I know, I never finish anything. But I thought I might as well start posting the new short story that has been fresh in my [VERY ANNOYING] brain. :) ENJOY!!!
OH! This isn't a HP story. :P
Love,
Lav
BREATHING AGAIN
PROLOGUE
The sword stung unmercifully as it passed through her middle. Though very sharp and defined, it seemed that every inch had a ragged edge that tore through her very soul. Her knees hit the earth hard as she doubled over, her hands falling to her knees, as an attempt to hold herself up. Her eyes met those of her attacker, who stood before her, and turned away, who turned her back on her, tears streaming down over her features.
"Rose," Lavender whispered, barely managing the sound, her voice strained with shock and betrayal. And pain.
The woman before her stopped, but could not force herself to look at her friend of nearly twenty years. Tears ran unchecked down her face continually, and she held back a sob as she whispered, tonelessly, "I'm sorry, Lav."
Then Rose walked away from her, leaving Lavender there, alone as ever, exiting the mortal park, and by so doing, cutting off all threads of her former life.
EARLIER THAT MORNING:
"ROSE! Gods, I can't believe it! It's been so long!" Lavender said, her excitement and disbelief spilling over as she opened the door of her home completely to her friend, throwing her arms around her neck and giving her a welcoming hug.
"Come in, come in!" She said happily, waving Rose into the hallway.
Lavender led the way through the oak floored hallway into the kitchen, where she gestured for Rose to sit upon the white, leather cushioned chair at the white table near the large window, while she walked over to the black marble counter, where a pot of tea was just done boiling.
Rose looked around as Lavender fiddled with the teapot, her eyes wandering over the hand painted walls, and figurines. The black walls were magnificently painted with winding roses and lavender flowers and wildflowers and vines from Lavenders own hand, when she was bored one day. Upon the plain wall, where nothing was set against it or by it, at the far side of the kitchen, there was a white wolf painted, sitting on its hind legs, its tail wrapped around its legs in a relaxed way. The way Lavender had painted it, one could look at the painted wolf as if it were looking at the real thing. The eyes were a fiery blood red, and they seemed to stare at you, however gently, despite their color. Rose, like so many before her, became entranced in the wonders of the painting, and she was startled when Lavender laughed as she set a tea cup before her.
"So," Lavender said, "how've you been?"
They shared a smile.
"Good. Well, actually. You?"
"Okay."
"Good."
They sat in silence, sipping their tea.
"You know what?" Rose said suddenly.
"Humm?"
"Let's go to the park."
"The what? But this is a mortal tow-"
"I know, but come on, it'll be fun. We can talk some more!"
Rose stood and pulled Lavender up, and the two left, laughing.
Conversation seemed easier in the park, as it always was outdoors with Lavender. The two caught up on old times, but as the subject came to old friends, Lavender became suddenly quiet.
"What is it?" Rose asked, her brow creased, concerned.
Lavender sighed.
"To be honest," she said quietly, "You're the first I've seen of everyone in years."
When Rose gave her a questioning look, she said, "Work" and rolled her eyes.
Rose laughed slightly, and they continued walking for a while, rounding a corner to a path of tall bushes on each side. When they were where no one else could see them, Rose stopped in her place. Lavender turned back, questioningly.
"Where exactly are we—"
She stopped mid-sentence, and looked down, her eyes widening at the hilt and part of the blade she saw there, the rest already gone through the bottom edge of her heart and a couple of inches more down, in the width of the thick, wide sword. She could do nothing but stare in disbelief at the evidence of her "friend's" ultimate betrayal.
Very good Lavender. Keep up the good work.
Thank you :-*
CHAPTER ONE
Lavender looked around, settled uncomfortably in the center of a black oblivion. She thought of nothing, except the pain everywhere over her frail body. Her mind raced, her heart stung painfully, and every breath stole away her energy, until breathing became more painful than anything she had ever experienced. She leaned foreword more as she became too weak to hold herself up, and she barely noticed when her forehead touched the pebbled path. And she couldn't feel it at all when she fell limply to her side, sprawled out over the path, the blade emitting an odd blessing of numbness throughout her body, until her eyes closed, and she saw and felt, nothing.
When Lavender finally reopened her eyes and looked around, it was as if she was blind, and she saw nothing. Her form was settled uncomfortably in the center of a nothing, and she could not feel, or hear, anything. All that was around her was nothing. She thought of nothing, except the pain everywhere over her, more painful than anything in her twenty-seven years. And suddenly, she closed her eyes, her breathing slowing, her spirit relaxed. And suddenly she began to fade from earth, her spirit numbly disappearing from her reach, away from her body.
~Death isn't so bad~, She thought to herself, as her breath began to shorten without the slightest pain.
It seemed as if she were merely lying down upon a bed of silk, to sleep. Weight suddenly settled over her entire form, and she didn't fight the blackness approaching. She didn't have the strength to fight it. She didn't have the strength to be scared. She was tired; tired of fighting everything and everyone—tired of running against the wind, and swimming against the current. With a final sigh, that all throughout the magical and immortal and human realms alike heard within their minds -though most shrugged it off as if it hadn't occurred-, she slept. She slipped away from the realm of the living, and immortals, into the soft embrace of Death's arms, wrapping its arms around her in greeting.
Lavender opened her eyes and sat up, seemingly, after a time of forever. All she saw was white. Everything was a white haze. For a moment, she closed her eyes again. She felt terrified and completely overcome with the grief tugging at her heart. But when she opened her eyes again, she was bluntly amazed at what she saw. Her parents, walking toward her, side by side, through the haze, as wonderful, and marvelous as ever. They stopped before her, and she looked at them, her lips parting slightly with a sharp, shaky intake of breath, her forest-green eyes rimmed with tears.
There her parents stood, before her, in the flesh, or whatever they were made of here, and she couldn't speak. All the questions she had had for them, all the questions she had needed answers to during her life, that could now be asked, and she couldn't utter a word. Tears began to roll down the edges of her high, well-toned cheeks, and she breathed outward slowly, not knowing what to do, or how to even react. The form of her mother reached out with her hand and gently pulled Lavender towards her, enveloping her into a tight hug, where, then, Lavender fell to pieces, sobbing into her mother's shoulder.
Her father stepped over and wrapped his arms around them both, and the two held their daughter until her sobs ceased, to quiet sniffles. She gently pulled away, finally, to stare at them, still unable to speak. Unknowing of what to do, she merely stared, on the verge of sobbing again. She had been to hell and back, and through more sh*t than most would ever dream of. And it was now, this time, that finally broke her strong shields. This, that shattered her.
"Lavender," her mother said softly, in the mothering way Lavender had always dreamed of hearing again, "You can't be here yet."
Will wait for BUMPS this time!
Lavender looked up at her mother, her features blank. Finally, she found her voice, "I didn't ask for it! I-I-, Mum, she was my friend, I never thought—" Aleia Edenice held her daughters chin up when she tried to turn away, her other arm gripping Lavenders shoulder.
"My daughter," Aleia uttered fiercely, her eyes intently serious. "If you give up yourself now..." She stopped for a brief moment, searching for a way to reword. Then, "Lavender, it is not your time to be here. Your place is needed back upon Earth."
"She's right, Lav, it's not your time," her father, Kalean, echoed.
Lavender said nothing. She couldn't manage anything. She didn't know what to think. She turned her head to the side, dropping her eyes.
"Lavender, tell me you haven't given up! Your father and I-"
Lavenders eyes snapped back to them, and she interrupted, her tone flat, and higher than usual.
"Why shouldn't I?" She said, "Earth doesn't need me. It doesn't give a sh*t-"
"You shouldn't, because you play an influential, consequential role in the continuation of living -of life- on the planet-"
Lavender sighed loudly, shaking her head.
"Mother," she said. "I've been preserving the life on that d**ned land for about as long as I thrived there. There are so many other resources it can look toward in a time of need. I know that for a fact."
Aleia stared at her daughter for a long moment.
"Did you ever think of why?" She asked.
Lavender nodded tartly, "Of course I did, but there was no one ever there to give me answers to my questions. I was always asked myself why I had been led into that direction. But I never knew the answer. And then I hit a point in my life when I really didn't care."
There was a slight pause of momentary silence before her father finally spoke, his voice heavy, with what emotion, Lavender could not tell.
"Lavender," Kalean said quietly, "why is it that you are fighting so, not to go back into the realm of the living? Most at your young age of twenty-seven want to go back when offered. In fact, I have not seen one who has not taken up the offer. They want the chance to finish up their lives."
Lavender sighed. "My life is only paperwork, and dealing with thick-headed dolts of murderers. It's all that the pea-brained boss of mine has us doing these days. Despite the turmoil, he still keeps us, or me, for this matter, away from where I need to be. Everything I have needed to do, I have done. Everyone who I used to know and love is gone from me now. There is no reason-"
"So if another time of carnage would rise like last time, or perhaps in a worsened way, and you were still here in this realm, then would you need to return?"
"I don't see why."
Suddenly her father burst our in a hearty laughter,
"Lavender," he said, "you are as impossible as your mother."
A smile crept upon both women's' faces.
"I've heard many a time I am quite impossible," Lavender said softly, her voice a notch or so lighter, "My teachers thought it perhaps every day, along with wondering if I was absolutely insane."
The three shared a grim smile, though it faded quickly.
Kalean said seriously then, "Lavender, you have to go back, not for the sake of the living in general, though it is a large factor in this case, but for yourself. All the questions that remain now in your head should be answered before your death. You and your friends have years ahead together, Lavender. Do you want to just throw them away, inexperienced, before they have a chance to reveal themselves? Like a rose bush in the winter time. Why cut the stems before they've had time to blossom?"
A sly smile curved over the thin lips of Aliea as she voiced quietly, "And Damion? Dear, dear, I do believe you want a bit more time with him now, correct?"
Lavender sighed, and nodded, and they knew she had finally given in. Lavender stared at the two figures of her parents, acknowledging for the first time how they could tackle at her heartstrings so effortlessly, where it had taken years for any other to do so.
Her parents looked at each other, and then turned back to her, smiling softly.
Lavender raised her head, and asked, curiously now, "I haven't seen any of them in years. How would I know if all my ties with them aren't changed?"
Her parents smiled down upon her, in that knowing way parents always had upon their children-- in the way she had never really known, and had envied for.
"The ties of true friends, and love, dear, are never really broken in time, though they sometimes are lost," her mother said, gently, quietly.
Lavender reached out without thinking, and before she had realized it, she had pulled them both into a tight hug, a loving embrace missed over the years. Finally, after a long moment, she pulled away, and there was an abrupt moment of silence, where none of them really had anything to say.
"Well, we're going to get you back to the mortal realm as soon as it is possible, but for now though, just-", her mother was interrupted, by a sudden hidden presence in the air. And, suddenly, Lavender's parents' forms disappeared, though very unwillingly. Lavender fell, suddenly, and slept again, in the blissful, and, yet, un-blissful, oblivion only Death can give...
Though I think the entire Fan Fiction and Art board has not received as much attention as it should, I [and I'm glad to see a lot of others do the same] will continue to continue posting this story.
These last few weeks i've had a bit of a stopper on my writing, but during Easter Vaca. I plan on writing more. Sorry about the delay! :P
:-* Lav.
I must agree with you on that point Lavender. Too many unintrested people around, they just don't seem to know what they are missing.
Continue please
Why, thank you, love. :-*
Here's more story......
CHAPTER TWO
Lavender awoke again, and began to think that the times she 'slept' took forever; then the thought crossed over her, wondering if any time really had passed at all. Then she heard voices; a lot of voices. She opened her eyes.
Before her vision was an expanding pebbled ground, flooded over with...red liquid. She blinked, and reality came rushing back to her. She was still lying on her side upon the pebbled pathway, her cheek pressed against the rough stones uncomfortably. Honestly, uncomfortable was a ridiculous understatement. The pain came flooding back, though more intense than ever before, and she had to take deep breaths, trying not to pass out from the woozy feeling of the numbness throughout her. She wandered slightly toward the thought of if she had really seen her parents at all, but her mother's whispered words floated back to her, from moments before she'd disappeared.
"Let 'em know they haven't got the best of you. Then give 'em hell."
She groaned as an electrifying spasm of pain shot through her, and it was then she fully realized that the trees surrounding her were actually human legs, and there were people around her. She didn't have the strength to scream at them, or she would have done so already to make them shut up.
One realized she was awake, and on top of that, realized she was alive, and they all knelt down, looking at her closely. She growled, but the sound didn't reach their ears.
Though she was willing, her body didn't allow her to slip into unconsciousness. She continued to be alert, though her senses were fading as she continued to lose blood, and by that, energy.
She suddenly felt mortal hands lifting her up, and she fought at the numbness taking over her as she was lifted from the earth into some vehicle. Though, she noticed, no one bothered to remove the sword embedded into her. Every slight lurch or bump in the travel to a building she couldn't read the title of brought on a renewed sense of the pain that flamed from the wound. Hands touched her neck and wrists and sensitive stomach. But their voices droned on and on and...
"Stop...please..." She whispered, though with a weakened thread of sound so distant from that of her usual demanding, short-tempered, and yet at the same time, soft, voice.
A man standing nearest leaned down and stared her in the eyes as he listened, [though he was now just another mass of a blob, getting too close for her comfort] and he smiled sympathetically. She hated people who pitied her in the wrong ways.
"Don't you worry, miss, you're in good hands." He said.
Still too loud.
"Stop...quiet..."She whispered.
This time, though, none of them could hear her. And as they continued to talk, her head swam with an all-too-familiar dizziness, as her shields began to, basically, break in their places. She didn't have the power to stop it. And these mortals obviously, in her mind, didn't know how to whisper. And that, more than anything, was killing her.
Her emotions were running loose, and, though that was already a very bad thing, so were her powers...
"Brent, take a look at this!" Said the same, low voice that had answered her earlier; there was a shuffling of feet, then:
"God almighty, her eyes are red," responded the other, named Brent, apparently.
"Not only that, I've never seen anything-" The original speaker was caught in his words as the vehicle that carried her slowed to a stop, its doors opening again with loud creaks that she ground her jaw against. To her dismay, Lavender was lifted and carried on some flat surface, then transferred to another, as she heard more feet moving, scurrying, all about, strange voices circling all around her.
It was all so confusing! Everything was going round and round in blobs and in such animate, colorful movements, that it was making her dizzy. She closed her eyes, fighting the urge to retch, and as she did so, she began to slip, going to the unconsciousness she knew so well. But before that step succeeded, she heard a voice, curiously in a whisper, say to the others over her head, "This miss's been poison'ed wit' 'dat s'word 'dat 'us plumag'ed right inta 'er middle..."
Blackness.
shiver!!!! lol, good lav, please, keep goimng
Thanks Gin :)
INTERLUDE:
"Depth, death, and demise;
A bloody sunrise.
Blood, red as its name,
Lost of all of what was sane.
No more is there laughter,
Everything all hidden, away with a happily ever after.
So confusing, the truth hidden behind a veil,
It's only stingy as a ragged betrayal.
Days pass, and some turn their backs,
But no matter who they are, behind them is a past.
When things are changing, and never hitting an even chime,
All that is seemingly passing...is time."
I am liking
Big Thanx. :) Ohz..I edited earlier posts a bit. ;)
So! More storyz...
...LATER...
The first thing Lavender recognized when her mind awoke from its abstracted state, was the utter discomfort that radiated throughout her entire self. Her head surged with unsettled misplacements, misunderstandings...; she was a mess. It took long, struggling moments for her to gather herself, and to muster the strength to open her weakened eyes. White, everywhere. Was she back— no, she was in a white room. A hospital room. Not uniquely decorated: white painted walls, a white ceiling, white curtains open the outside lights and fresh, salty, sea-air breeze, a grey floor, and bluish-white, warm, soft blankets and pillows. A deep, fine little fire pit was to the left of her bed.
Lavender had not a clue of where she was, in her slowly-working state. She remembered what they, the weird people hovering over her moments before she had lost focus, had muttered between themselves.
"This miss's been poison'ed wit' 'dat s'word 'dat 'us plumag'ed right inta 'er middle..."
Well, what the hell did that mean?
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Lavender focused her gaze, and blinked, blankly, for a few moments, utterly surprised to find there was not only a woman standing next to her, but she was squeezing off the sponge in her hands, and leaning over her forehead! Lavender shuddered as the cold water trickled down the sides of her face, about her ears, and nestled in the bed of silk raven hair beneath her.
"Well, good morning, miss!" the woman exclaimed, in a high, girlish voice.
Lavender winced at the sound, then blinked a few times to catch the details of the woman. A habit of Lavenders, to catch and memorize details of others.
A plump, chubby form, was the woman, in a very loose nurse's dress, tight stockings, and too-tight shoes for her plump feet. The woman had round, happy-go-lucky cheekbones, a matching smile, blue, girlish eyes, and a pug-nose. She wore minimal rouge, and dapples here and there of a light scent, that gave off an air that Lavender would have laughed softly at, at another time. The woman was far too old to be youthful, though she was the kind of being, where she was still so very young at heart. A darling, caring, and still very attention-seeking of a character, Lavender noted quite immediately.
Lavender made to reply, but not a sound escaped her. The woman took no notice. She continued to dab and gently press with the sponge of cold water here and there about Lavender's forehead, and collar bone, neck, shoulders, and cheeks. The cold water felt refreshing to her scorching hot skin, even though within, Lavender was shivering with exhausting chill.
"You've been out for quite a time, you know. We all were afraid you'd be lost within minutes from the time the paramedics picked you up. And look at you now, staring up at me! I told them that you were a strong one. Yes, deary. I know you'll recover. I had an aunt like you. Very stubborn. My grandmother was like that too, I suppose. She died parachuting, you know. Yes, my aunt was a very bullheaded woman. She used to knock mine and my brother's heads together when she thought we were being stupid. Yes, Aunty Jane was...." The woman continued to ramble on about her life story, most of which Lavender paid no attention to, or had the strength to follow. However, her voice was oddly soothing, and the girlish tones so innocent, that when the woman again asked Lavender a direct question, she was nearly asleep.
The woman laughed shrilly. "Oh, no bother," she said.
Lavender mustered a small, frail little smile, to the woman's utter delight.
During the course of the next three hours, or so, Lavender knew quite about the woman at her bedside, who had stopped in her workings to take care of Lavender's well being. The woman did not express pity towards her, which Lavender was greatly pleased. She helped Lavender, but was not interfering with her prideful boundaries. Lavender was grateful of this woman's simple kindness, and she vowed to make sure, in time she knew that.
"So, that's how my brother was put in prison," the woman was saying, squeezing the sponge over the glass bowl at the tableside. "You can call me Berta, you know. It's my name. That's a lass. Now, you get some sleep dear. I'll come back after I check on a few patients around the hospital. I'll be back, don't worry, I'm not like the rest of these half-brained idiots."
Berta smiled cheerily, turned on her heal, and clattered out of the room, shutting the door with a snap.
Lavender breathed deeply, and averted her eyes to the blank ceiling.
Beneath the heavy blankets, she shivered, her muscles screaming in a knifing pain. She wished she could scream, but her voice was gone. Her insides writhed with a vile, potent, snake-like slime-ness that rose in her throat. Her mouth, dry as deep-fried cotton, sticky and tickling. She ached for food, water, anything, though she knew she could not muster enough of anything to contain such things.
Her usually unmatched, angelic raven hair was strewn out beneath her, across the bed, dangling over the sides in long strands, dampened and matted and tangled, void of the once healthy, silky tints. Her green eyes stared, dulled and passionless, angered and hurt. Her toned, compact body, so normally very enduring, and powerful, was weak, and frail, unable to support the ravenous, caged animal of her spirit. She could not get out of these bonds. She could not get out of herself, to be free. Detached of her own self, she could do nothing more but lay there, and stare at nothingness. She felt like a nothingness. She could do nothing, but wait.
Lavender detested waiting.