Posts Tagged ‘steam punk’
8 items.
Her laugh was like sunlight. Her head tilted as she talked, smiling; her arms cradled behind her head in open unabashed comfort. Her legs folded and unfolded themselves as she sat, mid-air, three feet above our somewhat tenuous hold upon terra firma.
“How is this possible?” I exclaimed, my arms gesturing wide to encompass the horizon of floating sky islands. The gesture ended, not too pointedly, at her lithe figure hovering before me.
“Lindenium.” She replied matter-of-fact. “It runs through every atom of our existence here, from the rocks that we stand on, to the color of our sky. With it we can breath underwater, fly at will, or instantly transport our souls from one point on a map to another; If that is what our creator wishes.
“A society of floating fatalists?”
Her expression changed slightly. She looked at me through smoky eyes that hid a dark reality behind the graceful curves of her young female form. She shrugged.
“Aren’t we all?” Her smiled returned. “In the end, I am my creator’s avatar.”
8 Comments
The Daughter of the Tiberian Mining Consortium’s Chief Executive wore a belt of earthen clods tied around her midsection. She smelled of damp burlap and manure. Her face and hair were caked with mud. Dark crescent rings of black soot lay underneath her manicured fingernails. Around her neck, a cage of composed earth crawled with worms, which twisted and flickered against her skin. It was shopping day.
As she walked through the narrow ally with its polished chrome byways and stainless steel awnings, she would occasionally stop and lift a bolt of cloth, or piece of fruit. Her inspections left fingerprints of grime that attracted the attention of elated merchants who followed behind her; marking the now semi-precious items at double their normal cost.
Her hips swayed from side to side as she wandered, creating a veritable cloud of sparkling dust that hung over her; an aura of opulence laced with sunshine.
This ostentatious display of wealth was mirrored to lesser degrees by many in the street markets of this little world; Except the very poor of course, who were conspicuously clean in their antiseptic indigence.
The young wizard threw the oddly shaped dice on the table before him. The sound echoed from the cold stone walls in the dungeon of his parents keep.
Looking at the wizard, The goblin Home-Master smiled. “Your wife’s ‘mow the lawn’ spell succeeds! You lose two time cycles, but gain +5 matrimony experience points.”
“Big freaking woop-dee-do,” the wizard mumbled as he consulted the game tables. “15,000 more points and I might be able to cast an ‘intimate bliss’ spell … like that’s ever going to happen.”
“My father, and his father, and his father before him, for generations untold, worked the mines in the traditional way, We’ve used ancestral tools to protected our great halls from dragons, goblins, orc risings and evil wizards. The sounds of axe and shovel reverberate in our bones and color our blood. Our children suckle on carbon steel to pacify their cries, and the old use stone polished pick heads as crutches.
You can imagine then, the reluctance to embrace a technology that threatened these ardent symbols of our way of life.
However, when we were told in order for this new contraption to work, we needed to strap a steam forge onto our back while directing a impact hammer tied to our midsection … well, this new picture of dwarf virility was easily adopted.
After all, there’s not much call for slaying dragons anymore.”
I materialized in a prison cell. My counterpart smiled, picked up his towel, spread his arms wide and said “The planet Furth. Good luck,” and then he was gone. Outside of my cell a group of anthropomorphic beings gathered, unfazed by the apparent prisoner swap.
“Your type is not welcome here,” the leader growled.
Having traveled the multiverse as an artist, a hieratic, and an inter-dimensional vagabond, I asked “Exactly what type would that be?”
“Skinnies” she replied, the anger and contempt rolling from the curled lips of her muzzled jaw. “You’ve chased my kind off of every pawhold we’ve held in the multiverse, and it’s time we’ve made a stand.”
For the life of me, I had no idea what she was talking about, but I found her oddly attractive regardless.
