ground, carpet bag clutched under one arm, her hat under the other.
"You mind ringing the doorbell while I get your luggage out, little miss?" the cabby asked as he dismounted from the driver's seat.
She nodded and though she felt hopelessly timid beneath the great ironwood door, she crept forwards, leaning up on tiptoe and poking carefully at the doorbell.
A heavy clang followed, sounded out through the massive halls of the manor.
No one came to the door, but like the gate it opened of its own accord.
"Alright, well if that's all you've got," the cabby set her suitcase down beside her "Good day miss."
"Good day sir," she squeaked back and watched him leave. Still, no one had come to the door.
Swallowing hard, she stepped inside. It was a dark and took her eyes a good couple of seconds to adjust before she could see what was inside.
The first thing she noticed was the massive grandfather clock that towered over her imposingly. But for all its height and grandeur, it made the comfortingly complete sound that all clocks should.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.

[Ranger of the North]

Happy this is back!

[TheSongOfTheStars]

Yeah, got my muse back just in time to start college. I swear. Hopefully I'll have a little bit of time for this.

[Ranger of the North]

Yeah, got my muse back just in time to start college. I swear. Hopefully I'll have a little bit of time for this.

Ah, expert timing. Well done XD

[TheSongOfTheStars]

/ breach
506 words
The sun rose. The sun always rose.
Everything is fine. Life has always been this way.
Jash knew the sun rose, in a sense. He knew the planet was turning and caused the sun to appear to travel through the sky.
He knew all of this. But it never ocurred to him to look upwards to see if it was true.
Everything is fine. You make your own decisions.
He could look upwards, there was nothing preventing him, he just never thought to do it.
He had a routine to follow. Deadlines to meet. Work that was imperitave to keeping his world running smoothly. Fullfilling work, good work, work that made him happy.
Everything is fine. Nothing needs to change.
He stood for hours at his designated place on the assembly, attatching an essential part to a machine that was essential to their economy. He knew. He wore one himself.
Everything is fine. There is-
His routine was interuptted abruptly when the part slipped from his hand. He knelt to retrieve it.
The machine he wore on his neck caught on the turning gears of the conveyer. Jash braced without thinking and before anything else, the machine came off.
The world kept moving, ignoring Jash as he froze, overwhelmed suddenly by a flood. Everything grew to an unbearable roar, the light was blinding.
Can't...can't breathe
Agony coursed through him as the atmosphere seemed to triple in density and bore down on him like a collapsing building. A hand reached out to help him up and as the fingers made contact with his forearm, Jash jerked away with a sob of pain and his body unfroze. He bolted.
Out. Out. Out!
The walls. All around him. People. Eveywhere.
Escape. Escape. Escape.
He shoved his way through the crowd to the door. Pricks of pain shot through his hand as he pushed the door open and the air outside was dry and foul.
Run. Run away. You don't belong in the city
He let the new voice rule his actions and ran.
The ground was hard against his feet and every step sent jolts up to his knees.
Go
He could hear running behind him. He was being chased and that realization flung him into a greater panic and everything blurred around him but it was still a cityscape.
His joints froze from exhaustion and his knees buckled, sending him plumetting to his chest.
He lay still for a moment, struggling to breathe. He could sense them closing in around him and Jash knew he couldn't run any further, despite that voice screaming at him to keep going.
He curled his fingers against the pavement and more out of strength of will leveraged himself up far enough to be able to see the hazy outlines of his pursuers.
Slowly the rest of his body went numb, while the pain gathered in his hands, until it was nearly unbearable. He screamed, or tried to, he couldn't get enough air to do more than wheeze.
Abruptly the pain ceased and a second later the world went white

[TheSongOfTheStars]

/ thanatophobia
571
The quiet was swallowing him up, crushing him.
The crushing was probably the electric walls of his containment cell, but it could definitely be the quiet as well.
"Would you please say something?" Tovoth spat out finally after years...hours...five minutes.
He'd been waiting a long time for this, he was ready to be done with it.
"Coward," Veem snapped, sparing Tovorth a single condescending glare.
"Coward! What do you mean coward?!" Tovoth tried to flare his wings out in indignation, but again, crushing electric containment cell walls.
"You killed me!"
"Only technically! You're fine now! Why are you still mad?"
"Why? Why wouldn't I be mad? I died! Because of you!"
"I did it because I didn't have a choice!" Tovoth pinned him with an accusatory glare "You don't even know what happened."
"I think I have a pretty good idea," Veem traced a line across his throat and Tovoth couldn't help but flinch. He'd done a good job, the scar was all but nonexistent. But, obviously Veem could still feel it.
"I don't think you do. You said something absolutely stupid, I have no idea what, but you got the both of us in trouble. But I think I handled it rather well."
Veem began to splutter but Tovoth waved his hand "Will you be quiet and let me finish? Diocore ordered me to kill you. Obviously if I refused we'd both be killed-"
"We could have ran."
"They would have hunted us. Diocore has never tolerated deserters, you should know that," Tovoth all but spat "And stuck on the planet with no way off would have spelled a very painful death sentence. Now, the way I did it, well, not to brag-"
"Then don't."
"It was really quite clever. It's an obscure fact about Vive physiology that under certain circumstances certain body parts can be detached and reattached, so obscure that I would think I was the only one on that pathetic planet that knew about it. Obviously when I presented Diocore with his proof I was exonerated in his eyes and as far as anyone knew, you were dead."
Tovoth finished with a flourish and grinned down at Veem.
For a beat, Veem just stared at him dully.
"I'm still mad at you," he growled finally.
"We're free," Tovoth snapped "Don't you get it, you idiot? They think we're both dead. They think I killed you and that I died on Horenn 9."
A long slow blink from Veem.
"We are free," Tovoth enunciated each syllable carefully. Then looked around "From Diocore at least."
He looked down at Veem expectantly. As if awaiting applause.
Veem pulled his wings over his face and pressed himself harder in the corner "Leave me alone. I still hate you."
"Wha....bu...I did all that to fix your mistake! This is all your fault!" Tovoth's wings twitched hard, but didn't flare out.
Veem didn't reply.
Tovoth heaved a sigh and sank down, tucking his wings close against his back "After all I did for you, the least you could say is thank you."
"No."
Tovoth crossed his arms over his chest and scowled at the wall in front of him "Fine. But next time you find yourself faced with execution don't expect me to come up with a dazzling plan to save your sorry set of wings."
"I didn't expect you to do it the first time," Veem's voice was barely even a whisper.

[TheSongOfTheStars]

/ turning pages
566 words
She trailed her fingers over the words on the page, over names and dates, digging deeper through history, trying to find what she so desperately wanted to know. She started with her father's name then traced backwards, following each branch, trying to find a name that came from nowhere.
Trying to track down someone who didn't exist anywhere else, until they appeared from the sea.
It was going to be a long day.
----
Coe was back and he was trying to catch her.
Darkmoon could see him out of the corner of her eye, always trying to move towards her through the crowd and she really, really did not want to talk to him. For a lot of reasons, but namely, he'd inquire after Shyshie. Who, Darkmoon had managed to lose and she was worried enough without Coe hounding her on the responsibilities of motherhood.
He had managed to edge a bit closer to her, but the worthless octopus was too 'polite' to actually wave or call her name, polite as in deathly afraid of calling attention to himself in any way, shape, or form. Which suited Darkmoon just fine and made it all the easier for her to tilt her hat and act like she hadn't seen him.
As she continued to edge away from him there was a break in the crowd, allowing him to double his pace.
She gave up on all pretenses of meandering and full on dashed for the cover of the nearest alley. After several breathless turns she ended up at the outlet to another street and she peered around the corner. No sign of him.
She heaved a relieved sigh and stepped out from the shadows, only to immediately collide with her cousin.
"Oh!" Darkmoon pulled on her best feigned surprise face as Coe reached down to pick up her hat. He dusted it off and handed it back to her. "You're back."
"I am," he gave her his most unamused, I'm not buying it face "Where is Shyshie?"
"Uh, at home," Darkmoon fumbled "I was just, running out to get her some tea. She...was complaining about an upset stomach."
Coe's face tightened fractionally with concern and Darkmoon felt a flare of guilt, even though they both knew she was lying.
----
Shyshie finally found what she had been looking for and once she had found it, it was easy to find the marriage certificate. She slipped it beneath her cloak, she'd compare the signatures on it with the various journals she'd found in the old chests later.
Quietly she drifted out the Archives and down the steps, turning towards home.
----
"What type of tea do you need?"
"Stepstone Coe, I told you, I can find the tea by myself," Darkmoon stomped through the marketplace, Coe hovering over her shoulder.
He was quiet for a second, obviously not sure what to say, but unwilling to actually leave.
"Coe, will you just-" Darkmoon cut herself off as a tiny brown figure darted in front of her "Shyshie?"
"Mama."
"What...what are you..."
"You said she was ill."
"I am fine," Shyshie tilted that smile that always had Darkmoon melting and though the affect was less obvious on Coe it was no less effective.
"Let's go home," Darkmoon fumbled "Uh, Coe, nice to see you-" Shyshie shot her a much different kinda of look.
"And would you like to join us for lunch?"

[TheSongOfTheStars]

/ she has a wild look in her eyes
274 words
She came as unexpectedly as a mist on a bright summer day, crying like a stray bird down among the dens. She was skin and bones and matted fur, a broken voice and wild eyes as she screamed about destruction and an evil in the forest.
She staggered like she was injured or starving and tried to warn them about a fire descending from the stars.
"It's not true," Nightlily's mother soothed as she pulled her curious kitten away from the entrance of the den "Fire isn't going to fall on our heads dear."
"But what if it does?" Nightlily argued with that infallible logic only a child can muster.
"Then the sea will put it out," her mother reassured her "That's why we live right next to the ocean, so that the fires cannot bother us."
Nightlily couldn't find fault with that, but she still wanted to see the white stranger with the strange eyes, so as soon as her mother's attention went to one of Nightlily's siblings, the black kitten had slipped out of the den and went slip sliding through the sand. The stranger had wandered away from Nightlily's den, closer to the shoreline, still crying and screaming.
Nightlily hunched low to the sand and crept closer.
The stranger was facing her direction, but didn't seem to notice Nightlily. But Nightlily couldn't tear her gaze away from the stranger's gaunt face.
Their eyes had at first glance seemed golden like evening sunlight over the waves, but now they melted into the blue of summer's sky, then back again, the swirling colors chasing each other through the stranger's eyes.
Nightlily was entranced.

[TheSongOfTheStars]

/ from riches to rags
158 words
The sky was alive with colors, the vibrant clouds of the nebula ever moving, ever shifting, always transient above the city.
Kwet kind of hated it. Not completely, even he, practical and clinical as he tended to be, could admit freely it was a beautiful view.
But, now that he was forced to call this city his home, Kwet found himself aching for Kataria's lost skies. The simple darkness of real night, visible but distantly safe stars, and the moons; the perfectly predictable, unchanging, monochromatic moons.
He missed the moons most of all, he supposed.
"Hey Kwet," the greeting was perfunctory and Aveth didn't follow up with any conversation as he came to stand beside Kwet. He didn't really need to.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Kwet asked, his voice light and sincere, but his wings drooped and his shoulders hunched, betrayal enough of what he was thinking.
"You're only going to make yourself feel worse," Aveth replied.
"I know."