flashfic
Two Payments
The horses that plunge through the waterways between the cities of heaven and the citadels of hell are wild of eye and white of mane. No one rides them. In times past they have trampled armies and thundered down brave fortresses, and every hoofmark fills with dead water. They leave behind them a trail of sodden smoke and equations tearing themselves into constituent constants and shadows that chatter in the language of untimely gifts.
Thunder
Sometimes it’s about thunder, and sometimes it’s about the pale horses who thrash the sea into storm, and sometimes it’s about gunfire opening your heart. Fruits smashed down to their glistening pits. Petals that stain your wrists; wine that scours your throat.
The Third Flower
At the end of the world was a mountain, and in the hidden heart of the mountain was a maze. At the center of the maze, the stories said, there bloomed a flower. Storytellers from the riverlands said the flower was fair as morning, and shone with its own light. Storytellers from the drylands said the flower had petals dark as shadow, and perfumed the entire maze with the scents of extinct fruits. And storytellers from the mountain itself said the flower was no flower, but the chrysalis of a goddess.
Steel Ever Shining
Tea of roses scented the room where Jeru knelt, head bowed as she spoke her devotions to the saint of steel-ever-shining. As a girl, s he had stared at her father’s shrine and the beautiful mural of the saint with her long, curly black hair and her flawless dark skin, her unfathomable smile. Her father had caught her one day and cuffed her lightly.
Raven Tracks
The thing to know about ravens is that they don’t leave tracks the way other birds do. It is not just a matter of raven feet, of tearing raven talons.
Rather, ravens leave their thoughts scattered sideways in out-of-print books, in footnotes that should not be there and that are written in extinguished languages. Sometimes they discuss the number of coins it would take to imbalance a businessman’s greed. Sometimes they dissect (pitilessly, that goes without saying) the libretti of operas where too many characters wear black. They find it presumptuous.
The Palace of the Dragons
In the dark seas, in the deep and stirring waters, the dragons are building a palace.
Dragons do not build in human time, although they sometimes permit seers and unwed peasant daughters and abalone divers to swim among them. They do not build in coral time, although they sometimes plant coral gardens. They do not even build in fossil time.
Out of the Sky
It isn’t an angel that falls out of the sky, or a ship with tesseract wings, or a broken-eyed bit of star. Like apples and ashes it lands where temptation meets you with sweet stinging kisses, where treachery greets you with soft scouring caresses. But your heart is a sword and your heart knows its north, and steadfast you stand through the night of nights as the candles in the universe burn down. Then, warmed by your purpose, the seed-thing stirs and cracks open, uncoiling to grow a new sky.
The Mathematician’s Blessing
The mathematician had had some peculiar guests in her time: astrologer-queens with comet-shaped birthmarks on their faces, sages who spoke a different language each day, blind generals who had never lost a battle. But she had not expected a visitor from the steppes, wearing undyed leather, a shortbow at her back. The visitor appeared to be an unremarkable woman of wiry build, with black hair braided tightly back and deeply tanned skin.
The Lens of the Sky
It is not true that the hawk maidens of the moors have no hearts. Although they come down from the moors only rarely to trade and to find fathers for their daughters, they wear their hearts on silver chains. Hawk maidens are deadly hunters and far-seers, and to become an adult, each one must grind her glass heart with sand of her own choosing.
Jira Dark-Hands
In the city of Softly-Shining-Moon, during the hot summers when the breezes murmur of languorous courtships and loving caresses, a woman named Jira Dark-Hands sits and waits for her suitors. She is neither young nor old, but the sweet curve of her mouth makes her beautiful. Troubadors sing of her smile; hearing them, she laughs, not unkindly.