Honour of Lyfe pt 1- Introduction to Unreal

Gracie lived on only half a planet, just as everyone did besides those who lived in the oceans.  This half happened to be where “unreal” things lurked, surviving off of the natural world and using sinurgie, (something you would think of as magic), derived from nature.  The cats, snakes, birds, and other species besides the people had learned how to talk in the same tongue, which any person reading this would perceive as any normal language here because the tongue which the people of this other world spoke was sinurgie, and could be heard in many ways.

Gracie lived in a village where the houses were made of clay, where the trees were dry most of the year, and where prayer ribbons were hung to dance in the westward breeze.  She had acquired the power of empathy, and manipulation of other’s emotions.  It was one of the rarer, most powerful sinurgies in her land.  Many people wished to have that power, for they would not only be able to change someone’s emotions, but deliberately control them at will.  Gracie was talented at such sinurgie, and was envied greatly.  She had much praise though.

“I reckon she would be good in the war that is to come,” the king, passing through Gracie’s village, had said to her mother and father one day during the Leaf Festival on the Seventh of July.  “She has that ability to manipulate a man’s emotions, and perhaps she would cause the opposing side to cower down with regret when they kill our side.”

Gracie had been listening to this conversation and shuddered with fear.  There was nothing she hated more than deliberately making someone show emotion that they were not meant to feel.  There was something evil about what the king said in that conversation, and she took the initiative to run away from her village, and keep as far away from her king as possible.  She traveled north.

The snow was kicking in harder and harder by the minute.  Atrius was travelling as well, heading in the opposite direction as Gracie, whom he did not yet know.  He kicked the snow and dirt; his old brown boots becoming shrouded with the glorious white and the beautiful black.  He did not know where he was going.  Not yet at least.  He had been traveling since his mother and father died in that war King Leos had so stupidly begun.  Atrius sighed.  Why am I even living, he thought.  What was the point of all this mess?  Perhaps there was another place in this world where he would belong?  His sinurgie was useless—levitation.  He snorted.  Levitation.  Who needs levitation in their life if it does not even to anything?  He wished he could control people, or use blacklight which was a power no one could survive if they were hit by it.  But no, he had to have levitation out of all things.  Therefore, he longed for a place where he would fit in—a place where people would respect him.  But he remembered something a mysterious figure in black had said to him recently:

“Can you not enjoy what life is bringing to you now?  Do you not know how many people long for what you have as well?”

That brings us to the other half of the planet, where there is no such thing as sinurgie.  Only technology and weapons.  

To be continued.

-Aberswyth N.T.