karenvideoeditor-blog - Tumblr blog

karenvideoeditor-blog · 12 days

Text

“Why is it so squishy?” I asked my pod mother, staring at the animal she’d brought back to our den.

Pink and soft, it was about half my height, and my mother had told us it had probably been alive for three years. That seemed ridiculous, though. Why would it still be so small if it was three years old? I was tempted to think she was wrong, that the little thing was only several moon cycles old, but mother knew these things. Sometimes it felt she knew everything.

“He, not it,” she corrected me. “And he’s squishy because he isn’t meant to live half of his life in water. He needs skin, not scales like sirens have.”

The little creature, which I would come to learn was called a ‘human’, stayed with us. I didn’t know why at first. The most practical solution to finding him alive, on the dinky wooden lifeboat among corpses of those who’d died of thirst, would have been to find some other humans to give him to. They weren’t all over the place, but they were good at building ships now. So good that they were able to cross the ocean, though if any ships capsized, they likely would die, since they couldn’t go without air for very long or swim very fast.

But my mother just adopted him, as if that were the most normal thing in the world to do. She was always caring for little ones above all else, not to mention she saw value in having a human in our pod. Humans were quickly spreading across the oceans, after all. I think after caring for it for several days, giving it fresh water and feeding him fish (we had to cook it and take out the bones, she told me), she became attached. And I had to admit, he was quite cute, and remarkably smart. We didn’t know his language, but he picked up the language we spoke within an impressively short amount of time.

The human called himself ‘Jake’, and was still learning to speak. He was wildly slow to develop in all aspects, it seemed, including his brain, and when we explained how many moon cycles had passed, he said he was four and a half years old. That meant when we’d found him, he’d only been three and a half.

Jake grew up fast, and he grew up to be strong, not as squishy as when he first came to us. He liked the idea of living in a house made of trees, rather than a cave, and whenever mother scrounged items from ships that were wrecked or damaged enough to be abandoned, he’d put the items he liked in his latest little house.

By the time he was ten, it seemed he was always whittling some little wooden toy on shore with a knife my mother had found on a capsized ship. I didn’t see the point of it, until he made one that looked like me (well, it was meant to), and then my siblings. Over the years, we played games where we all went on imaginary adventures together, the tiny versions of us scaling the tall trees or the mounds of rocks. He kept whittling new pieces of quality wood, and when the toys got too damp and started to disintegrate, there would always be a new one to take its place.

Jake mostly staying in the shade of the trees, since otherwise his skin would turn red and burn and peel, which looked horrible. Jake said it felt horrible too, and he always had to use plants he found in the forest to dull the pain and help heal it. There were occasions I didn’t see him for days, off swimming and hunting, because he couldn’t come with us. Of course, living among us, Jake learned to swim quickly and was fantastic at it, and could go without air for minutes at a time, which was impressive for a human. But he couldn’t go on hunting trips, to his disappointment.

Then came the day other humans found the island we lived on. From the conversation I overheard when their boat first reached the shores, it seemed they’d been mapping the area. This was unfortunate, since if it was mapped, other humans might become fond of it, or at the least, use it as a way point. But there was no stopping human explorers, and even though mother had called this place home for centuries, they would claim it as their own.

What we hadn’t realized was that the humans were able to see quite far away with new instruments they had. None of us were foolish enough to get anywhere close to the ship or the are they’d claimed, but the last time mother had been near humans was ages ago, since we lived on the island. That meant the concept of a telescope was unfamiliar to her. The humans laid a trap near the shore and one morning, and while I thought I was far enough away from the humans to be safe, I stepped in something hidden under the sand that snapped shut on my ankle like the mouth of a shark.

I was strong and my hard scales were reliable protection, but this trap was something different than anything I’d ever encountered. It cut through the scales on both sides as it slammed shut, the cracking sound it made horrifying me as I collapsed to the ground with a scream. My heart racing, I started sobbing, staring at the blood pouring from the wound.

My family heard my cries and two of them immediately rushed to me from the sea, where they’d been swimming. They gripped both sides of the vice and pulled, and were able to get it to budge, but not very much. Jake also rushed to me, out of the forest where he’d been napping, and stood by in horror as they tried to free me.

My cries had also been heard by the humans, though, and they’d come out of hiding some ways down the beach in the trees. I don’t know how long they’d been there, but it seemed they’d intended on capturing one of us, though to what end I wasn’t sure. All I could think about then was the pain, and my siblings were unable to free me, not strong enough to go against the force of the trap. The jostling made the pain even worse and tears streamed down my face as I choked on shrieks of pain.

When the humans got close, one my siblings rushed off into the water. I knew they were going to fetch my mother, who took care of any trouble we encountered, but how could she fight back against something like this? We couldn’t even free my foot from the trap. Also, the humans closing in on us had knives and one of them had a larger weapon, something I’d never seen before.

Jake, though…Jake didn’t run off. By our count, he was eighteen years old, which was still young by human standards. He was strong, though, from years of building new houses from trees, from swimming, from hunting with us. And he had several knives of his own, the largest of which was in his hand now.

Jake had lost all knowledge of the language he’d known when he first joined my pod, so there was no way to communicate. Even so, it was clear that the other humans thought this was amusing, like Jake was playing at being one of us.

I had my defenses, though. After I managed to slow my racing heart and swallow back my tears, I started to sing, to attempt to lure the men into a state of mind that would render them fond of me, to put down their weapons and, instead, come to my aid. But nothing happened. My voice faded away, and I realized the men were grinning at me in amusement.

When one of them turned their head to show me an ear, I realized they were filled with wax. My heart plunged into my stomach, curling in fear, knowing that I’d been rendered helpless by the simple precaution that they’d taken. But they didn’t understand what Jake was capable of. The men were strong, but strong wasn’t enough. To hunt and catch fish, you needed to be fast.

And Jake was fast. When one of the humans started to move toward me, Jake didn’t hesitate before putting himself in front of me like a shield, and then suddenly they were fighting. Jake’s knife drew blood several times in slashes before he managed to stab the man, and then went after the second, quickly subduing him as well. But the third, which I thought had run away to get help, stopped and pointed the weapon in his hand at Jake’s back just as the second man was shoved to the ground. There was and staggering, cracking boom and Jake twitched forward. Then there was blood.

I screamed again, this time in despair and horror. Blood poured from a wound in Jake’s shoulder, gushing down his chest and left arm, and he’d looked at me in bemusement for only a moment before his knees nearly buckled when his expression turned to one of agony. Reaching for him, I bumped the trap that still bound me, but I was still stuck in place by the weight of the trap on my broken ankle. He didn’t fall, though. Instead, Jake turned toward the man who’d used this new weapon, his face turning into something ugly, and bolted forward.

It was clear the weapon was dangerous, but the man fumbled with it, and as he did so it became clear it couldn’t be used as quickly as a knife. When Jake closed in on him, the man swung one end of the weapon at him, but Jake easily dodged the strike and plunged his knife into the man’s chest. The weapon dropped from his grip and with a second, more accurate stab at his heart, the man collapsed to the ground.

Jake was sweating and looked dizzy from pain, but still came over to me. He knew as well as I did that more humans would be there soon.

“Get to the water!” he said, kneeling down to help me up with his uninjured arm to stand on one foot. I gasped in agony. “Get away, find somewhere safe far from the island. Then you can take your time freeing yourself.”

“But they’ll come for you,” I whimpered. “There are so many more.”

“Leave that to me,” he said. Jake gave me a smirk of a smile, but I saw what was behind it. The fear. Growing up with us, he’d learned stories of humans, and how they would treat not only different animals like sirens, but those of their own kind that they didn’t like. They often randomly attacked members of their own species, even their own pod. There was danger in the idea of Jake attempting to survive pursuit by the others.

But I had no other choice. I was less than helpful, simply dead weight, and so Jake walked me into the water until it was deep enough for me to swim. I gave him one last look before letting myself sink underwater. The trap was heavy, but with the water assisting with some of the weight and with the propulsion of swimming pulling it behind me, I was able to keep moving. The pain was almost unbearable, but to stay behind meant death or worse, so I swam as hard and fast as I could. I made it to my mother, who had been hurriedly attempting to come to my rescue, in minutes.

That was the last time I saw Jake. I hope he is all right. I’m sure he darted into the forest as soon as I’d left, and he knew the island better than any of the other humans. He could hide. He could wait until they left, as they inevitably would. And he could rejoin the humans he’d lived among before joining my family, perhaps stow away on a ship and then camouflage himself by going to an area overrun by them.

He might not have had scales, but he was a brother to me in every sense of the word. I still have the whittled wooden facsimile of myself, as do my siblings. Knowing there would be no new ones created by our brother, we keep them dry to preserve them. They’re the only thing we have left of the human that saved my life. Just them and many memories, which I hold dear in my heart.

/r/storiesbykaren

You are a siren, a rather young one. Today your mother, the leader of your pod, introduced an unfamiliar little squishy pink thing to you as your little sibling.

#writeblr #writing prompts #writers #writers on tumblr #short story #flash fiction #fantasy #siren #humans #writing #creative writing

3K notes · View notes

karenvideoeditor-blog · 17 days

Text

“Marie? What’s wrong?”

My head rose to look at my husband, his face creased with concern. I’d come in from the chicken coop and gone straight to my office, and Robert must have seen something disturbed on my face to come after me. It had been the third time he’d said my name, but I’d been staring at the scribbles in my notebook, and it had felt like it would take too much energy to merely look up at him.

Too much energy. Ha.

“I’ve made a discovery,” I said quietly.

Robert had been standing a few feet past the threshold to my office and he now took a few steps closer, taking a knee next to me. “Darling, you say that as if it’s the worst discovery since the torture spells of the Great War.”

Letting out a long breath through my nose, I shook my head. “This isn’t about physical pain. It’s about morality. For all I know, someone before me figured this out and chose to keep it to themselves.”

Putting a hand on my arm, Robert gave me an encouraging look. “Knowledge always comes out. Secrets in magic rarely stay hidden, considering how many study the arts. So, why don’t you share with me what you’ve discovered, and we’ll find out if…if you’re the second person to decide not to share what you learned. You don’t have to publish a finding if you don’t want to.”

Robert had always been my rock, the one to steady me in my tornado of books and parchment and furious note-taking that cramped up my hand. For seventeen years now, he’d been the one I would babble to at the dinner table about a remarkable new breakthrough, or complain to about the foolishness and recklessness of certain mages. It was tempting to think my husband could find another way to look at this that I hadn’t seen, but I couldn’t manage it.

“You’re thinking that any of the discoveries I could make are wonderful,” I told him. “That’s not the case. Sometimes results can be both magnificent and appalling.”

“What?” he asked, blinking. “You’re studying improvements in healing magic, aren’t you?”

I didn’t reply. “Everyone is aware of its limits,” I spoke, leaning forward and picking up my fountain pen to fidget with, leaning back in my chair. Robert stood up, sitting on the edge of my desk to face me. “If you attempt to fully heal a broken leg, or a punctured heart, or a wrist that is so damaged it will require amputation, the body can’t handle it. So, we stick to the small things. Also, we take our time, stabilizing a patient, performing incremental steps until they’re fully healed.

“But of course, for centuries we’ve wondered what we could do to improve on that. To increase the body’s ability to heal itself, without overloading the capacity it’s limited to. And there have been innovations. Still, the most desperate healers on the battlefield must push a soldier’s body to its limits, walking right up to the edge of a cliff that would send the body into a cascading failure. Drawing on glycogen from the liver and muscles, the body cannibalizing itself, pulling protein into the process, then gluconeogenesis from-”

“I feel you’re about to lose me, dear,” Robert said, a hint of amusement in his tone.

“Oh.” I shook my head. “Our body has energy stores. We use them to heal. But…these energy stores come from everything we eat; we’re renewing them constantly.”

“But wouldn’t that mean as long as someone keeps eating, stuffing their face with food, the healer could keep going?”

I was already shaking my head. “That’s what I was looking into. If it was just a matter of having a steak and baked potato before the healer did the work, that’s one thing, but the body needs time to process it. So, yes, the same calories and nutrients that fuel our body can go toward healing, but we’re simply incapable of digesting it fast enough.”

“That’s new,” Robert said, shocked, drawing my gaze. “What you just said there, steak and potatoes, would that work?”

“Yes,” I said softly. “There is a marked difference in the amount of healing, and I was excited at these results, but it’s not as much as you’d hope. The issue goes back to digesting it into fuel the body can use. We could even use a feeding tube directly into the stomach, bypass the process of eating and the work of the stomach entirely, but that won’t give the body what it needs.”

Robert folded his arms. “Okay so- Yes, so, that’s…good. A staggering jump forward in giving the body nutrition like that, it works to help the healer. What’s the problem?”

I tapped the end of the pen a few times on my desk thoughtfully. “You can take the energy stores directly from a chicken. I cut the back of my arm with a knife and used a healing spell to take the energy stores from the chicken when mine ran low.”

After a few beats, my husband coughed out a laugh. “That’s incredible. If- The hospital could have chickens, goats, cows- Look, you need to get to the part where-”

“You were close,” I told him. “You were growing the donor’s size. We can do this with people too, Robert.” He stared at me, opened his mouth, and then closed it. “Furthermore, if someone is on the verge of death, we can even have animals standing by, ready to sacrifice for the mana. But mana from humans stretches further.”

“And they could take all of it. They can take someone else’s life to heal themselves?” he whispered.

“Worse. Imagine a battlefield,” I said solemnly, looking back to the pen in my hand. I tapped it slowly, rhythmically. “Imagine a healer with one soldier on the brink of death, where attempting to heal him to a point of stabilization would kill him. But…there is a second soldier that has a fatal injury can’t be healed. You can only make them comfortable, but there’s nothing more you can do. Maybe they will last a day, maybe an hour, but it’s untreatable. Unfixable.”

Looking up to meet my husband’s gaze as he stared at me in shock, horror-struck, I asked, “Do they have standing orders to kill him to save the first soldier?”

/r/storiesbykaren

Healing Magic has a limit. If the body has been healed too deeply at once it will die. This is why healing magic is only done with minor injuries and stabilizing patients. As a nutritionalist you discover that it’s because healing magic needs calories and nutrients to repair injuries.

#writers #writers on tumblr #writing prompts #writeblr #writing inspiration #short fiction #short story #flash fiction #creative writing #writer #writing #fantasy #spell #healing

5K notes · View notes