Young Writers Society

This is an ending to a book I wrote. Just a kind of...sample of my writing. Letting you know, the first sentence in the book was "There is a place where no thing has ever been." And the story is about 4 descendents of the matriarchs and patriarchs of an empire going on a quest to find the "Sacred Fossil." A source of protection. Darrius is Tahmores's convicted son and Tahmores hated him so bad. I'll post the rest of the book some other time. I'm just not sure if I have it saved.

Selena took his head in her lap and stroked his blood-flecked hair affectionately. He closed his eyes and her chest tightened despondently. With his eyes shut, she barely recognized his gaunt face, now marred by the incessant eroding of his soul. The body upon her was cold and melancholy, not frantic, not resistant, just welcoming to its long-forbodden death.

“I’m not afraid, Selena. I am not afraid. There are times we must say good-bye. We must be gallant and brave enough to buckle down and weep at the loss of a loved one. There is nothing disgraceful about your tears,” he quavered, a hand caressing her cheek gently, so they ran down it. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Not now. Not ever.”

“But I don’t want to suffer this inexorable sorrow. You’re the light of my life, Darrius. You saw me through my darkest days and made me mighty even as I fell. If you’re gone,” her throat closed, and she whispered now. “If you’re gone, I’ll never hear your voice again, or feel your presence. Darrius, I’d die for you!” She cried out gutturally. “I’d die!”

His body tremored violently as he summoned enough strength to reach up a weary hand and embrace her own hand, slitting the middle with his dagger. As she felt the incision it made, Selena stared at him in bewilderment until he placed it upon the mortal gash in his chest.

“There,” he breathed. “You will hear my voice. No matter where you go in this wicked world, we’ll always be united, never apart, for…Everytime my blood pumps through your heart; it is I saying ‘I love you ‘till the end of time.’ Hold me here,” he put her hand to her heart. “For eternity. Never let go.”

In the greatest magnitude of anguish, Selena hung her head, eyes teeming with fresh tears, the old coursing down her face uncontrollably, like raging rivers. She whimpered and choked. It was too much. But then…

Darrius heaved his head up higher, and touched his lips to hers passionately but peacefully. Their eyes penetrated one another’s, looking beyond but gazing longingly at each other all the while…hoping, praying…dying.

“I’ll be with you forever, Lena, I will. Hold that promise as a covenant between us. Quote me on that.” He managed one of his infamous wry smiles, but it was clearly forced and halfhearted. “We shall see each other again, but see me every day until then.”

Tahmores leaned in. “Darrius. Darrius, you truly are my son.”

“And you truly are my father,” was his quaking reply. “Selena…I love you ‘till the end of time.

With one pulsating tremble, only one, Darrius Ferian opened those eyes for Selena once more, just so she could see them for his final breath, then closed them tranquilly with eternal, undying devotion…he closed his dark, disarming eyes into endless night.

One solitary tear made a pristine streak down Tahmores’s ashen, haggard face and fell upon his son’s lips.

“No!” Selena cried fervently; cried out to the fierce wind in her ears, every echo of her tormented voice ricocheting off the cold stone. “NOOOO! Darrius! Come back…come back to me! Please! I love you, Darrius! I love you!” her laments were those of a lone wolf, howling with loneliness at the moon.

She let his head down slowly and threw herself next to him, burying her face in her hands, in a mad rush of burning tears, cascading down her cheeks. Sobbing, sobbing, she screamed for him to come back, but he wold never open his eyes again.

It was Tahmores who led her back, through the Dark Lands, and he’d expected she’d die of sorrow had it not been for that red dust Jasper had told them about, professed to make the ones who tread on it immortal until they move to other grounds. Once, in recollecting terror, she bent down into the dirt and cried on it too, for she knew Darrius could have been saved had they brought him here to nurse his wounds.

“But Tahmores,” she shrieked. “He could’ve been saved. We could have carried him into this desert and he would’ve lived regardless, until he was healed. Tahmores! We let him die.”

She would not stir from groveling on the ground, nor would she speak until Tahmores lifted her onto his back and told her comfortingly that there was nothing they could have done, despite her theory.

When Selena regained her feet, Tahmores held her hand the whole way, crossing rivers, conquering mountains, scaling ledges, and leaping chasms. Through the perilous world away from the safe, secluded Ravibela they once knew, he led the girl, who was in a stupor, a trance. All that ran through her mind was not evident to Tahmores, but if he knew, he too, might have succumbed to his emotions.

‘I will love you till the end of time. I will love you till the end of time. I will love you till the end of time.’ It seemed as if every time her heart beat, she heard those words, though she was so hypnotized that she knew not where she’d heard them before.

And the day came. The sun rose up and painted the sky gold and orange and crimson and pink, and Tahmores entered Ravibela smiling, regardless of the hardships they’d encountered. But Selena followed less eagerly, dazed and staring into the sky with dazzling tears rolling down face, tinted cherry by the dawn she gazed into. Though they were welcomed by a party and the swift rejuvenation of a land once lost, she walked softly her “family’s” tree, now wrecked and none but rubble, and crawled under the limbs to her former bed, just a lump of cloth with straw underneath. There, she cried herself to sleep, and even Mika, sore and wounded from the invasion of Dirigo’s minions, discerned that Selena was unapproachable.

For days, the wolf-whisper lay there, among the dilapidated house, and days turned into weeks, turned into months. The sorrow that had overcome her was immeasurable, and she felt that never again she would rise.

Finally, the day came, when she saw Mika, Muriela, and Domenica, Tahmores’s daughter, playing in the field. Muriela was teaching them swordsmanship, like Selena taught her on their journey. They were merry, chasing River through the woodlands, but stopped abruptly as he catapulted himself into the cool water of the sea. “Hey!” Mika called, her rosy lips breaking into a gleeful smile. “No fair!” At that instant, River took off and they all jumped in after him, backing him up against the mountain.

“Okay, you got me. You got…” He dove under the water, swimming away to evade their playful attacks.”

She ambled to the Records Department building, hoping to reminisce on the hazards they’d encountered, just so she could remember once more, before trying to eternally forget.

“Do you have anything on the journey to retrieve the Sacred Fossil,” she asked the elderly man behind the dusty desk.

“No. I don’t believe we do. You see,” he gestured to the rows of tarnished books behind him. “No one knows enough about it to even begin to tell its story.”

“Thank you,” Selena said silently. She walked over to an oak shelf of blank books and picked a quill from the crate, testing it on her scarred arm. Sitting down at a table in the corner, only lit by dim candlelight, she flipped back the cover and pressed the tip of the quill to the cracking paper.

Now the Records Department would have this tale.

‘There is a place where no thing has ever been…’ She wrote.

Tell me if it made you cry.