Sleep came pretty easily for them that night, amazingly enough. No one had expected to fall asleep that naturally, that quickly. Especially not Evyn, after all he'd been through, what he'd seen, the worry inside of him. And yet, somehow, some odd and awful way, he slept soundly through the night, raccoons scurrying around and all. It was an exhausted, dreamless sleep, but that's all he could have ever hoped for. He didn't want dreams, especially not nightmares; he just wanted to be unconscious for a little while. Away in such a way that he could easily get back.
Shadow was equally as surprised by her night-long dreamless sleep. She woke up in an odd position as the morning birds cooed foreign songs; on her back with a horse leg lightly laid across her chest. She never would have believed it had she not seen it, but she looked over to find Sandy there, right beside and facing her, laying with one front leg tucked against her chest and the other placed on top of Shadow. A horse with a teddy person... she laughed sadly at her own joke.
The laughter seemed to wake Sandy much faster than the steadily increasing bird song, and with a giant horse-sized sneeze, she was ready to begin the day. At the sound of her snort, the other two horses, having chosen to stand in a dazed sort of sleep all night, tipped from side to side.
The horse's sneeze had pretty much the same effect on Evyn. It sounded sort of like a bomb going off, but he just couldn't force himself from the comforts of the bed, hard ground or not. Deep in the back of his mind, he just wasn't ready to do anything but sleep for several more years. His conscious (or semi-conscious) thoughts were doing battle, fighting over whether this was just a bad dream or current reality, but above the hum of gears turning was the call into sleep.
"C'mon, lazy little elf." He distantly heard Shadow's voice. She wasn't exactly thrilled about having no real place to go either, but they may as well all be awake to amuse one another, not to mention keep everyone from going insane.
Evyn consciously decided to pretend not to hear her, and it seemed to work for several short seconds. At last he felt a large horse nose pressed into the side of his face, and found quickly how hard that was to refuse. He mumbled something and got a large wet tongue against his; even harder to refuse.
Shadow grinned and walked back to her bed, starting to fold the blankets. All in all, a horse sneeze was by far better than a raging, evil alarm clock.
Groaning quietly as he stretched, several loud snaps coming from his back, Evyn ran a hand through his severely mussed hair. "I think every bone in my body hurts." He announced.
"Sleeping under the stars is not all it's cracked up to be." His new traveling companion returned, neatly piling the folded blankets.
He rubbed his eyes and gazed lazily toward a sleeping (and loudly breathing) Taerlyn, having drooled ever so slightly on the makeshift pillow beneath her. He choked with tired laughter and forced himself to slip out of the bed, bones cracking and all. "So..." he began lazily, "Where do we go now?"
"Where we've been heading, I guess." Shadow answered without much faith. Without much emotion at all, really. Sandy nudged her on the back with her nose for support, but somehow it just wasn't working.
Evyn grunted in response, and gently shook his sister awake. He had hoped, somewhere deep down, that she would wake up and be her normal self. But her eyes opened glazed and empty, and he swallowed back a horribly disappointed groan. This was no way to start the day at all.
Shadow had groaned for him; when he looked over, she was lightly rubbing her forehead with her fingertips. "No coffee..." she murmured, sounding deeply wounded. "We have... no coffee..."
That was enough to brighten his mood, if only just a little. "Stimulant deprived, are we?" he grinned madly.
"Shut up." She joked, glad for the help.
"What about food?" he wondered out loud, carefully helping his still dazed sister out of bed and pitching in with the blankets.
"Well, food-wise, we're pretty screwed." Shadow admitted, hunching over her backpack. She began pulling this and that out of it with little need for visual inspection, slapping each named item on the ground. She knew what they were by the feel of the container and smell alone. "We have exactly fourteen small bags of flavorless jerky, five bags of dry rice, three bags of dried beans, five unmarked cans of something that swishes... and... I don't want to know what this green stuff is."
"That... doesn't sound good." Evyn spoke with honestly, looking up with a worried expression from his folding.
"Is there anything to hunt around here?" she ventured, carefully opening the green stuff.
"I don't think so..." he trailed off with a grin. "But are raccoons edible?"
"We may have to find out." She announced, holding the "green stuff" far away from her. That smell was not a pleasant one. She didn't remember having smelled that in her entire life... maybe it was alien. Maybe it was an alien.
"Think they'd eat that?" he indicated the horses.
"I wouldn't feed this crap to a horse." She grinned.
He stuffed the folded blankets into his bag, then stood and looked around in thought. "I guess it'll have to do for now. We don't have anything to hunt with."
"I hope we don't have to wind up clubbing things to death... it bugs me for some reason..." she announced.
And with that, Evyn laughed quite hard. The thought of his violent new friend refusing to club something struck a slightly sickly humored chord in him, and he couldn't help but laugh. He didn't know it was funny until he had started to catch his breath.
"Go ahead and laugh." Shadow dared in good humor. She stuffed all of the packages of "food" back into her backpack, save one of jerky. Yummy, childhood lunches all over again... She shivered with valid discontent and handed most of the package contents to her fully conscious traveling companion, who divided it among himself and Taerlyn.
In between the banquet, Sandy stepped boldly. She made certain everyone was well aware that she was nipping at the fabric that bound her wound in annoyance. If they wouldn't untie it, she would.
Evyn stared at her plea. "I guess I can check it. I don't know how much it healed in just a night..."
"She looks rather demanding right now." Shadow commented. Sandy whinnied in agreement.
Taking a break from his "meal", he walked over and delicately unwrapped the wound. To his amazement, there wasn't so much as a scratch to be found under the fabric. The newcomer stared along with him, but Sandy didn't seem to be phased in the least. She whinnied a quiet thanks and got up before it could be questioned, leaving her tenders to stare at one another.
"That's some good stuff." Shadow commented.
"Well... I paid enough for it." Evyn agreed, scooping the bottle from his bag and staring at it's unlabeled ceramic surface. He looked back at her, and they both shrugged.
"We've got the whole day to ourselves, a direction to travel, and three horses." She announced like a mythical hero. "Guess we may as well ride."
"Ride..." he echoed, a little nervous about that thought.
"It's easy." She assured.
"But you've never done it before." He reminded, rubbing his eyes of the last sleepiness of the morning.
She blinked. "True." She looked at Sandy who appeared to be looking right back at her in sort of a friendly "I dare you" sort of way. "But it can't be... that hard, right?"
"No saddles, no bridles..." he stated weakly.
She looked at Sandy again, and as if on cue, the horse laid on the ground. The beast then stared at the other two horses and neighed something that almost sounded like a curse, getting their attention right away. Another few repeats of the same cry and the two brown horses hesitantly followed suit.
Shadow gaped. "I... don't think we'll need them... saddles and all..."
Evyn couldn't believe his eyes. It must have been luck... or some command they'd heard... Either way, it was just the slightest bit eerie. He'd never known work animals to follow instructions like that. "Okay... well... let's get going, then."
Why question, she thought. What they did need was something to tie their stuff onto the horses with. As she turned back, it seemed Evyn was already constructing a way to deal with that. "Can I see your bag?" he asked.
She brought it to him and watched. He may not have brought a lot of twine, but he was absolutely determined to make it work. He took all of the straps of all of the bags and used the twine to tie them together and make a sort of a web. Shadow realized it was to fit at the end of one of the horses' backs as she watched the boy further improve upon his invention, taking the remaining strips of her t-shirt and knotting them together.
"Genius." She grinned at the simplistic, straight-forward idea.
"Sometimes I even surprise myself." He responded without the slightest hint of humility. He nodded, satisfied, and stood up. "Since Ter's the smallest, we can tie this onto her horse." But as he walked past Sandy to the brown horses, she stopped him from passing with her head.
He looked back at Shadow in question, but she shrugged back. "Maybe she'd rather hold it." She'd somewhat surrendered herself to believing Sandy at the very least understood English. When in Rome, and all.
In wonder, Evyn just looked at the horse. He didn't think it possible, but... Hey, if she wanted it, she could have it. It didn't look like Shadow was much heavier than Ter, anyway. He grinned as he thought that, glad he hadn't been saying it. He just eased the web of bags onto her back, and without needing to say a word, the horse lifted slowly so as not to upset the cargo.
Shadow shook her head in amazement as she watched. The t-shirt rope was easily tied around the sandy black beast, tightening it until Evyn got the only horse death stare he had ever gotten in his life. That was that, so it seemed, Sandy appearing to be perfectly happy with carrying the load all by herself. She shot another glare toward the brown horses as they appeared to get antsy and want to get up, and then she whinnied a hurrying cry to her companions.
The newcomer gently took Taerlyn's hand (something she was definitely not used to) and led her to a random brown horse. Her brother looked down at her, then to the chosen steed. "I'm worried about this."
"You want to tie her on?" Shadow asked seriously.
The very slightest corners of his lips rose. "I don't know. Let's see if she'll hang on." With that, he picked her up and placed her upon the horse's back. As if by instinct, Taerlyn's hands grasped onto the mane with near white knuckles.
"We can ride on either side, just in case." Shadow suggested.
He nodded, as satisfied with the situation as he was likely to get. He was exceptionally nervous about journeying... but what else did they have to do? Where else did they have to go? There was nowhere to go, and yet they were still going. The Powers knew what to expect. He swallowed and took a deep breath just to walk over to his selected horse. Taking gentle hold of the mane, he swung his leg around its back and sat. It wasn't so bad, really. Not as scary as he thought it was going to be. He swallowed again and realized maybe he needed to.. relieve himself first, and lightly got off.
"Not cushioned enough?" his new companion teased softly.
"I'm going to... I'll be right back." He assured, indicating through the trees. "Ter might..."
Shadow must have turned pale. She had to have; Evyn's expression was too amused for her to have retained her composure. "Sounds like fun." Her sarcasm neatly spun.
The boy having made the suggestion just grinned and walked off with an unusual bounce in his step. Bastard. She thought gently. She looked at Taerlyn, still latching to the mane, and gently began to pry her hands off. It wasn't as easy as she thought it would have been, and she was certain they would have nothing to worry about concerning her letting go, let alone falling off. With a stifled moan, she lead the girl into the trees and tried to find some sort of mother instinct she was pretty fucking sure she didn't have.
Upon coming back to the horses, taking just a little bit longer than he thought he had to at first, Evyn discovered his sister again latching on to the brown horse's mane, and Shadow on Sandy's back with her face down in the horse's soft hair. "How was it?" he dared. She looked up and just shook her head, making him laugh.
"She better get her whatever the hell is missing, back." She said to his far too amused reaction. A grin had crossed her face, but she wasn't certain it was worth what she had done for it. "Ewe" came to mind, vividly.
With another swallow and a burst of courage, Evyn mounted the other brown horse again. He shifted from side to side a little, trying to find the easiest position to just latch on to.
"Settled?" she asked, readying herself for the ride.
With a deep breath, he responded very quietly, "Yes."
At that makeshift command, Sandy thrust herself smoothly from the ground, and the brown horses took that as a cue to do so as well. The initial shock of lifting was a bit dizzying, Evyn thought, but as they got into a row and Sandy began to give horse orders to the others under her breath, he allowed his knuckles to gain color again.
The ride felt surprisingly natural to all of them, really. Though Taerlyn was still in a trance state, she seemed to relax as she rode beside her brother. Shadow felt both safe and secure on Sandy's back on the other side, as though she had melted into the horse's strong muscles, flowing seamlessly along. She wanted desperately to know what it was like to pull the powerful creature into a run, as fast and as far as she could go, just to see what she was capable of. Fast car syndrome, she thought with a devious expression.
It was a beautiful world of things Shadow was both familiar with and had never seen before. There weren't any paths through the woods, but there were obvious places to go between the trees, and it made her wonder just how long it had been since anyone had laid hand or eye on the places they were traveling through. The weather was warm, the smell was of dirt and clean air, and it just felt so wonderful to be away from all of the damnable backward technology that she had left behind. Her curiosity started to get the best of her, and she simply had to satisfy it.
"This may seem like an odd question," she began curiously, looking over Taerlyn to Evyn, "But how many suns do you have?"
"That is an odd question." He answered with the softest hint of a smile. "Two. Bright Sun and Dim Sun. You really can't see Dim Sun that often, though."
She nodded, glad for the information. "And how many days is in a year?"
"Four hundred eighty." He answered naturally. "How many in your world?"
"Three hundred sixty five and a fourth."
"Well... that's confusing..." he commented honestly.
"Yes, actually, it is." She tilted her head and looked skyward. "How old are you, then?"
He thought it an odd question, but not so odd he shouldn't answer it. "Almost 20."
"Ah." Shadow put her head down and thought for a very long time. "I know I'm younger than you... and older than her... That's all I can figure out right now with a public school education."
"Public school?" he asked curiously. "You mean those places people meet to learn things?"
"I take it you don't have public schools here?" She asked with an unmistakable eagerness.
He shook his head. "Everyone learns at home. But my father used to tell us about 'the old days', before he was born. I guess his grandfather used to go to a public school."
"Nice to see parents of this world have that horrible habit of telling us all about days gone by, too..." she trailed off quietly.
He grinned. "Just can't get away from that."
For quite some time, she just closed her eyes and let Sandy do the steering. After all, she was obviously one hell of a smart horse, and seemed to keep the other two in check. Shadow just longed to enjoy this place, so far from earth. It just... felt different. Not only the smell, not only the tingling warmth of Bright Sun, but everything. Everything just seemed to feel so, incredibly, different.
"Shadow..." Evyn awoke her from her thoughts with delicate urgency.
She opened her eyes and looked at him, then her eyes followed to where his finger was pointed. Just a few yards away was what appeared to be a large, dark, perfectly square hole in the ground. At that point in time, she really wasn't certain she wanted to stop and investigate, but she knew her curiosity would simply drive her completely insane later if she didn't. "Better look." She said wearily.
He had been a bit afraid of that. His curiosity was strong as well... but not that strong. Not enough to actually stop and crawl inside, which he was absolutely certain was to be the situation. His heart pounded loudly as the horse under him stopped and, at Sandy's insistence, lowered a bit roughly to the ground.
Shadow had already gotten off of her steed, on her hands and knees on the grass, looking into the hole. It appeared completely dark even though Bright Sun was shining a bit inside. Odd, eerie... and a bit irresistible.
Evyn slid off the brown horse and looked down into the dark square. "Any ideas?"
"Not a single one." She responded, still staring blankly into space. "Only one way to find out."
Are you insane?! he wanted to cry out. Instead, the words that calmly left his mouth were, "Should Ter come?"
Shadow had already lowered herself into the hole, finding the first step of a shadowy stairway about three or so feet below ground. "Easier to keep an eye on her that way, I guess." She answered with a shrug. "It's up to you."
He swallowed hard and felt a headache coming on. A big one--a really, really, big one. He gently lifted his sister off of the other laying brown horse and took her hand, terribly less than eager to follow.
Shadow whispered softly into Sandy's lowered ear, "Stand guard here. If there's trouble, make noise."
Although it shouldn't have surprised her by that point in time, the horse whinnied softly in understanding and laid there in almost a royal crest of a horse pose; head down, ear perked, head and eyes moving from side to side, watching. Shadow smiled at the beast and descended slowly into the hole in the earth.
Still never having such a sense for adventure, Evyn shakily followed, lifting then lowering Taerlyn in tow. The sight that met all of their eyes the instant they touched the bottom was beyond words.
Making up the walls of the cavern were boards upon boards of silver metal, tinged with large green squares of sparkling plastic circuitry. Everywhere along the silver panels, randomly placed, were blinking lights of all colors, rhythmically pulsing, out of tune with one another. They could see just ahead ( barely due to the small colored lights) what appeared to be a throne of the silver metal at the far end. Beside it and along the wall seemed to be a bench, or at least some other place to sit. Slowly, feeling something like moths attracted to a flame, Shadow lead the way toward it.
Close enough to touch it, she stopped and simply stared at the throne. It was very simple, made of what almost looked like polished steel bolted at the corners. It was just one large box sticking about a foot out of the wall to sit on, and a thin rectangle behind it, not sticking out more than a couple of inches. She looked over to the bench beside the makeshift throne, noticing it was nothing more than another long box. Odd. Just absolutely, freaking, odd. More odd still was the fact she didn't feel like running the hell out of the place, screaming.
"Well?" she asked, her voice a whisper. She was almost afraid to talk.
"Sit?" Evyn suggested nervously, drawing closer to his sister, who was simply staring at the lights in amazement. The way her eyes were moving, it seemed like she had temporarily come out of her daze.
Shadow glanced back at him with an "are you insane?" look, their roles oddly reversed, but turned and prepared to sit nonetheless. She waved her hand toward the bench, inviting them to do the same. On a silent count of three, they all sat at once; a softly glowing form in the shape of a hand appeared on the wall across from the bench and began to pulse from light to dark shades of green.
Curiouser and curiouser... "Should I?" their "chosen leader" asked softly, lifting her hand close to the light.
"Why not." Evyn mumbled hopelessly.
"Be careful." Taerlyn whispered in a dazed monotone, wrapping her arms around her big brother and taking a deep breath. He only looked back in utter amazement.
Taking the suggestion into account, Shadow smacked her hand against the light soundlessly. A very low beep, something like an old computer makes when it starts up, came from all around them. Taerlyn swallowed a shriek, seeming more or less fully awake.
An eerie silence enveloped the room, and all to the lights dimmed to almost nothing. Shadow shuddered, wanting little more than to get up and run right back out from where they came. An instant later, the lights all flicked on and stayed that way, illuminating the room in Christmas light rainbows. From where the hand print once glowed, the entire panel slid open and a small device looking like a miniature television slid out. It was a darker metal than the rest, with a bunch of flickering lights and buttons in front, a single rectangular speaker on the right side. A computerized voice, inhuman and completely unreal, announced, "Please make your music selection. Artist and song."
All of them shivered at the same time. An agonizing terror had filled each of them, if even only for a second, with terrible dread as the voice begun. Hearts raced, and imaginations ran wild.
Almost afraid to speak, Evyn whispered, "What is this?"
Shadow thought for a moment, then leaned toward him and answered, "It's a computer." Seeing his puzzled look accented by the sharp shadows, she continued, "They have them in my world... they're a little different, but it seems like it's just a computer..."
"Are they dangerous?" Taerlyn barely whispered, her eyes wide and her hands clutching at her brother's arms.
She really had to think about that one for a minute. So many movies, so many books... "They can be." She said honestly, then looked around again. "But this seems to be... like... some sort of entertainment room..." she ventured. Yup, just like home, only in another world, being controlled by HAL. The three of them remained silent for a long time, staring at various parts of the room. Shadow seemed to be thinking hard as if trying to remember something.
"Artist and song." The fathomless computerized voice insisted again a moment later. Evyn looked uneasily at the speaker, then at his sister. The two of them followed the chords and gleaming lights over to where Shadow sat in the throne, elbows on her knees, hands loosely hung between her legs, her head down and eyes closed.
"Guns N' Roses." She announced flatly, surprising the others with her abrupt end to the silence. Her voice echoed to sound shallow and dangerous on the strange metal surrounding them. "'Welcome to the Jungle'... please."
To the continued surprise of the others, a rough grinding coming from the metal box dulled into a low groan, then a loud click. Not a single emotion crossed her face as the music began from nothingness, primal and screeching. She lifted her head slowly, satisfaction coming to her features as though her skin were being thawed after a long time out in the snow. She snapped her head back violently as Axl's voice began to wail, and her companions could see her melt into the chair of panels in absolute pleasure that they simply could not share in.
The siblings simply looked at one another. Neither could figure out why Shadow had seemed to think so highly of these musicians, most especially the singer, who sounded as if perhaps he had some sort of painful disease or was trying to ward off demons of some kind. And yet, the otherworldly girl sat there, happily and almost religiously transfixed on the screaming which seemed to get louder and louder by the second.
As the song ended at last, she released a breath that sounded to the others like one of a horrible pain being soothed. She opened her sparkling eyes and smiled widely. "Didn't like it, huh?"
Evyn, who could have sworn he saw a deep predatory viciousness in her gaze that would rival any wild animal, shook his head. "I haven't the slightest idea why you like that."
She laughed quietly, the pure feeling of danger never leaving her. Taerlyn swallowed gingerly, not quite knowing what to think. It seemed as though their companion had switched places with the horse beater. Shadow sensed their fear, however, and closed her eyes again. After several deep breaths, she opened and wiped them gently with the backs of her hands. In almost a cheery voice, she stated, "Not to worry. It's just my nature catching up to me." After a few seconds of silence, she added, "I'm not even sure what that really means, but it comes to mind a lot."
Evyn smiled at her words for reasons he couldn't even begin to fathom. As dangerous as she seemed, she did still seem to be a part of their circle, and an important one at that. Breaking his thoughts, he saw Shadow grab the speaking box by both hands and yank. The box flew out of the wall in a quick rain of sparks that even made Taerlyn jump.
"What was that for?" he asked, bewildered.
She looked from the box to him, then back to the box and turned it over in her hands for several seconds. "Ya know... I don't know. But if it can still play music from my world, it's coming with us."
He blinked at her answer. "Is it all... like that?"
She grinned and placed the box under her arm. "Oh no, there's a lot of softer stuff. U2 is worth a listen, for instance. You might like Bon Jovi."
As satisfied with her answer as he thought he was going to get, he took his sister's hand and lead her back up the stairs to the hole they'd dropped in. He looked up to see, still standing and watching, Sandy and the other two horses wandering not so eagerly around the trees. He lightly boosted his sister up, then offered his services to Shadow with a glance.
"You better go first." She suggested. "Just... trust me, it's better to pull..."
He tilted his head and almost questioned her, but decided it better to just do as she said. He jumped and pulled himself up, then kneeled and waited for her. With a smile, he took the shining box she handed up to him first and placed it by his side. "Ready?" he asked.
She took one long last look at the computer's brightly blinking lights below her, the smell of cold, oiled metal. She wondered just what the room was there for; or, better asked, perhaps who the room had been meant for. It seemed an odd thing to be in the middle of the forest. Better places than these... beat softly into her head, and she looked up at Evyn. "Yep." She grasped his hands and climbed out.
"Now what do you think that was meant for..." he whispered her thoughts in awe, looking down at the blinking colors in the darkness before lifting from the ground.
"I don't know..." she admitted with one more glance. "But I hope they don't mind me taking this." She picked up the speaking box and shook it very lightly from side to side. Her head swam with possibilities on what the second song she asked of it would be, and prayed it would work.
