Drummers: Dalsmalia

Chapter 1

Part 1

The single frozen crystal fell softly to the ground. The snowflake had many miles to tread to its feared destination. It feared this grave, because it would stop it from existing. Though it tried with deathly measures, it could not stop the urge to touch the once green ground. With fear of the tomb came a reality, a reality that was comforting. This reality was, “You cannot escape death.” With this epiphany, the snowflake fell to the white ground. A single trod of the foot crushed the frozen crystal, ending its life permanently.

A girl, who only looked to be the age of nine, tread through the snow at a leisurely pace. Like the snowflake, she had a destination, but this objective did not have a deathly ending; it was just to go meet her dad at the Entrasen Café. Her dad had told her to meet him when the snow had stopped, and the final snowflake had fallen.

She passed the Mountain Tree, after which the city she was walking to had been named. This is where she paused and stared at the exact spot where five years before her father had agreed to train her in the way of the sword. She had been six then. She remembered how her dad had handed her a stick and then picked up one himself. They had dueled until her father had disarmed her. The duel had lasted for five hours; the only thing that she had learned from hitting each other with sticks was that it hurt. That day he had warned her that in a real fight there would be no safety measures. Whenever she was wounded in a fight those exact words her father had told her would repeat in her head until the fight was over.

As she turned around, the memory faded and she continued to go towards the city. Her pace quickened once she saw a looming tower. Now she would have to avoid the stares of disdain from the human city folk. One human boy, who had never seen one of her kind, pointed and said, “What is that?”

The girl yanked on her long, droopy, elf ears and her cat-like eyes wandered nervously amongst the bevy of people; she was a Hogdawnwa and in this part of the world people disliked them: a Hogdawnwa is a humanoid being with cat eyes, sharp canine teeth, and droopy elf ears. More stares came and more kids pointed. Some would even whisper just in earshot so as to insult her without it being shown. In response, she would clamp her teeth together so as not to yell, “Stop staring! I am just like you, who gives a rat’s ass if I look different!”

To avoid hearing any more whispers and having to take the stares of distain from the humans, she swerved into an alleyway. The alleyways were her sanctuary; no one travelled in them and no one lived in them. Desolate as they were, you could still find bird nests and dens for dogs in them. As she passed through one small world and into another, her mental calmness dissipated and was replaced with the same awkwardness as before.

As the girl walked out into the bigger world, she saw that very few people were at the city centre. The city centre was a crystal fountain. Few people walked around the city centre due to the fact that it was market day.

A boy shot out of one of the swarmed streets furthest to her. He ran like a mad man into the alleyway she had just come from. He was trying to get away from his torturers. Three boys chased after their prey towards the alleyway, which the boy was trying to enter. One boy drew a dagger and then gave his last burst of speed. With this burst of speed he caught up with the victim, who appeared to the female onlooker to be seven feet tall with white hair, and hit him with the butt of his dagger. This caused the boy to tumble to the ground cutting his face and his hands.

The girl watched, waiting to see if the boy could defend himself. To her disappointment he was unable to. She ran at a steady pace, drawing the katana that was on her belt. When she got behind the boy with the dagger, she swung her sword and stopped it just before his neck.

All three of the boys stopped beating the white-haired boy; one took his foot off of the boy’s head and the second stopped hitting him with a stick; the third looked back at the girl who was holding a steel katana at his neck.

“Hey Zefira, what have we done wrong this time?” said the leader of the gang with a nervous voice. The leader, who looked to be four years older, only knew the girl’s name because she was the only one of her kind in the city.

Zefira merely answered, “Leave the boy alone and if I ever see you hurt him again, I will kill you.”

“He’s gotta pay though, Zefira,” stated the smallest of the gang, who had been pushing their victim’s head into the ground.

“Pay for what?” asked Zefira.

At these words the three bullies looked at each other as if their reason was justified. The one who had been wounding their victim with a stick responded by grabbing the boy’s fox ear and said, “Cause’ he’s got these.”

Zefira pressed her blade against their leader’s neck; this caused beads of blood to roll down the leader’s neck. The three boys gulped fretfully. The teenager dropped his dagger in surrender and said, “Lucial…Fririck, let’s go.”

Without any further ado, the three bullies dashed into one of the mobbed streets to the left of the sufferer and Zefira.

“You OK, kid?” asked Zefira in a sheepish voice.

The boy sat up and wiped the blood off of his hands, side and his face. Zefira looked at him for a second and extended her arm out, catching him on the shoulder. She then lifted him to a standing position.

“What is your name?” asked Zefira as she stared into his face, which to her seemed sad, but confident.

“My name…” he said this as if he himself did not know his own name.

“Well, spit it out,” said Zefira as she drove her sword into the ground in what seemed to be an angry way.

“It is Oric Yuri,” said Oric as if he had rediscovered his name.

“Well, Rick,” Zefira had already given Oric a nickname. “Do you wanna go get some food?”

Thinking that Zefira was asking him on a date, he said, “Well, not really.”

Zefira did not care what his answer was; she just grabbed him by the arm and dragged him onto the street in front of them.

They turned through many different alleyways, until they reached Entrasen Café. This is where a black-haired man was sitting.

“Dad, this is Oric,” said Zefira with a grin.

Part 2

Darkness screeched as it saw its mother; Dawn, Dimness’s mother, chased after him, for blackness was a wounded child who needs to be taken care of. All Gloominess was doing was trying to get away from Light, merely because he thought that he was in trouble. Brightness, of course, did not consider her son to be in trouble; all she wanted to do was to take care of him. As Luminosity continued to chase Murkiness, night turned to day. Lamp and Darkness’s chase entered Mountain Tree city. The final place that the mother and son chased each other in the city was a little cottage, which contained a young Oric.

Oric’s eyes blinked momentarily, and then he sat up abruptly; he was going to be late for his healing class. He pulled on his shirt and his trousers quickly. He ran over to his cottage’s door, opened it suddenly and then slammed it behind him hastily.

He dashed past Zefira’s dad’s house and paused wondering why Mister Hokori-Honõ was not at the front door waving him goodbye. He did not stay for another second; he just ran in the direction of the city.

Oric flapped on the hood that was attached to his shirt, pulled a pair of homemade earplugs out and put them in his fox ears. He did this procedure on a daily basis so as to avoid hearing the whispers that made him angry. Many times since he had begun living in Zefira’s dad’s cottage, Zefira had told him to beat up those who whispered wrongly about him; he was strong, but in his opinion no one deserved to be beaten up by him just because they were whispering about him. Though he had voiced this opinion to Zefira many times, he knew deep down he really did want to beat them up for whispering untruths about him.

Oric finally reached the small healing school that Mister Hokori-Honõ, Zefira’s dad, had enrolled him in. In this school he was to learn the religion of healing. The religion was simple, all he had to do was meditate by repeating a mantra in his head 10 minutes every day while sitting still; his mantra was “Ontai.” After his meditating he was always able to heal a great deal better.

The class went smoothly as it had always gone; the class would heal a wounded animal or cure a sick student. Oric was at the top in his class, mainly because he was the only student who could heal a limb when it had been cut clean up; he was able to rejoin the severed part to the stump.

After class, Oric walked to Entrasen Café for a glass of wine. He was just about to enter the café when he saw Zefira weaving through the crowd at an alarming rate. Actually she just pushed people aside as she chased after someone he could not see.

Swearing at himself for missing his daily wine; He decided to chase after Zefira. To his dismay the crowd had reassembled and he, like Zefira, had to fight through the assemblage. When he reached the edge of the masses, he saw Zefira kneeling in the sandy ground at the city gateway.

Oric ran over to Zefira and grabbed her by her shoulder and knelt beside her. “What happened?” asked Oric in his soft gravelly voice. As he stared at Zefira with concerned eyes, he was something he had never seen before: tears.

Zefira sniffed, “He left, he just left,” she said in a voice that quivered. In all the months Oric had been with Zefira, he had never seen her like this. She was trembling instead of standing there firmly; she was crying instead of yelling to the sky. She was broken and he would have to make her whole again.

“You mean Blade.” Blade was what Oric called Zefira’s father. This name suited him because he could wield any “blade” like it was the wind.

Zefira did not answer, and with that Oric could tell she was forming an idea. Oric picked her up in both arms and walked steadily through the multitude. They weaved pass Entrasen Café; weaved pass the crystal fountain, went through the city and passed the Mountain Tree until they reached Blade’s house.

Oric carried the now asleep Zefira up to her room. He placed her on her bed and went downstairs to read. As he passed the kitchen he saw a note laying on the floor, he went over and picked it up.

Dear Zefira,

Over the years that I have trained you in the art of the sword, you have progressed greatly. Actually I might as well say that you have exceeded my expectations and since that has happened I therefore let you go. I let you go by letting you go out into the world and explore. But before I can let you go I must leave you a few things; the house, so you have somewhere to return to; my collection of weapons, which will aid you in your fights; and Oric, so that you have a good and loyal friend to take care of you.

Love Tombo “Blade” Hokori-Honõ, your foster father

As Oric finished he smirked. Zefira could never own him.