User blog:Long Patrol Girl/Faded Rose

This is a sequel (Sort of, I guess) to my other story, The Warrior. I am writing it on here because the format is easier on me than on the Redwall Wiki, but I will be posting it there, too. I had this idea while I was reading Martin the Warrior for the third time. It struck me during the prologue; funny thing, I thought up of the first part of the prologue reading the other prologue! Funny! The rest came into mind while writing. Anyways, here it goes!

'''NOTE: Huge spoilers for Martin the Warrior. I advise you very seriously NOT to read it if you haven't read Martin the Warrior yet!!'''

Part One: Or So Was Thought
"Martin! Martin!" Brome ran about, shouting the name. "Martin! Oh, by the stars!" he ran into the falling remains of Marshank; he saw what he believed was the corpse of his sister, Rose; she was starkly beautiful, but her crumpled, bleeding body was pitiful. He stooped down next to her and picked up her head; he opened up her eyes and looking into them, felt to find her pulse, and checked for broken bones. He bent down and put his mouth on her, breathing out, then in, out, then in. He went back up and pounded on where her heart should be, once, twice, thrice. He tried to start her breathing again, then tried her heart. He felt her pulse: Could it be? Was there the slightest, faintest, weakest heartbeat? Or was it his imagination, longing for her to live? He shouted out over the walls, "Quick! Someone! Bring poles and cloth! I need help!" He heard two whistles; their code for "Yes". He repeated his process three more times, and felt her pulse. His face lit up for a moment; "Come on, Rose! You can do it!" He pounded on her chest several more times. Suddenly, her eyes whipped open and she begun breathing heavily.

"Martin!" she sat up quickly, then slowly went back down, for pain was rushing up her spine. "Martin?" she said softly. Brome shook his head.

"I haven't seen hide or tail of him; I've heard reports that he walked out and vanished, but it seems rather unlikely. But, there isn't a...corpse anywhere. Do you know where he went?" Rose thought for a moment, then shook her head.

"What am I supposed to tell him?" she thought. "That he can travel in time and is not from our age? That would seem outrageous and they would claim me to be not in my right mind." Mid-thought, Keyla ran in, bearing a make-shift litter.

"Rose!" the otter said in delight. "You're alive! This is such great news! You were dead, or so was thought." There was an awkward silence at this, then Keyla smiled nervously and he and Brome carefully loaded her onto the litter.

"I may be alive," she thought. "But I don't know if Martin is. Martin, oh, my Martin!" She closed her eyes. "My lovely, lovely Martin. My time traveling love. I always knew you were different." A tear drifted down her pretty, dirty cheek as she drifted into a deep sleep.

Part Two: End of my Days
''It has been nearly fifteen seasons since Martin died, and the Abbey is still asking questions. They will not accept my answer of going off to live a more adventurous life; perhaps I can record, though, that he came back and gave up his life of travel and liberty, but let us not forget his love. He talked of Rose all the time, and I must say she sounds wonderful. I am planning on taking a small trip out to Noonevale, although it is not at all a short distance, to see if I can find some descendants of Brome, so I may relate the true tale to them. I plan on saying I am going on my 'last holiday'; I am the only one left of all us adventurers; Dinny passed on three seasons back; the Abbess moved on to shady pastures just a few days after I arrived back; Skipper and Lady Amber died within the same day, the two friends. Columbine died last season, and Gonff, my son, left a few weeks after the funeral. The rest are either rotting away in their beds or have moved on, away from the Abbey.' The Abbey sits mainly empty, and while you walk through it, the hollowness echoes about you. Although, this has its upside: no one disturb me whilst I write, for I have taken on a new role: recorder! With nothing to do now that my wife is gone, I have taken it upon myself to record. I am also changing the history slightly, to adjust the mysterious bits with Martin. If I could guess, they will be so enthralled with his story, they will not care about a slight mystery or two. I write it hurriedly though, for I fear my end of days may be coming soon. Though I am outliving most of my friends, I fear that my body is still aging and I am doing so rapidly; although I do not welcome death, I accept it's role.''

''But about this I desist; I am so easily thrown off in my writings! I am leaving tomorrow to find a possible descendent of Rose or Brome! Wish me luck!''

-Gonff, retired Mousethief

Chapter One: Inklings of Something Wonderfully Awful
"Look Rose, look at our child. She was happy, and so were you and I, but then it all fell, like a house of cards, like the last autumn leaf. You and our children were burned, as was my life. Our life. And now, you are dead and I am as good as dead. I wish I didn't have to, but yet I did. And you are now faced with a gift and a curse..."

Rose bolted upright in her bed. She looked out a window; it wasn't even dawn yet. She was either claimed by insomnia or strange dreams, every night. The dream was always roughly the same: Martin, talking to her, or to perhaps himself, talking about something great, and horrible and the same time. She couldn't quite place a paw on it, but it was there. She remembered glimpses: she was trapped inside a burning building, holding a child, with screaming and laughter outside. The roof would fall in, and at the last second before she would be burnt to death, she would awaken, covered in a cold sweat. Was it meaningful? She doubted it. Yet, it still gave her inklings of something wonderfully awful, something from the past, or perhaps the future, or perhaps it was from the never happens. Her skull pounded as she got out of bed and went over to the water bin, washed her face, combed her hair back into a french braid, and stared at herself in the mirror: she always got compliments on how young she looked in relation to her age, and would stare at her beuty in the mirror, daily. She tried to fight back the dark desires of vanity and pride, but she was hard-set.

Rose had never been a perfect child: she even lied to Martin about her and Brome, for she was the one who ran off, her brother simply falling to the peer pressure she set for him. But Martin, oh Martin! He had set her right: he seemed so full of valor and good, that she felt shameful. But the shame soon left and she began to act better around him, trying to impress him. In what she thought were her last moments, she realized that perhaps he had changed her for the better, so that she would be a better person. Wrong. She needed him desperately, and she had fallen quite short in his absence. She was full of shame and pride and vanity, along with rage, directed at him for abandoning her, and self-pity, too: when Badrang through her against the wall, she was injured, and she has many a scar, not to mention a slight limp in her left leg, because of it. She used it to get pity and a few perks; she always was a bit self centered; but Martin, he changed that! And where was he now, to set her back on track, to fight her dark side? He was not here. He had failed her.