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[Way Out of Milliways: The Grail]
Sep. 21st, 2005 03:41 pmThe pictures didn't do it justice.
The thief recognises onyx, and pure, untarnished silver. The small size gives it an air of delicacy that was missing from the photos and diagrams in the Diaries. No one had been wearing it to give a sense of scale.
Someone is now.
That was the first thing she noticed, of course: the bones. Picked clean by who knows how many demons: long bones snapped in two, teeth marks at the joint areas, skull smashed open, vertebrae completely missing.
The bones are stewn around a pile of torn rags that might once have been clothes. Twenty-first century style sneakers ripped apart with such force as to tear the laces and the uppers. Even a sword lies discarded. The demons around here don't tend to use weaponry.
It takes a few respectful seconds before she notices what's odd. The rags shouldn't be here. The bones are soft, white. In searching for the amulet - pendant, really: it had been a personal affect of the girl before being enchanted - the current Slayer nearly treads in a something soft and brown. Not even demons find hair edible.
Nothing has rotted.
Come to think of it, how long has she even been here? It feels like forever. She's travelled vast distances in this world. From a time in which the needle she followed pointed in the same direction at all times, until it began to move as she travelled, leading her in a slow curve, moving faster and faster as she homed in on the object of her search. Enough time that sometimes she feels like this is the only life she's ever known. Enough time that she sometimes she finds it hard to convince herself that she's known others like her. Enough time that sometimes she doubts her own sanity in talking to herself about "Harth", "Erin" or "Mikey".
And in that time, shouldn't her own hair have grown? Early on in her time in this dimension, she'd torn a nail in the flesh of a dmeon that attcked her. The wound healed, but shouldn't the nail have regrown in its place? Does time actually mean anything here?
From the state of decomposition, this skeleton - this human, this girl - she could have died yesterday.
Her successor takes one of the only two things she has left of value, before burying her weapon and clothes with her scalp in a shallow grave.
Now, can she remember the way back home?
The thief recognises onyx, and pure, untarnished silver. The small size gives it an air of delicacy that was missing from the photos and diagrams in the Diaries. No one had been wearing it to give a sense of scale.
Someone is now.
That was the first thing she noticed, of course: the bones. Picked clean by who knows how many demons: long bones snapped in two, teeth marks at the joint areas, skull smashed open, vertebrae completely missing.
The bones are stewn around a pile of torn rags that might once have been clothes. Twenty-first century style sneakers ripped apart with such force as to tear the laces and the uppers. Even a sword lies discarded. The demons around here don't tend to use weaponry.
It takes a few respectful seconds before she notices what's odd. The rags shouldn't be here. The bones are soft, white. In searching for the amulet - pendant, really: it had been a personal affect of the girl before being enchanted - the current Slayer nearly treads in a something soft and brown. Not even demons find hair edible.
Nothing has rotted.
Come to think of it, how long has she even been here? It feels like forever. She's travelled vast distances in this world. From a time in which the needle she followed pointed in the same direction at all times, until it began to move as she travelled, leading her in a slow curve, moving faster and faster as she homed in on the object of her search. Enough time that sometimes she feels like this is the only life she's ever known. Enough time that she sometimes she finds it hard to convince herself that she's known others like her. Enough time that sometimes she doubts her own sanity in talking to herself about "Harth", "Erin" or "Mikey".
And in that time, shouldn't her own hair have grown? Early on in her time in this dimension, she'd torn a nail in the flesh of a dmeon that attcked her. The wound healed, but shouldn't the nail have regrown in its place? Does time actually mean anything here?
From the state of decomposition, this skeleton - this human, this girl - she could have died yesterday.
Her successor takes one of the only two things she has left of value, before burying her weapon and clothes with her scalp in a shallow grave.
Now, can she remember the way back home?
