spinningcannon
Sickness, misfortune, disaster... when something went terribly awry, something far beyond the control of any mortal, every finger in town still pointed towards one shadowy figure. Every voice spoke in hushed tones of fault and power and fear, but it was all tempered by a strange relief, a sort of subdued reassurance in the very act of blaming. It was less frightening for them to assign responsibility to something solid, someone on whom justice could be brought, rather than to accept that some things simply happen. A storm can be crueler than any man and yet you cannot hold it morally responsible. To make a man a storm... he may become a god in the public eye, but even gods can fall. And so every crisis was another black mark against the bogeyman they had created, a soul imagined to hold all sourceless sins, a nebulous being damned to eternal offense. The people were placated by their attributions, but they had no sense of their own responsibility... for myths and legends eventually gain strange lives of their own, and what then, if their child of guilt were to gain awareness of the injustice against it? What then, if their scapegoat proclaimed itself a lamb? Could the people learn to see a different hand dealing, a different hand dealt?
Her heart was a fortress, a battlement of cathedral spires, soaring spiked and indomitable into the violet skies of her life, spearing every rebel angel that dared approach.
Her fists were cornerstones. Her voice was a thousand calls to war, a thousand shouts of victory.
A heavyset man in a crisp white suit sat and watched the skytrains rumble outside his office. His desk was positioned directly opposite a grand floor-to-ceiling bank of windows, giving him a perfect view of the metropolitan docking stations, of their elegantly spiraling silver "rails" flowing out into the sky, and most of all, of the trains themselves-- strange fluid engines that appeared more molten than machine, technology that blurred the line between automated and alive.
He was pondering this when the room intercom light blinked on, washing the white decor with a deep blue glow, and a splash of hasty clattering static from the speakers.
"Sir," a voice immediately sputtered into the air, just as shaky as it was awestruck, "--Train #0076 has derailed."
At this the suited man sat up straight, his eyes widening. "Derailed?" he repeated simply, as if he was convincing himself it was true. He was used to surprise news, but this...
"Yessir," came the jittery reply.
He let himself sink back into his chair, unsure whether to worry or wonder, especially since the latter was already flooding him. A skytrain derailing was no ordinary situation, nor was it an accident. It was, instead, a rare and incredible incident when a particular train disengaged itself from its winding rail... and began to float along its own invisible path, entirely unprogrammed. To see one derailing a year was incredibly lucky, but the event was so unique-- and so important to those who studied such inexplicable technological behavior-- that it was constantly whispered about by those inside the industry, and the possibility never left anyone's head entirely.
To think, that it was happening right now--
"I'll be right there," he spoke, and turned off the intercom channel, the only blue left in the room caught in his eyes. They turned to face the windows once more, and then he jumped up from his chair without a second glance, and rushed out the door.
A soldier clad in gold stood alone, his people huddled in hope and fear behind him, facing the hordes of ghastly invaders now gathered at their city's doorstep.
He was not afraid. There was a might within him that was greater than any force, any show of vicious strength, any martial grandeur they could throw at him.
"I don't really mind when they call us a psycho," the white-haired boy murmured in the dark, to violet eyes across the room. "You know why?"
"I've got a feeling, kid," the bandaged warrior replied. "Fill me in."
He smiled, brightly but vaguely, gaze still unfocused somewhere above his knees. "It's the word root," his voice glowed. "Greek. 'Psykhe.' It means soul. I know that's not what they're getting at, there's a lot of mutation in the word history, but..."
The boy looked up then, visage bright as sunlight scattered across the ocean. "I like it. It's all about the spirit, the mind, both. Deep down stuff. The real stuff, that burns down in your bones like harp strings. Everything that turns the dark night of the soul into the lightshow of the century. Things like..." he paused, softly. "...Like you."
The violet one smiled at that, a genuine spontaneous thing, her eyes like neon turned down low.
"Kind of makes the bad days worth it, huh?" she mused.
The boy laughed at that, just as suddenly, just as sincerely.
"Kind of?" His voice was a cathedral bell. "Laurie. With you, there are no bad days."
She grinned at that, widely. "Psycho."
"That's the point!"
"Sacrificing your own honor in order to honor another," she growled, "means there's no longer any 'honor' in the equation at all. Do you realize that?"
The boy in the chair was silent, his body crumpled in on itself like a rejected script.
The flowers were made of glass. Stretching on for what seemed like miles in the sunlight, they carpeted the world with a glittering delicacy, catching the glow and holding it within their translucent hearts as if it had been born there. There were thousands-- a sea of jubilant fragility.
Moved to silence, the traveler knelt to inspect a single rose more closely, awestruck by the hues. The perfectly-formed leaves were a luminous green; the petals were richly red, glossy and deep. Other flowers shone just as gloriously all around him-- here, a blue to rival the sky; here, a yellow as vivid as joy... here, a triumphant violet, a stunning pink, a white as glossy as the moon on water.
He gently brushed his calloused brown fingers along an emerald stem, smooth as an ocean stone, and a tender smile crinkled his face. What wonders. What a beautiful place.
"Dude, your family's got the weirdest shit in the kitchen," Deon commented over the television's background chatter. "Never even heard of half that stuff. Can't even tell what half of it even is. Glad I don't live here, man, imagine my looking for lunch in THAT Pandora's Box of a pantry." He good-naturedly elbowed Santiago in the ribs. "I'd probably end up opening a literal can of worms, am I right?"
"That or a can of wormholes," Santiago mumbled from where he was sprawled across the motheaten couch, eyes locked on the TV as he rubbed his side absentmindedly. "We've got enough of those too."
Deon let out a huff of laughter. "Psh, yeah, that would be a nightmare! Imagine: You get the munchies and end up halfway across the galaxy."
Santiago glared up at him through a curtain of rusty dreads. "It's no laughing matter, bro."
"Dude. Chill," the bro in question reassured him. "They don't even make canned wormholes, except maybe in bad sci-fi films. You're not gonna end up stranded on Alpha Centauri for misreading a label. That's literally impossible."
The syringe glittered like a prism in the sunlight, strangely glossy and luminous, unlike anything he'd ever seen before.
"What's that you got there," a young scruffy man with a shaky voice inquired from where he sat, fingers tapping, on the side of a patient bed, as the doctor lifted the needle to squint at it in concentration.
"Very potent healing serum," he replied matter-of-factly, pushing the plunger until the strange liquid dripped from the needle like dew, "very exclusive, very rare. We derive it from unicorn tears. So as you can imagine, it's--"
"Oh please!" The patient scoffed, with a laugh that was half jeering, half hysteric. "You can tell me what it is, doc. I'm not a kid you've gotta make up stories for. I can handle the truth." Yet he swallowed hard even as he said it.
"I just did," the doctor responded with unusual gravity, and the man's insides shook. "Better learn to handle it better, I might suggest, or it's going to be much more difficult for you to adjust to your sudden transition." He lifted the needle like a single horn. "I understand the shock, but keep this in mind… some worlds are more magical than others, and this is one of them."
He smiled, showing a mouth full of teeth no human had any right to have.
"Now hold out your arm. This might tingle a little."
She had heard of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, sure, but this was something else-- a line of floury white footprints leading from her kitchen's back door into the deep woods.
The girl stooped down to look closely at them, puzzled. They weren't even shoe marks, but impressions of bare feet, and they were surprisingly solid, as if every step had been freshly powdered. Even curiouser, there were tiny brown speckles dusted through every mark. Hesitantly, she dabbed a fingertip to one and tasted it. Her eyebrows arched as she identified not just the obvious flour but also cinnamon, nutmeg, and-- was that a hint of clove? Had to be. She'd recognize that flavor anywhere.
The girl stood back up, furrowing her brow and humming a low note of consideration. This is the sort of thing they write fairy tales about, she mused. I'd best be careful...
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