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In, flash me
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Jan 10, 2024 22:08
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 22:33 |
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A Night in the Great Summer Forest 1411 words Flash ingredient: the previous meal Agent Patience was one day out from the extraction point, with a half-day's worth of rations left, when the receiver on her hip vibrated. Her hand went to her earpiece in time to catch the alarm call halfway through: "... cache, need backup. Coordinates 209-57. Repeat, Blackbird ambush at supply cache, need backup. Coordinates 209-57." 209-57 was twenty minutes' hike, towards the Great Summer Forest's border with Autumn, so the undergrowth would be sparse but dry. Ten minutes, she thought, at a run -- as duty demanded, even as the thought of the supply cache exercised the stronger compulsion Patience found herself hungry just thinking about fresh foil ration packages, ready to be torn into and finished at a sitting, full of heavy starch that would silence the stomach for hours. Even a split cache, harvested sparingly, would mean a two-meal day tomorrow, maybe three-meal. It was a thought Patience savored, then regretted, as her gut roared its demands. It was best not to think about food at all, Patience reminded herself as she trudged through the underbrush, keeping her eyes on dead leaves below and not the verdant branches above, heavy with jewel-toned fruit. She couldn't bank on anything but the opened pouch of chicken and dumplings still in her satchel. Patience was five minutes out from the coordinates when she heard the gunshot: unsilenced, a crack-boom none of the Forest's clever fauna could mimic. She broke into a run, heedless of leaves crunching under her feet, pushing starved limbs to carry her just a little faster, even as the silence told her all she needed to know. One gunshot, unanswered. When she stopped at the edge of the clearing at coordinates 209-57, she saw the crumpled figure in Jay-grey fatigues bleeding out into the clover, his assailant in Blackbird colors still standing over him with her pistol at the ready. "No closer," the Blackbird barked. "Your man might turn. I saw him eating." "Eating what? There's safe forage, you know, this close to Autumn." Safe was strictly a relative term, of course, but Patience remembered well the lessons they'd given her on which leaves and berries wouldn't corrupt you right away, and how much of them you could eat and still be purged post-extraction. "That's old science, sister Jay. Very old science. Doesn't matter, anyway -- he was gorging on something purple, the size of his head. Ate it down to the rind. And he sabotaged your cache." She gestured downfield -- carefully, with her empty hand, pistol still trained on the fallen Jay -- and Patience glanced away just long enough to confirm the disturbed earth. "Go see yourself." Patience stalked across the clearing, watching the ground for snares and tripwires, but the only unpleasant surprise was the state of the cache. It had been properly unlocked, ration packs and ammo boxes in undisturbed array inside, but as Patience knelt for a closer look, she could make out dark pinhole pricks in the packs, just the size to have admitted a hypodermic needle. One fae-fruit of the Summer Forest would provide enough juice to taint the whole cache, and a ravenous agent might not notice until they'd swallowed a whole meal-pouch. No sane man could say what the fruits of the fae tasted like, but Patience had been very close to learning. "The whole cache," Patience muttered. "The whole drat cache. Have to lug this to extraction for decommission, and I've barely got the energy to haul myself. If I leave the box and ammo, fine, but all the food..." Every packet was madness and death, tainted with the touch of the Summer Fae, and yet every packet was a temptation. Acid rose in her throat, less a true nausea and more hunger in its next phase, her body eroding away the soft tissue it could spare. Could she eat carefully and slowly? Open a packet, scrape out forkfuls of the beige and grey not tainted with the brightness of the forest? Could she trust it, or herself? There were footsteps behind her, and soon the Blackbird was at her side, pistol holstered. "We pack it out, even if we bite our tongues all the way back to Earth. And I do mean 'we.' I've seen you, scouting on the borders of Winter and Spring, and if you've seen what I've seen... it's not Blackbirds and Jays, anymore. Not my country versus yours. It's our whole drat world versus Fae, and your bastard was playing for the wrong side, so we clean up his mess together." Patience nodded, letting the thoughts slip that she'd kept even more deeply buried than her hunger: the sight of the ships of the Silver Kingdom docking at the ports of the Winter Court, the summits she'd infiltrated in changeling maid's dress, the pictures she'd taken. The plots for famine to sweep the northern reaches, just in time for fae ambassadors to arrive with their bright bounty, poison to fill a thousand starving mouths. The intelligence. The intelligence needed to get home for Blackbird and Jay alike, for both the nations whose name Patience did not dare think in the fae realm, no more than she dared think her true name. "We've got to," she said. "But I've got to eat something, too. I've made my last meal last two days." The Blackbird paused, a glance back at the dead Jay confirming what Patience suspected she was thinking, before she closed her eyes. "Check your man, just in case; he didn't turn, so he might be all right. If that fails... I've got a bit I can spare." Patience nodded again, pulling her service knife from its holster as she approached the corpse. She could see the proof of the Blackbird's story in the glistening purple stains over the front of his uniform, some still sticky with pulp and half-chewed seeds. More damning still was the blood oozing from the bullet wound in his forehead, thin and unclotted, glossy candy red and glittering. Blood-level taint, then. No need to cut into the meat; nothing of him was fit for eating. By the time Patience had finished rifling her comrade's pockets and securing his satchel, the Blackbird was back by her side, carrying two bags made of thick frosted plastic. "One for each of us. Weight should be bearable. All I've got left to eat is venison stew, but I've got a canister for my stove, and I think we can risk the fire. You'll feel fuller with a hot meal." "You're very kind," Patience replied. "I'd offer you my chicken and dumplings, but it's leftovers twice over, and it didn't start out tasting like much." "And I haven't eaten chicken in months. Trade?" "Trade. And... another trade. How much do you know about the Silver Kingdom?" The Blackbird's eyes widened. "Saw they were at the Winter Court summit, but we burnt all our promises getting in to the Spring Queen's chambers, so we couldn't get a drat thing." "I'll trade you the summit minutes and battle-table maps for whatever you've got from the Spring Queen. We'll fight the Fae as a united front." The Blackbird rations mostly cooked themselves, and Patience and the Blackbird snapped dossier photographs to the smell of simmering meat. When that was done, Patience pulled her leftover chicken and dumplings from her supply pack and handed it over. If the Blackbird was concerned by the crumpled foil, she made no sign of it as she dipped her fingers in to shovel it into her mouth. Patience knew all too well what it tasted like, nigh-flavorless say for the gravy, but there was something to the texture of it: thick pasty half-dissolved biscuit, mixed with lean chewy strips of chicken, with just enough sauce to let you swallow. It was the kind of food that could only satisfy in Faerie, where the very air was sweet, and the body cried for savory substance. The venison stew was gamy, despite chunks of undercooked root vegetable wildly outnumbering the cubes of meat. The other side's chefs spent no more on spices than Patience's side did, but it hardly mattered, not when the food was hot and filling. This was satiation, pure and simple. This was human, to sit by the fire and eat and feel alive, to gather strength for one more day. To do it all so your people can greet the elf-boats with their iron knives ready. Patience was human, and she would not fail.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:05
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yeah I'm in
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Jan 30, 2024 04:29
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Symmetry 244 words Apex Magazine / Strange Locations Welcome to Forthright! We're so delighted to have you. To familiarize yourself with our community, please consult the map on the back of this Welcome Pamphlet. In accordance with our innovative community-planning system, all streets in Forthright have been conveniently numbered in ascending order of their distance from Main Street, differentiated by suffix. Use our simple mnemonic to remember: they're Streets to the South, Boulevards towards the Bay, Lanes to the Left, and Avenues towards the Arctic! Travel agents, realtors, and map websites unused to the Forthright System may have given you directions without clear street suffixes. Fear not! For your convenience, every same-numbered intersection in Forthright features the same charming local businesses. Enjoy your breakfast at the Delish Diner on 13th St and 47th Blvd? You'll find the same great meal at 13th Avenue and 47th Lane! Aubree behind the counter will even remember how you take your coffee! She can point you to that antique store just down the street, where the lamp you were admiring on 48th St is waiting patiently for you on 48th Lane. It'll look perfect in your new home, which Realty Row on 49th can't wait to help you find! We've reserved a hotel room for you at the Sunrise Extended Stay Suites, located at 1248 22nd -- whichever 22nd is most convenient for you, of course! Room 303 has a charming view of Forthright's greenbelt. Everything's ready for you, so settle in and let the system work!
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Jan 30, 2024 04:30
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July 6th, 9:12 PM 220 words Flash Frontiers / QUIET | MARINE The paint's flaking off the newest sign in front of the gravel pit. It was supposed to be Chokecherry Lake this time, after Riverview Shores and Chickadee Pond, those signs collapsed and moldering in the underbrush. A few abandoned frames of Chokecherry Lake houses stand by the shore, waiting to be claimed by grass and horsetails. When does a boomtown become a ghost town? The gravel pit, defiantly nameless, is the same as it ever was. You pick your way down the beach, stepping around the remains of fireworks, wondering if whoever set them off stayed up to wait for the brief sliver of night or fired them futilely against the midnight sun. The lingering gunpowder smell mixes with the scent of freshwater weeds and the faint scent of rot. Something has died here; something surely dies here every day. You don't think about the depths of the gravel pit. You've always favored the shallows, the edge of the water glistening with shards of mica worn smooth. You wade in to your knees, trying not to think of the summer that will be dead by mid-August, or of the next school year, or of the hotels sprouting along the banks of the merciless river just down the road. You've never needed the river. You have the gravel pit's chill embrace.
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Feb 5, 2024 03:44
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A Walk Down Emberley Road 216 words Apex Magazine / Strange Locations Remember this: wherever Emberley Road takes you, it will never take you home. The buildings you pass may look familiar, in the darkness and the distance. Emberley Road is lined with houses, yours and those of old friends, and an apartment building or two: your parents', say, where you spent your first year. There's the odd commercial storefront, the after-school retail jobs you fled to after miserable days at school. Enter none of them. If your resolve falters, and you go in, there will be no ghosts who care to announce themselves to you. All you will find is other people's things in unfamiliar arrangements. Everything will smell wrong: like strangers' sweat, like foot powder, like nothing. All familiar-looking objects will deceive. Your favorite books bear other people's bookplates. The coffee mug in the sink, so much like your father's, has been chipped by some clumsy hand, and the residue inside is candy-red and sticky. At the end of Emberley Road is a cul-de-sac, every lot empty save for one. In that lot, the place where you felt safest is waiting for you, and it is empty. The floors are polished and clean, the walls bare. Nobody has ever stepped inside, least of all you. Stare through the windows, if you like, and then turn back.
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Feb 5, 2024 03:59
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Scene From A Fast-Casual Restaurant 79 words Gooseberry Pie / Six Sentences "When did you stop loving my whimsy?" He starts every fight this way, with the big broad leading questions, and she's always held back her answers for them. When you decided to start this in public; when I turned 20; when all your jokes started being on me. Today's answer, though, comes to her tongue almost unbidden, a date, a city. A hotel room. She sees the incomprehension in his eyes, and she rises to settle her bill.
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Feb 5, 2024 04:14
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I wrote another thing today, so I believe I owe a crit! Here it is:kaom posted:Prior Experience Not Required First thought: dermabrasion is a real procedure (god bless sinister plastic-surgery terms?), which I'm not sure is an intentional choice or not -- the concept of a 2034 alpha for something that already exists is a little sinister, but if you want something novel, you might need to coin another term? Second thought: I feel like "Sophie Twitcom" is a little twee as a dystopian name choice, especially given that this is only set 10 years in the future. Maybe use a standard name, but keep the TM? Other than that, I think this is good and faintly sinister, as is appropriate. I'm particularly fond of surgery for entertainment purposes only. Good stuff!
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Feb 5, 2024 06:41
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An Introduction to East Montane For Travelers 226 words Apex Magazine / Strange Locations The first rule of tourism in East Montane: be boorish. Boorishness is not to be confused with rudeness or criminality. To be properly boorish, one must cultivate an attitude of scorn and disinterest for the nation which you have chosen to visit, as if your meticulously-planned tour is an embarrassing accident. Learn three phrases of the local tongues, and pronounce them poorly. Pay no obvious attention to your tour guides. Complain loudly about the offerings at restaurants, until the waiter offers you a plain cutlet of some familiar meat. Treat East Montane as a bore and a burden, its history as trivial, its customs as an inconvenience. The locals will be unfailingly gracious. Do not mistake this graciousness for deference. Natives of East Montane know the sting of insult as much as anyone; the pain they know better, though, is that of the traveler who takes too keen an interest in their nation. East Montanian population control statutes are harsh, immigration laws for the wealthy lax. Every enthralled tourist who immigrates is a conception license not issued, or worse, a surplus East Montanian to be stricken from the rolls by any means necessary. Every enchanted foreigner is a threat. Appreciate the charm of East Montane, but keep it to yourself, lest the natives' greetings turn from gracious to cautious. Be boorish, but tip well. Leave promptly.
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Feb 5, 2024 06:41
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In, three-card spread for me plz/thx
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Mar 26, 2024 03:47
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Watcher, Shifter, Ladder 1349 words Flash Rule:  (Page of Swords, The Druid, Eight of Wands)The Ladder is waiting, and this time, Sorcha will not be denied. A dozen times before, she's followed the Ladder in its flight, and a dozen times, a watcher from the seaside holds has chased her away before she could force it to settle, always spouting the sane inanities. What is the worth of calling "danger" or "caution" to a Ladder-chaser? Do they imagine her to have a life elsewhere worth returning to? Of all of Wisdom's hounds, the watchers should have understood it best: the calling, the devotion, and the lure of the endless heights. They are not wrong, for all they are foolish. To attempt the ascent is to take one's life in one's own hands. Sorcha reassures herself with an old litany: the rungs will not give. If they do, they will do so early, and her only scar will be the shame. If the rungs give late, her feather cloak will catch her in the air and carry her far away. If the rungs doom her and the cloak betrays her... then so it will be. If she dies, let the watchers blame her mother. When you tell tales of a ladder to Heaven to your unhappy daughter, can you be surprised if she chases it? This chase is overland, and far from the coasts, which gives Sorcha some hope that she's evaded the watchers this time. The wings her cloak granted her have carried her far, but at last she allows herself a few hours' rest in a village, then pays in silver coin for a horse to carry her farther. The rungs of the Ladder are flying close now, low enough to see the shapes of their gnarled branches, and slow enough that they should come to rest not long after sunrise. Sorcha eats enough hard bread and cheese to sustain her until the end of the chase, and then she rides all night. (Sorcha does not know of the watcher who spotted her, the keen-eyed heavy-hearted young one who saw the gleam of magic on her wings days ago, but she feels when the watcher's surveillance trance breaks -- as if a weight has lifted from her temples. She considers it a good omen.) *** The serpent wakes from its long trance at the sound of the watcher's voice in his head. <i>I need help. There's a woman chasing the Ladder -- she's getting close -- I can't catch up on foot. She'll climb and she'll die. Help me.</i> It's been so long that it takes the serpent a moment to remember himself properly. <i>Himself,</i> he affirms; he'd been a boy at the beginning of this, and the watcher a girl. His friend. She had gone to a tower, and he had dedicated himself to the crawling forms, and it had been years now, as best he could reckon it. The crawling forms are good at patience and bad at marking time. The serpent uncoils, and another acolyte startles out of his trance. "Shifter," he whispers, "what troubles you?" The slightest shift, with a hint of pain like a long-unused muscle, gives the serpent a proper mouth to speak. "My friend calls me. A watcher. A woman will die if we don't do something." "Then she dies. It is not Wisdom's way to be interrupted." Before the serpent can speak again, another voice cuts in, an acolyte in tree-shape with a single blossom reshaped to voice its words. "But what use is Wisdom without action? Why do we hone ourselves so sharply, if not to be the blade of the people? If this be life or death, let our fellow go." "When he possesses no patience? You talk of honing, but this little one will blunt his blade against a rock before his proper tempering." "You speak of patience, you, still in man-form --" "Silence," speaks the voice of the druid, a whisper with the force of an earthquake. "Wisdom's way is not found in shackles. If the young one will go, let him go, and he will return if he and the fates will it." The druid makes few pronouncements, and rarely wishes well or ill, but the serpent knows a blessing when he hears one. He unfolds himself, sprouting the dove's swift wings to carry him, and flees towards the chimney. His friend's tower is not far, and still he knows the way from when he carried her there. *** The watcher grips the pommel of her blade with white-knuckled fear as she waits, hours past sunset. In her mind, she tries to track the Ladder she can no longer see, its slender rungs moving with blurring speed when she last caught a glimpse. Years she has sat in vigil along a peaceful shore, cultivating her senses on whale pods and gull calls, and now at a glimpse of danger, she will fail. Her friend has said nothing -- can say nothing, perhaps, but she fears worse than that. The sky is lightening again when the winged serpent's shape comes into view, a vast white form carried on two long rows of dove's wings, and when he stops at the edge of her tower roost, she climbs on its back without a word. Her heart is in her throat; words come poorly. She must thank him properly, this friend whose name she can't quite bring to mind; instead, she guides him with a hand on his side, and they are off on the hunt. The watcher catches trace of the Ladder just as it begins its last descent, rungs slotting into place, and the woman chasing it signals her horse to stop. The serpent speeds to meet them, and the watcher dismounts before her quarry can finish wrapping linen bandages around her hands. "Stop! Please stop! You can't climb the Ladder." The chaser turns to her, and at last the watcher sees her properly: amber-eyed, lean and weary. "A dozen of your fellows have told me the same. They all say I'll die. And why do they care?" "Because we have a responsibility! We ward against the strange ways of Earth and Heaven, and we bear that weight, and we can't set it down." And suddenly, that weight is heavy, almost impossible. She has lived in the watcher's roost so long that soft earth feels strange under her feet. How many years has it been? Should she still be as young as she feels? The Ladder hovers and trembles, as if waiting for them. The Ladder-chaser chuckles, dry and low. "A litany. Fine. But I know what I want, child, and I always have. Better to die knowing than live wondering. Go back to your tower." But she doesn't want to, the watcher knows, with keen focus of her youth. She has served dutifully, with everything in her, and all it has brought her is tedium and fear. She can't even remember her name. She looks to her friend again, who has shifted from winged serpent to something rather like a boy, and -- well, she remembers one name, at least. "Caomh," she says. "You're Caomh, and I'm sorry. I don't think I can go back." She looks up at the Ladder; next to her, the woman has hoisted her feet onto the first rung, hands tight on the second. The branches quiver but hold. "How high do you think it goes?" "Líadan," Caomh says, wearing his old face again. "Your name is Líadan. Please don't forget that, wherever you're going? I'll tell the druid." "Thank you, Caomh," Líadan says, and embraces him for what might be the last time. She doesn't know if anyone ever goes down the Ladder again, but she'll see. Above her, the amber-eyed woman is on the fifth rung and climbing. There were eight rungs before, but there are more now -- twelve? Twenty? She can't see, and it is a beautiful thing, the not-seeing. Líadan pulls herself to the first rung, then the second, then the third. She looks down -- vertigo. She thought she'd left vertigo long behind. She smiles, and she climbs.
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Apr 1, 2024 04:43
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In with "Sourdoire Valley Song" by the Mountain Goats.
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Apr 26, 2024 07:17
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 22:33 |
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Widows of the Woods 1745 words Flash Rule: The Mountain Goats, "Sourdoire Valley Song" By the time she stumbles upon the house in the woods, Tsitsia is so delirious that for a moment she mistakes it for a dead tree. The house's wooden walls seem too soft to stand on their own, grown over with creeping vines -- a fragile house, just the way that softlings build them. She cannot rest at a softling house, but she can go no further. Her ankle aches; the wound in her back throbs; above them all, her broken teeth scream. Fever dances under her skin and behind her eyes. As Tsitsia wills herself to stay standing, to take one more step and one more breath, a softling emerges from the house. The softling-smell lets her focus: female, old, but no tang of sickness, only the faint scent of herbs clinging to hair and skin. She walks closer, and Tsitsia can make out pale, sightless eyes in the lined skin of her face. Blind, then? "Who's there?" calls the softling, and Tsitsia knows it. Blind. Easy prey. Tsitsia doesn't need prey right now, even if she were in condition to claim it. Tsitsia needs refuge. She'd hoped to find the trails of the East River people, but she's seen and smelled no trace of their markings, and she can search no longer. She speaks the softling tongue well enough; if she can fool the blind softling into mistaking her for kin, maybe that will give her a hiding place and enough time to heal. Tsitsia pitches her voice to the odd softling tones and tries to concentrate. "I'm hurt," she chokes out. "Hurt badly. Sick." The softling approaches and reaches out, finding Tsitsia's wrist; her grip is stronger than she'd expected. "Then you'd better come in," she says. "I'm not half the healer I used to be, but I'll help. Where are you hurt?" "Back," Tsitsia spits out; thinking about the pain makes it flare. "Ankle. Teeth." She stumbles hard on the ankle again as the softling marches her into the house, awash in the scents of herbs and smoke, just dark enough to feel like a home. "Sit down," says the softling, gesturing her to a low wooden stool, on which Tsitsia perches as carefully as she can. "You said your back?" Already the softling's hands are moving across Tsitsia's skin. "Right or left --" Her breath caught. "That's a damned arrow in your back. Feels like a hunter's shaft. I'll have to pull." Without any further word, the softling pulls the arrow free. The pain is enough to make Tsitsia yelp in her own voice, but it is a better pain: fresh and sharp, the pain of blood and not rot. The softling's fingers are probing the wound, with new little jolts of pain, and the old woman's voice goes low. "This is festering, girl. I'll need to clean and bandage it, and then I'll give you something for the pain. Hold still a while longer." Tsitsia holds still. She wonders if her lie can hold, with the softling's careful attention, but flesh is flesh, surely? She's seen it herself, how alike they are under the skin. The softling says nothing until she smears her back with some herbal-smelling mud, then grunts at her to help wind a long length of cloth around her chest. "That should hold," she says. "Now for the rest of you. Teeth, you said?" "Bad," replies Tsitsia. With her other pains muted, her teeth are louder than ever, like thunder in her head. The softling hands her a small clay jar. "Chew these roots for a toothache," she says, then offers another jar. "Chew these ones for... well, you'll feel better and sleep better. Dream pleasant dreams, and we'll do more in the morning. What's your name, girl?" "Jana." That's the shape of a softling name, isn't it? It will have to do, and the softling says nothing, just grins with all her teeth. She guides Tsitsia to a bed, then offers her water and hot broth to help the roots down. They're bitter, too chewy for her pained jaw, and Tsitsia has to swallow her gorge and tell herself that this is food; once the first few mouthfuls are down, though, the pain begins to ebb away, and she can stand a few sips of hot venison broth to wash the taste from her mouth. The second root is sourer, but a mouthful down and the world grows hazy and soft around her, fear melting away alongside the pain. She has refuge now. The hunters are very far away. When Tsitsia sleeps that night, not long after the roots and broth are gone, she dreams a child's dream, of shifting colors and distant singing. She hears Zhenzhann's voice, but she does not see him bleeding and broken, opened from neck to gut by a hunter's blade. She does not see the softling hunters, does not feel the impact of the metal club against her jaw. It is better, in this dream, to be alone. *** The next day, Tsitsia tends to herself in her people's fashion. The teeth are loose and shattered, easy to pry out by hand now that she has time and peace; when the work is done, the softling offers her cold water and more pain-easing roots. The ankle is healing on its own, not broken, and Tsitsia says a silent prayer of thanks to any of the spirits still watching. For days after that, she mostly sleeps and lets the softling tend her wound and speak to her. The softling's name, she learns, is Lavender. She asks "Jana" nothing about her life (and Tsitsia says another silent prayer in thanks for that), but seems happy to speak of her own, of husbands lost and children departed. She lived a long life as a healer in the softling villages before retreating to the woods for "a bit of quiet," and to cultivate her herb garden. (Is that why she calls herself Lavender? Tsitsia thinks this is the name of a plant in the softling tongue. Is that how they give themselves names?) "When you've healed," Lavender says one day, "might you help me with spring planting? If you plan to stay, of course." What else can she do but stay? Even with her strength returning, Tsitsia has nowhere to go. She and Zhenzhann were alone before the hunters, and she's seen no trace of the East Rivers, or of others who might have taken their territory. If she could even find the East River homestead without a marked trail, who's to say it would be safe? "I will stay," she says, "if you will have me." "Gladly. It's been some time since I had someone to talk to." Soon enough, Tsitsia's ankle can hold weight, and the pain in her back and jaw is dull enough that she can go the day without the sense-dulling roots, as pleasant as they are. The routines of the garden and hearth are almost enough like home to quell the sadness that takes the pain's place. There is food, and Lavender's stories, and laughter. No singing, none of her people's stories, no bone-crack games -- but not nothing. A moon's turn or two after Tsitsia's arrival at the cottage, she feels her child stir within her: the child she'd assumed was lost, the child they should never have made. What fools they had been, and yet a foolish joy fills her, to think of it alive. A child. Lavender only gives another of those toothed grins when "Jana" tells her the news. "More hands is lighter work, girl." A child. A home. A strange home is still something. *** The child's birth is less than a moon away when the horns sound in the woods again. Tsitsia rises from her seat in front of the fire, slow and unsteady on her never-again-right ankle, while Lavender crosses to the window to listen. "Can you see the torches, dear? That'll be the ogre hunters out. Go down to the root cellar." Tsitsia takes a moment to remember "ogre," the softling word for her people. It takes her a moment longer to realize that she'd never fooled Lavender, had she? How could she have? Even a blind softling had ears, fingers, a nose. "You always knew," she says, in her own voice, as much as she can when shaping softling words. "I can't fight. I can't run. Give me up." "Didn't you hear me, girl? The root cellar." "But they'll know, and they won't stop, not until they have me. My husband took a -- took one of your people from the village. I ate him. To let us make the child." "Oh, I know," says Lavender, "but the man you ate was the only one that year. When I was a girl, the village lost a dozen or two every breeding season. In my grandmother's time, they'd leave babies and elders in the woods for you, or every child in the village would be gone by the end of spring." Lavender's smile is very wide, and her teeth very bright in the firelight. "The hunters have won, dear, and one or two ogres left behind won't change that. I'd rather have the company than the bounty or another notch on my knife. If you want to die, I won't stop you, but I'd just as rather you hide and live." Tsitsia wants to bare her teeth and snarl, to offer some last defiance to the grinning softling before her, but the truth is a heavy shroud across her shoulders. She stumbles to the cellar door and down into the darkness, leaving Lavender behind to face her kin. There is no future for her. All along, there has never been a future, even with the child coming and a place at Lavender's hearth. All there will be now is empty days leading to nothing. Without softling flesh, her child will never grow tall and strong; with only her voice to teach it, it will never sing sweetly in her people's voice. One day, it will bury her, and then it will find a dark place to live and die alone. Nonetheless, huddled in darkness, Tsitsia does not want to die. All she wants is those empty days. All she wants is to see her child's face. She will live, and she will love the grinning softling that shelters her, and she will be grateful for every sunrise. She will chew roots. The pain will ease.
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Apr 29, 2024 06:01
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