Featherscape

The following is a segment of a story currently for sale on my Gumroad page. To read the full story, you can find it all on my shop here! Thank you so much!❤ ~~~ When Rebecca was firmly bound down to the table, she found herself able to breathe again. She knew not how long Mommy’s hand tightened the air out of her throat, but she knew the elapsed time was far longer than she had ever been without breath before. She experienced the clenching pain of choking while feeling as if breathing was no longer a necessity, that she could be subjected to the pain of breathlessness without ever succumbing to the mercy of faint or death. Her eyes widened. She looked down as best as she could. At some point in the fray, her clothes had been stripped from her body. The girl remained in a rudimentary set of plain white underwear across her chest and hips without remembering her clothes being torn off of her figure at all. But she was still in her own body. No longer a victim of reliving memories

Morning came as a weary surprise to Silvia, a testament to how long she had been hanging in the Spinnerette’s nest after she had long since lost any notion of time. To her, the night had been an endless one, where hours passed in a retrospective blur of ticklish insanity. Pair by pair, the creatures came to indulge their hunger on her ticklish soles, her screams of laughter echoing out into the night and providing the entire nest with the Featherlands’s own tortuous source of nourishment. The beasts cackled and taunted the young queen. They came all through the night to taste her frantic ticklish laughter, teasing their clawed fingertips against Silvia’s classically sensitive bare feet. By the time the sun began to peak over the horizon, Silvia’s body was drenched with sweat, the Badland dew to a grand feast. She barely noticed when the tickling even stopped, her mind having gone numb to any recognition beyond her own ticklish hysteria. Her hair draped down her shoulders in wet

‘Peace manufactured by civilizations has always conflicted with nature’s desire for balance. Nature, unlike society, has no moral boundaries to limit its capabilities and often submits to means unimaginable by comprehension to uphold victory.’ The tea that swirled in Queen Deidra’s cup had grown cold and stale. She sipped at it anyway, remarking little of the taste. She sat in her chamber within Sprite’s Hollow, her door kept open to hear the usual bustling happening just outside. She maintained a casual look since moving the fairy commune into the Hollow, one that made her look more approachable than her normal attire as queen. Her hair was loosely braided and pulled back. Her wings were not adjourned with the typical royal sheen. Her queenly attire had been all but retired and forgotten, tucked somewhere in the dark corners of what she had scavenged since the move. None of it was nearly as important as providing the Featherland people protection and basic necessities. ‘Featherland

In the dragging fear for what was to come, Silvia’s mind still managed to torture her with memories of her sister’s stories. She remembered the trolls, the Howlers, the river beast. Of them, no matter how many times she told the tale, she always hated going over the thing with the spiders the most. Lilly despised telling it and Silvia was fine not hearing it. However, while being caught and dragged in a tight, unbreaking web up into the high canopies, surrounded by the raspy cackling and the unnerving scurrying of many legs around her, she knew she would not be able to skip the chapter for herself. “Let me go!” Silvia demanded. She squirmed and tried to grab onto any branch that would allow her to pull herself free. Silvia reached for her dagger, but found it not on her person. She saw it glimmer next to her bag as she looked back to her last view of the ground through the branches. She tried to slip the boot off entirely, but found more webbing securing it to her calf. She knew such

Silvia groaned at the water clinging to her clothes. With how difficult it was crossing the rapids, after no preparations doing so, she found treading forward in damp armor somehow worse. Luckily, the leather had not absorbed much, but the parts that did gripped onto her skin uncomfortably, starting the first stages of chills and rashes. She wrung everything out to the best of her ability. She checked the contents of her bag to make sure everything was mostly dry, save for a few loose sheets and a homework assignment that she became skeptical about turning in at all. She wiped her glasses on several things along her way. Leaves, flowers, drier portions of skin, only for each to make her lenses only a little less wet than before while still leaving those annoying streaks. Despite it all, she pressed on. Grumbling, not unlike she would during long, boring road trips with her family, but she did nonetheless. “Paul… now I have to go look for you…” Silvia muttered beneath her breath. She

A dour glimmer rested across Leon’s slivered pupils. The hair covering her body retained moisture from the damp catacombs of the Badland Castle, enough to prove itchy at times. He stood tall, bipedal and sturdy in how he moved. A stony expression sat across his face, unchanging by the day. A slender, muscular frame came by perfecting militant combat, though he boasted his mind as his greatest weapon. He spoke little to anyone, save for the Badland Queen and any whom he may be charged with interrogating. He carried out such duties tucked away in a deep, dreary cell. Leon stood over a stone table on one side of a small, enclosed room. Encaged torches burned against blackened walls. More light glowed from various devices and containers throughout the room. They were newer contraptions, clashing drastically with the more primitive layout of the castle. Machines brought to the Featherlands from the overworld sat throughout the room, both idle and in use. They were modified by a clever

“I had it under control,” Silvia argued. Back on the stone road, Silvia rushed to catch up to Paul. She huffed, still recovering from the previous tickle assault. Her cheeks were still rosy, her chest still sore from the constant heaving. Grumbling as she walked, Silvia picked the last of the twigs and leaves out of her hair before restoring her ponytail. “I’m sure you did,” Paul said. He walked ahead of her, carrying a smaller bag of his own slung over one shoulder. He wore the same long pants and boots in which he had found Silvia. His hair was short and resonated a sandy tone in the direct light. “I did,” Silvia snapped back. She adjusted the glasses on her face and the bag on her back. “I was about to, at least. I didn’t need your help.” “And what were you about to do, exactly?” “Cut through the one, then get all the others,” Silvia said. “Uh huh, before more showed up and kept you there?” “I would have handled it,” Silvia said. She raced to run up next to Paul, who faced

The evening came alive within the tunnels of Sprite’s Hollow. From the rousing commotion, a great celebration began to unfold. None of it had been prepared for, and yet there was little care to the matter. The Featherland Queen had returned and promised prosperity once again. The halls were alive with hushed whispers and the passing of the news. Silvia’s message had spread from one mouth to another. Creatures collected within the Hollow joined together. Woes were forgotten. Worries were but ghostly memories. The paranoia brought on by Nysadia’s regime had been extinguished, if only for one glorious night. Sprite’s Hollow exploded with impromptu festivities. Music poured through the tunnels. Surpluses of food became bounties on which to feast. The finest fairy wines had been broken into, flowing freely from one cup to the next. Silvia, at the center of it all, observed a Featherlands more boisterous than any she had ever seen before. It was a Featherlands not free from worry, but one

A strong gust of wind shot through the woods just outside of campus. The trees shifted, their branches rustling loudly. Leaves shook from their perches and fell in snowy flutters of green orange. Birds flew from their nests. They took to the skies above in flocks and danced in unison in the air. Silvia watched from below. With one steady footstep after another, crunching against the dried leaves against the ground, Silvia walked farther into the woods. Her hands brushed over waist high bushes. The falling leaves found her and seemed to tickle her cheeks. Silvia caught a few while others got stuck in her hair. She shook them out and looked back upward. The birds were still in flight above her. They rode waves of wind, making fluid shapes like living clouds. Silvia squinted as she stared. As she continued to watch them, a single falling feather caught her eye. It drifted down between the branches, almost navigating its way toward her. Silvia reached up and waited for it to get closer.

The path that Silvia knew connected her school and her neighborhood was much less of a path than it was brief accounts of trespassing. Her athletic abilities were significantly inferior to those of her sister, yet she was still nimble enough to jump the gated fence behind the football field. She slipped her backpack back over her shoulders from having to sling it over first. Beyond the fence were the very trees which stole her focus not one hour prior. It was those woods that always seemed gravely familiar to Silvia. Colorful clusters of leaves were scattered on the ground. Branches shifted and rustled in the wind, building up steadily. All the birds from before had flown elsewhere and only a few feathers remained, littered among the brush. Silvia bent down to pick one up. She pinched it by the quill. It was striking red and stood out from the others. It was short and stiff, yet Silvia felt the same familiar energy flowing through it. The imagery of feathers brought back strong, deeply

"H-hey!" Silvia called out into the trees. She snapped her head around and looked for the stranger who came to her rescue. Nothing answered back but her own voice echoing away. She peered through all of the trees. “Hey!” She still heard nothing but the wind whistling. The day had gotten dim. Looking around, she found her backpack laying in a small mess of leaves. She picked it up and brushed it off, tucking the dagger into a pouch on the side. Silvia brushed off her own clothes. She tried to wrap her mind around all that happened. Had it not been for the torturous sensations and the memories flooding back from the Featherlands, she would have convinced herself she was dreaming. Silvia sighed and started walking off, just hoping to get out of the woods and back home. Her head was lowered, her mind still racing and trying to comprehend all that just happened. When she looked up, she caught a glimpse of the cloaked stranger shambling off in the distance. She squinted and adjusted her