compound sentences || a.i. [a.u.]

parethesis 0.7

A girl followed the river of tears into an arcane place, that felt drowsy and wrong, yet unescapable. She only got off from her boat when she saw the river had ended and nothing but drought followed. The end of civilisation it seemed, the borders of a dystopian town that had been swallowed whole by the ominous desert at her feet.

Her delicate hand went to wipe sand off of the sign at the entrance of the city. Welcome to Elderbrook, where every person's a friendly one. In flashes she could see them walking there: the mailmen, the road workers, the little kids who had yet to figure out the meaning of danger.

Her eyes fell on one child, hair darker than the feathers of a raven and eyes bursting with every colour earth knows. She was selling ash-coloured pebbles, she'd found on the side of the river, exclaiming: "They are magic stones. Drop this one on the ground and it will cleanse the earth. Throw this one in the air and you will be free from the whispering wind. Drop this one in the fire and passion will no longer burn your fingertips and if this one" she continued, now whispering, "falls into water, it will end the floods."

The girl walked up to the child, wonder in her eyes at the child's magical promises. "How many of your stones can I buy?"

She smirked, the typical evil lacing a child's innocence radiating from her olive skin. "Hello miss. All of them if you give something equally magical in return. I like magic, you see. I heard my brother say that light is the fastest thing in the universe, but he's dumb. He doesn't know about magic, magic is faster, more fleeting than anything else. So fast his eyes can't see it, not even reflecting from the things it happens to touch."

"I-I don't have any magic to trade you. I could not imagine ever knowing how to pay for your pebbles."

The little girl tilted her head at the woman in front of her. "I'd imagined you were one of us. I'd imagined you had the eye. They told me you saw the magic." She shook her head as if she was shaking a thought from her head. "The boy where is the boy, he can make you see."

"He does not dream." she replied, fatigue lacing her voice. There was an annihilating truth she could never accept in those words.

"I do not dream," the girl perked up as if it was the most obvious thing. "And I am here am I not?" Happily, she jumped around the massive oak tree behind her. The pebbles jumped from one palm to the other, as she did.

"Am I not?" Those round eyes stared at Alana, every blink announcing another swirling shape across her irises, until the world was drowned in their never-ending hues. "I am not?"

Through the girl's eyes the dreamer saw her god. Two words reverberated through her world: "I am."

"And yet he is not."

His feet were drowned in a fog of moving colours, he seemed to be trapped. Yet his face did not announce fear at the loss of his freedom. It was laced with acceptance. The golden boy welcomed the villainous hue enrapturing his beautiful features. "Alana," he greeted, but neither could tell who was addressed.

"Him, trade me him." The stones jumped in and out of vision, larger than life this time. "Cleanse the earth, stop the whispers, burn no longer, end the rain."

Her incantations drifted into the fog, almost completely snatching the beautiful night terror from her sight. "No, stop!" The vigour of those words splintered her cheek bone to pieces or maybe that was the little girl's doing. Once again the environment shifted and they were on the beautiful golden field were Sanity and Pity and Humility still sat, sat still, hands clasped tighter than ever.

The girl's mischief no longer simmered beneath her delicate features, the devilry of her person instead whirled all around her, setting the grain around her ablaze with a terrible swirling fire. "This is not my doing, this is yours, you created me. Give me your monster and I will remain a girl, but keep your angel from me and he shall destroy the careful lapses of your mind. Cleanse the earth, stop the whispers, burn no longer, end the rain."

With those words her four pebbles created a house in the field. The house seemed huge. Only a giant would be able to reach the polished doorknob hidden behind thousands of black hand-shaped leaves. Flaking red paint adorned the window sills visible only by coincidence for it was the only place the dark ivy did not obscure. It too seemed to be shifting shape constantly. But the girl's wicked aura disappeared under the shade of its porch and she was a child once again, picking up a crown of daisies left forgotten on the doormat and ignoring the relieved sighs of her onlookers.

"You must go now," Pity finally beckoned. "Rest assured that no harm shall come to the girl when guarded by her pebbles."

The woman felt a great desire to steal a leaf from the house's walls, but with her first glance its grandeur mocked this thought. Instead the flower crown suddenly lay at her feet. "If you must take, then let it be this," the wind whispered, "for it was never ours to keep."