Indigo, Left, Shattered

Memory and Purpose are intertwined, infinitely feeding one another like the Ouroboros. Lose one, and you will cripple the other. Lose both, and you will dine in a meal of endless discovery and dust.

Indigo

lay overhead as a great dome of blue, purpling, covered the entire city. The violent winds of the Dustorm raged from without the barrier, but from within they were quiet as the footfalls of ghosts.

In fact, all was quiet, too much so. Standing in Indigo's main road, a highway named T-Seventeen, you might even hear your own heart beating. I know I did, when last I'd visited Indigo. You might hear your own memories, or maybe those of someone hundreds of years dead. You would not hear the winds while the purple held strong, while the dome still blazed overhead and lit the sky a contrast to the terrifying orange and black of fire and ash. When the Great Scar bled globules of red upon the dome, sizzling like hot water, the dome did its best to hold strong.

When it faded, though, as the dome sometimes did, you would hear it all. The wind would blot out your thoughts, even the throes of your own death, as it ripped every scream from your chest and tore you apart.

Is that what happened to me?

Irrelevant. Words of wisdom, it would not be prudent to stand outside when the barrier fell. It hadn't been for those who'd come before, and it would not be for you either.

One being did not adhere to these strictures, though. Was she unwise, then? Honestly, this author believes so, but perhaps not for this reason. She was quite suited for the climes of the dead world, had once been perfectly adapted to the Dustorm and the skies of fire and the loneliness. What other creature could have lived as long and held its sanity, let alone its physical body?

Hailing from the quiet, meek Steeles Academy, I introduce a single being; like the dome, a necessary, sharp contrast to the dead world. Wispy rose-colored hair lay atop a blanched face cut sharp and youthful, resisting the touch of the dust still floating around in a morbid sort of fog which rarely seemed to settle. Blazing red eyes peered out curiously from slightly-hollow sockets, but they were not so hollow as to seem inhuman.

You might confuse her for a woman barely passing adolescence, but you would be wrong on both counts. Lived six hundred five long years and capable of shaping the world, she would be loathe to confirm any conclusions you might draw. I only say 'she' as to avoid confusion, as we tend to judge decisively and descriptively, and neither of these tools truly applied to her.

This creature was named Elle Silver, and I beg you not to assume she was human. Silver was certainly a creature all her own. Wearing loose cloth of no particular style, of no specific color but of many vibrant ones, she stood out dramatically against the grey dust and the blackness of the abandoned structures outside of her Home.

An enigma she was, even to those closest to and, in my case, furthest from her.

She walked T-Seventeen in shoes like flat screens, over mounds of dust which acted quite like quicksand. In gentle hands of five fingers a-one and four fingers a-two, she held respectively a set of bottles of crystalline water and a single lantern, which she had lit and which pierced even a bit through the almost-impenetrable darkness. She walked with a jump to her step, and a hum to her light voice.

There were none around to hear her, as there rarely were in the days after the world had died. She had not seen one other proper being for "four-hundred-and-I-can't-remember-how-many years", if one could believe the Last Protomeckian. Most days, even I had trouble with that, but maybe not today. Today, she had Reclaimed, and that always seemed to resolve her Mind.

"Oh, he's going to be so happy!" she spoke jubilantly, trudging along as if the heavy settling of Dustorm deposits past hindered her not at all. "More and more. I think it's going to be okay, Father! I found this. I'll find him, and then we can fix everything! I told you, Father. You don't believe anything I say, but ha, ha! I was right!"

Her voice echoed off of the walls of the blackness, for only that above and around was lit. This was very little, but it was enough for 'Ellie'. "I wonder if he knows where I am," she suddenly let out, and in a moment her vision blurred with tears. "He forgot. That's all that happened. He's like a lost puppy, and I can bring him back. Aren't all people-men like that, Father? I know you were."

A harsh sound buzzed through the city of Indigo then, as the dome faded slightly. "Oh, for poo, I'm just kidding!" she hissed as she looked up. "You're not in a good mood today. I'll share my light." She raised the lantern as high as she could, but it was only a few feet, and she let it drop to her side as the dome shimmered, paling again. "You don't get all of it, you greedy Avar!" she scolded, making a face at the barrier. "Big baby."

The harshness returned, and from above a shriek sounded. Elle grew very quiet, and dropped the water bottles from her whole, shaky right hand. "F-Father?" she asked quietly, remembering that sound from somewhere, from sometime. "Are you going Home?"

The squeal stung her ears again, louder, even much louder than she remembered the Dustorm. "Father!" she cried, setting the lantern down, and then cowering alongside it, and then removing herself only to lurch toward it and cradle the fading light like an infant. "I don't want," she cooed. "I want. I want him back."

She began to sway, and she could feel the dust pick up all around her, and the omnipresent shriek drowned out her words as effortlessly as the Dustorm shredded the skin from her face, dried the tears streaming down her cheeks and threw her along the ground.

Something slipped from one hand, but she held the lantern close as she could. The tumult could go on forever, she knew, and she curled against the noise, feeling her life fading. I felt it too, as I feel all life, and prayed that Father would return to hold back the tide of the Dustorm.

Of course, that was all I could do. Pray.

And then it was gone. In a heartbeat, in the blink of an eye dry as the desert sands, the sound was gone and the winds faded. Dust settled again, blanketing her, and she stood with the lantern boring into her breast, loosing her grip very reluctantly.

She began to laugh, nervously, but this ended quickly. "Oh no!" she cried out, realizing what she'd lost, and in a flash leaped up to sift for the lost water. For five, and then twenty minutes she scoured, but she found nothing.

"Aw," she mourned, sniffing lightly. "Stupid Ellie. No water, no stupid light for stupid Ellie." She dropped the lantern, her head, and her hopes, and left each of these items buried like the gift she'd sought to return to Nalis Singer, a brother from another life. The dusts had no qualms about consuming them, and the darkness would take all that was

Left.

In some other time, though it may have been the same time, a slight, familiar form lay upon a mound of dust. The winds whipped through her hair like a strong breeze, causing each fine strand to delve deep into the even finer pile, like a series of burrowing rosy worms. The air was thick with invigorated particles, opaque to man's eye, but completely transparent to her.

"I like it when it looks like fire, for me at least," she spoke, her voice losing a bit but not enough to remain unheard. Father was blinking in and out of existence quickly, causing the winds to roar, the dust to stir. "Fire makes things easier to see. The dark is really not my favorite. You wouldn't really have to deal with it though, would you?"

As if to disprove her, Father shimmered again, and another, stronger gust buffeted the ground. Like an explosion, it pounded the earth and preempted another shockwave of the stuff. Rippling through the open airy ocean, the dust began to settle to her left, beyond Steeles' gates. "Darn," she spoke, watching it settle on clearer grounds. "I just cleaned that. Stupid Dustorm."

Father was back, and he was chuckling at her, flickering in a fit of laughter. "Father!" she complained. "That's not funny! Who has to pick up after him?" But Father would not hear it. Strong blue, weak purple, strong Indigo again. "You're a bleck," she spat, and broke their gaze.

Today, the Dustorm was breaking through the failing barrier, something which a more youthful Ellie would not have missed. Today, however, she was just enjoying the breeze, eyes closed, humming back, trying nothing but to drown out Father. He was, after all, being quite the bleck, and long ago she'd learned not to indulge those kinds of people-men.

She heard a sound, then, like the whooshing of a whirl-bird. She opened her eyes a squint, to see the raging flames like canyons in the sky above, red and orange spilling from the heavens as if a magma vent brewing for eruption. "Stupid Crimsonborns," she whispered, but only when the Dustorm returned, only when the shrillness of the world's death throes could mask her words.

She could feel an adrenal rush, and let herself sink into the dust below her back, sink until every part of her was subsumed. Indigo returned, and she could see the shape against his glow. It was tiny, a shadow, but she knew it was one of them. Back and forth it flew above her, but unless it was a newer one, it wouldn't see her.

If it was, then she might not survive the encounter.

Flying high above, it circled the area twice, but took a great deal of time for itself while it terrorized her. Not-not-not-f-not fair! she thought, her Mind gripped in fear and addled with age. No-not-flying-Father-cheat-cheat-Father--

Twice. Only twice did it fly over, and then it dropped to the ground in a motion faster than she could see. It does! she thought. See-see-Ellie! She knew it wasn't touching the dust, could see a light cloud forming from where its wings beat the stuff with flitting gusts, and tried to bite her tongue.

It chittered lightly, cracking its mandibles to either side, the sounds of grinding metal adjoining to each motion. Twin talons which glimmered in the light Father provided were raised slowly, over its head, before dropping just as gracefully. What it-it-Father-it doing?

Then, from chest level, it drove both claws into the mound over which it hovered, dropping to the ground at once. They rang out against something below, but the sound was eaten by the darkness and the dust almost instantly.

The chittering began again, and the being raised a single talon before it. The metal body of this appendage split, first cracking open like a pressurized latch release, horizontally and then vertically to become an open rectangular prism. Ellie could see dozens, maybe hundreds of moving parts as the hollows of its arm filled, adjusted and constructed a smaller cylinder within.

In a final motion, the arm was complete, the barrel shot forth to protrude from the new appendage, and the hollow arm locked swiftly into place with dozens of intertwining clicks and cranks. The chatter went on throughout this, getting louder. Father fled again from above, and the Dustorm blasted down, a drying gale.

The horrid shriek tore through Ellie, so very unlike the Dustorm, so very unnatural to any but the dead world. She was frozen as the Crimsonborn raged, but jumped with the first booming echoes of invisible gunfire, and she began to shiver. A dusty mound near the shape exploded outward, and the Dustorm swallowed it up in a moment. See-see Ellie! See Ellie!

Father returned, and the dust pirouetted a bit before hanging in the air again, as it always did in times of peace. Yet, with each boom! a little more joined it, in geyser eruptions. After each, the chitters warbled through, as if the thing were cursing her.

And then, the barrel locked gazes with her, and she closed her eyes, and a great boom! resonated through the open air for a few moments. This time, however, it was followed by a series of screams and gunshots, blasts and crashes as the crumbled infrastructure opposite her Home exploded with massive force. Vicious sounds returned to her, sounds of violence, but she opted to close her eyes. She just let the Crimsonborn rage, either for or against whatever had caused it. Quiet-calm Ellie. Calm-safe-Father, sleep-eep now.

And so she did, beneath the dust, hidden in the element for which she'd been born. She couldn't remember, but wondered if there had been a time she had ever shied from a fight before.

She stopped trying to remember, and sunk blissfully into the nothing.

She had been afraid, though the world should have acted to destroy the Crimsonborn at her whim. She should have had power, and for her lack, a small piece of her

Shattered

the peacefulness of her dreams. The Last Protomeckian awoke, covered in dust, and shook herself loose. Her skin bore no marks, her hair coming free easily, as if the stuff were water drying in the desert. Tattered, brilliant clothing did not do the same, but she remained visible to even a person-man's plain eye. Yet, nothing burst from the stonework, from the shroud of hanging dust, and she shook her head and brushed her rags with little vigilance, less fear.

Four mounds of dust sat on Bluerun, a river of waves beyond the gates of the Academy, and a thick cloud which was just beginning to stymie her sight. She grumbled, looking around at the mess. "Father!" she cried accusatorially, slapping the dusty mound from which she woke. "You let the dust in again! And you didn't even wake me up. P'tah!"

The silence overtook the world then, as Father held against the Dustorm. "Sorry. I was mean," Ellie told the nothing, flipping to her stomach before pushing away from the dust. She sunk a little before she managed to stand. "But Nalis doesn't like the dust. So we don't get to keep it. You're going to have to find a new Home for it."

Father shimmered, purpled in embarrassment, and Ellie laughed. "I'm going to go look for a light for you. Would that make you happy?" Again, a shimmer, perhaps of meek acceptance. That was how Ellie would read the gesture, anyway; she always seemed to have a way of knowing.

Author's Note

Please, tell me what you think, and let me know where I can improve. Deconstruct this chapter, and all of them, and find within the Good and the Bad. Comments and compliments are welcome, but I most welcome in-depth analyses, because only by discovering my strengths and shortcomings can I ever hope to replicate or overcome them.