{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/fiction/aurora/flash02",
  "path": "/posts/fiction/aurora/flash02",
  "publishedAt": "2023-08-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "A world of unending gray, so lonely the distant stars seem like\ncompanions, so empty not even a wind disturbs the all-encompassing\ndust.  Closed eyes see hidden light.\n\nAurora awakens in a small room with sunset's golden light streaming\nthrough empty holes in the wall.  The girl stretches in the small bed,\nrubbing against the silken soft sheets beneath.  A blink, a glimpse at\nhow late it's gotten, and she frowns.  Sitting up, then carefully she\nslips her feet into some slippers, a layer between her and the stone\nof the floor.\n\nThe floor isn't just dirt, not anymore --- they had paid to have stone\nlaid throughout the house --- but dirt accumulated between cracks and\nSunny hadn't cleaned her room in a few days.  She checked her dresser\nto find a shirt that didn't have a layer of sweat soaked into it.  On\ntop of it sit toys (dolls, balls, game pieces), all coated in a layer\nof dust.  There's a clay sword, shattered in three pieces, and a\nwooden sword Blank had subsequently grown for her.\n\nAurora gives that a second look.  It meant that Sus was wrong, didn't\nit?  Blank wouldn't have done that, if it really thought she was\nannoying.\n\nThinking of Sus is a flare of remembered anger.  It wasn't the first\ntime her ambitions had been mocked.  When she voiced it to folks in\ntown, it was dismissed as silliness.  Like a fool wishing on a\nshooting star, one lady had said.  (It was a reference to an old\nsaying, but Aurora didn't know that, had to ask and ask and ask until\nsomeone bothered to explain.)\n\nWith a new shirt, Aurora is walking out of her room.  Her father's in\nthe sitting room, looking over a ledger in the warm waning light.  He\nlooks up to her with a smile and sad eyes.\n\n\"Ah there you go, finally up.  You're alright?\"  He sees her nod and\nthere's some relief, at least.  His eyes turn thoughtful.  He's\nfrowning, angular jaw working, chewing on his next words.  \"You get\ninto so many fights, Aurora.  I'm worried you're gonna get hurt, one\nof these days.\"  His jaw chews a bit more, than he finally spits it\nout, asking, \"Can you tell me why?  Why do you have to fight so much?\"\n\nBecause it was fun?  Because it was the only thing she was good at?\nBecause--- the words didn't seem right.  She couldn't say it.\n\n\"Is it hard to get along with the spirits?  Do they bother you?\"  He'd\nasked before.  He keeps asking.\n\n\"I like the spirits,\" she says.\n\n\"You,\" --- the words are interspersed with a laugh.  Nervous?\nWorried?  (She couldn't tell; Father seemed solid no matter what) ---\n\"you have an odd way of showing it.\"\n\nWas it odd?  She had seen other children run at one another, laugh and\nflee, playing chase.  Likewise, she throws a fist, and they avoid it.\nIt was the same kind of game, one of evasion.\n\nWhy wouldn't you fight people you liked?  To land a hit, or avoid one,\nyou had to be paying attention.  All of your focus on that other\nperson.  If you didn't like someone, you ignored them.\n\nIt wasn't like talking, where you could hold a conversation without\nreally caring or trying.  Where people didn't understand the things\nshe said, where they didn't understand the things they themselves\nsaid, and couldn't explain it to her.\n\nBut a kick, a grab, that was very clear.  No ambiguity who won when\nyou pin them to the ground.  She could easily tell apart a laugh of\njoy and the look of fear that meant she'd gone to far.\n\nThe tactics, how to get what you want, it's so straightforward.  It\nisn't at all like talking.\n\nHow is she supposed to explain any of this with words?  Like trying to\nfight while tied up, she's helpless.\n\nFather's patiently waiting for a response, but what left her mouth\nisn't exactly words.  So her father pats her on the head.  \"It's okay.\nCome on, sit with me on the the porch.  The stars are about to come\nout.\"\n\nShe didn't mind the pat, though she was almost shoulder height, making\nthe motion awkward.  Despite following his lead, Aurora rushed out of\nthe door before him.  (Though she pauses to swap her slippers for\nproper shoes.)\n\nTheir 'porch' is a plot of dirt where grass doesn't grow.  Father is\nclosing the circular door behind him; it slots into a dirt hole in a\nhill, their hill.  He'd raised and shaped it himself, a milestone of\nearthcanting.\n\nLikewise, in place of chairs there sat soft, shaped mounds of earth\nhe'd uprisen himself.  Cloth covers Aurora's seat, but not Geller's.\n\nAbove, the eveningstar is first to appear in the darkling sky, lonely\nin the west.\n\n\"The eveningstar isn't like other stars,\" her father says.  \"Do you\nknow what it really is?\"\n\nHe'd told her, she did know; but he speaks now in a tone of retelling\na story.  He has a solid voice, even when speaking of celestial\nmatters.  She could stand to hear the stories again.\n\nThe truth, he say, is that the eveningstar is a wandering world, not\nunlike our own, with the sun rising and setting in its sky just the\nsame, and a moon all its own.  It wanders among the six kindred\nworlds, the most favored of the sun.\n\nHer father can name all six.  Not uncommon; there's a rhyming verse\nrecounting the mythic creation of the kindred.\n\nAurora interrupts to ask an odd question: \"If those are worlds like\nours, what do they look like?  Do they have mountains and rivers and\nclouds?\" She watches him carefully.\n\nThey're all different, says he; Father tells a story of a world of\nendless ocean and ever-hanging fog, and then a world covered in\ntarnished copper, a world with no land at all and one where the sun\nsat unmoving and one where the stars could always be seen.  They're\nthe one constant, really.  Every world turned under the stars.\n\nHe tells of more worlds than the six kindred.  Beyond them lies three\nstrange outer worlds, tracing far-ranging paths in the sky.  He could\nname the outer worlds, too, so rarely seen; and no one else in\nWillowind could do that.  According to his tales, the lands and skies\nof the outer worlds are even stranger, escaping mortal description.\n\nSunset glow now fading, the brightest stars deign to be seen, and he\ncontinues her journey through the system.  Beyond that, there spin the\nhidden worlds, wandering cloaked in the black spaces between the\nstars.\n\nBut they aren't really cloaked; but only highly trained eyes can\nmake out the nearest hidden world.  Another hidden world was\nsupposedly known for centuries to the mystics of the Nistran desert\ntribes, and the third discerned in his own lifetime by the scrying of\nroyal gemsingers.\n\nSix kindred worlds, three outers worlds, and three hidden worlds.\n\n\"But I think there's more.  Each world is more hidden than the last...\nwho's to say there aren't more of them?  Some say there's as many as\nfive hidden.\"\n\nAurora hums though.  \"Do they ever end?  Maybe there's more worlds\nforever.\"\n\n\"Oh, they end.  Because in the darkness beyond the hidden worlds...\nthere be comets.\"\n\nAurora tightens at the mention, tension from excitement or fear.\n\nBy now, twilight draws to a close, and the sky lies properly gleaming\nwith stars.\n\nThe shadows around her shouldn't be menacing; no comet would come\ncreeping from the dark.  Comets arrive in meteoric fire, and roam the\nearth dazzling with alien light.  Still, it's thrilling to wonder.\nCould there be a hidden comet, like the hidden worlds?\n\nHer father points up, and at last, they stargaze.  He names the stars,\ntraces constellations.  He speaks of the milky cloud across the sky,\ndescribes galaxies and nebulae.\n\n\"Sometimes the stars dance in pairs, and sometimes they explode, and\nsometimes they are... yet stranger still.\"\n\nAurora frowns.  Opens her mouth, but doesn't form the words.  Her eyes\ndrift, and she catches a hint of motion.  A streak of light across the\nsky.\n\n\"Only a fool wishes on a shooting star,\" she repeats.  \"I heard\nsomeone say that.  What does it mean, daddy?\"\n\nHe gives a long blink, as if closed eyes could hide his reaction.\n\"Shooting stars are small bits of the heavens, so feeble they\ndisappear in moments.  Wishing on one, it's placing your hope in a\nbrief, dazzling flash of light that will only turn to nothing.\" The\nemphasis, the trailing off --- a hint of bitterness laced those words.\n\"But that's not what you really wanted to ask, though, is it?\"\n\n\"A fool wishes on a shooting star,\" Aurora echoes the full saying,\n\"but only a madman wishes on a comet.\"\n\nHe doesn't respond.\n\nAurora looks at the sky, sees the streak.  \"Is that a shooting star,\nor a comet?\" She only receives silence in response.  \"What happens if\na bit of heaven falls and doesn't turn to nothing?  Is it always a bad\nomen --- a comet?\"\n\nAt length, he murmured.  \"They say... if you wish on a comet, then it\nmight come to you.  Comets... They say when one touches the sky, it\ndazzles.  When one touches the earth, it destroys.  If there's an\nexception... well I couldn't say.\"\n\n\"I'll stop them.\" She sees her father look at her, perplexed, no words\nin his reaction.  \"I'll become a knight and if evil spirits fall from\nheaven, then I'll fight them and win.\"\n\nComets were so very far away, farther than the outer worlds.  If she\nwished on this comet, would she be strong enough to fight it when it\nfinally came?\n\nHer father laughs with a stutter.  \"So it's practice for you, then?\nThat's why you pick a fight with everything that moves?\"\n\nReally, it was the other way around.\n\nThis time, rather than not knowing how to put that into words,\nAurora didn't know if she should.  She looks away.  Eyes going back\nto the sky.\n\nShe knew she hadn't figured out the right words to say it, but she\nhad to.  She had to prove Sus wrong.\n\n\"How do you know so much about the heavens, daddy?\"\n\n\"Oh, I've heard many stories over the years, read even more.  I have a\ngood memory for them.\"\n\nHeard them where, though?  He doesn't travel, and he's far more\nknowledgeable than anyone she met in the village.  (Well, except for\nthat lady, who gave her strange stares she didn't like, who had a\nmetal hand, whom no one else seemed to like.  Aurora'd never asked\nher and didn't want to.)\n\nHe doesn't travel, and Aurora had already read every b",
  "title": "Flash ii: What Haunts the Stars"
}