Ebony Alavasta

Marcus,
They are coming, and the egg must be thrown. Meet me on the border of River Town, and hurry!
,Cebairy

P.S. - don’t forget the sack!

Marcus put the paper down, his hands trembling with a mixture of fear and excitement. He glanced toward the red sack lying on the table that was glowing vibrantly for more reasons than the blazing fire reflecting off of it. Muffled cries were coming from inside. He took a deep breath as he looked towards the old ceiling and whispered a quick prayer. He grabbed the sack and ran out the open door, the eerie air flushing his warm cheeks.
He ran into circles of fierce wind and harsh rain, dizzying him. Frightened he made a wrong turn, Markus turned and bumped into a crooked wooden sign that read:
Rivertown: the happiest place on earth!
The sign clattered to the ground, and Markus chuckled at the irony of the words on it as he glanced at the meager town around him.
There were many things that River Town was, but happy wasn’t one of them. For one thing, it was murky and gnat infested, and the smell of sulfur filled the air so strong you could taste it. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, the place was permanently flooded, causing mold and mildew to eat away at the remaining structures scattered about the unfortunate area. Markus’ stomach crawled at the sight of the putrid, ankle deep sewage water.
Now that he was here, Markus looked around anxiously for a sign of his friend.
“Psst!”
Markus twirled around. “I’m sorry to frighten you!” came Cebairy’s giggling voice from somewhere in the darkness. “Where are you?” he inquired, directing his attention to the place where he’d heard her, and furrowing his eyebrows in confusion when he didn’t see anything but a few hundred gnats fluttering in the light of the full moon.
“Up here!” she called back, forgetting to whisper in her childlike excitement. Markus supposed she was still a child, what with her turning seventeen only a week ago. He on the other hand, had been nineteen for nearly three months.
Markus looked up, and sure enough, there she was; a striking woman with fiery red hair, one silvery-gray lock visible in moonlight, was sitting on a window ledge, impossibly high up off the ground. She had ghostly white skin, and a radiant smile that shone as bright as the moon high above. Markus looked utterly bewildered.
“Come on up!” Cebairy said, happily swinging her feet. She’d obviously done away with the whole whispering thing.
“Umm, is it, uh, safe?” Markus asked tentatively.
“Probably not…” she replied as if testing him. He stood there for a moment, pondering, a hesitant look on his bemused face.
“How do I get up?’’ he huffed, defeated, looking annoyed as he let out a puff of air he’d apparently been holding for a while.
“Uh, good question.” she replied, glancing around as if she’d only just realized that she was there herself.
“Well, how did you get up?” he asked pointedly.
“Ah, another good question.” She teased, tormenting him with her apparent ignorance.
“Well then, I suppose the only solution is for me to come down.” She said, looking disappointed as she jumped the 30 or so feet and landed gracefully in front of Markus, causing not even a ripple in the now knee deep water. Markus’ jaw dropped.
“Did you bring it?” asked Cebairy, suddenly solemn.
“Uh, yeah. H-how did you—“
“No time for questions, I’ll explain later. Where is it?”
“It’s uh, right here.” He said, confused yet again by Cebairy’s sudden change of personality.
He indicated the glowing, screeching bag with a nod of his head, wondering how she’d missed it. It wasn’t exactly discreet. The bag looked as if it was trying to run away; Markus was struggling to hold it in his arms. It started to tear at the seams, letting through blinding flashes of silvery light.
“It’s been doing this a lot lately. Mind telling me why?” he asked with pretend calm, practically yelling to make himself heard over the screeching of the bag, which was rapidly increasing in volume. “And why aren’t I aloud to look inside?” he added curiously.
“You shall soon find out what was inside, and by then I’m sure you’ll have realized that you’re quite grateful you weren’t aware of it. I do believe you’d have found it quite difficult to concentrate on anything, particularly sleeping.”
Suddenly, the quaking sack tore completely in half, revealing a colossal silver egg, woven through with intricate designs. A silver glow radiated off of it, pulsating as if it were keeping time with something… like a heartbeat…
As the sudden epiphany struck him, he called out over the screeching, which seemed to have reached it’s pinnacle now that it was released from the confines of the sack, “Cebairy, what’s in there?”
No reply.
The egg landed with a loud splash into the bottomless puddles of foul water that seemed to have deepened in the time they were standing there.
“Is that-Is that a human?!” he asked, panic erupting in his voice as he spoke the words.
“No, not a human.” She replied, quite calm in the middle of all the chaos.
Markus calmed a little, reassured by the tranquility in Cebairy’s voice, no matter how misplaced it was in the anarchy of the moment.
Just then, another burst of light erupted from the egg, but instead of silver this time, it was blue. Markus’ attention whipped back to the egg in time to see the blue light being absorbed by the design that was etched into the shell.
The light twisted and turned, following the design. It spread throughout the entire egg, weaving its beauty in every single crack and crevice until the entire egg was covered.
Then it all stopped, as if someone had turned off the power. There was no sound or light coming from the egg, and the night seemed strangely empty without it.
Cebairy bent over and picked it up, while Markus just stood there, too astounded to speak.
Before Markus had a chance to snap out of it and ask what she was doing, Cebairy flung the egg into the air with remarkable energy, while Markus, once again, just stood there with his jaw dropped.
The egg reached the pinnacle of its flight, but instead of falling, it began to spin. And as it spun, the screeching noise started up again, as well as the beaming light.
It stopped spinning, and seemed to absorb all the light while the screeching continued. And then it happened.
The egg exploded in a shower of rocketing shell fragments, and Markus’s hands flew over his head to shelter himself, but found that his attempt was futile; he felt nothing but silence piercing the air.
Relaxing his arms, Markus glanced at the empty sky hesitantly. Nothing. The night was dark and quiet. And empty. There was no sign of the egg that had scared him into oblivion.
“What the bloody hell was that all about?!” demanded Markus fervently. He was breathing heavily as he waited for a reply.






“That, my friend, was the beginning of a revelation.”