Author notes.
Crosspost, baby. I wasn't going to do it, but I figured out the doc manager. Even if no one reads this, it indicates there's more life! And I like supporting the fandom.
Of the many reasons I stopped working on my first Silverwing fic, this is one. My other projects are unbelievably dark and I needed a break from the darkness. So here we are with some zany shenanigans instead.
The trope in our fandom: re-writes/ expansion on the original story. As is this. Unfortunately for Shade and Marina, it's another Vampyrum joining them. Though she might be considerably nicer. ^^;
Chapter One: Nuria of Nowhere
Let me tell you, there is nothing quite as magnificently humiliating as being trapped. And here I was.
Mine was a beautiful prison, as magnificently designed as it was humiliating. Lush heat emanated from the forest floor, a sea of earth and moss and suffocating yet delicious humidity. The sort that fills your lungs to bursting.
Fat leaves and succulent flowers thrived alongside the moss, intertwined with creeping ivy, sedge, and exposed concrete (it's the little things that count). The trees strained against the ceiling, hoping for an escape that would never come while sturdy vines consumed their branches and strangled their trunks. The water here that didn't pour on an eerie and mysteriously fixed schedule came from a trough I oft watched be refilled when I was supposed to be sleeping. Sunken into the ground, its metal walls were disguised by overgrowth so that at first I'd thought it a lovely little pond, yet the water tasted strangely polluted, reeking faintly of chemicals rather than pleasantly familiar stagnation.
A clever illusion, and an illusion all the same. I had to give it to the humans, they were crafty ones. It could have been seamless. It could have been perfect.
There could be much worse places to spend a cold season.
The night I hung in a mist net, a tangle of threads meant for much smaller prey than I, comes straight to mind. Cramped, suffocated, thinking my wings were ready to snap off. That I should be laid low by something so basic was just one more thorn in the side of an already disastrous year. If death had come for me, in my despair I would have welcomed it.
Tonight – were it night, for the sun and moon did not exist here, instead the lights flicked on and off at what seemed like regular intervals, just like the rain - I flew another lap, one of many now uncountable laps, around the small jungle in a matter of seconds, alone, agonizingly bored, agitated for all the unnecessary noise and banging coming from a small cavern in the painted sky. One of two such tiny caves existed, each blocked by a grate, allowing fresh air to flow merrily in and out. If you could call it that.
That strange night air told me one thing for certain. Odorous, sulphuric, acrid, I wasn't in the jungle anymore.
As I passed the grate, straining to hear what might be grunts and shouts so as to know who else shared this prison, the pitch changed dramatically. What sounded almost like an argument whose words were lost became the scraping of concrete that made my skin crawl and my teeth hurt. I wanted to shout at them to shut up but I'd long since learned whoever else was in the building they never heard me. Or didn't care. Jerks.
As if to purposefully up my irritation, it began to rain from my false sky, out of small silver protrusions that looked rather like upside down flowers. If flowers could rain. Not a gentle misting as was the standard either. A no holds, hog wild monsoon came screaming through the windless, still forest, a blur of vertical sheet rain. After several minutes, flying became impossible. Water streamed off my fur, my brown hair was matting on my forehead and sticking my eyelashes together so they turned in and were getting pasted to my actual eyes, and the splattering ruckus of water slamming into the foliage rose and rose, becoming deafening.
So drenched and annoyed I landed on a sinuous vine, trying to put boredom and solitude out of my mind, pretending I hadn't lost interest in the only enjoyable activity my artificial jungle (Aw, yes, and mine it was, wasn't it? Princess of something so grand!) had to offer: infuriating the humans who kept me here. (Mature? No. Fun? Certainly. Productive? Oh, I hoped so indeed.)
Shuffling along the vine, I camped under an exceptionally large, stiff, and laughably fake frond of a lovely fern somehow glued to a very real tree. Like every other moment, the jungle left me with my thoughts glaring up at the vent.
Night One in this place sat up there in my all time lows; Day One being an easy follow up.
Those first moments of freedom, when I woke alone, I went slamming straight into a glass wall in seconds, before I fell out of the air and into a dazed, battered pile of wings, my ego critically injured, hissing, thinking beasts would pop out of the dense undergrowth at any moment to grab me as a quick snack. The cracking of wood and the loud rustle of fronds as blood roared in my ears and a paw crept over me, reaching for me... I screamed. Then a dull-eyed snow white mouse scurried over my foot as if it didn't just look its death right in the face.
A quick snack I was not. It, on the other wing, not so lucky.
Such was my first lesson about the false jungle. For reasons unknown to me, a single wall was a glass window clear as the most crystalline, perfect lagoon. Even when it rained and mud splattered onto the sheen, it would in those times I left the room be cleaned up before I returned.
The jungle's second lesson came immediately after I recovered from my initial flirtation with fatal injury. The kingdom that I ruled over had no subjects. No birds, no bats, no beasts. Just me and these bland, easy to catch mice. They were naive as can be. (But who am I to criticize? Stuck in a net like some dozy butterfly.)
Put the fear of Cama Zotz into them, that seemed like an excellent idea initially. When they didn't immediately run, I'd scoop them up, let them know I was a threat, and then drop them again. Wait for them to scurry off and hide, which sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't. I had all the time and so all the patience in the world for them to become acclimated to fear. In the face of capture, hunger hadn't been on my mind. Entertainment and catharsis had. Until soon I was flooded with rodents who refused to have any sense, made no conversation, and must have been raised somewhere just like this, free from predators and the thrilling delight of danger. Sounds like a boring existence, this safety? No? You haven't lived.
With lacklustre company, what's a girl to do?
But I was telling you about the glass walls, wasn't I? The home of my keepers.
Strange birds, humans are. They watched me at the same time each day, just after the second round of mist finished up. Late in night, as the artificial lights hummed and crackled to life, sometimes one of them would come to me.
I hated this particular animal but he also fascinated me.
His grip was crushing, and try though I might to turn a grab him every time I could not.
My life was a horrific blur of abuse, moments of unexpected compassion, and then more abuse that I put behind me whenever my mind was clear enough. (You try being stabbed with poison and stared at for hours. It's all fun and needles until someone fails to lose an eye.)
But sometimes I wouldn't be quite all that faded when they pulled me out of the forest after poisoning me. After a few trials, I reached lesson number three. I pretended to drift off quickly, but wait. Then I pretended not to wake up at a reasonable time, but kept my eyes open a crack.
Beyond the glass, in that room the humans accessed with their secret door, I caught just a glimpse. It could have changed everything.
There was a neighbouring jungle.
I shrieked and fought then. Screamed in their useless faces, "Why aren't I there! Why am I alone!"
Dullards, humans are. Bad as the mice. The man didn't make the slightest attempt to understand me.
So I bit him. He stabbed me. I fell asleep. Woke up, bit him again.
Rabies, am I right?
Alas, no.
Who knew what they wanted, but I knew what I wanted. Out. Or, more specifically, into that second room.
That's what solitude does for you. Muddles up your priorities.
While the rain tried to drown out the neighbouring din, and sure the other racket was coming from that oft glimpsed second room, my loneliness and frustration surged.
Then the fern leaf buckled, dumping half an hour of accumulated water into my face.
Sputtering and wheezing my ears pricked as a soft alarm went off, a small beeping. The secret door opening!
And not just my door.
The human walked carefully in, but his eyes were fixed elsewhere, moving towards the grates, studying them, and distracted he'd left me the perfect exit. In seconds I was among the strange devices the humans had. The windows with pictures, the beeping machinery, the metal tables. And to my delight another door was open.
The second jungle real! It wasn't a fever dream at all! With a burst of speed I swooped into it, through the chaos, suddenly hearing the man cry out while I was shouting joyously. Calling out! Asking who else was here!
I circled several times until being sure.
No one!
There weren't other people. But the source of my frustration.
There where the wind whistles through, shaking the artificial branches, waking the tasteless mice, usually lays a grate. At least in my own kingdom. Tonight? In this kingdom it was gone. Tonight, I was about to be gone.
Something whizzed by my wing with a hum and my eyes snapped back. The human had a rifle pointed at me with their poison darts.
Not a chance, not tonight.
Laughing while he shrieked, one victory swoop over his head led me forward.
I, Nuria of Nowhere, Princess of the Dead, Harasser of Humans, Devourer of Souls (provided they were bland little mice), a vampyrum of the finest lack of pedigree, was free.
Then I was off, sweeping up into that lovely metal bosom, toward that great unknown. As I passed the human, I let my claws rake across his cheek.
Just something to remember me by.
I'd never believe what was to come next.