A-Z Challenge #7: G is for Giant

G is for Giant, Long Necks and Spots

[Sorry, this is another long one.]

   Barnard looked up from the campfire as a noise gradually grew louder the closer it came. Instinctively he reached for the gun he normally kept tucked into the back of his pants; no gun was to be found. Without missing a beat, he reached down for his new club, only half worried, because Art was always screaming about something.
   His barreling, rolling, and screeching new comrade dashed right into their campsite and tripped over something, landing flat on the ground. Damn, Art had to have the luck of the devil to live this long.
    “This is why you shouldn’t ever be without a weapon,” Barnard counseled. “Then you wouldn’t have to run anywhere.”
    Art staggered up painfully from where he landed, face covered in dirt. “Dinosaur! I think there’s a dinosaur! Though it might not be because they’re all dead. But then again, it could be, because it might be!”
   Barnard shook his head. There was no talking to Art like this. He’d have to wait until, oh, there he was.
   James entered the campsite much calmer than Art, though even he looked a little spooked. “Don’t be ridiculous. I told you it’s not a dinosaur.”
   “But it has a long neck like the broncosaurus and-”
   “What’s a broncosaurus?” Barnard asked. He didn’t remember learning about that one. Then again, it’d been a long time and a world ago since he’d been in school.
   “Made-up, that’s what. It’s a giraffe.”
   Well, damn, if that still wasn’t weird.
   “No, it’s not!” Art protested, voice hot. “It can’t be.”
   “Didn’t the Old Lady teach you about-”
   “I saw a giraffe before. In a book,” Art said, and made it sound insulting, like books were still commonplace. “It was a lot friendlier looking though. And it would never try to eat a person.”
   “A giraffe tried to eat you?”
   “No,” James said, exasperated. “Art, was climbing a tree - and no, don’t ask - and then we heard something and-”
   “Something was shiny in the tree! It was probably treasure and-”
   “And that’s not a good reason to risk breaking your neck. What type of treasure could possibly be in a tree-”
   “If I knew that I wouldn’t have been climbing it-”
   “I’m trying to tell Barnard-”
   “Baggaro-”
   Barnard sat back down and leaned against the tree behind him, taking in the argument with a steady growing calm. These kids were... kids. And damn, if that wasn’t something he ever thought he’d miss. Plus, he’d have to wait until they quieted down to ask about the merits of hunting it. He’d never had giraffe.


[I'm keeping my A-Z challenge entries themed. They're set in the post-apocalyptic world of my current w.i.p The Wandering Shadow. They're typically scenes featuring the four main characters - Art, James, Barnard, and Elpirt. I hope you find them entertaining and enjoy learning about the characters. Excited to be a part of the A-Z Challenge!]

A-Z Challenge #6: F is for Foolish

F is for Foolish, Aspiring to Be

   “What are you doing?”
   James can’t answer. He’s not really sure himself. He’s only so relieved, so happy. For every beat his heart is shouting - Live. Live. Live. Live. Live. His whole body is awake with the knowledge - a strange, nauseous truth that he must have beat down into a small, single note he never played and instead kept tucked safe in the dark confines of his lost dreams.
   He had never thought he could live until this moment.
   But he wanted to. He’s wanted to so badly that he’d run from it completely, leaving it behind to be found in a giant, hollow city, on a bus housing fifteen skeletons, only one cradled inside a body with a heartbeat. Such a loud fucking heartbeat.
   Now his life is narrowed down to his shaking hands somehow overwhelming Nick’s. Nick, who wasn’t shaking at all, always so calm. Nick just needed to wait for that brief second where James faltered.
   “I think,” James gasps. “I think I might be having fun.”
   His smile is painful, because his lips are dry and chapped, and because he’s starting to tire. But shit, he can’t fail, he can’t, and not because he’ll die, but because he suddenly has a song in his head, the words beginning to clog his throat in their demand to be released.
    The others are going to love it.
   He has to live long enough to tell them.


[I'm keeping my A-Z challenge entries themed. They're set in the post-apocalyptic world of my current w.i.p The Wandering Shadow. They're typically scenes featuring the four main characters - Art, James, Barnard, and Elpirt. I hope you find them entertaining and enjoy learning about the characters. Excited to be a part of the A-Z Challenge!]

A-Z Challenge #5: E is for Elated

E is for Elated, or, ArtCannotContainHisExcitement

[Sorry, this one's a bit long...]

    They ambush him as he takes his first step into the house - their house! - and Art laughs when Chester covers his eyes. Elpirt takes a hand and tugs them along, all awkward angles and elbows and questions.
    “Why can’t I see? I want to see!”
    “Not yet,” comes Baggaro’s voice. Art doesn’t know where he is thanks to Chester, but from the sound of his voice it seems he’s guarding their back, shutting the door with a sound snap. Art knows Baggaro and Chester really like that they have a door, and walls, and even windows, but Art misses the wind already. He thinks Elpirt agrees, since he finds her jumping along the rooftops and lounging in trees during the day. But Art trusts his friends, and Baggaro and Cheser had insisted.
    They wouldn’t let him anywhere near the house while it was being built. So he soon becomes lost amidst the sudden stops and quick turns. Elpirt squeeze his hand in a certain way and he just knows to lift his feet before Chester gets a chance to warn,
    “Stairs. Take it slow.”
    “Why can’t I just walk?” Art whines. But then he bites his tongue. He doesn’t much mind, really. It’s sort of nice in a way that’s totally neat that his friends want to surprise him. From Baggaro’s deep guffaws, and Chester humming his favorite song, and Elpirt hissing out one long syllable that means, just wait, justwait - well, this surprise is probably going to be almost as fun as hunting rats.
    It’s not almost as fun.
    It’s a thousand times suns and somersaults more fun.
    It’s probably that Heaven place Baggaro sometimes talks about.
    “This is your room.” Chester says, and Art blinks a few times after his friend’s hands disappear from his face.
    Then he has to blink a few more times, not sure what he’s seeing is real. And then when it hits him, and he pinches himself to be sure, he walks forward into the room and turns slowly, and slowly, and stares.
    “Not as many pieces, probably,” Baggaro says with regret.
    “And probably not as many colors,” Chester says. He’s not as sad, but more thoughtful, like, he really meant, And probably not as many colors... yet. But one day...
    It must have been Elpirt who designed it. Elpirt’s always making amazing things.
    The pieces of glass are all hanging, most on their own strings, but some are clumped together. They’re all different colors, and the windows are open so they swing about in a breeze, gently and hypnotizing. Their colors dot the walls and the floor like pinpricks of starlight in the day - if starlight was made up of all the different colors in a rainbow. It leaves him speechless, mouth hanging open and eyes wide.
    The ones clumped together make shapes and forms. A long, blue and white dragon breathing a single red flame is probably the biggest, hanging in front of the giant windows on one wall. Not a space of the ceiling is without something, except for a little corner where a hammock hangs.
    “It’s not really the safest room,” Chester says when he notices that Art has torn himself away from his gift. “We wanted to keep your sleeping area a little safer. But the rest, well, no practicing your jousting inside. Shit, I sound like a mother.”
    Baggaro laughs, “You’re only just noticing this now?”
    “Shut-up,” Chester grunts, and maybe his face is turning red, but it’s also blue and green and orange and pink and,
    And Art looks from Elpirt’s wide grin to Baggaro’s warm eyes to Chester’s nervous, wringing hands, and he feels the love welling up inside him and spilling over. He throws himself at the closest one - Elpirt - and they sprawl along the ground, giggling and wrestling, and Art bounces up to tackle Baggaro in the gut, the older man grabbing him in the middle and flipping him over with a war cry that’s mostly laughter, so much laughter. He’s placed back down and tilts, unbalanced. Chester’s hands on his shoulders stop him, then retreat so he can gesture grandly towards the rest of the room.
    “Well?”
    Art has no words.
    He doesn’t know one that can match everything he wants to say.

[I'm keeping my A-Z challenge entries themed. They're set in the post-apocalyptic world of my current w.i.p The Wandering Shadow. They're typically scenes featuring the four main characters - Art, James, Barnard, and Elpirt. I hope you find them entertaining and enjoy learning about the characters. Excited to be a part of the A-Z Challenge!]

A-Z Challenge #4: D is for Dead

D is for Dead, What James is Soon to Be

James isn’t going to lie to himself.
   He’s got his fingers hovering over the strings of the guitar. He’s got the instrument heavy in his hands. He’s got a makeshift sling to keep it strapped to his back. He’s got a road in front of him, dark and empty and long, stretching into near suburbs and far city, a towering skeleton without a world to hold up.
   He has minutes, precious minutes, sliding through his fists, spent and gone, and soon Patrick will get back.
   He starts down the road.


[I'm keeping my A-Z challenge entries themed. They're set in the post-apocalyptic world of my current w.i.p The Wandering Shadow. They're typically scenes featuring the four main characters - Art, James, Barnard, and Elpirt. I hope you find them entertaining and enjoy learning about the characters. Excited to be a part of the A-Z Challenge!]

A-Z Challenge #3: C is for Carats

C is for Carats, What Elpirt Wears Around her Neck

Blood was rushing into his face. It was uncomfortable and awkward, and the pressure made it feel like his brain was ready to leak from his ears. Barnard, swinging about wildly, smashed into his side with a curse.
    “Goddamn. Fucking. Going to bash in some brains for this.”
    “Yeah,” James gasped, as he struggled not to puke from the way the world was spinning. When his body came to a stop he noticed the figure. A slim, pale body in grey and brown clothes, turning and ducking and twisting its way up and around the rafters of the building they were being held in. When it came to a stop in front of them it balanced on a nearby rope and looked at the two of them with a silent stare, her head cocked to the side.
    Her head.
    A girl.
    A girl just as tiny and slim as Art. Maybe more so.
    When she turned her head further, his eyes were drawn to the necklace that clinked with each movement.
    At first he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Then, after blinking a few times and seeing the way the sunlight caught on the dangling chain, he recognized them as rings. Gold and silver banded they all had one thing in common - diamonds. They sometimes reflected the light at just the right angle to make little rainbows burst on the pale skin of her neck and lower chin.
    It was oddly beautiful.
    And it would have been a more welcoming sight if it didn’t draw attention to her teeth.
    James swallowed a scream.
    He preferred to look at the graveyard of bones below.


[I'm keeping my A-Z challenge entries themed. They're set in the post-apocalyptic world of my current w.i.p The Wandering Shadow. They're typically scenes featuring the four main characters - Art, James, Barnard, and Elpirt. I hope you find them entertaining and enjoy learning about the characters. Excited to be a part of the A-Z Challenge!]

A-Z Challenge #2: B is for Barbarian

B is for Barbarian, what Barnard is Happy to Become

Barnard had killed before.
   There was the war back when the world hadn’t gone and blown itself up. He hadn’t been innocent then. He’d been right in the thick of things, gripping a rifle with the sun hanging high over his head. There had been dust and grime and dirt as they crawled along the streets while buildings exploded to shower bits and pieces of wood and plaster and blood and body parts on top of them.
   Barnard had killed before.
   After the End of the World he’d been prepared. He had a stockpile of guns and bullets, explosives and chemicals. He had a pack of mutts he adored, with sharp teeth and good noses. He had signs that weren’t just for show. Don’t fuck with me and You think you want to try it, but you don’t. And when people thought they could handle the threat, when they tried to pass those signs, well, he didn’t have a hard time pulling the trigger.
   Barnard had killed before, and maybe he will again.
   But now he’s got a couple pairs of eyes that give long looks to the guns he keeps strapped to his back and his hip, and they don’t say anything with their lips but they don’t have to. So the main weapon he reaches for in times of need is the whittled club of thick wood that Art enthusiastically commanded he carry. ‘Only proper for a barbarian!’ Maybe one day it will get him shot. Maybe, because he can, he’ll use it to bash people’s heads in, literally.
   But Barnard sort of likes being Baggaro the Barbarian, wielder of a club that leaves you alive, but with the fear of the Wandering Shadows in your eyes.
   They need people to spread the word anyway.





[I'm keeping my A-Z challenge entries themed. They're set in the post-apocalyptic world of my current w.i.p The Wandering Shadow. They're typically scenes featuring the four main characters - Art, James, Barnard, and Elpirt. I hope you find them entertaining and enjoy learning about the characters. Excited to be a part of the A-Z Challenge!]

A-Z Challenge #1: A is for Art

A is for Art, The Greatest Rogue in the World

    It’s debatable what Arthur Grisby, The Great Wandering Shadow, current championing rogue of the world, was most known for. He had, in his short life, accomplished many things. In fact, he was still at large, still shaking up the world with grand ideas and a sturdy, metal pole.
Most knew his name because of New Awetown. Many knew him for his never-ending optimism, which he wielded like a weapon. And then there was the battle with Zachary Nodes - no one was forgetting that any time soon. And the loyalty of his friends - a bard, a barbarian, and a... a... well, no one really knows what to call Elpirt.
    All of these were things to be remembered for.
    But he also spent three days clinging to a ceiling rafter in the mess hall because Kerry and Robin had acquired a kitten. A kitten whose basket and blankets were set up in said mess hall. A kitten that liked Art.
    A lot of people knew him for that, too.

[I'm keeping my A-Z challenge entries themed. They're set in the post-apocalyptic world of my current w.i.p The Wandering Shadow. They're typically scenes featuring the four main characters - Art, James, Barnard, and Elpirt. I hope you find them entertaining and enjoy learning about the characters. Excited to be a part of the A-Z Challenge! ... I hope I'm doing things right, haha!


I also apparently fail at scheduling posts, since this was supposed to auto go up much earlier, haha... I'll work on that]