Hello
I've been writing all day, revising the beginning of something I started a long time ago that was mostly crap...I want to know if I've elevated it so far above the state of crap. So I'd much appreciate any comments...
This is just the beginning bit, way before the main conflict even starts, so...*shrugs* Here it is...{edited slightly}
He awoke from his half-sleep with vibrations in his head and a vague feeling of nausea and anxiety. Classic residual symptoms of whale-fucking.
He looked at the transparent membrane above him, even though he knew he wouldn't see them. The whales that made the eerie subsonic vibrations never dove that deep. However, their infrasonic calls could travel for miles around in all directions; and could spindle through the heavy walls of the prison and right into Tiernan's spine.
"Right, they have all the fun," he muttered.
The whales, he was told, came to these colder waters in the summer to feed and mate. He had no way of knowing what they were really doing, but he spent much of his waking hours during the summer months wondering how a whale mated, picturing a weird ballet of two underwater blimps spiraling around each other and somehow connecting in the back like train cars.
He rolled over on his bunk to get his head away from the side of the iron wall, which was still boiling with whale sex noises. It was sometime in the early morning. Breakfast hadn't been shoved under his door yet, so he still had some time to kill. He went through his thoughts to try to find something entertaining to occupy himself with until his food came. Though he tried to shuffle past it, the fading image of the girl kept popping up in his mind..
She was the reason he'd been thrown down into the abysmal prison. His race was forbidden to attach themselves to the humans because of the danger it provoked; yet he'd become absolutely addicted. He saw her one day, and pestered her for a week as usual. But then he found himself coming back again and again, and before he knew it, he was a serial monogamist.
He thought of how her black hair felt when he twisted it in his fingers and the way her eyes looked every time he'd said he was leaving. Tiernan shook his head suddenly and twitched as though afflicted with a seizure, trying to knock out the desperate longing in his heart and loins. He slapped himself.
"Stop thinking about her, you bastard," he commanded his brain, which didn't want to obey. Thankfully, he heard a noise in the hallway at that moment he could shift his thoughts to. There was a hard thumping sound against the iron walls, similar to the sound a giant butterfly would make if it went on a rampage in a small sewer, and Tiernan's room suddenly glowed as vaporous fire liquid misted into his room from under the door.
One would never know whether it was night or day in the prison but for the gelded drakes that were made to light all the water torches at exactly six in the morning. Not only did the drakes fire the torches, but they also created a thundering cacophony. Their wings, though they were small creatures, smacked against the walls of the narrow corridors; and in spring, though they'd been deprived of nature's gifts, they cried for pleasurable company. Tiernan felt pity for the poor beasts when the time came around for the first few days, but always the pity grew to irritation. The prison had enough sorrow in its walls without lonely drakes bemoaning their clipped penises at six in the bloody morning.
The torches were filled with a firewater substance that, when lit, would turn the air element in fire to water. It took on the form of a harmless mist that came into the prison cells through the door cracks, both warming and lighting the rooms. The prison's designers, whatever sadistic assholes they were, had decided not to have the risk of actual fire near the prisoners, because fire underwater is a really useful weapon.
He waited. It would be another few minutes before breakfast would come.
Suddenly, a smashing crack came reverberating from up the hall. The noise of crashing continued and escalated as it got nearer to his cell. Tiernan started to hear snorting, scrabbling, blowing, and grunting; mostly the clang of the metal walls and the snarling of the Cusiths, the gigantic guard dogs of the prison. Underneath it all were low humming and small, sickening crunching noises. The Grey Man was coming. It meant that a new capture had been made. A rather large one, from the sound of it.
The noise was immense now. The banging and groaning and barking and clattering was going on right outside his door. Tiernan waited for the clamor to pass by, but it didn't; instead it hung there like a war of deranged boars outside his cell.
Tiernan sat up as he watched the tiny floating particles of fire freeze in the air. The locks turned in the door, and a chanting was taken up outside underneath the clatter. The door flashed silver and opened wide, revealing the huge stature of the Grey Man at the fore of the thrashing congregation.
Tiernan still wasn't used to the sensations the Grey Man brought with his presence. He was suddenly freezing cold, his fingers felt like ice, and all up and down his back the air stroked him coldly. He felt like homicidal snowmen were molesting him. He heard the sound of footsteps behind him, despite there being only a wall at his back, and he was sure in his heart that the owner of the nonexistent footsteps was bent on murdering him and impaling his head on a stick. He was afraid, feeling as if he was blind and chained helplessly in a dark world where nocturnal monsters thirsted after his blood. In his mind, he knew that it was all a trick of the emotions the Grey Man awakened in him; but nevertheless he quivered in fear before the towering form.
The Grey Man stepped aside to let in the prisoner: a moaning, heaving black bull with red eyes burning like warming embers, blowing steam in the sudden cold from its nostrils. It writhed and wailed and tried to spear one of the great dogs with its long horns, but the Cusiths only grabbed hold of the horns with their rapacious jaws and shoved the beast forward into the cell. Then the thing thrashed again and contorted; when next in appeared in clear view it was no longer a bull but a horse, blowing blue flame and kicking out with sharp hooves. It screamed, loud enough to stun a cat, and sliced a large gash in a Cusith's shoulder, and then smashed in the head of the next dog to approach. The dogs looked at each other and took several steps back, their ears flat and still growling, but with their tails tucked shakily under. They looked to their master questioningly, their courage simmering away like bacon fat.
The Grey Man, however, was undaunted. He turned and stared at the black beast as it continued to lash out furiously. Suddenly, the horse's movements began to slow, as if it were gradually becoming immersed in pudding.
Ah, pudding, thought Tiernan briefly. He missed pudding. He turned his thoughts again to the spectacle before him.
The horse had stopped moving and its fire had turned suddenly into nothing but frosty breath. The Grey Man waved one of his long arms and a Cusith stepped forward and shoved the immobilized creature into Tiernan's cell. Then, swiftly, the Grey Man and his dogs left, putting the locks and charms back onto the door.
A plate of apples and bread skidded under the entryway and slowed to a stop before the prone form of the black horse.
Breakfast had arrived.
Tiernan cautiously moved toward the plate of food. He didn't want to be in the path of the Phooka's rage when it awoke.
Its awakening didn't seem imminent, however, so Tiernan picked up the plate and went back to his cot, chewing on an apple and letting its juice drip on his close-cropped beard. He looked over the newcomer, lying on its side on the floor. Its muscles were clearly defined; its fur was slightly wet with sweat from the agitation of its capture, and its breath was still coming hard and fast, though the creature couldn't move.
Tiernan wondered whether the Phooka was male or female.
"Only one way to find out," he muttered, smiling impishly. He got up and circled around to the underbelly of the horse, peering closely at the aftsection. His attention was fixed, and he did not notice that the horse's legs had slowly begun to move. The Phooka quickly gained full mobility, as it demonstrated by morphing into its normal humanoid shape, rising from the floor and slapping Tiernan in the jaw in one smooth movement, eyes still red with rage.
"Aye, a female," said Tiernan, rubbing his jawline.
The Phooka said nothing, but stared at him, huffing angrily and hoping, evidently, to burn holes in his face with her eyes. Her hair was pure black, like the hair of someone else he knew, but the eyes were red in swirling color, like blood-soaked clouds screaming for war. Otherwise, she looked human.
Her eyes strayed from his face and shot around the room, taking in her new surroundings. It didn't take long, as there wasn't much to take in.
"Where have I been brought to?" she wondered, half to herself.
"Bathys," said Tiernan, ending the mystery.
She wheeled on him. "Bathys?! Why..?" She turned from him again and stared at the door. "Bathys..." she repeated to herself, this time slow and laden with dark comprehension.
Tiernan looked at her and noticed for the first time that she was shivering. A coldness seemed to be emanating from her; she was still partly frozen by the Grey Man's stare. He went over to his bunk and slipped the blanket off of it, then came over to her again while she was still in her reverie and threw the blanket around her shoulders.
She turned on her heel and slapped him in the face again.
"You...oh," she said, noticing the blanket around her. "Sorry. Reflex."
He straightened from his hunched Don't-Kill-Me position and nodded at her.
"‘S alright, happens all the time." He motioned to the breakfast. "Hungry?"
She shook her head and pulled the blanket tighter around her as she folded her knees and sank down to the floor. Tiernan thought he should say something, but couldn't think of anything more comforting than "Brilliant knobs", so he just went over to his bunk and chewed thoughtfully on a piece of bread.
"I suppose it's because I'm
dangerous, is that it?" she said suddenly to the floor.
"Well obviously," said Tiernan. "Otherwise they wouldn'a taken the trouble ta bury you five hundred feet deeper than whales even dare to take a shit."
She looked at him coldly.
"What is it you done?" he asked, tilting his head like a puppy and hoping it looked cute, taking a little bite out of his bread.
She looked down at the floor again. "Don't really want to talk about it."
"Aw come on," said Tiernan. "I'll tell you what I done if you tell me."
"I don't really care what...or
who," she said pointedly, "you did."
There was a silence.
"So you only did ‘it'?" said Tiernan. "Singular? One crime?"
She slitted her eyes at him. "Yes."
That was odd, thought Tiernan. Bathys was a prison for the magic creatures who were serious dangers to the world at large: demented torturers, mass murderers, serial killers, or in Tiernan's case, perpetrators of less serious but repeated crimes that had the rebellious mark of insurgency. Almost never was a person imprisoned in Bathys who was a one-time offender, unless the crime was inconceivably horrible...or, in her case...
"Aw no, you didn't really?" said Tiernan, folding his arms and leaning back.
"Shut your mouth, boy," she hissed at him warningly.
Tiernan didn't press her. He might have been foolish, but he wasn't a fool. He went back to silently eating his breakfast.
