Ink Raindrops

Yet another cycle of IR has gone by, and with it comes a new series of votes.  Thanks again for your time, reading and encouragement!  I hope that at least a few of my voters are repeat visitors.  It looks like the flavor of the month, once again, is The End.

I’m somewhat bemused by the fact that the story that is the least like what I ordinarily write is gaining the most votes — you folks are definitely giving me a challenge!  But it’s a good challenge, and I’m looking forward to it once again.  If time permits, I will try to concoct something from either Liar’s Dice or Shadow and Flame as well, since those two also received votes.  I’m thinking perhaps Way of the Dragon needs another chapter to hit its stride.  If it doesn’t get the votes, maybe I’ll go a round with that as my “author’s choice” next month (while, of course, still focusing on the winner of the votes!)

Stay tuned to IR, and I’ll see ya on the first!

If you’ve been here in the last day or so, you probably noticed two things.  First, the first update went out, and there’s new stuff to read!  Second, a couple of things were broken in the process.  The vote box was down until last night (well, early this morning,) and given the hour at which I fixed it, I didn’t have the brain power left to update all the info pages or explain the new voting process until now.

Everything should be in order, at last.  The explanation of the new voting system can be found on the About Ink Raindrops page.  The short version is that voting now takes place between the first and twentieth of each month.  The results of those votes will be worked on for the remaining week or so and then posted on the first of the following month.  This makes for quicker voting periods, but it also gets rid of the monthly-or-bimonthly conundrum that was confusing myself and everyone else too.  I hope it improves things!

All the info pages have also been updated.  The pages for Liar’s Dice and The End are the most changed, but I have made small changes to the others as well.  I have also changed the Author’s Notes sections for each page to be called Spoiler-Free Author’s Notes.  They’re not meant to be the afterthoughts of a finished story, they’re meant to be interesting comments about what I think of the stories, where they originated, and any other interesting tidbits about them that I think are worth mentioning.  There’s no risk for new readers involved.

Enjoy the updates, folks, and I’ll see you on October first, if not before!

Welcome to Ink Raindrops, everyone!  Today marks the first official IR update.  I took the three votes that I received last month into account for this month, so there is a new chapter of Liar’s Dice and a new chapter of The End available for your perusal as of today.  It’s nice to see my audience agrees with my own assessment, since those were the two that I most wanted to work on, and probably would have chosen even without the votes!  I can’t wait to see what you pick for next month!  And thank you, so very much, for voting.  I appreciate it a great deal and I hope I can give you what you want to see!

I think I may go ahead and change the voting periods to be more like this month’s.  The system I had worked out manages to confuse even me, and that’s not a good thing.  This month worked very well, as I was able to take the three votes, figure out what you wanted to see pretty quickly from that, and then spend this last week working on new writing.  Perhaps what I need to do is have three weeks out of the month be voting time, followed by my writing for the last week, after which I will still update on the first of every month.  I will make sure that I change the information pages to reflect this as soon as possible.  It shouldn’t affect you all aside from making things a little more easy to follow!

I had a lot of fun working on this month’s selections.  The Liar’s Dice chapter just came naturally to me, as it’s the final card in my “house of cards” that I’ve been trying to build since starting the story.  As I mentioned in the info page for LD, I feel like you can finally get a good handle on what the story is about and where it is going now that Chapter 3 is out.  I had some trouble shifting mindsets back into The End, but managed to buckle down and get it done with only a mild headache and an intense craving for chocolate cake that had nothing to do with the actual writing of the story!  Please let me know what you think about both stories!

Once again, thanks for sticking with me, and here’s to looking forward to next month’s selections!

Sam awoke in Wonderland, to the best of her knowledge.  The comfortable bed that she had crawled into the night before had changed while she slept, as had the quiet apartment around her.  This was not, she knew in an instant, the town of Kentford.  It might never be, again.  The room was still as dark as she had left it, and her glasses remained on her side table, but her sight could not have been clearer; this anomaly had been the first to arrest her attention upon waking.  Where her eyes did fail her, however, her other senses supplied the information that left her wanting to curl into a fetal position for protection.  She had had dreams and nightmares before; this was neither, as much as her mind yet wanted to deny its existence in reality.  Every minute of her psychology study flashed before her eyes, and at last led her to the inevitable realization that it had failed to prepare her for more than just the necessity of interaction with human nature.  Psychology was complete and utter bullshit.

She forced herself to open her eyes for the hundredth time since her return to the world of the waking.  No matter how many times she prayed to a God she didn’t believe in, or promised herself that she would get more sleep from now on, the vision before her did not waver.  The walls… she couldn’t take her eyes off the walls.  Pristine white they had been, cold and emotionless, just the way she liked them.  Now, they ran with what appeared at first glance to be a mixture of rain, rust and ink.  It was not still, like paint ought to be; it ran, dripping into pools that she couldn’t seem to locate no matter how hard she tried.  The stench in the room seemed to corroborate her guess as well; a cloying, metallic odor that left her wanting to choke.

The desk she had left the night before was no longer the clean aluminum frame she had bought on sale; it was black steel, harsh and wicked in the dim light.  The digital clock she had forgotten was flashing midnight, in red numbers that had never been part of its original display.  The bathroom door was open — she always, always closed it — and this alone was cause to send her pulse racing.  She knew she was strange, and had strange habits, but those habits were as much a part of her as her own flesh and blood.  Overlooking something as arbitrary as a bathroom door would be normal for anyone else, but not for Sam.  Cold sweat poured down her face in the absolute silence. As if any of this weren’t enough, the bed itself lay claim to her delusions like nothing else could.

Her sanctuary, it had always been; a place to go to hide her head away from the noise of the world around her.  It was just a twin, nothing fancy; she’d had it since her first failed attempt to normalize by moving into a dorm in college.  The springs were worn in just the same places as they had always been, every motion she made seemed correct… but that was where the familiarity ended.

Where soft, rose-colored sheets had once enveloped her with a sense of peace and comfort, dirty steel gray fabric that scratched across her skin like burlap had come to replace them.  The pillow pinned beneath her head was flat and hard, a bitter stand-in for her usual soft, fluffy indulgence.  The comforter, a delicate thick floral bordered with lace — a gift from her mother — had been reduced to a single stifling layer of the same woolen fabric that lay beneath her.  All of it smelled like dust and decay, but this didn’t concern her as much as the fact that she could not get away from it no matter how hard she tried.

Black leather straps, still carrying the odor of the blood of the beasts they came from, prevented her exit from the changed bed.  There were several of them; one long one to hold her feet in place, and two shorter ones to pin her arms to her sides.  Another short one had wrapped itself around her neck, tight enough to press against her skin in ways that made her want to gag, and still another wrapped around her slender waist in much the same way.  They had enough give to bend when she struggled against them, but no more than enough to give her the slightest hope of escape before reaching their limit.

Last but not least, a black leather strap had been forced between her teeth, removing any hope she had of speaking, or calling out to some possible companion in the darkness.  This, perhaps more than any other, left her wanting to scream; a lifelong vegetarian and a soft heart for animals, the scent and touch of leather brought rage and hatred to life inside her, and this leather in particular was raw… more raw than she could think about without her stomach churning.  Vomiting around a gag would be suicide; she focused on that thought first, to try to force her mind into some semblance of order.

Searching for something calming to focus her gaze on, Sam found that her window to the outside world was open.  From her vantage point on the bed, nothing had changed outside; the night was still dark, the rainy clouds still hung over the stars like a wet blanket — no, she couldn’t think of blankets.  Her hands, damp with sweat, clutched the awful burlap sheets as if they were her last link to survival.  Whatever had happened on this dark and dreary night, it was clear that something, or someone, intended her to stay and wait in this macabre rendition of her own room — not that she had much of a choice.

Her mind, in its desperate search for answers and sanity, seized on the absence of her only true friend; what had become of Poe, in this twisted layer of hell?  It was too silent for Poe to be present, of that she was certain; if he were here, he would have noticed her and made his presence clear by now.  She couldn’t bear to think of what could happen to a cat in a place like this, let alone herself…

The combination of missing cat and leather stench reached a conclusion in her mind that brought tears to her eyes and a fresh, empowered struggle against the bonds that held her.  They failed to give, as they had so many times before, and she fell back against the hard mattress with sullen fury.  What purpose could there be in this torment for her?  She had done nothing, to her knowledge, to anger anyone.  She knew, of course, that there were criminals in the world that did frightening things to young women; this was above and beyond that kind of ordeal.  Barring her own sudden descent into all-consuming madness, the simplest explanation was that this was no trick; no joke.  Something beyond accepted possibility was taking place just outside her reach, but with her at the heart of it all.  She had to know why.

Just as her gaze shifted away from the window, the sound of shattering glass brought it back in a heartbeat.  The window glass lay in shards across the barren floor, providing ample opportunity to do grievous harm to her bare feet even if she might have found some avenue by which to escape.  Try though she might, the only assailant she could find came in the form of a rock.  Alien in its smoothness, it gleamed in the pale moonlight that broke over the glass, still clinging to the window frame in pieces.

Sam’s first thought was that in order to crash through a window, a rock had no choice but to be thrown.  It seemed clearer that she had made an enemy, somehow; an enemy that wanted her to fear for her life and her reason.  Her second thought was that the rock itself reminded her of something, something she had seen before.  Unable to free herself from her bonds, the former was a thought that she had limited options of dealing with.  Until someone arrived to cast off the leather straps — if they ever did — she would be fastened to this nightmare replica of her bed.  The rock, however, she could afford to think about.  It would take her mind off of the rest of her situation.

It wasn’t long before she came to recognize the rock, though the realization was enough to tax her sanity further.  She had not seen it before, not precisely; she had seen it in her mind’s eye, and through the eyes of her characters.  It was yet another torn fragment of her destroyed novel; a more concrete reminder this time than the paper Poe had offered her.

It had been a symbol in her writing, a story about a girl seeking vengeance on a group of classmates that had always tormented her.  Dropping that unusual rock down a well was the keystone, the moment that altered the flow of the girl’s destiny.  It was the Stone of Promise, a long forgotten tool of the dark and sinister Lost Gods, and Their power held sway over anyone who took it up.  Touching it, a regular person would become twisted, bound to the blood of the Lost, and redemption could no longer be possible…

How could such a thing exist, when it was but a figment of her imagination?  Worse — did it somehow bear the same properties that she had written about so carelessly?  And if it did, what did that say about her?

What frightened her most, however, was the memory of Poe’s piece of paper.  She had scoffed at his poor sense of humor and gone to sleep in a huff, ignoring her own foolish words scrawled on the page that she had already cast aside in her own mind — and look what had happened!  Now Poe was missing, and perhaps she would die after all.  His teeth marks were still visible on her hand, where he’d bitten her to gain her attention.  Strange premonitions and unusual knowledge always were his knacks, when he chose to use them.

Sam’s pulse started to race, just as a sound cut into the still darkness.  Her mind seized on it; an incautious rattling in the direction of what should have been her door.  In this twisted environment, the door was battered and broken in places, littered with holes that offered small glimpses into the hall beyond. On the other side of the broken door, she could just make out a series of rusty chains barring outside entry — or inside flight.

Sam realized that the sound was the doorknob, twisting, useless, against the chains.  Someone, or something, was trying to gain access to her.  A low grunting sound followed the rattling after a few moments, and this was enough to make Sam sink as low as she could into her terrible bed and start to tremble.  The sound was close enough to human to trigger her fear, to be sure… but it was also beyond human, and the only thing that Sam could imagine was worse than a human, was something both like and unlike one.

New sounds joined the rattling; the sounds of shuffling of feet, and of the clanking of an over-large, heavy ring of keys filtered in.  Sam did her best to strain her vision, desperate to catch a glimpse of the approaching visitor, but the holes in her door would not allow for more than the detection of motion.  Within a few moments, and with a few further grunts, the approaching visitor succeeded in mastering the chains.  They fell to the floor in a series of tinny crashes that echoed perhaps more than they should have in her ears.  A final heavier thump had to be the lock that had fastened the chains.  She had only a moment to try, one last time, to struggle against her bonds and fail, before the door creaked open with an ominous groan to admit her new companion.

Sam forced herself to lie still, her eyes closed but for a tiny slit where she could watch the room from behind her eyelashes while appearing to be asleep.  If she was going to survive this encounter, she would be best served by appearing helpless — she was of no use defending herself until she could move, and that wouldn’t happen if she posed any sort of threat to her captors.  Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears; a sound so loud that it almost blocked out all other sources of sound, but the thing that entered her room was so audibly far from human that she had no choice but to hear it anyway.  It shuffled, it did not walk; it scraped, it did not step.  When it breathed, it rasped, like her father had after years of smoking away the family budget.  It did not breathe often, which she was glad for.  It smelled like death, or at least what an innocent psychology student in her twenties believed must be the smell of death.  She had never witnessed death before.

The thing approached with timid, uncertain movements,  though it was, without a doubt, approaching.  Sam fought to maintain her composure, uncertain of what she would see when it arrived at her bedside once and for all.  She tried to brace herself for the shock and terror of witnessing something that mere humans should not be asked to witness; the sheer inhumanity of the creatures she had only dreamed about in her mind, and never imagined having to greet.  Could it be one of her own creations?  The thought was no longer an impossible one, given Poe’s failed warning and the Stone of Promise that lay just far enough out of her reach to remain useless, whether dark power source or red herring it was.  She was defenseless, a sitting duck before her unwelcome visitor; all she could hope for was that the thing was not hostile without provocation.

It arrived near her bed and turned to face her, while it examined something in great detail on the table beside her, and Sam got her first good look at it.  She knew in an instant that she had made a grave error in looking, for the sight alone set her trembling more than any of her panic attacks ever had in the past.  There was no way that the creature could ignore her now, and her own inability to control herself would send her to a fate perhaps worse than death.  The knowledge that she could not fool it was instant; she opened her eyes, her teeth clenched tight enough against the leather strap to leave permanent marks in it.  She would have no choice but to throw herself on the mercy of the creature, if in fact it had any such concept in the world in which it lived.

It was as tall as a human and shaped similar to a human, but bent forward, its body hunched over like an old woman’s. It had no eyes that she could discern, but it was covered in thick, black fur from top to bottom.  Where the mouth on a human would be, there was one on the creature, but it was gaping wide open as a permanent feature, displaying several rows of fangs and a tongue that seemed three times as long as a human’s.  Its face twitched every few seconds, as a human with a facial tic might, but Sam realized that it was not ill; it was reading scents on the wind, to make up for its poor sight.  Its body was draped in stained rags, displaying wrinkled and marred flesh or jutting, decaying bone between them by turns.  It was clearly dead, or almost so — or perhaps it was already, and such things meant nothing at all to it anymore.

It must have had ears somewhere, for the creature froze in place and snapped its head around, convulsing in a twisted series of twitches that left Sam feeling sick.  Though the scents had not changed, Sam’s motion had, and it adjusted its behavior to avoid her, rather than do her harm as she had expected.  It grunted, the same low, guttural grunt that she had heard on its way in, and picked up her glasses from the side table.  It turned the glasses over several times in its hairy paws, exploring them with a careless touch, and before Sam could even think to cry out, it shattered the lenses.  It seemed stunned at the destruction of the unfamiliar object for only a moment before lifting the broken glasses to its face for closer inspection.

Without warning, the creature let out a howl that sent every muscle in Sam’s body taut and the hair on the backs of her arms standing straight up.  It backed away from her with an agility that she had not known it possessed, hissing in an almost cat-like fashion.  A flash of realization in the back of her mind made her link the creature’s black fur to that of the missing Poe, but she had no time to consider the relationship further.  The creature writhed in what Sam could only guess was pain, though she could not see how it had injured itself; perhaps the broken glass had cut into its hands?  Perhaps the glass on the floor had posed as much of a threat to it as it had to Sam?  She watched as the creature gained enough control of itself to throw the mangled glasses across the room, twisting them even more out of shape and snapping the frames in two across the nosepiece.  She did not need to wonder about the amount of force it could wield when necessary any longer.

The creature continued to twist and howl, a reaction not dissimilar to what Sam would have written as the reaction of a demon to holy water.  It was also retreating further and further toward the open door.  A brief moment of elation swept into her mind; she would not be eaten or murdered after all!  Despair took only a moment to replace it when she realized that her only hope of being set free now seemed to revile her.  Despite the thing’s offensive appearance, odor and behavior, it was the closest thing she had to an ally in the insane world she had entered.  If it couldn’t free her, who could, or would?  Was it better to die at the hands of the creature, or risk a slow death by starvation and suffering if nobody came to find her?

The creature had almost reached the door, but Sam watched it stumble, helpless and furious, into the wall instead.  It began to scrape its body along the wall rather than walk upright, and the behavior was similar enough to the same pattern that Sam had followed every night since she was a child, that her mind recognized it in an instant.

It looked through my broken glasses… I’ve looked through someone else’s glasses before.  It’s like a whole different world.  I think it doesn’t understand… it thinks my glasses did something to hurt its ability to see!  But… that means it does have eyes, then?

Unwilling and unable to answer her unspoken question, the creature at last found its way to the door.  Still hissing, it ducked out into what appeared to be an adjacent hall of a much larger building.  It slammed Sam’s heavy door behind it, almost as if it wanted to shut Sam away from it again, but she was all too aware that it was too distraught to lock it again.  Freedom could be hers, if only she could manage to get free of her leather shackles!  She also knew that the creature was loose, somewhere out there.  It had not harmed her despite noticing her consciousness, but if it didn’t intend to have her up and about, it would do more than just explore her bedside table, next time.

Without warning, a heavy mechanical groaning sound arrested her attention from somewhere in the direction of the hall.  At first Sam was certain that some new doom had been prepared for her, to end her life for the unintended insult she had paid her visitor; but in the time it took her to start to tremble again, she felt the leather straps loosen around her body, disappearing of their own accord into unnoticed deep grooves in the sides of her bed.  Confused, but wasting no time in getting free, she leapt out of the awful bed and fell to the floor in sudden shock, gasping in pain.  The bonds themselves had not injured her, but her muscles felt atrophied, as if she’d spent ten years in those same bonds without rest.  How long had it been?  The clock still flashed 12:00 in an endless pattern of red lights.

The Stone of Promise lay just a handspan away from her on the floor, between countless shards of broken glass.  Sam hadn’t noticed before how filthy the floor was; while the walls ran with ink and rust, the floor was just plain dirty and unwashed, like the floor of a cheap gas station bathroom.  It occurred to her that the stains and dirt appeared like splotches of ink might from a leaky pen, or mud might after being tracked indoors by the rain, but she cast those thoughts aside in lieu of gazing at the Stone.  The simplest explanation, on any other day, would have been that someone had thrown a very strange rock through her window.  Today, however, she had already ignored one hint too many.  Under these bizarre circumstances, Sam had the feeling that the simplest explanation would have to be that this rock was, in fact, the Stone of Promise — and the very same one from her story.

She knew what the risks of picking it up were, more keenly than anyone else ever could or would.  After all, she had written them.  The fact remained, however, that Sam was defenseless in a world that she still suspected would destroy her out of hand, if she let down her guard for a moment.  How she would get back to her normal apartment, with her beloved Poe, was anyone’s guess, but she could not fathom how she might be able to do that without the aid of the Stone; or at the very least, a good solid rock to use as a weapon.  With these thoughts in mind, she pulled herself to her feet, brushed her filthy, sweat-soaked nightgown off as well as she could, and bent down to pick up the Stone.
It was anticlimactic, Sam thought.  No aura of magic, no sudden feelings of empowerment, no ethereal angel come to herald the promises of power that came with the Stone.  But that was how she’d written it, and she liked it that way.

At last, with only a little more confidence in her sanity than she had managed since her arrival in this twisted world, Sam tried to compose her thoughts.  Escape was the obvious solution, but who knew how long that would take, or if it were even possible?  This world held things unlike any she had ever known or dreamed.  She liked to think of herself as braver than most girls, when it came to things of the imagination, but she was no fighter, no warrior like the ones she so often wrote about.  Mistakes would kill her; of that she had no question at all.  She would have to take this slow, one step at a time, until the sunlight of normal, boring old Kentford shone down upon her face once more.

She had to believe she would find a way out.  The alternative was too much for even her writer’s imagination to comprehend.

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” –Andy Warhol

When the doorbell rang for the fifth time that night, Madam Morrist got to her feet with an agility that no ordinary old woman ought to have.  Each of the previous four times, Melody had seemed to find some flaw in her suitors that left her unwilling to accept their advances, and by now Maraude was beginning to get desperate.  She had no misconceptions about whether Melody shared this desperation, but the girl was young enough to still believe in love, and true love at that.  It would be the undoing of them both.  What sensible girl wouldn’t look at a well-to-do merchant and swoon for his wealth?  What sensible girl wouldn’t look at a lesser prince of the realm and swoon for his palace?  That one in particular burned Maraude; the bribe she had paid his governess was not small!  The girl had learned nothing from her schooling and the guidance of her peers, it seemed.

This time, Maraude swore to herself, Melody would not get the first move.  It would be this man, or none at all!  She could, of course, have made this all much more simple with a few well-placed magical wards, but she had underestimated Melody’s stubbornness versus the amount of effort it would have taken her to do so.  Melody should have been willing to jump on the first male that entered the House of Morrist, but as usual, the girl always found some way to nettle her in the end.  How simple a task it should have been, indeed!

Melody failed to reach the door before her grandmother, as planned.  A cackle found its way to Maraude’s lips as the petulant scowl on Melody’s face deepened.  “Ye’d better git faster, sweet.  Men like their dinners hot.”  Ignoring whatever proud retort came in response, she unlocked the door, smoothed back her own ratty hair (for all the good that it did) and flung open the door with a flourish.  “Welcome to th’ House o’ Morrist, good lad.  Are ye here to court my granddear, then?”

Only after she had spoken did she get a glimpse of the new suitor that had come to make ease of her life.  He stood before her in a simple yet well-tailored suit, its colors muted but strong.  The style was good, but not the latest in fashion; the boy couldn’t be a noble, not with that as the finest he had to recommend him!  His hands were clean, at least, which improved her opinion just a touch.  He was a fighting man, judging from his broad chest and powerful muscles; Melody would just love that, she knew without even having to ask!  The fighting part, less so.  Maraude’s heart leapt into her throat; despite his lack of overachievement, the boy had the earmarks of success written all over him…

Then she looked into his face, and realized just how much trouble she was in.

Melody was quicker to recognize the visitor.  “Armer!  It’s been so long, I thought…  Oh, never mind what I thought, come in, come in!  Let me look at you.  You’ve grown so much, haven’t you?”  Confirming Maraude’s worst fears with each breathless word, she swept the young man inside, fussing over every stitch of his person.

Maraude retreated to the fireplace and fought to regain her composure.  Of all the people in the world to hear her call for a suitor, why in Heaven’s name did it have to be Armer D’Auguste?  The boy had been a close friend of Melody’s, years ago, back when her father was still little more than a boy himself.  The three had spent inordinate amounts of time together, and it had seemed like Armer wanted little more to do with his life than to emulate the great Ronald Morrist.  Though Maraude had never heard of anything untoward passing between Melody and Armer in the past, it was practically expected — or in Ronald’s case, accepted — that Armer would be the one to claim Melody as his own.  He had been too young to understand, of course, and so had she; but the look in Melody’s eyes suggested that for her, at least, she had learned to add.

Armer, on the other hand, was just as slow as he had ever been.  “Quit that, Mel, you’re messin’ up my coat, I just got this washed to come out here, y’know.” He brushed off her questing hands with an impatient gesture, then shoved his own hands into his pockets.  “I’m not dead, not with your dad’s teaching under my belt.”  His tone suggested that the very thought of his own demise by a woman was an affront to his manhood.  “I enlisted, you know.  I can take care of myself now.  I don’t need a second ma.”

Maraude watched Melody’s face shift between complete and utter adoration at the first sight of Armer’s face, to the irritation that had been more common when they were children together — at least, as far as Ronald had ever mentioned it to her.  The heat in Melody’s cheeks was rising, and Maraude knew her pretty little temper well enough to know that meant trouble.  It was nice to see her venom aimed at someone else, for a change.

Melody was all too eager to please her grandmother, for once.  “You do need a second ma, at least if you’re still as clumsy as you used to be.  Dad always thought you’d stab yourself with a sword before you ever killed…”

Then she froze, realization marring her delicate features into a mask of fear.  “Armer… did you say you enlisted?”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, attempting to maintain his pride while being blissfully unaware of the more important aspect of Melody’s reaction.  “I heard Ronald died, I couldn’t believe it.  Those were dark times for me, being just a kid.  He was my hero, and to have him butchered by some filthy Goblin…  I made a few ranks in the army just by being mad.  Then I thought of avenging him and made a few more.”

Maraude studied his build while he boasted.  His muscles were well enough, she had admitted as much before she’d known who he was.  Had Ronald really built the scrawny lad that he’d spoken of so often into this passing display of a soldier?  He was still stupid, of that there was no question, but his years in the army had given him more poise, more pride, than she would have expected from someone with his… questionable background.  Whatever the truth was, most of his pride seemed to be challenged in the face of someone who had grown up by his side and knew the child behind the newfound mask of heroism.  It was good for him.

Unsure what to do with Melody’s silence, Armer decided to try to fill it.  “I wasn’t sure what happened to you, of course.  I hear a lot of girls who lose their fathers end up drunk, or we find ‘em after they off themselves.  I wasn’t sure…”

Melody made a sound that Maraude could only describe as being similar to a plucked chicken, and she forced the remainder of her composure into an attempt to contain the hysterical laughter that began to build in her belly.  Perhaps her initial panic had been too sudden; if Armer blundered into too many more walls, his paramour might just kill him, and the crisis would be over before it ever began!

The tones in Melody’s voice seemed to be at war between a high-pitched squawk and a low growl when she managed to speak again.  “Drunk?  Off myself?  You spend years with me and Dad, and you think I’d just crawl off to some corner and end it all?  How dare you, Armer D’Auguste!  And what makes you think you know anything about what girls do?  If you’ve been in the army like you claim, you shouldn’t have had time for girls… right?”  She was fighting tears, like any good noblewoman should, Maraude noted, but her voice quavered just a little bit too long at that last; with any boy other than Armer, she would have just become a liability in the desperation department!

“Um… sorry, Mel.”  At last realizing that he’d made a mistake, Armer studied the floor with intense interest.  Maraude watched his hands try to dig deeper into his pockets and fail.  “That’s not good enough, but sorry.  When I saw the notice that you were to be wed, I came as fast as I could.  The army’s looking for me right now actually.  Something about absence of duty, I dunno.  They can’t win a fight without me, you know, just like Ronald.”  Maraude couldn’t help a snicker; it wasn’t like anyone would notice in the midst of such chaos.  The boy was treading on thinner ice than he knew, and yet he was still trying to recover his ego.  It was priceless!

Melody’s glare didn’t waver, but her arms had folded across her chest and her body language suggested the rigidity of a wild cat about to pounce on its prey.  Balked by his failure to diffuse the situation, Armer again attempted to fill the awkward silence.  “I didn’t want to join, you know.  I wanted to be like Ronald, and it was the only thing I knew how to do.”  A sweaty hand finally emerged from his pocket long enough to sweep through his shaggy hair before returning.  “I’ve always been stupid, Mel, you know it.  He didn’t need me to be smart, he had faith in me the way I was.  When he died, the only thing I knew how to do was hold a sword, so I did it, and I did the best job of it I could.  I couldn’t set his soul at rest, or take care of you, so…”

“You could have taken care of me!  Anything would have been better than this!  I’ve been dying for the last five years, you stupid ass!”   Maraude couldn’t help but feel resentment building.  She knew Melody’s feelings well enough, but to hear her shout them as if she weren’t even in the room, in the middle of company, was beginning to cross the thin line where her patience intersected with insanity.  Melody was far too irate to stop herself, however.   “Instead you went off and tried to get yourself killed, like he did.  You abandoned me just like he did!”

No longer able to control herself, Melody burst into tears.  If Armer could have dissolved into the floor by means of some magic spell, he would have done it.  Maraude held her breath, waiting to see the final stroke that would end it all, the one that would send Armer packing into the distance and free her of a general feeling of doom that had arrived when she first recognized Armer.  It had not dissipated, even after the realization that the reunion of Melody and Armer might not spell her worst nightmare, and that made her more nervous than anything else had that evening.  If Melody got away with someone that made her beautiful smile appear more than once every three months or so, Maraude would consider the evening a failure on many levels.

Armer’s next move, however, took Maraude by surprise.  He took his hands out of his pockets, straightened his posture as well as he was able, and crossed the painful distance that had developed between himself and Melody with several strong strides.  After only a moment of hesitation, he tried to put his arms around his childhood sweetheart.  The gesture was too much for the already overwrought girl, who shouted unintelligible things at him, beating her delicate fists against his chest.  Where any other man would have turned and run, however, Armer did not.  Maraude thought that he was simply too stupid to understand that he had made a fatal error, but soon began to realize that something unexpected was happening.  Melody’s assaults were growing weaker, and unable to escape from his rigid grasp, she was instead falling into his arms.  Her sense of doom could no longer be ignored.

Melody was babbling a string of half-formed thoughts all at once.  “You’re so stupid, Armer…  Why didn’t you come back?  I thought I’d lost you too, I didn’t know what to do…  Everyone disappeared, my friends, everything…  And this hag came and ruined it all!”  Sudden strength and anger surged in her voice.  “She’s horrible, she hated Dad, I don’t know how a mother could say such things to her own son…  Make her stop, Armer, take me away from here, there’s nobody I’d rather…”

Melody couldn’t finish the thought, which was just as well for Maraude, whose teeth were now ground into a permanent snarl.  Before she had time to bark, however, Armer rested his head against Melody’s, still trying to calm her shattered soul.  “I didn’t come back because I was scared, Mel.  You always loved your dad best, I could never compete with that.  The best I could hope was to try to be at least equal, so that maybe you’d look at me like you used to look at him… that I could give you hope like he did.  I couldn’t tell you…”

His voice skipped a beat, and Maraude couldn’t shove her fingers into her ears fast enough to avoid the words she knew were coming.

“I couldn’t tell you I thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world.”

Melody’s sobs changed force, from tears of rage to quieter tears of joy.  The damage was done; there was no way that Armer wouldn’t leave the House of Morrist with Melody on his arm now.  Looking at the two of them together made Maraude’s stomach twist in ways that it never had before; all the anger and frustration she had felt since arriving at the House of Morrist to meet with her hellion of a grandchild boiled to life.  For just one moment, she forgot that most of the goading had been hers, and that her own rage at Ronald was perhaps more than Melody’s could ever hope to be.  That moment was enough to change the tide that threatened to overwhelm all of them in its force.

Maraude would be damned if Melody got everything she ever dreamed of.

“Know what I think?” Maraude’s voice was louder than she meant it to be when she spoke at last.  “I think there’s too much honesty in this room fer me.” She reached into her pocket and removed a handful of garish-looking herbs and mushroom stems.  Armer turned at the sound of her voice; a trained soldier he was, and didn’t miss a beat despite his lack of mental agility.  Melody was slower, too blinded by her own emotions to recover so soon.  “Fer once I’d like t’ hear some sweet talkin’ my way, and not just the tripe y’ give me, child.”

Armer was not quick enough to remove his arms from Melody and make it to the fireplace in time to stop Maraude from flinging the mixture into the roaring flames.  “Let’s see how honest ye are now, D’Auguste, and how much th’ girl fancies ye when ye are.”

Armer froze as the flames roared even louder than they had before, and the blinding light that followed burned spots into the vision of everyone present.  He began to clutch at his throat, gasping as if the fires were choking off his ability to breathe.  Melody stood by in terror, torn between throwing herself at her grandmother in vengeance and a desire to aid Armer in any way she could.  Though she had seen her grandmother’s witchy magic a few times over the years, she had never gotten close to it, never understood it.  Maraude thought it was fitting that her ignorance should be paid for with joy.

After several moments, the flames resumed their normal heat and height.  Armer opened his mouth, fury written across his face, ready to speak his mind to what would be his new grandmother.

“That was some pretty swift magic, Granny, even for a beautiful girl like yourself.”

His eyes widened in horror, and Melody’s horror only mirrored his own.  Maraude’s grin could have sunk a million ships, if only she’d wanted it to.

“What the hell…  what the hell did you do to me?”  Armer’s voice had returned to normal again.  “What was that… mixture?”

“Still slow, aren’t ye, lad?  Ye can ask questions all ye want, but careful what ye say, especially to yer lady friend.  She’s fragile, y’know.”

Armer turned to Melody, who had begun to tremble behind him.  “We’ll never find a way out of this.  This is all your fault, you know.  Find your own way out.”

Melody fell to her knees, breathless, and Armer growled in fury at the witch who had somehow managed to twist his words into untruths — the opposites of what he intended to say.  It seemed that any question would pass unchallenged, but anything that he intended to say with any meaning at all would be warped.  It was perhaps the worst punishment possible for a simple farmer’s boy with nothing but honesty and a small amount of combat experience to his name.  Maraude congratulated herself with a mental pat on the back.

She watched with growing amusement as Armer attempted to compose himself.  She could see the wheels in his mind turning, grinding in an effort to find a way out of the predicament he was in.  She knew that the first thing he would do would be to try to retreat, taking Melody away with him until he could find a way to explain to her what was going on.  However, she was laying odds that he would try to use questions to his advantage, now that he “knew” they were safe.  Such a brave boy, thinking he understood the rules of the game before he’d even begun to play!  She didn’t have long to wait before her guess was confirmed.

“Melody, will you never follow me again, please?”

It took only a second for Armer to realize his mistake in assuming that questions were safe.  It took Melody less time to look at him as if he were some sort of monster, and then flee in the direction of the door.  Maraude never moved to stop her as she fumbled for the door latch and threw it open, running into the pitch black night as if her life depended on it.  No longer would she wait for anyone to save her; Maraude had bewitched Armer, her only hope, and now he was not to be trusted any more than that witch was.  Her only salvation was to run, far, far away from the House of Morrist, away from her father’s memory.  Maraude was certain that Melody would never return, unless by some stroke of luck, they managed to undo the spell.  The act was possible, but it would be difficult for two headstrong young fools such as Melody and Armer.  They still had time to figure out their new limitations!

Armer threw one last disgusted look at Maraude.  “I will never be back here, kind lady.  I will wait for you to tell me someday what enchantment you have bestowed upon me.  And when I find out, I will love you even more for it.”

He took off after Melody, slamming the door of the great House of Morrist behind him, letting it echo as much as it could.

The silence that fell was all the reward Maraude Morrist needed.