My first Friday Flash in two months. Rather glad to be back to it.<\/p>\n
I wept. It was a waste of water, but all the same, I wept. My tears hit the body of my wife, warm only because of the midday sun. She had fallen victim to desert fever and mirages, and we had searched for her, only to find her too late. And so I wept, while the others around me, faces shielded against the heat and light, kept a respectful distance.<\/p>\n
My wife was the fifth we had lost to the desert on this great trek of ours. Three had gone in like manner, crazed by the terrain and the lack of sustenance, and fled out into the desert, seeking miracles. No miracles were ever found. The last had the misfortune to irritate a sunbathing snake, and that death was swift and agonizing, the venom turning limbs black as it coursed through the blood.<\/p>\n
We were here because we had been chased from our land, our ancestral home. A great plague, of men and disease both, had swept over us, slaying our kind and forcing us to flee in front of the flood. I use the term men loosely, for these were foul creatures, humanoid and possessed of some of the features of men, but hideous and foul and lupine in appearance, and as they strode forth, their very essence befouled the land upon which they stood, and crops withered, and trees rotted, and so even if we, true men, had stood and fought, there would be no sustenance, no life for us.<\/p>\n
And so we fled across the desert, hoping that its great expanse and relentless heat would make of it a shield against the foulness that washed up against its borders. And it did. We lost many on that trek, perhaps a third of our people, but on the other side of that barren land we found a new home, a land of wet greenery and freely flowing water, and we laid out our sacred city once more, and built it anew from wood and from wattle. We lost more to disease as we adapted to that land, but our people’s prosperity and fecundity soon strengthened our kind.<\/p>\n
We became a great nation once more, with more cities being chosen and erected, and trade in all manner of devices and precious materials flowing between our great edifices. And I have grown old here, old and decrepit, but I am honoured, as are all those who led our people across the desert wastes. And so I spend my days reliving the past, telling stories, being wise, and enjoying the warm summer sun as it heats my frail body. It is a good life, and one I have enjoyed.<\/p>\n
Today, the city packs its belongings and manufactures carts and wagons and rafts, for we are to scatter once more. Our shield desert has turned black with the countless multitudes of the crawling plague, and we flee before them once more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My first Friday Flash in two months. Rather glad to be back to it. I wept. It was a waste of water, but all the same, I wept. My tears hit the body of my wife, warm only because of the midday sun. She had fallen victim to desert fever and mirages, and we had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[36,4],"tags":[21,22],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-3o","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":277,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=277","url_meta":{"origin":210,"position":0},"title":"A New Eagle","date":"September 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Days passed by, and I wept in sadness for their loss. Months strolled along, and I waved goodbye with my heart aching. Years disappeared into the mists, and I bawled openly. I saw friends come and go, family born and dying, the kindness of strangers, all the little acts of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Flash Fiction"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":517,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=517","url_meta":{"origin":210,"position":1},"title":"A Desert of Fire and Glass","date":"June 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Over on Splintered Lands today, we have the continuation of my comedy story Thieves Abroad. And here below, I've posted an excerpt from a short story set in The Four Part Land. To place yourself on the map, the action here takes place more or less under the text Yn\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 8 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":651,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=651","url_meta":{"origin":210,"position":2},"title":"Fever Dreams","date":"April 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The sixth installment in a new short story, one of three from the upcoming Splintered Lands: Volume One. Weeks passed as Ellgis and Fryca hid in their hut, nursing their wounds. Ellgis had been struck in the meat of the shoulder as he lay on the skiff, and the impact\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other Writing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=128","url_meta":{"origin":210,"position":3},"title":"The First Day","date":"May 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the first piece in a flash fiction serial. I'll be trying to do one a day, but I probably won't quite manage it. As those of you who have read the older postings will notice is that the main character for this serial is borrowed from the short\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Other Writing"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":437,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=437","url_meta":{"origin":210,"position":4},"title":"Stealing the Setting","date":"February 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"You want a believable setting, don't you? So steal it. No, not from some other author, from the world around you! Yes, the world outside the window. It's a beautiful earth, and there's lots of strange and fantastical places, and many of them haven't been used as inspiration, even to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Tips"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":113,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=113","url_meta":{"origin":210,"position":5},"title":"Legends of the Burning Sands","date":"April 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is one of the short excerpts from Unfolding a New Continent, the next book in The Four Part Land, that I'm currently working on and that Breaking an Empire is also a part of. I'll have a flash fiction piece tonight as well, as I get back into the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Four Part Land"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}