Shadows crept across the wall.
Richard didn’t see them, at first. He was too sunk in the stark reality of the agricultural reports before him, too chilled in a building built for solar heating.
He buried his face in his hands. Who knew for certain how it had started? A volcano, atomic bombs, a meteorite strike? All had been discussed, but it was impossible to tell rumor from truth. Even the reports, with their sentence of mass starvation, were late and scanty.
All he was sure of was that the sun was gone, hidden behind a pall of dark clouds, and he wasn’t even sure whether those clouds were ash, smoke or water. That, and the fact that without the sun, no crops could be grown.
He threw his head back and opened his eyes, looking upward in some half-remembered impulse toward prayer. His vision started to sweep past the shadows, stopped. Shadows?
The image of tree branches?
Scarcely daring to hope he turned to look at the window, uncovered to let in what little light remained, and saw the sun. Feeble, to be sure, but there, returning. Crops would grow again.
His eyes filled with tears, and everything faded.
Platform-Building Challenge #1 is the following:
Write a short story/flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, including a poem. Begin the story with the words, “Shadows crept across the wall”. These five words will be included in the word count.
If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional), do one or more of these:
end the story with the words: “everything faded.” (also included in the word count) Yes.
include the word “orange” in the story No.
write in the same genre you normally write Yes, science fiction.
make your story 200 words exactly! Yes, if I counted right.
To see the other entries in the first Challenge, click the logo above.
The shaman is not at all what I expected. In fact, I am starting to wonder if “shaman” is even the right translation of the word Songbird used.
It occurred to me after Songbird had left on her errand that she’d told me her people were in the habit of giving gifts of food to visitors. One thing I was sure they would treasure was salt – easy enough for me to get, simply by teleporting seawater to my shelter and boiling it down. I’d replenished my stock a fiveday ago, so it was simple to fill one of my smaller gourds with the precious substance.
What else? A sweet, sticky fruit from the jungle to the north, as far away as I have memorized teleport coordinates, was at first as strange to Songbird as it was to me, but after one cautious trial it became a favorite for both of us. It was easy enough to teleport to a memorized part of the jungle, and probe mentally for the right kind of tree with a feel of ripeness. I plucked a huge leaf, teleported the fruit onto it from one of the branches too slender for the small primates gorging on the tree’s bounty, and then teleported it and myself back to the shelter. Wild melons were ripening, too, and I plucked one to temper the sweetness of the jungle fruit.
Salt as a gift, fruit for refreshment. I placed both the salt and the leaf holding the fruit on a shelf out of Patches’ reach and looked downstream.
Four tiny figures were just visible. I thought the smallest was Songbird from the way she was dancing around the others. Two taller figures appeared to be assisting a third over the boulders lining the stream at that point. The shaman? It had never occurred to me that the shaman might have difficulty covering what Songbird had said was an hour’s walk.
As they came closer I recognized Songbird, and I thought the two taller figures must be her parents. Both wore tunics that appeared more decoration – or perhaps a way of carrying things while leaving their hands free — than clothing. The third figure was bent and smaller, and as they made their final approach I saw that the face was wrinkled and the mouth drawn in.
My people shed and grow teeth as they age, as often as needed. I lost one tooth when I first arrived, but by the time I found Songbird it was growing back. Do these people age, like animals? Is their life span so limited that they quit growing new teeth when they themselves quit growing? Did I misinterpret the awe and respect that colored Songbird’s emotions when she spoke the word I have been translating as “shaman?”
Jarn’s Journal is the fictitious journal of an alien stranded on Earth, in Africa, 125,000 years ago. His story is the remote backstory of the Confederation in which my published novels, Homecoming and Tourist Trap, are set. Jarn’s Journal from the time he crashed on Earth is being put on my author website as I write it.
Day 595
They have returned, and Songbird has rejoined them.
How am I going to survive with no one but Patches to talk to?
I have been spying on their camp, and they returned yesterday. It must have shown on my face when I teleported back to the shelter, because Songbird at once began saying, “Are they back?”
“Yes,” I said. “Do you want to go back to them?”
I was of two minds about this. Surely she was safer with me, and she was a child; it was my duty to guard her. Guard her, yes, my mind whispered, but she is not your property, and she has a mind and will of her own. Let the decision be hers.
And there was never any question of what her decision would be.
I teleported her back to the vicinity of the camp. “Go home,” I told her.
“Thank you,” she half sobbed, and then turned and ran toward the camp.
I did not leave at once. I did not know these people, and it was not out of the question that they would consider her a ghost or a sacrifice that had failed, and would try to kill her.
They were awed, yes – I could see that much. But the man and woman who gathered her to their arms had only joy on their faces, and the rest of the group, though obviously astonished to find her alive, appeared equally welcoming.
Which was the shaman? I wondered. Not there, or one of those welcoming Songbird back? I stayed long enough to be sure Songbird would be safe, but when two of the group started in the direction Songbird had come from, I teleported back to the shelter.
It is very lonely here without Songbird. There are so many reminders – the pallet I made her, which she promptly tore apart and remade to suit herself, the storage baskets and gourds, the tanned hides ….
The rain on the roof is maddening.
Tomorrow I will teleport back to the vicinity of the camp, and make sure she is still safe.
I am posting this background to my published novels on my author website as I get it written. Don’t forget this is the last day to enter the drawing!
(“Blue Babe” is a steppe bison that was killed by a lion, frozen and buried by silt some 36,000 years ago. He was found by a placer miner near Fairbanks, and rests today in the museum at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.)
The bison sniffed the frosty air, his head swinging back and forth as he scanned the snow-covered steppe. Vigilance was part of life, but within the herd it was a shared duty. Here, alone, he felt exposed and vulnerable. He lowered his head and pawed at the wind-crusted snow, uncovering a batch of browned grass, but he took only one bite before jerking his head up to look around.
The dead grass was harsh on his tongue, but it would be the only food available for months. And how could he feed, without others to keep watch? In the herd, at least one or two individuals at a time were always looking around, ready to sound a warning if danger approached. He swallowed the first bite, and lowered his head briefly to snatch more of the poor feed.
The wind tugged at his thick coat, but could not penetrate to his skin. He spread his nostrils and swiveled his ears, seeking warning of any predator, but the hiss of the blowing snow covered other sounds. Again he turned. Where was the rest of the herd? Sheltering from the wind? Perhaps in the valley to his left?
The narrow stream valley provided little shelter from the biting wind, and no other bison. Instinctively he knew the danger of being alone, but until he found the rest of the herd, he had little choice. Again he paced in a tight circle, seeking the source of every imagined sound.
What was that? One eye caught a blur of motion, and he bolted farther into the little valley. But the snow had drifted deeper here, and as he started to turn back, a sudden weight almost collapsed his hindquarters. Bellowing wildly he bucked and spun, the musk of lion rank in his nostrils. For an instant he was free, plunging though the snow for the mouth of the valley, but out of the thickening storm came another lion, leaping for his head.
His nose was pulled down, and again weight came on his hindquarters. He hardly felt the pain of claws and teeth. All his attention focused on the demands of his lungs for air. He tried to shake his head, to throw off the weight clamped to his muzzle, but his legs would no longer support even his own weight, and buckled under him. Redness fading to black washed across his world. He never knew when the lions began to feed.
I just realized I’m approaching 500 posts! In fact, this one is number 484, and a celebration seems in order. So I’m hosting a little giveaway.
The rules?
1. Leave a comment on any of my posts on http://HomecomingBook.wordpress.com, from 1 though 499 (which will be Friday, November 18.) Yahoo should inform me of new comments, regardless of how far back the post. Comments must be on the original blog, not on clones (facebook, Amazon, Goodreads, SheWrites etc.)
2. The comment must include the words “contest entry” so I can check my spam folder for legitimate entries. (I’ve had legitimate comments flagged as spam before, as well as unflagged comments I suspected were spam.)
3. You may comment on as many as 5 different posts, but no more than one comment per post. Also, these must be new comments, dated after this post goes live. No person can win more than one prize.
4. All comments will be entered in a drawing, using a random number generator (probably Stat Trek) to determine the first place and four runner-ups.
5. The Prizes! First place will be a trade paperback copy of Homecoming or Tourist Trap, winner’s choice of which. Second through fifth place will be a PDF copy of either, winner’s choice. If the first place winner has both books, he or she may opt to receive three shorter, unpublished SFF pieces in PFD. These are “Horse Power,” a 6700 word short set several years after Tourist Trap, “The Only Good Werewolf”, a werewolf story set today (8800 words), or “Useless,” a 4500 word colonization story. Second through fifth place winners may opt to receive any one of these stories.
Spread the word!
This is another (fictional) excerpt from the journal of the alien supposedly behind the modern human race (at least in my science fiction!) He was stranded in Africa about 125,000 years ago when his ship crashed, and has just rescued a child of the early human tribe he has found. For the earlier parts of his Journal, see my Author Website.
Day 353
It’s a good thing I have spied on the sentients enough to have learned a little of their language, as the child seems unable to learn mine. Hers is a pretty simple one: specific sounds for specific objects, more specific sounds for specific actions, various other sounds that describe objects and actions. R’il’nian might have been that simple, early in our evolution, but her brain does not seem wired to understand R’il’nian as it exists today.
They do have individual names, and her only difficulty in understanding me when I tapped my chest and repeated “Jarn” seemed to be that the particular sound meant nothing to her. Her own name is also the sound her people use to designate a small bird, dull colored but a beautiful singer. I find myself thinking of her as “Songbird.”
In some ways she is remarkably quick. She rapidly grasped that I did not understand her language very well and set about teaching it to me, and demanding that I give her the names for things strange to her in the shelter. Rather a turnaround from what I expected, but a surprisingly pleasant turnaround! In the day and a half since she awoke, we have established far better communication than I have with Patches.
Oh, Patches.She was afraid of Patches at first, but once she understood that Patches was friendly to me and willing to be friends with her, she managed to tell me that her own people now and then tamed young animals from the wild. In fact, they seem to have a religion of sorts, and the shamans always have some kind of tamed animal – or claim to. I must confess I have my doubts about invisible animals no one but the shamans can see!
Physically the leg appears to be knitting rapidly, and all signs of infection are gone. In fact, once she was convinced that my splints would hold, it was impossible to keep her lying down. I have managed plumbing, although rather primitive, in my shelter, and a system for disposing of bodily waste. I have to say she is far more fascinated by these than by the recorder or the computer!
So far I have managed to avoid asking why her people left her to die, telling myself it is because I still do not understand her language well enough. This is an excuse, and tomorrow I will ask her.
Or perhaps the next day.
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