Flash i: Melt in Battle’s Heat
A girl falls to earth.
It’s a pounce, but her arms close around empty air. Her foe has eluded her again. Moments later, she spots it hiding behind a bush. A spirit resembles a greenskinned child. No face to bear expression, but the jerk of its head still indicates surprise.
“Gotcha!” The girl charges after it, prismatic hair trailing like ribbons behind her. The spirit-child stands about half the height of the girl; there was no way its legs were long enough to keep up with her. But with each footfall against the green-covered earth, it moves swift — as if each blade of green helped convey it.
The girl has no such advantage, and she’s huffing to keep up, her face slick with sweat in the summer sun. Despite the heat, she has gloves and boots on, a thin, hooded coat over her a arms. Almost none of her night-black skin is exposed.
The spirit may be faster, but Aurora moves with cunning. When she corners the nature spirit at the bank of a creek, it leaves spirit no choice but to fight back. The spirit has tricks — if the weeds beneath the girl’s feet aren’t catching her feet, she’s sliding on seeds or falling onto thorns. Once, the spirit blinds her with a massive dandelion blown into her face.
But when she gets close enough to throws fists and connect, there’s no contest; the girl makes easy work of the spirit. Grappling its limbs, kicking the legs out from under it, landing punch after punch. This exchange culminates with her picking up and throwing the spirit, body splashing in the creek.
The spirit rises up, drenched, with its stubby arm-appendages closed into almost-fists. (Spirits have no hands or fingers.) The arms themselves are half-outstretched, half-curled up. Its head twitches atop its neck. Altogether, a comical display of anger. Stamping the ground, kicking dirt (without displacing any grass), it charges forward.
Seeing it so worked up, the girl cracks a grin. She leans forward and charges when it does. The two are running at each other, about to collide at full speed.
Then a sunflower shaped like a woman rises from ground, sudden like it had sprouted up between them. Thin petiole arms are thrown out and stop the two, arm-stubs against their head, halting each of their charges in their tracks.
“Aurora, you know what your father told you about fighting all the time.”
The voice of sunflower is not the voice of a human. Aurora wasn’t even sure if it was Extolan, or mere sound enchanted to convey intent. The voice came from high above the child; this spirit stands taller than her father.
“But there’s nothing else to do around here!”
“There’s always work to do on the farm. You can pluck weeds.”
“Blank plucks the weeds. It’s way better at it!”
“Have you trimmed the hedges? Cut the hay? Cleaned the house?”
“Sunny, you know I’m no good at any of that stuff.”
“You can still do it. No one is born good at anything, you have to work for it.” Sunny smiles, but it looks odd on her sunflower face. “Sweeping, at the very least, must be within your abilities.”
“But I get tired of sweeping all the time!”
“If you have the energy to fight, you have the energy to sweep. Please, Aurora, leave Blank be.”
“But it doesn’t mind. Right, Blank?”
Blank throws its arms around the sunflower spirit’s legs, clutching it. It glances it up at Aurora, flinches and interposes Sunny between them, hiding behind her long legs.
Sunny pats Blank on the head.
“Come on. If it wanted me to stop I would have stopped! I can sense these things — I got better at that! You believe me, right Sunny?”
Sunny gives a significant look to Blank. Then, “Yes, I believe you, Aurora.”
Blank droops, a hurt look, then flops dramatically on the ground, playing dead.
“But Blank has work to do. And so do you. Come with me, children.”
“Harvest isn’t for two moons! Nothing needs to be done!”
“Work always needs to be done. It builds character.”
“Then my character won’t be built. I’m not doing it!”
“Aurora…” There was a warning dissonance in her song.
“What are you gonna do, huh? Make me do it?” Aurora sticks out her tongue.
The sunflower’s eyes narrow. “You’re goading me.”
“It almost worked…”
“I’m not going to fight you, Aurora.”
“What, are you scared I’ll beat you? Here, if you win, I’ll do anything you say for a week!”
A significant pause. “Is that a pact I hear?”
“I promise! But you’ll have to beat me first.”
“Very well. Blank, go along now.”
The blank-faced child looks up at Sunny, silently pleading to watch.
“There’s work to be done. Go!”
When the fight starts, Sunny’s approach immediately differs from Blank’s. The sunflower keeps her distance, petals glowing with magical light. She throws out an arm that sparkles, and a rays of light leap forth. Aurora dodges them, and where they land, it’s as if the spirit had thrown a punch from a distance.
“No fair! I don’t have any crazy spirit magic!”
“What made you think this fight was fair? You intend to wrestle me when I lack even muscles. The only means for me to move is through, ahem, ‘crazy spirit magic’.”
“Doesn’t matter, even cheating won’t let you win!”
Aurora charges, but the spirit side steps and the girl’s momentum carries her too far. The spirit keeps her distance, and more rays of errant light keep Aurora cautious, even as some of them go wide. Aurora’s clothes are drenched in sweat now. Still better than feeling the dirt, though.
When Aurora closes the distance, she catches hold of one of Sunny’s petiole-arms. The other arm glows with a new ray. Aurora flinches, but instead of being directed at her, the new ray hits the spirit’s own body, at the arm where it joins its stem. The ray of light cleanly severs the limb, freeing the spirit from Aurora grasp.
The girl chases the sunflower into the forest, and the she fires yet another magical beam — this one going completely over her head.
“Ha! You missed!”
“I didn’t.”
A tree bough above her falls, and Aurora yelps and hops back out of the way.
Another ray, this time hitting the fallen branch — but instead of being punched, the branch flies toward Sunny as if yanked by a cord. Then the sunflower catches the bough. Where it was severed from the tree, she joins it to her own flesh, granting her a new, sturdier limb.
“Ready to give up, child? If you concede, I’ll will reduce it to a mere five days of service.”
“I never back down from a fight!”
Aurora charges, and the sunflower swings her new arm down with a massive crash against the ground. The girl frowns, a bead of sweat on her head. The bough-arm gives her a whole new way to keep Aurora at a distance
When she tanks a hit from the bough, she grabs hold of it. Grinning, she climbs on top of the tree branch and crawls towards Sunny, weighing down her new limb. Aurora leaps to pounce on her, and Sunny picks that moment to discard her new limb with another ray-amputation and runs for it. Once again, Aurora’s arms close around empty air, and she gives chase. She’s slower this time, wet and panting, almost nauseous.
It’s short lived, because a moment later, she trips and face plants against the ground. Aurora cries out, not from pain or surprise, but distress. The texture of dirt was awful and now it was on her face. The grit mixes with her sweat to become a muddy grime, and she rolls over, and forgets about her pursuit, wiping the dirt from her face.
There’s a squeal of laughter. She had tripped over something, after all — over someone.
She recognized the spirit of the woods beyond her fathers’ farm. Half-pig, half-goat, and both ends covered in leaves instead of fur. It was still as red-orange as a wild boar, though.
“What the heck gives?”
“You had tunnel vision. Practically asking for. It was hilarious.”
“I was in the middle of something. Our fight!”
“I will consider it… a draw,” Sunny says.
“I was gonna win!”
“Win what, though? What was the point? Calling it a draw’s the same as saying you won, ain’t it?”
Aurora crosses her arms. “It’s not the same.”
Sunny gives a level stare at the pig spirit. “I have work to do. Ensure she returns before dinner, Sus.” And the sunflower spirit is gone.
“Why did you do that?”
“Do I need a reason? Us spirits gotta look out for each other.”
“Doesn’t look like she appreciates it. Looks like she doesn’t even like you! You nuisance!”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” the spirit says with teeth visible. Did pigs have such sharp teeth? “Shows how little you pay attention.”
Aurora blows air out of her mouth.
“You really don’t get it, do you? Do you think she doesn’t despises you? Is there any love between you two?”
“Nanny Sunny doesn’t…”
“Or what about Blank. You think it cares for any of this? You’re just less annoying when it plays along then when you’re ignored. Me? Haha, no. Why would any of us like you? The relationship is one-way.”
“That’s…” She frowned. Her head hurt.
“Insightful? Puts everything into perspective? Or is it just hard to accept?”
“No, you’re wrong. If nobody liked me, then why don’t you all just…” It was hard to find words through her headache.
“Just what? We can’t go anywhere. We are this land. So long as the old man Geller keeps you, we just have to put up with you.”
“Father! He loves me. There, you’re wrong.”
“He feels some obligation toward you, sure. Else there’s no reason to keep you around. Don’t do any work, and you’re not charming, so what good are you?”
“I can fight!”
“Yeah, you’re nothing but trouble.”
“No, I’ll be a knight when I grow up! I’ll fight robbers and gembeasts and comets! I’ll vanquish the biggest monsters and then everyone will see how great I am.”
“A comet? What a daydream. Why would you even want to do that?” There was a snicker behind it. It wasn’t funny.
Aurora gets quiet. She looks up at the sky. Her hands work as she debates giving voice to what has, until now, only been a persistent suspicion.
Aurora knew there was something wrong — something different about her. Her father was a great earthcanter, and she couldn’t manage any of his incantations. Her skin, her hair, her eyes, they all looked strange, like no one in the family or the village or that she’d ever heard of. She felt different. No one understood her, and she didn’t understand anyone.
Nothing explained why, except there was one blank spot. If she knew what went there, she was sure it would explain everything.
“My mother,” Aurora finally says. “The daughters of the moon existed to defend the kingdom from comets, and they have ever since Queen Uluna first banished them.”
“Blah blah, mortal history. I don’t care.”
Aurora continues speaking, ignoring him. “They disappeared fifteen years ago. I was born fifteen years ago. And my mother… no one has seen her since the moonweavers disappeared. I’m not stupid.”
“So you think you’re descended from what, cometslaying royalty? Why isn’t your father rich, then? Why isn’t your father anybody but a farmer in a backwater barony? Why hasn’t he told you?”
“I don’t know everything! But it all fits, doesn’t it?”
“Plenty of people died that year. Mortals die all the time. Ever heard of coincidence?”
“Coincidence doesn’t explain why I’m like this! Let me hear your explanation, you stupid pig!” Aurora’s face was drenched in sweat, her temper not making her feel any cooler in the summer sun.
“Hear this. Maybe… you’re just a mistake? No deep truth to it, just a worthless mortal your mother couldn’t be bothered with. Just think about it. If your mother and father both cared about about you, why doesn’t he tell you the truth? Maybe he doesn’t care. Or maybe he does, and doesn’t want to tell you your mother doesn’t. How would you know?”
“Shut up.” Aurora didn’t have the patience for this.
“It’s my forest, I can say whatever I want. Don’t like it, leave.”
“You’ll shut up if I come over there and make you shut up.”
The pig squeals laughter again. Aurora launches into motion, unsteady on her feet but tackling the pig. She moves so fast that finally, her pounce succeeds. She holds the pig in a vice grip, even as its hooves beat on her back. They go down. She’s wrestling with a pig in the mud, getting dirt all over her, she hates it but she’s mad enough she doesn’t care.
The pig bites her. She screams, and releases it enough to start wailing on it. It smacks her in the face with a hoof. Her vision goes white for a moment.
Her head is pulsing.
She keeps fighting but it’s getting fuzzy. The world is throbbing. Their positions shift, the pig rolling over top of her. She resisting, she’s pushing back, she’s screaming.
She’s—
She’s nothing. The world is nothing. Hot, hot darkness. She faints and see nothing.
Visual snow falls in a dream. She glimpses stars in the noise.