Disclaimer: Not mine (excepting original characters, plot, the order of
these words, etc.) Everything else is already taken, dangit.)
Other: A) This is my first fic. I'd love to know what you think of it. B) Obviously I am not intelligent enough to handle this process, because it won't do what I want it to (ie space correctly, show my paragraphs, upload all my words, etc). Please have patience!
Four For . . . Flirting? By Spideymaan
"Girls!"
The three young women who had been standing laughing and chatting obliviously turned at the shouted word, and grins brightened their faces as they saw the figure approaching. With welcoming laughs and shouts, they beckoned her into the circle, the smallest of them giving her a fierce hug, which she enthusiastically returned.
"Well, babes, how's it hangin'?" she asked cheerfully, totally uncaring of the stupidity of that phrase coming from her. The 'babes' in question, used to the inconsistency of her speech (which ranged from idiotic slang attempts like the former to unspeakable eloquence), responded with a medley of comments, all variations on, "Good!"
"Where've you been, Laura?" the tallest of the group asked disapprovingly. "We've been waiting for almost half an hour."
Laura scoffed. "And when am I ever on time?" As the others laughed, she continued, "But I actually have a decent excuse this time."
"Well, out with it, then," the shortest, Krista, encouraged with a wide and extraordinarily devilish grin.
Smirking, Laura complied. "Well, see, I just happened to be hanging out at the antique mall-"
At this, the narrative was interrupted by a round of "Oooooh!"s from the audience, and Laura grinned in a mock-embarrassed way and laughed, "None of that, none of that!" It was common knowledge that an extremely cute young man just a year older than them worked at the antique mall over the summer, and Laura had set out-well, 'befriending him' was the term she used. 'Laying siege' was the group's general consensus of a more appropriate phrase.
"As I was saying," she said loudly over the teasing and ribaldry (originating from Krista). When silence again fell, she cleared her throat and continued. "Well. I was hanging out at the antique mall, wandering around on the lower levels, when I came across this new booth just packed with awesome old jewelry. And-very cheap, hanging in the back corner under a pile of junk, I found . . . these." With a flourish, she held out her hand, grinning wildly.
The others exclaimed in delight. Laura held in her hand four necklaces, all on long, fine silver chains, only slightly tarnished, all with round silver talismans at the end, each set with a different crystal.
"I want the red one," she said. "Finders choosers, so to speak. You guys fight it out for the others."
Amid a chorus of "thank you!"s, they pulled the other necklaces from her hand and examined them quickly. Danielle, the tallest, selected the one with the surreally beautiful azure stone; Annie, the quietest, the glowing golden yellow; and Krista, the short devilish one, selected the vibrant forest green. Laura, of course, remained holding the seductive, blood-red pendant, so dark it was nearly black.
When they had chosen their color, the four young women examined their necklaces with interest. Apart from the stones, they were identical. On the smooth front, surrounding the jewel, were a spiderweb of black lines, rippling out to the edges. On the back, fine cracks, almost like a puzzle piece, radiated from the unadorned center of the circle.
"Well?" Laura asked, still grinning broadly. "Put them on. They will be our emblems, our symbol of friendship and union! Kind of like the Celtic knots we used to wear," she grinned, "only more mysterious, and with one for Annie." She winked at Annie, who smiled uncertainly at her in reply. "So, what are you waiting for? Put them on!"
They obeyed even as she did, slipping the incredibly long, fine chains over their necks almost as one.
"Thanks again, Laura," Danielle said warmly, and Krista seconded, "These are awesome! How come we never find cheap stuff this cool, huh?"
"Some people have all the luck," Annie laughed.
Laura adopted a dramatic pose. "It was," she intoned, "destiny that led me to them. They had lain in hiding so long, waiting for the moment when I, by pure chance, put my hand upon them, and drew them from the darkness to their true masters."
As Krista snorted, Annie remarked, "You make them sound like the One Ring."
Laura shrugged. "And why not? Except for that whole evil and destroying the world bit, of course."
"Or so you assume," Danielle said mysteriously, earning her a round of guffaws.
"Well?" Laura asked after a moment. "What do you make of them? Not bad for five bucks apiece, huh?"
"And, of course, Laura tactfully mentions the price without sounding like she's hinting anything," Krista sighed in mock sorrow as Laura glared at her. "Don't worry, buddy; we'll pay you back as soon as we get some money."
"I was not hinting anything," Laura said, somewhat crossly. "You don't have to pay me back." She adopted another mysterious pose. "Consider them my gift to you all . . . of destiny."
"Yay," Danielle said in a monotone, miming waving a little flag. Laura put her tongue out at her, and Danielle pushed up her nose in reply.
"Well, I think they're absolutely lovely," Annie, too aloof to join this idiocy, remarked. She cradled her pendant in her palms as though afraid of breaking it and stared at it adoringly. As she was the artsiest of the group, Laura took her praise almost personally and beamed magnanimously at them all.
"And what does our resident Historian make of them?" she asked Danielle sweetly, and got a sharp elbow in her side for her pains. Danielle was indeed pursuing an Archaeological major in college, side by side with a Childcare-based one: an odd combination, but one that was uniquely Danielle. And, as the four girls had just graduated from their senior year in high school, college was very present in all of their minds.
Deciding she might as well answer, Danielle held her pendant up and squinted at it through the glasses she stubbornly refused to replace with contacts. "It certainly looks old," she said at last. Ignoring Krista's, "Wow, what an expert observation!", she turned it over and examined it a little longer. "I don't know," she conceded at last. "It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before."
"That's what I thought, too," Laura concurred. "Well, maybe we can do some research on it later. Uh . . . what were we going to do this afternoon?"
"What do we ever do?" Danielle laughed, gesturing expansively around them. "Eat lunch here at beautiful Panera," she pointed to the restaurant just a few meters away, "go to the bookstore, and see a movie!"
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Laura said, affecting a shocked expression.
"Hey, guys, check this out," Krista interrupted, garnering everyone's attention. Flipping her necklace over, she inserted one very short fingernail into one of the hair-fine cracks and twisted it . . . and the tiny pendant unfolded like a metal flower.
Laura gaped at Krista as everyone else exclaimed in surprise. "Wow! Look at this, Laura," Krista said excitedly, "all the edges are jagged now, and . . . there's this writing!"
"What's it say?" Annie inquired eagerly, trying to get a glimpse of it herself.
Krista waved her away impatiently. "It's not English-I mean, it doesn't even use our alphabet," she said. "I was just assuming it was writing. If you want to look at it better, open yours."
As Annie fumbled to comply, Danielle shot Laura an extremely odd look. "Did you know they did this, Laura?"
Laura recovered her voice. "I had no idea. Leave it to Krista to know."
Annie had gotten her necklace open. "Hey! Krista, does yours have a tiny picture in the middle of all the writing?"
Krista looked. "Yeah-looks like a pretty little flower. Ugh."
"Mine's a sun!" Annie exclaimed happily.
Intrigued, Danielle also managed to open hers as Laura tried, with little success, to do the same. "Oh. Mine's-" She stopped abruptly, and giggled.
"Well, out with it," Laura said between gritted teeth as she grappled with her own necklace. A moment later, she conceded defeat with a frustrated growl. "Perdition! How did you get yours to open, Krista?"
"Here." Krista reached over, inserted one fingernail, and opened Laura's necklace effortlessly. Even as she opened her mouth, grinning, Laura cautioned, "Don't you say one word."
"So what's your picture?" Annie asked, much to Danielle's indignation.
"I believe I-"
"I can't tell," Laura obliviously interrupted, squinting at her necklace. "Some kind of symbol, perhaps? Hmm."
"Well," Danielle began again, with an air of righteous indignation, "mine is a little symbol as well."
"Really?" Laura said, glancing up. "Recognize it?"
"Sure do," Danielle grinned. "I hate to break it to you, Laura, but I don't think these are as old as you were probably imagining."
Laura frowned. "What makes you say that?"
Danielle extended her necklace toward her. Laura frowned at it for a few moments, saying, "Now where have I seen that before?" Then, a moment later, she began to laugh. "Shucks!" she exclaimed. "Duped again! No wonder they were cheap."
"What?" Krista asked in some surprise.
"Hey," Annie interrupted suddenly, "Get a load of this!"
Everyone stopped talking and looked at her.
"See this?" she asked, pointing to her necklace. "This row of writing-just this one row- is different than the others, and that section of the circle has differently shaped edges."
"So does mine," Krista said.
"I have an idea," Annie said suddenly, and she reached out and grabbed Krista's necklace. Holding it up to hers, she pressed the edges together . . . and they fit like pieces of a puzzle.
"Cool!" Krista exclaimed.
Looking a little dazed, Laura also held hers up, and it clicked onto the side of Annie's, another perfect match.
Slowly, Danielle lifted hers up. "This is so weird," she said, a statement with which everyone heartily concurred. She paused, and said, "Now I have a very bad feeling about this."
"Come on, Danielle!" Krista said impatiently. "Just see if it fits!"
"All right," she sighed, ever the practical one. "I just want it known that- "
Her pendant touched the others, locking into place-and suddenly light flared up between the edges. As all four yelled and would have jerked away, they quickly realized that their necklaces were now practically soldered together, and that they couldn't do so.
As Krista muttered a choice expletive, the jewels on the back all flared their distinct colors, and suddenly the writing that snaked around all four pendants glowed brilliantly. As they gasped, the symbols on the front also began to glow their respective colors.
"Oh, no," Laura exclaimed suddenly. "Gods, I know mine! It's-"
But before she could finish, all fours girls screamed as they were wreathed in an unearthly brilliant glow. For a moment there was nothing but light, burning in its intensity, engulfing them all utterly-then blackness.
____________________________________________________________________________
"Uuuuuuggggghhhh."
Everything hurt. She was comprised entirely of pain. Pain was her world. Pain . . . and hunger. She was also hungry.
So much for melodrama.
As her senses cleared a little, Danielle became aware that she was laying, alone, on a soft bed, with diffuse light around her. She blinked, her eyelashes fluttering feebly, and was aware of a dim shape bending over her.
"Awake at last, my friend?"
Danielle meant to answer, she really did. However, at that precise moment her vision returned to her enough that she realized the figure bending over her was green, with a myriad of waving tentacles framing its concerned face.
"Huh," she thought distinctly, and fell back into pleasant oblivion.
____________________________________________________________________________ __
Annie was hot.
Now that was the understatement of the year. She was positively broiling. She couldn't remember ever having been this hot before in her entire life. Stirring faintly, she tried to speak or even moan, but couldn't.
Her eyes parted a barest crack, feeling disgustingly sticky and heavy, and she could make out two dim forms standing to her right, apparently arguing . . . over her?
"That is an absolutely ridiculous sum," one growled impatiently, "and you are well aware of it."
"Just what makes you say that?"
"Look at her! She looks like she wouldn't survive a day. She's so scrawny I doubt she can even pull her own weight. Look at those hands! Not a single callous on them!"
Indignantly, Annie tried to protest, but she was still incapable of movement, so instead she just lay there and listened.
"Bah! She may not be a strong one, but she's got clever hands and quick wits, I'll tell you that. This one isn't for hauling junk, fool! She's for making repairs, fixing meals, delicate situations that require a delicate touch."
"Hmmm. I've no need of a 'delicate touch' in my business," the other growled, but Annie thought he didn't sound very sincere. Interested for some reason she could not name, she continued to pay close attention.
"Hah! And what about what you were complaining to me last week, when you couldn't adjust your flux capacitor correctly because you were too fat to fit in the hatch, eh?"
There was a pause. "She is very skinny," the other said uncertainly. "Have you been mistreating her?" His tone was now darkly accusatory.
"I? Never!" the other spat, clearly offended. "You know me better than that, Drusis!"
"All right, all right," the first shrugged. "Sorry." There was a pause. "You know me too well. I'll take the girl."
They began to barter unintelligibly over the price, using terms wholly unfamiliar to Annie, as she listened bemusedly.
It wasn't until they agreed on a figure, spat on their palms, and shook hands, then Drusis drew out a pouch and gave several coins to the other, that Annie fully comprehended what was going on. She-she'd just been sold! Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Horrified, she summoned all her strength and began to thrash around, trying to speak.
"Look, she's waking," the other said, and the Drusis-shape came over and peered down at her. "You might want to sedate her, at least until you get her back to your place."
Annie opened her mouth to protest-but she felt a needle prick her arm, and fell back into shadow.
____________________________________________________________________________ ___
Krista was awakened, much to her disgust, by birdsong.
At first she was starkly disbelieving. Birdsong? How the hell would she be hearing birds? She set her alarm to classic rock, as always, a far cry from this pretty little tweeting. But-and her mind reeled-it was summer. She wouldn't be waking up to an alarm anyway.
Wishing she had the strength to tell the birds to shut the hell up and let her sleep some more, she instead resigned herself to painful consciousness and set about trying to make some sense of her situation. What was the last thing she remembered? A phone call. Driving to Panera. Hanging out in the nearby field, being eaten alive by bugs, while waiting for Laura, late again. Laura-necklaces-symbols-that glow-
Krista sat up with a gasp, suddenly wide awake.
She was, of all effing strangeness, in what seemed to be this wild meadow. To her left, a huge, beautiful waterfall poured itself endlessly into a frothing pool. Exquisite wildflowers bloomed all around her, their heady scent almost intoxicating. The grass on which she was sitting was soft as loam underneath her, and bees and hummingbirds flitted drunkenly around her, with the occasional insect-quick flicker of a dragonfly or the slow languor of a giant butterfly. To her right, a grove of trees, bearing delicate white blossoms that soon promised fruit, was the origin of the interminable birdsong. Above her, the sky was a clear, breathtaking blue, with a few puffy clouds lazily drifting around her.
Krista shook her head to clear it, but none of it went away. The waterfall still roared, the birds still sang, the bees still buzzed unmelodically as they drifted from flower to flower.
Ooookaaaay, she thought, now this is like the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me. How in heaven did I get here? Where're the others? Where's Panera? She gulped. I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore, Toto!
The surreally beautiful and somehow almost sickeningly saccharine landscape was as starkly different from the sun-baked, bug-infested meadow she had previously been in as the black and white farmhouse had been from the Technicolor glory of Oz. Except there had been no tornado, she had crossed no rainbow, and Krista was-proudly-a far cry from Dorothy.
She was still sitting there dumbly, pondering upon the strangeness of the world and how in heaven she came to be where she now was, when a relieved cry from her right made her turn sharply.
There, standing amongst the trees with her hands on her hips, was a vaguely familiar girl, swathed in a long lavender dress and tapping her foot on the ground disapprovingly. "There you are! We were so worried about you! Didn't we tell you not to go rushing off without telling us ever again? Anything could have happened to you! The other Handmaidens are frantic!"
Krista took a good long moment to absorb the meaning of those words. She looked at the girl still staring at her, realized she recognized her, then very carefully looked down at herself, soaking in the importance of the fact that she was wearing an orange robe. All of these significant facts led her to the same conclusion, and she took another moment to try and accept it.
Then, to her eternal shame, she fainted dead away.
____________________________________________________________________________ ________
It started as nothing but a faint rippling, the mildest of distortions in the perfect silence of nothingness. As it grew nearer, however, it gained power and volume, increasing exponentially until there was nothing but it, endless and all encompassing, tearing and ravaging through the darkness, a sound of agony, of horror, and of utter despair.
It was the sound of someone screaming.
Other: A) This is my first fic. I'd love to know what you think of it. B) Obviously I am not intelligent enough to handle this process, because it won't do what I want it to (ie space correctly, show my paragraphs, upload all my words, etc). Please have patience!
Four For . . . Flirting? By Spideymaan
"Girls!"
The three young women who had been standing laughing and chatting obliviously turned at the shouted word, and grins brightened their faces as they saw the figure approaching. With welcoming laughs and shouts, they beckoned her into the circle, the smallest of them giving her a fierce hug, which she enthusiastically returned.
"Well, babes, how's it hangin'?" she asked cheerfully, totally uncaring of the stupidity of that phrase coming from her. The 'babes' in question, used to the inconsistency of her speech (which ranged from idiotic slang attempts like the former to unspeakable eloquence), responded with a medley of comments, all variations on, "Good!"
"Where've you been, Laura?" the tallest of the group asked disapprovingly. "We've been waiting for almost half an hour."
Laura scoffed. "And when am I ever on time?" As the others laughed, she continued, "But I actually have a decent excuse this time."
"Well, out with it, then," the shortest, Krista, encouraged with a wide and extraordinarily devilish grin.
Smirking, Laura complied. "Well, see, I just happened to be hanging out at the antique mall-"
At this, the narrative was interrupted by a round of "Oooooh!"s from the audience, and Laura grinned in a mock-embarrassed way and laughed, "None of that, none of that!" It was common knowledge that an extremely cute young man just a year older than them worked at the antique mall over the summer, and Laura had set out-well, 'befriending him' was the term she used. 'Laying siege' was the group's general consensus of a more appropriate phrase.
"As I was saying," she said loudly over the teasing and ribaldry (originating from Krista). When silence again fell, she cleared her throat and continued. "Well. I was hanging out at the antique mall, wandering around on the lower levels, when I came across this new booth just packed with awesome old jewelry. And-very cheap, hanging in the back corner under a pile of junk, I found . . . these." With a flourish, she held out her hand, grinning wildly.
The others exclaimed in delight. Laura held in her hand four necklaces, all on long, fine silver chains, only slightly tarnished, all with round silver talismans at the end, each set with a different crystal.
"I want the red one," she said. "Finders choosers, so to speak. You guys fight it out for the others."
Amid a chorus of "thank you!"s, they pulled the other necklaces from her hand and examined them quickly. Danielle, the tallest, selected the one with the surreally beautiful azure stone; Annie, the quietest, the glowing golden yellow; and Krista, the short devilish one, selected the vibrant forest green. Laura, of course, remained holding the seductive, blood-red pendant, so dark it was nearly black.
When they had chosen their color, the four young women examined their necklaces with interest. Apart from the stones, they were identical. On the smooth front, surrounding the jewel, were a spiderweb of black lines, rippling out to the edges. On the back, fine cracks, almost like a puzzle piece, radiated from the unadorned center of the circle.
"Well?" Laura asked, still grinning broadly. "Put them on. They will be our emblems, our symbol of friendship and union! Kind of like the Celtic knots we used to wear," she grinned, "only more mysterious, and with one for Annie." She winked at Annie, who smiled uncertainly at her in reply. "So, what are you waiting for? Put them on!"
They obeyed even as she did, slipping the incredibly long, fine chains over their necks almost as one.
"Thanks again, Laura," Danielle said warmly, and Krista seconded, "These are awesome! How come we never find cheap stuff this cool, huh?"
"Some people have all the luck," Annie laughed.
Laura adopted a dramatic pose. "It was," she intoned, "destiny that led me to them. They had lain in hiding so long, waiting for the moment when I, by pure chance, put my hand upon them, and drew them from the darkness to their true masters."
As Krista snorted, Annie remarked, "You make them sound like the One Ring."
Laura shrugged. "And why not? Except for that whole evil and destroying the world bit, of course."
"Or so you assume," Danielle said mysteriously, earning her a round of guffaws.
"Well?" Laura asked after a moment. "What do you make of them? Not bad for five bucks apiece, huh?"
"And, of course, Laura tactfully mentions the price without sounding like she's hinting anything," Krista sighed in mock sorrow as Laura glared at her. "Don't worry, buddy; we'll pay you back as soon as we get some money."
"I was not hinting anything," Laura said, somewhat crossly. "You don't have to pay me back." She adopted another mysterious pose. "Consider them my gift to you all . . . of destiny."
"Yay," Danielle said in a monotone, miming waving a little flag. Laura put her tongue out at her, and Danielle pushed up her nose in reply.
"Well, I think they're absolutely lovely," Annie, too aloof to join this idiocy, remarked. She cradled her pendant in her palms as though afraid of breaking it and stared at it adoringly. As she was the artsiest of the group, Laura took her praise almost personally and beamed magnanimously at them all.
"And what does our resident Historian make of them?" she asked Danielle sweetly, and got a sharp elbow in her side for her pains. Danielle was indeed pursuing an Archaeological major in college, side by side with a Childcare-based one: an odd combination, but one that was uniquely Danielle. And, as the four girls had just graduated from their senior year in high school, college was very present in all of their minds.
Deciding she might as well answer, Danielle held her pendant up and squinted at it through the glasses she stubbornly refused to replace with contacts. "It certainly looks old," she said at last. Ignoring Krista's, "Wow, what an expert observation!", she turned it over and examined it a little longer. "I don't know," she conceded at last. "It doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before."
"That's what I thought, too," Laura concurred. "Well, maybe we can do some research on it later. Uh . . . what were we going to do this afternoon?"
"What do we ever do?" Danielle laughed, gesturing expansively around them. "Eat lunch here at beautiful Panera," she pointed to the restaurant just a few meters away, "go to the bookstore, and see a movie!"
"You say that like it's a bad thing," Laura said, affecting a shocked expression.
"Hey, guys, check this out," Krista interrupted, garnering everyone's attention. Flipping her necklace over, she inserted one very short fingernail into one of the hair-fine cracks and twisted it . . . and the tiny pendant unfolded like a metal flower.
Laura gaped at Krista as everyone else exclaimed in surprise. "Wow! Look at this, Laura," Krista said excitedly, "all the edges are jagged now, and . . . there's this writing!"
"What's it say?" Annie inquired eagerly, trying to get a glimpse of it herself.
Krista waved her away impatiently. "It's not English-I mean, it doesn't even use our alphabet," she said. "I was just assuming it was writing. If you want to look at it better, open yours."
As Annie fumbled to comply, Danielle shot Laura an extremely odd look. "Did you know they did this, Laura?"
Laura recovered her voice. "I had no idea. Leave it to Krista to know."
Annie had gotten her necklace open. "Hey! Krista, does yours have a tiny picture in the middle of all the writing?"
Krista looked. "Yeah-looks like a pretty little flower. Ugh."
"Mine's a sun!" Annie exclaimed happily.
Intrigued, Danielle also managed to open hers as Laura tried, with little success, to do the same. "Oh. Mine's-" She stopped abruptly, and giggled.
"Well, out with it," Laura said between gritted teeth as she grappled with her own necklace. A moment later, she conceded defeat with a frustrated growl. "Perdition! How did you get yours to open, Krista?"
"Here." Krista reached over, inserted one fingernail, and opened Laura's necklace effortlessly. Even as she opened her mouth, grinning, Laura cautioned, "Don't you say one word."
"So what's your picture?" Annie asked, much to Danielle's indignation.
"I believe I-"
"I can't tell," Laura obliviously interrupted, squinting at her necklace. "Some kind of symbol, perhaps? Hmm."
"Well," Danielle began again, with an air of righteous indignation, "mine is a little symbol as well."
"Really?" Laura said, glancing up. "Recognize it?"
"Sure do," Danielle grinned. "I hate to break it to you, Laura, but I don't think these are as old as you were probably imagining."
Laura frowned. "What makes you say that?"
Danielle extended her necklace toward her. Laura frowned at it for a few moments, saying, "Now where have I seen that before?" Then, a moment later, she began to laugh. "Shucks!" she exclaimed. "Duped again! No wonder they were cheap."
"What?" Krista asked in some surprise.
"Hey," Annie interrupted suddenly, "Get a load of this!"
Everyone stopped talking and looked at her.
"See this?" she asked, pointing to her necklace. "This row of writing-just this one row- is different than the others, and that section of the circle has differently shaped edges."
"So does mine," Krista said.
"I have an idea," Annie said suddenly, and she reached out and grabbed Krista's necklace. Holding it up to hers, she pressed the edges together . . . and they fit like pieces of a puzzle.
"Cool!" Krista exclaimed.
Looking a little dazed, Laura also held hers up, and it clicked onto the side of Annie's, another perfect match.
Slowly, Danielle lifted hers up. "This is so weird," she said, a statement with which everyone heartily concurred. She paused, and said, "Now I have a very bad feeling about this."
"Come on, Danielle!" Krista said impatiently. "Just see if it fits!"
"All right," she sighed, ever the practical one. "I just want it known that- "
Her pendant touched the others, locking into place-and suddenly light flared up between the edges. As all four yelled and would have jerked away, they quickly realized that their necklaces were now practically soldered together, and that they couldn't do so.
As Krista muttered a choice expletive, the jewels on the back all flared their distinct colors, and suddenly the writing that snaked around all four pendants glowed brilliantly. As they gasped, the symbols on the front also began to glow their respective colors.
"Oh, no," Laura exclaimed suddenly. "Gods, I know mine! It's-"
But before she could finish, all fours girls screamed as they were wreathed in an unearthly brilliant glow. For a moment there was nothing but light, burning in its intensity, engulfing them all utterly-then blackness.
____________________________________________________________________________
"Uuuuuuggggghhhh."
Everything hurt. She was comprised entirely of pain. Pain was her world. Pain . . . and hunger. She was also hungry.
So much for melodrama.
As her senses cleared a little, Danielle became aware that she was laying, alone, on a soft bed, with diffuse light around her. She blinked, her eyelashes fluttering feebly, and was aware of a dim shape bending over her.
"Awake at last, my friend?"
Danielle meant to answer, she really did. However, at that precise moment her vision returned to her enough that she realized the figure bending over her was green, with a myriad of waving tentacles framing its concerned face.
"Huh," she thought distinctly, and fell back into pleasant oblivion.
____________________________________________________________________________ __
Annie was hot.
Now that was the understatement of the year. She was positively broiling. She couldn't remember ever having been this hot before in her entire life. Stirring faintly, she tried to speak or even moan, but couldn't.
Her eyes parted a barest crack, feeling disgustingly sticky and heavy, and she could make out two dim forms standing to her right, apparently arguing . . . over her?
"That is an absolutely ridiculous sum," one growled impatiently, "and you are well aware of it."
"Just what makes you say that?"
"Look at her! She looks like she wouldn't survive a day. She's so scrawny I doubt she can even pull her own weight. Look at those hands! Not a single callous on them!"
Indignantly, Annie tried to protest, but she was still incapable of movement, so instead she just lay there and listened.
"Bah! She may not be a strong one, but she's got clever hands and quick wits, I'll tell you that. This one isn't for hauling junk, fool! She's for making repairs, fixing meals, delicate situations that require a delicate touch."
"Hmmm. I've no need of a 'delicate touch' in my business," the other growled, but Annie thought he didn't sound very sincere. Interested for some reason she could not name, she continued to pay close attention.
"Hah! And what about what you were complaining to me last week, when you couldn't adjust your flux capacitor correctly because you were too fat to fit in the hatch, eh?"
There was a pause. "She is very skinny," the other said uncertainly. "Have you been mistreating her?" His tone was now darkly accusatory.
"I? Never!" the other spat, clearly offended. "You know me better than that, Drusis!"
"All right, all right," the first shrugged. "Sorry." There was a pause. "You know me too well. I'll take the girl."
They began to barter unintelligibly over the price, using terms wholly unfamiliar to Annie, as she listened bemusedly.
It wasn't until they agreed on a figure, spat on their palms, and shook hands, then Drusis drew out a pouch and gave several coins to the other, that Annie fully comprehended what was going on. She-she'd just been sold! Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Horrified, she summoned all her strength and began to thrash around, trying to speak.
"Look, she's waking," the other said, and the Drusis-shape came over and peered down at her. "You might want to sedate her, at least until you get her back to your place."
Annie opened her mouth to protest-but she felt a needle prick her arm, and fell back into shadow.
____________________________________________________________________________ ___
Krista was awakened, much to her disgust, by birdsong.
At first she was starkly disbelieving. Birdsong? How the hell would she be hearing birds? She set her alarm to classic rock, as always, a far cry from this pretty little tweeting. But-and her mind reeled-it was summer. She wouldn't be waking up to an alarm anyway.
Wishing she had the strength to tell the birds to shut the hell up and let her sleep some more, she instead resigned herself to painful consciousness and set about trying to make some sense of her situation. What was the last thing she remembered? A phone call. Driving to Panera. Hanging out in the nearby field, being eaten alive by bugs, while waiting for Laura, late again. Laura-necklaces-symbols-that glow-
Krista sat up with a gasp, suddenly wide awake.
She was, of all effing strangeness, in what seemed to be this wild meadow. To her left, a huge, beautiful waterfall poured itself endlessly into a frothing pool. Exquisite wildflowers bloomed all around her, their heady scent almost intoxicating. The grass on which she was sitting was soft as loam underneath her, and bees and hummingbirds flitted drunkenly around her, with the occasional insect-quick flicker of a dragonfly or the slow languor of a giant butterfly. To her right, a grove of trees, bearing delicate white blossoms that soon promised fruit, was the origin of the interminable birdsong. Above her, the sky was a clear, breathtaking blue, with a few puffy clouds lazily drifting around her.
Krista shook her head to clear it, but none of it went away. The waterfall still roared, the birds still sang, the bees still buzzed unmelodically as they drifted from flower to flower.
Ooookaaaay, she thought, now this is like the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me. How in heaven did I get here? Where're the others? Where's Panera? She gulped. I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore, Toto!
The surreally beautiful and somehow almost sickeningly saccharine landscape was as starkly different from the sun-baked, bug-infested meadow she had previously been in as the black and white farmhouse had been from the Technicolor glory of Oz. Except there had been no tornado, she had crossed no rainbow, and Krista was-proudly-a far cry from Dorothy.
She was still sitting there dumbly, pondering upon the strangeness of the world and how in heaven she came to be where she now was, when a relieved cry from her right made her turn sharply.
There, standing amongst the trees with her hands on her hips, was a vaguely familiar girl, swathed in a long lavender dress and tapping her foot on the ground disapprovingly. "There you are! We were so worried about you! Didn't we tell you not to go rushing off without telling us ever again? Anything could have happened to you! The other Handmaidens are frantic!"
Krista took a good long moment to absorb the meaning of those words. She looked at the girl still staring at her, realized she recognized her, then very carefully looked down at herself, soaking in the importance of the fact that she was wearing an orange robe. All of these significant facts led her to the same conclusion, and she took another moment to try and accept it.
Then, to her eternal shame, she fainted dead away.
____________________________________________________________________________ ________
It started as nothing but a faint rippling, the mildest of distortions in the perfect silence of nothingness. As it grew nearer, however, it gained power and volume, increasing exponentially until there was nothing but it, endless and all encompassing, tearing and ravaging through the darkness, a sound of agony, of horror, and of utter despair.
It was the sound of someone screaming.