Crescending Staccato

The night was still young, in the surest yet most fearful hours of the morning. Midnight had struck about thirty minutes, by Livvie's estimation, ago. She was woken by the sound of a hiss, one that she had heard quite recently, but she couldn't remember where. Her entire body was nearly frozen in the dead of night where she lay, and she snapped upwards to gaze around.

Her eyes adjusted slowly, tracing the confines of the small home. She realized there was no open flame, giving light and life to the house, which was odd considering that Mel, now an enemy to the Tartars, was finding homage in the middle of Svalbard. They were the center of attention to any assassins who felt them a worthy target.

"C-can you hear me?" Livvie hesitated to ask after focussing on a single, gleaming point in order to help her eyes adjust. She was seeing almost as well as though the sun were illuminating her sweaty face. Nightmares had unfortunately ended her sleep. She swallowed hard, unsure how to approach her situation. She was in a stranger's home, asleep, in the wilderness, and the stranger had an impressive ability to fire arrows with haste.

"That's it!!" exclaimed Livvie mentally. She made sure to grab her shoes and put them on tightly. She walked outside, her socks still damp from the earlier encounter with the crystallized water. A smile tread across her face as she looked up into the sky.

What she saw was plainly beautiful. There was no other way to describe the romantic, yet completely rejuvenating and nostalgic spectacle in front of her. A nearly frozen lake was in front of her with snow covered trees, unusual vegetation for being so far north. Artificially planted, Livvie was sure, but she continued to trace the contours of the landscape. There was ice tracing every branch, every budded blossom that was ready to bloom but killed before the ever frozen spring could meet the flowers.

Snow covered the trees in front of her that embroidered the lake. There were about twelve trees stretching outward, and each one had snow about nine centimeters tall on top of it. The beautiful trees were being covered gradually by an increasing amount of snow, as t continued to fall from the invisible clouds above her. She looked up, searching, but was only distracted by a beautiful line.

The line seemed to split the sky in two pieces, one half appearing completely the same as the other. To Livvie, at least, that was how it appeared. An astronomer or an aeronaut would have quickly disagreed. There were stars covering the sky, but they were very faint when outshone by the moon. The stars seemed faded, but some seemed to glow even more triumphant that the satellite that acted as the centerpiece of the spectacular visual.

As she traced the line of great beauty, technicolor and flowing downward into the moon, she realized this is what she had read about, heard about, and dreamed about. These were the beautiful northern lights that sometimes compared brilliance to the midnight moon of Alaska. Svalbard's beauty had completely astonished the young girl as she clutched towards the heart of her garments.

"Terra..." she thought to herself as she gazed into the miracle of a night. She was alerted by a his and a the glowing dispersal of particles in front of her. Startled, she clutched her shirt even tighter, a move she'd regret. The motion, as though jumping backwards, gave her position away to someone who hadn't realized her. The young woman's action also released all the warm body temperature held to her body by the clothes and with its relinquishment, frigid air flooded inward. "What's going on?" she thought to herself as she felt a tug on her mind. She couldn't have realized who it was or what the tug meant. She felt unconscious.

"This is a dream! This is a dream!" she repeated to herself, confused as to whether she was talking to herself quietly or talking loudly. She heard another two hisses and arrows shot around her. One whizzing sound thankfully missed the bullseye, but the second only barely reached its target. Air was lifting um Livvie's shirt, and as though the element itself intended to defend the little girl, it cushioned the blow of one of the arrows. The only damage was Livvie's shirt and that through it, the arrow pinned Livvie to the ground.

"This is no dream!" retorted a familiar voice. Mel was on top of an animal, but was it the same one as before? Was this the same Mel as before? They both looked entirely different, stalkers in the night. They wore white clothing, blending in with the snow, except for the animal who was simply a white tiger. She wore a muffle, a scarf around her neck building up in front of her mouth. This would block any frozen breath coming from the maiden.

"Now fight!" she continued as she shot an arrow, a different hiss than before, it seemed, but still incredibly painful to listen to. Livvie's eyes started to blur and Mel cursed at herself as another volley of particles glowed into the distanced wind. She wasn't feeling certain that her arrows were striking true, but as odd as it seemed, a fire was started on the ground next to her daemon.

Livvie was about to complain that she had nothing to fight with when she felt something heavy in her pocket. She reached in there with her gloved hands and found a heavy, iron knife. She took it out of its sheath and started towards one of the flying, enchanting women that shot arrows at her and her newfound friend. She realized the heat and light coming from the ember, but wondered to herself, "How did this get here? Was it the animal...?"

She noticed that Mel dipped several, Mel counted two but in air they seemed to be three, arrows that were already notched into the flame. She lifted and pulled back with even more strength, further off the bow and released it into the air. Perfect shots, thought Mel as she watched three more plumes of illumination rise from bodies of daemons. There only seemed to be one more, which Livvie had already chased down.

The beautiful night took on a scarlet tone as Mel attacked her assassin. She clutched the knife, the blade coming outwards from her little finger. She jumped up with the blade clenched in hand and struck at the woman, only to find the blow in vain. The woman simply lifted her bow and blocked the attack, the wood so durable that only a scratch was found on it. She struck with the same assailing object towards Livvie who found the blow on her cheek. She launched backwards respectively.

"Blood...?" she thought. "Blood?!" Enraged, she lifted the knife from the snow as it had fallen when she got hit, and threw it at her enemy. She lifted the bow to block the attack, but the knife actually struck through it. Another plume of glowing, amber particles lifted off the wind in the distance as the woman fell, dead.

"Hmmm..." thought Mel to herself, entertained with the enraged little girl. She furrowed her brows and started to trudge off, mounting the white tiger beside her, towards her cottage. Livvie turned to see them walking away and ran to keep the pace with them.

"Who were they?" asked Livvie in desperation. She had just killed someone, and though it was in self defense, the thought was settling in. She would have released her anguish in the form of tears, but in such a frozen desolate place, that would have been coy.

"Witches. They were here for you, Livvie," said the mysterious figure riding atop the cat. Livvie was shot through with another wave of desperation and confusion. She didn't recall giving Mel her name, or even learning Mel's. It didn't matter for now.

"It was amusing the way you reacted to blood so harshly," added the girl as they walked through the doorway of the home. She lifted a brow and looked at her comrade, confusion also spreading through her face. "Where is your daemon? Was it cut from you? Did it settle?" she asked with an interest in her tone that slightly frightened Livvie.

"What's a daemon...? And how did you know about that? I didn't say anything! I only thought it to myself!" retorted Livvie with both question and exclamation. She was almost enraged at the way Mel was acting so nonchalant about the fact that they had just been marked for murder but defended themselves only with the murder of others.

"The look on your face gave that away, simply. That and you seem to be discharging this blood from your mouth right now. It is my best guess that you either bit your tongue or the side of your cheek was imprinted with your teeth," responded Mel as she shot a hand upwards to cover her mouth as she laughed, though if only for the rocking motion of her body, it wasn't very well distinguished that she was laughing.

"Who started that fire?" asked Livve. She was asking many questions lately, but the night was one that required explanation. "It couldn't have just happened! Where I live, we don't believe in spont-." she stopped and sighed. "Spontaneoulous gen-." She sighed again but this time the exhale was lighter, as though she had accomplished more by saying spontaneous as though she were a five year old. "Spontaneoulous generation! Yeah, that doesn't exist!"

"Spontaneous, and this isn't life. Who said that it was spontaneous anyways?" retorted Mel. Livvie was amazed with the intelligence that this girl had. Livvie was the smartest of her colony, reading almost all of the adult's books, including one on spontaneous generation. She had always, however, had difficulty pronouncing the word. She was amazed that this girl could do it right?

"How did you know that?" she asked, still awed by the amazing wisdom this girl seemed to display.

"Your words are spoken without pronunciation," came the reply. Like the night before, they both stopped talking and Livvie simply fell asleep once more. She dreamed of her holding hands with Terra, sitting by the shore of the unfrozen lake, gazing into the gigantic moon in front of them; cliché, but romantic no less.