Storytime

Dark Light

Kris Takahashi Storytime 4 Comments

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Heyo, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these literary sketches, so time to stretch out the old fingers and do some calisthenics. I might do this every Sunday or so just to help fill out more content since I’ve been so lazy as of late.

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And so it was down in the belly of the cave, full of bile and stink and horror, that darkness became a welcome sight and light an age old villain.

Thieves and monsters share this in common, and the girl was no exception. They say she wore the shadows like a scarf, but in the bowels of this dungeon they served as something else – a gas mask, a guardian, a friend. Fear may be the artwork of the blind, but so is courage. The imagination required to not think – to close your eyes in a room full of snarling wolves – was something few possessed and even fewer understood. Blindness quiets a mind drunk off adrenaline’s booze. Darkness can strip even the nastiest monsters of their fangs, claws, and face, and place them in the mirror.

Still, the demons lurking in the corners of light were merely echoes of the beast that surrounded her. And the deeper she delved the more it clenched its fangs, slowly choking the throat of the great black wind.

Its name was greed.

Like all sworn enemies of the dark, its light shone brightly, from its ruby eyes to its pearls of teeth to a coin purse full of Septims. And all it took was a single CLINK to impregnate her mind like so many bastard sperm, a single noise so full of lust and screams that it made Molag Bal cover his ears. It was an unseen form of domestic violence – married to the coin, the thrill, and the hunt, and all it took was the promise of more to keep her in this abusive relationship.

And so it was always at night, like the moth and the flame, werewolves and the moon, that the girl meets her demise; when the darkness can no longer save her, and a thief is honest with no one save herself.

 

Trailers and Teasers – Hope Lies

Kris Takahashi Storytime 5 Comments

“Howdy stranger. Take a seat by the campfire, we got plenty of room.”

The girl tips her cap and smiles. Both the fire and the invitation are warm enough, but the man to her right doesn’t seem too happy about it. His stare stretches for thousands of miles, far enough to see the back of his own head. It’s bald and dirty, with a scar running across the middle like a zipper.

“Oh, don’t pay him no mind. He ain’t much for talkin’. But, if you make trouble, he’ll put two…”

The girl makes a peace sign with her fingers, before pointing them at her head like a gun.

“…in your skull.”

I tell her I’m not here to make trouble, waves, or even conversation. All I want to do is rest my aching feet. The girl sympathizes. She tells me her soles are so worn not even Jesus can save them.

Maybe it’s the pun that makes my shoulders relax, or maybe it’s her southern charm, but I drop my knapsack on the dirt with a great big thud. Guns, ammo, and whiskey spill onto the ground like a diary.

“You starting a war, sheriff?”

Maybe.

“Then you’re gonna need a good deputy.”

Maybe I will.

“The name’s Hope,” she says, breaking the silence. “Hope Lies. Funny name, I know. German, I think. The lying part, not the hope.”

I ask her the obvious. Well, does it? Does “hope lie?”

“I don’t know,” she says, “You’ve been traveling these wastes. Why don’t you tell me?”

Any Day Now

Kris Takahashi Storytime 2 Comments

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Any day now.

There was something wrong about the way the words rolled off her tongue. They were pointy, bold, and crooked, but that was nothing new. What was new was the fact that Veralene noticed, that she was somewhat self-aware – as if she saw herself through a window and caught of glimpse of her own foolishness.

Normally the Breton had no problem being honest, but not with herself. You might say her mind was so narrow it could hide behind a straw. This was life providing another angle, turning her head ever so slightly to show her the crook of her nose. Yet not even that could sway her belief that her situation was temporary. All she had to do was place the amulet around her neck, and a horde of handsome barons would walk into the Skeever and fight to the death for the honor of making her rich. You’ll see, she’d say. Any day now.

In contrast, Fironet always knew. Every night a chorus of bards would amble in and out of the tavern, like a flock of noble seraphs on their way to the heavens. Jarls and Thanes had titles, but they seldom had presence. Bards were different. What good is owning a piece of land if you were born with wings? And she always believed her back was bare.

For her, those three words meant something else entirely. Any day now, she’ll have to say goodbye to Solitude. And every day after, she’ll find it hard to sing – because the memories of her failure will be stuck to every chord. Veralene worries her day will never come. Fironet prays to the Nine that she’s right.