At the crack of dawn was the sign morning began, maybe a few minutes off, but the sun usually rose around five o’clock. Birds chirped around this time as well, and many people also began to come awake at one of the most beautiful times of the day. Dawn is when light touches the land in such a way, purple and red clouds dance like a painting in the sky. Most mornings were very enjoyable yet this morning was filled with much confusion in the now awaken mind of a tired mind of a Guardian. As her black lashes parted, spikes of radiant sunlight filled into her vision. The brightness held her eyelids halfway closed, and a timid headache from the sun annoyed her. This annoyed mindset moved her right hand instinctively to her violet orbs.
Though the tanned digits she then saw her surroundings which even added to more confusion. How a large gaping hole appeared above her head which allowed the morning sunlight to enter, she held no reasonable explanation. Her eyes could even see the reddish clouds in the sky, and in the distance sounds of birds filled her ears. As she pondered on the hole in the ceiling, a stale taste in her mouth awakened. “Ugh,” she mumbled aloud to try and get the stale dry feeling from her tongue and throat. She figured she woke up that was obvious yet the tiredness she felt didn’t seem like a usual morning.
No it seems like my energy isn’t here anymore, she thought to herself in an exhausted voice in her head. Peering at the sun didn’t help her none, so her head tilted to the right side of herself, and saw nothing but a rather large wooden room. The space reminded her of the large open space atop of her shrine. Only difference appeared to be instead of an open airway with only one wall, there were four dark wooden walls. The first wall she looked upon was bare, no windows and no decoration. A sigh escaped her breath as she turned her head to her left and saw another wall yet it did have two square windows with a fluffy white looking curtain. I bet they’re soft, she thought as she sat up from the hard floor. Turning her head over her shoulder she saw that nothing supported her from the hard wooden floor.
Suddenly what turned into a sleepy confusion instantly turned into a minor panic. There was no telling where she was, what day it was, or why she was there. She couldn’t remember last night, not even yesterday period. Everything seemed to be so fuzzy in her memory, this never happened before to her. Even her heart pounded in her chest like never before, air wheezed hastily to her lungs as she tried to figure all of this out. “Alright Ploay, calm down everything is going to be-” Before she got the chance to say ‘fine,’ she noticed a pile in front of her. Ploay wondered why she wasn’t moving her legs, and as widened her jewels in horror she saw that a four foot long wooden board that once belonged to the ceiling pinned her right leg to the floor.
But before she could act on the fear that her leg may be broken, she followed the trail of piles of the wooden boards. Across the room she saw something breathing at first, and the more she peered though the bright light, she realized a man shared her large wooden debris room.
“Who are you!?” she scream at the man who she couldn’t tell if he was asleep or not, but she wanted answers. She caught her breath to wait for his response, alright that didn’t just come out did it? A question that poked at her sides like a bad piece of meat. Guessing that he was asleep, she pulled herself with both hands in an attempt to remove her right leg from being pinned. Pain ran up to her brain like a slither of a snake, and a low moan of agony passed though her lips. If her leg was broken, she wasn’t helping her cause at all, but she hated being pinned down, that was torture in her eyes. Then her head moved from her leg back to the man, there were so many questions she wanted to ask him, and maybe half of them were unanswerable.
Her teeth bit down gently on her smooth lips, asking for help wasn’t like her at all, but she was too week to push the board off, and too magically drained to do so. Ploay’s only option was to ask for help, hopefully he would help her. it was a fifty-fifty chance. “Sir, if you’re awake could you do be the honor of perhaps moving this board from my leg?” she said in the most polite voice she could muster. The ashened winged woman wasn’t prone to be polite, in fact she tried to avoid manners as much as possible, but she needed him so that was a different story. Yes, the guardian of wind hopeless and her only help is the help from a complete stranger. A chuckle floated from her lips at the thought.
Across the scrubbed wooden planks, lining the modest one-bedroom suite, a man in his mid-twenties was stirring. Dark-haired and tanned, his beefy body was draped haphazardly in a traveling cloak, that now resembled an excess of bed sheets, and was surrounded in varying sizes of debris. His face was contorted with a look of sleeping concentration, and scuffed with patches of dust. The slow rise and fall of his torso signaled that the man was in a deep slumber, unknowing of his surroundings or the needing calls from the room’s other occupant. Finally, after moments where the sun grew in height to welcome morning, he seemed to grow restless and turned on his side. Attempting to snuggle close to his cloak for comfort, he groped for it while moving. Instead of finding a new snug place amongst the wreckage, Vaudeux was rolling over onto a shard from the collapsed roof.
With a violent snort, the half-breed jerked awake with the dull after-pains of pressure from the wood shard poking into his back. He turned back over and clasped the middle of his back, his eyes half open, his countenance representing that as if someone had slapped him. The pain was too real, as much as he would have liked it, he couldn’t sleep after that. Blinking hard, he could now feel the heavy weight of his head, the pressure throbbing at his temples and hacking at his forehead. He pushed himself up with his unoccupied hand, and used his other to address the more prying ache in his cranium. He couldn’t think of anything but the hurt and the tiredness that gripped at his attention, as well as his body. The feeling was similar to being drunk, but multiplied horrendously. Exhaling deeply, it was the first time he tasted his breath, rancid on his tongue, like he had in fact been drinking. He bit back with a sour expression and attempted to stand.
His limbs brushing away splinters and other forms of rubbish, he wobbled steadily onto his tired legs. Every muscle was aching, like he had run leagues at an escapee’s speed. The room was just as uninviting as he stood, and peered blearily around. It was the first time he had noticed where he had woken. He must have been in some type of inn, one that he didn’t recognize or ever recall visiting before. He had fallen next to a large bed, of which its quilts and sheets were missing, strewn away from its mattress as if by weight, and hanging carelessly over its side and spilling onto the floor. Next to the blankets were shards of wood, growing in size as he followed its trail to the large support beam that had crashed to the floor. Instead of noticing anything below the log, his eyes traveled up a pillar of sunlight to the ceiling. There was a wretched hole, serving a quarter of the room to the elements of nature, and the falling sun. Tiny bugs were already swirling captivatingly in the shaft of sun, dodging partials of fat dust. That must have been one wild party… Vaudeux thought lazily, before anything more sinister could cross his mind. He hated to think how he must have looked after seeing the room he was in.
He turned back towards the bed, staring at a punctured feather pillow, trying to recall any of the events that could have been a prelude to his presence in the wreckage; when he heard something shift behind him. Turning on his heel, he spun back around, to see a woman struggling beneath the beam. Having a soft spot for the opposite gender, and seeing the sheer size of the wood, he turned a surprised eye to her before scrambling to her side. The log was heavy, yet with the leverage of its opposing side anchored against the floor, Vaud was able to heave up the hefty wood enough for the woman to slip from its clutches. Feeling particularly robust, Jupiter lifted the object further upwards and tossed it back into its nearby debris brothers. He grinned back at it, satisfied with himself, then turned his toothy smirk back on its victim. She had a dark complexion and fierce eyes that seemed to be smoking under his gaze. Her beauty was stunning, something he would have been sorry to miss any longer in Arda. Forgetting his pounding head, tensing muscles, and boyishly dirtied square jaw, he offered her a look of concern before mustering up the most velveteen of tones, “Are you alright milady?”