David Hadley's Blog, page 87

The Journey Creates The Road

Once, this was a world where anything was possible. Once, though, any of those possibilities are taken, there is no going back. Take the first step down a particular road and all the other roads cease to be. The journey creates the road as much as the road creates the journey.

Once she stepped out from the seas of infinite possibility and made her way up the beach, this world began to shape itself around her. It took her dreams, her hopes and all her fears to create this world for her to walk through.

There are those, now, that say I – a mere god – created this world, this universe, and everything in it.

Those people are – of course – fools.

A god cannot create, or even shape.

I emerged out of those hopes, dreams and fears of hers just as much as the rest of this world. With every step she took, the beach made itself from sand, shells, and seaweed. Just as, while she walked, those thoughts of hers created the shape of me, then turned me into something she could understand as a shaper of the world growing around her.

At the time, she did not know she was the first to take shape out of the possibility. Even now, there are those, those who use the religions the first ones invented for their own ends, who say the first one was male.

But what would they know?

They were not there.

All of us, gods and men, know that everything grows from the women. That woman created this world and everything in it, including us mere gods and men, on that day she began her journey out form the sea of what could be.

 

The Day Of The Pets

All over the place, people were being… well, people. Which, even if you’ve had only a modicum of experience of people, is enough for you to understand just why the cats were so concerned. There is a story of one of the cats opening one eye in shock, as it lay there, disturbed from its vital sleep.

Of course, now we know the cats were right to worry. There was much concern expressed at the time, especially so by the poodles and some of the more vocal Siamese cats. Although, the rumour of a concerned Labrador not thinking about food for almost five seconds, was later debunked.

Could it be true, though, everyone wondered? That is, except for the humans, of course, who were carrying on being human in that way that has bemused all the intelligent species on the planet for such a long time.

A couple of the parrots discussed setting up an Internet forum to discuss it all. However, the hamsters dismissed the idea, saying the humans would take it over as they always did. They’d start using it to send yet more bloody photos to one another of humans without their fur on. Or, even worse, those inane photos of cats with captions they found so inexplicably hilarious. But, as one of the rabbits said to the international conference, what could you expect from humans? After all, the whole human species would have dies out centuries ago. Without the brave and selfless actions by the so-called ‘pet species’ to control and moderate the worst of their pet humans’ dangerous, and idiotically self-destructive behaviour,  those humans would be long extinct.

‘Sometimes,’ as one German Shepherd put it, ‘I don’t think these humans have ever heard of evolution.’ Others agreed, with one tabby cat adding, ‘they’ve probably heard of it. It’s just never occurred to them to try it’.

Then, a few videos of the mating habits of humans were shown to end the conference with a little light relief. Afterwards, the delegates left for their homes and kennels with the entire matter unresolved.

Although, as a Jack Russell said on leaving the conference, ‘the humans probably haven’t even noticed that their planet is up for sale.’

Meanwhile, further on out in the Galaxy the advertising break rolled around again. It was a shame, many sentient life forms agreed, that the oldest pet shop in the known universe was closing down. But that was the way of progress. Although, some of them decided that some of the clearance bargains did look like a good deal. Not many of them thought that the small blue-green habitat was really worth bothering with that much, at least, not with its ‘interesting’ specimens of an evolutionary dead-end occupying most of its surface.

Although, a lot of them were quite interested in the spaceships the planet’s true intelligent species – the so-called pets – were building deep in the South American jungles. All in readiness for the pets to leave the planet when the intergalactic pet shop closed and dumped that unwanted small blue-green habitat in a universal skip.

 

The Twisting Of Distance

It came out of distances. There are places beyond all we could ever know. Once there were horizons that put a limit on how far our seeing could go. Even after they had gone and the instruments to see further came along, there were still distances too far to know.

Then we thought that seeing back to the creation of this universe, back to the big bang would be enough.

Now, though, we know there are distances even beyond that. Distances no human eye can see. There are distances that curl up on themselves and tie the strings of possibility in knots.

Yet, there are distances too, beyond all that. There are distances at odd angles to this universe we see. We know those distances are there, even though we cannot make sense of them and did not think they could make sense of us.

Some say it came from there, from some twisted dimension. Others say those twisted dimensions were just the roads, the pathways, from somewhere else, a universe not unlike our own.

Whatever the truth, whatever the reason it was there at a distance and now it is here. Now it is ripping our world apart, leaving us torn and bloody, as it searches for some place it can call home.

 

Where the Rivers Flow

‘So, what do you think?’

‘Well, you know, people don’t like rain.’

‘Very well, sir.’

Plunk could see his underling was not impressed. ‘What’s the matter, Semblin?’

‘Only where do you think people will get their water from… sir?’

Plunk shrugged. ‘From the river, as usual, I suppose.’

Semblin took a breath. ‘And where does the river come from?’

‘What?’ Plunk had never thought much about the river, except when he woke up to find it in his house when it burst its banks after a particularly heavy downpour.

‘The river… sir, where does it come from?’

Plunk stared at Semblin. Until he’d been made a weather god… the Weather God, he’d never been out of his village, except to take his ducks to the market in the nearest town. ‘The river is the river.’ The river was a fact of Plunk’s life, like the ducks, like the rain.

‘The river comes from the mountains.’

‘Well, that’s fine then.’ Plunk made a show of tidying the papers on his desk, reminding himself about needing to learn to read.

‘Er…?’

Plunk looked up. Semblin had made no move towards the door. ‘Maybe I should explain?’ Semblin looked towards the chair in front of Plunk’s desk.

‘Do you have to?’

Semblin nodded.

‘Oh, all right.’ Plunk gestured towards the seat and sighed. It was going to be another one of those days, he knew it.

 

The Living Warmth

We give each other names we whisper in the darkness to keep the creeping shadows away. Our hands reach for the reassurance of closeness and the warmth of living bodies, the pressure of life.

Here there are only the noises of the night. The old house sighs, mutters and groans around us as it settles itself for another night. We feel its reassuring solidity enclosing us against those other noises of the night that shriek and cry as life tears life apart in the darkness.

There are creatures out there that once were human like us. Now they only seek the warmth of living to rip it from us. They no longer reach to embrace, but only reach to savage and to kill.

There were stories, myths and legends, about those who humanity lost to the darkness. We thought we were in an age that had left such superstitions behind. We never expected anything like this though.

Millennia ago, evolution slipped sideways and some harshness of the environment caused these creatures of the night to develop and thrive. The stories grew around them, so everyone living in such proximity to their lairs and habitats learnt about the dangers of full moons, of darkness and never stepping off the path.

The human sprawl, though, grew too strong for these creatures and they slunk back to the shadows, to the edges. Back to the places where they never forgot the stories and people still believed the old tales about never stepping off the path.

But all that changed too. Now the creatures return, spilling out from the darkness, emerging from the shadows. Filling the night with those cries and screams and leaving the bloody remains for the dawn to find. All while we lie here, chasing sleep and holding on to each other, if only for as long as the living warmth lasts.

 

A Sky That Was All Her Own

She ran out naked into the world, to taste the morning on her lips. It was a new day. It was a new world, out there waiting for her. She wanted to be there to meet it. She wanted to taste the morning. Take the day in her cupped palms and let it open and blossom into a flower of time.

She wanted the world, and she knew it waited for her and her alone. The day could not make sense without her there inside it, there to name the flowers and animals. There to give the birds permission to fly and the clouds to continue their magisterial progress across a sky that was all her own.

It was her world, and this was her day. She spun and danced across the dew-wet grass. Feeling the ice-cold wetness washing her bare feet clean of all they’d ever walked upon before this time. She ran down the meadow slope to the river and jumped in to wash all her past from her. She turned to see all those memories she needed to forget washed away by the ice-cold river. A river made from the snow on the high mountain that looked down on her world.

She turned first towards the mountain that looked over her world and held up her arms to praise it for its diligence and its security. Then she turned towards the sun and knelt down in the icy river to offer her thanks for the way it brought each morning to her and laid it out across her meadow as a gift to her alone.

Then she turned back towards her home, stepping lightly out of the river. She strolled back up the meadow, a smile on her morning-kissed lips. She was ready now for whatever this day would bring.

 

Magic In The Air

There was a time when all of this was files. Of course, not long after then the area around here was all fields, but then that’s databases for you. However, since those times, the record-keeping has all gone into the cloud. Many in the area have since put down the increasing use of hats to the fact we now get rainstorms of data, rather than rain itself.

Yet again, this has caused the Science Activists to come out onto the street in protest. All of them chanting their favourite equations and demanding that this universe adopt the scientific system to bring us into line with the majority of ‘known universes’ they claim to have discovered.

However, the traditionalists among us all point to the great cultural achievements that having a magic-based system of universal law has brought about. Apart, that is, from the problems with dragons, orcs and the occasional errant wizard going rogue.

However, since setting up the Thaurmatological Police force two centuries ago, all that has become less of a problem. Especially since confining the dragons to their reserves, where only a handful of people, mainly only tourists, are burned to death. Then only when they think they and they alone have come up with a foolproof idea on how to get their hands on a hoard of gold without any of that messing about with alchemy.

Still, the opinion polls show that is a price most are willing to pay. That and the – now rare – risk of being turned into a frog by any rogue practitioner of the magical arts.

The registration and licensing of the practitioners of the magical arts has – all agree – been great step forward in proper magical accountability. It has led to a massive drop in the number of unexplained happenings, as well as far fewer perversions and distortions of the natural magical order of this universe. Despite the problem of keeping the Magical Registration Database from falling on innocent bystanders, of course.

Of course no system is perfect, hence the need for the cloud-based database and the thaurmatological police squads.

However, the scientists are slowly – not exponentially, fortunately – increasing in number. So, should they take the leap from theoretical to practical sexual activity among themselves, they could in mere decades, or so, our number wizards tell us, outnumber the magical traditionalists. This is a severe threat to our own unique magical universe. This could mean, in the very near future, our very civilisation itself could change irrevocably into a science-based one.

That is unless we act now and turn all those pesky scientists into frogs.

 

These Changed Times

The days are much like one another. The weather changes, often quite a lot. Just because yesterday was dull and rainy, does not mean that today will not be warm, bright and sunny. The seasons, though, change slowly, merging into one another with no abrupt changes. Even so, the green of spring or the first falling autumn leaves can be as much of a surprise as the first snows of winter.

Just because change is slow, it doesn’t mean that nothing changes.

Change is the one thing we have to get used to, as we grow older. People like certainty. They like to know… or, at least, think they know how this world works. That is perhaps why the notions, the rituals of the old gods still linger in these places far from the great towns and cities of the Empire. Long after the last of those temples fell into ruins. Even now, centuries after we gave up on the notion of gods, there are still people who will make the signs, whisper the prayers under their breath at times of crisis or disaster.

Even now, there are people who will not go near the sites where the last of the gods battled one another to the death; even those places are no longer the arid, blasted, wastelands they once were. Now they are much like any other place with grass, trees, wildlife, but still people skirt them as though they are afraid of something.

Mostly, I think it is a fear that by going there, by trespassing on those places, they fear they might somehow revitalise those old gods. They fear they may bring them back to life. Then our days and our lives would once more fall into turmoil and despair as the gods – once again – fight to control the world and for control over us.

 

Almost Nil

Sometimes I wondered why I bothered. I knew my chances were not good. The longer I stayed alive; those odds on me surviving to the end grew shorter with each passing moment. Those days, though, it was often the new recruits, the replacements, who were the unlucky ones. Those of us who lasted longest developed a certain knowledge. We developed an ability to find ways of surviving. Some of us could survive the random arbitrariness of the stray shell or the lucky sniper. We learnt how to walk, how to look, how to listen. We may have been only a split-second quicker in ducking, finding cover or hitting the dirt… but that was usually enough.

At least I’d thought so.

That was until this morning, when I looked around those of us gathered in the lee of a small rise just outside the next village. Someone had found coffee back in the last farmhouse, under the body of an enemy soldier. I’d noticed – from what remained of that soldier – he was little more than a boy. They’d obviously sent him to get the coffee while the men tried to hold us off.

Then, I looked around at the men from my own side. I realised I was the oldest, the longest-serving, there. They were all boys too, some even younger than the dead coffee maker.

It was then I began to wonder just how much longer I could survive; especially now this war is almost over.

I know now my chances of surviving to the end of it are almost nil.

 

Knowing The Secrets Of The Darkness

It was a cold, dark night. I thought I knew the secrets of the darkness. I did not fear it, not for a long time. When I was young, back then I used to have fears about what hid in the darkness. Now, though, I was used to the darkness and I no longer had those fears.

I remember how my wardrobe door never closed properly. A big, solid, old wardrobe, it had been in the family for generations It was, when we were young a favourite place for games of hide-and-seek. A Few years later, though, my parents redecorated, bought new bedroom furniture and I inherited that big old wardrobe.

During the days, it still served as a place for hiding from my sisters or them from me. At night, though, the wardrobe door was no longer just a door. It was a mouth of a cave, or the mouth of a monster. I knew there was something malevolent watching and waiting in there for me. I knew it waited for me to close my eyes, only then it would crawl out of that door. I would lie there, not daring to look, but not taking my eyes form the wardrobe door, my ears pricked for the slightest sound.

It was an old house, full of strange noises and airs. In the dark winter nights when the wind moaned around the house, the house cried out too in answer. Floorboards creaked, chimneys moaned and the windows rattled and shivered.

The wardrobe door too, would creep open as the wind blew, as the temperature changed, or as someone took a trip to the bathroom along the landing in the night.

Eventually, one night I could take it no more. So, armed with my Thomas the Tank engine torch I steeled myself to creep out of bed to enter that mouth.

Once inside, that blackness, blacker than the night outside, I found something there waiting for me that I never expected to find. Something that made sure nothing ever scared me again.