Alfbie

The Empress of the Underground

Ugh. That took longer than intended to reply. Son wanted to hang out after work, so I had to oblige. Then it took me a while to pinpoint a name. I even found a couple of pictures, but they don't quite match what I have in mind, so I'm being a chicken and am being reluctant to post. So apologies! Hope it was worth the wait :)

The Empress of the Underground

But how and where would the empress begin her search? Unexplained events saturated the globe, whether real or imaginary, supported by all manner of believers. In a world where the supernatural and the natural intersected, mixed, fused, it was almost impossible to tell what was real and what was not, what was science and what was merely a slight of hand...

But Las Vegas, a city in the middle of a dry, scorching desert, thrived on deception, of blending the imaginary with what could be perceived as real. Hoards of visitors, in superficial t-shirts and selfie sticks, lined the base of buildings shaped like fairytale castles, enchanted Egyptian pyramids, Coney Island, or the streets of Paris or Venise, these clogged sidewalks weaving through foliage that could never survive naturally in the dry Sierra heat. Cops on bicycles weaved through the heavy foot traffic while immigrant men passed out flyers advertising nearby, discreet brothels. Even during the day, the city seemed to sparkle in all its artificial glory and promise of wonder, the tinseled manifestation of magic.

Even this gem had its grit, a ring around the heart of the city lined with pawn shops, payday loan banks, adult video stores, and used car dealerships. These buildings, remnants of 70s glitz, did not shine, people did not clog these sidewalks, and fancy palm trees did not grow here.

Within one of these pawn shops, a slender man, no more than 30 years old, leaned over the scratched glass counter as the pawn shop owner examined a Zippo lighter. The younger man threaded a hand through bedraggled dark hair, a shoulder-length, oily mess that he had not the time for, before idly scratching at the stubble of a beard growing along a sharp jawline. "So, how much?"

The pawn shop owner glanced up to study the anxious customer--the younger man had darker skin, like one of those yuppy mochas from Starbucks, but bright blue eyes that made this older, proudly conservative man uncomfortable. Was the younger man a crack addict pawning what he could find for money? He certainly smelled like he hadn't showered for a few days, wearing a ratty, dark t-shirt to boot, but he was too much of a pretty boy to be on crack long-- his skin was still smooth. And he lacked the disjointed jitters that a drugged-up crazy carried.

The shop owner grunted. "Five bucks."

"Five..." The younger man gaped, his expression a mix of outrage and surprise. "It was a gift from when I was discharged from duty. It came all the way from Afghanistan with me. It is at least twenty. Look here, there's an inscription that says--"

"Five bucks." The owner set his jaw and glared.

The younger man mirrored his glare but was no match for the shop owner's decades of experience putting his foot down against multi-racial lowlifes like this punk.

The younger man snatched his lighter. "Fucking rip-off," he snarled as he shoved the lighter in his dirty jeans pocket and headed for the door. "I can get fifty bucks at the place across the street."

"Good luck with that," the shop owner scoffed.

The younger man--Alexander Valencia--ignored him, storming out of the store and into the glaring midday heat. Blinded by the sun and his anger, he began to cross the street to the next pawn shop, seeing no oncoming traffic in his peripheral vision.

A taxi screeched around the corner. Moving too fast for car or pedestrian to react, the taxi slammed against Alexander head-on, denting the hood of the car. Alexander tumbled clear over the vehicle as it screeched to a halt, smashing the windshield and damaging the taxi sign as he did.

A strange, tingling warmth enveloped Alexander as the vision of sky and concrete tumbled before him. For a moment, his vision blurred, the warmth bringing him back to Afghanistan, in a similar desert heat, bullets whizzing around him, bodies falling, blood splattering like confetti poppers...

He hit the concrete with an audible crack. The sharp pain pulled Alexander back to the present. Rolling to a stop on his side, he glanced at the source of the pain--bone protruded from his arm. He gasped and let out another wail of agonizing pain before struggling to his feet. His left foot wobbled uselessly, that broken ankle unable to support his weight, and he returned to the ground in a heap. The concrete was wet, and he realized that it was slick with his blood.

The taxi driver finally stepped out, pale-faced and gawking in shock. "Jesus, are you alright?"

"My arm is broken!" Alexander gasped even as the pain ebbed away, "and my ankle. My head..."

The taxi driver knelt down beside him. "Where is your arm broken?"

Alexander pointed to the grotesqueness of bone through flesh... except it wasn't there. His arm was whole, unscratched. He blinked, then checked his other arm. Dirty, but undamaged. "I-I swore...there was bone... it's broken!" He flexed both arms, a startlingly painless gesture.

The taxi driver rose to his feet, glowering. "You stepped onto the street on purpose," he snapped, "faking an accident, trying to sue me for my hard-earned money!"

Alexander lifted his head to stare like the man had gone mad. "You fucking hit me!" He rose to a sitting position, sliding both hands through his hair to check his head for injuries. None. Slowly, he rose to his feet, both ankles supporting his weight just fine. But just a moment before... He glanced at the streak of blood on the ground, his blood, but where did it come from? He checked himself for injury, clearly remembering the broken arm, growing more panicked and confused.

"Look at my car!" the taxi driver screamed. "You con artists know how to stand just right so that you roll off the car without getting hurt, and then pretend that you are! I'm not falling for it!"

A few people emerged from nearby buildings to stare, but this block was a ghost town compared to downtown Las Vegas--there were few witnesses, and even fewer who cared.

"I swear I didn't," Alexander murmured. The taxi driver's screaming hollowed, then thinned as Alexander remembered a different type of screaming that surrounded him. All those bullets...it had been an ambush, years ago in Afghanistan...dust all around...bullets going through him, piercing his armor... The doctors had said he was lucky, but there had been so many...

Alexander stumbled off the street and onto the sidewalk in a daze, the taxi driver still screaming at him. He ignored it entirely, his mind resetting to the broken arm he was sure he had just a moment ago. He could not make up that pain. Just like Afghanistan....

Vanish Into Light

Hey :) Sorry for disappearing for a bit: There's been a death in the family that is resulting in some major life changes for me, so I'm gonna be MIA for a while. Hopefully not too long -- gotta get things settled first. Apologies, and thanks for understanding.

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

Hey :)

Sorry for disappearing for a bit: There's been a death in the family that is resulting in some major life changes for me, so I'm gonna be MIA for a while. Hopefully not too long -- gotta get things settled first. Apologies, and thanks for understanding.

Vanish Into Light

Moving! I know what that's like; I've been moving for most of my life. It takes up a lot of time and can be very stressful. Where are you two moving to? How will that affect your work? The hardest thing is always uprooting oneself after establishing roots. Ugh.

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

The jinni's voice was like an anchor in the fog of fragmented emotions and half-formed visions, giving Miria a sense of focus. Memories of Tamal murmuring "Messi" with a hasty bow, downcast eyes, and lips drawn tight into a thin line rippled and faded behind Curdle. Miria hardly noticed. All she could feel was the grit and sand on her skin, the toil of a long day's travel in aching feet, and remnants of the hot sun lingering in brittle hair. She was no longer the pampered girl adored by her family but the nomadic merchant, aimless, loveless, shattered. All because of the jinni.

At once, perhaps unbeknownst to Curdle, he became the image of Tamal, sneering down at Miria, his eyes cold and empty. So many years she had mistook that gaze for sadness, for the lost hope of a broken slave. The memory of such foolishness angered her, pulled her to her feet, and she seethed. "No, it was my mistake for knowing you, loving you, trusting you! You are supposed to be dead! You're..."

She paused, took a wavering step back, shook her head. Up until that moment, she wanted nothing more than to lash at him, to throw words at him in shrill screams and hope those words held enough weight to actually hurt him. But there was a strange sense of realism in talking to Tamal that she couldn't place, like reliving an actual memory instead of a dream. It altered Miria's perception of her visitor, his image flickering between that of the spiteful Tamal and the humble jinni she had met so recently at the market. The jinni with the urn...

Miria gasped, blinked, and Curdle's image held, remained whole. She was suddenly aware, as though she had woken up. Somehow, she knew she was still dreaming, and somehow she knew this jinni was in her dreams, her thoughts. She didn't know how or why, but it sent chills down her spine, followed by the mortifying realization that he had witnessed very intimate moments of her subconscious.

"Y-you didn't..." A shaking hand flew to Miria's mouth. Unable to look him in the eye, she sank back down to sit, struggling not to think too much about what he had seen and what he had interpreted from the scene. His words, which felt like they were spoken so long ago, now tumbled in her thoughts; it was a wonder she could make sense of them at all. He was sorry, this was a mistake, he needed help....

"I still have your urn," she murmured, assuming that this was what the jinni needed help with. "I plan to rid myself of it."

Her gaze flickered up to him as a new question pressed against her tongue. "Are you dead?" How else would he be here in her dreams like this? Why else would he never come to claim his urn? She knew very little about the spiritual customs of the jinn; Tamal had always been so tight-lipped about such things. Now she had the sneaking suspicion that this jinni was a ghost haunting her dreams.

Vanish Into Light

YAAAAAAAY!

Congratulations on your graduation!! Hope everything wasn't too crazy! Glad to see you back :D

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

Tamal has his reasons for taking his vengeance out on Miria's father. Let's just say Miria's father wasn't as wonderful a person as she believed, but he was a very, very good father. Miria only ever saw the good in her father, so even now, all these years later, she has a difficult time grasping the idea that he was a totally different and very ugly person to Tamal. Does that justify Tamal killing the rest of her family, though? No. Despite Tamal's reasons behind his actions, he's not any better of a person. Miria struggles with the black-and-white of what is wrong with people, and everything in between.

Oh, I love complicated stuff like that, mwahaha.

As for the religion.... I kinda like the idea that the jinn have their own religion that is separate from what the humans believe. It gives that element of mystery to their culture that makes them all the more interesting :) That's just my opinion of it, anyway.

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

Oh my goodness...

I read your post (finally), and I thought the opposite of Curdle -- I think he is so full of emotion that he just doesn't know what to do with it, so he is reduced to simply apologizing. I think it is a very Curdle-like thing to do, haha, and it shows that he is so utterly consumed by his social status that even in a dream he feels it most necessary to apologize first before acting. Frankly, I am excited to see how he grows from this :)

My heart went out to him when Curdle actually felt sympathy for Tamal and wished he could help him. That, I think, was my favorite part of your post :) It would make sense for a fellow jinni, who has probably experienced a lifetime of abuse, to know that there are layers to Tamal's actions, that there are probably reasons that drove him to such extremes, and that it is not so black-and-white as Tamal was a bad person that he killed his master. This is why RP with you is so awesome *huggles*

Curdle literally becoming Miria in the beginning was a nice, unexpected touch. I totally dug it. And now for my response :)

Rising Winds and Shifting Sands

Tada!

I spent entirely too much time trying to decide what to write, lol.

I thought the post would be longer, but I'm kinda eager for some interaction to happen!

FYI, Curdle was able to see, feel, and experience everything Miria experienced, almost as though he was her, until the moment she bumped into him. I took a little liberty of how he should appear to Miria in the dream, but not too much liberty. Feel free place your own twist to the dream; we'll come up with a crazy scene together :)