HOME | DD

Keys - Catching Lightning - Part 1 — Description

“Where are you going?” Chance asked.
Evraen had his back turned to the boy, listening as the creek ran alongside them both in the depths of the canyon. The crow’s limbs rattled with so much emotion. Alarms in his whole body blared with the dangers of betrayal from the boy.
Repeated betrayal. Secrets. Traps. Tricks.
“Away,” Evraen answered, his voice faltering. “That’s where I am going.”
“You want to leave?” Chance asked. He took several steps forward, “After everything? For years you wanted to be friends, and now that that I open up to you you just-“
“Stay back!” Evraen darted around, wounded and afraid, warding Chance away with his talon-hands. “P-please!”
Chance stood at a distance, frozen against the sunset shining through the canyon.
Evraen, the crow, took a few steps back. “I don’t want you holding a pen and writing in my story anymore,” he croaked. “You put me through something I never wanted to live through again! I threw my weapons down to protect you, and you still accused and abused me. I chased you for months just wanting to reach you, heal you and protect you, but you shut yourself out and hid from me. I saved your life and you still didn’t forgive me for…forgive me for…for everything you changed!”
Chance hesitated and tried to speak again, shyly, but the crow cut him off.
“I was told everything about you,” Evraen said. “You’re more than what you seem. You can change reality….You put yourself in a ‘story’ where your friends would betray you again and again, all so you would teach some kind of lesson about care and compassion.”
“I was testing everyone,” Chance said. “And what did they do? They destroyed everything in their-”
“Spitsuds!” the crow cursed, holding his aching chest, and throwing his head. “You treated me like thre rest of them even though I was defending you, speaking up for you, but you…you…you changed the past! You decided that’s not what I did, instead you changed it so that I just stood there and stared. You actually rewrote the past and decided I was too cowardly to speak for you, when that was entirely against what I was working so hard for! Have you ever had someone use that kind of awful power against you? It’s violating!”
“Look, I changed it back for you,” Chance said.
“Only after the ‘adventure’ you wanted to play out for everyone had run its course…that…no. That was no adventure. That was disgusting!” Evraen chirped weakly. “I was an actor in a play. You used me and decided what was so important to me wasn’t convenient for the story you wanted to live out. Yeah I could try anything I wanted, but you had the final say if it would make any difference. And the sorcery to enforce it.”
Evraen turned sidelong and stared at the river bank, watching the water flow and shimmer in the golden orange sunset.
“I guess I don’t make any difference. I can never save what’s precious to me. Never. Ugh…You know, Chance…I didn’t need to learn any kind of lesson in compassion…I already knew it, even though you asked me if I had ‘a lot to think about!’ I was there to shout desperately and no one listened. No one just…stopped and listened to me. Because they refused to see how their hate just destroyed what they could have had. What they could have saved…And what’s worse…I’ve been through that before, already. So perfectly.”
Evraen turned his back to Chance another time, holding something in his coat his pocket. An ebony rod he treasured…the rod was always warm.
“You put me through it all over again…and nothing changed. I did all I could to not squander my opportunity this time, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. Only your ‘play.’…You were in control. And I played along to the end, and…it all turned out like before…with me walking away broken and empty.”
“Can’t we start over? Forget the others,” Chance asked. “It can be just you and me now. Buddies on the road. The friend I always wanted?”
The crow bowed his head. He wanted that. Very much. But now he knew better. He was so tired from the years he’d put up with Chance’s manipulation. His control. Evraen wasn’t willing to take the risk again.
“You want me to be your friend?” Evraen croaked, looking back one more time with one wounded eye. “You should’ve been a friend to me all those months when I would have done anything to protect you, and win your trust. I would’ve given my life for you, Chance. But now I’m just so tired. I’m so finished. And I’m broken. More broken than I was before.”
The crow sighed and paused. “This is goodbye. I don’t wish anything bad on you…not one thing, Chance. But I…I gotta put you where you belong. Behind me. You once tried to guilt trip me out of leaving before, saying it would only be proving your point right that I was a coward. That I just wanted to run and forget everyone and leave them behind when things weren’t going right or some scummy thing like that. Even so, you saw my efforts thwarted. I stayed to the end… and I didn’t change a damn thing. I was there to be unforgiven for things I didn’t do and…and miss out on living something out so…simple and beautiful—to face my ghosts in the past and maybe make everything go backwards. And I’d find a new flock who I could save from destroying itself. Everything awful I’d been through before would go backwards.”
The crow gripped that ebony rod again tightly, and then let go and sighed. “Instead I was there to be thrashed around and torn up. And I wouldn’t mind that one bit, if it all ends up meaning something! But I’m left empty again. Why should I stay? I can’t waste my energy anymore. Im exhausted. I’m hurt…and Im….sorry. Sorry I tried. Sorry I finished being a pawn in your play.”
Chance frowned and hung his head, the sunset breeze getting cold. “Go,” he said. “You have the right.”
Evraen walked away. Chance didn’t follow him. Much as that brought the bird relief, it also brought doubt. The crow questioned if he was making the right choice. He didn’t like letting people go.
And he’d had to let people go he cared about very much. Friends. Best friends.
Flock.
At least he thought they were.
But Chance? He was done. Even now as the crow trod up the creek, he couldn’t get the memories echoing out of his head. Strings of abuse. Accusations for offenses he didn’t commit. Indifference for the sacrifices he made to pursue his hopes. And blindness that this whole fiasco which Chance put him through was a nightmare the crow had been through once before. He’d never been whole since.
The crow walked for two miles until the sun over the Koryl woods had set to a sliver on the horizon. He came to the foot of Chateau Rene—the mansion’s west wing casting a long peaceful shadow overlooking the woods. Evraen sat himself at the bank of the stream and curled up. The breeze was getting cold. He could have gone inside the mansion, knowing the family therein gave him welcoming shelter—since they’d hired him to rescue one of their own. But he needed time in the shadows and the cold first. Both were familiar sensations to him and much as they brought discomfort, they also brought stability.
Evraen the crow was a skilled rogue. Hiding in the shadows was something that had never changed. Shadows were the longest of his loyal friends. They hid him. They protected him, like a mother shielding her young in the nest.
Everytime he came out of the shadows to rescue those who meant everything to him, he felt he was rarely rewarded.
He remembered rescuing the knight years ago in his first adventuring party. The knight who might have fallen by the mace of a foe. Evrean had been just a boy at the time, and he had been considered little more than a shy thief more prone to save his own cloak. That day however when the crow threw himself out of hiding and taunted the enemy, giving the knight a chance to come back strong, Evraen surprised everyone. Even himself.
“And there you were joking days ago to the baron that you’d never risk your life for me…I’m proud of you, Evraen,” the knight had said.
Evraen let a little whining chirp escape him, holding the ebony rod in his coat. He missed those grand times.
“Evraen?” came another voice from behind.
“Oo-hoo!” the crow jolted, eyes wide and feathers standing up. He looked back and saw a adolescent human, Jason, the adopted son of House Rene. Jason’s royal violet cloak blew in the chill breeze as did his unkempt hair, the locks of which partially obscured the scars that streaked all the way down one side of his face. He was carrying a cloth sack in his arm.
Jason flashed a smile. “Ah, sorry. Always so jumpy are you, little brother.”
Evraen snickered. “Eh, just used to being in trouble. You know me by now. Did you just call me ‘little brother?’” The crow had to give a double take.
“I did,” Jason said, sitting beside the crow. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Evraen blinked and twitched his head, before smiling with his eyes. “Eh, why not I guess? Sure!”
Jason’s smile grew. It was a peaceful smile. Tranquil. The most tranquil Evraen had ever seen Jason. The human seemed happier and more stable every day. Evraen hadn’t forgotten, of course, the first time he met Jason—rescuing him from a dungeon on behalf of House Rene. Jason had tried to strangle the crow.
Jason had two sides to him. He was a boy with a dark history, who had endured so much blood and beatings—a boy who just wanted peace. Then there was Jason’s ‘Other.’ A separate entity in some ways, but still an interwoven part of what made Jason who he was. Jason’s Other could be cruel, violent, devastating. His Other cared for Jason, and his safety, but the two parts of Jason were in many ways opposed to each other.
Evraen recalled how when he comforted Jason on the way home, telling him he’d be safe, Jason’s Other grabbed him by the neck and tried to break it.
“‘You can’t trust him!’” his Other has said. “No! Don’t hurt him! Please! He’s a friend! ‘You’re always letting yourself get close to people, and then something always happens! They leave, they turn on you. And then you get hurt! I won’t let that happen to you, not this time!’ No! Let him go! He’s different! He’s here to help!’”
The crow still chuckled nervously, at the memory. But he was grateful Jason’s Other had been willing to listen.
“Here,” Jason said, and the crow blinked back to the present. “Father said you have a pension for these.”
Jason opened his sack and sitting there in the cloth blanket were fresh biscuits with bread and cheese and fish meat, still steaming.
“Fish crackers?” Evraen beamed radiantly. “Don’t mind if I do!”
Jason chuckled. “Father told Mother you liked them, and she learned the recipe just for you.”
Evraen was already biting into one, when he stopped midway. The familiar savory treat was delicious, but hearing what Jason said was even more gratifying. “Lilly? She learned to make fish crackers?”
Jason nodded. “Just for you. Well, that’s what she told me.” He picked one up himself and tried it. “Mm. These are good!”
Evraen stopped a moment and took it in, looking back at the mansion. “Heh…is this what having a home feels like?”
Jason nodded. “Yep. I know what youre feeling. At least Im sure I do.” He looked into the stream. “Its a different kind of comfort, isn’t it.”
“Its one I felt before,” Evraen said, finishing his cracker and munching a second. “I just forgot what it was like.”
“You’ve had a home before then?” Jason asked.
The crow looked up and watched the stars come out. Evraen remembered his first flock. The heroic Azure Torch.
Their leader with the battle scar down his face, who once saw Evraen as something of a son.
The knight and his shield, who protected others from the most brutal attacks and dangers at the forefront of any encounter.
The shaman who commanded the power of the storms, who was of few words, but carried himself with great respect once upon a time.
“Once,” Evraen said, patting the rod in his green coat.
Jason tilted his head, and seemed to be able to tell the crow didn’t want to talk about it.
“Boy-oh-boy, tho, it feels good to have home again,” Evraen sighed. “Home…it’s a real pretty word. I could sing about it!”
Jason raised a brow. “Hard to imagine you having a voice fit for song,” he teased.
Evraen laughed, knowing his natural voice sounded raspy and unpleasant to some. “Hey, don’t forget. We crows can sound like anyone we’ve heard. All you gotta do is take me to the opera. I’ll sing with all the glamor of anyone in the cast. Hehe.”
Jason brushed back his hair laughing, when a wild pigeon started fluttering its wings near Evraen.
“Whoa-whoa! Hey!” The crow person said to little wild bird. “Beat it! I didn’t take nothin’ from you!”
“Evraen, wait,” Jason said, noting the pigeon’s leg. “That’s a messenger pigeon.”
“Oo?” Evraen chirped. The pigeon had a small wrap of parchment tied to its leg.
“Wait a minute…it can’t be her,” Evraen said.
The pigeon cautiously allowed Evraen to take the note from its leg.
“Her?” Jason asked. “Who?”
Evraen opened up the paper and saw a picture of a key drawn just above the name of a nearby crossroad. At the bottom the insignia from a familiar company Evraen hadn’t seen in years: Loftwind.
“Jeepers!” the crow exclaimed. “It is her!”
—-——-
Part 2 Coming Soon!
—-——-
Decided to try writing out this story and putting each part to an illustration
Catching Lightning will be one of Keys’s more emotional adventures. Fair warning. The crow is a goofball known for his silliness and antics, but this story will touch a bit more on how his adventures have been painful in the past. They will have some callbacks with references to my previous D&D adventures with him—all from campaigns that never finished and were put to painful ends, and one that ended but left me feeling empty and broken after years of it… He’ll be facing those unresolved haunts here.
The goal here for me with Catching Lightning is not to have Evraen get his glorious victory just yet, but rather kind of show him learning to accept and acknowledge that he’s been through some stuff. Stuff that wasn’t resolved, and some of it may never get resolved, at least the way he’d have liked it too. Evraen doesn’t like ‘losing,’ but sometimes we have to take losses.
He’s definitely angry with Chance here, but even if Chance is now offering something better, its not enough for Keys. He’s used to being broken and his cries for help ignored by Chance, or responded with excuses. He’s not willing to try again. He just wants to be done and have peace. And he can’t trust Chance to give him that peace. He knows people out there like Chance might not ever fully understand. They may even remember him with their own version of the story. But Evraen is learning something very important here—grace. Admitting defeat. Sometimes the best ‘victory’ is knowing when not to fight, or not to keep fighting, and walking away after having something better to pursue. In this case, Evraen has given it everything he’s got. But maybe he should’ve bailed out sooner…
Ultimately thats what Catching Lightning will be about. Not victory, not vindication, just validation. Sometimes, even when we try our best—and our best is always enough (we can’t be expected to give more than that)—it doesn’t give us the results we want…sometimes you don’t get closure. You just move on.
But even so, I think this will be a beautiful story with beautiful moments too After all, its not about the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. But the little wonderful treasures you find on the road. And Evraen isn’t going to miss any treasure that comes along, while he’s on the journey. Keys has an eye for all that glitters…
Jason, Rene, And Lilly belong to @NeekoWolfie
“Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate,” Captain Jack Sparrow
Part 2: https://www.deviantart.com/ferroth/art/1156861136