Friday, November 25, 2005
This is really chapter five, but I jumped the chapters up so it's now chapter six, or something like that... meh. I just edited some junk, is all. So don't worry about the seeming gap, this should be next in order, cryonologically.
Notice the sort of pit-like enviorment? It was COMPLETELY unintentional, the reminicence. Which becomes more obvious as time carries on. But I'm amazed it's not completely parodied of TDE yet... heh... and yes, Wyn must be related to Danian. But Laytha won't notice that when she pops in later on.
For some weird reason, I find this chapter bitterly hilarious.
Oh, and I drew Amber. Once I color and finish inking her, I'll post her. I know she looks like Ariane in the picture. I WAS originally drawing Ariane and NOT Amber. Which is why it's fire-themy. It could easily pass as Ariane younger AND Amber. (shrugs)
***
Chapter Six: In Which The Narrator Couldn’t Think of an Appropriate Chapter Title
**
The East Farthings
**
By the time a day had passed, Essar was bored silly. Not that he had any great desire to go on some incredible quest to save Amber from the evil spell, or whatever it was, but he had still thought that perhaps it would’ve been more amusing than this. This was just purely boring. It was the empty trudge of footsteps pattering through an empty land. It was fighting to open a cookie jar and discovering that it was empty of everything but crumbs.
Sometimes there would be couple of chocolate chips left, but it was mostly just crumbs that held absolutely no purpose beyond cluttering up a potentially nice jar.
The rain had continually poured down on them, drenching them in a downpour of frustrating liquid that hindered them from reaching their goal. This was the first moment in Essar’s life that he regretted having long hair. Soaked, it dangled into his eyes and completely hindered his sight while at the same time making him appear like a drowned cat. To make things worse, Amber insisted on walking backwards the entire time.
No lifeforms had appeared beyond circling birds overhead in the pouring rain and several pestering insects which had left Amber wailing to high heaven about the evil menaces from the depths of the storm. Although the threatening growls and creaks in the distance of the pattering rush of a downpour had left them both on edge.
And the scenery had remained untouched, a continual rocky slumber. Every once in a while Essar had noticed a slightly crooked tree alongside a deep black rock with a red heart. It had seemed slightly suspicious, as they clearly were not going in circles. The land itself seemed nearly menacing, a deep world of whispering fear from the shadows.
They had stopped for the night by now, refuge taken underneath an overhanging cleft of gray rock, Essar’s attempt to light a fire ultimately failing in a puff of slightly damp smelling smoke. He tossed away the damp brush in disgust.
Amber had made her haven in the furthest and deepest corner of the crevice. It was certainly no cave that the two huddled in, wrapped up in their damp cloaks and slightly damp blankets from their packs. The worst thing it held was a few bugs, but Amber had murdered them with a glance. Well, perhaps more literally it had been with a large stick and a rock that the legions of dry bugs had met their deaths. Terrified of them clearly, it seemed that she had taken great joy in murdering the little things.
Essar, on the other hand, had the elusive feeling that there was something phantasmal about, the eerie whisper of a crawling sensation down his spine that none of this was what it seemed. It had started out peaceful, but now everything had this eldritch feel of magicality, of an invisible nature to what was occuring.
He didn’t believe in fate. He didn’t intend on starting now.
“I’m cold,” Amber whispered after killing the last of the bugs. The human girl had pulled herself into a huddle, arms wrapped around her knees. “I miss my mother.”
Essar glanced over at her briefly, wondering if she was trying for a pity case. “What about your father?” he asked, figuring the slightly sarcastic shot back was safe enough ground.
Amber closed her eyes. “I never really knew him.”
“He’s dead?”
“Oh, no. I just don't know him.”
Essar found this a rather strange statement that made very little sense to the way his mind worked. “Your parents are separated?”
Amber shook her head, and he merely grew all the further confused. “We’ll be there by tommorow,” he offered to change the topic when she refused to speak, and the silence had grown awkward enough to be spread upon a cake and eaten for tea.
“I know.” She closed her eyes, and leaned back against the cliff wall, a smattering of the rainy mist having touched her face with a light misty gleam. The situation was far beyond either of their comprehension, as little as they knew of it now. Essar couldn't bring himself to sleep, his feet crossed in tired slumber. However, as tired as his feet were, his mind refused to come to rest.
He wanted to know what eluded him. He wanted to know why there was a tingling feeling in the air whenever he reached out to Amber. He wanted to know what had happened to her when she had fallen into that so-called magical fountain.
It had done something to her, but she refused to speak upon it.
He closed his eyes, and tried to fall into uneasy dreams, and into a dull demeanor that could drop him into a dreamy reverie of sleep and things beyond comprehension.
Essar wasn’t allowed very long to sleep. He was awaken to a pair of amber eyes staring at him with a brilliant and insane gleam. Underneath the eyes was a nose, a face, a slight beard, a mouth, and a face. Not to mention the remainder of the person with the eyes, of course. “Go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-d morning!”
“It’s not morning. Go away,” Essar grumbled, grabbing for his pillow (which wasn’t there), and pulling it over his head. He realized a second later that his pillow was not that, and that there was something over his head that was not a pillow. He felt it tentatively, went immediately red, and moved Amber back to where she had been sleeping like a limp rag.
She collapsed in a heap, not even a slight twitch from being dragged over to use as a pillow.
“You have to get up!” the cheerful amber eyed character chirped, waving a... a... Essar narrowed his eyes. He didn’t know what it was, but it looked dangerous. “It be breakfast time, yes!”
The halfling discovered a pizza box shoved under his nose.
“Pizza’s not breakfast!”
“It’s breakfast no-o-o-o-o-o-w!” the amber eyed character crowed, suddenly vanishing in a puff of purple and orange smoke that smelt suspiciously like powdered grape juice.
Amber sat up. “Why do I smell pizza?” she asked narrowly, glancing over at Essar, holding a pizza box with the lable Runeite Pizza Parlor in swirling letters. He made an attempt to hide it behind his back, which was rather purposeless, being as the box was wider than he was. “You ordered pizza?!”
“No!” he protested. “The guy just showed up. I think... er... that bird up there did. Yeah.”
She moved over to glance at it. “Sans-Serif- Font- Size- 60- Runite- Pizza- Parlor®- Subscript- CNI®- Font- Size- 20- Delivery- in- thirty- minutes- guaranteed- or- may- all- the- birds- of- the- foulest- nations- take- my- liver- and- feed- it- to- the- sharks- of- the- furthest- oceans- of- the- Inner- Realms- and- your- money- back- as- an- added- bonus- fries- not- included- toys- each- sold- separately.” Her expression could only have been described as a lower case o, an underscore, and an uppercase O. “Sounds vicious. Do we want to eat it?”
“Where’s the toy?” Essar muttered, looking about for the baggie with the toy, and wondering how she possibly pronounced the ®.
“It might have brains on it,” Amber mused.
Essar turned his head upside down in order to look underneath the box without possibly hurting the pizza.
Amber tilted her head, pursing her lips in a contemplative expression. “But then, it could also have spider guts, orange bellied lizards, the deadly poisonous blowfish of the western seas, and improper grammar on it.”
“He stole the toy!” Essar exclaimed in horror, his eyes widening. “How could he!?”
“But then,” Amber mused, “deadly poisonous fish might not taste half bad. No one really knows, because no one’s ever wasted their dying breath to expand upon the idea of what the deadly poisonous fish tasted like. It could also taste rather horrible...”
Essar opened the pizza box. His widened eyes paused, confused for a moment before one of them twitched slightly, lowering. The other one took a bit longer to catch up before it lowered likewise, giving him a narrowed expression. He handed the box over to her wordlessly.
In the little pink circles of various who-knows-what meat, filled with unknown parts of pigs, cows, and possibly poisonous fish from the western seas that no one knew what flavor they were was spelt out a symbol. It looked remarkably like a semicolon with a capital P beside it.
“I was right!” Amber exclaimed. “It does have improper grammar on it! Hah!”
“Er...”
“Well, that certainly doesn’t look proper to me.” She took a slice, removing the dot from the semicolon, and began munching on it. The pizza was warm and perfectly flavored.
“You know, that looked remarkably like a little person sticking out their tongue tilted on its side,” Essar remarked, taking another slice of the pizza before she could consider eating it all. He didn’t know how or why it had gotten there, but he didn’t care. It was nice warm pizza, and he hadn’t had to pay for it. He was going to eat it.
Amber swallowed her mouthful. “Right.” She gave him an odd look before taking another bite. Essar sighed. He didn’t expect her to see the logic of the little face sticking its tongue out in the midst of cheese and mushroom coating the pizza in pure stretchy bliss. He thought to himself that he was greatly indebited to the person who had thought to introduce the idea of circles of some sort of dough with tomato sauce, various meat chunks, cheese, and various vegetables to Endyr. As well as the person who had introduced Hawkey. It was a great game when it wasn’t raining. Running around batting a little black circle around on ice or slippery ground with a slightly bent stick into a net. So many girls thought it was pointless, but he thought it was great fun.
Both of the inventors, he remembered, had hailed from some place called Cahnadah. On Terra, they had said.
He reached for another piece of pizza at the exact same moment as Amber, and their hands connected. She froze. It was like an electric shock passed between the two of them. Their eyes connected, time seemed to freeze...
He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Then Essar realized an electric shock had really passed between them. He picked the toy out of the warm and gooey cheese. “I guess they didn’t steal it,” he mused, picking up the little electronic toy guilty of the static shock. Amber took the moment to grab the slice of pizza and munch thoughtfully on it.
Essar took the moment to sulk. That piece had possessed the most pepperoni pieces, and he had liked pepperoni pieces. However, he had no great desire for ABC unknown random meat, and instead tinkered with the unknown toy, until he got shocked again. This led to the decision that eating seemed like a better idea, and the ultimate consumption of an unfortunate slice of pizza, leading to digestion and further processes which will not be described here in text, as you may be considering eating sooner or later.
Yes, Endyr had electricity of a sort. Get over it.
***
Wyn wandered off, snickering slightly to himself. He had just known that it would work to get them pizza without having to waste a single step, though he was walking at the moment, and therefore wasting single steps. More than that, actually, considering that he was taking about three to fifteen steps for every sentence spoken herein...
Oh, never mind.
He had just known his scroll of delivery would work once he had worked out the glitches in making it pass through reality and the dreamscape. Well, that, and the little incident with it arriving before the person had ordered i...
He paused, and for a moment considered that it certainly hadn’t seemed as if Essar had wanted the pizza...
Now, wasn't that interesting, he thought upon observing a rather purple looking flower with an orange butterfly perched on top of it. It looked remarkably shiny as well. Quite shiny. He liked it. It was pretty...
Lost to a tangent, he decided to pick flowers for his mother.
i hit the post button at
1:50:00 AM
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