NicoleDaughterOfPoseiden – Gavin's "feelings" are extremely complicated right now. See story below for further explanation.
Disclaimer: Extra, Extra read all about it! Today's headline. I DON'T OWN THE RIGHTS TO FABLEHAVEN, BRANDON MULL DOES. In other news, Mark Twain and the Mysterious Strangerdon't belong to me either.
Gavin was wearing a rut into the floor. He couldn't stop himself.
Imprudence! Telling that Fairykind girl everything was idiotic. Of course, it wasn't like she'd ever be able to tell anyone what she'd discovered.
Gavin stopped pacing. He looked around what he considered the foyer of his home. Kendra hadn't given up hope of being rescued. Gavin knew her well enough to suspect that she'd try to make off sooner or later. Headstrong imp. Escape was ridiculously improbable. At any rate, it was only a matter of how long before running from him would become impossible forever.
Gavin let his gaze wander over to the falls. A pang, familiar yet something that he yet to get used to, pierced his heart.
Kendra reminded him of her. Ludicrous. Kendra was nothing like Amana. Amana had been dark-skinned, the color of roasted nuts, with cerulean blue eyes, and a mop of uncontrollable, mud-colored hair. Kendra was humble where Amana had been vainly haughty. The only quality the two shared was their innocent view of the wide world.
Amana was named after the South American goddess. Gavin had fondly thought of her as his private goddess. That was before his Master's revolution.
When Sairon Mirima came back for the first time, before the young Navarog had ever left the confines of the prison, he created the falls and put distractor spells on the prison. The naiad who took up residence in the falls was Amana. She was charged by the Fairy Queen, via Sairon Mirima, to the role of gatekeeper of the prison.
Gavin unconsciously took to walking to and fro once more.
The Forbidden Dragon Sanctuary, a name that the Knights of the Dawn so carelessly used, was not like the other forbidden dragon sanctuaries in the fact that no treaty had ever been signed by the residents. His Master and the other prisoners called Amana the Warden. He had jokingly called Amana the Caretaker whenever they had spoken. She hadn't minded so much. Using the nick-name in front of Kendra was a slip that Gavin was displeased at having made.
Amana had been the primary obstacle in the way of the First King being able to leave the prison. He was cunning. He knew that Navarog was a handsome young boy. He told Navarog to be charming, to be kind to Amana, to serenade her, to use whatever means necessary to make her like him. Gavin did as his Master commissioned.
Amana was lonely. None ever came to visit her. At the start, she wasn't receptive to company. He entreated her to let him show her how he could leave the prison, for his heart was not consumed by the Chaos that fastened the others to their gloomy cell. One day she let him, believeing him to be a charlatan, thinking she would get amusement from the activity. Much her to her astonishment, he passed through the barrier easily.
Eventually, she warmed up to his cooed greetings and soft spoken words. She let him come and go as he pleased, without telling the Knights of the Dawn on him. He was, after all, a pitiable orphaned dragon, who was looking for herbal remedies for his elderly imprisoned uncle's ailing body.
Gavin grinned at his cleverness. Her gullibility had been a blessing.
In return for the favor, Gavin pleased her as best he could. He feigned interest in her chattering about the life she'd lived in the Fairy Queen's realm. He sated her desires, allowing her to steal brief kisses (careful never to let himself lose control, should her fatal naidic nature take over). In lovely soprano tones she sang him ballads of lover's idylls, which he voraciously applauded afterwards. Anything she wanted was hers, so long as she continued to allow him passage whenever he (or rather his Master) willed.
Upon his arrival, following his release from the Quiet Box, Amana refused him passage for the first time. She obstinately told him that the Knights had informed her of what he had really been up to when he had gone away. She regarded him with jarring coldness. Gavin pleaded with her, for even if he forced his way past, she would tell the Knights of him.
He risked trying to kiss her. Unexpectedly, she allowed him to ensnare her lips. Gavin guessed why soon enough. She deepened the kiss, relinquishing the restraint she'd shown in the past. She put her webbed hands into his short cropped hair. Alarmed Gavin tried to break free of her grasp. She was stronger than he had intended.
It appeared that Gavin would drown, when, as his vision was failing, his temples throbbing from lack of oxygen, she pulled away. He gasped for air, blue in the face. Amana cried out and vanished into the falls.
Valiantly unperturbed, Gavin went into his home. Before he died, he never saw Amana again.
When Gavin returned to the land of the living, he went to see Amana, compelled to inexplicably. Amana cried out as she had before upon seeing him. She asked him how it was possible that he had gone out and disappeared, only to return but from the inside of the prison? There were no other entrances - Sairon Mirima sealed them all off (- It was recently that Gavin, in a fit of claustrophobia, had created the holes in his earthen ceiling leading to the outside world. Anyhow, the barrier enclosed the whole prison). He couldn't answer her. She grew angry. He tried to placate her, but she demanded answers.
Giving up the naiad, he returned to his Master. His Master had noticed Amana's disquiet. He told Gavin that Amana was asking too many questions. The time had come. She had to go.
It was then that the prison uprising occurred, though not as he had portrayed it to Kendra. Gavin was present for the "revolution", which consisted of his Master, himself, and another dragon Gavin had never seen before. This dragon was the cobra dragon that Kendra had seen raise its ugly head from the lower levels of the prison. The First King had not mentioned the presence of the cobra dragon prior to their arrival to the gate. He had not explained any of the details of his plan for getting rid of Amana.
They had discussed not sharing the "revolution" with the other inmates. This was alright because the dragons feared the ancient Father of all Hatchlings more than they did anything else. None would object to his designs, or demand to be included. Otherwise, his Master had simply told Gavin that he must remain in his avatar form no matter what occurred. Gavin thought this strange, but he wasn't in the habit of questioning his Master's eccentric motives.
Gavin could visualize the memory clearly, as if it were happening before his eyes a second time.
When Amana appeared to them, she obliged them to tell her what the meaning of their meeting was. Without warning, the cobra dragon lunged at Gavin pinning him down. Gavin bellowed in surprise and outrage. The First King never took his eyes off the naiad. Gavin's Master calmly told Amana that if she loved Gavin she would have to leave the falls and become mortal. It was the only way to save him. If she failed to act, the cobra dragon would devour Gavin before her eyes.
Gavin could see it all happening before his eyes. He recalled the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Amana would sense the trap – her naivety only went so far. Gavin didn't want to die again!
Did he?
When Gavin was younger, before his true imprisonment, he had found himself fascinated with the musings of Mark Twain. Gavin had stolen Sairon Mirima's steam trunk home, and inside he found hundreds of oddities. Journals had reveled the wizard's Achilles heel - a fascination with the novelties of the future. The writings of the wizard told him that Sairon had used the Chronometer to go forward in time. Gavin found all sorts of we he thought at the time was bewitched machinery - a megaphone, a radio, even a digital clock. He had also collected various author's works, including Mark Twain.
Gavin handed everything he found over to his Master - who eagerly took the treasures, but did not want the steam trunk itself - except for the books by Mark Twain. These he kept as his private spoils. His favorite story was the Mysterious Stranger. The tale was existentialist and nihilist. It reflected Gavin's worldly outlook. In the end the protagonist is enlightened to the fact that he is nothing more than a vagrant thought in the cosmos.
Why couldn't he remember what had happened to him when he died? Was it possible that it was because nothing had happened? No fiery depths or heavenly heights. Had he just ceased to exist?
To die meant nothing, Gavin told himself. He was nothing more than a vagrant thought. He felt emotion ebbing away from him with the epiphany.
Amana looked at his stony mask, her expression unreadable.
'Obviously you do not believe I will do it? Didn't he tell you? I'm quite mad!'
His Master then began raising his hand slowly from his side.
The cobra dragon smiled viciously down at Gavin. He opened his jaws and leaned down eagerly. Resigned, Gavin closed his eyes.
'Stop.' The word pierced the tense silence like an arrow.
Gavin opened his eyes in confusion. The cobra dragon, clearly disappointed pulled back, and with a grunt released Gavin. Gavin turned to Amana.
She stood dripping wet in front of the falls. The enchanting air of immortality was gone from her. Gavin could hear her heartbeat.
The First King laughed gutturally. With a discreet wag of his fingers behind his back, the cobra dragon lept away from Gavin. Amana had no time to react. He rushed out and with a roar consumed Amana in one impressively big bite. She was gone.
The First King continued to laugh. 'Well played my boy.' He had said, patting Gavin on the back. 'Well played'.
Gavin had not been listening to him, but nodded instinctively, mechanically. Amana had been nothing to him. He thought, for all their games, he had been nothing to her. Her idiotic sacrifice proved otherwise. Oh well. Another vagrant thought freed from the arbitrary rules of the silly game of the living. If anything he should envy her.
Yet Gavin had felt a coldness, a chill swathing him. His neck hairs had stood on end. Amana had been looking at him with what could be described as reconciled sympathy, just before she was encased in the cobra dragon's hungry embrace.
Since then she'd haunted him. In the mornings he woke, touching a bizarre, faintly cool, almost wet, spot on his cheek. In that time before he was fully aroused, he ached for a distant remembrance of melancholy cerulean blue eyes.
Gavin stopped pacing. Why was he thinking of Amana after he'd fought with Kendra Sorenson? A tingle in the back of his mind advised him to dread the answer to that question. A sudden rage swelled up in his heart. He didn't know who he was angry at, but he knew who he could take his anger out on.
At a brisk pace he strode up the stairs to his room. Stepping across the threshold, he stormed steadily to the alcove and the steam trunk. He crouched down and opened the lid of the chest. He started to enter but was frozen in an instant by an unearthly sound.
Stop. Amana's command resonated in the enraged dragon's mind. Gavin could so clearly hear her that he almost looked around to find her. Clenching the lid, he swiftly closed the steam trunk.
Gavin sighed with his entire being. Then he laid his head upon the trunk lid. What was wrong with him? He wondered.
Gavin stood up, and walked back toward the door, unseeing, without an intention to go anywhere. He was so lost in his pensive state, that he almost ran into the man standing in his doorway.
Gavin looked up to see Neak, much to his annoyance.
Neak was the name of the cobra dragon. He was in his avatar form. His avatar had swallow, sickly, yellow skin, shifty dirt-colored eyes, and greasy green hair. Gavin strongly disliked Neak. Neak was jealous of 'Navarog's' standing with the First King, so he was constantly trying to find ways to undermine him.
Neak was an easy target. Gavin was semi-grateful for the scum's appearance. He could unleash his wrath.
"Neak." Gavin's voice was dangerously low. "I hope for your sake there is a reason that you're depleting the air supply in my immediate vicinity. I have no patience for your insistence on basking in the light of my glory right now."
Neak flinched at Gavin's tone, but only a little.
"I?" He sneered his voice sounded like the drip of toxic waste, sizzling at the end as it burned through whatever it made contact with. "I bask in the glow of a puffed up babysitter?"
Gavin shrugged nonchalantly. "I am safeguarding one of the King's most dangerous adversaries. An individual who has bested a horde of demons, and single-handedly slayed the demon king Gorgrog. What are you doing? Would you like me to tell you? I know. You are no doubt brining me a message from your Master, requesting my presence. The King often requests my presence, have you noticed? Does he call upon you often?" Gavin was not taller than the spindly man, but he used his bearing to cause the man before him to flinch.
"I am Navarog the Demon Prince. Who are you? Neak the Thief – the slimly wretch that stole from Celebrant, barely worthy of the dragon prison. You are a page boy," Gavin hissed. "You are Hermes, free to wander the domain of our godly king, yes, but I am Hades, second only to the Zeus of our realm."
With this daring, vehement declaration Gavin pushed past Neak and began the ascent up the stairs. In a moment, he heard Neak follow, skulking behind him, muttering to himself.
Gavin felt somewhat more centered thereafter.