literature

things the darkness fears

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Literature Text

We have many roads.

We have the roads of air, which we traveled with our delicate winged feet, and the roads of ice that we skimmed with only a sharpness of touch. We have many roads, and not all of them have ends. Our roads can wind and stretch beyond time and can lead past mere destinations and places to things and ideas and states of being.

Our roads are old, and they are deep, and they are worn.

We used to travel our roads often; sure-footed and without hesitation we would set forth to destinations known and unknown - there were no dangers for us then, for we are creatures of movement and change, and there are things even the darkness fears. We were restless creatures in those young days, looking only to discover and consume. But as the sun grew dimmer so did we, and we thought more of settling and less of travelling. With the rise of the lesser creatures we diminished and found our homes in the dark and lost places. We have watched others walk our roads blindly, and we have seen the dangers that now lie in wait for them.

We remain untouched and unthreatened. In our homes we doze and dream, and we no longer feel the wanderlust and the aching need to feed. We are quiet now, but we are not gone, and although some of us sleep deeper than others still we feel the presence of the lesser creatures.

We do not like to be disturbed.

--

There was a certain stillness in the air that day, something I could not quite identify, that made me strangely uneasy. It wasn't quite caution, it wasn't quite fear... but there was something in that place that felt wrong. My fingers danced nervously over Piiska, hoping that the presence of it would calm me. I breathed in slowly and glanced over at Jade, hoping that he could not sense my discomfort. He seemed quiet, focused, and at ease - just the way he always is. I tried to convince myself that the feeling was only doubt, that I was simply channeling fear, but nothing would bury or mask what I felt.

"Strange..." Jade mused, breaking the silence. I started and looked at him, searching his face for some sign that he felt it too.

Nothing.

"The trees over there... do you see?" He stopped and gestured, my eyes following the path of his hand. "There's something not right about them."

Nothing is right with this place, I thought for a moment as I examined the plants. "They look..." But there were no words for what I saw, what I felt. It was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't say it.

"And over there..." Jade pointed in the distance. Something screamed inside of me, something old and strong and afraid.

"We need to go." I said, my hands shaking involuntarily. Run. Run run run.

"Not yet, there's something there..." He moved closer.

Run run run run RUN

"Don't, Jade. We have to go." I felt like screaming. The fear was overwhelming. "Can't you feel it? We shouldn't be here! We have to go."

He stopped finally and glanced back at me. "What do you mean, Danii? What is it?"

He couldn't feel it. How could he not feel it? It was in the air, I was breathing it. It was in my body and my eyes. It was screaming and freezing in me : RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN. I could feel the sweat pouring from me, dripping onto the damp earth below.

And then something moved behind him.

I screamed.

--

We can feel them walking above us. We can feel them coming closer, rustling, shaking...

We wish to sleep but instead they trample through our home and make noise. We are disturbed. We are angered.

We rise, gathering form around us and coming up into the light. We have not felt light for many ages, we shudder for a moment as it warms us.

Our attention focuses on the intruders. One has fallen. Our presence overwhelms him, our very nature beyond the bounds of his world. The other knows us.

--

Danii screamed but there was no sound. The world felt like it was covered in static and washed out with light. Her eyes were fixed on Jade and as she moved to him, but her movements made no sound.

She knelt beside him, willing her body to move closer. She felt for a pulse and eased only slightly when she found it. The force of the thing before her had come like a shockwave, she thought for sure Jade was dead and was surprised that she wasn't as well. Every action, every breath was like moving in sand. There was only silence now, heavy silence that pushed her down into the earth.

Her eyes rose to meet it, and for a moment it flared slightly, like a bird puffing its chest and spreading its wings when it is threatened. It had no eyes to speak of - it had no form she could rightly describe or fully understand - but it was staring at her, and it was waiting.

Something in her stirred.

For a moment she saw only stars and light, and something within her glowed and sang. It moved up and out of her, and although she could not hear it she knew the song it sang. She was drawing light from all around her, she could feel the song and the life of every plant and creature in her wake.

She was glory and life. There was nothing in her that was not pure and wonderful, and there was nothing that she feared. The being before her was old and feeble and to it she sang her greatness. Piiska and Sääksi sang with her, resonant and cold, and together they told the story of the world.

The old thing, the once-great thing, shrank from her, tired and overwhelmed, and it receeded into the earth.

She receeded into herself, into the dark places, back into Danii, and the world grew cold and dark again. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, for her body to remember the weight of gravity. She fell to her knees, breathing heavily and trying desparately to remember what had just happened. She tried to catch the song of glory and pull it back, but the notes slipped from her. As it faded, as the memory grew distant she found herself sobbing. The lack of it was unbearable, the knowledge of it unknowable. She searched within herself, trying to wake it again, trying to find some hint of where it had come from, but it was gone and she cried for its loss.

After a few moments she remebered Jade lying next to her and quickly wiped her eyes. Trying desparately to compose herself she knelt over him, the emptiness left by the song now filled with concern. He was breathing still and she chided herself that he was not her first thought.

She shook him. "Jade." She said almost gently, as if he were sleeping.

"JADE." Harder.

"Hnhnm." He said, stirring and coughing. After a moment he sat up. "Uh.. my head.. what.."

"You hit your head." She said quickly. "I kept warning you..."

"Yeah, I remember that.. sort of..." He began to stand, muscles involuntarily shaking and twitching. He felt like he had been crushed by a heavy weight. She helped him, but he was resilient and would not let her. "I'm fine. Let's just get out of here."

She smiled at the irony. No matter if they had danced on the thing itself it would not have risen to meet them again. The danger was past and only now did Jade feel uneasy.

"Good plan. You should buy me breakfast." Danii grinned at him.

"Why do I have to buy?" Jade answered incredulously.

"You were the one that drug me out here. Do you know how many moquitos have bit me since we've been here?"

Jade glanced down at his watch. An hour had past since he had last checked it, and he could've sworn that was only fifteen minutes ago. "We're gonna have to get lunch, I guess.. It's already noon." He looked at her and knew that she was lying, that he had not hit his head and that something profound and dangerous had happened. He could read it in her eyes and in the pallor of her skin. The fact that she wasn't saying anything made him equally curious and suspicious. He decided instead on caution and said nothing. She was strange, he thought, and young, but he trusted her nonetheless. "I guess we were out here for longer than we thought."

"Trampling about in the woods will do that to you. I think I'm sunburned." She complained, but it was forced and she knew that he knew.

"We should go back to that Denny's we passed on the road up. They serve breakfast all day. After that fall I'm going to need some bacon."

"I want a waffle. Or five."

They laughed, and it was uneasy. Something had happened, but it had not changed them. They fell back into their routine and each endeavored to never speak of it again, but in Jade's mind there was always a question, and in Danii's there was always an answer she was afraid to give.

There was something in her, bright and horrible, and the knowledge of it made her feel almost invincible for a time. She believed that were she ever again in true danger, it would rise and save her and once more she would feel it singing her glory. But after real danger and real scars she realized that it would not come again, and for a time she almost forgot it had ever been.

There were times that Jade would wake in the middle of the night, drenched in a cold sweat, and for a few seconds remember a dream of a being crowned in stars, singing the oldest song. And at those times he would feel ligher, as if he were falling from a great height or flying high into the air, and he knew something was different in him. He always tried to hold on to the feeling but it would always slip away, and he would wake without remembering.
For 's contest. Also because is too awesome for his own good.

I will probably manip an image to go with this, I have something in my head I just have to find time to do it...

anyway, wrote this over a couple days.. I was apprehensive about it at first, but I decided on retrospect that I really liked it.
© 2006 - 2024 apolly0n
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vfiction's avatar
Your work continues to impress the heck out of me. You have a great deal of talent as a writer in many voices and styles. You have definitely been able to get into this frameworld and, to a large degree, these characters.

You have, whether accidentally or not, touched on an important aspect of Autumn Country, and especially the Faeries, by exploring some other type of 'other'. I think that many people are under the impression that the only thing these folks do is hunt that particular entity they generally refer to using the Finnish term aave. But that is far from the case, and this story is a very plausible account of something that they might run into. Or so I've been told.

Your stylistic shifts are very effective in building tension and suspense, and your narrative is very visual and sharp.

All in all, a superlative effort. And whoever said it above was correct, the Denny's touch is right on.