Entry 05: 100 Fairytales

Oct 24, 2012 01:36

Title: 100 Fairytales, Chapter 12
Entry Number: 05
Author: Chelsea latemarch
Original
Rating: PG
Genre: fantasy
Spoiler Warnings: None
Word Count: 1212

Notes: This follows directly after this year's second entry, and is the beginning of Chapter 12 in my 100 Fairytales novel. Claire has completed the first room of her trial and has moved on to the second room. The prompt for this chapter was, "The youth transformed." This isn't the whole chapter, but it's a good chunk of it, and should give you some idea of what's going on. Yay! Let me know what you think!

Entry 02!


- - begin entry 05 - -

Blinded by the light, Claire threw her hands defensively over her eyes. It felt like a bright, sterile wash around her, a hospital room, a trap. A buzzing noise blocked out most sound, like television static was a sort of deafness. Even her nose burned with how clean and empty it all felt.

“Mom?”

She thought she heard her son’s voice through the white noise and nearly died to believe she heard it again. “Mom?”

“Sean?” She called out and heedlessly opened her eyes. “Ah!” Claire shrieked and covered her face again, feeling her eyes water and sting. “Sean!” She wanted so badly to see her son and to find something familiar in the barren unknown of the fae world, to reassure herself that she had done the right thing.

Second ticked by, and hearing nothing more, the silence was an absolute torture for the distraught mother. Claire couldn’t bring herself to wait an longer and opened her eyes again, stumbling back into the closed wooden door as she shielded her face. Squinting and calling for her child, she moved forward a few hesitant steps, and then a few more when she felt nothing  but firm ground beneath her feet. ‘Don’t be foolish. Stay where you are.’ She reminded herself before much more ground could be covered. The aching in her feet brought back memories of the daunting rock field and of her feet sliding off the edge of the path. It was this fear that rooted her to the ground.

“Mommy!”

This time his call was much clearer, and Claire spun in his direction, heart pounding and hands clammy with fear and need against her forehead. “I’m right here Sean! Tell mommy where you are!”

“Mom? I’m right in front of you.”

Her visions clearing enough for her to finally see, Claire screamed.

Sean did not stand in front of her - nothing even resembling her child lumbered in front of her.

She fell back and away from the giant bull that snorted at her feet, and spun, looking for the door and for her child. But the walls were smooth and perfect, so unblemished they were almost unreal. Even the door that she had come through only minutes before was gone. And there was nothing and no one else in the room with her.

The bull was huge, a mountain of hair and flesh and snorting animal. under long hair, bulky muscles shifted and slid over each other like cogs in clockwork, with the great head of the beast as the centerpiece. Black eyes stared out at her from under a shaggy hank of hair, and a great pair of sharp, bone horns gouged out from its forehead. It snorted, and puffs of hot hair blew across her face.

It’s breath warmed her, and realizing for the first time that she was cold in the white room, Claire wrapped her arms around herself and looked down at the bull’s hooves - it was too hard to maintain eye contact with the fire and destruction that rumbled in its eyes.

There were little clods of mud and dirt around the beast’s feet. As she watched, it took a shifting step,  and more feel off to the floor. For Claire, the action was startlingly and strangely real. Despite the creatures unbelievable size and stature , in the reality-less atmosphere of the white, sealed room, it was real. Just like her son was real.

Her eyes widened. “Sean?” Claire, almost afraid to ask, felt timid and thrown off. “Is that you?” She was disappointed when she didn’t hear her son’s voice again, but the bull shook its great head, and that was answer enough.

“Do you know what I’m supposed to do here?” She asked her transfigured son as he shook out his hide and stared at her with unblinking accuracy. “Do you know how much time I have left?” That was her pressing fear: completing the three rooms, only to emerge on the other side and find that she was too late. The bull still did not answer her.

Though she knew that it was her son, Claire still took a step back when the bull advanced on her, a hulking, looming mountain that made her feel small and insignificant and somehow wrong. Her body remembered that feeling all too well --  she had once thought of herself as the most insignificant thing in the world - her ex-husband was responsible for that. In leaving Henry, she’d made a promise to herself to never feel that way again.

This room, this beast that was her child, the way the unfamiliar fae in the throne room had looked through her as if she was beneath their scrutiny, brought it all rushing back. The too smooth walls of the chamber surrounding them seemed to magnify the doubts and insecurities robbing her of conviction and time. The previous challenges she’d already faced had battered her body. But this was different, this was aimed directly at the fractured mirror of her past - and that hurt most of all.

“Sean, wait.” The bull kept walking closer and closer to her, unheeding. It made a plaintive sound  that her growing fear made sound threatening despite its obvious heartbreak.  “I don’t know what to do.”  Disregarding her further, snorting as if this was ridiculous, he kept moving forward. “Please, stay back Sean.” She kept backing up, but it seemed to do no good.

Her feeling of worthlessness felt too big and unwieldy, like they were swallowing her whole. Her body felt colder than ever before as her throat closed up and she fought with upending waves of panic. Claire squeezed her eyes shut, trying to regain some composure, but all she could feel was a great, frigid ocean of depression drowning her, washing out all remnants of warmth from Ronan.

Opening her eyes again, she came face to face with the giant animal directly confronting her. His breath steamed over her face but held none of the comfort that she was looking for, still only a threat. Looking around wildly for some escape, as if now it would magically appear, Claire caught sight of something else: a spirit.

It stood off to the side, far away from them, and its shape and tone was reminiscent of the light that had aided her in the first room. “Please,” Claire whispered, and went to go to the spirit but found that she could no longer move her feet.

As she watched, steadfastly using it as a distraction from the creature staring her in the face, the golden light gained a steady shape. Still without true corporeal form, without face and fully defined fingers and toes, she saw a little girl. A golden, perfect, savior of a little girl, and knew that this was the creature that had saved her.

Knowing how much she needed the help, the girl spirit seemed to glow brighter, as if smiling. Slowly, it raised its half-formed arms in the semblance of a hug, holding the pose as Claire looked between it and the bull. Finally, to drive home the point that Claire was slowly beginning to accept, the spirit held out its arms, like she was welcoming something or someone into them.

Claire knew what she had to do.

- - end entry 05 - -

I just finished writing this literally seconds ago, so let me know if there are any blatant and horrible typos. Also, I'm kind of unsure of what to call the bull in terms of pronouns. I think that I switch back and forth between 'it' and 'he,' so let me know which one you prefer, because I should probably just use one, and I can't make up my mind! I'm planning on having her face three incarnations of her child: the past, the present, and the future, and this is the first one!

original, 5, 2012

Previous post Next post
Up