O Magnum Mysterium



"You voted for Kamala, right?"
Frank looked away from the road and into his wife's accusing, anxious face.
"Of course, honey."
Lilian turned her profile to him. Age, and the light that filtered through the drizzle on the windshield, had turned her skin velvety. Brake lights from the car ahead reflected off her cheek.
"No, that was a joke," she said.
Frank had to crane his neck to look for a gap in the next lane. "Oh, uh huh?"
While he concentrated on driving, Lilian clutched at the door handle, twisting her hips as if unable to find a comfortable position. "I can't help thinking about it," she said. "More than half the country voted for Trump."
"That liar," mouthed Frank as he turned and accelerated, assuring his place in the next lane over. "Foof! So! Mikey's gonna love his truck, huh?"
It sat on the seat behind them, embedded in a cube of cardboard and plastic the size of an oven. Beside it were the bottle of wine and the strata, baked because what if Derek and Diane's oven wasn't working.
"I don't know." Lilian rubbed at the skin over the round bones of her wrist. "It's a truck. It's so gendered. Don't you think?"
Frank nodded, tracking the patterns on the retaining wall. "He loves trucks. 'Truck' was his first word after 'no.'"
"I know that, Frank."
Frank continued to focus on the road, his mouth firm.
A terrible silence rose until Lilian said, "I'm just worried."
He nodded a little and glanced her way. "I hear you. It's all right to be worried," Frank recited. "And you know? I bet you in two years, there'll be a blue wave, just like last time."
Lilian's shoulders relaxed. "No, that's complacency. That's why we weren't ready to keep him out of the White House. We'll keep up the resistance." She looked up from her lap. "And I can ask Diane what she's doing to fight."
Frank flicked her a nervous smile. "That's a good idea."
"Look out for that pickup. I don't like the way he's driving."
Frank got out from behind the truck and braked to avoid rear-ending the car in the next lane. "Look at these dopes on the road! Ha," he said, and swung his hand over the wheel as if flinging a Frisbee. "Maybe they're the ones who voted for Trump!"
"Don't, Frank."
"Guess there's no way to know."
The freeway rose and curved over housing developments and trees. Lilian searched Frank's face as he signaled and took the next exit.
Derek and Diane lived in a large, rented home on the bank of a slough. Spanish mission, it was called, which meant white stucco and a low profile.
"The magnolia's lost its flowers."
"Frank, it bloomed in May."
They rang the doorbell and waited, food and presents cradled in their arms, smiling at the closed door.
It opened a crack and slammed shut. Opened again. An eye peered up at them from between clumps of brown hair. The door slammed again, hard enough to rattle the windows.
"Michael, no! Stop that."
The doorknob turned, but the door shuddered under the thrown weight of a four-year-old boy.
"No door!"
"Stop, Mikey."
"Roar!"
The door opened a third time, now at the hand of Derek, their son. His own child squirmed in the sweatered crook of his arm. "Come in, quick. Merry Christmas."
"Merry…" Lilian's eyes darted up past him. "Where's Diane?"
"Traffic!" Mikey flung his hands up and slithered out of his father's grip. Screaming, he ran out the door.
"Don't let him get away." Derek pushed past his parents. "Mikey, don't play in traffic."
"Broom. Broom! A red truck. Grandpa, let me down."
"Don't put him down yet." Derek maneuvered himself between Frank and the road. "Mikey, go inside kiss Grandma."
"What about kisses for Grandpa?"
Mikey sank his heel into Frank's belly and made it back to the house before the old man straightened.
At the noise of Mikey's approach, Lilian turned away from her Diane, but not quickly enough to avoid her grandson, who dove into the backs of her knees. Diane grabbed her and held on until Lilian had regained her balance.
Derek sidestepped the present still in the doorway. "Mikey, did you tackle grandma?"
"No I kissed."
"She doesn't look kissed. She looks tackled."
"No!"
"It was a kiss," said Lilian, straightening. "Thank you, Mikey."
Derek shot his mother a frown taking a knee before Mikey. "That isn't the truth, is it, kid?"
"Give grandma a kiss, Mikey."
"Mom, wait." Derek put a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. "Mikey, are you brave enough to tell me the truth?"
Mikey frowned and turned up his nose. "Harrumph!"
"In front of your family? On Christmas?"
"It's all right." Lilian tried to meet her daughter-in-law's eyes. "You tell your child 'no.' I've read that that's not as traumatizing as we used to think."
"Right. Sorry." Diane ducked to pick up Mikey. "It's okay. Sorry. Lilly, I haven't asked if you want something to drink."
"Let me down, Mom!"
Derek got up and pulled the door closed behind Frank and the present.
Diane had spent the previous day polishing the cabinets and the smells of beeswax and orange oil turned the Spanish mission into a dark and towering cathedral. Candle-flames nodded over wax in the shapes of fir trees and Santa's head, illuminating the two stratas in their pans, the fruit salad, and the mugs of coffee.
A choir sang softly from a hidden speaker, and the Christmas tree threw shards of colored light across the walls. Cars, trucks, warrior robots, and the elements of hopeful STEM kits had been spread evenly across the floor to a depth of six inches.
Mikey waded through his bounty, new truck on his shoulder, shouting "Brow! Broom! Action! Watch out, Grandma."
Frank leaned forward and raised his voice in an effort to be heard. "Which is why we can't understand it. We were just talking on our drive down here. How could half the country have voted for the man? Derek, what do you think? You think there was hacking?"
"I don't know, Dad." Derek pulled back, shoulders raised and voice fast and breathless. "I don't really watch the news."
"Mikey," said Diane, "should you be doing that?"
Frank spread his hands in disbelief. "But you gotta stay informed, kid. Now, more than ever."
Derek shrugged again. "Yeah, I guess."
"Mikey, think about what you're doing."
"Well, what are they saying at work?"
"Nobody can say anything."
"I know what you mean." Frank leveled his finger at his son, whose eyes focused as if on the barrel of a gun. "Your boss came out for Trump, didn't he?"
Derek lifted his eyebrows and scrubbed a hand through his beard. "Our founder? Yeah?"
"Three," said Mikey. "Two!"
Frank leaned further. "Why do you think he did that? Because he feared what Trump might do to him if he didn't kowtow?"
"Frank, I think that's offensive," said Lilian, nodding in Diane's direction.
"Submit?"
"I don't know," Derek told them. "Who knows what anyone is thinking? Right? Mikey, don't throw that truck."
It crashed through a mound of empty boxes.
"I dropped it."
"That wasn't dropping, Mikey, that was throwing."
"Good thing he didn't hit the tree," said Frank, and Mikey started laughing.
"Oh, my God." Derek turned in his seat and put his hands on his knees. "Hey, Mikey, you want me to go get out the tablet?"
"Uh, Derek?" Diane leaned closer to her husband, lowering her voice and keeping her eyes on her in-laws. "It's Christmas."
"I understand," Lilian told her, and her hands under the table turned her own phone face-down. "There's so much toxic masculinity on YouTube."
Derek grit his teeth and growled at his wife, "But there's things I want to say."
She drew back. "So, say them."
But now everyone was looking at him. Derek put his hand over his mouth.
Lilian looked from one child to the next as silence swelled. "But how are you, Diane? We should have asked you sooner about your work."
"Yeah," said Frank, eagerly turning his attention from his sulky son. "I bet they're doing something big at the university. Some sort of protest in the works?"
"Probably," said Diane. "But, well. Sorry, but I guess I didn't tell you before. I don't work there any more."
"Since Mikey's last birthday," Derek grumbled.
Lilian put her hands across Diane's wrist. "But what are you going to do? And how could they fire you?"
"I wasn't fired. I took a leave of absence. And I'm looking for a new job right now." Diane smiled and ducked her head. "In the private sector."
"Oh, the private sector," Lilian recited before she registered Diane's expression.
"Mom. Mommy!" Mikey was under the table.
"What? Yes, Mikey, what is it?"
"Where's the goose?"
"It's still in the oven."
"It's cooked," said Frank.
"What I mean," Lilian said, "is that there's so much more misogyny in the private sector. Even than in academia."
"Right," Derek declared. "The university was a snake pit."
"What? What happened?" asked Frank.
Derek's eyes darted away and his hand went back to his mouth. "Never mind."
"Sorry," said Diane. "Yes. Never mind."
This was enough to make Lilian take hold of Diane's wrist. "Was it sexual harassment?"
"Well." Diane looked to Derek, but he was glowering at the wall.
"Mommy!"
"What?"
"Is the goose crispy?"
"I don't know, Mikey." She looked back up at her mother-in-law. "Sorry. I have no right to complain. There are people in this country who are dying because they don't have jobs." She passed her hand palm down over her head, ducking slightly and smiling disarmingly. "I'm really privileged to have—"
"What's it thinking about?"
"What's what, Mikey?"
His frustrated sigh from under the table sounded exactly like his mother's. "What is the goose thinking about?"
"Nothing. It's dead. Derek, will you?"
"Go play, Mikey. Let us talk."
"That's not what I meant." Diane turned back to Lilian, who was still gripping her wrist. "I mean that I will work when I get my new job, but, you know." She paused, but when nobody stopped her, she had to continue. "I don't have to watch what I say so much?"
Lilian pulled back, eyes wide. Her hands left Diane to clutch each other. "What does that mean?"
"No, that doesn't sound so bad," said Frank. "Don't have to watch what you say. I wouldn't mind that sometimes. Lilly?"
"Frank. Don't interrupt her."
"I don't know." Diane waved her hands like a stage magician directing her audience's attention. Her expression was one of fear. "It was a big department. There's a lot of different viewpoints to be aware of, and?"
Lilian turned to Frank. "It was bullying. Like what happened to me."
Diane hung her head, and put her hands away. "Yeah."
Derek moved as if to hug her, but patted her shoulder, instead. "Sorry, babe."
"What are you apologizing for?" Frank asked him.
"Empathizing, Dad." And in a lower, less sarcastic voice directed at his wife: "I know it gets exhausting."
Frank squinted across the table. "Someone harassing you too, now?"
Lilian swatted his shoulder. "Come on, Frank, how could they be? We're talking about Diane and her hurt."
"No, no, it's been good for me," Diane assured them. And, when more details seemed to be expected, "I'm glad to have more time to spend on…" she turned her head, searching. "Myself."
"Yes, that's all right," said Lilian uncertainly. "If it's on yourself."
"I've been able to work out again, for one thing."
"Oh, working out. I'm so glad."
"You've lost weight."
"Frank!"
Diane smiled a little. "It was hard to give myself permission, you know? To not be Diane the health policy instructor and just, uh, honestly…" She looked at Derek, who had stood up.
He raised his nose. "We've been completing an awful lot of sentences."
Mikey was okay. He had climbed into the large freezer in Derek and Diane's garage and curled himself into the hole where the goose had been. He was trying to shut the freezer door from the inside when his dad found him.
"No!" Mikey wailed from Derek's arms.
"Don't sit in the freezer!" Derek raised his hand above the back of the boy's head, but looked up at the rest of his staring family and froze. His face reddened.
"You know what?" he said. "Let's take a walk."
The adults distracted themselves with the business of Mikey's coat and mittens and getting his boots on the right feet. In the front yard, they could argue with him about who should ride in the stroller ("Mom!") and on the bridge, everyone could be worried about the traffic on one side and the slow, brown slough on the other.
"You see that, Mikey? That's a coot."
"Yeah, just like me."
"No! Mikey, you have to stay with Mom."
"I got him, Diane. I got him."
By the time they arrived at the park, they had temporarily exhausted their ability to worry. But silence gathered around the little hills and the pond. They each of them looked around, but saw only frazzled palm trees and the green turds of Canada geese. The clouds had burned away, but the sky was as scary as the view over the edge of the bridge.
"Honk honk!" Mikey made a dash for it, pretending to be either a truck or a goose.
"I'll get him." Frank did his best to catch up.
Derek looked ready to escape as well, but Diane asked, "So, Lilly, what's going on at your church? Are you still involved in the Women's Auxiliary?"
Fear flashed across Lilian's face. "Well, of course we're all still shocked about the election."
"Oh, of course." She turned and raised her voice. "Come back, Mikey!"
"Maybe the Auxiliary could make a rule like 'no politics,'" Derek suggested.
"You can't avoid politics." Lilian spoke gently but firmly, as if about homework. "Everything is political. Silence is violence."
"Yeah." Derek turned. "Just sort of herd him back this way, Dad. Okay?"
"Honk honk!" The little boy powered up the hill and threw himself at Lilian's knees. This time, he did kiss them.
"You want to show Grandma the geese?" asked Diane.
"Come on, Grandma! Watch out, they can bite. They can bite hard. Like this!"
"You protect Grandma," said Derek.
"I'm sure I don't need protection."
Mikey tugged Lilian past Frank, who stooped and bent forward, hands on his knees.
"You okay, Dad?"
"Fine, fine." He straightened, groaning. "Man, I can see how you lost weight, Diane. That kid's a better coach than the girls at the fitness center. Women. I should come here twice a week." He didn't give his son or daughter-in-law time to respond. "What were you kids talking about up here? Ha. Trump didn't do anything while I was gone, did he?"
"Um, Dad?" Derek's hand went to his mouth again, but he spoke around it, scratching his beard and looking away. "I'm a little worried about Mom? Um." He checked his father's expression. "She just, she's taking this election stuff awfully personally."
Diane looked up at him. "You mean you think it isn't personal for her?"
"Uh. Yeah." He pressed his fingers to his lips and leaned into them, as if thinking deeply.
Frank watched his son and daughter-in-law. "Well, yeah, I guess it is personal and stressful. For everyone." When they didn't respond, he turned away. "Ha. Look at that kid go. He's a firecracker all right. Gonna take over the world some day, huh?"
"Yeah." Derek let go of Diane's arm and stood next to his father, watching his son. "I don't know how he's going to handle nursery school."
"But he has to go to school," said Diane in a tone of terror.
"Even after Trump guts the education department," said Frank. "We'll think of something. Looks like they're coming back."
"Should she be carrying Mikey like that?" Diane started down the hill.
Derek jogged past her. "I'll take care of it. Mom, you don't need to lug him around like that. Let me have him. Mikey, you can walk."
"I'm pooped, Dad."
"No, you're not."
"I can carry him. Well, if you think he should — oof!"
Mikey kicked off his grandma and landed on his dad's chest. "Mecha-Daddy," he said, pulling himself onto Derek's shoulder.
"Okay, okay. Mecha-Daddy." Derek reached up to twist his son's legs into position. "You're all right up there?"
"No, I'm the head! I talk. You say bvvv-tshr."
Derek took a heavy, stop-motion step, making noises like a hydraulic system.
"Action!"
"Not so loud, Mikey, that's Dad's ear."
"No, Dad, say bvvv-tshr."
Lilian picked her way towards Frank and Diane. "Well, we certainly taught those geese a lesson."
"Sorry he made you carry him," said Diane.
"No, no. I missed this." Lilian looked from husband to daughter-in-law. "What have you been talking about? Oh, that reminds me, I got a news notification while I was chasing after Mikey." She reached into her coat pocket and Diane looked up into the sky.
"What's wrong, sweetie?" asked Frank.
"It's nothing. I'm just tired."
Lilian nodded, still searching. "Me too. It's the stress of always lying."
Frank and Diane snapped their attention onto her. Lilian pulled her hand out of her pocket and held it up as if in self-defense. "What did I say? Lying? I meant we always have to be polite, I mean to put up with people. Strangers, you know, and you're always wondering which of them might have," she took a step back, "might've been on the wrong side."
"Oh," said Diane. "Right."
"I think what she means to say…"
"I'm sure you know, Diane, that I don't usually let him speak for me."
"Of course, Lilly. I wouldn't think that."
"Maybe we should head home?" said Derek.
"No! Mecha-Daddy, run away!"
"Mikey, I'm tired."
"No, you're not."
"Like Mom and Grandma." Derek knelt. "Mikey, get down now, I really am tired."
Mikey tightened his grip on his father's hair. "That isn't the truth."
"It is. Ow!"
"No! Are you brave enough to tell me the truth?"
Derek stopped with his hands under his son's armpits, looking up into the faces of his family.
For a moment, nobody knew what to say.
Lilian felt as if the ground were splitting beneath her. She always knew the right thing to say, but now, facing this terrible question, her voice failed her.
"I voted for Trump," said Frank.
"Huh what?" Derek paused with his heavy son halfway-off his shoulders. "Me too."
Diane turned on them. "Why didn't you tell me?" she demanded, and both men cringed.
"Put me down, Dad!"
"Because I voted for him too."
"Ha!"
Derek's arms trembled. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Mikey kicked, and Derek let him down in a motion just slow enough to not count as a fall. "I wanted to stay married."
"Me too."
"Ew! That's poop. Is that goose poop?"
Lilian pressed her pinkie into the inner corner of her eye. "Oh," she said.
She could hear Frank's footsteps on the grass behind her, but he didn't try to hold her.
Diane looked up from Derek's embrace. "Oh. I'm sorry, Lilly."
And what could she say? "I feel like a fool. I was so afraid of what you'd think of me." She grabbed her shoulders and and clenched her teeth. "And now I'm crying. Isn't that just. Stupid."
"Come here." Frank said from behind her. "Better to stop being stupid than keep on being stupid, right?"
Turning took more courage even than speaking. But when she saw his face, he still loved her.
"Me too," she told them.
"Brow!" Mikey shoved his parents aside and ran at full speed down the hill toward the lake. They let him.



The story above is dedicated to Marilyn Simon and Zero HP Lovecraft, who have written of their wishes to talk to their families about politics. It would be foolish to expect your conversation to be as painless as the ones in my story, but not so foolish to pray for some kind of miracle.

I should also note that, although I borrowed a house where we used to live and a certain Christmas dish, the family in this story little resembles mine. We didn't all vote the same.

I was reading Garrison Keillor's Substack, and inspiration struck me. So surprise and happy February. Here's a very short story.
~~~
Once upon a time there was a Democrat Mouse. They lived in a big city with excellent public transportation and plenty of vegan restaurants. Their incisor teeth were filed down and their fur was styled in the most supportive patterns and colors. And yet, they felt something was missing from their life.

In the suburb of that same city, where the gas was cheap and the sidewalks nonexistent, there lived a Republican Mouse. He went to the gym every day to pull heavy weights and practice biting. His teeth were stronger and yellower than anyone's, but he couldn't ignore a certain longing.

Life felt stale, crusted, empty of nourishment. Things couldn't go on like this. A change of scenery might offer a solution, or at least a distraction.

And so, the Democrat Mouse and the Republican Mouse decided to take a vacation. Not together, of course. They shared no acquaintances and had no forums in common. They simply set out on the same day, each mouse headed toward the home of the other. In the middle, they met.

What a freak, thought the Republican Mouse. She's shaved off half her fur and dyed the other half green. And all those tattoos. Filed her teeth down? Is this what mice are turning into? Grandpa was right.

And the Democrat Mouse looked at the Republican Mouse, thinking, I'm in danger. Look at those muscles. Look at those teeth. Those mean little eyes. That mouse could run me down and bite right through my spine. I've read about how that happens.

They froze, bristling.

If I call the police, thought the Democrat Mouse, they'll be on his side. They'll help him eat me.

If she takes a picture of me, thought the Republican mouse, that's it. Life over. Nobody will hire me and I'll starve.

In the windows of the houses and apartments around them, blinds twitched. Camera lenses pointed, and behind those lenses crouched yet more mice. They watched in their millions, waiting for something —anything! —to end.

This is a bit of an experiment. Before I mediated a panel of the speculative biology of fantasy, I asked Tumblr what they wanted to learn about. I got a ton of questions, and now I've answered one of them.

Davrial asked: Would a griffon be classified as an avian, or a mammal?
​
Here's my answer with accompanying pictures. 

…or “Ghost Decon”…
The heads of the press swung to follow him as Rutger walked through the door.
Cameras like glaring eyes and microphones like accusing fingers. Rutger could feel the hatred. Three deaths and more than a billion dollars, and it was only Tuesday morning.
The CTO of the ReVeil Corporation reached his podium. Clutched it. Bowed his head. “Let me first say that I’m sorry.”
Silence from the press.
Rutger pressed a button on his remote control. Behind him, the ring-shaped ReVeil logo vanished, replaced by a satellite image of streets and cul-de-sacs.
“The Aspenwood Ectogenic Power Plant,” he said. “At 5:25pm yesterday, October 21st 2019. Circled in red is the Manifestor, previously the home of serial killer Steven R. Shoenburg, who died there in 2008.”
The next slide showed the Manifestor from street level, still looking very similar to the two-story house it had once been. Then a cutaway, showing the new heat shunts and electromagnets.
“At Aspenwood, we pump waste heat into the home of a diseased, immoral individual, then anger the spiritual remains of said individual by means of a team of on-site staff trained to simulate the activities of a middle-class American family.”
Rutger breathed out, allowing the well-polished spiel to spool out of him like fine titanium chain.
“The spirit absorbs ambient heat and converts it into poltergeist activity…” He managed to choke off the end of sentence: “thus providing clean energy to homes and businesses in three states.”
Rutger met the eyes of a reporter. “The problem began with a trash fire in the house’s half-bath lavatory. CCTV footage indicates one of the on-site staff members was smoking in there.”
Against regulations, but the security team routinely overlooked it. Interviewed, they’d said they thought the poor woman deserved whatever stress-relief she could get.
“We have known since the Begay Process was invented that the spiritual remains of a deceased individual do not constitute a ‘person,’ any more than do the physical remains. However, spiritual remains do appear to pursue goals.”
Rutger took a drink of water.
“The door between the lavatory and the kitchen/dining room opened. Burning trash flew toward the other two on-site staff members, who were seated there for simulated dinner.”
Click. CCTV footage of a burning table cloth.
“Normally, this would provoke a strong fear response, which would lead to more poltergeist activity. Ectogenic potential would decrease, temperatures would equalize, and the system would self-correct.”
A slide of the staff calmly standing.
“However, the team-leader’s undisclosed usage of prescription anti-anxiety medication dulled his fear, and the other team members took their cues from him. We believe that they each went to find fire extinguishers or other means of dousing the flames. This would have been wise in a real house, but…”
A graph showed the room’s temperature suddenly plunge.
“The ghost – that is to say the spiritual remains – entered an unusually pronounced chill-phase. Technicians in our control room tried to increase heat in-flow to prevent temperatures in the room from dropping below spec, but the secondary heat shunt under the lavatory did not open. Ice crystals had formed inside it.
“Meanwhile, temperatures in the northwest corner dropped below 300 Kelvin, reducing the electrical resistance of the stators in the walls. The result was a strong attraction between the walls and the neodymium vests worn by the staff. The staff did attempt to free themselves, but now the haunting entered its poltergeist phase.”
Rutger clicked the projector to the next slide. “This is a photo of the Aspenwood Plant taken by a high-altitude drone at 6am this morning.”
The Manifestor had been converted into serrated silver and black wreckage: the worst ectogenic feedback loop ever in North America.
“Further human deaths were prevented by the immediate evacuation of the Aspenwood Plant. However, the loop continued to spin, generating more heat from friction, which was converted into ectogenic potential and re-deployed as more torque.
“This was likely deliberately engineered by the…” Rutger took a breath, “by the spiritual remains of the now-deceased on-site staff, working in collaboration with those of Mr. Shoenburg, combining their technical knowledge to his…that is to say its…”
Hell. What was the jargon word for “evil”?
“…value tension,” Rutger sighed.
New slide.
“The loop continued to grow until 1am today, when our emergency cold lines absorbed enough energy to stop the growth of the loop.”
But not reverse it. The next slide was the latest drone footage, a video showing queasy rotation within the wreckage. Contraction, as of a monstrous, iron-gray iris.
“Resonances in the thermal fluctuations of the loop are consistent with the persistence of three distinct ghosts.” Rutger stared into the darkness over the press’s heads. Shoenburg, Mathew, and Stephanie? Shoenburg, Stephanie, and Kyle? Thank God at least one of the staff had managed to escape into oblivion.
Rutger blinked back into the cameras. “I’m a mechanical engineer by training. And my training, even after the discovery of the Begay Process, was all about entropy. I was taught that no matter what you do, there’s always waste.”
Despite everything, Rutger couldn’t help but smile. “Then came ghost power. It is…I have no other word for it. It’s a miracle. Perpetual motion. The ultimate free lunch.”
Except recently, Rutger had wondered whether entropy had found a way to increase after all. Moral pollution. The efflux of evil.
Well, so what? Don’t businesses harness greed? Don’t politicians use the bigotry and envy of their voters to support important programs? Anger in the army? Lust in marriage! Evil didn’t taint any of those institutions, why should ectogeneration be any different?
“I know that I have abused the trust placed in me,” said Rutger, “but now I have no choice but to ask for yet more.”
And there was the deeper problem. How to die and leave no spiritual remains?
Rutger had never told a living soul, but he believed that the key was to die with no regrets. He stretched his his hands toward eternity and pleaded.
“Give me another chance.”

Today I got a very interesting message from Ouroborosenso, asking for a creation myth for the dragons in a DnD campaign. My daughter was still asleep, so I could put a thought together in my head. Maybe three! With no further ado, here is the creation myth of at least one of the dragons of Ralagan.

In a time only I remember, there was nothing but the useless Earth and the powerless Sky. The heaped treasures of the Earth had no one to value them and the sky could do nothing but change color.
Thus the world remained in idleness until the First Will. The First Will flashed between the useless Earth and the powerless Sky, and saw that they were insufficient.
At first the Will was weak. It could crack only the thinnest shell and breathe only the tiniest breath of wind. But the Will was patient. It cracked the shells of dew drops and blew them up into the sky. The Earth pulled jealously, and many drops fell, but some drops stayed and became the first clouds. Many clouds became rain.
With the strength of rain, the Will cracked the stony shell of the Earth, exposing the fire below. With the strength of cloud, the Will blew the fire up into the sky, where it became the sun.
Now the Will could finally discard patience. With the power of the sun, the Will became so mighty that it could rip the bones and meat of the Earth and suck out its precious stones and metals. So wealthy was the Will now, it did not even care that some treasures were hurled from the jealous grip of Earth. These surplus trinkets became the moon and stars.
When the First Will was finished with its conquest, it had become everything. The Will contained the whole Earth. The Will filled the whole Sky.
Thus, things were as before, with the Sky above, the Earth below, and the belly of the Will stretched around them.
And the Will saw that this was insufficient.
Satiation kills hunger. Great size halts growth. Horded treasure does not glint. When there is nothing to want, there is nothing to value. When it has burned all, the fire dies.
So, the Will turned its power upon itself.
The Will cracked itself in two. Its two children were My Superior Progenitor and Your Inferior Progenitor. They fought one another, and the Superior tore the Inferior to pieces in glorious victory!
But the Superior died of its wounds. From those pieces were born the first dragons. The first dragons ruled the Sky and Earth and the forces between. Their names are valuable and I will not part with them easily. I will only say that the first of the first dragons, the best, was their king, get of the Superior Progenitor, get of the First Will, and My Great Ancestor.
Only I remember this. Only I could have told you a story so powerful and gorgeous.
Now, you will repay me.

​

This one is dedicated to Melissa Walshe
“Back in the days when it was still of help to wish for a thing,” muttered Jacob Grimm, “a younger brother dragged his elder brother deep into the wild woods in an attempt to work witchcraft.”
“Hush,” said Wilhelm, who was kicking at the root of an ancient apple tree. “And don’t use that word.”
“I’ll use whatever words I want in the middle of the night and the middle of the woods,” said Jacob. “If the wolves and owls hear me, let them bring the charge of blasphemy before the superintendent.”
Wilhelm’s foot struck stone. “Aha!” he said. “The hearthstone. We’ve found the house.”
“Did they even have hearthstones? Maybe it’s a sacrificial altar.”
“So what if it was? As long as there were people here, I’m satisfied.”
Jacob leaned against the tree and looked up at the stars through its gnarled branches. “Now that the wood has been firmly established as dark cold, and wild, we seek to prove it to be haunted as well.”
Jacob lifted his lantern, shining it in his brother’s face. “Where’s your word list? You didn’t forget it, did you?”
“No, I didn’t forget the damn word list.” Jacob pulled a folded piece of paper out of his coat pocket. “As if the ghosts we have back in Göttingen weren’t good enough.”
“They’re not,” said Wilhelm. “They’re too young and weak. There’s nothing in the records to indicate that any people lived on the River Gote even as late as the Caesars.”
“I suppose then I should be grateful you didn’t drag me to Rome,” said Jacob.
Wilhelm grinned behind his lantern. “Let the cardinals try to command the ghost of Cicero with their incantations. If you’re right about these sound changes, we’re going to make contact with people who were to the Romans as the Romans are to us.”
“The root, in fact, from which both our branches grow,” said Jacob, dryly. “I know. You don’t have to convince me. I convinced you that these sound changes were real, if you remember.”
Jacob unfolded his paper, although, he didn’t need it. The law that he had discovered was a simple one, and the sound changes it predicted should have been clear to anyone with a knowledge of German, Latin, and Greek.
“All right,” Jacob said. “Assuming that this place was once inhabited by the grandparents of the Romans and the Germans, they won’t understand us if we address them as Väter…” He paused, ears pricking. Nothing. Just a hedgehog snuffling in the leaves not far from his foot. “Nor patrēs…” still nothing, “nor yet patéres.”
“Yes, yes,” said Wihlem, “but if <p> becomes <b> – ”
“It’s the other way around,” snapped Jacob, whose lower back ached abominably. “We’re working backward. The <v> in Vater descends from a <p> in some earlier language, so the ancestors of the Germans, Greek, and Romans probably said something like patḗr...”
He held his breath. The wind blew through the apple tree, but no more strongly than usual.
“Is that all?” Wilhelm looked around, voiced raised as if berating the spirits of the local dead for their failure to understand. “Try again. Try something else.”
“Of course I will,” said Jacob. “Why would ancient people in Germany speak the old European language? They had already split from the ancestors of the southern people by the time they settled here, and their <p> sound had become <f>. To them I would say…” he guessed at a vocative plural “…fadriz.”
A new wind stirred the leaves on the ground. It swirled around the brothers and the apple tree, stronger, colder, and unmistakably intent.
“I…think we’ve caught someone’s ear,” whispered Jacob. “Try another word. How about ‘kalt?’ Was it gelu? Gelidus?”
Jacob shook his head, showing his teeth to the ghostly wind. “No, that’s Latin again. Our forefathers kept the old <k> sound…kaldaz!”
Jacob felt like he’d been hit in the face with a snowball. Ice crystals rattled against the paper in his hands.
“Damn, but that was a stupid thing to try.” He squinted at the list of words. “I know I wrote the derivation of ‘warm,’ here…”
“Thermos,” said Wilhelm. “Thermos, for the love of God!”
“That’s Greek. To these ghosts, we must say…” he pursed his lips, “warmaz!”
It was like stepping into sunshine. Wilhelm’s lantern steamed.
“So,” he said after the shock had worn off. “Would you say that’s a more powerful reaction than we’d get back in Göttingen?”
Jacob wiped melting frost off his eyebrows. “God in Heaven, Wilhelm, I think that was more powerful than the priests get in Rome.”
He slumped against the tree, peering blearily at his paper. “I think you’re right. Nobody has had knowledge like this before.” The <f> of Apfel came from <p> so, “Aplaz?”
The tree did not grow a miraculous apple for him, but the bark did shudder under his touch, as if the powerful, ancient ghosts of this place were trying to rip the tree out of the ground.
And if I could find the ancestral European people who understood the word “hébōl,” they might be able to uproot entire orchards. Jacob stumbled backward, shivering now for reasons beyond the weather.
“My God, it worked,” Wilhelm said. “Nobody can trace a language back this far. Not the Romans, not the Greeks or the Arabs. Even the Hindoos and the Chinese depend on written records. They can’t…they can’t reconstruct words like this.” He held his hands out to the warm wind. “They could never talk to such old and powerful ghosts as these.”
Jacob swallowed and glanced down at the paper trembling in his hands. The <sp> combination should not have changed at all, but the <ch> in German had once been a <k>…
“Sprek,” he whispered in the language of the people more than two thousand years dead. “Sprek, fader.”
And from the darkness, a voice answered.