05.29.07
Patterns.
“What are you doing?” Kaezia asked, leaning over her father.
Arawn didn’t even blink. “Watching the Tree grow.”
Kaezia looked askance at the sky, then looked back down at her father. “There’s nothing there.”
Arawn chuckled. “Spare me from world-weary ten-year-olds. Lay down.” He patted the ground next to him.
Kaezia flopped down with all the grace of a sack of grain. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“You’re not supposed to look at anything. You’re just supposed to look. Just … look.”
“Um…” Kaezia stared at the sky until her eyes burned. Nothing, just as she’d thought. She reached up to rub her eyes, but her father grabbed her hands.
“If they’re burning, you’re almost there. Keep looking.” Arawn released her hands and tucked his own back under his head.
Sighing, Kaezia kept looking. Her eyes began to water, and her nose began to itch, and just when she was really, really sure she couldn’t take it anymore … they cleared.
And the world was made of branches. They arched above her, they twined around her, they wove through her, and they were growing.
And then she blinked, and she lost it. The world was just the world again.
Her father was looking at her, his eyes a serious brown she’d never seen before. “Remember that,” he said.
Kaezia nodded.
Together, father and daughter went back inside and went about their lives. But in later years, whenever the Queen could never be found, the Fool always knew where to find her – out in the meadow, watching the sky.
uPgRaD3 Z3R0 0n3 A said,
May 29, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Nice short story. It seemed familiar somehow – must have read this before.
Alix said,
May 30, 2007 at 12:57 am
I’d be interested to know what it was this reminds you of, since I just wrote it. I’m glad you liked it.
uPgRaD3 Z3R0 0n3 A said,
May 30, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Am not sure where I saw a similar story, but it seemed familiar somehow. I added a link to my blog since you are writing fiction and I found the story enjoyable (I have started writing science fiction).
I did recently read a book “I am a Strange Loop”, by Douglas Hofstadter a reference to a “Peanuts” comic with Linus, Charlie Brown, and Lucy:
Lucy: “Aren’t the clouds beautiful? They look like big balls of cotton…I could just lie here all day and watch them drift by…If you use your imagination, you can see lots of things in the cloud formations…What do you think you see Linus?”
Linus: “Well, those clouds up there look to me like the map of the British Honduras on the Caribbean…That cloud up there looks a little like the profile of Thomas Eakins, the famous painter and sculptor…And that group of clouds over there gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen…I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side…”
Lucy: “Uh Huh…That’s very good…What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown?”
Charlie Brown: “Well, I was going to say I saw a Ducky and a Horsie, but I changed my mind!’
Alix said,
May 30, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Well, I’m playing around with mythology – Proto-Indo-European mythology in this story specifically. The idea of a cosmic pattern and a world tree is a fairly widely spread idea. (That’s half the fun of mythology, to me – tinkering around with stuff everybody already half knows.)
Thanks for the link, by the way.
I love Peanuts. That snippet’s hilarious.
Your blog looks really interesting. I’ll have to check it out – when my cluster headache goes away. (I hate my head…)
Idetrorce said,
December 15, 2007 at 8:12 pm
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce