{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/fiction/aurora/flash04",
  "path": "/posts/fiction/aurora/flash04",
  "publishedAt": "2024-05-18T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "The world ends with a storm.\n\nAurora is frozen, cold sinking into shivering flesh as fear and shock\nquicken her pulse.  This fear doesn't still her --- she needs to move,\nto run and do something.  But she can't.\n\nThe waters of the circle pond turn to ice.  Hissing as the temperature\nplunges to cast them in crystal, then cracking as Aurora struggles\nwith flailing limbs.  One emerges, then the other, and now the cracks\ntravel outward, breaking off plates of ice.\n\nIce and snow fall throughout, first as stray flakes and drops, then as\na thickening blanket.  At the far end of the pond, the still-liquid\nskin ripples.\n\nAurora braces with one hand and pulls herself onto a plate of ice --\nonly for her weight to sink the platform, water rushing in.  When it\nmeets the ice-draped girl, it freezes to form a new layer, locking her\nin place, half-prone.\n\nShe hears the splashes and pops of ice raining into the pond.  She\nhears the rumble of thunder intensifying to a sharp tone, crying an\near-splitting warning.  She hears air finally start moving as the wind\nwhispers threats.  She hears the storm, and she sighs peace.\n\nIce numbed her flesh --- but it was not the pain so many described\nfeeling in the winter; no, this soothed.  Aurora twists her head to\nglance at the sky, and sees the lightning flash.  The light felt so\nmuch like the sky waving back at her.\n\nTrapped in the forest as ice falls upon her, the young girl isn't\nafraid of the storm; she has nothing to fear from it.\n\nBut someone did.\n\nHer father felt stiff pain in every joint when the seasons turned\ncold.  Her father had called for her when she ran away --- would he\nhave followed after? Could he endure a blizzard in the middle of\nsummer?\n\nWrenching with new strength, Aurora lifts her legs out of the pond\nand rolls over the surface.  A slow thing, leaving her black skin\ninvisibly raw where ice is torn away, but she moves.\n\nEnough of the pond is ice, be it in breadth or depth, that her weight\ndoesn't sink, doesn't invite another flood of new water.  Aurora takes\nunsteady steps toward the sheer bank wall of the circle pond.  The ice\nholds beneath her.\n\nBut more frozen and half-melted snow is falling now.  Water trails in\nstreams from the edge.  Tall and muddy, Aurora would need to climb.\nShe hates the feeling of mud --- but there's no other way out.\n\nWhen she presses her hands to the mud wall, brown water freezes along\nher fingertips, binding the dirt to her.  Ick. But mud frozen won't\nslip, and in seconds Aurora climbs back up.\n\nWalking forward, she peels dirty ice off her hands, even as more of it\nfalls on her.  Her head twists around.  Where was she, where was the\nway back? The sun had already set, and sky is clouded.  Then her head\nstops.  She knows she's looking north.\n\nShe hadn't kept track of her trail on the mad dash in, certainly not\nafter the deer started hunting her, but if north is that way, she can\nfeel she's farther east than the farm.  She turns and starts running.\n\nFirst flakes had become a drizzle, then a steady downpour, and now a\ndeluge as the new wind whips water into sheets.  A canopy of leaves\nabove her is a faltering umbrella, dripping lines where there aren't\nholes outright.  Where there are puddles, the constant impacts rouse\nthem to an unsettling and furious visage, ripples like so many\npuncture-holes.\n\nAurora slips on a slick patch of mud and ice, weight throwing her\nacross the ground.  She slides and slides and slices --- a rock in her\npath catches her in the stomach and carves her up to her breast.\n\nRed weeps, almost unseen in the shadows upon dark skin --- but when\nAurora looks, her eyes still glow.  She retches.  Mud on her skin is\none thing, but dirt in her wounds, pervading her life and being?\n\nAurora struggles to her feet --- but around her chunk of ice had\nquick-frozen, and now even more rains down upon her, forming layer\nafter layer.\n\nIce is numbing.  Soothing.  She didn't have anything to fear.\n\nThe girl looks up, to where lightning dances like mating snakes in the\nnight-dark sky --- the only light left up there.\n\nThey will say the world ends with a storm.\n\nAll you can hear is the ever-louder roar of falling water beating\ndown.\n\nAll you can feel is the cold deluge soaking you to the bone.\n\nAll you can see is those last flashes above.\n\nA storm drowning out all other sound, all other feeling, all other\nsight.\n\nBut, she thought, even though you couldn't see it, the sun and the\nmoon and the wandering planets and the stars and even the comets were\nstill up there.  They were so far away from the storm.  Safe and\nunbothered.\n\nEven when the world ends, the heavens would still turn.\n\nThere were still other worlds under beautiful stars.  Just like her\nfather said.\n\nHer father.\n\nAurora started moving for a reason.  She couldn't just freeze here,\neven if she had nothing to fear.  Hands feel along her breast --- but\nthe ice had frozen over her chest wound like a cold scab.  The touch\nof the storm on her skin felt so gentle, even as precipitation rages.\nWithout warmth, but not without care.\n\nAnd who did that sound like? This wasn't a normal storm.  Was it\nenchanted?  By what will?  The winter spirit claimed that it merely\nawakened her --- no, it only said it wouldn't be awake without it.  So\nhad that spirit called this storm?\n\nDid it matter?\n\nAurora stood.  The ice still grasped for her, but if this wasn't mere\ndead water, but an enchantment from a will that cared enough to heal\nher... she wouldn't bat aside, brush off the ice like obnoxious dirt.\n\nHer mouth opened and inhaled air, like cold fingers reaching into her\nmouth and her throat and deeper.  She felt the ice coating her like a\nnew dress, but solid like bones.  The ice was drawn toward her.\nAnd... she let it.  The cold seeped in.\n\nWhen the girl lifts her legs, the ice beneath the foot doesn't break\naway, it feels her intent and simply parts.  Slow, testing steps, then\nrunning strides.\n\nThe freezing rain never lets up.  If anything, it get colder with her\nacceptance, becoming hail and snow.  It tears through the canopy, and\nnow leaves fall too.  (Would a nature spirit call a storm that\ndestroyed its own domain?  Its very being?)\n\nAurora runs across a ground slick with mud and frost, crawling with\nroots and rocks and puddles and streams.  Yet no step betrays her.\nWhen she slides, it only accelerates her along her way.\n\nLightning strikes behind her, a bolt of fire that casts the whole\nforest around her into daylight for one moment.  The light reflects\noff of so much glittering ice.\n\nFor that moment, Aurora clearly sees the clearing in front of her.\nTrees are thinning, and her feet are stepping onto the familiar trail\nout from the farm.\n\nShe returns here and witnesses the sight, the site, of a lost battle.\n\nIf the world ended with a storm, it was supposed to bring a final\nflood.  This didn't look like the world had drowned --- it looked\nravaged.  The wind had torn furrows through the stalks of wheat and\ncorn.  Fences knocked down entirely.  Had this silo been lifted up\nfrom its foundation?\n\nSharp rods of hail have fallen and still stuck out of the ground, like\nso many javelines.\n\nThey had a couple pigs and chickens.  Aurora walked past corpses.  As\nif they had accepted the cold in them too, their flesh had burst, the\nblood within turned to ice.\n\n\"Blank? Sunny? D-dad?\" Aurora wonders if the storm drowned out the\nsound of her voice.\n\nThere is a withered husk, green skin already turning gray.  The face\ndoesn't look pained because there is no face.  Curled into a fetal\nball, staring toward the distant farmhouse, Blank lay palpably dead.\n\nAurora moves on, walk turning to a jog.  \"Is anyone there?\"\n\nMovement distant.  But there's movement everywhere, the world falling\napart.  Still, Aurora approaches.  A dark form is illuminated as she\nnears; her eyes and hair still glow.\n\nA sunflower shaped like a woman, one-armed.  Sunny is missing petals\nfrom her crown, and there's tracks running down from her lidded eyes.\nAurora's just a girl, but she looms over the spirit --- because Sunny\nis kneeling.\n\nThe spirit moves aside.  Beneath her, a man.\n\nAurora falls to her knees and feels it.  The flesh is cold and\nunmoving.  The face is still knit in concern.  Mouth open --- was her\nname on his lips?\n\nGeller is dead.\n\nAnd Aurora feels...\n\nThey will say the world ends with a storm.  Everything drowned and\nfalling.  But celestial bodies still turn, in a soothing numb void\nbeyond the world; no sound, no sight, no droplet falls upon them,\nunbothered by a storm some meaningless distance away.\n\nThe stars look beautiful from far on the other worlds, it's just like\nher father said.\n\n\"He forgave you, Aurora.  He still loved you, in the end.\" Sunny spoke\nor enchanted the air.\n\nAurora flinches.  She had doubted --- she had let the pig-thing's\nwords crawl into her and make her doubt.\n\nNone of us like you.  Maybe he doesn't care.\n\nBeing wrong means going backwards from the truth.  It means you'd be\nright if you switched things around.  Sus couldn't be right --- it'd\nhurt too much.\n\nBut the opposite of what he said --- if everyone did care?  That hurt\ntoo.\n\nSus was wrong.  And if you switch things around --- \"none of us like\nyou\" becomes \"you don't like any of us\".  Is there any love between\nyou two?  The relationship goes one-way.\n\nBlank was dead.  Father was dead.  Aurora had been to funerals, and\nFather took her to her cousin's grave every year.  You were supposed\nto tear up and cry.  You were supposed to shake your fists at the\nworld's cruelty.  You were supposed to wish it was different.  You\nfeel sad and angry and bad.\n\nShe looks over at the dead spirit-child and bites her lip.  Blank had\ngiven her that toy sword, and now she'd never get anything like that\nagain.  Did she even use it?  She'd never get to fight Blank again.\nWell, at this point she kept beating it anyway.\n\nAurora looks at the dead man and frowns.  She thinks of the questions\nhe'd never answer now, the broken toys he could never fix, the food\nhe'll never cook ",
  "title": "Flash iv: To Drown With a Smile"
}