The Icarus rocked like a metronome, with ruthless rain hitting the floor around its captain. With each roaring thunder, rope fled. Wind nagged him, insisted that he should fall off the sailboat. Falling would mean plummeting down to the ocean, far below, and it is unseemly for a sky-sailor to leave their vessel like that.
Still, clouds swirled and stirred and spiraled around him. Lightning flashed the deck every now and then, startling the floorboards. The storm sang, sang like a siren.
He knew 32 minutes more would get him out of that screeching climate, but that notion did little in the way of helping him stay afoot. Every gust tilted the boat ever more. Every galloping thunder threatened to claim the sail. Every bullet of violent cyan attempted to make him slip.
One mistake, and he’d spent 31 seconds falling to the endless blue below.
One triumph, and he’d be the first sailor to brave the Storm that Speaks without dying, at least momentarily.
And then, the left wing was torn apart by a frozen pellet. He was much too high; the storm was becoming a blizzard.
Quickly, very quickly, he pulled a rope to fold the right wing. The vessel took a nosedive that all flight manuals would surely describe as “negligent.” The man counted mentally. Five seconds. Ten seconds. He jumped to the right side of the main sail and leaned on it. Twelve seconds! Thirteen! Sixteen!
He let the rope go. The wing unfurled. The Icarus jolted as it stabilized in the air, still in the midst of the Storm. It sang angrily, it howled its fury. “No thing shall fly through me!” it spoke when met for the first time. But he was much too close to prove it wrong.
Now, it launched a piercing thunder. A Prometheus that brought fire to man, except this fire blazed like water, and it did so on the mast of his ship.
The cloth of the sail was hugged by the fire too.
They danced along, a wonderful tango.
The man gave up.
He met the turquoise below.
They woke up, though not from sleeping, for sleep had not yet been invented. They then moved, though without moving, for movement had not yet been invented. Then, they looked at the nothing in front of them, which was both impossibly close and infinitely distant.
Describing non-existence is quite bothersome, they didn’t think. There’s nothing to describe, not even nothing, for nothingness had not yet been invented.
They were annoyed, and after both an unfathomable amount of time and a fraction of a millisecond, they decided something should exist.
Given there were no rules stating that their thoughts couldn’t shape reality, some things appeared. Nominally, space-time.
Showcasing the brand-new concept of “emotion,” they were excited, and so wished for more things to be. And yet, nothing happened (But now things could happen, which was still exciting!). In making existence exist, they also made the laws of the universe. It stayed empty.
Reasonably, they were saddened. And so, to their grand surprise, started to cry. Many, many tears, each one heavier and larger than the last, all coming from imaginary eyes. Those were the very first things to exist! Excited once more, they invented the concept of names, and promptly started naming each one of those tears. The smallest, littlest one of them all was baptized as “Hydrogen.” The second one after that, “Helium.” And so they kept crying and naming tears. Many were just as small as Hydrogen, and so were named the same.
The tears, like tears do, started to accumulate and grow, which made them cry again due to the sheer beauty of it. And the new tears attained new names. “Phosphorus” and “Calcium” and “Oxygen!”
And so, forever more, they kept crying and naming, and their tears floated away and coalesced and separated. Eventually, they came together in a way that resulted in creatures with the ability to discover the names of those tears.
The party continued, dressed in glowing gold, on the main floor of the manor. She wore a tardigrade-colored dress, with an angrily-hued hat. Her mask covered only her eyes, resting on the cliff of her nose.
Though still, it did not matter if she wore a mask to hide her eyes, for she had none. She was blind, and given that one can only see a person’s soul through their eyes, hers was made secret to all but to the most experienced spirithologists, who were required to use less conventional methods to asess it.
Lidia Geheim’s soul was slightly heavier than average, at 27 grams. It was cold. So very, very cold. She was always in need of warmth. It was also peculiarly cruel, and wonderfully enticing, so much so that many devils asked Lidia to give them her soul upon death, to which she usually replied by biting an orange rose and drinking champagne from a teacup.
Tonight, though, she perused through the many guests, undecided on whether she should warm up or not. When she decided that indeed, she should, the clock struck midnight, and Lord Langley ordered the orchestra to swell up. The guests were more than pleased by this, and thus, they danced.
Fifty-eight minutes later, Lidia’s mask was lit by the dawny tones of a hearth. The hearth was not warm enough, though, and thus she decided to set her dress on fire. Her fellow guests were horrified at the sight, running as far as their morbid curiosity allowed, and were even more horrified when she -still flaming- sat back on a chair and sipped her cocktail.
It was still so very, very cold, and she decided she should warm up more. As the good alcohol expert she was, she knew her drink could go up in flames very easily. A sparks later, the fire in her cup swelled up, with a crackling melody.
It was still not warm enough, and she ruminated on what should she do next. Of course, like any reasonable person would, she came to the conclusion that the very room she was in should be dressed in golden flames, and thus, the incredibly expensive carpet of Lord Langley went up in dancing fire.
By now, all guests were trying to leave, though the coal-dark smoke convinced them to stay just a little longer. Lord Lindsmuth Langley (The husband of the Lord Langley that was host) was happily drinking directly from a casket of wine, with his whole head inside. To be fair, it was very good wine.
And then, finally, Lidia was warm enough to not be bothered when chatting with the other guests. They had grown awfully quiet, though.
She had spent the entire evening cleaning, as well as the morning and previous night. Yet still, it was not clean enough. There was dust everywhere, the floor was tainted an awful crimson, and the corpses were as hard to take care of as anything.
Shots flew merrily above her, and noxious clouds tried to wed her to death, but she refused. She would not be willing to die until everything was neat and clean.
Soldiers tried to ignore her. They had heard tales about her from their returning fellows. The battle had been raging for the last three months. Many, many bullets had pierced her, and yet every time the blood covered her dress, she’d just huff and clean it with a handkerchief.
A lieutenant tried to ask her, once, what in the White Lady’s name she was doing, to which she replied by using a sponge to dry his mouth of saliva. No one even knew her name, they just knew she was on cleaning duty.
Today, though, she was particularly annoyed. You see, dear reader, storms have awful manners. They never clean up after themselves, and they do their damnest to leave things messier than before. And it just-so-happened that for the last week, it had been pouring endlessly.
Brooms swept the battlefield. Every few minutes, she stopped to clean the mud off her boots until they were almost mirrors, and continued trekking through the place.
It must be noted too that her ability to complain was only surpassed by her ability to clean. She complained of the weather, of the manners of the soldiers, of the quality of the soil, of the dust, of the hour, and of the brand of cigarettes each soldier brought.
A few months later, the battle was done. Thousands of losses on both sides, all for a boring stalemate. And still, it’d be impossible to tell such a bloody battle had occurred, given that the bushes were most wonderfully trimmed, and the trees were so perfectly spaced. One would think dirt cannot be cleaned to the point of being indistinguishable from a mirror, yet she made it so.
And then, everything was neat and clean.
And They Sang Forevermore
He had arrived to the town a few days before. He hummed in a way most entrancing, such that those who passed near him, even if they heard the humming for just a second, could remember the melody in full.
And then, when the moon shone brightest, he played his fiddle on the altar of the church. The few that were awake were curious as to what the song was, so they headed to the church.
Inside, instead of the small building they were used to, they found an immense cathedral. Arches that stretched as high as was possible, hallways that extended beyond the horizon, and then, ever present, the echoing call of the fiddle. It was slow. It called them.
The next morning, a lovely autumn sunday, the rest of the town gathered at the doors of the church. Not because it was sunday, they weren’t all that religious, but because they heard that melody. They wished to enter, they wished to follow. But the ones that went before had locked the door, and so now, the burliest of townsfolk had brought axes to break it open.
They hacked at the wooden gate, perfectly aligned to the tempo of that fiddle, because who would dare interrupt such a beautiful song?
Finally, they broke through, and the town was flooded with the impossibly loud sound of the fiddle. Every person who could hear it went into that endless cathedral, and walked through its cavernous galleries following the sound, until they all disappeared.
The town then became overgrown with lilies and roses, all of which pointed to the destroyed door of the church, for they wished to follow the song. The clouds nearby swirled around it too, for they wished to follow the song. Animals also passed through the gate regularly, for they wish to follow the song.
And thus, the fiddle sang forevermore, ever enticing, ever attracting.