A/N:Just testing the waters. I need a beta for this story, PM me if you are interested. Review if you want more chapters to come.
If you do not like Jak/Seem, go no further.
If you do not like lots of description, go no further.
If you do not like minor violence go no further.
The rest: Have a nice day!
EXTRA IMPORTANT NOTES:
Seem is 10 in the memory of her first going to the pecursor temple.
The memory is very cryptic, but all will be told in chapter 2. So don't worry if you are going WTF? at the end.
The Jak/Seem romance will be most of chapter 2.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing.
Seem's memory, first person POV
The ridges of cold bristle under my arms. A hard hand pulling me. My feet keep stampeding. The ground changes to swept and flat. Now two hands clamp my arms.
Milky skin bulges beneath a fence of fingers. I look up, my head limp and puppet-like. Intense black eyes scrutinise me. I feel as though they are two loaded gun barrels. Fear crackled up my body and my stomach momentarily vanishes.
Suddenly I feel like I'm in a vacuum and I teeter on distant feet. A hand lifts, blood darts to the surface, cold air draws across. He holds the rigid rod above me for emphasis.
Light swims up its surface. My blood pumps. Hard, like worms under my skin. Fingers once again sink into my skin like sets of teeth. A push. My body screeches in the loss of control.
My elbows smash into the ground, nerves writhe frantically, bones quake violently and the pain coils upwards. My evacuated lungs spring to life and the heartbeat creeps into action. My cheek is piled on a cold, hard floor.
Currents of wind rub my face, announcing the beginning of a journey into the pit of pain. It rushes from him, like scared fish fleeing a shark. The air quivers in surprise as though just unzipped.
Tissue flails and shudders. Like waves of heat, the pain climbs upward. Blood panics, spills to the surface. Whipped again in a splash of red pain.
Wounded and crushed, my skin screams. Fountains of pain spurt out of my mouth. The floor wouldn't shelter me.
Again, senses shrieking. Skin inexplicably submitting and parting like water around the roasting wood. Blood gulps and rushes up as though thirsty for air. My body strikes out, convulsing, groping for help.
A towering figure behind me, an unpredictable tornado of anger. Dryness blooms in my stretched throat, my eyes wrenched of moisture, tears fleeing hot and cold.
It's over. The air settles, relief blankets my bruised shoulders.
Being thrown to the cold is like being thrown to a pit of piranhas. The cold rushes forward and tears off an invisible shroud of heat that surrounds you. But outside my home,the night was calm.
The wind prodded sand forward a few inches in a tumbling, drowsy movement. The thorny swarms struck my legs and lodged like beetles in the rubbery gloop of skin.
Fear fluttered inside me like a mother bird roused from her nest, wings beating my sides. Even though I knew where I was going the secretive emptiness of the desert terrified me as I walked on.
There it was. The temple entrance. The tufts of marram grass, water droplets filled up with moonlight like the opening of 1000 eyes. The invasive pin-tops of the grass dented my bare legs.
The metal railing around the entrance was beautiful. Delicate, fanciful tendril shapes like the honey I would twist over my bread with a spoon. It was all dusted with moonlight.
Air flung itself past me as I descended the hard steps. Black walls rose up, chiselled with age, blasted with dents like mouse-nibbled biscuits. I kept walking, invited and beckoned by that door until the darkness drowned me.
I reached the door. Boils of rust and knobbly, tapering cracks ploughed my fingers when I pulledthe dooropen.
Hard-packed rust coloured walls. Twirling fire in cone torches. A portcullis had been lifted and warm joy poured through.
Whippy currents of air scooted along this metropolis of passages. Light remained in a bubble around the regular torches, the tunnels seemed to absorb light like water on dry cloth.
I walked and bathed in that oxygen rich air. I never felt more in my element than I felt alone in this vast place.
And then, a figure.
There was warty, bronze armour, dead white paint like the salt crust on a dried pool and sharp streaks of berry red. A precursor monk. I thought that thesepassages were abandoned.
I froze. Air banged clumsily against my clothes and they were obliged to move. Fear drained through all my veins and landed heavily on my gut which wriggled like a disturbed snake.
I felt so uncomfortable with those two eyes bared at me, as much so as if they were twin holes letting in a slicing, cold draught. I waited.
My skin was sending me increasingly impatient orders to scratch my sand infested legs, my nerves practically seething to remove those spiny blockages.
"What are you doing here?" One of a thousand possible questions. And they were all dancing around like impatient animals inside her head probably, waiting for a barrier of shock and thought to lift.
The breeze kneaded my skin as I paused to really wonder, "What was next?"
I thought of everything I had left. It was like looking through a window except the curtains were woven from blood. The memories of the rod, smacking into my skin like it was bread dough, they all shimmered in my mind.
My house was like a cave, with spiked walls and nothing, no one where love and safety should be. A pain drilled in my belly like a rat gnawing me.
But I had crossed that ravine.
Hands of silky fear still crept around my skin, like a horsefly looking for somewhere to plant her eggs.
But that was behind me.
Copper-tinted delight was in front of me. Those walls were aching for someone to someone to inhabit them.
"I want to train as a monk."
End memory. Middle of Jak 3, third person POV, outside temple
The dune buggy jumped forward when Jak twisted the keys then the engine groaned with a sound of crushing metal. All pulsing noise suddenly wheezed to a stop. Daxter hopped lithely on to Jak's lap.
"We aren't getting very far, are we?" he commented, cocking his head at the stiff steering wheel.
"I'll check the engine," Jak said quickly climbing out of the ugly mesh of metal that formed the roof.
"Damn, we need Keira for this kinda thing," Daxter cursed. He started scratching irritably at his tail that was finely coated in compact sand.
Jak felt someone's gaze knead his back. He turned and saw Seem, alone and not far off. Her sunset-reminiscent eyes flooded the scene like spotlights while currents of sand swished across his vision. He turned back, deciding to ignore her blatant attention.
"Your car isn't working," she said in a flat, rustling drawl.
"Thanks for stating the obvious," Jak replied.
"Yeah, you gonna help or not?" Daxter asked angrily although looking comical as the wind was dragging him by his flag-like ears.
"The sun has dropped too much for your ability to work on your vehicle now," Seem said calmly. "And a storm is beginning." She blinked sand out of her eyes, refocusing her misty gaze to the sky. "We can offer you shelter for the night in our temple." The words flowed out of her mouth in an identical, emotionless tone. Seem waited with crystalline patience for Jak to respond.
He shifted into a more comfortable stance, his electric blue eyes directly facing hers and glimmering with obstinate challenge. "Do we have any choice?" he asked defiantly. The sun charged sand picked at his clothing in the whirling winds.
"The storms are fatal if you remain exposed to them for to long," she said, her face as animate as a slab of marble.
"Eh Jak, I don't want to end up like that," Daxter said nervously pointing to a thick bone bedded in the stirring sands. Its splintered surface had been scoured clean and bleached by the elements. Seem's eyes, twin pools of lava, shimmered.
"Okay, we'll stay and we'll fix the car tomorrow morning," Jak said, face muscles twitching.
Seem stood, looking almost regal, with the sand-strewn winds pushing feebly at her heavy, textured skirts. "Follow me," she said in a serene, distant voice before turning and walking in perfectly measured footsteps back to the temple. Daxter sprung up to Jak's padded shoulder, adjusting his ebony claws for expert grip.
Seem led them to a cavernous, airy chamber in the central temple. Its sand packed walls glowed eerily orange in the silken torchlight. Rock-hewn stairs and passages branched out from the many arched exits in the room. Seem walked to the left leading them up an engraved spiral staircase. It opened into a musty-smelling room, covered in irregular red tiles with wooden shutters at the windows. Daxter's tiny body shivered in the sucking draught.
"Wait here," Seem ordered in a voice that sounded like sand being rubbed against a curtain. She indicated a crude table and chairs all made from smooth, cloud-grey rock. When she left Daxter opened his mouth again. "Whoa! This temple is big! Musta taken a whole swimming pool of monks to build."
"What does Seem want with us," Jak said thinking of the soft spoken and hypnotic moving monk.
"Our autographs?" Daxter suggested with a grin.
Seem returned carrying a green painted tray. On it were several wooden cups and a plate of golden brown bread. She bent gracefully to set it on the table and sat down opposite Jak, oblivious to her restrictive garments.
"This bread better not have sand in it," Daxter said cautiously. He tore off a crusty chunk and chewed it, rolling his eyes in thought. "No, it's edible," he reassured them and he crammed another puffy piece into his mouth. Seem took a cup off the tray, twining her slender, pale fingers around it and sat straight-backed on the streaked rock.
Jak lifted up a cup and found it full of frothy, purplish liquid. Seem took a sip, carefully avoiding splashes tarnishing her brilliant white face. Jak looked back at the drink and its radiant surface glinted innocuously in his hard eyes.
We'll stop here. If you have comments, post away.