Disclaimer: I own nothing, except the computer upon which I write and my soul. The characters, concepts and character/concept references are the property of various television super-corporations which have better things to do than sue the pants off of me.
Author's Note: This is my first ad-lib fic, and only my second fic ever. Reviews and suggestions would be helpful to influence the direction of the story, though the plot is vaguely in place in my mind.
Also: If you are a literary critic and you abhor sentence fragments, read no further. No further. Honestly. You've been warned.
The Wolf, the Ram and the Hart
Prologue
The stone was warm. Up until now, the stone had been cool. Clammy as if covered in a thin, invisibly layer of cave mold. But now, as the Opening loomed before them, the smell of it impossible to ignore, the stone under their hands as they clambered up the rocky slope was definitely warm.
The sky was orange. Not tangerine orange. Not the pleasant orange of a breath taking sunset. Not even the orange of a gently crackling fire, throwing pleasant heat from the hearth. No, this sky, in the Abandoned place, was a sickly orange. A Martian orange, with sickly yellow clouds, as of acid rain or sulfur fumes.
Only the horizon, hidden by the teeth of rocks, was a distant hue of blue. A fading reminder that the pleasant world of sunshine and rainbows still existed, out there, somewhere in the distance. Out there to be saved, or not.
The heat was just unpleasant. The sensation of itching skin, as though any clothing at all were too much. In short, it was awful. Water dried in the mouth before it cooled. Sweat dried and caked before it gave relief.
Their hands were cracked and burning, red with irritation and the caustic minerals of which every rock seemed to be made. Of which the air was made.
Their eyes were pink and raw with dust and fumes, their lashes drying together as their tears evaporated. The salty brine that was the air sealing their lids together.
All of this was the reason no one had gone this far before. The terribly mournful moaning of the wind through the teeth of this place dredged up unwanted memories of tragedies long lost or long forgotten. Sorrow was thick in the air. Despair crunched underfoot.
The scattered bones, displaced by wind or by the beaks of the only living things to brave this place, the crows, lay here and their, at first bleached white by the acid breath of wind, but then petrified by time and sand and grit and dust, turned orange like the stones on which they lay.
The harbingers flew aimlessly, watching nothing, expecting nothing from those below. A lonely caw erased by the wind, never made it to their ears. But the tiny black spot, every once and a while, did flap its wings, reminding them it was going nowhere.
The Opening was just up ahead, a yawning cavern of sorts. It too was toothed, a bared, toothy grin its face a mask of death. One eye the burnt orange of a lonely skull, the other, the crow who had set it there.
The bird cried sharply as they approached, warning the living to clear off. This place was for those to whom invitation was given; those it carried here. But they plodded on, over dust and stone, the toothy mouth remaining agape.
The three small figures found their way inside, upon the plateau of Teeth, in the Abandoned place, beaneath the burning sky.
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Rave
Barbie Girl (Becca)
biscuit07
Filmtheory (Jim)
Malice (Jess)
MebbtheScribe (MichaelB)
Reset (Allie)
Shay (Marrisa)
somnambulist29 (Shea)
Stephanie Loss
Wendyness (Wendy)
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