Monday, September 16, 2024
Sunday, September 15, 2024
[Fiction] [Excerpt] [GR&SB] [Book II]
Green Ruins & Shallow Blues
:: Book II: FRUITFUL
(C) 2024 Kyrinn S. Eis
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
-=-
Sasko snorted himself awake.
The slate-grey room was further purpled by darkness slashed by almost Avistran-bright moonlight. Sasko stumbled to his feet and groggily staggered to the near wall and wandered along it to the window. The city was a crater the size of the world, and he a crawlie on a tiny pebble near some blades of grass.
Alnavranath had city-sized parks, preserves where food animals were ranched. Most were part of corporate holdings and each sector had its own colour-code and -shape designation which one could use to quickly conceive of wherein one was. They were in Faerytale Lake District's, Ancient Blue Hush. Their tenement was removed from the nearest street by hundreds of paces, Marks by local nomenclature.
Sasko scratched his sack and smelled his fingers, soured his expression, and wiped those fingers on his housecoat. The foxhounds patrolled and along with them hovered a night-vision equipped bot. It sought out the sneak-thieves which robbed and when able, life-stole and absconded with residents -- especially pets, children, and the elderly and infirmed. Everyone knew that when their day came, loved or not, their chair or bed would be left out in the evening air, and that was that...
"Come back to bed, Sasko. We'll make it out of this mess, you'll see. Our luck will turn around come tomorrow-sun."
But Mawzer wasn't in his bed, and she likely never would be.
He was -- they were in over their heads. How had he managed to turn the screws on them? It had been theirs, held, in their stash, and then it -- the entire shipment -- had been stolen. Almost nothing else had been taken -- it made no sense. Something had been bothering him about that, but the more he'd asked Zandig, the more upset at him she had grown. Three days ago, she had simply left.
Sounds outside his door found his hand on his blaster and the belt draped over his neck and shoulder as he hovered by the open window. Ten Paces down -- Marks, whatever they were; -- too much. The door knob rattled and a zip was slowly undone. Sasko peered left and right, and then stepped through.
The door was opened and Kwaith strode-in with the T47 extended, and fired tandem, slow, red-hot bolts into the bed which immediately started a fire as they languidly struck and spalled along the tile floor and spattered up the walls nearest their offset impacts. The thousands of embers were still cherry red, and an occasional orange or amber brightness would be enkindled by the breeze, but this would dull them darker than those unkissed by the black air of night.
Next in was Melkhwn and his darling daughter; her saliva-slicked chin and crazed eyes immediately warned one off of her helplessness. Her soft, combed whoollen coat was so emblematically red in Sasko's mind, and as had become the thought he had when Sask' heard the word. Empress was a horror turned dread.
"He's here." She sniffed at the air, and the saliva grew slicker.
-- "Sasko, you Flack! Where's my product? Huh?!"
Empress smiled at her brother's stupidity; she rotated in place at the hip, her hands thrust into her deep pockets; her stare absent the present, and down roads afar; her smile intensified at the imagined future she saw.
--- "I don't see 'im, Boss."
Kwaith neared, occluded Empress. Sasko fired; Kwaith died.
^Don't panic.
-- Right.
Before the crumple of local gravity could shrink, let alone topple Kwaith, Empress was on the move towards him; her jaw open wide; and fire in her eyes. Sasko leaned ever so slightly to his right and fired a long pulse -- he'd rigged it, it was dicey -- and the neon-bright plasma crackled and began to expand and decollimate -- it grew fuzzy and diffuse; Empress' hair ignited as it passed nearby, needle thin, threadlike dissipation of the charge reached out towards her form, but its ionised path had already been lain in the precursor-pulse which had struck Melkhwn and bade welcome the full discharge of the remnant electricity of the streamer. Its impact was perhaps no greater than a thrown stone, but that was only the shockwave of the collimated collapse. The discharge skated across his keristeel superstrate vest until the ions ground-out into his neck which blackened and crackled like the blistered meat it was,
-- "Augh!"
Empress only then realised that Sasko, while afraid, was not surprised at her tackle off the ledge. As they fell forward under her animal speed, she looked with cool appreciation at the scoundrel's ploy. Then, that look only a girl can give, appeared, and she kicked him away from her. The countermass did little to boost her; -=gravity=-; but Sasko found himself crashed into Blue Whisper staves which did much to resist his arrival into them, and but for perhaps a few cracked stalks, his momentum was neutralised and he fell back slightly to land on his arse.
...
"You -- you?"
Sasko nodded as he back-peddled on the wet grass. He felt for a broken stalk of Blue Whisper, but found only the needle-sharp points of the bud-staves and cussed for its pain.
"What a fool. You're the type of guy who thinks love is real; it's not, dummy! I'm just a girl, like half your age, and I already know that; how dumb do you have to be to --"
Her brains exploded out her ear and nose opposite Mawzer's blaster pulse, the crack still echoed off the building, rattled glass.
-- "Well, smartipants, there's a lot of ways to love; like saving someone's life, ...again."
Sasko looked up, and sighed explosive joy; pulled his stained crotch from his groin and stood on wobbled knees,
--- "Zandig!"
She rolled her eyes and opened to the inevitable embrace; she didn't know why they needed to do that, but she almost didn't mind...at least with Sask'.
-- "Yeah. Let's..."
Empress stirred as her brains knit back together one dendritic structure at a time.
Zandig shot her a few more times just to give them lead-time.
*
"Of course I stole it, you moron. Hesperis!"
Sasko was downfallen and scuffed the toe of his boot into the wet earth,
-- "Why didn't you tell me you needed to move it?"
Mawzer was flummoxed by a perfectly otherwise sensible sap not grokking her more fluid morals and even dodgier accounting skills,
"You know I'm only good with the money when it's in motion..."
He did, and nodded,
-- "A lotta' hoods are like da -- that." he shrugged, still hurt -- nursed his stupid soft heart, sniffed and looked aside as he casually wiped his face on his orange and yellow jacket sleeve.
Mawzer again rolled her eyes, and again sighed, and then socked him in the shoulder until he laughed and told her to stop; and a few punches later, she did.
She did love him, he knew it.
Zandig sighed a frown; the boy was more trouble than he was worth... but something about him seemed lucky. The smart play was to token him and play her cards close to her vest; the lad was just a kid to her centuries -- she couldn't just roll him and leave him defenceless. She'd show him the ropes, and then cut him loose. Yeah...
Empress heard grassy footfalls receded in the distance, and then the creak of the hulk's suspension on the gravplate; she smiled inwardly, but her lips and tongue twitched spasmodically as her addled brain grew more chaotic for the random healing she experienced. Something within her knew who she was and always reminded her even when her own brain betrayed -- her.
Beneath her a black beetle struggled through the roots and rocks and centuries tamped earth which had flooded the spillway nearly a millennium earlier. As it neared the humus she began to sit up in her wildly inaccurate gesticulated limb movements. Her wet, soft, ultra-combed whoollen coat, redder than red, confined her wilder flails until the beetle had found its way onto her shoulder. It split open its chitinous carapace, and for the first time, aired its wet wings with a series of pulsed buzzes. Empress looked on at it as faint red within strobed stronger with each pulse from the thing in gossamer and stronger lines of lumen spread throughout.
...and then! It was off into the night...
She marvelled anew at the stars overhead, and lay back with a few errant jolts.
Empress smiled, and cried.
It was all so beautiful.
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Friday, September 13, 2024
Thursday, September 12, 2024
[GR&SB] [Miscellany]
A videc presentation was made to a character, and at the end, I used this to illustrate how Info-synergistic the Empire's reach is:
:: -=[Credentials: -=[ {i:!_;'I}|.[::-ii'.]=l("|'.l!) ]=-
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Revised for Right-Handers
Darling,
I have re-tuned my guitar; five semitones, to ADGCEA for those of the right-handed persuasion, and everything sounds so much mellower and more ambient rather than before.
Camping,
-K
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Monday, September 9, 2024
15 Years to the day.
He was a very interesting character.
Mom made it eleven more years.
-- It was special knowing you, Pops.
SUMMERTIME
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Saturday, September 7, 2024
Friday, September 6, 2024
[AULDGORY]
Thursday, September 5, 2024
[AULDGORY]
