username; minifun990
colony link;
Mews and Mammalslittleheart name; Epoch
favorite story;
Epoch's favourite fable is a story of triumph against impossible odds, loss, but most of all hope.
And as all best stories start, it was once upon a time in a far off land.
This beautiful land was ruled by Kings and Queens, brilliantly wealthy storkies whose figures glimmered with the sparkling shine of gems and jewels. They lorded over bountiful land filled with maize and mice, rice and rabbits, houses and honour. The people were happy, their lives filled with magic and wonder.
It was a land of tricksters, but yet there was honesty in much of it. They did not use their magic in the way you may think tricksters do today. No, they used their magic to show off the items they could see, to tell stories and share memories. They used their magic to tell fables in far more than words. They could show you the shimmering scales of the gigantic fish they had caught, they could call like the haunting mocking bird, they could paint your house in imagination before you could even touch a paintbrush.
It was a beautiful place, streamers and colours and mirages floating through the sky, haunting between walls and houses. There was never a dull moment nor empty corner.
Especially not today. It was a royals birthday. He was still very young, the ball mostly to celebrate the older members of the estate. Or mostly to flaunt off wealth and power.
But it was a joyous day as any other. The Queen’s sister carried her son around the palace, his laughter ringing loud as she created mirages of mad mice, happy hopping rabbits, and funny ferrets. They were the mothers favourite illusions, and with the giggles of the birthday boy she couldnt help but push her magic further.
If there was one thing her son seemed to love more than the bounding bunnies it was something far larger and more exotic.
In front of the young grey kits eyes formed a huge seeming creature (though only the size of a chair to his mother), big eyes, scales like a fish, and big wings like a dragonfly, four legs like himself, and a large toothy grin.
It was a dragon. Light blue scales, the kits favourite colour. A mythological creature from stories so old no one remembered where they came from, nor where the original truth couldve lay. The kit grinned back, reaching out a tiny paw to his new friend.
He wanted to touch the illusion, he wanted to keep the dragon forever. His iris-less eyes lit up, as bright as a white flash of the sun. The dragon bowed, the paw met its mark.
And thats when everything went wrong.
A white flash, blindingly bright. The dragon gone. The multiple mirages merrily hopping shattered and collapsing like fading glass. There were screams from the open hallway. Fictional faces, fake flashes of armour and weapons, decorations and colours fading like sand washing away.
Like a power outage the tricksters magic collapsed in, illusion after mirage sucked away as if into a black hole. Or rather, a white void. The kit glowed, and his mother held him.
She continued to hold him as the glow died down. She held him tight as the royals argued and yelled over his fate. She snarled and snapped at suggestions he be forced to leave. She growled and grovelled at the idea of something worse than exile.
But the tricksters are not heartless. Behind their deceit and lies are hearts just as kind and loving as yours or Is. The kit could stay.
But his true nature had been revealed that day. This vast power of negating magic. A power that scared the tricksters. But worse, it was exactly the power that some had been searching for.
A thief in the night was all it took. A shady figure from another kingdom. A kingdom that shunned the world of magic, yet could not contain its power. The kit was their salvation. Lying in a small cot, he was still small enough to be snatched away.
To most that is the end of the story. A lost kit with too much power, taken in the night. A potential snuffed out and a curiosity.
But that was never enough for Epoch. He hated a mystery, an unended story, an open world of possibilities of what could've happened. Did the kit live a life in the other kingdom? His past forgotten? Or was there something more? Did he escape, living in the wilds between, stealing magic to survive like some sort of vampiric monster.
His fellow classmates told him to drop it, to let it go. They were there to study real history, not whatever truth hid within the story.
But Epoch couldnt. It sat in his mind, rotting curiosity. There was other mysteries of course, but to him this was the worse, the oldest one he knew of. It was what the academy of forgotten history was supposed to specialise in. Yet all him and his peers were supposed to was travel in time to fix up incorrect census numbers??
How could that be more important than finding out a powerful entities fate?
He had never heard of someone actually being able to break magic without opposition. Fire vs water, earth vs air, but what could ever oppose the whole of magic?
It took years. Study and weaseling his ways into places he shouldnt be. Calculations and guesswork to even figure when the kidnapping could even have taken place. Let alone the why. Let alone the powerful magic to actually end up where he wanted to go.
Foolish time magicians learnt strength to change things. Learning through trial and other peoples fixing just to watch.
But Epoch had always wanted to just Know. To find out more, the truth. And his end goal would to be to find the truth that had bothered him since childhood.
Today was the day. He gathered the artifiacts, the best guesses he had. He had a bag of rations, time specific gear and food to blend in if he was forced to emerge from the Viewing Zone of time. He was stubborn, but Epoch was never reckless.
With a swirl of golden sand, and hissing possibilities Epoch stepped through.
The first thing he noticed was the cold. The grey stone with dim contrast in the low light. There was strangeness to it all. Little details Epoch had never noticed before. Scents and sounds so quiet and dim, cracks that were far finer than he couldve remembered ever seeing before. It was as if somehow he had been sleeping all his life, and only just woken up to the precise and detailed reality.
His wings twitched with barely concealed anxiety. But he could see, through the darkness, the soft fabric opulence lay a large bed. Epoch raised himself onto his backlegs and gasped. It was the lost kit, eyes an empty white as they stared up to the spinning mobile. His fur was a deep grey, almost invisible in the low light night.
But strangest to Epoch was his size. He was a young kit for sure, yet was many times bigger than the other storkies he had met. Already he was Epoch’s size.
There was a creak and Epoch froze. Like a giant monster a dark figure crept in. Fully grown the other storkie was so many times large than Epoch that it seemed more akin to the size of a small wyvern. The theifs leg reached a little taller than Epoche head. Epoch found himself still and frozen, old buried instincts rising up.
But neither storkie saw him. He was not truly there, only viewing the time line in an inbetween reality. The thief took the kit, muffling the kits small cries with a small fabric.
In shadows and secrecy Epoch followed the figure. Knowing the mother would return that morning to an empty crib.
But it didnt even take that long. Sirens like howling wolves, roaring dragons echoed throughout the kingdom. False and real gates slammed shut as the palace and surrounding area raised to high alert, and rapid lockdown.
The thief ran faster, a coat of shadow rising up upon himself like some dark magic. His dark black irises flashing with fear and desperation.
Epoch followed. All the way through the brambles and branches, tangled webs thicker than Epoch had ever seen. Everything strange with fine detail and strange memories. The sun rose, and set and rose again. And perhaps a few more times once more. Epoch was never the best at keeping track of time, an amusing irony.
The next kingdom was different. It was dull and drab, strangely quiet with its monotony. No kits ran the streets with colouful illusions, nor was there any magic to be seen. An area of the city lay in rubble. Strange marks and an eerie silence.
It was through this place that the stranger brought the kit. Hungry now the kit demanded food, and water, and to be returned home. But the thief pretended not to hear. He took the lost prince down into the earth, a rough worn tunnel.
It was here that the thief was met with more storkies. Eyes aglow with different colours, and bodies just as large as the thief's if not some bigger. Yet each of them had expressions of low residing anger, desperation, and some plain old nastiness.
“You have the negator?” One strong voice asked. The thief nodded, hesitating before speaking
“You promise that they will be -”
“Yes yes, everything is as you asked, you can leave now.” The large red cat haughtily said, waving the thief away with a paw. The thief hesitated just a moment, brushing the kits head with a paw and a muttered sorry before bounding away.
The gathered storkies loomed over the kit, looking down at him as if disappointed in what they saw. This, was supposed to be their big break through in defeating magic. A small kit who looked unsure of whether to hiss or cower from the strangers.
“Test him Feron.” The leader said, looking at a storkie with orange eyes. The storkie nodded, his paw lighting on fire, reaching towards the kit.
Epoch looked away. He was just here to watch, but he didnt want to see the pain on the kits face. He knew, that this was the moment when foolish time travellers jumped in, but there was some things that couldn't be changed.
But his eyes met something strange as he looked to the side. A ripple, not in interspace but something deeper instead. And out stepped a paw. There was something about the hole that sent terrifying chills down Epoch’s spine. Yet it also called to him, pulling at his fur in a very strange way.
The new comer rushed into the scene, surprising all there. Her image was one of fragments, clashing magics and realities stacked on top of one another. But each almost seemed to fall away as she approached the kit. She was confident, and earnest. She didnt seem to fear the others, even as they warned her to leave.
She reached the kit, and picked it up, gently, whispering in the kits ear. But she wouldnt just leave so easily. Now the surprise was fading the other storkies were angry. The leader stood haughty and proud, but with a swipe of his paw everything changed.
Fire lit up on one storkie, another bubbled with jets of furious water, roots emerged from the soil underneath, tangling the newcomers paws. She leapt out of the way, evading slung angry furious magic. Dangerous spears of fire, water, air, and anything else that could be imagined.
She ran, protecting the kit the whole way. They would be free.
The ground growled low. A rumble and shudder that seemed to permeate the whole world. The ginger storkie looked up, her excited smile fading finally to a look of concern. The cavern shook, dust flaking off and coating her fur.
“Give the child back now. Or the cavern falls.”
The rocks inched closer, held back only by the strong magic of a certain brown eyed storkie, standing behind the leader. The ginger storkie opened her mouth to speak, some sort of quip most likely. But it was the kit who spoke.
“Leave me alone!” He yelled in his small voice. His white eyes narrow and angry. And the brown eye storkie collapsed. His magic gone with him.
The ceiling collapsed. Storkies sprinted and even Epoch started to leave. His spirit low and sad with how things had gone.
But the story wasnt finished here. Dust and rubble, rock and stone falling everywhere. But underneath some thick stone slabs two figured huddled. The earth around them collapsing.
Soon all had evacuated but the ginger cat and the lost kit. Epoch stayed with them, trapped in their small inescapable cavern. He watched the ginger cat start to conjure some sort of magic, but each time the lost kit looked at her it simply flickered out again.
There was desperation building in her eyes, and tears in the kit’s.
She looked through where Epoch stood, unseen. Frozen by tragedy.
But she wasnt looking through him. She was looking at him, confused, and a little fearful.
“You cant be here.” She said. Her voice sending a ripple through the time-viewing realm, and Epoch himself, he could see his fur almost glitch before returning to normal. He felt fear deep in his bones, and heavy in his chest.
“I’m just- I was-” He stuttered, his usually wellspoken nature shaken. The ginger cat shook her head, seeming to see things far beyond what Epoch could imagine.
“Hey kid, do you know any good stories?” She asked the lost royal kit, who sniffled and looked at her.
“I-I know one” The little one sobbed. The ginger cat hummed reassuringly.
“Can you tell me it?”
“My mummy can tell it better, but ok.” The kit looked away, thinking for a moment. His claws drawing in the ground a little.
“She said theres this place far away, and um.” He draws in the dust, the rubble surrounding them. “Theres all these creatures, like mice and ferrets and um-”
“Rabbits?” The newcomer asked, her strange flicking eyes looking straight at Epoch again. He stared straight back, unsure of what she was getting at.
“Yeah!” The kit exclaimed, a bit more animated now. Epoch could see the adult storkies paws flicker, stronger now the kid wasnt paying attention to her. Now that he wasnt as upset. He could see what she was doing now, distracting him.
“But they arent like the ones we eat at home. They are big, as big as us. And talk like us, and we are all friends.”
Epoch felt like the blood was draining out of him. This wasnt right. Storkies eating littlehearts? He once more was struck by the strange size difference back in this time. It wasnt something he had ever learnt about.
He wanted to leave. But something deep inside told him to stay.
“Thats fascinating isnt it. It sounds like a nice world.”
“It is! No fighting there.” He looks solemn suddenly, remembering the fighting and anger of before. Too much in his short life so far. “No fighting.”
“No, of course not.” The ginger cat said, her eyes far away now. The glow brighter. Epoch couldve sworn he could almost see the shapes of his fellows, the littlehearts.
“Theres dragons too in the story.”
“Oh? What are they like? I havent met one of those before.”
The kit laughed. “They are everywhere in the far away place! Mumma said they carry people around like horses, but in the sky.”
“Like birds?”
Suddenly Epoch felt a little hope, there wasnt dragons in his world, not the scaled creatures of old at least. But big birds for transportation? That was hearthoots down to a T. These two were going to teleport to his world.
“I guess a bit like birds, theyve got big wings and necks and claws, and they are magic like you and me. I dont want them to fight though, in mummas story the dragons fight.”
“Then in our story they dont fight.”
Our story?
“And- and there can be more people with eyes like mine?” The kit asked, white eyes duller now as he let the impossible magic of the other cat build up. Eyes Epoch had seen before, in the magicless cats and hearts of the future he lived in.
“I will make it so.” She confirmed. There was a beautiful array of possibilities at her feet, floating through the air. Familiar places and things Epoch knew. Yet it almost looked like sketches, a drawing.
“You have teleportation magic.” Epoch spoke, eyes looking upon the ginger figure. She didnt seem wholly mortal though. She was far too much power in too fragile of a creature. He spoke because he hoped his words were true. But he knew in his core they were not.
She shook her head, eyes flashing in fluctuating colours.
“No. My magic is far worse, far greater than that.” She picked up the kit, hugging him close as the earth shook once more. The magic condensing and awful and awe inspiring.
“You made my reality.” Epoch stated, looking down at the future, or rather his future world. Now he could tell why it was strange here, in this past. It was another world, more fleshed out and real than his own. “You made me.”
“Not quite.” She said, one paw in the swirling portal. “Your souls already existed, I just gave them new homes.”
“Why?”
“Because, even our little magic canceller here deserves a happy ever after.”
“But what abou-” Epoch started to say, but the Reality storkie just gave him a wink, the magic exploding around them. It was like a sonic boom. All sound and noise and colour and all of it gone.
Two figures remained. Their bodies still, yet still breathing. But Epoch knew that neither would awaken in this reality. They were somewhere else. Far far away.
