Yoyo, I know this took forever... and so it should be HUGE right? Well, truth is... ummmm... anyway, I wrote the draft for this (by hand, scary :3) on my birthday. That was a month ago today - I didnt seriously notice until now...

Points of awesomeness for all those who guess who the character is in the first half (*clue: the character telling the second part is a Gardian)

NOTE: the first line is the random bit I usually put in with italics, but as the first little bit is in italics I put it in normal...confused?

song: Hoodoo, MUSE


I look into the darkness... and what do I see?... An old man... haggard... beckoning to me...

It should be cold, even though It is not. The changing landscapes, the rolling hills, the sandless beaches, everything has It. The never ending storm. Shattering darkness. Laughter. Blood. Fear.

Not cold.

Never cold.

It is a whirlwind, a hurricane, a sandstorm... of nothing.

It generates the skies, the moon, the stars. Built from Its own flesh. It surrounds me – and It is me. All I can see. All I want It to be.

I see It in the air I believe I breath, feel It in the sand I believe I walk on. I think I run my hand through my hair, but in reality It touches It in a never ending swirl of nothing.

How can this be?

How can something that is nothing logically become something?

"It is because you believe..."

The voice drifts through It, reaching my ears. I believe I can hear It, but does It have a voice?

"Only if you want me to..."

The voice of It is drifting, never here nor there. The inbetween.

"Oh, how clever you are, Rider..."

It sounds familiar, that mocking, intelligent tone. One that makes me feel very angry.

"Yesss..." It hisses, "Get angry... you know that makes everything go away..."

I spin around—I believe I do. There is no logical way to tell. It never changes.

"All you need to do is believe, Rider..."

I want to yell, but believe It cannot hear me.

"What a pity. The little man cannot fix what he cannot see..."

The words are ones I have heard before, though many years ago. The voice of It chuckles. It sounds like the wind. It is the wind. I am floating over It. Within It. Flying.

"Do you want to know how long it has been?"

I do not wish to find out what It means, but It is louder, getting louder still as I begin to fall.

"Too long. It is all your fault. You, who cannot even remember..."

Maybe I have always been falling.

Maybe that is the point.

The cup is empty. Instead of waving the bartender I wave the glass. Looking into the base as it passes over the crest carved into the wood, the feeling of melancholy returns. That dream, it feels like a long time ago. But I remind myself it was not.

The glass stops moving. The voice from my dream, it was right. I am a coward, even if it did not say so in as many words.

It is amazing how soon one reverts back to old habits.

I focus on a small bug, watching it scuttle across the beer stained bench.

I've been here before. The way I feel. The broken seat by the bar. The empty glass. The glass that is always empty. Like my heart. Only my heart is not empty.

It is simply missing a piece.

Once upon a time I believed it would be found at the bottom of a glass. And so I drank. Until no bar on the west coast would take me. I got into fights. I stole. Lived in the gutter most of the time. The really sad part is I began to forget the real reason I was drinking. I forgot about the missing piece. I forgot what I had been. And that made me remember what I had become.

The bug comes closer. Inching. Stopping. It's antennae twitch.

I look once more into the bottom of the glass. What I look for is not there.

In one deft movement, I upend it over the bug.

Now the glass is not completely empty.


"Looks to be a storm approaching," mutters the bartender. Everyone in the small seaside pub can hear him. And all pretend they hadn't.

A new comer pushes the door and it closes, shutting out the cold and the blasting wind with it.

A storm approaching. Now there is something rather ironic.

You have no idea, I think, staring at the nearly full glass before me. That is what my companion would say. It is not and he is wrong. The glass was once full, but what little I have taken has made it empty. And it may as well be empty.

You need to stop doing that, girl. The other door, the one by the bar that leads to the private outhouses, which are only holes in the ground fenced off by waist high stones (so, very secure), opens.

I shudder with the blast of cold air. The course of drugs either haven't actually started to work in the time they assured me that they would, or are already beginning to wear off. I shudder again, this time not from the cold.

It hurts. Everything.

At the moment it is kind of okay. It sort of is if I don't move.

"It's cold out there," he breaths, sitting again down at the end of the table. It is small, and in the corner opposite the fire. I want to sit over there, it is too cold between two doors leading to the outside. He thinks I shouldn't, says I need to stay awake this time. The drugs aren't exactly helping, and neither is the blood loss and the pain. The thick and heavy coat he made me wear does not that much good, either. I'm sweating like a stuck pig, never mind the fever.

"Really?" I ask in a sarcastic tone, shivering again as the old man comes back to the bar from the same place.

"Rather busy this evening, don't you think?" he chooses to ignore my question, rubbing his hands together under the table. As if I don't get it. He never exactly listens that much to me anyway. "Are you going to drink that?"

He looks at me expectantly and I return it.

What do you think?

He takes the glass and nearly drains it.

"Whatever happened to watching how much you put away?"

He points at me with a waving finger as the rest is vastly swallowed. "Depends..." he pauses to belch, "depends on the person, and, of course, what they will be doing in the morning."

I snort with laughter. I get shot a filthy look as he stands to retrieve another. That's so like him.

Shaking my head, my attention is drawn to where the old man was sitting at the bar. He has returned to the outhouses, leaving behind his glass, upturned over a bug.

The shaking has gotten worse. Under the table I'm rubbing furiously at my right arm. There's a stab at my temple. My knee screams as I shift my leg. It all hurts. I don't know what more. I want to die. Why can't it just be over?

"What did I say about being negative?"

"Lücienn, you didn't," I stare at him, frowning. My vision has just greyed out. I'm burning up.

He swears, hastily putting down the three glasses he has just collected from the bar.

I hope you payed for that, I shoot in his general direction as he clamps one hand over my arm and the other on my stomach. That's not going to exactly help, now is it?

Shut up, you're not making sense.

I'm not making sense? How much have you had?

The outside door opens, the one facing the sea, and I swear, though I don't know whether it was inside my head or not and do not particularly care.

"Shi-it," Ellen chimes, coming in from the cold (to relieve the babysitter, I can't help thinking in a sudden fury). She does pretty much the same thing as Lücienn.

"I don't think the drug is working."

We both look at him, though I have to guess roughly where he is.

"What?"

I roll my eyes, reaching out to grab the front of his cloak. I don't exactly know why.

"You are an..." I can't get it out. I can see the word idiot in my head, its right there next to dickhead and moron. Yet for some reason it just doesn't make it to my mouth.

It feels like I'm sitting right next to the fire. I can feel the heat as it rises, coming closer. Are you sure we aren't next to the fire? It's so weird. Like everything has suddenly been consumed by the heat. But for some reason I don't really feel it. On the inside. Like the world is burning but somewhere deep inside me is a place so very cold that the fire is moving away from it to preserve its own existence. I don't like it. I've had this dream before. And I know how it ends.

I try to reach out with my body at first. Nothing happens. So I give that up and go after it with my mind. Still, the fire moves away. It moves faster the more I move towards it, doesn't cease nor slow whenever I stop.

And I have to. Have to stop.

I can't reach it.

It is too far away.

Like looking up at the moon from the bottom of a well. You jump and jump, claw at the walls, scream. But the sky never comes closer.


Did you guess? (if you did, please don't be mad. I do compensate for the 'additions' - which probably gave it away - by, ummm...yeah. Don't be mad about that either.) It is kind of obvious, but you never know... :#

R&R!

Maximoose :3

-I was in a dark place when I wrote this. In a way I still am.