Hey, I'm back! Yes, I'm finally back! I've managed to figure out my life a little bit more, and now I'm writing again because writing helps me to sort out my feelings, etc etc. So anyway, I spent a lot of time on this chapter, even though it may seem short - I have edited and rewritten and worked with this chapter for a long time and the final result is spectacular.
My parents are trying to ban me from the internet. Don't ask why; something about it taking up all of my free time. I dunno what's gotten into them all of a sudden, but because of it I now have to sneak on to upload these chapters. So basically, I can't promise exactly when I'll update this. It depends on when I can sneak on and how many reviews I get. Yes, reviews. I have no clue how many people are reading this and I'd really like feedback from you all. I'm not going to say "review or I won't continue the story!" but the fact is that the more reviews I get and thus the more people I know are reading this, the more I want to update it and thus the sooner you get the next chapter. I really appreciate not only praise (well, don't we all? ^_^) but also ideas, suggestions, and constructive criticism.
After reading all of the comments left on my various stories in reply to that note in the last chapter... just a big thanks going out to everyone for their kind words and support during this time.
Now let's see... one more thing. In the last chapter, I told you guys to try and find that important something that told you something about Ahsilna that you didn't know before. In case you didn't catch it, here's the sentences that I was referring to (they're from Ahsilna's POV, by the way): "Instinctively doing what I always did whenever someone got too close to me, especially if it was someone who seemed to care about me even slightly, I mentally formed the thought of keeping everyone out. I guess it's a kind of silly thing to do - after all, what good does some sort of mental barrier do anyway - but it's just what something inside tells me to do. I can't explain it; I just do as it wants me to, without knowing why. It just feels like something that I should trust, I guess." Ok, you people aren't idiots. I think that we can all figure out what that refers to...
This chapter is in third person. It starts when Ahsilna wakes up. I personally consider this chapter to be the best writing that I've done so far for this story, and I hope that you all agree with me. ENJOY! ^_~
The girl sat up slowly, palms against the mattress for support. Her face was turned towards the open window as a breeze rippled the sheets, and dark raven's wing hued hair billowed out behind her as she watched the sunrise.
Shadows of the fire in the sky burned their way across the glistening ivory plain, dancing like sprites on the hilltops and reflected, flickering, in the thousands of tiny ice crystals. Far away across the flat expanse, mountain peaks abruptly soared skywards, rough-hewn icy granite slopes gray and foreboding in the scant sunlight. Their peaks were buried beneath wisps of cloud. Outside, the world seemed to stretch on forever, a vast nothingness, wild and untamed. But inside this room, while the seconds here lived on out there as an eternity...
...trapped. She sat on the bed with her arms wrapped around her knees. Yes, she was trapped in here. Trapped by that glass in the window that kept her from the rest of the world. She was trapped by the steel walls, the huge door, the locks that kept her stuck in this room. She wanted - no, she needed - out. She could not survive like this. She could not live in a cage made of steel, trapped like a bird that someone has decided to make a pet of. She might as well be that bird; if they would not open the cage door and let her fly away, she would refuse to sing. If they did not let her leave, she would will herself to die.
Ten days that she had been trapped in here. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but sit on the bed and stare out the window at the freedom that eluded her. Even when she had lived with her parents, she had not been normal. If anything, they had made her worse. But the end result, no matter how it had come about, was that she was not tame. Feral. When people first met her, they didn't notice. But after a while, they would begin to notice. She was not meant for society. She hated the company of others and scarcely could manage to so much as tolerate it. She slept outside a lot of days, and could not survive if she was away from the woods behind her house and the plants and animals that dwelled there for too long. They always said it in the end - feral. Wild. Untamed. But she couldn't understand why that was such a bad thing. She didn't like people because people lied. People were cruel. They loved to torment or destroy anything that was weaker than them. She could never understand people. But she understood plants and animals, and so she looked to them for comfort instead of to her fellow humans. And indeed, in time, she had become partially wild herself. She did not act like a normal human, and there was a strange, inhuman gleam in her slanted amethyst eyes.
And if she was caged up, she would die, just like a wild animal.
That boy had been back a few times. He brought her food and tried to stay and talk to her. But though he meant to help, he could not understand her. And neither did he believe her when she said that she was from "Earth," and that she had come here by accident. He thought it a story that she had created to take the place of the memories that she had lost, and so he would humor her by listening to her, but he would not believe her. She knew a little about him, and about where she was, and what was going on now in the universe from listening to the talk of others when they walked down one of the halls next to her room. And the boy, Rans, had given her a new name to take the place of the one that hovered on the edges of her memory but drifted away when she tried to look at it closer. He called her Shenandoah, or Shen for short, for in his native tongue it meant star, and on the day that he had found her, there had been one star shining brightly in the sky - an unusual occurance for that time of day.
He said that she wasn't trapped. That they just needed to keep her there until they could make sure that she wasn't carrying any diseases that could spread through the base. That she would be able to leave the room very soon. But she did not believe him, and it would not have mattered if she did, because she would still feel as though she was a rabbit stuck in a snare, kicking to get away and be free but being held back by the wire. And so she kept struggling to get out.
Rans had been there yesterday evening, and he would come soon to bring her more food. He always locked the door when he left, and the last time had been no exception. She looked around for a way out. She was drifting towards insanity as a result of being shut up for so long. She had finally made up her mind last night to get loose, or die trying. And so she stood up and strode over to the door.
She tested the knob, twisting it slightly - enough to open it if it was unlocked, but not enough to set off the alarms if it wasn't as she had accidentally done before. It was indeed locked. Unfortunately, she had no hair pins with her and there was nothing else in the room thin enough to use as a lock pick. Running her fingers over the edges to see if it was loose and might be pried open, a skill that she had learned and polished to perfection after countless occurances in which her parents when mad at her for something had beat her and then locked her in a closet as further punishment, told her that she need not even bother to try to pry the door off of its hinges. The door fit the frame perfectly, with no flaws or gaps whatsoever.
So that left only one way out: the window. She turned to it and pressed her hands against the glass. It was solid, with no air bubbles that might make it easier to break. Nonetheless, it had no thick metal wires inside of it as reinforcement, and it could be shattered if it was hit hard enough. But with what? There were no hard objects in the room that weren't chained to the wall or the floor. And so that left her with only one option for escape. She slammed her fist into the glass as fast and as hard as she could...
...and instead of shattering and falling out of the window, the glass flew straight back at her, and tore into her. As people rushed down the hall towards her room, shocked by the sudden sound that they had mistaken for a blaster shot and assuming that they were being attacked by the Imperials, she crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood.
Author's Notes: Eh. Now that has GOT to hurt O_o and it will have some serious affects on her as well *cough* possibly blind now *cough* I haven't decided exactly what the other people at the Rebel base will do with her now as a result of that attempted 'escape,' so... ideas anyone?
To be continued? Only if you want me to. If you guys don't like the way that this story is going, just tell me and I'll stop writing it.
My parents are trying to ban me from the internet. Don't ask why; something about it taking up all of my free time. I dunno what's gotten into them all of a sudden, but because of it I now have to sneak on to upload these chapters. So basically, I can't promise exactly when I'll update this. It depends on when I can sneak on and how many reviews I get. Yes, reviews. I have no clue how many people are reading this and I'd really like feedback from you all. I'm not going to say "review or I won't continue the story!" but the fact is that the more reviews I get and thus the more people I know are reading this, the more I want to update it and thus the sooner you get the next chapter. I really appreciate not only praise (well, don't we all? ^_^) but also ideas, suggestions, and constructive criticism.
After reading all of the comments left on my various stories in reply to that note in the last chapter... just a big thanks going out to everyone for their kind words and support during this time.
Now let's see... one more thing. In the last chapter, I told you guys to try and find that important something that told you something about Ahsilna that you didn't know before. In case you didn't catch it, here's the sentences that I was referring to (they're from Ahsilna's POV, by the way): "Instinctively doing what I always did whenever someone got too close to me, especially if it was someone who seemed to care about me even slightly, I mentally formed the thought of keeping everyone out. I guess it's a kind of silly thing to do - after all, what good does some sort of mental barrier do anyway - but it's just what something inside tells me to do. I can't explain it; I just do as it wants me to, without knowing why. It just feels like something that I should trust, I guess." Ok, you people aren't idiots. I think that we can all figure out what that refers to...
This chapter is in third person. It starts when Ahsilna wakes up. I personally consider this chapter to be the best writing that I've done so far for this story, and I hope that you all agree with me. ENJOY! ^_~
The girl sat up slowly, palms against the mattress for support. Her face was turned towards the open window as a breeze rippled the sheets, and dark raven's wing hued hair billowed out behind her as she watched the sunrise.
Shadows of the fire in the sky burned their way across the glistening ivory plain, dancing like sprites on the hilltops and reflected, flickering, in the thousands of tiny ice crystals. Far away across the flat expanse, mountain peaks abruptly soared skywards, rough-hewn icy granite slopes gray and foreboding in the scant sunlight. Their peaks were buried beneath wisps of cloud. Outside, the world seemed to stretch on forever, a vast nothingness, wild and untamed. But inside this room, while the seconds here lived on out there as an eternity...
...trapped. She sat on the bed with her arms wrapped around her knees. Yes, she was trapped in here. Trapped by that glass in the window that kept her from the rest of the world. She was trapped by the steel walls, the huge door, the locks that kept her stuck in this room. She wanted - no, she needed - out. She could not survive like this. She could not live in a cage made of steel, trapped like a bird that someone has decided to make a pet of. She might as well be that bird; if they would not open the cage door and let her fly away, she would refuse to sing. If they did not let her leave, she would will herself to die.
Ten days that she had been trapped in here. Nowhere to go. Nothing to do but sit on the bed and stare out the window at the freedom that eluded her. Even when she had lived with her parents, she had not been normal. If anything, they had made her worse. But the end result, no matter how it had come about, was that she was not tame. Feral. When people first met her, they didn't notice. But after a while, they would begin to notice. She was not meant for society. She hated the company of others and scarcely could manage to so much as tolerate it. She slept outside a lot of days, and could not survive if she was away from the woods behind her house and the plants and animals that dwelled there for too long. They always said it in the end - feral. Wild. Untamed. But she couldn't understand why that was such a bad thing. She didn't like people because people lied. People were cruel. They loved to torment or destroy anything that was weaker than them. She could never understand people. But she understood plants and animals, and so she looked to them for comfort instead of to her fellow humans. And indeed, in time, she had become partially wild herself. She did not act like a normal human, and there was a strange, inhuman gleam in her slanted amethyst eyes.
And if she was caged up, she would die, just like a wild animal.
That boy had been back a few times. He brought her food and tried to stay and talk to her. But though he meant to help, he could not understand her. And neither did he believe her when she said that she was from "Earth," and that she had come here by accident. He thought it a story that she had created to take the place of the memories that she had lost, and so he would humor her by listening to her, but he would not believe her. She knew a little about him, and about where she was, and what was going on now in the universe from listening to the talk of others when they walked down one of the halls next to her room. And the boy, Rans, had given her a new name to take the place of the one that hovered on the edges of her memory but drifted away when she tried to look at it closer. He called her Shenandoah, or Shen for short, for in his native tongue it meant star, and on the day that he had found her, there had been one star shining brightly in the sky - an unusual occurance for that time of day.
He said that she wasn't trapped. That they just needed to keep her there until they could make sure that she wasn't carrying any diseases that could spread through the base. That she would be able to leave the room very soon. But she did not believe him, and it would not have mattered if she did, because she would still feel as though she was a rabbit stuck in a snare, kicking to get away and be free but being held back by the wire. And so she kept struggling to get out.
Rans had been there yesterday evening, and he would come soon to bring her more food. He always locked the door when he left, and the last time had been no exception. She looked around for a way out. She was drifting towards insanity as a result of being shut up for so long. She had finally made up her mind last night to get loose, or die trying. And so she stood up and strode over to the door.
She tested the knob, twisting it slightly - enough to open it if it was unlocked, but not enough to set off the alarms if it wasn't as she had accidentally done before. It was indeed locked. Unfortunately, she had no hair pins with her and there was nothing else in the room thin enough to use as a lock pick. Running her fingers over the edges to see if it was loose and might be pried open, a skill that she had learned and polished to perfection after countless occurances in which her parents when mad at her for something had beat her and then locked her in a closet as further punishment, told her that she need not even bother to try to pry the door off of its hinges. The door fit the frame perfectly, with no flaws or gaps whatsoever.
So that left only one way out: the window. She turned to it and pressed her hands against the glass. It was solid, with no air bubbles that might make it easier to break. Nonetheless, it had no thick metal wires inside of it as reinforcement, and it could be shattered if it was hit hard enough. But with what? There were no hard objects in the room that weren't chained to the wall or the floor. And so that left her with only one option for escape. She slammed her fist into the glass as fast and as hard as she could...
...and instead of shattering and falling out of the window, the glass flew straight back at her, and tore into her. As people rushed down the hall towards her room, shocked by the sudden sound that they had mistaken for a blaster shot and assuming that they were being attacked by the Imperials, she crumpled to the ground in a pool of blood.
Author's Notes: Eh. Now that has GOT to hurt O_o and it will have some serious affects on her as well *cough* possibly blind now *cough* I haven't decided exactly what the other people at the Rebel base will do with her now as a result of that attempted 'escape,' so... ideas anyone?
To be continued? Only if you want me to. If you guys don't like the way that this story is going, just tell me and I'll stop writing it.