((I wrote a little something over christmas. At the moment it's just one part, but if you like it I could certainly continue.))
CHAPTER I
'ADVENT'
I can hear... Ohh, something... Something... ah, who cares...
Mmm... I'm so comfortable, and warm and safe and it's so nice here in the dark.
I can hear, maybe a voice, but I'm feeling too good to move, even to open my eyes.
Everything's just perfect. Well, almost perfect, maybe the bed is just a touch too hard.
There's that voice again, screaming. I wonder what that's all about.
And this bed really is too hard, and now that I think about it, that draught is quite irritating.
Wait... Screaming?
With a herculean effort I force my eyes open... Bleary, I can hardly see, oh, and this bed feels like it's made of... Ah, it actually is made of stone, and its not a bed...
There's that screaming again and my mind is rapidly returning to lucidity. Screaming and... Roaring?
My eyesight is almost back to normal and I look swiftly around the room, blinking away the blur.
"Argh!" I scream, now!
I leap frantically away from the mummified body I'd been sharing a plinth with, skittering and stumbling wildly over the hard stone floor to sprawl a great distance from my erstwhile bed. The horrid corpse remains still, leering evilly, a wicked silver sword gripped in its twiggish, shrivelled fingers.
The screaming, the other screaming is getting louder and closer, and the roaring too and I am frozen in conflicted confusion and panic. Pale, milky-white light spills into this big stone room from only one place, a grand, trapezoidal doorway a few dozen feet from me. It yawns wide, filling the room with pale, disquieting light. I take my first frightened stride in that direction when I see her.
She comes barrelling into the chamber as though galvanised and before I can even halt my step the roaring reptilian monster follows behind!
Like a dinosaur made of thorns and wicked-bladed knives and shimmering with every colour of shining scales it chases her, intent on murder and feasting! She's running right at me and with agility I'd never before suspected I may have, I throw myself from her path, striking the floor and rolling to my feet again.
Some tiny voice in my mind says that I can't do that, but I have, and I've no time to wonder at it. Instantly I leap again, evading the monster that has sighted more prey in me. It skids on the stone floor, more massive than I and less agile. That silver blade in the mummy's dead hands glints at me and I run for it!
The woman is somewhere, I catch a glimpse of her in my mad dash for the sword and then she's gone. I can hear the beast bellow its rage too, echoing madly from the chamber's walls.
Time slows sickeningly to my perception. My fingers close on the sword's hilt, snatching it from the brittle, breaking grip of the corpse and with only a moment to spare. Every second passes with the pace of glaciers. I see every detail of the scene with the most profound and perfect clarity, I feel my body turn, lithe and cat-like in slow motion.
The beast is inches from me, it's razor-filled maw wide and reaching for me and I have all the time in the word to study the details of those flesh-shredding serrated teeth. My arm flies straight, driving the curved silver sword into the monster's mouth, slicing effortlessly through bone and skin and brain.
And in that instant, time catches sight of me and the bone-jarring crash of stone and sword and monster is all too sudden. And I'm laying, dazed and hurting on the floor, inches from the dead beast, the sword still jutting sickeningly from it's mouth, the tip in fact, thrust right through and out the back of its skull.
"You killed it!" her voice is strange, like none I've heard before.
I glance around, she's looking between me and the monster, as though not sure which sight is less believable.
I think I must be doing the same for she is quite as strange a thing as the beast I just killed. More than six feet tall, I'm sure, and purple.
I take a moment to look away and back at her. Her skin is a wonderful, delicate shade of lilac, though her long straight hair is black. Human looking, if not for her extraordinary skin, and quite stunningly attractive.
I spring to my feet... As shocked and fatigued as I am I'm up in a trice! Too fast. I bounce experimentally on my toes. I feel so light and strong. The analytical part of my mind nods intelligently and chalks my acrobatics up to that.
"Yes," I say, unnecessarily.
For want of anything better to do I pull the sword out of the monster. There's no blood, none at all on the blade. It's light too. The sword is so very light, it could be made of paper for all it weighs, and it's as bright as mercury, shining like a mirror.
The strange lilac lady watches me for a moment and ventures, "Who are you?"
The way she's looking at me, I'm starting to think I'm very likely as odd to her as she is to me. I glance down at myself. Her question, I now admit inwardly, is not one I can fully answer. I look between my body and my reflection in the silvery surface of the sword. The woman I see is not the one I expect.
Beguilingly beautiful, I say it without pride or exaggeration, a face to fire the lust in almost any woman or man. Fine featured and aristocratic, pale, bloodless skin framed by the most profoundly orange-red hair, long and falling in deliciously twisted ringlets. My eyes though! Oh, the most wonderful, terrible green eyes.
I'm paper-pale, tall and slender as a snake save firm and pleasantly full breasts and wow! The light gravity is so very, very good to the bust! All I have for modestly is a tiny white bolero jacket, sculpted so perfectly to my form and an equally tiny skirt which shows off my white knickers with every little move I make. There's so much pale, bare flesh exposed between my jacket and my skirt, and between my skirt and the tops of my tall white boots.
Suddenly I realise I'm as good as naked, and ogling myself in front of a stranger and a warm blush spreads over my cheeks.
"I... Don't know..." I admit, not knowing where to look, "Who are you? What are you, where are we?"
Questions tumble from my lips and again I scan her and our surroundings. She's wearing clothes of indigo and black fabric which shimmers like silk or satin... Or water or smoke. A long skirt slit right to the thigh and a teeny tiny top that covers her bust but little else. There's quite a lot of sexy dark hair under her arms and I'm proud of myself for keeping my priorities straight and noticing that!
The room we're in though... It's a big stone chamber, square in shape, but the walls lean in to one another. The single trapezoidal door is the only way in our out. That great stone plinth in the middle where I awoke is the only feature. Ah, but the walls... Now I can see carvings on them. Pictures of people and animals and strange geometric patterns, perhaps letters, writing maybe?
"You don't know who you are? Well, I do not know where we are," she smiles an odd, charming smile, "But I am Xellah. And as for what? This morning I was Princess of Lorroth. Now, a fugitive."
"Princess? Wait, Lorroth? Where are we?"
"I told you, I know not, somewhere in the Perigreen."
"Perigreen?" I ask, feeling obvious.
She looks at me like I've just grown a third head "The jungle... What manner of woman are you?"
I can think of no reply but, "What manner of woman are you?"
"I've never seen anyone like you before."