Friday, April 22, 2005

I wrote a fanfic! (I know this is my third post of the day) And since I probably won't be able to post tomorrow, I feel like posting it today. It took me forever, and it's a really long first chapter, but oh well, here it is. Why… do we live? What is the meaning of life? Why am I always chosen? Of all the people on this planet, why me?! All these depressing thoughts, passing through the mind of a sole fourteen-year-old girl, on the edge of life and death. Unconscious and lying on a bed in a ball, sweating like a pig, young Lyra’s breath grew more and more ragged and uneven by the second. To a stranger, Lyra would look like a demon, being punished by God, especially in this religious world. Her body was unusually slim, with rough hands and feet due to walking bare-foot, and fighting. Her usual loose-fitting, black clothes were strewn over the back of a chair, on which a kindly old woman sat. Presently, the woman got up, worried about the girl she had just met a few hours ago, her tight, grey bun swinging back and forth as she paced the floor. Her son had left about 90 minutes ago to retrieve the medicine, but he had yet to return. Feeling more and more anxious, she walked over to the side of Lyra’s adopted bed, stroking her cheek. The poor girl… who would do this to her? Oh, if only Toshi would hurry… Suddenly, the door burst open and a boy of about Lyra’s age burst in, panting. “Mom, mom! They’re coming, they’re coming, hide!” Toshi yelled at his mother, shocking her and causing a barrage of questions at once. “Who’s coming? What took you so long? Where’s the medicine?!” “The men! I explained what happened, you know, about her, and they said they knew who she was, and they followed me! I think I lost them, but, oh, we have to hide!” He slammed the door shut, barring it with a metal broomstick and several other things that he managed to get a hold of. Running back and grabbing his mother, Toshi tried to pull her into a side-room, proving futile. “No! We have to get the girl!” The door was being battered with a serious of bangs, startling Mother, but she recovered quickly and tried to pull Lyra off of the bed, but being as weak as she was, failed. Toshi groaned, before running over and picking Lyra up, carrying her, along with the bag of medicine he had managed to gather, into the side-room, where Mother followed. Pulling up a trap door on the floor, Toshi ushered his Mother in, before stepping in awkwardly himself, still holding Lyra. Immediately, Mother grabbed the bag of medicine and gingerly applying it to the strange girl sprawled on the floor, still teetering between life and death. Suddenly, Lyra groaned, and rolled onto her side panting slightly. “Mom… Mom! I think they’ve left…” Toshi whispered hoarsely, but Mother wasn’t listening; she was busy looking longingly at Lyra’s face. Thinking how much she’d wanted a child… but she’d never gotten one, she’d had seven boys, instead. Two of them died in war, three from disease or famine, and the other had left home long ago. Toshi was all she had left. Lyra’s eyes slowly flickered open, and she made an attempt to sit up, but ended up back on the floor, with a vicious headache. Holding her head with one hand, and pushed herself up once more, groaning in the process, and sat up, but fell back against Toshi. Shocked that there was someone else there, she gasped, and jumped forward, leaning against a wall. “Who’s there?!” She practically yelled. Mother hadn’t noticed her wake, but she had noticed the groan, and had seen a little of her movement through the darkness, as her eyes had adjusted a little more than Lyra’s. “Shh! They’ll hear you!” Mother whispered. “Don’t worry, they’re gone. I’m sure of it.” Toshi reassured her, getting up and pushing the door up. Wincing at the sudden light, he struggled forward into the room, and pulled his mother up with him. Lyra stared at them with scrunched eyebrows. Following their reassuring movement, she got up cautiously through the door. Japanese… Great. She thought sarcastically. Straining what little Japanese she knew, making her headache worse, she managed to say… “Uh... Hello. My name is Lyra. Who are you?” Toshi stared at her for a second before laughing. “Don’t worry. We understand English fairly well.” Lyra scrunched her eyebrows together yet again, not understanding his Japanese or his accent. All she understood was English, and the fact that he had laughed. She had realized that these were the people that had taken care of her, had possibly saved her life, and decided that they must be good people. Speaking in English, she asked the two. “Um... Do you understand me?” Toshi nodded, smiling, and sat down. “Okay, good… Erm… I don’t understand Japanese, so…” “Do not worry! I speak okay English, not perfect, but good.” Mother cut in, forcing Lyra to smile in relief. “Will you sit? You stay with us tonight! We take care of you.” Lyra frowned slightly, and moved to sit down on the bed. Cringing, she realized how much of a bloody mess she must have been. Her entire left arm was covered in scabs that had been hurriedly cared for, her clothes ripped excessively, her face scratched beyond comparison and the rest of her covered in blood and scars. The medicine they had given her must have stopped most of the bleeding and numbed most of the pain, but it would not last long. “I’m… sorry… I’m on a mission… Thank you so much for your hospitality, you saved my life and I’m forever in your debt, but I cannot stay. I need to head back to Kyoto—“ “Kyoto?! You don’t want to go there! There are men looking for you, they…” Toshi trailed off, noticing her confused face, and realized she couldn’t understand. He looked to his mother for translation, he could understand English but could not speak it. These language barriers were getting annoying, he thought. “Um… Toshi says you do not want to go to Kyoto. There are men looking for you there.” Mother explained. Lyra’s confused face slowly turned into an expression of understanding, then horror, then fear. “My bag! Where is my bag?!” Lyra yelled, frantically looking around. “Oh, do not worry, it is here. I did not look through it.” Grabbing the bag from Mother, Lyra searched through the pockets quickly, and sighed, relieved. She took out a velvet cloth from inside, treating it with the care a mother would treat her newborn child. She smiled at it, the strange, untouched cloth, that didn’t seem to match its shabby owner, or the tattered bag it came in. Lyra opened the velvet cloth, and ran her hand down the sharp edge of the silver blade under it. A dagger, encrusted with insignias and symbols foreign to both Toshi and his mother, was what was being treated with such care and love it frightened them. Lyra continued to run her hand along its edge until she cut herself and winced satisfactorily, then covered it back up and returned it to its place in her bag. “This dagger… is what they are after. My mother gave it to me before I left from my village, but I do not know how they came to know about it. Can I… trust you, with a secret?” This question surprised the two, but they nodded, and mumbled their ‘Of course’ and ‘certainly’s. “…I come from a long line of Samurai. Until a generation ago, my entire family was Japanese. My father was a very talented fighter, but he was not interested in the Religious ways of the family, and he fell in love with my mother, who was from a small village in Europe. The family was not happy, and sent him into exile. He was angry, and started a war between our family, but ended up losing, because it was everyone else against him, alone. He and my mother fled to Africa, where they had me. My father had, since then, become a Ninja, or rather, and Assassin, doing jobs here and there to earn money. “He taught me everything he knew, even everything he learned from when he was a Samurai. But two years ago, members of our Japanese family found us, and killed my father and mother. My mother gave me the dagger just before she died, and told me to keep it safe… And I have been. I came here to finish the war he started, to end this fued—“ Suddenly, the door burst open, sending everything that was blocking it flying. Jumping up, only to cringe at the pain still in her arm, Lyra squinted to see who it was. “There she is! Get her!” A war cry was yelled, and a few men ran in, bearing weapons obviously too large and heavy for them to handle. One was dragging a huge axe across the ground. Lyra reached for where her katana normally would have been, but ended up cursing loudly, realizing it wasn’t there. She grabbed a broomstick from the floor, but one of the men swung through it with his overly-sized mace easily. Cursing again, she reached into her pack, pulling out the dagger. Some of the men laughed, thinking of a tiny dagger verses their huge axes and maces. Lyra jumped up and lunged the dagger into one of the men’s stomach, and twisted it viciously. The others stopped their laughing and stared, wide-eyed, at their fallen comrade, not believing that a little girl would actually kill a full-grown man. All but the leader turned and ran, dropping their weapons behind. “Cowards!” The sole man left yelled after them, and pulled out a rapier. Lyra didn’t bother to wait, and ran up and stabbed him in the side several times, before he fell to the ground, blood spilling everywhere. Panting slightly, she looked back at her panic-stricken hosts apologetically. “I’m… sorry… I didn’t mean to get you caught up in it…” Lyra mumbled, grabbing her clothes, her bag, the dagger put back in it, and her katana she had found in the corner of the room, and walked out silently, into the mist, never to see them again.

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