Chapter Four: Returning to Shade
With the icebound forest far behind her, Marina angrily pounded her wings, fighting furiously, at the equally violent winds that tore at her fur, sending tiny shards of ice into her skin; stinging her face to the point of pain. Her wings began to grow stiff and leaden and the cold sent tremorous chills down her spine but despite the weather, it was the safest to travel in a blizzard. There were always some fugitive owls who were unhappy about the sudden peace between the birds and the bats and who knew what dangerous predators lurked around in the winter?
A distant light shone dimly against the messy blur of white and gray around her, and the echoing bong that grew louder with each wing beat told her she was getting close. Almost there, you're almost there, Marina told herself.
As she neared her destination, visible lights grew more numerous, as the heavy storm slowly died down, revealing hundreds of bright white points of light shining out of buildings and street lamps. A dark, superior structure loomed over all the other buildings surrounding it, overlooking the whole city. It held no light, but its powerful height and echoes of continuous deep sound commanded attention to itself better than all the lights in the city. The clock tower. She was here.
But her destination wasn't exactly inside the clock tower. Oh, no, she'd experienced the inside of the tower that unforgettable winter with Shade and she never wanted to go in there again. Sudden flashbacks zoomed into her head. The filthy pigeons, their spindly feet pressed down against her body, their claws digging into her skin, scraping at her wings, their shrieks and snapping beaks threatening to tear her eyes out…it was almost too horrible to reimagine it, everything tinged in white and black. Never had she had a more ominous night, other than that time facing Goth with his fangs lashing out at her, heated breath and spit spraying at her face, his massive wings, not to mention his mouth, threatening to rip her heart out and eat it whole. It made her sick with nausea just thinking about it.
She settled near the large clock area of the tower and tried her best to resist being blown off by the enormous waves of continuous noise emitted from it, and hurriedly dove into the opened mouth of one of the stone gargoyles that sat comfortably, having never dealt with any problems in life other having no Humans to clean the daily bird scat that dropped on their bodies leaving nasty dried clumps where the rocks were once smooth and possibly shiny.
Marina sprayed sound and jumped as millions of tiny bugs became lined in quicksilver in her mind and quickly flew out. It wasn't the one she was looking for. But it had to be that one. She remembered clearly what the gargoyle looked like, pointed tongue sticking out of rows of jagged teeth, a horridly ugly face with round eye balls staring to no end, because of course, it wasn't alive. It looked like all the others except it had a peculiar broken ear. It always confused Marina because quite a large chunk had been cracked off, where the ear was unexpectedly the thickest. It would have taken quite a bit of time and effort to wear that much of rock off, so it felt ridiculous that any creature would bother passing their time like that.
"Ha, ha, please mind the bugs, my friend! I don't come out of here very often!" A familiar wise old voice bellowed from inside the gargoyle.
Marina breathed a sigh of relief. It was the right gargoyle.
She flew in again and got greeted by an old friend. Zephyr, an albino bat, completely white from the tips of his ears to the claws of his toes, smiled kindly, the skin around his eyes crinkling softly. Marina quickly returned the smile, but she couldn't lie that his clear, white eyes and transparent wing membranes that showed his dark veins, scared her quite a bit when she had first met him and the memories didn't completely fade away yet. Still, he had been a kind friend and a lot of help in the past, so she kept her fears to herself.
"Hello, Zephyr, I know we haven't seen each other in quite a while, but we are still good friends, right?"
He smiled thoughtfully.
"It is not the quantity of time you have to know someone, but the quality, so yes, we are still quite good friends, so, how can I help you? You seem troubled,"
Marina bit her lip uneasily, ears twitching.
"Well, my son Griffin hasn't been talking about my mate Shade at all, so I am worried that something may have happened to him that I don't know of…"
Zephyr's eyes grew dark, or as dark as white could possibly become (which wasn't very dark, Marina realized) and his voice became gravely serious.
"Word appears to not have reached your ears yet. Griffin doesn't tell you the truth, fearing you will never forgive him, never speak to him again. But it also appears that you don't seem to talk to him anyway, so he may tell you sooner or later. I could tell you what happened to Shade, but it's only going to be a matter of time before you find out anyway. You don't really need my help on discovering that because it won't move you forward and you can find the answer elsewhere. Tell me what you really want to know,"
Marina took several deep breaths, bracing herself for the inevitable answer of that she couldn't be helped. It's impossible she thought. Zephyr can't help me with what I want, this time. She squeezed her eyes shut for a second, grinding her teeth together, hoping for the best, but knowing the worst would come. She sighed again.
"If-if Shade is d-dead…is…is there some…possible way I… could…change that…?"
Zephyr let out a tired sigh like he repeated the same thing to many bats and they just never listened. Marina doubted that she would listen either. She didn't want to think that seeing Shade again was impossible. She refused to believe it.
"Time travel…is not simple, my friend…and it is most definitely uncertain on whether you can return to normal time again. Many of my friends have time traveled but none have returned to tell the tale. It's dangerous, messing with the dusts of time, and I heavily urge you to find another solution. You don't want to die, stuck in a time period of which you are not supposed to exist in, or still alive in at somewhere else. You will confuse the events, and I cannot guarantee you will even be able to rescue Shade in the end…"
She looked down at the claws of her toes, tears rimming her eyes, and then slowly falling down her jaw, blurring her sight. Marina didn't want to see the rest of the world, knowing Shade wouldn't be able to see it with her. Shade was gone. Nothing could be done about-
Zephyr suddenly let out another sigh, but this time it was more frustrated than tired, as if maybe something could be done, but it wouldn't be easy.
"If you are really desperate to get Shade to return to you, then there is another alternative that has recently entered my mind. But before I continue, how is Griffin, I might ask?
Marina's eyes widened in surprise. She hadn't been worried about Griffin, since he'd returned to her; she thought he was perfectly fine now that he was back. A sudden thought shot through her mind. Maybe she'd neglected him. Maybe she made him feel like he was forgotten.
"I-I, well, Griffin- he seemed fine- he-
"Are you so sure? How do you know if you never bothered to ask?"
Silence. Marina couldn't say anything.
"So, after being trapped in the Underworld of the Dead for several days, you assume that after he comes home, everything is fine? Before you worry about your dead mate, you must worry about what you still have left; your son. You act as if his return meant nothing. Do you understand how he feels? I hope you do, considering you should be plenty familiar with becoming alone after your entire Brightwing colony abandoned you because of a simple metal band. Why can't you understand that your son may feel lonely right now, too, as you once had?"
"Well-
"First things first, I need to get something straight. You do care about your son, correct? Because if you don't and believe that he can easily be replaced in some other form, you have made things much easier for me. If your son is not of any value to you, I can easily trade his soul for Shade's, so Shade's soul has a body to live in, because Shade's spirit is actually in our world right now. But you will have to live with your son being either dead, or you will have to covet the life of another being to fill his body with a soul. It may get quite troublesome, so it will be easier to just forget him, and leave him dead, if Shade is who you truly care about, after all…"
"Shut your mouth; you don't know anything about Griffin…!" Marina shrieked, baring her teeth, tears streaming from her face again.
"-you don't understand why I want Shade back. Griffin won't talk to me or anything and he refuses to even explain what happened to Shade. Shade's death, his disappearance is killing Griffin. He is growing cold and silent, and it is partly my fault, but Shade needs to return as well. See, even more importantly, Shade's death is destroying me. I can't live with the idea that he is gone, in fact, I can't even be a proper mother to Griffin anymore…"
Marina broke out into miserable, broken sobs, breaths ragged and cracking, drinking her own salt water tears as they slid down from her eyes and dripped into her open mouth, trying her best to cover her face with her wings, her shell shaped ears pinned back on her head, making herself appear smaller, weaker.
"Alright, then. Since you appear to now care about Griffin, I will explain the other alternative. There has recently been an object discovered by the Humans, that has been messing with my ability to look into the past and future. The future was changing constantly, but what puzzled me was that this object messed with the past, much more violently. Anyone in contact of this tool could immediately go back in time to where they wished and change events, but the end result is never certain. The object chooses whether you get what you wanted in the end; either you come out alive with what you were looking for, or you are trapped in there and die trying,"
Marina's ears shot up and her eyes lit up like stars in the night sky.
"Tell me where to find this object,"
And so Zephyr began to explain.
It was much easier flying there, than it had been, getting to the clock tower to meet Zephyr. Marina suddenly remembered the smooth, light pump of Chinook's wings and tried to copy them to get there faster, even though she was fast enough as is. It struck her as strange how she was suddenly thinking about him and she quickly switched her thoughts to seeing Shade, seeing his smile; seeing her own reflected in his eyes. That made her happy.
The clouds soon gave way, and soon Marina's eyes were graced with a majestic forest of towering evergreens, their pine needle filled branches all covered in soft fluffy snow. The scent of the pines, cold and spicy swirled in her nostrils and she wrinkled her nose, the smell a bit strong. She silently landed and with a quick fold of her wings, hung upside down, looking around for any sight of the Humans. There. Coincidentally right below her. Marina shook her head, silently scolding herself for getting so distracted by her recent thoughts that she hadn't bothered to look out for Humans.
Slowly she inched closer and closer to the dark trunk of the old fir tree that had lost most of its needles, making it easier to move around on, but harder to hide in. She sucked her breath, clinging close to the trunk like its sticky sap had covered her fur and glued her on. If Marina made herself thinner by making her fur stick close to her body and folding her wings as tight as she could, maybe she could blend in and observe what the Humans were doing.
They spoke in quiet, but harsh tones, occasionally snapping at each other in their language that she didn't understand. It annoyed her that she couldn't make out what they were trying to say to each other, since who knew how much precious information she was missing? A sudden memory hit her again, Shade always finding the info and her always tagging along to make sure he didn't know anything she didn't. Good old times. She sighed. How she missed those times.
Marina squirmed, trying to make it as subtle as possible, trying to see what the object looked like. It was so annoying; the Humans always either had their large hands around it, or their heads blocked her view completely. She had a sudden urge to swoop down and take off with the object in her claws, but they obviously had those machines that sprayed poisonous gas that would knock her unconscious and then they'll probably just capture her again and use her for whatever evil plan they had in store this time. Humans are always up to evil plans on destroying whatever we weak and helpless creatures have left she thought angrily. When would their greed for hoarding whatever things we still have, end?
She glared defeatedly at the gray sky, squinting in confusion; it was almost like the light behind the clouds could eat through them, since how else it could possibly be so bright when filmy clouds covered it entirely? The Humans will never stop taking until there isn't anything left to steal. Then they will kill each other and take whatever they had left. And then again, how did she know that they didn't do that already? The bombs they had attached to them, a bit ago, were set to land on certain buildings. Only Humans lived in buildings. Could they have started killing each other so early?
The world the Humans lived in must be very complicated and fragile if they already began to destroy each other. Who knows, she thought, maybe they will become the victims of themselves someday. Then they will finally understand how we feel, being tortured and thrown around at their liking. Nocturna will get back at them.
The Humans began to move away, walking briskly towards the truck that awaited them that would soon leave and probably never come back. Marina decided to take her chance.
She dropped down like a bullet, restraining herself from folding her wings and then unfurled them at the last minute, claws just touching the object at first, then suddenly clutching onto it like dear life. Hands grabbed at her, closing around her body and she snapped at the fingers, biting the skin from most of them and in the rush of events, accidentally tore one from the hand, quickly spitting it out onto the ground, spattering dark blood onto the stark white snow. A horrible scream emanated from the man and the Humans retreat quickly, rushing the injured one into the truck. She sighed with relief; they hadn't brought those poison gas tanks that would knock her out.
As she left the forest behind her, Marina strained to fly harder, faster, grumbling at the surprising weight of the small object, tightly held in her claws. She would never let it go until she flew back to her roost. She couldn't take any more chances now.
But she got curious. Her claws felt around the strange object, stroking the smooth array of buttons on one side. But one accidental click was all it took.
Marina was gone.
Hi everyone! Sorry for posting this chapter so late, I was really, really busy last week so I completely forgot about it...:'( (I have horrible memory skills...they can't even be called skills...) Stay tuned for the next chapter!