Extra: Mistaken Orations


::little E. M. O. extras that aren't in the story...yet::

 

     His name was Clay and this did not make him happy.

     Of course it was much better than Destiny [Miley Cyrus' real first name. it made me laugh--no wonder she changed it...but it's still a cool name...] or Muhammad or one of those strange foreign names that teachers always mispronounce. But still, the word "Clay" leaped out on roll-call sheets like a deflated red balloon in a field of cultivated forget-me-nots. Clay wasn't even him, if he could sum himself up in one word. In fact, the closest you could get would probably be emo.

     And that wasn't even a proper word.

 

     "Hi Clay."

     The boy with the swaths of black hair glanced at the boy with the pillars of sharp white hair. They looked like reflections of themselves through a negative mirror [you know, black and white].

     "...Hi Moon."

     Looking closer, the boy called Moon seemed to be the hazy reflection of Clay in a murky pond. He was even standing horizontally.

     "Why do you call me Moon?"

     "You don't call yourself otherwise."

     His ghostly flicker of a face got a faraway look.

     "What are you doing here?" he asked dreamily.

     Clay looked around at the skeletons of trees and their crackling leaves rhasping against each other in the September wind, clean silhouettes against the silvery moon whose cool beams filtered through the mist that swirled around the moon-like boy. The forest was silent. At 12:00, that magic numeral and a colon that signalled the beginning or the ending of time, the Clan and all their companions would come. But now the forest was silent and black as death.

     "..."

     There was something so beautiful about that half-light, that knife's edge between life and death, innocence and sin, the sun and the moon. Clay could feel himself bleeding from the inside for want of something he could not say. The day was where life and Time were, but the night was when his heart stirred and the pain could cut through to something that belonged.

     "Loving," he sighed.

 

     "What did you do to him!?" she screeched.

     "Shut up, lady. You're not helping."

     "What did you do to him!? What did you do to him!? What the hell did you do to him, I command you to tell me!" she kept up shrilly.

     Bren found the first aid kit in the kitchen cupboard, right where Clay had said. He ripped it open and roughly wound something that looked like a bandage around Clay's leg. The injured boy gasped from the pain and started to make weird choking sounds, but he was too exhausted to scream.

     "Water," Bren snapped.

     "Fine, forget what you did to him, what are you-"

     "Water!" he bellowed. "Are you stupid!? Get him a cup of water!"

     The wrinkles on her face twitched, and she hurried away, whimpering. Bren turned his attention back to Clay.

     "C'mon now," Bren muttered. There was blood. A whole lot of it. Soaking the carpet, staining the concrete floor, trailing all the way back to the creek and the forest where Clay's warm blood cooled in splats on shivering leaves and drained away in the water. A whole lot of blood. "C'mon. Stay with me."

     The water-bearer returned, and Bren blew his fiery breath into the cup to heat it and tried to get Clay to sip some. His head lolled against Bren's arm, and his insomnic eyes were getting darker and more glassy by the second.

     He slapped Clay's cheeks without holding back. The woman protested sharply, but went quiet at the look Bren gave her. Clay still didn't respond. The water dribbled helplessly out of the corners of his mouth as fast as Bren poured it in.

     "Goddamnit, Clay," he whispered.

     Bren dunked the warm water onto Clay's wound and smashed the cup into the far wall, freeing his hands. He grabbed Clay by the neck and dug his other palm against the thigh wound. Clay started to cry.

     "If you c'n still here a voice, then listen! I'm gonna get in your mind and draw out your water potential [oh woah lol pun semi-intended]. I'll make you sync with the water and you're gonna heal. Alright!? Think of Crawna! Think of the Clan! And I know you have a thing for Lizzy, so most of all think of her! Your life depends on this!"

     Then he sank his teeth into Clay's neck and the dark shroud of Time fell upon them.