I am thinking of ways to improve traffic here, in order to get this blog out to the masses.  If you can think of anything that isn’t too obtrusive or frustrating for readers, please do let me know and I’ll consider it.  I’m not ready to shell out a ton of funds trying to get attention, but small avenues have to be available that I haven’t thought of yet.

That’s all, folks!  I’ll see you on March 20th!

The stairs seemed to go on for an eternity, descending in a twisted maze of shadowed steps that sent shivers down Sam’s spine.  They were straight, in reality; she had climbed them only as much as she had to, of course, but she did not doubt her knowledge of this.  The twisted versions were steeper, darker and almost defiant in the face of gravity; on more than one occasion she had the impression that she was walking on the walls, or even the ceiling.  The ever-present ink, rust and rain lurked within sight at all times, making the going even tougher, but a sense of acclimation was seeping into her skin in regard to that.  It seemed that even a creature so possessed by fear had to prioritize, and with everything else she had to worry about, the ruddy mess was far and away the least of her concerns.

Her discussion with Miles about the state of the world outside brought her to a standstill at the base of the stairwell; she would not have recognized it as the base, if not for the dim daylight that radiated into the darkness and beckoned her forward.  He had said there was no respite, and that the things she fled from were waiting for her there, as well.  She had made her peace, albeit fragile, with leaving him behind, but part of her wanted to deny his words; to pretend that he had misjudged, and that her first step into clean air and dry pavement would put an end to her ordeal.  Taking that final step would, once and for all, determine her next course of action by opening – or closing – potential exits.  The possibility of freedom excited her, drove her forward; but the gnawing feeling that she was wrong, and that Miles had spoken truth, left her faltering.

She had come so far; it would be madness to return.  Her heart in her lungs, Sam gritted her teeth hard enough to make her jaw ache, and then stepped outside, into the alien world she both knew and rejected with every bone in her body.  If she had not paused to rest and make use of the painkillers in her backpack at her first sight of the twisting stairwell, she might not have been able to tolerate the view that greeted her.  Even so, it was enough to coax a whimper from her sternest attempts at solidarity.

The sky was impossible to miss.  Sam had spent her lifetime with her head in the clouds, or so her parents had always told her; the Nightmare did not warp those things she found comfort in without doing it tenfold.  The pale blue sky, sunny even in winter, and on most days, clear and almost transparent, was gone; no other word seemed to fit it.  Rather than the absence of color that came with night, the sky was saturated with a combination of all the colors in the spectrum, reflected to an opaque, unsettling white.  The sun nor the moon were visible; night and day had once and for all lost their meaning.  The tree-lined walkways and manicured gardens that surrounded the Shadowbrook apartment complex seemed black and menacing by default.  The trees themselves loomed overhead, threatening to engulf her; she looked away, unwilling to give her heart or mind into their clutches so soon.

The strange sounds that crept into the very edges of her hearing, combined with the impossibility of the sights before her, brought Sam’s mind out of the stark rejection she had mustered and into the bitter realization of undeniable truth; Miles, of course, was right.  He would never have lied; not to her, and not about such important details.  She was beginning to realize just how easy it was to lure herself into a false sense of security.  Psychologists loved to throw that phrase around; it was not the first, nor the last, time she would hear it.  For the moment, it seemed like a cruel joke to her exhausted mind.

In the throes of despair, Sam sat down on the edge of the curb, her feet sticking out into a street – her street – with an utter lack of vehicular presence.  Midway Avenue was one of the busiest streets in town, and looking at it now just convinced her further that her time left on earth was limited in the most violent of ways.  She hunched over her own knees, her eyes blank and empty, as she stared at the ragged patterns in the asphalt.  What good could there be in continuing?  The small efforts she had made to survive – heroic, in light of her many weaknesses, she thought – meant nothing.  If the creatures Miles spoke of wanted to kill her, what would stop them?  If anything, this broken world was theirs, not hers, and they could do with it as they pleased.

She was on the verge of a complete mental breakdown when the woman entered her peripheral vision.  She was a young woman, with her straight and proud back blocking any view of her face from Sam.  Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, unkempt but lovely in its wildness; it was the same length and color as Sam’s own, though she always kept hers woven into braids to avoid startling herself when it fell into her eyes.  Her movements were slow and deliberate, and from the way she held herself, it seemed as if she cradled something precious in her arms.  Sam’s first thought was of a mother carrying a child.

Sam almost didn’t notice her dress, laid against the sky, until it was too late; the woman wore pure white.  It was not the radiant white of a wedding gown, nor the sporty white of a tennis uniform, nor even the stained and filthy white of unwashed socks; it was something both like and unlike all of these at once.  If she had tried, she could not name it, and she had the funny feeling that to name it would be to court her own death by madness.  It was at once a mystery that Sam knew she could not, and should not, solve.

The woman was crossing the street, a great distance away.  Sam leapt to her feet, shaken out of her panic at the sight of another living soul.  Of course, she had not forgotten Miles; approaching her was out of the question.  She could, at least, follow her; with any luck, the ethereal creature might well know the way to safety.  She looked human enough, at least, but Sam had never been one to trust appearances.  There were too many stories, both hers and others that she read, where the vilest sort of demons were born from human flesh.  If this was a trap meant to lead her to her doom, then she would be no worse off than she had been before; if not, then her only hope of salvation was passing before her eyes.  In this case, Sam could not afford to be too hesitant, and she knew it well.

Hoisting her backpack onto her shoulders again, wondering how it seemed to feel heavier each time she did so, Sam began to make her way toward the woman in white, keeping her eyes as much as possible on the empty street and not on the woman herself.  It was rude to stare; Sam did not want to admit it, but the woman was somehow captivating.  She was beautiful, like an angel or a saint, but somehow flawed in a way that she could not put a name to.  She felt strange urges welling up inside her with each moment she looked at the woman; she wanted to touch her, to comfort her – how she knew the woman needed comfort, she had no idea – and at the same time tear her apart and strangle her with her bare hands.  She had only felt such violence toward another human being once, and the regret for it still haunted her memories.

The psychologist; her first.  Her parents had insisted, and she had never forgiven them, in all the years since.  She couldn’t remember the woman’s name, or face, or anything; at her impatient questioning and selfish assumptions of what Sam was feeling and thinking, she had given in to her basic instinct for survival.  It was an experience that left her traumatized, swearing to never hurt anyone or anything ever again; the psychologist had spent time in the local hospital before quitting her job with all haste.  She had always wanted to apologize, to make things right with a woman who had only tried to do her job, but there were reasons – legal ones, as well as emotional ones – that prevented her from doing so.  The restraining order said everything it needed to, in no uncertain terms.

The woman in white began to move quicker, as if in a hurry; Sam forced her memories aside in an effort to keep up.  At first the woman’s motion seemed like just a brisk walk, but as Sam struggled to follow, it became a run and then almost a kind of floating or flying.  Sam found herself stopped and struggling for breath beneath the weight of her backpack at the same moment that the woman disappeared.  Not around a corner, or into the distance; she disappeared into nothingness, as if she had never come in the first place.  Sam reached for glasses that no longer existed, thinking to clean them; instead, her hand dropped to hang beside her, useless.  Once again, her hope for salvation was gone.

She didn’t have long to revel in her confusion before the awful scent and sight of blood assaulted her senses.  She had not been paying attention to where the strange woman led her; she had arrived at the intersection of Midway Avenue and Cypress Street without notice.  In the middle of the crosswalk lay something that Sam could not look at without screaming; it was human, but it was dead in a way that no human being should ever be.  She had not seen death before, outside of her television set and in her mind’s eye as she wrote stories about it; a sort of bitter humor billowed up in her stomach.  Of course, the Nightmare would bring to light her worst fears.  Of course it would.

This death was not typical; the man had not died from gunshot wounds or a stabbing.  He had in no way chosen to commit suicide.  The violence that spread before her seemed to go on forever, as if whatever killed him had intended to make its mark in as large an area as possible, to send a signal of its conquest.  Vague marks in the shape of alien handprints marred the scene further, and laid against them, other bloodstains began to take on almost recognizable shapes and designs.  Sam managed to draw blood from her knuckles in her mouth before she even realized she had put them there in the first place.  It was perhaps less shocking, in some small way, because it didn’t seem real, but the metallic scent of blood mixed with the scent of death left her no doubt of the scene’s authenticity.  She could not get rid of that without running away, which seemed like a very, very good idea once it had reached her halting, railing mind.

She had just managed to flee the stench when the woman appeared again, this time much, much closer to Sam.  If she had not skidded to a halt the moment the woman entered her field of view, she might have bumped into her back.  Sam found herself fighting to breathe, from the run, from the proximity of another living creature, and from the new scents and sounds that seemed to circle around the strange woman’s presence.

There were roses, faint and rich and fresh; there was the warmth of a raging fire, burning wood into comforting smoke.  There was the scent of her body and hair; a human scent that Sam had not realized she had lacked since her exit from the real world.  In the end, though, above all these things, there was the scent of warm animal fur, and the faintest hint of a purr.  She knew then that she had no hope of surviving the day, or night, conscious.

The woman stopped and turned to face Sam, the motion seeming as if it took an eternity.  Perhaps it did, and Sam never knew until too late.  When it stopped, however, and the vision before her became clear, she could not help the reaction that sent her backward on her butt, scrambling for purchase in a street that had nothing to hold onto.

The woman wore Sam’s exact face, and a radiant smile that seemed to chase the darkness away wherever she looked.  In her arms, a black cat slept, his back rising and falling in steady rhythm, unafraid and oblivious to his protector’s motion.  He did not wake nor stir at Sam’s outburst; the world itself might have fallen around him, but in the arms of this mirror image of a woman, he could sleep forever.  Sam would have known him anywhere at a single glance; she did not need to ask, or wonder, if it was Poe.

Her first instinct was anger, and it came from nowhere at all that she could fathom.  How dare this woman, whoever she was – and she was not, could not be, the real Sam – take Poe away from her?  And for that matter, how dare Poe himself sleep in her arms as if she were the real Sam?  He was her cat, her protector, her pride and joy, he knew her better than anyone else!  Yet, for some reason, he didn’t seem to need her anymore.

The urge to break the strange angel before her grew tenfold, and only the shock of her body prevented her from a reprisal of the violence she had shown to her psychologist years ago.  Perhaps it was also something in the knowledge that destroying a woman who could be her own twin was too poetic; too ironic and sadistic to manage.  Though Poe had given up on her, she could not interrupt his peace, either.  At least someone had managed to come through, to this strange and terrible world, and survive.

As she fought the urge to attack, the woman seemed to direct her smile at Sam alone.  Well before Sam had time to recover or react, she reached up with a careful, gentle hand to stroke Poe’s head.  The cat leaned into her touch, rapt in his feline pleasure; then he opened his eyes.  They were the same ethereal green that they had always been, but he did not blink when she looked straight into them, as any cat – including him – would have done by instinct.  Instead, he stared, for all the world as if she were some sort of threat; or was she prey?  Though he was her friend, he was still a cat, and she could only determine so much by a glance.  A handful of guesses at his mood left her with even less purchase on reality; he might be accusatory, or bored, or interested in her plight depending on which angle she considered.  It was not impossible to think she might have been attributing her own thoughts of herself onto him, either.  What, then, did it all mean?

Sam felt as if she were drowning.  She had only a moment to gasp for air before the woman, and Poe, disappeared again, fading into the distance with no warning and no reason that Sam could determine.  With their departure, and the encroaching silence, came the knowledge that she was now more than alone.  The silence almost seemed appealing.

It was an unfortunate appeal; the silence that descended upon Sam was the kind of silence that comes within the eye of the storm, and the storm was one of the fastest that Sam had ever seen.  Where the woman and Poe had stood, something else appeared, shambling toward her, as if somehow called by the woman’s absence.  Unlike the strange woman or the heap of a corpse that she had run from, this creature was not in any way human.  Its sudden appearance, she began to realize, might be blamed on the opacity of the sky, hiding a great deal from her view.  She might have believed it hid the woman, too, if she had not dematerialized within a handspan of Sam.  Or, she admitted to herself, she was groping for answers in the dark.

The creature was almost upon her by the time she noticed it.  It had bulging eyes, and it had a mouth, which was twisted into a hellish grin.  Its hands were huge and long and gnarled, with thick palms; Sam did not have to think long to realize that it intended to grasp and clutch her in them until she died.  What other purpose could there be for such an abomination?  In the next instant, she recalled the bloody handprints left at the scene of the horrific murder she had come upon; this, then, was one of the creatures Miles had warned her about, the kind that sought human blood.  There would be no escape.

Her first thought was to give up.  If Poe was happy, then what did it matter if she returned home?  What home could there be, without her beloved friend to share it with?  Then the thought of pain entered her mind.  She was, after all, still human herself.  If not for her abject fear of pain, she might have ended her own life years ago, back in the real world.  She had not been able to do it, then – she could not do it now, either.  It labeled her as a coward of the worst kind; but it dictated that she must live, or die trying.

An image of Miles, and of the desperation that fueled his search for the right lever to free his daughter, and of Melissa’s perfect, innocent face, crept unbidden into her mind, and she found herself fighting inertia to extract Miles’ pistol from her backpack.  She did not have much time; the creature’s pace was swifter than the one she had encountered in the Nightmare replica of her bedroom, and unlike that creature, this one was intent on doing her injury rather than passing her by.

She did not want to live for Miles, or Melissa, either.  She denied all possible thought that began to trend toward that, in her panicked scramble.  Miles was all but dead already, and Melissa would die too, without him; she could not rely on them.  She should not have relied on Poe!  Reality was a harsh mistress.  If she was going to live, she was going to have to do it for her own reasons and her own needs.  Though she had none of those things, she could at least make sure that there was time to seek out new ones.

Still on her butt, Sam pulled the pistol free of her backpack.  As the creature sallied forth, its foul breath reeking all too close to her, she managed to cock it and point it forward, between her bent knees.  Her hands shook with effort and uncertainty; she did not want to harm anyone or anything, but this was self-defense, and the rage of everything she had been through over the past few hours had broken some of her inhibitions; just the ones she needed to survive the encounter.  Murder would be easy.  Her first kill would be easy.

She emptied the entire bullet clip into the monster.  The second shot ended its advance, and the third ended its so-called life, but the others were for good measure.

Covered in the creature’s foul, rancid blood, poised in a half-crawl away from the horrible corpse, Sam dropped the spent pistol in the street and began to laugh.  Her uncontrolled and hysterical laughter filled the air until her exhausted body and mind gave up the fight and her eyes rolled back into her head in a dead faint.  It was dangerous to leave herself exposed, in this strange and alien world; she might die anyway, despite her last stand to defend herself.  She just could not find the strength to maintain consciousness a moment longer.  The world was beginning to take its toll on her in ways that no human should have to accept, much less consider.  If she could not die, then she would have to release the tension by other means; science, it seemed, still worked in the Nightmare to some extent.

The last thing she saw was the hem of a dress that was white and yet not white, covered in a thick layer of dark blood and matted with black fur.  The glowing green eyes of a black cat that was no longer hers attended her fall into darkness.

Before you get too excited, I should be honest; the additional content beyond Liar’s Dice is a standalone and not a new continuing story.  Blank Slate is the remnants of a fictional blog I created for a character that I played in the now-defunct NCSoft MMORPG Tabula Rasa.  I really enjoyed their interest in and devotion to fan writers, as they actively encouraged such participation in their community, and hosted their own fanfiction section for writings such as this.  I only submitted “Here There Be Angels” due to the length of the other two, but it was accepted and posted with all the other TR writings for the length of its life.  In memory of a great game that had so much potential, I wanted to post these, and share my hope that other games in the future will be as inspiring and welcoming to those that live by the pen.  Of course, an information page will be forthcoming sometime today.

I’ll see you again on the 20th.  It’s good to be back in the saddle.

Seeing the injection gun at my hip, he asked if the “good doctor” wanted to hear a story. In the interest of civility in an already uncivilized world, I invited him to pull up a stool. Having pursued half of my former education in the field of psychology, I was well aware of the importance of being available to those in need. There were many soldiers yet traumatized by their new lot in life, and this fellow was no exception.

He opened his mouth to tell his story, but what came out was a swan song for our dead Earth, just as I had suffered from countless others before him. He told me of his model wife and angelic children, and of his job that left him rich, and of his beauty of a car that got at least a billion miles to the gallon. All of it was gone, of course, and he didn’t see the reason in fighting any longer. What did it matter, if the Bane would win regardless of what we did? We never saw it coming, and we wouldn’t the next time either. He never saw my fist until it had made contact with his jaw.

I was beyond tired of hearing about the world we’d left behind. Every soldier fighting had the same story to tell, and the more they told it, the more they believed that everything would be right again. Perhaps at the thousandth telling, their wives would be in their arms again, or their children’s laughter would ring in their ears anew. They didn’t realize that with each telling, they died a little more inside by demanding constant memory and recreation of the past. Most swore vengeance in the same story, but I knew better – only those of us who pushed our memories behind us would ever consciously make the decision to fight, and to win.

He didn’t want to hear it, and after a few curses and bitter threats, he left. I didn’t expect to see him again. However, my behavior left me with a sour taste in my own mouth. The old Hippocratic Oath rang loud and grating in my ears, and I sank back onto my stool and finished my drink in silence. The future would make animals of us all, and alcohol only brought the nature of that transformation to light. It was the last time I tried to find peace in a bottle.

It wasn’t a gun I offered in the end, but a prayer. Crouching at the heels of my failing comrades, I wiped the sweat from my brow and pulled out the new repair tool I’d bought less than an hour ago. Things looked bad, but more than the power of another gun, we needed an angel – someone to gift us with the last breath we needed to stop the rush, and God wasn’t listening, to say the least.

It lasted an eternity, but when the dust settled, our last stand had become the first miracle we’d seen since we left home. I’m not sure whose tears flowed faster – the soldiers’ or mine.

The only thanks I got in the end was a salute, but somehow it was more than enough to make me think real hard about becoming an angel more often. Maybe this war doesn’t need more guns after all.

That’s what they told me when I climbed into their van.  They didn’t ask twice about the bloodstains on my hands or the ghosts that haunted my inner vision — they didn’t need to.  They’d seen it all before.  I wasn’t the first doctor pulled from the front lines, but I was, perhaps, the most dedicated.  They said something about a way to restore what we’d lost, a way to harness an ability never before seen on Earth, and that only myself and people like me could use it; I laughed.  It was the first time I’d laughed since the Fall.

They would hear none of my demands to be freed from fairy tales.  I fought, thinking to rid myself of them, but they quickly overcame me, and my consciousness faded in a haze of confusion.  What madness had taken these remnants of Earth, that they believed in a half-baked scheme based on purely conjectural context?  With my skill, I was needed to aid the survivors and lead them to shelter, and these devils had not stopped short of violence and abduction to gain my compliance with their wishes.  If I hadn’t believed that Earth had fallen before that moment, it was a turning point to be certain.

I awoke in a room filled with light.  They’d put me in solitary confinement after treating my various injuries.  The days when my father had taken me out into the fields and taught me to shoot targets in Berlin were impossible to recall when brought to rest against the might and brutality of our enemies.  Within a few moments, something akin to food and water were supplied by a silent man, not much older than myself, wearing a lab coat like the one I had recently torn to shreds in the name of supplying bandages to the injured.  I didn’t realize I was hungry enough to consider the primitive mass of spoiling food and sour water appealing until it was halfway into my belly.

The silent man returned, bearing another man in military garb that managed to make the tall and lanky doctor appear mouselike by comparison.  The speech he gave was free of nonsense in that he spoke in short bursts with no embellishment required, but his words were far from sensible.  His song was the same as the men and women who had pulled me from the field with a promise of backup and supplies – a ballad of alien technology, inborn hidden potential, and outer worlds that could save us from extinction.  They needed a doctor with my skill, and that was the point that he most returned to over the course of the conversation; each time he reached it, his eyes changed from empty to pleading.  Instinct couldn’t lie.

I asked him why, theoretically speaking, I would be a greater aid to those who had decided to take this chance by leaving Earth, than I would be to those still remaining and injured.  He shook his head: over 90% of Earth’s population was dead or dying, and our enemy had leaked intelligence that they planned to eradicate the planet once they had finished their slaughter.  Most of those left worth saving had been saved; I would just be saving those who could no longer aid themselves or others – and I would be promising them another chance to watch their life slip away between their fingers, nothing more and nothing less.  I reacted badly, and he left me to crouch in the corner, my knees locked to my chest and my body rocking back and forth, just as subject to shock as any of my patients.  Of all the things I had been in my life, helpless was never one of them.

They called it a choice, but it wasn’t, at least not at the heart.  If I hadn’t agreed, and if I’d fought to remain on Earth, they would have forcibly thrust me through their impossible wormhole and dragged me off world; this I know now beyond a shadow of a doubt.  It’s absolutely true what they said; doctors and medics are desperately needed out here.  And even though I’m not accustomed to choosing a computerized handheld device over a tourniquet and scalpel, I know what is needed to save lives.  I can do good for those of us out here learning a new way of life, and making a new stand against those who shattered our lives.

The magic, I still have to get used to.

Melody found herself unable and unwilling to pay attention to where her footsteps led her, in the midnight rain.  The tears that poured down her cheeks blinded her view.  The delicate color she applied to her eyelids and cheeks earlier that night, in order to make them stand out, ran in streaks and stung her eyes.  Her nose ran in an unbecoming fashion; hysterics left no room for the beauty of maidenly grief. The worst part was that she did not care what the passing crowds thought of her any longer.  They had no sympathy for her, anyhow; any girl worth approaching would not be making such a scene.  She was alone, again, and just when she had begun to believe in miracles for the first time in years.

She tripped over her own feet as she reached up with a silken sleeve to wipe the mess from her face; down she went into the muddy street on her hands and knees, the hem of her gown as torn and filthy as her soul.  At once the tears halted, and gave way to hysterical laughter despite the blood that began to well from the scrapes on her hands.  She could feel the crowd looking onward; their eyes were downcast, but she knew they watched beneath veiled lashes and furrowed brows.  They wanted a show, and she was giving it to them, like some kind of common prostitute; her laughter only grew louder at the thought that soon, she might very well fulfill that role.  Anything had to be better than the House of Morrist, and the woman who lived there – and her puppet, Armer, who danced only for her.

A young boy in the crowd hesitated, his innocent gaze the only honest concern directed her way; his mother bumped into his unmoving back, scolding him in hushed tones and urging him to continue homeward, away from the strange woman in the street.  Abashed by his behavior, he turned his face and obeyed; he was gone before Melody had time to miss him.  She was done with believing in human kindness; the male sort of human kindness in particular.  Boy or man, they were all the same; Armer, her childhood friend, had not grown or changed in his time away from her, so why should any other man possess the ability to transform into something greater than himself?  It was too much to believe.  Even her father had not changed; he had died instead.

Melody rose to her feet, her skirts heavy with grime, and began to walk again; it was a walk with purpose, though without aim or direction.  She had long since lost her orientation within the city, having had little opportunity to familiarize herself with the distances to the apothecary or the market on her own.  She had always followed in her father’s footsteps; always trusted him, or someone he knew, to guide her in the world.  Without him, she was adrift on the wind, seeking something that could never be found.  She had thought that Armer might know where his feet had once traveled, and guide her to him in the end, but he had failed her as well.  She had wanted to love Armer; had believed that his foolishness and innocence were as much a part of him as her hopelessness was of her, but she had not known him as she thought she did.  That much was clear, at least.

His words rang in her ears, striking her bruised heart again and again with fists of iron and steel.  “Melody, would you never follow me again, please?”  It was the final straw, after finding him again, then finding out who he had become since she had last seen him.  He was afraid to come and save her, as shattered by the loss of Ronald Morrist as she herself had been; she had never guessed that her savior and suitor would be nothing more than a bottomless pit of fear!  She had expected more, somehow; a white knight, born from his parents, Honor and Grace, reaching out to her with hands of Justice and Mercy.  He had been so beautiful, in the darkest reaches of her mind; so gentle and kind, and had wiped away her tears with a single breath.

Armer was a failure, compared to him.  She wanted to laugh at him; to push him back and away from her presence, but she couldn’t do that, not with him sipping tea at her grandmother’s behest!  She had been willing to settle; he had not, it seemed, in the end.  Not only did that mean that Armer had betrayed and destroyed her, it meant that she was not even a good enough woman to be settled for out of fear.  What hope could there be for her after something like that?  The knowledge made her want to scream; to tear out handfuls of her coiffed hair and twist apart the delicate jewelry that adorned her neck and earlobes.  What good were those things now? What good could any of it be, in the end?  A woman without a name and a husband was as good as dead, in the eyes of the world.

As the storm of her thoughts raged in her breast, Melody flew through the city, toward the outskirts, and at last into the forested reaches beyond the city gates.  A well, designed to aid weary travelers on their path, if they had no time or means to enter the city itself, intersected her flight.  The sight of it drew her up short, breathless, and disrupted her racing mind into something approaching sensibility; she had never been so far beyond the city, and was beginning to doubt her ability to return via the way she had come.  If she had been a fool to believe in Armer, she was becoming a greater one with each step she took!  Return, of course, would be impossible anyway.

The rain and the wind picked up, and Melody found herself bending double to try to stay afoot.  Hopelessness began to creep in again as she crawled up to the edge of the well and clutched the dirty, rusted and crumbling side with all her might.  She had intended to fall in the lee of the well, blocking at least some of the wind from shearing through what remained of her delicate gown, but instead her gaze fell to the rising water level in the bottom of the well.  She had heard stories of maidens, awash in grief from their lost lovers or broken promises, who ended their lives in wells.  Their families grieved and wailed when they found their bodies; in death, they guaranteed a place in the hearts of those they loved.  She had thought it selfish, clutched in her father’s warm embrace; thought it meaningless, when playing with Armer as a boy.  Now, face to face with her reflection, she thought she could see, for the first time, the sense in such an act.

She had thought a lot of things, over the course of her life.  She had wanted so much to be free of the mindless masses that her grandmother insisted she ingratiate herself with.  Life was to be an endless stream of parades and parties, court balls and lovelies, if she was to be anything more than Morrist’s failed excuse for a child.  Her grandmother had done her utmost to make Melody into what she most desired, and Melody had paid it no mind, believing with all her heart in the stories her father told; the ones where the maidens with wit, cunning and intelligence never needed to throw themselves on the mercy of others.  Things always worked out for them; their saviors always came, and cherished them just as much – if not more so – than their rich and realistic cousins.  So many stories, packed with such beautiful promises; she had wanted to believe with all her might that such things were possible.  Her father had told her never to believe everything she read, but she had never realized how deaf those words had been to her until just that moment.

In his eyes, she could have been anything.  She could have gone off to war, in a knight’s clothing and armor, and become the light of the world.  She could have gone questing for the herb that would cure the world’s ills, and created the potion that would erase the grief from human souls.  She could have read all the books in the world, and been the smartest person alive, giving advice to the lost and lessons to the world’s children.  She could even have been noble in any of these professions, had she the will to learn it.  He had never pushed her, never said anything one way or another to make her think that the path of courtly intrigue was to be preferred.  Only after his death did the necessity of such a way of life begin to enter her mind, and she had hated it with every forced smile and every ladylike word that crossed her lips.  And yet, if she had followed it, she would not be standing here now, an empty shell of a childish flower blooming into the petals of a woman.  She had never believed she had failed before, but her mind was changing fast.

A foul taste crept into her mouth and throat, choking her.  To admit that she had failed, and that any woman expecting to survive in the world had to pursue the highest goals in life and become the possession of someone higher than herself was one thing.  To admit it, however, was to admit that her grandmother – the woman who had done nothing to save her as Armer left her bleeding from the inside out, the woman who had used him to cause such brutal injuries on purpose to spite her, and the woman who resorted to blasphemy and witchcraft to achieve her goals in life  – had been right all along.

Melody’s eyes fell on the well before her again, and her haggard appearance in the water.  Given the choice between agreeing with Madam Morrist, and death, she thought that she might, in fact, prefer the latter.

Just as her arms began to find the strength to pull her weight up toward the well’s edge, her vision blurred further, and her eyes began to sting even worse than they had before.  Thinking that more of her makeup had caused the flareup, Melody stopped pulling and rubbed her soaked sleeve across her eyes.  If she was going to die, she wanted to do it with a minimum of pain; the necessary pain of suffering as her body surrendered to the water and gave up its last breath did not enter her mind.  She was, after all, only a child when it came to the harsh realities of life.  Blinking the soreness out of her eyes, she met with a sight beyond the well that almost stopped her heart by itself.

He was an old man; she knew that from his bushy black beard and matching black hair, but she knew by instinct that he was far, far older than his appearance belied.  He was wrapped in a foreign cloak, crafted from patches of mismatched and ratty fabric.  It appeared to wrap multiple times around his body in uneven layers, clasped in the front with a heavy brooch worth three times more than the jewelry she wore.  His white shirt had billowing sleeves that tied at the wrists with what she thought might be fishing line; his breeches were tied at the waist and knee with the same.

He wore a wide straw hat that kept him and the ground around him free of the rain for what seemed like miles; no matter how hard the wind blew, the hat never shuddered or attempted to take flight.  In his hands was a gnarled old root staff, which he used to aid his ample personage in movement.  She had never seen such a large man; the elders she knew boasted thinning gray hair, frail bodies and feeble voices.  Though he had not spoken, she felt his voice would be able to reach to the ends of the earth with a single word.  How such a man had come upon her without notice in the silence of the night, she could not fathom, even in her frantic state.

If she had believed in magic outside of her grandmother’s filthy tricks, she might have known him at a glance to be a man from another place and time outside her own.  Unfortunately, she had written that off as one more thing her father had meant when he told her not to believe everything she read.

He looked down at her and smiled; the corners of his black eyes crinkled up.  She wanted to run then, but something held her feet rooted to the spot, and she found that she couldn’t look away from him, no matter how she might try.  When he chose to move, his motions were deliberate and far more graceful than a creature his size and shape ought to command.  She imagined she could feel the earth tremble as he walked, but it was only a child’s fancy; he was as light as a feather, for all the world knew of things.  He approached her, the kind smile still rapt on his face, and at last ceased his approach within a giant’s handspan of her; his own hand, of course, which he offered to her.  His fingers were free of callus and markings in a way that no man’s should be.  She thought he might crush her in his palm, if he wanted; but he waited for her, as he would have for anyone he offered a simple handshake to.

She frowned at him for what felt like hours, trying to determine his nature; was he a friend, come from the dark of the night to save her, or was he a foe, seeking to end her life by his own hands instead of her own?  At last, when she could find no reason inside herself to wait any longer, she reached out with timid fingers to brush his open palm, as if it might burn her at a touch.  If he sought to kill her, then she would not end this night any differently than she had intended.  If he was a friend… well, she could use one of those, though she did not for a moment trust his lasting impact on her life.  After all, Armer had betrayed her, and her father had too; this man could not be anything greater than either of the two, or the two combined.

His black eyes smoldered with unnamed emotion at her touch, and just as she felt he was about to speak, the giant man seemed to glow with a strange, ethereal light.  His appearance trembled before her eyes, as if he fought to maintain his existence in her world.  At last, he lost the battle, and he began to dissolve into nothingness.  The touch of his hand was the last of him to disappear.  She heard the sound of bells in the distance; many shopkeepers tied bells to their doors in foreign places, to announce the coming and going of patrons. Her father’s books had said so.  She had no idea why that was the first thing she thought of, but she knew at once that it must be true.  Her father, it seemed, had not lied about everything, during her life.

It was then, in the silent void left by the giant’s passing, that the rain and wind stopped, leaving in their wake a still and silent night.  The moon shone down on her from its height in the sky, illuminating everything around her and pressing back the darkness that had held her in thrall before.  Melody looked down into the well again, but reflected there was not her own ragged face, but the glow of the moon, radiant and beautiful and alien at the same time.

Melody was a foolish girl; her understanding of this fact had grown tenfold since the moment she first saw the strange giant.  She had suffered a great deal of injury and betrayal that night, and she was overwrought, exhausted and drained.  Less than an hour ago, she was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for infamy and love; now, the thought seemed as foolish as it ever had in her youth.  Her flight from Armer, and from her grandmother, seemed foolish as well.  The stories of her childhood spoke of women that fought, sometimes with swords, but most times with words, for what they believed in.  She had not fought; she had allowed herself to be tricked and wounded instead, all while waiting to be saved like the very princesses she despised!

Armer was wicked, of that there was no question, and her grandmother more wicked still; but what she hadn’t considered before this moment was the blessing of freedom that now rested upon her shoulders.  With an assumed name, a little bit of creative disguise (her father would have called it dress-up) and no one to look for her, who knew what sort of life she might lead?  She could be any of the things her father had promised her, and more still that he hadn’t.  The thought of a simple life was not a bad one; she could be happy as a librarian, or an apothecary, or even a farmhand.  Work did not shame her anywhere as much as parading around in noble garb looking down her nose at the masses.  Now, divested of her entire childhood and its tangible memories, she was nobody and everybody all at once.  Nobody had to know of her failure to marry Armer.  Nobody had to know of her lying, selfish witch of a grandmother.  They could know her, and perhaps even love her, for who she was.

She had thought that the world had conspired to teach her one of its greatest lessons that night: that dreams were for children, and that she was no longer the child she still felt like in her heart.  However, the giant man had somehow taken with him all the chaos and drama that swept the intellect from her mind and left her little more than a slave to her emotions.  Now she could think, and thinking was what all the heroines she had ever read about did first, and best.  Her dreams still lay in tatters, just as her fancy dress did, but perhaps what she needed went beyond dreams in the first place.  She could not spend her time dreaming of rescue now; there was no need.  Now came learning to live again in a world without dreams; it was a place she felt she had never seen before.

Gathering up her filthy and torn skirts, Melody began to make her slow way out of the forest; at least she thought she might, if she continued in the same direction for long enough.  She was still too innocent to find her way back to the city she was born in, but sanity dictated that something had to lay in whatever direction she chose.  She would find the nearest road, keep to it, and soon, she would find a place to begin her transformation into something other than Melody Morrist, the hero’s daughter.  Inside, she would never be anything more; but it was time to see what the outside could be, if she let it.

As for the strange giant of a man… she would have to write it off as insanity, if she wanted to get anywhere in the long run.  She knew that she would have to find the answers about him inside herself at some point, but to dwell on it now was to risk looking inward at a time when she needed first and foremost to look outward.

At worst, he was an apparition sent by her grandmother to bolster her flight.  At best, he was an angel, sent by her father to guide her on her way.  Whatever he was, he had set her feet upon the path of life, and she could only thank him for that.

A snake, somewhere, is missing an eye.

Well folks, the result of IR’s first die roll is here!  We had a three-way tie over the course of the last few months.  Liar’s Dice (1), Shadow and Flame (2), and The End (3) all had shots at being the next updated story, but Fate decided that She wanted to find out what happens next to everyone’s favorite doomed couple – Melody and Armer!  But then, shouldn’t She know already?

Keep in touch!  I’ll be back to update on the first of February.  Let’s get this ball back to rolling, shall we?

I have made a few changes to the way things work here once again.  You may want to review the About pages to make sure you’re on top of everything.  The biggest changes are that I’m now just taking December and January off by default.  I cannot guarantee that I’ll be available during those months due to other commitments, so let’s just not stress about it, OK?  All other months should be as normal, and I will try to double up in October to make up for the long hiatus.  The other big change is that ties are now broken by a random die roll (see the About Ink Raindrops page for details on exactly how this works.)  Hopefully this will be beneficial for both of us in the long run.

Don’t forget to check out the new NaNoWriMo page!  The results of my participation each year will start being available for you all soon.  And enjoy the new layout!  It’s not perfect, but unless you want me to take time off writing to learn CSS, you’ll just have to make do.