- Tʜᴇ Wʜɪᴛᴇ Dᴇᴀᴛʜ ❄ - Tuesday Challenges #1
May 21, 2017 18:53:33 GMT -5
kinkajou, ᴛᴜᴇsᴅᴀʏ, and 3 more like this
Post by » ѕнαdσω ⚔️ on May 21, 2017 18:53:33 GMT -5
They come from the white horizon like ghosts collecting under a pale orb. Their shadows cast short outlines before them, beckoning them onwards with weak nudges. They are a lost pair of stragglers barely managing to push through the deep snow, their coats caked in clumps of sticky ice, and their whiskers frozen stiff.
The tall pines towering over them groan and shriek. Harsh winds push against the tree’s ice coated trunks. Icicles already form on their branches and weigh them down, forcing many to bow before the white onslaught. As they fall they scream with no sound, making the ground shudder as they hit the snow banks.
“Not…much longer, Amelia,” one of the stragglers says, their teeth chattering. “The camp… is just over the…ridge.”
Amelia shakes out her messy brown pelt, flinging snow flurries to the ground. She gives her companion a look of determination and nods, breathing in quickly and exhaling slowly, white clouds of moisture escaping and running away with the turbulent wind.
The straggler manages to chuckle, resting his thick grey tail along her shoulders, ushering her forwards.
Amelia does not speak. She can’t. For as long as she can remember, she has never been able to form words, only sounds. Her limbs too, follow a similar glitch. They do not respond to her as they should, and cannot form beautiful acts of physical prowess like her tribe mates do.
It is much like this storm. Places once green and full of life and sound are coated over and crushed by this cold, icy wind. Everything freezes. Everything pauses. Everything…stops.
Everyone hides from her. They don’t say it out loud, but she can tell. They avoid her, as if afraid she will pass on this freezing of their senses to them. But, that didn’t stop her from joining the recruits for their war. No, it really wasn’t a choice. Everyone was required to do something. She could have helped the healers and fetched them their herbs, but she wanted to prove that she wasn’t weak. Even with her body, even with her sickly mind, she can still fight for the freedom of her kind.
Her kind…this five year long war had been waged by her kind to free themselves of the tribe living far across the mountains, but now it has turned into a battle of survival between the normal cats and the Cursed who had once protected them.
Cursed: a race of felines with souls of fire. Able to control these flames at will, they are the most dangerous and unpredictable creatures in the Living Realm.
She would give anything to have some fire of her own at this moment, despite her hatred of the fire-spitting vermin.
“Amelia…,” her tribe mate says breathlessly.
She returns her mousey brown eyes to her companion, tilting her head.
His grey legs wobble, his blood-stained white paws contrasting against the snow. His eyes, a bright green, widen with fright. He nods beyond her, swallowing thickly.
“Look. Ahead…of you.”
She turns her head, and feels her heart freeze over.
The Great Mountain ahead of them has vanished. In its place, a giant barrier of white clouds is racing down the slopes towards them, pushing between the trees and forcing some of the smaller ones down onto the forest floor. The sound of breaking branches and tree stumps shattering echoes along the mountainside.
It’s not an avalanche. It’s a cloud system rolling over the peaks of the mountains and falling upon the valley. These storms are rare, but they are notorious throughout the valley inhabitants. Containing high winds, precipitation made out of ice claws, and a sudden and overwhelming drop in temperature that rapidly freezes all warm-blooded creatures in its path...it is known simply as a white death.
“Run!” The tom yells, biting down on her scruff and hauling her backwards.
She realizes then she has been standing there watching the oncoming doom. She was entranced with the graceful way it was mowing down those pines.
She shakes herself out of his grasp, finding her footing and scrambling after him.
They have to leap like rabbits through the snow. Trying to run would only slow them down and pile up more snow before them. Amelia fixes her eyes on her tribe mate, her lungs burning and her limbs slowly growing more and more numb. She gasps raggedly for air as she tries to keep up with him, matching her leaps with his so she doesn’t have to work her way out of a fresh snow drift.
She can feel the ground tremble with every landing she makes onto it, her spine shivering with each and every contact. She then feels a great pressure begin to build in her, and her vision starts to blur. She knows what is coming, but has no way to stop it.
She can only prepare.
“Eyah!” she cries, trying to get her friend’s attention.
He halts, looking over his snow covered shoulder. He gasps as he realizes what is about to happen. Her eyes are going out of focus. She can no longer look straight ahead. There…her eyeballs are rolling into the back of her head.
“Dammit, Amelia!” he shouts, rushing to her and catching her before she collapses into the snow. There, in his embrace, she begins to seize.
He holds her tightly as her body breaks away from her brain, and her muscles spasm and contract. Her limbs curl and uncurl, her tail twitching back and forth like a fish on dry land. This is the fourth time she has seized today, and it is barely sun-high.
“I knew this was going to put too much stress on your body,” her friend hisses, his eyes leaping from the oncoming white death to her pupils rolling back and forth from his face to the inside of her skull. “Why did you do this? Why did you agree to go so far…?”
She can’t answer him. Even if she was coherent, she wouldn’t be able to produce an explanation. She’s told herself over and over it was for the good of her kind. For the good of her tribe. But now…
“Ar…ar…ley,” she spits between clenched teeth, trying to push him away.
He grunts, grasping her scruff and pulling her up. Her seizure has calmed, but it will be a while before she can regain full function of her limbs.
“I am not leaving you here,” he growls, snaking his body under hers. He begins to walk forwards, faster and faster until he is nearly jogging through the last few fox-lengths of snow drifts. She can see now where he is taking them.
Wait, we can’t go this way! Amelia thinks with panic. We just came from there, I just escaped from that darkness…
She struggles, but the tom only holds on tighter.
“I know you are going to hate this,” he snarls out between his teeth that are grinding together with the strain of carrying her through the thick snow. “But I believe the cave I got you out of is deep enough to shelter us from the storm.”
Her limbs are too weak to stop him, and she knows he is right.
I can endure it. Just one last time, until the storm is over, Amelia chants to herself.
There, they reach it. The roar of the white death is steadily getting louder behind them, now near deafening as they squeeze into the cave.
Instantly the smell of blood snakes into Amelia’s nose, and she gags.
Her tribe mate sets her down gently, dragging her further back into the cave by her scruff until they are against the wall. He pants, his chest heaving and he scrambles back out toward the entrance, poking his head out.
“I thought the cave was deeper,” he admits to the whirling air outside, not looking back at her.
You probably didn’t notice the dimensions of my prison while you were killing my captors, Amelia thinks, raising her head weakly. She can’t stand the smell.
Then the cave shakes, bits of stone breaking off and clattering to the floor. The tom dashes over and covers Amelia’s body even though the stones are small, no more than pebbles.
The air begins to get colder, and from the look in her friend’s eyes, Amelia knows they will die.
“Ar-arlay,” she stutters, trying once again to say his name.
He chuckles, resting his tail on her shoulders, not paying attention to how much they are both starting to shiver. “You…almost…got it. It’s Arely. Try it…one more time.”
Amelia scrunches her brows, the tip of her nose burning like wildfire from the cold. “Ah..are…leh?”
“So close. Maybe…one day,” he says gently, removing his tail from her shoulders.
The walls begin to glint and sparkle. The ice is coming in and freezing over the stone, slowly making its way toward them.
“Will you…forgive me, Amelia?” Arely asks suddenly.
She looks up at him in confusion. She doesn’t take much time to think it over though as she nods.
Arely smiles, his whole body shaking violently. “Good. I can’t…stand to go if you blame me…for not getting to you in time.”
You were the only one who came for me, she thinks with much tenderness. No one else would have.
She reaches out with her front paw, trying to convey her thoughts to him, but he pulls away, stepping back toward the exit.
“No. I won’t do this…if I don’t do it now,” he explains, confusing Amelia even further as he takes another step back.
She tries to stand but fails, her limbs like rotting wood beneath her. All she can do is watch as her friend braces himself, keeping his gaze locked on hers, and then begins to let off steam.
She watches as the steam erupts into large, warm clouds of moisture, and then turn into small petals of glowing indigo embers. They flutter around him, much like the birds do in the forest during warm-sun, but these are just as harsh as the winds forcing themselves inside.
A small storm of cinders begins to slowly build around him, and soon his fur erupts into a brilliant purple flame. The sound of it is like many feline claws scraping against tough limestone. Brutal and sharp with a slight ringing ‘ting’ to it.
He’s one of them, she realizes with shock.
His light green eyes melt away, a bright, fiery indigo replacing them. At the same time, his flames rise up and form a circular barrier around her, shielding her from the oncoming ice. He too dons a purple flame shield around him, but it is clear he is putting more effort into the one around her.
There are so many emotions in his eyes, it reminds her once again of a tempest, a blizzard of flame and ash instead of snow and ice.
Her one and only friend…and also the one thing she hates most in this world. She understands now why he was apologizing. Why there was guilt and even fear in his gaze. He had hidden this for so long. She would be the only one to see this, just as he was the only one who would see her…
Her vision goes white, and it feels like only moments later when she wakes up on the bitter cave floor. She checks her limbs. Thankfully they are all intact. No signs of purple tainted flesh or crystallized ice around her appendages.
Arely…where is Arely? She wonders with a deep panic, reaching out blindly and feeling for his body.
She finds him pressed up against the far wall, his grey fur plastered in tiny icicles. He sparkles like fresh dew, but it is not beautiful. It makes her more terrified.
“Ah…lay,” she croaks, realizing to her discomfort that ice is coating the inside of her throat. She swallows, her eyes tearing up.
She begins patting his body, leaning in to look for frostbite or frozen limbs.
“Amelia?”
She gasps, a bright smile breaking through her terror.
He chuckles, his light green eyes fluttering open, his smile weak but there.
Her paws then bump into something hard and cold. She hisses, pulling back.
His front right leg is completely covered in white ice. Frost crawls all the way up to his shoulder where some of the ends of his fur have already frozen over and broken off. He winces, looking down at his limb in dismay.
Can’t you melt it? Amelia thinks, poking his leg.
Purples flames erupt, forcing Amelia to leap backwards, but they do not burn her. They only feel pleasantly warm, but the heat does not melt the ice made by the white death.
Then, before she can return to his side, he lifts his frozen limb and slams it onto the stone floor.
He screams, burying his head into his other limb, the shattered pieces of his frozen leg flying around him.
“Wah!” Amelia cries, rushing forward and pressing her paws into his frozen stump. Thankfully little blood flows out.
“It’s ok. There was nothing else to be done,” Arely assures her, flicking his tail and producing another indigo flame that rests on the cave floor. “That will keep us warm while we wait for the rest of the storm to pass.”
She nods, not sure what else to do besides press her paws into his wound.
He chuckles again through his pain, resting his tail on her shoulders. “It seems we are both impaired now.”
Amelia shakes her head, letting out a soft, ringing giggle.
What a crazy day it’s been, she thinks, lying down on the cave floor next to him.
He sighs, letting his head rest on her paws that are staunching the bleeding from his missing leg. His light green eyes shift from spring to an indigo winter, letting his racing heart calm with the raging storm outside.
Amelia keeps her brown eyes on him, a mix of weariness and relief swirling within her. She feels the storm is not over yet.
Author's Note:
This short story is a quick snap shot into a work in progress Clans of the Valley novel currently titled Silence. It is about a she-cat named Amelia who is born with rett syndrome and is forced to partake in the Blood Wars. She chooses the path of a soldier despite her physical and mental limitations and soon comes to learn about a whole other part of the world she would have never been able to see before.
Amelia's appearance and personality is based off of my older sister, Amy, who was also born with rett syndrome. For those of you who don't know, rett syndrome is a rare genetic neurological and developmental disorder that affects the way the brain develops, causing a progressive inability to use muscles for eye and body movements and speech. It occurs almost exclusively in girls. There are many different levels of severity, and given the nature of the novel, I have made Amelia more high functioning.
If any of you have any questions or are curious to learn more, please visit Rettsyndrome.org.
Thank you for reading. <3
EDIT: The White Death got second place in Tuesday's challenges! :'D
This short story is a quick snap shot into a work in progress Clans of the Valley novel currently titled Silence. It is about a she-cat named Amelia who is born with rett syndrome and is forced to partake in the Blood Wars. She chooses the path of a soldier despite her physical and mental limitations and soon comes to learn about a whole other part of the world she would have never been able to see before.
Amelia's appearance and personality is based off of my older sister, Amy, who was also born with rett syndrome. For those of you who don't know, rett syndrome is a rare genetic neurological and developmental disorder that affects the way the brain develops, causing a progressive inability to use muscles for eye and body movements and speech. It occurs almost exclusively in girls. There are many different levels of severity, and given the nature of the novel, I have made Amelia more high functioning.
If any of you have any questions or are curious to learn more, please visit Rettsyndrome.org.
Thank you for reading. <3
EDIT: The White Death got second place in Tuesday's challenges! :'D