literature

Libertas Audition

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Libertas
Audition
In From the Cold

It was winter in the valley. It was always winter in the valley. She didn’t much mind the winter, excepting when the chill wind stirred the snow to life, bringing it barrelling through the valley like a howling mad wolf. She was made for winters deeper and longer than any the valley had seen in decades. Her family had lived through the dark and the cold for generations going back into the Darkest Years, when they say the sun never rose in the northern country. She had dug trenches to the barn for milking goats in winters harsher than this.

It was the loneliness that scared Bartleby.

(Mother used to call you Bee.)

Three years ago—give or take; she couldn’t know to the day, she hadn’t known the days after the first month of isolation—she had been blindfolded and bound; prayers said over her head in the sacred language, and she had been taken. Days of riding, water poured between her lips between the tears and the pleading, and she had been left. Since that day, however many days ago it had been, she had not seen another human being again.

Some time, she’d forgotten how long ago, she’d tried to find her way out of the valley. It had taken days of travel, wrong turns and dead ends, but she had found the bridge over the river and it’s deep chasm that the priests had brought her over. The charred remains of the mooring posts remained, and black fragments of rope tickled the wind, but whatever had once provided escape from the forbidden land was gone. And she was alone.

The valley was a forgotten place. It was a sad, and lonely piece of land filling the space between high and rocky mountains that had long ago been abandoned (just like you had been). The evidence of the former inhabitants was everywhere, if one looked hard enough, though the clues were ancient even by Pelis’s standards. Ruins older than anything Bee had ever seen.

Today was very cold, colder than it had been at this time the past two winters. Cold enough to force the animals into early sleep, turning the normally quiet valley into a veritable graveyard. Her regular traps were empty, and the river long frozen up into thick pads of ice. Any remaining tracks had been swallowed by the encroaching blizzard, and with the wind sweeping and changing as often as it did, her scent was smeared all over the valley by now. At least in the good hunting spots.

Arkadiy dipped his head, snuffling for rodent excrement, or any sign that creatures other than themselves were brave (desperate) enough to leave shelter. The fur around his face was covered in thick balls of snow by the time he returned to look into Bee’s eyes.

The snow will be coming very bad. Arkadiy said into the girl’s mind. Most bad I have seen in my years.

The girl pulled the woven mitten from her hand to pluck a cone from the nearest tree. While she dug deep for its seeds, she cocked her head and said aloud: “How many winters have seen you, Arkadiy?”

The big cat’s ears pressed back to his skull. Many, many. I never have asked this rudeness of you. Bee’s eyes dropped. But many more winters than have seen you.

“Sorry,” Bee murmured, smoothing the tufts of his ears with her free fingers, then bundling them safely away from the cold. “I’m worried.”

As am I, the cat admitted. The prey is hiding, and they have food enough for most of the winter to pass them by. It is too cold now, but we will try again tomorrow. We can perhaps burrow for mice.

Bee nodded, but her warm eyes turned cold. The wind swept through, stuck to her bones, and they moved on.

The night came quickly, wrapping the valley in darkness before they had made their way back to their cave. Arkadiy, sensing the chills wracking Bee’s little body, took the hem of her habit between his teeth and tugged her swiftly into the nearby crumbling ruins.

There were many spots like this one littered throughout the valley—some little more than blank stone walls long devoured by lichen and time, one so grand as to rival the temple of Eleynmor in the capital (at least it might have done, when it had been new; now it was an empty palace, crawling with ivy in the summer and open to deep snow drifts through ruined windows and doorways). The outbuilding they huddled in that night was hardly larger than a sitting room, but once might have served an entire family for shelter. Bee clung to the lee of a south-facing wall, huddled in a corner with her companion, and closed her eyes.

No food for nearly two days. She was beginning to feel the fatigue gripping at her knees, trying to drag her into the earth. She snuffled into Arkadiy’s fur, hiding her tears before they could freeze on her cheeks.

(Don’t cry, Bumblebee.)

“I do not want to talk to you,” she said quietly, squeezing her eyes shut. Not now, not in the darkness, where the Voice always seemed louder.

(Sweet Bumblebee, I don’t want you to be afraid. I know it’s hard. I know it’s cold. I want you to feel better. How can I help you?)

“To go far away.”

(Please cheer up. Do you want me to tell you a story?)

“I have no choice.”

(Don’t sound so disappointed. I promise that it’s a good one. It’s about a winter just like this one.)

The corners of Bee’s eyes prickled with tears and the bitter, rushing cold. Deep inside of her stomach, somewhere low and forgotten, strange feelings swirled and brewed. Strong, unbidden emotion forced upon her, sadness that she had never experienced. An old sadness.

(It was a colder winter than this, by far. Children froze in the streets, if parents were foolish enough to let them out. Children lived here once, a long, long time ago. Children and their foolish parents, and all of them died.)

“Please, stop,” Bee begged. Her stomach pinged with regret, with loss.

(You’re going to be sad, my Bumblebee, but you must be strong. You have to be. Don’t succumb like the others, lying in the snow.)

Arkadiy stirred from his sleep. His warming presence in her mind soothed the Voice into silence, even without speaking. It lurked still, hiding in her dark recesses. Bee shivered against her Familiar, burrowing her face into his fur.

Bartleby, his sleepy voice peeked through the clouds the Voice had settled into her brain. Sleep now. Be calm.

And, full of sadness that didn’t belong to her and empty of anything to soothe the growling of her stomach, she finally did sleep.

+++

Bee blinked awake to the hollow sound of silence. She tried to clear her vision, tried to blink the redness that seemed to have washed over the world in her sleep. She slowly rose to her feet, using the ruined wall she had fallen asleep against as leverage.

Only it wasn’t the same wall. She withdrew her hand from the strange surface as if it were on fire, trying again to focus the red out of her eyes. It wasn’t the rough stone blocks covered in centuries of lichen—it was something else, something she’d never encountered before; certainly not wood, and not quite stone.

In fact, the entire place was wrong.

Bee’s mind clouded with panic for a full twenty seconds (taken again, lost again, just another place that didn’t want you and dumped you somewhere else, Bumblebee). Her breath finally caught up with her, and even though her knees shook, she found her voice as well.

“Arkadiy,” she squeaked, and her voice echoed oddly.

Her eyes darted around what she found now to be some kind of room. Nearly empty, and surprisingly clean. Indoors, she noticed suddenly. And warm. She couldn’t even see her panicked breath form in the air before her. A floor-to-ceiling glass window took up the wall to her far right, though the spiderwebbing cracks kept her from seeing out from her position. Where she stood, almost at eye level, was painted an odd symbol that she didn’t recognize as either holy or secular.

Again, she whispered: “Arkadiy!”

The cat stirred at her feet. Bartleby, his own distress evident. The smells are wrong. What has happened?

“Are you hurt?” she asked, finally seeing him once the white edges of panic left her vision. “Has anything happened to you?”

No, he replied, rubbing his face against the back of her knee to reassure her. I—

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Something around Bee’s neck gave a light tinkle, like sleigh bells in the distance. That something hadn’t been around her neck before, she was sure of it. All she had around her neck since she had been abandoned had been her holy symbol of Eleynmor. Now, as she felt for whatever it was, she found a new length of rope holding something close to her chest under her habit.

Arkadiy’s ears pressed flat against his head. What is it? Demon work?

It seemed at first to simply be a flat, black slab of rock, though surprisingly light. The rope secured it around her neck, but she hadn’t felt its weight until the chiming had begun. She brushed her fingers along the rock’s face and found it warm rather than cold. And then it lit up from within at her touch.

Bee shouted, tried to drop the tablet, and Arkadiy’s hackles stood straight. He growled at the thing attached to Bee’s neck, glaring and threatening anything that might attempt to hurt the girl.

Remove it from you! Arkadiy hissed.

Her shaking fingers fumbled with the rope as she backed herself into the ruined glass window in sheer shock.

And that’s when the voice emerged from the lighted tablet.

Find someplace hidden before reading this. There are wild animals and hostile patrols in the area. Be quiet. Be careful. Be safe.

Both the girl and the cat stood stock still. Somewhere, the wind was howling. Muted, far away, and sad.

“Who is speaking?” Bee asked, her voice quavering.

Welcome to Eos City. I am sorry you have found yourself here. There is something about this planet that draws people from all worlds, times, and places to drop them here with no warning.

“Arkadiy,” Bee whispered, and she slowly sank her to her knees. She cradled the lit tablet in her hands. “The words say the same on this page of stone. It’s a message.”

The lynx sat beside her. I read not your human words. But the spoken voice says the same?

“Shh,” she urged.

“—abandoned by its people. We don't know why for sure, but whatever it was, it was sudden. Rainbow distortions we’ve named Warp Storms still plague the planet. If you see one, get underground immediately and pray to the Eos goddesses that you don't turn into one of the Warped.

Bee and Arkadiy fell into careful silence. It wasn’t difficult to believe that they had appeared in a world that wasn’t their own—the window behind them held every evidence they needed. The view dropped out around them for hundreds of feet to a place unlike either of them had ever seen. Even Bartleby, who had lived in the biggest city in Northel for years, had never seen buildings and roads of this magnitude, or anything that towered so high over the landscape. The light filtered dull red through low clouds, as if the world were on fire.

The Warped were once people like you or I, but the storms changed them into monsters. Avoid them. They will try to kill or change you too.

(Never change, Bumblebee. I love you as you are. Just be strong.)

Just a warning, the sun does not set and the clouds don't clear. Not everyone is trustworthy, but if this message still sends, then there are still good people surviving on this world, whether me or someone else.

I wish you the best of luck. Find safety. We will find you.

-Apollo Stardust, formerly of the Fountain community


“Good people,” Bee breathed, purposefully loud to scare the Voice away. “Good people in this unsafe place.”

Eos, Arkadiy repeated.

“We must find these good people,” Bee said urgently.

She didn’t tell Arkadiy—because how could he understand?—but even the mention of people, the sound of another human voice, was a shock of warmth to her cold system. No contact for three years, no human voice or sound of laughter. Just the thought of seeing another person, real and alive and not a cold, dark shadow of a Voice lingering in her subconscious, sent giddy anticipation shooting through her blood.

Formerly of the Fountain community, the message had said. They had moved, maybe they were threatened by these Warped things—whatever they were—

The voice says that it will be they to find us, Arkadiy interrupted her thoughts. It is safe in this place now, so we should perhaps stay.

Her little heart was thrumming, but eventually, she dropped her head and nodded to the floor. “We will wait,” she mumbled.

She did not want to wait.
Finally! My audition for Lady's OCT, featuring my newest sweetheart, Bartleby. It took me a while to get to it, full time job, blah blah. Anyway! I'm liking these kids so far, and I hope you like them too!

:iconlibertasoct:
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doodleavc14's avatar
I really like your audition! I'm glad to be against/with her.