| Sample 3rd Person - Jeremy Garrett and others (OCs) |
[Jan. 4th, 2008|04:46 pm] |
for ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) houseontherock
The dormice of Wonderland were robust creatures. Most grew to between one foot and two in length, with squishy pot bellies and thin, downy fur covering their entire bodies. At the sight of them, little girls begged their mothers for pets, and useless people dreamed of catching themselves a good meal. No one felt threatened by a dormouse. No one ever had.
But a dormouse, like any other creature, was not to be solely measured by its outward appearance. One had only to wander out into the fields or woods of most kingdom, to hear them talking amongst themselves, in their small, pallid voices, and hushing again, when they sensed human presence. Every species has its idiots, but every species has its geniuses, too. The geniuses of the dormouse race were often looking at more than their share of kings.
Or, at least, the illegitimate sons of kings. Prince Veles (as he was called here, in the castle towers overlooking the city of Nightshore. He longed, in the echoing hallways, for the occasional harshness of Bam’s Pennsylvania accent, the Ws he affectionately attached to his other name) stood before a quartet of them, now. They had little belts around their fat waists, made of braided ribbon and almost disappearing beneath their fur. The ribbons were not in the collars of any particular kingdom. One mouse wore yellow, one green, one silver, and another white. It was blessed that it was not Jareth they had journeyed to see, Veles thought.
The first mouse plucked a scroll of paper, nearly as long as he was tall, from his belt. Bowing low, he raised it up to Veles, and in his wavering voice, he beseeched him: “With most humble nature, our country lord, King Jeremy, sends this missive and request, most humbly, for your great favour, Your Majesty.”
The seal on the paper was made with something other than wax. It looked a bit like plaster, mixed with something else, and it cracked when Veles flicked at it. The lettering on the pure white of the paper was ballpoint. The paper was obviously copy paper. Veles couldn’t help grinning to himself – Someone seemed to have met with a happy accident, in the House. What a detour.
At sight of his smile, the mice shuffled their feet, and prodded one another’s shoulders, and whispered in a reedy way amongst themselves, until Veles spoke. “Tell your king,” he said lightly, humanly, with a voice Bam would have recognized, “I have no one to send. He’s on his own, but I send my condolences to his lady, and if he must speak to me again, let him come here himself.”
“But Majesty,” the head messenger mouse pleaded, “How will he believe that we have seen Your Greatness? You give us no letter.”
Veles smiled at them again, even reached down and scritched the head messenger’s head. “King Jeremy will know. Tell him what I said, and get going.”
The mice made many bows and utterances of thanks as they backed away from the prince, and then took off through the halls of the Black Castle, the tinny sounds of their chatter bouncing off the marble on the floor, rolling through the building like the play sound effects of children’s games.
Another young man entered in their wake. “How did they get in? Those weren’t even colours they were wearing.”
“They’re a new faction,” Veles replied, his tone back to almost dreary, as he regarded his brother.
“They won’t last long,” the brother, Nix, Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Black commented. He lolled onto a chaise in the little lounge, flicked a smattering of dormouse hair off the edge. If they lasted long enough to come back, at least, he would prefer his brother not let them leap all over the furniture.
“No,” said Veles. “Just until this afternoon.”
* * *
King Jeremy of the Higher Room, of the Hunt Unceasing, of World’s Outside, watched the painted sky above his palace room. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, he knew his messengers had reached the Black Kingdom. The oil paints were a swirling mass, a faint raw egg smell hung in the air, and the skies were roiling, dark, scary places. They looked like the skies he had seen in his dreams, and nothing like the casual, cloudy gray cast that covered his kingdom on most days.
Days. On the floor, sprawled out in front of his throne, were tick marks. Dozens of tick marks, thicker where they began, just in front of his feet, until, after a few rows, they became paper thin, intricate looking things. Some even had faint designs carved around them. There had to be at least a hundred now. The first month’s, he had carved himself. The others marked the coming of the mice.
Jeremy wondered how many days they had left, in this, their tiny, humble kingdom. It wasn’t really a kingdom, that much he knew was true. It was a farce. But what would he have done, if the mice hadn’t found him? Who would have brought him food and water, to keep him from dying? Who would help him in the endless search for Ora? The mice knew this place, even changed as it was. He, Jeremy, did not.
Behind him, behind his throne (a carved oaken chair, hung about with trinkets the mice had brought him), there rose a wall. It was Ora’s wall, covered in signs of her that the mice had been lucky enough to find. Queen Ora, their lost goddess. Jeremy kept the wall behind him, because he could hardly bear to look at it and know he might never see her again. He had built her up for the mice, spun exaggerated tales from the air, until they worshipped her, until they were utterly devoted to the cause of finding her. It was she who was their sovereign, Jeremy explained. But he must rule until she was found, and direct the search for her.
The mice brought him a magical mirror that had captured the image of her reflection. They brought him a lock of her curls, clipped from her hair. They brought him one of the earrings she had worn that day, so long ago, when she and Jeremy arrived at the House. They brought him her jacket.
Where did these things come from, with no real sign of his lost love? What had happened to her, that she had cut a piece from her hair? When had she taken off her jacket? Ora always complained of being cold. She used to laugh and say her African blood couldn’t deal with life in Illinois. She used the laugh again, and say her American blood couldn’t deal with a thing about Africa. Then she would sigh, and ask Jeremy if that made her a terrible person. He would run his fingers through those same curls and say, No, God makes us all what we are for a reason.
And what had God made him? A man in ragged clothes the dormice had procured from somewhere, dependant on those same creatures, even as they bowed and called him their Lord, and never realized it. Help me, Father, he prayed silently. This is a desert, and I continue to dry out, one day at a time. But no Almighty word came. The only word to come was the swirling in the painted sky, and now, the flurry of mouse feet entering his throne room.
Jeremy sank into his chair. “Greetings, messengers,” he addressed them, weary. The mice chattered amongst themselves, and scampered to him, over the marks in the floor.
“Your Gracious Eminence, Fraught With Grief Most Holy As You Are, King Jeremy,” babbled the first, with a bow, and subsequent bow from the other three mice. “The Prince Veles expresses his deep sympathies for your Plight, O King, and his sorrow, as he is unable to send aid to Our Most Humble Kingdom at this time.” The little mouse backed away, bumping into his companions. The mouse in the green sash fell over and righted himself with a little mumbling of penance to the Great Lady Ora.
This was as Jeremy had assumed it would be. “At ease,” he bid the mice, with a wave of his hand over their heads. “This is what I anticipated. None of you are to blame.”
“But Sir, Your Majesty Most High, what will we do? We need the help.”
“I know. I have news for you, Pengilley. Your king must undertake a journey.”
The mice all gasped, took up their usual chittering. The leader, Pengilley, stuttered when he asked, “But Sir? Majesty Most High? Why must you leave us now? Your Grace will return, will it not?”
Jeremy nodded. They were like children. If the situation wasn’t so grave, he would have smiled. It seemed his features had been set darkly for some time, now. “I will return, Pengilley. Don’t be afraid of that. It’s a spiritual journey I must endure, to help find the Lady Ora. But I need your word that you’ll manage the hunt while I’m away.”
Pengilley squeaked. “Majesty! Your Most Feared And Yet Most Kind Lordliness! However can I?”
“You know my wishes better than anyone else. You’ll do fine.”
A look of rapt attentiveness came over Pengilley, and then he snapped to attention again, saluting the man in the chair. “I will do my best not to displease you or dishonour the Lady Ora.”
“Good man,” said Jeremy. “I leave tomorrow, at dawn.”
* * *
The mice packed Jeremy a satchel, full of bread and sticky rice, and water bound in flasks that would have lasted many days for a mouse, and perhaps one drink, for a human. Up ahead, on the oil painted ceiling, the sky turned white and impossible, foretelling of snow, while the dormice crowded around their king’s boots, to bid him farewell. Voices squealed, more than a fair share of tears were shed, and Jeremy had to set his features to a grave and steely mask, to keep from betraying the care he had come to feel for these tiny creatures.
He set off into the wilds of the house with no less fear of the unknown than a dark and vicious forest would have garnered in him. The hallways in this wing were spacious, but he couldn’t say how long that might last. Please, he prayed, as the Persian rugs running the length of the floors cushioned his footfall, Lead my feet somewhere, Lord. Somewhere with a meaning.
Jeremy didn’t presume to know what it was the Lord had in mind for him. Ordinarily, he didn’t presume God owed him anything, either, but now…there was a slight, desperate change in his thinking. In the months he’d spent here, as king of the mice, his prayers had gone from frightened, to begging, and now to this. To the feeling that God, for once, owed him something.
His life had been a good one, Jeremy thought, as he passed through a hallway where the walls were hung with baby clothes, affixed to golden wallpaper with rusty nails and fish hooks. He had never hurt a soul, never done anything worse than carelessly break a heart in his younger days. For goodness sake, he didn’t even smoke! And he loved…Oh, he loved. The love Jeremy had felt, that he still felt now, was so all-encompassing, and so good that he couldn’t imagine it not gaining him a few points with Heaven. No one had ever loved a person, the way he loved Ora. Jeremy would have done anything in the world for her. He was still doing anything in the world. Just walking, just putting one foot in front of another, now, was the most, and the hardest, a man could do.
The hallways narrowed. They were hung with blankets, now. Pillowy, soft things with edges of satin ribbon, in pastel colours. Baby blankets. The path became so thin, so spindly, the blankets brushed against him as he walked. Jeremy slung his satchel around to his back, so it wouldn’t catch and ruffle the things too much. The sensation of curtains bothered him. If one of those blankets were to pull back, what would he see?
Beyond the blankets, it was murals of living paint, like his ceiling, back in his throne room. The walls still nearly touched his shoulders, but far and away from him, yellow-gray plateaus of waving grass and running antelopes stretched. Lions bounded after the creatures, trees and bushes cropped up. Africa. And then a village, where all the bodies were women, and all the faces were his Ora, and he imagined he could hear her voice, plain as day, telling him again how she knew she didn’t belong in those wilds.
It was ironic, maybe, that Ora had disappeared. She was a happy woman, but she had always told Jeremy she didn’t belong anywhere. What soil were her roots entrenched in, now? Could it be that she had gone on to some greater place? Could it be that he was foolish to search for her? That he might hurt her, by discovering her? It was evening, by the time these thoughts came into Jeremy’s head. His internal clock had attuned itself to the painted sky, even more accurately than it had once attuned to the real one. Warm winds blew out of the African fields, and he sat down to rest his feet, and eat some of the food the mice had sent with him.
The winds blew, the sun shone, and Jeremy napped. He didn’t mean to, and when he awoke with a start, the plains above him were not only dark, but still. The little antelope had ceased their running, forever caught with the lion’s claw just barely piercing the flesh of their hindquarters. Jeremy shivered. They couldn’t be in much pain, but to be in that pain forever? Until the next time the painting came to life? It was a frightening thought.
Jeremy climbed to his feet and saw the hall had changed. In the direction he came from, the paintings still faded into white folds of blankets, but up ahead, now only a few metres away, the hall ended. A sign pointed left, proclaiming his arrival at the Streets of Yesteryear. There was no need to question it, no need to wonder why he had found his way here. Readjusting his satchel on his shoulders, he followed the sign, and prayed it was the one he had been looking for.
The street looked different now, darker, and Jeremy’s senses spiked to the alert; he thought he heard voices, somewhere down a bend, between the houses. This wasn’t even so much a street anymore, as an entire town. Jeremy looked around him, and up overheard. Living murals didn’t faze him anymore, nor did the strange hangings that covered the hallways, but he couldn’t have imagined a place the size of this. As far as he could see, in every direction but behind him, there was nothing but sooty London streets.
Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed. Jeremy had the sudden, chilling feeling that it chimed only because he thought the word, “London.” As if his thought had finalized some deal, made the room (if it could be called a room) decide on some final detail. A chilly wind to match the warmth of the African plains siphoned down the dirty black streets. Chimes on a nearby storefront chattered like teeth. The wind ripped at Jeremy’s clothes, yanked a loosely tucked packet of rice from his bag and sent it whipping down the street behind him.
Behind him? Jeremy turned. The hallway was gone. This city, this London, had completely taken over.
The rain came faster than he could have anticipated, boiling out of the sky, with the gusts of wind. The clock chimed its final note: eight. “Damnit,” Jeremy gritted his teeth, the raindrops pelting him with such momentum that they seemed to tear through his clothes. He would be soaked.
Across the street, a light came on in a store window. The sign above the door, rattling and bumping in the wind, declared it a general store and draper’s. Jeremy didn’t give it a second thought; he ran through the viciously growing storm, yanked open the door to the storefront, and slammed his way inside. |
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