My sister, aptly blogging at @QuilledSister, writes short stories on her blog. Read her stories; they’re wonderful. Every so often one of them lodges in my imagination and sends me wandering down a side path of my own. This is one of those wanderings.
Original Story: Vision
My Story
“Fuck the fucking fuckers!”
Her blue-black skin flashed as she swirled, sparks flying with every movement.
“Fuck the patriarchy, the communists, the capitalists, Rebecca Yarros, whoever the FUCK is responsible for the shit I’m getting these days.”
I kept my cool. Ironic, if you think about it.
She flung what she was holding into the fire. The parchment didn’t flare; it just smoldered. The flames were, if anything, smaller with the addition of her fuel.
I studied the young woman. She wasn’t, strictly speaking, young, though she carried herself that way. She was a stunner, though. You couldn’t point to any piece of her that was particularly attractive, but the whole was a dark, smoky, writhing, seductive… look, the whole thing just worked. Don’t get carried away. Nyx will ruin your life if you lose control.
She wasn’t stunning at the moment. She was furious. Her face contorted from her book-burning snarl into something truly ugly. She stewed, lost in a black reverie even I feared to interrupt.
Well, almost. I stirred the fire, just for fun.
“Not up to your standards, dear?” Sweet as could be.
The roar that erupted from that throat could have belonged to a much older god. Me, perhaps. I love my job.
“One fucking love story that doesn’t involve whips or chains or dragons or abs! One fantasy that isn’t fucking wish fulfillment. One hero who isn’t a goddamn 16-year-old pubescent hormone-ridden SPECIAL BOY with an older mentor…”
“Or girl,” I chimed in, happy to do my part for equality.
“DON’T GET ME STARTED ON SPECIAL GIRLS,” she thundered. As much as a pixie who might not have topped seven stones soaking wet can thunder. It was impressive, if you’re into such things. She could have starred in her own worst nightmare. Heh.
“WHAT… what am I going to do?” She was suddenly smaller. Weaker. Out of sorts, which is never a safe place for a god. Gods who aren’t well-sorted tend to bring down civilizations.
I knew her complaint. It was old and boring, frankly. “Oh, no, dreamers aren’t dreaming big enough dreams!” she would wail, “It was so much better in the old days!”
Which old days? The ones where Sophocles and Euripides couldn’t write something happy if their lives depended on it? Or maybe when Shakespeare was drowning in debt? When were those days, sweet Nyx, when artists were pure and uncorrupted by lucre, when every half-remembered dream sprouted at dawn into Mab and Titania?
Ah, she is young, as I said, and she will calm down if I wait. It’s more fun to let her lose steam before I fan the flames a bit.
“Maybe,” I ventured, after the storm had spent itself, “they’re missing you?”
She glared.
“When did you last sit by a bed and stoke those visions?” I continued. “When did you last drive a man to madness with the stories he couldn’t quite seem to tell with enough fidelity? Kubrick was decades ago, you know. Even Rothfuss is fading from view. Maybe the problem is… you?”
Perfection. I knew I had hit home before I finished speaking.
I gently closed my eyes, knowing that even as I did, Nyx had vanished to find one of her dreamers, the men and women whose minds are open to more than what the waking world has to offer. She would speak sweetly to them as they bolted upright, sweating at night, urging them onward as they furiously tried to capture the agony and ecstasy of whatever it was. Hexagonal serpents. Accelerating elevators. Probably dragons; always dragons.
And she would drive them to something wonderful. Disruptive. Ugly. Glorious.
Chaotic.
Nice to meet you.
