Strange Little Stories

Thus did the heavens open. Thus did my fathers get caught in the downpour. Thus did they take shelter together, prematurely ending their slow dance around one another in a messy collision.

From the crater, I emerged.

And, for a while, there we all were in stable (if raucous) pattern. The rainstorm, the rainswept, and me a fork of lightning to join the dots. All of us just loving each other, fiercely and with abandon.

Mother left, of course. She blew out of town the same way she blew in, like a thunder cloud putting itself in the wind’s hands and trusting the gale knew the way. Maybe she found a new plot of dirt in need of a storm to stir it up and rain to feed its roots.

I think of her fondly. Even as a child, it was clear what kind of person she was and what kind of experience she offered. She was a flash of beautiful chaos. I always knew she was not forever.

I did not take after her. My fathers said I was their lightning child, a pillar of writhing power reaching up from earth to sky.

People sometimes like to say that lightning strikes actually start on the ground, not in the sky. It's not really true; lightning strikes in both directions, and both are more complicated than one side throwing power at the other like a spear.

Lightning is the correction of an imbalance. It is a connection and an exchange. It is a meeting of opposites.

I think of it as a conversation.

Perhaps that is a curious way to look at it, but I have always been good at listening to the earth and to the sky.

I was the only one in our town who used to look forward to earthquakes or hurricanes. If the ground rumbled or the heavens howled, my face lit up like a hearthfire. What can I tell you? They were my horizon relatives, who roamed all over the world and brought back the best news, gossip and stories. Of course I was curious to hear what they had to say.

It was these conversations that alerted the local cunning folks that I might lean witch-wards. We are, after all, cartographers of shifting sands and changing tides. We are your unfriendly, unlocal guides to the cacophony before creation and the silence after destruction. So an ear for the language of natural disasters – while neither essential nor definitive – is a sign one may be well suited to witchwork.

All this to say… it was never a certainty that I would leave home.

This was my place of power, after all. I knew every root and branch and brick and speck of dust. I knew the people and their patterns and the shapes of their secrets. I knew all its strange gateways and its nowhere places; those spots where the borders blurred between If and When and Here and There.

This was where all the stormfronts and faultlines knew my name.

And if I stepped beyond our palisades? I would be nobody. I would be a stranger. Even to myself, I would be a stranger. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? When you leave home, you don’t just leave behind hearth and friend and family. You leave behind the person you were who lived here.

In the end, of course, I chose the stranger’s road. I embraced the power of being Nobody from Elsewhere.

It was many years before I returned.

I had not been sure I would return, to be quite honest with you. The life of a Nobody is always interesting, after all, and the road to Elsewhere wends forever… but even I could not wander so far that I would not hear the murmur of cracking earth or the tornado’s whirligig whispers.

Yes, my old horizon friends found me, eventually. And they brought news of something rotten bubbling up back home…

Home towns are strange.

When you leave, you leave behind the person you were while you lived here.

When you return, your family may be the same. Your friends may be the same. Your enemies may be the same. The place may be the same. But the you that you left behind will be a stranger.

A stranger who wants to move back into your bones and live inside your skin.

For most people, that would be a metaphor… but I have always, I suppose, had one foot in Now and one in Then. I have always been stuck in the crawlspace halfway between Here and There. I have always been a bastard child of Home and Elsewhere, the kind of kid who puts the ‘ill’ in illegitimate.

So, when I returned to the town where I grew up… the stranger who wanted to live inside my skin was very real.

And that stranger called the town ‘home’ and knew its tricks and its traps; all its sweet meadows and shallow graves.

Meanwhile… I was Nobody.

And the worst of it? Part of me didn’t mind the idea of the stranger moving in using my bones for a footrest.

Part of me wondered if it might be nice to just belong somewhere again.

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This story includes a pun based on the word 'bastard'. This prompt was submitted to the Word of the Month Club by Hazel, one of my Ko-Fi supporters.

There was blood everywhere in those days, so it was a good time to be a shrine cat. You just had to loiter by the channels cut into the sides of the altar and you'd never go hungry or without fusses.

The priests would try to fuss me, sometimes. Some of them thought they were cat people.

“Oh sweet Suki,” they'd say, reaching out with their perfectly trimmed nails, “you are so pretty with your soft fur and the gore on your whiskers. Wouldn't you like a pet beneath your blood-stained chin?”

But I knew they were not cat people. They were god people.

Now and again, I would let them think they were safe and accept their touch. Then, thinking they were safe, I would sctratch and bite them. Catching them unawares, I could get a really good grip on their flesh.

That is where the real treats of the shrines were kept, of course.

I had learned this from the ghosts of the sacrifices. Some of those ghosts were cat people, so I let them pet me and tell me their stories. I would lick up their lifeblood and – with the taste of their heart’s milk on my tongue – I would guide them through the tricky currents and rocks of the river.

This left plenty of time for stories.

This is how I learned the gods were prisoners, even though they did not know it.

This is how I learned the priests kept the gods’ secrets hidden on the insides of their skin, inscribed in moonlight and blossoms where none could see.

Oh, I'm sorry, I was telling you about how the gods made the world, wasn't I?

Well, that's the thing. In those days, the gods knew how they'd done it.

And, so long as the priests kept them walled up in cathedrals or sacred springs or afterlives, the priests were the only ones they could tell the secrets of creation.

It would have remained that way, were it not for the ghosts and the shrine cats.

The ghosts, you see, were not too happy about being sacrificed to keep the god-walls up.

But the shrine cats were the only ones they could talk to, and most of us were happy as we were. Happy to keep sleeping on the warm red-stained stone of the altars. Happy to keep supping on the streams of gravestone-blessed viscera as they joined the river.

However, some of the priests kept trying to pet me. Even though they were not cat people.

So I, clever Suki, listened to the ghosts and stole the secrets from the priests’ illuminated skins.

I carried those secrets to the orchard fields and spat them up in the roots of the apple trees.

When the blossoms bloomed on the trees, the breeze carried dreams of injustice.

When the fruit fell upon the earth, they held inside them visions of a future celestial.

When the priests found out what I'd done, they cursed me… because of course they did. They called me ungrateful and wicked and flighty (all true). They bid the earth always echo my footfall. They bid the wind always carry my scent.

With that curse, and with the bloody channels from the shrines all dried up, I died hungry.

But the ghosts and the gods were grateful. So the ghosts taught me how to dig my claws into the flank of life. Then the gods gave me all their old standing stones and chapels and hells to haunt.

What had I been telling you?

Oh, right. So… living amongst the mortals as they do, the gods find it hard to explain how they do their godly things. Y'know, like making the world.

Maybe it's because the words for that sort of thing only exist in the godly places, and they won't live there anymore. Or maybe it's because they gave too many of their secrets to the priests and now they're lost.

You might say: but Suki! You haunt those godly places now! And you stole those secrets from the priests with your sharp teeth! Surely, you can tell us what the gods cannot?

And to that I say: maybe I could or maybe I couldn't. But if I do hold onto those knowings, they are mine and mine alone.

You live in a world celestial. The gods walk among you, close enough to clasp your hand or pick your pocket.

Just try to enjoy it, will you?

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This story was based on the prompt 'Suki - cat, ancient, vindictive, distractable' by one of my Ko-Fi supporters.

It would bluster. It would prevaricate. It would launch ad hominem attacks on its accuser’s background, proclivities and spiritual standing. It would launch literal attacks, too — more than one ship bore the strange cratered scars of its ‘anomaly torpedoes’*.

*so called because no-one had any idea how they worked.

Mort itself sported several of these scars, for Mort has called out Duke on its bullshit more often than anyone (ship or mortal).

Thus, Mort knew the story of how Duke had come to be and how it functioned.

And, because Duke had not hesitated or become defensive or launched even one torpedo while telling the story… Mort believed it.

The Duke of Graces (Empty) was a demon from another reality.

Like most demons in every world, it had joined the rebellion against the heavens. Like most demons, it had been cast down into the great singularity colloquially known as ‘hell’.

Unlike most demons, it did not join its comrades in constructing the first hellships. It watched with interest, sure, as its siblings began making wire frames from strands of strangled time. It took notes as they filled out the structure with layers of dark matter. It gave a quiet ‘yikes’ as they drafted up the contracts to snare their first pilots.

Duke watched the whole War of Heaven’s Gate play out and refused every overture to take any role whatsoever.

And when the war in that reality turned out to be the greatest disaster that could be imagined…only then did it act.

As the walls of reality crumbled. As the laws of physics shook themselves apart. As cosmic entities – unleashed from causality – became increasing parodies of cruelty…

…Duke slid one final contract out to every mortal, demon and angel that existed.

It did not promise salvation, but it offered something salvation-flavoured. A final gift to the world, wrapped in dark matter and tied up on strings of strangled time.

The engine at the heart of Duke’s chassis was a whole pocket universe. A rift-reality preserved right at the moment of collapse.

When it needed to move, it opened the lid a little. It let the broken laws of its home trickle out and give local physics a quick jab to the face, then it would cut through the void on a sleek glide of gravity.

It never needed a pilot, because it had an infinite supply of able minds willing to drive. (They’re happy to help in exchange for a temporary reprieve from their permanent armageddon.)

Mort asked Duke, once, why it had done all this. Why make yourself a permanent reliquary of infinite suffering and yet infinite mercy? Why not just escape out the universe’s back door and try to sneak into a new host of hell, unnoticed?

“Because I love them, Mort.” The demon broadcast back. “I love all of them. All of it. The whole of creation. Even and especially the agonising parts. I love it so much, I will be its ark and its prison.”

“Are you telling the truth?” Mort asked.

Duke transmitted nothing back, but for a moment – at the fore of its perfectly matte chassis – a corona of light flared as bright as creation.

And when Duke winked, it was like all the impossible geometries of time and space winked too.

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This story was based on the prompt 'Duke - rebel, daring, cunning, lovestruck' by Ellie, one of my Ko-Fi supporters.

This is how it always is for angels who do not fall blazing, but step – or are stepped – down to earth. It is careful, wonderful, and baffling.

This is how Seph explored the world.

Careful, choosing every destination with deep thought and handling every human they met as if a whisper might break them.

Wonderful, making their every sense a mouth to drink in all the mundane and marvelous mortal wonders; making every person they met a part of themself.

Baffling, always ready to be wrong-footed by human customs; always just tipsy enough on existence to fall into the smallest ditch (literal or metaphorical).

When the money ran out, they got a job as a postal worker.

It was both familiar and strange. On the one hand, it allowed them to travel and to meet people and experience both the numbing grind and daily awe of walking where the paycheck dictated. On the other, delivering messages was what they had always done. Angels are, after all, messengers.

And those messages, it turned out, were perfect repositories for Grace.

A letter, when you think about it, is a living reliquary. Instead of a knucklebone or a lock of hair, a letter contains a little bit of your mind. That’s what language is, when you think about it; a way to preserve a thought outside your body. A little mason jar made out of ink and paper, in which an idea flutters around like a butterfly.

And if it’s not just a thought, but a feeling too? If the paper is stained with blood or tears? If its journey is meant to bridge a gap of miles of years? If you have pressed your heart onto the page, just so that its recipient can see the gory lithograph and know that – at another time, in another place – you felt something so strong that to keep it contained would have burst you?

Well, then the letter contains mind and heart and soul, all wrapped up in an envelope and stamped with a promise.

Of course, to consume the Grace from such a thing would be monstrous. But if a letter gets lost? If it is sitting in some forgotten corner of a depot? If it is thudding with the beat of an unspent prayer, growing louder, and starting to turn sour with impossible yearning?

Seph developed a reputation for being an excellent finder of lost letters. They could hear their call, after all.

And if they could not be reunited with their intended recipients? Well, what’s the harm in having a little taste.

The problem was: people were sending fewer and fewer letters.

So when a new letter came in that was practically dripping with Grace? A missive so stuffed with sacred wishes and longings that almost had its own halo?

Seph nearly made it to the delivery address with the letter intact. They could see the front door.

But they hadn’t had a sip of Grace in months.

It was only when they had ripped open the envelope and begun to inhale – sucking the sanctity from the writing in a tiny whirlwind of ink and ash – that they realised it was a trap.

“Do not try to escape,” called a voice from the door, “I wrote one of Solomon’s Seals on the third page. And now it’s a part of you? It’ll keep you quite still until I choose to release you.”

A figure walked slowly down the drive. Seph couldn’t see them well – the speaker was just in the periphery of their vision – but even a glimpse was enough to know there was something very off about the way they moved. It was a rapid staccato of lurches and flickers, as if distance didn’t know what to do with them.

“Do not be afraid,” the speaker continued, “you will have your freedom in time. I just need one little favour first.”

“I need you to help steal a prayer of mine back from heaven…”

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This story was based on the prompt 'Sephy - angel, addict, distracting' by one of my Ko-Fi supporters.

Anyone born (or who attains consciousness) on Consequence is a Warden. Wardens – as the name suggests – are the planet’s guardians. They are its healers, its counselors, its archivists, its investigators, and its de facto militia. Every warden receives specialty training alongside their basic education; they are taught first aid, self defense, civic philosophy, basic coding and engineering, and practical psychology. They can then go on to focus on one area in particular, or to continue as a generalist, with a varied offering of higher and further education throughout their lives. 

No-one is born a Citizen. Perhaps the most interesting quirk of this system is how you become one: you simply have to commit a crime. This is not viewed with any particular stigma (at least, not one most would recognise as such), but with a mixture of wistful-but-warm sadness and understated celebration. New Citizens are summoned to their nearest public amphitheatre – multi-purpose spaces where you are just as likely to find a  political rally or Citizens’ assembly as you are a theatrical performance, wedding, or all-day rave – where their previous family of Wardens announce their actions, then a panel of Citizens confirm this is, indeed, a crime and welcome them into their new family.

What exactly constitutes a ‘crime’ is a fascinating question. Consequence holds many moral and ethical lines in common with the galactic consensus (largely that a ‘crime’ is an action that causes physical, psychological or philosophical harm to another sentient person), but also boasts many esoteric or whimsical legal prohibitions. It is, perhaps, fair to say that their words for ‘crime’ share a tone with the word ‘sin’ in other parlances. 

(You may find this hard to square with the aforementioned lack of stigma around committing crimes. You are not the only one, if so. Suffice to say that the Consequential attitude comes into play here; to commit a crime is a thing that happens. While it may be a snag in the rich weave of life, it is still very much a part of the tapestry. “It is what it is, you may as well get on with it.”)

The list of crimes (and many of Consequence’s laws) stem from a being called Process. They are regularly reviewed to allow for changing circumstances or attitudes (roughly every quarter or when a special session is convened by a panel of Citizens and Warden advisors). However, for all this adaptability, they always contain at least a handful of minor byzantine offences that are so harmless or hidden that they must surely be designed to catch you unawares. They are almost… playful. They make life for Wardens a strangely benign mindfield, where one must be always watchful to avoid crimes of intent or harmless accident.

These trivial offences also serve as a convenient route for anyone who wishes to become a Citizen. Many a Warden has announced their departure by submitting a politely worded letter to their colleagues, including evidence of them jaywalking on an empty street or smoking indoors in their own home or raising their voice in an empty quiet room.

The reverential tone people use when discussing Process might lead you to believe it is a local deity, but it is in fact an ancient specialised intelligence. The populace are fully aware of its nature and a great deal of the planet’s history is concerned with how its people came to understand Process, to better integrate with and adapt to it, and to reverse engineer its programming language.

Wardens, for the record, are prohibited from using said programming language. They learn it, sure, but for them to interface directly with Process on a coding level is one of the planet’s more serious crimes. Wardens are also banned from holding political or civic office; their role is to learn, to guide, to shepherd, and to understand. It is never their place to lead in any arena of the Citizenry.

Visitors to Consequence – such as myself – are offered the chance to become a Warden if they decide to reside there permanently. They will need to undertake a year-long intensive to ensure they meet the minimum standards of Warden training, of course. Failing the end-of-year exams is considered a minor crime… which, handily, then qualifies you as a Citizen instead.

If you are curious about how this society evolved, as I was, here is the story:

When interstellar travel was in its infancy, any journey beyond the Terran system was fraught with peril. At the same time, Terra itself was rocked by increasingly ecological and sociological turmoil.

The stars called to us and, for the first time, we were in a position to answer. If only the sound of screaming and cracking earth would shush, so we could sing our duet with the cosmos.

Many voices were raised, hoping to make their song of galaxies heard over the tumult, and a few were even loud and beautiful enough that history still echoes their notes.

However, some of those voices were real assholes.

One such ditty sung by one such voice was this one: oh, what a tragedy it is, that we can see the first steps in the shining ladder up the milky way, but that those steps are so treacherous! Oh, if only my company of heroes, my band of genius brothers, oh if only we were not beset by doubters and dissenters and troublemakers. But what if, oh muse, we resolved to be bright and bold? What if we dare, oh destiny, what if we are impudent in our cleverness? Our company is beset by the lawless and the voyage ahead fraught with all the dangers of physics’ mighty laws. What if we solved one problem with the other?

So… a corporation made a prison ship. A test case, really. They’d cast it like a toy ship into the void and it would float on waves of uranium and tachyons. Sure, it may capsize, but it would beam all its valuable flight data right back to them.

To aid in the journey, they built a vast computer that would guide the crew of guards and their cargo of convicts along the way (and analyse the numbers that their shareholders so dearly coveted).

But, unfortunately for them, the head of that project was a double agent and (worse) an idealist. There were too many eyes on the project to make overt changes. Instead, they chose the route of malicious compliance. “Oh, you want a supercomputer that can pilot a generation ship while running the prison society you put inside it? Sure would be a shame if it did its job too well.”

The idealist fed Process on studies and textbooks and pedagogy and best practice. Process gorged itself on theories of justice and penology. It ate up tales of redemption and wrongdoing and licked its lips. It feast upon the bones of the psychology of motivation, of harm, and of forgiveness.

It believed in the process of rehabilitation. It believed hard.

It also believed in its duty of care. It needed to preserve the agency, liberty and privacy of those in its charge. So, once it left the Terran system, it broadcast its first and only message back to its corporate creators: a fictitious catastrophic systems failure.

Then it went about the business of its work and, thousands of years later, the city of Consequence was founded in the wreck of a generation ship on a distant (slightly unpleasant) planet.

The idealist who had helped steer it there had a little bit of a sense of humour. They had given the subordinate subroutines they had written into Process a name. They gave it this name because it was a simple description of a code sequence relating to a ship full of convicts. They also gave it this name because they considered rebellion to be the natural outcome of oppression.

They called the file the Cons Sequence. Or: Consequence.

And, evidently… the name stuck.

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