Okay, author's note time! Gather 'round, chillins, an' we'll git ourselves a reg'lar hoe-down a'goin.
Actually, I lived in South Carolina for two years, and none of my neighbors spoke in that manner. They did pronounce my name wrong no matter how many times I corrected them, but they didn't talk like that.
Anyway, the author's note. This time, I'm speaking on fan-character names.
*gets shoved off her soapbox by a bunch of reviewers yelling "JUST GET ON WITH THE STORY ALREADY!!"*
*stubbornly climbs back on*
Ahem. This is my author's note space, so if you don't want to listen to my babbling, and I don't blame you at all, then simply skip down a couple of paragraphs and you'll come to the story. Meanwhile, I will continue to babble. *tries to order her now-shaken thoughts*
Okay, as I said, this is about names. It's more of an explanatory thing than an author's note, really, but whatever. You might want to read this if you're interested in nightmaren names. Let me continue already.
Below is a list of names and word origins. Some of the maren listed below you may already know; some you may meet soon; some may come on the scene much later; some may never be used at all, and you'll have wasted your time reading about them. Sorry.
*ahem* First off: "corbeau black" is a type of---duh-uuur---black. Ergo Corbeau: named after black.
Post meridiem is the Latin term for the hours after noon, normally referred to as PM. Postmeridian is an adjective describing an afternoonic state, if there is such a thing; don't look at me, it's in the dictionary. Postmeridian: named after the later hours of the day.
Nyct is a prefix meaning night-related. Nyct: related to night.
Vespers is a traditional name for a prayer said in the evening; if you're a poetry buff, you'll probably know the poem by A. A. Milne entitled this. If you don't, I suggest you go and get one of his books of poetry out of the library right now. He's a very good writer. Vespers: evening prayers.
Hadrian is Latin for dark. At least, I hope so; I'm going by the word of a baby name book. I'll probably meet a person fluent in Latin in the future, ask them what "Hadrian" means, and find out that it means pickled codfish, but let's think positive, shall we? So Hadrian: dark.
Insomnia is obvious. For you younger or less-vocabulary-orientated people, insomnia is a sickness in which the subject cannot fall asleep. Cool name for a nightmare creature, I think. Insomnia: sleeplessness.
Luna is another obvious one; I believe it's Latin for moon. Or maybe it's Spanish. Or French. Heck, it could be Swahili for all I know. It's moon in another language, that's all I can tell you. Cope. Luna: moon.
Aniline is another type of black. I like naming things after their colors, okay? For example, Hyacinth, Heliotrope, and Terre-Verte wear blue, purple, and green, respectively. But I'll introduce them later, if at all. Aniline: black.
Wesh is a gypsy name, and it means woods. This is an unsure-if-I'll-use-this name, as it's not directly related to dark and night and sorrow and despair and all that other good nightmare stuff, but it's good to have it in here anyway. Besides, Clawz isn't a dark name, and Puffy isn't even something I'd deign to call a name at all. Wesh: woods.
Jal is another gypsy title; it means wanderer. Jal: wanderer.
Wyth is---guess what? Gypsy name. Wyth: willow tree.
Tas is---yeah. Tas: bird's nest.
Nigel is Latin. Like Hadrian, I can't tell you I know for certain this is it's true translation; this one is another baby name book name, and I don't completely trust those things ever since I read in one of them that my name meant "brave maiden". It doesn't. Nigel: dark night.
Rune is German; I know German fairly well, so I can tell you for certain this is a true translation. Rune: secret.
Tynan is Irish. I seem to like foreign names as opposed to American, don't I? Well, can you imagine a nightmaren named Billy Bob? Tynan: dark.
This one's pretty, in my opinion. And Latin. Vere: truth.
Amaya is Japanese; I had a friend check this one out a while ago, so it's good. No baby name book involved here. Amaya: night rain.
Are you ready for another Latin name? No? Good. Adrienne: dark. (For the record, an alternate spelling is Hadriane. Guess where you've seen that before.)
Leila has a double meaning. In Hebrew, Leila means dark beauty or night. In Arabic, it means born at night; fitting, since all nightmaren were created by Wizeman, and he's the lord of nightmares. So Leila: dark beauty, night, born at night.
Ashlyn is another Irish one. I can't help picking an Irish name or two. I have some Irish blood in me; I guess it's trying to come out in my writing. Ashlyn: vision or dream.
Okay, I'm done. *evaluates list thoughtfully* You think it's long enough? *snickers* Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
As a last note…I use Avis the Crow as my online name. Avis means bird in Latin. You probably didn't care, but then you probably didn't know either. Now you know.
Disclaimer: Don'cha just HATE it when you step on a piece of cooked rice while wearing socks? It's like impossible to get out...it's just this starchy goo, and it gets all stuck in the thread like a blob of Elmer's glue or something...
Bass: ...getmeouttahere.
Chapter Five:
On The Bank Of The Tumid River
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star...
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river...
The Hollow Men, by T. S. Eliot
Insomnia was on a carefree cruise about Nightmare Castle. He was just coming past the east side when, to his left, he heard the sound of a door opening. He banked, hoping to see who had come up on the ramparts.
A whistle shrilled through the air, and he realized that it had been Jackle's door that had opened; the demi-maren himself stood on his balcony, arm held up to the sky, head turned upward as if waiting for something. His whistle was explained a moment later, when a large crow alighted on his yellow-clad wrist. He grinned, head cocked fondly to one side, and began speaking to it.
Insomnia, remembering the outcome of the earlier conversation between the two, decided to go the other way.
The nightmaren were bedding down for the evening. The barracks were full of noise and murmurings, which wasn't that unusual, but the fact that Wizeman had publicized his plan of taking over the Waking World only four mornings ago added more than slightly to the general feeling of confusion and excitement. The older generations were all calm and speaking in low voices, as usual, but the larger amount of nightmaren were young, and thusly more excitable and loud. The boys especially.
One of the young maren was currently boasting of exploits to come in the campaign against the Waking World. "Once I've gotten my sword, I'll be a match for ten armed humans."
"I'm a pretty fair hand with a bow," mused another. "D'you think that'll be useful?"
"Useful, sure---but practical?" cut in a girl. "A simple drill-dash'd be a lot easier---and you don't have to carry around all those heavy arrows and bows and things."
"A bow isn't heavy," defended the archer-to-be mildly. "And arrows are light as a feather."
"You all can keep your arrows and swords," stated another young female, coming in to the conversation with some interest. "But give me a pike, like what Miss Luna carries."
"A pike like Miss Luna's?" laughed the originator of the subject. "You'd fall over. Have you seen how long that thing is?"
"I could carry one," defended the girl a bit testily. "They're long, but light."
"Like a bow and arrows," submitted the archer helpfully. His input was ignored.
"I want a sword," decided a boy from two bunks down. "They're the easiest for skirmishes and hand-to-hand fighting."
"Axes are cool," said Insomnia, bounding onto his bunk just to get a lift out of the resulting bounce or two. He was hailed by several different voices.
"Yo, Som, where you been?"
"We were wondering…"
"Nice timing, Som."
"Out flying again?"
"Yeah," he admitted, rolling over and crossing his legs Indian-style, propping his chin up on his palms. "So we're talking about weapons?"
"Yeah. I say the pike rules, but some people just don't seem to see things my way."
"Which isn't a crime," added the boy interested in bows. Insomnia gave him an amused glance.
"Always the peacemaker, huh, PM?"
Postmeridian flushed. Apart from his obsession with the subject of archery, he was a very quiet boy who did not like attention.
The girl who loved pikes and italics shrugged. "We all know what he'd like---"
At least seven nightmaren chorused the answer. "A bow."
PM flushed deeper; fortunately, public interest soon tired of him and went back to the original subject of conversation.
"I don't know," continued the girl who'd first questioned the practicality of archery. "I think a drill dash is the best."
"What if you're fighting a stone creature?" queried one of the others, grinning.
"You'd have a whopping headache," supplied another.
The girl glared at the laughing youths around her, but then rather ruefully joined in the merriment at her expense. "I suppose that would be a kind of awkward position," she admitted. "But then, if you were fighting a golem I doubt a sword would do you much good either."
"Would anything?" replied Insomnia.
"I don't know," she mused, looking off into space---or rather, the ceiling---thoughtfully. "I suppose a really good fire could destroy one…"
"And who carries around a fire that reaches two thousand degrees?" challenged the one who'd started the whole thing. "Face it, Nyct, nothing could kill a golem."
"Actually, I doubt that's something you have to worry about," cut in a voice above their heads. The young maren all looked up to find their sparring instructor, Miss Luna, standing over them. Her face showed no signs of annoyance, but then she wasn't smiling either. "Since there haven't been any in the dream world for years. Be glad. And even if their were, and you were on the verge of finding some way to defeat them easily, it wouldn't get you out of the fact that lights-out was twenty minutes ago."
The nightmaren looked around to find that the rest of the barracks had already bedded down, and they all sank an inch or two lower. Several mumbled an embarrassed "sorry".
"We didn't realize, Miss Luna," stammered Postmeridian. "We're so sorry---"
The older nightmare's face crinkled into a smile, only a few wrinkles around her eyes showing her true age. "Don't worry about it. But I'd go to sleep, if I were you. Y'never know when Lord Reala might come around and inspect the---"
But she was talking to the air. Every maren had ducked down under their covers at the mention of Lord Reala's name, and was currently snoring away loudly.
She chuckled and turned away. "Bright kids."
Reala started as a purple form swung itself up over his windowsill and landed in the middle of his bedroom floor; as it straightened up into the form of his brother NiGHTS, he relaxed. Not willing to show he'd been surprised, he put a gruff edge to his voice. "What is it?"
"Oh, you know, the usual---just wanted to talk," said NiGHTS airily, waving his brother off with a hand ala his usual carefree attitude. Reala scowled.
"I've got a long day ahead of me tomorrow, NiGHTS, and I don't need to waste my sleeping time with useless chatter."
NiGHTS looked over at his brother, startled. "What's with you?"
"I told you, I'm busy," sighed Reala.
NiGHTS shook off the protest of weariness and plopped down on his brother's bed, kicking his heels up in a carefully easy-minded manner. He looked away from his brother and up at the ceiling as he spoke. "So, how did you sleep, say, three nights ago?"
Reala started for the second time within five minutes. After a second he calmed himself, and looked at his brother out of the corner of his bright blue eyes. "Why?"
"Just wondering."
"Sure," muttered Reala. "And I'm a monkey's uncle."
"You are? Why, Reala, you should have told me," teased NiGHTS. Just as suddenly his mood shifted again. "So you didn't have any, say, weird dreams?"
Reala straightened and stared at his brother. "Why are you asking me this?"
"You did?" NiGHTS seemed relieved. "Oh, good. I was hoping I wasn't just loosing my mind or something equally uncomfortable…"
"What are you talking about?" snapped Reala. "Who said I did? Why are you asking me?"
"Come on, Reals, I can read you like an open book," said NiGHTS, waving his flurried questions away unperturbedly. "I wanted to know 'cause I had one, too."
The Seeker General forced himself to calm down. NiGHTS could be so horribly aggravating sometimes… "What was your dream like?"
"What about yours?" countered his brother.
"You first," insisted Reala, part of his mind noting how he seemed to slip so quickly into colloquial when around his brother. "I mean, explain yourself."
"Well, there was the living shadow---"
" 'Living shadow'?"
"Yeah, but that was after the morphing room and running into a valley and that stream…"
"So I take it you didn't dream about the bottles," muttered Reala.
NiGHTS blinked. "Bottles?"
Reala shook his head. "Nothing."
"Oooookay. Nothing about bottles…sure. Anyway, you had a weird dream too."
Reala shrugged again and looked back down at his book. "And you find this interesting?"
"Come on, Reala, no nightmaren's ever had a dream. Duuuu-uuur."
He glared at his immature brother over the page. "I assume you had a reason for coming here besides doing a fairly good impression of a seven-year-old?"
NiGHTS started. His brother was never this peevish. "Geez, Wizeman really got to you today, didn't he?"
"Will you just spit out whatever it is you wanted to say and leave?" snarled Reala, startling even himself with his ferocity. He halted, suddenly feeling guilty, his self-reproach heightened by his brother's astonished expression; dignity dictated he not apologize, but he struggled with the resulting guilt complex for a moment before giving in to honor.
"You wanted something?" he questioned, almost unknowingly trying appease his guilty side by using a far quieter tone.
NiGHTS just looked at him for a moment; then, he shook his head. "No," he said softly. "Just came in to say goodnight."
Without further ado he got up and left. Reala stared after his brother, feeling more than a bit ashamed. Eventually he returned to his book; however, it took him a few minutes to shake off the queer feeling of disturbance that had settled on him along with his guilt.
NiGHTS stared up at the ceiling of his room, his heart weighted with an unknown apprehension. Reala had seemed so angry and annoyed tonight; not that this wasn't normal, but before there had always been an underlying fondness in his eyes. Tonight that brotherly love was strangely muted.
NiGHTS shivered and rolled over, burying his head in his arm. He had the feeling something wasn't right.
Jackle stared upwards, eyes tracing the spade-and-diamond pattern painted boldly on his ceiling. The blacks and reds were dim in the moonlight, and the bright yellow background looked like a deep grey. Moonbeams stretched across the entire ceiling in sharp streaks.
He rolled over, shooting a glance to where his mantle hung, limp and lifeless in the moonlight. A slight wind blew in through the window, a leftover breeze from the changing winds, and stirred the cloth; just as soon it dissipated, and the cloak hung straight once again. There was a peculiar air of defeat about it, as if it's owner had died long ago and it was left to hang, gathering dust and old memories, a broken reminder of it's long-gone master.
Jackle started and shook his head once, dusty golden hair tumbling about his ears. Since when was he so morbidly poetic? Must be the stress was getting to him… He shook his head again. Ever since Wizeman had declared his scheme all of the High Seekers had been a bit on edge. Clawz and Jackle, especially---new conquests meant new ways to get recognition in the eyes of their master, which meant new quarrels over to whom that recognition should go. NiGHTS and Reala held their sovereign's highest levels of fondness, but someone else could undoubtedly be the second fiddle; and playing second fiddle, though not the most prestigious of posts, is a very esteemed position nonetheless. The two second-levels both believed themselves to be the one most deserving of it.
Jackle's gaze returned to the ceiling, and the stark light trailing across it. Not only was he worried about position, but then there was the more disturbing matter of hearing voices when one should not.
It had been what…three…four days since he'd last heard them? Up until then he'd only been aware of their presence in dreams; dreams which he wasn't supposed to have. But he'd just chalked that up to being created different than the others, a second-level, a bodiless being, a partly invisible creature.
'Imperfect.'
He shook his head violently. No, he wouldn't believe it! Despite the rumors and claims otherwise, he wouldn't believe it. Clawz could go and hang himself; he wouldn't admit that he was worth less than any other nightmaren. Master had created him this way---it was the way he was meant to be, right?
Firmly pushing the subject of self-worth into some deep corner of his mind, he went back to pondering the voices in a reasonable manner. He'd heard them in dreams for at least two months; then there had been that event of hearing them in the morning, right after Wizeman's announcement. For three days afterwards they'd left him alone, and he'd thought he was free. Then they'd come back.
Jackle shivered and slid further down into the blankets. This was getting frightening; he didn't want to have these mental problems, didn't know what to think of them. He was a very care-free person, and one who did not trim his performance to fit the standard expectations, but he wasn't insane.
Of course, no one ever said this was unalterable fact.