Tag: flash fiction Page 1 of 3

An extravagant purchase, his wife calls it. A dangerous fantasy, his father says. A bad idea, says his eldest daughter, surrounded by books and head full of numbers. He ties down the trade goods with ropes. He hires a guard who carries a flail- an odd choice of weapon, but apparently one of the few permissible under the new laws. Half of his family begs him to stay. His youngest son begins to cry when he explains his plan. He knows that he must do something. In order to continue to afford his eldest daughter’s education, he must learn to trade. As his caravan departs across the first stretch of the vast distance through the mountain pass, he looks back longingly at the family that hates him. He hopes they learn to forgive him.

Everyone breathed easier at the first signs of spring. Infants died during the winter, as did crops, which left everyone a bit shaken. The least among them hardened their hearts against the pain, and then in good times, they sapped everyone else’s strength. Cruelty and senseless suffering visited upon the community again and again, with no sign of abating- during winter, from lack, and during summer, from anger. The gate of spring brought on hope, cheer, and the potential for something fresh and unsullied by reality; freshly-driven snow, melting into water for the fields.

Even when the losses of the season had been particularly bad, Gayle could not cry. She had hardened her heart, but not as many of their young men did. She did not fight, brandishing a knife to steal food for her family. She did not offer shelter, and then demand rents paid in exchange. She did nothing cruel in service of being kind, nor anything kind in service of being cruel. Nothing big. Nothing momentous. Gayle simply did little things, year after year. She walked half the distance to the river, to help the young men with stronger backs as they brought back water from the river. She told stories to the other women’s children, giving them fantasy as a vehicle so that they might learn important lessons. She tied knots, using ropes to hold together the collapsing structures of a town forgotten by its best and brightest. It was this last kindness- this last cruelty- that everyone remembered.

One of her creations lasted for months before it burned in the spring bonfire. The doll made of hair, rags, rope, and straw had taken three years to make, and it burned in the course of several minutes. Gayle replaced it soon enough. She got to work, stealing scraps that she could sew into the next one. The dolls were powerful. The fate of a community, made to rest on a single object. Objects were unlike people, Gayle knew. Objects had no feelings. Objects could not suffer. Unlike the homeless, made to toil to pay for their shelter, or the desperate, killing to feed their baby siblings, Gayle hurt no one when she punished the dolls. They took the punishment uncomplainingly, and when the larders filled through autumn, her neighbors all thanked her. No one asked how, or why.

Gayle did not know why, or how. The dolls had been a family legacy. Her mother had explained to her the process. She had not told her the cost. Most of these things had a cost, said the stories that Gayle told the wide-eyed children who studied at her knee. Gayle did not believe in the cost- or more importantly, Gayle did not care. If there was a cost, she would pay it. Let the cost fall on her. The dolls would absorb the suffering of a whole world if she asked them, and in turn, she would take theirs.

A kind of prudence only comes when knees buckle under the weight of self-imposed limitations. Lenny took a bite of the smelly fruit concoction. All eyes watched him, seeking an intense reaction. He disappointed his audience, and they will rake him over the coals for it. As the jeers come in through the interface, Lenny closes it. In the blink of an eye, all of his followers will abandon him. Various sources of income will dry up. There will be a parade in the streets proclaiming the fall of another great man, hoist by his own petard. As the source of this challenge, Lenny will be mocked, criticized, and judged for how far it has gone. He does not look at his numbers, having no interest in watching them shrink. He lies awake for the rest of the night.

On the grassy knoll, the people gather. United in common purpose, they laugh, dance, and sing along, off-key. Their tickets are checked before they enter, but once inside, they are part of the chosen. United in common purpose, they sit, stand, and settle in to watch something magnificent. The performers take the stage- the first of them. The night does not begin with the promised singers, their voices and words renowned across the land. It begins with the newcomers, screaming into an uncaring night, into blank faces with their ears waiting on their promised reward. United in common purpose, the audience listens- they are drawn in, distracted from the revel by the unexpected beauty of something unexpected- but they are united in common purpose. The bards take the stage, one at a time. They shout their names, their dreams, their stories at the gathering of humanity. The hill absorbs their sound, the receptive earth accepting this violence against the soil. United in a common purpose, the haggard listeners sing along, and along, and along. The performance carries on, the players of the parts changing places until the band is unrecognizable. In concert, united in a common purpose, everybody enjoys the music.

Crushed underneath the hammer in the crucible by the clearsmith with the limp, the hailstones gathered moisture and began to drip drip drip. They melted as they smelted in a facsimile of alchemy. The master swung hard, a grisly application of his extra strength. The claustrophobic workspace encouraged a faster pace. With extra motivation, he pursued his grand ambition. Crash, gnash, smash- so the tools say. The crystalline structure, with steam rising off in waves. It allows the water to peel off, from the spear of ice. Spear and sword alike, a glaive that changes size, shape, and kind. As the night approaches a later hour, the clearsmith begins to flounder. Left with nothing else to ponder, the craftsman starts to wonder: in a crucible of heat and metal, is evaporation fundamental?

“For my next trick, I’ll need a volunteer.”

Erika snorted. She had come along with her granddaughter in the vain hope that it would keep her entertained, but the little girl wasn’t having this nonsense either. She was proud of her for not being taken in. When charming gentlemen spoke this well, it was easy to let yourself listen. At least she didn’t take after her mother that way.

“You there, madam. Come on up here.”

The little devil was smiling at her now. His unsure grin belied his confident persona. He needed dental work, and he wasn’t as handsome or fit as a proper showman ought to be. He seemed startled when she heeded his command. Erika smiled, curtseying. It didn’t have the same effect now, when she was nearing 70 and dressed in pants, but the magician blushed all the same.

“Well, yes. Now if you would take this deck-”

Erika took the deck, shuffling it. The cards danced through the air as she gestured. It was like playing the piano. Erika’s talent had grown as she learned to use her fingers for delicate work. Knitting, sewing, and piano kept her deft. It was convenient that her family thought she was good for little else. The audience clapped at the display. Had quirks become that prosaic? She missed the days of secret institutes hidden deep in the mountains. It was something special, to share a secret like that with a select few. Erika wondered how many might be in the library with them.

“Wonderful, wonderful. Draw a card. Memorize it, please. Commit every detail to memory.”

Erika did. Playing cards disappointed those who were looking for details. They were too minimalistic. She kept the card longer than necessary. She thought it heightened the sense of drama, and she wasn’t going to be the one who made this show fall flat. She would leave that up to the boy on stage with her. She placed the card back into the deck, and pushed it through the air to the magician. His eyes were tightly shut to maintain the illusion. As if anyone cared about stage magic when quirks existed.

“Thank you, that was wonderful. Now, I, the Illuminating Mythmaker, will find your card.”

The magician placed a hand on the deck. Smiling, still with eyes closed shut, he drew the first card.

Instantly, Erika felt the sand in her toes. Warm from the sun and wet from the surf, it tickled a childish part of herself that she preferred not to indulge. Her daughter went to the beach every summer, but they never invited Erika. No one wanted grandma on those excursions. It wouldn’t be right to ask, either, and besides, she was busy. Days like this, with Katrina, those were special enough. Still, her toes curled up as she thought about years gone by.

They were back in the library, but only for a moment. The next card brought another vision, this time of a small room. It was full of cigar smoke and the sound of poker chips hitting the table. There was nothing familiar or nostalgic here, but Erika laughed as she realized. No wonder the magician had so much confidence in his act. He cheated. Before she even thought of examining the scene, they were back, and then gone again.

Each card changed the scenery, but Erika watched the performance. The magician furrowed his brow whenever he drew another card. This took more focus than her tricks. Was it just because he was young? He couldn’t be older than twenty five. Maybe his quirk worked differently. She had only met six others like her, and that had been decades ago. If she ever listened to Becca, she might have met more. It was a part of herself she still had time to explore. By the time he asked, Erika had stopped watching the kaleidoscopic room, and only looked at him.

“Is this your card?”

He held it out, grinning like a costumed kid on Halloween. He wanted a treat, or a trophy, and Erika didn’t have either.

“You got it,” she said dryly. The crowd didn’t care. They ate it right up. There was nearly a standing ovation, bar one or two senior citizens. Erika clapped politely. No need to stick out just because she didn’t like magic. Besides, Katrina was smiling more than she had all morning. Anything that made her granddaughter happy was worth putting up with.

The magician bowed, and the crowd dispersed. Erika returned to Katrina, sweeping her up in her arms. As long as she was still small enough to pick up, Erika was going to enjoy it. She carried her over to the stacks. She had only let her watch the show on a whim; they had come here to pick up new books for her to read. She was quickly moving up in reading level, and it was important to give her fresh material. Erika cared more about her granddaughter’s literacy than the child’s mother did, unfortunately. She had always tried her best with her, but children made their own decisions after a time.

It was as Katrina sat with one of those young adult novels about revolutions that Erika noticed the magician. He stood at a nearby bookshelf, pretending not to watch her. Erika raised an eyebrow at him. He bashfully turned away, feet unmoved by her judgement. What did he want now? Was he one of those quirk fans? Scaring them off was a full-time job sometimes. She marched over to him. Shrinking away from her, he placed the book he’d been holding on the shelf and began pumping his skinny legs to get away.

“I hope you’ve got a really good reason for this. Staring is rude, and stalking is illegal.”

Erika waited for an apology, or an escape attempt. Either would do, as long as he stayed away from them.

“I’m sorry for doing it this way- I just needed to make sure you wouldn’t tell.”

“I don’t have all day. Explain yourself in a way that I can actually understand.”

“I’m not licensed.”

“Is that all? Well, I won’t tell on you. Happy?”

The magician blinked, mouth agape. It was charmingly boyish on him. Erika revised her estimate on his popularity with the ladies.

“I thought you were- that was an impressive display if you’re not a quirk.”

She laughed.

“Of course I’m a quirk, dear. What does that have to do with me turning you in?”

“I’m unlicensed,” he repeated, more slowly, like she was a dumb animal. Maybe she would turn him in after all.

“I’m not with the licensing board. What do I care? Honestly, what bothers me is all this skulking around. It’s rude.”

The magician’s eyes flitted around the room nervously. If this was how he acted, no wonder he was worried about getting caught. The agency could sniff out guilt, and his stunk to high heaven.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll stay out of your way. Charmed to meet you.”

He doffed his top hat at her, and walked away. Erika watched him go. Before she’d fully committed to it, Erika ran towards him. She tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned to her, she held out her hand. Reluctantly, he shook it.

“My name is Erika. You haven’t given me yours yet.”

“The Illuminating Mythmaker,” he ventured. Erika raised an eyebrow.

“Mithril Winter,” he sighed.

“Your parents didn’t think very far ahead. Good on you for adopting a stage name.”

“It seemed like the thing to do. ‘Mithril’ wasn’t a big hit, growing up.”

Erika nodded knowingly. She had considered, more than once, spelling her name differently, but bending to the will of other people wasn’t her style- hadn’t been, since she was young. Public opinion was worth less than public opinion held it to be.

“Nice meeting you, Mythmaker. Same time next week?”

He cracked a smile. She was beginning to appreciate it. Someone his age ought to smile more often.

“Same time next week.”

With all of its contents packed into boxes, his mentor’s workspace seemed larger. The blank walls and empty floor suggested untapped potential. Years of experimentation, practice, and study had been erased. Lomard chuckled roughly, voice still strained from his latest crying jag.

“I’ve cleaned up after her, but it hurts more, if anything. You said it would help. Some antidote to grief you have there.”

Cleo indulged his minor outburst. She had put up with too many snide remarks and teary confessions in the past several days to be bothered by a snippy comment: a woman of infinite patience. She approached the lab table. He had cleared the beakers and vials first, but heavier equipment would require four hands to remove. She wanted him to keep moving, but she wouldn’t say as much. She ushered him on gently. Whatever suggestion she had intended to make, though, was swallowed up by the chiming of the fifth bell.

Both of them looked to the grimy window. Wizards’ windows accumulated grime from puffs of smoke, potion fumes, ooze manifestations, and the like. He reflexively breathed in, treasuring the smell of a laboratory that had not been aired out recently enough. The uninitiated turned up their noses at the smell of magic, but Lomard wanted to sing its praises until it wore down his voice completely, irretrievably- Shada would never speak again, and he wanted to join her. Cleo placed a hand on his shoulder. He sighed, smiling tightly. No time to wish for death: Cleo was her to make sure this town had a wizard by the end of the day.

“A smile is the shortest distance-” he started, but couldn’t finish. Words fail. The lump in his throat rose, drowning out everything else he might have done- cast a spell, sung a hymnal, cursed the heavens- and demanded that he feel only his grief and his guilt. If he had been there- if only he could have- he wondered if Shada had felt the same lump in her throat as she drowned on the stairs of her tower. The signs of water damage had faded, now. It had taken three castings to do that much, and he had no interest in hiding it any further. The thing deserved to bear scars.

“A smile is the shortest distance between two people,” Cleo whispered, taking him by the hand and leading him down the tower stairs.

When people referred to him later, they called him Icarus. If he had told anyone what he was planning, or if anyone had been able to report on his death, perhaps he might have been remembered in the lists of famous explorers, who changed human understanding forever. Instead, we have no idea who he may have been. Without a personal account, we can only guess at his motives. A man with his technical expertise most likely had some goal in mind, but what he accomplished was greater still. The discovery of the Skyworld changed everything.

The journey to diplomacy was slow. Centuries of tension and conflict broke out between Groundworld and Skyworld. Governments united in the face of a common enemy, one with so little in common with us. There was little thought given to peace. Looking back, we may disdain our ancestors for their choices just as they did theirs, but on the cusp of this age, we were still so young. We cannot blame them. If they had known a third of what we know now, they might have acted differently.

After Icarus, and after the War of Esau’s Ladder, things looked bleak for Groundworld forces. The remaining three nations came together (no matter how strange that might seem to a modern reader, it was the obvious choice at the time) and began their final assault on Skyworld. Most historians point to this as the turning point. When Groundworld forces successfully crossed Jacob’s ladder, the sight of a beriset encampment greeted them, and relations between the species were never the same.

Those of a more cynical bent have suggested that if human warriors had faced another species when we arrived in Skyworld, we would not have given up the fight. While any scholar can acknowledge the weight behind such a claim, I must respectfully disagree. Humanity has always checked itself. Even the worst of human behavior has found staunch opponents within our species, which is more than can be said of the akahaha, or hellworms.

None of this, of course, explains the current situation fully. It was when humanity discovered lost pieces of Groundworld that the ILAB formed to respond to such cases. Skyworld and Groundworld disagreed about how to handle these pockets of land that had crossed planes; ultimately, the choice was made by the respective inhabitants. Unfortunately, governments everywhere would regret such a lax approach to legislation when they discovered more.

If it was only that each world had somehow ceded land to the other, that would be one thing, but when the United Nations realized that the phenomenon continued, without any kind of explanation, scientists dedicated themselves to analyzing the process. With no live examples, given the lack of warning before a transfer, they used the first recorded modern transfer as a case study. Although the citizens of Zermatt cooperated, there was very little to go on.

Further study would require searching for more past cases, and gathering enough data points to build predictive models. Groundworld more or less mobilized to the task. Anthropologists, historians, and scientists of all stripes attempted to contribute their minds as humans tried to understand the connection between Groundworld and Skyworld. It was then that we discovered the akahaha.

The initial response was founded on skepticism, hostility, and confusion. Humans had long believed that, unlike Skyworld, Groundworld was free of other intelligent life. There were no signs of civilizations that could not be explained by human presence, or lost pieces of Skyworld. The akaha quickly disabused our ancestors of their close-minded beliefs, showing a vibrant society not defined by typically human markers of such. They had language and law, and the more they learned to communicate with humanity, the more complicated things became. Humans and akaha had shared Groundworld, but if they had anything like the technology we have now, such co-existence might have been impossible.

All of this came before humans discovered Deepworld. Those of you who have struggled to understand why the relationships with both planes are so complex but so different should remember that the time between our first interaction with Skyworld and our first interaction with Deepworld was 224 years. The change in perspective was not entirely for the better. Deepworld posed different problems, and no one was truly prepared for it.

By the time humanity discovered Deepworld, superstitition had faded into obscurity. As science improved, fewer people looked to religion to explain their reality. Day by day, our knowledge of the planes increased. Eventually, we concluded, there would be nothing left to learn. It was a point of hope for some folks. Those people, and those of a similar mindset, are where the Truthless come from. Their aims may be misguided, but it comes from a point of view that many of us can recognize.

Deepworld posed a problem for both planes. Most people had assumed that there was only one other plane, and for Skyworld, that remained the case. Deepworld only had a connection to Groundworld (as far as we know, see chapter 7 for the controversy surrounding the planar model), which reignited tensions. More than that, though, was how foreign it was. Deepworld had less in common with the other two planes than anyone could have expected.

It wasn’t until decades later that the C.A.N. established rules prohibiting transfer. In the early days, transfer was treated like a new, exciting natural resource. The corporations that initially began exploration lobbied against those changes until the first incursion.

Aaron stepped into the building, wiping his shoes on the mat inside. The wet, browning leaves clung to him, evidence of walking through the rainy, cold autumn streets of the city. Satisfied that he’d made an effort, Aaron stuffed his hands in his pockets and pressed on. Using his shoulder to push open the door, he marched up the stairs. It was quick, at first, as he reminded himself of the importance of what he was doing, but he began to slow down after the third flight. He didn’t know how he’d fare if the building had been much taller, but he could manage fifteen.

As he reached the final flight, Aaron paused. He withdrew a chunk of bread from one pocket, tearing it. He offered it to Iris, reaching into his jacket. She snatched it from him eagerly with her beak. He smiled indulgently. She would need the energy for her upcoming flight. Bread was a simple fare to pay for her services. After catching his breath, he opened the door to the rooftop garden.

Within the square, the crops comprised a regimented grid. Pumpkins, turnips, squash, and other winter vegetables brightened the day. Despite the dreary, cloudy sky above, the bright oranges and yellows of the garden stood out. They didn’t offer enough brightness to shine through the darkness surrounding them. Aaron wondered if the rain was seasonably unusual, or if he was just too much of a transplant to recognize what normal looked like.
Aaron moved the brick to hold the door open. The roof bore signs of the October rains as clearly as the streets below. The pair of them moved towards the edge, granting them a clearer view of the city- not all of it, with significant portions of it quite a bit higher than Aaron and Iris. Aaron reached into his jacket. Iris flared her wings, leaving the jacket and making a circuit of the building. Aaron watched her carefully. When he was certain she wasn’t leaving, he removed the letter.

He whistled, the sound calling Iris back to him. She landed on his shoulder, pouting. Aaron smiled, stroking her feathers. She had been very brave thus far, but unfortunately, more bravery was required. He attaches the letter to her legs. Iris glares resentfully at him but does not object further. Aaron feels worry settle into the pit of his stomach, but he stokes his hope. Maybe Iris will return to him. She flares her wings again, this time flying through the air into the open, cloudy sky.