castle in the sky *in progress*

It is late evening. The sun has smeared his last bloody rays across the lower clouds and then sunk into oblivion for the night. I watch as the sky sinks with him, from blue into black. The world is grey.
My small traveler cloud is about to dissolve, so I take up my rucksack and jump onto a long, low cloud bank. It spreads off into the horizon. I sit on the edge of infinity with the wind at my back, and look out across forever. The gale whips this desolate plain into small crests and troughs. They stretch on and on across the endless ocean in front of me. I know what lies before me. I leave my tiny pack of provisions sitting on the edge of nowhere, and I walk out into eternity.
In the beginning, I didn’t even know what eternity meant. I thought I was invincible. The rain spirits fell in the morning on the day I left, a rare occurrence. I woke up to the fresh smell of a banquet. Mother had harvested the broken bodies of the rain for a midmorning feast. The sharp sizzle and crack of frying food reached my ears as I stepped into the common room of our little cottage. She smiled and dished me up a heaping plate. As I ate, I watched the clock. Today was the day of my brother’s naming ceremony, a great occasion for the whole family. He would become a man, and be able to help our struggling family. He could work in the marketplace, or even be apprenticed to a craftsman and live in the castle! The possibilities overwhelmed me.
I gobbled the last bit of my breakfast and rushed out onto the carrier cloud which would take me to the castle gates. Mother came after me, fussing and clucking over me, the last of her brood. Once we passed the guardsmen, I raced ahead to find Geoffrey before his ceremony began. Skittering around the corridors of the castle towards the robing rooms, I bumped straight into the back of a stately old gentleman. He turned, and grasped my arm. “What’s the rush?” he hissed, baring a gruesome smile. I muttered into my shoes, and made to go off. “Wait,” he said, suddenly commanding. “Look at me.” I looked upwards into the intricately woven patterns of his deep grey eyes. He nodded judiciously. “You will have need of this.” he said. He took a small piece of yarn out of his pocket. In a few deft twists, it took the shape of a cat. He jerked out a piece of my hair with a swift movement. I yelped and held a hand to my head. “My apologies, Miss.” he bowed. “But I wouldn’t want to leave ye without a means of controlling him, now would I?” He winked as he wound the strand of hair around the cat’s neck, and handed him to me. I tucked the doll into my pocket. “Thank you very much sir,” I said, remembering my manners, before ducking off around the corner. I couldn’t find Geoffrey in the robing room, however hard I tried, and the tailors kept shooing me off. I sulked around the door until Mother came bustling about and caught me to go sit with her in the balconies.


*scene1*
The cat still slept in her pocket, and she knew what she needed. Or rather, she knew the name of what she needed. Blood. How hard could it be, she thought, to find this blood? Perhaps she could ask where to find it in a marketplace. But as she walked on and on across the soft, white desert, she saw no signs of a market, or even a house. Late into the night she wandered, finally falling asleep in a small nook of a carrier cloud from sheer exhaustion. Trying to wake cat-needs to think of blood(feeds off of thoughts) but doesn’t know what it is. Falls asleep on cloud that drifts down to form a thick fog—she can walk on the ground(happens once in a lifetime, about the odds of a human being tossed into the air by the wind. Walks through fog a few inches from ground. Stumbes into scene of a crime—someone is dead, jeweled dagger in heart? There is a streetlight by the scene with the top half of the bulb broken off. It is filled with blood, dripping slowly down the sides between the jagged glass. Electricity still runs to the light, and it gives off a sickening red glow. The blood is beginning to evaporate from the lamp, curling up in red-tinged swirls to poison the rest of the fog. She hears voices from the blood-wraiths. Screams and pleading and the faintest sound of the darkened thoughts of the murderer. His satisfaction as the lady slumps dead in his arms. Finds chest of jewels, covered in blood, dripping sinister almost reflective coating. She is hypnotized by them, (cloud-people cant touch anything solid, it will cut/disperse them) and reaches out to touch them, despite knowing they would take off her fingers. However as soon as she touches the blood (wasn’t expecting it to be so sickly, didn’t knw what it was) she cant think of anything but the blood on her fingers, stares at them in horror, and the cat wakes. Yawns showing bloody teeth. Speaks, dark and cruel, dishonest and brutal cold. But must guide her true because of the cord around neck. First meal in a long time. Tells her to get back to clouds if she wants to survive, (shell be cut off from her world when clouds evaporates) makes it back just in time to catch a low traveler cloud.

*scene2*
Just left city,(shaken) stowed away. Now has been thrown off by captain, because she has no money. Left dirty and shaken on godforsaken cloud bank. Sees black globes rising near the other edge. Walks over and watches them rise, almost hypnotized. Reaches out in trance and catches one. Looks into it, perfect black. Then feels surge of emotion from within the globe, and darkness begins to melt away. Sees child, starved thin, cut all over, hears sound of its death, loss of innocence is instant. Tortured soul scrabbles at the now-clear globe, trying to get out. Clearly it is a torture chamber for him. Stunned, lets globe float away. As she releases it, the black seems to pour onto it from unseen source, as the creature within struggles.

*3*
Thank god for that low-hanging cloud. The fog rolled in three days after L’rael stepped out of the sky. Three days after the blood spread over the street, and oozed over the cracked edges of the streetlamp that cut her when she tried to reach inside. Three days since human blood mixed with her own.