Sometimes when you fall... - Part VIII

He turns the key in his lonely apartment. The silence is oppressive.

He turns on the computer, plays a game, heats up his dinner, watches a show. Again. Same as last night, same as next night. Wake up, work, eat, jerk off, rinse, repeat.

It’s too late, he should go to sleep.

Instead he goes to the window.

He looks out into the uncaring city lights.

He looks down.

He could fall.

Instead he flies.

Read More »

Sometimes when you fall... - Part VII

Crackling light and ozone.

He holds on to the bow mast of the Endeavour as the Imperial Hunters swarm around him. He can see the cannon hatches opening on their hulls. He shouts an order to the pilot, a friend of his from the College of Natural Philosophy he had rescued from prison just before they took on the mission. The Endeavour banks sharply to the left, just as the Imperial cannons roar, and avoids most of the shots.

The clouds and the rain pelt his face as the Magnetrolyte-powered airship falls through the sky, evading its chasers, and he has never felt as excited in his life.

The Master at Arms scrambles up to him and tells him the Hunters are coming back for another round. He cracks a smile and says he’s got it all under control.

He reaches out his arm into the storm. The Electro-Capacitor Gauntlet is his own design, and the spark plugs lighten up as it begins to bottle in energy from the lightnings.

The Hunters buzz back, their green lights illuminating the Imperial Crest on their side. The dials and gauges in the Gauntlet are all in the red. He presses his thumb and the blue crystal in his palm lights up.

Lightning arcs out to the hunters and they explode in metallic pieces. 

He laughs.

Read More »

Sometimes when you fall... - Part VI

Something. 

He had forgotten. Or maybe he hadn’t, but thought he could still do it in time. Or maybe he had always known it would fail, and the desperate weight of that certainty was what he had been feeling.

His boss had talked to him, in the disappointed tone of those who had seen it coming miles away. He had failed, not enormously, just rather humiliatingly. Unsurprisingly.

He felt dejected. His feeling of self-loathing intensified, but he had no time to lick his wounds. There were more clients to see, more deadlines to make. Always more.

Always more to do. A never-ending stream of dull duties and obligations. 

And for what? To keep himself alive? And for what?

Read More »

Sometimes when you fall... - Part V

Herb scented smoke.

He inhales deeply of the sacred herb. He keeps a pouch of it with him always, as well as his sculpted sea-shell pipe. He holds in the smoke in and feels a wave of joy rush out from his lungs and through his mind. Thoughts become fluid.

He buries his toes in the warm sand, feeling the setting sun wash over him like a blanket. He adjusts his blue robes around his waist, and the straps around his shoulders.

The elder speaks.

He follows the old turtle, with the holy face carved on its shell along the white sanded beach. His search for guidance has not been in vain.

The message enters his mind not as sounds but as images. The elder speaks of the past, and the future. He speaks of little things of tremendous brilliance, and of big things with subtle effects. He speaks of the coming darkness.

The turtle slips back into the surf and he is left on the sand, trying to piece together all that he was told, holding on to the fleeting thoughts before they become lost forever.

He uses his old swordspear as a cane, and the mystical runes carved into the ironwood glow. 

He will need to inform the Council. He will travel to the Monastery tonight, and as the children sing the hymns of longing, and as they eat a plentiful meal of raw fish wrapped in seaweed and vinegared rice, basking in red lamp-light, he will tell them of the preparations they’ve been instructed to make.

Read More »

Sometimes when you fall... - Part IV

He talks to the client in front of him, and suddenly realizes it is not the same one he was talking to seconds ago. His mind wandered off again, and he has no idea what this person in front of him is getting so agitated about. Something important, surely, but what? He wonders if he can piece it together without asking the client to repeat himself.

They’re all the same, even though they’re not. They all have the same complaints, the same questions and attitude after a while. They blend into each other in an endless procession of faces and requests, none very different from the other.

And yet he doesn’t feel any more relaxed, always afraid he’s going to fail at something. He couldn’t tell you what, if you asked him. But something.

He constantly feels like he’s just hanging on to the threads of his life to prevent it from unraveling. Always just barely making deadlines, constantly being reminded quite by accident of very important things he should be doing. He constantly feels like he’s missing something crucial, and that it will be his undoing.

Read More »

Sometimes when you fall... - Part III

Bone dry wind

He stands in the middle of the street, and tries to protect his neck from the biting gusts with his makeshift poncho, and yet his right hand never strays far from the holster.

The street is quiet now. No carriages, no hammerfalls from the blacksmith, no sound from the saloon.

Slowly, three figures walk up to the middle of the road, a few dozen yards away from him. One of them is slightly round around the edges, the other thin as a wire and with an evil twitch in the mouth, the third wears a black coat, and a black hat. 

They stand side by side, the black hat in the middle.

The folks in town had asked for his help. No one else they could ask. He had walked countless miles to get here, and he had countless more ahead of him. But he was honour-bound by the old code into helping as he could. So he did.

The strangers had shown up months ago, brought an ill wind and ill omens with them. Devil-dancers, the people called them, when they started killing. 

Now here they stood.

He cleared his mind and readied his hand. It would all be over in a matter of seconds.

Read More »

Sometimes when you fall... - Part II

The trepidation of the train and the cold morning light streaming through the window prevent him from sleeping. He went to bed late last night. Again. He keeps promising himself he’s going to bed early, catch some sleep, not be as tired the next day. But he never does. Not for years now.

Going to sleep feels like giving up, to him. Going to sleep rushes the morning, and he doesn’t like mornings.

So now he tries to rest on the train on his way to work, but achieves only a kind of half-slumber which is even more tiresome in its own way.

Read More »

Sometimes when you fall... - Part I

The freshness of elder pines.

His hearing strains as he walks through the path. The pines stretch above on either side of him. His slippers softly crush the needles beneath his feet.

He can hear them. There are six of them. Hiding in the branches.

He does not slow his steady pace, but instead adjusts his Katana nearer to him. When he needs to unsheathe it, it will be over quickly.

Almost painfully he remembers the night in the Shögun’s keep. Her name was Misako, and she was First Geisha to Homori-kun.

As one of his Samurai, he had been invited for the victory feast, and in honour of his feats in battle, Misako had performed a dance for him.

She had danced in the rain, to the sound of a single Koto, and it was poetry in motion. As he sipped at his impeccably made green tea, he realized she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.

That same night he went to her room, and proclaimed his undying love for her. She raised a single, slender, white finger to her painted lips, pointing to the mark of her servitude. She was Geisha, a living work of art, a symbol of status, property of the Shögun. Not to be loved, but admired.

He did what he had to do.

They were closing in, now. He could feel the woods breathing closer.

He catches an arrow mid-flight with his left hand, quivering inches from his neck. The shooter had exhaled as he released it, giving himself away. They were either nervous or over-confident. 

He might yet survive this.

Read More »