{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1", "title": "Aurora Moonrise", "description": "a story of comets and a girl who wants to fight them", "favicon": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org/favicon.ico", "home_page_url": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org/fiction/aurora", "language": "en", "feed_url": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org/fiction/aurora/feed.json", "_atom_url": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org/fiction/aurora/feed.xml", "_contents": [ "/fiction/aurora/flash04.html", "/fiction/aurora/flash03.html", "/fiction/aurora/flash02.html", "/fiction/aurora/flash01.html", "/fiction/aurora/memory07.html" ], "_filter": ".book == \"Aurora Moonrise\" and .chapter", "items": [ { "url": "/fiction/aurora/flash04.html", "id": "/fiction/aurora/flash04.html", "date_modified": "2024-05-18", "title": "5: Flash iv: To Drown With a Smile", "summary": "

The world ends with a storm.

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Aurora is frozen, cold sinking into shivering flesh as fear and shock quicken her pulse. This fear doesn’t still her — she needs to move, to run and do something. But she can’t.

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The waters of the circle pond turn to ice. Hissing as the temperature plunges to cast them in crystal, then cracking as Aurora struggles with flailing limbs. One emerges, then the other, and now the cracks travel outward, breaking off plates of ice.

", "_source": "./site//fiction/aurora/flash04.md", "content_html": "

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---\ntitle: \"Flash iv: To Drown With a Smile\"\ndate: 2024-05-18\n---\n\nThe world ends with a storm.\n\nAurora is frozen, cold sinking into shivering flesh as fear and shock\nquicken her pulse. This fear doesn't still her --- she needs to move,\nto run and do *something*. But she can't.\n\nThe waters of the circle pond turn to ice. Hissing as the temperature\nplunges to cast them in crystal, then cracking as Aurora struggles\nwith flailing limbs. One emerges, then the other, and now the cracks\ntravel outward, breaking off plates of ice.\n\nIce and snow fall throughout, first as stray flakes and drops, then as\na thickening blanket. At the far end of the pond, the still-liquid\nskin ripples.\n\nAurora braces with one hand and pulls herself onto a plate of ice --\nonly for her weight to sink the platform, water rushing in. When it\nmeets the ice-draped girl, it freezes to form a new layer, locking her\nin place, half-prone.\n\nShe hears the splashes and pops of ice raining into the pond. She\nhears the rumble of thunder intensifying to a sharp tone, crying an\near-splitting warning. She hears air finally start moving as the wind\nwhispers threats. She hears the storm, and she sighs peace.\n\nIce numbed her flesh --- but it was not the pain so many described\nfeeling in the winter; no, this soothed. Aurora twists her head to\nglance at the sky, and sees the lightning flash. The light felt so\nmuch like the sky waving back at her.\n\nTrapped in the forest as ice falls upon her, the young girl isn't\nafraid of the storm; she has nothing to fear from it.\n\nBut someone did.\n\nHer father felt stiff pain in every joint when the seasons turned\ncold. Her father had called for her when she ran away --- would he\nhave followed after? Could he endure a blizzard in the middle of\nsummer?\n\nWrenching with new strength, Aurora lifts her legs out of the pond\nand rolls over the surface. A slow thing, leaving her black skin\ninvisibly raw where ice is torn away, but she moves.\n\nEnough of the pond is ice, be it in breadth or depth, that her weight\ndoesn't sink, doesn't invite another flood of new water. Aurora takes\nunsteady steps toward the sheer bank wall of the circle pond. The ice\nholds beneath her.\n\nBut more frozen and half-melted snow is falling now. Water trails in\nstreams from the edge. Tall and muddy, Aurora would need to climb.\nShe hates the feeling of mud --- but there's no other way out.\n\nWhen she presses her hands to the mud wall, brown water freezes along\nher fingertips, binding the dirt to her. *Ick.* But mud frozen won't\nslip, and in seconds Aurora climbs back up.\n\nWalking forward, she peels dirty ice off her hands, even as more of it\nfalls on her. Her head twists around. Where was she, where was the\nway back? The sun had already set, and sky is clouded. Then her head\nstops. She *knows* she's looking north.\n\nShe hadn't kept track of her trail on the mad dash in, certainly not\nafter the deer started hunting her, but if north is that way, she can\nfeel she's farther east than the farm. She turns and starts running.\n\nFirst flakes had become a drizzle, then a steady downpour, and now a\ndeluge as the new wind whips water into sheets. A canopy of leaves\nabove her is a faltering umbrella, dripping lines where there aren't\nholes outright. Where there are puddles, the constant impacts rouse\nthem to an unsettling and furious visage, ripples like so many\npuncture-holes.\n\nAurora slips on a slick patch of mud and ice, weight throwing her\nacross the ground. She slides and slides and slices --- a rock in her\npath catches her in the stomach and carves her up to her breast.\n\nRed weeps, almost unseen in the shadows upon dark skin --- but when\nAurora looks, her eyes still glow. She retches. Mud on her skin is\none thing, but dirt in her wounds, pervading her life and being?\n\nAurora struggles to her feet --- but around her chunk of ice had\nquick-frozen, and now even more rains down upon her, forming layer\nafter layer.\n\nIce is numbing. Soothing. She didn't have anything to fear.\n\nThe girl looks up, to where lightning dances like mating snakes in the\nnight-dark sky --- the only light left up there.\n\nThey will say the world ends with a storm.\n\nAll you can hear is the ever-louder roar of falling water beating\ndown.\n\nAll you can feel is the cold deluge soaking you to the bone.\n\nAll you can see is those last flashes above.\n\nA storm drowning out all other sound, all other feeling, all other\nsight.\n\n*But*, she thought, even though you couldn't see it, the sun and the\nmoon and the wandering planets and the stars and even the comets were\nstill up there. They were so far away from the storm. Safe and\nunbothered.\n\nEven when the world ends, the heavens would still turn.\n\nThere were still other worlds under beautiful stars. Just like her\nfather said.\n\n*Her father.*\n\nAurora started moving for a reason. She couldn't just freeze here,\neven if she had nothing to fear. Hands feel along her breast --- but\nthe ice had frozen over her chest wound like a cold scab. The touch\nof the storm on her skin felt so gentle, even as precipitation rages.\nWithout warmth, but not without care.\n\nAnd who did *that* sound like? This wasn't a normal storm. Was it\nenchanted? By what will? The winter spirit claimed that it merely\nawakened her --- no, it only said it wouldn't be awake without it. So\nhad that spirit called this storm?\n\nDid it matter?\n\nAurora stood. The ice still grasped for her, but if this wasn't mere\ndead water, but an enchantment from a will that cared enough to heal\nher... she wouldn't bat aside, brush off the ice like obnoxious dirt.\n\nHer mouth opened and inhaled air, like cold fingers reaching into her\nmouth and her throat and deeper. She felt the ice coating her like a\nnew dress, but solid like bones. The ice was drawn toward her.\nAnd... she let it. The cold seeped in.\n\nWhen the girl lifts her legs, the ice beneath the foot doesn't break\naway, it feels her intent and simply parts. Slow, testing steps, then\nrunning strides.\n\nThe freezing rain never lets up. If anything, it get colder with her\nacceptance, becoming hail and snow. It tears through the canopy, and\nnow leaves fall too. (Would a nature spirit call a storm that\ndestroyed its own domain? Its very being?)\n\nAurora runs across a ground slick with mud and frost, crawling with\nroots and rocks and puddles and streams. Yet no step betrays her.\nWhen she slides, it only accelerates her along her way.\n\nLightning strikes behind her, a bolt of fire that casts the whole\nforest around her into daylight for one moment. The light reflects\noff of so much glittering ice.\n\nFor that moment, Aurora clearly sees the clearing in front of her.\nTrees are thinning, and her feet are stepping onto the familiar trail\nout from the farm.\n\nShe returns here and witnesses the sight, the site, of a lost battle.\n\nIf the world ended with a storm, it was supposed to bring a final\nflood. This didn't look like the world had drowned --- it looked\n*ravaged*. The wind had torn furrows through the stalks of wheat and\ncorn. Fences knocked down entirely. Had this silo been lifted up\nfrom its foundation?\n\nSharp rods of hail have fallen and still stuck out of the ground, like\nso many javelines.\n\nThey had a couple pigs and chickens. Aurora walked past corpses. As\nif they had accepted the cold in them too, their flesh had burst, the\nblood within turned to ice.\n\n\"Blank? Sunny? D-dad?\" Aurora wonders if the storm drowned out the\nsound of her voice.\n\nThere is a withered husk, green skin already turning gray. The face\ndoesn't look pained because there is no face. Curled into a fetal\nball, staring toward the distant farmhouse, Blank lay palpably dead.\n\nAurora moves on, walk turning to a jog. \"Is anyone there?\"\n\nMovement distant. But there's movement everywhere, the world falling\napart. Still, Aurora approaches. A dark form is illuminated as she\nnears; her eyes and hair still glow.\n\nA sunflower shaped like a woman, one-armed. Sunny is missing petals\nfrom her crown, and there's tracks running down from her lidded eyes.\nAurora's just a girl, but she looms over the spirit --- because Sunny\nis kneeling.\n\nThe spirit moves aside. Beneath her, a man.\n\nAurora falls to her knees and feels it. The flesh is cold and\nunmoving. The face is still knit in concern. Mouth open --- was her\nname on his lips?\n\nGeller is dead.\n\nAnd Aurora feels...\n\nThey will say the world ends with a storm. Everything drowned and\nfalling. But celestial bodies still turn, in a soothing numb void\nbeyond the world; no sound, no sight, no droplet falls upon them,\nunbothered by a storm some meaningless distance away.\n\nThe stars look beautiful from far on the other worlds, it's just like\nher father said.\n\n\"He forgave you, Aurora. He still loved you, in the end.\" Sunny spoke\nor enchanted the air.\n\nAurora flinches. She had doubted --- she had let the pig-thing's\nwords crawl into her and make her doubt.\n\n*None of us like you. Maybe he doesn't care.*\n\nBeing *wrong* means going backwards from the truth. It means you'd be\nright if you switched things around. Sus couldn't be right --- it'd\nhurt too much.\n\nBut the opposite of what he said --- if everyone did care? That hurt\ntoo.\n\nSus was wrong. And if you switch things around --- \"none of us like\nyou\" becomes \"you don't like any of us\". *Is there any love between\nyou two? The relationship goes one-way.*\n\nBlank was dead. Father was dead. Aurora had been to funerals, and\nFather took her to her cousin's grave every year. You were supposed\nto tear up and cry. You were supposed to shake your fists at the\nworld's cruelty. You were supposed to wish it was different. You\nfeel sad and angry and *bad*.\n\nShe looks over at the dead spirit-child and bites her lip. Blank had\ngiven her that toy sword, and now she'd never get anything like that\nagain. Did she even use it? She'd never get to fight Blank again.\nWell, at this point she kept beating it anyway.\n\nAurora looks at the dead man and frowns. She thinks of the questions\nhe'd never answer now, the broken toys he could never fix, the food\nhe'll never cook again. Then she thinks of the church she won't have\nto attend, or the rules she won't have to follow now.\n\nOnce, when playing, she'd rolled her ball down into a snake's hole and\ncould never get it out. She lost it forever. That didn't feel good,\nbut she got over it. She vowed to hold on tighter to her toys after\nthat. Was that enough?\n\nSunny has grabbed her hand and now she squeezes, looking up at the\ngirl with a sympathetic bend of her flower-lips. Aurora pulls her\nhand away. (The spirit's arm shivers as it falls.)\n\nEven if Aurora couldn't feel what she was supposed to, she could at\nleast do what she was supposed to. She walked towards the shed, where\ntools leaned against the wall. She hated using them, but here, it'd\nbe necessary.\n\nSunny hasn't moved at all when the girl returns. Could she?\n\nAurora tosses one of the shovels. It lands beside the spirit and\nslides in the snow. The iron head touches her leg and she flinches\nback.\n\n\"Aurora?\"\n\n\"Come on. Let's dig a grave.\"\n\nHer own shovel strikes the earth, sinking into mud like butter. She\nscoops it away, then looks up to where the spirit has left hers lying\non the ground.\n\n\"You always yelled at me for not doing work. C'mon.\"\n\n\"Aurora, I can't.\"\n\n\"What is it you always say about excuses?\" Aurora stabs her shovel\ninto the ground hard enough the wood handle slips out of her grasp.\nHer fists ball up.\n\nSunny doesn't care either, did she?\n\nAurora's voice is crackling. \"You were *here*. You were here all\nalong! Why didn't you bring him inside?\"\n\n\"He was calling for you to come back. He was wait---\"\n\n\"It's not my fault! It's yours! Why didn't you save him?\"\n\n\"I couldn't--\"\n\n\"Why didn't you take him back inside before he *died?*\"\n\nThe sunflower opened her mouth, but every word was a wound, and Aurora\nneeded to mend it with cold, numb, quiet. She launches forward.\n\nSunny doesn't move, falling to the ground as the girl tackles her.\n\n\"Why? Did you even care about him?\"\n\nSunny starts talking, gets interrupted by Aurora slamming her head\nagainst the ground, then tries again. \"I'm--- I'm dying too. Like\nBlank. I wanted to spend my last moments... with him.\"\n\nAurora opens her mouth, but no words come out.\n\n\"Listen, he wanted me to tell you. The last thing he said.\nYou'll... You'll be a good knight one day. When the next comet falls,\nyou'll give it a good fight.\"\n\nAurora's raised fist trembles in the air. She couldnt even fight a\ndying sunflower.\n\n\"He didn't understand,\" Sunny continues. \"He never did, I think.\nCouldn't. You were always your mother's daughter. Didn't know what\nto do with you. I don't either. But, better them than us.\"\n\n\"What? What does that mean? What was my mother like?\"\n\nInstead of answering, she says, \"So cold. How do you stand it?\"\n\nAnd that's the last of Sunny. Aurora looks down, and where her arm\nand legs pin the sunflower, ice crawls onto stem. Sunny has frozen to\ndeath.\n\nA snort. \"Ol' Geller, Blank, now Sunny. How's all the blood and sap\non your hands feel?\"\n\nAurora doesn't look up. If she sees the wretched pig-goat-thing,\nshe'd see red and charge.\n\n\"I *didn't* kill them.\"\n\n\"Old man was out here for your ungrateful sake. Then you attacked a\nspirit on her deathbed. But suppose I can't blame the kid on you. Or\ncan I? Do you *know* where this storm came from?\"\n\n\"The winter spirit summoned it,\" Aurora said. Her voice shook as she\nsaid it, which about reflected her confidence.\n\nThe pig spirit just snorts.\n\n\"What was Sunny talking about?\" Aurora asks. Sus might lie, but did\nthat matter if she got any answer at all? \"You all knew something\nabout my mother. Can't you just tell me? Please...\"\n\n\"Isn't it obvious?\"\n\n\"I tried to figure it out and you laughed at me!\"\n\n\"It is *hilarious* how stupid you are. At this point I really just\nwant to see how many pieces you break into when you finally realize\nthe truth.\"\n\n\"Fine then! Go ahead and break me! *Just tell me.*\"\n\n\"We're all sworn to secrecy, kid. Mortals love their bloody pacts.\"\n\n\"Who made you swear? Mother? Father?\" At the mention, Aurora\nglances back at the frost-rimed dead man. He was supposed to be\nimportant, wasn't he? \"I--- it doesn't matter. Can you help me bury\nhim?\"\n\n\"No can do.\"\n\n\"Right, of course you wouldn't care.\"\n\n\"You *are* stupid. Spirits don't have hands, kid. Can't use tools.\nAllergic to iron, too. Wait, don't tell me snapped on Sunny just\nbecause you *forgot?*\"\n\nAurora stood up. \"If you can't help me and can't tell me anything,\nthen go away! You're useless!\" Aurora stalked forward.\n\nAnd with each step, the pig-goat-thing backed up, their wet autumn\nleaves quivering.\n\n\"What's wrong, little piggy? Scared of the cold?\" She meant to say\n'scared of me'. But she was cold, wasn't she?\n\n\"I can handle a november chill. I just keep my distance from serial\nkillers.\"\n\n\"I'm not a killer!\" Aurora screams. But the goat-thing has\ndisappeared into the underbrush. She was alone, speaking into the\nroar of the rain. \"I didn't kill them. I don't want to kill\nanyone... Knights are supposed to save people.\"\n\nBut wouldn't a knight *care* if their father just died?\n\nShe slowly walks back to pick up her shovel. She doesn't even feel\nthe downpour, ice cradling her like a second skin. A shovel blade\nstabs into a muddy hold, already a puddle.\n\nThen ice cracks behind her.\n\nSomeone else had come.\n\nAnd there's a scrape, as of a shovel being picked up.\n" }, { "url": "/fiction/aurora/flash03.html", "id": "/fiction/aurora/flash03.html", "date_modified": "2023-09-03", "title": "4: Flash iii: A Freezing Summer’s Wind", "summary": "

A cloud passes in front of the moon. A shadow rears up behind Aurora. She lashes out, a fist thrown with weight behind it.

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She impacts hard against tree bark. There’s nothing there. Jumping at literal shadows.

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Aurora sighs, and advances deeper into the spirit-haunted woods.

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Running through this domain, one can’t say Sus made no attempt to trip her. Sus is these woods, and the roots beneath her feet had every intention of pulling her to the ground; the vines and branches clearly intended to slap out in front of her stride, and the only paths allowed to be worn in the underbrush were those that twisted like a maze. But having spent over ten years wandering these woods, she can weave through at a jogging pace.

", "_source": "./site//fiction/aurora/flash03.md", "content_html": "

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---\ntitle: \"Flash iii: A Freezing Summer's Wind\"\ndate: 2023-09-03\n---\n\nA cloud passes in front of the moon. A shadow rears up behind Aurora.\nShe lashes out, a fist thrown with *weight* behind it.\n\nShe impacts hard against tree bark. There's nothing there. Jumping\nat literal shadows.\n\nAurora sighs, and advances deeper into the spirit-haunted woods.\n\nRunning through this domain, one can't say Sus made no attempt to trip\nher. Sus *is* these woods, and the roots beneath her feet had every\nintention of pulling her to the ground; the vines and branches clearly\nintended to slap out in front of her stride, and the only paths\nallowed to be worn in the underbrush were those that twisted like a\nmaze. But having spent over ten years wandering these woods, she can\nweave through at a jogging pace.\n\nOn and on she went through the dark of night. Far enough to be alone\nfor a bit, to feel peace and solitude, to cool off from how *hot*\nshe'd gotten. (Some would be afraid in these woods; of wolves and\ngemfiends and wild spirits; but Aurora had easily wrestled dogs and\nfoxes, and she had the measure of Sus; she didn't *trust* them, but\nshe trusted her safety in their woods.)\n\nWhen she finally slowed to a stop, it is not out of caution. No, it's\nstill so *hot*. Sweat slicks her face like she's melting. She keeps\nmoving, but it only gets worse.\n\n(The shadows look like visual snow.)\n\nAurora knows the feel of Sus's woods, familiarity to the point of\ninstinct.\n\nSo she knows something is different. It's off, it's wrong.\n\nThe paths are too straight, the trees too tall. Are those cypresses?\nNot willows or oaks. If she *was* being watched earlier, now she felt\nten more eyes on her. The shadows are sharp. Were those bones?\n\nThe moonlight --- the moon is brilliantly full --- filters down\nbetween the branches. Sometimes she blinks and the needles are gone,\nthe boughs bare and every too-tall tree now skeletal and\nspirit-haunted.\n\n\"Sus?\" She's not sure if she speaks the words as a reproach, an\ninvocation, or a quiet cry for help. There's no response of any sort.\nThe wind blows locks of too-colorful hair in front of her face. Her\nlong-sleeved coat is fluttering around her. It's a strong storm's\nwind, and it chills her. She doesn't shiver.\n\nAurora isn't running anymore. Cautious steps forward, head swiveling\nand double checking every shadow around her. Those shadows shift when\nshe steps near a tree's shade; they disappear when she gets near.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Aurora speaks, steadying her voice.\n\nThere's a presence, sometimes felt in the twisting of a cypress's\nsharp leaves. Sometimes echoed in a fallen twig. Always distant,\nfragmentary indications, like a moon viewed from glinting dewdrops. A\n*spirit*. So close, so far away.\n\nAurora grits her teeth. \"Come out! I'm not afraid of you!\"\n\nHer head is still swiveling around, gaze impatient for motion, true\nmotion. The wind is knocking rocks and sticks around and making the\ntree limbs groan --- it meant there's so many distractions to look\npast. But if she saw *something*---\n\nThere! A hundred feet away! Eyeshine behind a dead tree leaning\nagainst its fellows. The body is long behind it, like it moved on\nfour legs. But a glimpse is all she gets.\n\nThere's a tremble in her legs. She would run, but she wasn't afraid.\nThis spirit would show itself, and Aurora was going to *punch* it for\nscaring her like that.\n\nA tree moves. The eyeshine is piercing light out from two holes in\nits bark. Above, two boughs split and split again, a crown of dead\nfingers. After glimpsing for a second, Aurora breaks eye contact\n(there *is* a mind behind those eyes, she knows this in her bones).\nIt's still there, she can feel it watching her.\n\nYet it seems *wise* to drink no more than a moment's glimpse of that\nsight.\n\nAurora's eyes stare at the ground. She crouches to pick up a rock.\nAnd then, eyes closed, hurls the rock to where she feels those eyes\nwatching her.\n\nWood cracks as if under strain from snow. Is that the sound of her\nhitting the mark, or the spirit making sparse? The skin-prickling\nstare is gone now.\n\nAurora roots herself to the spot. She's not afraid.\n\n*\"Aurora?\"* The girl suddenly remembers the sound of her father's\nvoice. *\"Aurora! Please come back here!\"*\n\nShe runs. Not now, not when he wouldn't tell her *anything.* She\nwouldn't go back yet.\n\nUnder the cold light of a full moon, Aurora never finds refugee of\nshadows to hide. The storm wind seems to blow boughs out of place as\nsoon as she steps under them. The way even dark overhangs grew\nilluminated leaves her wondering if, somehow, the wind is blowing the\nmoonlight itself.\n\nMore than Aurora is running, tonight. She sees mice darting, foxes\nignoring them to crawl into burrows, owls nestled still in the hollows\nof trees.\n\nAurora still feels hot, a coal in a smith's forge, burning with the\nheat that fueled *action*, the sort of action Father has rules\nagainst. It's that heat which keeps her from feeling cold --- her\nbreath is a cloud leaving her mouth, and she swears there's gleaming\nflakes of frost in the night air.\n\nBut all of the animals stowing themselves away --- did they feel like\nwinter had come early?\n\nThe eyes appear anew, fifty feet to her left, then forty feet to her\nright. Aurora dropped the pretense; when her path would take her near\nthose glowing, hollow sockets, she ran the other way. As they watch\nher, she sees it more and more fully. It wasn't a tree with two\nboughs --- those were antlers upon its head.\n\nIt felt safer to glimpse the body. She had seen hunters kill doe.\nShe had seen wolves kill a buck and happened across the carcass. She\nremembered it now. Skin still covers these bones, but barely. The\ndeer is thin and taut, like it had grown larger than a man without\never eating.\n\n*(Was it hungry? Would she be its first meal?)*\n\nThey were so long --- deer didn't have eight legs. Deer didn't have\npair after pair of antlers upon their back like wings of velvet and\nbone. Deer were prey, they didn't *chase*.\n\nThe wind blows again, and above her she see clouds rolling in so fast\na fisherman of the sky must have reeled them. Now the moon is\noccluded from the ground by clouds colored like the fringe of a\nrainbow.\n\nSo why did the shadows still light up when she steps near?\n\nThe deer spirit manifests, twenty feet away right in front of her,\ncloser than it ever has come before, like a shadow given flesh. This\nnear, the hide appears a shade of deep blue.\n\nAurora gasps, terror choking her breath. (What color was strangled\nflesh?) She falls to the ground, coughing. Trembling, she makes to\nstand, falls again. But she has to get up.\n\nHow long has she been running? Twilight had long given way to true\nnight. Aurora is tired. She can't keep this up.\n\nTrapped in the domain of a malevolent spirit, unable to move. Would\nshe melt from the heat still building inside her? Freeze with the\nunnatural cold of this storm? Or would the winged deer *devour?*\n\n*Get up, child*.\n\nAurora mumbles. It's not words.\n\n*Run. Escape. Give me a hunt.*\n\nThe shadows seemed enchanted with the words.\n\nAurora rasps a breath, and scrambled to her feet. The shining, hollow\neyes are peering at her, deep and evaluating. Eight legs crush dead\ncypress leaves underhoove. The spirit circles her. She has to time\nto stand shakily, then get steady.\n\n*Go.* The deer's mouth yawns upon and there's something within and\nAurora starts running anew.\n\nThe hunt is different, now. Those eyes are behind her always, and\nnever leave. Earlier, the trees sometimes flickered, looking leafless\nand dead. She can't banish the images no matter how many times she\nblinks. She can *feel* its falsity, a ghostly illusion.\n\nA fox sleeping in a low tree branch looks like a crow-picked skeleton.\nBut it's not.\n\nAurora had delved too deep into this spirit's domain. In each tree,\nit was no longer a distant presence; every plant here sung with the\nslow, faint pulse of a spirit's enchantment, a will-song.\n\nSweat soaked her underclothes. Did she smell terrified? Even as her\nfear deepened, she feels ever hotter.\n\nShe is being led, that much is obvious. Earlier, brief appearances of\nthe spirit had nudged her this way and that, and now she must be\ngetting close. The deer-thing pushes her exactly where the spirit\nwants her. Each long, cantering stride of those eight legs brought\nthat stare closer and closer.\n\nJust up ahead, there's a gap. The trees break into a sudden clearing.\n\nBut Aurora trips again. Her balance tips forward, and her hands catch\nher. She doesn't want to stop moving, she can't fall again, so they\npush off the ground even as her legs keep moving. For that moment on\nall fours, she truly feels like prey animal fleeing in mortal terror.\n\nA leap brings her out of the forest. Before her now lies the banks of\na pond so round cartographers would draw it with a compass. The banks\nrise up toward the edge.\n\nAurora strides twice near the pond's edge before leaping again. She\nwas *so hot*. All she could think, seeing those cool waters, was how\nthey'd feel washing over her skin.\n\nSailing over the waters, she looks down, and understands.\n\nWhy the shadows kept shifting, why the forest was illuminated, why the\ndeer's gaze looked so much like eyeshine and she was afraid to look\ntoo deeply.\n\nAurora is light. Her skin glows; her hair sparkles; her eyes radiate.\n\nShe really was like a coal in a forge, so hot she burned bright.\n\nTime to be doused. Her arc reaches a peak, and now she falls toward\nthe clear waters. The pond had no fish or scum, and even the bottom\nlooked smooth instead of muddy\n\nShe should have splashed. But Aurora sinks into the waters like sand,\nand it's not a ripple or wave that flows out. It's a crackling sound:\nthe waters freeze to ice around her, ice glowing with her light.\n\nFrost coats her skin when she emerges from the depths, and the\nfreezing happens so fast that, when lifting an arm out of the ice, it\ngoes from covered in frost at the wrist to chunk of ice at the elbow,\nand when her shoulder emerges, it's near-immobilized by the mass of\nthe iced pond. She struggles to dunk it back in.\n\nThe deer trots forward. At the the pond's edge, the long, gaunt neck\nbends toward the thin rime of ice (the pond is freezing slower,\nfarther from her). A long tongue breaks the ice and sips at they\nwater. The eyes stare at her still, shining back with her own light.\n\n\"A most pleasant hunt, child Aurora. I confess I cannot swim;\npatience will seal your freedom.\" The voice is not human. If a\nwretched old crone sounded tender and matronly; if a deep lullaby were\nsung by a wailing banshee; if you could hear the winter winds make\nthreats and promises, it would sound like this.\n\nIt's then that everything snaps and falls apart in Aurora. She\nlaughs, high-pitched and rhythmless. If this was her last laugh, it\nwould be terribly embarrassing.\n\nShe says, \"That doesn't make sense! Deer are prey, not predators.\"\n\nThe deer neither laughs nor growls at this critique of its chosen form\nand art. \"To my precious leaves, deer are the most relentless\nhunter,\" says the spirit.\n\nShe, the spirit, dips her head deeper into the cold pond water. Tear\ntracks flow down from the hollow eyes, and glowing ice crawls upward.\nThe ice continues, tracing out the whole of the deer spirit's form in\nall its austere emaciation. It is both illuminated and defined.\nSomehow, hanging off this spirit like an indecent raiment, the glow\ndoesn't feel like her own light anymore.\n\nWhen the head lifts, the spirit hasn't closed the mouth.\n\nAurora wasn't sure if pigs had sharp teeth, but she was certain deer\ndidn't.\n\n\"Are you going to eat me?\"\n\n\"I would not dare subsume you. I lack that power.\"\n\nAurora frowned (or tried to, cracking the ice on her face). \"You\nseemed to have plenty of power in that hunt.\"\n\n\"Truly, it is a borrowed might. You feel it too, do you not? Burning\nin your breast, setting your teeth on edge, the omens of a great and\nterrible storm to come. I would not be awake in month, in this\nseason, not without it, and at this hour you, dear, would be asleep.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Aurora says. She looks up at the clouds. Was it just the\nweather, all along? But that couldn't be it, she had reasons to feel\nhow she did. \"No, I was frustrated. I was *mad*, and that's why I\nran out here.\"\n\n\"Two things can dance together as one truth.\" And then the deer\n*sits*, dropping to look down on her from a lower height, eight legs\ntucking underneath. \"Tell me, what insult inspired your journey?\"\n\n\"You'd know the pig spirit, right? Sus, your neighbor?\"\n\n\"I see,\" the spirit says, as if that alone had explained everything.\n\nShe continues explaining anyway. \"They, they said that everyone hates\nme. And\" --- if Aurora hesitated her, it's the frost on her lips,\nshe doesn't stutter --- \"they're right. I tried to prove them wrong\nand I didn't.\"\n\n\"What you must understand,\" she starts, \"is that Sus is a spirit from\nthe court of wild autumn. It is their nature to delight in the decay\nand ruination of all things. The truth is not that you are despised,\nbut merely that Sus is jealous of your position. I have watched your\nfather hold you close when winter's chill grips the land. He cares\nfor you greatly, and Sus would simply prefer that attention be theirs,\nor no one's at all. Everything else is a lie traced between points of\ntruth.\"\n\n\"But Sunny? She's sick of me, isn't she?\"\n\n\"If Sunny feels any ill will towards you, it is regret, or bitterness,\nor perhaps a different species of jealousy. Long ago, Sunny dreamed\nof your fathers hand in marriage, but that was never to be.\" The deer\nis looking up, like she could read it in the stars, but you cannot see\nthe stars behind violet clouds. \"I would not be surprised to learn\nshe looks upon you, on some occasions, and dreams a fantasy where you\nhad been her daughter instead.\"\n\n\"But Father, I mean, Geller --- is he really my father?\" She only gets\na stare from the spirit, and eventually is granted a languid nod, as\nif disappointed in the question. \"What about Mother? Did you ever\nknow her?\"\n\nThe deer looks around them, eyes wandering around the pond. \"How\ncould I ever forget her?\"\n\n\"Was she a powerful enchanter?\"\n\nThere's a strangled sound, like a deer drowning, like ice cracking.\nAurora frowns, slowly realizing it was a brief laugh. Another might\nfind it offputting, but spirits' strangeness never bothered Aurora.\n\nShe's worried the thing was laughing at her mother, though.\n\nAs if sensing her offense, the spirit finally says, \"One of the\ngreatest, some would say.\"\n\nAurora cracks (literally) into a grin. It lasts until she wonders,\n\"Then why doesn't my father just say that?\"\n\n\"Do you feel your mother's absence? Wish that, at night, you had\nsomeone else to hold you? A woman to be proud of you, to guide you?\"\n\n\"I wish for it every night.\"\n\n\"But you never *knew* her. At best, you've heard what mothers are\nsupposed to be like. Now imagine you had. Would her absence not pain\nyou doubly so? Could you stop yourself from dwelling on that loss at\nevery moment?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"I can look into your heart and see it clearly. You'd run away from\nit. Running away... it comes as naturally to you as autumn turns to\nwinter. It's what brought you to me, after all.\" Another strangled,\ncracking sound. \"Your father isn't much different. He thinks he can\nescape the pain of losing your mother by not thinking about it. It\nleaves him ill equipped to discuss those matters with you.\"\n\nNow Aurora stares up as if she could see the stars. She's frowning.\nShe's not a coward, is she? But... it makes sense. It explained this\nin a way nobody seems able to explain why people do this.\n\nAurora sighs. \"I think I understand now. Thank you.\" She watches,\nand the spirit doesn't make any indication of appreciation. Aurora\nfrowns. She ignores it. \"You know, I'm not sure if I've seen you\nbefore, miss spirit.\"\n\n\"Of course not. I belong in the dead, dark nights of the coldest\nmonths. But this weather, it is invigorating. The ice nascent in\nthose clouds, it sings to me. This storm... it will be spectacular.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm glad you're here to see it.\"\n\nStrangled, cracking, and the sound goes on for so long. \"Oh, do not\nbe *glad*. Do you imagine me compassionate? This is incorrect. I am\nmerely truthful. I am a spirit of the court of wild winter. Do you\nknow what winter means to mortals caught in a blizzard with nowhere to\ngo? I am *death*. If you imagine me compassionate, then imagine my\ncondolences.\"\n\n\"For what?\"\n\nBut the spirit was gone, like a shadow in the passing of a light.\n\nAurora stares into nothing for a while, dreaming of her mother, of a\nfuture that would make her proud. It may have been mere moments.\nThere's a flash, coming lightning a rumbling forethought in the\nheavens. The winds grow still. Very still.\n\nFlakes of snow descend from on high. It's cold, but the chill that\ngrips her is pure fear. The words echo with all musicality of a\nchoking, frozen deer.\n\nIt was so very cold. What does winter mean to mortals caught in a\nblizzard?\n" }, { "url": "/fiction/aurora/flash02.html", "id": "/fiction/aurora/flash02.html", "date_modified": "2023-08-15", "title": "3: Flash ii: What Haunts the Stars", "summary": "

A world of unending gray, so lonely the distant stars seem like companions, so empty not even a wind disturbs the all-encompassing dust. Closed eyes see hidden light.

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Aurora awakens in a small room with sunset’s golden light streaming through empty holes in the wall. The girl stretches in the small bed, rubbing against the silken soft sheets beneath. A blink, a glimpse at how late it’s gotten, and she frowns. Sitting up, then carefully she slips her feet into some slippers, a layer between her and the stone of the floor.

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---\ntitle: \"Flash ii: What Haunts the Stars\"\ndate: 2023-08-15\n---\n\n*A world of unending gray, so lonely the distant stars seem like\ncompanions, so empty not even a wind disturbs the all-encompassing\ndust. **Closed eyes see hidden light.***\n\nAurora awakens in a small room with sunset's golden light streaming\nthrough empty holes in the wall. The girl stretches in the small bed,\nrubbing against the silken soft sheets beneath. A blink, a glimpse at\nhow late it's gotten, and she frowns. Sitting up, then carefully she\nslips her feet into some slippers, a layer between her and the stone\nof the floor.\n\nThe floor isn't just dirt, not anymore --- they had paid to have stone\nlaid throughout the house --- but dirt accumulated between cracks and\nSunny hadn't cleaned her room in a few days. She checked her dresser\nto find a shirt that didn't have a layer of sweat soaked into it. On\ntop of it sit toys (dolls, balls, game pieces), all coated in a layer\nof dust. There's a clay sword, shattered in three pieces, and a\nwooden sword Blank had subsequently grown for her.\n\nAurora gives that a second look. It meant that Sus was wrong, didn't\nit? Blank wouldn't have done that, if it really thought she was\nannoying.\n\nThinking of Sus is a flare of remembered anger. It wasn't the first\ntime her ambitions had been mocked. When she voiced it to folks in\ntown, it was dismissed as silliness. *Like a fool wishing on a\nshooting star,* one lady had said. (It was a reference to an old\nsaying, but Aurora didn't know that, had to ask and ask and ask until\nsomeone bothered to explain.)\n\nWith a new shirt, Aurora is walking out of her room. Her father's in\nthe sitting room, looking over a ledger in the warm waning light. He\nlooks up to her with a smile and sad eyes.\n\n\"Ah there you go, finally up. You're alright?\" He sees her nod and\nthere's some relief, at least. His eyes turn thoughtful. He's\nfrowning, angular jaw working, chewing on his next words. \"You get\ninto so many fights, Aurora. I'm worried you're gonna get hurt, one\nof these days.\" His jaw chews a bit more, than he finally spits it\nout, asking, \"Can you tell me why? Why do you have to fight so much?\"\n\nBecause it was fun? Because it was the only thing she was good at?\nBecause--- the words didn't seem right. She couldn't say it.\n\n\"Is it hard to get along with the spirits? Do they bother you?\" He'd\nasked before. He keeps asking.\n\n\"I like the spirits,\" she says.\n\n\"You,\" --- the words are interspersed with a laugh. Nervous?\nWorried? (She couldn't tell; Father seemed solid no matter what) ---\n\"you have an odd way of showing it.\"\n\nWas it odd? She had seen other children run at one another, laugh and\nflee, playing chase. Likewise, she throws a fist, and they avoid it.\nIt was the same kind of game, one of evasion.\n\nWhy wouldn't you fight people you liked? To land a hit, or avoid one,\nyou had to be paying attention. All of your focus on that other\nperson. If you didn't like someone, you ignored them.\n\nIt wasn't like talking, where you could hold a conversation without\nreally caring or trying. Where people didn't understand the things\nshe said, where they didn't understand the things they themselves\nsaid, and couldn't explain it to her.\n\nBut a kick, a grab, that was very clear. No ambiguity who won when\nyou pin them to the ground. She could easily tell apart a laugh of\njoy and the look of fear that meant she'd gone to far.\n\nThe tactics, how to get what you want, it's so straightforward. It\nisn't at all like talking.\n\nHow is she supposed to explain any of this with words? Like trying to\nfight while tied up, she's helpless.\n\nFather's patiently waiting for a response, but what left her mouth\nisn't exactly words. So her father pats her on the head. \"It's okay.\nCome on, sit with me on the the porch. The stars are about to come\nout.\"\n\nShe didn't mind the pat, though she was almost shoulder height, making\nthe motion awkward. Despite following his lead, Aurora rushed out of\nthe door before him. (Though she pauses to swap her slippers for\nproper shoes.)\n\nTheir 'porch' is a plot of dirt where grass doesn't grow. Father is\nclosing the circular door behind him; it slots into a dirt hole in a\nhill, their hill. He'd raised and shaped it himself, a milestone of\nearthcanting.\n\nLikewise, in place of chairs there sat soft, shaped mounds of earth\nhe'd uprisen himself. Cloth covers Aurora's seat, but not Geller's.\n\nAbove, the eveningstar is first to appear in the darkling sky, lonely\nin the west.\n\n\"The eveningstar isn't like other stars,\" her father says. \"Do you\nknow what it really is?\"\n\nHe'd told her, she did know; but he speaks now in a tone of retelling\na story. He has a solid voice, even when speaking of celestial\nmatters. She could stand to hear the stories again.\n\nThe truth, he say, is that the eveningstar is a wandering world, not\nunlike our own, with the sun rising and setting in its sky just the\nsame, and a moon all its own. It wanders among the six kindred\nworlds, the most favored of the sun.\n\nHer father can name all six. Not uncommon; there's a rhyming verse\nrecounting the mythic creation of the kindred.\n\nAurora interrupts to ask an odd question: \"If those are worlds like\nours, what do they look like? Do they have mountains and rivers and\nclouds?\" She watches him carefully.\n\nThey're all different, says he; Father tells a story of a world of\nendless ocean and ever-hanging fog, and then a world covered in\ntarnished copper, a world with no land at all and one where the sun\nsat unmoving and one where the stars could always be seen. They're\nthe one constant, really. Every world turned under the stars.\n\nHe tells of more worlds than the six kindred. Beyond them lies three\nstrange outer worlds, tracing far-ranging paths in the sky. He could\nname the outer worlds, too, so rarely seen; and no one else in\nWillowind could do that. According to his tales, the lands and skies\nof the outer worlds are even stranger, escaping mortal description.\n\nSunset glow now fading, the brightest stars deign to be seen, and he\ncontinues her journey through the system. Beyond that, there spin the\nhidden worlds, wandering cloaked in the black spaces between the\nstars.\n\nBut they aren't really *cloaked;* but only highly trained eyes can\nmake out the nearest hidden world. Another hidden world was\nsupposedly known for centuries to the mystics of the Nistran desert\ntribes, and the third discerned in his own lifetime by the scrying of\nroyal gemsingers.\n\nSix kindred worlds, three outers worlds, and three hidden worlds.\n\n\"But I think there's more. Each world is more hidden than the last...\nwho's to say there aren't more of them? Some say there's as many as\nfive hidden.\"\n\nAurora hums though. \"Do they ever end? Maybe there's more worlds\nforever.\"\n\n\"Oh, they end. Because in the darkness beyond the hidden worlds...\nthere be comets.\"\n\nAurora tightens at the mention, tension from excitement or fear.\n\nBy now, twilight draws to a close, and the sky lies properly gleaming\nwith stars.\n\nThe shadows around her shouldn't be menacing; no comet would come\ncreeping from the dark. Comets arrive in meteoric fire, and roam the\nearth dazzling with alien light. Still, it's thrilling to wonder.\nCould there be a hidden comet, like the hidden worlds?\n\nHer father points up, and at last, they stargaze. He names the stars,\ntraces constellations. He speaks of the milky cloud across the sky,\ndescribes galaxies and nebulae.\n\n\"Sometimes the stars dance in pairs, and sometimes they explode, and\nsometimes they are... yet stranger still.\"\n\nAurora frowns. Opens her mouth, but doesn't form the words. Her eyes\ndrift, and she catches a hint of motion. A streak of light across the\nsky.\n\n\"Only a fool wishes on a shooting star,\" she repeats. \"I heard\nsomeone say that. What does it mean, daddy?\"\n\nHe gives a long blink, as if closed eyes could hide his reaction.\n\"Shooting stars are small bits of the heavens, so feeble they\ndisappear in moments. Wishing on one, it's placing your hope in a\nbrief, dazzling flash of light that will only turn to nothing.\" The\nemphasis, the trailing off --- a hint of bitterness laced those words.\n\"But that's not what you really wanted to ask, though, is it?\"\n\n\"A fool wishes on a shooting star,\" Aurora echoes the full saying,\n\"but only a madman wishes on a comet.\"\n\nHe doesn't respond.\n\nAurora looks at the sky, sees the streak. \"Is that a shooting star,\nor a comet?\" She only receives silence in response. \"What happens if\na bit of heaven falls and doesn't turn to nothing? Is it always a bad\nomen --- a comet?\"\n\nAt length, he murmured. \"They say... if you wish on a comet, then it\nmight come to you. Comets... They say when one touches the sky, it\ndazzles. When one touches the earth, it destroys. If there's an\nexception... well I couldn't say.\"\n\n\"I'll stop them.\" She sees her father look at her, perplexed, no words\nin his reaction. \"I'll become a knight and if evil spirits fall from\nheaven, then I'll fight them and win.\"\n\nComets were so very far away, farther than the outer worlds. If she\nwished on this comet, would she be strong enough to fight it when it\nfinally came?\n\nHer father laughs with a stutter. \"So it's practice for you, then?\nThat's why you pick a fight with everything that moves?\"\n\nReally, it was the other way around.\n\nThis time, rather than not knowing *how* to put that into words,\nAurora didn't know if she *should*. She looks away. Eyes going back\nto the sky.\n\nShe knew she hadn't figured out the right words to say it, but she\n*had* to. She had to prove Sus wrong.\n\n\"How do you know so much about the heavens, daddy?\"\n\n\"Oh, I've heard many stories over the years, read even more. I have a\ngood memory for them.\"\n\nHeard them *where*, though? He doesn't travel, and he's far more\nknowledgeable than anyone she met in the village. (Well, except for\n*that lady*, who gave her strange stares she didn't like, who had a\nmetal hand, whom no one else seemed to like. Aurora'd never asked\n*her* and didn't want to.)\n\nHe doesn't travel, and Aurora had already read every book in the\nhouse. There's some books about astrology, but again, nothing like\nthe stories he's telling. He just told her there were volcanoes on\nthe eveningstar!\n\nShe asks a question that really, is more of an answer. \"You learned\nthis from mom, didn't you?\"\n\nOf course the daughters of the moon would know far more about the\nstars than anyone else. They had hidden knowledge to fight comets,\nsecrets passed down from great Uluna herself.\n\nAurora watches Geller's face. He frowns and furrows, he looks away,\nhe sighs, but he never admits it.\n\nAll he has to say is that Sus is wrong, that he cares and mother cared\nand the truth wasn't just a disappointment.\n\nIt gets cooler at night, so why did she still feel hot?\n\nHer fist hurts, and she realizes she slammed it against the\ndirt-chair. She wipes the dirt from the edge of her palm, then gives\nup because she just wants to slam it again.\n\n\"A farm boy can dream of the stars, can't he? I may not be a scholar,\nbut...\"\n\nAurora's shaking her head. \"You can't *see* all that stuff. Someone\nhad to have told you.\"\n\n\"I'm good with spirits, you know.\" It was true; most farms didn't have\ntwo, let alone three spirits in the flesh. \"Their memories are longer\nthan any record.\"\n\n\"You aren't *saying* it.\" He knew she could feel the deception, if he\nsimply lied outright. Her father dancing around this much, it's\n*odd*. \"Please! Just tell me the truth!\"\n\nHe sighs again. \"There are things you can't understand until you're\nolder, Aurora dear.\"\n\nAurora's hot enough she's surprised her breath doesn't come out as\nsteam.\n\nIt'd be easier to think through her words, plan things out, if the\nnight air would just *cool*. Sure, it's summer, but it's also\n*night*. Come on! Even a little breeze would help...\n\n\"Why are you always like this?\" Her volume is too close to a yell.\nShe reels it back, says \"Why can't you just tell me about her?\"\n\n*Why did you have to make Sus right?*\n\nShe stands up, looking down at him.\n\nSo he stands up, still taller than her. \"Aurora---\"\n\n\"No.\" She doesn't want to hear it. She *can't* hear it.\n\nShe---\n\nShe turns to leave. She *runs*. There's footsteps behind her.\nThere's her name being called again and again.\n\nBut she doesn't stop running, and at some point, he just lets her go.\n\nWhen you talk to people, you don't have to listen to what the other\nperson was saying. You can say *anything*, it doesn't matter, it\nisn't physical, words aren't *real*. But you can't ignore a kick.\nThat's real.\n\nBut Aurora wasn't supposed to fight to get her way. She knew that.\nThat was one of Father's most important rules.\n\nReally, Aurora wasn't supposed to fight at all.\n\nBut how could she stand that? It was the only time anyone was\n*honest*. People didn't make sense and when she tried to make sense\nof them, she's doing something wrong.\n\nIt'd be easier to just run away, never have to talk to another person\never again.\n\n(But she'd never get another fight, like that.)\n\nSpirits were better than people, made more sense, but *Sus* was a\nspirit.\n\nAurora half expected the porcine goat-thing to be grinning hunger at\nher right now, or waiting unseen to trip her. No, it was more than\nhalf expectation, he could feel it when a spirit was watching her, and\n*she was being watched*.\n\nAurora breathes out a growl. She tenses, tightens her hands into\nfists. Fighting was fun to her; it was clearer than talking. But\nsometimes, all what you wanted to say is *go away*.\n\nForget her father's rules. If something bothered her now, they would\nget a fist to the face.\n" }, { "url": "/fiction/aurora/flash01.html", "id": "/fiction/aurora/flash01.html", "date_modified": "2023-08-03", "title": "2: Flash i: Melt in Battle’s Heat", "summary": "

A girl falls to earth.

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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.

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“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.

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---\ntitle: \"Flash i: Melt in Battle's Heat\"\ndate: 2023-08-03\n---\n \nA girl falls to earth.\n\nIt's a pounce, but her arms close around empty air. Her foe has\neluded her again. Moments later, she spots it hiding behind a bush.\nA spirit resembles a greenskinned child. No face to bear expression,\nbut the jerk of its head still indicates surprise.\n\n\"Gotcha!\" The girl charges after it, prismatic hair trailing like\nribbons behind her. The spirit-child stands about half the height of\nthe girl; there was no way its legs were long enough to keep up with\nher. But with each footfall against the green-covered earth, it moves\nswift --- as if each blade of green helped convey it.\n\nThe girl has no such advantage, and she's huffing to keep up, her face\nslick with sweat in the summer sun. Despite the heat, she has gloves\nand boots on, a thin, hooded coat over her a arms. Almost none of her\nnight-black skin is exposed.\n\nThe spirit may be faster, but Aurora moves with cunning. When she\ncorners the nature spirit at the bank of a creek, it leaves spirit no\nchoice but to fight back. The spirit has tricks --- if the weeds\nbeneath the girl's feet aren't catching her feet, she's sliding on\nseeds or falling onto thorns. Once, the spirit blinds her with a\nmassive dandelion blown into her face.\n\nBut when she gets close enough to throws fists and connect, there's no\ncontest; the girl makes easy work of the spirit. Grappling its limbs,\nkicking the legs out from under it, landing punch after punch. This\nexchange culminates with her picking up and throwing the spirit, body\nsplashing in the creek.\n\nThe spirit rises up, drenched, with its stubby arm-appendages closed\ninto almost-fists. (Spirits have no hands or fingers.) The arms\nthemselves are half-outstretched, half-curled up. Its head twitches\natop its neck. Altogether, a comical display of anger. Stamping the\nground, kicking dirt (without displacing any grass), it charges\nforward.\n\nSeeing it so worked up, the girl cracks a grin. She leans forward and\ncharges when it does. The two are running at each other, about to\ncollide at full speed.\n\nThen a sunflower shaped like a woman rises from ground, sudden like it\nhad sprouted up between them. Thin petiole arms are thrown out and\nstop the two, arm-stubs against their head, halting each of their\ncharges in their tracks.\n\n\"Aurora, you *know* what your father told you about fighting all the\ntime.\"\n\nThe voice of sunflower is not the voice of a human. Aurora wasn't\neven sure if it was Extolan, or mere sound enchanted to convey intent.\nThe voice came from high above the child; this spirit stands taller\nthan her father.\n\n\"But there's nothing else to *do* around here!\"\n\n\"There's always work to do on the farm. You can pluck weeds.\"\n\n\"Blank plucks the weeds. It's way better at it!\"\n\n\"Have you trimmed the hedges? Cut the hay? Cleaned the house?\"\n\n\"Sunny, you know I'm no good at any of that stuff.\"\n\n\"You can still do it. No one is born good at anything, you have to\n*work* for it.\" Sunny smiles, but it looks odd on her sunflower face.\n\"Sweeping, at the very least, must be within your abilities.\"\n\n\"But I get tired of sweeping all the time!\"\n\n\"If you have the energy to fight, you have the energy to sweep.\nPlease, Aurora, leave Blank be.\"\n\n\"But it doesn't mind. Right, Blank?\"\n\nBlank throws its arms around the sunflower spirit's legs, clutching\nit. It glances it up at Aurora, flinches and interposes Sunny between\nthem, hiding behind her long legs.\n\nSunny pats Blank on the head.\n\n\"Come *on*. If it wanted me to stop I would have stopped! I can\nsense these things --- I got better at that! You believe me, right\nSunny?\"\n\nSunny gives a significant look to Blank. Then, \"Yes, I believe you,\nAurora.\"\n\nBlank droops, a hurt look, then flops dramatically on the ground,\nplaying dead.\n\n\"But Blank has work to do. And *so do you*. Come with me, children.\"\n\n\"Harvest isn't for two moons! Nothing *needs* to be done!\"\n\n\"Work always needs to be done. It builds character.\"\n\n\"Then my character won't be built. I'm not doing it!\"\n\n\"Aurora...\" There was a warning dissonance in her song.\n\n\"What are you gonna do, huh? Make me do it?\" Aurora sticks out her\ntongue.\n\nThe sunflower's eyes narrow. \"You're goading me.\"\n\n\"It almost worked...\"\n\n\"I'm not going to fight you, Aurora.\"\n\n\"What, are you scared I'll beat you? Here, if you win, I'll do\nanything you say for a week!\"\n\nA significant pause. \"Is that a *pact* I hear?\"\n\n\"I promise! But you'll have to beat me first.\"\n\n\"Very well. Blank, go along now.\"\n\nThe blank-faced child looks up at Sunny, silently pleading to watch.\n\n\"There's work to be done. Go!\"\n\nWhen the fight starts, Sunny's approach immediately differs from\nBlank's. The sunflower keeps her distance, petals glowing with\nmagical light. She throws out an arm that sparkles, and a rays of\nlight leap forth. Aurora dodges them, and where they land, it's as if\nthe spirit had thrown a punch from a distance.\n\n\"No fair! I don't have any crazy spirit magic!\"\n\n\"What made you think this fight was fair? You intend to wrestle me\nwhen I lack even muscles. The only means for me to move is through,\nahem, *'crazy spirit magic'*.\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter, even cheating won't let you win!\"\n\nAurora charges, but the spirit side steps and the girl's momentum\ncarries her too far. The spirit keeps her distance, and more rays of\nerrant light keep Aurora cautious, even as some of them go wide.\nAurora's clothes are drenched in sweat now. Still better than feeling\nthe dirt, though.\n\nWhen Aurora closes the distance, she catches hold of one of Sunny's\npetiole-arms. The other arm glows with a new ray. Aurora flinches,\nbut instead of being directed at her, the new ray hits the spirit's\nown body, at the arm where it joins its stem. The ray of light\ncleanly severs the limb, freeing the spirit from Aurora grasp.\n\nThe girl chases the sunflower into the forest, and the she fires yet\nanother magical beam --- this one going completely over her head.\n\n\"Ha! You missed!\"\n\n\"I didn't.\"\n\nA tree bough above her falls, and Aurora yelps and hops back out of\nthe way.\n\nAnother ray, this time hitting the fallen branch --- but instead of\nbeing punched, the branch flies toward Sunny as if yanked by a cord.\nThen the sunflower catches the bough. Where it was severed from the\ntree, she joins it to her own flesh, granting her a new, sturdier\nlimb.\n\n\"Ready to give up, child? If you concede, I'll will reduce it to a\nmere five days of service.\"\n\n\"I never back down from a fight!\"\n\nAurora charges, and the sunflower swings her new arm down with a\nmassive crash against the ground. The girl frowns, a bead of sweat on\nher head. The bough-arm gives her a whole new way to keep Aurora at a\ndistance\n\nWhen she tanks a hit from the bough, she grabs hold of it. Grinning,\nshe climbs on top of the tree branch and crawls towards Sunny,\nweighing down her new limb. Aurora leaps to pounce on her, and Sunny\npicks that moment to discard her new limb with another ray-amputation\nand runs for it. Once again, Aurora's arms close around empty air,\nand she gives chase. She's slower this time, wet and panting, almost\nnauseous.\n\nIt's short lived, because a moment later, she trips and face plants\nagainst the ground. Aurora cries out, not from pain or surprise, but\ndistress. The texture of dirt was *awful* and now it was *on her\nface*. The grit mixes with her sweat to become a muddy grime, and she\nrolls over, and forgets about her pursuit, wiping the dirt from her\nface.\n\nThere's a squeal of laughter. She had tripped over something, after\nall --- over *someone*.\n\nShe recognized the spirit of the woods beyond her fathers' farm.\nHalf-pig, half-goat, and both ends covered in leaves instead of fur.\nIt was still as red-orange as a wild boar, though.\n\n\"What the heck gives?\"\n\n\"You had tunnel vision. Practically asking for. It was hilarious.\"\n\n\"I was in the middle of something. Our fight!\"\n\n\"I will consider it... a draw,\" Sunny says.\n\n\"I was gonna win!\"\n\n\"Win what, though? What was the point? Calling it a draw's the same as\nsaying you won, ain't it?\"\n\nAurora crosses her arms. \"It's not the same.\"\n\nSunny gives a level stare at the pig spirit. \"I have work to do.\nEnsure she returns before dinner, Sus.\" And the sunflower spirit is\ngone.\n\n\"Why did you do that?\"\n\n\"Do I need a reason? Us spirits gotta look out for each other.\"\n\n\"Doesn't look like she appreciates it. Looks like she doesn't even\nlike you! You nuisance!\"\n\n\"You have no idea what you're talking about,\" the spirit says with\nteeth visible. Did pigs have such sharp teeth? \"Shows how little you\npay attention.\"\n\nAurora blows air out of her mouth.\n\n\"You really don't get it, do you? Do you think she doesn't despises\nyou? Is there any love between you two?\"\n\n\"Nanny Sunny doesn't...\"\n\n\"Or what about Blank. You think it cares for any of this? You're just\nless annoying when it plays along then when you're ignored. Me? Haha,\nno. Why would any of us like *you?* The relationship is one-way.\"\n\n\"That's...\" She frowned. Her head hurt.\n\n\"Insightful? Puts everything into perspective? Or is it just hard to\naccept?\"\n\n\"No, you're wrong. If nobody liked me, then why don't you all\njust...\" It was hard to find words through her headache.\n\n\"Just what? We can't go anywhere. We *are* this land. So long as\nthe old man Geller keeps you, we just have to put up with you.\"\n\n\"Father! He loves me. There, you're wrong.\"\n\n\"He feels some obligation toward you, sure. Else there's no reason to\nkeep you around. Don't do any work, and you're not charming, so what\ngood are you?\"\n\n\"I can fight!\"\n\n\"Yeah, you're nothing but trouble.\"\n\n\"No, I'll be a knight when I grow up! I'll fight robbers and\ngembeasts and *comets!* I'll vanquish the biggest monsters and then\neveryone will see how great I am.\"\n\n\"A *comet?* What a daydream. Why would you even want to do that?\"\nThere was a snicker behind it. It wasn't funny.\n\nAurora gets quiet. She looks up at the sky. Her hands work as she\ndebates giving voice to what has, until now, only been a persistent\nsuspicion.\n\nAurora knew there was something wrong --- something *different* about\nher. Her father was a great earthcanter, and she couldn't manage any\nof his incantations. Her skin, her hair, her eyes, they all looked\n*strange,* like no one in the family or the village or that she'd ever\nheard of. She *felt* different. No one understood her, and she\ndidn't understand anyone.\n\nNothing explained *why*, except there was one blank spot. If she knew\nwhat went there, she was sure it would explain everything.\n\n\"My mother,\" Aurora finally says. \"The daughters of the moon existed\nto defend the kingdom from comets, and they have ever since Queen\nUluna first banished them.\"\n\n\"Blah blah, mortal history. I don't care.\"\n\nAurora continues speaking, ignoring him. \"They disappeared fifteen\nyears ago. I was born fifteen years ago. And my mother... no one\nhas seen her since the moonweavers disappeared. I'm not stupid.\"\n\n\"So you think you're descended from what, cometslaying royalty? Why\nisn't your father rich, then? Why isn't your father *anybody* but a\nfarmer in a backwater barony? Why hasn't he *told you*?\"\n\n\"I don't know everything! But it all fits, doesn't it?\"\n\n\"Plenty of people died that year. Mortals die all the time. Ever\nheard of coincidence?\"\n\n\"Coincidence doesn't explain why I'm like this! Let me hear *your*\nexplanation, you stupid pig!\" Aurora's face was drenched in sweat,\nher temper not making her feel any cooler in the summer sun.\n\n\"Hear this. Maybe... you're just a mistake? No deep truth to it,\njust a worthless mortal your mother couldn't be bothered with. Just\nthink about it. If your mother and father both cared about about you,\nwhy doesn't he tell you the truth? Maybe he doesn't care. Or maybe\nhe does, and doesn't want to tell you your mother doesn't. How would\nyou know?\"\n\n\"Shut up.\" Aurora didn't have the patience for this.\n\n\"It's my forest, I can say whatever I want. Don't like it, leave.\"\n\n\"You'll shut up if I come over there and *make* you shut up.\"\n\nThe pig squeals laughter again. Aurora launches into motion, unsteady\non her feet but tackling the pig. She moves so fast that finally, her\npounce succeeds. She holds the pig in a vice grip, even as its hooves\nbeat on her back. They go down. She's wrestling with a pig in the\nmud, getting dirt all over her, she hates it but she's mad enough she\ndoesn't care.\n\nThe pig bites her. She screams, and releases it enough to start\nwailing on it. It smacks her in the face with a hoof. Her vision\ngoes white for a moment.\n\nHer head is pulsing.\n\nShe keeps fighting but it's getting fuzzy. The world is throbbing.\nTheir positions shift, the pig rolling over top of her. She\nresisting, she's pushing back, she's screaming.\n\nShe's---\n\nShe's nothing. The world is nothing. Hot, hot darkness. She faints\nand see nothing.\n\nVisual snow falls in a dream. She glimpses stars in the noise.\n" }, { "url": "/fiction/aurora/memory07.html", "id": "/fiction/aurora/memory07.html", "date_modified": "2023-08-03", "title": "1: Memory vii: Meteor Cadence", "summary": "

It is the fate of comets to dazzle and destroy.

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The prelude to even the grandest song is utter silence. In the vast gulfs where even the nearest light is but a small fraction of the panorama, the music of stars and spheres is a dim murmuring. In this black empty quietude, a player composes their next movement.

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A comet flies through the void between the stars. She has no stellar light with which to dazzle, and no celestial body to destroy. The comet is alone: no one to shine for (as she melts to gaseous nothing) nor dance with (unto their obliteration).

", "_source": "./site//fiction/aurora/memory07.md", "content_html": "

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---\ntitle: \"Memory vii: Meteor Cadence\"\ndate: 2023-08-03\n---\n\nIt is the fate of comets to dazzle and destroy.\n\nThe prelude to even the grandest song is utter silence. In the vast\ngulfs where even the nearest light is but a small fraction of the\npanorama, the music of stars and spheres is a dim murmuring. In this\nblack empty quietude, a player composes their next movement.\n\nA comet flies through the void between the stars. She has no stellar\nlight with which to dazzle, and no celestial body to destroy. The\ncomet is alone: no one to shine for (as she melts to gaseous nothing)\nnor dance with (unto their obliteration).\n\nBut the comet does not drift through space: she flies like an arrow\ntowards her mark. Among the uncountable multitudes, one star is\ngrowing ever larger.\n\nRadiation sears against her black shell, internal heat mounting. She's\noutgassing, her hair unfurling as mist behind her. This isn't a mere\nphysical process. She feels the will of the sun she nears, the\ncacophony of a billion patterns of *lux,* thoughts of countless\nradiant nascent minds just an incoherent babble washing over her. The\nsun has a will, and so does she, (it a gestalt, hers a refined\nunity). Will and purpose is written in the crystalline structure of\nice frozen within her. This is enchantment. When purpose is cast with\nwill, the world bends toward it: like this, the comet sings.\n\nThen the song falters, as if a player missed a note. The crystalline\nstructure, the *lux* within her, is isomorphic to a grand, infinite\npattern unfurling. A fractal web, but a flawed fractal, this web hangs\nwith tattered edges, threads torn apart and only partly sown back\ntogether. But the comet still sings, and her trail of sublimated vapor\nstill conforms to the pattern of her imperfect will.\n\nHer coma becomes twin wings unfurling behind her, and she rides the\nsolar wind.\n\nThat great stellar mass pulls. Her path into the system is twirls and\nspirals, stealing momentum as she accelerates to her destination. That\nplanet spins around the sun, a blue jewel deep in the innards of the\nsystem. It was terribly close, and terribly hot this near to an\never-screaming explosion of radiation. Why was this her destination?\nWhat comet would ever fly this close?\n\nThe question echoes in her mind. It is the fate of comets to dazzle,\nand their song could be heard many clusters away if you listened\nclosely. She had heard seven comets dancing destruction upon a planet\nhere (already deep past, by the time she had heard it) --- but what\nbrought them here?\n\nAnd what brought *her* here?\n\nIt's so hot so close to the star. But her last twirl around a planet\nspent momentum instead of stealing it, and she was on course to spiral\ntoward the blue orb that had witnessed so many comets. It had lured in\nso many comets.\n\nIt had trapped so many comets.\n\nIt's so hot. She feels the planetsong calling to her, pulling her\nin. A small white moon gyres around it, and why did its light look so\nugly? She spirals in. She feels the thick brush of an atmosphere, and\nknows this is going burn. All her velocity will be friction, now\n\nIt's so hot. It's too much. Her song was still missing notes --- her\nlight had nearly gone dark, a mere billionth of a galactic spin ago,\nand that was hardly enough time to shine clearly again --- but she\ndidn't have the luxury of convalescence.\n\nShe didn't know what brought all those comets to this world. She\ndidn't know if she'd need to dance destruction with them. She wasn't\nexpecting it to be *so hot*. But it was worth it. She needed to do\nthis. She didn't float, she flew like an arrow towards her mark ---\nbecause all of this was for---\n\nFor what? Why was she... it's slipping her mind. She's missing notes.\n(She remembers how ugly that moon looked, but even that's slipping\naway, like it were a dream.)\n\nIt's so hot. She's burning up on entry. She's losing mass. She's\nlosing *her*. Losing her mind. It was her fate to dazzle and be\ndestroyed\n\nA comet falls to earth.\n" } ] }