Mini-Challenge: Hierarchy
Well, just finished the last Christmas story and got a start on the Christmas Posery, so I'm back to doing challenges for my own amusement. ;D I did two just this afternoon, which may bode well for the last week before departure. *cautious poke*
Here's the first one. I did some little pictures as well just for a laugh - for those of the dialup persuasion, there's about 320k worth under the cut there.
Not sure what to say about it except that I'm glad Inya and Thalian aren't related to me. ;P
"Inyamennaaa!"
Inya counted the syllables in her head and paled, hopping to her feet. "Maios! Maios!"
A little backwash of magic warned her that Maios had made his getaway even before she turned to look down at two bulging frog-eyes.
"Maios!" she shrieked.
"Breeek," replied the frog, explaining this was a case of mistaken identity.
"Cut it out! Go hold the door!"
The frog that wasn't Maios dissolved into wet, stridulating laughter, clearly indicating it valued its froggy life, and hopped away under the dresser.
Inya frantically considered her options as she heard Thalian snarl-sing the front door shut. She herself had yet to master shapechanging, though it was probably becoming a life skill. From the sounds of things, Thalian had only hit eight out of ten on the rage scale. That meant he'd found out about the stinky sigil thing, but not the other thing. She'd only have to really panic if he went all quiet again.
"Um ... should I leave?" asked Uti nervously, chewing on her hair. She'd abandoned their game and stepped out of the full light of the window, trying to fade out a bit in the shade behind the shutters.
"Are you crazy?" Inya threw back, singing her first little bonds of will around the door. After a moment's reflection, she pushed her sleeping couch up against it as well. "He'll go back down to a six right away if he knows there's a visitor here."
"Huh?"
There wasn't much time for this! It really was hard to explain things once to sun fae girls.
In a hasty patter of shrill notes, Inya threw a full explanation up on the wall. "Take it off when you're done," she warned, and concentrated on singing against the door again.
"Hum," said Uti, and read them off aloud.
"1 (Annoyed): Thalian will glare at you.
2 (Irritated): Thalian will try to ignore you.
3 (Cross): Thalian will tell you off.
4 (Angry): Thalian will snap at you and say nasty things, or try to sit on you. - Oh ...
5 (Mad): Thalian will shut you in your room and give you a big lecture.
6 (Really Angry): Thalian will raise his voice and keep you inside until you apologise to people.
7 (Really Mad): Thalian will lecture you for ages and ages and call you names.
8 (Furious): Thalian will yell a lot and chase you around.
9 (Really Furious): Thalian won't talk to you and he'll probably smack you. ... Wait, guests too?"
"How should I know?" asked Inya impatiently.
"10 (Unbelievably Angry): Thalian won't talk to you at all - he'll tell Maios to tell you things - and he won't say goodnight."
"Well?" Inya prompted as the silence dragged on. She could hear Thalian's boots stomping towards the door now that she wasn't answering his calls. "What are you waiting for?"
"I'm scared," said Uti, biting at her nails. "He sounds really furious."
"Yeah, well, you don't have to live here," she replied, tossing back her hair. "Quick! Come help me with the door!"
"But I ... um ..."
"You'll do it if you're really my friend!"
Uti straightened. "I'm your friend," she promised, and finally hurried over to sing.
Outside, Thalian's voice sang a short, sharp opening note. By now that wasn't going to work on the fast-snared door, of course. It just quivered for a moment, but stayed shut.
"Inyamenna," came the growl.
"Hi, Thalian!" she chirped through the door.
"I'll give you 'hi', you little toad. Open it."
"Uti and I are doing girl stuff, fishhead. Go away. ... Say hi, Uti."
"... hi ..."
There was a long, menacing pause. When Thalian spoke again it was in his cool public voice, as she'd known it would be, but only a very silly person would think it wasn't angry any more. "Oh, hello, Uti. Does your nùth know you're here?"
"Of course they do," Inya huffed.
"That's remarkable, Uti. When you speak through a door you sound exactly like my half-brain sister."
"Go away, Thalian! No-one wants you and you're not coming in!"
"That's what you think."
Inya dove at the door, singing frantically, as a stronger note from outside made it shiver in the frame. Luckily she'd had all kinds of practice at this. "Uti, Uti, Uti! Sing!"
Thalian kept singing, too. If the door broke, it wasn't going to be her fault.
Holding images in her mind of mountains and stones and massive old karri trees - and of Thalian fuming outside, of course - Inya sang strong with Uti, repulsing each new attack. Sometimes he went quiet for a while, but she was never fooled; he'd just sing a sudden, hard note at the door enchantments to try to break them unawares.
As the victories on their side mounted, both Inya and Uti shared glances and started to giggle.
"The Enemy is very clever, captain," Inya told Uti in a hushed voice. "But we must survive until reinforcements arrive."
"I don't think the men can hold out!" gasped Uti.
"Then we'll hold the gates alone." Inya clenched a grim fist. "We shall not go down easy."
Uti saluted. Then she turned to army-crawl over to the dresser, peering into the shadows beneath. Out of the direct sunlight, her head was going a bit transparent again.
"How's the sergeant?"
"He's a frog," reported Uti.
Inya nodded. "A hex of the Enemy. I feared as much. Protect him, captain."
"With my life, commander."
An eerie silence fell on the battlefield, but Inya refused to let her guard down. Pressing her ear to the door, she whisper-sang about wolves raising their heads to the wind on the plains, and about morning quiet atop mountains, until her hearing sharpened properly. The Enemy was still out there, all right. She could hear loud rustling sounds that might have been cloth-folds brushing together, and an erratic, breathy sound.
Then it stopped. Inya listened even harder, hearing only the cloth, and narrowed her eyes.
"Open the door!" hollered Thalian.
"Aagh!" Inya shrieked, clutching at her ears and falling back on the floor with her head spinning.
"Commander! Are you okay?" Uti cried.
Hastily Inya hacked her magic off short, still moaning and holding her head as Uti came and patted at her hair.
"I'm hit," she groaned to the captain, and then - raising her voice - "You're an ironblood donkey, Thalian! That really hurt!"
"That's war for you," his voice replied through the door.
"No, I mean it! You really, really hurt me! I -" She swallowed the rest with a short shriek of horror as the door rattled again. "Uti! Battle stations! Battle stations!"
Uti sang valiantly, still patting Inya's hair, and the Enemy outside fell silent again almost at once.
Inya flopped back, glaring at the bottom of the door.
"You must be strong for the troops, captain," she declared. "I'm badly wounded. But we must fight to the last."
"We shall, commander," said Uti solemnly. "Am I commander if you die?"
"Yes, you are. But I'm only wounded at the moment, remember."
"Right."
They sat there and listened again. Everything was quiet ... too quiet.
"It's quiet," said Inya, because she liked the sound of it. "Too quiet."
"The Enemy is plotting," Uti agreed. "But he shall not break the gates."
"No." She looked the defences over, feeling the ambient glow of a very good lock, and was actually rather proud. It was worth making Thalian mad for these. "I'll draw our plan on the wall, okay?"
"Breeek! Breeek! Breeek!" exclaimed Corporal Frog suddenly.
Uti jumped up, as did Inya, forgetting she was wounded.
"A call to arms!" Uti cried as the alarm went on, and Inya glanced at her appreciatively. She was much better at this than Maios. "What is the Enemy planning, corporal?"
Inya glared at the door. "Quick! We must strengthen the gates again! Rally the men!"
"Yes, sir!"
As Uti army-crawled towards the dresser again, a sudden darkness blotted out the sunlight in the room. Inya turned towards the window just in time to see the dreadful shadow of a blue Quicksilver tunic eclipse the bright windowpane.
Uti started screaming around the same time as Inya did, both bolting away into the further corner of her bedroom.
"No, sing the window shut! It's opening! Quick!"
"Too late! Hide! Hide!"
Her sleeping-couch was still planted against the door. Inya ran at one of her shelves instead, dislodging her things in a clattering rush to the top, perching at the summit and making room for Uti to join her. At least she was almost transparent now!
Like a crack of doom opening in the earth's crust, the window slid fully open and the Enemy began to squeeze through. Inya clung to Uti atop the shelf and shrieked along with her, partly in squealing panic, but mostly because this was bound to be the last fun she'd be having for a long time.
There was a small delay in the apocalypse as Thalian tried to fit both shoulders through. In the end, though, he managed it, crawling in headfirst and standing up amidst a fading chorus of screams. Uti hugged Inya a little tighter as his narrowed eyes came scything over and he stalked towards the shelf.
"This is the End!" she whispered.
"No," Inya whispered back, watching Thalian's grim strides and stiff shoulders with relief. "That's not his angry face. That's his too angry face." Which meant he was trying to act angry. Which meant he somehow wasn't even a six any more.
"I mean he got inside and broke the siege."
"Oh, yes. That's the End."
She fell silent again, plotting a slightly different kind of battle, as Thalian reached the shelf and stared up at them with arms folded.
"Do we speak the same language?" he asked flatly.
"Avaunt, foul one," she threatened.
"I'm not playing, Inyamenna. Do I look like I'm playing? I told you to open that door. - Maios, get out here and act your age."
"You hurt my ears," she countered, sullen, pulling her knees up to rest her chin on them as a nervous frog crawled out from under the dresser. "And I think you've broken my door."
"Look at all the mess you laid on it! It's never going to open again at this rate! How many doors do you think I want to - what's all that on the wall?"
Inya froze as Thalian's eyes slid towards the illuminated reference chart.
"I told you to sing that off when you were done reading!" she hissed at Uti.
Uti bit her shadowy lip.
With a calm, relaxed kind of menace, Thalian stepped over to the wall - his arms still folded and his back facing them - and began to read Stages One Through Ten of Thalian Getting Mad.
The silence was deafening. Inya squirmed on top of the shelf, sensing all hopes of postwar amnesty starting to slip away. She had to do something.
"I still love you, Thali-aan-y," she piped in a sweet-lilting voice.
Thalian didn't reply right away. Instead he slowly sank down on his haunches in front of the wall, shaking his head as if he were tired.
"Do you?" he asked, very, very quietly. "Do you really?"
Inya's apprehension turned into something else, something much worse, as he unfolded his arms and just sat there, head down.
For a few more moments she crouched where she was, feeling all cold and slimy on the inside; then she unwrapped Uti's arm from around her middle and scrambled back down the shelf, flying across the room.
"I'm sorry, Thalian! I didn't mean it! I love you so - agh!"
The world flipped over in a quick, dizzy rush, and all of a sudden she was on her back with a brother sitting on her shins. "Thali-aaan!"
"What?" he asked in apparent surprise, pointing up at the faintly phosphorescent wall. "That's what happens. It's written right there."
"You tricked me!"
"That's because you're a dopey little toadchild," he replied. Then he pointed at the wall again, in case she'd missed it.
"Get off my legs! You're hurting! You always play rough!"
"So? You have to expect this from ironblood invaders. You're the idiot who didn't notice us coming around the back."
"Get off!"
"Some commander you are."
Here's the first one. I did some little pictures as well just for a laugh - for those of the dialup persuasion, there's about 320k worth under the cut there.
Not sure what to say about it except that I'm glad Inya and Thalian aren't related to me. ;P
"Inyamennaaa!"
Inya counted the syllables in her head and paled, hopping to her feet. "Maios! Maios!"
A little backwash of magic warned her that Maios had made his getaway even before she turned to look down at two bulging frog-eyes.
"Maios!" she shrieked.
"Breeek," replied the frog, explaining this was a case of mistaken identity.
"Cut it out! Go hold the door!"
The frog that wasn't Maios dissolved into wet, stridulating laughter, clearly indicating it valued its froggy life, and hopped away under the dresser.
Inya frantically considered her options as she heard Thalian snarl-sing the front door shut. She herself had yet to master shapechanging, though it was probably becoming a life skill. From the sounds of things, Thalian had only hit eight out of ten on the rage scale. That meant he'd found out about the stinky sigil thing, but not the other thing. She'd only have to really panic if he went all quiet again.
"Um ... should I leave?" asked Uti nervously, chewing on her hair. She'd abandoned their game and stepped out of the full light of the window, trying to fade out a bit in the shade behind the shutters.
"Are you crazy?" Inya threw back, singing her first little bonds of will around the door. After a moment's reflection, she pushed her sleeping couch up against it as well. "He'll go back down to a six right away if he knows there's a visitor here."
"Huh?"
There wasn't much time for this! It really was hard to explain things once to sun fae girls.
In a hasty patter of shrill notes, Inya threw a full explanation up on the wall. "Take it off when you're done," she warned, and concentrated on singing against the door again.
"Hum," said Uti, and read them off aloud.
"1 (Annoyed): Thalian will glare at you.
2 (Irritated): Thalian will try to ignore you.
3 (Cross): Thalian will tell you off.
4 (Angry): Thalian will snap at you and say nasty things, or try to sit on you. - Oh ...
5 (Mad): Thalian will shut you in your room and give you a big lecture.
6 (Really Angry): Thalian will raise his voice and keep you inside until you apologise to people.
7 (Really Mad): Thalian will lecture you for ages and ages and call you names.
8 (Furious): Thalian will yell a lot and chase you around.
9 (Really Furious): Thalian won't talk to you and he'll probably smack you. ... Wait, guests too?"
"How should I know?" asked Inya impatiently.
"10 (Unbelievably Angry): Thalian won't talk to you at all - he'll tell Maios to tell you things - and he won't say goodnight."
"Well?" Inya prompted as the silence dragged on. She could hear Thalian's boots stomping towards the door now that she wasn't answering his calls. "What are you waiting for?"
"I'm scared," said Uti, biting at her nails. "He sounds really furious."
"Yeah, well, you don't have to live here," she replied, tossing back her hair. "Quick! Come help me with the door!"
"But I ... um ..."
"You'll do it if you're really my friend!"
Uti straightened. "I'm your friend," she promised, and finally hurried over to sing.
Outside, Thalian's voice sang a short, sharp opening note. By now that wasn't going to work on the fast-snared door, of course. It just quivered for a moment, but stayed shut.
"Inyamenna," came the growl.
"Hi, Thalian!" she chirped through the door.
"I'll give you 'hi', you little toad. Open it."
"Uti and I are doing girl stuff, fishhead. Go away. ... Say hi, Uti."
"... hi ..."
There was a long, menacing pause. When Thalian spoke again it was in his cool public voice, as she'd known it would be, but only a very silly person would think it wasn't angry any more. "Oh, hello, Uti. Does your nùth know you're here?"
"Of course they do," Inya huffed.
"That's remarkable, Uti. When you speak through a door you sound exactly like my half-brain sister."
"Go away, Thalian! No-one wants you and you're not coming in!"
"That's what you think."
Inya dove at the door, singing frantically, as a stronger note from outside made it shiver in the frame. Luckily she'd had all kinds of practice at this. "Uti, Uti, Uti! Sing!"
Thalian kept singing, too. If the door broke, it wasn't going to be her fault.
Holding images in her mind of mountains and stones and massive old karri trees - and of Thalian fuming outside, of course - Inya sang strong with Uti, repulsing each new attack. Sometimes he went quiet for a while, but she was never fooled; he'd just sing a sudden, hard note at the door enchantments to try to break them unawares.
As the victories on their side mounted, both Inya and Uti shared glances and started to giggle.
"The Enemy is very clever, captain," Inya told Uti in a hushed voice. "But we must survive until reinforcements arrive."
"I don't think the men can hold out!" gasped Uti.
"Then we'll hold the gates alone." Inya clenched a grim fist. "We shall not go down easy."
Uti saluted. Then she turned to army-crawl over to the dresser, peering into the shadows beneath. Out of the direct sunlight, her head was going a bit transparent again.
"How's the sergeant?"
"He's a frog," reported Uti.
Inya nodded. "A hex of the Enemy. I feared as much. Protect him, captain."
"With my life, commander."
An eerie silence fell on the battlefield, but Inya refused to let her guard down. Pressing her ear to the door, she whisper-sang about wolves raising their heads to the wind on the plains, and about morning quiet atop mountains, until her hearing sharpened properly. The Enemy was still out there, all right. She could hear loud rustling sounds that might have been cloth-folds brushing together, and an erratic, breathy sound.
Then it stopped. Inya listened even harder, hearing only the cloth, and narrowed her eyes.
"Open the door!" hollered Thalian.
"Aagh!" Inya shrieked, clutching at her ears and falling back on the floor with her head spinning.
"Commander! Are you okay?" Uti cried.
Hastily Inya hacked her magic off short, still moaning and holding her head as Uti came and patted at her hair.
"I'm hit," she groaned to the captain, and then - raising her voice - "You're an ironblood donkey, Thalian! That really hurt!"
"That's war for you," his voice replied through the door.
"No, I mean it! You really, really hurt me! I -" She swallowed the rest with a short shriek of horror as the door rattled again. "Uti! Battle stations! Battle stations!"
Uti sang valiantly, still patting Inya's hair, and the Enemy outside fell silent again almost at once.
Inya flopped back, glaring at the bottom of the door.
"You must be strong for the troops, captain," she declared. "I'm badly wounded. But we must fight to the last."
"We shall, commander," said Uti solemnly. "Am I commander if you die?"
"Yes, you are. But I'm only wounded at the moment, remember."
"Right."
They sat there and listened again. Everything was quiet ... too quiet.
"It's quiet," said Inya, because she liked the sound of it. "Too quiet."
"The Enemy is plotting," Uti agreed. "But he shall not break the gates."
"No." She looked the defences over, feeling the ambient glow of a very good lock, and was actually rather proud. It was worth making Thalian mad for these. "I'll draw our plan on the wall, okay?"
"Breeek! Breeek! Breeek!" exclaimed Corporal Frog suddenly.
Uti jumped up, as did Inya, forgetting she was wounded.
"A call to arms!" Uti cried as the alarm went on, and Inya glanced at her appreciatively. She was much better at this than Maios. "What is the Enemy planning, corporal?"
Inya glared at the door. "Quick! We must strengthen the gates again! Rally the men!"
"Yes, sir!"
As Uti army-crawled towards the dresser again, a sudden darkness blotted out the sunlight in the room. Inya turned towards the window just in time to see the dreadful shadow of a blue Quicksilver tunic eclipse the bright windowpane.
Uti started screaming around the same time as Inya did, both bolting away into the further corner of her bedroom.
"No, sing the window shut! It's opening! Quick!"
"Too late! Hide! Hide!"
Her sleeping-couch was still planted against the door. Inya ran at one of her shelves instead, dislodging her things in a clattering rush to the top, perching at the summit and making room for Uti to join her. At least she was almost transparent now!
Like a crack of doom opening in the earth's crust, the window slid fully open and the Enemy began to squeeze through. Inya clung to Uti atop the shelf and shrieked along with her, partly in squealing panic, but mostly because this was bound to be the last fun she'd be having for a long time.
There was a small delay in the apocalypse as Thalian tried to fit both shoulders through. In the end, though, he managed it, crawling in headfirst and standing up amidst a fading chorus of screams. Uti hugged Inya a little tighter as his narrowed eyes came scything over and he stalked towards the shelf.
"This is the End!" she whispered.
"No," Inya whispered back, watching Thalian's grim strides and stiff shoulders with relief. "That's not his angry face. That's his too angry face." Which meant he was trying to act angry. Which meant he somehow wasn't even a six any more.
"I mean he got inside and broke the siege."
"Oh, yes. That's the End."
She fell silent again, plotting a slightly different kind of battle, as Thalian reached the shelf and stared up at them with arms folded.
"Do we speak the same language?" he asked flatly.
"Avaunt, foul one," she threatened.
"I'm not playing, Inyamenna. Do I look like I'm playing? I told you to open that door. - Maios, get out here and act your age."
"You hurt my ears," she countered, sullen, pulling her knees up to rest her chin on them as a nervous frog crawled out from under the dresser. "And I think you've broken my door."
"Look at all the mess you laid on it! It's never going to open again at this rate! How many doors do you think I want to - what's all that on the wall?"
Inya froze as Thalian's eyes slid towards the illuminated reference chart.
"I told you to sing that off when you were done reading!" she hissed at Uti.
Uti bit her shadowy lip.
With a calm, relaxed kind of menace, Thalian stepped over to the wall - his arms still folded and his back facing them - and began to read Stages One Through Ten of Thalian Getting Mad.
The silence was deafening. Inya squirmed on top of the shelf, sensing all hopes of postwar amnesty starting to slip away. She had to do something.
"I still love you, Thali-aan-y," she piped in a sweet-lilting voice.
Thalian didn't reply right away. Instead he slowly sank down on his haunches in front of the wall, shaking his head as if he were tired.
"Do you?" he asked, very, very quietly. "Do you really?"
Inya's apprehension turned into something else, something much worse, as he unfolded his arms and just sat there, head down.
For a few more moments she crouched where she was, feeling all cold and slimy on the inside; then she unwrapped Uti's arm from around her middle and scrambled back down the shelf, flying across the room.
"I'm sorry, Thalian! I didn't mean it! I love you so - agh!"
The world flipped over in a quick, dizzy rush, and all of a sudden she was on her back with a brother sitting on her shins. "Thali-aaan!"
"What?" he asked in apparent surprise, pointing up at the faintly phosphorescent wall. "That's what happens. It's written right there."
"You tricked me!"
"That's because you're a dopey little toadchild," he replied. Then he pointed at the wall again, in case she'd missed it.
"Get off my legs! You're hurting! You always play rough!"
"So? You have to expect this from ironblood invaders. You're the idiot who didn't notice us coming around the back."
"Get off!"
"Some commander you are."