Love in the Time of Trials

Chapter 10: A Darkness

Would seem last chapter wasn't very popular considering how few or slowly people gave me reviews on it. Always makes me wonder if there was something I did wrong in the chapter when that happens...Anyway, time for Chapter 10!

Chapter 10

A Darkness

All it had known was captivity.

Captive to its darkness. Captive to its light. Captive to its other side. Captive to those creatures that were absent prior and walked on two legs. Freedom was a luxury.

After that, all it had known was pain. Yet pain did not deter it. Surely not all of these creatures were so callous. Surely some of them would be kind. But for so long, no matter how much it had cried, no one came to its rescue. No one came to its friend's rescue. It was, and had been, so utterly alone.

Then came the one in white. It spoke of so many things when it had found them. And it had spilled so many liquids to the floor that the captive one could not understand just what that foreign substance was. But it listened...listened to the white one on two legs speak of how closed in it was. Somehow, inside the little one's heart...it felt like breaking.

Yes, it could remember thinking, there is kindness here, too.

Then it was free. The white one had pulled it away from captivity, and for the first time, it could breathe. Could cry. Could call for its other half, no matter how much that vestigial power was slipping away. So it did.

Because it knew. It knew of what could come so long as they were separated. That there was light, more than darkness. And seeing the white one cry, it knew in its heart of hearts: it did not want this world to suffer the same fate. That was the only reason it struggled to flee that sack of cloth.

It was drawn to help the two-legged ones such as the blue one, the pink one, the yellow ones...and the white one, of course, who had given it a name. Treated it with more love than it could have imagined. So it would flee, because it was curious, and because it knew of something that could help. Something that shared its inherent, natural power. Something that could connect their bonds.

That was all that was on its mind as it rested there, listening to its companions speak of resting and "dating". Watching the blue one and the pink one go off together to presumably do some strange mating ritual that involved their mouths touching. It cried out at twilight, only to have the white one sing a song, a song that it had probably once cried out in its pain. A tonal inflection it had hoped to use to get home, but did not carry the power to do so any longer.

So, as twilight faded into night, it slipped out once again, bounding along the empty streets and past the lights. There was more power nearby. More that it was attracted to. It cried out, the tinkling cry attracting those notes that could free its brethren and bring it home. The notes that would save this place. So it ran towards it, heedless of the shadow that was ever pursuing it.

For Nebby loved this world too much to run from it any longer.

X X X

"Ah, what a battle!"

Olivia lifted her gaze to see Mallow spread out on the couch in her sitting room, her legs stretched out. Kiawe was watching the green-haired girl, sipping on a drink. The Kahuna shook her head and turned her attention back to the papers in front of her. A frown slipped upon her face. The phone call about the stolen shipment of Buginium-Z was an annoyance she really didn't want to have to deal with, but the papers before her all but screamed that she was going to have to.