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+--- Thread: Fever Dreams [[ stories, ooc comments welcome ]] (/showthread.php?tid=5727)
Fever Dreams [[ stories, ooc comments welcome ]] - Nauta Lyehga - 12-08-2013
CHAPTER ONE; GRAVEYARD
The sun was a bright burning eye high in the face of the blue sky. Naught a single cloud in the sky marred the perfection of that perfect blue. The sands beneath burned with the intensity of the eye, giving off waves of bending light, marring the otherwise perfectly still landscape. Across the dunes of this burning inferno a group of younglings trekked. Their footprints were the only thing telling where they might had come from in a sea of unending sand. All four had relatively dark skin and a similarly striking green eye color. All but one whom had mismatched eyes, one of green and one of blinding yellow.
"Are we there yet Maka?" The girl with mis-matched eyes complained, stomping her feet dramatically in the sand as she walked. The group walked in a curving line with the dark haired girl with dazzling light green eyes at the front. Maka giggled from the front and continued to trudge through the burning sand, her bare feet moving quick to keep from blistering against the intense heat of the sand.
"No, no. Not yet Luha. We'll be there soon though! I promise, it's totally worth the walk." The darkest haired girl at the front turned and began walking backwards, grinning at the others. Luha trudged on at the back while their brothers K'thrup and K'yhaega walked between them. Thrup seemed utterly uninterested in anything particularly happening, as he had simply be dragged along for the walk. Yhaega seemed only to be hot and somewhat tired. K'luha on the other hand was bouncing with excitement and frustration as she stomped through the sand after her siblings.
"Ugh, come on Maka! We've been walking for like... ever already!" K'luha pouted, her youthful features puffing up to indicate her displeasure. She was perhaps twelve years old, though her chubby face made her look more like she was only ten. K'yhaega was the oldest at fourteen and unlike K'luha looked to be at least sixteen. K'thrup was eleven, and much like K'luha he looked to be even younger. K'makanee, or Maka was she was almost always referred to, was the youngest at ten years. All four siblings shared their moth and father; K'thajon and K'haaz respectively. And of course, neither parent knew about the foursome's little excursion outside of the tribe. During the morning's hunt, Maka had rounded the gang up and insisted she had found the coolest thing the other day while playing and thus they all walked through the middle of the desert in the middle of the day.
"There, there! I see it!" Maka giggled gleefully as she climbed to the top a tall sand dune. She pointed a finger out over the horizon towards something K'luha and her brothers could not see. K'yhaega pushed his way past K'thrup and dived to the top of the dune to see it. Not to be outdone, K'thrup followed suit and dived on top of his brother with a loud 'oof'.
"Hey! Letmee see! Let me see!" K'luha whined loudly. She stormed after her brothers and sister, running to the top of the dune but tripping in her eagerness to reach the top and tumbling over her brothers and sisters. In a somewhat comical manner, K'luha managed to knock all of her siblings off the top of the dune and send all three and herself rolling down the hill.
Tumbling down, down, down, they kicked up a small dust storm as they went. As they finally rolled down to a stop more than halfway down the hill, the siblings coughed and slowly got their bearings. K'yhaega was first to recover, dusted in a light coat of sand and coughing but otherwise unharmed.
"Luha, Maka, Ru! Are you all okay?" The eldest called out, squinting around the dusty sand pit. K'luha had landed a ways off, her fall stopped by a gigantic bone that was sticking out from the sands like a great spear. Her small body rested against it, similarly covered in sand like K'yahaega. He ran to her first and shook her frame furiously, trying to wake her up. "Luha! Luah wake up! Are you okay?" he begged frantically, afraid his sister might be dead. K'luha stirred slowly and lifted her head to look at him.
"Nnngh... ow. Haega? Where's the others...?" Came the hazy mumble. Haega took a moment to breath out with relief before frowning and pulling hard on one of Luha's ears.
"You idiot! You knocked us all down here! I am so telling mom when we get home." He grinned deviously as Luha yelped in pain and scrambled to make him let go.
"Ow! ow! ow! That hurts Haega! Let me go! Let me go!" Luha cried, grabbing at her brother's wrist to try and free herself. "This isn't funny!" She added somewhat desperately.
"Seriously Haega, you're such a jerk." K'thrup huffed, coming up from behind Haega and kicking him squarely in the back. The elder brother let out a loud 'oof' and let go of K'luha as he cringed from the sudden pain. K'luha took the moment to scrambled away and hide behind Ru, ears flattened to her head as she frowned at her elder brother.
"Bully." Luha whined, her tail having found its way to hide between her legs. Haega stood after a moment and turned angrily on the two.
"This is your fault Luha! You're so dumb." The eldest huffed and turned his back on the two irritably. The threesome stood quiet for a moment as Haega finally got a chance to look around at their surroundings. "Just... where are we anyway?" he asked finally, prompting the others to look around. Huge thick bones stuck out from the sand like claws, ripping through the sands like butter. The dunes had shifted in such a way that there was a valley between these two sand pillars. The entirey of the valley featured these thick sharp bones, both curved and straight in an eerie sort of graveyard. All three were struck silent taking in the sight. So high did the dunes and bones tower that the sand cast a shadow over the valley, creating a huge shaded area where the siblings had fallen.
"Where's Maka...?" K'luha finally spoke up. The brothers looked to one another before glancing around the scene.
"I don't know. She's got to be around here somewhere..." Ru mumbled nervously. The sand down here was cold and strange. Somehow it was almost like night, yet they could clearly still see the sun's burning gaze from the valley. It was.. disturbing to the siblings to say the least. The three stood in silence again, just looking about nervously before a soft groan caught K'luha's ears first; then Haega's and finally Ru's.
"Maka!" K'luha yelled before pushing Ru aside and running deeper into what seemed to be some sort of forgotten graveyard. She had sworn she heard Maka's voice from further inside.
"Wait! K'luha!" Ru yelled reaching a hand out to try and grab her tail and stop her, but she was too quick for him and instead he stumbled forward and fell.
"Get up!" Haega growled, grabbing his brother by his collar and hoisting him to his feet. "And come on!" The eldest ordered before starting in a run after K'luha. Ru hesitantly followed, if only to keep Haega from beating him up or worse, from letting him beat up K'luha.
As K'luha ran, spurred on by the sound of Maka's hurt voice, it seemed to somehow grow darker and darker. There were more and more bones and now smaller ones scattered among the giant ones. K'luha cried out as her foot stepped sharply through what seemed to have previously been an Miq'ote skull and it shattered to dust.
"M-maka! Maka where are you!" K'luha screeched fearfully, stopping in her track as her foot now was hurting too much to keep running.
"Here!" A young voice called out. K'luha spun around to see her younger sister laying against one of the larger bones. A few smaller bones had pierced through her side. Maka had her hand pressed against the wounds, which were mostly self contained and had yet to start bleeding. Luha limped over more carefully to her sister's side and sat down, mindful of the bones. Her hands, trembling, went to her sister's wounds and touched them.
"M-maka... a-are you okay?" K'luha whimpered, her hands moving from wound to Maka's hands and grasping them. The younger sister nodded slowly and squeezed K'luha's hands tightly. She was scared. They both were. K'luha looked around the dark valley and realized her brothers weren't right behind her. Where then? A sudden yelp alerted her to their presence. There were a felt more cries and K'luha and Maka went pale. "I-i'm sorry M-maka!" K'luha whimpered softly, pressing her head to her sister's shoulder. "I-i love you. S-sorry..." Tears slipped down her cheeks as she waited for whatever was killing her brothers to come and finish her off as well.
Minutes past and there was only quiet. No movement she could hear, absolutely nothing.
"How long are you two doing to sit there and cry?" A mundane and stoic voice called out from the silence. It was deep and somehow familiar. K'luha looked up to see a familiar purple haired Tia looking at her bluntly. She could see plainly behind him were her brothers, their faces red with embarrassment and a few wounds on their chests.
"K-k'yohko...?" Luha mumbled, shaking a bit as she looked to the elder Miq'ote. A faint smirk past his features as he straightened up and motioned back at the other two.
"I saw you all sneaking out of camp so I followed. When you fell I attached a rope to a boulder and followed you down. Your brothers wanted to keep me quiet so you wouldn't get in trouble. They're fine." He explained briefly, the faintest hint of a smirk in his voice. His face held that same hint of a smirk, but it couldn't be plainly seen. K'yohko offered a hand to K'luha and with a swift movement helped her up. "Come on. Let's get everyone back to the tribe." He sighed, moving to pick up Maka carefully. "And your parents will be hearing about this."