There is a quiet
A kind of silence
Beyond the finger-to-the-lips shush,
Beyond the gentle whirring of the AC,
Beyond the low hum of traffic seeping in from the street.
The dust whispers in silence,
Wondering where all the words have gone.
There are no readers here,
No one interested in
History
Or science
Or anything.
This is darker than the province of the dead,
Darker even than that space between the leaves of journals and books.
This is the darkness
Of forgetting,
Of deep space with no stars,
Of the rocky core of a dusty
Dead
Planet.
This is the second story my friend and I worked on together! As a little writing exercise. (This is the first one https://www.tumblr.com/cottagecorebastard/775065330900942848/stars-above-oceans-below?source=share)
Pain shot through my left leg making the whole limb feel like it was stuffed with glass shards. This was good, it meant I was still connected to it. In a spiritual sense, as the aforementioned limb was currently held in the jaws of a six legged, long haired cat the size of a horse. A Wampus Cat, classified as a class C being under the Supernatural Defence force threat taxonomy, my brain thought idly as I gazed up at from where I lay at the monster currently using my leg as a chew toy. Something that I should be able to deal with easily enough. In theory. There was a loud crunch, followed by a hair raising yowl, and Wampus Cat spat out my leg... alongside a handful of broken teeth.
“Seems like you bit off more than- ghrk!” My oh so clever remark was interrupted by the beast leaping forwards and sinking its remaining fangs as deep as it could into my neck. Luckily for me, as a Repurposed, that was deep enough to take hold, but not enough to cause significant bleeding. The bite force, however, was crushing my windpipe, and, while breathing was more of a luxury than necessity for me, I did need to be able to speak to actually cast any spells. The stitching on my neck, titanium plated chords of gold, silver, and iron which held my various bits and pieces in order and channeled magical energies through my body, strained but held. Things were starting to look bleak. I rolled my eyes and gave as good a groan as I could. As a general rule, I like cats. The feisty little buggers have a natural affinity for magic and a similar affinity for mages. But, I liked myself more.
My fist swung up and collided with one of the Wampus Cat’s wide green eyes with enough force to crack the beast’s orbital and squash the contents into a bloody mess. I was dropped rather unceremoniously as the creature tottered away a few steps and collapsed. It was still breathing and a wretched mewling escaped its bloody maw.
“Burn.” I pointed a finger, one covered in gooey eye bits, at the beast and a thin stream of blue flames rushed at the Wampus Cat, engulfing it in a rapidly growing blaze. A one word spell was all even I needed to dispatch such a creature, no point using a full chant. The alleyway was illuminated by the pale light of the corpse fire and I dragged my way over to my missing limb. It had torn off cleanly at the stitching.
“Well, shit.” Looks like I’d need to visit the Seamstress to get proper repairs... and that meant going back to base more or less empty handed. I crawled from the alley and gave my eyes a minute to adjust to the dark of night. Funny to think cities were once bright and teaming with life. My gaze roved over steely skyscrapers, once pristine towers that stood as testaments to humankind’s engineering power which now stood only as stark reminders as to what was lost nearly fifty years ago in the Convergence.
/
I grabbed my severed limb and used it as a crutch to get up onto my feet, well, my foot. I could use my other leg as a cane, no no I’d have to hunch terribly. I fumbled my pack off of my back and looked around for some rope, using the rope I secured my severed leg to the side of my pack. I then looked around for something to use as a cane, the corpse that was this city was ruined so it shouldn’t be too hard to find some sort of debris that passed as a crutch. Leaning against a wall I limped forward and would you look at that some debris, a metal pipe. The pipe was a little shorter than what I would prefer, and the clanging of it on the ground might get me some unwanted attention, both problems could be fixed. I grabbed the shoe off my severed leg and put it on the end of the pipe, fixing both problems quite neatly. Crutch in hand I could finally move forward.
I made my way back the way I came, weary of the corpses I had left in my wake, mostly of small fungal creatures, unfortunately nothing of note, nothing the Seamstress would consider of note anyway. I could take a shortcut back to the base and check out a small part of the city for any supplies for the Seamstress, but then I would risk a fight more than I could handle in my weakened state.
Suddenly, a deep bellow shook the ground. The layout of the city made pinpointing the origin of the sound neigh impossible. Tonight was not a night to take risks, I would need to lay low, stick close to shelter. That bellow sounded like it could’ve been a Star Class Behemoth, something the Seamstress would be interested in. Looks like I wasn’t going home empty handed, not entirely at least, I can’t fight it as I am now but the information of its general location would hopefully soothe any ire toward me. I smirked and started carefully making my way back to the base.
Limping through the city was fortunately uneventful, I came across another Wampus Cat, but I saw it before it saw me. I was able to make it to the outskirts of the city no problem. Maneuvering my way through what what was once a suburban neighborhood, at least, according to the Seamstress, I came across a house that looked nearly identical to the others nearby it, however the grass around it was shorter, the yard kept clear of debris and flowers and herbs were growing in the garden. I was home.
This is a little story my friend and I worked on together! We worked on two of these (I'll post that one as well)
In the dead of night, when the moon did not shine and the sun was as far away as it ever would be, the stars shined bright. Some never knew the stars, for they feared the dark and all within it. Few people, such as Moelwen, knew that the dark was not something to fear, but rather to revere. Moelwen knew that the creatures born of shadows were not monsters, but simply, creatures. He meticulously timed his sleep so that he could wake at that precious hour and still wake up with the town. He’d walk to the ocean shore where the smooth dark stones would welcome him and simply gaze towards the western horizon, sometimes, he swore, something gazed back. Whenever he felt the gaze of something greater, rapture would fill his heart. Sometimes the gaze was from above, where the stars lit up the sky, sometimes the gaze would come from the ocean below. Today, he felt that gaze from the stars above, feel it like an oncoming storm. He looked up in awe, and he could make out the silhouette of something great. He could not see the stars he knew so well behind the vast entity. Despite clearly seeing the silhouette he struggled to describe what he was seeing, it was almost as if it was undulating. It could be described as vaguely humanoid in shape, legs, torso, arms, head, at least it came off that way. Gazing up he vaguely noticed that it was moving closer to the ocean below. His eyes grew blurry looking at this incredible being as it started sinking into the oceans depths without so much as a ripple. Just before it sunk below, it opened its eyes.
Moelwen awoke with a strangled gasp. That could not have been a dream, could it have? He carefully took stock of himself, he was in the clothes he had gone to bed in, he was thirsty and hungry but no more so than what could be expected. His room was the same messy state he had left it in. The sun was shining through his window, higher than he expected. He had slept in later than usual, unfortunate, but no big deal as he did not work today. He walked out into his living room, his blacksmithing tools were scattered about, that was odd. He paused, and decided that could wait until after he had eaten. He also had a meeting with Astraea later today he’d need to be ready for. / The fool woman always seemed to need something repaired, be it sword or armor. A sigh escaped his lips, and he ran his calloused fingers through his sweat drenched locks. It did not do to think ill of one of the few people in Evsgaard who didn’t fear him for his stargazing.
No one ever said anything to his face, as one of the only smiths in the seaside town people needed to be on his good side, but he still heard the whispers. Stargazer. A term synonymous with madman. Astraea never said that, though, she was more worldly than the others in the village. Whispers followed her too, but they always cast her in a better light. Some said she was a knight of the Gloamhenge, the imperial capital far to the east, or else a champion of the Grand Church, sworn to root out evil and that her dealings with Moelwen were a pretense to observe the man, to see if he was as heretical as the villagers all thought. Moelwen snorted as he reminisced on the things he had heard. Astraea was, in her words, a treasure hunter, and, in his words, a lost romantic, a looter of a past so long forgotten as to be imaginary.
Any further musings were disrupted by a loud knocking at his door. Only Astraea would be so forceful, and only when greatly excited, the woman had a poor hold on her emotions at the best of times and would often let fits of great, almost maniacal, joy overtake her senses.
“Moelwen! Oh, Moelwen, you curly headed doom-monger! Your forge is cold and your hearth unlit, are you yet abed?”
Her voice was sun bright as her countenance, a marked contrast to his own wane and sallow features. With a long, slow stride, Moelwen came unto his door and opened it, just as Astraea prepared to deliver another series of hearty knocks.
“Ach, I’m abed nae more! Nor, as like as not, is any soul all o’er the village. You’d well wake the dead with yer dratted noise!”
“Oh, you! So crabby!” Astraea was smiling widely and shoved a hot cake into Moelwen’s mouth, stifling a his reply, before marching boldly into the man’s home and depositing a small item wrapped up in a bundle of coarse linen upon his table, “Chew on that and then look at this!”
Moelwen swallowed the cake, it was one of the village specials, made with crab and seasoned with spices brought up the trade roads from the distant, more cosmopolitan, south. Moving with his trademark steady stride, he approached the table and began to unwrap the object Astraea had brought. A sense of dread began to take him as he removed layer after layer of linen, the shape of the thing becoming clearer and clearer.
“It’s some kind of idol or figurine! I found it in an underwater grotto near abouts where some old temple of whose-it the whats-it once was, you know, one of them old gods. They are all polysyllabic bastards with titles like the destroyer or hope-eater, or whatever. Anyhow, not quite sure what it’s made of and was hoping you could tell me. It seemed almost luminescent in the cave, but almost seemed to fade in the sunlight, hence the wrapping.”
Moelwen was silent, there was only a single layer of linen between him and the idol. The form was concealed to his eyes, but his heart already perceived it and brought with it great fear.
Hi there! I'm Cottage. I'm a writer, currently working on my WIP Lunar Lunacy, I will likely change that title but it's what I have right now. I'll update this post as things come up but this is it for now
@cottagecompost is my sideblog were I reblog things I like
