Elizabeth Pilfrey

Wherever We Go

Artur nodded and sheathed the elf's sword, and hung in on Revelations' saddle with a meaningful look. Apocalypse had managed to stand, and Artur felt a wave of gratitude for the stallion's health. He would have to carry half the saddlebags himself, but that would be fine. He loosely saddled Apocalypse, gathered both leads and set off into the forest without another word. Just before exiting the forest he stopped to straighten his robes and his long, flaxen hair. He would have to look the part, riding into the village.

"Can you carry those bags?" He asked the elf. Perhaps it would be too much, but . . . "It's not unusual for Guardians to have charges that travel with them as squires, and they may be more welcoming if they assume that you are a soul on the path to the Light. More welcoming than . . . others have been, in the past." Of course Artur was far too young to have acquired an official charge, but the villagers could wonder at that. He mounted Revelations and tied Apocalypse's lead to the horn of his saddle. He glanced down from his high perch at the scars on the elf's chest, "Can you close your robes or something?"

The villagers had begun to gather in the streets, examining the damage done. Artur rode in from the east at a slow walk, with the dawn light breaking behind him, setting his hair and his gold-and-white robes aglow. The villagers would also be less likely to be shocked at Morgan's appearance if they couldn't clearly make out the details of their silhouette. Artur came up to the first huddle of villagers, who went silent and paused in their work, and dismounted.

"The Light brings the morning," he greeted them in the traditional way of the Guardians.

"And the morning brings us a Guardian. Were you here during the attack yesterday?" The young woman who spoke gestured at the damage in the side of an old stone building. Her lips had a twist to them that dared Artur to lie, and he suddenly felt very much his seventeen years as she looked him up and down. She was taller, and dark-haired and disarrayed and very, very lovely, even in her sleepless state.

"Yes, I was, with my, ah, charge. We arrived during the attack and did what we could. The chase took us into the woods, so please forgive us for not staying and introducing ourselves immediately, Madame . . . um . . . " he waited for her name, and tried very hard to stand still and dignified, and not like a little boy faced with a pretty girl.

Eden of the East

Linguistics and Terminology

Vamps: Life-deficient people.

Society

People feel very all in this together, like an ancient village. There's no real hate towards Vamps unless they so vampiric that they're a danger to those around them. Being a Giver is very dangerous, however, because people will try to take advantage of it.

Religion

Eden of the East

Overview

An unidentified year in the future. The skies are dark with the fallout of human industry and the earth is grey and dead. The rich live above the clouds in the Sky, a web connecting the skyscrapers that have grown like forests over the face of the Earth. The poor live in the shadows and ruins on the ground, huddling like snakes and rats in concrete dens. Surviving, but never living. Life left the Earth when the last tree was felled. Everybody knows this, even if nobody knows how, or why. The rich took all Books and Knowledge with them to their sequestered paradise. Once upon a time, some think, everybody had Books and Knowledge, but not anymore, and nobody has time for useless things like that anyway.

They do know that the monsters appeared before the End. In fact, the cities were built to protect against the monsters, and the strategy worked, for a while, until either the monsters became too strong or the cities overtaxed themselves.

Monsters inside, monsters outside, and worst of all these children being born. These little vampires that died faster than their parents could name them, or killed their mothers first. The last thing the rich did before disappearing was name them: Life Deficient the doctor's ticket would say -- but everybody calls them Vamps.

Life-deficient, (Scavengers or Vamps): Those who must take Life from outside sources in order to survive. Symptoms of deficiency mimic those of low blood sugar (mild) or drug withdrawal (severe), and usually include weakness, fainting spells and anger.

Life-sufficient people: those who resemble ancient humans. Like blood donors, they can offer a little here, a little there, for the production of Life good and services. The lack of sunlight affects them, but no more than a serious lack of Vitamin D

Life-efficient people, aka Givers: those with excess life. Generally shorter-lived but very happy, optimistic, sometimes over-emotional people.

And this is how humans live, as always adjusting with unbelievable rapidity to the new world order.

Notes:

Superstitious? Old folk beliefs (Pagan, Viking, Native American) resurrected because Nature is worshipped. Do we want to create a centralized religion?

Ground level society resembles Prohibition x South Chicago + Harlem x Mass Effect. So we've got inner-city diversity and dirt, speakeasy sci-fi neon nightclubs, crime on crime on crime, black market racketeering of Life goods, Life prostitution. But also schoolhouses and janky electricity and cool music cultures

Sky-level society is like a slowly rotting hotel and an endless Gatsby party all at the same time.

Wherever We Go

"There is no need to apologize. I know that you will never trust me. It's hard for a demon to trust another demon." Demon? Artur wrote it off as an elfish expression, and didn't pay it any mind except to file it away for later conversations. Artur didn't like the way the elf was looking at him, through him, so he turned away and went to Revelations, who had dozed off nearby.

""I don't think you understand quite how much I am grateful to you, Guardian. By the way, I don't intend to leave your side. I am in your debt." Artur turned his head over his shoulder at the elf and smiled thinly. He liked being called "Guardian". It made him feel . . . powerful.

"And I intend to rid you of this curse," he said, turning back to run his hand through his stallion's mane, "But not tonight. Dawn is breaking and I'd like to return tot the village to make sure the villagers are safe." Absently, his hand drifted to his rib. He'd need to bandage that. Perhaps the village would have a healer, or at least private rooms where he could take care of it himself, without being seen.

Wherever We Go

For a moment Artur paused. Could he actually do it? Could he actually kill a living being?

And if the elf was so unafraid of death, why was he not dead yet? It would be easy: be caught by an angry mob, slip and fall in front of a cart, let those knights -- Artur refused to consider that they might be Guardians -- do the deed. He would have to ask.

Those thoughts fled quickly, however, before he could dwell on them. Artur usually tried to act distinctly not-seventeen, but he couldn't help wanting to throw a tantrum. He was confused. He felt helpless. He wanted to sleep. He closed his eyes and silently recited the first ten proverbs, composing himself.

"I apologize for my behavior, but please excuse me if I continue to doubt you," he opened his eyes and looked at the elf, "Thank you for healing Apocalypse. We . . . have been together a long time," he offered the personal detail as his way of clearing the air, if only a little bit. "Here," he took the wrap of trinkets out of his robes and tossed them to the elf, then knelt to examine his stallion. It seemed the magic had put him to sleep. Artur took off his bridle and tied his lead a tree.

"Are you sure you know nothing about the sword?" he asked as he was working.

Fairy Tail: A Rising Dawn (Daisuke & Elizabeth Pilfrey)

Hey, are you alive? Are you OK? Is your sister settling in?

Wherever We Go

"Are you even listening to me, elf?" Artur rounded on him, holding the elf's sword comfortably in his hand. "I don't know what sorts of Guardians you've been meeting before now, but I would be appalled if anybody belonging to the Order would so much as hurt you unless they saw you causing violence to someone else. We don't strike preemptively." His voice had gotten away from him, rising to a girl's high, soft tones. He came up to the elf and towered over him again.

"Now answer the question, elf. Where did you get this sword?" Because Artur, suspected, but couldn't make himself believe, was that he knew precisely where it came from, and that there was a Guardian's body rotting somewhere in the wilderness.

Wherever We Go

"Oh gods, what did I do this time? Or....is it something that you did or didn't do? Something you forgot to do to me while I was unconscious?"

A thick cloud of irritation that felt remarkably like a headache had been building in Artur's head, and the elf's chatter was only making it gather all the quicker. He took a deep breath, which jostled his rib, and tears sprang to his eyes. He looked away. Apocalypse was panting, rolling, and Revelations had paced away and begun to nose at the muddy ground.

"I'll shut my trap now." Well, thought Artur, the elf didn't look too dangerous, and he had helped kill the demons in the village. The priest rose with some struggle and walked over to the elf until he stood over him. He twisted his face into yet another variation of the stern looks his Counselors had worn at the Temple when chastising young acolytes and made up his mind.

"Elf," he began, then reconsidered, "Monsieur Medraut," that was the right title for a male in these parts, right? "I can see without knowing your personal history that you are in need of guidance and guardianship, and as a Priest of the Order of the Guardians of Light, it is my duty to provide these things for you. However," he lowered his dark, thick eyebrows to seem more threatening and underscore what he was about to say, "if you give me any reason to believe that you are lost to the clutches of the Other, or, Gods forbid, that you willingly serve it, I will have no choice but to deal with you as a Guardian must. If you are lost due to the misfortune of your . . . predicament, you will of course receive last rites and proper burial. Traitors, however . . . " he trailed off, eyes still drilling into the elf's. It was nice, for once, to have the upper hand, and he was proud he hadn't stammered once, though he could feel his cheeks were flushed and his hands trembled with something other than exhaustion. Years of being the smallest, the baby, the pretty one, and now, a chance to be recognized as the fierce Priest of the Order that he was. He was going to do the best he could to vanquish the No-God's hold on this creature.

With that he crouched and fumbled at elf's restraints. Halfway through, he realized that he probably shouldn't remove them entirely, and turned them into hobbles. The elf could freely walk, but not run or ride, and his arms could hang naturally at his sides, but spread no wider than the rope connecting them allowed.

"Is that good enough?" he stood, and without waiting for a response, walked to where he had laid the elf's possessions out, "I'll be keeping these. If you can heal my stallion, I would be ever grateful, and happily to return some part of them to you," he said, bundling the trinkets into a piece of cloth, which he his in one of the hidden pockets of his robes after making sure his back was to the elf. The wand he refused to touch bare-handed, wrapping it in another cloth and hiding it in his saddlebags, well away from anything holy. The sword, when he touched it, seemed oddly warm and familiar. So familiar, in fact, that for a mad second Artur felt as if he was picking up his own sword, and he automatically went to hang it at his back when he realized that his sword already hung there. He stared dumbly at it. Of course it wasn't his, the stone set into the pommel wasn't blue, and the inscription on the blade . . .

Artur stopped again. No, the stone wasn't blue, but there was an almost identical stone set into the pommel at the same place where his would be, and though the inscription was different there was an inscription. He could count on two hands the masters who had inscribed their swords, and on one the number of inscribed swords that remained in use. Lost in his stupor, back still to the elf, he drew the sword. The motion was the same, the balance, the length, the weight the movement. If he didn't have eyes, he couldn't have told it apart from his own.

"Elf," he said, forgetting his manners in his fascination at the blade, "Where did you get this?"

Fairy Tail: A Rising Dawn (Daisuke & Elizabeth Pilfrey)

Straight people are so scary people in general feel so threatened when their cut-and-dry ideas about their own sexuality is questioned. Well, it is a scary process.

Hey, car rides are awesome! Well, depend on the family, but. My parents do 24 hours from their place to mine in one go. And yeah, moving away is the best thing that fucking could have happened. I move lit halfway across the country and I live alone and it's just [i]great

Fairy Tail: A Rising Dawn (Daisuke & Elizabeth Pilfrey)

Lily followed Ame in a daze, letting the girl pull her along the crowded train station. She tried to play it cool, but in reality, she was so excited to be travelling. She'd rarely left the guild, and it had always been her secret dream to go on a grand adventure with a friend. She'd thought it might be Ame often, especially when they were kids; she couldn't believe this was actually happening.

They were seated before long, large backpacks tucked under their seats. She was glad she'd thought to hid her sword and dagger in the backpack itself. If Growl wasn't allowed on the train, then she was sure her sword would be even less welcome. She stared out the window while Ame and her cat arranged themselves. So many people, all rushing somewhere. And now she was one of them, too.

"We can't lose a team member before we even get there. Isn't that right, Lily?" Lily looked at Ame, startled. Did she say . . . team member? She couldn't help it, she smiled stupidly before realizing she'd been referring to Growl.

"Yeah, you guys have to keep each other safe so you can go on more jobs, right?" her smile thinned and her gaze dropped to its usual place on the floor. The train started and pulled away from the station, and Lily looked back out the window.

"Um, who else is on your team, Ame?" she asked, hoping that the question wasn't offensive.