Ginko (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dontpokethat) wrote2018-04-26 12:18 am
dontpokethat) wrote2018-04-26 12:18 amEntry tags:
LC STORIES
Individual stories in comments below!
dontpokethat) wrote2018-04-26 12:18 am
THE GOD'S EGG
As he had nowhere to go, he was taken in by a scientist who studied such disasters. But the scientist wanted to show off his knowledge. He told the orphan “This way, you can earn your place”, and, rather than continuing to travel to keep the problems from getting worse, made the boy stay in one town for months to demonstrate the effects of the disasters. In the end, though, they got too far out of hand for the scientist to handle, so he left the boy behind.
After that, the orphan was found by a doctor, who could treat the injuries and illnesses the disasters caused. But the doctor realized he could make more money if more people got sick, so he told the orphan “This way, you’ll earn back what you cost me”, and he made the boy stay in just one town. When the disasters became too much, he drove the orphan away.
Finally, the orphan was taken in by an herbalist who lived in the mountains, who told him “You are free to leave as soon as you’re ready”. In fact, he was too busy to worry too much about what the boy was doing; when the boy asked why, the herbalist told him that the god of the mountain was dying, and he needed to keep track of the mountain’s condition until the new one was born.
Curious, the boy went in search of the new god. Not in a tree, or on the ground, he found it at the top of a great cliff: Unborn, hidden away in a golden egg.
In that moment, looking upon the egg, the cursed orphan felt an envy greater than any he had experienced; he wished, desperately, that he could take the god’s place - that he could have the power, the importance, the belonging that this god would be born into, and which he had never had a chance of gaining.
And, in that moment, a gust of wind sent him off-balance, and the egg in his hands tumbled to the ground and cracked.
Horrified by what he had caused, the boy climbed down to the ground, where the egg lay dying. He ran in search of the old god, begging it to save the unborn new god’s life, but the god did not respond. He promised anything the mountain needed in return, but his plea still went unanswered.
He promised his own life in exchange for the god’s, but still the new god was not revived. Instead, its life was taken back into the mountain, leaving the boy alone in the forest once again.
When the herbalist found him, the boy told him what had happened. The herbalist told him, “The mountain could have taken your life, but it chose to let you live. But you can spend no more of that life here.”
He told the boy, “Because of what you’ve done, the mountain will need time to heal. You have left a scar on it, and for that you cannot be forgiven.”
And so the boy left the mountain behind him, never to return again.
BACKSTORY
One day, however, the two were caught in a landslide. The boy survived, dragging himself from the rubble, but his mother was already dead. With nowhere to go, he began to wander through the woods, lost and aimless. He could only go for so long, though, and eventually collapsed.
It was then that a hermit who lived in those mountains, a one-eyed woman with white hair that belied her young age, found him; she brought him to her home, fed him and let him rest. As she knew of the spirits he had seen, she taught him about them - their names, their workings, and how to remain safe from them.
She told him about the spirits which resided in the pond by her shack - beings of shadow and light, whose darkness consumed living things whole and whose radiance bleached them to silver. Being near them had left her the way she was, and done the same to every fish in the pond. She assured the boy that they would be affected no further - but warned him to be wary. If they caught him at sunrise or sunset, the spirits could trap him, and steal a part of him - his life, or his name.
For those weeks in the hermit’s shack, the boy spent much of his time watching the one-eyed fish in the pond. When he saw one consumed by the darkness the woman told him about, he ran to confront her, to ask her why she had lied to him. But she told him there was nothing to be done about her fate, now that she had been touched by the spirits, and that, as he was healthy again, he should leave to begin his own life anew.
The boy began to leave, but found he couldn’t bring himself to abandon the woman who had looked after him for so long. He ran back to the shack, where he found that the hermit had begun to turn to shadow - and, when he tried to take her hand, it overtook him as well.
In her last moments, as she and the boy were surrounded by the spirits of shadow and light, the hermit reminded him that he could still live. The light would take his eye, and the shadow his name, but he could live on, leaving his past behind him.
After the boy agreed, he was left alone in the woods. There, he forgot who he had been. There, he became someone new.
And the boy with one eye and no past began his life again.
Rust in her Voice
As the villagers suspected their condition was connected to the silent girl, she was shunned by those around her - with the exception of a boy who had moved from a seaside village, so recently that his clothes still carried the smell of salt. And so, for a long while, the boy from the seaside was her only companion.
One day, a stranger arrived in the village who told the girl that her village could be cured. She needed only to go into the mountains, and, there, to call out with all her strength, and the rust would be drawn from the village and toward her. He warned her, however, that she could not tell anybody what she was doing, and that, once she had emptied her village of rust, she could never return.
The girl couldn’t bring herself to leave without a word to the boy who had stayed by her side. So she wrote him a letter, and gave it to him before she left. However, the boy couldn’t read, and gave the letter to his employer - who found within it the confirmation of all that the village had suspected about the girl’s connection to their illness.
The boy tried to defend the girl, but his efforts were taken for malice by his new village. And so the boy and the girl fled into the mountains, and off to the sea.
Over the years, bit by bit, the plague of rust retreated from the village - and, true to her word, the girl with the voice of rust never returned.
The Guardian
The traveler who could not accept the guardian's fate purged her of the mountain's power, and Nature's law turned its punishment to him.
The guardian stepped into his place, and Nature's law accepted her life.