If one was forced to describe the day with only one word, it would be “uneventful.” It was just one of those slow days in the middle of June, where just about everybody seemed to be bored inside their houses flipping through television channels senselessly or sleeping. It had been an unusually dry summer, so the dirt had dried together and cracks had formed throughout. There was even an apparent lack of animals, as they had all decided that the heat was too hot for them to bear.
However, a young blonde haired girl skipped absent-mindedly singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" horribly off key, although she didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care enough to stop. She just seemed happy singing as most young people did. "Twinkle, twinkle, little star..." Judging by the way the sun was beating down, one might guess that it was three in the afternoon, at the latest. She was on a back dirt road, not known by most people or maps. About an hour ago, she had been chasing a pink butterfly in the front lawn of her own house. She had lost sight of the butterfly quite a while back, but she continued on the road, sure it would lead back home eventually.
"How I wonder what you are..." If one saw her, one might guess she wasn’t older than five. She did look terribly young especially with her wide, lively, blue eyes that would stare up at one full of harmlessness. The bangs that hung down in her face and the pig tails that fell loosely down the back of her head added to the look. Her hair was almost brown, bleached from hours of playing in the sun. She wore a knee-long, light pink dress with a stitching of a white daisy in the middle and vertical folds.
"Up above the world so high..." She had eaten before she left, so hunger wasn't an issue. She was perfectly happy. She had seen her parents drive down this road before... or maybe it was a road that looked just like this one. Either way, she wasn't worried. All roads had to lead to somewhere, didn't they?
"Like a diamond in the sk-" She stopped singing. She had heard something. It was only one voice, but it seemed to be talking to itself, words she didn’t understand. The young girl walked further upon the road towards the voices. Slowly, the speaker came into view.
It was a cat. He was a navy blue, except the insides of his ears, a bright gold, and his paw tips and the lower half of his face. He had big eyes with vertical red pupils that stared at her with anticipation as if he wanted her attention and he wore a wide, yet polite smile. He wore a sleeveless argyle sweater of red and black and a yellow collar that matched the insides of his ears. He was a bit taller than her, reminding her of the animals that walked around at amusement parks that she had been to a few times. He was leaning against a gray train, talking to another that she couldn’t see.
Finally, he casually turned his head towards the girl, his scarlet eyes widening in surprise before he brightened his smile. “Hey there,” he said to her, “what are you doing here?” He laughed, noticing her reluctance as she took a few steps back. “Don’t be shy.”
She twisted her hands in one another nervously as she gradually made her way over. “Are you real?” came her small voice. As she moved closer, the other being came into view.
It was a dark brown monkey standing off to the side. His small black eyes looked down at her and his lips curved into a smile. He wore a blue top hat like hat, striped red, orange, and a pale yellow with a circle bronze medal on the front. On the rest of his body was a matching blue jacket with all three buttons buttoned up securely and two pockets in the front.
“Yes,” the cat replied, emitting another laugh at her inquiry. “We were just taking a break. The train life is hard.” He motioned with his left paw to the small train.
“Train,” she repeated, staring up at it. She didn’t recall train tracks anywhere near her house, but perhaps she hadn’t been very observant. “How?” She remembered her mother once telling her that trains were used to transport things to other places like cars.
"International Animal Town Free Public Transportation," the monkey replied, not taking into consideration that such a young girl probably wouldn’t understand what half of those words meant, especially strung together like that. “Eek, eek!”
“A train that gives free rides to people,” the blue feline clarified. “Do you need a ride? We were just about to go anyway.”
The girl pondered this for a while. She remembered her parents telling her to never get into a car with a stranger. But this wasn't a car, she figured. So, she agreed, nodding her head. It would be much easier to get home now.
"Great," the monkey said, opening the train doors and climbing on board, waiting for the other two to join him. “Where are you headed?”
"Home!" she said without hesitation, stepping onto the train. That was where she desired to go the most, back to her own house. There were four rows of identical teal seats, some facing each other. The door was in the middle, splitting the four in half. She sat down on one of the seats closer to the doors, facing the head of the train.
"Home..." repeated the monkey, walking through the aisle to the conductor’s cabin. “That's a nice town. Lots of visitors. Eek, eek! It’s quite well kept. Very well, home, it is.” He swung the door open and closed it behind him.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll sit here across from you to keep you company,” the cat offered, smiling, already sitting himself down on the matching seat across from her. “Home is quite near here, so we’ll reach your destination shortly. Now, what’s your name, hm?” The train began to rumble as the monkey switched the engine on and it picked up pace. They were off.
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Maybe a king is better.
Because a king never dies.
"Well, have a nice day and I hope you enjoy your stay at Home," said the cat as the youth walked off the train. The doors closed behind her and she turned, smiling and waving to the train as it picked up speed, going off. After it was fully gone, she looked around. She was in a small, empty train station with a concrete ground and wooden walls. This wasn’t home, not the one she had been talking about. Her home was a beige house surrounded by lots of pretty flowers and shrubbery that her mother and father attended to.
Seeing no other place to go, she walked out of the train station. It was like a jungle with trees everywhere, occasional fruit on the branches. The only thing else that she could see was a dark blue and green brick path that lead further into the town. She began walking, soon trying to step only on the blue bricks.
"Twinkle, twinkle little star..." she sang, resuming her song. She jumped to the next blue brick, almost losing her footing. She knew what to do and she wasn’t worried about it at all. She remembered a few weeks ago when she had wandered off in a grocery store and had gotten lost and her mother told her that if she were ever lost like that again, she should go tell someone and they’d bring her back home instead of crying like she had until her mother had heard and rushed to her.
"How I wonder what you are..." There was a shuffling noise like another set of feet dragging along brick behind her.
"Stop,” an angry, masculine voice called.
She turned around. It was a boy who looked much older than her. He had short clipped hair the color of obsidian. He kept an easy distance, so she couldn’t see him too well. She tried to tell herself that he was friendly, but his angry voice and tense posture told a different tale.
"Who are you?" he asked. His voice had softened a bit, although still rough.
The girl hesitated, feeling like she was going to cry. She shook and tears welled up in her eyes. It felt like she was being yelled at and in trouble. Was he angry that she had mistakenly trespassed into this fruit forest? What would he do with her? Perhaps he wouldn’t help her at all.
"Who are you?" he repeated, louder. "What's your name?"
They both stood where they were, neither daring to run away or get any closer to the other. She whimpered, rubbing her left eye with her hand. But finally, she spoke, replying. She said it quietly, the word barely there, but it was there and he had heard it. “Lystra.” Chapter summary: The first character to be introduced is a five year old girl named Lystra, who begins in the “real world,” only to bump into Rover and Porter who are taking a rest with their train on the train tracks somehow. They offer her a ride and she accepts asking to be taken “home,” although Porter misinterprets that as going to a town named “Home.” She arrives at the town only to run into someone who already lives there, an intimidating older boy.
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Maybe a king is better.
Because a king never dies.
A lot of things could change in eight years; however the sun’s relentless heat on a June day was not one of those things.
Despite the summer’s warmth, the residents of the small town still went outside their houses and pranced around including the thirteen year old girl named Lystra. She sprinted through the small town, enjoying the cool wind on her face with an elated expression. “Karina,” she called out the name of one of her companions. Her white sneakers padded heavily on the dirt, dehydrated from the dry season. It was hard to run in a knee length pink dress with black polka dots, but she managed as she often wore dresses.
Her fun jog was put to an abrupt end as she stopped suddenly, her eyes squinting with concern as she saw the one who she had been searching for.
She stood outside of her house, a few steps outside of the gap of the white picket fence surrounding it. She wore the appropriate summer apparel: white shorts, red tank top, blue flip flops. However, it was her facial expression that worried Lystra the most. Her thin pink lips were in a small upside down crescent. Her right index finger had a long piece of light yellow hair curled around it as she played with the messy strand, a sign of worry. The rest of it was pulled into a low, neat ponytail that went down her back. Her light green eyes were averted downwards. “He left.”
"Who?” She tilted her head to the right in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“The traveler,” she replied, raising her eyes to meet hers, “that visitor that came less than a month ago. He must have not liked the town very much. But he’s gone. He moved last night while we were sleeping. Maybe he found some other town where he belongs. But it’s a good thing for all of us.” She nodded as to reassure herself.
“I don’t understand, Karina” the brunette girl said back, blinking blankly.
“Look, he even left a letter,” she said, reaching into the right pocket of her white shorts, pulling out a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it in a not-so-careful manner before fixing her eyes on it and reading aloud.
Dear Karina, I wish I could stay longer at Home. But I’m afraid my time here is up. You taught me a lot here and I wish to pass on my newfound knowledge.
She looked back up into the other girl’s eyes and folded the piece of paper again, shoving it back into her pocket. “During his stay, he ruined the town. Didn’t you see what he did? He ran over the flowers and kicked up all of those freshly planted roses along the paths that we had spent all of our days planting. Now we just have to do them again.” Her emerald eyes flashed angrily and her words had a sudden edge to them. “They’re terrible. Every single visitor that we have – they always destroy everything here. They’re travelers.” She said the last word like a curse word or a nasty insult as it was usually used in the town.
The younger girl nodded in agreement. She had gotten used to this pattern. Every so often a human would move into the town and stay only less than one month usually. She, personally, usually had little to do with the traveler. Most of it had to do with fear. Every single one that had ever come to Home had messed one or another thing up until they left at a random time in the middle of the night, leaving a letter, usually to Karina. After that, Lystra never heard anything more of that traveler.
“Hey, Lystra… Karina…” another voice called out. It was a deeper voice, the same one she had heard eight years ago once she had arrived in the town. The speaker was a young man named Justyn, three years older than Lystra, although two months younger than Karina. He smiled slightly at the sight of the two and his dark hair was ruffled in an unexpected, short breeze. “We need to get to work, you know.”
That’s what the three of them spent their days doing. They spent their days working on different parts of the town, repairing the damage of whatever the most recent traveler did. Once they were done, they’d have to go around the town and perform daily duties and work on the upkeep of the town such as watering flowers or pulling nasty weeds that managed to pop up.
They faced each other, nodding in agreement. They wouldn’t get enough done if they didn’t begin now. So they did, dividing up the tasks for that day. Karina began walking north to replant trees that the traveler had cut down. Justyn walked to the east to repave the path that the traveler had messed with. Lystra began walking south by the beach to replant the blue roses that grew alongside the southern paths.
And thus their day began.
Chapter Summary: The story skips eight years ahead and Lystra has been living there all this time. The third human character is introduced, Karina, who expresses her own concern about “travelers” who come to the town, only to attempt to destroy it and then leave abruptly. The second human character, Justyn, is also given a better look at. The three of them spend their days repairing and working on Home.
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Maybe a king is better.
Because a king never dies.
This isn't an update, obviously, but I’ve always considered playing around the amount of years Lystra had spent in the town before and the age she arrived, and possibly the ages of them all. So if it all seems kind of off, don’t take it all to heart.
I suppose right now, this plot is also really cliché, but I’m working on making it better, which, I guess, is why there isn't a chapter now.
But, thank you so much for reading!I actually entered this into a competition and it would be really great if you could vote for me.
If you're not familiar, pretty much how it works is that first, you can't tell anyone who you voted for. Anyone can vote. You can vote once a day for now.
"4. Every vote (for now) is consisted of 3 possibilities.
Type 1: You give 1 vote to 1 story.
"eg. I vote for Shella" Type 2: You give 2 votes to 1 story, and 1 vote to another
"eg. 2 votes for TTACWW, 1 vote for bunkbeds" Type 3: You give 1 vote to 3 different people
"eg. 1 vote for DarkMuffin, 1 vote for accflover101, 1 vote for Cutiepiepie" This means that if you want to only vote for your favourite, you can only award one vote. But if you want to give them more, then you have to vote for another. It also allows you to spread votes out between three. This stops people spamming me with 3 votes for one person, and also reduces the chance of getting bottom ties of more than 2/3 at the start of the competition. Let's not have another bottom 7 like in 2009."
You have to send the votes in a PT to only Computerfan and name it "Vote" or "Competition Vote."
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Maybe a king is better.
Because a king never dies.
Posted:
6/30/2013 1:01pm
Edited: 1
