The Very Very Very Short Story...

So there was this challenge over at Fantasy Forums to write a very short story - 800 words or less. And somehow, magically, I found out about this when I was both feeling creative and actually had free time. So, the story below was born. I feel very negligent for my lack of posts here in April - the month was taken up with moving, unpacking, dealing with old and new landlords, and other random distractions - so I thought I would share this story.

Enjoy.

The sun was setting in the west. As it sank into a scattered bed of clouds, the sun’s dying light painted the treetops in copper splashes. It was strange, she thought, that it was the very last of the light hanging on against the dark, doomed to fade, that was the most beautiful.

She moved through the tall, reedy grasses and barely felt them, just as she barely felt the earth that was still warm beneath her feet, or the lilac-scented breeze. Spread before her, the meadow was lit by the growing light of pixie nests, luminous points of blue and green and gold broken up by the flitting shapes of pixies themselves. The pixies sensed her approach and stopped their dusk movements, turning as one to face her across the field as the hum of their stiff little wings took on a threatening note. But a moment’s observation and they returned to their own doings – they knew she was no threat to them. If she still had such idioms, she would have sighed. The thought that the insectile little fey, the only ones who saw her anymore, gave her no notice…well, she could no longer say it made her heartsick, but there was undeniably a dull ache inside her at the idea. Watching the pixies dart about cutting their jagged patterns in the air, she settled down to wait.

She waited. And she waited. And as the sun sank deeper within the cradle of the trees, she was forced to admit the truth. He wasn’t coming.

She hung her head. She shouldn’t be surprised – well, if she could have still felt surprise – she’d known this day would come. Oh, she still remembered the day they made their promise; the day he’d held her hand, fevered warm in his cool grip, and spoken of this place. It had been here, on the hill above the pixie’s meadow, that they’d shared their first kiss on a warm night in late spring. It had been on that same night, which she supposed had been a night much like this one, that they had pledged their love to each other for always. And as he’d held tight her burning hand, he’d promised to come here every year on the anniversary of that day and be with her.

He had done so, and more – at first. In the beginning he’d come every week, stained with sweat and dust from the trek, to sit with her, talk to her, share the setting of the sun. Then every two weeks. Then once a month, which became once a season. Now, his last handful of visits had been a full year apart from each other. With so much time between their meetings, she could see him aging from one visit to the next. She could see now that he had been barely more than a child when he first started coming here, but now there was a man coming to visit her in that boy’s place. She thought hard, struggling to concentrate on his last visit. Yes…yes, he’d spoken of another then. Of a cottage being built at the edge of the fields. Of the extra space near the hearth, where a crib would go. Of a third on the way... He’d wept. And many times, he’d said he was sorry. She hadn’t, couldn’t, grasp it a year ago – it was so hard to concentrate now, to remember anything. It had been many visits, many years, since the fever had claimed her life, and since then the old memories had faded like a half-glimpsed dream.

But now she understood what he’d been trying to tell her.

She rose from the ground, causing another brief stir among the pixies, and looked up at the sun. It was nearly gone now. Her gaze fell slowly to her hands, fading now so that she could see the dancing blades of grass right through her fingers. It was his promise, his memories, that had moored her to this place…and now that it had faded away, so would she. She had expected to feel sorrow, fear, regret. But now, with the moment finally on her, all she felt was a sense of quiet peace. It had been a long time, after all – perhaps, she thought to herself, she was finally ready to go home.

With a final flash of brilliance, glittering glorious deep and many-hued against the sky, the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. The pixies paused again in their twisting flight to glance up at the spot on the hillock – but there was no longer anything to see there. And so they returned to their dance on the warm currents of air, unobserved.

On Fantasy...

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth." - George R. R. Martin

I was recently asked to fill out the following questionnaire – a nice young student from Sweden wandered on to The Fantasy Forum asking for some help with her school project. The goal was to examine why people are interested in fantasy, and why the genre has stuck around for so long. An interesting question, especially considering that if you take mythology into account, fantasy is the oldest genre and has literally been around nearly as long as the human race. We evolved alongside fantasy…

Anyway, since it seems relevant, I thought I’d post my answer here.


1) WHY DO YOU LIKE FANTASY?

I'm not going to deny that escapism is a factor...I think everyone has wished they could live in a magical realm at some point or another. But more importantly, the reason why I like fantasy, why I write fantasy and illustrate for fantasy stories, is that it is a way to bring out the things that are important. It seems like modern reality has so many little things that clutter life up, that get into the way - but using fantasy, you can strip off all those little distractions until you have the pure ideas and concepts, both good and evil. Every day, people find themselves in positions of strength, and must decide whether to use that strength to help or harm. Every day, people find themselves in positions of weakness, and must figure out how to overcome that weakness. Every day, someone somewhere starts thinking of people as things, and takes the first step on the road to becoming a monster - and every day, someone somewhere commits an utterly selfless act. We hardly pay any attention to these pivotal moments (if we even hear about them) because there is so much distraction, so many of us, and so much "background noise"... However, in fantasy, we can throw these concepts into stark relief and pit the darker parts against the lighter. Which side wins depends on the author. Some try to show what isn’t, but could be; others show things that shouldn’t be, yet are. I think both are helpful for making us look at our world and dreaming, striving, for something better.



2) WHICH IS YOUR FAVORITE FANTASY book/movie? WHY?

A book called Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams. I have been in love with this book forever, I think because it proves what I was trying to explain in the answer to Question 1. The actual story is about talking cats and their quest to save their friend from a dark magic taking over the land, and is about as far from reality as you'd care to get. But the story beneath the story - the actual depth of emotional changes/issues - has just about everything you could ask for. It deals with feeling overwhelmed and small in the great crowd of people in the world, the difficulties we have tolerating people who are really not so different than we used to be (or still are!), the loss of friends and the gaining of new ones, and learning that we weren't really in love with someone we thought we'd stay with forever. Fantastic book - I reread it every year.



3) WHAT IS AN IMPORTANT "INGREDIENT" IN A FANTASY book/movie?


No contest - depth and realism in characters. I will follow an interesting character doing his laundry for ten pages, but I won't follow an unconvincing, "fake" feeling character fighting a horde of magical sword-wielding demons for two paragraphs. Characters have to feel like real people, not invincible fighting machines or perfect heroes. That means they should be human inside (even if they are elves, dwarves, goblins, ect on the outside) and have flaws, certain petty or mean habits, and struggle with difficult choices. The path from joining the fight to standing triumphant on the field of the final battle should be a rocky, slippery, winding trail - not a stroll across the parking lot - and I want to see it.

Note: This is largely why I could never really get into R.A. Salvatore books or the Lord of the Rings series, although I admit Tolkein's work is iconic. I feel about Tolkein the way I feel about the Beatles - both of them deserve a tip of the hat for revolutionizing their genre and bringing it to the attention of the world, but both have been surpassed by the writers/musicians who followed in their footsteps.



So those are my thoughts. Those are the reasons why I read, write, and draw fantasy, why I dream fantasy, and why I started this journal. Take from it what you will.


~Blue Nephelim Out