Young Writers Society

Author's Notes: 1,485.  Yeah, pretty lovely.

"Are they not lovely?"

Seated on his throne, the King of Exedor relaxed on an array of colorful pillows, his young daughter resting on one knee. His green and blue robes blended with the cushions, leaving a homogeneous color pattern broken only by the silver crown poised atop his messy hair.

The well-dressed audience, assembled in the massive ballroom, watched the jesters at the center. The trio, wearing colorful outfits, summoned flames to create the image of a soaring bird speeding around the ceiling. Applause echoed through the space as the bird traced figure eights and flipped upside down, among other tricks. Embers drifted towards the ground, snuffed into oblivion by the few guards who coated them in the flakes of ice that sprouted from their fingers.

The young Eremia watched mesmerized, her four-year-old eyes bulging. She shouted with glee as the bird zoomed overhead, her father brushing away any embers long before they reached her.

On the other royal seat, Eurynome laughed sweetly, cradling a swaddled infant in her thin arms. "All for you, my princess," she said, the voice almost drowned out by the sounds of the audience.

Eremia tried to push herself off her father's knee, but he held her back. "It's dangerous," he said. "You needn't want to-"

He stopped. Everyone stopped talking, moving, breathing. Color drained from the room, turning it black and white. The windows, partly covered by curtains, showed an impenetrable darkness, making it look like the outside world had never existed.

Startled, Eremia pushed aside her father's cold, stiff arm and rose, finding herself to be a teenager again. She wheeled around to find his cheerful face frozen in time, smiling down at where his daughter had been.

Trying not to panic, she took a deep breath. This was clearly a dream, and she happened to be a lucid dreamer. To test out her talents, she glared at the bird over her head. It gradually regained all the tones of fire, eventually sprouting to life once more. The creature shrank in size as it neared her, perching on her shoulder and making the shrill cry of an eagle. There wasn't a burn in her clothes.

Eremia stepped down the stairs towards the floor, passing over the blue carpet. "What else did happen here?" she said aloud. "I wish that I remembered more."

Her voice echoed off the walls. Not a response came back. Eremia walked up to one of the revelers, flicking his nose. The jolly-faced man remained unresponsive, caught in the middle of downing a glass of wine (he held another in his other hand).

"Foolish."

Unlike all the other noises she'd heard thus far, this shot through the setting without an echo, as though it were an arrow aimed directly at her. She flinched as it clapped around her eardrums, the flaming bird on her arm crying out in alarm and beating its wings dangerously close to her hair. Eremia scanned the faces of the frozen partygoers, looking for some detail out of place - an object, a person, even hints of light or wind. Nothing save loud, slow footsteps greeted her efforts, and they appeared to be coming from behind a closed door to her right. She knew, from the times she had spent in the mansion, that there was a long hallway leading out to an open garden behind that entrance. Indeed, hints of sweet flowers now tinged the air.

"Little!" the voice said, the word slicing through the air like its predecessor. The footsteps stopped. Eremia, heart beating rapidly, pointed towards the thickset door. Squawking, the bird arced above her head, landing briefly on her index finger before it launched itself to the entrance. She retracted her hand in surprise, holding it firmly in the other as she inspected the fingers for any damage. One felt hot, but there wasn’t any harm done – she muttered to herself a vague excuse about being surprised, blushing over forgetting where she was.

The bird's wings stuck into the entrance, burning holes through the wood. An acrid smell emanated over the ballroom, causing Eremia to wrinkle her nose in disgust when she looked up from her hand. She gasped in alarm when she saw flames, but knew that there was no point in holding back. This was all fake, after all, and she wanted to get to the heart of the matter. On hearing her shout, the bird briefly stopped and looked at her, waiting for her approval; she nodded, and it persisted.

By the time the two oversized wings had eaten their way through most of the door, the footsteps resumed. The doorknob trembled, like someone were handling it delicately. Sweating and breathing rapidly from what she wanted to believe was the smoke, Eremia willed the bird to triple its size. Its cry grew deeper as it complied, shoving its way through the gaps it had made in the wood. As soon as the door started to swing open, it exploded in a shower of flaming splinters, shooting both into the hall and the room.

Eremia ducked, falling to her knees and covering her head with her arms. The cloud of smoke and timber soared over her head, drowning out her ears in their booming crescendo. Though she avoided most of the blast, the overwhelming force was enough to catch her in the chest. Her vision spun as she was thrust back, head landing harshly on the wooden floor.

And then it arrived, and she felt like she was right back in the wagon. As she stared at the ceiling, feeling like somebody had split her head open, she could see Jonah, glaring at her from white pupils. No, this wasn’t Jonah, but she didn’t know what else to call the creature in his body. It held the weakened, frail, small bird in one hand, throwing it to the side as their eyes met. She was so tired and surprised that she couldn’t say a word, much less call the bird back into play.

The blues, reds, greens, and other colors of the ballroom seeped back from around Jonah's head, consuming their surroundings slowly. Its scowl deepened; the frown seemed to be saying that she was a nuisance that had better keep away from its plans. She soon realized her brain was picking up Jonah’s thoughts, though Jonah never opened its mouth.

It leaned over in Jonah's normal, childish fashion – arms crossed and with a nasty smirk - and reached out to touch her forehead. "Girl!" it shouted at last, sound waves pushing through the scene and reanimating all the onlookers. Colors burst out of the walls and people in a kaleidoscopic effect, settling back down as the rest of the memory fell on Eremia.

And then she was a child again, sitting on her father's knee. The bird, back to its grand stature, passed by once more, ballooning in size and exploding into the images of numerous small doves. The audience cheered as the jesters beckoned for the doves to come closer. Each burst into small balls of fire on contact with the jesters' hands, shrinking as the grip around each one grew tighter. A round of applause greeted the showmen as the last of the fire dissipated, their light replaced by the brilliant gleam of numerous candles superimposed on the chandelier and scattered among the walls, which cast a myriad of lively shadows.

The jesters bowed, one at a time, waiting for the clapping and cheering to desist. One, in a loud, high-pitched voice, struck up a conversation with the King. Eremia's four-year-old mind was too awed by the sight of the glorious bird to understand a word; mostly, she felt disappointed that it had gone.

"Come now, you need your rest," said an elderly maid, picking up Eremia and lifting her away from her father, who was laughing heartily. The maid set Eremia on the ground, taking her hand as they walked off to the side. Guards stood at attention, fists closed around their spears and sword hilts as they parted to make way for the duo, who proceeded down the steps and arrived at a door.

Pushing the door open, the maid led Eremia down the long, dimly-lit hallway, towards a garden illuminated by the moons and the night sky.

The edges of the world began to fray. The tapestry that was the memory tore at itself, making the setting vaguer and cloudier. Growing older by the second (she didn't know how else to think of it, other than that she was pulling away from the memory and back towards lucidity), Eremia easily wrenched her hand from the maid's. She sprinted for the garden, trying to outpace the wall of dense fog that consumed the hallway. It sped ahead of her, however, and she awoke, seconds away from bursting into the garden and touching the green leaves of the spring trees.