Broomstick - Part Eleven

Here's part eleven! We left off with our hero escaping the dwarves with the Nether Key, which he cleverly took in his escape. Now the story continues.

I've been tagged again...by Leilani Sunblade this time (http://dreams-dragons.blogspot.com/2013/04/tagged-again.html ). So I'll do it right here as quickly as possible. Same tag as last time.

1. I have red hair that needs to be cut soon.
2. I love to play chess.
3. I have never owned a hamster.
4. I want to see the new Star Trek and Man of Steel, but I can wait for Iron Man 3 probably.
5. I live on earth.
6. I like science fiction, and am trying to write some.
7. I am currently reading Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.
8. I think it's a good book.
9. I write poetry from time to time.
10. I like to draw people's faces, but I can't get body proportions down right.

-------------------

The next morning when I woke, it was on my bedside table. The box that contained the Nether Key was right there, and I couldn’t return it.

I went downstairs and out after carefully hiding it (in my sock drawer) and purchased a paper out in the street. I returned to the Sleazy Fox and ordered some breakfast and began reading. The front-page headlines stated: POWERFUL ARTIFACT STOLEN FROM IMPOUND

The article was about the Nether Key, of course, and to my annoyance featured Tom Thumb as an interviewee. To my further dismay the paper reported that he wouldn’t be taking today off for the Broomstick holiday, but would rather be continuing his investigation into this.

The death of Aleck Shipton and the disappearance of his sister Alice were bumped back to the second page. The recipe in Aleck’s pocket was not mentioned, but the cause of death had been determined to be a heart attack. I highly doubted it was that simple, but the recipe he had in his pocket hadn’t been what killed him. I read a little more about Tom Thumb’s exploits and then breakfast arrived, and I handed the paper to Woody. I ate quickly and headed out to the library.

The mysterious “Three” wanted Alice alive for some reason. They wanted her brother Aleck dead for some reason. They also wanted the Nether Key, which they did not have. Why?

I checked out a few books on the Nether Key and spent the morning scanning the pages of those up in my room at the inn. What I found was not very helpful.

It had something to do with the Nether Realm, but the problem lay in the fact that nobody really knew what the Nether Key did. There was much speculation about the subject, but the artifact was kept locked up and had never been used in recorded history. All that was known about it was that several had tried to channel its power, to disastrous effects.

I wrote down a few possible uses of the Key:

Nether Key

Summoning the dead/supernatural being(s)

Control over death

Control of the Nether realm

Grants wishes

Gives immortality

Curses the user to be a vampire or other creature of darkness

This was more promising. If I could figure out what they might want it for, I could derive what they needed to do in order to use the Nether Key. I fished around to see if there were any references to kidnapping, and I thought I found something to do with summoning a supernatural being and controlling the Nether Realm.

The sacrifice of a person with no family and a deep connection with the Nether Realm is thought by many theorizers to be required for the proper rites to do with summoning the great Titan Ishgrald of the Dark.

And then it hit me like a brick to the face. Alice was the sacrifice, of course; but what I hadn’t realized in time was something I should have seen coming. My mind flashed back to when I first eavesdropped on the two dwarves in the King’s Men ballroom.

“Did you hear the news?”

“Of course.”

“He’s dead.”

“Who do you think did it?”

“Same as tomorrow.”

“Of course. With Aleck out of the way, all that’s left is Old Man Shipton, and then Alice.”

Alice Shipton still had family. And I might already be too late.

Hide and Go Seek - A Jethraxx Nokt Tale

I wrote this story quite recently, and I've written another story similar to it called Playing Poems. It's on Iron Wyvern, but I will post it on here at some point in time. Anyway, they are similar because the genre could probably best be described as "Little Boy Dark Forest" fiction. Enjoy.

"Gonk! Are you there? Gonk!" The little boy peered into the darkness of the forest trees. He saw nothing within that dark forest,  but he had just seen his pet rabbit leap into those bushes inside it. "Gonk!" he called, stumbling forward into the bushes. He tripped over a root but caught himself by grasping onto a thin ash tree. Rollo was a little boy of four years of age. "Gonk!" he exclaimed. "Where are you? Gonk!"
He began to feel that Gonk was never going to come back to him, and the thought made him pause for a second. But then he thought: Gonk is my friend. Gonk is just playing hide-and-go-seek. Rollo ran farther through the bushes with an earnest expression on his little face, calling, "Gonk! I'm going to find you! Gonk!"
Rollo suddenly realized that it was really dark inside the forest. He couldn't see very well. Gonk had the strategic advantage, but Rollo knew that he had to keep looking. To give up was to accept defeat. Defeat was unquestionably bad. Gonk would come out and taunt him.
"But Momma says I need never go in the forest on the west edge," Rollo intoned solemnly. "She says it's bad and I could get lost or aten. If I got aten I couldn't find Gonk."
Then another thought came to him: what if GONK got aten? That would be worse. Rollo called, "Gonk! No more hide-and-go-seek! You're gonna get aten by the monsters!"
There it was, at last. Spoken. He had avoided the thought, but once he spoke the word he shuddered and realized how alone he felt, and how dark it was, and how cold the wind blew. When Rollo had walked into the forest, it had been late evening. By now the sun was probably nearly down.
But Rollo was brave, and reluctant to give up. If Gonk was lost, he had to help Gonk get back out of the forest before the monsters eated them both. "Gonk!" he yelled again. He tumbled through the waist-high grass and underbrush, wading into a sea of darkness. He caught his pant-leg on a thorn, and he had to tug at it to get it unstuck. By now, he was on the verge of hysteria, a little child lost in the woods pursuing something that was too far gone to be retrieved.
He finally freed himself from the grasp of the thorn, but the momentum sent him sprawling onto the ground. It jarred him, and as his eyes searched the darkness it suddenly occurred to him: I'm lost. "Monsters, don't eat me," he muttered. The uttering of this sentence sent him over the edge. Rollo curled up on the ground, rocking back and forth. "Momma! Gonk! Daddy!" he shouted, his voice a frightened wail. "Momma! Daddy! Gonk!" A fleeting thought told him that more noise would ward off the monsters, so he began yelling hoarsely at the top of his lungs. He didn't even hear an echo; nothing came back to him except the silent absorption of the darkness around him. He was the only living thing in the world, other than the monster.
In his imagination, he thought up a giant reddish pig of a creature, with snorting nostrils and stamping hooves. It had two long tails like a lion, and its great huge teeth dripped with saliva, but its eyes were the worst: glowing yellow lights, like lanterns or furnaces. Those fires could only be kept going with the blood of little boys and bunny rabbits.
At this conjuration, Rollo buried his face in his hands and sobbed, wailed. He looked around as the warm tears trailed down his dirty cheeks. He could see no light, anywhere.
He heard a rustle in the grass, the snapping of a twig. "Hello," said a voice.
"Hello," Rollo answered, hiccuping as he stopped sobbing. "Who are you?"
"My name is Jeth," said the voice. "Who are you, little boy?"
"I'm Rollo," said the little child, shivering with a sudden cold he felt, blowing softly over his skin and raising goosebumps. "Rollo Tanner. I was looking for Gonk, my rabbit, and I got lost. Can you help me?"
"A rabbit?" Jeth asked. "Why yes, I think I saw one just a while ago. I have good eyes in the dark."
"Really?"
"Yes, little child," Jeth assured him from the dark. Rollo couldn't actually see anyone, but he felt a cold breeze and he thought he felt the presence of someone near him. "Follow me," Jeth commanded, taking Rollo's little hand. His touch was cold, so cold that at first Rollo flinched and tried to pull his hand back, but the person in the dark held him firmly. Rollo felt the freezing grip burn into his wrist as he was pulled along through the forest.
Before, he had stumbled through blindly, but with Jeth, though Rollo walked and thought he felt his feet touch the ground and the grass brush his sides, it was as if he was gliding over a soft silky surface; he felt no root touch his foot, and never tripped.
As they passed along, a strange orange light developed, so dim that it made Rollo's eyes strain even more than they had in the dark. He thought that he could see the vague shape of the form in front of him. He could tell it was a human form, but Jeth seemed too tall and wispy to be a normal person. Rollo didn't mind saying so. "You're tall," he giggled, wriggling his wrist under Jeth's firm grip. "And you're cold."
"Do you know what manners are?" Jeth asked, genuinely inquisitive to Rollo's naive ears.
The little child answered in a heartbeat. "Yes I do. Don't burp or toot or pick your nose or--or--or--or, uh, poop your pants." At this he giggled uncontrollably. "I think I pooped mine," he announced cheerily. "Did you know that you're cold?"
"Yes," Jeth answered. Rollo smiled at the darkness.
"That orange light is a little brighter," he said. Now he could make out the silhouette of Jeth's face, thin, with a sharp curved nose. He looked down but didn't see individual legs or feet, just a black shadowy form, like a long dress or skirt, gliding across a silvery glinting ground. It was almost as if...Rollo thought...he was made of shadows.
"Are you sure my rabbit went this way?" he asked, noticing the cruel curve of Jeth's nose again.
"Oh, yes, I'm sure. What was its name again?" asked Jeth absent-mindedly.
"You didn't remember it?" squealed Rollo. "You don't care about Gonk after all! You're just a gonna sell me, uh, take me and sell me to the gybsies!"
"Of course not," Jeth denied, his grip tightening on Rollo's little wrist. His hand was icy, even colder now it seemed, and upon Jeth's tightening it, Rollo suddenly cried out sharply.
"Can't you be quiet?" Jeth sneered. "We're almost there."
As he said this, the orange light grew brighter, and Rollo saw Jeth's face clearly for the first time as they descended into a little hollow. It was pale, paler than the moon, and there was an evil glint like that of a curved scimitar in the figure's eyes. This was no friend of Rollo's.
"We've arrived," Jeth cackled, and turned to the boy.
"Help!" Rollo yelled. "Help help!" He began screaming as loud as he could, until an icy numbness stopped his throat from uttering sound. His numb mouth jabbered and moved, but no sound came out.
He looked down and saw that ice had covered the ground, a thick layer, and Jeth rose like a phantom out of its expanse. He was a monster, his cruel face reflecting in the orange light.
The light came from a small den in the dirt wall of the hollow, an evil ghoul-light, and Rollo knew enough of local lore to recognize a ghoul.
"Ha! Annoying child!" Jeth smirked, tossing Rollo into the den. The little boy landed right next to the large crystal that was the source of the eerie orange light. It glowed and pulsed and throbbed when he came near. Tears rolled down Rollo's cheeks as he silently sobbed; he was going to be devoured by a ghoul.
"I am the Jethraxx Nokt," announced the ghoul, ducking into the little den and grasping the ghoul-light. "Terror of Kings, The Phantom of Dark Ice, the Kolwolf. Foolish child, I will strike you down; and who is there to save you?"
Rollo stopped staring up at the phantom, and instead his eyes looked past. He uttered a single word. "Gonk," he said.
"Boy!" raged the Jethraxx Nokt. "Be silent!"
"Gonk," Rollo insisted.
The ghoul seemed to be a little smaller, and his light faded a bit.
"Gonk, you found me!" Rollo repeated, and scurried forward, out to the opening of the den. The phantom was gone now, and what illuminated the hollow instead of the crystal was the glowing tail of the little rabbit, silver in the night. "I was hiding, and you were seeking," Rollo muttered. "I was wrong. Can you lead me out of here?"
He patted his rabbit's fur, and Gonk led him out of the forest and into the dawn.

Broomstick - Part Ten

“He’ll scry the bosses and if they know him, he’s fine. But if they don’t, then we’ll slit his throat,” Dopey explained to the other six dwarves. “Simple.”

“Seems good enough to me,” Happy shrugged. I struggled to retain my composure. I needed a way out of this, fast.

“Okay,” I managed to say, “but they’ll get really mad that you guys stalled the plan just to check if I was on your side. For crying out loud, I helped steal the Nether Key with you!”

“The wolf’s got a point, but it can’t do any harm to check in with the Three. Better safe than in custody,” Bashful reasoned. “I’ll fill a bowl.”

He went to the bathroom to fill up a scrying bowl, and I surreptitiously glanced at the window. A two-story fall to the ground below didn’t seem so bad at the moment, and I was weighing my chances.

Happy smirked. “You’re gonna get caught, wolfie, and we’re gonna kill you and dump your body in an alley.”

That was the last straw. I bared my fangs and struck. I swept Happy off his stupid feet and onto the floor and then I bashed Grumpy in the face. Two down. Dopey yelled and swung a triple-flip kick that should be illegal, but I dodged it by mere inches and retaliated with an iron paw to his solar plexus. Sleepy, Doc, and Sneezy crowded around me, but I bouldered past them and to the door as Bashful came sprinting into the room. I wrenched it open and dove into the hallway, running for the nearest stairwell. I heard the dwarves noisily groping after me, but I shot down the staircase to the first floor by way of the banister.

I turned down a few hallways and opened one of the grandiose doors to the main ballroom. Safe at last. And tucked under my paw was a small black box.

I Have Been Tagged

It seems, dear readership, that I have been tagged. I feel, well, I feel a little bit achey because it's early in the morning where I'm at.  But anyway, I'll stop prattling on and post something.

The Inspector Wolfe Tales, PART TEN, COMING OUT ON TUESDAY THE 23RD OF APRIL!!!!

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT IT'S LIKE TO EAT A FLUFFY KITTEN??? ME NEITHER.

Sorry. Anyway, I'm supposed to state ten facts about myself and tag ten other blogs. Here goes...

1. I have never owned a Texas horned toad. It's true.

2. I have watched a snake suffocate and swallow a live mouse. The snake was a bald python.

3. My siblings are three in number.

4. My siblings have watched too many episodes of Mythbusters.

5. I love coffee, chocolate, hot chocolate, chocolatey coffee, dark chocolate, white chocolate (which isn't actually chocolate at all, just a type of fat that's not good for your body in mass quantities), and milk chocolate. Here's a virtual chocolate bar:

6. I am wearing a shirt.

7. I wear a pair of awesome glasses that make me way cooler than you could ever imagine. (Okay...maybe that's a bit of a stretched truth. But still a truth.)

8. I play the violin, and have played for nine years.

9. My favorite sport is BASEBALL, and my favorite team is the St. Louis Cardinals! Baseball is the most amazing sport of all time.

10. I have never won a laser tag battle. Partially because the only 3 times I've gone, I've been about six years old (times #1 and #2), or there have been really avid goers there.

Now, to tag more:

Taisia Tinuviel

JTZ Baner

T. Granger

Rayne Speryll

The WordWeaver

Charlotte/Starsinger

Andy
Sine Nomine

Ryebrynn

AGHHHH.......... Sorry, but I can't think of most anybody else. I tag.....ME! On The Yammering Dragon! Hehe.

Well, readership, that's all. I gotta go around tagging people.

AND I'VE BEEN RETAGGED! THIS ONE WILL BE A LOT SMALLER.

1. I like fruit.
2. I have hair.
3. My face has lots of freckles.
4. I want to build a model ship.
5. I haven't played baseball for a long time.
6. I ache to play baseball.
7. I do not own a pet currently.
8. I need to write.
9. I want to write.
10. I'm tired, so the last two don't affect me right this moment.

Acrostics - A Poetry Challenge

Welcome, one and all, to Inkweb, and to the second poetry challenge on this blog!

Concerning The Inspector Wolfe Tales, installment number 10, that will be posted on April 23rd. If you wish to catch up on the storyline, either click on the tab "Inspector Wolfe Tales" up above, or find its label in the "Post Index" sidebar and view all the other posts about the Tales in chronological order. Please, if you have questions or comments, feel free to comment on anything, or just email me at:

smiling_pint@yahoo.com,

and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

NOW, on with the challenge!

An acrostic poem doesn't have to rhyme or have a certain meter, although for an extra challenge, it's fun to include that stuff too. But all the criteria of an acrostic poem is that each line start with one of the letters in the term you are describing. For instance, a poem about a raven:

Ranging afar through tumbling skies,

Avian with black spread wings it flies

Verily black with violet tinge

Each time it soars the sun can singe

No outspread feather; this bird, too clever.

So, there you go! I include rhyme and meter in that, but you don't have to if you don't want to.

So, everybody get your thinking caps on! Here's what you have to do!

1. Write an acrostic poem utilizing the word CARP!

2. Post it in the comments below!

3. Write your own acrostic poem on any word pattern you choose; feel free to post it in the comments, but you don't have to do so.

4. (Optional but recommended) Answer the poll at the top right of the page!

5. (optional but recommended) Visit Iron Wyvern and Coal Ridge. Here are the links:

www.ancientryme.blogspot.com

www.ironwyvern.blogspot.com

Broomstick - Part Nine

Greetings, and welcome to Inkweb! First of all, please click the link to Iron Wyvern to go and see the beginning of The Draconian Letters Book Two, opening with a letter from Smok's newly recovered uncle Trubodox!
Secondly, I am proud to announce that The Inspector Wolfe Tales, Part Nine, is below! I have also added it into the "Inspector Wolfe Tales" tab above, a nice little update if you want to read the whole of the project so far. Part 10 will be posted on Tuesday, April 23rd. Please enjoy!

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“Get in!” shouted Happy, shoving Grumpy through the doorway and into the vault. “Wolfy!”

I ignored him. My defense instincts had set in by now, and I was staring down a pack of turkey fiends. I growled, and they raised their feathers and gobbled menacingly.

The turkeys were pretty normal looking. Well, sort of. For the most part they were your average farm turkey: the colors, the shape, the beak, the feathers, the feet. They were what one might expect, except for a few things. First off: their teeth. Regular turkeys don’t have teeth, and these ones didn’t just have teeth. They had razor-sharp axeblade chompers, meant to maim and kill upon contact. Second point, the eyes. I shudder to think back on them. They were the most horrific sight I had ever seen in my life.

Well, they started shrieking like before, and I raised a growl before retreating back, my rational side overpowering my instincts.

“What was that, wolfy?” Happy barked as he shut the door behind me.

“Who cares right now?” Grumpy intervened. “Let’s find the key and go.”

This is Dopey. We’re retreating.

Bashful reporting. I’ve turned on the outer defenses for the vault and I’m making some upgrades. It’ll take the Peacefire team at least ten minutes to break in.

I looked around the room and was surprised at what I saw. It seemed that they didn’t keep the Nether key completely alone. Filing cabinets lined the room, neatly placed from A to Z. It was a big room too, and I hoped the dwarves knew how to get to the Nether key fast.

I heard a bang at the door. “That would be the turkeys,” Happy informed me. “Get over here and help look.”

“It should be filed under ‘Artifacts of Mass Destruction,’” Grumpy informed me cheerily. “Then under K, for ‘key.’”

“Okay,” I answered. “Where’s Artifacts of Mass Destruction?”

“In the D section, for ‘destruction, artifacts of mass.’ So, about nineteen rows back! Let’s get cracking.”

“How large is the section?” I inquired as we trotted down rows of filing cabinets. The werelights above followed us around the room, keeping everything nicely illuminated.

“Oh, probably about eight rows. But we’ll be looking at the beginning few shelves.”

I gulped. Eight whole shelves for the destruction section, and these dwarves were only after one thing. I reasoned that the Nether key must be even more powerful than rumored.

Grumpy led us down the nineteenth row, his eyes speedily scanning the shelves. “If only we had Sleepy with us,” he muttered. “He’s the most alert guy out of all seven of us.”

“Well, he is a neat carriage driver,” I remarked. “Speaking of which, what exactly is the getaway plan?”

“The getaway plan? Oh, that’s simple. We’ll—” Grumpy was cut off when Happy exclaimed, “Here it is! I found it!”

We rushed over to the other side of the row of cabinets, where Happy stood pointing at a single cabinet. “It’s in there, Grumps. It’s in that cabinet, by golly.”

I heard shouting and thumping outside. “That would be the Peacelocks,” I reminded them. “Let’s hurry up!”

“Well, the actual box is protected by more hexes,” Grumpy told me. “But we know our way past that. Bashful will take care of it when we get back to the King’s Men Club.” With those words, he pulled the whole drawer out of the filing cabinet and took the box from inside it. It was a simple black cube, and I couldn’t believe that such a powerful artifact was just shut up in there like a forgotten keepsake.

“They tried to destroy it, the Peacelocks,” Happy grunted. “But the idiots should have known. They couldn’t make a dent. It belonged to a king of shadows long ago. It was forged in the Nether realm, from the very essence of the ancient Titans. There’s no getting rid of that kind of power.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “How are we doing that, by the way?”

“Oh, baby, you’re in for a surprise,” Grumpy chuckled, and then the doors blew open and the werelights turned crimson.

“Bouncing bugles!” cursed Happy, and ran toward the back of the room. Grumpy motioned for me to follow, and we all raced across the vault floor. I heard the shouts of Peacelocks and Peacefires behind us and saw the reflection of all the flashing lights on the walls and ceiling.

“Don’t look back!” Grumpy called as we reached the back wall of the room.

“What do we do? We’re at a dead end!” I gasped.

“Watch and learn, wolfy,” Happy sneered, and he pulled a playing card out of his pocket, on which was drawn a depiction of the seven dwarves’ room back at the King’s Men Club.

“Is that a veniflagrus card?” I asked in surprise.

“Absolutely, my friend,” cackled Grumpy. “Burns up as soon as we travel through. Grab Happy’s hand!”

I did as I was told, a thrill spreading through me. I glanced over my shoulder to see a line of Peacefire assault agents sweeping the room, crimson firebows at the ready, but that was the last I saw of that vault as I was dragged by a strange force into an interdimensional gap. It happened forever, and in a flash, and suddenly I was standing in the middle of the dwarves’ room in the club with Happy and Grumpy.

“Merlin’s bushy eyebrows!” I exclaimed. “That was jarring. Where’d you find a veniflagrus card?”

“We’ve got connections,” Happy said dodgily. “So who’s the wolf, exactly?”

“James,” I said, holding out a hand. Happy didn’t shake, so I dropped it. “I was sent by the Three to supervise the heist.”

“So you’re reporting how well we did?”

“Absolutely. And you did well.”

Grumpy grinned and set down the black box on one of the beds. “Well, we ain’t done yet. We have to crack the box open somehow.”

The door opened, and in rushed all the rest of the dwarves, swarming inside and pulling off masks. Grumpy, Happy, and I remembered to take our own masks off.

Bashful looked at Grumpy. “Where is it?” He looked tired and haggard, and out of breath. I wondered what toll magic must take on someone.

“It’s on the bed. Tonight we’re gonna crack it.”

I looked at the black box on the bed, the box that held death and destruction inside, all crammed into a few cubic inches. And then I made my move. “Actually,” I announced, “the Three said I was supposed to take it to a professional to get it open.”

“What?” Happy snarled. “That wasn’t what they told us! In fact, they never told us you’d be coming along, much less that you’d take our score. How do we know we can trust you?”

Grumpy frowned. “He has a point, actually. How do we know we can trust you?”

The other dwarves crowded around us, chorusing “Aye” with varying degrees of loudness.

“I never trusted him!” Happy growled. “And now he’s trying to rob us, ain’t he?”

“No, guys,” I tried to explain. “The bosses sent me, I swear!”

“Well, why don’t you prove it?” Dopey shrugged simply. Everybody turned and stared at him.
I gulped. This was going to be a hard sell.

Announcement: Camp NaNoWriMo

Welcome to Inkweb! I've decided to post about my experience so far of Camp NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo, to those who don't know, stands for National Novel Writing Month and is a non-profit organization devoted to getting your novel written. National Novel Writing Month takes place in November and is a challenge for you to write 50,000 words in a month.

Camp NaNoWrimo is part of the NaNoWrimo project, taking place in other months of the year. Note: It is not a real camp, it's only online. For this one, the target word count doesn't have to be 50,000 words, it can be anywhere from 10,000 words to 999,999 words (although I do not recommend the latter option) and it doesn't have to be a novel, it can be short fiction, nonfiction, a script, or whatever you choose.

I decided to participate in the April session of Camp NaNoWriMo and floor the accelerator, taking my novel's word count to 75000 words, which is turning out to be harder than I thought. Currently I'm about four thousand words behind but that's not the worst I've been and I think I've got it in me to come back. I believe my whole month will be like a surging tide: I'll write like crazy and get up to the target, and then be exhausted and take a break to do other things like school and fall behind about 5000 words before writing my way back into the game. AAAAGGGGHHHH. I'm feeling exhausted already, and it's only the end of week 1.

On top of that, I lost my flash drive so I don't have a big chunk of my writing from the last few days. I've continued in a different document but it's weird not having half my project. I hope I can find my flash drive and add in everything else to the document before the end of the month.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from the part of my novel that I haven't managed to lose, incinerate, or crush under a tractor:

"The city of Brasilia was packed. Alabaster buildings were stuck so close together that in some places the road wasn’t quite as big as the Jeep; pedestrians and bikers were everywhere on the road, and sometimes there would be a fruit vendor squatting with his fruit stand right in the middle of the road.

Birds were everywhere, in every nook or cranny known to man. There were bright colorful birds obviously from that region, and there were darker colored, less vibrant ones as well; they perched on poles and wires, they flocked together on windowsills and bicycles; they filled the air with an incessant flapping noise that stirred up the air into a miniscule whirlwind of currents. Feathers fell through the air like snow, adorning the ground in great green, red, yellow, black piles. There were parrots and parakeets, macaws, a hawk or two hovering high overhead, but the crows gave by far the most clear impression. They were giants, black hulks crouching on telephone poles in groups of about two or three, never a whole murder all together at once, but definitely sticking to each other. While the other birds frolicked, these black-beaked birds sat silently like dark angels staring at the children of light."

-J.W. Ball, In the Trappings of Lost Gold

And, JTZ, please don't spoil the ending in the comments. I didn't even want you to know the ending for this, but you looked at my notes anyway, so, oh well.

Please visit Iron Wyvern and Coal Ridge, everybody! Links here:

www.ironwyvern.blogspot.com

www.ancientryme.blogspot.com

And don't forget to answer the poll at the top right!