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 Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 2:41 pm
Word Count: 644
He found himself in the bedroom, just as he’d left it during his previous visit with Valhalla. But then he hadn’t expected very much to change. It never did. The moon and its derelict buildings remained as vacant and lifeless as always, haunting shells of former grandeur, a teasing glimpse of what once was and what may never be again.
The bed stood prominent among the rest of the furniture, with its raged, ghostly hangings. The doors to the broken balcony stood ajar, as if someone had only just opened them to escape for a bit of fresh air. Into the room blew a cool breeze, lightly rustling the bed hangings, but other than the soft swish of old, near-crumbling fabric, there was no noise. Ganymede shivered lightly, more from the emptiness and silence than the sudden chill, and he lifted his arms as if to hold and comfort himself as he glanced around and got his bearings.
It was dark but for the faint red glow of the large planet on the horizon. The crimson light that shone in through the glass could have been reminiscent of a sunset, though Ganymede could not quell the sudden thought of blood.
He looked around slowly, and once he was satisfied that all was as it had been the last time he’d come, he stepped cautiously toward the balcony doors and gently closed them, shutting out the draft and providing a barrier between himself and the damaged terrace.
Valhalla had been right to worry about those sorts of dangers. He couldn’t trust himself not to become carried away by what he was seeing, and forget what was truly there.
He turned back to the room with his back to the glass doors, staring around at the dust, cracks, and piles of battered furniture. The book from before had not moved from the bedside table, and he approached it to run the tips of his fingers over the front cover, brushing away more of the dust and dirt to reveal words in a language he did not know.
“… Ganymede…” he heard, as if whispered from far away.
All at once, the scene around him changed. There was an old man standing there, feet from the door, his thin figure clothed in black robes, his gnarled hands resting on top of a cane he used to support himself. A small group of women stood to the side. Most of them looked young and wore aprons over their dresses and caps upon their hair, but the woman at the fore was older and stern, her dark hair streaked with gray and pulled back into a tight bun, the collar of her dress high, her posture stiff and unyielding.
Before them all stood a young boy, blond haired and pale, with a lost, terrified look upon his face. His eyes were wet and puffy, his lips parted in both fear and awe. His clothes appeared to be of a decent quality, though they lacked embellishments, such as the brooch the older woman wore at her throat, or the golden chain draped over the man’s shoulders. The boy looked as if he’d been plucked from somewhere modest and comfortable, and thrust into a world of riches.
Ganymede stared closely at the little boy, and did not know whether or not to be disturbed by the fact that he saw a bit of himself in him.
“Do you understand…?” the aged man asked. His voice was quiet, but firm.
The little boy nodded quickly, though it looked as if he didn’t understand at all.
The scene was quick to fade away, and though Ganymede stood very still in the hopes that he would see more, that the vision would be further explained, nothing else returned. Slowly, he crossed the room to the door, and exited out into the deserted sitting room.
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 2:44 pm
Word Count: 565
A tea cup lay shattered on the ground by a dust ridden couch, near one clawed foot of an ornate coffee table. A silver platter rested in the center of the table, the dust that covered its surface disturbed from the slow tracing of fingers. Ganymede approached to sweep the tips of his fingers through it again, and then straightened to look around just as the visions returned to him.
The boy from before, though perhaps a bit older now, sat in a chair at a desk along the far wall, hunched over as he scratched words along a piece of parchment. The old woman stood at his shoulder, observing his progress and frequently stopping him to make a correction. On the other side of the room, the younger women, whom Ganymede assumed to be maids, busied themselves with their work, shooting the occasional glance toward the boy and whispering to one another behind their hands and feather dusters.
“… so lonely…” he heard one of them say.
“… just a boy…”
“… more children his own age…”
“… all these expectations…”
“… too much…”
“… still so young…”
Ganymede glanced back to the child and assumed it could only be himself – or, at least, the person he once was in the past. He wasn’t sure how much he could claim it to be him, when he’d grown under different circumstances and lived such a different life in a different place. He had stopped being that boy when life had ceased in this world, and all that had once been had died.
In any case, the boy certainly looked similar to the young man he’d seen in flashes of memory before – smiling sadly in mirrors, dancing freely in the grand ballroom -- though terribly small and frighteningly lost in such a big room with such a stern guardian. He watched as the boy straightened up, put down his writing utensil, and allowed the old woman to take his parchment from him. She read over it and seemed to take a long time deciding what to make of it, though she eventually nodded her consent.
“Very well. This draft is acceptable. An improvement, but not without flaws,” she said, looking down her nose at him imperiously.
“Can I go outside now?” the boy asked.
His clothing had changed. His knee-length shorts were crisply pressed, his matching jacket adorned with golden buttons, his shins covered in stockings and his feet dressed in buckled shoes. His fair hair was a little longer, tied back at the nape with a red ribbon.
“You have not yet finished your lessons,” the old woman informed him. Her tone of voice might have forestalled any arguments from a less willful individual.
“Just for a little while. I can do the rest of my lessons later.”
“You will do the rest of your lessons now, Ganymede.”
The boy frowned at that, his shoulder slumping sadly. Across the room, the maids whispered all the more furiously.
The image faded just as the previous one had, the figures, so clear seconds before, melting back into the dust and gloom of the room. Even as they disappeared, he thought he could still hear the quiet whispers, calling to him from long ago.
“Ganymede… Ganymede…”
He left the sitting room and ventured into the hall, shutting the door behind him and closing the feelings of loneliness within.
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Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 2:48 pm
Word Count: 877
He didn’t know where to go from there. The palace suddenly seemed even emptier than before, and he wondered if it was because he was missing Valhalla’s presence. While the addition of another party had made it difficult to truly see what there was to be seen, the companionship had brought a bit of warmth to an otherwise cold and lonely scene. He didn’t know what to do with himself, or what to explore next, when the palace was so large and he couldn’t be sure what it was that triggered certain visions to show up in various rooms of the building.
Slowly, he began to make his way back down the hall, finding a staircase that took him back to the ground floor. He intended to return to the ballroom in the hopes that something else would present itself there – he had seen the most people there, whether or not he knew who they all were – but he stopped on another hall, his attention suddenly focused on a set of doors, through which there was a courtyard with a crumbling fountain at its center.
He remembered passing it the last time, after following Val from a room that made his stomach turn, but he hadn’t paid it much attention at the time.
He went out through the doors, careful not to push them off their hinges, and entered into the weathered yard. The ground was mostly dirt and split stone, but he imagined there’d once been grass and lush foliage, perhaps some flowers, rose bushes, or hedges. No water rested in the fountain basin, nor did any fall from its numerous spouts. It was a sad skeleton of a garden, though something told him it had once been a calm, peaceful place.
The visions came to him here as well, but they took a bit longer to come into focus. Figures faded in and out – the boy from before, closer to his age now, with an older man dressed similarly to the aged man from the short scene in the bedroom, standing before another boy his age and more dignified and important looking gentleman.
“… will soon be introduced to the public…”
“… is your age… diplomatic visit…”
The images became clearer once the older gentleman vacated the scene and the two boys were left alone. They sat upon the edge of the fountain, with a decent amount of space between them, talking quietly and looking at one another as though meeting someone else in a position so similar to their own made them nervous. Ganymede stepped closer to chance a better look.
His past self had grown since the scene in the sitting room, a mid-adolescent with long, pale hair bound back into a loose tail. He still wore stockings and buckled shoes, but had knee pants instead of shorts, and a loosely fitted shirt instead of a jacket. He appeared more at ease, as if since childhood he’d grown to accept his fate, or else been bred not to show his displeasure and despair.
The other boy couldn’t have been any older, though slightly taller and more athletic. He wore green and brown, with a line of fur at each shoulder and along his boots. His arms were bare, his hair a dark auburn and pulled back as well, and his expression looked somewhat sour, as if he did not want to be there, or as if he were feeling uncomfortable and out of place and didn’t want to show it.
“I’m not supposed to tell anyone my real name,” the former Ganymede said. He had a small smile on his face, and his eyes twinkled mischievously.
“Then don’t,” the other boy replied. Short, to the point, no-nonsense.
“But we’re alike, you and I,” the fairer one argued.
“Maybe…”
“Aren’t you ever lonely, too?”
A noncommittal shrug. The darker boy frowned at his companion but didn’t contradict him.
The boy that was then Ganymede smiled wider and inched closer along the fountain ledge. “Liesel…” he said quietly. “My name is Liesel. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
The other boy shook his head, and though he never once smiled, he didn’t move away.
The sound was the first thing about the vision to fade. The present Ganymede stood and watched in silence as the two boys continued to converse, the blond looking progressively more animated and exited, while his guest showed him nothing more than a frown, though it was not hostile. The images themselves began to fade as soon as the boy… Liesel… pushed the auburn haired youth into the water.
Ganymede thought he could hear snatches of laughter, shrieks of excitement and a shout of “Val!” but the scene was quick to dissolve and his surroundings returned to their present state.
He could feel his heart racing in his chest. Bursting with excitement, he knew who that must have been – his closest ally in this existence and, perhaps, his first true friend in the last.
Without much thought, he took his phone in hand and concentrated on home, letting the sudden desire to see Val – or Chris – fill his being as he pressed the center button, leaving the whispers and the ghosts and the memories to the empty stillness of the palace.
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