Nietokune the Valiant

By: Pickle-eating Kangaroo

Okay, before I start, NO STEALING! All this material is copyright me so no taking anything for yourself or I’ll sue the pants off you.

Okay, for those of you that know me, then you know that this is the first chapter of one of the two novels I’m writing. A spoiler, if you will. A sneak preview of something that’ll show up on bookstore shelves sometime within the next 5 years. Before you start, here’s a couple things that’ll be helpful:

Nietokune- Knee-et-o-kun

AElfeuesh- Al-fee-ush –my made up word for elves. They live to be over a thousand years, so they age really differently from us humans.

AElfu- a male AElfeuesh (they’re not human, so why call them men?)

40 in AElfeuesh years 17 in human years

Okay, now that that’s out of the way. Here’s the sneak preview. It’s the only chapter you’re going to see unless I get a lot of reviews and decide to spoil you all.

Nietokune stared numbly at the small fire before her, a thin, gray cloak draped over her shoulders. Her deep blue eyes were lit dully by the flickering flames, but they reflected little hope. How had her people managed to get into this? No one remembered.

One of her comrades walked up beside her, a bowl of broth in his hands. “Your highness?” He said softly. She reached up and took the bowl from his hands, resisting a shiver as goose pimples formed on her skin.

“Thank you.” She responded quietly. The AElfu bowed and left her in peace. Nietokune stared back out at the seemingly endless plain; her perfectly sculpted face, sullen with fatigue, hunger, and despair, showed little expression. A shower of dull silver lighted beamed down from the moons, casting an eerie glow on the golden stalks of dead grasses. There was a slight breeze making the beads in her braids of dark brown hair clink together melodiously. A low rumbling echoed over the horizon to her long, pointed ears. Thunder, but it was a long way off.

Nietokune closed her eyes on focused on the faint sound of the far off rain, her favorite sound in the whole world. All of the AElfeuesh possessed some degree of magical ability, and as a result. Parents often had trouble disciplining their children. Special gemstones were often placed on the arms of children who couldn’t control their desires. Nietokune had one, to suppress her rain obsession. She had always wanted her parents to make it rain, but the tiny blue topaz gemstone was placed in her forearm when she took matters into her own hands and ended up creating a flood.

What did it matter now? Her parents were dead, leaving her an orphan at the young age of forty, barely into adulthood. She alone had to lead her dwindling population to whatever end there was for them. She was the last of the once royal house, Nohansen.

How had it come to this? How had they ended up in this strange and foreign world? Hadn’t it been less than a hundred years ago that they still lived in their homeland, a homeland that no one truly remembered? She had been born here, in this world, but for some reason she could tell that it was dry compared to the old world. It was a curious kind of dryness, a dryness that extracted any moisture of corpulence from a person’s mind and left memories that were only decades old seem like ancient myths or fairy tales. Not even the oldest of the group remembered much of the world from whence they came. The only thing that still had its old vigor was a single poem, told to young children to help them sleep or give them hope. She still remembered it clearly:

There is a land we cannot see

Where the sky, through the day, shines gold.

There the dreams that you dare to dream

Will, one day, become legends of old.

It was a beautiful, simple poem that infected her daydreams almost constantly. If only they remembered how to get to that land, or even remembered its name, but no one remembered, not even those that had been born and raised there.

They all still wore the insignia, the golden triangle that was said to have made that sky amber colored, what was once the basis of their world’s providence, that represented the Trinity Sisters. Some wore the symbols of the other gods; the white-gold circle that represented Time, the copper square that represented Chaos, the green-gold line that represented Fate, and the silver squiggle that represented Destiny; but the triangle was most commonly seen. There were many other lesser gods as well, but an insignia represented few of them. Everyday, she saw the hue and shine of the symbols grow less and less as her people wearied and their faith slowly decayed away. It was almost inviting, for what gods would drive them into this dismal place of nothing and remove all memories of the previous life? But she couldn’t give up on the thought that Destiny and Fate were guiding them on a path that was invisible to them, that soon they would be granted relief from their suffering; she had to believe it. She had to give her people hope and will.

She sipped daintily at the bowl of broth in her hands, not truly tasting its rich flavor. Their food supply was low; not even three months ago people had been able to obtain bowlfuls of hearty soup or plates of tender meats and tubers, not now. They had eaten too much too quickly and now they were paying the price. They made broths out of what leftovers they had remaining, but the soup was getting thinner and thinner by the day; the old animal bones wouldn’t suffice much longer.

Some had resorted to the barbaric practice of hunting, but there was little to catch and they caught even less; mice rabbits, birds, and even snakes, there were no peaceful plants to gather from here in this desolate world. Her people were starving and there was nothing she could do to help them except try to get them out of here. Wherever “here” was.

She had no sense of direction. Which way was south, north, west, east, no one knew. She knew the starts and where they stayed in the sky, but she had no idea which star would lead her people out of this wasteland. They had been following the rise of the sun since they found this barren place, since before she was born, but everyday the sea of dead grass seemed to get bigger and bigger. Occasionally they would stumble a small creek or such and would manage to suffice themselves and their animals for a short while, though the last animals had died now. They couldn’t turn back now, they wouldn’t make it back to the tiny stream they had last ventured to before they all died; their only hope was to keep trudging forward.

The meager fire flickered violently as the last bits of wood began to burn away. She ripped out a handful of grass and placed it over the tiny flame, her eyelids growing heavier by the minute. Why was she bothering? The fire wouldn’t be able to last much longer anyway, with the wind starting to kick up, and she had to sleep sometime.

She shuddered against the gust, dreading the thought of sleep when her head laid down to rest and the bitter cold drove itself down into her bones. Several people had already died of hypothermia in the past week; she didn’t want to think about the long procession that might follow if she died.

Someone approached her from behind an she felt him or her cover her shoulders with a second blanket. She opened her mouth to protest but she couldn’t get her voice to sound for her, she was too tired and cold. She felt the person’s hand brush over her cheek, wiping away the single tear that lay there.

Why did they do that? No one had ever touched her like that before. She struggled to keep her eyes open, to turn her head, but exhaustion overcame her in moments and she drifted into sleep, the mysterious person’s hands still on her shoulders.

And there it is. kisses fingers like an Italian chef Muah! Voila!

Don’t hesitate to review! I’m open to flames! I want to hear what you think!!! NOW!!

Love you all Pickle-eating Kangaroo