Ch. 21 Origin of the Sky
From: Arwen17
To: Libitine
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 3:56 pm
"Dustin" Leah's voice was strangely high-pitched to Dustin's ears. "I think you should go check on Sky."
"What?" Dustin asked with exasperation. You kiss a girl and she tells you to go find the other girl?
Leah was still not looking at him, staring off into the other direction. "Just make sure she is all right and...tell her...tell her I'm sorry."
"Why?" Dustin asked curiously.
"We fought over something really stupid."
"Ok..." Dustin stood up, "And are you coming back in a little while?"
"Yes..in a little while." came Leah's quiet reply.
Dustin finally left, glancing back at her many times, wondering what he had done wrong.
"What do you want?" Leah asked when she and Mab were finally alone. Leah didn't want Dustin, nor Sky, nor anyone else to get caught up in this mess if she could help it.
Moira kicked a stone and sent it flying a couple of feet. She reached her front door and discovered a blond girl exiting. "Who are you?" Moira asked with little patience.
"Oh, I'm Sky, Dustin's cousin. Have you seen Leah or Dustin anywhere?" the girl explained.
"No." Moira sighed.
Words spilled from Sky,"Your daughter, she's really...something else."
"Is that an insult or a compliment?" Moira inquired.
"I don't know." Sky spoke honestly.
Moira actually gave a dry laugh at that. Today had been far too exhausting, Moira felt like she was close to losing her mind again. "Find Leah and tell her to come home, will you?"
Sky ran into Dustin on the way to find Leah, literally ran into him. They both managed to knock each other to the ground. "Damn you, Sky!" Dustin groaned in the dirt.
"Already done." Sky giggled as she got back to her feet.
"You have no sense at all." Dustin complained. Sky helped pull Dustin to his feet. "Where's Leah?"
"She's by the road where I left her."
"Why did you leave her?" Sky asked a little surprised.
"Because she asked me to and she said to tell you She was sorry."
"Leah!" the Sky's lunatic shriek reached Leah and she watched Sky bolting headlong through rocks and other obstacles without slowing down a bit.
"Sky." Leah whispered to herself. This was not good. Mab was still here.
From: Libitine
To: Arwen17
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 9:15 pm
The relief Mab experienced from Leah's consent to come to her was enough to calm her fast-beating heart. Quite a bit had happened in the past few hours and it seemed as though time had doubled its speed, just for her own torture.
"Leah," She said. "Moira, your mother, Moira came to me about your powers." She had nearly forgotten why she had appeared to Leah, but the answer came back quickly. Never, to Mab's knowledge, had she been this frazzled.
"She says you are having trouble controlling them." Mab whispered. "And she had petitioned me to help you, train you, in both the control and the discovery of your other abilities. You need to come with me."
If the girl complied, which Mab prayed she would, the Queen figured she could grab hold of everything and decide exactly what her next plan of action was to be. Right now, she was taking advantage of standing their amongst the villagers, and was letting them all feel her presence, the magical energy Mab sometimes gave off. Sure, it was a bit sneaky and invasive but if she was standing there she might as well.
Because, of course, she needed their response. She needed them to flood her temples and give her sacrifices and cry her name. Mab needed their love and their belief so she could live long enough to meet the child inside her.
"So you need to come with me," Mab said, puzzled as to why Leah had yet to respond. It was then the girl whispered something that caused Mab's eyes to widen.
Sky.
"Sky?!"
The name! Mordred's Sky! The Sky Idath had told her about. It was this girl, some girl, come after Leah. Oh! She had found her. Mab was so very close to finding her.
"Where is Sky? Let me see her."
It didn't take long for the Sky in question to reach Leah. She bounded over, throwing her arms around Moira's little girl and spinning her around.
"Oh Leah!" The girl cried. "I accept your apology and pray you accept my own. I will hurt you no more."
The girl was beautiful, Mab decided upon seeing her. She certainly looked regal, with her bright blue eyes and perfect curls. A crown would bring out the gold in her hair quite nicely.
"Leah?" Sky said, ending the embrace and staring at her friend in confusion. "Leah, what are you looking at? What has captivated you so? Oh Leah!"
From: Arwen17
To: Libitine
Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:09 am
"Oh Leah!" Sky gasped with shock.
Sky suddenly knew what Leah was preoccupied with as Mab appeared before her.
"No." Sky found her voice.
Leah turned to looked into Sky's stricken face.
"Sky, what's wrong?" Leah asked her.
"I know who that woman is and I know what she wants." Sky's voice flooded with fear. "The answer is no."
And Sky fled toward the woods.
"Sky!" Leah called after her, bewildered.
Sky stopped as she reached the first few trees and pressed her face against the rough bark of one, tears silently rolling down her face.
"Sky!" Leah's shout came again
"Sky what is wrong? Why did you run?" Leah gasped out, her breathing laboured from running.
Leah tried to touch her shoulder, but Sky jerked away.
"No! I will not go back to that place ever! You have no idea what I witnessed! What he did!"
Sky finally allowed Leah to touch her and they both were hugging, Leah trying to comfort her.
"He was completely mad, Leah! Mad! But it still doesn't justify the things he did!"
"Who is he?" Leah whispered to her gently.
Sky heaved a heavy sigh, "My father, King Mordred."
Horror ran through Leah at this new information, but she hugged Sky closer anyway.
"It doesn't matter. You are here with me now. And I'll protect you." Leah reassured her.
Sky's face was buried against Leah's chest while she sobbed her heart out. Leah looked up and saw that Mab had followed them. Leah's heart sped up slightly, but then her attention turned back to Sky who was trying to tell her something through her agony.
"Leah..." Sky whispered.
"What is it?"
"Leah, he...he" Sky's voice reached hysterically pitch and cracked on the next words, "he raped me."
Leah felt like the blood in her veins had turned to ice. Horror and sympathy rushing through her and something else too...rage. Fury for what Sky had been forced to endure. A heavy branch from a nearby pine tree snapped and fell to the forest floor. Leah didn't even notice her newest accident, still lost in the tumult of her own emotions and the feel of Sky in her arms.
From: Libitine
To: Arwen17
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 10:08 pm
Mab growled aloud in frustration, both from watching Sky and Leah run off and out of contempt for herself for making her presence known. The looks she received were mixes of surprise because she had appeared, followed by bows, and surprise because she was still alive, followed by glares.
As much as she needed them, oh how Mab hated the people of Camelot.
Making the citizens of Mordred's dying city blind to her form once again, Mab followed the path of the two girls. Of course, she could have gotten there faster by flickering, but that required much more magic than simply going incognito and walking.
She hated walking.
The Queen was surprised that Sky had recognized her, for Mab had not seen the porcelain-skinned, blonde-haired princess since she was very little. Granted, then she hadn't known of her blood. Perhaps Mordred would have been more embarrassed and more cruel and the situation would have been much worse had Mab known, but all the more it would have brought about a different ending and Mab wouldn't have found herself tramping through the poor muddy streets of Camelot after two children.
Mordred had been a pig.
That was a horrible thing for Mab to finally accept, but accept it she must. Putting all the faith she had in Mordred had been a mistake. He was Morgan's son after all. And Arthur's. How well-behaved could he have been?
The truth was painful.
Queen Mab had given him everything he had ever desired and treated him better than she could stomach to treat a mortal. In fact, she had broken a rule and granted him some minor powers. Magic could not be freely given see, and he was a mortal. He was clay, actually; clay that had been shaped by murderous, greedy hands.
Those same hands now shook from weakness.
Anyway, he should have taken better care of himself, and of her. They were both very fragile, that being the only thing they held in common. Mordred was a child. Mordred had been a child, there was that little matter of the past. He was no longer a child. He was cold.
He had always been cold.
Mab supposed that his death wasn't going be too difficult a transition. In reality, she had already replaced him threefold. She would miss him though, a part of her would. She would miss the little boy who crept into her bedroom at Tintagle late at night because he knew she never slept. She would miss his cackling laughter that he forced to sound like hers as she set Frik's foot on fire. She would dearly miss the glances they would gift each other over dinner. She would miss his eyes, lips . . . hands.
Idath had killed him.
How simply horrible of Idath. What a betrayal! What heartless cruelty! Mab could have never guessed that weak, simpering Idath could perform such a task, killing. That hypocrite. That monstrous hypocrite. Oh, how she loathed him! Mab, who never wasted the energy required to 'loathe' loathed Idath, Lord of Death. Lord of Death indeed. Lord of the Death of Love, Life, and Happiness. Lord of Shame and Lord of Defeat. Those titles suited him better than the ones he held.
And he would be bitter, for it will be a bitter birth.
Yes, their child, this strange child forming in her belly would be hers, as Moira was hers. It would bring with it a black night to cloak the world and freeze Aneoth's depths, soaking every realm with Queen Mab's Old Ways. Oh it would be a bitter birth as her black heart brought forth her little monster, her little machine, conceived as her newest puppet to put out the blinding light of Christianity and forever swaddle her subjects in her darkness and her illusions.
She would live.
"Oh gods, Auntie please!" Mordred cried, throwing himself at her feet and gripping the skirt of her dress. "Auntie release me from your eyes, your torment and your shame! She is a worthless thing! Her mother was a whore! It matters not! Release me, for it matters not!"
Mab glared down at him with unwavering contempt. "Mordred you stupid spoiled boy!" She hissed. "You have truly dived down into the depths of madness. She is but a girl you stupid monster!"
The girl in question was curled up behind his throne, tears streaming down her face. Dirty blonde hair stuck to her ashen cheeks as she pulled her skinny arms over her head, legs crossed as blood dripped down from between them.
"It matters not." The King insisted, shameful tears trickling out of his own darkened eyes.
"She is a child." Mab growled, her bright red eyes darting from the top of Mordred's head to behind the throne where the little one sniffled.
"I hate her!" Mordred shouted, looking up, his eyes now angry instead of remorseful. "And no one will ever know, Mab."
Mab bent further down. "Oh I will grin all the more when the entirety of Camelot knows of your horrors." She hissed. "They will know."
"I will kill her with my very hands before there be blush about my name!" He shouted, spitting on the Queen's milky skin. "There will be no soiling of my throne. It will stay as pure as when you gave it to me!"
"I will know of it's deflowering." Mab snapped. "I will know, and that is all that matters."
"If they know," Mordred whispered, the tears having stopped and a horrid grin spreading across his face. "They will rip me from my throne and put someone else in my place, a Christian, Auntie Mab, a Christian. You will be hated, loathed, hated, Auntie, hated. You put me here and I am this monster. They will hate you. You will lose."
Mab straightened, the twisted grin falling off her face.
He was right.
They couldn't know.
The girl had to go.
She ripped his hands from her skirt and walked behind the throne, roughly tugging the girl's arm.
"Come."
The forest was larger than Mab had anticipated. She could hear Leah shouting but knew not where. A shout from Sky, her voice traveling more distinctly than Leah's had, let Mab know where they were and, dropping her guise, she appeared to them.
Neither girl looked shocked. Sky simply looked angry and Leah afraid.
She waited.
He raped me.
So, Mab's precious Mordred had raped his daughter. The situation was impossible.
The tree branch fell not inches from Mab, and the Queen's eyes fixated on the cause.
"Leah . . ."
From: Arwen17
To: Libitine
Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 12:59 am
Memories as painful as glass shards darted across Sky's mind as she clung to Leah. It had been Mab that had taken her away from Mordred, but still, it's not like she did it out of kindness. All she cared about was what others would think of Mordred. Sky knew all about Mab. Mordred had never shut up about her. Sky was sick of hearing about her and she had come to hate her to for letting that maniac remain king.
"Leah..." Mab's voice made it's way to them through the dead air.
Leah? What does she want with Leah? Sky glanced up at Leah's face, and then, it finally struck her why she found Leah so attractive right from the very beginning. Leah looks a lot like Mab, doesn't she? Sky thought to herself dizzily. Sky had had dreams of her saviour and nightmares of her tormentor and it all came back to Leah's face, Mab's face reincarnated. Sky ripped herself from Leah's grip. "You belong to her, don't you?" Sky asked Leah, the pain of the ultimate betrayal written on her face.
"No, Sky, no...I only belong to you, I promise." Leah coaxed.
"You said it could never work between us." Sky reminded her. "And now I see why."
"But you said it didn't matter what other people think." Leah begged. "I decided to stay with you, and now you're going to leave?"
Sky took several steps back, but Leah followed her. "I..I..lo..!" but Leah couldn't bring herself to say it out loud. It hurt too much. Sky was going to leave her because of something she had no control over. In one last desperate attempt to remind Sky why she had wanted Leah to stay with her, Leah closed in and pressed, open-mouthed, against Sky with as much passion as she could muster. Leah imagined that Sky seemed to hesitate, but then Sky shoved against her hard. "Go back to Dustin." Sky choked out and bolted away. Leah slowly slid to the ground and watched, with hopeless despair, Sky disappearing into the sunset.
Dusk had fallen and night had brought with it a chill to the air. Leah sat on the forest floor, slightly shivering. Her fingers dug into the dirt as a shriek ripped itself from her throat. Just once, she needed to let that out, as she panted for a minute in the dark.
A cold hand touched her shoulder and then moved Leah's face around to lay on her shoulder. Leah cried silently into that shoulder. The body she was pressed against had little warmth, but what did it matter? Everything here was cold and dark.