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Jas	By : awcoppelia Category: A through F > Forgotten Realms Views: 3206 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Forgotten Realms series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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CHAPTER 1

He banged through the front door, school bag hitting the jamb on both sides, and slammed the door behind him as hard as he could without actually damaging anything. Oh how I hate school, he thought to himself, I hate school, the bus, the idiots all around me all the time. It had been a particularly difficult day, one of those days where nothing life shatteringly bad had occurred, but tons of ridiculously evil little things had, over and over and over again.
And of course the first person he met, his mother, immediately had to ask, in one of those fake pleasantly interested tones, how his day was. Like he wanted to stand there, still loaded down with the million books he had to cart like some kind of pack mule, and cover each one of those horrible details with her. So he just grunted, and dropped the bags right where he stood, so he could cross his arms and fix her with the best disinterested yet annoyed look he could muster.
As always, she ignored his first attempts to avoid questioning, and asked with a slight titter, "Did you learn anything you didn't already know?"
Like learning was what school really revolved around! The nerve of her to even think that he had been sitting around like some happy kindergarten kid, all bright eyes and full of dreams, instead of dealing with dictators in the disguise of teachers and torturers in the guise of students. Feeling somewhat as if he were caught on a Mobius strip, he responded to this question in the usual way, an exaggerated eye roll and a muttered response that somewhat resembled the words "I am not in the mood to talk about this right now."
Now his mother switched to concern, face wrinkling in a expression that she most likely felt reflected her sincerity, but to sixteen year old Gerald it just seemed condescending. The kind of face that rich people affected when they talked about the charities they donated to in order to keep kids off the streets (and out of their neighborhoods).
"I wish you would talk to me occasionally, even if it''s just about the weather. I am just trying to be friendly. It's not a crime to want to talk to one's own son occasionally." She raised one eyebrow, in that annoying way she had.
"I don't want to be friendly. I just want to be left alone." On the last word, he scrunched his eyes shut and put a hand to his forehead. Already he was getting a headache, something that was happening more often than not lately after school.
His mother must have mistaken the gesture for her idea of teenage angst, as her next words were, "You know, Gerry, if you were a bit friendlier sometimes, maybe you'd be a bit happier, hmm?"
"Oh God, Mom, just leave me alone. I don't want to be friendly and I don't want to be happy!" he growled, as he grabbed his bag and stomped towards the stairs.
His mother's voice trailed after him, "don't you use that kind of language with me, young man!" - even though his tone should have been more the issue in Gerry's mind, then his slip in taking the Lord's name in vain. He chose to ignore it, and just continued up the stairs towards the landing.
At the landing, when he made the turn to the next set of stairs leading to the second floor, he ran into an even more diabolical obstacle. His younger sister sat on the second stair from the landing, grinning at him like the cat that caught the canary. Hair sticking up everywhere, interthreaded with obviously fake colored strands, eyes circled in large black rings, she looked like a circus clown on a drinking binge, or at least Gerald's opinion. She probably thought she looked the epitome of cool, the very picture of ‘Goth' or at least her particular twist on the theme. Gerald had always thought it pretty ridiculous, since he couldn't see anything in his sister's life that would warrant taking up a lifestyle that was normally associated with depression or social dysfunction. In Gerald's eyes, she was just fishing for more attention, trying to shock those around her into cautionary concern.
And today was no exception. She had had an orthodontic appointment this morning, just to adjust her braces, but did she have to go back to school after it was over? Oh no, his wonderful mother had decided that instead his sister should stay home, a chance for a little mother-daughter bonding, a chance to try to discover why Glenda had been so ‘down' lately, so unlike herself. But Gerald knew that was all a load of crap, she was playing her parents like a concert pianist. More like chance for Glenda to stay home and chat for hours with all her equally ridiculous ‘goth' friends, and not about appropriately angst-y things either. No, they would go on for hours about their fool-headed cartoon show they were so into, as if the main characters were planning to pop out of the TV and become their boyfriends any minute. Hah! What nonsense.
Still she sat, even though Gerald had put on his most threatening stance, still looking as is she was one very full cat. That could mean nothing at all, on the other hand...
"What do you want, permission to wipe all that gook of your face? Get out of my way," he snapped, "before I adjust those braces even more for you."
She just tittered and put her hands up over her mouth, like she though she was the cutest thing since Hello Kitty.
"I mean it; get the freak out of my way, gothturd." He glared at her, waving his still laden bag in one hand as if winding up for the pitch.
She tittered again, and in her best imitation of their mother's half concerned, half condescending tones she said, "Now Gerry, you know if you're friendlier to people, you'll be happier."
"I'm not the one with the supposed gothic angst around here," he countered, and then let the school bag swing out at her. But, having lived with Gerald all her life, she easily predicted the move, and bounced up the stairs like a backward crab, reassuming her pose three steps above her original spot. And, having the same advantage as she, he could also predict that move, and the ones that would follow. She'd dog him all the way up the stairs, spitting any lame insult she could at him until he finally reached safe harbor in his room. He briefly considered throwing the bag at her, but decided that would be too likely to go hideously wrong, and actually hurt the little brat. Not that it would bother him too much, but his parents would freak, and his long bad day would turn into a long bad evening. So he settled on throwing only his algebra notebook at her, it deserved the abuse as much as Glenda did.
But the stupid notebook got wedged in his bag, and instead, his sister got in another round of frenetic tittering while he tugged uselessly on the defiant sheaf of papers. "Whatcha gonna do, Gerry, bore me to death?" She broke into outright laughter at that, no more perky giggles, grasping her sides while she enjoyed Gerald's inability to do much more than irritate himself. Abruptly, though, the laughter stopped, as Glenda strained to hear a tiny mechanical sound, the incessant buzz of her Razor phone. Forgetting her teasing in favor of socialization with those more on her level, she raced into her own bedroom. Gerald waited on the landing until he heard the sound of her door lock.
He sighed in relief at the click of the tiny catch hitting home, and headed to his own room. Once inside, he dropped his overloaded bag on the unmade bed and flopped beside it. He stared at the ceiling for a little while, studying the patterns in the plaster, and tried to let the world drift away. Just him and his room, his space, no one to bother him, at least not until dinner. But somehow he just couldn't get completely relaxed. Something was just not quite right. Something about his sister's canary look...
He sat up and briefly glanced about the room. At first scan, everything seemed in order: computer on, screen saver set to black as always, book shelf neat and organized, and fairly empty as of late since he had decided there was little he liked to read anymore, putting the fairly messy room to shame. Clothes were piled in various corners, he had finally got the system so well down that only he could tell which were clean, dirty, or somewhere in between. This was fine with him, since it meant that his mother had lately refused to do his laundry because of it, which was great in his opinion. Less chance of her getting all nosy and stuff, not that he really had anything to hide. It was just the principle of the thing. His desk was also covered with clutter, mostly with half finished models and various school projects in diverse stages of completeness. The five chessboards were still in their assigned spots, each with a different chess puzzle set up for study. Above them hung a shelf with various trophies and placards, each having to do with chess.
There had been a time when he was a real chess aficionado, a time he lived for the competitions and titles. However, since he had turned sixteen, he had lost interest in the group competitions, he wasn't quite sure why. His parents had expressed numerous ideas about this, not that Gerald really listened to much they had to say anymore, at least not about his own life and interests. He had a feeling though that his father was at least partially correct in his assertion that it was partly because it just wasn't ‘cool'. Even though he loved chess, almost to an obsession, he didn't like the fact that other students could use as ammunition for their bullying. And they had used chess against him many, many times. He still loved playing, enjoyed the mental challenge of the game, just would not play in the public eye anymore. He glanced again at the five boards on a folding card table across from his bed.
Wait a minute... Gerald squinted suspiciously at the boards. All five had been set up with challenges, various scenarios within the game that required a lot of thought to win. Two had been set up with especially difficult trials, and he had been working on figuring out the winning movements and patterns for months. He had those two boards memorized, and had been known to work on the challenges even at school, during boring lectures or, even worse, pep rallies. Something was amiss; they weren't as he remembered. He stalked over to the boards and studied them closer. Sure enough, every one of the pieces had been moved, on every single board. They hadn't been moved far, just a space or two from their original place, but it was enough to completely upset the boards. He of course could rearrange most of them from memory, but still, the nerve of her! Because there was only one person it could really be, only one person that would dare touch his chess boards: Glenda.
Although she hadn't really done that much, unlike the last time, when she had hidden 2 pawns from each board in the refrigerator, of all the places, warping the wood on some of the more expensive sets, he was still steaming. She knew right where to hit him, where his weakness was. Well, he knew her weaknesses as well as she knew his, and he could take care of that little problem. Of course, it would be technically best to tell his parents and let them do the dirty work, but he was so sick and tired of her and her evil little games. So he stomped down the hall, letting her know he was coming, that is, if she wasn't completely tuned into cell phone world.
He burst into her room, breaking right through the flimsy lock in his haste to get at her. She had indeed known he was coming, knew he would be there even before he had. She knew how picky he was about his silly chess sets. But she hadn't expected him to go right through the locked door, instead of amusing her for a few more minutes with some useless pounding on the door and muffled insults. She squealed like a stuck pig and jumped into bed, throwing the covers over her head. She wasn't his primary target, though he did entertain thoughts of seeing how easily those falsely colored strands might part with the top of her head, and he instead focused on the bookcase next to the closet door. Hardback novels lined all five shelves, their dust covers gleaming in the low light. Taking a precious few seconds to decide between the inane Cherry Valley High collection and the more serious looking black covered RA Salvatore novels, as he knew his sister's surprise at his rapid entrance would wear off in an instance and she would be rushing to defend her books, he decided upon a nice fat Salvatore Drizzt trilogy anthology. As he jerked the book open and grabbed a handful of pages, he heard his sister's frantic screech, "Don't you dare, don't you dare, don't you dare..."
It came a moment too late, and he gleefully ripped the pages from their binding. A missile in the form of a Living Dead Doll hit him squarely on the back of the head, but this did not deter him from his revenge. He continued to rip chunk after chunk of printed pages out, dropping them in unceremonious heaps at his feet. More missiles were launched, most hitting their target dead on, and more pages piled up on the floor in response. Only when he ripped the last page out, slowly and deliberately, did he turn his attention on her. She merely looked at him, pouting. She had known her little rearrangement would be answered in kind, and she could always get a new book, just as could reset up his boards. Feeling somewhat satiated by his attack on the innocent novel, he dropped the empty binding on top the pile of torn pages, and stalked over to the bed with the remaining page. Not saying a word, he calmly dropped the page on her rainbow head, watching as it fluttered down and around her shoulders to land in her lap like some kind of bizarre lap dog. He hadn't paid much attention to the pages as he tore them out, but now he noticed that it was actually the very first page in the book, the blank one. It had been stamped carefully with a name plate, but the name plate had been scribbled over with in pencil and a unicorn nameplate sticker applied instead. ‘Glenda's book' the unicorn proudly bore on its white flank. Although it was mostly blacked out, the name in the nameplate stamp was also partially visible, and read simply ‘Gerald'.
For some reason, this sapped some of Gerald's enjoyment out of his revenge, so he settled for giving her one last growl and glare and made his exit. As he walked down the hall, he tried to shake the sudden feeling of negativity brought on by the mostly obliterated stamp. It wasn't as if he cared about the books or anything. He himself had penciled over the nameplates, in preparation to take them in for credit at the local used bookstore. His sister had raided that box, without permission from anyone, and had salvaged a few of the books meant for trade. He still had no idea why she had done that, she had never expressed interest in them before. Mostly she tended to stick with junk such as the almost targeted teenage romance collection or Japanese manga. To get his mind off of his rather lousy day, he decided to play around on the computer a little, maybe even update his ‘I Hate My Sister' webpage. It was a bit silly to have a whole web site dedicated to ridiculing his sister and her various friends, interests and hobbies, and it certainly didn't attract that many visitors. No regulars for sure, since no one could stand his ranting for long, and he didn't keep a guest book or forums in which people could express their opinions of his sibling rivalry.
Occasionally, though, one or two people, who in Gerald's view must not have much of a life, were able to tie some of his rants to his other social networking accounts. The messages they left were always the same crap, people who wanted to tell him how he should be thinking and acting. ‘You should be nicer to your sister, blood runs deeper than water", that sort of nonsense, as if they had any clue how his sister and he really interacted. For all they knew, he didn't even have a sister in the first place. You could lie about any sort of thing on the internet if you wanted to.
Then there was the other group of them, the ones that focused on one particular rant, usually about one of his sister's hobbies or interests. Instead of worrying about his ‘poor little sister', they were upset that he had pissed on their particular interest. They usually read: "How could you dare say that about (insert obsession here)?!!?!?! You obviously haven't watched/read/participated in above stated interest. You need to keep quiet." or something along those lines. He found himself wishing on more than one occasion that people would stop trying to find him in order to answer his rants, but he had discovered if he didn't reply or acknowledge the message in any way, they usually got the point and stopped trying to incite his fury. Unlike them, he just didn't care enough about whatever interest they were defending to get into an e-argument over it with some anonymous jerk. They never seem to consider that the webpage was just his way of venting, without actually harming anyone. It's not like any one knew who he or his sister really was.
Today, when he checked his my space account, he had just such a message. Although it was of a higher caliber then most of the defensive missives he had received, with its lack of grammatical errors, cute avatars, graphics, and pointless signature quotes, it was still of the same gist. Coincidentally, this (unsettled) reader was upset about his rant on the character of Drizzt, the very same character he had symbolically ripped to shreds moments ago. For the first time that day he laughed. The unhappy poster was complaining specifically about his accusation that the character was a Mary Sue, too perfect and unbelievable, at least to someone at his age and education. This poster seemed to think that he had no right to label someone that way unless he put himself in their shoes. As if it was a real live person he had dunned. This had the effect of renewing Gerald's passion for vengeance, and, for once, he shot off a hot response, basically searing the individual for their lack of a life and need to put human feelings into a book character. He pushed submit before he could change his mind.
That done, brief resurgence of vengeance satiated, he went on to check his real messages from people who counted. As he filtered through his inbox, a voice suddenly drifted from the far side of the room.
"You still haven't answered my question." said the voice, a voice that did not belong to any of Gerald's family, or anyone else he knew, for that matter. He froze, and then slowly, carefully turned around. Whatever he had been thinking before he turned fled from his mind. What was sitting in front of him, casually sitting atop his old plaid beanbag chair, was a creature the likes he had never seen, not even in cartoons, although that came the closest. But this was no line drawing. The creature was vaguely dog shaped, in a very anthropomorphic way. If a dog could actually breed with a human, and then have generations of babies from pure human stock, it might look somewhat like this. Except it appeared to also defy any physics of the world he knew, especially the way it was perched on the beanbag's seam, without denting the bag at all, almost as if it was floating. He caught himself idly thinking that if the thing could float, why the hell would it bother to appear to sit on the beanbag? That thought brought him back into focus, made him shake his head. The doglike creature remained, even after he had rubbed his eyes a couple of time. It seemed to be waiting for him to make the next move.
His next thought was that he was dreaming, but he knew that couldn't be the case, even before the thought was finished. Any time he realized he was dreaming while asleep, it immediately woke him. That didn't happen this time. They sat staring mutely at each other for a while, until the dog-thing spoke again.
"Well?" it expressed, one eyebrow, or corresponding body part, rising.
Gerald still did not speak, this time chasing the thought that he had gone crazy, a sudden onset of schizophrenia, yeah, that must be it. All the stress of school and family had finally taken its toll, and he was just plain nuts now, seeing and hearing things that couldn't possible be there. When he decided to accept that thought as truth, he relaxed visibly. It sure made it a lot easier to deal with the thing in front of him that was now tapping what appeared to be its foot impatiently.
"Uhhh, I don't know what you mean," he said, feeling a mite silly talking back to his hallucination.
"The message I wrote?" it prompted.
"I don't understand" said Gerald, in a brilliant moment of obliviousness.
The dog-thing sighed in what was a rather feminine breath. Now that he had decided that this thing was only a harmless hallucination (it didn't seem to be ordering him to stab himself or something, not yet at least), he was taking more time to really look at thing. It did have the general appearance of a female, if the body parts of the thing were in the same general places as a human being's.
"The message I sent to you a little while ago, the exact one that you just responded to in a rather uncouth manner, not that I expected anything more from you." she prompted again.
"Oh... " Gerald trailed off, still very distracted by the dog-thing's physical appearance.
It (she) sighed again, this time more vehemently. It was obvious that Gerald's fascination with her physical being was far more interesting to Gerald than any old post on his computer.
"Would this help?" she asked as she suddenly appeared to flicker. When the flickering stopped, she had taken on the (vice) of a middle aged woman, but still looked eerily like the dog-thing she had just been. She had lost any cartoonish edge to her outline, but her long messy brown hair still remained, as did the pink and green striped dress she had been wearing. Her facial bone structure was still the same, but this time without the fuzz that had covered it moments before.
The abrupt change made Gerald squeal much as his sister had done earlier. But at least now he didn't feel quite as nutzoid as he had a moment ago. It was easier for him to wrap his mind around her form this way. Of course, he didn't let the idea that he was crazy completely drop, as then he would have to mentally explain to himself where this woman or thing came from and why the hell she was in his room arguing about a stupid post on my space.
"You know, I didn't come all the way across twenty three branes just to watch you stare at me." the once dog-thing complained, sounding very much the way he imagined her post would have sounded spoken aloud. At least she was consistent with that.
Shaking his head again, and giving his eyes one more rub, he tried to focus on the question at hand. What had her beef been again? Oh yeah, that she thought he had no right to label a nonliving, nonexistent character with something that might hurt the character's feelings. The same argument that it wasn't real so what did it matter, was right on the tip of his tongue. Then he realized again that the thing sitting in front of him couldn't possibly be real either, could it? He shut his mouth with a clack of teeth.
Opening it again, he asked "Why do you care? And what the hell are you?"
"It doesn't matter what the hell I am, and you still haven't answered my question." She again raised an eyebrow. At least this time he could tell it really was an eyebrow. "Well, I'll give you my take, and you tell me what you think, hmm? I think that you're merely taking out your frustrations with your own lack of life, as you so poetically put it in your kind reply. Drizzt is something you really want to be, if you only could, and you are basically jealous. Also, you have very little in the way of empathy, no real ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, as they put it here."
Gerald, although he was still somewhat in shock from the sudden appearance of this creature in his bedroom, grew angrier and angrier at this thing's condescending words. And he had thought his mother was bad! He can't believe this thing had dared come into his room, apparently for the sheer purpose of insulting him.
Instead of answering insult with insult, Gerald instead said, with just a touch of whine, "Why can't you just post that on my space like a normal person?" Not that this was in case a normal person grinning at him from its precarious position on the beanbag. But still, the point was valid.
She laughed, bell-like tones echoing around the room. He figured the only reason no one had come to check on the mysterious conversation in his room was because she was indeed some type of sign that he was having a nervous breakdown.
"Actually I have a proposition for you, "she said, touching her fingertips together in a gesture not unlike that of the boss man on The Simpsons. "How would you like to find out for yourself, actually go and meet Drizzt? Then you really could decide for yourself, and if your opinion remains the same, at least you'll have something to back it up. Not that you could use the information here, everybody would just think you were crazy," she added, laughing again, this time at the look Gerald took on at her last statement.
He stared at her for a while. "You mean it." It wasn't a question, he could tell by looking at her that she meant every word. She was seriously proposing this idea, as if it would be no problem at all to whisk him into a world that didn't exist to meet a character who wasn't really there.
"Totally," she responded. Funny, he thought he heard a bit of southwestern drawl in her tones. for some reason.
"Sure, I'd do it, if it could really be done." He didn't think it could, so felt pretty confident in his response. The whole idea was just ludicrous. Of course, so was this thing sitting in front of him, spouting nonsense. Again he tried to imagine this as just a dream, and again, did not wake.
"Well, it can," she said, delighted, "and I'll just take that as your consent to do exactly that." Gleefully she bounced up, still balanced somehow on that seam, and waved her arms around like some amateur magician. She even said some words that sounded suspiciously like Abracadabra and Ala-kazam. He couldn't help himself, he started laughing at the silliness of it all, and then, everything went suddenly dark. Not just dark, but the complete absence of everything, including conscious.
And somewhere in time/space, but not in Gerald's, a baby was born to a one of the lowest noble houses in Menzoberranzan. The first, and only, son born to the house's Matron, after a string of twelve girls. It was a rather uneventful day.
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Jas