Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
Dragons at Dawn
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
A kilometer outside the fortress of the Green Empress, a small white rabbit huddled naked against a dirty concrete shed cracked with age and bombardment, clutching in her small arms a tiny version of herself: her shivering baby, the only one left alive after the incessant aerial bombings of the Dragonflies over the past four weeks.
The skies were the ever-slate of the Land of Grey Dusk, but the Dragonflies’ explosive ordnance threw up smoke incarnadine and lavender. Overhead, the massive insects droned, searching out any remaining warrens or burrows not yet obliterated by their patrols. The rabbit squeezed her eyes shut and held her little one tight as she dared, her entire body ajitter, anticipating the descending whistle of the ball of light and noise that would destroy her completely.
But instead she heard, “Psst! Over here!”
She eased up her right eyelid and saw a young girl poking her head out of a doorway in the shed, a doorway the rabbit was certain had not been there before. Within was dimness, but the rabbit skittered over and leapt inside onto a dirt floor. The girl slammed the door and the rabbit laid eyes on the motley assortment gathered there in the faint light: a tortoise, a cat, and two person-shaped things with spears.
“We’re looking for the Green Empress,” the girl was saying. “Can you tell us how to find her?”
“Do you mean to kill her?” asked the rabbit.
“What? No! I just need her to send me back home. Why would you want to kill her?”
“She did the same to my lifemate and my dozens of children. To her we’re pests to be exterminated.” Her one remaining bunny trembled and wept silently in her arms.
“Is that so?” said the girl, her facial features set hard and angry. “Well then, I have yet one more thing to discuss with her.”
“And then afterward you will kill her?”
The girl bent down and gently touched the rabbit on the arm. “No. I don’t believe in killing. It wouldn’t bring back your family. But I will make her stop her extermination, and there will be recompense for the survivors, you can be assured of this.”
The rabbit said not in a word in reply, but held out her precious baby to the strange girl, who took her. The rabbit closed her eyes again to concentrate, and despite her exhaustion both physical and mental, she touched her forepaws to the dirt floor and began to dig.
***
(This piece was inspired visually by Lisa Snellings’ evocative eponymous painting, and aurally by Linkin Park’s “Krwlng (Mike Shinoda ft. Aaron Lewis).“)
***
Previously:
01: Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall
02: The World, Under
03: Androcles Again
04: Look Into My Eyes, You’re Under
05: Shiftless, Hopeless
06: Cricetinae’s Paroxysm
07: Wind and Harmony
Pirates of the Caribbean
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
The skull and crossbones flag wasn’t flying high with impunity like it used to but James considering himself lucky that at least the Red Cassandra wasn’t full of cannon balls in Davy Jones’ locker. The Royal Navies had put so many at the end of a rope. He didn’t like being out manned or out gunned.
The crew had finished repairing and caulking their hull after their last close call. Wind rustled through the palms on shore. The moon hung over its lonely reflection. One more quiet night in the hidden bay and then it was back to the shipping lanes to hunt. Easy prey was in such short supply.
Something whisked overhead, whistling like the mother of all cannon balls. Had the British found them, even here? No other cannonballs followed. James looked up in time to see a huge shooting star with fiery red tail streak across the sky and disappear over the trees. Fireworks? A thunderous crash came from beyond the trees followed by column of water.
“I seen it, Captain,” Billy cried from the crows nest. “A ship fell from the sky. And it was on fire!”
James ordered the Red Cassandra to the inlet on the other side of the island. In the shallows lodged between the sandbar and the reef was the wreck of the strangest ship he had ever seen. A sleek oval schooner with no sails. It was made of a glistening metal that looked like silver and gold.
James and Billy and some of the crew approached in the dingy.
“There’s no crew in here,” Billy said from inside the torn belly of the strange ship. “They must have abandoned. But wait, I think I found guns, Captain.”
James had an idea. He fired his rifle. The ball dinged harmlessly off the metal hull.
Then he ordered the crew to fire the Red Cassandra’s cannons. The cannonballs were easily repelled.
They spent the next weeks living on fresh fruit and fish and plating the Red Cassandra’s hull with the salvaged metal. They mounted the new guns in the cannon ports and the on the deck.
James mounted a strange device from the other ship’s bridge in front of the steering wheel. He wasn’t sure what it did but it seemed to be a map of the stars and that could prove useful. It cast the ship in a glow like artificial moonlight. He liked how ominous it made them look.
To the shipping lanes, Captain James ordered.
He raised the Jolly Roger. The men cheered. James smiled.
Let the Navy come, he thought. Looks the skull and cross bones will be flying high on these seas a while longer.