There will be no update for the writing challenge this week. Updates will resume as normal 7/16/23.
Sleep
Choosing a prompt to respond to because: got lazy! And somewhat in relation to the prompt, took a nap in the afternoon instead of writing. But I have pulled my cards and have something of an idea for it at least when I post next week.
Generally my sleep schedule can change up quite a bit owing to my work schedule. For the most part, my boss usually gives me closing shifts (or what counts as closing for us – we close at 7 pm) because I enjoy sleeping in and don’t mind working in the evenings. A lot of our employees usually prefer day shifts because they have children or would like to be off earlier in the day. As a result, I go in to work anywhere between 10 am to 12 pm, and will usually sleep in to about 45 to 30 minutes before I am due for work. On days when I don’t have to work, I can easily sleep in until nearly 1 pm.
I’m also a night owl, so I’m up pretty late. I rarely go to bed before 2 am. There are exceptions on days when I am just completely drained and crash early, or when (like today) I take a nap. There are even some nights when I am up until sunrise.
24. Lucas
If anyone knew about Peyton and I taking a stroll that evening, no one said a thing. We hadn’t stayed in a place large enough for us to make the attempt again, and we didn’t openly discuss it. I had long suspected that the compass spell needed our presence to work, so that meant that once we found our fourth person, we might all be able to escape together. That option gave me some peace of mind.
The routine for the next couple of days remained the same as it had been the entire trip so far. In the morning, we would cast the compass spell. We would spend the day traveling, listening to Raella’s history lessons, and then find an inn to stop in for the evening. Sometimes we trained a bit with our weapons. Sometimes Chase and Zolambi spent entire evenings trying to get me to tap into my magical ability. There had been no luck with that so far.
They would also cast the compass spell again before we settled down to relax, and discuss our route for the next day. “She must be crossing the desert,” Zolambi said as her course began to take us further south.
Greyjon frowned, studying a map that he had laid out on one of the common room tables of the inn we were staying at. “That’s a dangerous route. She must be incredibly powerful already to have survived this far.”
“Or she has powerful companions. It’s not an unusual route to take for certain slaves. I crossed the mountains myself, but it was summer and the passes weren’t snowed in. The border further north is more heavily patrolled though.” Zolambi absently rubbed at the rough skin of his scar. “If she does cross the desert, she’ll make it to the ravine. There’s a small walled town called Watter close to there. That will be our last inhabited stop, I think.”
“And if she does arrive with escaped slaves in tow?” Raella asked. “We weren’t planning on having many extra people with us.”
“Well, we can’t leave them behind, Raella,” Chase said with some exasperation.
Zolambi nodded. “We can travel back to Watter. They’ve got an organization that helps take in escaped slaves, and acclimate them to the Empire. Most of the border towns do.”
Raella stared at the map, and pointed to a town even further south. “Then certainly Veinwell will have that as well. Then we don’t have to make the trek back. We’ll be looping to the southeast after we find her anyway.”
I looked curiously at the map, seeing what was to the southeast of where we were going. I spotted the familiar name of Glyss along the southern border of the Empire, and remembered that Raella had mentioned that the ruler there had helped open up a friendly relationship with the dwarves. Unfortunately, the map didn’t extend beyond the current borders of the Empire, so I couldn’t see any specifics about the dwarven lands.
We traveled within sight of the mountains that Zolambi had mentioned and then began to take a more southerly course. The Elves called them the Elder mountains, and they terminated just above the desert, trailing off into the human kingdom that bordered there. Zolambi explained that further north, the range became truly massive in scale. Even though it was still autumn, I could see that the mountains were covered in snow. The grasslands gave way to the sparser vegetation of the desert, and the weather was a bit warmer than where we had started.
Watter was a small town, just as Zolambi had described, and not even large enough to merit walls. The inn had only two rooms, so we split them by gender. Lexie groaned about this. “Raella is going to drone all night,” she muttered angrily as she poked at her dinner. “I just know it.”
“Maybe we’ll ask Chase for some pointers on casting as soon as we get to the room,” Peyton suggested.
Lexie didn’t look fully convinced. She was already powerful magically, and picked up on spells easily. As soon as she was shown something, she seemed to understand how to do it. But she completely lacked fine control – if she summoned flames, it was always in a large burst. She couldn’t control the temperature of summoned water, and when she tried to move items through the air, they wobbled and on occasion slammed toward their destination with too much force. “I think Raella believes that’s a lost cause,” the girl said morosely.
Peyton shrugged. “We could say that we want to try to help Lucas again.” I felt the same swirling nervousness in my gut that I always felt when my lack of magical ability was mentioned.
Glancing up, I could see that they were both giving me sympathetic looks. I sighed. “Sure, I can be your excuse,” I said, feeling like there wasn’t much point to trying. I caught Peyton looking between Lexie and me, the hint of a smile pulling at the corner of her lips as we both pouted at our particular weaknesses.
“Well, maybe instead of any of it, we go to bed early. Tonight will really be our last night in a decent bed,” Peyton noted. We sat for a moment in silence as we considered that. We hadn’t known what to expect when we initially left the University, and I think the paved roads and inns had been a nice surprise. Now we were going to travel out into actual wilderness.
With a sigh, Lexie stood up. “You’re right. I’m going to see if I can pretend to be asleep before Raella gets to the room. Goodnight Lucas, night Peyton.” She quickly walked off to where the rooms were. I considered excusing myself as well, but Peyton beat me to it. She had already been done eating at that point and had just been sitting with us companionably, studying the décor of the room.
She stood and said goodnight, and followed the girl back to their shared room. I pushed the remainder of the food around on my plate, wondering if I’d actually be able to sleep tonight.
The next morning, Raella made arrangements for the wagon with our supplies to be taken to Veinwell, where we planned to go after our trek into the ravine. We traveled alongside the wagon most of the day. It was being driven by the innkeeper’s son, who seemed to be happy to get out of Watter for a time. In the middle of the afternoon, we said goodbye to the boy and left the road. I glanced back several times as the wagon grew smaller in the distance, heading further south as we began to make our way west and away from any signs of civilization.
That evening as we stopped to make camp, we called up the compass spell. The image was larger every day, especially as we had gotten closer to the mountains and the ravine that was south of them. It was easier to see what she looked like now, even though we didn’t know anything specific about her still.
Colors were hard to make out, because the image was made of light, so I had no idea if she had brown hair or blonde hair – but it came down to about her shoulders and was slightly curly. She looked disheveled and tired. She was dressed in the same breeches she had worn the entire time, and a tank top underneath a billowy shirt that looked like it belonged to a pirate. Another shirt was wrapped around her head with the sleeves pulled around her neck to hold it in place, probably to protect from the sun. She also carried a pack loosely over her back.
At the moment, she was in the process of testing an improvised crutch, walking back and forth on the ground with it. I could hear Chase gasp lightly from behind me when she saw what she was doing, and could see the frowns on everyone else’s faces. “So she’s been injured,” Raella noted impassively.
They kept the image up for several minutes longer than usual as we observed her. I could see where the pants had a rip high on her thigh, and that was the leg that she seemed to have trouble putting weight on. After testing the crutch, she set it aside and sat down to rest. Then she cupped her hands and brought them up to her face, appearing to drink from them. I paused, confused at what she was doing because she didn’t have any sort of canteen, until I realized that she must have summoned water directly into her hands. I couldn’t see the glow of magic because she was just represented here as a glowing form of light itself.
“Oh, she has learned to cast!” Chase said, sounding excited.
Even without any direct instruction, she had managed to learn to use her magic. I felt even more worthless for a moment, and a little embarrassed. What was I doing so wrong?
The bedrolls weren’t as comfortable as a modern sleeping bag, but were still better than sleeping on the ground. Zolambi, Chase and Greyjon each took a turn at watch. I offered to help at one point, but was told to rest instead. In the morning, the compass spell revealed that the other Grace was moving again. We continued our own journey, leaving the mountains behind.
The next day of travel wasn’t so bad either. We had eased into traveling through the previous days, thanks to the frequent stops and the wagon. A full day of riding still left me sore and a bit stiff, but I wasn’t as uncomfortable as I had initially worried. The increased exercise likely helped as well. That evening when we stopped, Greyjon provided some instruction with the staves again. He tossed them to us, as he traditionally did, and as usual, Lexie missed catching hers. She grumbled about it as she chased after the stick, which had rolled away a few feet. “Statistically, you’d think you’d catch it once by accident,” I said.
She used her staff and a gust of air to trip me before I was technically ready to start sparring. “No magic in these lessons,” Greyjon said, doing his best to hide a smile. “Though that is a good combination to keep in mind if you ever get into an actual fight.”
The day after that we reached the ravine. We traveled along it for awhile as we attempted to find a way down, eventually finding a trail of sorts. “It reminds me of the Grand Canyon,” Lexie said, marveling at the scale of it.
“Same process probably made it. A river and thousands of years,” I said, staring down at the river far below.
“I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon,” Peyton said thoughtfully. “I guess I’ll never get to see it.”
“Well, it’s kind of like this,” Lexie waved an arm to gesture at the view. Peyton chuckled. After a few moments, Lexie added, “I’ve never seen the pyramids. I always wanted to go.”
“Well, they’re not like this,” Peyton said. “But maybe this world has something similar to offer.”
We made camp when we reached the bottom. When we checked that evening, the other Grace was already sleeping. “She stopped early tonight,” Raella noted. The image was almost to scale, I realized. We were close. “Tomorrow we’ll travel further south along the river.”
We stayed in the gorge the entire next day, stopping often to check our course. She was close now. We’d be meeting her soon. Raella didn’t want to travel too far south if we could help it, and casting the spell again and again seemed to be taking its toll on them. We stopped earlier in the evening after finding a place that provided a reasonable path up toward the desert side of the gorge, and we camped for the night.
The next morning, we woke early to the echoey sounds of barking, and people screaming and shouting from somewhere above. I wasn’t sure if we were close – the canyons could have been amplifying the sounds for all I knew. And we couldn’t see what was going on towards the top of the canyons. We hastily packed our items and began to follow what passed for a precarious trail up. It took us several minutes to be halfway up – we were going fast enough, but it felt dreadfully slow hearing the shouts from above.
At one point as we neared the top, Lexie gasped and waved her hands, pointing toward a cliff face slightly south of us. We all turned to look, could just barely make out figures along the edge of the cliff. There were five individuals, four of which glowed from magic use. What looked to be several darting balls of fire weaved around the figures.
We reached the top of the cliffs, and Greyjon quickly mounted his horse, racing ahead to reach the figures – Peyton was immediately behind him, followed quickly by Chase and Zolambi. Raella lingered near Lexie and I, waiting as we mounted our own horses, not being as quick or practiced as our other companions.
As we approached, I watched a pair of figures and a smaller figure, what looked to be a dog, move dangerously close to the edge. I gasped as they tangled and then tumbled over the side of the cliff, and could hear Lexie scream something from not far behind me. I stopped my approach and moved to where I could see what happened to them, Lexie following my lead. Initially, the figures drifted apart in the fall, but then one of the people reached out and grabbed the other. The glow of magic sprang up around them, and their fall slowed dramatically as the dog hit the cliff face below them. They drifted off toward the river far below.
“Oh. That’s a really useful spell,” Lexie said thoughtfully, watching until they were out of sight in the water. I glanced up to see that Raella was staring down as well, watching them drift away. Her mouth was pursed as though she had tasted something sour. Our eyes met, then she gestured with her head and led the way toward where our group had joined the fray.
The fireballs were flaming dogs. A lot of them were dead – some frozen in ice, or disemboweled. By the time I arrived, the remainders of the pack were already yipping as they ran away. One of the strangers, an elven man with very pale features, was standing near the edge of the cliff, staring at the river below. He bent to pick up a discarded pack that was laying on the ground near him, and turned to face us. Raella quickly looked at each of the three figures, her brow furrowing deeper at every set of pointed ears she saw.
A tall, burly elf with brown hair was giving Greyjon and Peyton appraising looks. “Thank you for your help, strangers,” he said as Raella climbed down from her horse. Greyjon nodded in acknowledgement to him, wiping his sword off before sheathing it. Frowning at the gore on her own blade, Peyton followed his example.
“Was it a human woman that went over the cliff? A human that can cast,” Raella said bluntly, ignoring the thanks.
The pale elf frowned at her sharply. “Yes,” he said. He was looking at our group carefully, and I could see that he recognized that Peyton, Lexie and I were all human. “Her name is Cassandra.”
Cassandra. After all our time here, we finally had a name for our lost Grace.
Little Star
The cards for this one were: teenager, and garage sale.
It had been a boring summer for Tim. They had just moved to a new town, so he didn’t have any local friends yet, and his mom’s new job had her working nights, so she didn’t want him playing games in the house while she slept. Apparently even with the headset on, he yelled too much and too loud, and after the first week of summer he had been banned from touching his game systems until after 4 pm when she was awake. Instead, he spent his days riding around on his bike, exploring the nearby neighborhoods.
This town didn’t have straightforward streets. Instead of blocks laid out in easy to navigate squares, the roads looped and twisted, sometimes creating a detour from a main street threading through the entire neighborhood, only to return to that very same street. Or occasionally they ended in dead ends and cul-de-sacs. It made navigating hard and he had gotten turned around several times.
Still, some degree of backtracking could get him home, and he always had his phone in his pocket, so he never felt truly lost. He found as fascinating as it was stupid, and he enjoyed riding around to see how lost he could get.
The neighborhood he was in now was strange. A lot of the houses looked empty with overgrown yards and dark windows. He didn’t see any cars around, which he considered strange. Moments ago he had been in a normal neighborhood, the sunlight bright, the summer greenery vibrant. There were cars parked in driveways or on the street, and he could spot people going about their business, occasionally returning his waves. The sun still shone, but somehow seemed to lack the warmth it had moments ago. The trees gave an oppressing atmosphere, and the colors all seemed muted here.
He considered turning around when he finally spotted a few cars ahead, and some stuff piled in front of one of the houses. Riding closer in curiosity, he recognized it as a garage sale. The garage door was open, and the person running the garage sale (an ancient woman with curly white hair, sitting in a plastic outdoor chair and wearing sunglasses and a straw hat, white slacks and a floral blouse) sat in the shade just inside, tables set up in her driveway. A few people poked around at the contents of the sale.
Tim rode up and dropped his bike on the grass at the edge of the driveway. He walked through, glancing at the items on display. He hadn’t brought any money with him, but he loved poking around yard sales and seeing what people had decided to toss out. He loved second-hand stores for the same reason – everything there was something with history. Some of it was quite normal – books with yellowing paper and broken spines, an assortment of clothes. Some of it was a little bizarre. Trinkets and decorations of a macabre sort – skulls, crystals, and taxidermied animals. He glanced up at the old woman running the sale, sitting so still that he wondered if she was even awake. Or even alive. He couldn’t imagine her being the sort to own items like this, and tried to imagine where they had come from. Did they belong to children who had grown and moved away and left their juvenile gothic obsessions behind?
One particular item caught his eye. A little keepsake box, shaped like a pirate’s chest. He studied the intricate designs on it for several moments, lifting it to get a good view of all sides. It was heavy, and he knew it wasn’t empty because he could feel objects shifting inside. He popped the latch on the front of it and pushed the lid up. Inside were little pieces of glinting black stone – shaped like stars, small grooves decorating and accentuating their shapes.
They were fascinating. He wished he had brought some money. He set the little chest back down on the table, poking at the contents within, and felt a sudden sharp pinprick of pain. He pulled his hand up to see a small bead of blood welling on a fingertip. Popping his finger into his mouth, he glanced up to see that the people in the garage sale had nearly cleared out. One man was pulling away in his truck, and the last remaining shopper besides him (a young woman) was currently speaking to the old woman (apparently less than dead), purchasing a couple of things she had found. It was hard to tell since the old woman was wearing sunglasses, but Tim was certain he wasn’t being observed for the moment.
He felt compelled to quickly slip one single star into his palm, then deposited it into his pocket and closed the small chest. He turned and walked back to his bike. Once on his bike, he pedaled away, not daring to look back over his shoulder in case the guilt of the moment was plain on his face.
He backtracked along the way he had come in. It was getting to be later in the afternoon, and he wanted to get back home to AC and XBOX, so he went relatively fast. Still, the quiet, empty neighborhood seemed to stretch further than he remembered. Annoyed, he stood on his pedals and leaned over the handles, pushing forward like he was in a race.
Just ahead, he saw a familiar woman walk to a car, and quickly pull away from the curb. His jaw dropped as he slowed, staring at the garage sale as he coasted by it. The old woman was still seated there, barely acknowledging his presence.
He stopped just past her house. He turned and looked back. Yes, it was the same place, the same sale laid out on the same driveway, the same old lady in sunglasses and floral sitting just inside the garage. Had he somehow gotten turned around so bad that he had looped back around completely? Starting down the street again, he decided to follow a different route than he had moments before.
Before he knew it, he saw the tables in the driveway and found himself coasting by the house again. He frowned hard, staring at the house as he passed it. What was going on? He had taken a completely different route that time and had still ended up in the same destination. He stopped and pulled his phone out, to pull up a map and see if it would pinpoint his position on it.
He frowned at his phone’s dark screen, furiously mashed at the buttons he knew would boot it up if it had somehow completely shut down. Nothing happened. He had completely charged his phone before leaving home, and finding it dead and useless now felt wrong. In fact, everything about this felt wrong.
Frowning back at the old woman, like maybe she had somehow caused this, he balanced back on his bike and took off again.
This time it took a little longer, but soon the garage sale came into sight again. He stopped well before he even saw the woman sitting just inside her garage. Someone else had arrived and was poking around at the items. He decided to wait to see if he could follow them on their way out of this neighborhood. He balanced on his bike, shifting his weight from one side to the other in boredom as he waited for the person to finish looking and climb back into his car. The man started the engine and pulled away from the curb, and Tim followed along behind, not bothering to look at the house or the woman or the sale.
He never fell behind or lost sight of the car. Instead it was like it vanished from thin air. He came to a halt, his jaw dropping as he stared. Then carefully, slowly, he biked forward, waiting to see if he passed through something too, but there was nothing – no unexplained portal, nothing strange that he could see. Just regular space.
He continued slowly, his stomach churning with dread at what he knew he would see soon. And sure enough, just ahead – the familiar tables came into sight.
He stopped and dropped his bike where he had left it the previous time, and approached the woman timidly. It was the only thing he could think of to free him from this. He fished in his pocket for the strange stone star. “Ma’am,” he said morosely, holding the small dark shape out to her in his open palm. “I’m sorry I took this. I think I need to return it.”
He could see his hand reflected in the sunglasses. For a moment, he wasn’t certain she was going to respond, but suddenly she gasped and reached out, gently folding his hand around the star instead of taking it from him. “Oh my, that wasn’t supposed to be out here,” she said, standing and walking out to the table in the carefully measured steps of the elderly. He watched in dumbfounded confusion as she picked up the little chest carefully, holding it close to herself before turning around to walk back to him. “Did you feed it blood?” she asked.
Tim thought about the pinprick on his finger, the small drop of blood. He didn’t think any had dropped into the chest, but he wasn’t really sure. “I think… maybe?”
“Oh, boy. Oh, child,” she said, her voice quite sad. “I’m so so sorry.”
The feeling of alarm started to grow in Tim’s chest. “Why?” he asked.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman repeated, opening the chest so it faced him. Tim stared, mouth agape, as he watched what was happening to him reflected in the glossy surface of the woman’s sunglasses. It was like his shape had lost its form and was swirling toward a single point. Looking down, he could see that everything about him seemed to focus on what was in his hand – the star, glowing brightly now, pulled him in.
********
Gladys carefully reached out with the open box. She knew that if she waited too long, the star would finish consuming the boy’s soul and fall to the ground, and she hated touching the things. So much risk, so many sharp edges and points if one wasn’t careful. Better to simply swipe it out of the air while it still floated. She closed the lid down around it and carefully latched the box, then carried it back into the house. She hated to leave her garage sale unattended, but this was more important. If they were awake and seeking blood, it was important to put them to sleep again.
mehryment 