Total Word count: 3500
Nanowrimo 2013 Day 2
Other-Space Chapter 1 (part 2) + Chapter 2 (part 1)
Well, not so much of a struggle this time. We’re getting close to the starting point of the plot now. And with the Temple of the Listener we have the first thing I actually thought of in regards to this story.
It was still day time when they’d emerged from the
cave. That was several hours ago
now. Jade was silently lying on the
grass looking up at the stars. She had
her arms stretched out beside her with a portable cassette player clasped
tightly in her right hand, the earphones plugged firmly into her ears with
music flowing into them. Behind her were
several cabins, mostly made out of wood, with the sounds of a loud party coming
from one of them. The Cave Crawlers
would almost always through a party at the end of the week. Jade was never keen on parties, especially
the really loud ones where you can’t have a conversation without shouting down
someone else’s ear. Her own music helped
drown out some of the noise, but not all of it.
Further
back from the cabins was the mountainside, honeycombed with the caves they
explored. Various ridges and ledges ran
across it leading to the various openings.
Some caves weren’t so easily accessible and several ladders had been
affixed to the mountainside.
Nobody knew
exactly how or why the caves had been formed; they were older than recorded
history and almost certainly older than human life. The number of openings in the mountainside
had remained the same since they were discovered but new tunnels would
sometimes appear within the caves themselves.
Jade and Dani would often delve into a cave that they, or someone else,
had explored before only to discover a new route leading to somewhere
else. Sometimes routes would just
disappear. Jade occasionally wondered if
that ever left a Cave Crawler trapped on some far off world. And there was one thing the different worlds
had in common, there never any form of intelligent life there, at least not
anywhere near where the cave came out.
Jade wasn’t
thinking about any of that. She was
thinking about Dani. That was, what, the
eighth time she’d done that, or was it the ninth? Jade had found herself just stopping and
staring at Dani several times now, and Dani had started to notice. She’d just shrugged it off the first two times,
thinking she might have just become too wrapped up in her own thoughts she’d
just zoned out. But it was only when she
was thinking about Dani, never any other time.
The music and the stars put her at ease and helped her think.
Jade didn’t
hear Dani approach her from behind and didn’t notice that she was there until
Dani was standing over her, Dani was carrying a small glass bottle in one hand. Dani said something that Jade couldn’t hear.
Jade
switched the music off. “Pardon?”
“I said,
are you okay out here by yourself?” Dani asked, sitting down next to her.
“Yeah, I’m
fine.” Jade sat up.
“You
hungry, I could bring something out for you.”
Jade smiled
and shook her head. Dani took a swig
from her bottle and offered it to Jade.
“Alcohol?”
Jade asked.
“No.”
Jade
accepted the bottle and took a large gulp from it before handing it back. “Thanks,” she said.
Dani
glanced at Jade’s cassette player, which was now lying on the grass. “I didn’t
realise you still had that,” she said and picked it up. “Good grief, you’ve still got the same tape
to. Have you ever taken this out?”
“No.”
Dani smiled
and handed the player back. “So, what’s
up?”
“Huh?”
“You’re out
here by yourself gazing up at the sky, clearly something’s on your mind.”
“Oh… yeah.”
“You
willing to share?”
“Sorry,
it’s kinda personal.”
“Oh.”
“But… I do
think I need to talk to someone about it.”
“You
mean…?”
Jade
nodded.
“Well, if
you want to think about your problems by yourself I’ll leave you two it.” Dani
gave Jade a light pat on the shoulder and got to her feet. “If you need me, I’m right here.”
“Thanks,”
Jade said, and Dani walked back into the cabin.
She’d left her drink on the ground next to Jade.
Jade took
another swig from the bottle. She knew
what she wanted to do, but she felt a little uneasy about doing it. She’d never gone to speak to her before; she
didn’t know anyone who had, at least nobody who talked about it if they had. It was a while before she managed to pull
herself together and got to her feet, she’d managed to empty the bottle by that
point.
Jade took a deep breath, focussed on where she wanted to go,
and kicked off from the ground. She shot
up a few inches off the ground, and then she began to slowly float
upwards. She picked up speed as her
altitude increased. She felt the air
rushing past her as she rose up into the night sky and the ground fell
away. It wasn’t long before she flew
away from the planet itself and across space.
Chapter 2 – “What brings you to the Listener?”
Jade
floated above her home world, she could feel the heat of the sun on her back,
and around her where the man planets of Other-Space. They all hung there in the vast black void,
each one slowly revolving. Jade sailed
between them, she didn’t know how fast she was going but she knew it wouldn’t
take her long to reach her destination.
Around her she could see a few other people traversing between
worlds. Jade had heard that in the much
larger Universe travelling between planets like this was impossible, that
nobody could survive out in space. That
had been a hard concept to understand, it was something most of the inhabitants
of Other-Space just took for granted.
Other-Space
was its own small universe; Jade had heard some call it a pocket universe. It was completely separate from the much
larger Universe, though travel between the two was possible. Jade knew that a lot of the cave tunnels came
out on planets somewhere in the Universe.
Once Jade had tried propelling herself into the air on one of these
worlds, she was unsuccessful.
Jade loved
to do this. To soar between worlds, free
from the constraints of gravity. She’d
rarely had any reason to leave her own planet but she’d still take a flight
just for pleasure, it was something she’d do if she ever needed to get over
stress or if she felt she needed some time alone.
She caught
sight of her destination, not too far ahead of her. She was heading towards a large patch of
floating land. Jutting out of the front
was a long pathway with two ornate pillars at the far end and two guards
standing by each one, both guards carried long spears almost twice their height. Set in the middle of the floating land was a
large white building. There were several
more pillars set into the walls and it had a large domed roof. Between the pathway and the building were
several trees, covered in dense green leaves.
Jade touched down on the end of the path and slowly walked towards the
guards. As she got closer they both
lowered their spears and barred her way, Jade took a step back.
“Halt,” one
of them said, rather pointlessly since Jade had already stopped moving before
he’d spoken. “Do you wish to speak to
the listener?”
“Y-yes,”
Jade said, the spears made her feel nervous.
“Then you
must first hand over you weapons,” the second guard told her.
“Weapons? What we… OH!”
Every Cave Crawler carried a small handgun and a knife. Jade’s were attached to her belt, but she
never used them and often forgot that she had them. She removed both of them and handed them over
to the guards. They stepped aside and she
rushed past them.
Jade
stopped once she was out of sight of the guards and hidden amongst the
trees. She took a few minutes to catch
her breath before proceeding towards the building. The place was called the Temple of the
Listener. It had been built several
thousand years ago and hadn’t changed at all during that time. A small set of steps led to the large stone
doors. The walls and the doors had vast
intricate images carved into them, images of people, plants and animals, of stars
and planets. The walls had several sets
of candles set into them at regular intervals and draped across the wall
opposite the entrance were two large dark red curtains.
As Jade
walked up the steps the doors opened by themselves revealing a smooth marble
floored room. The place was circular,
and the walls were decorated with tapestries and paintings. The marble floor bore so many different
colours and images Jade had trouble taking it all in. The inside of the domed roof was painted with
the patterns of the stars. Jade gazed
around the room in awe, turning this way and that as she slowly walked in, she
almost slipped on the smooth floor. She
heard someone laugh when that happened, someone behind the curtains.
The
curtains parted as she approached them, revealing another smaller and square
room. The walls and floor of this one
were draped with a red cloth the same shade as the curtains, with several
cushions scattered around the place. At
the back of the room was an alter made of the same white stone as the Temple’s
exterior, and standing in front of the alter was a person dressed in white
robes, with their head covered by a hood.
Jade stopped short of the room itself, she wasn’t sure what to do next.
“Erm,
hello,” she said, timidly.
The figure
turned to face her and lowered their hood.
The figure was a girl with shining gold hair. She looked as though she was younger than
Jade, but she was taller, but Jade knew she’d been around for a long time,
perhaps longer than the Temple.
“Hello,”
the girl said with a wide smile. She
stepped forward and stretched out her right hand towards Jade. “Please, come in.”
Jade took
her hand and stepped over the threshold.
As her feet fell onto the red cloth she realised that her boots might
dirty, covered in mud. She glanced down
as she raised a foot, expecting to see a muddy footprint beneath it. She looked back across the room; the marble
floor was also footprint free and just as clean as it was before she entered
the temple.
“Please,
sit down,” the girl said, gesturing towards the cushions.
Jade
obliged, and the girl sat down to as the curtains drew closed. Jade glanced around the room, it seemed
rather plain when compared with the elaborate decorations in the rest of the
room, with the place coated almost entirely in red. There were a few lit candles sitting atop the
alter, each one giving off a soothing scent.
“So, tell
me,” the girl said, still wearing the same smile, “what brings you to the
Listener?”
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