Down by the Riverside

The bank of the river was flat, grey stone.  Some day the river would cut down deep to form a mighty valley, but today it sat a few feet below the rim of the plain.  Cool, dark water whirled about, flowing down towards the sea, miles and miles away.  There was just the river, the plain, and the man crying on the bank.

He knelt, hunched over, tears soaking his clean-shaven face that was only visible to the water he wept into because of the black veil of hair that cascaded down in strands.  The sun was setting, the heat of the day already gone into the clear sky.  Like the shadow he made that stretched out across the surface of the river, his clothing was a dark black.

No words were said, for how does one plead with a river to give back what it stole?  The water has already gone onward, the water shrugs off a yell, the reflections it shows are only your crying eyes.  If there were a grave, he surely would be there, but a grave requires a body, and a body was not to be found, not from this river.  It was swift, fast, unstopping.  So all that was left to talk to the river was the salt water mingling with the fresh water.

The moon rose to the setting of the sun, pulling itself high above the plain, and yet the man still knelt, waiting.  Either he would break, or the river would relent.  Drifting shadows, slowly in the moonlight, time itself dragged them to and fro through the night.  When tears subsided, the shaking took over, night chill a poor comfort against tragedy.  A poor mimicry of her warm body, a fair one of the river.

He had thought of jumping in, but what use was that?  To be forgotten as well, nobody left to light a remembrance candle, nobody to leave a piece of bread at the doorway for the departed.  If the spirit could make the journey back up the river, would it be kind to run away, to abandon a hope of welcome?  He knew not.  He could not grasp it, he could not escape it.

All he had were the red eyes, the cold wind, the empty house.  Nothing to tie him to the city, nothing to keep him away from the river.  Dawn came, flashing through the veil of hair his hung head draped over red eyes.

The sun rose and so did he.  It walked across the sky, and he walked down the riverside.  When it sank to the horizon, so did his knees sink down to the cold, grey stone of the riverside.  A drink, then vigil like the stars, looking down from the black veil of night.

Alien World

Selvian V, sitting just so in orbit around a fair sized star and home to some of the richest merchant guild's operation's workers.  Not to say that the workers were that well off, in the grand scheme of things they, and I really should say we here, fit squarely into the lower middle class.

The work itself is mostly easy, it doesn't take much to pilot a drill digger or a loader crane, maybe a little more to work the scan station to plan out the digs, but the real tough spot to get used to is the boredom.  Either you're down in featureless dark tunnels, relying on the green glow of your scan system to guide the digger, or you're sitting up topside staring out at the brown-red rusty plain that stretches out far as a man can see.  Gives a man a whole lot of time to think about the world, it does.  See, as far down as the drilling goes, after half a year of that you're either washed out for trying stupid shit on the job, or you're digging deeper into your soul than any digger could descend.

Guess that's not really what you wanna hear about though, I'll get back to the planet and the operation what you done come here and ask about.  See, Selvian V didn't have this rust layer on top when we first got here, was like a big shiny marble, all metallic.  Not sure how rare that is, being here most of my life, but every so often we get folks like you coming through here asking about it so it figures its special.  The iron layer on the surface formed when the guilds got together and decided it was easier to just fix the atmosphere than to keep fixing the suits and dealing with all the special locks on the doors.  So they bring in the gasses and the water on the first fleet.  The thing was, they didn't get all what they planned.  Sure they figured the rust would come, came with the territory, but they didn't really care about the iron anyway, more just the heavier stuff on the inside.

The real surprise was the weather.  It went like normal for the first few years, but as we kept digging and stirring stuff up the flooding happened, and the contamination, and the water pockets in the ground.  Had to modify the diggers for that one, what with the equipment cost and the deaths.  Nothing worse than being trapped out miles from home in a little pod train deep underground knowing the next time somebody was coming for you was gonna be too late.  Started carrying these big boys out of fear around then.  Now this is a radio, half the size of a man with an antenna to boot.  These babies can still sound from a few miles down.

Anyway, the surface was all shiny when we got here.  Yeah there were some meteor craters, but they were pretty clean.  Figured the advance crew had scrubbed the planet like they always do, and just got a bit overboard on it.  Just the metal down here, never seen anything out of the ordinary, but we can't go more than halfway down with the equipment, which includes the big scanners up top.  Just a big black hole of unknown down there, but I figure it must be more of the same, maybe a bit more dense stuff, but we're just here to get the rich layer in the middle.  Once you go too far down you hit some heavy radioactive stuff.  Not worth much on the market so we don't touch it.  Yeah there's some seismic activity, it screws with depositing the filler that we get supplied with, had to leave off doing the full job because of it, but don't go spreading that around, makes us look bad.  The scientists say that it's all because of the heat from the sun hitting the planet.  No molten core, but it sure is hot down there sometimes.

Anyway, what's a biologist doing out here on this planet, no animals to speak of, not any microbes either, least not after the scrub at the beginning.  All that's here we brought ourselves.  You said something about eggs, I think?

A Curiosity in my Travels

Far beneath the ruby surface of the lake, the Jahwhel sleeps, bathing in the blood of countless cultists sacrificed to form his sanguine home.  Deep in the mountains, the lake sits as a mystery to most who encounter it, wondering exactly why it takes its brilliant hue.  At first they assume rightly that it must be bathed in blood, but the purity of the water, free of grime and mold, free of gore or growth confuses the observant.  Thus they pass it by as a curiosity, mayhaps catching a glimpse of towers through the mist the plays across the surface.

Those few who set out across, and it is always across no matter which shore one starts on, may reach a pair of dark grey towers around the base of which a small town carries out a simple life.  Hunting, farming, spending off time in the tavern, it seems normal enough, if not for the mists and the lake upon whose shore it sits.  No door can be seen into the towers, just close-set stone and unmanned buttresses way up away in the sky.  Looking up under the moonlight, people whisper that forms sometimes seem to hide in the shadows up there, looking down, watching.  I wasn't one to stay out of doors at night there, but for the festival of the full moon, so I could not say as to how tall these tales are.

Down the main street of the town, down into the waters that raise so much interest, a small channel runs, wooden of an unnaturally white hue and meandering side to side like a stream bed.  On that festival of the full moon, all the town gathers, from the youngest to the old high priest who resides there, one might even believe he was from a time before man walked the earth by his long white hair and pruned skin.  All the village gathers with knives and makes a cut across their palm, letting a drip of blood flow into the channel, trickling slowly down into the red waters.  Afterwards, they all gather around a giant bonfire at the shore and dance and drink for hours until the sun peeks over the mountaintop.

The next day, I took furtive looks at the channel on my way out of town, noting the absolute clean of it, no red stains to be found.  The hands of the villagers were without mar and though they attested to holding the festival every full moon for as long as they could remember, it looked as if they had not so much as scratched the surface of their skin with a thorn.

I left town that day, rowing my way back across the water in my boat.  The village had none, no fishermen to set out across the waters in a craft, so my solitary craft drifted out across to the other side, across the clear, ruby waters of the lake.  I think that some day I might return to spend a few moons there, for the land was beautiful and the life was laid back, but I think I might not find it again having left.

Something of a God Complex

Down by the waterfront you could see the city lights from across the bay just glistening on the swells and the sides of boats as it all drifted out down river.  Quite night then, not busy, not loud, not colorful, not yet.  See, the thing was, sitting here under the trees in this park, sitting under the cover of the looming elm trees, sitting waiting for something to happen, I knew a bit more than one might say was legal seeing as how I was keeping it to myself.  They call it aiding and abetting, y'know.

Soon as it got real quiet that medium sized yellow boat would come floating down the river, and the city would see a show.  A show was what I was here for too, but my backdrop looked a bit more promising.  Coincidence they might say at later dates.  Two heists on the same night, followed by a hostage situation and a car chase, not to mention the boat chase from the first heist.  The explosions would be ascribed to chance, the fires and the way they danced from building to building as well.

I know better though, and if you wanted to point a finger, you might say that I was in some way responsible, sure.  I did a bit of nudging, pushing things back and forth in the river of time.  One fire back a few years, another forward a week or two.  Time the criminal element to strike at that hour in the night.  I can't be blameless, but it wasn't like I caused them, just pushed a little.

Over the years some people seem to think that bad things are just innately drawn towards others, like some snowball rolling down a white hill.  Either science or some sort of karma approach, and to some extent they are right, right about the way things flow into one another.  Nights like this though, perfect intersections, they're a bit hard to come by naturally.  Pompeii was one of the few, really, and that was more just spectacular in majesty of a volcano.

This night though, not perhaps one of the most spectacular, but it will be talked of for a few years.  If I waited a few more, maybe I could have snuck in an earthquake or a flood, but then I'd be bending the rules a bit.

Lately the big heads don't want us fiddling with the weather, say they have something huge planned, something world-wide.  Might be worth the show, but it might also be a bit premature to throw on these little monkeys.  Maybe they don't realize it, but these ones are a true joy to mess with, always getting back up after we push them down, like self assembling block towers.  Most entertaining thing to happen in a long time.  I might be able to slide the scale in a few places, fiddle with the world in what they would call a very boring way.  I think they show enough promise for that investment.

Anyway, here comes that yellow boat.