A Tale Of Snow and Blood

Standing with her hair blowing in the wind, Laurel closed her eyelids. She felt the bits of ice make her skin raw. The snow was constant and hard to see through; she'd stopped trying anyhow. The blue scarves that she wore as a symbol seemed meaningless as her toes crushed the remaining pieces of the great city that had once been Os. Another step, and more wood splinters scratched, more frozen corpses glared from the ice. She felt them clawing for the life that had been smothered out of them. Blue scarves matching hers, and red scarves against hers, made bloom-like sprouts against the stark white. Laurel kept her eyes shut. She'd been rasping to herself not to panic in the hours before...now she could only pretend that this walk across her fallen city would lead to something. There had been true hope, until the flutter of white became a blizzard and the corpses became thousands beneath her. No one had survived. No one except her. Someone unworthy to survive, in her mind. After all, the only reason she did survive would have made her an outlaw.

The desert sun was hot on Mej's face. He smiled, scowled, and then laughed. A large legion of small birds had started to attack his feet. He kicked one off lightly, and it's head cracked against the hard ground. His sister, Loll, laughed at the bird. It shook as itís nerves reacted, and then flew away awkwardly. Mej slapped one long arm in the air, his bulbous elbows protruding round and white against the dark bronze flesh that decorated his bones. His teeth were an off white, but large and as gangly as the rest of him. They were both wearing yellow cotton slouching robes, with a pearly brooch over Lollís breast. Mej wore a red sash, with his people's clumsy lettering. It was ancient text that had been drilled into both of their minds before they were force fed anything else.
"Really free, really free." Mej commented brokenly.
Lollís laugh wore to a siren,"Til they break necks for supper. Then we'll be free from all the freedom in our bellies!" They both danced at that, long limbs flailing to hook into one anothers in the way any sibling would caress the otherÖroughly and stubbornly.
"Wouldnít we?" Mej tilted his head back as the laugh exploded, "Fly!"
"To the sky! With our eyes, small, beady, and black!" Loll's scarlet hair covered her face, muffling her boisterous poem.
They were outside, bare feet on hard sun bleached dirt with a thatch roof over their head's. The bleached brightness created hard shadows on their faces. Neither of them noticed, only seeing either one of them as an extension of themselves. Mej often commented on this fact, calling Loll his reflection. Loll, the smarter and much more devious of the two, was less likely to point it out. She'd amuse Mej, while plotting behind him. She'd do it herself as well if she could, since her heart was as cold as bath water. The wars she'd conducted while he'd mumble to her about the angle of a portrait or snuck around doing something "important" were numbering higher then she herself could count. They'd already fought the entire planet twice, won half of them, and only lost a dozen terribly.
She'd seen four decades of torment and torture, and still looked pre-pubescent. This was the blessing of the Aud royalty. She'd die an old woman with the skin of someone half her age. The price was sanity, but that was little cherished on the island.
Their dirt castle stood above all else, in the center most dry point of the land. They ate animals with glasses of cactus juice. They wore hand woven gowns, and decorated their faces with dried berry guts.

Loll tore into a bird at the head of the table. Mej, on the other end, giggled about flying as he devoured a wing. Their subject's, meek and intelligent, all whimpered and sighed in unison. They had raised monsters, and were all aware of it. But no one dared say a thing. Loll had gutted her own mother, and killed Mej's with poison. Their father, Turg, had lived til their Ninth year, and then died in battled. Though it was suspected otherwise, since there was no particular battle at the time.
In fact, the world was at peace until Mej and Loll had come into power. Loll found the system unfair to her people, and Mej didn't like the colour of the united planet's banner. They were quite young at the time, but neither regretted their reasoning for tearing their planet apart. They took their people's known cruel and brash personalities to a whole new level.

Neither of them knew who Laurel of Os was, nor that she was in their market only five miles away as they ate heartily. She had painted her fair skin bronze, and covered herself in red cloth. No one could see the blue the clung to her naked skin under the layers, but she could feel it burning her skin. It wasn't the heat from the sun, it was the guilt that racked her body.
"You look too thin!" An old Magick woman threw rice into the air in front of Laurel. The rice turned into a pigeon, "Eat!" The pigeon fluttered in front of Laurel, taunting her.
Laurel of Os, like all of her people, ate meat only four months out of the cycle, and refused the bird.
The lady spat at her bare, bronze paint smeared, feet, "You are smart." She hissed.
Misunderstanding her, Laurel said thank you quietly, and speedily walked passed her. The lady didn't hear her, much to Laurel's luck.
Laurel saw the familiar pale eyes of Ehrin. He grimaced, "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see...you." She withdrew a letter, and slipped it to him.
"Laurel," He mumbled as he read it, "This 's treason, you'll be mur-dered."
Laurel gulped. She hadn't really thought that far ahead, on purpose, "I-well it was either you or me."
"Me? An old man? To live? While," He brushed a rough dark hand on her skin, "No, Laurel, this is wrong." He crumbled the letter and threw it in a fire, "Go back 'ome."
"I can't Ehrin, not til I know you'll all be safe."
Ehrin almost laughed, "This is about Yhrin is it?"
Laurel's blush broke through the paint, "No"
"I'd of send 'em away anyway. You should think ëbout going to the north. The south is crumbles to be."
Laurel took a big breath, "My family is the south. I can't leave."
Ehrin smiled sadly, "Neither can I. Now, go back home then, wash up in the sea. You do look pretty as an Audette though." There was soundless words that escaped his lips, and Laurel nearly cried the paint off her face at them. She said goodbye to her old teache. He'd been her schoolyard's gardener til he was released when the wars started. He'd taught her so much more then any of the people in the actual school. Ancient magicks, Aud languages, even some herb grinding. She'd fallen in love with his pale eyed son, Yhrin, and lost her innocence to him right before they went back to Aud. He was half Os, and so very reclusive as the war was happening.
Laurel was now apart of the high court in Os. She was not royalty, but her vote counted, which was a major accomplishment. You had to be very intelligent to be in the Os high court. She'd never actually met the royals, but she'd seen them from afar, and that had been enough. The slip of paper that was now ashes was a notice that was sent to all of the high court.

" We are engaging the Aud people at sunrise.
There will be losses on both sides.
Plans to invade Aud by sundown are in place.
All voting is overruled in this matter by the high Queen."
She had wept for half a day before making the decision to betray her people. She didn't even care, as she strode to her small ship, that she would never see Yhrin again. She loved him enough to have him live, and to let him go.

Mej shivered as they entered, by carriage, the farthest southern point of their world. Their was a brisk cold wind. Loll was nearly on her feet in excitement. She had their fathers sword strapped to her waist, and her pearl brooch was now holding her scarlet curls out of her face. Peaking through the red and gold fabric, she saw green grass and a dark gray sky. She ignored the wind, letting her brother feel it all for her. Loll yearned to see death, and did not care whose it was. She looked on her race as an immortal would, and enjoyed to see any blood that flood from steel cut wounds. As the carriage rounded, and the flood of red armored soldiers ahead of her halted, she nearly leapt from the cushioned bench seat. Mej was not as eager, and just barely caught up with his sister as she joined the head swordsmen.
"Kill them!" She yelled loudly, the soldiers all barking a response of laughter and excitement in return.
"Wither til they strike!" Echoed from a mile out.
Carnal thirst broke out on Loll's face, "Those retched Os'triches! Birds! Eat them! Show them we red for the blood that'll spin from their veins!" Her scarlet hair seemed to break loose on cue, and as the brooch fell to it's broken fate, she ran with her people to glory.
Mej ran at the heel of his sister, his own blade that of a child's. It was short and barely sharp enough to pierce an apple. He didn't expect to kill anyone, though he was sure to see some carnage from the spot behind his sister. He felt her excitement, and tried to share it. But instead, he was racked with the fear and all the pitiful emotions Loll refused to feel. He felt them hard and painfully. If it hadn't been for the ten large men in front of him, he wouldíve been the first to die.
Instead he was the fifth.
As he lay dying, Mej saw himself through Loll's eyes, and felt the pleasure, the pity, and the cruelty, that fueled her last vision of her brother. It was then he understood everything, how she had tricked him, used him, and had not ever truly loved him. She was incapable of love, and if he had been able, he would have mocked her for it. This was his last intention, but he instead took a breath and died on the blood that came with it.


When Ehrinís eldest son Yhrin came from behind the shed, covered in grease and studge, it was early afternoon. He had known, from the blood moon, that this would be a day of tragedy. Since they had moved to Aud, there had been several blood moons. However, as his father now lay in a dark red pool in the harsh sunlight in front of their shop, Yhrin understood this as true personal tragedy. Even as the blue scarves were bleached as the desert afternoon approached on the necks of Os citizens who had taken a village for the death of their own, who had killed his father, and everyone else he knew. Even as rage took over Yhrin, it was not to Os that he stormed. It was to the Aud castle. He had in his hand a rough piece of sharp steel, and in his pale eyes a rash of heat. He had dark hair and light skin like that of the Os. If the Aud's had been alive, he would be dead by now. But he stepped over corpse after corpse. Children scampered in packs. Ehrin would have stopped, comforted them, but he did not have time. They were becoming wild creatures by now, having seen their parents brutally murdered. It would have been a mercy to have not spared them, but he knew the Os were too gentle of a people for that. He imagined their children lay in their beds forever, for the Auds were not gentle.

Laurel took shelter in the village, which was now only filled with ghosts and echoing wind. There was a wool coat in the door way of an abandoned house. Their animals were all slaughtered and strewn disrespectfully in the bedrooms, as if someone had taken pleasure in making them look like barbarians. She wrapped the wool around her, sat in the corner, and wept. They had taken away her home. She felt her betrayal had caused this. But when she imagined all the scenarios where it was her fault, none of them made sense.
Her people had most likely come to an agreement with the Audís where to battle, and both peoples had schemed to destroy the other village. Part of her hoped the Audís were dead, and then another part of her ached for her friends, for her Yhrin. She hoped he was on his way to the north, but she doubted it. The wind howled at her to stop moping about, and to go find survivors. Someone had to have survived. Maybe, the children.
Laurel picked herself up and stepped carefully out of the house. Her feet were still bare, but she ignored them. She walked, her head up, ignoring the corpses she passed. She made her way, with the snow in front of her face like a wall of white, to the school yard. She didn't notice the little lumps in the snow at the edges of the grounds. But she saw the red trails in the hallway, and heard the eerie sounds of nothing at all. The smell was only slightly altered, and if she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that nothing had happened. That maybe the silence was because class was in session, and that someone had left the hall door open, and that's why it was so bitterly cold. But as she opened her eyes, and the gloom took over, her fantasy dissolved into reality. They had tried to hide, but were slaughtered as they hid.


(Authors Note: This is just a tidbit I did, I may work on it more, I may not. It's not perfect at all, but I like the idea)