time marches on

What I always liked about New Year's celebrations is precisely how arbitrary they are. There is no religious mandate for the calendar to increment, no cultural touchstone we're celebrating, just celebrating that the year is over, in much the same way that we celebrate that the weekend has come. We've decided, not because our gods demand it, that when the year starts anew, we should take the time to reflect, to celebrate, to promise to do better.

By any standard, it's been a rough year and a rough decade. I like New Year's Eve because it's a quiet, personal day, and the predominant theme of this past decade is the slow strangulation of the quiet and the personal. There's no room left for little victories, for those peaceful moments where everything feels just right. It has been a bad decade in a way that is massive and all-encompassing.

And yet. I was worried we'd end this year with the sad drizzle that has characterized much of this month, but there's a strong wind blowing outside. I still remember, distant though those memories were, finding magic in the woods on an island somewhere, stepping into a softer world for a few perfect days. I've written things I'm proud of, made friends, survived. I have no reason to think it's going to get better out there, but there is no reason to abandon the quiet and the personal.

Take care of yourselves, and happy 2020.

inktober archive

I wrote a thing "every day" for Inktober, which is an event which apparently started as one copyright troll's idea to do an ink drawing every day in October and has become an event as ubiquitous as Nano Rhino, but without the inherent impracticality that the aforementioned novel-writing event brings to the table. I am bad at drawing so I wrote fantasy vignettes about life in a dying empire and a dying world. With two exceptions, I used the "official" prompts from this year; on those exceptions I used prompts from previous years because I liked them better. Below I've collected links to all of these vignettes for your convenience.

• ring
• mindless
• bait
• freeze
• build
• sword
• enchanted
• frail
• swing
• pattern
• snow
• dragon
• ash
• overgrown
• legend
• wild
• ornament
• misfit
• sling
• tread
• treasure
• ghost
• ancient
• dizzy
• tasty
• dark
• coat
• ride
• injured
• wreck
• ripe

ripe

I did settle down, eventually. I always thought there wasn't a road long enough to take me away from my old world, but I found one in the end. A quiet little village, hidden away in the lee of the mountains. They let me work to earn my keep even though all I knew was war--honest work, not the sort of work people usually find for people like me. The first few months I was there, I kept mostly to myself, and they respected that. They knew, I think, that I carried some scars. So I spent my days working the orchard, and when I had the time I'd walk the forest, learning the landscape. I was content, but it all felt temporary.

The orchard belonged to a woman who had recently inherited it--I didn't pry into the details, but there was too much to tend to on her own and there weren't enough people in the village to help. I stayed in a room in a house that was much too big for her, and though we spent most of the day working together, we seldom spoke of anything personal. Still, she seemed to enjoy my presence, and I liked working with her.

As a beautiful autumn started to give way into winter, the village prepared for its annual festival, celebrating the harvest and the turn of the seasons, honoring the spirits of the land. "It's a time of transition and transformation," my host explained. "Those are worth celebrating." And, she added, it was a festival for the dead--not to mourn, but to celebrate. "And to show them we're doing well. I imagine they worry."

She insisted that I attend, despite my initial reluctance. "You're part of this town. You helped make the cider we'll be drinking. This is your celebration, too."

I relented.

The whole village was alive that evening with revelers gathered around bonfires, drinking cider from barrels that I'd helped fill, feasting on foods grown and harvested here or gathered in the forest--apples, yes, but also pumpkins and corn and cheese, wild berries and meats. Children in costume ran around, shrieking happily as they ran and played in this somehow otherworldly landscape.

Now and again someone would recognize us and compliment the cider. "Your finest since, well, since your folks were still with us," was a common sentiment. And she would smile and say that I deserved some of the credit, and they'd clap me on the shoulder or shake my hand and thank me, not out of politeness, but because they genuinely appreciated my efforts.

As the night wore on and the crowds thinned, my host and I walked through the orchard, spreading cider for the spirits--"They work hard, too," she said when I asked, a levity to her tone I wasn't quite used to. Then we sat on the steps of her house watching the distant fires, waiting for the first light of dawn.

"I don't know who you lost," she said, after a long silence, "or whether they can see you tonight. I'm sure that they'd be very happy if they could, though, just to see you smiling. To see you living well."

"Am I living well?" I asked.

 

"I think so. I think you've allowed yourself to be happy, despite the darkness. And I think that together we can do our best to keep the dark at bay in this little part of the world." She took my hand in hers. "And just maybe, remind each other to smile now and again?"

"Maybe," I said.

We sat there like that, my head on her shoulder, her arm around my waist, until the first light of dawn glimmered on the horizon. In the morning there would be more work to be done, but perhaps allowing ourselves the time to have fun was not so bad a thing after all.

wreck

I had planned on coming back, at first. Even after the shipwreck, when I found myself washed ashore on an island that, as far as I knew, was uninhabited, I was planning on finding a way home. Burn the wreckage to signal a passing ship, perhaps--the island was thickly forested, so I had no real worry about shelter or forage. I could afford to waste time thinking about home. Even once I found the village--or rather, once they found my makeshift shelter and insisted that I come back with them--at first I still dreamed of home. They were nothing but kind to me, but even with war looming, even with everything that had happened--everything she did to me because she thought I'd let her--I missed it.

If we're being honest, I still do. But the war never touched the island, and if I managed to lure a ship here, would that change? I certainly didn't look like I'd survived a shipwreck. After they had gone to such lengths to elude the grasp of empire, would I bring empire to their doorstep? Was finding a way home worth destroying someone else's?

So I stayed. I stayed and I promised I wouldn't let myself wallow in regret and nostalgia--they had offered me a life here, and it would be rude of me to squander it by living someone else's life. We had hard times, of course--I don't think anyone fully escaped those--but it was peaceful. And I felt like I was part of something bigger than me or any one person, far more than I ever did back home.

But yes, I planned on returning, and a part of me still wishes, no matter how I try not to think about it, I'd managed to at least send a message. But I suppose no matter what you do, the past will always tempt you with the idea of closure, of what-if. And no matter what you do that will never be enough.

injured

The first time I almost died, my friend--arguably the only real friend I had in the whole ragtag lot of us--gave me a charm to keep me safe. That night I had a strange, beautiful dream, full of doors leading to a world more beautiful than my mind could comprehend. All I remember of that world is my emotion upon seeing it, an overpowering sadness that I could only access it in dreams. I awoke the following morning in tears, still overwhelmed with the sorrow and beauty of it all. And for some reason, I could only glimpse the world these doors led to.

The dream lingered in my mind through the day, distracting me from the thoughts I should have been having, like the fact that I felt much better than I had previously, far better than a single night's rest should have been able to accomplish. And more importantly, it made me forget about the charm. I still wore it, of course, because it was a gift from a friend, but nothing else about it struck me as noteworthy.

Two things changed from that point on: every now and then I'd have some variation on that dream--never exactly the same, but always just as powerful as the first time; and I seemed to bear a charmed life. Every time I should have taken serious injury, whether due to my own mistakes or some misfortune, I somehow escaped . . . if not entirely unharmed, then at least with less harm than I ought to have taken.

I came to rely on it, without entirely realizing it. I could use it to protect my comrades, to keep everyone safe, to make sure we all made it through to the end. It seemed important, somehow, as if maybe if everyone made it out alive I could finally access the beautiful world of my dreams.

I couldn't, of course, and as the years wore on I found that the charm didn't extend to my friends and allies. Sometimes, no matter how I tried, I couldn't protect them. And every time I'd walk away and wonder why I had been spared, what I was supposed to see, or do, or if it wasn't just there to torment me.

It was years later that I finally ran into my friend again, and from the look in her eyes they had been no kinder to her than they were to me. She smiled when she saw the charm, though. "I'm glad it's kept you safe all these years." And like a spell being broken, I remembered. A few weeks later I met a traveler who still had the spirit to fight, and gave her the charm--"For good luck on the road," I told her. "It's kept me safe over the years, but the fight's gone out of me." She smiled, and thanked me, and continued on her way.

The dream never changed. Every time I had it, I would awake with the conviction that there was something vast and beautiful out there that would be forever beyond my reach. But there was a hope behind the sorrow now. This world didn't seem quite so bleak as it once did.

ride

In the days before the end, she sent me--and everyone, really--on a lot of errands. Everything, no matter how trivial it should have been, took on a level of absolute urgency. We knew the end was approaching, both from a strategic and logistical standpoint, and because you could feel it. I could, anyway, and I think the others could, too, even if they didn't know it: there was something oppressive in the air, like a storm building, except it didn't break. It just kept getting worse, and it put everyone on edge.

And, yeah, part of it was the princess. She was getting desperate--there was a reason she was losing followers--and desperation pushes people to strange things. And I don't mean "strange" as in "making poor strategic choices," but strange as in "sending urgent letters to people who wanted no part of the rebellion." And she still had that way about her where if you weren't careful you'd just go along with her ideas, wouldn't question it until you were already committed.

Sometimes I think she'd stopped trusting anyone, even those of us who had stuck around, and was trying to get us out of the way so we couldn't stop her. Other times, when I'm in a particularly dark mood, I'm convinced she just wanted to separate everyone right before she destroyed everything. And very occasionally I entertain the idea that maybe she did it to save us from the fallout.

That night she pressed a sealed envelope in my hand and told me to ride for the estate of some countess or other--it would be several days' ride for me, and I was equipped to deliver messages quickly; any meaningful help the countess could provide would arrive too late. And yet, the way she asked, with such confidence, such conviction . . . maybe she knew something I didn't. Maybe this would avert disaster. What choice did I have but to ride?

coat

One of our friends gave my sister and me a coat she'd inherited from a family member, and since we couldn't both wear it at the same time we decided we'd say it was mine. I wore it quite a bit, and eventually it became my thing. That is, people associated me with the coat and vice-versa. The princess--this was before she inherited that title, I suppose--liked to tease me about how much I liked it, and it was too much energy to argue. And it was a nice coat, I suppose. 

My sister liked using it when we were pretending to be each other, especially once people got wise to the trick and started looking for the little clues they thought we'd overlooked. Somehow it only reinforced the idea everyone had that the coat held some deep sentimental value for me, and at some point everyone else's attachment to the idea of my attachment to this coat stopped wearing on me and became something fun and whimsical I sought out.

It was the coat I wore when they appointed me as her protector, the coat I wore as the fragile order of our world started falling apart. I was wearing that coat when I earned some of my scars, and each time I cleaned it up and patched it. Each patch was a mark of pride, or at least a reminder of what I'd done.

When most of us parted ways for the first time--we could feel disaster approaching even then, years before the war--I gave the coat away as a token of friendship. If she's to be believed, she wore it until it fell apart. By then, she told me, it became something of a legend--but then, she likes telling stories, so of course it did.

The world is altogether less sentimental now, but there's still a place for whim, I think. Even if there's not much hope left there's no harm in a smile and a story about that time your lucky coat protected you from harm.

dark

Growing up in the capital, it never really got dark--not in the sense that I always imagined it, so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face, the kind of dark where you're lucky if you can see the suggestion of shapes. I didn't think about it often, but every now and then I'd catch a glimpse of it. It used to frighten me, as my imagination would fill the darkness with horrors or, worse, would imagine it completely empty, a void that would swallow everything given the chance. My heart would race every time.

It's normal for children to be frightened of the dark, I suppose. And perhaps it's normal for that fear to linger--why else build a city where there is always light enough to see by? The monsters may be gone, but surely we must believe that there is something lurking in the shadows, something that can be banished if only the lanterns stay lit.

I don't know when I became obsessed with the dark. Perhaps it was the sheer novelty of it--in the city the darkness was hard to find, but out here, all it took was a cloudy night and the shadows would overtake everything.

I remember one night a storm rolled in after everyone was asleep. I wrapped myself in a cloak and felt my way away from camp, off the trail, and into the woods. The wind and rain and hail were impossibly loud, and my only illumination came from the occasional flash of lightning--too quick to do anything but disorient me further.

When I'd gone far enough--far enough that I wasn't sure I could find my way back, perhaps, or maybe I simply couldn't bring myself to go any further--I found a tree to sit down against, and let the storm rage around me. I was cold and lost and I don't think my companions could have heard me even if I shouted for help.

I still couldn't tell you why I felt the need--no, the compulsion--to do this, but I can tell you that it felt amazing. Surrounded by nothing but storm and darkness, with so little protection against the world, my heart racing like it did when I was a child--I felt alive, like I'd found something I didn't realize I was missing.

I made my way back to camp when the sky began to lighten enough for me to see. By then the rain had let up, and I wanted to start a fire. No one asked why I was up so early, or why I was soaked and grinning. My companions, I think, understood me better than I did.

tasty

I picked up the habit of carrying around an easily accessible pouch of red pepper from an old friend who started a lot of fights and told me she found it a lot easier to fight when the opponent is blind and in pain. I figured it could help me out of the occasional scrape, but these days, I mostly keep it around because it's tasty. There's a lot of empty road out there and after a while having a bit of spice to your meals helps make them more tolerable. My friend was the one who did the cooking back before we went our separate ways, so I guess it's nostalgic in a way. I'm not as good as she was but it still brings back memories when I cook something up in the evenings.

I met a merchant on the road the other day and she gave me a look when I asked if she had any red pepper. "It's funny," she said. "Just yesterday I ran into someone else asking for pepper. Don't usually see travelers looking for it."

"This traveler. Skinny, scruffy, talks a lot?"

"That's the one."

"She was heading north on the road here?"

She nodded. "You could probably catch up if you hurry."

I paid and hit the road again. Prior to this little exchange I was just wandering, but now . . . well, I was just saying how I missed my friend's cooking. Maybe I can catch up to her on the road. No luck so far, but I have a good feeling.

dizzy

I never liked crowds, but it got worse over the years. Every time I was forced into a large gathering, I was afraid that I might lose a piece of myself to the crowd and never be able to find it again. Sometimes I was afraid that I would return diminished; others, that I would return different, changed. It didn't help that I was good at people--not as good as my sister, but we had both learned to use a smile as a mask. So inevitably, when we needed to win someone over, one of us would be sent. And every time I would steel myself, hide behind my mask, and try my very best not to drift away.

It worked right up until it didn't. The princess needed allies--this was just before she got too paranoid to continue trying to build a coalition--and she wanted any support we could muster. I tried to protest, as I always did, and she brushed off my concerns, as she always did. So I traveled, I dressed up, I tried to steel myself, and I put on a smile.

Panic gripped me as soon as I walked into the ballroom. My heart pounded, the world spun, and I stumbled my way into a corner, murmuring apologies to the guests, hoping this would eventually pass. Someone--my traveling companion, I assumed--guided me out to a balcony, and sat with me until I calmed down.

"I'm fine," I said, once the imminent sense of being attacked had faded into something somewhat tolerable. "Just got a bit dizzy." And I smiled immediately, while my companion frowned at me.

"That must be it," she said. "Poor rations on the trail. Entirely my fault."

"Right," I said, and spent what felt like another eternity trying to get my breathing under control. If I could just get my breathing back to normal, everything would be fine.

"You know," she said, "if you're feeling faint, there's still some food at the inn. I could cover for you here." She hesitated, then added, "It was, after all, absolutely unconscionable of me not to take care of you on the road." And there it was: a way out. Give up, go home, and take care of myself, or hope that my fear of crowds had abated enough that I could endure the evening and maybe achieve someone else's goal for them.

She escorted me through the crowd and out the entrance. We'd think of a story to tell the princess on the road. Much later, we'd wonder, over a bottle of wine she nicked from the cellar, if this was what sent her down the road to paranoia. None of us were quite the same after.

ancient

There's an argument I have with the princess all the time, where I ask her why she has any right to rule and why any of us should be following her, and I pick holes in her responses until she gets tired of me and kicks me out. It always comes down to this: her family has been there the longest, so the throne is hers by right--you know how it goes. Tonight something I said must have stuck with her because she's sitting outside my tent when I get back from wandering the woods.

She's tired of trying to find an answer I like, and wants me to give her one. So I tell her to follow me and lead her off into the woods. There's an old ruined shrine here--the kind that's been ruined since before any of this started, so overgrown and decayed that you could miss it if you don't know how to look. "Why do I like places like this?"

"Because you like anything that reminds us that we exist at the sufferance of nature?"

"Well, yes, but that's not the answer I'm looking for." I sit down against a crumbling wall. "This place is ancient, and there's still some power here, but not enough that anyone's likely to care about it. There will be no wars over a place like this. So why did I lead you out here?"

"Because you delight in being cryptic and irritating?"

"Also true, but still not the point." I lie down and close my eyes. "I like these places because they're beautiful, and peaceful. I feel safe here."

"So . . . you think you should be following me because I'm pretty?"

"You're trying to bait me. I won't bite. But you're not far off. There's plenty of ancient things in this world with no merits to speak of, to say nothing of the ones that are actively harmful. If there is a reason for us to follow you, it has nothing to do with tradition. Be worthy of it, and you'll convince me."

She sits in silence for a long while, and eventually lies down next to me. "How do I convince myself I'm worthy?" she asks, quietly. Like she's afraid that if she speaks too loudly, the world might realize she's human, with human vulnerabilities. It breaks my heart, just a little.

I don't have an answer to that question, and maybe she just thought I was asleep. I keep my eyes closed and my breathing steady, until my feigned sleep becomes real and the night becomes morning.

ghost

I always thought I'd notice if I died--if there was any of me left to do the noticing, I suppose. Surely there is something that ties us to the bodies we're trapped in for our entire lives? But it was weeks, months, possibly even years before I noticed that I no longer had a physical form. It was such a seamless transition, almost as if I were meant to live on as a ghost.

Almost. Sometimes, much of the time, I forget that I was ever human at all. Humans are so small, so fragile, compared to the eternal majesty of this form--except majesty is such a human concept. I am the continent, I am civilization, I am the order that humanity has imposed on this world--and it's so easy to forget, when you are so vast, that you were once so small.

Perhaps it's better that way. I always had strong will, for a human, but did I have the will to shatter this world and reforge it anew? I very much doubt it. I still wanted to be loved, wanted people around me to be happy, and who can say they are happy now? Who could possibly love me now? Better, much better, to forget about being human. It is fortunate that my flesh perished long ago, unmarked and unmourned.

These days it seems that I am spending more time aware of my humanity, more time as a ghost, haunting the halls of a single building rather than a spirit that stretches for countless miles in all directions. My work is unfinished, and yet only rarely am I able to sense what needs to be done, much less effect the necessary change.

If I remember the stories (and it has been so long since anyone has told me a story), ghosts linger because they have something left to do. Is that why I'm here? What could I possibly have left undone? Everyone who betrayed me, everyone I betrayed in turn, are dead now. I have left a broken world behind and no matter how I try to fix it, fixing it eludes me. And now I can no longer even make the attempt?

I always thought of my body as a prison when I was alive, but at least it was not shackled here in this dead tower, waiting for . . . what? Some hero to come and put me to rest? The heroes all died.

There is a thought in my mind that keeps trying to form, one that I am unable to grasp. Sometimes I can see its shape, sense its magnitude--it is something vast, something to do with prisons, the reason I keep meditating on that word, but already as I talk about it it's gone, vanished exactly like a ghost.

treasure

When the dust finally settled, when there was no more ash and soot and endless winter, when it no longer seemed optimistic that we might survive to see another summer, a few enterprising individuals started scavenging the ruins in search of the things we left behind. Tools, weapons, cookware, trinkets--we'd lost so much. The hope, at the time, was that we could recover some of it.

Within a few years, most of the towns and villages--at least, the ones that were easiest to reach--had been more or less picked clean of valuable finds. Many of us stopped scavenging, then, content that what we had found was enough for whatever our purposes was. Some of us, however, continued exploring the deeper, more remote places. I can't speak for anyone else, but if you'd asked me at the time I'd have said it was curiosity that drove me. Maybe I still would.

There were ruined shrines and temples scattered throughout the wilds, cities and towns where the cataclysm had rendered access nearly impossible. Some of them were days, if not weeks, from the nearest settlement--too remote, most of us decided, for anything but a dedicated expedition, and who had time for that? I was probably not the only one mad enough to attempt it on my own, but there weren't many of us. These sites would be pristine, untouched.

So I learned to live off the land as well as I could, and I set out. Whatever treasures these lost places hid, I would find them. There was so much to discover, so much to experience, before someone looked at all of this beautiful decay and saw only profit, before there was nothing left out here to treasure.

tread

I tried to learn the sound of everyone's footsteps in my time at the monastery--the steady, dull tread of the abbot, the soft, easy stride of my protector, the hurried gait of my fellow shrine-keeper. It was far from foolproof, but it helped convince them I wasn't helpless simply because I couldn't see.

For the longest time, her footsteps were the only thing I knew about my protector. They weren't allowed to talk to anyone outside their order, and the usual methods of getting around that--writing it down or using their sign language--you can imagine had some problems. The others--the abbot and my fellow--seemed puzzled that I had any interest in communicating with her in the first place, so I received no help on that front. We developed some basics, but otherwise she was like a ghost, someone whose presence I could sense but could never really see or understand. The quiet tread of her boots on the earth was at once comforting and unnerving.

I started talking to her, from time to time. Our rudimentary system of knocks for responses didn't allow for much in the way of conversation, but it helped her feel less like a looming wraith and more like a person, and I imagined, at least, that she appreciated having someone at least make the effort.

Every now and again she would leave, usually for a week or two--some business with the protectors, probably. One day she returned and left something on my desk--a small necklace with a stone that pulsed with energy. "For me?" She knocked once to indicate yes. "Help me put it on?"

Her hands were rough but dexterous as she fastened the chain around my neck. After she had withdrawn, I tried to focus on the feeling of power, when I noticed a voice in my thoughts--something quiet, and clearly not my own thoughts.

The aristocracy were fond of giving these to their most trusted retainers, said the voice. There aren't many left, but I found a collector who was willing to trade. And a jeweler to set yours in a necklace.

A set of sending stones. A way to communicate at last. They were meant to send messages that could be retrieved in a moment of quiet meditation, but it was something. And that day, exhausted though she was from her travels, it seemed her footsteps were a little livelier than they had been in quite some time.

sling

The first time we met, she had her arm in a sling and a look about her like she hadn't gotten a decent night's sleep in weeks. I try my best not to make assumptions based on first impressions, but when she was in similarly rough condition on multiple subsequent meetings, I started to wonder if she didn't simply have an extraordinary disregard for her own well-being. She even chastised me for suggesting that we take a slightly longer rest than was strictly necessary, and I got the impression that if it were possible she would have prefer that we travel through the night without stopping.

This was early on in the war, well before it could properly be considered a war. Her particular breed of recklessness was instrumental in our first few victories, after which people started to believe that our rebellion wasn't a lost cause after all. I'd assumed that once we no longer needed her to regularly perform impossible feats at great personal risk, she would have stopped, but at every strategy meeting she volunteered another death-defying plan, and even if we usually managed to talk her down, "usually" wasn't "always," and I consider that a failure on my part.

She was one of the first to leave us. I had proposed a risky strategy to retake the city, which I had assumed she would support--was she not a thrillseeker?--but she was furious at me for risking so many lives. There were safer ways, she said. She accused me of a monomaniacal obsession with recapturing the city, that my recklessness would put us all in danger, that I cared nothing for the cost, so long as victory was achieved. And as soon as I tried to defend myself, she stormed out. I never saw her again.

Before she left, I'd never thought to ask what happened to her arm before our first meeting. So I asked her friend, the one who introduced us, and she just shrugged. "She gets in a lot of scraps, and she isn't much of a fighter."

"That doesn't seem wise," I said.

"It's like a compulsion for her. She sees someone who needs protecting, she does it, no hesitation."

That was almost enough to make me second guess myself--almost. I thought of myself as a champion of the people, and if someone left me because I wasn't doing enough to save them . . . but no, my choice had been made long ago. There was risk, yes, but I was prepared to take those risks. Even if it was a certainty--well, she was right about one thing. No cost was too great.

Still, I hoped I hadn't made an enemy of her. I imagined her out there, picking a fight she knew she'd lose in the hopes it might help someone, and wondered if one day she'd be picking that fight with me.

misfit

I have a tendency to overstay my welcome, so after a while I made it a point of leaving town before that could happen. If you travel long enough, you start to get a feeling for when it's about to happen--that moment when the idea first enters their minds that maybe they are a better host than you are a guest. At first they're too nice, too polite, to even consider the thought, but it's there. A weariness to their smile when they say hello, a tension to their voice when they invite you to dinner. When that happens, you pack your things and you leave, and you absolutely don't think about it. Everyone's happier this way.

Sometimes, they'd try to stop me. Sometimes I made friends with them, and sometimes when they'd catch me in the dark sneaking out, it took all the willpower I had to say no. But I made a promise to myself, and I care about my promises. (At first I tried promising not to make friends, but that one I couldn't keep. It's a lonely enough existence as it is.)

Except... I stayed for the winter and when the spring came and the ice and snow began to melt, I didn't want to leave. There was no sign that they were tired of having me around. They even let me cook for them, once they found out I could and decided I was actually good enough. It had been ages since I'd done that. So once spring was in full bloom, with the flowers and the trees so impossibly bright, I was gripped with a panic so intense I very nearly fled without even gathering my things.

I tried to leave that night. I didn't make much of an effort to hide it, lost as I was between panic and the conviction that she would catch me leaving anyway. Instead I spent the night steeling myself for whatever she might say as I packed. I wasn't prepared for her to arrive, a bag on her shoulders, and say, "Will you take me with you?"

If you listened carefully, you could have heard my will shatter into a thousand pieces at that exact moment. I slumped back onto the bed, and tried my very hardest not to meet her eyes. "It's dangerous out there," I said. And how could I live with myself if I dragged her away from her home?

"Oh." She tried not to show her disappointment, tried not to argue. "Be safe, then. You know you'll always be welcome here."

She caught my eye, then. There was a challenge there. It was a long, cold winter and she knew all my stories by now. I smiled, despite myself, and she grinned at me, somehow both innocent and smug. "I'm willing to test that, if you are."

ornament

Early on, before the rebellion was anything more than a band of misfits and idealists who dreamed of a better world, when we were still too small to do anything but hide and hope, we took shelter in a ruined temple. They weren't quite so commonplace back then--most towns still tried to keep theirs operational, even if the rituals had largely been forgotten, the ornaments once so integral to their upkeep left to gather dust in some reliquary.

That first night, most of us were too exhausted to stay up, so it was just me and the princess on watch. I'd gotten used to not getting by without too much rest, and the princess . . . I got the feeling she tried to avoid sleeping these days. She probably thought nobody noticed.

The ruins had her in a melancholy mood. When I noticed she'd left her post, I found her in the main chamber, turning a broken earthenware pitcher over in her hands. "We don't even know what we've lost," she said when she saw me. Then she looked at me with that oddly intense look she'd get sometimes. "Would you restore them, if you could? All these lost places?"

I'd learned long ago that when she asked a question like that, there was a correct answer. Usually I'd just evade the question, but tonight we had nothing to do until the morning, and I had an . . . intuition that nobody would bother us. "I wouldn't," I told her.

"Interesting. Not the answer I expected."

"Eventually they ended up creating more problems than they solved. It'd be the same if you tried it." I shrugged. "That pitcher, for instance. They were supposed to make it easier to build new temples and expand your empire. They ended up allowing the very collapse you're now sulking over."

"So, you don't believe we can surpass our predecessors?"

"Doing better is only good if what you're attempting is worth doing." We continued like that for what seemed like hours. The discussion never seemed to go anywhere, but she seemed to be enjoying herself, at least, and at the time that's what seemed important.

Whatever conclusions she had drawn from our conversation, she kept them to herself. She took the pitcher with her, when she left, and went to some trouble to transport it with her for most of the war. I never did ask why--perhaps she simply liked the way it looked. Or perhaps it reminded her of something, some secret she unearthed, some decision she made--I knew as much about it in her hands as she did when it was in the temple. A ritual ornament I would never understand the significance of, and I was beginning to suspect that whatever it signified mattered a great deal.

wild

Once upon a time, we tamed the world. It happened slowly, over the course of generations, as temples and monasteries spread across the continent with the inexorability of a plague. The channels and conduits of power became the shackles which bound the world, driving back the wild places and keeping the wolves away. In time this became the basis for an empire. As often happens with empires, cracks developed over time. It was a slow, almost imperceptible process, so of course, as empires do, they elected to ignore it.

Eventually the wild places crept back into the civilized world, the chains that kept the world bound having weakened over the years. Fear of the wild spread unrest into the leaders of the empire, who were ever eager to cast blame--far easier that than to accept responsibility yourself.

One day a princess came to believe that she could repair the chains and drive off the wilds once more, using nothing but the strength of her will. She believed it to be possible in the same way that you or I believe the sun is going to rise tomorrow, and she was willing to go to great lengths to make this possible. She believed she was going to save the world. But the world, which had been tricked into its chains, did not wish to return to the previous state of affairs, and as she traveled the world hoping to achieve her ends, the world began to wake.

And so when she returned to the spire where it had all began, there was a great battle between the wilds and the princess. At first, wielding a power fueled by the sacrifice of every living soul in her city, it seemed that she had achieved her goal, but her power and her will faltered and the world cast off its chains. The wild returned with a vengeance. A series of great catastrophes befell the empire, scattering its people to the winds, and in the time it took for a new generation to come of age all that remained of it was memories and ruins.

legend

She was always obsessed with legends and legacy, with the stories we tell about ourselves and the ones we find ourselves trapped in. I don't think she fully realized how many of her decisions were based around that--not on what was the best course of action, but on what would make the best story, would leave the most lasting legacy. All of us went along with it, to some extent. Sure, some of us managed to convince ourselves that we were merely humoring her, but she had a way of carrying people along with her. Sometimes she did it deliberately, but usually, I like to tell myself, it was simply her nature.

When she needed to escape the city, when she told me she needed someone to take her place while she raised an army, so the usurpers wouldn't suspect anything, when she told me that there was no one else she trusted with this task, the strength of the story she was trying to tell was almost enough to convince me. There's a romance in it--the noble sacrifice, the tearful departure, the heroic rescue--a whole army, a whole war, fought just for me. She had it all planned out, and it probably would have been beautiful. The problem is I had other plans, and she did not particularly care about them.

So as soon as she had fled, I did, too. Whatever legend she was going to craft, she would have to do without my help. I'd spent too much time being a character in someone else's story, and by the end she had lost the ability to see me--to see anyone, I think--as anything else. She knew that she had a great destiny, and she was terrified that that destiny might somehow be out of her hands.

Perhaps that's why she drowned her city and broke the world. And perhaps that's why, when I found a new life far from that cursed place, I never told anyone her story. I could grant her that much--I wasn't going to be the one to ruin the legend she crafted.

overgrown

I was expecting the city to be a desolate, rotting place when I found it. The way everyone talked about it, how vibrant it was before the fall, how it had become a place of dread and death in the blink of an eye--how could I imagine anything but a wasteland? How could I have imagined how beautiful it would be?

The half of the city that wasn't submerged in the ocean was overgrown with trees and vines and wildflowers. The previously pristine marble streets were tangled and broken, the buildings crumbling as years of growth slowly reclaimed the space that had once belonged to the city's residents. It had been, as my former mentor was so fond of reminding me, twenty years--I think I would have guessed it had been a hundred. What was everyone so afraid of?

The answer, of course, was still standing out there, surrounded and yet untouched by the waves: a perfect white spire, the still-beating heart of the city that it destroyed. I probably should have found it more menacing, but seeing how little time it had taken for nature to reclaim what was once a thriving city, it was hard to make myself believe that destroying another edifice erected by humankind would be all that difficult a task.

I slept in the ruins that night. The enormity of my task would hit me eventually, but for the night, at least, everything was beautiful.

ash

For a while we tried to pretend everything was . . . not normal, it could never be normal again, but at least that it was recoverable. We lost a city, and the world was spiraling into chaos, but surely, eventually, things would settle. The empire hadn't touched every corner of the continent, however hard they tried, and out here . . . maybe we could still find peace, out here. Then, that summer, ash began raining from the sky. We carried on, because what else could we do, but that's when everyone started to accept that whatever storm had been unleashed, there was no chance of it simply passing us by.

As the summer wore on, travelers trickled in with news of fire and flood, of the earth shaking itself apart and the mountains themselves exploding. People were fleeing, if they could, with neither plan nor preparation. And I, fool that I was, decided to head back to the source.

The fires had died down but the ash remained. On clear days the light seemed pale and wan, and when it rained the rain left streaks of soot everywhere it touched. To say nothing of the storms: fierce winds, torrential rain, clouds so thick I couldn't tell if it was night or day and lightning so bright and so frequent my eyes refused to adjust to the dark. It was comforting to imagine that all of this was just to keep me from reaching my goal, but I doubt the world cared that much about me. As I took shelter in the abandoned villages along the way, it was hard to think that it cared much about any of us.

I finally arrived at the dead city one clear bright sunny day, and for once the sunlight was clean and healthy--I'd almost forgotten what that looked like. There were no storms here, and the city--the bits that weren't under the ocean now, anyway--was almost untouched. My suspicions, it seemed, were correct.

I cleaned the ash from my face in the ocean and picked a building to take shelter in. I had nothing but time, now--time enough, I had to hope, to put the world to rights.

dragon

The story goes she encountered a dragon in the valley and awakened her powers there, which is of course nonsense. I heard she made a fool of herself trying to outsmart a swamp witch--she certainly came home seething, and when I asked what happened her face turned red and then when I asked why she was blushing she told me to fuck off. To be fair, she didn't start the rumor about the dragon. Every time she heard it she squirmed and blushed and tried to change the topic, but that wasn't enough to make it go away. She became kind of a legend after that, as if she wasn't enough of one already. A destined hero.

I went to the swamp to find out what actually happened down there, because stories about dragons don't just materialize, and I found the witch there, waiting for me. "You're late," she told me, and I told her that pretending to be all mysterious prescient wasn't going to impress me so she should drop the act.

She raised her hand and what I had taken to just be a fallen tree in the swampwater behind her shifted and splashed and there before me stood a dragon, all covered in moss and lichen and mushrooms, its eyes the color of algae, its scales the same brown as a decaying tree stump. "I summoned a dragon and it took you two months to come investigate," she told me. "You're late."

I shrugged an indifferent apology at her. "You should have sent a letter," I told her, and she didn't argue because she knew I had a point.

"So," I said. "You wanted me here. What did you want to tell me?"

"Your friend. She's waking things up. I don't think she knows it yet, but this fellow here," she indicated the dragon, "shouldn't be. Or rather, wouldn't be, if she hadn't paid us a visit."

I watched the dragon for a while. "Makes sense," I said. "Anything else?"

"You're very irritating," she told me. "Do you know that?"

I did know that.

I probably should have been worried about that, or wondered what it meant, but there's always a looming calamity somewhere, and the spirits can be very melodramatic about it all. Mostly I found it amusing that the story that made my friend into a legend was more or less the exact opposite of the truth. She had gone into the valley and awakened the dragon's power, and who knows what else besides.

The whole trip home I debated whether or not I should tell her. In the end I decided to, which in retrospect was probably a mistake, but I believe in letting people make their own decisions. Besides, she'd have found out eventually, and maybe things would have been much worse if she found out from someone besides me.

snow

I spent the winter in a remote mountain village, not entirely by choice--I'd hoped for a long autumn and a mild winter, and got neither. They were welcoming, if not entirely friendly, but I found ways to earn my keep. They knew turning me away was almost certainly a death sentence, and times weren't quite that tight.

The snows came early and they didn't let up. Within a few weeks it already felt like the snow had always been there and would be there long after I was gone. Sometimes, especially at night, I'd imagine that this thick blanket of frozen down would suffocate the entire world. It was an oddly peaceful thought, and every time I hated myself for thinking it.

I spent the mornings clearing out paths for the villagers and the evenings in the town hall, drilling their militia, hoping that they were only planning to defend themselves against bandits and invaders and weren't planning to become bandits or invaders themselves. And then, once the training was complete and everyone had retired for the night, I would eat a meal with my hosts--at first in silence, and then, as they warmed to my presence or grew tired of the isolation, in polite conversation.

On those rare days when I had nothing to do, I would walk. Ostensibly I was checking in on the more remote houses, ensuring that the paths were still usable, that everyone was in good health, but this was mostly an answer for when the locals got suspicious. Seeing my footsteps alone in the fresh snow, surrounded by that perfect stillness, I could finally feel free.

It wasn't to last, of course. I returned one evening to the smell of smoke, and found that my hosts' house had gone up in flames, and in the ensuing chaos of the town trying to stop the fire, someone had raided the storehouses. Most people had some supplies of their own tucked away, of course, but . . .

Suspicion fell on me at once. It didn't matter that I no longer had a place to stay, that the fire had destroyed most of my things as well as the food my hosts were using to feed me; I was an outsider, I knew the village, and they were certain they had been betrayed. I fled before they could decide that I needed to be brought to immediate justice--almost certain death was better than certain death.

An old villager I'd spoken to a few times on my walks stopped me when I passed by his cabin. "Leaving us, are we?"

"I don't fancy being killed for a crime I didn't commit." I put a hand on my sword. "Don't fancy killing anyone, either."

He held his hands up. "You're the only face I've seen in weeks, I've got no quarrel with you. Figured you might appreciate some supplies for the road, since it looks like you've lost yours."

I hesitated, then nodded. He beckoned me inside, and outfitted me with enough supplies for an extended foray into the winter wilds, and a map and compass to help me find my way to another town. Then he insisted on giving me a hot meal before I went, and offered me a space on the floor to stay the night. I declined.

It started snowing as I set out again, heavy enough that any tracks I left would be gone by the time the village tried to search for me. The journey to the next town would be a long one, but the world under the snow was so peaceful, I didn't really mind.

pattern

I started studying history in the hopes it would be useful. Whether the objective was to change the world or merely to rule competently, she would need guidance, perspective, someone who could look at the world and see the patterns. So I studied deep and broad, because when she had a question I was determined to have the answer. Even once I'd moved on to living a life of my own, and even once I realized that if it were possible to gain the powers of an oracle through nothing more than reading a great deal, everyone would be studying history with just as much enthusiasm as I was, I enjoyed delving. The world made more sense.

But sometimes there were patterns. Sometimes, watching events unfold, it all felt familiar, or at least expected. And towards the end, before the war, before everything fell apart, I tried to warn her. If anyone could prevent disaster, it would be her.

"I thought you, of all people, would understand," she told me. "Are you having second thoughts?"

How many times had a ruler stood at the precipice of disaster? How many times had they had a friend, a confidant, an adviser, try to warn them, only to have their advice discarded? My mistake, I realized later, was assuming that if I worked to help her achieve her goals, we could avoid catastrophe. Because she really did want to make the world a better place, and somehow I believed that meant she actually could, that despite her failings, she was our best chance.

 It's hard to see the pattern when you're part of it.

swing

The morning after I killed her would-be assassin, her father paid me a visit, not to thank me, not to apologize that I had to do what I had done, but to promise me that whoever was responsible for this would hang for it. I think I was supposed to be comforted by the idea, but it seemed so pointless. Her assailant was barely older than I was, and he bled out on the marble while the guards shouted and my friend cried and I wondered why I wasn't crying, wondered why no one would help him. Surely he was no longer a threat?

Over the following days they all treated me (and my sister, mostly because none of them could be bothered to distinguish between us) as if I had done something remarkable, as if I wanted more attention and more responsibility because my friend was in danger and I protected her without thinking, without planning, without--anything, really. I didn't cry then, either. None of it felt real. Part of me wondered if I was still there in the hallway, if this wasn't just some dream I'd had.

It was when they found some friend of the attacker's who, they said, was in on the plan, when they had us go out to the gallows to watch him die, that I finally cried. He had the same dazed look in his eyes I'd seen in the mirror ever since, that sense that none of it was real, because accepting that this was reality now was unthinkable.

There was no fear, no protest, as they put the hood over his face, or the rope around his neck. Even when they dropped the world out from under him, he didn't struggle. He kicked once or twice, as if trying to find land, then went absolutely still, except for a very slight swing back and forth, as the crowd jeered.

frail

The first time someone tried to assassinate me, I became obsessed with the fundamental frailty of the world--not just my mortality, though that was certainly a significant aspect of it, but everything. I imagined how, had my friend arrived a moment later, I might have died, or been taken, or been injured, but she would not have been forced to kill a man; and how perhaps my death would have lead to the deaths of other members of a conspiracy, instead of leaving us with only a corpse and no real answers.  All it would take is a brief moment, a tiny shift in the position of a blade, and the whole world would shift.

It was somehow comforting to think that if I had died, the ripples would change the face of the world forever, but it became difficult to ignore those morbid thoughts. I could suppress them, but in the evenings they took up the entirety of my attention. Over time I learned to focus less on death, but I never quite stopped the peculiar obsession with how a single, minuscule action could forever alter the course of history.

I was already predisposed to thinking and rethinking every little action, but now it seemed to take on this monumental importance. I consulted seers and oracles, some real, some fraudulent; I called on my friends and counselors to give me advice, then demanded that they justify that advice; I stayed up late into the night studying and strategizing and doing anything I could to ensure that every decision I made was the correct one. If my health and friendships suffered for it, so be it. I had a great burden to bear, a bright future to lead us towards. I had the power, the knowledge, and the will. 

Everything fell apart so suddenly, and yet, looking back on it with eyes trained by these years of obsession, it seemed so obvious. How many paths were open to me which avoided the calamity that followed? I could see them all now that there was no choice but to push through.

enchanted

When you travel far enough from the empire's reach, to the places where they never built their little temples and monasteries, you start seeing little charms and trinkets to make life easier: a charm for mild winters, a charm for health, a charm for a good harvest. And so on, and so on. Officially, of course, they are dangerous and unreliable, as are all enchantments performed without the carefully calculated geomancy that keeps the empire stable. Unofficially . . .

I asked once how they are enchanted, these charms and trinkets, and at first they laughed at me. Another city girl asking foolish questions. But I pressed, and finally one of the locals humored me. They had me help them split firewood, and at the end of the day cooked me a hot meal and gave me a scrap of parchment which said that they owed the bearer a favor.

"How did I enchant this?" they asked me.

"You didn't."

"But you know I'll honor it, right? Even if you traded it off?"

I nodded.

"But probably not if it was stolen, and definitely not if whoever tried to turn it in had offended me in some way." They tossed a wooden charm on the table. "This is a promise. That's all. A useful promise, one people would be willing to trade a lot for--but there isn't really a how to it. A promise was made, a promise will be honored."

Their hand hesitated. "That's a charm to help those who are seeking something lost. If you want it . . ."

I handed the parchment back without thinking and fastened the charm around my neck. It certainly couldn't hurt.

sword

Stealing today's prompt from the year of our lord two thousand seventeen because the word "husky" isn't giving me any good ideas.

It's still dark when I'm finally prepared to leave--early enough, I had hoped, to leave under cover of darkness, but my teacher sleeps light these days. So many of us do. "You're leaving us, then?" she says, and I stop. Her tone is sharp, alert--she's been up. She's been waiting for me.

"I--"

"You have many talents. Subtlety isn't one of them." In the light I can't see her face, but there's a warmth to her words. Very slowly, she rises to her feet. I drop my bags and run to her side--I've seen how it hurts her to walk, since the injury. I don't want that on my conscience. Not now.

Her smile is more than half a wince as she hands me a parcel wrapped in fabric. "My old sword," she says.

She doesn't say anything as I unsheathe it and hold it in my hands. It feels good, even if the blade has seen better days. There's an intensity to her expression that is only amplified by the starlight, and I can't stop feeling like she's waiting for a reaction. "Thank you," I tell her.

She makes a noise of disapproval. "It's not a favor," she says. "But you're determined to be a hero. And who knows? Maybe you'll save us all." She sinks back to her seat, more quickly than I think she meant to. "I hope you will. But I need you to understand, before you leave, that carrying it will cost you."

I try to meet her eye, but I can't. I sheathe the sword, look away, and nod. "I understand," I tell her. "Thank you."

The sword is an awkward weight on my hip as I leave town, constantly reminding me of its presence no matter how I shift it.

build

A,

I hope this letter finds you well. Actually, I hope it finds you at all--if you knew the trouble I went through to find a messenger who seemed like they might be able to find you... anyway, I do hope you're well.

I know we didn't exactly part on good terms, but . . . I'm trying to build something here and it wouldn't be the same without you. Any time we tried something crazy, knowing you had our backs made it feel possible. And right now I need someone to convince me this is possible. We're trying to build a new community out here, somewhere out of reach of the dying empire and all the petty warlords and their dreams of conquest, somewhere built with love and the desire to create instead of claimed with swords and strategies.

There aren't a lot of us, and it's hard work, but everyone is happy to be a part of something. Even me--I can't remember the last time I was able to sit down at the end of the day and look at something and say "I helped build that. That was mine." You and I watched a city drown, survived countless battles, and for how many years now have we been wandering, convinced that war is all we're good for, looking for answers we'll never find? It doesn't have to be that way.

The messenger knows where to find me. I hope to see you soon--and if not, I hope you find what you're looking for. But so long as this village stands, there will be a place for you here. That's a promise.

Yours,
D

freeze

The first hard freeze came too early--one night it was clear and bright and the next morning a thick fog had crept in and coated everything with ice, making the world at once impossibly beautiful and impossibly cold. I was already ill-prepared for the autumn--as I woke shivering in my tent I wasn't sure I'd survive to see nightfall. All the firewood I'd spent most of yesterday gathering was coated in ice, and my tent was frozen stiff as well. No fire, no tent, and all I had left of food was some mushrooms and wild berries I'd gathered on the way in. So I dressed myself as warmly as I could--which was not warm enough--and I left my tent and I walked and promised myself not to stop for anything.

At first the dull monotony of the journey helped keep my mind from focusing on the cold, but then the forest thinned and a bitter wind began to blow and the only thing I could think about was how much it hurt. And then my mind pulled away, and I was somewhere far above, watching this poor miserable creature trudge her way across the icy roads. Her pain was palpable even from my remote vantage, but it was no longer my own. Her fate was no longer mine. I watched her stumble her way into a village, and finally collapse within view of an inn. Perhaps she cried out, or perhaps someone saw her--someone ran out to drag her inside, the poor thing. And then everything went black.

I was more or less myself again when the world returned, wrapped in blankets. Someone had put me in a change of clothes--nothing I owned was this warm--and tucked in some hot water bottles. And someone--a young woman--was watching me. When she was satisfied that I was well enough, she led me to the common room and introduced me to "the regulars." We spent the night just chatting and for once it felt like home.

I shouldn't have stayed. Trouble always found me sooner or later, and I'd rather it happen around strangers than friends. But I tried saying I'd leave, when everyone had gone home and it was just me and her, cleaning up and finishing off a mug of hot cider together, and she wouldn't hear it.

"The roads aren't going to get better from here," she said. "We've got room to spare and could use an extra set of hands around the place. It's going to be a hard winter. Please stay?"

"Until spring," I told her. It's so much easier to stay if you really believe it's only temporary.

bait

After the dust had settled, when the chaos of the collapse had calmed into something more stable, a steady slog of survival, I started getting dreams--dreams where all of us were back together again, where instead of fighting just to survive we were fighting to fix the world. Yes, we'd failed, but in the dreams there was still time to be heroes. The dreams were so clear and so vivid it was hard to imagine they were just the product of my sleeping mind--these were visions. Someone wanted me to go back.

It was, of course, a trap. How could it be anything else? How could anyone imagine that this world could be fixed, after everything we let happen to it? Whatever had sent these visions, it did not have my best interests at heart--the hope it offered was false hope, and whatever fate awaited me if I heeded them was not, I was certain, a happy one.

And yet. The others were still out there somewhere, lost in the chaos, and I had no doubt they had received the visions as well. What if some of them decided to follow, to head back to that dead city? Could we avoid the worst of it if we returned knowing that we were walking into a trap? Was it worth risking everything for a chance to see some of them again, to maybe save them from whatever horrible fate awaited us?

If I was the most sensible of us, and I was considering heeding the visions despite knowing they were a trap, certainly some of the others wouldn't even hesitate. I settled my affairs in town and hit the road once more. No one here would miss me.

mindless

I always thought that what she needed most was loyalty. She had enough enemies and critics to go around--if she wanted me to question every effort she would have asked. So I did what I could to make sure that, whatever goal she set, someone would be there to help achieve it.

I told myself it didn't bother me that in public she met my loyalty with indifference, that she couldn't afford to reveal how much she relied on me. I pretended to understand. And I had almost convinced myself that it didn't hurt every time I found that she had kept some pointless secret from me or hadn't sought help I could easily have provided.

Then she disappeared one summer, without a word. I considered spending the time moping, and discarded the idea as a waste of time--if nothing else, she wouldn't get anything out of it. Carrying on as if everything was normal was, of course, impossible, since "normal" required her presence, so I resolved to find a new normal. I made friends, I fell briefly in love, I took time to myself. The midsummer festival came and, drunk on summer wine and freedom, I talked about her for the first time--about us, really, but it seemed already like I wasn't talking about myself anymore.

When she returned with the first chill of autumn at first I worried my new self would disappear, but when she smiled at me--in private, of course--my will no longer abandoned me. I could look her in the eye, and smile back, and my mind, at last, was my own.

ring

I didn't have many friends, growing up. Plenty of people who admired me, plenty more who wanted to be on my good side, but a true friend, someone I could trust and confide in--those were vanishingly rare. It was a lonely life--but admitting that to anyone, even those few friends I had, could have been catastrophic. I needed to project perfect confidence at all times.

Sometimes it was easy. Other times, not so much. One one of those occasions, one of those friends--my oldest, truest friend, the one I knew would stay with me through any danger, whose loyalty was absolute--gave me a little ring. She had carved it out of pinewood, given it a simple floral pattern, and on the band carved our initials. "So whenever you feel like you're alone in this world," she said, "you can remember that you have me." I was wealthy enough that I tended not to care much about my possessions, especially when I was so young, but when I promised I would treasure that ring forever I meant it. I kept it on a silver chain around my neck and wore it everywhere.

A few years before . . . everything else happened, I was traveling far from home, traveling with only two guards as an escort--a mistake, in retrospect, but back then I felt so invulnerable. There were problems in the world, of course, but nothing could stop me. The future was so bright. We were robbed on the road, and no matter how I pleaded they wouldn't let me keep that ring. They took it along with everything else of value that we carried.

Having something stolen from you, something you care about, is a jarring experience. The world suddenly seems sharper, everything you thought was a soft surface or rounded edge suddenly becomes suspect, and you feel like somehow you are diminished by the experience. My friend consoled me as well as she could, but I had invested so much hope in that little ring. Somehow without it I knew that bright future I was so certain of before would be forever out of reach now.

Part of me knows that's nonsense, of course. That everything that happened after wasn't because some thieves saw an easy target, that when she finally betrayed me, along with everyone else, it had nothing to do with losing that little ring that bound us together. But I can't help but wonder if things could have been different.

unlikely

We used to believe, the two of us, in that perfect star-crossed connection, some unlikely story bringing us together with our respective loves--it didn't have to be a big thing, of course, but something cute you could tell your friends. We took the same bus every Thursday and then we saw each other at a bar on the completely other end of town and we hit it off. We ran into each other at a concert and there was a spark there, but she disappeared while I was at the coat check, but then I saw the same band at the same venue five years later and there she was, smiling. And so on. The little things that tell the world: this was fate.

And I know a part of both of us still wants that world to exist, of course, but just as obviously the world can't work like that. It's too dark out there for whimsy, even if the nights are perfect at this time of year, when the heat of the summer starts to fade and those first chills of autumn creep in and the stars are so bright and clear.

We both had a few relationships like that in our time, where everything seemed so unlikely and perfect right up until everyone involved realized that coincidence is a flimsy foundation on which to build anything, even if at the time it feels so important.

Maybe it is important. Maybe it's us who have gotten too grim for this world, too serious, too afraid to leap into the unknown based on nothing but that overwhelming feeling that this is too unlikely to ignore. I've been wrong before.

What I know is this: we've spent the evening wistfully lamenting our naivety over some cheap beer left over from someone else's party. How foolish we were back then, and how fortunate to be so foolish. If only we could go back to do it all over again, would we? And if we did, would we make different choices, or relive them all over again? If we were fools then, were we still fools now?

When we were younger it would have been wine or coffee or something we thought was romantic or at least poetic, and we would have thought there were answers to these questions. Of this much, at least, I am certain: the world will never provide answers.

As we stood on the porch, we brushed against each other several times, each one of us daring the other to make a move after so many years of searching for magic elsewhere--but perhaps there's still some of that youthful idealism left in us. We're not nearly unlikely enough.

scenes from a dying empire

She is pacing again, anxious again, frustrated again--I feel trapped is what she told me, and I wanted to tell her I understood but I'm not sure I do. I wanted to tell her I could help but I can't. All I can do is watch, and listen. I'd offer a shoulder to cry on but she doesn't like being touched. She is my friend and she is suffering and there is nothing I can do about it.

(She has told me so many times you are helping just by being there and it is sweet of her to think of my feelings even at a time like this. It breaks my heart, but it's sweet.)

We used to come up here sometimes, when the days were getting long and the nights were just warm enough, to get away from it all, to leave behind who we were by day and just be us, whoever we were. I'm not sure either of us knew. It was a place of comfort then; now we mostly come up here when the world is too much. A place to worry. I hate that I'm starting to dread coming up here. I think she is, too, which doesn't help. This was our place.

She stops pacing, looks at me, and sort of freezes. Like she wants to say something, or scream, or keep pacing, but she can't. Her hands clench and twitch and finally she turns away and says it's too much. It's too big.

And at first I don't understand but--of course. I've been feeling it too, I think. Once, a long time ago, there were places where it wasn't encroaching. It being--hmm. The death throes of a dying empire? But there is so much else. It's not just overwhelming because of how vast it is, but because of how minuscule, how trivial. Even the trivial has been devoured by this creeping sense of--

--of being trapped.

She sees the understanding in my face, smiles a bittersweet smile, and tells me I don't know how much longer I can do this. My breath catches, but you're here. That's enough.

At least at night everything is peaceful. The city is asleep, the stars are shining, and if we must be prisoners here, at least we are here together.

golden

The trails were oddly empty this weekend, when we got up early--as early as we could, eager to beat the holiday weekend crowds. We hiked the first part of the trail in darkness, and at first we were certain that it was empty because, somehow, we were the first ones to arrive. But there was no one, just a few people returning from their own trips. No new day hikers or backpackers. Just us and the mountains and the woods. The weather was magnificent, the mountains were beautiful; it seemed nothing short of a miracle how perfect the trip was, how alone we were out here. Such a marked contrast to the constant noise and static of the city.

It wasn't until we tried to return home that we understood: we were alone because we were the last ones to leave. The city fell silent after we left, and the suburbs and small towns followed shortly after. No one online knew what caused it, before online fell silent, too. So we turned around and headed back.

We can't survive out here forever. Even if we can find enough forage to live on, the winter will come and we aren't prepared. But it was beautiful, and if the silence takes us here, at least it will be someplace too beautiful to be believed.

a diptych of poems

ELEGY FOR A SUNKEN CITY
The city seemed so empty
when you weren't here.
I promised I'd return, didn't I?
Didn't I promise I'd rescue you?
But I fought my way back
to our city,
our home,
and there was nothing left but silence.

Of course I drowned it.
Of course I shattered the floodbanks--
they are,
after all,
my floodbanks, because this city
is mine,
and there is nothing here
worth saving
without you.
They said you'd left
so I did what I had to.
I let the ocean
reclaim her own.

Perhaps they'll remember me as a hero:
perhaps, as the waves crash through the marble streets,
they'll tell themselves stories
of how I sacrificed my city to save the world.
But I didn't. I sacrificed it because
I hoped I'd drown with it.

The waves are calm now,
the screams of my city finally silenced.
It's oddly peaceful,
here alone with the gulls
and my thoughts
in the dead city beneath the sea.
I hope you'll come back home.



ANOTHER CASTLE
You promised me, when you fled,
you'd come back and rescue me.
I never promised I'd wait.
Did you think I would?

I have no time for you to lead your armies
to glorious victory, nor to
defeat my captors in single combat.
I know this prison better than
I know myself.
Did you think it would
hold me?
Did you hope it would?

Life, I'm afraid, is not so glamorous:
no one will thank you for your conquests.
No one will sing your triumphs.
I never asked for war in my name,
for blood to be spilt on my behalf.
I was never going to stay
and you,
my love,
were never a hero.

scenes from a cyberpunk road story, pt. ii

It's just cold by the time we get to New York, the kind of cold where the air burns your lungs even as the sun shines down on you with false promises of warmth. This is the kind of cold that kills.

I do not own a heavy enough jacket for this.

Still, even though Morgan says her sister has taken care of the surveillance to make sure nobody notices that we're here, it's a good opportunity to slip into town unnoticed. There are ways to identify someone who's bundled up for winter, but they don't use that sort of tech for casual surveillance, and I don't think anyone's looking for us here just yet.

Morgan's driving, because this is her town, even if she hates it. But she navigates like she knows it, and pulls into the parking lot of some building I instinctively think is too nice. These places aren't for people like us--well, people like me.

The woman waiting for us looks like Morgan if she were a little taller and a little thinner and a lot more interested in fashion. Morgan's parka is a dingy black thing, warm and functional and street-stylish. This woman's navy blue coat dress is the sort of designer brand that only even sells to corporate royalty. Somehow simultaneously understated and ostentatious.

"I like your jacket," she tells me. "I'm Elizabeth. I'm sorry that my sister has forgotten her manners."

"Nora," I say. "Thank you." Then, because I feel like she's expecting something more, "It's not the best jacket for winter. It doesn't get that cold where I grew up."

"I'll find something for you," she says cheerfully. "You two are popular right now, did you know?"

***

We've been reported as missing, as it turns out, which only means someone wants to find us and doesn't want to have to deal with cops. But whoever put out the bulletin had enough influence to make sure our faces were on every news report in the New England Commerce Zone and a good number of them in New York, which was . . . troublesome.

"It would be much easier to make that disappear if it were an arrest warrant," Elizabeth tells us as she pours us wine that costs more than I spend on food in a month. "Bribes are easy. Making this disappear is going to be hard."

"There's contact info, right?" asks Morgan. "I assume that's a dead end?"

Elizabeth nods her head. "They covered their tracks well."

"But you have a plan."

"But I have a plan." She claps her hands--an affectation, I imagine, both to draw attention to her state-of-the-art cyberhands and to disguise that she is simply sending a command to the drone that walks in, holding aloft a sleeveless dress in black and white. "There's no shortage of high society functions in winter--all the better to stave off madness, I imagine. Stay here for a while, make some appearances. Make it look like you're here to stay. Whoever's looking for you will know you're here, but Morgan the scruffy drifter is a much easier target than Morgan the corporate heiress. If they do make their move, we'll be ready."

I can tell Morgan doesn't like this plan, but I can also tell she's going to say yes. But I'm not sure how I fit in yet. "What about me?"

"What about you? We take your measurements, get you a wardrobe. So long as it's clear you're with us, no one will dare question whether you belong." And then she smiles brightly. "It'll be fun, I promise. And you'll be out of here before you know it and back to your glamorous vagabond lifestyle or whatever it is you two are doing." Her smile takes on a slight edge. "Which M will have to tell me about sometime."

Morgan sighs. "Yeah. Soon, I promise. Not yet." A long pause. "All right. I know you're only doing this because you miss having a tag team partner at these insufferable parties, but all right. But if we're staying still for a week you're doing more than helping us find dresses."

"Of course. And Nora?"

I shrug. "If Morgan's in, I'm in."

"Excellent." She beams at me. "I promise you will not be disappointed."

Maybe we've been on the road too long, maybe Elizabeth's enthusiasm is infectious, but for now, at least, I'm starting to feel pretty good.

scenes from a cyberpunk road story, pt. i

In no order.

It's harder than I thought it would be, leaving New York behind again. It's so easy to feel like home is this awful place when you're not there, to say you hate who you were there, you hate all your friends there. But I miss it. I miss when El and I were an unstoppable team.

Which means she was right, of course. She's always fucking right. I miss that, too.

Nora's driving again, because she likes it and she's better at it, but she keeps glancing at me. There's a question there, an unspoken "Are you okay?"--unspoken because Nora never says anything when she doesn't have to, and she knows I know.

"Home is like a glimpse into another timeline. A life where I never . . ." Here I sort of gesture with my cybernetic hand, because in many ways when I lost that I lost everything. "I spend so much time convincing myself I'm happier where life ended up taking me, but that's a fucking lie. You know? I loved it. And not just because my sister's still there."

She nods. "Would you go back, if you could?"

I hesitate, partly because I'm not sure I know the answer, partly because of the other reason leaving is so hard: because that's not such a hypothetical now. "Only if you can come with me," I tell her, and I'm not sure if it's just idle flattery or if I really mean it.

She nods again. Maybe she's not sure, either. Or maybe she's just processing. Either way, we ride together in silence for a while before she says, "You hungry?"

***

The food at these roadside diners is starting to taste like home, and I'm starting to realize that home is complicated. Home is the shitty apartment in Boston we abandoned when we skipped town just after Christmas. Home is scheming with El at New York high society functions, rubbing elbows with some of the worst people imaginable. And now, maybe, it's the road, all the greasy food and the shitty small towns and all the small town people sneering at the two girls from out of town.

Maybe home is just what happens when you finally get used to not fitting in.

"It's funny," I say, while Nora picks away at what's left of her fries. "When we got to New York I was sick to death of diner food. We spend a few days eating, you know, real food, objectively good food, rich people food, and after that suddenly this is fucking amazing."

"It tastes like adventure," she says. She sounds thoughtful. "Back when--when I was young, and we'd go on these long trips to nowhere because the eastern CCZ is nothing but nowhere, miles and miles and miles of it. We'd stop in at the truck stop outside town or some other diner or burger place and drink too much coffee and eat too many fries and then just drive, and it was wonderful. It was the only good thing about that place, and I miss it so much." She offers me something of a sheepish smile, then falls back to her customary silence.

"You can never quite leave home behind," I say. "No matter where you go it will follow you there."

She nods again.

"So. Do we keep driving or try to find a place here?"

what a fucking year

What a fucking year.

There wasn't a lot of room 2018 for hope or optimism or on some days enough energy to do anything besides get out of bed and go to work. But we made it. The calendar changed a digit, and people complain about how insignificant that is, but it's not. Every time you live to see that digit change it means you've lived another year, no matter how hard it gets. And sometimes that's something to be proud of.

I can't say with conviction that 2019 is going to be any better. But for me, at least, the new year has always been a time to regroup, to gather my strength, because whether you're ready or not, another year is coming. Sometimes you have to fight to stay afloat, and other times everything seems so perfect you wonder if you're dreaming.

I hope 2019 is the latter for you, but if not, just remember: none of us are alone out here, even if it feels like it. And remember that it's okay to be tired and it's okay to feel like it's hopeless. Just hang in there and we'll survive this together.