Another piece of fiction from me. The beginning of a fantasy story that started out as the familiar old 'portal between the worlds' scenario but was beginning to incorporate all kinds of wierd, disparate elements just before it's host 'novel' at Panhistoria came to an end.

Yes, I suppose really one day I should post a sample of what I'm writing NOW rather than older, defunct stuff. But this is as much for me as it is for you (my hypothetical reader, maybe I have one!) and I am shamelessly prone to nostalgia. I can see the faults in these pieces now, and even ways to improve them (though I haven't), but that's half the point of this exercise for me.

So with no further woffle, here is Burn - a Fire Elemental, resident of Faerie, and reluctant guardian-to-be of that pesky portal.

The Earth Moved in Faerie

Something was terribly wrong. The Land knew it too, and moaned and trembled with its unease. The rumbling echoes of the groundquake and following rockfall faded back into silence, and after a brief pause during which everything seemed to hang in tense stillness, the birds began to sing again, though tentatively. The black horse, which had lifted its head from cropping the sparse grass to stare with anxiously pricked ears at the mountains facing them across the forested valley, gave a soft snort and stamped a hind-hoof, nosing at its master’s shoulder.

Burn absently murmured soothingly to it and patted its strong arching neck. “And what was that?” he mused. It was a rhetorical question – he knew what it was, just not what had caused it.

I don’t know but I don’t like it, said a small leathery voice from inside his jerkin. I think we should move on. Wherever we’re going.

“Hmm.” Burn looked across the valley at the hillsides beyond and frowned. There wasn’t much that could make a more-or-less immortal fire-elemental uneasy, but the series of unusual events he’d encountered over the past few days were getting close to it. Two days ago, he’d been drawn by the smell of fire and smoke to a meadow down in the valley below them, where he’d found nothing but ash blowing amongst the trees and long grass. The work of dragons, he’d assumed, scenting sulphur and brimstone on the hot breeze, but the mighty creatures generally kept to the mountain fastnesses and were rare visitors in the valley without good reason.

He thought he understood the reason for the dragons’ presence when he went a little further, and in a small clearing in the woods he found a rift in the fabric of the world, a rippling shimmer in the Spring sunlight that as he stepped closer revealed a view into another world beyond. The world of the humans, Burn had decided, creatures he generally had nothing to do with, not even those who had passed into Faery years before and stayed. He never went near their small, scattered settlements. He saw no point in it although he didn’t resent or regret their presence in the Land.

Small rips in the continuum were not uncommon and generally easily sealed, but Burn could see this one was something different. It had a force of its own that hissed in the wind and rippled in the aether, as if in defiance of any attempt to close it. Not that Burn did even think of trying to close it: he was Fire and this was not his responsibility. He had simply ridden away, assuming those who could, would deal with it.

But since then, he had begun to wonder. The next day he had found something wandering about in the valley that had no right to be there and had aimed a small metal weapon at him that spat fire. Burn had retaliated in kind and left the ash to mingle with that already lightly dusting the leaves of the trees. And then today—the Land itself had spoken and Burn realized that the rift he had ridden away from was of more ominous significance than he’d thought.

But still, he was a fire-elemental and such things as holding the boundaries between the Worlds were not his business. He gathered up his horse’s reins and swung into the saddle, careful not to squash the salamander that lay quietly beneath his jerkin. Normally Pyro would have been up riding on his shoulder and filling his ears with its chatter, but today the little creature was silent and hiding.

The big black horse moved sure-footedly on the rocky slope down to the valley floor, ears flicking back and forth as if it too had caught some of the salamander’s unease. As the ground levelled out and became more thickly wooded, Burn turned its head into the trees and crossed the valley floor at its narrowest point, fording the small stream that meandered along its length until again the land began to rise towards the foothills on the other side. What had made him decide to see for himself the aftermath of the Land’s protest he couldn’t say, and he never asked himself because he never questioned his own motives for anything.