Fan Fiction ❯ Fey at Heart ❯ Chapter 01 ( Chapter 1 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Rosy the Cat 
The adventure begins!
Anime/Manga: Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Drama / Fantasy / Romance / Supernatural | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 12.17.2003 | Pages: 4 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 219 | Status: Completed
The adventure begins!
Anime/Manga: Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Drama / Fantasy / Romance / Supernatural | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 12.17.2003 | Pages: 4 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 219 | Status: Completed
Fey at Heart
By Emily R. Bryant
Chapter One
Alex Andersen winced at the sharp sting from her ankle as she made
her way as quickly as she could from the bathroom she shared with her
little brother Adam to the small first aid kit in her mother's bedroom.
She had received a Too Large To Ignore cut while shaving her legs, and
needed a bandage, leaving her extra-careful in her movements to keep
the wad of toilet paper stuck to her ankle with oozing blood from
losing its tenuous hold and dropping off to the floor.
There were times she really, *really* wished they hadn't moved away
from their cozy Southern Californian three-room apartment to this
larger, colder, cabin in Big Bear. Having to share a bedroom with an
early-adolescent brother was bad, but at least it wasn't a fifty-foot
walk to the Band-Aids back then!
Not to mention that her recently-acquired step-father was a royal pain
in the butt. Do this, do that, stop doing this, stop doing that, obey
my every over-precise-and-exacting WHIM; she was of the opinion that
they were all better off back in Anaheim signing treaties with the
apartment's resident roaches and His Control-Freak-ness freezing his
derriere off up here all on his own.
Although, snow could be fun at times...
In moderation.
And the lovely stuff seemed to be Heaven's gift to lovable, vengeful
children who feel compelled to knock their step-parent off of his self-
supported pedestal, where his ego wouldn't have anything to support itself
and would hopefully deflate from world-consuming to its more deserving
peanut-size.
Why, why must the Fates torture people so?!
Tucking the loose end of her towel more securely within previous folds,
Alex inched her way into the bathroom, flinching slightly at the cold of
the tiles.
"Band-Aids, Band-Aids, where are the Band-Aids...?" she mused to herself
as she tried to orient herself in the still largely-unfamiliar bathroom.
"If I were Mom, where would I put the Band-Aids in such a freakishly huge
bathing facility?"
She opened the medicine cabinet.
"Wow, I've never met someone who actually kept medicine in their medicine
cabinet! This warrants further investigation..." She looked down at her leg,
noting the size increase the blood spot on the tissue had acquired. "...After
I find the stupid, *stupid* Band-Aids!"
She left the small cupboard open, moving on to the maplewood doors to the
various cabinets. It only took her to the third cabinet search before she
finally found the small box of bandages.
"Score!"
After hastily applying an appropriately-sized bandage to the still-seeping
wound, Alex moved to inspect the various pill bottles.
Minutes later, she left the bathroom for her bedroom, carrying an old receipt
that had various long words on it; the names for the various substances in the
cabinet. Far too many of them had set off subconscious alarm bells in the
seventeen-going-to-be-eighteen-in-a-few-days-year-old's mind.
A quick change into clothes, boot up the computer, and Research Girl would be
on the case.
God, she loved being a bookworm!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, this just made Alex's worldview that much weirder. This all smacked
distinctively of a detective TV show, or perhaps a mystery novel. And, as much
as Alex liked an occasional episode of Law and Order (tm), mystery novels tended
to either give her freakishly vivid nightmares, or be poorly written and thus
not worth her time.
Either way, she knew she had to show her findings to her mother...Who just happened
to be currently out buying groceries with Mister I Keep Dangerous Mind-Altering
Drugs And Chemicals In My Medicine Cabinet.
"Oh, what fun!" Alex snarked sarcastically to herself as she pondered her options.
Her first option was to confront William "Call Me Bill, Or Better Yet, Dad" Beard
about her discovery and hope really-really hard that he would crack under pressure
and confess. That option did not seem very likely to succeed, and was far more likely
to result in her, Alex, being heavily dosed with those mind-altering pills, or,
worse, dead by sleeping pill overdose.
"Thanks, but no thanks," the teenager muttered even as she stomped upstairs towards
her room, in search of some thinking space. Nightmares were now extremely likely
to be on her agenda tonight, if she lived that long...
Option number two was to wait for her mother to return from the store, get her
alone (a near-impossibility these days... Hmm, what if she said it was girl talk
or something? No, didn't want to run the risk of reopening the disturbing topic
of The Talk again; that did not go well the last time) and tell Mommy that she has
married an ax-murderer or something. That sounded like the best plan.
Then again, what if some of those pills had already been used on Alex's mother?
Then the woman might just go and blab everything to "Bill", and things would be
nasty!
This left only one option. This option would require entering one of the most
dangerous domains within the building. She had put HazMat on speed dial after
they had moved out here for the sole purpose that she felt some of the stinky
things within the room in question might reach, or have already reached,
radioactivity.
The room of a fourteen-year-old male. Casa de Adam, as their mother jokingly
referred to it. Alex preferred calling it Hell the Day Before Laundry Day.
"I swear," Alex growled under her breath, "One mocking word, one slip of the
tongue, and that little brat is getting a smack upside his head!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You can't be serious."
Alex glared potently at her younger sibling. "Do you really think that I have
gotten cabin fever and have slipped this much into insanity? I know it sounds
crazy, but everything I've found points to my conclusion. We're all in danger!
You, me, Mom..." She sighed, shoving a few loose strands of hair out of her
face in irritation, which knocked her glasses askew, which only deepened her
annoyance further. Absently resettling the spectacles, she waved energetically
in the general direction of the piles of pill bottles and computer printouts
which were spread haphazardly on the surface of her brother's hastily-made bed.
"I'm scared, Adam. No, scratch that; I'm freaked, I'm freaked out on freakishly
huge levels! Freaked freaked freaked freaked *freaked*!!! I'm tired, but I'm too
scared to sleep because I might not wake up! I keep thinking and thinking and
I just can't stop!"
She came out of her self-absorbed rant at a slap across her face, startled to
find one of the pill bottles in her hand, and the child-proof safety lid almost
off. After muttering her thanks to Adam, she shame-facedly twisted the lid back
on, setting it carefully down on the bed.
Adam blew out an annoyed gust of air, and then took on a more contemplative
look. "Couldn't we just call the cops? I mean, even if Bill isn't planning on
killing us, all of these pills don't speak of a sound mind. According to this,"
here he waved his hand absently at the various stacks of printouts and
encyclopedias, "A lot of these pills and chemicals are dangerous, if not
illegal. We could get him locked away for a few days at least on possession,
or probable cause."
Alex smiled cheerfully, fuzzing his buzzed straw-blond head in her glee. "I knew
there was a reason why you started dragging me into watching Law and Order a few
years ago! You wanted to watch and not be thought of as un-cool! That is so gosh-
darn cute!"
Any retort that had been forthcoming was put on hold at the long-awaited sound
of the front door opening and their mother, and Bill, 's voices floating
upstairs. The teenagers, however, were kept from putting in an appearance by
the loud booming voice of the town's Sheriff, Sheriff Robin Longfellow.
"Wasn't any trouble at all, Ma'am," he said to their mother's repeated thanks
regarding jump-starting the battery in the woman's car and then escorting the
newlywed couple back to the cabin. "Anybody in this here town would do anything
for Bill Beard; you just remember to get Ol' Doc to replace that there battery
sos it won't be giving out on you again. See ya around then, Bill!"
More pleasantries were exchanged, but they went unnoticed by the two minors who
watched all from around the corner of a landing. Brother and sister shared
desperate looks.
If they couldn't go to the police, what were they going to do?!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They came up with The Plan that very night. It was crazy, insane, and more than
likely "half-arsed", as their father would have pronounced it with his unusual-
for-California Welsh accent, bits of which Alex had picked up while the man had
still been around, which she in turn had accidentally infused into her brother's
speech patterns.
Oh well, it made cursing sound not quite as bad, so Alex didn't mind it too
much, for all that it just reminded her of the parent who had abandoned the
family, and that if he hadn't left, they wouldn't be having this problem!
They would be living in middle-class suburbia, being all domestic and stuff!
Well, to give The Plan a bit of credit, the situation was also crazy and insane,
so why not go for broke?
Alex was busy packing up a hiking backpack with a few changes of clothes for
various weather situations, as well as her favorites out of her collection of
books. She was rather sad at having to leave the bulk of her belongings behind,
but it was better to do without until they could get down the mountain and into
a non-Bill-friendly town to report him to the police, at which point she didn't
doubt that she would be swiftly reunited with her beloved reading material.
Stepping back to survey the arrangement of water-proofed bags strapped to an
aluminum frame, she let an annoyed gust of air out as she realized that she
would have to leave behind her Discman and CDs if she wanted to have room for
a weeks' supply of granola, trail mix, dried fruit, and bottled water.
Removing the offending items, she extinguished the glow of her small flashlight
and made her way quietly out of her sparsely-furnished room by touch and memory,
and downstairs to the kitchen.
Upon her arrival, she set to work raiding the pantry for two six-packs of
bottled water, as well as some bags of dried mixed fruit and some non-perishable
grain-based not-so-goodies.
Granola: Unless it has chocolate mixed in with it and is formed into a chewy
and sweet rectangular block, it is usually blah. But at least it would not go
bad if kept in an unrefrigerated pack for a week or two. Alex poured the mixture
into two gallon-sized zip-closed bags, thought about it for a bit, and then
filled two more bags. Food left over was always better than running out along
the way, after all.
Then she set to work readying some trail mix, followed by throwing together
some peanut butter sandwiches for variety and lack of spoilage potential.
Alex looked up from her work as she carefully washed off the knife used to
spread both the butter and peanut butter required for the food, and nodded
acknowledgment to Adam, who had just come into the room and started packing
away his share of the food. Unusually short both brother and sister might have
been, but they were surprisingly strong for their sizes. That would hopefully
work in their favor in regards to their escape.
Despite Alex's ownership of a driver's license, a consensus had been reached
that taking one of the cars, while helpful in speeding up their trip, would
have been too much trouble for the gain. Bill could charge Alex with car theft,
and have police for counties around on the alert for whatever car they procured's
license plate numbers and description. As annoying as it was, hiking it down
the mountain, interspersed with riding down slopes on their toboggans for speed,
was their best option. Not to mention it was far easier to ditch a sled and hide
in the woods until a cop car passed than to do the same regarding a car.
Their packing finished, Adam and Alex strapped their sleeping bags and inflatable
pads to the frames of their respective packs, double-checked the tightness and
security of the straps, and headed for the drafty old cloak room that was the
only thing between the back yard and the rest of the house, carrying their snow
boots with them. Boots on, snow jackets (light brown for serviceability and
blending in better, rather than bright neon-colored ski jackets) on over long
underwear, turtlenecks, and snow pants, grab the longish plastic sleds, and out
the door.
They hit their first plan snag at this point, however, when Adam absently let
the outer door slam out of habit.
"Stupid-head!" Alex hissed, her eyes wide and terrified behind her already-
fogging glasses as she stared up at the master bedroom's window.
The light went on, and sister and brother froze like gazelles caught in the
sights of a pack of hungry hyenas on the Discovery channel. At that analogy,
Alex snapped herself out of her fear-induced stupor when a replying thought
of 'And we all know that the gazelle is going to buy it in the end!' zapped
across her mind. Her face set in determination, she grabbed Adam by the arm
and dragged him off running towards the nearest downwards slope, and the
track the two of them had built up all winter. She pointedly ignored the
masculine shouts from back in the house.
Throwing down her toboggan, Alex made a flying dive into the light-weight
vehicle and tore down the hill, Adam close behind. They were in luck; the
day's snowmelt had frozen again in the nighttime cold, giving the track less
to slow them down with, so they were going faster than they had ever managed
on this run.
Alex instinctively ducked at the loud report from a gun up at the top of the
hill, a nearby tree branch exploding into splinters. She chanced a look back
and spotted Bill taking aim with a scoped sniper rifle the likes of which
would make even James Bond green with envy. She caught a very freaked-out look
from her brother, and turned back to face forward.
That's about when they discovered the six-foot-deep cement ditch in the middle
of the small valley between their cabin and the next uninhabited cabin.
And they realized they had too much momentum to stop before they would go flying
into its cold, uniform gray depths.
"Oh-- Crudnugget!" Alex screamed as both she and her sled became airborne, even
as she took note that her brother had just used language that was far less polite
behind her.
Oh, yes. Pain was most definitely in her future. Their future, really. And death,
of course, because if the neither the impact with the wall or the floor of the
ditch killed them instantaneously, Bill and his overly-itchy trigger finger,
accompanied with that high-tech, military grade-looking sniper rifle, would.
Her last thoughts before darkness consumed her consciousness were first, 'I know
it's cliché, but I'm too young to die! I've never even been kissed!', followed
shortly by a mental whimper and 'Daddy, where are you?!'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A world away and "under a hill", a bored sentry's thoughts strayed aimlessly to
the wife and children he had been forced to leave behind. He barely managed to
cast a silencing spell before he was overtaken by a rather violent sneeze, an
occurrence that seemed particularly odd considering it was June.
What was even more odd was, however, that he could have sworn he had felt a
blast of December cold, and his little girl's voice crying out for him.
He shook his head, putting all thoughts of the past aside. His queen wouldn't
let him leave her side again, not so soon. And anyway, if little Alexandrea,
or baby Adam, neither of which, he realized, were probably all that little any
more these days, after all of the years he had been kept away, were truly in any
danger, she would have used his amulet and popped up right here. The children,
his and Melanie's, were perfectly all right. There was absolutely, positively
nothing wrong. It was probably just his old mind playing tricks on him. His
family was not in any danger.
Right...?
*************************
Author's Note: Pretty-please review?
By Emily R. Bryant
Chapter One
Alex Andersen winced at the sharp sting from her ankle as she made
her way as quickly as she could from the bathroom she shared with her
little brother Adam to the small first aid kit in her mother's bedroom.
She had received a Too Large To Ignore cut while shaving her legs, and
needed a bandage, leaving her extra-careful in her movements to keep
the wad of toilet paper stuck to her ankle with oozing blood from
losing its tenuous hold and dropping off to the floor.
There were times she really, *really* wished they hadn't moved away
from their cozy Southern Californian three-room apartment to this
larger, colder, cabin in Big Bear. Having to share a bedroom with an
early-adolescent brother was bad, but at least it wasn't a fifty-foot
walk to the Band-Aids back then!
Not to mention that her recently-acquired step-father was a royal pain
in the butt. Do this, do that, stop doing this, stop doing that, obey
my every over-precise-and-exacting WHIM; she was of the opinion that
they were all better off back in Anaheim signing treaties with the
apartment's resident roaches and His Control-Freak-ness freezing his
derriere off up here all on his own.
Although, snow could be fun at times...
In moderation.
And the lovely stuff seemed to be Heaven's gift to lovable, vengeful
children who feel compelled to knock their step-parent off of his self-
supported pedestal, where his ego wouldn't have anything to support itself
and would hopefully deflate from world-consuming to its more deserving
peanut-size.
Why, why must the Fates torture people so?!
Tucking the loose end of her towel more securely within previous folds,
Alex inched her way into the bathroom, flinching slightly at the cold of
the tiles.
"Band-Aids, Band-Aids, where are the Band-Aids...?" she mused to herself
as she tried to orient herself in the still largely-unfamiliar bathroom.
"If I were Mom, where would I put the Band-Aids in such a freakishly huge
bathing facility?"
She opened the medicine cabinet.
"Wow, I've never met someone who actually kept medicine in their medicine
cabinet! This warrants further investigation..." She looked down at her leg,
noting the size increase the blood spot on the tissue had acquired. "...After
I find the stupid, *stupid* Band-Aids!"
She left the small cupboard open, moving on to the maplewood doors to the
various cabinets. It only took her to the third cabinet search before she
finally found the small box of bandages.
"Score!"
After hastily applying an appropriately-sized bandage to the still-seeping
wound, Alex moved to inspect the various pill bottles.
Minutes later, she left the bathroom for her bedroom, carrying an old receipt
that had various long words on it; the names for the various substances in the
cabinet. Far too many of them had set off subconscious alarm bells in the
seventeen-going-to-be-eighteen-in-a-few-days-year-old's mind.
A quick change into clothes, boot up the computer, and Research Girl would be
on the case.
God, she loved being a bookworm!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Well, this just made Alex's worldview that much weirder. This all smacked
distinctively of a detective TV show, or perhaps a mystery novel. And, as much
as Alex liked an occasional episode of Law and Order (tm), mystery novels tended
to either give her freakishly vivid nightmares, or be poorly written and thus
not worth her time.
Either way, she knew she had to show her findings to her mother...Who just happened
to be currently out buying groceries with Mister I Keep Dangerous Mind-Altering
Drugs And Chemicals In My Medicine Cabinet.
"Oh, what fun!" Alex snarked sarcastically to herself as she pondered her options.
Her first option was to confront William "Call Me Bill, Or Better Yet, Dad" Beard
about her discovery and hope really-really hard that he would crack under pressure
and confess. That option did not seem very likely to succeed, and was far more likely
to result in her, Alex, being heavily dosed with those mind-altering pills, or,
worse, dead by sleeping pill overdose.
"Thanks, but no thanks," the teenager muttered even as she stomped upstairs towards
her room, in search of some thinking space. Nightmares were now extremely likely
to be on her agenda tonight, if she lived that long...
Option number two was to wait for her mother to return from the store, get her
alone (a near-impossibility these days... Hmm, what if she said it was girl talk
or something? No, didn't want to run the risk of reopening the disturbing topic
of The Talk again; that did not go well the last time) and tell Mommy that she has
married an ax-murderer or something. That sounded like the best plan.
Then again, what if some of those pills had already been used on Alex's mother?
Then the woman might just go and blab everything to "Bill", and things would be
nasty!
This left only one option. This option would require entering one of the most
dangerous domains within the building. She had put HazMat on speed dial after
they had moved out here for the sole purpose that she felt some of the stinky
things within the room in question might reach, or have already reached,
radioactivity.
The room of a fourteen-year-old male. Casa de Adam, as their mother jokingly
referred to it. Alex preferred calling it Hell the Day Before Laundry Day.
"I swear," Alex growled under her breath, "One mocking word, one slip of the
tongue, and that little brat is getting a smack upside his head!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You can't be serious."
Alex glared potently at her younger sibling. "Do you really think that I have
gotten cabin fever and have slipped this much into insanity? I know it sounds
crazy, but everything I've found points to my conclusion. We're all in danger!
You, me, Mom..." She sighed, shoving a few loose strands of hair out of her
face in irritation, which knocked her glasses askew, which only deepened her
annoyance further. Absently resettling the spectacles, she waved energetically
in the general direction of the piles of pill bottles and computer printouts
which were spread haphazardly on the surface of her brother's hastily-made bed.
"I'm scared, Adam. No, scratch that; I'm freaked, I'm freaked out on freakishly
huge levels! Freaked freaked freaked freaked *freaked*!!! I'm tired, but I'm too
scared to sleep because I might not wake up! I keep thinking and thinking and
I just can't stop!"
She came out of her self-absorbed rant at a slap across her face, startled to
find one of the pill bottles in her hand, and the child-proof safety lid almost
off. After muttering her thanks to Adam, she shame-facedly twisted the lid back
on, setting it carefully down on the bed.
Adam blew out an annoyed gust of air, and then took on a more contemplative
look. "Couldn't we just call the cops? I mean, even if Bill isn't planning on
killing us, all of these pills don't speak of a sound mind. According to this,"
here he waved his hand absently at the various stacks of printouts and
encyclopedias, "A lot of these pills and chemicals are dangerous, if not
illegal. We could get him locked away for a few days at least on possession,
or probable cause."
Alex smiled cheerfully, fuzzing his buzzed straw-blond head in her glee. "I knew
there was a reason why you started dragging me into watching Law and Order a few
years ago! You wanted to watch and not be thought of as un-cool! That is so gosh-
darn cute!"
Any retort that had been forthcoming was put on hold at the long-awaited sound
of the front door opening and their mother, and Bill, 's voices floating
upstairs. The teenagers, however, were kept from putting in an appearance by
the loud booming voice of the town's Sheriff, Sheriff Robin Longfellow.
"Wasn't any trouble at all, Ma'am," he said to their mother's repeated thanks
regarding jump-starting the battery in the woman's car and then escorting the
newlywed couple back to the cabin. "Anybody in this here town would do anything
for Bill Beard; you just remember to get Ol' Doc to replace that there battery
sos it won't be giving out on you again. See ya around then, Bill!"
More pleasantries were exchanged, but they went unnoticed by the two minors who
watched all from around the corner of a landing. Brother and sister shared
desperate looks.
If they couldn't go to the police, what were they going to do?!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They came up with The Plan that very night. It was crazy, insane, and more than
likely "half-arsed", as their father would have pronounced it with his unusual-
for-California Welsh accent, bits of which Alex had picked up while the man had
still been around, which she in turn had accidentally infused into her brother's
speech patterns.
Oh well, it made cursing sound not quite as bad, so Alex didn't mind it too
much, for all that it just reminded her of the parent who had abandoned the
family, and that if he hadn't left, they wouldn't be having this problem!
They would be living in middle-class suburbia, being all domestic and stuff!
Well, to give The Plan a bit of credit, the situation was also crazy and insane,
so why not go for broke?
Alex was busy packing up a hiking backpack with a few changes of clothes for
various weather situations, as well as her favorites out of her collection of
books. She was rather sad at having to leave the bulk of her belongings behind,
but it was better to do without until they could get down the mountain and into
a non-Bill-friendly town to report him to the police, at which point she didn't
doubt that she would be swiftly reunited with her beloved reading material.
Stepping back to survey the arrangement of water-proofed bags strapped to an
aluminum frame, she let an annoyed gust of air out as she realized that she
would have to leave behind her Discman and CDs if she wanted to have room for
a weeks' supply of granola, trail mix, dried fruit, and bottled water.
Removing the offending items, she extinguished the glow of her small flashlight
and made her way quietly out of her sparsely-furnished room by touch and memory,
and downstairs to the kitchen.
Upon her arrival, she set to work raiding the pantry for two six-packs of
bottled water, as well as some bags of dried mixed fruit and some non-perishable
grain-based not-so-goodies.
Granola: Unless it has chocolate mixed in with it and is formed into a chewy
and sweet rectangular block, it is usually blah. But at least it would not go
bad if kept in an unrefrigerated pack for a week or two. Alex poured the mixture
into two gallon-sized zip-closed bags, thought about it for a bit, and then
filled two more bags. Food left over was always better than running out along
the way, after all.
Then she set to work readying some trail mix, followed by throwing together
some peanut butter sandwiches for variety and lack of spoilage potential.
Alex looked up from her work as she carefully washed off the knife used to
spread both the butter and peanut butter required for the food, and nodded
acknowledgment to Adam, who had just come into the room and started packing
away his share of the food. Unusually short both brother and sister might have
been, but they were surprisingly strong for their sizes. That would hopefully
work in their favor in regards to their escape.
Despite Alex's ownership of a driver's license, a consensus had been reached
that taking one of the cars, while helpful in speeding up their trip, would
have been too much trouble for the gain. Bill could charge Alex with car theft,
and have police for counties around on the alert for whatever car they procured's
license plate numbers and description. As annoying as it was, hiking it down
the mountain, interspersed with riding down slopes on their toboggans for speed,
was their best option. Not to mention it was far easier to ditch a sled and hide
in the woods until a cop car passed than to do the same regarding a car.
Their packing finished, Adam and Alex strapped their sleeping bags and inflatable
pads to the frames of their respective packs, double-checked the tightness and
security of the straps, and headed for the drafty old cloak room that was the
only thing between the back yard and the rest of the house, carrying their snow
boots with them. Boots on, snow jackets (light brown for serviceability and
blending in better, rather than bright neon-colored ski jackets) on over long
underwear, turtlenecks, and snow pants, grab the longish plastic sleds, and out
the door.
They hit their first plan snag at this point, however, when Adam absently let
the outer door slam out of habit.
"Stupid-head!" Alex hissed, her eyes wide and terrified behind her already-
fogging glasses as she stared up at the master bedroom's window.
The light went on, and sister and brother froze like gazelles caught in the
sights of a pack of hungry hyenas on the Discovery channel. At that analogy,
Alex snapped herself out of her fear-induced stupor when a replying thought
of 'And we all know that the gazelle is going to buy it in the end!' zapped
across her mind. Her face set in determination, she grabbed Adam by the arm
and dragged him off running towards the nearest downwards slope, and the
track the two of them had built up all winter. She pointedly ignored the
masculine shouts from back in the house.
Throwing down her toboggan, Alex made a flying dive into the light-weight
vehicle and tore down the hill, Adam close behind. They were in luck; the
day's snowmelt had frozen again in the nighttime cold, giving the track less
to slow them down with, so they were going faster than they had ever managed
on this run.
Alex instinctively ducked at the loud report from a gun up at the top of the
hill, a nearby tree branch exploding into splinters. She chanced a look back
and spotted Bill taking aim with a scoped sniper rifle the likes of which
would make even James Bond green with envy. She caught a very freaked-out look
from her brother, and turned back to face forward.
That's about when they discovered the six-foot-deep cement ditch in the middle
of the small valley between their cabin and the next uninhabited cabin.
And they realized they had too much momentum to stop before they would go flying
into its cold, uniform gray depths.
"Oh-- Crudnugget!" Alex screamed as both she and her sled became airborne, even
as she took note that her brother had just used language that was far less polite
behind her.
Oh, yes. Pain was most definitely in her future. Their future, really. And death,
of course, because if the neither the impact with the wall or the floor of the
ditch killed them instantaneously, Bill and his overly-itchy trigger finger,
accompanied with that high-tech, military grade-looking sniper rifle, would.
Her last thoughts before darkness consumed her consciousness were first, 'I know
it's cliché, but I'm too young to die! I've never even been kissed!', followed
shortly by a mental whimper and 'Daddy, where are you?!'
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A world away and "under a hill", a bored sentry's thoughts strayed aimlessly to
the wife and children he had been forced to leave behind. He barely managed to
cast a silencing spell before he was overtaken by a rather violent sneeze, an
occurrence that seemed particularly odd considering it was June.
What was even more odd was, however, that he could have sworn he had felt a
blast of December cold, and his little girl's voice crying out for him.
He shook his head, putting all thoughts of the past aside. His queen wouldn't
let him leave her side again, not so soon. And anyway, if little Alexandrea,
or baby Adam, neither of which, he realized, were probably all that little any
more these days, after all of the years he had been kept away, were truly in any
danger, she would have used his amulet and popped up right here. The children,
his and Melanie's, were perfectly all right. There was absolutely, positively
nothing wrong. It was probably just his old mind playing tricks on him. His
family was not in any danger.
Right...?
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Author's Note: Pretty-please review?