《Azure Chronicles》Chapter 4: Wake Up Call
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Later during the night, the sound of the villagers could be heard as they made their way back to their huts. Zalroth sat down on his bed and took his white coat off. He placed the coat on the table before laying down on the bed. He closed his eyes but opened them again when he heard Lola's backpack bump into both sides of the door frame, causing the contents inside the backpack to slightly move about. He watched as Lola tried to pull the backpack through the door frame but to no avail. She sat on the floor in exhaustion and looked at the backpack that was now stuck in the doorframe.
"You know you could just change your bag into its ring form then back to the backpack," Zalroth stated. Lola let out a fed up groan and led down on her back.
"But that's so much mental effooorrtt.". Lola rolled around on the ground while continuing to complain. She eventually relented and changed the backpack into its ring form. She picked it up before she rolled over to the middle of the room. The ring changed back into the backpack and Lola placed it next to the bed Zalroth was on before she started to search through it. She pulled a sleeping bag and a gem themed pillow. She laid it on the floor and placed the pillow inside it. She quickly hopped into the backpack and after a few seconds, she raised her hand out of the backpack. Zalroth grabbed her hand and raised her out of the backpack, before placing her on the ground.
Lola was now wearing her pink onesie and quickly untied her long hair before placing the hair tie in her backpack. She stretched her arms and legs which caused her three green kitsune tails, which had metallically silver tips, and ears, which also had the metallically silver tips, to appear. She quickly climbed into her sleeping bag. Zalroth tried to say goodnight to Lola but noticed she had already fallen asleep. He awkwardly/playfully rolled his eyes as he led back on his back.
"So do you mind telling me what you were going on about earlier?". Zalroth looked over at the window frame and saw Sophia sitting in the tree right outside the window.
"What in particular?".
"The reason we're going with this village to the Aivikkra Continent would be nice but I suppose it's got something to do with what Lola whispered to you, right?".
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"Oh yeah I forgot to tell you earlier but Lola told me that she had found a lead on the location of an Azure Gem in the continent but forgot about it until Akari mentioned it.".
"Right..." Sophia said with a slightly gloomy tone.
"Something wrong?". Sophia both rolled her eyes and led on her back, facing away from Zalroth.
"It's nothing.". Zalroth relented and the two of them went to sleep.
Meanwhile in another part of the forest, Charlotte, and her team, jumped out of a tree and landed in a clearing. She pulled her hood down and rubbed her eyes with the others being slightly out of breath.
"Ok, I think that's enough for today," Charlotte stated to the others. The other kunoichi let out a sigh of relief and all of them slumped to the ground.
"Don't you think you took sensei's instructions a little too close to heart, Charlotte?" the red-haired and pink-eyed demi-human with cat ears asked.
"Of course not; it's just that you lot have been slacking on your training.". Ruby and the others awkwardly chuckled in response.
Charlotte commanded Ruby and Alex, a tall dark-brown-skinned half-demon with black hair and orange eyes, to go hunt. They hurried off into the forest with due haste.
She then commanded Heather, Luna, a short whitely green-skinned fairy with long teal hair and blue eyes, and Elizabeth, a slightly tall pale vampire with long blonde hair and red eyes, to set up their camping equipment.
As the trio started to set up camp, Charlotte noticed Star, a short dark-grey-skinned spirit with super long glowing silver hair and glowing purple eyes, was looking awkwardly at her.
"Something wrong, Star?". Star twiddled her fingers together. Charlotte pulled down her mask and crouched down on one knee.
"Is... there anything... I can help with?". Charlotte playfully rolled her eyes and let out a faint sigh.
"Of course there is. I was planning on having you help me with the cooking after everyone's finished with their objectives.". Start happily nodded in response and watched Charlotte look through the group's supplies.
The next day, Scarlett let out a yawn as she sat up in her bed. She rubbed her eyes and heard her mother packing stuff into three different bags. Akari noticed that Scarlett had woken up.
"Morning sweetie.".
"Mor...ning.". Scarlett yawned again as she started to lay down again.
"Scarlett, could you do me a favour and go check on Zalroth, and the others, to make sure they're awake?". Scarlett didn't respond for a few seconds until she properly registered what her mother had said. She instantly sat back up causing Snow, who was sleeping right next to her, to wake up in a dazed state. Scarlett quickly rushed out of bed got changed out of her bedwear and into her casual clothes, consisting of a red hoodie over a pink shirt, silver cargo shorts and red running shoes. She told her mom she would be right back before racing out of the hut.
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Scarlett energetically ran down the makeshift path and dodged out of the way of anyone in her way until she arrived at the hut Zalroth and the others were staying in.
She leaned her head across the open door frame and her eyes were instantly drawn to Lola. Scarlett started to lightly bite the tip of her right thumb as she watched Lola's ears slightly twitch in her sleep.
Scarlett instantly appeared next to Lola before slowly reaching her hand out to touch Lola's fluffy ears. However, she stopped herself when she remembered something her mother told her.
"Even if you want to stroke a cute and fluffy animal, you should always have its trust and permission first.". Scarlett found it a little funny how those words weren't entirely applicable to this situation but did think she should ask Lola later if she could touch them.
Scarlett repeatedly and Lightly poked Lola's left cheek. Lola mumbled in her sleep as Scarlett started to press her finger into Lola's cheek. After a few seconds of Scarlett massaging Lola's cheek with her finger, Lola eventually woke up. Lola lazily looked up at Scarlett while rubbing her eyes. Lola sat up and yawned.
"Morning Scarlett... what brings you here so early in the morning?". Scarlett explained that her mother told her to come and make sure the three of them were awake. Lola asked why.
"Probably because the village will be getting ready to start travelling again soon and was probably worried you guys wouldn't be used to getting up so early or something like that.".
"Oh?!.". Lola quickly sat up and tried to wake Zalroth up by shaking his arm, but it didn't seem to work. She tried for a few more seconds but gave up. The two wondered what to do. Luckily for them, Sophia was awoken by their discussion and she rolled over to see what the noise was.
"What's with all the noise...".The two looked up and explained the situation.
"... right... why don't you two just leave waking Zalroth up to me.". Lola and Scarlett thanked her. Lola quickly jumped into her backpack and got changed. Sophia created a little white arrow above the backpack and Lola pulled herself out of the backpack while carrying some clothing on her back. She quickly placed the baggy looking black fighting gi and two Silverwood(silver coloured wood) getas on the table before getting her backpack out of the hut and following Scarlett.
The two made their way back to where Akari was and occasionally stopped to watch people dismantling stone huts.
They arrived at the stone hut Scarlett was previously staying in right as Akari dismantled it, causing it to crumble. Snow, now wearing Zalroth's mask like a hairpin and eating cookies, spotted Scarlett and Lola approaching. She tugged on Akari's arm while pointing at the two. Akari looked in the direction Snow was pointing.
"Welcome back sweetie but we're are Zalroth and Sophia?". Scarlett was about to explain what happened but a loud crash followed by a few slightly quieter crashes interrupted her. The group wondered what the noise was. After a few minutes, a tired Zalroth, now wearing the clothing Lola had left and covered in rubble, and Sophia arrived. Sophia brushed some dust off of her shoulder.
"What happened to you guys? It looks like you two just got done taking down a hut." Scarlett asked. All three of the children noticed that Zalroth had a light red mark on his forehead.
"Papa, what happened?" Lola asked as she pulled one of her bandages out of her bag and placed it on his forehead. Sophia chuckled to herself.
"Let's just say he makes a pretty good club.". Scarlett, Snow and Lola collectively imagined Sophia swinging Zalroth around like a baseball player while Akari looked a little bewildered at Sophia's statement.
"Well, whatever the case, it's nice to see you're all up.". Zalroth rubbed his head as he watched people dismantling the stone huts.
"I take it we'll be heading off soon?". Akari nodded. Akari's answer caused Zalroth to sigh.
"I would've like to eat something before we left at least.". Zalroth clicked his neck before he noticed Snow was trying to get his attention. She offered him a cookie from her bag of cookies which only made Zalroth feel like a spoiled brat.
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2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. 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