Flash Fiction #730 -- Doom/2

 

I watched the light for a short time and then laid down to sleep.  It was too hot to worry about anything else right now.  And if I faced my doom, better to nap and not be cranky.

Not surprisingly, I dreamed about home -- about a city of rainbow colors and delicate towers.  A magical shield had kept it hidden for a thousand years, protected both by the magic and by this inhospitable desert. The fair city of Nerian would not be easy for humans to find, unless they had a guide.  To them, Nerian was a near-mythical ruin that most didn't believe really existed.

For me, it was home.

I forgot about the dust storm -- right until the first gale crashed over me.  Dust filled my mouth, and I surged to my feet, coughing and gagging.  I couldn't get a good breath, and I had trouble pulling a cloth from my pocket so I could cover my nose and mouth.

And then I ran into the lion with wings.

As days go, this had not been my best.  I looked into the huge golden eyes that blinked and narrowed.

"Odd place to meet you, cousin," a disembodied voice spoke from above the lion's head and mane.

Glowing mane.  Magic.

"Cousin," I repeated, testing out the word.

Someone slid off the lion and rushed toward me.  I took a step back, confused for reasons I couldn't name.  Then the stranger caught my arm just as I fell.

"Kero!"

He shook me, and my head rolled back and forth as though I had no muscles.  That finally annoyed me.

"I have a knife in my boot.  Kindly pull it out for me so I can slit your throat before you shake me again, Adon."

"There you are!" Adon shouted and missed my wince at the loudness.  Then he pulled me into a tight embrace.  "What in the name of the stars is going on, Kero!"

"I sent messages.  Told the elders.  Others looking too hard for the city --"

"You were taking them to the ruins of The City of Sunrise to distract them from Nerian." We both sat down in the shadow of Golden Mane, who shifted slightly to give us more room.  I scratched under his chin and won a cheerful sound.  "I had a sense of you nearby, and then of a problem.  What --"

"Untrustworthy, gold-hungry human."

Adon made a hissing sound of anger and then grabbed me so that he could look at my head.  I protested.  As usual, that did no good.  Adon rarely listened to me.

"That is a dangerous wound," he pronounced.  "I will take care of it --"

"Until, sure no humans," I began and then fought for better control.  "Leave the outer wound.  Painful, but not dangerous, and easier to deal with than suddenly healed."

"You are not going anywhere near the humans again."

I caught his hand and looked into his worried face.  "I have to make certain they get somewhere safely.  I am their guide, Adon.  And I can't abandon them all for the sake of one or two."

Adon fought me for a moment and then nodded.  "Guide.  You made that a pledge, not just a job description. And now you have to make sure they reach safety, if not the ruins of the City of Sunrise.  You do make things difficult, cousin."

"Thank you for finding me."

"I worry every time you leave home."

"You would think that I always have trouble."

"Shall I list the events of the last ten years?"

I moved slightly, intending to stand, but changed my mind.  Adon gave me water.  The storm grew worse, but my cousin kept us safe.  I could feel my own magic returning in small waves of power.

"We should ride Golden Mane back to Nerian," Adon said.  "I want someone with better training to check your wound."

"I can't.  You know that."

He sighed, barely heard over the sand whispering in the wind. "We should ride Gold for a few miles and go on foot when the storm eases."

"You can't come with me."

"Of course I can.  You were left at a cache.  I came across you there.  Their caravan is the closest help we might find since they ruined the cache."

I wanted to argue.  I didn't.

We followed the sand buses.

 

Flash Fiction #729 -- Doom/1

 

I had not intended to walk in the desert.  The team had special vehicles for this sort of travel. Being the head of Sun Team 1 should have guaranteed me a front-row seat in a sand bus and a lemonade.

How long would it be before someone realized that I wasn't on any of the buses? Quite a while, actually.  We had six sand buses crammed full of equipment and people -- well, full of overly excited archaeologists, anyway. It is almost the same thing. 

A lot of them didn't care for me.  We hadn't grown up in the same circles. That was going to make it difficult to learn who had hit me on the back of the head and dropped me in the sand behind a line of boulders that marked the location of a cache.

I gently touched the spot on the back of my head and started the healing process. It took a while for me to get back on my feet, and the height didn't improve the view. I felt far too annoyed to wait there for a ride, although I kept in mind that another sand bus would be through in three days. I was at a spot with a cache of food and drink, although the sand buses had mostly cleared the supplies out. A few packets of emergency supplies remained. I could probably survive here without too much trouble. At least as long as that dust storm they were predicting didn't come through. 

This was not a trip to count on luck. 

I looked around and took into consideration several things I had been ignoring until my thoughts were clearer.  The cache had been small, meant for emergencies if someone had trouble traversing the desert. That my team had robbed it angered me, and not just for my own sake. Caches like this saved lives.

A slight breeze shifted the sand at my feet. I had to decide what to do before the storm trapped me here with no way out. Remaining at the site might be the best answer, but only if I were prepared for it.

And as long as no one came to see if I had died yet.

I didn't think three packets of trail mix and half a bottle of water were preparation for staying or going. My inclination was to stay and rest until the others came back for me. Then I realized how suicidal that might be. I had not taken the attack seriously until now, and maybe that was just because my headache surged forward again. 

This had not been a practical joke.  My companions didn't know that I could survive the desert.  The others knew I had grown up here, but they didn't know what that meant. They certainly didn't appreciate that I could lead them to a fabled lost city. They certainly wouldn't find it without my help, which I was increasingly less likely to give.

That still left me in a bad spot with three difficult choices.

Stay and hope someone who was not trying to kill me showed up.

Head in the direction the sand buses should have gone – I thought they were still on track – and hope they didn't get lost before they found the ruins.  (And then what?  Let someone try to kill me again?)

Head for home, which was a place I would not lead the others to.  I don't know about human families, but I wasn't eager to lead a would-be killer to my parents and siblings.

Though they were the only hope of help I had.

Or so I thought.

I had been walking for a few hours when a bright dot moved across the clear blue sky.  I blinked several times, but it was still there and growing larger.

I stopped and sat down.  There was no use rushing to my doom.

Flash Fiction # 728 -- Story clip

 

 

(This is a drabble clip from the current manuscript I am editing.  The one 'lecturing' is a young rat.  The other is McKittery, a cat detective.)

"I was working on a theory. You know that all our Teddy Bears originally came from humans, right?" the rat said.
"Yes, but --" I began.
"You don't realize how important the Teddy Bear is to human culture. Of all the places I visited, only eleven had no Bears, while some others sometimes had entire pantheons of them. Among the first gifts to a newborn human, there is almost always a Teddy Bear. As they grow older, they often have a Teddy Bear guardian to sleep with them."
I wanted to say something. I opened my mouth and shut it again.
 

Flash Fiction #727 -- Doomed

 

Not everyone is born to take long, magical journeys that lead to fame and legend.  Unfortunately, fate doesn't care if you can't tell north from east or if you get lost in the grocery store.  Too often, one of these 'less magic than a common rock' humans is sent on a detour while on the way to work and ends up in Faelandia rather than Oldstone's paper mill. 

This is when the fun begins, although no one actually enjoys the transition. The human panics, runs away at the sight of a unicorn, and gets lost in the worst possible place.

The local fae draw straws, and one of us has to go pull the human out of the mess that is getting worse by the moment.  Let me give you one tip on how to avoid one of the worst problems.  If you find yourself in a dense forest and you see a giant cat walking toward you -- Do not climb a tree to escape.

Cat.  Tree.  You can't win this one.

Speaking of cats, if you see fae with high pointed ears, do not greet them with any of the following phrases:

Hi pussy
Here kitty kitty
Hello kitty
Anything else that implies they are a cat.  

These are elder fae.  If they ever had a sense of humor, they lost it after the first few eons of dealing with humans. While they have taken a sacred vow not to utterly destroy the humans, that doesn't mean they won't make humans utterly miserable. Especially the fools who don't take them seriously.

I have been unfortunate with the straw draws.

My latest human at least had not run away in blind panic. She sat in the usual spot, having dropped to the ground when her car disappeared, along with the road.  She seemed to be one of the calm ones. They rarely stayed that way for long, so I watched carefully as she stood with graceful ease and looked around.

"Hello," she said.  "Who are you?"

"Keldyn," I replied. She had taken me by surprise.  Most demand to know where they are.  "I am Mary Welton.  What am I doing here?"

Still not quite the question I had expected, but better.

"You stumbled into an area of the veil that is unstable.  The veil is a magic wall between your human realm and my fae one."

That finally stopped her for a moment.  She focused on me and nodded.

"Yes.  Good.  This will give me a chance to study a lifestyle that is truly different from anything on earth." She looked with interest at the trees nearby as they began to swirl with rainbow colors.

"Study? What are you?" I dared to ask.

"I am a sociologist."

She was going to use science to understand fae society.

We were doomed.

Flash Fiction #726 --Devils

 

 

The devils were out, and the sun hadn't even gone down yet.

Bang! Thump, thump!

Boom!

Despite my warnings, my companions scattered in all directions.  Devils howled with inhuman delight and coughed layers of smoke into the darkening night.

Humans also laughed, not knowing what they had released. New evils for the next year flew on the smoke-filled wind.  It would not be a good year.

We were not without hope.  Fire fairies lit the sky with bouquets of glowing flowers. Some of my friends found me, and we walked the guardian path with fire fairies to light the way.