When the child was pulled from her still womb, the first thing anyone noticed about the squalling pink infant was the claws.
Small, sharp, black pointed tips, shreds of placenta still hanging from them. The cries were not frightened, confused, inncocent. The sound exploding from the child was pure anger, powerful howling.
As the hunter had killed the witch mother, he wasted no emotion and no thought in putting a bolt through the heart of the demon thing with the black claws.
Johara tried to say her own name, two thousand years after she first set foot in her prison. Her words were slow and thick, like honey, dripping sticky syllables out of her mouth. She fumbled and forgot how to form sounds. She could talk to the cage, but those weren’t sounds so much as thoughts after so many years.
As no things are forever hidden in the world, a tribe of nomads eventually passed within viewing distance of her window. The adults showed no interest in Johara’s monastery, but the children stared with abandon, pointing at the flashes of silver they could see, sparks in the sunlight. They shouted things that Johara could no longer understand, the sounds were faint memories that she couldn’t place. Disheartened by the fact that even if they had come to speak with her, she wouldn’t be able to understand them, Johara covered her ears and turned away from the happy children.
She never learned to say her name again.
Vorah looked over the forests, slick with an oily fog that hung over the entire island. She hopped from one floating stone to another, uncaring about the mud seeping between her toes. She’d shed her disguise back with Ris, clad once more in a thin linen shift. Her thick violet hair spilled down her back, longer than usual with months of disrepair. Gold-on-lavender eyes unbound, she took in the rest of the landscape.
Ris, in any animal form, had the enhanced senses of a beast. She had to lose his scent, or else he would swoop down on her and carry her away to another town.
Splashing down into a weak stream, she grimaced at the thick silt on the bottom and felt the leeches pop beneath her toes. Her shift already ruined, she sighed and reached back, tying her hair into a large plait and winding it up on her head.
A great cry shattered the silence, and Vorah looked upward, in time to see the great form of dragonRis wheel through the sky, screaming, and fly to the east.
A great depression weighed on her heart, but she could only turn to the muck of the stream and press on.
It was a beautiful thing, all airy crystal and spun gold. There were pearls studding the base, and delicate glass flowers trailing up the points.
Aut looked at the beautiful crown and saw it for what it was: a lock on her luxurious cage.
She looked out at her wedding procession, the bridal suite overlooking the courtyard, some sixteen stories in the air. The wicked man she was to marry was mingling with the guests, his sharp smile on his face, his cruel hands gently touching the people he was to rule. Those hands would be bruising her, later in the night.
Turning back into the room, she stared at the dress her servants held up, heavy lace and silk.
Aut turned around and flew out the window.
Among the dreaming world, among the large dreamers, the ones who had their own hall, there was no sense of humility. These people, if they even were anymore, were tall, proud and graceful. They had become so used to their station, playing with the hopes and despair of all humans that they thought themselves above it.
In truth, they never slept. Their duties were too pressing, and their bodies had evolved to process the pressure. They were always sending out dreams, thoughts, feelings, even when they were in a class, debate, or meal.
They would absently dust pillows, shuffle apprentices from one hall to the next, and they never seemed to trip, fall or run into anything. Some of the younger dreamers would try to pull pranks on them, but the head dreamers always seemed to know about them. Ignore them, step around them, and whap the culprits on the head with a soft object.
The head dreamers knew of many things, but nothing so much as dignity.
Nobody had ever survived Johara. Not really, not in truth. She allowed a few to leave, but their minds were so scrambled from trying to process her that all they said was that she was ‘a beautiful oasis’.
True, many plants grew in the cool, moist corners of her crumbling walls, but there was no lush garden. No large pool of clear, life giving water. A silver cage covered with silver vines.
Perhaps they thought of Johara herself of an oasis, secret and hidden from mundane life. A spot of beauty in an ugly world.
Johara wondered, occasionally, at the purpose of her building. There was sand on the floor and the roof was crumbling, but the walls were high and the windows narrow. She didn’t remember much about religion, and didn’t really care, but found it funny that her cage could be in a place where people worshiped gods.
There no relics, no murals and no leftover dogma to pierce her ears with, but sometimes, just sometimes, Johara felt at peace. She felt like everything was going to be fine, like she could do anything.
At those times, she would sit at the bottom of her cage and brush her hair, wondering if this was what it was like to be a god.
The apprentice rushed through the halls, toes gripping the thick red carpet as she ran. Her slight form was almost lost amid the heavy robes she wore, embroidered and dyed richly.
The alcoves along the side, hollowed out from the stone slabs and inlaid with bright glass lanterns, they spilled pillows into the walkways. It was difficult to navigate. A dreamer for every petty dream, there were hundreds in the complex. A thing Pane hoped to achieve one day. She was on a special mission to one of The Dreamers. Love, in fact, with her own gilded halls and beautiful people on beautiful cushions, often in pairs.
The Dreamers were always rare, and there were only five of them. They could dream while awake and still run their own halls, having their own sects to make up for impure, muddied dreams. Half formed or underlying currents.
Pane was apprenticing under a subsection of Revenge. They figured she was a shoe in, her parents having been murdered and all. She didn’t have the heart to tell them that she hadn’t loved her parents anyway and if she met their killer, would probably just shrug and walk the other direction. The halls of Revenge were cold and dank, with moldy pillows and thin blankets. Nobody there was ever in a good mood, and Pane was going to try her hardest to transfer somewhere better.
To Love, she carried a special package. She carried it close to her heart and tried her hardest not to think about it. Some of the dreamers could pick up on stray thoughts and they could broadcast it to everyone in the complex.
The more she thought about it, the harder she ran. Some dreams just couldn’t wait.
Compared the lush gardens of home, with their sprawling green carpets and tall belladonna stalks, this garden was empty.
The princess looked around, her gaze reflected back at her through a thousand diamonds, and lamented herself. To save her family, to save her sister…this is what she had done.
Listlessly, she snapped the soft gold stem of a ruby daisy and held the flower to her nose. Nothing but the grotesque tinge of metal. It was all she smelled, lately. Certainly, he had been kind to make her something so beautiful, this resting place. Even if it was a grotesque parody of her own gardens back home. She appreciated it, truly in her heart.
But at that moment, the girl would trade her entire family for just one plant that could grow.
Johara existed outside of the span of time, and yet her body continued to age. Her hair grew, her nails constantly needed polishing, she could sunburn and heal. The cage, it seemed, protected her from all elements, including man.
The one time she could not kill an entire battalion of men, the cage defended her. Four men, survived from two hundred, came up to pry the bars off the cage. Part of the floor scraped away and shot through the bars, straight into the hearts of those soldiers.
It had hissed and grumbled at her, ‘Use your talents, you stupid thing. Shouldn’t have to defend you.’
She noticed that her clothes never became moth eaten or dirty, and always seemed to fix themselves whenever she split a seam. Over time, the embroidery become much more elaborate and sprawling. Near the end of her reign, she wore pure silver with no cloth in sight.
Living in between space and time, able to touch men but unable to be touched, never really took its toll on her.
Johara was never really meant for the world of men.
With luck, a drabble a day for a year! Prompts via: http://www.magatsu.net/art/index.php
