Story Blog of Hecate N. Nix

While all of my stories could in some form be considered scraps I like to think of the main ones (Sareth, Lislaria, In Flight, Palacia, Gargoyle, Exchange, and Aracule) as works in projects. There is hope of them being updated. These are fragments of stories. Ideas that never completely got flushed out, quieter voices that have not become demanding enough in my head for me to pay much attention to them, dreams I've found next to me in the morning that are scribbled on any surface from half finished pictures, to science note cards or once even the blank page found at the end of some books torn out so I could dump my brain on it. (Don't worry I owned the book.) They're fun or odd or disturbing but I feel they have as much right as my works in progress to be here. So here they are labeled as found.

(This is a collection of somethings that were found stapled together at the very bottom of my writing folder. Most have no title and are a page or less. ---- shows a divide to a new story.)

It was time to leave. Father had really gone too far this time telling me I was engaged to wed some pompous jerk i had never even seen. He was the next heir to my father's throne. Why not me? Because I am a girl. He wasn't even related to the family. He was my great grandfather's third cousin's great grand child's step-cousin's nieces' son's son. How did we figure that out? Through two years of dedicated research of course. But it didn't matter. I was leaving. Who am I? My name is Katherine but everyone calls me Katz because I act like a cat and look like one. I have black hair, an undetectable walk, and....my eyes are midnight black. Not just the iris but the cornea and pupil and well...everything. You see, I have night vision, a sight usually only seen in hunting cats. I cannot see well and must always wear a special set of lenses I made myself. They are glass and tinted and held together by black metal which fits over my ears. I call them sun glasses. They are not only to protect my eye but to protect others from the hideous sight. I wear black and some say I have the ability to read minds. What joke right? Wrong. I can read minds as I lived inside my mind for so long the mind is actually a maze of tunnels leading to filing rooms. Some locked. I was a shadow in the back of the court where no one noticed me and I liked it that way. I over the years was able to actually tap into these files and can now actually see the doorway. There is a miniature of you which does the work they run around fetching the files. They watch through your eyes, take smell samples, and test the food,. She, or actually, I am the real part of me, not the body I inhabit. Soon my mind grew stronger with the help of one of my friends who you will meet later. Anyways, I was leaving. I had put on the black breeches I had made when no one was looking over the years and the shirt. Finally I pulled on my knee-high riding boots, also in black, and the cloak. I pulled up the hood and got ready. I would leave n note they could track me by. I climbed down the ivy covered wall from my third story room with the practiced ease of one that has done this more than once. The faithful night wind kept me company. My friend stood below with a horse. She was telepathic but is not the friend I told you of. We ran together in complete silence. You are thinking the horse ran you mean, but no I don't. I ran too because one, it is unfair to make a friend carry you and two, we can travel faster this way. When we reached the dark forbidding forest we were met by a huge black leopard. Calisto is the friend I told you about. She is also telepathic and has been one of my close friends and confidants for a long time.

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I will never forget the day I ended my tedious life as a dull and boring princess to live by the sword. I had always dreamed of it. It was midnight, witching hour, and I was the only person awake except the guards who I didn't have to worry about since they never came near my side of the castle. The reason is because of my eyes. Born with a defect leaving the entirety of my eye immersed in inky blackness I found myself early on labeled a demon. Who am I? Let me introduce myself. My name was Christine Andromeda Falestone, the Crown Princess of Standria. I say was as my name and rank have changed somewhat drastically since that time. Here is my story:

The dark is the best time fore me. My eyes adjust well to the murky darkness. I cannot see well in the daylight as it hurts my eyes. I donned my cloak and touched my sword for reassurance.  Then i threw the rope out the window and began to climb. I made it to the bottom of the second story before trouble struck. Of all the nights for a guard to dare another to walk on my side this was not a good night. 'I...intruder!' came the hoarse yell from the west turret. Okay, let's get going. I hurried down and ropped the last few feet and landed running. a man was in my way with a drawn sword so i drew mine as well. He drove at me as I skimmed out of harm's  way and then knocked him unconcious with the butt of my sword to the back of his skull. He crumpled in a lifeless heap to the ground. I did not wait to see if he was found. I ran. The portcullis was lowering in an attempt to cut off my escape I dove through and just made it over the draw bridge. The guards clamored at the gate keeper for not closing it in time but I was already gone. I knew they wouldn't follow because I had entered the enchanted woodland are where monsters supposedly lurked. They were right about one thing. Things were lurking but I knew this forest well. I had started escaping to it as soon as I could climb. I knew most of the inhabitants. a large form dropped out of the tree in front of me. <Going somewhere?> The thought spoken words didn't even make me tense. 'I am leaving Cal, for good' The huge black cat eyed me. <And what makes you think we will let you go without an escort to make sure you're safe? Why did you try to leave without me?> 'I wasn't trying to. It's just that I didn't know where you were and didn't have time to find you. Now I have to go!' 

< I am going with you.>

'You don't have to do that for me.'

<We're friends and you are like the family I never had and the LOM isn't going to let you go by yourself.> She pointed out matter-of-factly.

The LOM means the League of Monsters. They were my only friends and since I had night vision I was considered a monster by common folk. 

<So where are we going?>

'I have decided to join the army in the Fantion kingdom. Let us go. ' We traveled in silence and it took about two days to get to the edge of the kingdom and three more to get the general to let me try out for the army.

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Entitled: Calisto's Tale Part 1 of....

Silence. Darkness. A darkness stealing over the land with the stealth of a cat stalking it's pray. Suddenly, a baby's wail! A woman's shriek of horror! 'Dear goddess! What is this thing?!'

A few hours later the queen of Hasford woke hoping that what she had seen before she fainted had been all a dream, or more truthfully a nightmare. 'My lady, you're awake. Thank the powers above,' this voice breaking the tomb like silence came from a young serving made named Deborah.  ' You gave us quite a shock after...she came.'

'It wasn't a dream then?' moaned the queen almost in hysterics.  'She really is a...a demon?'

'I'm afear'd it is so yer ladyship. Her eyes, I ain't never seen such eyes. Black as night and no whites in em' a'tol. It ain't natural I tell ya,' she ended in a shutter.

'Okay,' said the queen pulling herself together. 'We'll kill it, get rid of the body and say the child was still born.'

'Too late fer that beggin' yer lardyship's pardon but de kind, he already knows about it,' the maid said meekly.

'Goddess spare me! Then what...what should we do?'

'M'lady, keep her here until she's full grown but make sure she ain't never seen, then evacuate one of yer castles and hire a dragon and do the whole rescue thing that way the young prince what finds 'er has no choice but to marry 'er.' 

'That's a wonderful idea! Why you truly are a treasure Deb!' And so their scheme was put into motion. 

18 Years Later

The castle was dark. No movement stirred it's inky depths. Suddenly, a light, dim and eery green, could be seen moving across the darkness. The light seperated into two large eyes as it moved toward the north most tower.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'I want him dead,' Countess Lillenth whispered in her faint harsh voice. 'But not just dead, I want him to suffer!'

'I think you have come to the right place ma'dam,' said the patroness in the same monotone voice, which reflected in her emotionless face. 'But you must understand this person is a specialist. If you start this, there is no stopping it. He will die or she will. It matters not to her but I can say this, she can torture him, make him love her, and fall into despair. I have even heard it said some of her victims take their own lives when she asks it of them.' 

'Yes, yes, that's exactly what I want,' snapped the countess. 'Why would I halt it if I hated him enough to start it?' 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A baby girl with blond hair is born the soulmate to a dragon. To show her status she has dragon wings and when angry she breathes fire. The mother sells half  of her beauty to make the wings invisible and have no feeling in the mortal world. The king, fearing witch-craft, has mother locked away, knowing nothing of the child who end up in the care of a scullery maid. Years later the child has grown and now works in the stables. One day she meets a young wizard sent to assassinate the king. He feels great power but cannot tack it's source. Enlisting the help of the princess now stable girl he accidentally makes skin to skin contact blasting away the shields that have hidden her wings and her mind from the world. The dragon who has been reeking havoc on the  kingdom in belief that his soulmate was murdered suddenly can once again sense her. Believing the sorcerer tricked her and forced the wings upon her she becomes increasingly angry and accidentally uses her own power as a truth spell on both. Finding the truth to hard to bear she flees into the nearby woods before they can stop her. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lislaria spent the first years of her life raised by Sea Sprites after the death of her parents in an earthquake. Then suddenly the Sprites were vilely butchered by local fishermen who believed them to be the source of the fish shortage. It is only after the massacre that the truth of their innocence came to light. Just before their deaths the Sprites funnel their combined powers into the girl who is then taken by the fishermen to an orphanage that she later escapes from due to it's cruelty. With her new found fear and distrust of humans assured she uses her new powers to find another mythical group and ends up living with dragons who she learns much from. 

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            The scene begins following a yellow touring bus. A large man in a dirty shirt with very little hair is driving the bus with a group of what look like runaway ren-fair re-enactors most of the guys have a girl with the noticeable exception of one in the back who has the whole back seat to himself. He has a fur-lined cloak around his shoulders with his arms out over the seat back and his legs crossed. He has a lazy almost gloating look on his face. The expression of someone who’s gotten everything he’s ever wanted and then some. While they chatter he just sits back in judgmental bliss over them all. The bus is traveling through a desert like setting but mountains can be seen behind them, which could explain the heavy cloak. He has longish hair around his shoulders dark brown and wind swept. His eyes are green a deep heavy green but not murky with brown. He is wearing a puffed white renaissance shirt with a sky blue vest buttoned but for the top one which is back on the vest. A town comes into view and one of the courtiers in front shouts back asking if this ‘be’ the place ‘m’lord’. The man turns to look out the wind down with exaggerated effort and says it is quietly. The man can’t hear him and he’s forced to repeat himself loudly. ‘I said…’ The bus pulls up along a dirt road to a wooden walkway and the bus driver announces the town of Alba. Everyone waits as the prince gets off first. He shades his eyes looks around and snorts in disgust. A man getting off makes a comment that there ain’t ne’er been a better place for demolition if’n ya asked me. Several others pipe in with here heres and the group begins to separate with many heading directly to the inn and pub for a drink. Several including two shifty eyed looking guards following the prince down the boardwalk. He rolls his shoulder and makes the comment that he’s just itching for a good fight and that father hasn’t let him in a good long time. One guard points out that he IS the crown prince of …. To which he gets a dirty look and an ‘old man’ comment. As they pass a particularly ratty looking house a woman who has been leaning in the doorway looks directly at the other guard and say ‘Oh that’s going to hurt real bad.’ As they turn to look at her the woman behind him trips knocking him over which slams him into a wooden post and then on into a dubious looking water trough. He comes up sputtering and everyone turns to laugh with the exception of the prince who heads into the store looking in search for the mysterious woman. He finds himself in a cluttered bookstore. Dusty with a stale damp smell to it. Books litter over everything not already covered with stacks of papers. He knocks over a stack while looking. A desk sits near the front entrance nearly hidden behind stacks of books and hidden under papers. On one edge a skull sits. The skull is bleached white except near the eyeholes, which are black with soot. Incense is coming out of the eyes. He doesn’t know what to make of it and goes to sniff it. He comes back quickly coughing. A bookshelf with caving edges sits behind the desk also covered in books and miscellaneous papers and items. Skull has a lit candle on top. He turns around again searching and from behind him comes ‘I help you?’ He yelps spinning around. The woman from before is now behind the desk. She’s delicately shaped. Her face is older and her eyes never open completely. She looks Asian and her outfit speaks of Asian origins. Her hair is grey from black and is done in dread locks with a prim know in back. ‘Where did you come from?’ He snapped trying to get back his lost composure while trying to covertly check to see if one of his men had scene him lose his cool.

But here she was with an unconscious prince a rioting country, and her brighter was no closer to being ready. There was no help for it. The plan would just have to be moved up.

            She was the sole survivor of the band of people who knew who Devan’s father really was. Of course her mother had known but no one was ever going to get it out of her now. Her mother had died after father had poured a clip into her in a jealous rage though by all accounts they had been passionately and madly in love. That was why she was the leader now and not Devan though it was customary to pass leadership on to the male heir. While he was tolerated, he was not accepted even now after her father had been dead and buried for two years, the peace was still tenuous at best between him and the rest of the clan. Not that she couldn’t hold her own. In the months since her father’s death she had had to fight to keep her place in the group. She had killed people, yes and she wasn’t proud of it but neither was she ashamed. She understood power and knew that to show weakness meant certain death.

            ‘So what is the plan, sis?’ Devan asked from behind her, rudely interrupting her thoughts.

            ‘Don’t call me sis. You known how it sets my teeth on edge. Besides if you see me once you’re in place you can’t act like you know me so think of this as practice.’

            ‘Ah, c’mon sis… Andrea, don’t you think I know that? Besides you are my sister aren’t you?’ He gave her the look he’d always used to get around her and like always she melted. He was the only one she had ever shared things with, not including her now long dead mother.  He was the only one who knew how much it had taken out of her to be a good leader. She leaned forward and hugged him while he made faces and acted macho but hugged her back after surreptitiously checking to see if anyone else was looking. Suddenly a groan came from the corner where the prince lay bound. Andrea whipped around pulling a knife from her belt loop at the same time in one graceful motion. Before anyone could react she was kneeling on to of him. ‘If you so much as squeak highness, I’ll slit your throat and don’t think that’ an empty threat. You’re dispensable from here on out and don’t fort get that for a moment. You may thank your luck stars that you’re still alive.

            His first conscious thought was one of panic followed closely on the heals of by pain from muscles left too long in an unnatural position and he could not resist groaning which was his first mistake. He later came to realize. She held the knife to his throat a moment longer and then without warning stood up with silent grace popping the knife back into it’s hiding place.

Young woman, daughter to the rich Baron and his lady

Son, angry at life because he is ill (no one but himself know he’s going to die soon)

The parents die at a grand ball in honor of her friend who just go married. At the dance she goes out to the balcony to get air and someone pushes her from behind. She manages to grasp the balcony railing long enough to be saved by the servant who we find is her friend because she loves horses above everything else. He has been secretly painting pictures of the horses for her for years but they are all attributed to a mystery artist. It is discovered her mother and father are dead after he leads her back to her room to calm down from the near fall. It is her brother who comes in and finds her in the groom’s arms. (Note: He is in love with her but being below her station he feels he has no chance with her and has resigned himself to never being more then a friend but he always watches over her.) After explanation that he was only trying to keep her from fainting and explanation about being pushed the news of parents’ murder comes out and he has to watch her brother comfort her when he would like to himself. He leaves but she visits the horses late that night at the stable and they begin talking. They decide to work together to find the killer. After teaming up they begin investigation in the morning. Odd painting disappearances, a box with a layout of the house with words on different sections and the layout is wrong. The staircase is in the wrong place and others. Investigation continues but then Clara goes missing. He begins desperately searching for her and come back to a hidden passage they had found. He is caught from behind by someone while walking through the passage and knocked unconscious. When he comes to he is being bound by the hands by a man in a mask. He persuades the man to show his face and it’s…Armand, her brother! Armand explains some of the things going on. He has an advanced stage of consumption and won’t live long enough to get the inheritance he had killed to get but neither will he let his sister enjoy it. Why? She’s not really his sister, she was born of a poor mother when his father was young. The mother had died in child birth but the father had actually loved the woman and had planned to marry her and shame the family name, his real mother had found out about the baby and had agreed to be married quickly, she was already his betrothed from an arranged marriage plan, and she would pretend to have been secretly pregnant before the marriage and claim the child as her own. She loved Claira as much as if she were her own daughter but she wasn’t! She was common! Before this Armand taunts Mikael about being common and not good enough to marry an aristocrat like his sister. Mickael gets loose and destroys several items in frustration but he’s stuck in the room and Armand isn’t concerned. In the rampage he finds Claira, who is unconscious but not bound. The missing portraits are found and the house box. Armand takes it from him and reveals the truth. The box is a puzzle. When the pieces are realigned it springs open to reveal a hidden compartment with the real will inside! The surprise? Mikael is named as the heir, he is actually the son of a nobleman who died and the baby was sent to them to raise but when it was found that the death had been a murder their was belief the baby might be in danger so they told everyone the baby had died. They couldn’t claim it as their child because the wife had just given birth to Armand and it wouldn’t make sense for her to have another child so their hand was forced and they claimed it as the son of a groom and his wife.  The will gives half of the land to him to pay for the damage they had caused him and in the event of Armand’s death he was asked to be the benefactor for Claira who would own the other half but as women can’t own land on their own he would control it in her name. 

((This clip is actually from a webcomic that made it all the way to page 10 before I realized no one could read the text. I still have the rather terrible looking sketches somewhere and may post them some day for a laugh. This text is for a later scene I was working on))       

     And damn you, you left her there to die. You knew she didn’t have much time left but you just couldn’t wait to sign up for this deal. Couldn’t let the precious Nocamura waiting. She died scared and alone because of you. I was there, I held her in my arms as she died because you couldn’t take the time to be with her in her final moments…you her own sister.

            Rave…(she reaches her hand out towards him as he pulls away) how could you think that…. (Katra breaks in) I was the one who signed the papers with Spin Records. Me! (points to herself). I had to explain to the director that Jazz couldn’t sign the papers herself because she was in prep for surgery.

Rave: What…?

Kat: Yeah, surgery. Didn’t you ever wonder who Kaitlyn’s donor was? It had to be someone with the exact same type of blood work, a direct relative in fact. Did you really think that Jazz wouldn’t do everything in her ability to save her? You weren’t the only one who loved her you know! The only one who lost her.

Rave: You’re lying! If she had donated she would have been done and back there with her sister if she had been the donor.

Jazmin: (She steps forward and lifts her shirt showing for the first time, a giant scar running from the underside of her ribs up to the  right side of her neck) There were…complications. Part way through the operation something went wrong and I began to bleed out. They thought they had lost me at one point... there was no pulse for about five minutes. I was clinically dead by medical standards for two minutes. When I came to they told me that Kaitlyn had passed on. I went bizerk. They had to sedate me but I had torn out several of my stitches by then and so they kept me restrained, cuffed down to a bed for two weeks until they decided I wasn’t a threat to myself.

…. Even then they wouldn’t release her without the both of us signing off on her and she stayed at our house for a few days. That’s why we delt with most of the funeral arrangements and why she looked so tired at the funeral. Not because she had been on a plane for hours but because she was still dealing with the after affects of the medication.

From Seliria she traveled west.  At first there was no particular direction to her travels. She had some little amount stored away from jobs previously fulfilled so that she need not beg for her food or take on work that might be odious to her current state of mind. She rambled on her way stopping from time to time in a small village or at a particularly warm feeling farmhouse or vineyard. If she stayed at on private land she would do some small task for them to make up for the burden of her food and keep. At one home she approached soon after a terrible field accident and just as the local doctor was telling the family that their son’s leg could not be saved. She came upon them just as the words were uttered and was the only one who saw the mother’s pale face in time to intercept her graceless fall to the earth. The husband of the poor woman came swiftly over to collect her from the stranger and was surprised to be asked if the traveler could please have a look at the leg before the amputation took place. Seeing no reason to deny such a request and since this new comer had just saved his wife from a rather dangerous fall (she was once again pregnant and a fall such as the faint had set up for her could have done untold harm to her and her unborn child.)

            Cassandra leaned over the child who was deathly pale but who had subsided from his ear splitting cries and now lay quietly whimpering, his little tear stained face a terrible heart wrenching sight for anyone whose heart was made of any kinder stuff than stone. Silently she knelt down beside the small body and placed her hand first over the boy’s heart and then slowly swept her hand down toward the mangled leg. Though her touch was light so almost as not to be felt it seemed as though warmth followed in its wake. Warmth and a soothing calming sensation that spread out and slowly the child’s body relaxed despite itself. When she reached the wound itself she began to touch gently along the edges and then slowly to prod into the wound itself. Examining it carefully she made a few mental calculations and nodded her head a few times. Looking up at the doctor she opened her mouth slowly, choosing her words carefully so as not to ruffle the feathers of this old and obviously respected practitioner of healing.

            ‘Sir, I have been traveling for some time in the lands to the east and have been blessed with the chance to study under several eastern healers whose ways are slightly different from those found in this land. If I may, would you allow me to change the diagnosis slightly and to explain my ideas for helping this boy without the immediate removal of his limb? Of course, as the local physician I understand completely that the decision is yours and that you must do what you feel is best for our… your young charge.’

            Now the doctor who was not used to being second guessed by anyone let along a stranger some years younger than himself but he was not so stiff in the heel that he could not see the knowledge and intelligence shining behind her eyes and he would have been remiss in his duties if he had not noticed that her touch alone had already done the child some small bit of good. Though it went against his better judgment he gave his consent in so far as she explained each step of her process before going on and had it okayed by him before performing it.

            She nodded formally and then began to put the family to work. The mother and eldest daughter were sent to the house to heat water, as much water as they could possibly heat without making it take longer than an hour to be made ready and to tear up linens for bandages. The father and his brother she sent off to find a door or plank large enough to carry the boy back to the house without jostling his leg in any manner that might do further damage to his sensibilities. She sent the smaller children into the neighboring woodland to search for herbs, which she meticulously described so that even the youngest would be able to easily identify it by sight or smell should they stumble upon it. Finally as everyone began to drift off in separate directions to begin their appointed tasks she returned her focus to the doctor and her new patient. ‘I hope to clean out the wound to get a better view of  damage and then I hope to work at healing him from the inside out.’ She put her hand up to forstall any protest the doctor might have at this bizarre turn of logic. ‘The bone is broken as I’m sure you have already surmised but we can set it easily. The problem as you have no doubt noticed is that the muscles around it are torn and ragged. One healer under whom I trained had logged the different muscles of the human body when he was apprenticed to a shankuyen, a priest that makes the necessary changes to the body so that it can be ready for sacred burial. He showed me how to identify them and reattach them so that with proper care they can function almost as well as if they had never been severed in the first place. After this it will be no large task to stitch up the outer wound and with time and the care of his family he could be on his feet again before the next harvest.’

            The doctor rubbed his chin as he milled over what he had heard. Though this all seemed rather fantastical to him, he had seen things done in his life that had been here to fore never heard of and perhaps she could do all she said she could. What more could it hurt to allow this young woman to try. If it did not work it was not as though the leg could made to be in any worse shape and so he allowed himself to be swayed into helping. When the board and sheets and water had been made ready at her disposal and when the children had come roaring back across the field with clumps of plants in their grubby fists torn out by the roots and strips of bark torn haphazardly from trees most likely too small to be making such contributions she allowed her charge to be lifted carefully and the group made its slow winding way, avoiding rocks and debree that might cause some bump or jostle that might hurt the child, they were surprised to find that she wanted them to set her up not in the house but  in the brightest area of the yard. This was, she explained to the puzzled doctor, because she needed the light for such detailed work that she could not get from inside such a small home with but one window and because the air here was fresh while that inside would be stale and dank and no place for an open wound.

...

If things could get worse she didn’t want to know how. To say that it had been a bad day, a bad week made up of bad day piling upon bad day would have been an egregious understatement. Now here she was elbow deep in the guts of a man who probably would have died of a stroke soon anyways, fishing for a bullet or like item that might not even exist. The accident was a horrible event but usually when people died from being crushed in the oversized death trap they did not come to the new chief criminal coroner for autopsy. But this was not a normal case by any means. Some clue of it had come to the attention of the Chicago PD more than eight hours ago as they had pulled a man out of what most likely had been a stolen vehicle and found that not only did he have the normal contusions and marks one would expect of someone who had just been through a terrible crash but also showed signs of what looked like multiple bullet holes riddling his back. That’s was why she was here at four a.m. instead of asleep under a heap of blankets like any reasonable person. She had been here for six hours cutting open, taking pictures and notes, checking recognizable characteristics and making full dental molds for later identification. Some of these people would be too mangled to be directly identified by a loved one but she would make sure that each and every one was identified and properly bag-and-tagged if she had anything to say about it. Any other day there would have been help. She was the boss of this tiny little oasis of death but it was a training ground for young hopefuls. The highers up knew her well enough that they sent her potentials to see if they would make it or wash out. Her lab was run as a tight ship and she would put them through hell but tonight she was once again flying solo as she had for the last month now and all because her last assistant had had the bad manners to up and get herself killed because she got too invested in a case. It was a mortician’s worst fear though she was sure police and others in this line of work felt the same way about their rookies and trainees. There was no way to hammer the truth that subjectivity was not objectivity and that emotions had no place in a criminal investigation though she did understand where Leanne had been coming from. The case had been a tough one for her and she was a seasoned veteran of almost every kind of grizzly death. She had pulled pieces of people off of barbed wire, had worked with no more than a foot or a head, had dealt with drownings, suicides, butchers, and loonies. She had seen the effects of exotic diseases and once had tested the body of a child who had been killed and swallowed by a boa that had gotten loose and gone wild inside a mansion over the course of ten years. 

Aurian-28

Derineth-30

Day/Light-16

Night/Dark-18

Thunder-18

Lightning-18

Aqua-14

Wisp-13

Terran-10

Sila/Silencia-19?

Solera-5

Fira/Fierra-3

Wolf/Loupe-17

Sangre-6

Dracon-2

Angel-12

Demona-11

            The  day I met Daren was like any other day for me. In short it would have been a living hell for most normal people. But I never claimed to be normal. I don’t think being left to die on the sacrifice stone to dies is the mark of a normal individual. My parents didn’t want me, you see, because I was heir to the thrown and a girl. The sacrifice stone is the place for unwanted children. For a time it was littered with the dead bodies of fall those who came before me but now they are given proper burial. You see, I lived because of Calisto, the rare and terrible black cat of the desert. As long as 16 hands and faster then the naked eye can fathom, she was my mind sister. I could speak to her without ever making a sound and as soon as I was born we were inseparable. We were born at the same time and shared a similar fate. Her mother was killed and skinned to be a rug in my parents’ bedroom. It took 12 men to take her down and in the end she took three of them with her to her fate.

 She came for me when I was dumped on the altar and I rode limply on her back. It was with her help that I grew faster then an average child but still, for the first years she did the major share of the hunting and work. Yet, by age seven I was tall with rugged blond sand coloured hair and was quite swift on my feet. That was the year that I first went back to the bloody altar whence I had been rescued. New bodies were strewn over the stone slab and the surrounding ground around it.

Evidence of scavengers was everywhere and older corpses were in differing states of decay. There is something to be said about how a body rots in the desert. The process is one unique to deserts and I have never seen it duplicated anywhere else. The body doesn’t rot in the way one pictures a body to. The very term rotting evokes images of oozing wounds and squelching organs. In the desert the body more sort of shrivels into itself like a husk. From there the process remains dry and in the end you become what you live in…nothing but dust for the desert to reclaim.

It didn’t occur to me to bury the bodies at first. In fact it took quite some time before I was even in a position emotionally to be able to begin the task. When I did it was with little surprise that it took quite some time. I had readied myself for this though and worked at it steadily if slowly.  Each body needed a hole dug that would be deep enough that scavengers would not undo my work. I had learned this from living long enough in a harsh countryside that left little to fools. I had once buried a small portion of the night’s food too shallowly near the cave’s entrance and had come back to an orgnac, a large wild bear with a gold coat that is found solely in the desert of Ear where I lived. It had smelled the food and was loath to leave a comfortable sleeping location. It took loud calls from me and a physical confrontation with Calisto to drive it off. Many of the lessons I learned came to me in such a way. The weak do not survive long in such an unkind environment. It reclaims those who would believe themselves it’s tamer. It had tried with me but I had a protector who would not allow it and when she turned her mind to something her will was cast iron. 

After a time I began to make small markers for each gravesite. I knew where each of my brethren now lay but the wind and sand scoured away and short term means of marking. I settled on small clay obelisks that would mark their places. The early ones were crude and several have since crumbled and had to be replaced. The later ones are somewhat more ornate although too much effort would be misused energy because in the end even these totems are only transient in the scheme of the desert. As I had no information about the earlier children I felt as though I was failing them but at the time there was nothing I could do.

            It was during what I have come to believe was my ninth sun cycle that I returned to the altar after a brief stint away to the south with Calisto on a hunting foray that I came across my first living denizen. To say it was a shock would have been an understatement. She was so alive in this place that had come to mean to me nothing but death. At first I could not believe my eyes and then I realized I had come to a pivotal point in my life. Did I take in this child when I was so young myself and in that way leave behind the self that I now maintained or did I leave the child there and in turn take on a part of the blame that those that had left her here to die now bore. I was little more than a child myself but in many ways I was so much older than those who would have called themselves my peers.

            In a way there was no decision to be made. I knew it when I first heard her feeble squalls. That night we had one more around the campfire. If Calisto had objected I know I would have left the child there because in the end I owed my life and my allegiance to her first and not this tiny human life. She said nothing about it and in a way it was this silence that encouraged me and pushed me into my first hesitant steps towards the child. I will not say that it was easy raising her. No matter what my skills were, I was very young to have another’s life in my hands but Calisto helped and Silencia grew strong. Silent as one of the giant sand cats on the hunt and very intelligent she kept her own council for the most part. She was the first of our clan.

            A little over a year later I returned to the altar with Silencia in a sling over my shoulder. She could walk on her own a short distance but the altar was not so close to our home that it would be advisable to allow her open reign and the second sun had not yet finished it’s cycle. I felt as though something was drawing me to altar. I had been in a state of nervous energy all day. I didn’t know at the time what it could be. I am generally well collected and patient but on that day I could not wait for Terus, the second sun to come to the end of it’s age old journey for the day. Calisto seemed restless as well. She stalked silently from one end of the cave to the other which was no easy feet because the cave went well back into the ground and had several branching chambers that we did not use. In the end Terus set and I carefully but quickly strapped Sila in and as if of one mind, which in a way I suppose we are and were, Calisto and I left the cave and trekked west towards the altar.

Upon the altar were two small children. Younger than Sila but older than she had been when she came to us. They lay wrapped in dirty blankets that at one time might have been a royal blue but had since faded beyond recognition and should have been relegated to a rag bin even in the lowliest of hovels. When I approached one of them began to babble happily and reached out towards me as though saying, ‘There you are. We’ve been waiting for you.’ The other remained stonily silent but upon being picked up gave a loud crack of wailing reminiscent of a clap of thunder during one of the infrequent storms we got in the desert. As they grew their personalities came to match perfectly with the names that had been given them. Thunder was generally very silent for long lengths of time but when he spoke you listened. He was sharp, precise, and to the point in all things. He was a talented hunter but somewhat lacking in creativity when it came to deviating from a plan. Thunder was dark haired with chocolate brown eyes like the hide of an eldridge. His build was somewhat stockier then others of the clan but was by no means large. Lightning was his opposite and equal in every way. He was flashy, liked to make an entrance and loved nothing more than the bizarre and exciting. He could tell the most enthralling stories around the campfire as though he were picking them from thin air. He talked quickly and sometimes had to be hushed when he felt the need to talk at inopportune moments. He was a social animal and craved attention which came to be an advantage as the more children came into our family. Lightning had white blond hair that stuck out from his head in jagged peaks as a child. His eyes were ice blue and his build was slight though he was very tall. Thunder and Lightning became the second and third additions to our small group.

            Over time more children were added to our small family of rag tag rejects. Loupe was the next. A small child, she had grey eyes like pools of quick silver. She took quickly to weapons and even built some of her own as a child. Her specialty as she got older was in small throwing knives an a pair of cat claws she created on her out of two straps of leather and stones that she sharpened and worked into stiletto thin curves. She would wrap them around her hands and then tuck them in between her fingers so that they wouldn’t show until the last possible moment.