I wanted to share a short story I wrote with you all. (Notice the distinction, here. You. All). I wrote it three nights ago and I really liked the way it turned out. I would love your comments after you read it, or your own interpretations.
I'm excited about this one. It was so easy to write and very fun. I've been having some trouble writing lately, so this story was a blessing.
Remnant
The demon Stvia floated lazily
through the trees, a truly disinterested expression on his wolfish face. As he
twisted and wove through the canopy of the forest, leaving his thick, yellow
remnant in his wake, he couldn’t help but sigh aloud, quite exasperatedly.
Stvia, the Destroyer of Worlds, was
bored.
Just as he was contemplating this
fact, quite bitterly, Stvia heard a small, hushed intake of breath from
somewhere beneath him. Twisting his head down toward the earth, Stvia beheld
what appeared to be a girl. Truly, he had never seen one with his own four
eyes, but he had heard many stories about them during his own travels; but,
then again, his travels were quite exhausting and never allowed much time for
socialization.
After all, destroying a whole world
was incredibly taxing on oneself.
Now, upon seeing what he was almost
positive was a girl, he could see what all his kinsmen had been going on about.
The thing was relatively remarkable, really, with its small, pale body and
movement limited to touching the ground. Stvia regarded this body quite
interestedly; what a strange idea to have a solid form all the time. It must be
so very constricting.
His black eyes regarded the girl as
he floated above, considering. “May I help you?” he asked the creature, almost
positive that humans had the ability to speak. At least, he hoped so; that
would provide some sort of distraction until the world was completely covered
by his yellow, ribbon-like remnant.
The girl stared at him, with
strange eyes that were not one solid color like Stvia’s, but seemed to be split
by three colors. It seemed excessive to the demon, but he wasn’t one to pry.
The girl opened her small, ruby colored lips, the furry lines above her eyes
crinkling together. “What are you doing?”
Stvia sighed sordidly at the
reminder of his current activity. “Obliterating.”
The girl frowned slightly, considering
the unbroken strand stemming behind him that grew with every turn and motion
the demon made. “Are you a snake?”
“No,” Stvia answered, “but that
sounds delightful. What is it?”
Before his entertainment could
provide an answer to his inquiry, there was a rustle from the foliage behind
the girl and, as both turned to look, another
girl slid out of the greenery. This one was not nearly as miniscule as the
other, almost triple in height to his current companion and had a much longer
brown mane. Stvia managed to hide his surprise quite well. What were the
chances that there would be another girl on the same world? He wondered what
the reaction of the first one would be, but was quite interested to see it
almost light up upon seeing another of its kind.
His interest was officially piqued.
The taller girl froze upon seeing
him coiling through the early afternoon air, shock and horror appearing on her
delicate features. “I found a flying snake, Kita, and it knows how to talk!”
the little girl crowed, quite proudly.
“Kita,” Stvia repeated, almost
tasting the girl’s name with his forked tongue, “how curious. Do all girls have
names?” he wondered to his smaller companion, whose lips parted to reveal white
stones in her mouth of all similar size and shape. Curiosity continued!
“I’m Aa,” she told the demon,
oblivious to her sister’s fear.
“That’s nice,” Stvia said offhandedly.
Kita suddenly regained her ability
to use words. “No,” she murmured, staring up at the Destroyer of Worlds in
sheer disbelief, “you can’t do this.”
Stvia looked perplexed. “Why not?”
The girl blinked, slightly baffled
by his question. The little human, Aa, her sister, Stvia would learn later, was
pleasantly immune to the fear and terror her older sister was currently
experiencing, and was being quite entertained by watching Stvia’s remnant wrap
around and over and under itself as he drifted along. It was almost like he was
weaving a blanket with his tail!
“You’re going to destroy our
world,” Kita said softly to him, in a voice that reminded him of a sunrise,
which was one of his favorite moments of destroying. “You’re going to kill us
all,” the girl’s pink lips parted, her forehead crinkling.
Stvia considered this for a moment,
almost surprised at her statement. “Why, yes,” he said thoughtfully, “I am.”
Aa looked between Kita and the
demon, a confused look on her small face. “Why?” Kita joined her sister in
waiting for the demon’s response, looking quite paler than her natural hue, he
noticed. It almost caused a glare from the suns’ light.
The demon looked down at the human
girls, realizing this was the first time in his existence that anyone had asked
that question. Slowly he twirled downward from the high canopy of trees,
leaving the gentle waves of yellow up above. Kita’s blue eyes followed the
demon’s movements carefully.
Stvia finally reached roughly eye-level
with the tall, thin girl, and, for the first time in an eon, stopped moving. He
merely levitated beside the human girl, black eyes unblinking. Up close, Kita
observed, he looked less like a wolf but more like a fox with narrow, clever
features, graceful yet fierce, with a sharp intelligence in his iris-less eyes.
Stvia spoke suddenly, making the
girl jump slightly. “Do you know why I do what I do?”
Kita paused for a long moment,
regarding her reflection in the bottomless black eyes. “I suppose it’s because
you are told to,” she surmised, brows knitting together thoughtfully. She knew
from stories that demons did not work on their own accord. She wasn’t quite
sure to whom they answered, but she did know that each one had a clear purpose.
“I am, but why am I told to?”
Kita opened her pink mouth only to
close it and frown. What reason would there be to destroy a world? Stvia seemed
to hear her thoughts, because he continued deliberately, “I don’t know why
either, girl. No one tells me anything. I only appear,” he twirled once,
smoothly, as if gesturing to the world around him, “and cover it until I
consume it. I move, always, leaving my remnant in my wake, because I do as I am
told. I don’t always know why; I never do, but I do it.”
“But how can you justify it?” Kita
whispered, looking at her world, which mostly consisted of a small human girl
currently inspecting a clump of bright green grass for insects or flowers,
perhaps. “How can you live with yourself?”
Stvia’s nose twitched. “I cannot
die,” he admitted, something he had never said aloud, and something he would
never say again.
Kita straightened suddenly, sharpness
in her eyes. “But we can. Aa and I will die. There are thousands of humans on
this world, and you will kill them,” she spoke fiercely, passionate for such a
small creature.
“You would die without me,
eventually,” the demon stated.
“Not the whole word, not all at
once,” Kita argued.
“No, probably not,” Stvia mused,
straight-faced. He thought of the countless worlds he had destroyed throughout
time. There was not a number for them all; it was pointless to keep track. It
had never mattered before, and it wouldn’t matter. Stvia would destroy many
worlds in the future, but this one, right here, was the first where he had
found something worth saving.
Kita’s fingers trailed over a thin,
quivering tree trunk, her voice soft, “But you do it anyway.”
The demon was seized with an urge
to explain himself. “Kita, do you believe that there is a Plan?” he asked her
intently, staring into her eyes.
He could practically see her mind
working. Her shoulders came together and she nodded, once. “Yes,” she said, “I
do.”
“Then how can you question it?” he
countered. “How can you know better?”
“I don’t know better,” the girl
admitted, biting her lip, staring past Stvia at her sister, whose small, sweet
voice was singing a lullaby for no one’s sake but her own. “I do believe
everything happens for a reason. But the Plan does not always end in death. I
have a place in it. I am here for a reason.” Kita looked the demon squarely in
the eye, “And maybe this is it.”
“And maybe you will just die like
all the others,” Stvia said quietly, tongue tasting the air. It was cool and
lovely, and he almost wished he hadn’t done it.
“Maybe,” Kita shrugged, “but that
doesn’t mean I didn’t matter.”
“But all you did was exist,” Stvia
stated, frowning at the girl’s logic, “you will cease. All will. You will be
forgotten; you were nothing great.”
Kita smiled suddenly, a beautiful,
simple thing. “For a moment I was. For a moment, I was alive. I breathed and I
loved. For even one moment, I had a beating heart that existed. I was a part of
the universe. In a small way, yes,” she acknowledged, eyes traveling to Aa, but
shining with pride, “but small doesn’t mean it wasn’t there; it just wasn’t
big.”
“What’s one beating heart among a
sea of stars?”
Kita spread her palm against the
trunk of the tree, thinking. “I didn’t make the Plan; I was just in it. But I
was put in it, so it’s my duty to try to live it.” She looked at Stvia,
leveling him with those blue and white and black eyes. “And maybe, together, we
can save it.”
“Kita,” the demon began gravely,
already starting to rise, to put distance between him and the girl. He could
not do what she was asking. He had a job; there were rules.
“I’m going to fight. You cannot
destroy life. It is valuable. No matter how small,” Kita spoke quickly,
stepping closer to Stvia as he tried to rise. She was merely inches from the
demon, but she was not afraid. She was not afraid. Something inside Stvia, in
that moment, was moved.
“I have to take, Kita. I can’t just
erase what I’ve done. I’ve already started to destroy this world. It needs an
exchange or else it will break by itself if I try to move on,” Stvia explained
carefully, black eyes intent on the girl.
“But you don’t have to take all of
it. The whole world,” she clarified carefully.
“I was supposed to,” the demon said
quietly, but he did not look away from the girl, “but something came up.”
Kita looked up at him through her
eyelashes, chest rising and falling. “Maybe that was the Plan all along.”
“It’s impossible to know,” the
demon murmured, slowly revolving in a circle. He felt his remnant behind him;
he was conscious of its existence, of its sureness. He could only draw it along;
he could not tuck it away. Stvia felt its sturdiness, it’s reality.
Kita spoke again, a note of
suppression in her melodious voice. “If I take this world’s place, could you go
away?”
Normally, Stvia could only leave a
world after he had encompassed every inch of its sky. Only when his body was a
blanket drowning it, snuffing it out, could he move on. But, just as Kita said
this, his remnant softened slightly. It wasn’t strong enough yet; he hadn’t
even gone one full time around the world. It would break for something like
this.
It would dissolve for a girl like
Kita.
“Yes,” the demon answered honestly.
“Okay,” the girl nodded, as if that
solved everything. She looked at him, determined, waiting. Stvia frowned to
himself. How could she bravely accept her own demise?
“You’ll just do it?” he asked,
mystified, slightly concerned with her sanity. “Say goodbye to life?”
“It’s not just doing, but it must
be done,” she told him, shrugging her slim shoulders. “This life I have had,
however short, was a beautiful thing.” Kita pursed her lips; looking around the
world she had been a part of. “Even though, at times, it didn’t seem that way.
At times, I wished I wasn’t a part of it anymore. But sometimes I just had to
wait for the darkness to pass. And it did, when the time was right. I wasn’t
always happy, or pure, or content, but I do know that it was all worth it for
the light. Regardless,” Kita smiled at the Destroyer of Worlds, “life has
always been beautiful. I’m only sorry sometimes I closed my eyes to it.”
Stvia nodded at Aa sitting out of
earshot, whose eyes were the color of the sky above them. “It will destroy her
world, you know,” he remarked wretchedly.
Kita looked at her little sister who
was enjoying the lovely day and going to enjoy many more. “No,” Kita shook her
head knowingly, “it will just affect it. Sometimes pain is worth it.”
“Worlds grow,” Stvia agreed, almost
to himself. He sat for a minute in the air, observing the little glen below
him. A soft, warm breeze slid across his remnant, unconcerned with its
existence, ruffling the dark hair of Kita and Aa, the breath of the world.
Sunshine from the duel suns in the sky shone golden through the trees. Far off,
he heard something he had never wanted to listen to before, but had always been.
Out there, in this world, there
were countless hearts beating. Some, yes, were breaking, but they still beat
on, a cadence of life and living and hope.
This world would beat on, thanks to
a girl who was brave enough to fight for it.
“Are you ready, my dear?” Stvia
asked his human girl, wondering if this was what his entire existence so far
had been for. To do more than destroy. To learn, to see what was worth fighting
for. To see what his choices were and that they existed.
To choose to live; and to live
truly.
To choose meaning, regardless of an
eventual outcome.
Kita the Small Human Girl smiled
softly, a lone tear sliding down her pale skin. “As I will ever be,” she whispered
brokenly and with one careful hand reached out and offered it to Stvia the
Destroyer of Worlds who took it the only way he could: in his mouth.
One moment later, Aa would look up,
just as both disappeared into thin air. In that moment, she would feel a lot of
things, especially for a child so young and fresh and lovely in the world.
Amongst all these things, she would
later reflect, the biggest one she would feel was that of hope.
