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Hi, my name is Fleta
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 | Watching: Book 1- Moon Water (Chapter 1) |
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 5 with 4 vote(s)
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| Created: 2009-08-22 14:43:05 |
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A/N: Yes, this is another story I'm starting. Like The Patients, I hope to get this published someday, so I'm making the chapters pretty long. This could one day be a series, and right now it is just sort of starting out, so tell me if anything about it is confusing (I'll try to explain everything about the strange place that is this story's setting throughout all of the chapters). Anyways, please enjoy, and if you see anything I could approve on I would love if you would point that out. Thanks.
I live in the place with no sun, no light. A cold, dark place filled with cruelty and secrets, death and fear. It has been almost 200 years since this place; the region of Lassithi in the Crete Island of Greece, was discovered and settled by a strange sort of Greeks. After 40 peaceful years on the island, the Watchers came.
The Watchers are strange creatures. They are immortal, and have strange, amazing powers. Magic is what most call them, and all of us mortals here fear the Watchers. For now, not only is the region of Lassithi captured by them, but the other regions of the Crete Island as well. Their leader, the Grand Watcher, sits atop a throne somewhere in Lassithi. I myself do not live in Lassithi, but in the region once known as Heraklion. Now, there are not just the four large regions of the island, but many different regions of smaller amounts of land. Each region has one of the Watchers watching over it. If a mortal is caught by the Watcher, even if he or she has not committed a crime, he or she receives a punishment. A small offense or no offense at all means death, a mercy. A larger offense means that he or she is sent to a Flatland.
You see, when the Grand Watcher took over the island, he had his mortal slaves till various fields in the different regions. These fields were called Flatlands. They brought up crops that the Grand Watcher used for his own purposes. After the mortal slaves died from the hard labor, the Flatlands began to fall into ruin. The soil was no longer rich, becoming sand, so that each Flatland was a small desert. When the Grand Watcher had used up all of the crops, he gathered more mortal slaves and commanded for them to till in the Flatlands again. When the discovery of what had happened came to the ears of the Grand Watcher, he was terribly angry, and killed all of the mortal slaves. Then, he decided that death was not the only punishment a Watcher could inflict on a mortal. They could also be sent to a Flatland to work digging and shoveling in the sand in search of soil. The poor mortals sent to Flatlands are worked so hard that most of them die after a month, the labor slowly and painfully bringing them to their death.
Most people here in what is now known as the Phaos Polis (Dark Island) speak Greek. Some speak English, and others speak languages of countries in Europe that I have hardly heard of. There is no safe place for anyone. Dead bodies litter the ground, and many will give you disease. Finding food and shelter is hard, and you must constantly run and hide from the Watcher of your region of the island. No one is safe.
For me, though, I am not safe at all, and not just for the same reasons as everyone else. You see, I have a secret, a secret that must be kept, because if it gets out, I will most certainly be captured and betrayed by other mortals. You see, I am different than other mortals. My mother is a mortal, and my father is a Watcher. I was born with my mother’s mortality, but with strange powers inherited from my father.
He, the Watcher that is my father, is after me. He knows that I have powers that he gave to me. He wants to find me, and I’m not sure why, I suppose he might want to kill me, so that the Grand Watcher can never find out that he had a child with a mortal woman. Or perhaps he wishes to make me use the powers I have, the powers I know I have but I do not use. Because I am almost certain that using my powers will be the first step to making me a Watcher.
I do not wish for my father to find me, and I know that I must find my mother. My mother has secret knowledge, she knows how my birth came about, and she knows the whole story. She knows how I might come about saving my life and my mortality. It is urgent that I find her, yet I never do, for I have little knowledge of where she might be. Certainly she is hiding from my father like I am. If I find her, I am sure that some certain things would be much clearer in my life.
My name is Fleta, which means ‘swift’. Even when I was a baby my mother could tell I was quick and agile, so she gave me this name. I love it because she gave it to me, the mother I have not seen for many years. I am fifteen now, and have come of age. If I did not live in this place, with the Watchers and corpses and my secret, I could very well be married right now.
At the moment I stand hidden by a hill. I can see the Watcher coming, and my heart is pounding quickly. It’s dark here. It’s always dark here.
I step over a skeleton lying on the cold, gray gravel, my feet crunch against it softly. I hear a hiss somewhere close to me. I freeze, my heart pounding against my chest. In this dark place death can come swift to the unwary. Fear makes me simply watch as the small snake slithers out of the bush, coming close to me. I stay still, perhaps it can’t see well; perhaps staying perfectly still will save my life. My breath sounds soft and ragged; I try to keep it from being heard by the snake.
The snake hears the sound of my foot making a slight sound on the gravel. He stops, making a slight hissing noise, turns to peer at me. In the darkness, it must be hard to make me out, because I can see his startlingly red eyes squinting. His tail makes a small flicking motion and he creeps forward towards me.
Swallowing my fear of being heard by the Watcher, I kick at the snake with my foot, sending it roughly down onto the gravel. I stomp on it cruelly, a faint hint of malice in my eyes. When I step away from it, I see that the gravel it’s laying upon is stained scarlet. Glittering in the light, the sight of the blood makes me retreat a little, fear of my own violence flickering in my eyes as I back away from the act I have committed. I have killed the snake, who might not even be a venomous one, who might not even have meant me any harm.
Suddenly, I feel someone grasp my arm tightly, holding me rooted to the spot. I feel the hot breath of the man on my face. Thinking that it’s the Watcher, I kick my legs at him in panic and fear, desperation lending me strength.
But then the man lays a hand on my head gently and whispers in my ear, “Stop you’re struggling, girl, or the Watcher will notice us.”
At his words, I realize he is not the Watcher, and I cease my kicking. Still, I feel fear hold me tight, and I turn my head as much as possible to look at the man. He is tall, and large, with a fat, round belly to show that he has eaten well, at least in previous years. He wears a dirty green tunic, a brown belt with a strange pattern holding a small sword, long brown breeches with a few rips in them, and long red brown boots. He is rather old, perhaps 50 years old, and not the most handsome looking man I had ever seen. His hair was a mousy brown and cut quite short, and his face was rather chubby, with large features and dim gold eyes that regarded me with a gentle kindness. Despite the small sword on his belt, he didn’t seem like much of a threat to me. My agility would surely help me escape a man of such years.
“Come, girl, the Watcher is coming this way. If he finds us, we will surely die,” the man told me briskly. I knew his words were true, for I could see the light of the Watcher not too far from where we stood, and did as he bid, following him across the dirt, blood, and dead bodies that littered the ground. Seeing the snake as we passed it, the man halted, and crouched close to it. It was dead, and the puddle of scarlet on the gravel around it had grown larger.
“This is an omen, surely. Whether good or bad, I cannot be sure,” he murmured thoughtfully. Then, seeing the light of the Watcher grow closer, he stood and urged me on.
Up a hill, we went, and down to a Flatland. Seeing it, I could not help but cry out, “The Watcher will surely find us here! A Flatland is the worst place of all to be with him close.” Falling to my knees, tears trickled down my face. There was absolutely no way we could get away now, only a fool would enter a Flatland. Capture by the Watcher at least meant a sure end.
But the man just grabbed my arm and dragged me forward. I tried to pull back and he said sharply, “Do you wish to be killed, girl? A Flatland may be a strange place, but we are going there nonetheless. The Watcher won’t follow us into a Flatland. But in a Flatland, the Watcher isn’t the only thing you have to worry about.”
My eyes were filled with fear as I followed him into the Flatland. He was right. No Watchers went into the Flatlands, they were places for slaves. The mortals who worked hard there were kept in line by strange magic linked into the ground. Luckily, the magic was only in the fields where the mortals worked. We would not be detected right now, though there was a chance that if we came too close to the fields where the slaves worked, we would be discovered and forced to work as well.
After a time, the man finally spoke. “What is your name, girl?”
“F-fleta,” I stuttered timidly. Looking up at him, I saw that he was not looking at me, but at the sand ahead. “What is your name?” I found myself asking hesitantly.
“Legrand,” he muttered, glancing down at me.
“Legrand.” I whispered it to myself; the name seemed to tinkle like bells in my ears. I knew that name, it was French, and meant large, tall. Indeed, Legrand was quite the meaning of his name, for he towered over me, his stomach large. I could see that he was an older man, for his short brown hair and wispy beard were graying, and his face had many wrinkles.
We kept walking on after that, no words passed between us. I could tell that Legrand was more of a silent man, and I myself had rarely talked to anyone since my mother had first urged me into hiding from my father. Eyes set ahead; I realized we were coming to the edge of the Flatland.
“Where are we going?” I wondered aloud, turning to look at Legrand. At first he seemed to consider my question, and then replied, “We are going to my home.”
Home. The word echoed faintly in my ears, I had not had a true place to call my home all my life. I wondered what this man’s home was like. Surely it could not be much, for not only did he seem an old, weary man of poor health, but no one had ever lived in a normal dwelling since the Watchers first came. To keep from being found by their region’s Watcher, every mortal on the island was constantly on the run, hiding in any sort of shelter they could find at night. Any sort of ‘home’ that you had would be in a deserted place where a Watcher would rarely go, and even then, you would not stay in your home for too much time each day.
Legrand’s home turned out to be little more than a small hut partly cut into the hillside. It seemed small and shabby, partly in the hill, but I supposed that if the roof and walls were secure enough, it would make a fairly nice place to sleep for the night.
Legrand looked about first to make sure we were alone, and then went up to the door of the hut. He stuck one of his dirty fingernails into a crack in the door for it had no doorknob, and made a strange motion. The door then swung open, and Legrand started inside. When he turned around to see me standing a few feet away, gaping at the place, he asked, “Well, are you going to come inside?”
After a wary glance around myself and then back at Legrand and his hut, I hastily followed him inside. |
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