The Descent of the Seagull

He felt bones smash as his body broke the water. It was rare for anything to survive falling from so high. He floundered just beneath the surface, wings hampering his progress back towards the air. A dark shadow passed over the edge of the water and he saw his kin circling in the sunlight. Longing to be on the other side of the watery ceiling even for a moment motivated him but his struggling was futile. He wished he had not crashed into the dangerously churning blue mass.     

The cold depths awaiting him would be a terrible contrast to the fire and warmth of the sun he had revelled in. It dragged at him; cold hands grabbing at his stomach. Bubbles escaped as he coughed, choking on the liquid of life. His wings flapped slowly, weighing him down. Struggling legs stopped as the light left his eyes, descending further into the domain of Poseidon.

The sun was long gone when finally he stopped moving. All he could do was watch as his body sank further. His muscles were cold, limp legs waterlogged inside and out. The water had become him, and he was just another drop in the freezing void. Memories seemed to vanish; those he left behind were not merely a thing of the past but nothing at all. The few that he had known no longer mattered anymore.

For moments only his mind recalled the cage and being trapped inside with his kin. The door had been closed so long that even their protesting squawks had ceased, but one day they had woken to find it wide open. Their first reaction was to be afraid. Their wings weren’t ready; it had been so long since freedom had floated beneath their feathers. Even after a few days, the door still hadn’t closed. It never seemed to close. It stood there, taunting them with a full breeze and bright sunshine.

Finally the temptation had cracked them and they leapt into the wind, twirling and winding in the thermals. Screaming back and forth to each other, they had taunted captors from high enough not to be reached by clawing hands or ripping arrows. Anger and hatred were left behind, but not for long. The last of the storm had brought him down into his death.

Sinking ever further, he slowly descended between crags in the ocean floor. The bleak black rocks would have surprised him if his heart had still been beating. He had thought the darkness total but the rocks proved him wrong. The gap between them narrowed and for a moment he brushed one side.

His body flipped and the last few bubbles in him floated up through the water. They made no sound as they ascended, wishing him a gentle farewell. He was now completely one with the water. Wings and legs forgotten, he began to feel the subtle ebb and flow of the water, even in these deepest, darkest reaches.

Stopping suddenly, staring upwards, the palm of the earth reached upward to cradle him. The flow pushed his feathers about and he noticed the trail of white down he had cast off in his descent. They specks above waved from side to side in the water, indecision tearing them between rejoining him and seeking the air above. A passing humpback above the crags broke his path to the surface, straining the curious pale debris of wings with its baleen teeth. When it had passed he could no longer see the top of the path. Cut off from everything he had been, the water accepted him as a new being.

A thought occurred to him, answered a moment later by the starting of a struggle above him. He watched as three prongs slowly clashed with two, for a moment locking as they bumped together. The force of the blows pushed down on the water, pressing him down into the earth. The prongs drew apart again but soon resumed pushing at each other, each trying to move the other out of the way. They fought with a slow intensity, grappling for advantage from the ends of their staffs. The three seemed to have a subtle advantage, a slight speed and ever increasing size pushed the two further and further back.

It was a while before one conceded. The two prongs retreated a ways through the water, so that he could barely see them past the crags. Then they were gone.

The three lingered where they were; seeming to float for a moment as if whatever had controlled them had vanished. He watched them with indifference; doubting any intent they might have for him. When they turned and descended towards him, spearing the earth nearby, he neither flinched nor blinked. His waterlogged apathy had paralysed even the simplest of instincts. What had the dead to care about?

A hand descended through the dark towards him, growing ever larger. It buried around him, stirring the earth into a cloudy mist that left him in complete darkness, but he felt the brush of sediment against his cheeks. The hand lifted him away from the earth, pulling him back up between the crags.

The flow of water through him grew faster and ever more turbulent as the hand that had claimed him sped to an unknown place. It had fought for and now owned the lifeless flesh that encapsulated him, and soon would claim the mind within the egg. Tightening its grip on him, it changed directions, navigating piercing rocks and pulling him further yet into the crushing black.

Lights began to play through the cracks between fingers; wavering on the palm above him. They grew in intensity, gleaming through the depths and fooling with the lines across the wrinkled palm. They matched the troughs and pitches then shifted to contrast them. They tickled along the nerves of the gigantic hand, and at last it opened to release his being onto the steps of a glorious citadel.

The sanctuary before him shimmered and played about the waters, skewing and warping in his vision as the light it cast off continued to laugh in his eyes. His wings, a fair few feathers still clinging to the bone, dragged through the water behind him as he began to drift up the flight of stairs. He was met at the top by sea creatures in bits of human armour, helms torn and fitted awkwardly onto the already scaled heads of seahorses, dolphins, and fish he had never seen.

A guide bearing an upside down torch floated towards him through the giant double doors that led into the palace. It stopped a small ways short of him, large eyes and grisly teeth blankly staring his direction. It turned, and he saw that the torch between its eyes was attached into its forehead through a fleshy link wrapped in chains. It swam back through the opening, and the guards parted their spears to allow it passage. He followed.

Passing through the marble doors he floated slowly through the short front hallway into a gigantic room filled with a never ending mass of pillars that went back into the darkness forever. They were carved from pure white rock, like marble without swirls, and they grouped around an open space of water at the front of the room. Seated at the back of the clearing was a throne of immense proportions. The rock was crested with the golden horns of a bull. The throne reached up to the edge of the darkness above and in it sat a god.

Cloths swirled gently in the water, the being within wearing a coral crown. A trident was held firmly in its right hand, and the other hand held the bent white feather of a drowned bird, given to him by a whale. Folds of white robe wavered from side to side with the slow and subtle ebb of the deep; a bland but blunt contrast to the darkness beyond. It was then that he noticed the fabric wasn’t being pulled, but pushing. The pillars began to seem a pale gray the more he watched the flowing fabric. He tore his eyes away to notice the trident again; prongs shaped the same way he had seen before. It didn’t seem impossible for it to be the same prongs, even the same hands.

He stood before Poseidon, shaker of the earth and stirrer of the depths. The torch-fish had left a while ago and the pale distorted light was coming from everywhere and nowhere in the clearing. Pillars shimmered in the glow; the throne swam without moving as everything else did. It was effortless; movement in the stillness. Chaos interposed on order. A god.

“You’ll never see my true form,” said the figure on the throne. It smirked. “It would kill you. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not a real god.” After a few more moments Poseidon spoke again. “Bow.”

The room moved around him as his broken body bent to appease the god. His feathers ruffled slowly in the water that was still pressing and pulling through him. He straightened again and somehow Poseidon seemed bigger.

“You flew higher than you should have, little bird, seeking the warmth of the sun. Did you know that Zeus himself called for Apollo, charioteer of the sun, to ruin you? He thought it hubristic of you to reach for the heights of the Olympians. And even when you died, Hades himself tried to make the claim for your feathers. He contests me for the earth daily, but you saw the battle’s results. Even Hermes couldn’t transport you to the afterlife from my realm. And so you are mine. You’re quite the special little bird.”

Poseidon shifted on his throne and the water pushed like a tidal wave. He moved his hand to his chin and a whirlpool grew in the current and swirled down through the darkness between the pillars.

“All the elements have tried to claim you. The fire of the sun, the wind under your wings, even the earth and what lies beneath. But it is water that holds you now. Of all the gods, I have you.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “A stone bust of you will be erected to remind Hades of my triumph this day.”

A thought took the god and for a moment he just stared at the creature before him. A glint came to his eye, the light in the room brightening for a moment, and the god smiled. Leaning his trident against a nearby pillar he reached over to straighten the bent feather in his other hand. Wings stiffened, chest tightened, and legs straightened. The dead felt itself come to life to stand at attention.

“A few mere hours ago you flew on seagull’s feathers. That’s a funny feat for a human. You and your father were the first, but there will be more someday. However, I’ve claimed you for my own because you’re special, you’ll see. You’re the first of many I’ll claim from Hades’ grasp, Icarus. You’ll be the general of my army when the sea shall give up his dead.”

Icarus Underwater - Legion of Doom

Blood, new series

Chapter 1

Having an insane mother never mattered to him. It wasn’t his largest concern, though he always cared how she was treated. It was this desire that originally inspired his drive, his strength to carry on in a den of vampires. Being a human would have been hard for anybody else in his position; always under watch and always knowing his scent made them crave his blood. He worked past it and trained harder and harder every day.

There was an incident in early life, when he had been impetuous, that might have been his undoing if not for what little semblance of order existed under the city. His mother had recently been the focus of much interest and he had snuck into her room to find her suspended in the air. It was a moment before he realized it was not by choice. Falstaff stood in the darkness away from her lamps with one hand around her collar.

Within a moment he had dashed to a chair and flown onto Falstaff’s back. With one fist around Falstaff’s shoulder and the other pounding away, focused on the head, he had been only a pest. Falstaff’s hand came up and he was suddenly approaching a wall at great speed. The broken ribs and bruises had kept him in bed for weeks after but Falstaff had glared at him and left his mother be.

Falstaff had not let him be however. When he had been left alone that first day, Falstaff had wandered into the room to sit by his bed. The dark auburn eyes had stayed trained on him all day and it wasn’t until night time that he had fallen asleep, exhausted.

He woke to an empty room and wondered where his mother was. Their circumstances made her ever more possessive of her child and ever more irrationally protective. The only times she didn’t watch him at that age was when he was taught and when he trained. The empty room pressed in on him and he imagined what Falstaff could have done to ensure his doom in the time he had slept.

For hours he waited here, alone and bedridden. For a while he thought that nobody would come to feed him. Then the thought occurred to him that if Falstaff made a case against him to Dracula, he would be the food. If his ribs had not kept him from moving, he would have made to escape.

At midnight his mother arrived, her fangs receding back into her mouth as she entered. There was blood on her lips, fresh from a hunt. The door was closed behind her and she sat next to his bed, laying her head down upon his covers. She was exhausted, and he could sense it.

“Mom, are they going to eat me?” he asked, his voice wavering with a fear he only showed to her.

She didn’t move for a moment, her head remaining where it was. When she did move the look in her eyes frightened him. He tried to convince himself that it was just the shadow of the fluorescent bulb above her, but he couldn’t. That was the first time she ever seemed insane, and the last time she said something remotely coherent.

“When they take you as their own, they will try to eat you from the inside first. Don’t let them.” With this, she collapsed onto his bed again, and slept. He sat stroking her hair, groomed and smooth as it was in those days, until he also fell asleep again.

*  *  *  *  *

Dear Canada

Finch – Letters to You - What It Is To Burn

Dear Canada, I want you to know that I miss you.

Deeply.

However long I might be in Australia, whether I’m here for the rest of my life, be that a short or long time, only fate can decide. Whether I visit other countries or not, and if that includes Canada, is beyond me today. But what I do know and know will always be is that I will always miss you. There is nothing that will change that.

Right now I plan to have a love affair with Australia. It is amazing here, with the birds and spiders, people everywhere, skyscrapers on the horizon of my campus, and the brightest sky to grace the eyes of men. I’m glad that I have come here. But I remember the price of leaving; more than just a ticket and a tear.

I remember daily what I have left behind. Mountains coated in the crispiest frosting that slides so smoothly under skis. Rural landscapes of poignantly coloured crops and porous odours. Flowers strewn across desperate highway shoulders, grasping the hands of spring and dancing in the rain and wind. Early Christmas mornings of snow on earth and in air, so thick it mocks the fog for allowing sight. Blazing fireworks blown high enough for the world to see; sent skyward from the parks of maples and oaks below. Cities so tall and celebrated they have never been overcome. Animals so still and serene, cocked ears alerting them to all around them. Country sides of rolling hills that speed toward the inevitable Pacific. Early morning clouds that roll over the Rockies and storm down their sides like the front lines. Ocean breezes that feel so soft and clean the taste of salt can barely be detected. Drifts of snow and ice that carry children’s joyous voices forever. Lakes so big and filled with childhood memories they threaten the prominence of foreign seas. Summer breezes that waft picnic fumes beneath the leaves that shade weary laughter. Piles of leaves so full and rich in colour they shine brighter than rainbows. A people so crafty and resilient they braved the dangers of foreign countries and saved friends and strangers alike. History so full and storied that it has never been off of the minds of the world itself. Culture so rich that it pumps out individuals who travel the world and shine the Canadian Spirit in the darkest places. A song full of glory to sing each morning before the works of everyday life. A man and woman so loved that they are not not only accepted but welcomed in countries across the globe.

Beauty more radiant than the sweetest smiling face. Strength more stable than the toughest man or beast. Soul more full and vibrant than the sweetest notes of song. Courage bolder than the fearless heroes of old. Laughter louder than the closest crack of thunder. Creativity more original than the imagination of a child. And no, if you’re wondering, I’m not talking about the landscape anymore. I’m talking about the people. The beautiful hearts, strong minds, and vibrant souls of friends and family alike.

I don’t just miss the places I’ve been. I miss the people I went there with, and the people I’ve left behind. Even in my dreams I’ve seen you since I’ve left, and in my heart I know I’ll always remember you.

No matter where I am and no matter what I might be doing; laughing, crying, singing, dancing, partying, surfing, praying, teaching, learning, sharing, running, hiding, living, breathing, hoping, loving, caring, trying, falling, failing, writing, acting, lolling, dreaming, screaming, sitting – standing - lying down, kissing, hugging, helping and even one day when I’m noticeably dying; I will always love you. I will always remember you for who you made me, and for what you’ve done for those I’ve loved.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart,

Thank you, Dearest Canada

Quest for the Character Name

I'm constantly searching for names for my characters. I've got lots of different stories and not just fantasy stories either. I've got a need for names for both Sci Fi and Drama genre stories as well. Finding the right name, the PERFECT name, can be an arduous task and that's why I'm asking for support from you, my friends and family.

If you have an idea, I'd be more than happy to take a look at it. I'll look for a place for it to fit into a story, and you can make a request of a genre you'd prefer to see it in and I'll try to accommodate you.

I hope to see lots of ideas as all ideas are welcome. Thank you in advance for your help.

Short Story Preview 1

Gaia

Gaia awoke. He awoke with a start. A start filled with noises and sounds. Noises and sounds that clambered into his mind and filled him with confusion. Then the confusion stopped.

Gaia sat up. He needed to run.

Bursting out of his tent, the dwarf saw the wide road that he had settled down by the night before for a quiet sleep. It stretched out across the leagues of plain around him; wind playing through its soil and grass, tickling and teasing it. He looked around himself, quickly taking in his surroundings. The shadowed hills off in the distance caught his eye; they and the mountains nearby had been all but invisible the night before, yet they contrasted the sun with an ambience of foreboding in the midmorning light.

Shielding his eyes from the blaring sun that beat a new day’s light down upon him, Gaia found his cause for the confusion in his mind and the screaming of his instinct to fly.

The dwarven officers he’d heard coming down the road on horseback were in no way trying to sneak up on them quietly. He knew from their horses’ desperate charge that they were trying to play a game of intimidation.

Gaia rushed to his sister’s tent, ripping back the flaps and immediately taking the spear from beside her. He could not let her instinct to protect herself take a single moment of their time. One moment was too precious to waste.

Niobe’s first look upon waking showed Gaia which dream she had had again that night, and the surprise of finding herself defenceless spread shock and pain across her face. He quickly grabbed her hand and pulled her outside.

Within a moment, Niobe’s complexion had returned. Wits returned to her, she gathered the horses and their necessities, what little there was, and was up on her horse bareback in a flash.

Gaia was immediately beside her, his scythe at his side and the fire he had set on their tents starting to catch. He threw her the spear and clambered onto his horse as quickly as he could. They kicked their horses and started off, Gaia looking quickly behind himself to find that the officers were so close he could just imagine the brutish murder in their eyes. An arrow struck the dirt behind the hooves of his horse but the mare did not falter. Turning round again, he leaned forward to allow the wind to pass over him as he tried to match their speed.

All too soon the officers were upon them, and Niobe’s arched blow to a horseman’s shield sent him flying off his horse into the fields, the sound of his chainmail rattling lost under that of the horses’ hooves. His scythe in hand, Gaia turned just in time to block the strike of a sword to his horse’s right flank. Following up on his block he brought the other end of his scythe and the reigns around to pull his horse into another sneaking up beside him, shocking the rider. With the momentary advantage and great luck Gaia took the sword from the officer’s hand with a quick slash and pulled his horse back around, an arrow streaming over the empty hand of the disarmed officer.

Turning with his horse Gaia saw that Niobe was surrounded on both sides by an officer and their captain. She held their swords at bay with either end of her spear, stabbing the officer with the blade. Gaia rode up beside them and sliced through the straps holding the captain’s saddle to his horse, and the man disappeared onto the road with a sickening crunch. The horse dropped behind and cleared some space for the two of them to get some distance. As they began to lengthen the gap an arrow streamed into the back of Niobe’s leather binding, piercing above her hip, and she slumped forward onto her horse.

The remaining officers stopped to recover their captain and Gaia moved to grab his sister’s reigns. Her hand came up to slap his away, and she leaned back to steady herself. The arrow was all the way through her side and she was beginning to bleed. She gave a small, unsteady signal to continue.

He moved closer to the rear of her horse, opening the pack she had stuffed their provisions into as they set off. Amongst what little food and tools she had managed to grab he quickly found a sheet of cloth that they had used to cover their horses on rainy nights. He honoured the god of earth in his mind, thankful that it had been a dry night and rode up next to his sister.

Checking behind herself, she slowed her horse enough to carefully wrap the sheet around her waist, tearing holes in it so as not to pull on the arrow. There was no time to stop and pull it out without risking the officers catching up to them. Having only dwarven pack horses, bred and trained to bear loads but not to bear them quickly, they knew they were lucky just to have stalled their pursuers’ superior horses long enough to escape.

With the knowledge that the honour of the officers would keep them attending their captain, Gaia and Niobe rode on for a few minutes, ever closer to the blackened hills, and when the glint of armour and weaponry behind them was long gone they dismounted and led their horses off the path. Having ridden closer they now found that the hill had not only been blackened by its own shadow but by a fire in long distant times. A perfect circle of flame had once burnt the hill to a crisp during an unforgiving season, and the grass had slowly grown back from the outside of the circle as the soil recovered.

The site held them for a moment, and as they passed through the centre of the blackened circle of earth, Niobe’s hand shot up to her temple. A moment later she was fine, but Gaia knew why her head had pounded. His gaze returned to the ashen earth he knew had once been rich. His eyes stayed this way for a moment and then a moment more, his thoughts slowing.

“I must leave this place.”

Niobe’s words startled Gaia. The quiet had begun to creep into his skin, and an interrupted silence seemed like sacrilege for such an eerie place. It demanded respect, almost sucking his obedience from his head and pulling it down, down into the earth. He silently shook himself and began to walk again, Niobe picking up pace beside him. They left the circle and the path disappeared behind them over the crest of the hill as they began to head off toward the mountains.

***

More to follow!