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 Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 10:41 am
A while ago I wrote the first few parts of a story, based on this guild but written to stand alone. It's not amazing writing or anything (if you want that, I suggest you look at some of Eisette's stuff), but I felt like putting it up. Feel free to read and laugh at me smile
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Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:09 am
In retrospect, I suppose I was always a bit different to the other kids my age. I was shy but wished I wasn't, brilliant at hide and seek but awful at finding my way, and I had the strange 'skill' of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, it all seemed fine at the time; 'just another phase' as my mother said to my primary school teacher after they found me locked in the staff room during parents evening. My mother, as it turns out, was right, but I'm guessing she didn't even imagine that the next phase would be as... how can I put this?... transitional as it was.
At the age of 11, I went to secondary school - Carborough High School, the local comprehensive. Carborough was, I suppose, a very important factor in my life - perhaps it was even the catalyst for the changes that happened later. A the time though, it was just an education.
I had my head stuffed into rubbish bins and down toilets more times than I can count. My lunch money was taken every single day. The teachers wondered why my work was handed in on ripped paper and covered in splotches of reddish brown. I had a lot of nosebleeds.
So, I became a real bookworm. I would curl up in the school library for hours before, after, and during school. I especially like the books on foreign countries; I imagined I was there, breathing the air, tasting the foods, touching the soft, exotic vegetation.
Now for a slight digression. They say that imagination is a powerful thing; those who have a strong enough one can move mountains with their minds, run faster than the speed of light, or travel to where nobody has ever been before. I chose the last one.
One afternoon, as I was sitting in the library in the short lunch break I had, tucked away in my usual corner, away from prying eyes, I read a book on the Sahara desert. I'd had a tiring morning of PE, avoiding being tripped up by my classmates, and all I wanted to do was shut my eyes and dream. As I was reading, I did exactly that. In my daydream I was, predictably, in the middle of the Sahara, with nothing for miles around. I could feel the shifting sand beneath my cheap and sturdy school shoes, the dry air in my lungs, and the heat beating against my pale skin, more used to English weather than this climate.
Now, normally when we're daydreaming, we know we're doing it. We know, on some level, that it's not real and that nothing can hurt us except what's waiting for us when we get back to reality. Just bear that in mind.
So, as I was standing there, in the middle of the desert, I saw a gorgeous little stone, about the size of a 2 pence coin. It had an amber sheen and was perfectly rounded. I know that's highly unlilkely for the desert, and I still can't figure out what it was doing there, but seeing as how I thought this was a daydream, I though 'what the hell' and put it in my pocket.
When I'd done that, I saw something else - a tiny yellow insect crawling towards me on the sand. I bent down to look at it, only to see that it was a scorpion - probably one of those that can kill you if the antidote isn't given within a few hours - and it scurried faster, tail raised, towards my legs. I panicked, despite knowing it was just my imagination, and screwed my eyes shut tight. Next thing I know, I'm in the nurse's room with a massive bandage on my ankle and a bruise on my arm.
The nurse, a nice woman with awful fashion sense, saw me wake up and came over to me, leaning over the cot in her orange cardigan and pink corduroy trousers.
"Luna! Do you feel okay now, hmm? You had a lucky escape there, didn't you?"
She'd never met me, despite my frequent and heavy nosebleeds, so she must have gotten my name off my bus pass.
So, to sum up, I'm Luna Terry, I'm 12 years old, and there's a small, round, amber-coloured stone in my blazer pocket.
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Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 2:21 pm
Part 2
The second the nurse let me out of school - to recuperate at home, of course - I put my hand into my pocket, where I'd been feeling the pebble against my side, weighing down the right side of my blazer. It was the very same stone that I'd picked up in my 'dream', down the the slightest vein of granite through its heart. Obviously, it was one of those 'wow' moments. That must mean I was actually there. Except I couldn't have been, could I?
I let myself into the terraced house my mother and I lived in; she was probably at work, and my brother Jase was away at university. Lucky sod, having the time of his life in Manchester, while I'm stuck here, wasting my time with things I'll never need... Those were my thoughts, until the stabbing.
We got the call at 8:30 in the morning, a few days after the desert thing. I was about to leave for school, getting a lift with my History teacher because my ankle still hurt and we didn't have a car, when the phone rang. I heard my mother scream from the kitchen, asked Mrs Jones to wait, and rushed through the house to pick up the phone my mother had juts dropped. The voice on the other end was that of Constable Ryan Davies, of Manchester borough police force. He may as well have been the reaper.
"I take it you're Luna Terry? Is your mother alright?" She was sat in one of our cheap kitchen chairs, her face devoid of colour.
"She'll live." I said, and I saw her wince.
"I have some bad news, Luna. Your brother is Jason Mark Terry?"
"Yeah. Why? What's he done?" I thought he'd gotten into a fight, or, at the very worst, got drunk and broken something in a pub.
"He's... dead. He was stabbed in the early hours of this morning by an unknown girl, in his flat. He died shortly after being admitted to hospital. I'm sorry."
"Oh." Throughout his speech I'd been unable to say a word, but now I forced some out. "Thank you for telling us."
"It was no problem. I believe Jason's girlfriend, Cassie Letts, will be phoning shortly. I'd recommend you let her stay with you or nearby, if you can. She was living with your brother."
He recited a number we could call if we could think of any clues, and hung up.
I cried.
My mother cried.
Then Mrs Jones got fed up of waiting and picked her way through the mess, to the kitchen, where she saw our faces and called me in sick for the morning.
A cup of tea is not the cure for all ills, and people who think so are deluded fools.
"Have a cup of tea, sweetheart." Mrs Jones put a mug of tea down on the table in front of me.
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