(Thanks to everyone on Tales of Asyre: Box of Magic, Butterfly In A Hurricane, Beautifully Chaotic, SpearOfHope, Irindiglo and Sokatoa! You all keep my imagination fed!
Also another great big thank you this time to Square Enix and this planet's wonderful Disney Corporation for getting together and giving the world Kingdom Hearts which inspired absentminded12 to create the YouTube vid which in turn inspired many years of creativity into my head!
PS Find out about or join Asyre at .net/topic/54030/25298362/1/ or .com/ )
The waters below a mighty cliff churned and fought with each other beneath a moonlit night. A small gale blew the leaves of the trees that clustered for warmth on the clifftop, their soft shadows chill to the skin and their chill whispers soft to the ears.
A body plunged downwards from the rugged cliffedge, sinking into the darkness of the night and the turbulent tempest of the gulf.
He was a boy, unconscious and falling to the seabed fast, the small medallion fastened around his neck dragging him down to more secluded depths. The boy's body hit the seafloor, resting on the bed with a soft thump, unheard by all who dwelled on the ground far above.
No water entered the boy's mouth; the necklace strapped to his throat made sure of that. Floating ghostly above the boy's head, the dull gold of the medallion sparkled with an unnatural light as the small ruby in its centre gleamed through the dark.
From the surrounding depths the medallion called them to them and they answered his call; they felt the familiar soul speak to them like no other ever had; the only being which had promised wildness; to run across spectral plains and dive into lagoons of sanguine dimensions. And so they rose from the deepest pits and crevices of the Northern Sea of Asyre.
The bed of this Ancient aquatic expanse was not silt, sand, mud or any other unworthy dirt. Vast areas of this oldest of all floors were rock catacombs, criscrossing in arches which shimmered in the shadows, bound thickly in the ice of frozen time. And from these pits there rose from where they had nestled for a millenia, creatures neither of matter nor form, but rather passionate spirits of a Forgotten world which transcended the simplicities of fable or folklore and had passed into realms where no mortal man had any place to be. They resided in patient dormancy below the current world of towers, farms, business and war, dreaming of how they used to pass over magma and stars back before the Beginning of Ages, right at the beginning of matter and form, before time had yet lit a sun to count its progress through the Wild Kingoms of the ethereal.
They strained against the chains that bound them Below and reached out to the boy lying sleeping on the bed, clothes and hair dancing in tandem to the beat of the ocean currents that rippled over and around him. The dust exploded underneath the sleeping form and bore him up and forward, pulling him away from the cliff-face with the terrestrial surface that it bore on its back, dragging away the confusion and noise of the breathing world and pulling the small form into the soundless recesses that lay below the earth, existing perfectly in tranquil water and encapsulating a beauty that the upper land with its dry rocks could never copy.
The boy passed unknowingly above glorious sights. Spirits twisted around him like a typhoon, bearing him forward in the tumulteous cyclone thorugh a tunnel of air alone, its sides flaring with the lights of the Ether and passing over sparkling crystal monoliths that rose from the sea floor, their inner lights appearing like stars in the black expanse of the night sky of the blackest shadows far below the earth, a perfect match to the sky with its moon far above.
Even blazing sunlight didn't wake the boy as he lay on his back on the fine grains of sand that made up the golden beach on which he lay. The medallion at his neck lay motionless, wearied to the point of sleep by the efforts it had made to pull the boy's body forward through the crashing tempest and up the slip onto the warm beach.
Now, under scrutiny by the solar eye, the boy could be seen for what he was: wet, for one thing; his shirt, jacket, trousers and shoes bore a vivid memory of being amongst the moisture of every kind that could exist above or below the earth; his light brown hair was flattened to his forehead and his gloves were darkened by the water they carried, but a great little point to note would be that he was perfectly living and breathing! The necklace had done its job well; here was the thing it had been obligued to protect, left to sleep safe as you like on a deserted beach far away from every scuffle, fistycuff, war and bloodbath the most violent creatures of the world could offer.
Shuffling footsteps sounded, falling deaf on the unconscious boy. They stopped and a shadow fell on his sleeping form.
More shuffling footsteps sounded as the person scurried away.
Silence.
The footsteps returned and a spider was placed on the boy's chest.
The shadow observed the spider, shook its head and picked the spider off again, scurrying away once more.
The footsteps returned yet again and placed a much larger spider on the boys chest, paused, observed its work, shook its head and removed the monster spider as well.
Scurrying away and returning, the shadow crouched down and bent over the boy.
A pale hand extended and rapped lightly on the boy's forehead.
Nothing happened.
The hand extended and rapped harder.
Still nothing.
The hand nudged the face a few times, then pulled at the top lip.
Still nothing.
Hooking a finger and placing it in the boys mouth, the hand tugged at his mouth, pulling it to one side, causing it to release an involuntary groan.
The hand darted back and the shadow with it, startled by the sound.
When the body continued not to move on its own accord, the shadow dipped back down again, greatly amused by this newfound ability to create a sound.
Hooking the mouth to the side a few more times to repeat the groan, the fingers then wiggled the teeth as if expecting them to be musical. When this failed to produce an interesting sound, the fingers grabbed the tongue and yanked it upwards, delighting in the more louder and twangy groans it made as a result.
The boy's eyes shimmered and flickered, eventually focussing enough from consciousness to become aware that his tongue was currently being pulled sharply upwards repeatedly. He started uprtight and the shadow flew back with a gasp, leaving the boy to sit with his tongue out, looking down at it and wiggling it himself, trying to dispel the discomfort it now held for whatever reason.
Moving his mouth to get the unusual, unexplained sensations out of it, he looked around and caught sight of the owner of the shadow who had taken such delight at being able to use him as an orchestra.
She was a girl of around his own age of fourteen, maybe a bit younger, brown hair hung around her face and her large, brown eyes stared at the boy from behind the hand that was held over her mouth, a look of surprise on her face which quickly evaporated to leave behind a pretty smile. Uttering a giggle, the girl skipped away at high speed back to the treeline.
"Whade!" was all the boy could utter around his mishandled tongue, darting up.
The girl disappeared into the shadows of the trees and the boy stood at a loss, alone on the deserted beach. Despite the warm peacefulness of his surroundings, the boy quickly became scared, his breathing became more erratic as he realsied he was on his own without any idea where he was and so, with another utterance of "whade", he gave chase into the undergrowth.
The sand had been warm in the hot light of the sun and yet the trees were covered with a blanket of snow. The shadows thrown down by the thick canopies was cool but not cold, refreshing after the heat of the exposed seafront, but this was lost on the boy as he hurried to and fro through the foilage. He eventually ended up in a clearing without any sense of direction where to go to find the girl or the beach or anywhere. A giggle sounded to his right adn he took off through the shrubs, crashing through ice-caressed bushes thick with summer flowers. His path ahead suddenly gave out into a long, wide ditch with rocky edges. More like a ravine than anything else. The girl stood on the opposite side, she giggled again and waved at him before disappearing agian into the bushes behind her.
"Wait!" the boy said for the third time, but, for a third time, the girl ignored him and didn't reappear. With no other course of action presenting itslef in his panic-stricken mind, the boy eased himself doen into the bed of the ravine. Once done, his sweeping eyes sought out the easiest place to climb up, his brain deciding on a place that was far from being "easy".
Sprackling up the rocky side with very little grace, the boy was almost at the top when his hand slipped on a cleft of ice. Gravity swarmed around him as he fell back down to land on his side in the snoy dirt once more. The boy panted heavily on his side, then rolled onto his back, his heavy panting continuing as his throat deformed a pleas of emotion to make it come out as a whimper. The boy closed his eyes to hold back the tears of stress that were welling up in his ducts and when he opened his eyes again, the girl was staring down at him. His breathing didn't ease, it stopped entirely.
"Who are you?" the girl asked innocently, her voice sparkling like water as it flowed out from the smile on her mouth.
"Nemo," the boy breathed out, breathing heavily, but no longer panting.
"Hmm," the girl smiled wider then darted backwards again.
Nemo was on his feet within a millisecond. The girl was scampering away into the pale shadows again and he ran as fast as he could to follow her, tripping on loose rocks and gravel in his haste. When he again entered the dim austure of the forest, the girl had disappeared again. Nemo's panic returned with a soul-crushing force and he looked around wildly.
She was standing between two trees about thirty feet away from him. He ran at her again and again she disappeared. When he reacehd the spot she vad been, he looked around again, she was ahead to the left this time.
He continued to chase her in this fashion until he had to rest on a tree. His breath came out in tattered rags and his head dipped with the lack of energy to resist the gravity that pulled it down. When he looked up from teh ground, the girl was standinfg so close to him that he let out a yeklp and jumped back, banging his head into a tree trunk. The girl giggled and it was so tinkly that Nemo couldn't help by gasp out a laugh too. The girl stopped giggling and held out her hand. Nemo took it after a moment's hesitation and allowed the strange girl to lead him the rest of the way to wherever it was he was going to.