Director of Narrative
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Barton followed and watched from a fair distance as the beetle crawled through the well-trimmed grass. It was the biggest bug he’d ever seen. It could probably eat one of the kittens Minnow had last month. This bug was huge, its iridescent carapace glistening rainbow hues in the morning sun as it scuttled along. No one seemed to notice except him. It was nearing the stained picket fence of the recess yard as the young boy glanced toward the Sister, as if to check if he was straying too far. A wink too short and he would have missed it as the enormous beetle struggled between two slats, stopping only to readjust its delicate wings under the hardened forewings. The Sister beckoned him back just as her call was overwhelmed by a cacophony of splintering wood and the tumble of human flesh just across the street.
Two men, only moments ago loitering against the slat-board hostel, were knocked to the ground under an avalanche of stained lumber. A beetle the size of an ox, shining like an emerald in the sunlight, only interrupted by dissipating puffs of dust, steadily lumbered out onto the street through its newly crafted tunnel toward the schoolyard.
“Barton!” the Sister shouted as she sprang from her seat, embroidery ring clacking against the lacquered timber decking. Behind dark curls, the boy’s eyes widened and he darted across the yard without even thinking, to catch the excitement. Upon seeing the monstrous insect intent on marching through the schoolyard, Barton froze, his eyes feeling like they took up his entire face, mouth going slack and perspiration beading on his soft skin. The shouts of the Sister sounded like they were shouted through the sewer pipes with cotton stuffed in his ears. His vision narrowed as everything in the periphery faded to a blur, except, in perfect clarity, this monster. This massive, shimmering vermin that is headed...right…for…
The child’s body went limp as Nydelle slipped her arms around his thin frame. Not expecting the resistance, the Sister’s slippers slid in the grass and she fell, legs sprawled in front of her, rear firmly on the dew-dropped lawn and her arms around this mesmerized child’s waist. The creature rose up as a spiny leg folded the wooden fence, creaking in the ground, down toward the child. She watched in slow motion shock as the angled tips of the fence fall within an inch of the dumbstruck child. Shaking the fear from her mind, she pulled the boy to the ground and began to crawl away from the now-destroyed fence, while the shining, spiny beast marched across the schoolyard paying them no mind whatsoever.
Curled around him, stroking his head, Barton came around before Nydelle had regained her breath. She inhaled deeply as he blinked and asked, “What was that thing, Sister?”
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Director of Narrative
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Mardo lifted the chipped, clay mug to his lips, eyes never leaving his opponent’s face, as he spun his last tile between his thumb and middle finger against the oaken table. The once-lacquered table held nearly thirty tiles of yellowing ivory, each marked with a number of pips. The man on the other side of the table contorted his face in thought, eyes dancing between each of his three remaining tiles stacked in front of him on the table.
As if the gentle tap of the mug against the table was the final clue to the man’s dilemma, the opponent’s face washed clear and he picked the tile in the middle of his edge-stacked row and placed it on one end of the sprawling arms of tiles. Knowing there was no way possible to block his play, Mardo tossed his remaining tile toward one of the arms, edges lining up perfectly. “Show your hand,” Mardo announced.
Sliding his mug to the edge of the table Mardo boasted, “Man, you played that hand like you were the one up all night on duty. That was my last pint and my last game. Goodnight gentlemen, I am going home to bed.”
Rising from the old, yet sturdy chair, he grabbed his sword belt and the deep blue coat that marked his station as an officer cadet. The morning-weary customers nearby groggily mumbled their well-wishes as Mardo spun towards the door and headed out into the morning sun.
Not three steps off the decked walkway onto the packed dirt road, last night’s rain already dried by the early sun, a crash and a number of screams sounded out a few blocks down toward Milharbor. “A man’s work is never over,” he thought aloud. His shoulders dropped as he rationalized, “There’s got to be someone else there to get this one.” His brows knitted like he was playing a tough hand and he almost turned away as his eyes locked on an old woman behind a cart hawking fruit. “Damn it!”
Mardo spun toward the disturbance, away from his welcoming bed, a low clamor issuing from the area. He trotted a few paces as he buckled his sword belt around his narrow waist and drew his coat over his strong shoulders, and then he broke into a light run. Never over, indeed. He glanced back a few paces down to nod to the old woman, but she was not looking.
Spit that flame until the world glows white.
Aahh yesss my sweet, now I must have more! More I tell you!
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Director of Narrative
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Ahem...
The discordant crash of splintering wood on packed earth woke her up. A crystal clear, viscous string of drool stretched from the corner of her thin pale lips to her delicate wrist, breaking as she shook her head side to side to help gain alertness. Her blue eyes, chased with spider webs of broken capillaries from staying up too late into the night yet again, tracked from her drool-glazed forearm, onto her scattered writing desk, across the chart strewn floor to the open balcony doors. Long saffron-hued curtains drifted lazily in the morning breeze framing a brass and wood contraption on a tall tripod glaring up into the now bright heavens.
“Feck” Petra spat! “Stupid, stupid girl! What would I have done if my celescope were taken?” Rising from her chair, she strode across the apartment, on her way to the open balcony, collecting the large sheets of paper scrawled with tiny dots with annotations and long arcing lines. “I’ll tell you what would happen. The academy would never give me another single copper, no matter how compelling the research. Old Matherson would love the chance to gloat about how he was ‘right about that one’. That old bag would certainly make me pay for the loss. How would I earn that kind of money? I’m not going back to the scullery and I had hoped that I was done with scribe work.”
Reaching the balcony her audible internal dialogs stopped cold. Petra tensed. Her interrupted heart seemed lodged in her throat and her legs quivered. She squinted in the morning sun, trying to rationalize what she was seeing. A green iridescent insect, unnaturally large, had crawled out of a gaping hole in a wall of the Spoonside Hostel and had made its own path directly across the orphanage yard. Being three stories up, Petra had the vantage to see the creature’s corridor, unobstructed, between two houses. Everywhere in its short path people were screaming and running for cover, yet the emerald beetle showed them no mind. The din of frightened residents moved with the monster down the block.
Projecting the lustrous insect’s vector and calculating collisions, Petra spotted a lone Guardsman running down Slipstreet toward the disturbance. “At his speed and path, he will bypass that creature when he turns onto Spoonsway at Groson’s Sundries, unless the insect topples those bins in the alley and alerts him,” she mumbled aloud. Petra watched for a couple more seconds. “Ha! I was right,” she grinned. “Now to get this inside.”
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Director of Narrative
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This is fun, thanks for watching...
Vision through one eye only is very disorienting, especially when it is filled with debris and lachrymal excretions. This along with an extreme curiosity of what had exactly just happened was enough to jostle his mind to refocus his observant acumen. It was hard for Eason to focus, at first, on the large hole in the Spoonside Hostel with Burnis’ toothy mouth jabbering at him, trying to find out if he was okay.
“I’m fine. Fine I said!” Eason spat dismissively, despite the fact that his right eye was swollen shut, and glanced past the makeshift hero to see the clerk lying limp alongside the wooden planks of the boardwalk, a circle of onlookers watching him die.
“Save him!” Eason shouted, pulling himself up onto his elbows. The circle of onlookers turned their heads towards him. “Did he say any names? Don’t bother with me! Save him! And somebody tell me what knocked down that wall!”
Everything seemed to work right, as he rolled up onto the balls of his feet and brushed himself off with one hand while steadying himself with the other. He was bleeding for certain on his head somewhere. He could feel the trickle and knew it wasn’t sweat. “No reason to bring attention to it”, he thought.
Eason moved over to the now certainly dead clerk and sighed. The growing crowd watched. Eason flashed an insignia sewn inside his jacket and the crowd backed up a step or two. “Did he mention anything before he expired?” he offered to the dumbstruck crowd.
“I heard him say that ‘he was afraid that she was staying here’ when we riled him for a bit,” an onlooker commented. “His head was really hurt.”
Eason then noticed the warped shape of the clerk’s head and the pool of blood smearing from underneath the timbers of the hostel, slid by the witnesses, to where this possible source of information lay dead. He felt very lucky for surviving this event.
“Who’s she?” he thought. “A minute or two has already had to have gone by, where’s the guard?” Eason leaned over the dead clerk, slipping his hands into the still man’s coat. He then searched through the man’s pants. “Feck! Nothing!” he thought, trying to hide his frustration.
Eason heard bootheels ringing off the packed earthen streets behind him. He glanced behind him to see a blue-coated guardsman rounding the corner onto Spoonsway at Groson’s Sundries. “Guard’s here. He’ll take care of this. I’ve got to go, you didn’t see me here.”
Spinning around on his heels and popping up to slink off, he heard a strong voice behind him, closer than he had anticipated. “You, there! Sit back down, everyone stay where you are. Is he the only one wounded?” issued the blue-coated guardsmen, Officer Cadet to be precise.
Not wanting to draw further attention to himself, Eason sat back down, crossing his legs as he dropped to the ground. This cadet seemed wholesome enough, but he looked weary, maybe even a bit drunk.
Seeing the guardsman, the crowd erupts with reports of a gigantic green beetle that had crashed out of the Spoonside Hostel and went straight across the orphanage yard between those two houses into that alley. The guardsmen’s shoulders dropped as he looked over his shoulder at the path of destruction.
“You, what part did you have in this?” the man in the blue coat asked.
“I had been stopped by this man as he asked directions to Reygan’s Bakery, and the next thing I know I’m being awakened by Ol’ Burnis, here” Eason explained, “I took quite a whollop.” It made him sick to have to lie like this. Especially to a guardsman.
Umm? No umm, too late, now I'm hooked, I gotta know more, where did the bugs come from? Where did my namesake go? Did she save the boy? There's so much more, I need it all. Think about the children man!
Get back in that kitchen and cook up some more prose.
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Director of Narrative
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Thank you all for your kind words, here and in the chatroom.
I have already been scolded by my editor (read: wife) for posting without proper editing, so do me a favor and ignore my verb tense errors, word choice errors and generally whatever other errors slinks their way into my spittings.
I had written the first one as a way to jump-start my motivation to finish work on an adventure I'm wanting to sell. GreenGrunt started a thread talking about writer's block and I thought it would be a good thing to post an example of one of the ways I try to reconcile that condition. I'm certainly glad that a few of you have taken a liking to this so far. You've helped encourage me.
More to come....
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Director of Narrative
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Lying sprawled on the floor, his eyes opened to the varnished ceiling boards. Tufts of dust-speckled cobwebs clung to some of the larger gaps and the finish had bubbled in many places over the years. The seasons changed here, for certain, but it was always damp, always humid. Motes of dust slowly twisted and spun through his vision, illuminated in the rays of the morning sun. The stifling hum in his ears began to clear only to be replaced by the jangle of a crowd. His head was split with pain and he closed his eyes with a wince, raising a hand to his sweat beaded face and rolling onto his side. A shuddering line of pain shot through his forehead and dulled itself into knots in the back of his skull. He’d had another episode.
Footsteps approached and someone braced themselves in the open doorway. “Are you well? Were you injured?” a frantic voice barked into the hostel room. Through the chatter of voices Latran could hear doors being swung open in the hallway and the slap and clunking of bare and booted feet on the floors.
He vigorously shook his head, feigning comfort as he pulled his sore body into a slumped seat on the smooth floorboards, and waved the questioner away. “Ah’m fine. Go on.”
After a second, Latran turned his head toward the door, sensing the person was still standing there. He brushed his bangs, clinging with sweat to his face, from his eyes. The inn keep, checking the rooms for others harmed by the recent infestation, stood in the doorway in shock. The door to the room across the hall was open and teetering on one hinge. Through the door frame he could see the bed crushed, linens shredded on the frame and strewn through a gaping hole in the outer wall out onto the street. Legs of a bedside table, fallen on its side, jutted out around pieces of debris from the clay water pitcher that lay shattered on the floor. Latran shook his head in near disbelief, the pain in his head dissipating in this sudden reality. He pulled his focus back into the room to see the wide brown eyes of the keep standing in the doorway scanning his room with a look of disbelief.
“Guardsman, here! Come now!” the man shouted. “Y-y-you, just s-s-stay there,” stuttered the frightened man standing there arms held out towards him, his palms showing the calluses of years of hard work.
Still shaking off his physical and parietal preoccupations, Latran spun his head to see what the inn keep was reacting to in his room. Scrawled images covered the entire room. The lightly stained pine planks of the walls hosted a gallery of insects drawn in charcoal. Black beetles, their thick, rounded carapaces covering a thorax sprouting jagged and smudged legs, crawled along the walls above the tangled linens of the bed. Penciled wasps swarmed near the ceiling, stingers dripping venom. A portrayal of a millipede undulated itself around the window frame. Sketched cockroaches mingled along the floorboards as ants coalesced into a colony building their way up the corners of the walls. His head spun in a drunken arc, taking in all the horrid imagery, reeling in confusion. Blinking repeatedly, his shaking head swung back to the doorway when he heard the boot steps. A swarm of mosquitoes, issuing forth from the washing basin, were illustrated on the wall sweeping towards it, while six dragonflies fluttered above the opening watching in anticipation.
“This one?” a strong deep voice asked moving into the scene, his broad shouldered stance blocked the light from the open hole across the hallway. A quiet gasp escaped the guardsman’s mouth upon seeing the room. The inn keeper nodded and backed up, gesturing into the room. “Stand down there fella” Officer Cadet Mardo commanded. “We’re all done here. Just come with me and this will all be sorted out,” he said in a comforting tone. Without showing it, he groaned to himself, “This is going to be a long day.”
“What the feck is going on here!” Latran thought out loud. Casting his head down he glanced at his hands, covered in a sooty dust. His heart lurched into his throat and his body tingled with anxiety. His first instinct was to run, to stand and bust through the door or window. Careful not to get himself killed by a guardsman, who’s hand rested steady an inch from the hilt of his sword, he apologized, “Sorry sir. I really am. It’s just that….I uh.” He sighed in frustration, and dropped his head into his hand. “Please help me. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Ahem, it's been a whole day.
I read it! I read it! Where's my more?
Ahem...
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Director of Narrative
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...Because she was worried about them...
The boy was sitting up watching the drama unfold across the street before Nydelle picked herself up from the soft grass. The accumulated dew made her light dress cling to her body and she picked at it a number of times as she stood. “Sister Nydelle,” the boy asked again. “What was that thing?” Barton looked past her at the trail of clumsy, lumbering destruction.
“Are you okay, Barton? Come here, let me look at you.” Nydelle inspected the boy casually, knowing that the only thing that could be wrong with him would be a bit of fright. The young boy gazed with wonder through shaggy dark curls toward the broken fence and alleyway where the enormous insect had crawled.
“I’m fine, Sister Nydelle. I saw another bug like that, but smaller, but it was still really big. I saw it right before that big one broke out of the hostel. Just when it broke out I was thinking, ‘Boy, that’s the biggest bug I’ve ever seen!’, but then that one! Wow!” the boy gushed. Turning back to the commotion across the street, Barton suddenly yelled, “Mister! Guardsman! Hey, that bug went that way!” He took two steps forward and raised his arms, one gesturing towards the alley and the other waving high above his head. The guardsman turned toward the gesticulating boy just as something inside the building grabbed his attention. He cut off his glance with a curt nod and climbed into the ruined building carefully to avoid tripping on the splintered timbers.
“Sister Nydelle, Sister Nydelle” the boy prodded, “We have to tell them where it went so they can get it!”
“I think they can find it. Come now let’s go inside,” the Sister coaxed.
Barton threw his left shoulder back when she placed her hands on him to guide him in. She tightened her grip on his right and he dropped his head and slumped slightly. “Okay, Sister,” the boy pouted, spying out of the corner of his eye the group of people milling around the punctured hostel.
The back door to the orphanage suddenly swung open to offer a perplexed, towering man holding a stout stick tightly in both hands, still wearing a flour-dusted apron. “Sister Nydelle, Barton! You okay? There’s a big bug on the loose. It crashed through…” Westington’s voice trailed off as he scanned the area, realizing that he was once again too late.
“We’re fine, Westington,” Nydelle assured. “We were just coming in. Is breakfast prepared?”
“Yes, Sister. The biscuits should be done soon. Everything else is on the table. I s'pose I’ll be fixing that fence this afternoon.”
*happy sigh*
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Director of Narrative
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I couldn't wait until later
After dragging the brass and teak contraption inside the apartment, Petra dismantled its more delicate components. She slipped the brass sleeve down from the teak rod that ended in a metallic, feathery appendage that resembled a moth’s antennae. With a gentle tug she removed the part and placed it into a padded wooden box. She then shifted a lever on the side of the larger tube and released a piece of double terminated clear crystal. Then, almost ritually, she inserted this hand-length prism into a leather tube and placed it in the padded box. Closing the lid and placing her hand on the latch, Petra quietly chanted three short phrases with her eyes closed.
“No need to put the whole thing up into its case,” she thought out loud. “I’ll be using it again tonight.” She walked over to the water basin and washed her hands. She splashed a couple of handfuls of the cool, clean water onto her face and rubbed her tired eyes before blotting her round pale face with a soft towel.
Petra turned around from the water basin and retrieved a porcelain cup and a small tin, then spun back to collect the tall slender pitcher. She opened the tin and took a large pinch of ground, dark leaves and sprinkled them into the delicate white cup. She then filled the cup with water. Cupping the porcelain in both palms, Petra closed her eyes and slightly lowered her head. In a low, flat tone she spoke, “Delsmoran Na Bata-to. Essren Mapan Na Bata-to.” Upon completing the last syllable, wispy tendrils of steam rose from the cup and a mellow, earthy smell, accented with citrus, filled the room.
She walked back to the balcony, drawing the curtains revealing the still-open door. Stepping out onto the balcony she began to review the morning’s events. Her eyes traced the path of the monster and peered into the city for evidence of its continued destruction. “I wonder where that thing ended up. I’m certain the Guardsmen at Blockpoint Street got it. Unless it got them,” she mumbled. Petra saw nothing beyond except the casual interactions of a bustling city. She looked back down at the hole in the Spoonside Hostel.
A man in shabby, dated clothes recanted the story, complete with overly dramatic gestures, to a handful of fellow onlookers. “That silly man, Burnis,” she spat, shaking her head, “He’ll do anything for attention.” Two men had wrapped the dead man in a blanket and were preparing to carry him away. Petra scanned the area looking for the guardsmen that had run up to the scene. “Go figure. He’s gone already.”
As if the world intended to immediately prove her wrong, the guardsman emerged from the front door of the hostel escorting a weeping man. “What’s this now?” Petra thought aloud. “Hmm…new developments. Who’s this fellow and what part did he play with this whole giant beetle thing? And why is he crying?”
The man’s shoulders shuddered as he periodically wept convulsively. His light brown hair was cut in a fashion that was popular last season and his clothes were only a shelf up from basic. He looked like a student. The guardsman led him unrestrained with no resistance back down Spoonsway, under her balcony, towards Slipstreet. “I’ll have to make an excuse to have dinner out tonight and find out a bit more about this little event,” Petra said to herself. “But now I need to get some real sleep.”
As the blue-coated guardsman escorted his suspect toward the intersection, Petra saw a slight woman watching the two men, as she poorly tried to hide behind a water collection barrel. “It just gets better,” she mumbled. This small, dark woman’s face carried an iniquitous grin so wide it narrowed her eyes. Her thin, spidery fingers, perched on top of the barrel, unconsciously stroked the rim. With a start, the woman’s head shot up to face Petra and the two women locked eyes.
Petra wrinkled her nose and said to herself, “Who does this woman think she…” Her words were cut short by a sharp sting in her wrist. The sudden pain caused Petra to lose the grip on her cup and it tumbled down, its contents racing the delicate porcelain to the hard packed street below. She didn’t watch it drop, but heard its twinkling crash as she inspected the underside of her wrist, finding a red wasp – its stinger still piercing her quickly reddening and swelling skin. Slapping it away Petra looked back across the street for the sinister woman, but saw no one.
Is it later yet?
It's later.
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Director of Narrative
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It is much later...
Cursing as she ducked down alleyways and side streets, Ostana shouldered panhandlers and bums aside. Others more observant and not dazed with nightflower sickness gave her a wide berth. "Who knew that Petra b!&%* stayed there! I bet she saw everything! Days lost! I'm going to have to ask for more gold to pay off the guard, if my neck stays intact!"
Ostana shouldered past a couple of children barely in their teens, wearing rags that for an instant looked like they could be twins. Her double take caused her to bump directly into a coughing beggar. “Keep that to yourself, fool!” she spat. “This is no time to contract the sickness,” she thought.
“The Hive calls and its drones are drawn back to the nest,” the beggar intoned vacantly.
Ostana’s eyes widened before she could catch herself. Regaining her composure, she reacted. “What do you know, slave!?” she snarled as she shoved the vagrant back against the wall of the alley. The beggar slumped to the ground gasping as she tucked the knife back into her sleeve. “You’re nothing!” A glistening dark patch spread out from his chest as sputtered sprays of blood streaked from his lips. He attempted to mutter the phrase again.
“The Hive calls…”
The dark lady continued moving as the beggar expired in the alley. Sweat beaded on her temples and as she wrinkled her forehead and hustled along, the salty liquid stung her eyes. The alley came to an end and she had to cross a busy street. Carefully looking both directions out onto the street, she waited for a carriage to pass before darting across. Ostana stopped only for a moment to see if she was being followed. Any longer would have been suspicious.
For a few minutes, she moved confidently through alleyways filled with nightflower addicts, despicable, diseased vagrants and prostitutes servicing their clients. Her escape nearly complete she relaxed her progress and stopped running.
She stopped cold upon nearing the back of the tavern when she saw two individuals standing above the grate looking down into the damp darkness. They were dressed in the blue coats of the guard. Ostana spent a moment watching the guardsmen.
Drawing a copper coin from her belt pouch, she quietly spoke, “Calus mekan, al dostrovan.” The two men continued to look down into the grate. The guardsmen were an interesting pair. One was as broad as an ox while the other was as slight as a crane. Upon finishing the words the slim one scratched at the back of his head.
Slumping down beside a mumbling bum, Ostana tucked her head against her chest and concentrated. As she focused her mind, the guardsmen’s thoughts blossomed in her head. He was frightened, but curious. This made Ostana grin widely.
Watching as the two guardsmen gestured to each other in disagreement, she giggled to herself. The smaller one shoved the brute and an altercation ensued. Ostana walked confidently up to the two guardsmen and asks, “What are you boys up to? Fighting in an alley when there is an enormous beetle crashing through town? You have jobs right?”
The two men look at each other and the strong guardsmen says, “Yes madame. We’ve heard about this menace and we may have tracked the source to this sewer grate. We were discussing whether to summon more of the guard or...”
The brute’s words were cut short by a well-directed punch on the right side of the jaw. The large man staggered back a few steps before catching himself and retaliating. An arcing swing was dodged by the slight guardsman, and the thin man came back with a powerful uppercut. As the large man’s body collapsed onto the ground, the lean guardsman reached down and pulled the iron grate from the ground. He struggled at first, but then finally slid the heavy piece from the shaft, dragged it over a few feet and bowed - gesturing down into the depths for Ostana.
“The Queen blesses you, drone,” she hissed, and with that, Ostana disappeared down the tunnel.
Thank you, my thirst has been sated, if but for a few moments.
Sometimes life happens, and some things have to be put on the back burner. But, it is those things, that are allowed to simmer for awhile, that usually end up being better for it. I am nothing if not patient. :)
(rolls in)
(squints to spit a stream of corrosive tears)
(slips when rolling out)
*bump*
runs through thread in an attempt to increase his post count