Frostbound

[Jade Harley]

Her eyes rove over the ground, searching for any uneven spaces or unanticipated miscalculations made during her earlier exuberance. Nihil. Nada. She should be good to go!

The ground level will have to be created first, Jade assumes. If she began at one of the upper floors in her grand project of visualizing each and every room down to the tiniest little detail, the entire place would cave in. At least, she guesses it might do that. Jade isn’t totally sure, but it seems like a reasonable conclusion to draw.

Starting with the front door, with an atom insignia engraved upon it, Jade imagines herself stepping inside of the grand foyer. The room is dim, the walls a shadowy slate grey. Globes are scattered about the room alongside crumbling, mummified bodies and the taxidermied heads of many beasts hang from the walls. Suits of armor glint slightly with the light spilling out from the hearth.

There are two comfortable-looking lounge chairs with several almost indistinct figures sitting upon them, among them being a valiant knight and a decrepit mummy. They are the most distinguished of house guests, dressed in their best formal wear and partaking in the proffered tea and civilized discussion.

Jade doesn’t like them very much. Especially the sun-bleached beauty doll. She has always been suspicious of that one, although she now realizes that it was kind of silly for her to think that a dummy had murdered her grandfather.

The odd group is seated quite comfortably beside the big fireplace, which has an electronic fire burning within. Each flank of the fireplace is painted a different color, one a gilded gold and the other a solemn purple. Above, sitting upon the mantle and in the most hallowed place of honor, is an image of Jade’s dream self in her terrific golden dress, smiling cheerily over the socialites in the room. A few candles flicker mistily from where they perch atop the mantle.

Her grandfather’s stuffed corpse is cut in profile by the light of the fireplace, a shadowy silhouette against the orange-gold flames spitting at his back. Jade eyes him uneasily and moves on to the next room.

The first thing she sees upon entering this room is the Transportalizer platform at its middle, which will assuredly take her up to whichever floor she wishes it to in the tower. The second thing she notices is the big-ass green serpent monster sticking out from one of the side hallways. It is apparently blocking the way to some mysterious room as well as the Transportalizer she had just been looking at. Jade wonders how on earth she hadn’t noticed it beforehand. Red flames flicker all around on their pointy-ended candle sconces.

Jade scuttles around the edge of the green-scaled beast and up the spiral staircase curving along its frame. This leads into yet another useless room, consisting primarily of her grandpa’s old junk and some very unexciting bluish sun-bleached photos of women that have been sitting in the front window of a beauty parlor for some twenty years. She bypasses most of the clutter by persevering up yet another curving stairwell.

Oh, bother. There’s just a bunch of arbitrary crap up here, too. Really, this is getting pretty annoying. Jade glares accusingly at the various sarcophagi scattered about the room, some cast wide open with mostly-preserved bodies peering at her from within. They are withered and blackened with age, skin peeling disconcertingly back from their skulls. More big game trophies and suits of armor regard her, a faint pink glow reflecting in their glassy eyes and chainmail, respectively. Jade squares her shoulders and again proceeds up the staircase and into the next room.

There isn’t another Transportalizer here, either. A strange orange light permeates the room. Every which way Jade turns her head, there is a spear, mace, blade, or an axe being held aloft by some valiant knight. With a grumpy huff, she ascends the stairwell and continues on towards the room above.

The contents of this room are an assortment of undeniably mythological creatures and other considerably less mythological specimens of fauna naturae. All stuffed, of course. There is a Transportalizer at the center of the room, but Jade supposes that she might as well use the stairs and continue on to the next room.

Sunlight immediately assuages her senses, although Jade quickly modifies this feature to be substantially gloomier according to the miserable Frozen Fields outside. Her imagination has to be as realistic as possible, after all!

When Imaginary Jade takes a look around once again, there is a blue pallor cast over the contents of the room. Potted plants of all kinds are a colorful contrast with the clinically white tables positioned in the room. The earthy smell of flowers, fruits, and vegetables infuses the air. If Jade looks out the window, she can see the glassy reflection of another one of the four wings of the garden atrium through the falling snow outdoors.

Turning on her heel, Jade heads into the area that marks the exact spot where all four wings of the garden atrium overlap to look for a Transportalizer. Thankfully, she actually finds one this time, and steps on it. In a plume of green light, she is rocketed through Space and is simply delighted when she appearifies in yet another boring room. This room is mysteriously lacking in any metal boxes for containing dreambots.

It is, however, remarkable in that it has one more staircase leading to an upper floor. You would think that being upgraded to godhood would make stairs easier to navigate. Ha! Not so.

Jade fists some of the fabric of her dark-colored skirt into her hands, hiking it up a small ways above her calves. An irritated scowl curling her upper lip and crimping her forehead, Jade marches up the remaining flight of stairs.

When she arrives at the top of the staircase, Jade is greeted by the sight of her bedroom. This improves her mood spectacularly, as her bedroom contains all of the objects that pertain to her interests, such as her Squiddles doll collection, posters of anthropomorphically persuaded fauna, several potted and hanging flowers, as well as some of her unfinished experiments and optimistic inventions.

Strangely enough, all of her prized rifles are missing. Jade notes this with some confusion, but accepts the puzzling reality for what it is. That is, she will have no guns for an even longer time than originally anticipated.

Her bed sheets are a hearty sky blue and are generously decorated with images of poufy white clouds and a stylized sun, which is reminiscent of Rose’s Light symbol. Jade wishes that she could flop down on her bed and take a nice long nap, but unfortunately this is only an incredibly detailed, totally imagined representation of her bedroom. Which really stinks, because Jade is dog-tired.

She wonders if there is a Prospit or Derse here. That would be interesting; although, she wouldn’t be able to access the moons without a living dream self. Jade used to have issues with telling between whether or not she was awake or asleep— having a dream self was kind of an in-between state for her. She supposes that she is most likely not dreaming as of right now, seeing as she hasn’t been privy to visions of her thirteen-year old self dying horribly in the clouds.

Now, back on the subject of her tower. Built by her grandfather when Jade had been just a wee little tot, barely big enough to heft a pair of flintlock pistols (which small children should never be given, by the way, just ask Jade’s dead grandfather), it is surely falling into disrepair at this very moment while suffering under the ruthless weather conditions of the Land of Frost and Frogs. The winds are most likely buffeting the stuffing out of the poor old casa de Harley.

Alas, Jade cannot access her sylladex at the moment and will not be able to pay her planet a visit for quite a while yet, which is really such a shame. She has already decided that she will just have to recreate the tower using her stored omnilium, although it will most likely take a lot out of her.

Nevertheless, any loss of mysterious conjuring energy will totally be worth it if it means that Jade will have a warm hearth and a bed to return home to again. If everything goes according to plan, the comforts of the Harley home will be numerous in number, the stony walls thick and difficult to pierce, and best of all, Jade will be able to invite her friends over without an ocean in the way! Fantastic!

Despite her cheery attitude, Jade is finding it a little tough to stay optimistic with her butt freezing off as it is. Nearly ten minutes into the summoning process, she had found it difficult to remain standing and had reluctantly planted her bum into the snow. Bec had chivalrously offered to let her sit on him, but Jade had declined for fear of accidentally hurting him. With a huff, Bec had then settled for lying heavily across her legs as Jade did her very best to concentrate on summoning her family residence.

But, wow! Is it taking forever. She supposes that she shouldn’t be surprised based upon the humongous height and size of her home, but geez! She’ll be lucky if this pile of rock and shiny glass windows appears within the next century.

At one point Jade considers calling up her chat client and babbling aimlessly into the memo she has going, but that doesn’t seem like a good idea when she thinks about it. She can’t afford to let her thoughts become side-tracked and keel off the rails just yet, at least no more than they already have. For some reason, she has been thinking a lot about LOFAF during all of this boring inactivity. She is just a bit worried that this might affect the outcome of her summoning, but even if it did it probably wouldn’t be too big of an ordeal.

Well, it might be for the hummingbirds and spring-fresh flower petals. Jade isn’t a licensed meteorologist or anything, but she can kind of tell that this blizzard isn’t letting up anytime soon. Maybe she can move them into the garden atrium?

“Hmm,” Jade says to the incandescent light that is slowly but surely cumulating into her home base, maxing out just below the poufy grey drape of dreary sky hanging over her head.

“Ah,” she says to the small patches of vegetation that flicker in and out of existence beside the tower, a smattering of rugged green trees with soft specks of poppy red blossoming here and there.

“Welp,” Jade says to the world at large, to Time and Space and all aspects in between. This sure is taking a while. She thinks Grandpabot might be starting to rust a little.

Speaking of her bionic Grandpa— where the blooming heck is he?

With a frown crinkling across her face, Jade whips her head this way and that in an effort to catch a glimpse of her wayward mechanized guardian. The shifting rainbow form before her stilts and stutters dangerously, however, and Jade has to abandon her search for the moment in favor of lending more attention to the pressing task at hand.

The white wolfdog slayed out across her legs is warm and unconcerned by Grandpabot’s apparent absence. Sticking her lower lip out, Jade jostles Bec into wakefulness with her knee until he more or less looks at her. Like always, it’s kind of hard to tell if he really is, seeing as he has no visible facial features to speak of.

A foggy puff of air whuffles out from his snout and into her face. Yep, Becquerel is definitely paying attention.

“Bec,” Jade whispers, not really getting why she feels the need to whisper but also not especially bothered by the fact that she is in the first place. Bec’s left ear cants to the side. “Where’s grandpa?”

Bec proceeds to yawn directly into her face, causing Jade to wrinkle her nose in disgust. Yuck, dog breath! Deciding that this isn’t enough torment, he then rolls over more heavily onto her stomach, tilting his head all the way back so that his light green nose nearly touch’s Jade’s shoulder. He grumbles something again, cold doggy nose pressing meaningfully against her upper arm.

Brows drawn together in her confusion, Jade turns her head and— “Oh!”

Grandpabot is sitting atop one of the rock pillars, red lenses glowing through the pall of snow and furling cold air. Jade wonders how the heck he got up there, being a feeble senior citizen and all, but then the obvious “d’oh” moment occurs. He’s a robot, of course he can climb up a couple of dumb rocks! How silly of her to even think otherwise!

Curiosity satisfied, Jade returns to her task of epic proportions. Seriously, this is one ambitious project. She just hopes that it will turn out as grand as she wants it to!

Like the scratching of a disc, Jade’s errant musings draw to a stuttering halt. An image, wavering almost akin to how a mirage might in the midst of sizzling desert sands, takes shape in front of her.

There is a blocky, solid grey mass of stone a few feet away from where she sits. When she tilts her head all the way back to take in its entirety, her hair spilling out across the ground and icy snowflakes prickling at her eyes, this grey form grows, and grows, and grows, spiraling up until it reaches a magnificent height that barely scrapes the belly of the sky. The image sluggishly metamorphoses into something concrete, two misty-coloured, regal bulbs twinkling faintly at its top.

Jade’s mouth forms a perfect ‘o’ as she scrambles to her feet, Bec rolling lazily off of her with a grumpy snort. The sapping of omnilium abruptly ceases; the splendid rainbow gleam of its summoning dies away. She looks upon her tower, real and ensconced in a jeweled halo of frost.

The last time Jade saw her tower, the winter had been fading fast in thin blue streams. Every morning it was cast in an illustrious, blithesome fire-mist, and would shine almost as bright as the golden towers her dreams once held, a prismatic mountain nestled beside.

On one hand, Jade feels excitement course through her soul like warm sunshine at the sight of her family home. On the other, an ink-drop spot of vile darkness sinks into her heart, and makes her detest this tower down to the very marrow of her bones, mostly thanks to the conflicted memories it holds. It is the place where she lived without human contact for so long and grew up fearfully wondering if her grandfather’s death were an accident, suicide, or something far more sinister. But, it is also where she learned to shoot a gun, speak, work with electronics, garden, and so much more.

This kind of response definitely deserves an interrobang, otherwise known as a combination of a question mark and shout pole. “Great‽” she asks/exclaims, hence the interrobang.

The tower isn’t alone, either— the forests of LOFAF, or at least several small cuttings of them, have also materialized nearby. Deep green boughs already weighed down with snow rise up in blotchy patches here and there. Jade can already see the budding beginnings of flowers peeking out from the snaking vines that wrap around the trunks of deep green trees. Lavender-colored hummingbirds dip and bow in graceful flight, without a doubt searching for nectar. They seem unbothered by the extreme climate.

Jade would really like to go indoors right now— she’s about to turn into a pupsicle! – But, first things first. She has to make sure that nothing has been overlooked!

There are four small groves in all; one nestled at the back of the property in the tower’s shadow; two allocated to the east and west; and a third behind her, sprawling and storm-stippled with grey. It is peculiar to Jade that, in this coalition of brisk squalls and sheets of rugged ice, that these plants appear to be right at home. This has been an extraordinary phenomenon that has not yet ceased to confound her since her first entrance into the Medium, and which doggedly persists even while in a new universe.

Turning her head to the side, Jade sees that Grandpabot has left his perch. Just as the beginnings of distress start to tug her lips downwards, the trumpeting of a petroleum-smoke gasket alerts her to his whereabouts. He is stood stock-still among the eastern grove of trees, apparatuses whirring and twanging inside of his head and lenses gleaming as he regards the odd foliage around him. He appears content to merely observe the distinctive swaying of the tree limbs.

Yep, that’s everything. Grandpabot will come indoors on his own time. She should be good to go inside, now, and get out of this horrible cold!
Her feet crunch in the snow as she walks up to the door, which slides easily aside to let her in. Ducking her head a bit out of habit from the Prospitian battleship’s low-hanging entryways (some carapacians sure are short!), Jade blinks in the face of the warmth and immediate dimness that assuages her numb senses. Becquerel squeezes in beside her, sloshing snow across the floor.

The door slides shut behind them with synthetic muteness, only a faint hiss indicating that it has closed. Jade blinks at the foyer all around. The fire in the hearth crackles and snaps at the air, reddish light spilling across the room.

It is just as she remembered it. Her grandfather’s taxidermied corpse stands watch over the entrance hall, a glassy-eyed and disconcerting vigil illuminated by the fireplace's glow. The odd assortment of doll house guests sit in their usual seats, as if the game had never even happened and they had never been cast into the Earth’s orbit by Becquerel’s green lightning.

Jade turns and walks into the room with the minion of Typheus, the green snake beast, and observes that it is still splayed out over the Transportalizer that she could use to access upper floors. She glowers at it, but takes the stairs. These steps lead her to the room of sun-bleached beauties, then to the one filled with decrepit mummies, then through the room of valiant knights, and finally into one of the wings of her garden atrium.

When she rushes over to look out through the smooth reflective windows, the only sights evident are the snow clouds hung in a thick mist. If she scrunches up her eyes, however, she can vaguely discern dark shapes burrowing like moles on the silvery-white mountainside. They look almost...people-shaped. Or like ants.

“Hmm. That's pretty neat,” Jade says. Becquerel whuffles at the glass in possible agreement, causing it to fog up. Giggling a little, Jade pats him on the head and tugs his ruff towards the zone where all of the divisions of the garden atrium intersect.

She eyes the Transportalizer there for a time before stepping a foot up onto the engraved platform. Jade knows that she will have to create a pass-code to activate it at some point, because it would be silly to have a bunch of portals lying around that any old traveler could use. Then, the Transportalizer activates with a barely palpable hum.

In between one moment and the next, Jade is warped up through the tower in a blazing flash of green light. Her atomic make up proceeds to break apart and spiral through Space, mingling jubilantly with snow-drop speckles of frost, ivied walls, and green-gold gases in equal measure. She becomes merely a collection of effervescent particles, fizzling silently through the upper atmosphere.

Then, Jade’s red-slippered feet touch down, and she is left with a strangely hollow ache behind her sternum. It’s probably just the fact that she can’t really do that kind of thing on her own without technological aid anymore getting to her. (Or a serious cardiac condition, but she highly doubts that this is the case.) That’s okay, though. Jade will be fine; she didn’t always have those super neat Space powers, anyways, and can get along well enough without them.

There still isn’t a box containing her dreambot on this floor— as expected. That’s pretty alright, too, because Jade isn’t sure that she wants a robot wandering around her property while she’s asleep— excluding Grandpabot, that is! She trusts her Grandpa enough not to get into too many crazy robot shenanigans or to blow up their house. The only thing between her and a terrible, fiery death is her Grandpa’s good judgment!

Not delaying any longer on this largely empty floor, Jade takes the steps two at a time as she climbs to her bedroom’s level. She just hopes that everything will be in its rightful place when she gets there.

“Aw, this stinks,” Jade grumbles when she enters the room. Sure enough, her guns are still missing. Even when she drops down to the floor to check underneath her bed! “How am I supposed to go exploring without a gun?”

The answer is simple: she shouldn’t. It could be dangerous to go out without a proper weapon to defend herself with, and Grandpabot would probably be very disappointed in her if she returned home all scuffed up from trying to pummel abominable snowmen with her fists. So, Jade will probably have to hang around the homestead for a while before venturing out.

As Jade walks further into her bedroom, she is hit with a sudden unruly blast of cold air. She proceeds to reenact that one photograph of Marilyn Monroe taken in 1954, you know the one, with the flying skirt and purportedly suggestive pose. Although, Jade doesn’t bother acting nearly as suggestive, and if she’s suggesting anything here, purely for the sake of suggestion, it’s probably violence.

Flapping her arms about wildly and shoving her skirt roughly back down below her knees, Jade stomps over to the open window and tugs it closed. Alright, none of that funny business! She’ll have to get John to rein that rowdy Breeze in. That is, if he ever shows up.

The Witch of Space sighs. Wow, nice one, Harley! Way to bring your mood down in two seconds flat. Bull’s-eye.

Well, all the more reason for her to start messaging someone! Flicking her Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles onto her face, Jade flops back onto her sky-blue bed sheets. Her candy red Lunchmuffs bunch up around her ears awkwardly as she settles in to begin pestering the Omniverse, hopefully not in a futile attempt to communicate with someone. Becquerel noses at her feet and she shifts her legs aside to let him hop up onto the bed, too.

After a few hours of babbling into her memo, Jade falls asleep in a very uncomfortable-looking position and with her body strewn out across the bed, legs and arms splayed like an upended spider. She snores, loudly.

Meanwhile, Grandpabot stands outside in the snow, watching the ant-sized shapes in the distance move at a slow crawl along the mountain range. They do not appear to have noticed the tower, yet; And hopefully, if their presence bodes ill, things will stay that way.