Equal Beings

“Emery!” My eyes fling open and my sister is there in front of me. “Did you fall asleep?” She laughs. I sit up and wipe drool from the corner of my mouth.
“Yeah I guess I must have.” I say looking around the train. It’s mostly empty with just my sister and I , an old looking couple, and a man in a black jacket staring out the window.
“Okay well I was telling you my story, but obviously you didn’t think it was that interesting..” She trails off and lowers her head, pretending to be hurt.
“Wendy, I’m sorry. But it is the third time you’ve told me that story you know.” I tell her. She lifts her head and gives me a sly smile.
“Yeah that’s true.” She punches my arm lightly before going back to her notes.
I look out the window at the world flying by. Everything is green. Everything is every color of green you could imagine from sea foam to emerald and everything in between.
“Look Wendy!” I say excitedly pointing out the window. “We’re passing Viridus!” She looks out the window for a split second and then back down at her notes, uninterested.
“Emery it’s not a big deal, we’ve visited Viridus lots of times before.” She says flipping the pages of her notes.
“I know, but it’s just so amazing. I mean when you live in only one color for so long it’s nice to see others.” I say. My sister and I live in Caeruleus, a completely blue city one of the most beautiful cities in the Arcus. But always seeing blue can get boring and unlike the rest of the citizens of The Arcus we are Royalty. Being Royalty means that my sister and I can travel to the other colored cities and see all the beauty they have to offer. Right now we are traveling on a train to take us back to the Main station and from there we’ll be headed home to our blue city.
“Emery you daydream about other colored cities far too often. Caeruleus is the most beautiful out of them all!” My sister says proudly. The man in the black jacket turns to look at her and that’s when I see the red scarf tied around his neck. He is part of Rubricatus, the most violent city in the Arcus.
“Little girl…if I was as privileged as you, I do not think I would be rubbing my fortune in other people’s faces.” He has a thick Ruby accent and immediately my sister goes quiet, returning to her notes. The man gives me one last look before turning back to stare out the window. The rest of the train ride is silent and tense.

When we arrive at the Main Station the old couple gets up and I see purple clothing beneath their jackets. They give us a nice smile before exiting the train. The Ostrum people are always quiet and kind.
“Watch your step.” I warn my sister. She steps off the train and gives me a look that says ‘Big brother I know what I’m doing’. We walk the down the main isle with our bag man behind us. We follow the blue Arrows until we reach the platform that will take us home.
“I can’t believe Father sent only us on that trip. What was he thinking?” I ask my sister. She is still wrapped up in her notes and I have to ask her once more.
“Helloooo Wendy!” I say snapping my fingers. She looks up. “I don’t know Emery, when we get back home you can ask him yourself.” She grunts. I must have interrupted her at an important part. Teenage girls are very hard to understand.
I sit on the blue bench and relax, hoping that the shuttle will be here shortly.
I’m close to closing my eyes when I hear heavy footsteps walk up to the platform. It’s the man from the train and he has a wild look in his eyes.
“Little girl, I knew you looked familiar. You are the Princess no?” He asks. I immediately stand up and get between him and my sister.
“Ah and if it isn’t the King to be, standing before me.” He chuckles.
“You can’t be here. Please leave us alone.” I say sternly.
The man smirks. “Where are your bodyguards?” He asks.
My sister grabs the tail of my jacket. She begged my father to let us go alone with no bodyguards, telling him that we would be safe. That no one in the Arcus had started trouble in quite some time and my father foolishly believed her. I tried to tell him that it was a bad idea, but he wouldn’t listen to me.
Now we were in trouble with a Rubric no less, the worst person to anger.
“You tell the King I don’t like what he’s doing to my city.” The man says, his smirk turning into a sneer.
I can feel my heart beating out of my chest and hear my sisters deep breathing behind me.
“Please just…just leave us be.” My sister pleads, her voice cracking in fear.
The man looks at her for a moment.
“Little girl, I have waited and waited for things to get better. But they are the same. You walk around with so much pride while my city gets torn apart, and you think I won’t do anything about it?” He says.
Suddenly I’m struck with pain deep in my gut and I look down to find a knife embedded there. The man pulled his knife out of my stomach the same time that my sister gave out a  loud scream.
“Tell the King I said hi.” The man says before running down the platform and away from the guards who heard my sister scream.
                It feels like fire in my stomach, so much pain that all I see is black before my eyes. I fall to the floor and my sister is there crying and screaming, holding onto me. The guards are rushing up around us trying to figure out what’s going on. But I can feel myself slipping; the light around me is getting darker. Before I close my eyes I look down at my wound and see the red of my blood seeping out. We are all red inside, not just the Rubrics. We all have anger inside our veins. 

Due to Illness

Due to illness, all stories and fan submissions will be posted on Saturday, the 21st of December.

Sorry for the inconvenience, hope to see you all soon!

Challenge #51

We are back!

The hiatus was a nice break. Took some stories down, edited a ton of them, picked some to make books out of. Good times. Ink has finished her first round of editing, Feather has . . . Well . . . Uhh . . . -cough cough- . . . Let's talk about the new challenge!

As you may remember, we were just starting the Alphabet Challenge! We are now on the letter E! We must either base our stories off of something that starts with the letter E, or we must use E letter words a lot in the story. Fun!

If you would like to join us for the challenge, please do! You can e-mail us your submission for Fan Friday at inkedfeathersfink@gmail.com! You can send us a short story, a poem, art, whatever you like as long as it goes with the challenge!

See you all on Wednesday!

Four Week Hiatus

Hello everyone!

So, for the next four weeks we will be on hiatus! We will be taking down stories to edit and publish. This means that the stories we take down will be much longer and may have different endings once we are through with them. Some stories may not change, and some stories may be combined into one single story. It all depends on the theme we choose for our first publication. We are hopefully going to go for an e-book or e-magazine. We would love some fan submissions to be put in, and we might even add some stories that we haven't put on the Feather and Ink blog. It all depends on where we go with this.

We would like to have this project done by the end of December, but that plan may change due to life being  thorns in our sides.

If there are any stories you would like to see us tune up, or if you would like to have something of yours published in our first little project, just e-mail us! If you have any suggestions for a theme for us to base our project on, e-mail us! So far, all I can think of is 'Best of 2013', 'Madness', and 'Supernatural'.

You can e-mail us at inkedfeathersfink@gmail.com, or you can message us on our Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Feather-and-Ink/.

Each week we will try to give a status report.

So, I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving, we will be back in Challenge business on the 7th of December!

Taken down for editing.

Challenge: Write a story based off of the letter D.
Ink's story has been taken down for editing.

Dare

“Deirdre!” He calls my name out into the open air. I hesitate to turn around, not wanting to look into his eyes. He steps closer to me and puts his hand on my arm. I have no choice left, but to turn around and face him. “I dare you to kiss me Deirdre and tell me that you don’t feel something between us.” He says. I can see it all in his eyes, he loves me more than her.
“I can’t do that Will, and you know why.” I say, and it breaks my heart in half to do so. But If I know Will, he won’t give up a fight.
“That’s bullshit Deirdre and you know it.” He says. He takes my hand into his and looks in my eyes.
“Please, I dare you, I triple dog dare you.” He says and leans in close to kiss me. A lot happens in the seconds before a kiss. You wouldn’t believe what happens to your mind and your body when someone you love has their lips inches away from yours. It’s a crazy experience that I had only been through once in my life. But now here was Will standing in front of me and he made the seconds seem longer. When I was with Will It felt like a rush of cool air on a hot summer day. He made everything better. But deep down in my stomach I could feel that this wasn’t right.

Will had been married for four years now. He was married to his high school sweetheart Melissa Cambry. For years and years in high school I had admired Will from afar, but never did anything about it. Years later I ran into him at a Comic convention of all places. Turns out Will had been a closet geek like me, and from there on we clicked. One night Will had come over for dinner and half way through the meal we just started talking. It was a deep conversation that left our meals cold by the end of the night. Then Will kissed me and despite what my mind was telling me, my heart had taken over.
                Will and I had been having our affair for six months. I knew it was wrong, he knew it was wrong. But it didn’t stop us. Every day I would wake up and look in the mirror and at first I would smile thinking of him, but then I would think of Melissa. What if I were in her shoes? I would hate the women who took my man. That’s when I began to hate myself. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I called Will and I told him I don’t love him. I was only in it for the sex, and that I had found someone new.

I didn’t expect to see him again that morning. I had been avoiding him for weeks and weeks. I was afraid that if I saw him again that he would know the truth. I was still in love with him, and even though I hated myself for what I was doing I still wanted to be with him.
                I wanted so badly to kiss him now, but a lot could happen in the seconds before a kiss and I finally knew what I wanted. I pull away from Will and push him back some.
“Stop Will, first you have to listen to me.” I say. “Will, I love you. You know that I do. But you are married to Melissa, you know that right? Before this had ever happened-“ I gesture at myself and then at him.
“-before you and me were ever a thing, you loved Melissa. And you know what? She loves you Will. I don’t know her like I did in high school, but nobody deserves this and you know that’s true. So here’s the deal, if you love me then I dare you tell me you’re not still in love with her.” I say. My question is answered when Will stands there for a moment, hesitating. It hurts to do this, but I know it’s the right thing. I lean in and kiss Will on the cheek. “Goodbye Will.” I say and walk away. 

Video of Me Writing This Story

Challenge #50

Hey guys!

It's time for our 50th challenge! After this, we will be going on a four week hiatus. More on that next week. For now, let's focus on the challenge!

The challenge for this week is to write a story based off of the letter D. You may integrate tons of words with letter into your story, or focus your story on a word that starts with the letter.

If you would like to join us for the challenge by submitting your own short stories, poems, or art, please do! Just e-mail us at inkedfeathersfink@gmail.com so that we may showcase your work for Fan Friday!

See you all on Wednesday!