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Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Posts: 7,994 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
III
Dearest Lucas,
We are having the most awful weather here. You know how it gets, at the height of summer, all blistering hot? Well, it’s worse than normal. I think we’re having a drought, now – it hasn’t rained for weeks, maybe once since you left.
Do you remember, when we were thirteen, that summer it got like this? Some of the physicians said the mercury rose over 110. The air felt solid, like a quilt thrown over you, and the slightest movement made sweat spring out on your skin. To attempt to breathe was to feel like you were suffocating, do you remember? Ah, you could probably describe it better than I, having your way with words. But I remember you came to see me in the house, and all I wanted to do was lie inside in the shade covered in ice cubes and try to will the heat away, and you said there were things we had to do.
You convinced me to come with you, and we took a ride out of the city into the forest by the East Gate. We rode through the woods for almost an hour, before we reached the trees’ end and you told me to stop and dismount. I could see water through the trees, sweet blue water. You tied the horses while I walked forward, entranced, feeling cool already, just imagining how it would feel to dive in, feel the water wash over my skin and engulf me. Before I knew what was happening, you came up behind me, your hands encircling my waist, then you had me up in your arms and you sprinted, well, staggered – I was almost too heavy for you at that age – toward the edge and pitched both of us into the river.
It was the most amazing feeling. This icy-cold rush, a shock that knocked the breath from my lungs, and nothing had ever felt so good. I felt at peace, like I could just stay under the water forever. Then I couldn’t breathe, and I had to come up for air, and when my head broke the surface there you were, treading water next to me.

30-Dec-2008 16:27:58

Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Posts: 7,994 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
You had this big triumphant grin on your face, and you just reached over and plucked at my hair, showing me the green leaf you had pulled away. “Nice, isn’t it?” you said to me.
“Perfect,” I said.
I remember we played in the river, in this little secluded glade, so heavily wooded we couldn’t even see the city walls. Even though we couldn’t be more than a mile away…I felt so free of the city; it was so nice to get away from all of it. It felt like I had escaped my father, his pressures, his hatred of you…all of it, just for a little while. I loved you for taking me away from that. And I remember that when our skins started to wrinkle like prunes, we finally climbed out of the water and collapsed laughing in the grass that was so vibrantly green, speckled with clumps of wildflowers.
You picked a daisy and tucked it behind my ear, and mocked me because of the way my white summer dress had become see-through. I felt terribly improper! But you just smiled, and looked at me thoughtfully, and said, “Justine, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” and you were so shy, and you were the one blushing, not me.
You looked so beautiful in the sunlight, lying in the little meadow, and the water had made your hair curl all about your ears, I just couldn’t stop myself. That was when I leaned over and kissed you for the first time. Oh, Lucas, it was wonderful! I may have fallen in love with you that day. I don’t know. Maybe I was always in love with you. Sometimes I feel like that was the first day I knew it. Crazy, for someone so young, isn’t it? But I think I always knew I wanted forever with you, that there was no one else I could ever be with.

30-Dec-2008 16:28:41

Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Posts: 7,994 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
I think of this memory today, and what stands out to me was that feeling when I was just staring at the water, before you threw me in. That feeling of relief when I just thinking how badly I wanted jump in. How just knowing I would escape the heat soon was enough to relax me. Sometimes I try to imagine how it will be when you come home. I wish that just thinking of you returning could bring sweet relief from the constant fear that grips my heart, but somehow it doesn’t work the same way. I won’t be free of this worry until I see your face and hold you in my arms again, until I get to kiss your lips and know that you are real and here. You must come back, Lucas! I need you here. I miss you so much. Please write to me, Lucas, so I know that you are all right. I haven’t heard from you, and it worries me. I must know that you are still alive and well!
Write to me soon, love, and tell me if you got my last letter. I hope all is well. I miss you.
Love,
Justine.
Justine dropped the pen and held the letter up to the window in the last rays of sunset to read it over. Sniffling, she reached up and blotted at a tear across where she had written his name, then cursed as the letter smudged. She flung the paper down angrily and rose to pace for a moment, scrubbing her hands through her long hair. The memories had assaulted her all day long, from rising, through her encounter with the Prince, to now, writing him another letter; this was the course of every day. She relived every moment they had spent together, trying to place what went wrong, if there was any point where she could have stopped him from going. It was exhausting, frustrating, and left her with an empty pit in her chest at the end of each day, where she ached to see him and hold him again.

30-Dec-2008 16:29:20 - Last edited on 30-Dec-2008 16:50:07 by Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Posts: 7,994 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Regaining her composure, she slid back into the seat at the desk and folded the letter with great care, then placed it in an envelope and sealed it with wax. She inscribed his name across the front and rose again, exiting the room and running down the hall. When she was admitted to her father’s room, she simply placed the envelope on his desk beside him and murmured, “Please send this.” Then she bowed her head and left. Since their fight the night before, relations between them had been strained, and they had hardly spoken. She had nothing to say to him, nor did she want to hear anything he had to say, unless it was that Lucas was home.
Back in her room, Justine collapsed on her bed and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes. Lucas was all right, of course he was. He had to be. Yet somehow the lack of reports still worried her. Sighing, she rolled onto her side and wrapped her arms around her stomach, hugging herself, knowing it would do little to make the pain go away.
***
Only the lightning and scattered fires illuminated the battlefield now, and still both sides pushed against the other. Lucas tried to will himself up from where he lay in the sand, and found he did*’t have the strength to do it. Every muscle in his body ached, every inch of his skin felt battered and bruised. There was a pounding behind his eyes, a burning in his lungs, and he felt it would all be easier if he simply lay here to die. Nobody would miss him anyway, right?
He was injured, he thought, but he wasn’t quite sure where. He only knew that his body hurt more than it should, but since everything hurt, he couldn’t place the feeling. All of his clothes were spattered with blood, too, so that gave no clues. Maybe it was his stomach wound reopened. He had been walking all right, just swaying a little, before he’d been bumped from behind and just keeled over. So perhaps it wasn’t his legs…

30-Dec-2008 16:40:53 - Last edited on 30-Dec-2008 16:42:31 by Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Posts: 7,994 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
“Who cares?” he mumbled to himself, cheek pressed to the ground, lips smeared with sand. “I’m entitled to a break anyway.”
They’d been fighting for hours. The heavy rain had hindered their efforts at firing the ships, though some had eventually caught. They had blazed out a while ago, however, sometime around sundown. One had even exploded, causing the beach to shake and debris to mix in with the rain as it fell. Smoldering pieces of the ruined hull now added more obstacles for the advancing Kandarins. They came endlessly, charging over the carpet of their dead, adding their own bodies to the pile. Somewhere back down at the water’s edge, their commanders urged them on and they pounded endlessly at the army’s defensive lines. The afternoon had been nonstop fighting – charge, retreat back to the trench, then charge again. Lucas thought his side was winning, judging by the number of red and white uniforms he thought he saw on the beach, but for all he knew, they were just covered in blood.
As the sun went down in the west, dipping below the heavy cloudbank, the shallows of the ocean, already reddened from the amount of blood running down the sand, had turned a brilliant scarlet in the last rays of golden light. Lucas had stopped and stared for a moment, entranced at the beautiful, terrifying sight. That might have been when he took his wound – a Kandarin had bowled into his legs, knocking him on his back.
Pain had exploded all through his body. They had scuffled for a few moments, wrestling, fumbling for weapons, before Lucas had managed to stick him in the chest with his sword and scramble to his feet, gasping, feeling as though he might faint. He reeled about a moment before pitching back into the main fray, and only the adrenaline kept him going. Hours later, though, it was fading.
He felt numb, that was it. Incredibly numb. Even the pain was fading now. There was no emotion, no sense whatsoever left in his body. He was just so tired…

30-Dec-2008 16:42:05

Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Posts: 7,994 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
A horn blew, blaring over the clamor of the fighting and the thunder. He lifted his head, turning to see which side it had come from, and found out with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The beach exploded in a flash of orange and red. He dropped his head again, resisting the urge to burrow it into the sand and hide. More mages had come – more ships, then. Would it ever end?
But there was a cry, a cheer, he thought, coming from up the beach, from his people. He raised his head again, mindful for the whistle of an approaching fireball, and squinted up the beach. Was that…white? A smear of white across the top of the beach. What? Lucas pushed himself to his feet, not daring to hope, and began to trudge as fast as his exhausted, aching legs would take him. He stumbled once or twice, but when he got closer, a surge of joy rushed through him. He had been right! A clump of men in white stood above the lines of trenches, suddenly illuminated in a flash of lightning, with their hands and staffs raised to the night. Fire shot forth, raking across the beach where Lucas had been a moment before, and exploded loudly.
Not more ships, then! Falador had sent aid! They must have sent runners. He tripped and rolled into a trench, but he was laughing so hard that tears streamed from his eyes. The Kandarins were done. When he climbed back out, he could see a troop of white knights charging down the beach, dispersing the already struggling invaders.
Lucas was filled with a new energy as he climbed from the trench and jogged back down the beach. He could keep going, then, knowing that the end was in sight. He reentered the fight once more with a smile on his face. By morning, it would be done.

30-Dec-2008 16:42:59

Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Posts: 7,994 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
***
True to his predictions, by sunrise, both the rain and the battle finally came to a close. The Kandarins had nowhere to retreat to, as most of their ships were now smoldering, and so, as before, they were rounded up as prisoners once their commander surrendered. Now the army milled about, unsure what to do next. No more ships were coming. The commanders were shut away in a large tent atop the hill, rapidly discussing plans after hearing a full report from the troops from Falador.
The soldiers knew nothing but fighting, and once that was done, they had almost nothing to do. Some began to erect tents along the shore, staking them carelessly among the dead bodies. Lucas felt no desire to sleep, and instead wandered toward the medic’s tent, hoping to find the source of the stabbing pains in his body.
When he got there, though, he realized the medics had much more serious cases than his own to attend to. Their hastily erected pavilion was overflowing with screaming, bleeding men, and the medics rushed about frantically to tend to them all. Lucas saw one man being borne on a stretcher, his leg hanging awkwardly off the side, barely attached to the body. Another was carried out of the medic’s tent, from which piercing shrieks erupted every couple of seconds, and this one had white bandages wrapped around his chest so thickly he looked like a mummy – and already they were soaked through with blood. The chaos was sickening to Lucas, and he fled from it. Very well then; he could tend his own wounds, if need be. They’d throw him out on sight – he couldn’t even tell them where he hurt. It was pointless.
Instead of erecting a tent like the others, however, he meandered away from the site of the battle to an open patch of sand, one that was still clean and white, free of the crimson stains the rest of the beach held. Here he sank stiffly down, almost pitching backwards, and bent his knees, resting his forearms upon them.

30-Dec-2008 16:43:47

Crystal Smee

Crystal Smee

Posts: 7,994 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
One hand reached down, fingers sifted through the sand, and his tired eyes stared with fascination as the white grains swept back down to the earth from his fist. As his fingers unwound, he examined them as though for the first time, turning them over and over. These hands had done unspeakable things in the past day, things he never thought himself capable of. His hands were scarred, blotchy with patches of brown, crusted blood – how much of it was his own, he had no idea. Some fingers were swollen, or crooked, and all felt stiff.
There was blood under his fingernails, too, all around the edges, and he suddenly rose to his feet and staggered down to the ocean, plunging his hands in, trying to wash it away. The dried blood washed away with his scrubbing, but try as he might, the blood under his nails would not. It was dug in too deep; he feared it would be there forever.
Trembling at the thought, he wobbled his way back to his seat and collapsed again, feeling exhausted. He surveyed his hands once more, sadly trying to imagine them holding a pen, scrawling in his fluid cursive on the neat white parchment he collected from the library of the castle, and he tried to imagine those changed, ugly fingers wound through Justine’s pale white hands, and couldn’t.
The soldier bowed his head to his knees and allowed the tears to run freely down his cheeks, washing through the grime that had accumulated there. When his helmet banged against his legs, he gave a start and ripped it off, then clumsily unbuckled the rest of his armor and tossed it aside. Clad only in a wet, dirty shirt and his torn pants once more, he wept. He knew now the young scholar he once was had gone, and he would never be that man again. He instinctively sought the letter in his pocket, gripped the tired envelope as though it could give him strength, and wondered sadly if Justine could ever love the man he had become.

30-Dec-2008 16:44:43

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