Sunflower - Chapter 1

Of perhaps all the places I’d been, Whesmorr had the windiest nights.

There were many places filled with wind; in some places it was a constant, such as the quaint desert city of Drilishire, or the faming community of Blan. Whesmorr, too, had a breeze which blew with great consistency and insistence. The difference between Whesmorr and, say, a place like Blan, was that the wind was a result of the trees ejecting their leaves in the evenings. With the setting sun, the trees of Whesmorr shed their glimmering green growths and released them to the breeze, which, moving with enough swiftness to send any of the mammoth-sized women flying quite a few gallops off their feet should they haphazardly venture into the night without their eveningwear. The women of Whesmorr were looming, powerful beings, with thrice the girth of any of the Whesmorr men. These men of Whesmorr were, with few exceptions, twice my size; these were not allowed outside once the sun set, so as to ensure their lives would not become forfeit to the brutal breezes of the place.

And I, wishing sometimes that my curiosity would stop getting the best of me, clung to the exposed and terrifyingly dry root of an older tree as the brutal evening gale pulled at my ankles, threatening to tear me from the merciful yet dehydrated tree and into the skies above, from whence it would drop me come morning and dash my brains upon both the ground and whichever unsuspecting resident of the recently-tortured city.

“Sampaa!” yelped the reason for my excursion, who clung painfully tightly to my forearm, as my right hand gripped his.

“Hold, please!” I roared above the screaming winds, looking for any possible way to return the two of us to some semblance of safety. Though my form was shockingly durable, it was not – hence the shock – very massive, and thus strained greatly to maintain the balance necessary to retain my holds on both Marty and the tree, all while focusing enough to ensure that I was as streamlined as possible, so as to reduce surface area onto which the wind could hoist its hasteful self.

“Just let me go, Sampaa! It’s okay!”

I rolled my eyes, finding his desire of martyrdom and/or self-immolation immensely distasteful. “No, thanks! I’m fine!” I replied, scanning the nearby horizon for any sign of reprieve from the tension building in my forearms and shoulder. It was then I noticed the woman dragging herself towards us, and tutted, wishing I’d never even thought to ask that eternal and cynical query which the cosmos – no matter which dimension through which I venture – seems bent on answering as quickly and callously as possible.

The woman, though not of Whesmorr, was hulking and ravenous, as the others who had been infected were. She was cleverer than those counterparts of hers which had been defeated earlier by relatively simple means, involving a rope, smoked fish, and the squeal of he who, albeit panicking, clung to me with the vigour of an excited pup chasing its tail, adamant that it is capable of catching it, seemingly refusing to tire although you can tell, upon watching it, that it is indeed slowing in its spirals, that it is coming to the realisation —

“Hold fast, Petros!” I commanded, reaffirming my grip on his sweating forearm, willing my epidermal cells to cling to his, for some kind of seal to form between my skin and his.

“Sh-sh-she’s c-coming, Sampaa!” he whimpered.

Men everywhere, it seemed, did a great job of pointing out the obvious when abjectly terrified.

I cannot fly in this, Noora reminded me, quelling my habitual desire with her soporific susurrus. Perhaps we can ask the trees…

“Perhaps,” I murmured to my spirit, watching as the foreign woman pierced the ground with the femur of one of her victims, dragged herself towards us, staked the ground with the sharpened femur in her other hand, and thus continued the cycle which spiralled increasingly closer to our demise. Switching to what I hoped was a local accent of arboursong, I plead with my rooted handhold, Hey, friend. I’ve one of the local denizens in hand, and you in the other, and I know that the sun shall rise relatively quickly for you, but for us, it truly cannot rise soon enough. If there is any way you could assist us, help us survive the breeze…

The response, as swift as it was horrifying, and thus calamitously jarring: Release me.

At first, I completely questioned my understanding, because, having asked for help, it seemed markedly paradoxical that the tree would ask me to let go of the very thing seemingly keeping Petros and myself alive. I then wondered if, perhaps, I’d messed up the accent, switched a vital word order… the arboursongs of each place were different, though the overarching language family was extraordinarily well-contained.

Let… let go? I asked, hoping for clarification more than confirmation.

I received, quite bluntly the latter. Release me.

I would have asked, too, Noora soothed.

“Petros, close your eyes, focus only on holding onto me!” I commanded, hearing the woman behind us growling more intently as she sped up her pace. Saliva flew from her anticipating mouth, filled with too many teeth and thus propped open by the sheer volume of serration her gums protruded. They were, in fact, about as gross to look at as I’ve just described. “Are they closed?!”

Petros opened his mouth to answer, but released instead an exclamation of extreme horror as I relinquished my hold on the tree and let the wind claim us, hoisting us both back and skywards, well away from the impending doom in the form of she whom I’d referred to as Beth while she was in a less bloodthirsty form. Petros’ high-pitched scream would have pierced my eardrums had the wind not whipped past and protected me from any sound but the buffeting breeze which hurled us towards the clouds and…

“Oh… because we’re… Petros! Open your eyes! It’s okay! We’re scrawny!” I knelt upon the clouds kept above the trees by Whesmorr’s terrifying powerful night-time winds and tugged on Petros to stand with me. “Look!”

“I… I can’t see, Sampaa… my eyes…”

“Ah, they’re just crusted over with a little fear, Petros. Come on, I can’t carry you to where we need to go, so up! Stand! Open your eyes!”

“If we don’t see the light, we can’t go towa—”

Exhausted from Petros’ fretting, and certain about only having precious minutes to get from standing over thousands of sharp and wind-tempered branches, I slapped his mouth closed and eyes open, and he found himself too stunned to experience the pain that his jaw would likely feel for many days after.

“Are we..?”

“Yes, Petros,” I sighed, as Noora commented on the ability of fear to render those unused to it incredibly vapid. “Clouds. Which will not be supported by wind for much longer. We have to beat the sun. Come!”

“Can I get a picture?” Petros plead.

You could always say you tried, Noora suggested. Who can say otherwise?

I shook my head, earning a scoff from my spirit, and cupped Petros’ cheek. “Petros. If you die, then I just risked my life for nothing, and got only a sore forearm and shoulder from it. Please. We need to get over the pond so we’ve a soft place to fall, yes?”

“Won’t we shatter from this high up?” he asked as we entered a decent trot.

“Not if… have you never dived before? Don’t answer that… too easy an assumption. Listen: hands like you’re praying, over your head, try to keep the shape of a needle. You’ll be fine.”

I can fly up here, I’m pretty sure, Noora teased, finding Petros’ confusion-filled face as repulsive as I.

Are we just tired? I asked Noora, who tilted her head from side to side.

Probably. It’s been a long night. And though we don’t need sleep anymore, it is tiresome to be conscious all the time… plus, you’ve effectively been dealing with this tiresome baby for ten hours straight.

I raised my eyebrows with that revelation, even prouder of the two of us for not killing the sometimes-unbearable Petros. We’d only known him for three days, but… imagine a man so obviously overcompensating for his short stature that he does nothing but fail to help the people around him, at every chance he gets. And though it’s probably admirable to at least tryto help others… Petros was just terrible at it. Like, “try to help make a poster and end up burning it to ash” bad. I wish I could tell you that wasn’t how I met him. I liked his spirit, but the execution made me yearn his execution sometimes. Not really, but… you know. A little.

Pond, Noora sighted, her owl eyes spotting the glittering water well before mine. I halted, seeing the edges of the sky turning crimson as the third sun climbed the expansive horizon.

“Remember, Petros – and I can’t do this for you, perhaps unfortunately for you: hands like so, over your head, body like needle.”

“Like th—” Petros went to ask, but the sun was present, and the winds ceased, and the clouds like most claims of flat planets found themselves unsupported, and we, like plans made with untrustworthy people and/or fellow graduates, fell through, nearing with greater velocity every second the fog-laden pond which became increasingly less below us and, eventually, all-encompassing.

Noora, forever my favourite co-pilot, hummed that brilliant aquasong which convinced the water around us to help respirate my cellular structure and see as clearly as if I were above the surface. Petros was unconscious, likely having suffered the more agonising aspects of terminal velocity. I gathered him up, careful to ask the water to suspend his broken arm so as to alleviate the pain he would endure once he awoke. I felt his heart beating well, however, slow only due to sleep, and rejoiced as the water drew us to the shore, up which I walked, Petros dripping water down my dry form.

“Nightswimming?” asked the nurse as I placed him on the bed that she kept especially for him.

“If he tells you that we fell from the sky last night, it isn’t a concussion. Or… he might have a concussion, but that story isn’t a symptom…”

Javi smiled, her six lavender-hued eyes glimmering as she squinted in humour. “I will keep that in mind when I check on him later. Did you find what you were looking for last night, traveller?”

“Ah, some of it. I think I’ll have to satiate my curiosity tonight.”

“A fourth day in Whesmorr, then?” she asked. I nodded as I yawned, earning from her a giggle. “Sounds like you’ll be missing most of it, hm?”