writing adventure 39- History

     There is nothing worse, in Lance's eyes, than being a historian who has lost the meaning of it all.  He's not sure where it went, whether he misplaced it in Greek myths or medieval battlefields, but he's sure it's gone forever.  Once someone sees the light, or lack of it, there is no switch to turn on or off.
     The girl at the bar is beautiful, and she doesn't find another seat when he tells her what his profession is.  She sees something else in him, something darker, maybe, and Lance is very sure that it's the fact that he knows everything important that's ever happened and still can't find a reason why.
     "Tell me about the battles," she says, between drink number four and drink number five.  He is close to losing himself as well, and doesn't look up from his glass when he answers.
     "Battles?  Oh, battles were so important in history.  It's how history is made, really.  War moves the earth, and people love when the earth moves."  Shut up, he slurs in his own mind.  That didn't even make any sense.
     The girl giggles a bit and throws her head on his shoulder.  "Did they fight for love?" she asks.
     Lance throws her off of himself and stands, a bit wobbly but more determined than he has ever been before.  "They fought for love," he concedes.  "They fought for love, and for religion, and for honor, and for morality, and for land, and for gold, and for sons, and for daughters, and, sometimes, they fought just to fight.  But, most of all," he says, louder now, "they fought for nothing.  And then, they came home, in coffins or in drunken stupors, and their children would look on horrified at what their fathers had become.  And, after that, those same children would become the same things, and die in one way or another for the same reasons."
     It is only now that Lance realizes the woman has left and the bar is silent around him.  Most are staring at him, but a select few avert their gazes and resume their games of pool or darts.  Lance doesn't sit back down to his drink, though.  He stays standing in the dim room, standing in the spot where he finally said aloud his deepest, innermost thoughts.
     It was not as satisfying as he wished it would be.  Instead, it is hollow, and lonely.  The words tumbled out, but they did not change the past he studied.  They will not change the future he is afraid to see.
     He said the words, he fought his own soul, for nothing.  And a little piece of him died when he did, but Lance has seen it before in greater men, and he will go on with or without it.

writing adventure 38- Through a Stranger's Lands (part 2)

     The most frightening aspect of deserting the army, for Brear, was that he did not know what was going through the minds of those he left behind.  The sun was fully up, had been winking merrily at Brear for a while now, blissfully ignorant of the storm in his mind, the weight of his eyelids, the blood scattered in a clearing miles away.  He hoped that they were equally as ignorant back on the battlefield.
     He feared not being there, almost as much as he feared staying there. Paranoia washed over him in the silence and seclusion of the tall forest.  Would the army come after him?  Would he be welcomed home?  What would Kander think of his brother now, his only living role model a deserter and a coward?  Brear slumped against a tree, the bark digging into his spine.  He was afraid, and it was not a feeling a soldier should have, but he was no soldier.  He was barely a citizen.
     A criminal, that's what he had become in those few hours of morning.  He took the advice of a dead man and had run, which had in turn made him a dead man.  The sweat poured down his face, and he tried desperately to stop his shaking hands.  The attempt was in vain, and Brear sat in the forest for another hour, hands shaking and heart fluttering deep in his chest, until his eyes slipped into darkness, and he slept.

~

     Village Messer was located just outside the forest, and was not protected by any larger kingdom, even though it pledged its loyalty to a crown that believed it was entitled to the land.  There was a family name that had once been known, but Village Messer didn't care for unseen forces and famous names. Like Troxia, they simply called the kingdom "The Checkered Flag," for that was the simple crest that adorned everything the kingdom believed to be its own.  Also like Troxia, Village Messer had a checkered flag on the tallest building in the small town.
     It was almost sundown when a strange man stumbled into the tavern of the small town.  By what Elliah could gather from his cautious and curious stares, he did not know where he was and he did not trust the occupants.  She was fine with that; she barely trusted the regular customers and the place was owned by her father.
     She watched him out of the corner of her eye. The boy was lost, she knew this for sure.  He was very lost and very alone, just like anyone else who ever stumbled into her father's bar.

~

     Brear wished, more than anything else in the world, to be home.  He had found this village after walking in circles through the forest, and was immediately nostalgic for that which he left behind.  Whether he was welcomed or not, he needed to make it back to Troxia.
     He surveyed the bar closely, afraid that anyone there would suddenly recognize his face as the face of a deserter, and he would have to run for his life, just as he had earlier in the day.  He seemed to be an exceptional runner these days.  He saw the girl sitting at the bar shift uncomfortably when he passed, and took notice of her.  She had long red hair, like a blaze down her back.  If he hadn't been preoccupied with worry, Brear would have thought she was beautiful, would have asked her name and bought her a drink.  Instead, Brear asked a simple question.
     "Miss," he whispered behind her, and Elliah whipped around quickly and pretended to take in the sight of him for the first time.
     "Yes?"
     "I hope I don't alarm you by asking this, but could you tell me where we are?"
     She was taken aback for a second.  No one was ever this lost or alone.  She cleared her throat before speaking.  "We are in my father's tavern in Village Messer, one of the many small towns under The Checkered Flag."
     Brear's eyes lit up.  He didn't know the army had been this close to civilization, let alone its own kingdom.  "You mean we're within the limits of the castle?"
     Elliah paused again, confused at the young man's own confusion.  "Technically, we are not," she replied.  "This village pledges its loyalty and, in turn, the crown does not completely surrender us when the borders are threatened."
     Brear smiled, no longer fully listening.  Being near the kingdom meant being near home, but being on the outskirts meant he was practically there already.  "Can you point me in the direction of Troxia?"
     Elliah smiled.  The boy knew not where he was, she reasoned, but where he needed to be.  That calmed her mind a bit.  "Keep walking east, through the forest that lines this place, and in a day's walk you will meet Troxia's border."
     He began to run out of the tavern, but then thought better of it and came back to the girl.  "I apologize," he told her, bowing his head a bit.  "I never asked your name, or told you mine.  You have helped me a great deal yet we are still strangers."
     "My name is Elliah," she said to him, and Brear smiled at the beautiful name.
     "I am Brear."
     "Well, Brear," she said, loud enough for her father behind the bar to hear, "you can't run off before you stay the night.  My father and I will settle you in here for the night, and then you can find what you seek in Troxia."
     "Family," Brear revealed to Elliah.  "I seek family in Troxia."

writing adventure 37- Through a Stranger's Lands (part 1)

     The scream that echoed through the small sleeping town woke no one; they assumed in their dreams that it was a wolf or something equally as frightening, and so they allowed it to pass undisturbed through Troxia.
     It was no wolf. It was, in fact, a citizen of Troxia, aged seven years, being snatched from the desperate arms of his mother.
     If Troxia had woken up, had realized the crime that just occurred mere feet from their own children, they would have also heard the mother's crazed sobs for Kander–whether she meant her dead husband or kidnapped son she herself did not know. Once her mind realized both husband and son were gone, she sobbed for another boy–the one off to war, probably also dead and taken from her.
     "Brear," she cried, her hands wringing her dress. "Please come back, Brear. Please don't leave your old mother alone."

~

     Brear woke suddenly, alone in the dark hour before daybreak. He sat up under his small blanket, and his joints hurt from the cold. "Curse this place," he spat, and the men around him barely stirred from their sleep. "My mind ages one minute and my body ages ten years."

     Brear attempted to get more rest, but gave up after the wind began swirling around him, chilling anything not under the thin blanket his mother made him six months ago. Instead, he silently made his way towards the clearing a few yards from the army's campsite. It had been the site of the army's last battle, a small skirmish that amounted to no gained ground and a few dead.

     In Brear's mind, a few dead was still to many, considering the war was over mere blades of grass.
     He heard moaning in the grass and ran to the spot, his arms before him in case he fell in the dark. It was only after he stumbled and tripped over the man did he realize where was. This was the enemy's side of the battlefield. This was a man from the other side, a man dragged halfway home only to be deemed not worth the exertion. This was a dying enemy.
     Brear knelt by the man's side anyway, his eyes attempting to scan for injuries and gushing blood but finding no source in the dim and hazy light. "Hello?" Brear said, shaking the man a bit.
     The man coughed up blood before whispering back. "You must run," the man said, and took a shaky breath in before coughing again.
     Brear paused, scrutinizing the man in the darkness. "Sir, you need to rest. I will get help for you, the day is almost breaking."
     The man groaned almost angrily at Brear. "No. I will receive no help today, boy. I am a dying man, it is destiny that I die upon this ground. But you, you have time. You must not die for senseless purposes. It is not your fate to bleed here."
     "It is no one's fate to die or bleed here," Brear replied, his voice a mere whisper and his eyes searching for any sign of help. "War is no one's destiny."
     "Nonsense," the man said, and Brear could feel the man's life slipping away from him, could almost see his soul pulling itself towards the heavens. "Everyone is at war with something. For instance, you battle with the notion that it is your duty to be here, even though you say yourself no man is supposed to bleed for this cause."
     Brear paused once again. In a way, he feared this stranger, this enemy. His father told him once that the truths of the world are held only in the gaze of dying men. He never believed it until the moment dawn surfaced over the clearing and Brear could make out the man's eyes.
     The enemy took Brear's hesitation for acceptance and spoke again. "You must run, boy. You must run away from this place, because there is no peace in blood. You will lose yourself in the war, just as I have lost myself. You must never look to an army as an identifier to who you are. You must run while you have the chance."
     Seconds after speaking, the man died in Brear's arms. In an enemy's arms.
     Seconds after that, Brear deserted the army.

writing adventure 36- C.O.o.t.P.: Bagveina and Duena

This is a tie-in to a larger story I wrote, which is called Climbing Out of the Pit. It is about two young adults (about 20 in this spot) who are stuck in a world they don't wish to inhabit. One is Bagveina: a newly crowned emperor of Ickant that never wanted the throne or the responsibility that comes with it (his older brother dies and leaves the throne to him). The other is Duena: an orphan of Pittopia that goes by the code name Small One to protect a country that has given up on itself.

----------------------------------------------

     She doesn't understand. This is what he'll say when she grabs his hand and tells him he can't go. She might cry, but it will be dark and tears from hearts that he broke have never affected him before. This is different, though. He helped her when she was just an orphan, and she helped him when he was just an angry and neglected son. This frightens him, makes him question his decision to meet her. He's leaving her, knowing that she'd never do the same.

     Small One never leaves; she is a ghost tied to Pittopia, tied to a love he never fully reciprocated but could never fully forget. But he must go on, because Ickant is killing him in a way he hadn't thought possible, screaming at him to be a brother he always hated and rule a country he never loved.

     The moon scowls at him but falls gently on Duena, who is waiting by the sign that used to say "Marimba, Pittopia" but is now littered with gang signs from the EMP. She smiles at him, and they embrace, and his throat catches with the memory of the last time they were in Pittopia together. He had crossed the border as only an emperor's reckless brother, and she had saved him from the king's men.

     "I'll die before I let Jacob get to you," she had said then, and she will be right. He had told her he loved her, and she had repeated those words, but it had never been real. He always laughed right afterwards, and she always smiled with sadness and looked off into the distance. He always went back to his country above ground, and she always stayed in the Pit.

     "I'm leaving," he tells her, and doesn't watch her face fall. 

     Duena fights the urge to kiss him, embrace him, shackle him to the dirty sign, and instead says, "If that's what you need, I can make sure no one finds or follows you."

     He hesitates, but doesn't look up. "No one will find me," he says, and begins the journey back to Ickant.

     "I love you, Bagveina. Not in the way we've said before. In the way that, some days, this place means nothing to me. Some days, I want to fall asleep in your arms and stay in the east. I can't be more than a Pittopian, Bagveina, but I can love you like you need."

     He stops, and finally realizes that he is lost without her, but she is only lost when he is there. "Love," he sighs, and doesn't turn around before continuing. "You are the daughter Pittopia doesn't realize it has. I am the son Ickant doesn't realize it's killing. Tell me, Duena, where did love get us?"

     She is silent for only a second before he begins walking again, away from her.

     Maybe, he thinks–hopes, even–that two years down the road they'll be able to look at each other and not wonder if they would be happy together. Maybe he'll have someone who hasn't seen the worst of him, and she'll have someone who is better to her than he ever was. What he doesn't know is that two years from now she will take a walk and never reach her destination, and he will look up from his work and find death waiting for him as well.

writing adventure 35- For Nothing

     When faced with a stern and challenging figure, one rebels. Everything gets steadily louder, the air gets steadily more charged. Mob mentality kicks in, and one loses their morality in the crowd. There is violence, there is confusion, there is so much sound. Chaos drowns out the voices of the sane or holy. They will scream for salvation, they will cry for a hero, but the mob will only reply with louder cries that heroes live only in myth. Salvation does not exist for them anymore, nor do they want it to. Salvation, to the mob of rebellion, would mean that the challenging figure never mattered. Salvation would mean peace, but peace was trampled under their collective hooves, bloodied and killed by their new belief in war.
     But, for those suffocating under the grip of this figurehead of terror, the rebellion is never big enough, never violent enough. There is honor in the violence, honor in the way they hold their heads high even as their throats are slit. There is honor in the way they set fire to the past, even as that fire devours them, traps them in their own battle. This honor may only be an illusion, but no one in the mob will live long enough to see it that way.
     When faced with a stern and challenging figure, one rebels. And one loses regardless. No matter how many fight, no matter how much blood is spilled, they will lose. Whether it is a battlefield or a street corner, a country or court room, the mob loses their fight. They forget their morality for nothing. They forget the price of speaking out for nothing. They die for nothing.

writing adventure 34- Home

     "Hey," he said tentatively as he stood in front of the small crowd. "My name is Raymond." He coughed, and wrung his hands together.

     "Hello, Raymond."

     The fact that they were so rehearsed, so perfect as to say that line together frightened him, and he contemplated bolting. Just run, his body was telling him. Just run and get the Hell out of this place.

     He sat down instead. "Would you like to tell us why you're here, Raymond?"

     "Oh," he said, and struggled back out of the chair again. The nervous sweat running down his neck made it hard to concentrate, and the silence around him felt heavy in the air. He surveyed the small circle that seemed to get closer and farther away at the same time. There were three women and five men. None of them looked like anyone he would remember. They weren't dirty, or openly sad. They were just people. They were just strangers. He sighed, the room spinning from his panic. He closed his eyes, and the group took notice without judging, but to Raymond the air was still thick and uncomfortable. "There's this window," he said, and almost laughed at the trivial fact. The corners of his mouth twitched upward. "It's in my room, and it's this really big window, and it reminds me of this girl." Raymond's mouth stopped twitching. "This damn girl," he whispered, but still his eyes didn't open. The group waited for him to continue.

     "We were seniors in college together. I mean, we went to the same college all four years, but we met senior year. She was dating my best friend at the time. God, she was pretty. I never thought she was sexy, or hot, or anything like that, but she was pretty. She had this light brown hair that was super short, and she used to giggle at everything Eric said. Eric was my friend, by the way." His arms waved around as he told his story, but his eyes never opened. He could see it, could see her, and Eric, and late nights in computer labs.

     "Anyway," he continued, "I knew her for like three months before Eric dumped her. Said she didn't care, or something. We were seniors, and he wanted someone serious that he could marry. I never heard her side of the story, though. By that point, we were already friends, but she didn't talk about Eric anymore. I don't know if it was because Eric was right or really wrong, but I was okay with her boundaries." Raymond backed up just a little too much, and felt the plastic chair dig into his leg. He focused on the insignificant annoyance on his leg for a second before moving.

     "It had been two weeks after the break-up when she got into a car accident, right outside her dorm. After that, she wasn't pretty. I mean, she wasn't scarred or anything like that, but she wasn't the same girl. She would just sit around, staring off in the distance. Eric wasn't the same, either. Maybe seeing her like that made him realize what he could never get back, or maybe he just evolved away from me. From us. Either way, Eric was out of there." Raymond sighed again. He heard sniffles from the crowd, and resisted opening his eyes.

     "But I wasn't," he said, and his voice cracked just a small amount. "I wasn't gone. I tried so hard to get her back. We moved in together, I protected her as best I could. Every time we went out, she would look at me with these vacant eyes, this vacant heart, and she would tell me 'You should party more, Raymond.' I never drank, because someone had to keep everyone off of her, you know? She was so gone all the time, someone had to stay in the moment." The sniffling turned to cries, and his voice got louder, the tears coming down his own cheeks as well.

     "She only ever did two things: party, and stare. The partying was usually done at this tiny hole in the wall, and the staring was usually done right out my window. I used to force her to come into my room for human interaction, but she would just stare out that window."

     "Well," he added, bitterly, "she left two nights ago, and now I can't stop staring at that fucking window, either, and I hate it. And I really want to hate her too, and I think I did for a time, because who was she to define my life by what she turned into?"

     Raymond heard the screech of a chair against linoleum, and quickly opened his eyes. The girl across from him was staring straight through him, straight to his heart, and suddenly the group knew.

     "But I don't hate her," Raymond whispered, and took a step forward. "I don't hate her. I just want her home."

     The girl blinked and remembered where she was. Mascara running, she hugged herself and sat back down. "I'm trying to be better. I'm trying to be what you remember," she said to him, and the rest of the group sat in awe of the exchange between them.

     "I'm glad," Raymond said, and took another slow step, afraid she would bolt like he was thinking of doing. "But you don't have to do it without me. I'm trying too."

     "I know," she said.

     "Come home, Maya."

     Maya looked up at him, and he saw the eyes of a girl that had died six months ago in a car accident, before she got addicted to the pills that gave her relief from that trauma, before she forgot the world around her.

     Raymond looked back at her, and all she saw was home.