SS - Three Gifts

from "We Three Kings" - Michael W. Smith

Three campers sat beside a dwindling beach fire. Above them, stars spun. Beside them, ocean waves roiled and spit foam. The sand beneath them was cold but powdery soft.

“They will come soon,” said the bearded one. He ran a grimy hand through his hair and leaned back into the heavy bundle behind him.

“You’ve said that every night for fourteen nights, Japhus.” The smallest one traced characters in the sand - HOPE more than any other. Starlight and firelight flickered in her bright eyes.

“And every night it is more true, not less.”

The third one did not speak but drew the bow across her violin twice slowly.

“I’m ready for them to come now,” whispered the bright-eyed one. Grains of sand ran through her fingers. She shook them off. From beneath her short cloak, she took a pulsing whorl of colours.
For a moment all three were blinded before the maelstrom subsided to match the glow of the embers and stars.

“My heart,” she said, “undivided for the true King and Queen, forever may they reign.”

The violin sang Glory.

“Beautiful,” said Japhus. He shook his head, “ah, but you are stronger than me, little Taes.”

Taes smiled. A sparkling ray of light shimmered from the orb to dance over Japhus’s head before vanishing. “Thank you.” She tucked her precious gift in the hollow of her lap.

Vyz the violinist set down her regular bow and picked up a different one. The music she began to play now reverberated through the two who listened. Melancholy yet joyful, it plunged through several different tempos and themes. Vyz danced as she played, sand flying up from her feet to land like glitter on the arms and faces of Japhus and Taes. The music wrapped around them like invisible gossamer, present but untouchable. A whisper of chiffon. An impression of lace.

Around Vyz the music became visible as well as tangible. It took the form of a veil, black as the night on first glance but composed of every colour imaginable when one focused in on individual threads. It wound around her but didn’t inhibit her movement at all, a dancing veil that moved in perfect synchrony with her.

Dizzy, Taes covered her eyes but the music filled her soul and the brilliant image remained clear in her eyes.

Japhus opened his mouth to speak but no words came. He watched the music, mouth agape, wanting to laugh and cry but unable to break the wonder that held him enchanted.

At last, Vyz came to an end. The final chord spiralled over the sea and fell into the spray. The veil dropped against her skin and was still. This was Vyz’s gift: her very soul.

Silence suffused the three who waited until Japhus spoke, “the last is the least but I hope my King and Queen will not be disappointed.” From the side of his pack, he unstrapped a fine leather sheath narrow but long. “Since I was a boy I have tempered this metal. I have laid it in the fire of doubt and worked it with the hammer of logic.” He withdrew the sword until a coppery-brightness showed just beneath the well worn handle.

“Your mind!” Taes exclaimed. “Oh, but it is a great gift.”

Vyz did not speak but nodded solemnly.

Japhus blushed. “Thank you.”

Gifts bared and ready, the trio waited.

SS - Sleeping City

from "Sleeping City" - Kutless

Rain on asphalt. Sun on glass.

The City doesn’t weather the weather, it enjoys it. Fragments of rainbows -appearing in the trod up dust and vanishing again- are the City’s version of a sleepy smile. The changing of days and seasons mingles with the changing of the City’s dreams. Cold is a caress and heat is a blanket. The City slumbers under both. When the sun is bright, the City turns its own lights low, and when the night comes, the City festoons itself with vibrant colour for the striking contrast of radiance against the black. Stars above are seldom seen but they twinkle in all of the City’s dreams.

Built by artists and entrepreneurs, the City now houses dissolute youths and embittered elders. The war between generations is quiet and cruel. But the City’s dreams are populated only by the simply and seriously merry. Working and dancing and eating are all a part of the endless games that the City dreams.

Once, thirty-nine years ago, the City awoke for a moment. A tremulous glistening electrified moment before sunrise. A child wandered away from the boardwalk to the statue at the end of the pier and pressing a warm small thumb to the large stone one said, “hello.”
But before the City could reply, the mother came running and snatched the child away. A maelstrom of fretting and fussing and kisses and warning. But the City fell back into sleep the moment the connection was broken and never knew.

The child grew up and moved away to be an artist somewhere else. And every third painting was of the slumbering City. The artist never knew why.

So the City sleeps in contentment, unaware of pollution or politics, feeling only the reverberations of nature. Buildings fall or decay or burn and others are built. Every summer the roads undergo noisy construction. Every winter snow is sullenly shovelled from one place to another to melt before the cherry trees blossom. Cacophony turns to harmony within the City’s dreams. Disaster turns to delight. Nothing in the waking world holds the power to disturb the City’s rest.

But sleep is not meant for forever.
Dreams cannot defeat time, they can only cheat it for a time.
Neither are cities immortal.
Will the City awake before it dies?

Rain on asphalt. Sun on glass.

A very old woman -too old to be doubtful of magic- sits at her window and wonders. She has grown to be simple and learned to be serious but if there was ever anything merry within her, there is nothing left now. Frigid rain and smothering sun bellow through the cracks and rainbows swirl in the dust. She lights a candle in the day and nothing at night. She hears the grumbles and the curses, different language from different ages but the same tone. She ponders. She waits. She hopes.

The day she falls asleep for the last time is the day the City stirs and startles and, finally, awakes.

SS - Putrid Poetry

from "Burning in My Soul" - Matt Maher

Shiver down a moon beam and dance here with me
Forget the sound of hundreds of feet marching over rock
There is a fire that burns in rain…

    “What are you muttering?”

    He shrugged and laughed self-consciously, “nothing really, it just seemed to fit.”

    Adelaide hiked up her dress to cross a fallen tree, “What seemed to fit? Are you writing poetry again?” She tripped and would have fallen on her face if Jake hadn’t reached out to steady her but it was his face, not hers, that burned red with embarrassment.

    He coughed. He hopped over the tree, avoiding the slippery patch of moss that had almost upended his fellow sojourner. But he couldn’t avoid her gaze.

    “Well?” She prompted. He didn’t have to look to know that she had her hands on her hips and her head tilted ever so slightly to the left.

    “No.” He said. “It wasn’t nothing. Don’t slow down now, we got to get at least to the gate before dark.”

    “Sure.” She skipped past him, a queer mixture of grace and clumsiness in her movements that he still found disconcertingly distracting after months of travelling together. “But I rather think that any beasty prowling in these parts could be turned back by the power of your witted words.”

    “Shut up.” He spoke the thought out loud but not so loud that she would hear it but at that moment she stopped so abruptly that he almost crashed into her.

    “Hist!” She whispered harshly.

    He couldn’t see or hear anything that would cause her alarm. He opened his mouth to question and breathed in the unmistakeable stench of Anfarri dire wood.

    And I was so looking forward to a quiet evening and green beer at the Dancing Foal Inn!

SS - Resurgam Falls

From “Crisis in Asgard” - Patrick Doyle

A river of stars flows down from the Dark Mountain and dazzles the eyes by day or night. The pool it flows from has never been seen, deep within the mountain’s cloud, but there are those who say it is birthed at the heart of the world. It whispers as it streams over the molten rock but thunders where it meets the Yellow River at Resurgam Falls. A sacred place that binds earth and sky, fire and sea, Resurgam Falls draws immortals and mortals alike, to the peril of the former and the salvation of the latter. Enter for worship or because of avarice, for ambition or simple wonder, it is the doom of all who come that they shall find what they truly seek.

Listen for the tread of those who gather now. A flutter of wings, a tentative step, the smallest of things can disturb the constant thunder for the thunder is music not noise and the melody is changed every time someone or something beholds the hallowed cascade.

Twirling down through the mist, a flower faerie flits, her eyes alight with mischief, heedless of the rocks and rapids. She comes to play a deadly game. A surge of heat blasts through a crevice on the western side and the Lord of Chaos appears. Curved horns, rugged mane, a grimace on his face, he comes for answers. Bubbles filter up from the churning of the waters in the estuary, Old Mother Turtle breaks the surface and swims with ancient strength toward the base of the Falls. She comes to die.

Three would be a fitting number for any story but in this one there is a fourth and a fifth: a brother and sister playing on the banks of the Yellow River.  Caught up in their own joys and fears, they do not know where they are about to tumble into or whom they are about to meet or what will happen to them there or how they will leave or when. Some of these things will not be discovered until the end of the story. But the why will be understood at once.

SS - Walking the Dog

From "C.L.U." - Daft Punk

**This story is mostly not true**

“So. It has come to this.” The girl with the bright red hair glared at him.


I debated the merits of coming to his rescue. But really, he had done this to himself. He had slept through his alarm. He had failed in his sworn duty. He deserved the consequences.


But then a wet nose prodded my arm and milk chocolate eyes gazed at me hopefully. He sat back on his haunches, his tail wagging. “I don’t love you,” I told him.


His tail wagged more.


I sighed theatrically and turned away. The dog wandered back over to where the siblings remained in frictitious tableau. I had no doubt the girl would care for the dog as she always did once she had finished verbally eviscerating her brother but something needed to be done now.


“Alright then!” I whistled for the dog’s attention. His ears perked up. “Wanna go for a walk?”


He leapt like a happy frog and pranced in circles around the room. That was his way of saying: YES, YES, YES, OH PLEASE! He wasn’t a terribly subtle creature but his exuberant affection was endearing.


The extra tesser suit in the exit chamber was a little roomy but it would do. I filled the outer pocket with doggy bags and attached the subspace link to the dog’s collar. “Ok!”


The first few stops were made to the dog’s favourite comets so he could mark them again. For a centuries old science experiment, he had retained disappointingly ordinary dog instincts and behaviour. Then we tessered to a nearby astroid field. I let the dog run loose. Other than an obnoxious school of space fish and a shy rock hunter, I didn’t meet anyone (for copyright reasons, I can't mention the bounty hunter and jedi knight that were attempting to murder one another). When he’d had a good sniff and seemed content, I linked us to the ship and we tessered back to the exit chamber.


The ship was silent when we returned but I assumed the brother was napping and the sister had gone to her basketball game (one more win within this galaxy and they’d move on to an all-galactic tournament within the time frame of the fourteenth millenium).


I wrote a silly short story and heated up leftover meatballs for dinner. The red headed girl arrived home and we sat down to eat together. After awhile it seemed strange that her lazy brother hadn’t joined us.


“Hey, should I go wake your brother?” I asked.


She raised her eyebrows, “he’s not sleeping. After you left, I threw him in the trash compactor.”


I turned to look at the chute next to the sink.


“Oh it’s too late.” She cleared her dishes from table and set them in the cleaner. “I already ran the cycle and jettisoned the refuse.” She licked red sauce from her fingers. “He shouldn’t have forgotten to walk the dog.”

SS - A Change in the Weather

From “I’ll Be Waiting” - Talia Perez

 

The dryad stepped out of her birch tree. Frost crunched beneath her bare feet and an icy wind stirred the leaves in her hair. Impervious to the chill, she moved up the hill. A chickadee winged around her and chittered greetings. She paused to let the bird alight on her head.

Garish sunlight turned the grass to diamonds as the trees became fewer and farther between. The brilliant purple sky did not hold a single cloud.

The chickadee sang a question.

“I think it has been winter long enough,” the dryad replied.

Another question.

“I don’t really care what the faerie might think.” The dryad reached the crest of the hill. She spread her arms and more leaves gently swirled away. “It is time.”

The frost melted slowly, running first in rivulets then in streams down the hill to where the trees woke from their slumber and shook the stiffness from their branches.

The chickadee took flight again. Her song rose and fell, mingling with the laughter of the dryad. Springtime, at last!