Quest For Harmony

by destinedjagold

Chapter 1 - Message

Four o'clock in the morning. Usually, at this hour, everyone should still be asleep, enjoying the embrace of dreams and slumber. Not for me and a few others, I'm afraid. Wake up early, fix myself up, and wait inside the bus station has been my daily routine. Well, except during weekends and holidays.

I am one of the lucky few who got a job in the city. Decent pay, nice workplace, kinda snubby workmates, scary bosses. But meh, at least the company provided free lunch to all their employees. Unfortunately for me, I needed to sacrifice a lot of my free time to get there, and head back home. It's a two-hour bus ride from Sun Ford to the city, and another two hours from the city back home. And that is if traffic isn't heavy. Traffic's a real pain, and that's why I ride the bus at four. The office starts at seven, and it's an eight-hour work, plus one hour for lunch.

I've been wanting to find an apartment in the city to save myself time and money, but, I couldn't really leave my home, not to mention my two brothers and my parents. Sun Ford's a small country town. My dad's a miner, while my mom's a basket maker. Money is pretty difficult to earn here, but my parents really did their best to send me and my brothers to a public school, and even earn enough to help me graduate in college, which greatly help me land a job.

A whistle woke me from my little train of thoughts. I removed my head from leaning on the glass window in the waiting area of the bus station. I stood up, picked up my bag, and stood in line to ride a bus.

I took a seat beside the window. Looking through, I saw my home town still embracing the morning darkness. The dark-blue sky is full of dancing stars, which is one of the things I love to stare at while riding the bus to work.

I love my family so much. It often makes me wonder why everyone else — at around my age — despise their own parents. They only wanted to provide a good future to their children. I never really got good answers from a number of my friends though during high school. Sure, parents tend to do things which may ridicule and humiliate us in front of our friends, but I did not care about other people. I love my parents, and I am proud to be with them...even though...

Though they're really caring, I really wished that they could at least spare a little of their time to attend school events when I was still a student. I always envied others who have their parents around during family days, recognition of honors, and other things. I do understand their reason though, but, sigh...

Sun Ford was getting smaller by the minute now. Soon, it'll disappear as the bus drove on the wide cemented country road towards the city.

My brother, a few years younger than me, is like any other teen back home: rebellious, tough, proud. He always spend more time in work and with his friends than to be with us: his family. Try as I might, as an elderly brother, but I can't reach out to him. I wanted to know more about him, learn more about him, because he really changed during high school. He was no longer the brother I used to know, and it really hurts when he ignores me and walks away. No matter how hard I try, he easily shoves me away and tells me that everything was fine.

A bump on the road shook the sad feeling within me, at least, a bit. I don't think I needed to carry this kind of feeling when I start my work later. I opened my bag-pack and pull out my old notebook and pen. I simply sewed this notebook with pages of other old notebooks that doesn't have any writings on them. I used this notebook to write everything in my head. This was my way to release the heavy feelings inside me. I began writing down, on a blank page, about my brother yet again. He didn't come home last night, but I've seen where he was when I got in town yesterday night. He was with his buddies. He saw me, but didn't mind me. I simply continued my walk back home.

I fill a page, and it was all about him. I sighed. Turning on the next page, I began to write about my youngest brother. He's still in high school. Like my younger brother, he's also outgoing, makes friends easy, enjoys their company, and hangs with them if he's bored to the bone. But he's also like me. He loves his family, though he doesn't show it, I can tell. He's open, always talking and asking me about stuff. He knows how to pick proper friends, and he's a computer addict. Yep, I managed to save enough money to buy myself a laptop to help me with my work. I ended up giving it to him. He's really good at software and stuff, and he began composing his own songs and videos with it. He also learned how to make animations. He told me that when he got nothing better to do, he goes to an internet café with my, er, his laptop, and does his research. And he ended up earning some money out of his original compositions.

I smiled. The city had a lot of hiring posters, looking for people who were good at computers. My brother was going to have a good future. I read some of those posters, and it didn't specify any educational achievements. I wonder if it was too late for me to learn computers. It seemed like an easy job: just typing stuff, burn and other computer-words I don't know the meaning of.

Oh yeah, that reminded me. I might as well add this in my notebook. A few weeks ago, my youngest brother arrived home late, but he had a really wide grin. My youngest brother was usually home by the time I got back from work, so it worried me that he wasn't home when I got there. That feeling of worry was replaced by confusion after I noticed how excited he was as he pulled me inside our room. Yep, the three of us share one room. Well, the two of us, at least. Anyway, he booted the laptop on and began going through folders and stuff. He opened a video player and asked me to sit with him to watch a cartoon.

I arched my eyebrow at him as the video started playing. A cartoon? I haven't watched cartoons since I graduated from high school. I shrugged. If he was excited to share something, then who was I to throw him to the dumps?

The cartoon started with this white horse thing with wings and horn, and the narrator said about it banishing the dark horse to the moon. And then a purple unicorn appeared, reading a book. I turned to him as the stupidly-childish intro song started playing. He even hummed along with the intro. His wide grin completely contrasted my frown. I mean, what the heck? That was clearly a cartoon for kids, specifically for little girls! Don't judge just yet, he told me. I sighed as I promised him that I was only watching one episode.

To make things short, I was late the next day, because I ended up watching every single episodes from seasons one and two! I still think it's a girl's show, but, strangely, I liked it. Does this mean I'm a weirdo? But my brother liked it as well, and he told me that the internet was full of bronies who were around my age, and also loved the show, My Little Pony. I don't think I would be yelling about it in the streets though. Anyway, I liked the story of the cartoon, where it wasn't really a hundred percent childish. I can't explain it pretty well.

Now, he said something about a new season of the cartoon. Season three, he said, and it's my favorite number, but I asked him not to spoil me the details. He respected my decision though. His favorite was Twilight, while mine was Applejack. I don't know, but I really liked her accent, and her hat.

The bus suddenly stopped. I looked over the seat in front of me, and with the bus' headlights, I could see a few cars ahead, but they weren't moving. With the soft rays of the slowly rising sun, I manage to see further as I stood up from my seat. Yep, traffic, and from the looks of it, it'll probably take me a while to get to work. I sighed as I returned to my seat. I'm going to have to do overtime to make up for the time I'm not in the office. Sigh... I hate overtime...

Thunder suddenly roared from the heavens. Great. Traffic, plus a storm. From the city's bus station, it'll be a twenty-minute walk through the busy streets to reach the office. At least I always brought my umbrella along inside my bag-pack. I turned west, where the green mountains stood tall. Above the mountains was a very dark and gloomy blanket of clouds. Blue cracks of lightning crawled through it though. The wind started to blow strong as I sighed and closed the window.

Another roar of thunder. I blinked. Wait a minute...blue lightning? That's unusual. I pulled my phone out from my pocket and went to the video recorder, and then I pointed my phone at the clouds. Okay, another lightning, but it looked ordinarily white on my phone while it was blue up above. Huh, weird. I noticed the volume inside the bus was getting louder. I don't really like loud places, so I stood up and walked out the bus after the driver assured me that he wont be going anywhere without me. Heh, where would he even go, anyway? The bus is surrounded by cars. I stopped and stood in front of the bus as I tried to video record the blue lightning.

“What are you doing?” asked the driver after he poked his head out from the driver's window.

“What does it look like I'm going?” I asked back without turning to him, “I'm recording this strange blue lightning bolts from that storm cloud!”

“What blue lightning?”

I blinked. Okay, that made me turn to him as I hit the pause button. I wanted to ask if he was color blind, but decided against it. "Those lightning are blue, aren't they?"

He looked confused as he slowly shook his head. I think that he was satisfied that it was enough of an answer to my question, and some follow-up questions. Those lightnings aren't blue? But, they are! I looked around, and noticed that I was the only one who was intrigued by the storm. I convinced myself that maybe — just maybe — I was seeing things. I shook my head and walked back inside the bus. The storm clouds were already above us. The driver closed the doors as a heavy rain started falling from the heavens. I let out another sigh as I returned to my seat.

My phone vibrated as I settled down on my seat. I got a text message, but I don't know who it was from. I opened the text message, and as soon as I did so, a very loud and rumbling crash of thunder roared, and made the bus vibrate a bit and the passengers gasp in fear. I rolled my eyes before I read the...blank text message. I sighed as I was about to press the exit button when letters suddenly appeared on the blank message, as if being typed.

“We...need...help?” I read in whisper.

Another loud thunder roared as a lightning flash blinded my sight in blue.

Author's Note:

Edited On January 20, 2013
Edited Once Again On June 15, 2013
Edited Once Again On July 3, 2013

Comments

[StoryWeaver]

dude, you need a spellchecker, and a few grammar lessons, other than that you have me interested, also gave a good laugh as the protagonist was sucked into the fandom, and, as a result, was late next day.

To put it simply, this story is going in my read later list, among several other stories I haven't gotten around to reading. Hope your story is a good one.

[Your resident Night Owl]

i like it its cool

[Teraunce]

Your grammar could use some work but tis a decent start.