Kunena Site Syndication http://riseofaester.com/ Fri, 24 May 2013 18:04:40 -0700 Kunena 1.5.9 http://riseofaester.com/components/com_kunena/template/default_ex/images/english/emoticons/rss.gif http://riseofaester.com/ Kunena Site Syndication http://riseofaester.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=54&func=view&catid=3&id=3372#3372 The tiny girl lay motionless at the foot of the “Lost Tree”, her skin and hair pale from lack of sunlight. In her dreams she wandered a world of bright yellow with golden plants and trees of amber, a golden disk illuminated the land from the sky. The figures of a man and women watched the girl with a loving gaze as she frolicked in the bright field, mystified with every new sight. As the girl turned her head to the inhabitance of the field she couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew them; the look in their eyes as her eyes met with them had a familiar feeling that she just couldn’t place. The woman’s lips moved as she spoke with words she couldn’t hear. She tilted her head in confusion for she tried to speak but the words were lost in the breeze that flowed throughout this golden world. The realization came to her as the woman smiled sadly; the golden-skinned couple was her birth parents, they beckoned her forward, somehow knowing that she recognized them. But as she walked closer to them the amber vision faded into the dark fog. Her icy blue eyes flickered open and she found herself once again at the foot of the lost tree. She felt a tear run down her cheek as she traced the pale, smooth surface of the trees’ root with her fingers. She had been told by the elders that the tree had been here since before the rise. That thousands more like it had littered the landscape and all had vanished as the skies darkened. Now all that remained was the lifeless empty shell, stripped completely of bark, covered in glowing fungi and hanging moss. She could hear the muffled breathing of her fellow clansmen as they slept a few yards away; she sniffled wiping the few remaining salty droplets from her cheek. She felt her eyes become heavy as she traced the pale roots with her fingers, then her eyes slowly shut and sleep came to her, curled up on the cool marshy earth. ~***~ A sound of sloshing awoke the girl from her slumber. Something big and slimy slithered its way toward the girl from behind, her blue eyes opened to see only the pale luminescent glow of the fungus that clung from the lost tree. She could feel her hair stand on end as she lay petrified with fear. Too scared to turn around and look at the beast that stalked her. She heard it’s squirming and the muddy earth squish beneath its weight as it squirmed from the murky waters of the swamp. She could hear its gaping mouth open and close as it moved closer to her, its whiskers dragging on the ground sensing ever tiny movement. She moved her arm slightly reaching for the bone dagger lying beside her. Her breathing came in muffed gasps as her paranoid ears hearing every sound. The beast’s mouth closed just above her as she instinctively rolled away, holding the dagger to her chest as it came for her again. Its mouth closing around her arm, as it pushed its body into the dagger. She screamed out of fear, walking the other members of her tribe. She heard them scrambling to their feet and yelling to each other. The hunters came with their knives and flint spears, driving the beast back. She was thrown around as the beast thrashed beneath a hunter wrestling it in the dark. The only light came from the glowing fungus that lined the swampland. She felt a hand grasp her arm as she was pulled from the thrashing beast’s mouth. The healer held her tightly, rocking her and speaking in a soothing voice. The hunters returned to the foot of the lost tree, in the light she could see their muscular bodies bloodied with fresh bruises already coming in dark. The beast was dead but the struggle was never over. The fighting never ends. There is no place in this world for weak orphaned children. The warriors approached her, whipping the bloodied dagger on their clothing they leaned and placed it in her lap. “They are pleased with you.” The healer said in a soothing voice, girls eyes closed as she sat cradled in the healer’s arms. For once she did not fear abandonment for now she knew she had a place. Mon, 20 May 2013 16:30:39 -0700 http://riseofaester.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&Itemid=54&func=view&catid=9&id=3360#3371 12th February PAE 83 Sid, I had nearly forgotten that I had a letter written to you. In the chaos since returning to St Louis it fell to the back of my mind to post it. My father was killed by the bleeding influenza. I returned home to find him close to death, and I stayed with him as he passed. My cousins, Tabitha and Max, both fell ill as well. Tabitha succumbed, Max has recovered from the disease. He is distraught without his twin sister, and, like myself, has not been able to eat or sleep for the most part. We have closed the shop for the past few days as Max and I finish recovering from the fever and coughing. It is also necessary to keep the press away, they've been swarming around like the pests they are. I can't take two steps away from my door without being harassed.  It's been absolute madness with those reporters, from the moment I stepped off of the Night Train. At least a dozen of them, shouting and pushing. I don't even remember what they were asking, but I wouldn't have made it through the crowd without Sian and Ori grabbing me and pushing our way through. Even with them pulling me along, I was still shoved to ground. My knees were bruised, but the marks are fading now. It took far too long to reach home. It's but two blocks from the train station, but it must have taken at least 20 minutes to push through the badgering reporters and photographers. One of them kept shouting at me, wanting to know what I knew of the disease. You and I both know that the press takes whatever snippet you tell them and twists it around so that it suits them, so I said nothing.  They were packed in front of my home, and I and those that followed me, Sian, Ori, Myrrne, Dr. Mackenzie, we had to fight our way through to the front door.  Everything was wrong, Sid. The shop was locked, the post scattered on the floor. Bottles were left lying open and out of place. I called out for Papa and the twins, so they wouldn't be alarmed by the large amount of people who entered. No one answered. The reporters were banging on the windows and doors, still shouting. We were trapped in the shop.  I can't even remember all of the details. Someone asked me if there was another way out. I said no, because that would have led them through the green room, and only Kendricks enter there. As they began to bicker about an escape route, I had to find Papa. He was so ill, Sid. I found him coughing blood in the back room, pale and weak, unable to leave his armchair. He was still able to speak, though it was through terrible fits of coughing. Though he had taken the twins to the hospital, he refused to go. "No doctor will lay their damn dirty hands on a Kendrick!" he reminded me. I don't know why he would let Max and Tabitha be treated by doctors, but not himself. Yes, we've always declined treatment from doctors, but why make the exception now? And not for himself? Papa was suffering so. I waited with him, holding his hand as he passed away to the next world. I shall never forget the weight of his hand on my head as I knelt next to him with my head on his knee. Those minutes shall haunt me until I breathe no more. If Sian had not pulled me up and away, I likely would have stayed there indefinitely, clinging to something I no longer have. She asked me again if there was a way out other than the front. I wasn't thinking straight, but I didn't have any fight left, and I told her about the way out through the green room. She wrapped me in her cloak to try and disguise me from anyone we might have ran into on the way to the hospital, for that was where we were going next, I had to find the twins, and the Glass Knives wished to see how Lady Connolly was fairing after the attempt on her life. Before we could leave Kendrick's, Constable Cartwright pulled me aside, though Sian tried to stop him, he insisted on sorting out the details. He told me that he couldn't in good conscience leave my father's body there, and he would have his men come and collect it for burning, and they would leave his effects. True to his word, Papa's body was gone when I did finally arrive home again.  I don't recall much on the way to the  hospital. I didn't cry then, looking back likely my mind couldn't grasp what fully happened yet. Again, the hospital stank of death and illness, something I never want to smell again, I've seen it far too much. I had no idea where to start looking for Tabitha and Max, and I suppose I was swept away by the others in their search for Alex.She was recovering well from being shot, three times I think she said, in the back. I can't truly recall all everything that was said, she was surrounded by Glass Knives, and you know how they chatter, Sid. I couldn't keep up. Little Lucy is safe, tended by Elise and Esmeralda.  Sian searched the hospital on my behalf for the twins. I felt blank, absolutely blank as I sat amidst the bustle of loud colours outside of Alex's room. Sian reported back that she thought she had found Max, but couldn't get close to him. She told me that the nurse told her that Max was beginning to recover. She found no word of Tabitha.  The hospital was so busy that admittance records were far behind being caught up. I thought that Tabitha surely was just lost in the numbers. After all, isn't one loss for the Kendrick family enough for one day? And the twins had never been separated. They don't exist without each other. Didn't exist. I should have stayed to try and find her. I let myself get swept up with Dr Mackenzie to go to the university, where work was being done to find a treatment for the bleeding influenza.  There was news of an airship crashing into a tenement in the southern part of the city. At the time, nothing was known about which airship, or what happened. Sid, surely you can imagine the confusion and the chaos as some people were running towards the crash, and others away from it. It has been reported now that it was the Airship Lugh, flown by Air Clansmen. I've heard that a possible reason behind the tragedy was that the crew had fallen ill and lost control.  The university students were out of control. Dr Mackenzie, Mr Von Trump, myself and a few others pushed through the rioting students. They were screaming horrible things at the Nightmen, blaming them for bringing disease into the city, an absolute falsehood, it was spread, hopefully unintentionally, by the Salvation Army and their blankets.  I want to think that I said something in defense of the Nightmen, but there was so much screaming and pushing I cannot say for certain. They say that Lieutenant Kelvin shot and killed a man there. Constable Cartwright has asked for a witness statement from me, as well as the others there, but I have so little to say. I did see a man go down before being pushed inside, but I didn't see or hear who harmed him.  The rest of the day and night passed in a blur of work alongside university students and doctors. Hours passed of working with samples trying to isolate what we thought we needed. There was a point where I looked over the group I was working alongside of, and I said to myself, I cannot think anymore. I had family to take care of. The twins were now under my care, and I had left them in the care of overworked doctors. So I left the university and made my way slowly back to the hospital, holding a scarf around my face in hopes of remaining anonymous. Twenty seven years of living in St Louis played in favor, the only thing that has in the past few days, and I was able to get back to Max taking a circuitous but somewhat calmer route. Room 403 is where Sian had told me he would be, and though the nurse hadn't let her in, I was allowed "for a few minutes" because I was family, and likely because she recognized me. My fever had ceased, and my coughing had died down to a manageable level, any fear I had of being trapped in another hospital had gone.  The ward was filled to the brim with the sick and coughing. I could almost taste the metallic bloody smell in the air. I knelt besides Max's cot, he was awake and coughing, but not vomiting. It was the first time that I had noticed that the tanned skin he had from living in the Aureus up until a few months ago, it had faded into a colour almost as pale as my own. I ran my palm over his forehead and it was sweaty from a breaking fever. "They took Tabitha away," he told me.  I tried to reassure him and said, "I'm sure she's in another ward." "She's in the morgue," Max told me. In that one sentence he looked so much older than his seventeen years, and my heart broke for him, Sid. "I don't want to be here anymore, Viola." If I could do nothing else for him, I could take him away from the hospital. He no longer had a fever, they had no reason to keep him. I helped him out of bed and into his clothes. I had to help him hold himself up the entire way back to Kendrick's. We didn't speak, other than him inquiring about Papa, which I couldn't answer without crying, and Max knew then.  I was incredibly worn out, and absolutely exhausted. I believe that the reporters who had swarmed the shop mostly disappeared at news of the rioting students and the airship crash, because there were only a few on the street. Max's coughing thankfully kept them far enough away that I could ignore their questions.  Sid, my home felt so wrong and empty. Constable Cartwright's men had taken Papa away. Max was too exhausted to go upstairs, and he settled in to sleep in Papa's chair. In that moment of getting him settled and comfortable, I was so worn out as well I slept next to him on the floor, leaning against the chair. I have done nothing of note since. I haven't gone out, haven't opened the shop again. The plants had been neglected a bit, and I have spent my tears in tending them back to health. Max works alongside me in the green room now. Everything is shockingly different, and I feel so empty, Sid. I don't know what I should do other than what is most pressing. You told me to let you know when I visit New London again. Likely it will be shortly, to take care of the paperwork that will transfer possession of Kendrick's to myself, though I doubt you or I will have the chance to meet in the sunlight.  Yours, Viola Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:13:23 -0700