Flash fiction – Page 4 – The Word Worker

Quest

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The street was empty, oddly so. That squirmy feeling was back between my shoulder blades, and I scowled at the too bright clouds overhead. Why on earth had Lakra sent me here? Cryptic to a fault, that one. Trustworthy? I still wasn’t sure.

I knocked on the wooden door set deep in the stone, my other hand rubbing the filigree of my sword grip. The door flew open and a wrinkled hand shoved a scroll into my chest before it slammed shut again. I scrabbled to hang onto the rolled paper, staring at the worn boards as if they might bite me at any moment. “Hello? Nice to meet you too?”

Nothing but silence answered me, and I stepped back into the street to examine the scroll. “This better be worth it!” I yelled at no one in particular as I unrolled it. Inside were two lines of angular marks and a sketch of a river basin. “Seriously? Hell runes?” I was going to kill Lakra when I saw him again. A simple quest, that’s what I told him. Just for a few golds. And he sent me for hell runes. I made a fist around the scroll, crumpling it irredeemably, and stomped back down the still empty street.

White

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She stopped just below the rise, nervously adjusting her shield. The bridge of her nose was starting to hurt; whiteout suits weren’t designed to be worn more than a few hours. How many days ago had she left the Dome? Did days even exist out here?

She sighed and watched a flock of frostlings whirl above the lone tree on the ridge. They settled quickly, one or two fluttering up again as if squabbling over a perch. She glanced from the tree to the track before her and stabbed her pole viciously into the packed snow under her snowshoes. Just one hour couldn’t hurt. Under the tree would be a welcome rest from the endless white.

She trudged ahead, trying to ignore the burning in her thighs. How long? The tree was just on the ridge, but distance was deceptive out here in the White.

She wondered if anyone would look for her. A wry grimace stretched against the irritating shield. After the shouting match in the precinct over her report on the tracks, they might be relieved if she disappeared. Even if they did search, they would never find her in whiteout gear. She would find out what, or who, else was out here in the White. One way or another, she would find them.

The Proposal

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“Who’s that trip-trapping over my bridge?”

“Connor!” Emily leaned over the rail, her voice hushed but quivering with laughter. “What do you think you’re doing? They’ll kick us out!”

“Not if the bridge troll eats them first!” Connor growled, then coughed as his vocal cords protested. He ducked out from under the boards and hopped up to sit on the warm stone beside the bridge.

Emily propped on the rail, elbows stiff, and tried to glare at him, but he leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips. She laughed softly and fisted the front of his shirt, shaking him slightly. “What if I was the big Billy goat gruff?”

“That would be disappointing,” he said, shifting his weight and grabbing her hand as if to keep himself from falling. “Because this wouldn’t fit a gruff old goat.” He held her hand tightly, running his thumb over her fingers with quieter expression, then with a sudden strangled throat clearing shoved the ring over her knuckle. “It looks pretty good on you, though.” He gave a nervous chuckle and glanced sideways with an almost pleading grin.

Her breath hissed inward and she stared at her hand for an eternal fifteen seconds. Then a blush suffused her cheeks and she touched the tiny sparkle resting on her finger with tender awe. Agreement came in a whisper as her forehead met his, but the quick rise and fall of his shoulders registered full comprehension.

“Come along, we’ll see the bridge later,” a passerby urged her child with a knowing smile. “Those two might be there for a little while. We’ll give them their privacy. “

The Gorge

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The bridge had stood for a thousand years, Pere Aule taught in Remembrance. Shuri believed it, but cared little. The gorge, carved deeply into the mountain that towered over Vale, called to her with the voice of the Elementals.

Pera Leilin urged in Admonitions that the gorge was forbidden, that the wars that destroyed the Elementals had left it tainted and unsafe for mere Souls. Shuri chanted the Admonitions with due solemnity, but when she stood on the bridge and heard the song whispering in the wind the water, she did not believe it. Taint was not beautiful, she was sure.

The golden sky behind her lit the stone far into the gorge, setting a flame to the darkness, revealing a point of profound shade untouched by the brightest sunset. It frightened her, yet summoned her. Without thought she grasped the branch of the twisted and ancient trunk supporting the weight of the bridge and carefully followed it to the black sand below. In a moment she stood breathless before the chasm, a portal to what world she hardly dared guess. The earth trembled beneath her feet, the still river surged to meet her, and a sigh tickled the hair at her ear. She shivered and stepped forward, unaware of all but one astounding thought. The Elementals remained.

The Locker

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Everyone knew Locker 410 was odd. Not even the maintenance man, who had been with the school since it’s founding, remembered it being assigned to anyone. He got a funny look whenever someone asked about it, mumbled about something needing to be cleaned, and shuffled away as fast as his aging feet would carry him.

For a long time most people just pretended not to notice. A weird sensation if a hand brushed the door, a cold chill in the spine of anyone standing near… those were easy enough to ignore. They might, after all, be figments of an overactive imagination. When all the lockers were repainted ten years ago, ignoring number 410 became a little more problematic.

In a wall of orange, 410 stuck out like a sore thumb in lemon yellow. According to rumors, the painters had tried. After one suffered a seizure, another watched every stroke disappear through the metal, and yet another reported there being no locker there when confronted about his failure, the company firmly refused to try again.

Still, an ugly yellow locker surrounded by spooky rumors did little more than provide seniors with fodder for hazing freshmen. Until last night, that is. An unidentified, dessicated body turning up directly in front of it while the opened lock smoked and hissed tended to be considered significant even by the most hardened skeptics. In the shock, no one thought to look for the mumbling, vague janitor.

The Beach

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“Saul, wait!” Lily laughed breathlessly as her bare feet slung sand behind her. “I lost my sandals and the sand is on fire!”

“Not as hot as the boardwalk,” her brother yelped, dancing on his toes from sand to board and back again. “Hurry up, it’s too hot to be out of the water!”

“Well, you’re the one who just had to come all the way down here,” Lily grumbled. “We could have just swum in the pool, you know.”

“Yeah, but who wants to do that when the whole big ocean is waiting?” Saul reached the shade of the dock and jumped to swing from the beams. “Just look at it! Have you ever seen color like that?”

“Yeah, yesterday, when we came for swim.” Lily sniffed and attempted to imitate a flamingo while examining the soles of her feet. “Now that we’re here at the ‘whole big ocean’, are you getting in or not?”

“Come on, Lily, I thought girls were supposed to be romantic.” He dropped to the weathered boards and perched on the railing beside the steps she was about to descend. “It glows on its own, don’t you think? There’s magic in it! Maybe it’ll turn us into denizens of the deep, doomed to ride the waves for all eternity.” He struck a dramatic pose.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Waves aren’t in the deep, idiot.” She shoved him so that his balance on the railing failed and darted down the steps into the brilliant water. “Catch me if you can, you big sea monster!”

Fire

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He could see Liam on the opposite bank, pole in the water, as usual. His brother was never happier than when he was fishing or gardening or puttering with some household task. Like their father, he was, quiet and naturally content. If he had his way, he would never leave home; even trips to town for supplies were generally treated as an interruption and an annoyance.

Hollen sighed, restlessness tugging the corners of his mouth downward. He had convinced Liam their food budget could stand another few hunks of venison in the freezer, but the truth was he couldn’t stand spending the day at home. The wind bit with a playful vigor that called him to the mountain. He cast one last half-guilty glance over his shoulder at Liam, but his brother didn’t even seem to see him.

Shaking off the last pretence at restraint, he strode purposefully into the fire of the trees. Wind tore through the tops, ripping orange from the twigs like soaring flames. The mountain wavered, hazy, and Hollen broke into a run, arms flung wide. Leaves of fire swirled around him as endless blue sky blinded him. He soared above the mountain, and his roar lit the clouds like kindling.

Dry

Color surrounded her, the brilliant yellows and reds and greens of summer in the garden. The sky glared blue overhead, and she glared back at its near cloudless face. Her hand closed around the nearest white spray, twisting involuntarily, the crushed petals releasing their nauseatingly sweet scent as they fell from her fingers.

She took a shuddering breath, her chest aching as if with vacuum. The fountain nearby was as dry as her eyes; she resented it’s deathly emptiness. Perhaps the red that surrounded it was the remains of the bloody tears of its untimely end, an irrevocable stain on the land. She pressed her fists into her eyes until they ached, silently screaming for a single drop of relief.

A hand touched her shoulder and she flinched. “It’s going to be alright,” someone said, and the hand caressed the black of her sleeve like flame licking at tempered steel. Her arms fell nerveless to her sides and she walked away without a word.

Footprints

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The old ones called these valleys the footprints of the gods. Impossibly pressed between rocky conifer peaks, the rich dark soil harbored fertile fields and close-knit villages. The only paths in led through crevices and over streams accessible only by foot, cutting us off from all but the most adventurous outsiders. Few even of those stayed long, usually flashing a lot of coin about until they discovered how little value it held here.

According to the old ones our people sprang from the magic left when the gods themselves walked the earth to view their creation. Though others came after to fill the lowlands, they were lesser, lacking the mark of the trueborn and unattuned to the land. Its bounty fed our spirits and held us within our ancestors’ prints for many long lives of soulless men.

Until the greed of the lowlands could no longer resist the lure of the high valleys. The day the peaks exploded changed everything. When the dust settled on the broken pines, the mark of the gods was gone. One by one, the old ones failed, their spirits choked like our lungs by the fumes of destruction. Our villages in ruins, our graves buried, we few who remain will find what comfort we can in the forests of the outside.

The Garden

I wasn’t feeling inspired, so as I often do I asked my kids what story they saw. Today’s flash fiction is therefore brought to you by twelve-year-old Sarah (edited and embellished by me).

Becky, Malcolm, and Josephine were emotionally broken people, so broken that they were sent to an asylum for healing. While there, the three became friends and wandered the grounds together every day. They stumbled upon an old, forgotten garden, weed-choked and wild.

The three were drawn to the garden, and asked the director for fertilizer, seeds, and tools to reclaim the overgrown plot. They spent every free moment in the garden, hoeing and pruning, clearing vines and saplings, fertilizing neglected soil, and planting new flowers. As time passed and their garden thrived, they found that they, too, had healed.

The three called everyone at the asylum to see the fruits of their labor, and everyone found peace and comfort in its beauty. Becky, Malcolm, and Josephine passed the work to their fellow patients and returned to their homes, where they lived freely and happily for the rest of their lives.