Disclaimer: the books, place and characters (that wont be present all that much) that are obviously hers belong to Mercedes Lackey and most assuredly are not mine. However, Mouse is mine as well as a few other fellows that will show up later because I don't like using other people's characters all too much for fear of portraying them wrong. No using of my people!
Warning: if homosexuality offends you in any way shape or form don't read further (though I don't know why you are reading this at all since Mrs. Lackey uses same sex quite frequently in her books) and I might recommend getting your closed minded self smacked over the head with a good two by four. Also some language.
Onward! *points*
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"Hey, Mouse, go get me two 30 foot extension cables from storage would ya?" hollered a voice from the grid that I knew to belonged to Ryan.
"Yeah" I hollered back up all the while grumbling under my breath. I tended to get most of the crap jobs, but I knew why: I was new, I was quiet, and I would do them because I knew they had to get done. The last one was in my favour but I still didn't have to like running errands for the others. I wasn't even an electrician, but at least I knew what he wanted which was more than I could say about some people I had worked with. I shuttered at the memory of a girl that didn't even know what a screwdriver was, let alone the fact that she needed a philips and not a flathead.
"I'll help" came another voice as the dark haired man that it was owned by jumped up and ran over to where I had been making my way to storage.
"Thanks, Jerr" I mumbled, not waiting but making my steady way to the stairs that would lead me to the room I wanted. Granted I wasn't unhappy by the offer or help I just didn't think that hauling the two cables back up the stairs and in turn up to the grid warranted the help he offered.
Stopping in front of a uniform brown looking door I pulled the open padlock off and went searching in the storage room for the requested cables.
About five minutes and a thousand dust motes later we found the cables in a box, under two rolls of 15 foot cable and a roll of 50 foot cable. Just like the rest of the theatre oh so cleverly organized with a system that no one had as of yet been able to figure out.
"I'll take them, you put that stuff back" Jerr told me pointing to the excess wires. I only sighed, I was back to being a lackey...a very dusty lackey at the moment. I think that the last time the theatre had been cleaned was sometime in the early 70s, the dirt was thick enough anyways and seemed to float up out of nowhere whenever you moved.
Carefully recoiling the cords I placed a cable back into the box when I heard the door click shut not so subtlety. Okay...that was weird. Okay I was fine with this. I took a deep breath. So long as the lights were still on I was okay. So much for my luck, the lights flicked off. I tended to have that kind of luck.
"Jerr this isn't funny!"
I got up and carefully wove my way though the mess with a little help from my exceptional night vision and the light trickling in through the door cracks.
"I mean it Jerr! Turn the lights back on!" My hand made contact with the door and, after some fumbling, wound it's way around the handle.
Thunk..... Thunk Thunk. It was locked. It was locked and dark and I was in a tiny room with boxes of who knew what and most likely a couple of puppets lying around somewhere. I had a deathly fear of puppets that I never could figure out, not to mention a fear of confined spaces.
"This isn't funny! Let me out!" I bellowed with my only reply being a snicker from the other side of the door.
"Have fun, Mouse" the carpenter chortled as I watched the shadow of feet move away.
"DON'T DO THIS!" Thunk Thunk "LET ME OUT!" Thunk Thunk "JERREMIAH BARTHOLOMEW WINSLOW LET ME OUT OF HERE THIS INSTANT! IT"S NOT FUNNY!" Thunk
I think that that was the loudest I had ever uttered anything in my entire life.
This truly wasn't funny, ever since the others had found out that I was afraid of small spaces I had been the object of no small amount of teasing, the teasing I could handle, but not this. It wasn't so much as I was afraid of small spaces as I was afraid of closed spaces, spaces that I couldn't get out of. Okay, so I was a little claustrophobic, I delt with it, all it ment that I didn't like closed spaces....and I was afraid of puppets...
There were puppets in here. I whirled around and looked frantically to the piles of stuff hidden in shadows, there were puppets everywhere in this theatre.
Alright breath, I consoled myself, they have to let me out sometime, they need me to help set up for the show. Taking slow deep breaths I lowered my hand to my belt, or my batman utility belt as I fondly liked to call it, and pulled out my small maglight. At least I didn't have to sit here in complete darkness. And at least I could see it when the puppets tried to sneak up on me. Those puppets were damn sneaky at times and I didn't like it one bit.
Okay, now I had light, I admit it was a kind of creepy blue light because of the gel I had placed on my flashlight for shows, but it was a light.
Too bad the door locked by padlock and the hinges were on the outside, I forlornly fingered the velcro on my gerber satchel, if it were the other way around I could have easily gotten out before Jerr felt the need to unlock me. I knew how to pick locks like any good theatre person did, unscrew the doorknob or take out the hinge pins, both would get you out. Then again, I also knew how to lock doors with pennies.
Too bad for me because I was just to the point right before a major panic attack.
It was closed, It was dark, There were puppets, and I was alone. Did I mention these sort of things are easier to handle when there's someone else around to distract me?
Not good for a mouse, especially a mouse on her way to hyperventilating.
Take a deep breath. One two three. I closed my eyes hoping that it would make it better, I knew it wouldn't help much, but I was hoping. If wishes were fishes they say, now I don't know who says that but apparently it's been said.
So there I was locked, sitting in a dark room trying not to scream and resort to curling up in the fetal position while crying incoherently when the randomness of my mind suddenly remembered something. This was storage two. The one right by the basement entrance. The one where a couple of people stowed their stuff while they were working upstairs. The one where I stored my stuff with the rest of them while I was working upstairs.
That could only mean... My left hand reached out and pulled back a cloth strap that attached itself to my shoulderbag. At
least I could have something to take my mind off of my situation. I stuck my hand into it, headless of the dangers of doing so
(my bag had been known to demolish anything that, to some ill luck of that object, had gotten placed inside it. The bag was a
virtual black hole.) And brought out a black book that appeared as if it had once seen better days and had been loved far
beyond the bounds of repair. Ahhh...my savior, Magic's Pawn. Despite the fact that I had read this book an innumerable
amount of times and could probably quote it just as well as any movie I had seen (I was known for being able to quote a
movie only after viewing it once despite the fact that I generally couldn't remember where I set my sneakers.) I could still
become lost within the folds of it's pages, and, hopefully, I could do that now. I really did not need to be thinking about
where I was sitting or what the surrounding crates might be holding. This was the perfect distraction. It would be just as if I
were backstage during a show with my trusty blue maglight gliding over the words I already knew so well. After all I had
probably gotten more reading done backstage between shifts than I had any other time, not that I didn't read enough any
other time though.
//... "You take that back, you little bastard!" Tylendel roared. "You take that back, unless you want another pound of mud
shoved down your throat!"
Savil steeled herself and barked-in her best stop-a-mob-in-full-cry voice-a single word.
"ENOUGH!"
Instantly the fighters froze.
Savil strode out into the deluge, her dignity somewhat diminished when her feet squelched instead of coming down firmly, and the rain immediately plastered her hair to her skull, sending tendrils of it straggling into her eyes and mouth.
Nevertheless, she reckoned she looked imposing enough, since all the blabbering behind her ceased as she reached the edge of Tylendel's mage-barrier and stopped.
"Take it down, trainee," she said, her tone so cold it could have turned the rain into snow.
Tylendel scrambled to his feet and dismissed the barrier. Now that he could be seen clearly, he truly looked as if he's been through the wars. His hair was full of mud and straggling around his face in dirty coils. One eye was turning black and starting to swell; his lower lip was split and bleeding. His tunic was torn and muddy and so were his breeches; one of his boots had come unlaced and sagged around his ankle. He wore a very un-Tylendel-like expression; sullen and full of barely-smothered anger.
Vanyel remained prone for several moments longer with his chest heaving as he gulped for air; long enough that Savil
began to think he might really be hurt...//
I grinned to myself thinking about how worried Savil was and how the two tried to coddle each other after they had gotten
away from prying eyes when a slight scratching sound at the back of the storeroom made me start and look up, not that I
could see much but it was a natural reaction.
The noise came again and I got hesitantly to my feet wondering if the theatre had another mouse besides myself.
Scritch. Scritch.
I started walking over to it, my hand on my knife just in case. Just like my namesake I was too curious to let the noise pass, that and I think I get a thrill out of being scared shitless..go figure. Too bad I'm a bit special and despite my extraordinary night vision I had terrible depth perception that only got worse as it got darker. (Hey! At least I figured out why I had such a problem hitting a baseball.) I neatly tripped over the corner of my bag and hit one of the shelves sending something crashing down upon me and my flashlight to the floor. And even more unfortunately for me that light landed in a way that it shown upon me and what had attacked me.
Letting out a blood curdling scream I threw the marionette off me and fell backwards into a pile of unused drapings. Scrambling as fast as I could I overturned an unused box over it and thunked a sandbag atop it. At least it couldn't get out now. Puppets were shifty like that and tended to come back when you least expected it.
I sure hoped that those upstairs had heard my scream and had been scared out of their wits by it, serve them right for locking me in here with those.........puppets. I knew that if they had heard me they would at the very least try to do something about it. My screams had that kind of moving power, granted I had only ever screamed once before like that and it had been at the order of a drama instructor during a workshop. I knew then that I had most likely scared over half the building and elicited an applause fallowed with compliments on the greatness of it. Too bad this time I hadn't covered my ears and they were still ringing a bit.
The sound came again and screams were forgotten as I gathered up my maglight and my shoulderbag just incase some of the puppets got any idea about it, though I doubted that they would survive the black hole if they fell into it, and more carefully this time made my way over to the back right-hand corner of the room.
Scritch. Scritch. It sounded again.
It was coming from an old battered trunk with brass corners and a lock with the curious initials A. F. C. inscribed above it in swooping gold lettering. Curious. I didn't remember that trunk from the last time I hade been in here, granted there was a lot of stuff in the dark room that I didn't know of, but the trunk was rather nice and in a style that I particularly enjoyed.
Scritch. Scritch.
That damn noise just wouldn't leave me alone! So, clenching my maglight with one hand I gently lifted the trunk lid with the other. Light seeped out of the ever growing crack as I opened it in a furious rush like the light itself was trying to consume the darkness and chase every shadow away. The lid wasn't even halfway up when I noted an odd shaped ball of glowing orange, then the light overtook every and everything went white.
