Zchapeloriginsoftheoldchapel

Origins of the Old Chapel This background story about the old chapel is based on journal entries written during a Scribe's site visit during the spring of 2011. 

Colors swirled around her body, changing as quickly as a dancer on the wind. She had no clue as to where to go. Of course her mind was screaming at her, begging her to run, to get as far away from this place as possible. The shades of the colors didn’t help. The reds, oranges, and yellows were the colors of fire and destruction. Purples, blues, and shades of gray were obviously the colors of loss, grieving, and troubles. What were they doing there? Why were they haunting her dreams? Out of nowhere, a gryphon, the size of a bear flew over her head, letting out a war-cry that made Freya’s ears want to bleed. Just the wings of the creature were as long as she was tall. The fur that covered the legs of the creature was a deep, dark brown. It ran into the slightly lighter, but still imposingly dark feathers of the gryphon’s wings, mixing together in a beautiful harmony of colors. Just looking at it, Freya felt terrified. Adding the face to the cry made her cringe in pain.

 Just after the gryphon landed on an outstretched branch of a decrepit tree, a flash of purple and turquoise flew past her eyes. It took a minute for Freya to realize that this sudden blaze was actually a dragon, covered in beautiful scales that added a bit of hope to the already depressing mood of the scene. With a swift turn of its head, the dragon glared into the gryphon’s dark, sinister eyes. It was a death glare, though the other creature did not seem to take it as such. It was then that the first creature flew at the second, its black talons ripping off the smooth, sleek scales of the dragon’s torso. In one fluent, slow motion, the dragon fell out of the sky, hitting the ground with a loud thud. Everything shook. Trees fell over like card houses, houses even more easily than the trees. The gryphon attacked at the creature again, now ripping apart its flesh. The dragon now lay dead in the open field, a sunset sky burning behind it.

 Freya could not stand to watch it any longer. It was a terrible sight to see—a murder of an innocent, beautiful creature who had meant no harm to any others than the gryphon, the obvious sign of evil in this picture. How could this happen to someone who had done no wrong? The gryphon…how could it not care what happened to the dragon? Weren’t the two species usually separate? And if together, did they not get along? Freya did not know. She never did learn about creatures in her studies. It was considered impractical for a princess to know of such things, after all. Instead of watching the torturous scene behind her, Freya turned and ran as fast as her long legs would carry her in the opposite direction. It did not matter to her, where she went, or what she did when she got there. She tripped over a rock, scraping her knee. Normally, the sight of blood would make her feel ill, but at the moment, Freya didn’t care. She let the red trickle down her leg, spoiling her plain white dress, and running until it hit her foot. It was only a small gash, but it was enough to make her bleed for a good five minutes or so. Her hand reached forward, and touched the bottom of a golden knocker. She was able to reach it with ease, and pushed the door open to find…nothing. The hall was completely empty. The high, arched ceilings had no rats stirring, and the marble floor was empty, and looked like it had been that way for quite a while. Freya’s eyes wandered everywhere, including her own feet, and she noticed that her one of her feet were bare. What was the use of shoes, if they could not stay on? She had to have lost one when she tripped.

 Freya cast the second one aside, the cold marble licking at the bottoms of her feet and sending chills up her spine. It was then that she observed something that she hadn’t before. A marble statue of a woman stood facing one of the walls to the side. This statue was very far down—toward the end of the hall. Freya ran towards it, hoping to get a closer look at this figurine. But just as she was about to reach it, its head turned, facing Freya with a look of anger in it’s eyes. At that moment, a feeling of dizziness came over her entire body, overwhelming her as everything went black. An evil laugh sounded—it wasn’t a particularly malicious one, but one of pure assurance. Of what, Freya did not understand. At least, not until it had ended. The laugh was to say, “Evil conquers over everything. It is inevitable. Do not fight it.” Before she could contemplate it any further though, everything had ended.

Freya opened her eyes and looked upward, kneeling under the trunk of an old tree. She dare not touch it – these days it was seldom that Freya touched anything around her. The molded, dusty clay coloring of the tree reminded her of things she used to have, and things that she feared she may never see again. Touching these things, the trees, the wood, the grasses around her, reminded her of the people that used to live in this same place. Her neighbors. Her friends. Her mother. People that were gone. People that were dead. People, Freya would have to learn to accept, that were dead. This place was special to her. It was a holy place. If other people were around to see this place, with its purple flowers and ugly weeds, it would look no different than any place they had ever known. But Freya cherished this place, as if it were the last visible paradise on an abandoned planet. If other people were around to see this place, she decided, it would not hold the importance that it did. If other people were here, she would not need to remember everybody that she lost. She lived not far from here. Freya felt it impossible to be too far from this place. It compelled her, pulling her closer in, forever and always, albeit willingly. To her, it was a calling. The Eternal Father of the Sea (whoever she was, she never was quite sure) wanted her there, for a reason she could not figure out. Her home was in a hole. To her, this was very fitting for the circumstances which with she dealt with day after day. Her home, rather, her hovel, kept her safe from the weather, from the stragglers that came through, and from the wild, hungry animals that came at night.

In her dream the night before, she had been a princess. Her father was the Eternal Father, and the Adversary had come to warn her of the evil that was about to take place. It was a stupid, foolish dream, Freya thought to herself. There was no evil coming; nobody ever came, good or evil – not these days. She was alone, abandoned, and left to fend for herself amongst the forest of trees around her. The only thing that she had was her hovel in the ground, which Freya felt she could not even call a home or living space. But before the nuclear explosion, her mother //had // told her that dreams were important things. Dreams were beautiful messages, filled with twists and turns, all of which holding significance. To ignore a detail in a dream was to treat the entire thing as if it were nothing but imaginary. Just because things were in one’s head, Freya’s mother told her, didn’t mean that they weren’t real.

Her mother always //was // a dreamer. The neighbors claimed that Freya’s mother, Analisia, had her head far above the cloud. She was stuck in a land that she could not be reached, they said. Analisia was a hopeless, insane young woman who was raising her daughter to be just the same. Freya, as a child, did not agree with them. Her mother was her only caretaker, her heroine and great protector. Freya shunned all of her neighbors, biting at them and yelling that they had no idea what they were talking about. Nowadays, now that they were all gone, Freya wished she listened to their talk.

Even if they were gone away, away had to be better than where she currently was. Deep down in her heart, Freya knew that these people, those that she grew up with, were dead. They were too preoccupied with their nuclear power, with their machine shops and their fancy science experiments, to notice the harm that they were doing escaped to places beyond their territories. Slowly, but surely, her mother noticed the little things that went wrong as the exploration into nuclear territory continued. People were getting sick. Gardens were growing, but the crop production slowed greatly. The air was getting harder to breathe. Life as they knew it, her mother said, was going to get worse, and soon.

Analisia claimed she knew, and was adamant about these facts. They came to her in //dreams //, so they had to be true. Why would the Almighty, the Eternal Father, give her these messages if they were not going to be used wisely? With that, Freya’s mother packed up their things, and brought everything to an underground hovel that Analisia started digging a few months before. Everyone thought that Analisia was crazy. They all believed that their science came with no consequences, that they would live forever. But then the explosion happened.

Sometime in the early winter, two years after Analisia and Freya started living in their shelter, they heard a loud noise. The ground began to shake, dirt began to fall, and Freya, being only nine, screamed at the top of her lungs. Analisia, never the caring mother, simply sat with a book in her hands, smiling contently to herself. Her dreams were coming true, and she was nothing but pleased with the outcome. Later, when everything around them became still again, Analisia allowed her daughter to get out of the hole and go searching with her.

More than anything else, they found dead people. Dead people, and dead animals. The numbers surpassed one hundred, a number which scared Freya beyond most things. Their faces were contorted, either with fright, or pain, or some other deformity that was most likely caused by the radiation or by falling things. The machine shop was broken, metal and glass all over the floor of what used to be a successful place of business. To say the least, everything that Freya grew up knowing had now been destroyed. Now all that she had left were memories. Memories and broken buildings. Freya looked back up at the tree in front of her, and closed her eyes again. She knew what she had to do. She was going to build the church.