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+~The Princess Protector~+

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Readytodream
Apr Member 2007

Readytodream

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keep up the good work :D

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23-Aug-2008 01:16:09 - Last edited on 23-Aug-2008 01:16:42 by Readytodream

Ele Cambria
Jul Member 2017

Ele Cambria

Posts: 1,024 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
As some of you may know, I've been pretty busy with my other writing project -- a fantasy trilogy that I intend to get published, and its set in my own not-so-little world, not RS -- both very good reasons why it can't be posted up here.

However, lately I've been doing readings of the first book-in-progress in my chat channel. This week I'm going to start making this a regular thing, Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, from 6-7pm Central Standard Time, which is 11-midnight, GMT. Everyone's welcome to come to listen, or just to share some cookies and milk. :)

I'm still going to be working on Princess Protector, of course, and will try to have chapters of it up on a more regular basis.

No, I take that back -- *will* have chapters of it up more regularly. As a very wise person once said, "Try not. Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."

Just keep in mind, my trilogy comes first.

14-Sep-2008 22:35:35 - Last edited on 14-Sep-2008 22:45:11 by Ele Cambria

Ele Cambria
Jul Member 2017

Ele Cambria

Posts: 1,024 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
We interrupt this thread to bring you a preview of "Cord of Three: The Search".

Two Years Ago.

--Carl--

Jared and I were hanging out, just like it was any other Saturday, just like it wasn't the last day of our normal lives.

Not that our lives had been all that normal, ever since my mom was killed. They say it was an accident. From Mom's last words, I know it wasn't.

Anyhow, we were at the arcade that day, playing pool on those cheap old tables set up back where all the cool machines were, before they got broke and no one bothered to fix them. It was the last Saturday before school started, and with it, our senior year of high school. We'd been talking all summer about doing something cool, something spectacular, for our last weekend of freedom.

"So, you doing anything tonight?" Jared asked me while pretending to study the angle of his next shot.

"Yeah. You got plans?"

"Not yet." He hit, missed the pocket by a good four inches, and as usual, blamed it on the table. "Are they ever gonna get some decent tables in here?" He passed me the chalk.

“Probably not.*

"So, whatcha doing?"

"Something stupid." I put too much spin on the cue ball and it missed my target by a long shot. "Not crazy-stupid, like the time we tried to make our own firecrackers. More like... Bad-stupid. Scary-stupid."

Jared completely flubbed his shot, and hit my last ball into the pocket. "That would never have happened if these tables were level, you know?"

"One of these days, we'll buy a table ourselves -- you'll have to find new excuses."

"I can't wait," Jared laughed. "I'll be like, 'Dude, that alien just totally distracted me!' and you'll be, 'What alien?' and I'll say, 'Didn't your father ever tell you? *You're not one of us,'" he said in his mock, funny-scary voice.

14-Sep-2008 22:35:45 - Last edited on 24-Sep-2008 11:43:31 by Ele Cambria

Ele Cambria
Jul Member 2017

Ele Cambria

Posts: 1,024 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
He leaned down near me, while I chalked up my stick. "So, my alien friend, this plan of yours is...?"

"Party crashing."

Jared couldn't keep himself from laughing. "Man, that ain't no scary-stupid. That's just stupid-stupid."

"Not this one -- being hosted by Quentin Sanguin."

Jared got real quiet. "The guy you think...?"

"Had my mom killed. Yeah. I'm gonna try to get close to him. See what makes him tick."

"You're right. That is scary-stupid."

I took a deep breath. "Eight-ball to the right corner pocket," I called, and sunk it in easily. "That's our last game. Let's go."

On our way home, I asked Jared, "Doing anything tonight?"

"I'm coming with you, of course."

"Of course," I agreed.

14-Sep-2008 22:35:55 - Last edited on 19-Aug-2010 02:20:56 by Ele Cambria

Ele Cambria
Jul Member 2017

Ele Cambria

Posts: 1,024 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Chapter Two: The Letter

--Two years later--

--Tristan--

I came home a bit earlier than I told Sandra I would.

Before that, she'd told me to call her "Mom."

I told her I'd die first. Only, in language much less kind.

She said I was grounded. Also not in nice words. Or tone, for that matter.

I said I was leaving to do my school shopping and if she wanted to be the one to explain to Dad why I didn't have any clothes that actually fit me anymore, then go right ahead and try and stop me.

She didn't.

Probably one of our more successful conversations, all in all.

So anyways, her car wasn't in the garage when I pulled in, just as I'd expected. She's always at some yogurt-and-yoga-something or other that time in the afternoon, with her "girlfriends" she calls them -- and I always point out how that makes her sound "non-straight".

"Girl. Friends. Girl friends, Tristan, must you take everything so literally?" she'd demand, and scream, and yell, and moan about why I seemed incapable of being a "decent little girl" (I'm 17, sheesh, not exactly a little girl anymore) and throw up her hands and make all these weird Broadway-theatrics-gestures, and generally make herself amusing to me for a few minutes.

When she's not ranting and raving, she's a big nuisance to me. She made me stop taking karate, or visit the firing range with some of Carl's old buddies, or get a job, or do anything that would actually enable me to take care of myself.

Ever since Carl disappeared, and Dad went off into depressed-poor-pity-me-mode, I've been the only one taking care of anyone around here.

Far as I'm concerned, I'm the only one worth taking care of, right now.

I hauled all my bags out of the car - Carl's old one, actually - and double-checked that the brown paper sack was deep enough in hiding that if Sandra came home early and surprised me or something, she wouldn't be suspicious.

That's the one and only thing she and any of us have in common. Her and Mom and Carl are all paranoid.

14-Sep-2008 22:36:04 - Last edited on 19-Aug-2010 02:14:07 by Ele Cambria

Ele Cambria
Jul Member 2017

Ele Cambria

Posts: 1,024 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Difference is though, Carl and Mom were paranoid for good reason. Mom'd been getting death threats. Then she died, and it was called an accident. Only an imbecile would NOT suspect something, or worry that we'd be next.

Sandra gets paranoid if the milk gets left out of the fridge for two minutes. "What are you trying to do, Tristan, poison me?"

I'm not exactly suspicious, but I can tell when something is wrong. I suspected something was up when I walked down to the basement and was hit by the heavy stench of Lysol mixed in with some flowery powder "odor eliminator" garbage that Sandra uses to "make the house smell like a beautiful garden!"

Smells more like "instant headache" to me.

Every box we'd left in the basement to unpack later, had been unpacked.

All the cobwebs were gone, the old lights bright and freshly washed.

And the Happy Bunny stickers I'd put on my bedroom door had been painted over.

I stormed over to the room, flung open my door, and my jaw hit the floor so hard I think I left a permanent dent.

My entire room was spotless. Everything hung up, put away – and, from the sheer emptiness of the room, I knew -- a lot of things, thrown away.

Like the things I'd left on top of my dresser: my box of Carl's pictures, and the letters I'd started writing for him and never was able to finish. And, infinitely more importantly, a letter from him to me.

I may hate Sandra for a lot of things, but I'd never really try to hurt her or anything... unless she threw away my brother's last letter.

I pounded up the stairs, raced to the kitchen and started digging through the trashcan, praying that my trash-that-wasn't-trash hadn't been taken out yet.

On the very bottom, beneath a bunch of my old magazines and the remains of today's breakfast, was The Box. I pulled it out carefully, as it was falling apart even before I started using it to put Carl's stuff in. At the very top, The Letter, stained with syrup and egg.

14-Sep-2008 22:36:19 - Last edited on 19-Aug-2010 02:18:07 by Ele Cambria

Ele Cambria
Jul Member 2017

Ele Cambria

Posts: 1,024 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
At that moment, I heard Sandra open the door from the garage.

"Of course it's not the best neighborhood, Mary," she said, apparently on the phone. "But Dan's happy here, his job's good, and we're all doing fine. It's the public school that really bothers me. Some of those kids look like the type to carry guns and knives around, you know? I've always said we should get rid of guns entirely. They're just nothing but - Oh. My...." Sandra stepped into the kitchen then, and saw me steaming, with the trash spilled everywhere and the box in my hands. "
Excuse me, Mary, I'll call you back later."

"Just what in hell do you think you're doing?"

"You explain to me why you're throwing away my things first!"

"You had a bunch of trash everywhere. I've been after you to clean it. If you don't care about your stuff enough to put them away, you must not want to keep them very badly."

"Not these!" I yelled. "These were very specially placed on top of my dresser, with nothing else around it! That's where I ALWAYS put my Carl stuff, you know that!"

"And those clothes and books everywhere?"

"The clothes were in piles, stuff that doesn't fit me in one, a few decent things that I could possibly wear to school in another -- and now you've messed it all up by putting it who-knows-where!" I shook with anger. "But I don't care about that as much as I do this," I said, carefully holding up Carl's letter. "This is the one thing that means the most in my life, you KNOW it, you've been after me for months to just get rid of it. You've been waiting for an opportunity to get rid of it, thinking I'd never notice. Well, you're wrong!"

"Kiddo, you've read that thing a million times. It's falling apart, it's dirty--"

"Mostly because you dumped breakfast all over it!"

"--And you know it by heart anyway. Tristan, come sit down with me." Sandra sat down at the kitchen table and motioned for me to sit beside her.

14-Sep-2008 22:36:28 - Last edited on 19-Aug-2010 02:18:48 by Ele Cambria

Ele Cambria
Jul Member 2017

Ele Cambria

Posts: 1,024 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
"No! I know exactly what you're going to try and tell me. That Carl's gone, that he's never coming back. That I should just let him go. He is coming back, and you can't prove to me otherwise!"

Sandra was quiet for a moment. Finally, she said softly, "What if he's dead?"

I couldn't answer that one. I glared at Sandra, snatched up my box, and took it to my room. As I left the kitchen, I saw her rest her head in her hands, muttering about how impossible I was.

She's got it all wrong. I focus on what is possible, while everyone else only sees one thing. Just because we haven't found Carl in two years doesn't mean he's dead. People have been missing for much longer than that, and been found.

My brother will be found. He'll come back to us. Dad will be his old wiseguy, fun-loving self again. We'll be a family again, taking care of each other.

And in the meantime, I'd do a fine job of taking care of myself.

I sat on my bed, pulling out the old pictures and looking over them again. Carl and me at the firing range, at karate with our uniforms on, playing baseball, pretending our bats were swords, goofing off for the camera.

Mom wasn't in any of the pictures. She was always the one taking them. Except for one. My favorite one, Carl and Mom playing chess, Carl one move from winning - and in the middle of turning the board around so Mom would win. Mom had her hands out, and was laughing, trying to say, "No, go ahead, you beat me!" Dad was in the middle, trying to keep all the pieces from falling off. And I was the one taking the picture, capturing a moment when we were all just being normal, having fun.

Some days I wonder if I'll ever be able to have fun again. Some days I wake up, and I forget. Then I remember, Mom's dead, Carl's gone. And it's just like losing them all over again.

I read over the letter. Some parts were too badly smudged or faded to read, but I filled it all in from memory.

14-Sep-2008 22:36:40 - Last edited on 19-Aug-2010 02:19:02 by Ele Cambria

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