March’s Magic Image Story: The Sleeping Geyser

Previously: February's Flight (2008)

COPYRIGHT JOEY B


A traveler and self-professed student of history huddled herself into a ball on the rocky ground, under a bole of an ancient tree. The monsoon rains are relentless and her only protection from the wind, rain and icy coldness was her thick cloak of synthetic materials and the makeshift roof she constructed out of leafy underbrush. With her meager skills in wood magic, she had built a shelter thick enough to keep her partially dry and her cloak will keep her partially warm.

Such survival skills were necessary; Ireulun had been cautious about the possibly risky situations of backpacking through this unknown world.

It didn’t help her mood though. Half of her wished she could go back out into the night, back across the barren rocky lands and to the slaveship. It must have felt confused, to have found a master who wished not to be a master.

The other half wished the slaveship would come fly itself and get her. Her resolve to allow the living flycraft make its own choice, the freedom to make its own choice, was slowly wearing out her patience.

Especially in the dark, stormy night.

Ireulun felt a sudden birth of mirth, possibly as her wits were driven out of her by the cold. She imagined what strange events would occur on such dark stormy nights, and would she be there to witness it.

Hopefully not a hailstorm. Her little bush-house probably would stand little chance. And she wanted to sleep. By sunrise, the weather would be mild enough for her to leave her spot and find a more sufficient shelter. It was only early winter; the series of hurricanes that plagued the isles every winter had not yet appeared. Only very cold storms.

Some perverse mind reader must have heard her thought and teased the storm to bring forth the little drops of ice she so despised.

Ireulun groaned when something that sounded like pebbles hitting on a plastic tent reverberated above her. They were tiny at least, but some were still big enough to pierce through the leaves and batter her through her cloak. Rainwater dripped through the holes made by the hailstones as well, dripping on her back and chased away whatever left of the comfortable warmth she had.

Ireulun groaned even louder, the noise ignored by the howling winds, the splatter of rain and little hailstones on rocks. She curled herself up even tighter and avoided the steadily falling drips from her tree ceiling, knowing all too well that she would not be able to sleep after all.

She hoped she wouldn’t catch a cold.

She kept her mind distracted by remembering the history books she had borrowed from the library of that town she left before and now going back towards it. She thought about what she learned about the winter storms of the islands.

Apparently, it would start small, but as the weeks’ progresses, the series of hurricanes would plague the island chain. That’s when the spirits of water and air would rise and do battle against each other. Hailstones were one of the signs that the air spirits had come.

Just her luck.

A freezing wind crept under her shelter and chilled her bones. Now seemed like a good time for a hot cup of chocolate. She felt she could really use one. Slowly, she rose from her curled position and reached for her large backpack.

In the inky darkness, she found the pocket where she kept several stones that glowed a white light when rubbed. Her hand found their smooth surface; her fingers pushed some of them around, making little knobby sounds as the stones hit against each other.

She found the biggest stone, a large round one covered in a fishnet sachet. Pinching it out of her pack, her fingers felt stiff with the cold, but her eyes rejoiced in the gentle burst of light the glow stone emitted.

It was bright enough for Ireulun to rummage through the rest of her things. She had to work quickly, the glowstones’ light were not substantial.

She took out a thermos cup and a brown ball of dried chocolate powder. She reached out to one of the flowing drips and caught some of the rain in her cup, her hand shivering with the cold.

Once her cup was full, she concentrated on using her magic to heat the water, chanting quietly to aid her concentration for evocation. She could have forgone the hot chocolate and just simply used the spell to heat her own body, but she wasn’t as good as that. She nearly had a heatstroke the first time she tried to heat her own blood.

Besides, she liked hot chocolate.

Slowly, steam rose from the heated water. Ireulun breathed in the rising warmth of air and letting it fill her lungs. Greedily, she drank before it was cool enough to drink so she scaled her tongue. In her jerk, she knocked the hand that held the cup against a protruding tree branch and the drink spilled to the ground.

She cursed, damning only herself. A sad waste of hot chocolate.

The hot chocolate was spilled on the hard, rocky floor of the shelter. It flowed downwards where gravity told it to flow. But Ireulun then noticed something strange. She watched her spilled drink, the flow suddenly started to reverse and then turn into a sharp angle.

She blinked, but there was no deception in her eyes. The tiny brown water trail flowed out of her woody refuge. Ireulun touched gingerly on the earthen floor. There were no protruding angles, no rock pockets, nothing to indicate that the stone had been in the way of the strange flowing chocolate water.

Her spilled drink flowed by itself.

Water was not supposed to do that, flowing against gravity was against nature. Unless magic was at work, all rules of nature applied.

Unless magic was at work...

She peeked out from her shelter and noticed for the first time that all the fallen rain, the tiny rivulets of water shifting and moving snake-like on the ground, was going in the same direction as her spilled drink. All water, even the rolling hailstones, was moving uphill.

Ireulun looked up and saw that the rains were falling naturally, down to earth, flying with the winds. But when it water hit the ground... Something big was at work that night.

Especially in the dark, stormy night.

She was never the one to shy away from strange phenomenon. After securing her cape, cloak and a thick muffler around her face, she left the protective shelter of her brush and tree bole and followed the flowing water.

The open night was still dark and dreary. She could barely see anything; her steps were guided only by the light of her large glowstone she kept close to her body.

The place she was hiking through was a rocky wasteland with rockier mountains on the horizon. The stony path she took was white, filled with shallow moving water and strangely, quite smooth. An old dried up river? Was that even possible, water regularly flowing upstream during the winter storms?

Eventually the rivulets became shallow streams, some soaked into her boots, the winds were as coldly fierce as ever. She kept away from the water, mindful of any possible torrents that might sweep her off her feet. That risky possibility and various others that might strike her gave she her caution.

But they did not stop her resolve.

Ireulun climbed an outcrop of rock to get out of the growing water and noticed the colour in the sky and on the horizon had changed. Shafts of dim light shade the distant mountains and dark red clouds covered the sky, scattered evidence of the night’s storm. Daylight was coming. The winds too had slowed. The rains had been reduced to a placid drizzle.

In what she had learned about the coming winter weather of the islands, dawn and sunset was the mildest time for the storms. She had planned to make most of her hike during those twilight hours.

She held her glowstone high above her head, trying to assess an overall view of her position. By the small light, she saw that the rock she stood on was just after the edge of a large basin of water. It was clear and cool, and eerily calm. A lake?

It was a lake. Large and green, surrounded by rocks and cliffs. It betrayed no indication of its depths; its silent stillness was eerie to look at.

Even if it were just a pool, this would have been a boon for the people of Crosswind Isles, as fresh water was hard to come-by, thought Ireulun. Why had they not taken advantage of this resource? Do they know it exist?

Her hood was still soaking wet. She took it off from her head and squeezed the water out, taking advantage of the quickly growing sunlight to dry her apparel. Drops of the squeezed water fell over the rock she stood on and splashed into the lake.

She watched the ripples on the water as she twisted her hood. The ripples caused by it were small but instead of dispersing, it grew larger and it gets further and further away from her.

More ripples formed and grew, until the lake was swirling and churning by some internal, moving force. Ireulun apprehensively bit her lip. Had she disturbed a sleeping giant? From the very center of the lake, a whirlpool formed.

It grew quickly, moving faster and faster like something had opened a plunger from the bottom of the lake. As the ring of the sun broke through from the thickening storm clouds, tinged blood red by the light, a massive shape began to take form in the heart of the whirlpool.

It took on a winged form, an iridescent bird made of ice and running water shook its white head clear from the whirlpool, scattering shining droplets everywhere. It was beautiful and magnificent to not stare. But Ireulun turned her eyes away as the sunlight fell on its crystalline body; the reflected light was too strong to see directly.

From the corner of her eye, She watched as the bird tested its wings. Every beat shook the waters of the lake even more. A gathering wind, peculiarly warm instead of cold, circled around the lake. The waves splashed noisily on the shore, some were as high as to push up against her ankles. She struggled to maintain standing on her rock.

The bird then took off into the sky like a graceful rocket, but it’s form grew less solid with every height it gained. Less visible. It was as if its feathers dissolved into steam with every flap of its diamond-like wings.

Ireulun watched in awe. The bird flew to the clouds; it’s form turning tiny against the rolling clouds and hot-red sky, before it disappeared. She looked back at the lake, or what’s left of the lake. The lake had reduced in size, greatly. It was much smaller than it was when she found it.

The once enormous lake, fueled by uphill flowing water, had turned into a pool no bigger than a duck-pond.

She climbed down the outcrop of rock and approached the site. The lost of water, what water taken by the flying spirit, had revealed something nestled between the rocks. In the edge of the pool, was a cavern. It was not a gaping mouth of hole on the rocks, but it was not a small crack either. Ireulun estimated that it was at least ten feet high and maybe fifteen feet wide.

And it was black. And dark. More so as it hid in the shadows of the mountains, the rising sunlight did not touch anywhere near the cave.

Ireulun held up her glowstone, still brightly lit, stretching it out in front of her, towards the cave. Trickles of water here and there curtained the cave, making small puddles that stream and snake in trails down to the pool.

She approached it carefully; wary of possibly any new spirits might turn up to surprise her. Her feet touched the edge of the pool.

Ireulun noticed another thing about the cave. Letterings, craved into some of the rocks, outside and around the cave. The alphabet looked familiar. Perhaps she could recognize the words?

Spurned by her curiosity, she approached the patterned rocks. She walked across the water; it slapped ripples around her feet.

Crack!

What sounded like a breaking glass rang from underneath her. A fissure in the bed of the pond formed between her feet, sucking in the water.

She stopped cold. Inside her, she felt her stomach made an uncomfortable flip.

Craaaaaaack!

And with that great sound, the wet ground broke into shattering pieces and Ireulun felt into unearthly darkness.

Images: Recap on the March’s Magic... with Banana Milkshakes

I was in a busy frenzy that last Saturday.

Well, actually, no I wasn’t.

It was just that it’s an empty-empty hours that there was nothing to do but make homework and banana milkshakes.

Mm-mmm... creamy milkshakes...

Okay, enough photo-whoring. Sadly to say that due to the lack of online connections, I am stuck with my old basket of picture goodies instead of something really nice and new for you to drool over (budget student, maaah...).

So this week’s (belated) images is a tribute to the very beautiful painting-like picture by Joey B of DeviantArt.Com.

Though I had stated in last weekend’s image that I don’t much have any particularity for angels, I do have a certain obsessive-ness for birds. Winged predators, descendants of dinosaurs.

In fantasy, what’s the greatest bird creature than the phoenix?


Copyright Joey B

Every month I have a poll on the blog’s sidebar. I write better if I have something I could visualize with and thus, I look around for something really nice. Under Characters, I chose this pretty phoenix image.

I wanted to find an image that had some painting-like quality, instead of the clear-cut precision of the more popular pictures. Joey B calls it an ‘ice phoenix’ and I agree... though what I will write about it in my monthly fiction would be my own story.

The funny thing is that my monthly fiction didn’t have a clearly defined structure. My one main character, Ireulun, has a history, a family and a purpose in her journeys but who she was in connection to the readers is something I’ve yet to convey.

How long had she been travelling? How old was she? Even her last name is still kind of blurry. I decided when I write of her, it’ll be more towards the environment of the story, the concept I had about the picture I found and selected for the month, rather than a clue to her mysterious identity.

Maybe someday I’ll figure out who I can make her to be.

... I'll think about that as soon as I finish this milkshake.

Image: Angels and a Whole New Slideshow

I don’t usually have a fascination for angels. Yeah, they are part of the Fantasy genre I’m so enamoured about but the anatomical inconsistency of enabling flight and propulsion of having dual bird-like wings ...

I’m just plain rambling, aren’t I?

Angels. Messenger of the divine, tools of miracles, protector of innocents, harbinger of doom, mediator between God and men. See, it’s the abundance of use, immortalization and iconic personas in association with the entity ‘angels’ that any personal bias towards my preference for them is sadly lacking.

They’re just damned overused.

When I want to write a tale, I usually use the most underappreciated themes like science, social doctrine and political turmoil. I don’t use a pegasi as a creature of flight; I use 60+ species of dragons in varying shapes and sizes. In one point, I plan to use eagles as well. There so much about the nature and existing system that splicing and attaching biological body parts to non-related creatures just seem bleh...

Yeeeeeeeaaaah, I can guess ya. The wings of angels are all in the mind and their flight to goodwill and heavens’ work is metaphorical but no less deeply impacted.

Just for that (and the fact that there’s just a good load of artists with damn pretty angels pictures) I’m going to post them here.

The Muse (Google Art)


Armoured Angel by silverlimit


Fallen Angel by kjfaust


Angel by chrono75

By the way, what do you call a lot of angels? A flock of angels? A march? A team? A parade?

I've also updated my Monthly Slideshow. As you know that I'll never place personal pictures of myself or individual family members so I instead present a slideshow of my favourite images that I've collected as I surf online. Check the Slideshow tab for the new one this month (15 images intotal, some you may have seen before).

February’s Flight Image Story: A Slave’s Memory

Previously: January's Journey (2008)

COPYRIGHT GREG TATUM


The rain was beginning to pour heavily when she left the Crosswind Isles. She wondered what the local villagers would think of her. She and her sudden disappearance from the islands long after the last mainland ship of the season had sailed.

Would they blame her for Mrs. Marble’s demise? Would they suspect foul play? Ireulun decided that it was too late for thoughts of turning back now as she is already high in the cloudy, wet atmosphere.

Riding a flycraft.

Sitting in the cockpit, she probed the controls. They were less complicated than she had feared but still more than she expected. It was half a relief for herself, because it was too long ago since she remembered the last time she flew any kind of machine.

And the cockpit she sat in held only a vague reminiscent of the ones she was familiar with. Back in her childhood days at her family’s farm.

Unlike the crafts of her childhood though, the flycraft bequeath to her by Mrs. Marble - late Mrs. Marble, angels bless her - was coated in metallic chromium finish. Its surface was as smooth and glassy as river pebbles. It had a sleek, aerodynamic leaf-shaped body, flanked on either side by a short wing panels that ended with a small jet propelled engine.

Jet-wings, they were called, thought Ireulun. Having two small engines on the side of the craft was to help steer and stabilize the massive energy engine mounted behind the cockpit. The energy engine was the main propulsion system for the craft, flanked by four long ‘tails’ surrounding the exhaust of the energy engine.

Long buried in the sand, the craft had been kept in fairly good condition. Its system was of a long outdated design however. But to Ireulun, a traveller and historian by choice, the vehicle was dream embraced from the past.

It was no doubt in Ireulun’s mind that this craft was built for speed. She thought back on the story Mrs. Marble had told her before she died, that her people had tried to escape the invisible threat of her city but failed.

She inwardly said a prayer for the lonely lady who had been a close friend and companion, even though they met only three months before.

The craft must have been the chosen vehicle. But Mrs. Marble never left the islands. Proof of it was Ireulun being the current flycraft’s pilot, sitting in the cramped cockpit of a machine that should have flown decades ago.

The machine’s cockpit had a more traditional W-shaped, front-side steering wheel instead of the modern two stick, two-handed sideways steering. The basic interface, those that she could recognise, were the small virtual grid-map screen, visual sensors indicating the craft’s conditions and adjusters to the craft’s internal and external environment.

But there seem to be little methods for her to manually make adjustments to the craft’s mechanism. No dials to regulate fuel flow, no switches that indicate references to flight optimization, no programming interface to directly communicate with the auto-pilot.
In fact, Ireulun was beginning to suspect that the flycraft had no auto-pilot, despite the rapid ease of flight.
“Maybe you’re automated learning?” Ireulun thought aloud.
The craft answered with its never-changing monotonous hum, the sound coloured faintly by the splatter of heavy raindrops outside, flinging against the craft’s body.

From the outside, it had been hard to distinguish the windows from the rest of the body of the flycraft, so uniformed was its shape and colour. It had taken her a great deal of probing, dusting away the covered sands, until she located the hatch.

Ireulun stared through the chrome cockpit windows. The afternoon sky, already cloudy by the seasonal storms, was slowly turning to darkness. Ireulun checked her wristwatch. It had been hours since she took off and she had been flying at a cautious speed, just enough to counter the ever changing winds, following the land route across the archipelago’s biggest island.

Soon she will reach the white seashore and then onwards, to an even longer flight across the sea. Ireulun hoped she could outrun the seasonal hurricanes. Though the rains and strong winds she faced now were difficult enough with her limited experience to manoeuvre, she risked not flying through the heart of the storm.

Risk not losing what she had yet to discover in that dream forest in the east.

Boom!

A loud noise, like the explosion of a hundred simultaneous fireworks, shocked suddenly on her right. The impact made her swirl sharply to the opposite side, nearly turning her over; the sound had been deafening. There was still ringing in her right ear when a large dark object passed her overhead.

While she was trying to distinguish what that object was, another explosion erupted on her lower left, almost as loud and juddering as the first. She held tight to her flycraft’s controls and flew a downward right, greatly reducing her speed.

She glanced again to the skies above her. Within the grey clouds were pinpricks of flashing luminous lights, darting and spinning in an odd pattern. Between the greyer rains are large dark objects; there were three, one more massive than the other two, flanked on the side by two flashing lights.

Other flycrafts? Her suspicions were confirmed when the three objects descended lower and appeared out of the misty rain clouds.

Ireulun flew even lower, closer to the flat grounds, out of the clouds and where the rains were less, thick and more dispersed. She checked her map screen. The field showed the three flycrafts in her sensory field, the two smaller ones were about the size of her flycraft. About same metallic body as well. And the same shape...

“Holy crap!” blurted Ireulun. Her verbal profanity came out half in a gasp as that the last minute, a second bomb - missile? - flew over her before it broke into a shattering blast.

Ireulun’s mind quickly thought back. Her departed friend had never mentioned of any other flycrafts - hidden or otherwise. The inhabitants of the isles were ignorant - by choice and stubbornly so - of anything that had to do with their fallen occupiers.

So where did these flycrafts came from? Opportunistic pirates? Lost survivors?

She quickly dodged out the way of a speeding flycraft, barely missing it by a few hundred feet. When it turned around and engaged to close in to her again, she realized that the craft, perhaps even all three of them, was trying to engage her in some sort of combat. She suppressed the urge to cry out another expletive, redundant as it was.

Before she had boarded, Ireulun had not bothered to check for any means of flight communication or combat mechanism, either digital or magical. She had no idea how to contact the other crafts, did not suspect she would even need too, at least, not until she reached the mainland.

Even less did she expect was being targeted by dangerous projectiles that, even on missed impact, generated a shockwave vibration that could jar her bones to pieces, if the sound blast didn’t rocked her to confusion first. Ireulun had thought she was the only flycraft in the area. She was still in Crosswind Isles.

Wasn’t she?

Concentrating at best on speed, she took off from the ground and into an opening space. Her aim was to run away and give as much space as possible to avoid them. And to separate them; it was two flyers against her and unlike her, they have intentions and methods of bringing her down to a crash landing. If they didn’t explode her to a fireball first.

With the two maniacs circling around for a second engagement, Ireulun turned her attention to the closer, larger, more silent flycraft. It was huge, but not overly so, about 10 times the size of hers. It was still large enough to bring an icy tinge of fear down her spine, despite its passive stance.

It was, in many ways, greatly different from the smaller crafts. It was subtler in its outlook, of earthen browns and dusty greys. Its main body was less sleek and streamlined in design; rather, more like it was coated in insect-like armour plating. Its titian-sized twin engines were mounted on either side of its wing-body fusion; those were similar to the main energy engine of the smaller flycrafts.

It was the larger ship that gave Ireulun a sudden flash of insight. She blinked for a moment; her mind rapidly calculated the revelations growing within her. Her hands faltered on the controls. Had she really seen it before?

Granted, the design and shape and structure showed nothing, betrayed nothing of its origins. In spite of the incoming threat of two offensive machines behind her, she raised one hand to caress softly against the cockpit hatch, her finger tracing the lines of the larger craft, still a great, silent, yet ominous distance away.

There was one way to put her theory to the test. It was a crazy one but if Ireulun suspected what the true situation was, she will take charge of it. Immediately.

Her mother always said that she had a streak of her father’s madness in her.

Muttering a quick prayer to the divine protectors, Ireulun grasped her flycraft’s control firmly with both hands. In a sharp forward thrust, she flew upwards into the sky. High into the storms until her field of vision were covered completely by white and grey mists. Relying completely on the virtual map, she estimated her position and leaned slowly to fall into a wide arch.

Falling out of the clouds. Falling straight toward the larger craft. Speeding toward the larger craft.
Dead centre.

Maybe her mother was right about the madness part.

More explosive shells rocked beside her. The offensive twins were bombarding her with missiles to try to shake her out of her resolve. She outflew every one of those missiles; they missed her but she had expected that. Even if Ireulun wasn’t falling a straight downward path so fast, speeding on a single-minded suicidal path toward the larger flycraft, she knew that those missiles would not have hit her.

They had been only to scare her.
Just as the larger flycraft had scared her.
But she wasn’t scared now.
Now it was her turn to shock and scare.

The larger flycraft loomed even larger as she closed in on it. It attempted to turn away, out of her path but it was slow and cumbersome. In the last moment, close enough just before point of impact to hit the armoured body of the craft, Ireulun released the controls and switched off the engine.

On instinct, she curled her body close, her arms around her knees and braced for impact. She shut her eyes tightly. If she was wrong, the collision might be strong enough to... but it would be quick.

It didn’t come.
Ireulun slowly opened her eyes. She was still falling forward. The larger flycraft was nowhere to be seen; neither were the offensive twins. But she was still falling downwards, but this time, the earth was her target.

Still, she did not move.
The controls in front of her shook violently as her machine threatened to spin into a corkscrew. Ireulun started at the steering, half in deadly fear but her resolve was stronger. In the very centre of the steering was a glassy white stone. She had thought it to be decorative but now she knew better.

The flycraft was truly falling now. There was no stopping it, even if she tried, the force to turn against gravity in time for safety was too strong for her.

The ground loomed ever closer. She could see in the corner of her eye, the long rivulets of water swimming in a criss-cross on the barren, grassy terrain like slimy snakes.
“You’re going to crash,” she spoke to the white stone.
Almost instantly, the white stone turned blue.

The flycraft suddenly came to life. The engine restarted and flared to life. The control stopped jerking and swiftly yanked the craft into rising. It barely collided with some bush trees; one was too close that it scraped the underside of the craft.

All the while, Ireulun only watched the stone on the steering controls.
She touched nothing.
The flycraft was flying by itself now.

Ireulun smiled to herself. It was safe to do so. Not even a machine could detect how wildly her heart was still beating, her tension, her fear still gripping her like painfully sharp thorns; her damn crazy idea had nearly got herself killed in the wilds of nowhere.

Even Papa would probably have agreed with Mama about her uniquely stupid wild streak.

*****

The rains were at its heaviest when the flycraft landed itself on a muddy but high ground. It turned off its engines by itself. There was no glowing light outside the windows. Darkness of the evening, made even darker by the storm, made her small, enclosed cockpit seem very much smaller and very private. It was surreal.

It was also a sham.

Ireulun knew that she was not alone in the cockpit. She had never been alone since she first eagerly placed herself into the cockpit. Was that event only happened that morning? It felt like days ago. The bright light of revelation she had when she studied the shape and structure of that larger flycraft had faded into a memory.

Basking in the revelation’s afterglow, she continued to watch the stone on the steering controls. It had turned to white again, but it still tinged with a blue radiance so soft, it would not have been noticed if her surroundings wasn’t so pitch dark.

She touched the stone with the tips of her fingers.
“You don’t like to fly do you?” asked Ireulun softly.
The stone’s bluish radiance grew stronger.
“I thought so.”

She sat silently, her thumb brushing against the stone. It was a long while before she spoke again.
“You could have told me. I don’t like to fly either.”
The stone immediately turn a deep red and at the same time, the still air in the cockpit turned a definite chilly temperature.

But Ireulun just chuckled, a smile that was too brief.
“Not really. I like it only a little bit but I don’t prefer it,” said Ireulun with a humourless tone.
“My dad flys all the time though. He has his own set of flycrafts.”

She had thought to placate the stone - the entity of the flycraft - but the stone turned to an even brighter red, until it looked like it was glowing with a fierce fire. The dark cockpit was bathed in red light. But Ireulun knew what it was thinking.
“I know what you’re thinking. You think my dad had enslaved flycrafts, don’t you?”
Red, red glow but it no longer felt so fierce.
“Naaah, he owns dead flycrafts. Metallic ones. Most of them he build himself.”

Ireulun turned away from the sight of the red stone and leaned back on her seat. Granted, there was not much room to lean back against; her action was more of trying to seat comfortably than trying to relax her guard.
“He’s friends with a clan though. Actually, he’s friends with several clans of living-crafts, flying or landed or seas. But his favourite were always the living flycrafts because they helped him find my mother once.”

She knew she was babbling but Ireulun was becoming more nervous as she continued. She was relieved when the ever-changing colour of the stone no longer seemed aggressive or hostile, though it still maintained its bright red glow. Then she dropped a risky question.
“Don’t you have a clan too?” she asked in a purely innocent tone.

The light from the stone disappeared. Everything turned black. Pitch dark so deep, Ireulun could not even see her hands in front of her face. She took it as a signal that the flycraft no longer desired her chatter.
“Gotcha,” she smiled.

She tried to ease herself on the cramped chair. Though it had seemed to be designed for someone who was obviously larger than her, it still felt small and cramped, more so in the darkness. Stalemate. She can’t stay in the machine, reluctant as it was to bear her.

Still, she knew she could force it to obey her command. Mrs. Marble had bequeath it to her. Such was what the metallic flycraft was forced to do. It hankered back to the older warring days, when infant living-crafts were forcibly taken from the clans, subjected to slavery. Metallic armour, welded to the body of the young living-crafts was to toughen their structure. It also served as a branding of ownership between master and slave.

Such practises were banned, prohibited, but some groups of people still follow it, citing traditions or obligations or greater good or such crappy excuse.

This flycraft had been a slave.
But to be a slave, one must have a master.

She probed to the space above her head, hands groping for feel to compensate her lack of vision. Ireulun’s fingers found the heavy catch in the expected spot. She tugged, tested it and then pulled hard. With a loud click and a burst of pressurised air, the hatch of the cockpit opened.

The noise of the rain became very loud, and the chill of the wind crept inside the machine, slowly dispersing the last warmth.
Ireulun sucked in a lungful of wet outside air before she turned to the stone, now silent and white as dead.
“I’m not your master. In fact, I don’t know how to be a living-craft’s master.”
She continued to prod in the dark. Her rucksack should be at that small space behind her seat. There’s a cloak in it that she could use.
“You can stay here if you want. But I need to leave. In this storm if I have too.”

Inwardly, she groaned. If she had to walk out into the rain, she would. The storms of the archipelago were nothing to sneeze at; the winds were always freezing cold. If it does become cold enough, the rains would turn into small hailstones. In the flat open plains, there would be little to no shelter. Her only option was to find a way back to the town where she had started.

A trip, which by foot, could take days, maybe weeks, depending on how far she had strayed because of that illusionary fight. A very realistic fight, but illusionary nonetheless. They had been holograms, projected on to the cockpit windows. Were those flycrafts were part of this flycraft’s family? Fallen comrades?

It was the larger flycraft that made her realize what her flycraft was, a machine that was eerily similar to one of the most celebrated - and most tragic - enslaved living flycrafts in history.

So many questions floated in her head. But she couldn’t learn something that couldn’t be taught. She won’t force. It’s just not her nature with forgotten slaves, rebellious or otherwise. Still, the truth needed to be told.

After she found her rucksack and covered herself with a thick cloak and hood, she spoke softly.
“Captivity is only in the mind. Oppression is only as you receive it.”
She bit her lower lip as she thought of something else, something wiser to say. She didn’t particularly felt very wise, - witness her jumping out into the storm and at night, what’s more - just needed to say what should be said to something - someone - who had been too alone for too long.

She pounced on the words her father once told her.
“Isolation is no way to survive.”

She pushed the hatch all the way open. The raging storm greeted her; its raindrops were wet and cold but the winds seemed to have lessened a bit. A few drops that fell from the sky struck her face. It was stinging on her cheeks. Ireulun groped for the muffler around her neck and covered the lower half of her face.

She took one last peek at the stone on the steering.
It stayed silent and white.
In normal circumstances, she should have felled maybe some irritation or at least inwardly groan in frustration. The tiny, cramped cockpit never looked so dry and comfortable.

In stead, she was filled only with pity. She could not stay.
The flycraft didn’t need to go anywhere. It also never had anyone who did not command it to do anything.

Ireulun hoped that it was thinking about that fact.
“Later,” she said with false brightness. And said it quickly; she was getting wet and will be even more wet.
Taking a firm hold of the overhead fittings, she pulled herself up and out or the cockpit.

In two seconds, the hatch closed shut. A few bumps and bangs against the hollow body before Ireulun slid herself on the wet surface of one of the jet-wings, carefully gripping in every possible place for hold. Eventually she splashed on the muddy ground.

She walked, going west. Back to the village. Eventually she disappeared from the flycraft’s field of sensory vision.

Inside the cockpit, the stone on the steering glowed to cobalt blue.

Next: March's Magic (2008)

Blogger Tag = Monkeys on Keyboards

Courtesy of a tag from the dynamic duo, twosuperheroes, I have been de-evolutionized into primitive user.

Me Quickening. Hear me grunt. See me ping blog. Me get blog tag.

“We've heard that a million monkeys at a keyboard could produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.” -Robert Wilensky-


Hahaha. It did get me do more surfing. I was looking for 4 serious, new bloggers who potentially have not yet been tagged by this menace. And thus, I sneeze on your blogs.

Fly Over Me: Because I've yet to catch you in person!
Raising Mercury's Negative Negative Positive: Because I keep catching you in this blog!
Adino Online: Because your dear wife needs more publicity!
Satkuru.com: Because I like your pubilcity!

These infected bloggers are under no obligation whatsoever to infect other bloggers. This is just to say I like your pages and that your names are not in the Unsaved-Monkeys-List (scroll down see below). Now spread the blog tag and help prove Robert Wilensky... partially wrong.

The Strategist Notebook, Link Addiction, Ardour of the Heart, When Life Becomes a Book, The Malaysian Life, Yogatta.com What goes under the sun, Roshidan’s Cyber Station, Sasha says, Arts of Physics, And the legend lives, My View, My Life, A Simple Life, What Women REALLY Think, Not Much More Than This, Jayedee, Jenn, Beth, Christie Marla, Cailin, Simone, FlipFlopMom, Katrina, Gill’s Jottings, Work of the Poet Wakela Modern Day Goddess Livin With Me, Writing in Faith, Maiylah’s Snippets GreenBucks, Its Not a Weekend; Its a Lifestyle, Rooms of My Heart, Life with the Two Crazy Dogs, Joy of a Homemaker, Shifting Sand, A Tale of Two Superheroes,Shadow Pimpernel

January’s Journey Image Story: The Stone Necropolis

Previously: December's Dream (2007)

COPYRIGHT RAPHAEL LACOSTE


“Leaving already, Ireulun?”

Brushing her sweaty black fringe from her forehead with the back of her dirty hand, Ireulun smiled at the matronly figure standing on the threshold of her bedroom. She got up from the floor she was crouching and dusted her hands on her thighs. She wanted badly to stretch her arms upward, to stretch her back, to pull at knotted muscles but Ireulun was quite tall for a woman and her knuckles would knock against the low beams of the ceiling.

“Not yet, Mrs. Marble. Maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” said Ireulun.
“Oh? By ship then?” asked Mrs. Marble.

Ireulun nodded. Her knees ached. She had been crouching in one position for too long, replacing the frayed straps on her backpack with strong new rope strings. Almost all her worldly possessions are in that backpack, including her map and her diary. The books she had studied - books all borrowed from the village library - were stacked neatly on the study table by the window.

Mrs. Marble too noticed that Ireulun was looking at her books and quipped, “If you still need them tonight, I can take the books back to town for you tomorrow.”
Ireulun shook her head.
“Thank you ma’am, but I shall do that myself. I have everything I need for my trip. I’m quite ready to take off from the island.”
“Everything, indeed?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Everything?”

A fissure of irritancy crept in Ireulun, but Mrs. Marble spoke in a sarcastic tone that evokes nothing more than a twitch in the corner of her lips.

Ireulun is a something like a guest of Mrs. Marble’s small farm. Ever since she found herself lost on Crosswind Isle, far from either home or her intended destination, the widowed Mrs. Marble took her in as a kitchen maid.

Mrs. Marble also took on a role as her steadfast duenna. She imposed strict curfews on her goings to town, watched her growing number of acquaintances and advised her to often write letters to home, to her family. Normally it irritates the devil out of Ireulun, to be led around as if she was a helpless little girl, but Mrs. Marble had been so kind and considerate that Ireulun decided that it was a worthy sacrifice.

Still, she didn’t need to be reminded on everything.

“Yes, everything, ma’am. Even the letters from the West,” said Ireulun, grinning.
Letters from the West are those of her family. Satisfied with the answer, Mrs. Marble beamed.
“Good, good. I take it you shall go to town this afternoon?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Mrs. Marble narrowed her eyes at Ireulun and waved a soupspoon at her nose.
“I expect to see you back a full hour before sun down, little miss. Understand me, gel?”
Ireulun threw the plump old woman a mock-pout.
“Awww gee, Mrs. Marble. Will there be candy?”
Ireulun left the cottage amidst laughter and as much light-hearted bantering as between two good friends.

Fifteen minutes later, her feet touched the cobbled streets of Sandhurst town. Crosswind Isles is an island, or rather, a series of small islands clustered very close together, and Sandhurst is situated on the largest island. It is a market town where the local fishermen and small-farm owners converge to trade and exchange news.

It was also the place where, several months ago, Ireulun found herself getting off on the wrong ship port and had no idea how to get back home; proficient though she was in languages, the local dialect was as strange to her as hers was to them. Only Mrs. Marble, by sheer luck and good timing, understood what Ireulun was trying to say and rescued her from the authorities who thought her a possibly dangerous half-wit.

In those months, Ireulun managed to adapt well to the island life and languages. She learned a lot about its history as well, something her nature would not allow her to miss such opportunity.

After returning the library books and making a few new purchases, such as some day-old bread from the bakers’ for the night’s soup and a seashell necklace she had admired for some time, Ireulun realized that she was still a bit early from Mrs. Marble’s curfew. Her curiosity was piqued was refused to be suppressed any longer.

She decided to take the longer route home. The route that cuts alongside Balcony Park.

Soon after she got used to the island life, Ireulun began exploring. What she found not an hour’s walk from the market town and through the dense woodlands was a sight that knocked her breath out.

A lookout dais on a high rock cliff. It must have been a platform of sorts connected to a bridge somewhere to a very near, very large outcrop of a neighbouring island rock jutting out of the rough waves and biting winds. The dais itself was beautiful. A completely circular structure surrounded by stone arches on spiral pillar, topped by female statues. Every statue was the same; a female in a flowing robe and coronet hairstyle, each holding a shiny crystal ball in her hand.

And beyond Balcony Park were the domes and towers of one of the largest stone metropolis Ireulun had ever seen. A city at her feet and she can view it for miles toward the western sea from the cliffs.

The stone city and the stone dais were separated on by a short but very deep chasm of winds and waves, endlessly pounding against the jagged sea rocks. Erosion had weathered the bridge into a broken stump on both sides of land, yet Ireulun felt that if the chasm was not so deep and the winds would cease, she might cross it with a good swing on a strong vine.

A good swing and she would land her feet into the metropolis. Or more accurately, a necropolis.

The local islanders did not call the dais Ireulun now stood upon as Balcony Park; she gave it that name for lack of a better one. The dais, indeed the entire empty city, had no name. Or rather, its name and origins was forbidden to speak of amongst the people of Crosswind Isles.

Not for lack of trying. She consulted the library, the village hall, the small religious school and even the fisherfolk in a neighbouring community a good distance away. Not one can answer her inquisitive inquiries. But their faces held subtle contempt for her, as if her innocent questions were a violation of some unwritten code.

As an experienced traveller, she knew when not to step on beyond local bounds. But as an experienced traveller, she just could not let it go. Hence, Ireulun had broached the subject to Mrs Marble only some days after she discovered the stone city.

“A forbidden city?” she said with more awe than she intended. Mrs. Marble turned to her just in time to see Ireulun shut her gawping jaw.
“Yes, gel. And like the rest of us, you will do well to stay well away from that haunt,” said Mrs. Marble with a narrow look.

But Ireulun could not stop herself from asking why, but she managed to keep her expression to a mild inquest instead of the bubbling curiousity she was filled within.
“Because, gel. That city belongs to ghosts now. Just an eyesore of our islands’ past. The folks who lived in there are long gone and so let them rest in peace.”

She said it with such a finality in her voice that Ireulun’s concern for her landlady’s affections took over her desire to learn more about a city no one speaks of.

Now, as the sun’s red rays were disappearing behind the domes and towers of the city’s horizon, Ireulun packed her shopping basket of foodstuffs and headed back to the farm for her last night on the island. Her last night before the last passenger ship of the season sets sail for the sea.

Her last chance from discovering the city’s hidden secrets.

Darkness came quicker than she had expected due to the storm clouds that had gathered quickly across the sky. Far too quickly. Ireulun realized that these must be the first stirrings of the winter rains. The seas around the island are relatively calm during most of the year. But come wintertime and the winter storms, it was impossible - completely impossible - to navigate sea vessels of any size through the choppy waters, much less through the unforgiving rains.

Tomorrow Ireulun would depart for the mainlands in the far south. She had stalled her journey for many days now, but ever since she had that dream - her strange dream of a forest of silence - did she finally habor a real desire of leaving. She would leave soon, before the full blast of winter storms stopped her.

It did not rain when she finally returned to the Marble farmhouse, but with the last signs of daylight disappearing behind thick rolling clouds, Mrs Marble would have the place lit with candles and warm from the kitchen fire. And mostly likely waving her soupspoon in a very concern, maternally concerned, manner.

So when Ireulun noticed how dark the house was and that the front door was swinging open and close on its hinges by the strong winds, something was wrong. Even more so when between the swinging door, she saw an old shoe in the darkness, attached to a leg, lying on the floor. With the rest of the fallen body of an old woman.

Mrs. Marble

Struck with fear, Ireulun ran into the farmhouse.

***

“Irrie...”
“Shh, Maggie. I’m here.”
“Irrie...”
“Maggie it’s alright now. Can you hear me?”

Mrs Marble - Maggie - opened her eyes for the first time since her fall to the floor. Ireulun heaved a sigh of relief. She turned to the bed table to fetch the cool compress she had been applying to Mrs. Marble forehead. But a firm hand with old fragile fingers held to her wrist.

“Don’t leave,” said Mrs. Marble, weakly.
“I’m not,” Ireulun said. She placed her other hand over the old woman’s grip on her wrist and squeezed gently, trying not to harm her.

But those fingers gripped even more tightly.
“Don’t... leave...”
Ireulun next sigh came out more in a sense of exasperation.
“I’m not,” she repeated. Patiently, she gestured a hand to the bed table, “I’m just going to get a cool cloth, that’s all.”

Mrs. Marble blinked her old eyes at the bed table, topped with a bowl and strips of cloth.
“Me...?”
Ireulun vaguely nodded.
“Maggie, you had a fall. The healer from the village had come to check on you.”
“Only... fall. Healer Marcus-“ she wheezed in a breath. “-just now?”
Actually, Mrs. Marble had suffered a stroke and fell to the floor because of it. And the village healer was at the farmhouse over a full day ago. The time was the evening on the day after.

“Yes, Maggie. Only a fall. Lie still.”

Ireulun reached far to fetch the compress and placed it on Mrs. Marble’s forehead. For the rest of the night, Ireulun kept watch over her, as protective as a parent to a child. Outside, the winter storms began its seasonal onslaught. No one would be out to sea in a very long time.

***

“Not a good protector, aren’t you gel?”

Ireulun woke up with a start from her resting place. The first thing she noticed was a stinging, cramped sensation on her neck and down her back. The second thing she noticed was that Mrs. Marble was sitting up straight from her bed. Wide awake and with a narrow gaze. And in full control of her wits.

“Mrs. M-mm-Marble?” Ireulun began.
“You have a trail of drool on your mouth, gel. My wooden table better not stain permanently.”
Beneath her still riding emotion of anxiety, Ireulun could help but mentally giggled. She rubbed her drool off with the edge of her sleeve.
“I was-“ her voice felt hoarse “I was just resting my eyes. A slow blink, that’s all.”
Mrs. Marble raised an eyebrow in disbelief and watched her far too disconcertingly. Even old, frail and in a ragged but serviceable nightgown, Mrs. Marble looked somewhat intimidating. As if she was waiting for something that was her due.

Ireulun felt the first stirrings of an uncomfortable silence. She got up from the desk she had been sleeping - resting her eyes – upon.
“Do you feel better now, Mrs. Marble? Shall I make some tea?”
“No.”
She mentally blinked. “Maybe coffee or choco-“
“I don’t want anything to drink gel.”
Ireulun did not know what to say after that.

Sensing her young charge’s apprehension, Mrs. Marble extended a clawed hand and spoke more softly.
“Come here, Ireulun.”
Ireulun did as she was bid and sat on the coverlet on the old woman’s bed.
“Why are you here, child?” Mrs Marble asked. Hey eyes looked deep into hers but there was no predation in her constant gazing.

Ireulun cleared her throat before she said weakly, “I couldn’t just leave you, ma’am.”
To her relief, Mrs. Marble only smiled.
“You missed your ship, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you leave? You were ready days ago.”
“I,” she drew in a deep breath, “don’t want to leave you. You were ill. Someone has to take care of you and I want it to be me.”

She returned Mrs. Marble gaze, eye for an eye, and saw nothing but sincere gratitude flowing between them.
“You missed you family, do you, Ireulun?”
Ireulun only nodded.

Her family. A mother and a father. Her brothers and sisters. In the west.

Mrs. Marble continued.
“You didn’t have to stay with me you know. You don’t have to postpone your journey.”
“Nonsense! I can wait until the winter’s over. Or until you’ve fully-“
“I’m not going to recover, gel.”
Ireulun’s eyes went wide. Before she could speak, Mrs. Marble spoke first in tone that held deep meaning.

“I am never going to recover.”

The silence in the bedroom stretched. The only sounds that could be heard were the crackling of the fire in the bedroom fireplace and the light drone of the night’s rain as the early hours rendered it into a drizzle. Ireulun frowned and unconsciously mouthed a silent why.

Mrs. Marble’s face shone with a delicate glow.

“Child, I had not been quite truthful for all the time we’ve been together.”
She paused and then continued.
“I am dying, child. Not wait!” She held up a hand when Ireulun was about to interrupt. “Just listen.”
When Ireulun shut her mouth, she continued.

“I know I don’t look it, but child, I am dying. It wasn’t just a fall, wasn’t it, gel? I had another stroke, didn’t I?”
Knowing that the question was purely rhetorical, Ireulun kept mum.
“I had already seen a healer, the one before Healer Marcus took the job. I may not look like it but I do know that this winter,” she waved to the window, to the rains outside the farmhouse. “This will be my last winter.”

When she paused and closed her faded blue eyes, Ireulun had a sudden thought that the old woman might faint again and a small burst of panic grew in her chest. When Mrs. Marble only continued, her panic lessened, but did not disappear.

“Gel, I want you to leave. Soon”

Immediately, Ireulun’s panic was replaced with an uncomfortable mix of concern and irritation. She held to Mrs. Marble hand.
“I’m staying here. With you.”
She then raised her hand when Mrs. Marble poised to interrupt.
“It’s the right thing to do. I won’t leave you alone, in this old shack. If you won’t get better, I want to be next to you.”
Mrs. Marble stared at her with the same open frankness as Ireulun said her words. Then she added the obvious.
“Amongst other thing, Maggie, there’s no passenger ship left to take me off the island.”

Instead of accepting her sacrifice, an acceptance her help, Mrs. Marble shook her head briskly, her eyes twinkling.
“I didn’t mean by boat, gel. Did you think my stroke made me loose all my wits?”
That did occour in Ireulun’s mind but she knew the old woman’s pride too well to have mentioned it. But if not by sea, then...?

Mrs. Marble pointed to her cupboard and spoke to her again before she could formulate an assumption.
“Fetch that box, my dear.”
Ireulun blinked inwardly. She rose slowly, mindful and ever aware of Mrs. Marble’s fragile health. Crossing the room to the cupboard, Ireulun opened it. She hardly ever entered her landlady’s room, much less look into the cupboard. Between dusty coats and threadbare dresses, she did not know where to look first for... whatever it was that Mrs. Marble wanted her to find.

“Left side. Third drawer from the top.”

It took some strong tugging to get the drawer to open. Ireulun immediately knew what Mrs. Marble was referring to when she opened that tight drawer. There were silk scraves in that drawer of a design she had never seen before but it was what nestled in the middle of those scraves that drew her eye. It was the size of her fist. She knew without touching that if it was placed on her palm, it would fit snuggly.

“You know what it is don’t you gel? You seen something of its like every time you go to that dais you so loved to look out from.”

It was a crystal ball, an exact replica of the crystal balls held by the female statutes of Balcony Park. Round and clear, the crystal ball’s surface was smooth and unmarked. But inside the crystal ball were cracks that seem to grow outward from the centre. Altogether, it was like an unlit star frozen in time, frozen inside the crystal.

Ireulun turn to Mrs. Marble and held out the ball to her. It was surprisingly light but Mrs. Marble would not take it.

“Gel, that ball is for you now. I want you to have it,” said Mrs. Marble.
Ireulun let the questions in her mind show openly to her face, waiting for Mrs. Marble to explain more.
“If you take to the place you’ve always been wondering about for weeks, you will see.”
Slyly, with a teasing glint in her eye, she added, “And you will see it.”
“It will help me leave the islands?” asked Ireulun.
“Yes, dear.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see.”

For a dying old woman, Mrs. Marble had the gall to still be mysterious. Ireulun had a half-mind to childishly pout and stomp her foot but when Mrs. Marble’s expression blanked and turned towards the window. Outside, the world was in the darkest hour before dawn. The rains had lessened but it had not stop, a temporary respite before the winter storms returned to blast the islands again.

“You should leave. Soon. It only works at dawn,” said Mrs. Marble.
Ireulun never saw her look older than she ever did at that moment.
“Please. Mrs. Marble,”

She waited. It was not until Mrs. Marble turned to look at her than Ireulun asked her question.
“Mrs. Marble,” she started slowly. “How did you get this?”
Instinct, trust and understanding of character made Ireulun knew that the crystal ball was not a stolen artefact.

Like a secret unfolding ghostly wings, Mrs. Marble gave Ireulun a long sweeping assessment, a girl prior to the prime of her life as much as she was long past hers.
“That crystal ball, gel, is mine. Given to me by my family,” said Mrs. Marble.
When she did not say more, Ireulun could barely contain herself.
“Mr. Marble?”

Mrs. Marble gave a genuine chortle but the act made her cough bitterly. Ireulun approached her in alarm but the garrulous woman waved aside her open arms with a, "Don’t worry me, gel, I must say this. It’s been too long and I can’t have it hanging over me before I depart.”

Ireulun waited in painful patience.
“My dear, Mr. Marble never knew of it. For all I had love him, the ball was only my secret. My burden to bear.

“You asked me before about the forbidden city, yes? Let me tell you why we - even I - never speak of it. Our memories of those citizens were never good. The people of this island were the lowest of the lower class. Fisher folk and farmers, they were the natives of this island but they were treated as if they owed the invaders their allegiance.

“Then came a time of trouble. A day of reckoning for the people of that city you saw. Like a plague it swept between the stones of the city, filling its domes and breaking its towers. Still, their arrogance made them blind. They would not leave. They died in that city.

“The people who had repented, including my family, had made plans to leave. To escape. We had a way. But we never had the chance.”

“You were discovered?” asked Ireulun.
“Discovered. Or betrayed. Who’s to say? I was the only survivor,” said Mrs. Marble. Sadness, an old pain, a long buried pain, coloured her tone.
“How?”
“The device we made, it was on the very edge of the city, on the island’s mainland instead of the outcrop of rock we had made as home. The blind ones never knew what it was, except that it was something. They were afraid it was something that might be used against them.”

She paused, her breath ragged, her eyes shone with unshed tears. Ireulun sat by her side and held her hand. Whatever courage she had, whatever comfort she could give, she transferred them to Mrs. Marble, a refugee of the past.

“It was never anything offensive. Or aggressive. We - my family - we just want to leave the island safely.”
“But you didn’t.”
“They didn’t. I did.”
She turned to Ireulun and spoke quietly, barely a whisper, more a repercussion of old regret than old age.
“I should have died there, Ireulun. I should have died protecting my family,” said Mrs. Marble.
Ireulun did not turn away or gave pity. Only her understanding. It was Mrs. Marble’s pride that had helped her survive whatever cataclysm had been inflicted upon the stone city.

“So you roamed the streets of Sandhurst before you met and married Mr. Marble. Nobody knew who you were? Why didn’t you just leave?” asked Ireulun.
“Nobody cared. The failing of my people did nothing to improve what limited quality of life the natives of the island already had. They just shrugged and went on with their life, just no longer answering to a foreign authority,” said Mrs. Marble.
“As for leaving, where would I go? I have no one, no place. No one that it, until I met my husband and he had no desire to be more than the farmer he was.”

Cupping the crystal ball in her hands, she felt it absorb her warmth. A long silence passed before she felt the old woman’s gentle touch on her shoulder.
“Use it my dear. You may take your leave today.”
Ireulun was still absorbing the new revelations about the silent city. And of Mrs. Marble.
“What about you? No matter what, I still can’t leave you.”

A slow smile infused Mrs. Marble’s face, a smile of friends sharing trust and hope. Ireulun could not help but smile back.
“When I first met you, Ireulun, you told me you were a traveller. You took many journeys because you wanted to. Isn’t this just another leg in your journeys?”
“Journeys means little if not for those I meet.”
“Then take this from an old woman who never left the island.”

Squeezing Ireulun’s hand over the crystal ball, she raised her own gnarled hand to her smooth cheek.
“I plan... to go on a journey too. My family will be waiting for me, just where I left them,” said Mrs. Marble.
She paused, and then continued.
“I don’t want anyone to be left behind.”

***

Contrary to Mrs. Marble wishes, Ireulun stayed with her for the rest of her final hours. Perhaps Mrs. Marble had always known Ireulun’s steadfast desire to stay with those who needed other. She never mentioned or gave any allusion to the term ‘weak’ or ‘helpless’. No, it was Mrs. Marble’s strength, her desire to live, that kept her alive and Ireulun was proud to have known her.

In the back of her mind, she wished she could have done more to her landlady, her friend for many weeks. If Mrs. Marble had lived long enough to meet her mother, the two would have become good friends.

It was the third dawn after Mrs. Marble - now late Mrs. Marble - had had her stroke. Ireulun had left a message at the village healer’s notice and another at Mrs. Marble’s nephew in town. She had not stayed a minute longer than necessary. With her possessions and her sustenance for a long trip in her backpack, she took off without looking back.

Mrs. Marble is going on a journey.

Ireulun would start hers as well.

Well, if you insist gel. We will part in the heavens at dawn.

At dawn? Even at her deathbed, Mrs. Marble refused to explain more than she did, citing it was more fun when Ireulun should see for herself. Whatever it was that the lost people of the stone necropolis had made, Mrs. Marble was confident Ireulun would handle it.

The heavy winter rains, as always, slowed to a drizzle come dawn. It was the best time to be on the move, to cross familiar but muddy forest paths. Deep were her thoughts about the city, about the old woman’s past, about the biased natives of the island that the arches of Balcony Park loomed over her before she realized that she had arrived.

The stone structure had not changed in her eyes; it still looked the same as she had first seen it. The arches were standing tall, the slabs on the floor crooked as ever. The city without life hovered in view, filling her view.

But in her mind, coloured by new revelations, everything about the structure had changed. Ireulun did not know. She walked a little bit away from the dais and onto the broken bridge structure. What had caused the failing of the city? Why was the government so blind? Why, even years later, the natives refuse to speak about a dead city?

Who were the ladies who posed as female statutes for this balcony? The people who made these arches, were they members of the rebellion of supporters of the blind government? Or was it the natives who had been forced to work without pay to craft these sculptors?

Questions that perhaps will be revealed in time.

Or perhaps never.

In the heart of a student of history, that last part irked Ireulun’s heart. But she had other plans. Plans that preclude the mysteries of the stone city. Remembering her friend’s instructions, Ireulun reached an arm to her back and pulled out the crystal ball. The light of dawn was reflected in the spiky cracks, making the inner star glow.

Slowly, Ireulun took slow steps toward the middle of the circle, holding the ball with both hands and keeping it warm with her fingers. The reflected light grew and shone, until it was no longer reflected light but an inner light that glowed from the crystal ball.

In response, the other crystal balls - the crystal ball held by the surrounding statutes glowed in similar colour of less intensity. Then one of the statutes’ crystals, closest to Ireulun, burst into shards. She held up her arm in a jerked surprise, barely missing the shower of shards to her face.

But the shards were tiny and brittle as glass. They bounced off her arm harmlessly. Soon other crystal ball on the hands of the statutes burst as well. One by one, they pop and cracked and shattered until all that remained was Ireulun’s own, shining every brightly.

There was a moment of silence, a stretching stillness that Ireulun wondered if she had done the steps correctly. But then ground started to shake beneath her feet. Not an earthquake, more like a sudden weakness in the dais floor. Sand? The stone slabs of the crooked floor dissolved under her feet like melting sand.

She imagined that if she suddenly found herself in the top half of an hourglass, perhaps that was how the sand was falling under her feet. Ireulun quickly jumped out of the way of the moving, shifting sand, the stone slabs of the floor breaking into pieces, the slow sinking sand brought her ever deeper into the floor.

Her foot then struck something solid. Her initial thought was a hidden stone sculptor but as she tried to gain purchase on it, she realized that the structure had a smooth surface.

A metallic surface.

Curiosity grew greater than her caution. She rubbed the spot where she had landed. The surface was definitely metallic. One hand still holding the bright crystal, she swept the sands around her, bringing to light a more definite unveiling of the unknown object.

As sand continued to flow steadily under her feet, the hidden structure, the lost relic of the stone necropolis revealed itself under the glaring light of Ireulun’s crystal ball. What Ireulun found was beyond what she had been guessing and mussing about.

Far, far beyond her expectations.

“Mrs. Marble, you have got to be joking!” Ireulun exclaimed in disbelief.

Next: February's Flight (2008)

SP's January 2008 Photo Entry

I think I’ll make a photo entry as a regular feature, now that I have a Sony Ericsson and Imageshack at my disposal. It should give you an intimate view to the many aspect of my life and get to know more about the small random things about me and around me.

Actually, I’m just too lazy to write my regularly long-winded entries.

The barbecue set. A very old friend of the family, this thing had served more mouths than a school canteen’s stove and passed between family members more times than the number of reasons to actually have a barbecue.


Sandwiches. One of my Seven Shameful Sins. I don’t often buy sandwiches, but I make’em like Dagwood style. Plain bread, brown bread, toasted bread, garlic bread, cheese slices, cheese spread, swiss cheese, melted cheese, garlic butter, garlic mulch, green relish, salami, burger meat, mince meat, meatballs, beef bacon, barbecued chicken, shredded chicken or tuna (dry, grilled or mayo), boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, turkey ham, turkey strips, hot dog strips, corn chips, lettuce, chopped celery, chopped chili, cucumber (thick, thin and pickled), pickled jalapenos, tomatoes or onions (fresh or grilled or pickled), toasted mushroom, brown sauce, barbecue sauce, spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, chili sauce, mustard, 2-layered, 3-layered, open-faced, you-name-it-I-had-it.
Now I want to go to Uptown and eat Subway.


I. Have. Bad sense. Of direction. In more ways than one.
I’m more male-oriented mentality when it comes to driving to new places. I read maps, I don’t ask for directions. So if I’m lost, you better get a motorbike and locate me because telling directions to me on the cellphone guarantees gets me lost even more (I got lost in Hospital University as recent as lastweek).


I read a lot of fantasy books. These two of the Aleran series by Jim Butcher (excellent writer, see his Dresden Files series) are currently loaned to my cousin since he doesn’t need to buy fantasy books since I keep buying them. I just hope he remembers to give them back before he returns to study in India.





Photos of The Curve's New Year 2008 party. I saw them last year with my father and was pretty awed. I went to The Curve again this year with a couple of moon-lighting buddies.


Oh yeah, one more thing. Please, please, help! I still have a bee hive in my trash box and no idea how to get rid of it before it grows any bigger.

December's Dream Image Story: Follow the Mouse

COPYRIGHT CGSOCIETY


It was a mouse.

A small one, not a house rat but more of a woodland variety. Ireulun was not surprised. She was, after all, lost in a forest. But there were a few strange things about her current situation.

The most pressing one was that she did not, could not, remember how she found herself in the forest. There was a blank, a dark space, in between her last memory and the moment when she spotted the mouse. What has happened?

The other strange thing she felt concerned about was the forest itself. It was common enough; tall trees full of green leaves at the height of late summer. Trees as far as her eyes could see. There was nothing distinctive about the trees; Ireulun was never much a student of botany.

But despite the forest’s obvious largeness and health, there were no animals. No birds chirping in the canopy, no squirrels amongst the branches, no lizards basking in patches of sunlight on the forest floor. No animals in the silent, suspended stillness.

Except that small brown mouse.

Somehow, the sight of the only other living creature in the woods prompted Ireulun to approach it. The way it sat on the ground, so still and watching her, gave Ireulun the impression that it was... waiting. For her? To do what?

But when she approached the mouse, it retreated quickly. Darting through the underbrush and disappearing into the shadows. Ireulun gave a sigh of disgruntlement. So much for that. She supposed that she should had been looking for a way out of the forest.

“Hello?” she called out.
There was no answer. Ireulun tried again.
“Hello-ooo?”

But only her echo returned her call. Ireulun suddenly had the distinct impression that she was the only person around. Alone. Angels and ashes, how did she get here?

As she raked through her memories, a chrip called to her. More a squeak than a chirp but it was loud and clear. The mouse? Where is it? Ireulun turned towards the sound.

A few moments later, she saw it, the mouse. It was sitting under a straight light shaft, its brown fur tinged with the sun’s glow. It was... doing nothing. But then it chirped again, loud and clear as before.

Then suddenly, it bolted again into the ferns and tall grasses, disappearing from Ireulun’s sight. She blinked and frowned. Then the mouse’s chirped cried out though the forest’s gloom.

It was calling to her was the thought that came to Ireulun’s mind. Why? Her next thought was the mouse was a spirit of the forest, not unusual perhaps, for a forest this strange. Ireulun may not be a student of botany, but she was an observant student of history.

She looked closely at a tree trunk, studying its bark and leaves. The trees looked like something from a place she was once been as a child, a Region very far away where people lived in vine covered homes built on giant trees.

Ireulun touched gingerly at the leaves. Her finger traced the lines of the tree’s bark and deducted that the species of tree was very much like those tree-houses of that far-away Region. But such spindly vine-trees do not grow straight from the earth; they grow on other trees.

The sound of the chirp repeated, this time with a somewhat irritated nuance. Ireulun no longer felt curious. She felt cautious. Nonetheless, she followed the sound, followed the mouse.

With every step she took and every sight she glimpsed of the mouse flitting through the patches of sunlight, she spotted other things. Broken things. Man-made things. There was no question about it.

A long thin object she at first took for a twig jutting awkwardly out of the ground turned out to be a dirty old wizard’s staff. The intricate designs carved on the handle were recognizable to Ireulun as from the northern tribe in the grasslands of her home Region.

A few meters away were another long object, this time a rusty sword. Ireulun crouch down low to examine it. The blade was dark with rust, pitted with holes in certain places. It did not look as if it had been used or discarded in a fight. It looked as if it had been abandoned there, ignored and forgotten.

Like the wizard’s staff, the sword had a unique deign which Ireulun recognized. The swirly patterns on the hilt suggested a knight of a high order, from a war-torn nation that was also in her home Region.

Ireulun discarded the sword and for a moment, she strained her eyes to look though the darkness of her surroundings. Between two trees, she spotted what looked to be a large, open trunk-box. Beside a rather large rock were several pieces of glittery that, at a second look, turned out to be expensive jewelry. And close to her feet, not far from the rusty sword, were broken pieces of glass vials.

And there was more, misshapen, often broken, but indefinitely man-made objects all scattered around her, intersecting between shadows and brushwood. All of then had a neglected, abandoned, forgotten feel. Suddenly, a chill grew in Ireulun spine.

The atmosphere felt like that of a graveyard.

A now familiar chirp-squeak cuts through her reverie. The mouse. It was still ahead of her, still calling out to her from the deeper parts of the woods. Ireulun debated whether she should continue following the creature. What if it was leading her into a trap?

Almost against her will, her feet dragged her forwards, and onwards. Her curiosity, coloured by a slight sense of fear, made her cautious. As much as she wanted to leave the forest, she wanted to discover its secrets. Her instincts were telling her that the mouse may be a key to the mystery.

Ireulun pressed on, careful not to disturb the objects in her path. Eventually, the air seemed lighter, less oppressive. The gloom of the woods faded as the forest canopy was higher and less thick. Through the shafts of sunlight Ireulun could see further ahead and noticed that there were more open spaces between the trees.

The underbrush was thinner as well and for the first time in a while, she could see the little brown mouse clearly. It ran quickly, darting over fallen trees and large boulders but it was never too far from her sight.

Then, just out of the way of the trees, Ireulun came to a wide clearing. It was a larger empty space, larger than any of the forest clearing she had been through. She could see high above the canopy, the tree branches. To her eyes, the tall trees and its branches intersect in an unusual way, giving the illusion of narrow windows flying buttresses. Just like in cathedrals.

No sooner had that thought entered her mind, she felt a familiar chill, only more welcoming than before. She felt as if she was in a sanctuary, a holy place. Looking on the ground around her, there was none of those pieces of neglected objects she had seen before.

And then there was the mouse. It sat in a shaft of light, a brighter sunbeam than any in the forest. It watched her, its small eyes stared at her with an almost expectant fixation. On impulse, Ireulun crept closer to it, so close, bending so low until she could touch it.

But then the mouse bolted into a tiny hole she did not notice before, a nest-like entrance made of dried grass. A mouse home, perhaps. Ireulun felt dejected. The mouse had done nothing more than just trying to get away from her.

So much for the mysteries of the strange forest.

But then, bending over the nest, she felt cool flat stone underneath her hand. Ireulun brushed away the fallen leaves and dried tufts of grass. What she uncovered was indeed a stone tablet, flat and large, like a tombstone that had fallen over. She traced the engraved words.

The alphabet was recognizable but the language was old. Ireulun looked through her mind, trying to remember her learning. She reads the words and translated them in her mind.

The Forest of Silence

If you can read this, it means that you are now a prisoner in the Forest of Silence. Here you shall stay in permanent solitary confinement for the rest of your living days, or until the Psychic Order reinstate a review of your criminal case, whichever comes first.

The trees will bear fruit, the roots can be eaten and the spring waters are clean and plentiful. But take the rest of your time and make your peace with the angels.

As she read, Ireulun’s hand shook with anxiety. At the bottom of the tablet was some additional writing, in the current language used that she recognized instantly. Unlike the rest of the message, the additional words were crudely craved, as if by a pointed stone rather than a chisel.

Angels knows I am innocent.

Ireulun felt a deep void grew within her. The forest she was in was actually a prison. An old prison for people to be forgotten. To be ignored. To be lost.

But how did she got here?

“Forest of Silence...” she whispered.

Suddenly she felt light-headed and dizzy. She struggled to remain conscious but the beam of light of which she was in began to grow brighter and hotter. Her hands shook, her body was paralyzed in the rising heat, though the stone tablet under her hands remained cool. Ireulun shook her head hard, her hands grabbing handfuls of soft dirt and grass.

But then the bright light waned. And slowly disappeared.

She opened her eyes slowly. Ireulun was in her familiar bedroom, in her familiar bed. Her hands were clutching the folds of her bedding. Light was growing through the windows as dawn approached and brought her to wakefulness.

As her breathing slowed to normal, Ireulun brushed the sweat off her feverish forehead. It was a dream. The forest, the mouse, the stone tablet had been a dream.

Hadn’t it?

She turned to the desk beside her bed. On the desk were all her history and geography books, some lay open on its spine. An unfinished graph, a map of Ireulun’s home Region, lay open, waiting for her to continue drawing its mountainous ranges and coastlines.

As a student of history, she had been working on mapping the south-east corner of her home Region, an distant and unknown territory known for centuries as ‘impassable, dense woodlands’.

Ireulun now knows what she has to do.

She has to go to the Forest of Silence.

Next: January's Journey (2008)

First Bloom...

Hello and welcome to my blog.

This isn’t my first blog. My old one fell into discontent ages ago, mainly I think due to immaturity. I was young and I pretty much joined the blog bandwagon along with hundreds of others in a cyber community for teenagers. During those days, I strayed a lot from my own way of thinking, writing so that people would read. Maybe add a comment.

The old one pretty much bumped out as time went by. The contents, the accessories, the groups it was in, the whole blog grew into something that just wasn’t me. Not the real me. It became a... well not so much a façade. More a farce. I had to stop before I don’t recognize me anymore.

So I’m making a new start on online journals. I never really had a need for blogs. Or journals, for that matter. I didn’t want to because I’m very much a private person. Immensely. If you ask my own parents 20 questions of what they think they know about me, they’ll get wrong two thirds of it.

My... uh, privacy, is a side effect of my childhood. Of course.

I had a super terrific childhood. I was spoiled, the third child with three siblings and hard-working parents. I like to cry and joke a lot. I took nothing serious and, as Ayah always tells me, I took much of my life for granted. I know I do, but I just can’t seem to change it.

I got used to being what I do, being in the system of sleeping off worries instead of tackling the problems that caused then, then shouting quietly in private. In the end, nothing gets done and resources had been wasted. At my age, I’m institutionalized. If I were to fill out a confession after being injected with truth serum, I would put ‘Occupation: Extremely lazy addict.”

Don’t get too much emphasis on it. The imagination is a good thing (I’ll even pat God on the back for giving it to mankind) but I’m not stupid. If I ever get broke, I know how to get work. A work with no future maybe, no offense to anyone who ever had been broke, I do apologize. But my needs are simple.

Work, eat and sleep. If it’s available, take it. If it’s not, screw it. And if you have to do something illegal to get it, do it quietly and leave no trace. Okay, if I ever had to resort to that, maybe I am stupid. Smart or stupid, I never really know what category I’m in. Not even during primary school. I got switched back and forth between the ‘smart students’ and ‘stupid students’ class. Attention disorder maybe.

Those were the little schooldays. I’m still at school, though the tertiary level. I should have graduated ages ago. In fact, I’m not sure if I’ll ever graduate. There’s a six-year limit I think, to how long you can stay as a student. I’m not sure. Again, attention disorder.

Not good for me. Even worse bad for my family, parents particularly. My folks don’t have a lot of kids. Just one boy, then a girl then me and then a genius (yes, male).

It might sound a good lot of kids (if you’re, heh, a Japanese maybe) but it’s pretty average if you count all my family members on my maternal side. The first two have already begun producing money and babies. Well, my sister is. My brother (an Arsenal fanatic I might say) is sort of living with my sister’s family until he made more money or married a rich girl, whichever comes first.

That’s my family. I will refer them from father to mother to brother to sister to younger brother as Ayah, Mak, Arsenal, MySis and Genius because I’m that kind of person. I may not care what people think of me but I’m pretty sure my peeps don’t want to get my dirt near them by crying out their real names. Besides, this blog is all about my thoughts and I have to get to call them whatever I like.

What’s with the name? If I were a guy, this would probably count as gay. Just for that, I’m not. Neither guy nor gay that is. But sexual orientation aside, the name is partially my love for fantasy genre, partially because I’m fascinated with English society and mostly because ‘shadowflower’ had already been taken by some pink-crazed German girl who hadn’t updated her blog since she signed in 2005.

I used the word ‘shadow’ in many abstracts and contexts. Corrupted by the Fantasy and Sci-Fi sections in bookstores, I have this imaginary world in my head as big as any MMORPG (massive-multiplayer-online-role-playing-games, if there are some of you who have yet to learn big acronyms. And welcome to English) and in that imaginary world, ‘shadow’ is a type of magic the imaginary people use to hide their spells’ technically. That’s another story however. Remind me to tell it to you someday.

Pimpernel is a type of flower that grows in England. A weed actually. Other weeds in England are Asians and Arabs (Indians, however, are no longer a weed since they taste so good when boiled in soups). I don’t necessary like the plant since I’ve never seen it outside the Internet but I choose it because I liked a short novella that’s older than Jane Austen called The Scarlet Pimpernel.

So by changing the first word, Shadow Pimpernel has almost the same scheme as the book, save it’s for my thoughts instead of suppressed French people. Whenever my thoughts or ideas get close to getting cut off, I save them in here, away from the real world. I just need a safe place for them, to think freely and let unbiased people see them get expressed.

If you don’t like what you’re reading, then ahead to another browser. If you think I’m a loner who needs a butt-**ck badly, leave a comment and maybe I’ll mention you in my next post. If you think it’s pitiful for me to exist since I’m writing miserable things about the people in my life, do leave a comment too.

In fact, leave all kinds of comment and maybe you’ll destroy my account’s bandwidth because I’m keeping my anonymity to protect my thoughts, my freedom of the individual mind. I’ll add some details from time to time, but the day I close this is the day the day I might actually hurt someone I care about with this blog.

So if you think I’ve hurt your feelings, go take a butt-***ck. You don’t know the feeling that’s blooming in me to finally get the s**t out for being totally honest.