Information

FrozenLava
Legacy Name: FrozenLava

The Galactic Mahar

Owner: erynamrod

Age: 15 years, 11 months

Born: May 24th, 2008

Adopted: 8 years, 8 months, 2 weeks ago

Adopted: August 8th, 2015

Pet Spotlight Winner
July 16th, 2018

Statistics

• Level: 41
   
• Strength: 67
   
• Defense: 36
   
• Speed: 34
   
• Health: 37
   
• HP: 37/37
   
• Intelligence: 123
   
• Books Read: 101
• Food Eaten: 6177
• Job: Expert Technician

"Mom?" the little boy piped out excitedly as he peeked around the heavy wooden door. In the dim, cramped room, as she usually was, his mother was bent over her work table, entirely focused on the intricate jewelry pieces she made for a living. She didn't seem to notice him or the plate of food that had grown cold next to her.

"Oh look!", he shouted once he caught sight of the blue and orange swirls of the nebula that lit up the night sky. Rushing over to the window, he bumped into a small rack of necklaces, sending them scattering to the ground.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!", snapped his mother, finally looking up from her work. "How many times have I told you to keep away from the jewelry!", but the shocked look on the boys face quickly softened her tone. "Sorry I shouted, it's just you know how hard I've been working..."

"I know momma, and when you sell these ones we can go have a picnic under the nebula, my teacher told us today about how the planets and stars only align like this so that we can see the nebula when the balance in the world is just right!", he started off again as he picked up the tangled chains, holding them up so that they glittered in the soft light.

"Maybe if anyone would buy them...", she murmured. "Anyway, I'm not sure that's how it works", she said a bit teasingly.

"It is!", he exclaimed.

"That's enough of that, isn't it bed time?", his mother said with a bit of a chuckle, "for both of us".

"Ooh really? I'm not tired!"

"Doesn't matter! It's time to sleep, I have to get up early to finish these off. Now off with you!"

"Fiiine", the boy sighed as he headed towards his room.

Shutting the door to the work room behind her, she followed her son's lead down the creaky stairs to her bedroom.

The next morning the woman woke up feeling as tired as she had the night before. Lately that was just how things went. They had never been particularly well off but interest in her work seemed to have dried up, and the stress was taking its toll. She struggled to make enough money for the rent of their small flat. Well, it wasn't really a flat. The old building used to be the home of an incredibly wealthy family, like many of the other houses that stood in a tall tight row over the cobbled street below. At some point years after the original owners moved onto nicer areas, the floors were divided into living areas and rented out. Her and her son lived in the very top floor, originally for the servants. Her workroom was just a converted attic, but it was home.

In the small kitchen she boiled some water and made a cup of tea. She clutched the mug close to her as if it were a shield that could ward off the chill that was starting to creep in, and tip-toed up the stairs to her workroom.

As she pushed the door, she noticed a small scraping sound and looked down to see some of her pieces stuck underneath, jamming the door a little. She clenched her jaw in frustration at her son's carelessness as she stooped to pull the pieces out, but when she finally worked the door open and looked in her workshop she realized there was no way her son had done this. The room was torn apart. Not a single piece of jewelry was left untouched. They were strewn across the floor and counters, chains broken, stones pried from settings, even metal bands twisted and deformed, but it wasn't just the jewelry. Her books were also destroyed, the two chairs in the room tipped, one of their legs was torn off. Was it a burglar? Why would they destroy everything and leave behind all the precious stones and metals?

"Mom?", her son piped, this time with fear behind his voice. The sound brought her back from her almost frozen like state, realizing that he had woken and was looking around her into the room. She also noticed the tears running down her cheeks.

"What happened?" he whispered.

"I don't know..."

After sending her son to school she attempted, and failed, to clean up her workshop, and then laid in bed. She felt consumed by fear and hopelessness. They were already struggling so much, how could she possibly come back from this. She pulled the covers over her head and drifted in and out of restless sleep for the rest of the afternoon.

She finally woke sometime after dark to the sound of footsteps walking up the stairs outside her room. Somehow she managed to gather the strength to get out of bed and went into the workshop to find her son sitting in a corner behind a table and overturned chair.

"What are doing?" she asked sternly.

"Shhh!", he replied "I'm going to catch the thief that did this!".

"I don't think they're going to come back, hopefully anyway", she said with a sigh.

"But I have bait!", he exclaimed pointing at a plate on her work desk with the sandwich she had sent him to school with for lunch.

"What...they're not going to come back just for a sandwich!"

"They ate your leftover dinner last night! Maybe they're hungry. Please mom, we have to catch them!"

She looked at him for a moment with her eyebrows pushed together in worry before deciding that it couldn't do too much harm. The thief had no reason to come back, and maybe they could both sleep better if they saw that.

"Ok", she murmured as she went to the window to make sure it was closed tight and joined her son in the corner.

Neither of them could really tell how long they were sitting there, but at some point the boy started nodding off and laid his head on his mother's lap to sleep. She had plenty of sleep earlier, but started to doze as well until a sound at the window brought her focus back. It seemed as if the wind was pushing the window, but then it creaked open. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she stared at the twisting lights and darkness of the nebula outside. At first she thought it was just a trick of the light, but it seemed as if the darkness was twisting through the window. Eyes widening in disbelief, she watched what seemed to be some sort of creature made of darkness drift into the room, seemingly affected by gravity only when it wanted to be. Crests of blue light flickered from its head and down its back, while orange plumes like those of the nebula danced from its tail.

The woman reflexively tightened her arms around her son as she sat as still as possible watching the creature glide to the sandwich and sniff it. It turned away from the plate and started picking up and pushing the gems and metal around that still littered the floor into a pile. The sound of the shuffling woke the woman's son, but she put her hand over his mouth before his sound of surprise could get out. The two of them sat frozen as the creature dropped something from its mouth into the pile, gave what could almost be read as a satisfied look, and turned back to the sandwich and gobbled it down.

This last part seemed to be a bit much for the boy, who let out a small laugh, because his sandwich had actually worked to bring the "thief" back. The creature's head snapped up at the sound and it stared at the table they were hiding behind. Landing on the ground, it crouched and looked at them from under the table. They had never been very far apart in the small workshop, but the woman was sure she could have reached out and touched it, if she had really wanted to. After a tense moment of staring into each others' eyes, the creature turned and shot back out the window and was immediately lost among the colors that it seemed to come from.

The boy leaped up and ran to the pile the creature had made, but his mother was too stunned to do anything but stare out the window.

"Look what it left!", he exclaimed running back to her. He opened his hand to reveal a large orange gem. Even with her knowledge of precious stones she didn't recognize the gem, but she imagined anything with beauty like that would be worth a decent amount.

After spending the rest of the night and early morning cleaning up the work shop, the two of them finally curled into their beds for some rest. The woman woke up in the early afternoon and sat pondering the events of last night in her workshop. As she sat, she started idly twisting a piece of copper wire. She looked down and the shapes somehow reminded her of the nebula, and the creature. She suddenly started pulling apart the older broken jewelry for gems to use for the new piece. She got absorbed in the new piece until her son came in asking for dinner. They headed downstairs and started scratching up some food.

"We should make some extra for FrozenLava!"

"Uh...FrozenLava?"

"Yeah! He looks like ice and lava."

"Hmm...well maybe we can scrape together something."

After dinner they went back to the workshop, placed the plate of scrap on the window sill, and the woman got to work on her new jewelry while her son worked on his homework. As time passed they glanced out the window and as the sky darkened they started to see the swirls in the darkness and the creature appeared, perching on the window. It sniffed the plate while eyeing the two warily, and then drifted to the pile with the large orange gem. The woman took a scrap from the plate and held out her hand to the creature, coaxing it to take the scrap. It creeped forward slowly, and then snatched the scrap before leaping out the window.

The ritual passed like that for the next few days, the creature becoming ever more comfortable with the family, and the woman making great progress on her new series. When she had a few samples she took them to a jeweler and he was so interested in the new unique pieces that he bought the samples, and asked her to let him know if she made more.

Rushing home in her excitement, she met her son outside the house as he was coming home from school.

”Look! I sold some pieces today!”, she exclaimed with a large smile.

”Oh wow! Now we can have that picnic!”

”Oh, I forgot about that. Well not tonight, the markets have already closed. We’ll pick up some things tomorrow.”

”Ok! I want to get food ready for Lava tonight anyway.”

After getting home and making up a large pot of food for them and Lava, then went upstairs to wait.

The nebula seemed a little bit dimmer tonight, but as usual the creature appeared and the three played in the dancing light. At some point the boy glanced at the orange gem and noticed a dark crack running along its surface.

”Moom! Look! The gem is cracked!”

”Were you playing with it? You shouldn’t touch it!”

”I haven’t touched it, I swear!”

As the two bickered over the pile, Lava slipped in and nudged the gem. There was a quiet cracking sound as the fracture deepened, and the two stared in shock as a tiny glowing creature crawled its way out.

”I...it’s an egg?!”

”Lava’s a mommy!”

The tiny creature stretched and fell out of the egg into the pile, and Lava nudged it again while making a deep cooing sound. She turned to the woman and boy, nudging them both in turn and then looked back at her child as it attempted to leap into the air, floating awkwardly. Taking off together, they looked back as if to say goodbye as they somersaulted through the air back into the sky.

The next day the woman stopped by the market to get all of the things for the picnic. Her and her son climbed onto the roof of their house where they spread out a blanket and laid out their dinner. It was a great place to view the sky and they were hoping Lava would come back, but they were quite disappointed to see that as the sun went down, the nebula was no longer visible. After eating they eventually moved back into the workshop, neither of them really wanting to sleep, but she didn’t return.

”Do you think we’ll ever see her again?” the boy asked.

”I...I don’t know...” replied his mother.

Credits
Background image by Sarah Ross, modified by erynamrod
Coding, story, illustrations by erynamrod

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