Almost Drabbles

Roleplaying and Games
201

I can’t believe you’d give me a present. You, of all people.
I stand in my bedroom, the ceiling fan humming above me in the center of the recently dusted rafters. I worked on this room meticulously. I’ve wondered before what you’d think of what I did with it, but you never came in here.
I sink my toes into the plush mint green carpet, vacuumed free of any trace of dust, and finger the black ribbon on the small box. I pull the ribbon off the shiny cheap black plastic.
I take a deep breath and pull the box open.
The inside of the box is startling white. I can’t tell what it is, but the brightness is like what I imagine the sun on a field of snow is.
I don’t know, I’ve always lived somewhere warm.
I reach my hand in and flinch back from the sharp cold.
I remember your mysterious grey eyes following me throughout the day, your insistance that you were too busy when I asked you to play with me.
I grew to think you hated me, but you always seemed to be watching me. Not glaring, just watching me like you watched everyone.
What were you thinking? Are you watching someone else now, a significant other, friends, coworkers? I feel like I missed my chance to learn about you, but even as I think that I know it would have been no good.
I asked. I asked what you were thinking, I watched you watching us.
I don’t know what I’m holding in my hand, but maybe it will give me some answers about you. Maybe I’ll stop by your house and ask you what this means.
I snap out of my thoughts, the hum of the ceiling fan suddenly present again.
There’s a wall between us, I think it’s no good to ask you.
I put my hand into the box and feel it disappear into the startling white and sharp cold. Shivers shoot through my body and I’m frozen to the core.
Gasping and shivering, I pull my hand out and drop the box. It falls upside down, but nothing comes out. Both of my hands are glowing bluish white now, but I’m adjusting to the cold.
Somehow, it feels as though I’m no longer completely in the room anymore. The ceiling fan is quiet, the colors are a bit faded, and I can just hear a faint, wordless voice singing sweetly.

Next: crumbling stone

1 Like
202

“Just go with anything.”
“I asked you for your opinion.”
Trisha glances up from her phone for the first time since the couple had walked into the store, her eyes running over Aishwarya’s dress. “Go with this one. This one looks great, honey, really. Amber suits you.”
And then her eyes drop away, back to her phone, back to somewhere far away.
Aishwarya’s lips set in a thin line, and she walks back into the dressing room, rubbing at a sharp pain that starts between her brows. She’s not asking for much. Just once. Just once, for Trisha’s full attention. Increasingly, she was starting to feel like a chore on a long to-do list of Trisha’s, the other contents of which Aishwarya was entirely unaware of. Trisha said it was work-- was it really? Devon worked at the same place, and he never has problems spending a little extra–
Aishwarya lets out a sigh, untangling the threads of anger that slowly choke her heart as she tugs off the dress. She hates feeling clingy, or like she was asking for too much.
Was it really too much to ask for a little bit of attention?
The dress was hideous, especially the color. She hates the dark mustard-yellow, which reminds her of the faded cow manure you could find on the streets all over at her hometown.
Trisha knows this.
At least… Trisha knew this.
Aishwarya sits at the chair in the dressing room, the cold plastic against her bare skin, as she runs tired eyes over her hunched-over form in the mirror opposite. She looks taught, tired. She looks like she could use a break.
She reaches out, touching her reflection gently. Plenty of couples go through this. It happens. It happens to everyone.
The consolation rolls off her like oil on water.
Maybe it would be better if she went back home for a while. She’s missed her mom’s cooking.
Her fingers pass through the hard, smooth surface of the mirror and brush something different, open air and winds and cold.
She lets out a startled sound as she jumps back, the chair hitting the floor.
She stares at the bewildered reflection of herself in the mirror. She looks almost comical, standing there in her underwear, her hair a mess of curls and an expression of exaggerated surprise on her face.
The surface of the mirror wavers, almost like a trick of the light.
“Crap,” she mutters, in favor of more choice words, and grabs for her shirt and pants, watching her rippling reflection rush to dress.
“Aish? You alright in there? I heard a sound–” her wife’s voice comes.
Her reflection parts like butter, something golden, something huge and glinting and claw-like suddenly reaching through the surface, and it takes all Aishwarya has to not scream as she gives up her efforts in putting on her clothes as she lunges for the door. What was in those dosas they’d had earlier? She was surely hallucinati–
A grating, rolling sound pierces her ears, like so many stones crumbling against each other.
“Aish?”
“Trisha–” Aishwarya yelps, as the huge claws wrap around her waist. She shudders, looking down at her shaking form, the claws tightening around her waist, as she’s picked up, dragged, right to the mirror. “Trisha!”
There’s a loud bang, and the door bursts open, Trisha stumbling in with panic written all over her expression.
“What–” Trisha stands there, panting, as she takes the scene in, from the golden claws to her wife, who’s half-dressed and struggling against the claws.
“Honey,” Trisha says, her voice measured.
“Do you see this? Help me!”
“Honey, listen to me,” Trisha says, looking around. She grabs a jacket off a hanger, and drapes it over her wife’s shoulders, paying the few people clustering behind her at the open doorway no mind. She cups Aishwarya’s face, forcing her to make eye-contact. “I need you to take this calmly.”
“What do–”
“You’re getting sacrificed to the underworld. I’m sorry.”
Aishwarya stares at her wife, not comprehending–
Trisha watches her expression a second, then bursts out laughing. “I’m sorry, couldn’t help myself.”
She presses a quick kiss to Aishwarya’s forehead. “I’ll see you in a little bit, okay? No matter what you see, don’t touch the green worms.”
“Why would I touch green worms?”
Trisha smiles, and Aishwarya hates it, because her wife’s really just going to stand there and watch her get dragged off by a disembodied set of claws into a store mirror.
And then it’s like she’s underwater, her vision swimming, unable to breathe in.

next
falling leaves

2 Likes
203

Just like the falling leaves around me in bright fall colors, my Outer Form is irrelevant. Once it was a filtered, bent expression of my Inner Form tailored for a social life, but now it’s just… different.
I’m a tall brown shape in a blue coat with big dark grey eyes and brown horns. My posture is hunched over and my words are quiet, my voice thick.
As a teen I remember enjoying my stature, the way my voice pitched downward, but now I just find it immature.
My Inner Form used to be a black snail, now it’s a duck that smells like sunshine, radient and light. I want to express myself, but somehow I can’t imagine expressing something so bright in the middle of other people’s worries and problems, clouding the air in a room.
I lean against the back wall of a hut, facing the forest, away from any people, and sigh. I’m uncomfortable all over, my form feels like dragging a muddy river with every motion.
I catch a glimpse of someone flying overhead and sigh. I wish I could learn to fly. I wish I could transform and become someone new, but somehow the very air, the expectations, the things I’m used to, are pushing me back into this form.

Next: Time Sandwich

1 Like
204

:eyes:
what’s a time sandwich–

There’s no time left for him.
There’s all the time in the world.
A slow breeze runs over his arms as he sits on the crumbling steps. The movement of people walking around him, the voices of children. Scents so achingly familiar, they filled and filled his nose and brought him physical pain.
For a moment, he’s young again, sliding down the stairway banisters, his friends chasing after him. He’s walking home with a bag of skewers swinging in one hand as he struggles to bite into the meat of one, flinching because it was too hot to touch. He’s holding his mother’s hand, pointing to a kite he wanted her to buy, but she wouldn’t, because he broke all his toys.
He breathes in the moments, so clouded by memories that he doesn’t notice the cat until it brushes against his arm.
Startled out of his thoughts, he looks down, vision blurred through tears, as he runs his hands over the cat’s fur.
It seemed like it would be so easy, to go back in time, if it were now, if it were in this place. Like the life he’d lived was only one push of a thought away.
But it wasn’t.
What separated him from his childhood was the yawning chasm of time, decisions made one after the other, one leaning on and toppling against the next until he’d wandered farther, and farther away from who he’d been.
It’d be wonderful, if he could go back, if just for one day.
The old man sits on the stairs, sandwiched by two times, the past and the present, existing in neither.

i tried lol
when i try to sound older than i am XDD

next!
interested party

1 Like
205

that’s up to you XD

that was good!

I’ve never had a birthday party like this before.
I’m not sure what it is, maybe it’s the right group of people, maybe they’re in a good, maybe it’s because mom said she was worried about me.
But they’re all looking at me, and Fen is even asking how I feel about being twenty-one.
“It’s cool,” I say, feeling unsatisfied with my response but unable to say more.
I push myself and say,
“It’s really cool of y’all to come here.”
Fen awws and hugs me, patting me on the back with her shiny white claws. She’s changed shape several times in the last few years, but the claws have remained the same.
“What are you going to do with the rest of your life?” Kin asks, his red horned head peeking around Fen at waist height.
“That’s a big one,” I say, having no idea how to respond.
“Do you like your cake?” Mom asks, grinning demandingly.
I know there’ll be a mess if I don’t give a big yes, so I say it emphatically.
“Was there anything else you wanted for your birthday?” Kin asks, his eye stalks pushing his eyes closer to me.
“This is a very interested party,” I say, overwhelmed.

Next: Sunshine Soup

1 Like
206

I’ve never eaten this stuff before. I glance at Fen’s smiling face, which looks like a dragon skull, and open my mouth. I want to tell her it reminds me of my essence, but suddenly that seems too personal, so I close my mouth and dip my massive tongue into it. If I ever do manage to change forms, I’m keeping the tongue.
The sunshine soup tastes like I feel, except more searing and bright. I’m surrounded by the smell of sunshine, the relentless light, the heat that gets under my skin and soaks my essence.
“Strong stuff,” I grunt.
“Yup! We got it in the plains today, it was so sunny we could scoop it right up,” she says, leaning forward to suck some into her hollow bone mouth.
She grins, displaying short, sharp white teeth. Filled with the power of sunshine, I smile back and feel myself melting into the smile like sun into a warm field.
I realize I have a snout now, I’m growing shorter, and I have four legs and a tail.
I scoop up some sunshine soup in my soft oversized paw and pour it onto my wide tongue, surprised and happy to feel the change.

Next: Star Taffy

1 Like
207

Fallen stars have strange effects on people. It’s probably not recommended to eat the strange glowing taffy spread out around this one, but it looks too tasty to pass up.
I stuff the bright, glowing sticky strands draped around the star into my mouth.
I’d get scolded for eating strange things, so nobody has to know.
Satiated, I waddle over to the pond of muddy rainwater to wash it down.
I catch sight of my reflection, glowing neon colors with antennae and green sheets of wing.
Oh no, they’ll know I was eating random things again. I’ll tell them it just happened randomly, it’s not my fault.

Next: demon claws

2 Likes
208

I put my hand to that of the ancient creature before me.
“See, that’s a high five,” I explain, grinning at their earnest expression.
I’ve seen them take two forms, this cute young child and a huge, threatening mass of claws and spikes.
“Again!” they say, their voice making it easy to forget they’re not actually a child.
I wonder if they’re appearing like this to charm me. Even if they took their other form all the time, it’s not like I’d leave them.They’re all I can rely on now.
Our hands clap together, and I wince at their claws leave a scratch on mine.
I lick at the wound, wishing they could be careful with their claws like I am.
I stop sucking on my hand and look at it.
Demon claws are long and sharp, damaging everything we touch if we’re not careful. I know I wanted wings, but claws are inconvenient.
A brisk wind is blowing through the leaves of the park. I don’t want to stay here another day, people are searching for Atheos and a seperate but equally dangerous group is searching for me.
A part of me hesitates to ask the wide eyed child in front of me where we could possibly be going, not wanting to burden them with the worry, but I could almost laugh at it. The child is an illusion, I don’t know what this creature’s true intentions are and they won’t tell me.
“It’s going to storm soon, we need to get moving. Where are we flying to?” I ask.
“A few days to the west. I used to live there.”
Atheos puts their thumb in their mouth thoughtfully, then spreads their arms to their side and snaps their wings open.
We jump into the sky together, battling the wind. I’ve got to find a safe place to stop, soon we’re going to be blown around like leaves.

Next: Shapes

209

I’ve been trying to fit a square peg in a round hole my whole life.
My creator is looking at me with complete exasperation, and I spare a moment to look up at her. Our peanut butter colored eyes meet, then I go back to my task.
She slaps my hand away from the toy.
“Come here, you.”
She grabs my hand, guides me through putting on a blue tracksuit, and pulls me into another room. All the people who look like me in numbered blue tracksuits look up at me. A few of them wave, smile and say hello, others smile and glance down, and still others just stare.
It’s a lot of people.

When mealtime comes I play with my food while eating it for so long that the person next to me snatches it and finishes it. Another one reprimands her, but my food is still gone. I learn that I have to hide away with my food or eat it quickly, but I don’t want to eat it quickly unless I’m really hungry.

I see the sky through a slip of window and want to touch it. I tag along on some other people’s plan to escape and hide behind a tree.
The sky stretches on and on above me, the clouds fraying and reforming and seeming to very slowly move.
I was wrong. I can’t touch the sky, it’s too big. The shapes of the clouds are too complicated to ever fit into a round hole.

Next: Deep

“That shifter told me I was wearing a glamour, but I’ve never actually taken it off,” she says nervously, her voice cutting clearly through the open air despite the sound of our wings flapping.
The sights below us changed completely at one point. I almost believe we’re in a different world, far from the people of our village. I was worried someone would look up, see us and make a connection at first.
“There’s a river down there. Shall we?” I say, grinning at her.
“Sure,” Erina says, and we dive, pulling up near the ground.
I land heavily, but she seems to have mastered the art of landing. Her wings are a bigger than mine, but my wings seem to continuously grow, so maybe that’ll change.
She takes a deep breathe, closing her eyes. I know she’s trying to access the magic inside her, feel for the glamour from the inside.
Magic isn’t just about wishing for what you want to happen. You have to know where the magic is and feel it before you can manipulate it.
The difference isn’t as drastic as I expected. Her face is angled differently, certain bones more visible, the skin greyer, and her eyes are a beautiful deep shade of red. I tell her that last part as she examines herself in the stream.
“Thanks,” she says, playing with her hair, “Do you think there’s really a place where people like us are normal?”
“In every way, all living together? I don’t think so,” I say, realizing the impact of my words when her face falls, “but who knows! That’s what we’re going to find out, right?”
She hugs me, planting a kiss on my cheek.
“Yeah, let’s be optimistic!” she says.

Next: Far away

210

The far away jingle of bells is what keeps her asleep.
When she opens her eyes, she doesn’t know why she’s awake.
Just that this is the first time in her long, long existence that she’s been allowed to enjoy the bliss of silence.
The girl shifts, mind cloudy from her century long slumber. She grabs the edge of the marble casket in which she lies, sitting up. She feels like she’s trying to move through a thick sludge, every movement disconnected.
“Zar.”
Warmth lights the air, crackling immediately above her head.
The girl sighs, letting it wake her, as she wiggles her toes, rubs her hands over her bare arms. She looks down in what she’s dressed in distastefully. How could a Priestess choose to dress her in such rags? Of course a goddess only deserves the best. She’d have to have a word with whoever was in charge later.
She lugs one leg over the lip of the casket, then the other, falling with a dignified oof to the ground.
Zar burns bright over her head, and she opens her hand, calling for it.
The flaming sword settles in her palm, and instantly, she feels life flood back into her disused limbs.
She stands, looking around her abandoned altar. A hundred years asleep for these stupid humans, and not one bothers to show up at her Awakening to greet her?
She grimaces, floating into the air.
She’ll have to whip these humans back into shape, it’s looking like.

next!
right now

2 Likes
211

My head aches horribly as I pull it out of the past, the barrage of dusty images leaving imprints on my vision. Looking into the future was disorienting, looking into the past gave me a headache.
“I can’t help you. You’ll have to find the answers right now,” I tell the police officer watching me impatiently.
“Seriously? We’d only call a fraud like you if we were desperate, you know. This case has only led us to dead ends.”
I bite down the urge to snap at her, too exhausted to get into an argument with some stupid person. I tried my best but my powers only showed me people crawling through passageways, pressing on walls, and…
I cross the room and put my hand to the wall, and it gives, revealing a hidden door.
“And there you go. Locked room mystery, solved. My job here is done,” I say, ignoring her objections.
My powers are too exhausting to uncover clues that other people could deal with instead.

Next: giant bottle

1 Like
212

Neil collapses in the grass, heart going a mile a minute as his muscles throb with racing pain.
His skin is red all over, sticky with sweat as he gulps in air. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t finished his laps. He can’t go on any further.
It takes another few minutes for him to calm down, and look over to the others still doing their runs.
Arrossa seems to be having an easy time, most noticeably. A few of the others were still in the field, keeping at her heels.
Nidhii…
Nidhii was there. Which was surprising enough. She kept a steady pace somewhere in the middle, looking like she was running out of stamina, too. Neil smiles, a little meanly, glad to see her suffering.
Someone’s standing at his shoulder, and Neil flinches, sucking in a breath as he looks towards them.
“What’cha looking at?” Coco asks, standing beside him, gulping down the contents of a giant water bottle.
“What do you want?” Neil asks warily.
“That’s rude,” Coco said, still out of breath as she looks at the other boy. “I was going to offer you water.”
Neil holds his hand out.
Coco grins, passing him the bottle. “You’re a strange guy, Neil.”
Neil ignores her, drinking the water, letting the soothing droplets run onto his face and trickle down his skin. He finally puts the bottle down, now almost empty. “I’ve heard worse.”
“Oh, I wasn’t making fun of you.” Coco says immediately. “You’re just… weird, you know?”
Neil raises his brows, wondering if Coco wanted him to agree with that statement. “No. I’m not sure what makes you say that.”
“It’s because… well, you collapse a lot, and Arrossa’s basically your maid–”
“She’s a friend–”
“And, you know, you just have this hard-to-approach kinda vibe since all the adults tell us we have to be careful around you since you’re always sick.”
“It’s my powers–”
“So, you know. You’re kinda weird.”
Neil has a lot of things to say to that, and he looks at Coco in exasperated annoyance. He tosses the bottle to her. “Thanks for the water.”
“You’re welcome,” Coco smiles, catching it easily.
Neil turns to looking at the kids again, then realizing he has no interest in them, just turns his gaze to the clouds. But Coco doesn’t move from his side. “Do you want something from me?”
“No. Why?”
“…because you never talk to me.”
“You’re pretty weird…”
“If you think that, then stop talking to me–”
“But I figured you were a nice guy. So.”
Neil quietens. “What makes you think that?”
“Because. You took my bottle.”
“That makes me nice?”
“Well, sure. I thought you’d tell me to back off or something.”
“You’re weird.”
“If you say so.”
“Can you go away now?”
Coco looks down at the grass around them, lifting a foot to look under her shoe as if there was something there. “Hm. I don’t know. Does this spot have your name on it?”
“Stop being childish. I just don’t want to talk to you.”
“Then, don’t.”
Neil hasn’t gotten more frustrated at a person in his life. What did Coco want from him?
He’d get up and leave, but his legs still hurt.
“Leave.”
Coco smiles. “I already said no. What’re you going to do about it?”
Neil lets out a long, aggravated sigh, thinking this was a new form of bullying. “You’re not worth my time.”
“What makes you think you’re worth mine? Oops-- looks like your maid’s here. She’s pretty scary, so I gotta go. Talk to you later!”
Neil watches the girl go, exasperated.
“Was that Coco?” Arrossa asks, stopping beside him, panting as she bends over, catching her breath as her blonde hair falls over her face.
Neil looks towards where Coco had disappeared to, into the trees. “Yeah. She was being annoying.”
“Yeah?” Arrossa asks, looking at him. “Should I talk to her?”
“No. Are you done with your laps?”
“Yeah!”
Neil glances at the kids running laps. Nidhii was still there. He smiles under his breath. She looks about ready to collapse–
he pauses. Coco was across the field, laughing as she talks to a few others.
But… that was impossible.
He glances into the trees where she’d disappeared, and back at Coco, chills going up his spine.
…What?

next!
rolling around

1 Like
213

I make bubble shapes with my feet, watching the pavement slide by underneath me. Well, bubble isn’t quite accurate. More like… squiggly lines.
“You’re embarrassing me!” mom hisses.
She kept insisting I didn’t wear the inline skates to the community dinner, but I didn’t pay her any mind. Mom tells me a lot of things and if I listened I wouldn’t have any fun.
“Your daugher’s rolling around awfully close to the snack table,” the neighbor says with a knowing laugh as if he’s watching a show where my crashing into the snack table is being obviously foreshadowed.
I make a point of staying close to the snack table but not crashing into it, but he starts talking to the other neighbor and seems to forget about his prediction. Boring, he’s going to be so inflammatory but not even own up to it when his prediction is wrong.
I make my way toward one of the other kids who goes to the neighborhood children’s religious history class with me.
“Nice skates,” she says.
“Thanks. I plan to show everyone that I’m not going to crash into anything. The problem is, I don’t think anyone’s paying attention.”
“I’m not sure why my dad wanted me to come to this thing in first place,” she says, sitting down on the curb at the edge of the parking lot, “I wanted to stay home and read my book but he made me come.”
“Yeah, I’d rather be trying to see how far up the tree I can climb. There’s this one branch I keep trying to get to but it’s just a bit too far.”
She shudders,
“I’d be too scared. Be careful.”
I wave my hand,
“I’m always careful! Soon enough people will realize that.”
I tip myself over and catch myself on the grass, sitting next to her.
“Do you think they’ll make us eat the neighbor’s stew again? She always makes so much and it always sucks,” I wonder.
“I heard it was actually because she was using bad spinach.”
“Every week?”
“Somehow. Or maybe. I don’t know, I guess we’ll see if we’re forced to eat it again.”
I make a gagging motion at that and she smiles nervously.

Next: Faded Paint

1 Like
214

Flashy bad memories. Showing off with their brightness and vivid feelings, while life itself is modestly dull.
Faded paint, flaking paint, an empty room for hours. The exact rising pitch of my crying, the musical creak of the door as it opened, the sour taste of my anger as I swallowed it to get out.
I go through the practices of grounding myself, making note of the dull leaf colors, the muted softness of the scarf against my neck, the muffled thud of my shoes against the gravel. Reality keeps a polite distance from me, as if aware of the pandemic. I appreciate a personality like that.

Next: Saving Energy

I could run, but instead I walk. I’m saving energy. I could talk to people after the lecture, ask the lecturer my burning questions, but I’m saving energy. I could try to internalize the lecturer’s message, but I’m saving energy.
I could chase the guy who snatched the woman’s purse, but I’m saving energy. I could call the police about the murder I witness on my street, involving that neighbor I don’t like stabbing that one I do, but I’m saving energy.
When I get home and rub my lamp by accident before turning it off and the genie comes out, I refuse to make a wish. Sure I could wish for world peace, sure I could end world hunger, sure I could make everyone happy forever, but I’m saving energy.
I lie down in bed exhausted, but I can’t sleep for some reason. Maybe I’m still saving energy.

Next: Doorbell

215

“Didn’t expect I’d see you–”
Hot air buffets my face as magic sparks in my gut, and I hear Neil hiss. I turn, jumping, apologizing before I knew it.
“S-Sorry,” I stutter, though he seems unharmed.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he says, continuing as if nothing had happened. He examines his sleeve, which was now charred, and frowns. “This is why you need Rain to babysit you. Why is it that every time I meet you, I regret even coming close.”
“Sorry,” I repeat, dropping my eyes. Isn’t he supposed to be one of the most “brilliant,” students at school? If he’s so smart, he’d have figured out how to dodge that. Or, better yet, stop approaching me already.
“Shouldn’t you be in class right now?” He asks, looking at me.
“What about you?” I ask, stuffing my hands in my pockets, feeling a nervous rush at talking back to him. “I thought you had history this period.”
“You remember my schedule?” There’s a teasing smile in his voice, and I shake my head. Yes. All the better to avoid you with. When I don’t respond, he moves on, though I’m pretty sure there’s a misunderstanding there. “Where’s Rain?”
“Why does it matter to you,” I mutter.
I’d been staring somewhere at a spot on the floor down the hallway, but he ducks, suddenly in my field of vision.
“What was that? Sorry, couldn’t really hear you since you’re always mumbling.”
I asked you why you think that’s any of your business, jerk.
“I’m here to,” I gesture at the headmaster’s door, as if it wasn’t already obvious. “I have something to talk about with Espresso. It’s kinda urgent, so if you could move out of the way…”
He glances at the door, and steps to the side. “Oh yeah? What about? Are you in–”
I quickly open the door and slip inside, closing the doors right in his face. An artificial doorbell rings somewhere over my head, and I ignore it to let out a short sigh.
“Nisa, my dear child! I’m afraid you forgot to knock!”
I look behind me, then over my shoulder. I finally find the headmaster on the window sill behind his desk, his beard braided with yellow flowers today as he flips through a book, the sunlight falling warmly over him.
“Sorry, sir-- I mean, Espresso.”
He smiles kindly, though he doesn’t raise his eyes from the pages in his hands. “Sit. I’ll be with you in a jiffy.”
I look around a little worriedly, then walk up to the chairs in front of his desk. “I’m actually here about this magical book. It just, it keeps popping back up when I throw it away-- It’s been with me since Thomas’s-- I don’t know what to do, it’s starting to creep me out. I mean, creep me out even more than it already–”
I stop my rambling when I realize my voice is growing louder and louder, more distressed.
“Book?” Espresso asks, and when I look at him, he’s staring at me in interest.
“Yeah,” I laugh nervously. I pull my backpack around, set it on my lap as I see the now-familiar faded red of the book sitting neatly in my bag. I tug it out, and hold it gingerly in my hands, as if it was an explosive, the fabric cover rough on my skin. “This…”
“The Book of Stories!”
“Uh? Oh, you know this book?”
“Know it?” Expresso stands, his eyes alight, papers forgotten. “My dear, that is the single most sacred book at our school. To think it hunted you down before you were even became our student. This is a sure sign of Destiny, weaving its threads.”

next!
raised platform

1 Like
216

“So if I step on this raised platform, what happens? I have to give a speech?” I ask, wiping the dirt on my shoe on the edge of the pristine black surface.
“No. You’ll be judged by the spirits. You’ll be found lacking, and they’ll drag you to the hollow ground,” the hooded man guiding me says, obsessively cleaning the spot I dirtied.
“So I’m supposed to just step up without resisting? After all I’ve heard the hollow ground feared?”
He hisses the air in through his teeth.
“If they judge you as still useful to our society, they will spare you and we will pardon you for your crimes.”
“But they won’t. As you just said.”
He glares at me, as though trying to scald my skin with his gaze along. It’s not working.
“You may refuse to step up. If so, you may make your appeals in the apropriate alternative legal processes.”
A picture of the trial flashes through my head, more of this constant scrutiny, with no place to call home in this boring country.
I’ve been there, I’ve tried that.
I hop onto the platform and immediately feel the room sinking away in a smear of blackness.
“Who knows, the hollow ground might be interesting,” I say lightly as the man’s face vanishes.

Next: fight for

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217

You close your eyes; you take a breath. The world pauses around you, just for a moment, but it does. It’s enough, though, enough for you to realize why you’re still here. Why you’re still fighting. In that moment, so brief a moment… You saw your home, and a woman… You heard a baby’s cry, saw the smile on the mother’s face, heard her gentle shushing as she held her child for the first time… You don’t know who she is or where she came from. You don’t know if these visions are real, or if they’re a figment of your imagination. If they happen in real time, or the past, or even the future, you just don’t know. But you know one thing. You know that these visions… Whatever they are, they show you the reasons you’re here. Your faith in humanity. Why you haven’t kneeled yet, why you’ll die before that happens.

These visions, whatever they are, show you what it is you fight for every day, what it is you’ve fought for all these years, and what it is you’ll continue to fight for as long as it takes.

Next: Redemption

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218

The sun rises on a new day, light washing over the landscape like an ocean over a dry shore.
I wasn’t looking for some redemption arc, I wasn’t looking to become a better person, but somehow, I’ve ended up saving the people by my side in an effort to achieve my own goals.
With the king under close watch, what happened to our people is unlikely to happen again. I’m content, even though I thought nothing but his death would be enough. Maybe I’ve grown up a bit.

Next: sunglasses

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Black cloaks, black sunglasses, black masks, black spiky hair that could only be dyed and gelled. Everything had a spiky, sleek look.
“You think they have black spiky underwear?” Spiky said to his sister, Dash.
She snickered, raising a hand to her mouth, but her smile fell away after a moment, replaced by a frown.
“What do you think they’re doing here? It can’t be good.”
The stream of suspicious, nearly identical people was streaming into a newly made tower a few miles from the edge of town. It was well visible from the tall tree on the cliff the two used as a lookout spot.
“We’ve got to get into that tower,” Spiky decided.
“If you can lure one of them away, I can get a cloak. One of us needs to stay outside in case anything goes wrong, and it’s going to be you,” Dash said.
“Why me?”
“Because I want to see what’s in there!”
Spiky wanted to be the one to go into the tower. He examined the small black shapes streaming below them, then an idea came to his head.
“You’d have to cut your hair and dye it black,” he said, “see their hair?”
Dash didn’t want to cut her long blond hair, and she dreaded to think of what hair dye would do to her sensitive cat ears.
Neither of them knew why she had cat ears and tail, they speculated that she’d been experimented on when they were little kids. Their adopted guardians didn’t know either, she’d been that way when her and Spiky came to them.
“I’ll get a wig,” said Dash stubbornly.
“What about your ears? You’d have to squash them down. And your tail, you’d have to hide it. It’s an extra risk, and it’s not worth it.”
Dash hasn’t considered that either.
“Fine. You win. You go in the tower first, and I follow if you’re not out within thirty minutes.”
“Thirty minutes???” Spiky pretended to nearly fall of the branch in shock.
The two of them were so used to climbing trees that they weren’t really scared of falling.
“Thirty minutes is waaay too little,” Spiky insisted, his light blue-grey spiky hair waving in the breeze as he tilted his head up, “give me more than that.”
“Nope.”
Spiky facepalmed, resigned to accept his sister’s reckless stubborness.
“Fine. We have to get the disguise first, though. Any ideas? Besides just asking?”
“I mean… what’s wrong with just asking them to come aside then knocking them out?”
“That’s what I was thinking. We’ll go with that and if it doesn’t work we’ll go from there,” Spiky decided.

Next: Dangerous plans

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From the sparkle in their glittering shiny dark eyes, they have dangerous plans. Their long tail periodically flips up and down, thumping the bed, coiling down the side, then lifting up again.
“What do you think, partner? If we blow this place up, nobody will know it was us.”
I gulp, my pulse racing. I have to admit it’s an exciting possibility. The thrill of walking away with blood on our hands, acting innocent and getting away with everything.
A part of me twinges, knowing I shouldn’t agree to kill innocent people just to get back at the guy who scammed us.
My partner reaches over to flick me on the forehead, but I grab their hand and hold it for a moment, staring them down.
“You know I don’t like that,” I tell them.
They drop their hand.
“If we blow the guy up, he won’t scam anyone else,” they say, appealing to my conscience.
I snort.
“And the other people in this building won’t save anyone else,” I say, but my mind is already made up.
“Oh don’t get weepy on me,” my partner sighs, about to go on about how I’m no fun.
I hold a finger to their nose.
“I’m not getting weepy, just saying it how it is. And I didn’t say no, did I?”
“Right, partner, so how we gonna go about this?” they say.
Our dangerous plans become deadly and calculated as we refine them. Tomorrow evening this place will be a scorch mark on the ground and we’ll be on our way.

Next: Sticky puddle

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