Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 1 - Nothing Ventured [LADYBIRD]

Hush,

hush,

hush,

h u s h

The people are coming.

At the shore, she stiffens, shrouded closely by the devilish envy of trees and shadow. The end of her obsidian spear digs into the melted sand puddling around her feet. She stiffens and looks out across the water at a boat, a small, wooden boat fit for three young men and no more. From what she can see from here, there appears to be only one man filling the boat, and rowing slowly. That means he's old. He's less likely to flee, then.

A feeling floods through her liquid heat, and she wants to be the one to flee instead, simply because that's the safe way to do it, but then she catches sight of a dark spot in the sky, circling overhead. The Raven does not want her to flee. But she wants to. Why can't she run? She waits long enough for a tendril of blood to snake its way from the fish down the spear's shaft until it meets her finger and sizzles to nothing. The bird turns its beak to her and flies back into the trees.

It's refusing to speak to her until she obeys.

No, no, my friends, don't leave! She will stay. Stay she does, waiting in the same puddle as the boat nears. The old man hasn't seen her yet; at least, she doesn't think he has. Perhaps by the time he's able, she'll have hardened to rock again, and he'll have to knock her limbs free of their dry paralysis. Maybe he won't. Maybe she'll stay stuck here forever, a protrusion of the earth fit only to serve the birds and act as their perch. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.

BUT THE MAN

He sees her.

She takes a step backwards and hears the thin crackling of her skin as it flexes over the movement. If she wants, she can still take off into the underbrush, and she does want, but can't. It's not just the birds, it's a curiosity that thirsts for interaction, thirsts for the thought of sharing words with someone so unlike her, of sharing space with them. What if, one day, someone comes upon this island and decides to stay? Nobody's ever decided to stay; she fantasizes that they have. It's a whirling, twirling, plummeting dream that never quite takes off like it should whenever someone comes around. Even the braver ones leave eventually, and at this point, she's learned that her time with the visitors is limited. She must suck the life out of this interaction to keep her steady for the next endless forever she will go without.

So she waits, and when his boat comes upon the shore, she lifts her chin in the same way she's seen many others do to her, as if expecting something. The man is a fisher, and his pole hangs limp in his palm as he cups the other around his mouth and hollers. "You're that 'Serafina' they talk about? I'll be damned."

She repeats him, but only because she's taken a habit to repeating the words of others. A way to confirm, a way to learn. "You'll be damned." It comes out low but travels on the wind's wings to the man's ears, and he hears her loud and clear, evidently, for he flinches at the sound of her voice. He seems to proceed more hesitantly than before, but she cannot fathom why. The boat floats forward, the oars dipped over the edge and empty of action.

"Say," the man says, closer now, voice more sullen and low, "you got any others like you in there? Or's it just you?"

The words get confused when she tries to figure out what to say, so instead, she moves her legs, popping joints and letting the armor unfasten its locks on her limbs. Then she tries her best. "I am me. I am here only. With birds and things."

BUT THE MAN

He seems intrigued, and begins to step onto her island, ankles dipping down beneath the water. More often than not, the fishermen never leave their boats; this is a threat, and he holds that pole like she holds her spear. The magma boils and flushes through her body, and the crackle and snap of her movements fizzle out, now broiling and fluid. She points the spear at him, stanced like the hunter someone like her had been once. It is no threat though, for she is not a hunter. It is a defense.

"Do not come on!" she gargles, hot spittle turning to steam the moment it hits the water pooling around the man's legs. "Go back and far!" A hiss burrows out of her, but not on purpose. It must not scare the man, for he continues to advance, although his hands are held in the air now, like the surrender she's seen some in fear do at a kneel. A person fearless is a person to fear, and so she makes good upon her defense, and lashes out with the spear, nicking the skin of his arm just barely, just enough to leave the smallest cut and brand.

He seems surprised that she's done this, and gasps at the pain running through his blood, for he has blood, which must be cold, because he narrows his eyes at her and spits at the puddle around her feet before leaping back into the wooden boat and beginning to row away. He never turns his back to her; now, now he is fearful, and as such, she takes it upon herself to walk away, back into the overbrush and along the path she's burned into the ground so many times. She is safe again.

Safe within the trees, within the shadow, she runs; though her boiling body produces a faint angry glow, nothing else will follow. They've learned to let her be and pass through without trouble. The only ones that flutter close by are the birds, the ravens and crows who'll sooner die before the sun may set, and the ones native to the island, crooning loudly as they smack through the trees and tear their little wings and throats open trying to keep up. Their feathers brush by her, desperate for a touch, and then they scream out from the heat, from the wound their beloved has caused them. "I am sorry," she says aloud, and she says it clearly, concisely. She's most acquainted with this phrase above all others.

They'll forgive her. They flock to pain like moths to a flame. This is a small comfort; nothing else in this world will come back like they do.

Hush,

hush,

hush,

h u s h

The people are coming.

The birds' noisy fluttering is quickly drowned out by an even louder flutter - no, a whip. It's a violent whipping overhead that feels close enough to cut through her scalp, and when she dives against the cover of a tree and glances up, she sees the branches quaking, spinning in a horrendous cyclone that knocks the branches of one tree into the branches of three others. The trunk vibrates against her back, and she smells smoke. "I am sorry," she tells it, and then detaches before a fire can ignite.

She is tempted to run the other direction, back towards where the fisherman came, but the birds have left her now, all stuck in the same flight stream towards where the beast seems to be landing on the island. She must follow, so she does.

When she comes to the fringe of greenery on the other side of the island, she peers through the underbrush and watches as a mechanical sphere descends on the sand, kicking it up and throwing it out towards the ocean, towards her. There's a spinning device atop it, which slows as the thing buries itself in the island, in the earth. Soon people are leaping out of it.

She spies on them and their guns. The combat team calls out, "There have been many reports of a violent metahuman causing injury to strangers." A pause. "Hunting." I am no hunter. I am a ladybird. "A man recently attacked has given us your location, so surrender now, and no harm will come to you. Harm is not the intention, but you've been harming the locals, and this needs to stop before it gets out of hand."

"I am not bad! I am hurt by the bad ones!"

"Yooo you're safe. We won't hurt you; as a matter of fact let's get you to a place where nobody can get hurt. Would you like that? Hell yes you would c'mon," and then she gets into the helicopter with the birds circling overhead. It's so loud, and yet, there is

Hush,

hush,

hush,

h u s h.