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evergreen-dryad · 4 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 신의 탑 | Tower of God Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Khun Aguero Agnis/Twenty-Fifth Baam | Jyu Viole Grace Characters: Khun Aguero Agnis, Twenty-Fifth Baam | Jyu Viole Grace, Rachel (Tower of God), Headon (Tower of God), David Hockney (Tower of God), Ship Leesoo, Androssi Zahard, Hatsu (Tower of God), Anak Zahard Jr., Hwa Ryun, Mata (Tower of God) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Sirens, Deals with the Fae, Mutual Pining, Fluff and Angst, Body Possession, almost turns into a daemon au, Animal Transformation, Fairy Tale Elements, Witches, Deception, because it's rachel, Happy Ending, Misunderstandings, POV Multiple, Injury, Magic Summary:

The tales have warned before not to make deals with the fae. Especially those that are beautiful, and dangerous, and related to the sea-witch.

Viole finds he doesn't care, as he stares into the deep blue eyes of the Khun siren. He's going to risk it for their happily-ever-afters.

(In which there's a voyage over the sea, and falling in love. Khun Aguero Agnis somehow, inevitably, becomes the lighthouse for Viole Grace, and there are deals involved with legs. And a happily-ever-after.)

//here’s the thing I’ve been working on in August! Hence the silence. Enjoy~

Outwards, it is lonely dark water. The crunch of ice echoes around him as his craft moves through them slowly. In the distance, whalesong shudders.

Viole keeps an eye out. They've all been warned of the dangers.

Tales tell of fantastic creatures rising up from the sea, singing of your heart's desire. They sing in such a way to pluck out your heart, that you no longer know yourself or your right mind.

They always end with the poor soul drowning.

Though, Viole has doubts that entire shiploads can go missing, going from some of these embellished tales.

He had been following the voice over many leagues now. The voice that now winds into his ears, as sure as a shining thread of light.

Viole had stopped counting after the last fortnight had gone by in a blur. Bleak open water all around — it was easy enough to feel life was all a dream. The horizon always far away, destination unknown.

He sighs, burying his nose into his furs.

"Not too long now, Rachel," he murmurs out loud. "I'll see you again soon." Viole had found that talking out loud actually made him feel less like he was losing his mind, like uncorking a bottle the sea had deposited deep within him.

Birds swoop overhead, cawing furiously as they divebomb the water. It is that time of the day where the sun is almost directly overhead. Hunting time for the animals, but for Viole it is time to sleep. He retreats back into his cabin gratefully. Even here, the sunlight can be searing. He had found that out the hard way, back when he'd been starting out.

Back when he'd begun this journey to find a witch, for Rachel's legs.

Rachel, who might never run and laugh again, and walk on her own two legs to find her fortune. It had hit her especially hard because she was the only child.

Only children rarely fare well in the stories, so she had told Viole. Especially if one of their parents die and remarry and give them a stepsibling. They fare even worse if they're the oldest, she said, in that gloomy tone of voice that said she was ready to go off for a long sulk. And Viole didn't like that.

"I'll go," he said quickly before it looked like she'd start crying. "I'll go and be your legs. And - I'll look for your fortune, Rachel."

She'd brightened.

There were hedge witches, but they apparently did not know the magics needed for deep healing. So he'd travelled the other direction of the crossroads instead, to the coast.

(He was afraid to go too far from Rachel. Somewhere too far from all he'd known. )

But here he was anyway, set adrift in an unfriendly sea. Viole had never really had the chance to visit the ocean much before, but he found with a few rough starts he was actually a pretty good hand at sailing. He knew ropes well. The rest were adjusting the various parts of the ship he’d rented on the fly.

If he could just find a sea witch, he returns to his thoughts drowsily, perhaps even the fabled sea witch, of which the info broker said the sirens are abundant—

(“A Khun siren could probably do the trick,” Shibisu said pensively over folded hands. A critical glance went over him. “But are you sure? They’re known to be vicious and exacting.”)

—then they could swap Rachel’s bad legs for good ones.

They had to.

Making deals with any of the fae was bad enough, let alone with a witch, but Viole is nothing but determined to pay the price.

(If like repels like, then surely like can cancel out like?)

Sleep drags him down into its depths. The voice spirals along with him, and Viole dreams of sky-blue expanses.

At night, the voice echoes even clearer over the waves. It reverberates, bouncing off the icebergs almost eeriely, till Viole can feel the notes of the siren song hooking into his chest. Four clear notes, always the same. He didn’t understand why, but it was his only clue.

It seemed he was the only person who could hear it too. When he asked Hockney, the guy who rented him the craft, he’d shaken his head and looked at him oddly. And Hockney had eagle eyes who could see storms coming from far-off.

Maybe Viole’s special talents lay in hearing the unseen.

He gazes upwards at the sky, holding out his hands to measure the space between stars. He’s only approximating where he thinks he needs to go, after all. But he does have to make sure he doesn’t just sail right back where he came from, or fall off the edge of the earth.

How far will he need to go?

He had reached ice. He had never known there was even ice beyond the sea that bordered them. What would be beyond all this? His teeth were chattering.

Only the desperate can hear them. This was what the singing of the Khuns was renowned for — the lure they maintained, for their desolate icy kingdom.

Aguero Agnis knew this. He had watched the dark shape of the boat come over the waves, steering by night.

Hunger simmered deep within his bones, his tail shifting impatiently. He knows a chance when he sees it. Perhaps it’s not his, but he will take it. He had borrowed power for the occasion, after all.

He will be nothing more than his father's lackey if he stays under here.

There is not a single thing that truly belongs to him. All undersea belonged to his father, where the ice breathed and shone.

There's nothing more he hates than drowning alive. They know all about killing people, things slowly.

They are Khuns. They do not do things otherwise. They hunt with the killer whales, beating in the prey in a shell of bubbles.

This Khun, however, has no intention of following the same rules.

Softly, he unspooled the lure, note after note. The moon above, magnifying his every ulululation.

Yes, come, little fish.

It was coming to the ice shelf, the boat scraping through, slowing down.

It was easy enough for Aguero to hide under the sheet ice, their colouring naturally lending them camouflage in this world of blues and greys.

He flicked his tail in agitation. He couldn't get a clear visual without giving himself away, but he could hear the whistling breath of the human overhead, as it strained. The rhythm by which it rowed, its oars scraping and carving against the broken-up bits of ice.

Here it comes now, the prey over the waters. Aguero peers upwards through a small disc of air—

—and sees a young man, dark hair tied up in a little tail.

Why, if he isn't a lean one. The shape of his fate had a body like a fisherman. This was the hook he had fashioned for himself, and now all he had to do was throw himself upon it, and up the line and sinker he would go.

I will bend fate to my will. Moonbeams travelled down the runes he’d casted, etched into the grooves of his skin.

Now then, how could he make a grand entrance?

#tower of god #khunbam #25th baam #khun aguero agnis #jue viole grace #twenty fifth baam #kami no tou #tog #rachel #my writing #ed fics

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korora12 · 5 years

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Ladybug Week Day 2 - Bedtime Stories

Day 1 Day 3

Word Count: 3810

Grimm. Monsters of nightmare, of bedtime stories meant to scare children. Behave, little Tenny, or the creatures of grimm will fall from the sky and eat you. No one knows where they come from or even how they function since grimm fade and dissolve upon death.

What is known is this: they are the greatest danger any space-faring civilization will face. Grimm move freely through space without need of a ship or air, their black bodies invisible against the void and only small white masks reveal their presence. Their method of moving through space so quickly is a mystery. It’s unknown what they eat, or even if they need sustenance. They don’t seem to be intelligent; at the least, no one has ever been able to communicate with them. Where there is one grimm, you can be sure there are more, and their only goal seems to be the eradication of intelligent life throughout the galaxy.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Today was just not Ruby’s day. What started as a simple escort job for a crateship carrying raw construction materials to Draconis 3, known locally as Eltanin, had quickly gone south when a spawner appeared from nowhere. Spawners were massive grimm that ranged in size from football field to small island nation and did exactly as their name implied; they spawned more, smaller grimm. Ruby thanked the stars that the one that had appeared, vaguely whale-shaped and covered in tentacles, was only a little larger than the crateship they were guarding. They would’ve stood no chance against an alpha spawner.

Crescent Rose was fast, agile, and deadly, which made her perfect for dealing with the smaller grimm, and thankfully she wasn’t alone. A second ship, the Crocea Mors, had also been hired for the job. She was an old ship, old enough that she would’ve fit better in a museum than out in space, but she’d been well-maintained and still seemed to function well. She was much slower than Crescent Rose, but her heavier weapons let her crew unleashed hell on the spawner directly.

Still, two ships against an effectively infinite stream of grimm was not good odds, and the numbers began to take their toll. Crocea Mors couldn’t stay on the spawner long enough to do any real damage to it without getting swarmed, and every time Crescent Rose swooped in to pick some grimm off her hide, they were forced to leave the crateship wide open. During one such run, grimm had managed to break into the crateship through a side window. The area had been sealed off from the vacuum of space, but not before several dozen of the creatures had boarded the ship.

Ruby had made the decision to dock with the crateship to protect the crew; Jaune would just have to make do without them for a bit.

Yang had stayed on Crescent Rose, taking control of her many guns and pointing their firing AI at any grimm that drew close. Ruby, Blake, and Weiss had rendezvoused with the crateship’s small crew, then started hunting grimm on foot.

Since this was their first real battle together, Ruby made sure to keep an eye on how her crewmates fought. She herself had brought her lazrifle onboard; her ballistic rifle would’ve been more effective against the grimm, but it was also more likely to blow a hole in the ship walls. Each pull of the trigger caused a small explosion of heat and light wherever she pointed, but only a sustained pulse would be able to tear through a space ship’s thick, coated walls. With a sixteen-centimeter bayonet attached to the end, her gun was nearly as long as she was tall, but Ruby was far too familiar with its heft for that to hinder her.

While Ruby held back and mowed down grimm with near-perfect aim, Weiss was the first to rush in to the fray. She was a materia, a silicon-based species made of light-generating crystals who had made their home on the planet Atlas. Weiss in particular looked like someone had carved a human out of white diamond or glass. Their bodies, though usually mobile, were extremely hard, allowing her to fight grimm up close without worry.

Watching Weiss fight made it obvious why Yang was so smitten with her. She wielded a thin sword and lazpistol in tandem, and the way she moved was like art in motion. One wouldn’t expect a creature of stone to flow like water, but she managed to do just that as she danced between opponents, blade flashing and gun firing. She wore a pair of modded magboots that let her glide across the floor without lifting her feet and could send her shooting towards an opponent like a particularly pointy missile.

Following in her shadow was Blake. Weapons wielded in opposite hands and blade a bit broader, she was nonetheless similarly equipped as Weiss, but the way she fought set her apart. Where Weiss had danced, Blake instead flew. Her naturally high strength and reflexes were further heightened by selectively overclocking certain internal systems, causing her to move almost too fast to follow. Ruby had very good eyes, but it seemed the grimm were not so lucky as they fell to her sword and gun as easily as they did to Weiss’ as she leapt and bounded through their numbers.

The trio was making short work of the grimm when the entire ship suddenly shook. Ruby immediately hit her helmet’s comm. “What was that?”

“Are you kidding?” Yang’s voiced rang in her ear, tinged with panic. “Try looking outside!”

The sounds of battle faded as Blake and Weiss finished clearing out the hallway. “We’re not near a window. Tell me what’s going on.”

“The spawner just latched on to the crateship. I had to break loose to avoid being crushed.”

A new voice joined their channel. “We’ve lowered the barricades on all the windows and airlocks,” Captain Braun, the man in charge of the crateship, said. “Most of the breached areas are blocked off, but the site of the initial breach is still unresponsive. Atmosphere is dropping in the areas ahead of you, and if they get much further, we’ll start losing our shipment.”

“Jaune has an idea for destroying the spawner,” Ren chimed in next, “but we’re going to need some help to line up the shot.”

“Right.” Ruby’s mind whirled. The situation might be different, but what needed to be done was still the same. “Yang, rendezvous with Crocea Mors and give them whatever help they need to kill that thing. Captain Braun, close off the areas behind us. I don’t want this ship to completely depressurize if they break through.”

“You risk getting trapped if I do that.”

As the only member of the boarding party that couldn’t last for hours in the vacuum of space, Ruby was equipped with a skintight spacesuit, an oxygen tank, and a helmet, all worn under a large red cloak. “I’ve got three hours of oxygen. That should be plenty of time to clean up and get everyone inside before I run out.”

Ruby could hear heavy metal walls slam down behind her. She pressed a button on her helmet and it fabricated a clear visor before her eyes, sealing her off completely. It cut her off from most sound, but her crew was fluent in Atlesian Sign Language. “Let’s go,” she signed.

The trio continued down the hallway, more barricades dropping behind them as they went, until they finally reached their goal. At the end of the hall were a pair of massive metal doors partitioning them away from the gaping hole in the ship that Ruby knew was on the other side. Unfortunately for them all, a lot of grimm had made it through before the barriers came down, and some were still there, trying to pry it open. A loud bang on the door suggested there were yet more grimm still waiting to pile through.

Ruby attacked first, using the advantages of surprise and range to take out three grimm before they realized what was happening. One, a round thing held aloft by long, spindly legs, fired a series of white spines from its back. Blake deflected several with her sword while Weiss and Ruby let them shatter harmlessly against their skin and cloak respectively.

The spider-like grimm was already dissolving, courtesy of Ruby’s crackshot aim, by the time Blake and Weiss closed the distance between them. The battle was over in under a minute.

Ruby activated her comm, speaking into the silence of her helmet. “That clears up the grimm that got through. Now as long as the doors hold we’ll be—” She was cut off by a loud clang as both doors shook violently.

“Ruby,” Weiss signed, managing to get her point across despite both her hands still carrying her weapons, “please stop talking before you get us all killed.”

The trio backed away from the doors as they shook again. “Activate magboots,” Ruby signed. The women managed to stick themselves to the floor just in time for a fourth strike to tear a hole between the doors. Ruby’s cloak whipped around her as all the air in the hall suddenly decided it wanted to be outside. The onrushing air pressure bent one of the doors at an angle, widening the gap further.

Small, tube-shaped grimm, each no bigger than a small dog, began pouring through the opening in droves. They were covered in legs, as many jutting upwards as facing the ground, and each leg was tipped with tiny claws sharp enough to dig into the metal floor and pull them forward in spite of the onrushing air. At their size even a lazpistol could do enough damage to kill one with a well-placed shot, but there were so many they threatened to overwhelm them through sheer numbers.

The airflow cut out before the invading grimm managed to fill the space between them, leaving the room depressurized and its occupants free to move again. “Spread out,” Ruby signed, and her crewmates obeyed. Before the grimm could spread in response, she leaned over into a runner’s crouch, gun held tightly in both hands. Lines on her suit began to glow before the world blurred passed her.

Cybernetic enhancements in her legs, coupled with further enhancements in her boots, put Ruby’s top speed somewhere around 100 kilometers per hour while on the surface of Vale. With no air resistance, on a ship with lower gravity, Ruby topped out closer to 200.

Grimm scattered as she sped through them; she lowered her bayonet blade into their numbers, further spreading her range of destruction. With a slam of her legs she leapt high enough to bounce off the ceiling, bleeding off momentum with the help of gravity, then came to a complete stop by landing feet first in a puddle of ex-grimm directly in front of the open doors. Her crimson cloak settled around her, long enough to reach the ground and protect her from the claws of any grimm she missed.

Ruby took a moment, as her crew began picking off the stragglers, to take a look inside. Or perhaps it was outside now. Whatever purpose this room had once served, it wouldn’t be able to return to the task anytime soon. Most of the outer wall was gone. Remnants of window frames hinted at its previous shape, but they had largely been ripped away. In their place was a giant tentacle as wide across as the room was tall. A large chunk of flesh was missing from the end of it, no doubt repurposed into the attacking grimm.

Had the tentacle been responsible for breaking open the door? Much of the room was still blocked off from her angle, but if she could poke her head through quickly, she might get a better read on what they were facing.

Her comm sprung to life in her ear. “Ruby, look out!” Blake shouted.

She was already backpedaling before she could see why. A massive hand, black as night, grabbed the side of the bent door. Another one joined it, then two more. A great heave peeled the door from the wall, revealing the creature behind it.

Even hunched over as it was, the grimm’s head brushed against the ceiling. It’s bone-white mask, bulbous, mouthless, and misshapen, sat squarely between the shoulders of four pillars of muscles that might be called arms. Its furred torso, as wide as it was tall, rested atop four squat legs that spread in each direction for balance.

It tossed the door aside and charged.

Ruby’s crew was already moving before it reached them. Blake leapt straight up, slashing repeatedly at its torso as she rose, then ricocheted off its shoulder. Turning in midair, she began unloading her lazpistol into its mask as she flew backwards. Ruby put distance between herself and the monster and, the moment Blake was clear, started taking shots at its elbows, wrists, and shoulders. Weiss dashed around its feet, tearing gouges and jabbing holes in its legs and knees.

The creature kicked out a foot at Weiss, three stubby toes latching on to her and slamming her into the ground. A brief flash of purplish-white shone from inside her; the equivalent of a scream of pain for a species that spoke with light instead of sound.

Blake was already hurdling towards her, having bounced off a wall to redirect her flight, when she saw her scream. A full-force flying slash severed one of the toes, giving Weiss enough room to stab upwards into the sole pinning her down. The grimm flinched backwards and Weiss was able to free herself. Blake grabbed her arm to help her up, and neither seemed to notice as the monster raised two fists to the ceiling.

Not enough time to warn them via comm, Ruby instead did the only thing she could think of to get them out of harm’s way. She dashed forward at high speed, grabbing both of her crewmates as she passed, narrowly avoiding its falling fists and skidding to a stop in the room beyond their foe.

Blake gingerly rubbed her side where Ruby had grabbed her, but nodded her thanks anyway.

The grimm struggled to turn its oversized bulk in their direction, buying them a little time. “We’re wearing it down,” Ruby signed. “If we keep attacking it from different angles it should have trouble keeping up with us. Stay in motion and don’t lose focus.”

Before either woman could respond, the room began to shake. Ruby’s eyes widened in shock as she had a sudden realization. She’d zeroed in too much on the giant grimm attacking them that she’d forgotten to account for the spawner tentacle still protruding into the room. She’d assumed, based on experience, that it’d used up so much mass making their current foe that it wouldn’t be able to spawn more grimm for a while. She’d failed to consider that it could still attack them directly before she rushed them all into its range. It had no way to sense their exact location, Ruby was pretty sure of that, but that didn’t stop it from flailing wildly until it hit them.

She wrapped her cloak tightly around herself and hoped it would hold up. Weiss was zipping along the ground, dodging the writhing tentacle as best she could. And Blake…

Ruby’s heart stopped beating as she watched Blake misjudge a jump and take the full force of the spawner straight on. She hit the wall and didn’t bounce back.

Ruby screamed Blake’s name and it echoed in her ears.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The world was dark when Blake reactivated. She lay in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. A warm breeze blew through an open window, carrying with it the scent of flowers and grain. She was on a planet, then, which didn’t square up with her most recent memory of being thrown against a wall by a Grimm. Sitting at the side of her bed, head in her arms and seemingly asleep, was one Ruby Rose.

She was still wearing her spacesuit and cloak, with signs of helmet hair clear atop her head, despite the fact that Blake’s internal clock told her over a day had passed. A book lay half-open by her side, next to her discarded helmet.

Blake shifted in the bed and Ruby bolted upright. “Blake! You’re awake!” Her silver eyes were rimmed red, adding to her bedraggled look. “Thank goodness, I was so worried.”

“Hey.” A quick self-diagnostic revealed that most of the damage she’d suffered had been repaired. But still she wondered, “What happened? Is the crateship and crew okay?”

Ruby nodded while rubbing some sleep from her eye. She spoke in a quiet tone, more reserved than her usual cheer. “Yeah. Jaune’s plan worked. Yang says he had a mass driver that launched high-yield explosives straight into the spawner’s mouth. Blew it to smithereens. After that it was just clean up. Most of the Grimm retreated, and Weiss and I were able to kill the one on the ship and get you back to Crescent Rose.” Her hand dropped back to the bed. “But you were hurt really bad, more than Weiss could fix on her own, so we took you to a hospital once we got to Eltanin.”

Blake looked around the room she was in. It most certainly did not look like a hospital room. It looked more like someone’s house. She had a pretty good idea how the rest of the story went.

Ruby balled the bedsheets between her fists. She continued, “when we got to the hospital, they wouldn’t even look at you. They said…” she broke off, looking away. “Well it doesn’t matter what they said. It’s not worth repeating. Yang was ready to start threatening people if they didn’t admit you until one of the doctors pointed us towards a clinic in a nearby town.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it. “How could they do that? Just turn away someone in need?”

“It’s unfortunately common,” Blake answered, though she suspected the question had been rhetorical. “Hospitals aren’t legally required to have someone on staff who’s familiar with FAUNIS biology. Without anyone who can give the proper care, they’re allowed to turn us away.”

“It’s not right.” Blake could see tears forming in the corners of Ruby’s eyes. “You could have died. And they were going to let it happen. People like that…” she trailed off, not finishing the thought aloud.

Blake placed her hand over Ruby’s, pressing down until they finally unfurled. She understood Ruby’s anger viscerally; she’d felt it herself more than once.

When Ruby met her eyes again, her voice was quiet and plaintive, begging for an answer. “Are these the people we’re out here trying to protect?”

It was a difficult question. Blake couldn’t deny that she resented those sorts of people. But she’d also seen where that resentment could lead if left unchecked. “There are good people too, who do deserve protection.” She waved her hand around. “Who was it who took us in?”

Some of the visible tension began to leave Ruby’s shoulders. “Dr. Zong. He’s a FAUNIS too. Most of the town is, from the looks of it.”

Blake left Ruby to her thoughts. This was an important moment, but Ruby had to figure out for herself what it meant. It was easy to go from “these people willfully and cruelly hurt me” to “they don’t deserve my protection” to “the world would be better off without certain people in it”. She’d started down that path once, and getting off it had cost her dearly. She didn’t want Ruby to suffer the same way.

To be honest, Blake’s brush with near-death bothered her a bit as well. Diagnostic logs showed that a crack had formed in her core matrix, the one part of a FAUNIS’s body that wasn’t replaceable. Repairing it would’ve required careful application of properly programmed nanobots, which a hospital not set up for treating FAUNIS likely wouldn’t have had. If left unchecked, the damage could’ve worsened, causing loss of memory, personality, or even identity.

So the pair sat in silence for a while, until Ruby at last broke it. “I’m sorry.” She turned her hand over, wrapping her fingers around Blake’s. “I’ve seen racism before, but it was different this time. I was so scared that you might not wake up. The thought that I might never get to see you again… I wasn’t even that scared when the spawner showed up, but from the moment you hit the wall and didn’t get up, I wasn’t able to think straight.”

There was something more here. Something Blake was supposed to say. Ruby was important to her, Blake knew that much. Even though she’d only known her for a couple months, Blake found herself drawn towards her captain in a way that wasn’t entirely unfamiliar.

She’d told herself at first that her interest was only in trying to prevent Ruby from turning out like that man. But the more she got to know this woman, the more certain she became that the similarities she’d noticed were only surface similarities. At their cores they were drastically different people.

And anyway, getting things right with Ruby wouldn’t make up for or undo her past failures.

Despite that, there was still a definite attraction there, but it wasn’t the sort of thing Blake was ready to put a name to. So instead she said, “Thank you,” and hoped it was enough. She squeezed Ruby’s hand with her own, then pulled it back.

“Of course,” Ruby replied.

Unable to meet her captain’s eyes, Blake’s sight instead fell on the book splayed out on the bed nearby. “Did you fall asleep while reading?”

A hint of pink touched Ruby’s cheeks. She picked up the book, gently straightening creased pages before shutting it fully. “It’s an old adventure novel my dad used to read me to help me sleep. I thought you might like it, so I was reading to you. Not that you probably heard any of it. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” Blake said, parroting Ruby’s earlier words. “Are there any grimm in it?”

“Completely grimm-free. It’s a fantasy story about a married couple, a historian and an archaeologist, who discover an ancient civilization and are changed by its unknown magics.”

“Sounds interesting. Do you want to keep reading it to me?”

Ruby’s face lit up with a grin as she flipped back to the first page. Blake did her best to stay awake, listening as a story filled the air between them, but doing so proved difficult. The air was warm, the bed was soft, and Ruby was nearby. Before the first chapter was done, she’d turned once more to the land of dreams.

#rwby #ruby rose #blake belladonna #ladybug #ladybug (rwby)#ladybugweek #fanfiction #my writing #The Last Frontier #space au #Ladybugweek2k19

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dw-writes · 7 years

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NaNoWriMo - Day Two

Hello everyone! I know I just posted Day One not too long ago but I felt like I needed to add what I wrote for day two as well! I’m working pretty ahead of schedule, which is nice, and I’m enjoying this story a lot more than I thought I would! So here it is, day two!

As I said, feedback is is very welcome and appreciated!

Days: 1//2//3//4//5//6//7//8//9//10 11//12//13//14//15//16//17//18//19/20 21//22//23//24//25//26//27//28//29//30

of a mermaid.

The clam grew cold and hard and burned her skin. She gasped and struggled to free herself of it without losing grip on her tail. “Up there, in the light waters, where you are care free and out of harm’s way, you dream of something more,” it spoke against her skin, “You dream of breaking the surface and going beyond.”

The little mermaid dropped her tail, let it spiral down, down, down into the darkness below, into the depths that made her seem pale in her own eyes. She ripped the calm from her with both hands. The skin of her fingers burned. She smelled a sharpness to the water, looked up to see thin clouds of red floating away from her head and into the water above. As the clam left her hands, it ripped at the skin of her fingers. More clouds of red. More clouds of blood. The mussel at her waist grew so cold that it hurt. She cried out and tried to pry it free. “Sweet shallows child, sweet sun kissed child,” it cooed.

Thin tendrils slithered up her tail. The mussel tumbled into the darkness as she released it. It bumped against the top of a creature she had never seen before, one with a light that bobbed in front of its, with thorns for teeth and extended far beyond its bulbous face. Something lurked deep down behind it, something with long and pale limbs that brushed the mermaid’s tail in eight different places. Eight. She knew by the way her scales grew so cold that they were hot.

“Let me help you,” the creature croaked. It’s light extended up to the little mermaids face. The creature’s long body emanated a cold that thickened the water.

Ten bone thin fingers clamped down on the head of the thing. They ripped the head back, let the light bob far behind its intended reach, and it lit up the face of a gruesome woman. She was more bone than skin with eyes that were startling dark in her bleached white face. Another hand, another ten bone thin fingers, fluttered through the water to the little mermaid’s face. There were six more of these, six more ten fingered hands that brushed and smoothed and caressed the little mermaid’s tail and sides with burning touches. Tendrils of darkness of blacks and purples and greens, snaked up the woman’s naked chest and dipped into the spaces of her ribs. Beneath her, the tendrils were illuminated with a light of their own, beautiful spots of purples and greens with pinks hidden in a forest of paper thin tentacles. The woman was a jellyfish and a skeleton in one and it made the little mermaid’s heart sputter and race.

Her jaw fell open to show a cavernous and empty space. “Let me help you, my sun kissed child,” the creature hissed from between a cage of ten bones, “Let me grant your wish to see the above.” Ten dull fingertips tapped against the curve of the little mermaid’s skull, smoothed over the bald skin. They were just as white and cold and unnerving against the little mermaid’s rich and warm brown skin as the sun scars of the surface were in the day time. She wanted nothing more than to swim away, to leave, but she knew she was trapped.

Prey stuck in the vice grip of a predator. The little mermaid thought of her six sisters and wanted to weep.

“I ask for a simple token,” the creature said. Her voice was not her own and it croaked and rasped and it resonated in the little mermaid’s skull with such pain that her eyes screwed shut. “A simple token,” it repeated. Another hand, another ten dull fingers, pressed against the curve of the mermaid’s throat. “Your voice.”

“My voice?” The question came as a surprise. The little mermaid couldn’t remember the last time she spoke, the last time her voice danced in her ears, only that it had last been amongst her sisters as they sang and swam through pods of whales. It was a soft sound, a soothing sound, the sound of waves and whale song and the warmth of the waves that broke against the shore.

“Your voice,” the creature repeated. The little mermaid stared into the voids of her eyes and trembled. “You know me?”

“The witch,” she breathed. The skull of the predator trapped in the witch’s hand cracked under pressure. “You could take me up there?”

“Better,” came the reply. The witch snapped her head one way. It clicked as it slowly went the opposite. The ten dull fingers at the mermaid’s throat enclosed around it. “I could make you one of them.”

The mermaid froze. Her hands were curled against her concave chest where her heart beat a rhythm so fast and so hard that she thought the water moved around her. Her tail was a smooth twister that burned with a cold so hot that she lost feeling in the tip tips of her scales. The skeletal witch cracked as she moved closer to the little mermaid. Shocked and stings traveled up her tail from the tentacles of the witch.

“One of them?” the mermaid whispered.

“Yes,” was the answer, “All I need is your voice.”

She thought of her sisters, her six sisters with voices so beautiful that they lit up the ocean. But they may be nothing compared to the shore, to the world above the surface of the water. “Could I come back?” she asked and the question was fragile in her mouth.

“A fortnight above and you return to the sea and I return your pretty little voice in exchange for what you bring me from above,” was the tender reply. Another crack, this one sharp enough to make the little mermaid jolt, and the creature in the witch’s grasp floated down into darkness.

“Okay.”

Four letters later, a warmth grew in her throat. The currents moved, changed, swirled up the length of the little mermaid’s tail. She was pushed up, up, up, out of the cold grip of the witch and towards the growing light above. A pressure grew in her skull, a skull that was slowly covered in soft fur, in hair, in the strands she had seen atop the heads of the people on the surface. She felt naked from the waist down, naked and bare and vulnerable in ways that she had never felt before. Her chest burned. Oh, did it burn and it hurt like nothing she had felt before.

She breached the surface and opened her mouth to take in greedy gulps of the crisp air. It was sharp as it pushed through her body for the first time, a beautiful pain that made her laugh. She had never felt anything like it before. Her body fell beneath the cresting waves. The little mermaid pushed with her arms, arms that were now small and full and no longer the delicate limbs that stretched as far as she could see. Her legs – they were legs now, not a tail – moved in a way that her tail once did and she could not feel the ocean floor against her toes. She pushed around, took in her surroundings, and spotted the lights of the harbor not far away.

Her fat fingers and toes and arms and legs were heavy as the little mermaid pushed herself through the water to the wooden planks. She grasped them, the wood soft under her hands, and pulled herself out of the ocean for the first time. Her naked torso pressed into the dry planks above the water. She dragged herself forward, pulling her feet free.

Pain erupted in her hips, in her thighs, in every inch of warm brown skin that had grown from her waist and ended in ten tiny toes. She cried, a sound so harsh to her ears in the air around her. It hurt. The witch had never said it would hurt.

A thunderous sound filled her ears and devoured her cries into the night. The little mermaid wished to push herself back into the water, to take back her promise and go home. There were men surrounding her, asking her questions while their hands fluttered over her damp and open body. A large cloth that rank of death and fish was thrown over her and a man almost four times her size scooped her from the docks.

“Fetch the doctor now!” he called, “Quick!”

A fortnight was fourteen days. Fourteen times that the sun set and the moon rose and they chased each other over the sea faring town in an endless game.

Fourteen days was three hundred and thirty six hours. She had spent five of them staring at a clock, one that moved and ticked away the time of men and women and controlled them from sun to moon rise. Hour six came and the discovery that she could not speak came with it.

The man that had taken her from the docks was a fisherman. He told her himself and she hissed and spat and slapped him until he demanded to know why she was so angry. Her lips moved with silent curses. He was dumbfounded by her quiet fury and almost laughed. He asked her name. She tried to give it and what would have been sound disappeared under the crash of a wave against the side of a ship. The man snorted.

“You’re a mute, course,” he muttered then, and scooped up a feather and parchment, “Can you write?” When she stared at the feather, he swore and tossed them aside. “Then you need a name.”

Angrily, the little mermaid’s mouth moved and the waves crashed again outside. The fisherman frowned. “You keep tryin’ to speak and you say nothing.” His large hand grasped her jaw, pushed it open with his thumb and finger, and he leaned close to peer into her mouth. “You have a tongue but no words,” he mused.

Her hands, ones that were thick and clumsy, pushed against his face and chest to get him to let go. He did with a laugh. “Then I’ll name you, yeah?” he asked.

She shook her head with the deepest of frowns. “No?” he questioned.

She mimicked his mouth movement and shook her head again.

Day three came and he named her anyway, tired of calling her girl and woman and darling. Instead, he called her Avisa, a name he had gotten from another fisherman who passed through. “It means ocean,” he had told her when she began to protest. “Is that not where you came from?”

Her brow knit. She tried to tell him the sea is where she came from, that the sea was her home, but he only squinted at the way her mouth moved and grew tired of her flailing arms and violent posturing that constantly threw the blankets from her naked body.

The moon rose that evening and he came to her with armfuls of cloth. “It’s indecent,” he grunted as he dropped the cloth on the bed she had claimed for three days and two nights, “For a lass to go without clothes. Won’t have the Father come after me for being crude to a lass who drives me mad.” He motioned to the clothing. “Get dressed.”

The little mermaid plucked at the cloth. She had seen some float through the sea time and time again to disappear into the darkness but she did not know what it was for. The fisherman found he had to be crude to help her pull a dress on. She fought him, dug her dull nails into his cheek and made him bleed and he yelled at her to stop being a child. When he stood her up to tug the dress properly around her body, she collapsed.

“What happened?” he asked as he fell next to her. Her hands pulled the skirts up, pressed into the flesh of her thighs and she cried. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

The feather sat at her bedside with a roll of parchment, always within reach in case she remembered a craft she had never known. She picked it up, stared at the sharp end of the quill, and stabbed the exposed palm of the fisherman. He yelped. “What’d you do that for?” he shouted. She patted her leg, gritted her teeth against the pain, and stabbed the swell of his palm again. He didn’t yell. He stared. “Is that what it feels like?” he asked. He ripped the quill from her hand when she stabbed him again. “Give me that,” he muttered. He tossed it out of reach, watched as it spun to the middle of the room. “How much of it hurts?” he asked.

His hands were large and pale against her deep brown skin, shades lighter, like wood that was in the sun for far too long. One alone encased the rise of her hip, the tip of his thumb pressing into the folds of her thighs and her body, while the rest of his fingers splayed over the curve of her backside. Both were dangerously close to indecent areas, he knew, but he was more focused on the pain that flashed over the mermaid’s face. His hand traveled up, over the crook of her hip, and the pain disappeared. “So it stops there?” he asked. She nodded. Now, his hand traveled down, traced her thick thighs and knobby knees, dipped behind them and up over the soft muscle of her calves to the pale skin of her feet.

Every inch stung like a thousand quill tips.

Her face was wet when he stopped. He pushed her hair from her face, noting how it was brown in shade and red in the sun. It had been black when he found her, dripping wet and cold, on the docks long before. He wondered what other colors it had. He apologized and folded her into his chest.

Day six he gave her his name, finally, and she was able to curse her silent curses at him with the name Elias on her lips. He was fond of it, of the curve of her mouth as she tried to yell his name.

They were a pair. By day seven, Elias was helping Avisa to hobble through the fishing market. She tried to swear at every fisherman she saw, even took a fish by its tail and flung it far into the sea, and Elias laughed every time.

Day eight and Elias sat down to teach her to write. It was a slow and arduous process, one that made her angry and him frustrated. When he started to write words and speak them, it seemed to click. She knew the sounds, they were still in her head where her voice still lingered, and her hand was clumsy as she traced out the letters.

She wrote the letter C over and over when he told her how it sounded. She patted her chest and pointed at the letter, then at the sea beyond Elias’s humble shack. “The sea,” he finally said, “You came from the sea.”

Avisa threw her hands in the air with relief. She patted the paper, than herself, and shook her head, her lips forming the words, “Not Avisa,” as carefully as she could.

It took a long time for Elias to stop laughing. Hours. He had to leave her behind in the shack to pace the docks and when he returned he doubled over with laughter again. Such a large man, with a weathered face and wiry scarlet hair, laughing so loudly and for so long made her smile, despite her frustration.

“The sea and the ocean are the same around here,” he finally said when the laughter passed. He sank next to her, falling into the mattress that smelled too much like salt and water and age. “Though in other places, they are not.”

She patted his knee then. He told her stories of seas and of oceans and of places that thought they were two different things until the sun rose on day nine.

She slept for day ten.

Day eleven and she wrote a letter and stuffed it in a bottle.

Day twelve had her begging Elias to take her to a sea, to a different sea, one far away from where he found her, one where she would never have to see the waters she had risen from. “Show me everything,” she begged, her letters shaky and fragile, “Show me everything you love about this place.”

On day thirteen, Elias and Avisa were gone from the shack. A wagon was purchased and was little belongings Elias had were loaded into the back. They left as the moon disappeared from the sky and the sun warmed the day. They traveled far, so far, until the horse grew tired and the shore was far behind them. They slept in the wagon that night, Avisa with no blankets to keep her warm from the cold night. She did not need it. She had lived in far colder waters.

By sunset at day fourteen, Elias and the wagon rumbled over the rocky shore of distant waters, far from where he had found Avisa, far from where the witch would find her. “This is a sea,” he had told her as she limped across the smooth stones with bare feet. He followed close behind in case she fell. “The sea, you see,” he laughed at his own joke. Avisa scooped up a pebble and tossed it at him. He grinned and it was as beautiful as the scars of light across the ocean floor. “Is smaller than the ocean,” he finished. He stood out of reach of the water. Avisa knelt, her toes in the wet sand as the waves pulled at her ankles. The bottle was gripped between her fingers.

He left her as the sun set and turned the water scarlet. He wasn’t far, up on the grassy knoll behind her, where the wagon sat and the horse ate. He watched her all night as she watched the water and waited for a witch that would never come. The moon was full and beautiful and reflected off the water. It painted her in ways that it never could in the sea. Elias noticed that, at night, her hair was black and purple and blue, like the water of the ocean poured down her back.

She was still crouched when the sun rose. Her legs were numb, the pain lingering in the back of her mind. The moon was pale as the sky lightened around it. She watched and smiled and for the first time in fifteen sunrises she laughed. She stood and the sand stabbed the tender soles of her feet. Avisa plucked rocks from the shore and stuffed them into the bottle. She motioned for Elias to join her at the water’s edge. He did. She gave him the bottle, threw her arm as though she was throwing it. He shook his head at her but did as he was asked: he threw the bottle so hard and so far that the rocks clinked against the glass and the bottle gave a hollow thwump as it hit the water.

Avisa held out her hand to him. He took it with another shake of his head. “To see the world then?” he asked her. She took two languid strides forward. The pain was an afterthought to the journey that now opened before her.

As she climbed into the wagon, she swore she heard a scream of thunder and gusts of wind. She wondered if her words had made it to the witch already, if she had read with her dead and haunting eyes that Avisa had never intended to return to the shore that she appeared at, that the humans had two places that were seas and that the witch never said which one, that Avisa hoped that her voice was enough to pay the debt that she owed the witch on the fourteenth day.

“Enjoy it in ways that I never could,” she had written in her trembling hand, “And I may enjoy my days in pain amongst a world I dreamed of.”

“Avisa and Elias were married seven years later and had seven girls to them. The seventh was mute and in pain, just as Avisa was, but came with the grandest of luck. She, too, had seven daughters, as did her seventh daughter, and her seventh daughter still, until our mother, the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter six times removed, gave birth to you.”

Alyssa, the eldest of the sisters, with hair the color of the sun and skin a cool brown, pressed her finger against the nose of her smallest sister, Anyanka. Anya scrunched her nose and twisted away with peals of laughter bubbling from her lips. Her feet ached as she danced across the floor. Alyssa closed the book in her lap, watching her youngest sister twirl in the middle of the room.

Anya was the seventh daughter, Alyssa the first, and the two were the closest of the sisters.

#dw nano 2017 #you can be the king but watch the que conquer #original works

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valley-of-dyingstars · 7 years

Text

The Whale

“Funland?” Greg read aloud, trying to place if he had heard the title before. It sounded familiar, the kind of name one might hear in passing but not think twice on. “What is this place?”

Greg looked out at the area beyond the sign, and he was surprised to find the desolate remains of what was once a small theme park. There was a merry go round, a small swing ride, a few carnival game stands filled with mouldy teddy bear prizes. There was a small building at the back of the theme park that had a round shape. The front of the building was painted to look like the face of a clown, it’s wide smiling mouth serving as the entrance. Greg would probably avoid such a place when it was in good condition. With the paint on the eyes chipping away, making it look like the clown had no pupils, he found it absolutely terrifying.

“Looks like fun,” Hanna stated with a cheeky grin. She nudged Greg with her elbow to try and get a laugh out of him, but he couldn’t manage to crack a smile. “You alright?”

Greg managed to avert his eyes from the clown’s gaping smile, repressing a shiver. “I’m fine,” he responded, nervously rubbing his arm. He didn’t want to come off as a wimp in front of his sister and risk her teasing. “Lets just get out of here.”

Hanna frowned and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it kiddo. This place was probably shut down because no one wanted to come out here,” she theorized, she put on an easygoing smile. “We are in the middle of nowhere.”

Hanna motioned towards the woods and abandoned park that surrounded them. As she looked beyond the broken down attractions, she let out an excited gasp. “Hey, I can see water back there!”

Hanna pointed to the space behind the clown head. There was a wide river at the edge of the park and floating within the water were a number of animal themed paddle boats. Most of the boats were made to look like swans, but Greg could see a turtle and a few different fish scattered across the edge of the river. None of them looked to be in good shape, but he was sure one of them could make it to the other side without capsizing.

The river was surprisingly calm, with a weak current and a lack of choppy waves. It wouldn’t be difficult for them to get across in one of the paddle boats. Greg was thankful the theme park was abandoned. They wouldn’t need to pay a fare in order to take one of the boats across the water. And since he couldn’t see a bridge, using the boats was their best option.

Greg voiced this plan to his sister and, unsurprisingly, she was immediately on board.

Hanna enthusiastically pulled Greg off towards the river without a moment of deliberation. “I haven’t used a paddle boat since I was nine,” she gushed. “This will be way more fun than crossing a bridge.”

Greg wasn’t nearly as happy to ride in a dinky little raft covered in moss, but he was definitely eager to get out of this creepy theme park.

The boats bobbed within the water, lined up in a long row that stretched from one end of the park to the other. Each of the animals were tied up to their own hook that had been driven into the earth. Some of the boats were far too damaged to even float in the water, their bases filling up with liquid that had them sinking under the waves. Only a select few looked like they were still functioning.

The siblings approached a boat that was made to look like a cartoonish whale. The head was massive, taking up most of the whale’s body, and it had large black eyes. The tail was thin and obviously disproportionate to the rest of the whale, but Greg supposed he shouldn’t be concerned about the accuracy of theme park paddle boats. The mouth of the whale was wide open, similar to the clown. Greg had to assume that the seats for the boat were located inside the mouth of the whale.

“Do we have to take that one?” Greg complained as they got closer. The painted highlight in the whale’s eye made him cringe. “It’s probably the creepiest one.”

“I thought you liked whales,” Hanna said, giving him a pout.

“Doesn’t mean I want to get into the mouth of a whale,” Greg muttered, crossing his arms in front of his chest. His aversion to the whale wasn’t exactly rational. It wasn’t as if the boat would eat him. However, that didn’t make him any more open to using it.

“It’s not terrible in here, actually,” an accented voice called out from inside the mouth of the whale.

Both Hanna and Greg squealed in alarm at the foreign voice that had invaded their conversation. They backed away from the water’s edge in an effort to distance themselves from whatever stranger had frightened them.

Greg clung to Hanna’s arm as an elderly man emerged from the whale. He was thin and short in stature, not much taller than Hanna. The man had thick white hair tucked under a flat cap and a handlebar moustache. The black pants he wore were held up by matching suspenders, and the sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled up to the elbow. Round spectacles sat on the bridge of his nose, magnifying his pale blue eyes. At first glance, he looked a lot more approachable than the woodcutter had been.

“I apologize,” the man said, and Greg took note of his Italian accent. He held up his hands in surrender, as if trying to ease the children of their fear. A friendly smile lit up the old man’s face as he stepped out of the whale and approached them. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just looking for a seashell in the whale. No luck, I’m afraid.”

Greg and Hanna exchanged a look of confusion, both wondering why the man thought he could find a seashell in a boat, let alone a boat on a river nowhere near the coastline. Hanna decided to come right out and ask the stranger the question that had popped into both their minds.

“Why were you looking for a seashell,” Hanna asked, slightly suspicious of this stranger’s actions. “Did you loose it or something?”

“My son lost it,” the man said, his eyes downcast and his lips forming a frown. “The whale was the last place I saw him. I thought perhaps,” he trailed off, not wanting or feeling the need to complete his story. He looked back up at Hanna and Greg, turning chipper once again. “I was quite surprised when I heard your voices as I searched. You see, I haven’t seen any children in this park for so long.”

“No kidding,” Greg replied, a hint of sarcasm mixed in with the nervousness in his voice.

“What are you two doing here?” The man asked curiously, stuffing withered hands into his pockets. “Are you lost?”

“Sort of,” Hanna answered, somewhat sheepish. “We were just going to cross the river to get onto the path.” Hanna held out her hand and introduced herself. “I’m Hanna, and this is my brother Greg.”

The man stepped forward and took her hand with a smile. “Lovely to meet you Hanna and Greg. My name is Giuseppe,” he greeted them both.

Greg shook the man’s hand with a hesitant and loose hold. He wanted to get this encounter over with and continue on their journey home. However, something Giuseppe had said earlier was nagging at the back of his mind.

“You said that the whale was the last place you saw your son,” Greg recalled. “Is he lost?”

Giuseppe seemed surprised by his question for a moment, but he gave Greg a small sad smile. “He’s not lost, not completely,” he replied, seemingly unaware of how confusing and cryptic that answer was. “He’s just inside. Come, you can meet him if you would like.”

Giuseppe turned and started walking back towards the theme park. Greg would have been very unwilling to follow him, but due to the man’s strange answer when it came to his son, he was curious to find out what he meant. Perhaps he was just wording his sentences incorrectly.

Greg looked toward Hanna for some kind of guidance and she shrugged halfheartedly. “Maybe he has a phone with him here,” she whispered, trying to remain optimistic. She followed him with the slightest hint of wavering in her steps. Greg could tell that even Hanna was a little wary about this stranger, no matter how friendly he was.

They were led by Giuseppe back in front of the clown structure, and the sight of it caused knots to form in Greg’s stomach. He had to let Hanna pull him along as they followed the elderly man inside. It wasn’t as if he would have been able to move on his own when he was paralyzed with fear.

The entrance was pitch black, receiving no natural sunlight from the outside, and Greg stumbled as he tried to shuffle about in the darkness. He was glad he still had a firm grip on Hanna’s arm or he might have fallen on his face. However, even with his sister beside him he couldn’t help the bubbling of fear in his stomach. He was beginning to have very pronounced second thoughts when it came to this venture.

Greg heard a soft click up ahead and the room they were in flooded with light. The relief Greg felt when he was able to see again was short lived when he found what the room was filled with. Wall to wall and suspended from the ceiling were dozens upon dozens of wooden puppets. On a good day Greg would be freaked out by such a room, he had taken well to creepy wooden puppets. That day he was terrified because every single puppet that surrounded him and Hanna was missing their eyes.

He could feel Hanna go tense beside him when she took in the sight. “Where-” she started but her voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat. “Where is your son?”

Giuseppe took one of the puppets off of it’s strings and brought it down to show her. “Right here,” he stated, holding the puppet in his arms out towards them. This puppet’s eyes were also gone, leaving empty wooden sockets. The mouth was hanging loosely open in what Greg would describe as a silent scream. “He’s seen better days, but I try to keep him well dressed when the day comes.”

Hanna smiled politely and pulled Greg along as she took a small step back. “I see,” she said, her voice remaining cheery. She spoke as if she were talking to a child and playing along with a wild story that they had just invented. “Which day are you dressing him up for?”

Another step back. Greg would have ran out of there if he didn’t have a firm grip on his senses. It wouldn’t be a good idea to run right away and risk Giuseppe chasing after them.

“For the day I get the seashell and restore his soul,” Giuseppe replied. He motioned to all the other marionettes around and above them. “All these children are missing their souls you see, that’s why they have no eyes. After all, the eyes are the window to the soul.”

This time Greg was the one to initiate the step backwards. He needed to get out of this place and away from this man.

“What happened to them?” Hanna asked, half in fear and half in curiosity. Even though this man’s story was completely insane, for a moment her eyes took on a look of sympathy.

“Their souls were lost in the river,” Giuseppe replied, his voice was mournful and full of regret. “That water is much more treacherous than it appears.”

“That’s so sad,” Greg responded, trying to sound natural. He wasn’t nearly was collected and convincing as his sister was. The story he told was kind of sad, if it hadn’t been completely ridiculous.

“It’s very sad,” Giuseppe whispered, looking down at the slack face of the puppet that he held. There were tears glittering in his pale blue eyes. Looking up at the siblings, he gave them a watery smile. “But once the seashell is broken they will all be free and become children again.”

“Well, I hope you can find that seashell,” Hanna said with a plastic grin. “Sorry that we’ve been taking up your time, but we have to get home.”

She took several large steps back this time and Greg struggled to keep up with her pace. The more distance they gained between themselves and the old man, the safer he felt.

“Of course, I wouldn’t want to keep you,” Giuseppe stated with a friendly wave and a good natured smile. “I hope you two have a safe trip home.”

Taking this as her signal to leave, Hanna turned on her heel and pulled Greg out of the building. Greg had to run to match her brisk walking pace, but he didn’t mind. He would have sprinted out of the building if he wasn’t afraid of leaving his sister behind.

“Goodbye!” Hanna called out over her shoulder. They had made it to the building’s entrance.

As the siblings stepped out onto the grass, completely out of the clown’s mouth Greg let out a sigh of relief. He nearly jumped five feet when he heard Giuseppe call out from within the clown structure.

“Be careful on that river and within those woods children,” he called to them, remaining cheerful in his tone. “Many things can be lost there.”

Greg gazed at Hanna with wide eyes. “Lets get out of here.”

“Right behind you.”

The two ran towards the riverside as fast as they could. Greg boarded onto one of the undamaged swan boats with out a moment of hesitation. He looked over expectantly to find his sister meandering on the shore.

“Aw,” Hanna whined, loosing all previous urgency she had possessed. “I kinda wanted to use the turtle boat.”

Greg groaned in frustration at her complete lack of priorities. “Now is not the time!” he hissed. “We have to get out of here before that guy comes after us and tries to turn us into puppets.”

Hanna rolled her eyes when she heard his overly dramatic tone. She untied rope that had anchored the swan to the shore and stepped into the seat beside Greg. “I don’t know if that guy was going to hurt us,” Hanna said, looking regretful with their behaviour. “I mean, he’s crazy but not dangerously crazy.”

Greg scoffed as he put his feet on the peddles. “Well, I don’t want to stick around to find out.”

The two of them managed to turn the boat around so that the head of the swan was facing the opposite side of the river. They peddled as hard as they could and were able to stay mostly on coarse despite the soft current that was pushing them down stream.

The further they got from the theme park and that clown, the more relaxed Greg became. He let out a breath he had been holding since he had first seen that clown.

He placed his hand down on the edge of the boat his shoulders slumping in exhaustion. It took him a second to notice the long thin object that had been tucked into the rim of the boat. At first he thought it was a stick, but as he pulled his hand back to look it over he found that it was to smooth and pure white to be a stray twig.

Greg picked up the object nimbly and examined it was curious eyes. It was a flute.

#drama 205 #story #fairytale au #fairytales #hansel and gretel #pinocchio

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