Ghostwriter

I'm quite enjoying this exercise. You're a creative bunch.

As for the unspoken speech, well. How did it go, "Where Gods walk disaster follows?" Or was it "Where there's disaster, a God isn't far behind?".
Regardless, seeds must be sown, watered and nurtured before they can be harvested.

To write a story is to become its arbiter. To let it run its course is to become its witness.

You may know already, but the gods in my universe lack power. They are creators, and have long since spent that energy. Now, all they do is watch. They are immortal beings, and they are spectators.

I believe deities exist. I also believe that if a god may create anything meaningful, that god must also let go of its power.

I think we have a theme here of Belief.

Dime wants to believe - not so much in a religious sense, but in anything. But belief is all but dead in his world.

Belfry believes in a lie. Or rather, her belief was manufactured by the invaders. Yet, she still held it firmly herself. Even now, I would not be surprised if she still thinks of herself as the form she took for all these years.

And our two objects here. Our weapons, of a sort. The beacon and the box. The power in both of them comes from belief.

So here's something we don't have. A specific antagonist, one who reflects our theme of belief in a different way. What if it's not just any lizard alien taunting Belfry, but a particular one, one who she is disgusted by on a personal level. One who has a concept of belief that is anathema to her.

Perhaps a philosophy that there is nothing to believe in. That reality itself can be manipulated, so why care about anything. Being able to shapeshift could easily tie into this, feeding a sense that your own form is mutable and beliefs can be changed just as thoroughly.

And so, the feeling of desperation doesn't come simply from the idea that the invaders will succeed. It's that this particular invader will succeed in embodying their own destructive philosophy. That personal touch adds to the emotional stakes.

Belfry and Dime are consciousnesses floating in a void, as it is. We haven't even dared name the other actors in this play. But I agree that personal conflict brings richness to everything-- even in our own lives, it is hard to understand conflicts with no intimacy to your current life, with no face to them. They don't typically source stories in a nickel from several people, for instance: it's easier if they can blame somebody like me for all the ethical troubles. I am one face. I make for a good antagonist, as it happens.

Our blue-clothed protagonist was not inactive in her youth, far from it-- she was barely old enough to talk when she discovered a battered reptilian who reminded her very much of herself. It wasn't that she saw physical similarity- yet- but that she could see the looming abandonment personified in this barely-alive lizard, not a lot older than herself.

This young, hopeless reptilian was named Yaffenhash, and it was Belfry's only friend while growing up. This is why it's so horrifying for her to find the reptilian on the rooftop once again.

The scene shifts. Yaffenhash is not maniacal, or bitter at all. Her voice is warm, soft, comforting. She knows Belfry, and though she had no hand in the lie which permeates the girl's life, she certainly maintained it.

All three of these characters have seen this world in all its darkness: and like a missing puzzle piece, Yaffenhash represents the last response they could take. Belfry is reactive, fighting the darkness with flashes of light. Dime is attempting to live his own life, pushing away the big questions and waiting for it to be over. Yaffenhash has joined with the reptilians, not out of any true want to hurt Dime's tripodal species, but because she believes it's the only safe place she can be. "Their era is over," she says softly to Belfry. "I don't think they were ever meant to own a planet this big."

"You liar!" the girl shouts, weakly. "You piece of shit! It's your fault that everything's so bad, not theirs!"

Yaffenhash shakes her head softly. "Long before our arrival, they were exhausting their world's power with their misuse of that box. Their society was always a cacophonous mess. I know you can see it, too. We're here to make things better... and you've helped us so much." Now, her scaly hand reaches forth, asking Belfry to join the fold with a gaze that holds bitter kindness. "...You helped me so much, Belfry. All those years. Let me help you. Let's go home."

This is the moment where Dime drops the pack off the roof, and all goes to shit.

Here, Belfry faces a Problem.

Option 1
She can forsake her identity as a refugian, shift into the form of a large bird or other flying creature, take Dime and fly away before disaster hits. They would escape, and their story would continue. There would be doubt, uncertainty. A chapter on discovering who she truly is, while Dime comes to terms with being demonized, the one who destroyed a box and caused a great deal of grief. They could talk about finding their whole world ripped from beneath them, and finding their place in world anew. This path strikes me as a slower, more thoughtful approach. A slow and steady way to both build character and design fluff for the setting.

Option 2
Or, she can solidify her belief that she truly is a refugian, and solidify her prior form. Barring some miracle, neither she nor dime will escape the coming disaster. But, it would still be a satisfactory end, no? She may be seen as a martyr by both the other refugians, and any chiron residents who hear the story. The last stand of a hero, memorialized by those fighting the lizard people. I see this as something of a rougher, shorter chapter meant to capture interest for the next book.

Either way, the book would have its ending. Something followed by a brief epilogue to lead into the next.

Of course, the latter path would end their stories in the here and now, but the setting would continue. We could find new characters to bring into the front.

Death is an interesting thing. The method by which I design nickel universes means it is tough to bring the dead out as ghosts, and even more jarring for the consciousnesses in question. This doesn't mean I'm averse to it. Many great stories have ended with death.

I'm not sure this one should. To see death as the only option embodies hopelessness; it is as Belfry says, that the absence of a choice is a choice in of itself. I feel that, for the purpose of this story, we must go with the first option.

But she does not just grab Dime. She grabs Yaffenhash, too.

...

The island beneath collapses in on itself. The very soil sinks into the sea it came from, like it was never there at all. The shining silver towers, like slim figures which rampage atop their home, slip underwater, and in a moment, all is nothing.

Belfry has, in her avian claws, a still Yaffenhash and sobbing Dime. She is processing this all internally. Not a word is spoken between the three.

After a few hours, the horizon bulges up. Amidst a scattered, moonlit sea, mountainous peaks emerge, and reveal the largest island any of them had ever seen. Buildings and smoke-stacks foreign to them, scattered amidst spikes of rock with snowy tips, all bordered by a rampaging, jeweled sea, still reverberating with the destruction of the Holy Box. Not one of them knows the true consequences of what has just occurred, but they know they are lucky to be alive.

When they touch down on the beach, Belfry immediately morphs back to her natural reptilian form, and falls onto the sand, exhausted. Yaffenhash stumbles for a moment, then sits down, breathing heavily in shock. Dime lands and struggles to stand, holding himself together.

He can't understand his role in all of this, but he thinks that maybe their roles have been thoroughly reshuffled.

His first words to the both of them are...