The Sky And The Sea

Clipart by Microsoft Office

The fifth day of voyage dawned bright and clear

And she whispered the story soft in my ear

As the Sun flew low o'er the horizon red

She told me how the Sea and the Sky were wed

How the Sea and Sky were wed

The Sky had used the waters for his looking glass

But he had never noticed what a lovely lass

That the Sea had become when Time first began

To run, and run as fast as he can

And run as fast as he can

The Sea would use the Sky to help her dye her gown

And the Stars at night would form her watery crown

But she'd never seen the Sky for what he really was

Only blue for her shift, and black for her gauze

Only black for to make her gauze

But as Time began to race and the mortals to move

The Winds would get restless and disapprove

Of staying on land for very long at once

So they swirled and swept away, away to their hunts

Away, away to their hunts

The hunts led them on to the Sky and the Sea

Where the freedom was right, where the freedom could be

And as the Winds played wild in their newfound home

The Sea saw his clouds, and the Sky her foam.

Saw his clouds, and he her foam

The Winds were witness to the marvelous sight

When the Sea gave up her waters to the Sky's pure light

And then, because he loved her, he returned it to her

And rain fell between them, and all over the Earth

Between them and all over the Earth

The storm continued on for three nights and three days

And the Sky and the Sea were colored all the same grays

So the Winds, when they looked, couldn't tell them apart -

'Soon it will be, as we see, they will share the same heart.'

Soon they would share the same heart

Their whispers still echoed on the fourth day's morn 

When the Sky and the Sea, so faded, so worn,

Were lit by a burning, great circle of red

That froze at the point where the Sky and Sea were wed

At the point where the Sky and Sea were wed.

So the Sea would cradle one half, and the Sky would hold the other

While the Stars would gaze upon it, their heavenly brother,

And whisper to themselves, 'They do share the same heart,

For when they both hold the Sun, we can't tell them apart.'

They couldn't tell the Sky and Sea apart.

Thus the Sky and Sea were wed at the start of Time,

And never again will there be such a rhyme

As the one that she gave on the fifth day at Sea

When she spoke about the heavenly wedding to me

About the heavenly wedding to me.

Beast's Blood - Part One

Foreward: Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairytale ever.  Who can't love the story?  I've had ideas for retellings churning around in my brain for ages, but this is the one that stuck.  I can't help but love the characters already.  And just the idea.  I honestly can't wait to finish this story.  So get ready for Beast's Blood, a novella blending Beauty and the Beast, space travel, and - of course - a magical curse.

***

The interloper must have been a Hunter.  Rus smelled the acrid tang of metal weaponry hanging off the man in long ropes, like a queen's jewelry.  A well-equipped Hunter, apparently - always bad news.  Rus let out a silent sigh through his mouth, the cloud of hot air that spewed out pocked by his fangs.  To tell or not to tell, that was the question.

Sock would only panic, and the rest of the magi-formed would get their bloodlust up.  That would be the end of that Hunter.  Then the government would flock to the hint of blood like so many vultures descending on a rotting corpse.  Rus shook his head, his head-fur tickling the shorter bristles on his shoulders.  No - he would hunt the Hunter himself.

Rus walked along the claustrophobic corridor, the occasional leak in the roof splattering against him.  Up here, on the highest level of the ruins left upright, the rain could easily seep through the holes in the ceiling; his feet-paws made puddles whisper as he stepped in them.  

At the end of the corridor, Rus passed through a doorway - the wood long corroded away by time - and descended the four flights of stairs.  He had to rush past places where there was no wall left.  During these quick glimpses outward, Rus scanned the rock-studded landscape: gray-red sky, browned dead tundra, storm clouds in the distance.  No sign of the Hunter.  But he was there.  His bloody scent intensified with each step Rus took.

The whole operation of silence was in most danger the minute Rus set foot in the central chamber.  Lit only by the stagnant light that dripped through more wounds in the roof and walls, the stone hall was the crossroads of magi-formed life in the ruins.  At any minute, one of the magi-formeds - Sock, or Scales, or Persee, or some other active member of their tribe - might appear.  And some of the ones that had been transformed into carnivores would smell him.  Even now, Rus could sense his own fear-scent.  This would have to be quick and silent.

Rus peeked about, made certain it was silent, checked for smells.  Everything was stale.  His wolf-sense told him that it was safe.  For extra security, he dropped to all fours; the pads on his fingers and the balls of his feet would make him quiet, and the extra power would make him fast.  He raced from the staircase cubby to the half-open ruin door.

Safe! Rus thought, sliding to a stop and then lunging through the doorway.  A gentle sprinkle of rain accosted him at once.  He stood, the bones in his back crackling as they re-accustomed themselves to a human position.  Rus winced.  Every time he ran wolf-like, it got harder to revert to a sapient posture.

Behind the soothing lullaby of the rain, silence hung like a muffler.  Rus executed a slow three-eighty twirl, even checking the front walls of the ruins - the Hunter could be anywhere, after all.  But his canine sight didn't detect anything.

Rus's muscles tensed of their own volition.  The blood-metal scent snaked past the rain-scent, oozing into his nostrils and stinging at his nerves.  He shuddered.  That Hunter would appear at any moment.  He was out there - somewhere.  Rus wasn't about to let him attack his makeshift family.

Pain lanced through his arm and side. 

The Hunter leapt away from the ruin's second story, from behind the small jutting segment of wall.  He hit the ground with a hiss; the landing barely upset the pebbles on the ground.  A gun was already in his hand as he straightened. 

Rus roared again as blood trickled from the hole in his arm.  He lashed out with the other, catching the Hunter's hand with his five long claws.  The gun flew away, firing as it went.  The Hunter, barely fazed, reached into one of his bodysuit's compartments.

Rus didn't let him pull anything out.  One bound, and he had the Hunter pinned to the ground, wolf-style.

The Hunter didn't flinch.  He yanked his hand from the bodysuit compartment.  A knife flashed in his grasp; he stabbed at Rus's throat.  Rus opened his jaws and clamped down on the Hunter's hand.  Blood erupted in his mouth.  The blade shot down, scraping harmlessly against Rus's torso scales.

Eyes bulging, the Hunter nevertheless didn't try to pull his hand away.  That would only tear skin and tendons more.  When he shoved the other shaking hand into a compartment, Rus tightened his jaw.  Bone crunched audibly.

The Hunter squeaked.  

Suppressing an urge to smirk wolfishly - the squeak had not been a manly noise - Rus released the ruined hand, letting it drop to the Hunter's chest.  He placed a paw on the man's torso and bent his head nearer; hybrid neck bones creaked as they stretched to accommodate the movement.  "You chose the wrong magi-formed to hunt," he growled.

Despite his position, the Hunter spat in Rus's face; his voice was steady.  "My daughter will come to find me.  Then she'll kill you."

Rus laughed - half human laugh, half lionish rumble.  "Only if you want to release my hellspawn servants on your sheltered little world." He slid his paw to the Hunter's neck.  "Take off your tracker."

The Hunter raised an eyebrow.  "Tracker."

"How your daughter will find you." Rus narrowed his eyes.  "I've killed Hunters before.  I know how you work."

The man hesitated, unmoving.  Rus listened to the drip-drip-drip of blood in the spreading puddle under the Hunter's hand.  Finally, he nodded, reached down with his unmarred fingers, and wrenched a metal, button-sized cube from his belt.  Rus snatched it in his jaws and crunched down.  For a moment, energy zapped his tongue.  Then he spat the remains of the little tracker onto the ground.  

He moved cautiously off the Hunter's chest.  "Stand," he said.  "If you try something, I'll kill you.  I only consider prisoners once."

Rus stood as the Hunter did.  The Hunter did with considerably more grace.  It hurt, but Rus kept his face blank.

"Into the ruins," he growled, twisting his neck to realign the tendons.  "Unless you'd rather be beast food."

The Hunter, without a word, walked to the ruins, blood seeping from tears in his bodysuit.  Rus stayed close behind him, but paused for a few moments to scan the skies.  Cloud cover had increased, but it didn't hide the faint hovering sphere just above the ruins.  The Hunter's ship hovered in wait.  He hadn't lied.  Rus would soon have another visitor.

Poem - Titanic Pride

Picture from Microsoft Office 

It's intriguing to think

Of what happened to sink

A ship the size of Titanic;

To be crashed by a rock

Must have been quite a shock 

And the people must have gone manic.

Just a quiet old thing - 

How on earth could it bring

Such grandeur to such great destruction?

The jewel of the seas

Down on its metal knees

Through ignorance of one small instruction:

"Don't taunt the unknown

For it flies and has flown

To the seat of man's unmanly pride;

And the smallest of stones

Will break folly's bones

And the past won't forget what you tried."

Frostbitten - Chapter Twenty-Five

Jack fell asleep shivering.  Hermes, ignoring his painfully tingling nerves, picked up his once-apprentice and laid him in the hospital room chair.  Jack moaned softly and curled into a ball, his head falling onto the chair arm.

His words hung in Hermes’s head like a death call.  Your mark worked.

Hermes sat back on the edge of his bed and watched Jack twitch and shift through sleep.  Was it worth it, Hermes?  Was Jack turning ‘good’ again really worth ruining his life?

Frostbitten - Chapter Twenty-Four

Jack barely got to the next door in the hallway before the headache attacked him.  Claws raked down his brain, and white dots danced before his eyes.  He slumped back against a wall and nearly fell all the way down.

“Sir?” Someone touched his arm.  Jack opened his eyes.  A nurse stood there, frowning.  “Are you... Jack Frost?”

Jack nodded wearily, biting his tongue to keep from crying out.

“I’m sorry, but there’s a patient who wants to see you.  Another Legendary—“

“It’s Hermes, isn’t it?” Just moving his mouth made spikes drive through his skull.  Jack tried not to flinch.

The nurse nodded.  “He’s awake and we think he’s stable for now.  He’s been calling you ever since he woke up...”

She kept talking, describing some process that they had used to get Hermes’s skin back to normal, but Jack’s mind wandered.  His former mentor, also the one to give him up to a thousand-year stay in prison.  What kind of friend, what kind of mentor, what kind of adoptive father did that?

Jack saw himself, in his bloody armor, bloody staff in hand, a bloody smile on his face.  People all around him lay dead.  And he didn’t care.

He closed his eyes.  The smart kinds of friends and mentors and fathers do that.

“Mister Frost?”

He looked back at the nurse.  “Where’s he staying?” he croaked.

 “I’ll take you, sir.”

Jack followed her to an elevator, and the nurse pressed a button for the floor two stories above them.  Jack braced himself against the wall, feeling queasy.  The nurse tried to get him to take medicine or stay in the hospital another day or so, but Jack just waved her off.

They got to the right floor, and Jack went on with the nurse to a door at the end of the hall.  She opened the door a crack, then paused.  “I have to warn you, he’s not... not quite...”

“Not quite there?” Jack smirked and pushed the door in all the way.  “Don’t worry.  I’m used to that.”

“But—“

Jack pulled the door shut behind him.

The dimmers in the window were turned up, leaving the room dark.  The only illumination came from a light panel above the head of the bed.  A shape tossed back and forth under the blankets.

Jack stepped closer, suddenly apprehensive.  “Hermes?” he whispered, feeling for all the world like he was a naïve apprentice again.  In trouble for something.  Like the time he had accidentally knocked Hermes out of a stake-out tree—

The form stilled.  “Jack?” a voice rasped.

Jack winced.  Hermes’s throat must have been ruined.

He moved closer.  “That’s me.”

“I wondered if...” Hermes trailed off, then sat up slowly, shoving the covers away.  In the dim light, Jack could just see the pale pink skin, newly grown to replace the frostbitten.

Hermes rubbed at his eyes, then lowered his hands, focusing on Jack with difficulty.  “Intruder messed up my eyes,” he said.  Like it was a normal conversation, with two normal, sane people.

Jack swallowed hard.  Why couldn’t Hermes just scream at him for ignoring him all those years?  “I... I...”

Hermes’s expression softened.  He ran a hand through his tousled hair, waiting for Jack to go on.

Just tell me you hate me, Jack thought, the back of his throat tingling suspiciously.  Just... tell me.

“I... I’m sorry,” he blurted out, lowering his gaze.  “I’m sorry for everything.  I’m a fool.  You were trying to get me to stop – Bianca was too – but I couldn’t – wouldn’t – it was... was asinine and wrong and I can’t even think straight anymore because of it and—“

“Jack.”

The one gently-spoken syllable shut Jack up.  He stared at the ground, trying to keep his mind from the soldiers all clamoring for attention, and then there was that one figure that was starting to vanish – Hermes, his old mentor, standing there in the crowd, very still, shaking his head no, he could never take Jack back after the centuries of bloodshed and pain, all that he had caused and done—

Arms slid around his shoulders, and the strength leeched out of Jack.  His knees buckled.  Hermes tightened his grip and half dragged Jack to the bed.

Jack sank down to the mattress, shaking his head and clenching his eyes shut so tight that they hurt.  “It’s not that easy,” he said breathlessly.  “It’s not that easy.  Everything I did – th-the killing and—“

“Jack.  It’s all right.” Hermes tightened his grip.  “It’s all right.”

“No!” Jack shouted, straightening and breaking out of his mentor’s embrace.  “It’s not!   I don’t have blood on my hands, it’s all over me – the nightmares, th-they brought it all back, but it wasn’t how I thought it was when it happened – I thought they were puppets, going to die soon anyway, but they weren’t, and they told me—“

Jack cut off, his voice strangling in his throat.  He pressed the back of his hand over his mouth, trying to get it together, but the tears came anyway.  He started to turn away, hide the two cold, damp lines tracking down his cheeks.

Hermes caught his shoulders and looked straight into Jack’s eyes.  “It’s okay, Jack,” he whispered.  “I know.  I know.”

“No, you don’t,” Jack choked, closing his eyes.  “You had it together right after you got here... I’ve been a... a mur—I’ve been wrong for so long...”

Hermes said nothing.  Just pulled Jack closer, like he had so many times before when the nightmares hit.

Jack shuddered, clenching his eyes shut.  He swallowed hard, then whispered, “I... I guess your... your mark worked.”

Hermes still stayed silent, but Jack felt a warm drop of dampness fall into his hair.

Frostbitten - Chapter Twenty-Three

Jack awoke feeling much more refreshed than before.  Dark gold sunlight glimmered through the open windows.  The room was empty – Holly was gone.  Probably back to her hospital room to recover.

Sitting up and stretching his stiff arms over his head, Jack glanced at the monitors hooked to his wrists.  Come on, he thought.  I’ve got to go.  There’s so much to do...

Hermes, Invierno, Holly... come to think of it, Stonne Sector.  Jack closed his eyes and tried to think of the last of his wars while keeping away shrieking ghosts.  Stonne... they had never liked the Ice People, they had no army, and they were rich.  For Jack a thousand years ago, they had been the perfect target, the perfect place to watch those silly mortals die.

Now... now.  Jack clenched his eyes shut.  “Fool,” he said past gritted teeth.

The door swung open.  Jack straightened quickly and brushed at his eyes.  An older nurse came to his bedside.  “All the scanners and sensors indicate that you’re ready to leave,” she said stiffly, unhooking him from the monitors.  “The sooner the better, Frost.”

Jack froze and opened his mouth, but the woman was already striding back to the door, leaving it wide open in her wake. 

“Argh!” Jack banged his head back against the wall, barely even trying to restrain the anger against himself.  “You fool!”

The blanket over him crackled and solidified into stiff, icy folds.  The glassy ice zipped down the bed, over the floors, up the walls, over the equipment.  Water seeped into the electrical wires, and sparks spit out over Jack’s bed; the numbers on readout panels flickered and died.

An orderly glanced into the room, eyes wide as they landed on Jack.

Jack savagely kicked at his blanket.  It kept its form, flew off the bed, and clattered to the ground.  It broke in half, making the sound of ripping paper.

“Failure!” Jack shouted, sitting bolt upright and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.  The orderly rushed in, hands raised, but Jack shot him a narrow-eyed glare.  “Don’t even try to keep me here.  I’ve gotten out of much, much worse.”

The orderly pressed back against the icy wall.

Jack pushed up to his feet, nearly fell back down, caught his balance.  It was hard to stand after almost two days in bed.  Sucking in a deep breath, he turned to the orderly and forced his voice to hold steady.  “Where are my clothes?”

The young guy darted to a shelf and pulled out the shirt Holly had gotten, along with the old Tartarus Prison pants.  He tossed them to Jack, keeping his distance.  Jack caught them, yanked them on, then glanced around the room.

“Sorry for any water damage,” he said, limping to the door and out into the hall.

Frostbitten - Chapter Twenty-Two

Holly watched Jack sleep, swallowing back the painful coughs that scratched at her throat.  He was so still in slumber, more peaceful than he ever looked when he was awake.  He almost smiled, lashes dark against his white skin.

Nearly choking on abrupt, senseless tears – what was she crying over? – Holly scrambled to her feet and went to the door.  “Sorry, Jack,” she choked out.  “Sudden realization of girl genes.  Can’t stand the sight of you.  Be back later.”

She glanced down at herself once she was safely in the hallway.  Hair a greasy rat’s nest, wearing that gaping hospital shift, her shoes long lost...

I need a makeover.

The fever’s achey blanket made Holly shudder, but she yanked the last of the temperature monitor out of her wrist and tossed it into a nearby trashcan.  She couldn’t help Jack if she was busy being a damsel in distress.  Time to suck it up.

Holly sneezed and clapped a hand to her nose.  Maybe literally.

*

Four hours later, Holly stepped out of the hotel room bathroom and examined herself in the mirror.  She had gotten her hair cut to her preferred bob – somewhere, someone was enjoying a four-foot-long wing of strawberry red.  A thrift store visit had gotten her the white blouse, white pants, black belt, and white headband, and the hotel room had equaled a long shower.

Not bad, convict, she told herself, nodding to the reflection.  Not bad.

She threw away the hospital clothes, paid the hotel for the room, and wandered back out into the city.  The shower had helped alleviate the worst of her fever, but it still wasn’t nearly cold enough to take away the livid aches in her bones.  Holly shoved up the sleeves of her blouse and focused on ignoring the fever.

Okay.  Issues.  Holly stopped in a small park, crawling into an ice cave that was stained green.  The scent of snow and the aura of cold filled her senses, and she let her shoulders relax.  Problems... Hermes frostbitten by Jack, Jack’s curse, I’m crazy too...

She leaned back against the igloo’s wall and fell asleep.