Lightscript Legends Episode 11
“Beyond Endings”
A book thrown away, a home left behind, and a doorway of hope…
As Elina’s hand rested against the tree she had watched both rise and fall, a sudden wave of sunlight washed over the battered landscape. The burst of light illuminated a small sawmill surrounded by drying logs, slash piles, a rugged workbench…and more shifters.
A plaid-clad young man with unruly dark hair and smoky-blue eyes bustled around the makeshift mill. He was flanked by a thundercloud-gray Shadowshifter with midnight-blue eyes and a winter-blue Lightshifter with eyes like molten sapphire.
Months passed in moments while Elina watched the young man rolling logs onto the mill and dividing them into boards. Each log his saw opened revealed decades of beauty formed in secret. The rivers of golden grain were arrayed with knots resembling everything from islands to creatures…many recognizable from the walls she had fallen asleep inside.
Time slowed once more and the sawmill fell silent. When the young man faded from Elina’s vision, she curiously approached his cluttered workbench. In the midst of the tools, nails and wood scraps scattered across the sawdusty surface, she spotted a book with its original cover removed and two varnished slices of blue-stained pine ready to take its place.
This time she needed no urging from Skyvior. A small, eager smile played on her lips as she placed one hand against the incomplete wooden cover and the other against the book it was built for…
Elina was a little disappointed when the whir of Time’s turning pages landed her in a landfill. “Maybe I should have touched another pinecone,” she mumbled as the stench of rotting garbage filled her nostrils.
Crows were squawking in the gloomy gray sky overhead and a man was tossing garbage from the bed of his truck onto a mountainous pile of trash. He hopped off the tailgate and turned toward the cab, pausing to grab one last object from the bed, before leaving in a cloud of gravely dust.
Elina barely saw that the object was a book before a tractor rumbled in behind the retreating truck to shove the new garbage higher up onto the heap. As the tractor moved on to scape more wayward debris from the ground, the book came tumbling back down the stack corner-over-corner.
Then Elina saw the boy. He was half the size of the man at the mill but recognizable by the unruly dark waves brushing the tops of his shoulders ~ where a gray shadow and a blue light hovered. He darted over to where the book had fallen in the dust, snatched it up quick as a cat, brushed it off with a grin, and tucked it inside his coat.
The blue Lightshifter brightened at the sight of the book, while the gray Shadowshifter darkened like a thickening storm cloud.
“Trash,” the Shadowshifter hissed.
The Lightshifter’s eyes danced almost playfully as he countered, “Treasure.”
Elina glanced around to see where Dravial had gone and noticed a large raven silently circling among the smaller crows. Smoky wisps of darkness trailed from its shiny black feathers, sending a shudder down her spine. “You shadows are relentless,” she muttered under her breath as she followed after the boy, wondering if she would ever wake from this maze of memories that were not her own.
As expected, the raven shadowed her from overhead…along with that mysterious flicker of emerald light.
The boy jumped on a bike at the entry gate of the landfill, and Elina couldn’t keep up with his wild peddling for more than a few strides on foot. With a heavy sigh, she stopped on the shoulder of the highway to watch him ride off down the ditch with the battered book thudding against his chest.
Dravial descended, landing uninvited and weightless as a breath on her shoulder. “This is why you should only open the Dreamscape stories that I recommend.”
Elina grunted. “I would rather not be engulfed by another forest fire, thank you.”
“I fail to see how your dump tour was a superior experience,” Dravial quipped, casting a sideways glance at Skyvior.
Skyvior smiled. The wind picked up, stirring his feathers and a flurry of Lightscript embers that caught in Elina’s blowing hair. “The tour is not quite over.”
The highway dissipated into a heavy mist that then blurred into a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. Elina stood on a cracked sidewalk outside a quaint house with a small screened porch and a bay window looking out on a small, well-tended yard. The dark-haired boy was parking his bike next to the front steps, still cradling his dump discovery inside his coat.
Dravial looked at the house with an expression of obvious boredom and began preening, his form gradually morphing back into that of a dragon while retaining the size of a raven.
Elina followed the boy up to the white front door. There, her heart sank at the sight of a paper posted on the window with the words - Notice of Repossession - in letters as bold and black and cruel as a Shadowshifter’s breath.
Before opening the door, the boy gave the notice a lingering look filled with sorrow, yet empty of surprise.
Elina stepped into the cozy house behind him. It was tidy, aside from the partially packed boxes set here and there. The fragrances of spices and candles and soap were adrift on the air. The lighting was soft. A small stereo in the living room was playing soothing piano music. But the homey atmosphere was tainted by a dark heaviness that materialized in the thunderhead of a Shadowshifter looming over the boy’s shoulder.
After hanging up his coat, the boy set his rescued book on the counter. He then snatched up a cloth and got some water from the sputtering kitchen faucet to clean the worst of the grime off its damaged cover. Elina stood among the shifters, watching as he worked with the intense concentration of a treasure hunter examining an artifact. As gravel and mud were wiped away, she was gradually able to make out the title…
The Firstborn Legend
Finally, the boy scribbled his name ~ Andor Thorsen ~ inside the old book. Then he placed it in a box laden with folded blankets and heavily hugged teddybears.
Elina looked from the harsh Notice of Repossession on the door…to a set of house keys lying on the counter…to the legend of a doorway to a forever home nested in a moving box.
Her thoughts drifted to her new home…to the mysterious key that matched the lock with no keyhole…and to her own copy of The Firstborn Legend…
🏔️💫Lightscript Legends💫🌲 is an ongoing series of bite-sized stories and sip-on-the-go serials. Click here for the full list of published episodes and subscribe to get new installments in your inbox!