Thursday, December 29, 2011

Charles & Freya Edgarory

Freya's fear had departed and she too sat cross legged sitting upon my left knee as I sat in there in the same manner as the demon and Freya. Her eyes were upon the devil before us, though it seemed that all her fears had left her.

'I really wish you wouldn't do that,' Freya started with half a smile upon her face, though she made every attempt to remain stern of complexion and word, 'You know we were stalked by a panther for the last two days, how was I suppose to know it was you. My nose is greatly hindered by the mist, which you know quite well to be true,' she finished with a huff and crossing her arms.

'I am truly sorry little one,' the devil started in a soft yet stern melodic voice which I could tell straight off to be male, but I could not guess the owner's age, 'Twas the panther that I was watching with such intensity, for it sat silently amongst the rocks behind your friend, just there beside that boulder,' it raised its red right hand to a large rock no more than ten feet just behind us. 'But the it and the worry of the great cat's association to good or ill is gone for now.' Sighing as he finished the white scars upon his body moved from tiny marks into characters and markings, which made the devil all the more handsome yet menacing.

Freya turned to address me, 'Charles this is an elf of the marsh tribes, he is called Edgarory by his kin, but I have been allowed his friendship and so am able to simply call him Edgar,' she finished with an assertive yet cute smile. With that she bounded down from my knee and off towards the fire, where the open hands of Edgarory were waiting for her.

In all hopes of returning,
Charles & Freya

Monday, December 26, 2011

Charles & Freya Red Devil

Freya stood there before me upon the stump end of the log staring out into the fog, her nose working hard sniffing the air in attempt to make out who the silent eyes before us belonged to.

'Its not the black panther,' Freya whispered ever so softly over her shoulder, both eyes upon the fog guardian shrouded in mist. 'It is something taller, I can make out the edges of several rocks, it is standing upright.'

After what seemed like several hours the bright yellow eyes hovering out in the fog blinked and where gone. A moment later they appeared again, this time no more than a few feet in front of Freya, she chirped and leapt backwards off the stump. In a blink and a flash a muscular red demon with long white hair was atop the stump in the exact spot Freya had fallen from. It was bent over, almost leaning into the fire, hair covering it's face, its right arm held it steady while the other was dangling down close to the fire, hand clenched in a soft fist.

Raising its left hand and stretching it out towards me, it opened palm up revealing Freya unsinged by the fire curled up, quivering with fear, but unharmed. I stood slowly and walked towards the stump, the red devil did not move an inch as I did. I gently picked Freya up out of his hand, as I noticed that his body was covered in thousands of tiny scars of the purest white.

I took a few steps back to my bedding and sat down, knowing nothing else to do. The devil adjusted himself to sit atop the stump cross legged with an almost mechanical precision and swiftness. As he did with one fluid movement both hands stole up all the hair about his face and shoulders and tied it back in a top knot. Its piercing eyes staring into mine, though I was mesmerized by the demon and the abundance of scars adorning its body. The demon was no larger than I was, though it seemed taller and very much more muscular, the scars told me stories of endless years of battle. Yet Freya's fear was abating... What Red Devil trap had we been lured into.

In all hopes of returning,
Charles & Freya

Monday, December 19, 2011

World's Over Journal XX The Dream

I had no idea that the dream Priscilla had was so vivid in her mind, when she spoke often I felt like she recalled them as distant memories, for she fought back fear as she mentioned certain details.

That afternoon over lunch, with Toki in the threshold, Priscilla began the tale which was her dream while in the depths of the dark sleep. She maintained that these were not her memories, that the view was so lucid and beyond herself that they must be formed in another living soul, a soul whose eyes she was trapped looking out from behind. Here is a brief recount of a great portion of what she recalled from memory.

Slowly my mind stirred back into the waking realm a dim gray twilight before my eyes, from a black slumber eternal where no memories existed, it was as if I were but newly born. My senses appeared to be dull and unaware of my predicament, they seemed almost numb, even my emotions were detached from my current surroundings, which my foggy eyes were starting to take in. I felt nothing, not fear from having woken from a slumber I knew not how long, nor did my stomach know hunger or my limbs know the pain of stiffness. Could it be that this gray kingdom, which was coming into focus around me, was beyond the lands of the living, was I in the solitude beyond death?

Just then, when my mind had begun to believe I was in the afterlife, something thin wriggled curving itself in frantic motions without pattern just above my right leg. As the fog lifted more from before my eyes, there I confirmed it to be a tale of sorts, covered in a coat of short and mangy black fur. I tried to tilt my head to glimpse the creature to which the tale belonged to, but my head simply slumped off to the side with a thud it hit my shoulder. Despite great effort in an attempt, I could not lift it.

For a moment I pondered upon how my neck had allowed so easily such an abnormal contortion as to allow my head to rest completely sideways upon my shoulder, though at least now I could see the cat. Yes, now in plain view was a sickly looking mangy black cat. The vile little creature seemed to be chewing on my leg. The gray lifted more from my eyes and I found that indeed it was, though I knew no pain from the nibbling of sharp teeth upon my right calf. I attempted to move my leg, as to shake off the tooth invader of my weary shell, but instead I blinked. With the effort as an earthquake did my eyes shake behind my their captive lids, until they finally opened.

Though now the cat had faded into a pulsing blue and green outline of that same creature. Where blood circulated near its skin was a murky orange, from its heart pulsed a deep purple out from which flowed veins of bright red. How had my vision changed as to allow me to see the radiation of heat, why did my eyes seem to hurt so, for that is the only word I can use to describe the flame which was ablaze within each socket, pain, these questions whirled in my mind. Amidst the fires of my eyes, I was answerless and could not help but think that I was not truly seeing the cat at all. The thin veil of gray passed over my eyes and grew thick until I knew no more.

When at lost last my mind swam back from the dark depths into consciousness I found that I had been stolen away into a far off place, or so it seemed. I was still sitting, but this time, I seemed to be in the center of a busy street in the middle of a vast city of silver steel and endless gray concrete in the violent heat of a humid summer. A multitude of towers sprawling up from the ground in every direction from where I sat, before me, behind me and on either side for as far as I could imagine to see.

Many iron wagons of various sizes and shape past by driven without a team of ox, horse or mule scurried by me as multi colored beetles on a quest for food. A multitude of people walking wove their way in and out amongst one another upon a sidewalk of sorts, for no wagons were upon it, save for persons riding upon metal bars with black wheels on either end from the most ragged looking young men and women with tall green or pink hair to what seemed a higher class, business men all prim and proper rolling about smoothly to check on their merchants. The warm breeze upon my face moved swiftly through as it funneled through the towering citadels, many with mirrors for walls, it was such an amazing feeling, it was my only feeling. In that moment I knew I was indeed alive.

Quite suddenly the veil rolled in once again, a plague of gray eclipsed my eyes. When finally the twilight rolled away, as a fog lifts mystically from a marsh, it seemed for the first time they opened of my own will. The grandeur of life’s abundance around me dissipated with my last vision. There before me was the cat, which was still licking and gnawing at the flesh off my leg, though I felt it not just there underneath the remains of the tattered rags which once had been my favorite pair of skinny jeans. At least I had recalled a memory, a feeling attached to a set of pants, was I alive or dead? Lifting my gaze, merely my eyes for my head I still could not move, from the cat to look slowly around. I was perched upon a plastic crate on a stone slab sidewalk, propped up against a dusty and ancient looking red brick building surrounded by large concrete towers. For how long I know not for all seemed as a dream.

I blinked and again was in the city teaming with life, people everywhere. Suddenly everyone stopped as if they had all at once become aware of some grave danger. They looked up, in quick secession, into the skies which had grown dark with low lying clouds, just above the skyline. The darkness above threatened an immense storm of tear drop sized rain and violently bright lightning amongst immense earthquakes of ever rolling thunder. Though no rain fell upon the vast number of men and women standing dumbfounded in the streets, nor upon the stopped vehicles, I once knew as cars, something else was falling down. The sky was thick with the falling of tiny yellow stars or possibly flowers, I could not tell, the size of snowflakes floating slowly downwards. Mingled here and there amongst the flakes there looked to be tiny fairy folk, swimming in the air with smiles upon minuscule handsome faces. As the white and yellow touched the skin of humanity they toppled over and did not move, whether death had fallen over them or they had been set in a state of deepest sleep I know not, for they did not wake when they fell with a crash to the concrete, nor did they stir when the cars and trucks, yes trucks that is correct word, began to collide in violent clashes of steel and flesh.

The settings stirred and changed all in an instant, once again I was sitting alone upon the blue crate on the street corner. The city was dark, though the sun had not yet sunk behind me; the buildings seemed to have aged a decades as many of them had begun to the slow process of decay around me. The sky was not as it had been in my last vision, for now there were dark clouds which were illuminated by flashes of blue and green hovering somewhere not a great distance in front of me below the skyline, there between two towers on opposite sides of the street. Most of the people were gone, how I cannot begin to fathom a guess; however several dozen of them though lay still and silent where they had toppled over. The skin of those closest to me seemed just as bright as the day they had fallen, though their clothes were much faded of hue and deteriorated, as if an age of the earth had passed. Despair stole into my heart in that moment, I felt and knew both at once that I seemed to be only half living in between dreaming and reality. Indeed if I was wholly alive what hope did I, a simple man counted amongst the few still living, have in such a city of darkness. My sight faded once more as all before me was stolen into gray.

What seemed like decades later my eyes rolled open to a most majestic sight, explosions of deep ocean greens and blues swam before me inside a cloud of thick gray smoke; The expanse of which was not high in the heavens nor near the skyline but was low lying, within the city itself. It was like watching the fierce beauty of an electrical storm, flashes of bright blue bolts flickered amongst the murky depths of blues and greens as it passed over the people lying about the streets, moving ever closer to me. Fear did not steal my as it passed over me, though I wanted to and that as a man I should have felt something at least. I knew then that even if I should like to, I could not force myself to feel alive. Once I had been so but now who knew now what I was, would I ever walk amongst the living again? The light in all its mystical poweress passed through me, I felt nothing at all, not the sorrows of pain nor the hope of life. Then I slept, as those around me, who aged not but did not live.

My ears rang with the sound of rumbling thunder, though when I opened my eyes not a cloud was in the sky. It was nearly dark, the sun or whatever was causing the radiant blue-white light was nearly sunk behind me, for the towers around me cast ominous shadows of obsidian. Then I noticed a small stone rolling out from the darkness between two towers nearby, when had come to a stop, so too did the resounding earthquake in my head. It had been kicked I swore it, for not of its own accord does a rock begin to roll, by what I swore was a man crouching just there, hiding and watching me.

A pair of catlike eyes flashed a glance of bright ochre flame from the shadows in my direction, as they did, I saw a mouth full of terrible fangs amidst a slender and pale beautiful face which remained half hidden beneath locks of jet black. Elongated ears jutted out from underneath the hair taller than the top of its head, this was no man. I felt the prey of a devilish hunter seeking a freshly taken meal, yet where horror should have been I was perplexed with wonder and intrigue. And then, all at once, the creature was gone as the dreamed stirred again... Would I wake this time into a world which I could feel and embrace with my own flesh, or was I destined to live in visions of solitude, more importantly, who am I? What is my name?

Priscilla let out a heavy sigh as she finished telling us of the dreamer whose eyes and mind she was held captive within. She had lived through much, for a girl whom in our old world would be no more than nine years old was much older inside, her soul was now ancient as the forest we lived in.

Whoever the unnamed being was, the soul was trapped within the shell unable to fade to death, becoming a ghost to wander once more. Would we, no, more imporantly could we ever find this being out there in the vast world in an ancient city.


In earnest anticipation of,
Jane
Without Charles

Friday, December 16, 2011

Charles & Freya Silent Eyes

The moment my sleep state ended and my eyes opened I felt Freya stir and in a moment her tiny blue and green eyes peeped out from underneath my jacket where she had slept next to my collar bone. The stump which we had started the fire under was still hot, many embers still burnt red. I sat up and scooted my butt closer to the fire, once I was close enough I reached out my hands to warm them up, as I did Freya bounded down my arm and out onto the top of the stump to glaze out into the fog which still lay thick not more than twenty feet before us.

Freya had turned her back on the fog and started gnawing on a small piece of corn that I given her the night before, which she had kept in her pocket. Her bright eyes, one a bright green the other an even brighter blue were gazing happily into a single fire red ember which I had set before her atop the stump when I swore something moved in the fog. Not a mass of dark shadows, but yellow cat like eyes. They hovered over out in the fog, though they had positioned themselves over Freya's head, so I could not tell if it was the gleem in her eyes melting with my imagination or if there truly were yellow cat like eyes dangling out in the fog more than five feet or more off the ground.

In all hopes of returning,
Charles & Freya

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

World's Over Journal XIX Odd Family

It was a day of the finest of quality, with Priscilla sitting with me at the kitchen table and her guardian friend Toki sitting under the threshold of the front door, we ate breakfast together. It seemed to me that Toki, the ghostly white and terrifying to look upon troll, had taken over the mothering rights to Priscilla; she rarely left her side and when she did, always she looked into my eyes, leaving only after we had both nodded consent.

On this gloomy morning the forest was filled with a thick fog and so the whole realm was aglow, a shade of tangible turtle shell green. The young maiden was wearing an egg shell blue dress which we had gone out into the crab tank Bahamut to obtain. No one else woke when we entered, Toki's eyes were filled with tears mingled with sorrow and hatred as she looked over those who slumbered within. Priscilla and I had gone in and grabbed her suite case and a crate of clothes which she had snuck aboard and hidden underneath the bunk beds amidst the food boxes. She was discussing her dreams, it seemed that she had only one constant dream the whole time she was in the vile state of sleeping death.

Whatever it was, I was surely glad she was awake. The birth of an odd family had begun, Charles, Toki, Freya and myself the parents of a lonely young girl in a scary new world filled with many dangers.

In earnest anticipation of,
Jane
Without Charles

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Charles & Freya Granite & Marsh

Naught more than thirteen steps beyond the massive network of shallow red Manzanita roots of the large tree which we had descended did we began to making our way slowly downhill. The ground opened up before us as we descended, not a tree before us or on either side, only loose rock and mud. Not soon after we began descending we found ourselves in a new labyrinth of granite walls covered in moss with large boulder formations jutted out from the earth here and there.

For hours we wandered about the granite labyrinth, ever so slowly making out way down hill; which really was the only thing that kept us from going in circles. We stopped once we reached what seemed like the bottom of the hill and the end of the granite walls which held our eyes captive under the fog, there before us was a marsh. Amidst an endless network of dark pools lay uneven ground of turf and tall grass, which we knew was unsafe even to look upon. Hidden from our eyes behind the patches of tall grass, rock and fog were dangers unseen, so there between the last two granite walls of the latest labyrinth we built a small fire for which we used small sticks for kindling.

In all hopes of returning,
Charles & Freya

Friday, December 2, 2011

World's Over Journal XVIII Priscilla & Toki

Priscilla was the only child with us, a family member of one of the soldiers whom travelled along with us inside Bahamut on our voyage into slumber. She turned to the troll and spoke aloud, ‘Toki, it’s okay this is Jane! I remember her; she was the one tucked me in each night, inside the belly of the iron beast,’ Priscilla’s face bore an ever widening smile as she spoke.

The troll, whose name apparently was Toki, lowered her arm allowing Priscilla to pass, as she did the young girl flew into my arms. Without noticing I had dropped to my knees and tears had begun streaming down my face as Priscilla wrapped her arms around me, I could feel the beautiful warmth of happy tears flowing freely down my neck.

Opening my eyes I saw that the troll named Toki’s face bore a smile, it was not hideous, despite a mouth full of fangs most of which were hidden behind her lips. There were no rough hard lines about her thin and beautiful white face, which beamed with life at the sight of her surrogate daughter’s happiness.

In earnest anticipation of,
Jane
Without Charles