Chapter 1: Genesis Unravelling
I was no more than a dream, an ethereal wisp in the mind of an immortal, a daughter in name only and a mother in form alone. And then I awoke, a body not my own, a mind barely home, in a place I'd never known. They told me my name, they gave me a life. And the dream vanished, leaving me with nothing.
Heart of Silver
The sun was entirely too bright. It was unfair. My breath was short. My heart was racing. Something had happened. What? Something told me the world was warmer than it ought to be, but why did I know that?
My clothes were tatters, barely covering a shame I couldn't understand. Streaks of blood and raw flesh coloured my legs, arms, stomach. My back was a battlefield of its own burning intensity.
Where was I? Why was everything so painful?
I managed to rise from where I was lying. Grass as far as I could see. Beautiful and green. It felt nauseating. White and crimson flowers formed a strange sort of path from where I was standing and off into the distance. Golden blooms seemed out of place in the pooled blood at my feet.
Convincing my legs to carry me was a chore. They belonged to someone else, some life forgotten. They weren't mine. They couldn't be, or else they'd be moving with a measure of fluidity. But here I was, failing at the simplest of human tasks.
I smiled at the brilliant ivory blooms interspersed with blood red blossoms. Different sorts of flowers for certain. A sense of relief flooded me. I hadn't been responsible for the dyeing of those precious things. Tears of another soul streaked my cheeks and stained my tongue with salt and copper.
Walking that welcome carpet of snow and cherries, I stumbled toward something I longed to find. Something lost. What?
The road was a shock when I tripped onto it. Tiny grit and pebbles adhered to the sticky miasma of my skin. I saw the drops of blood someone had left behind. How long had it been.
Footprints intermingled with the drops of life upon the road. Four sets. Two tiny, two large. A family draped in love, escaping terror, hoping for safety. Why?
I didn't follow their steps. I traced them back. Wandering, hoping, needing to find something. Anything.
That was my first mistake.
Following to their beginning, I found the footprints started at a carriage. Overturned and ruined. There were five sets of prints. One of them had shoes about the same size as mine, and it went off in a different direction.
Beside the carriage was a small doll. I had to take it. It belonged with me. She belonged with me. Her name was lost to the world, just like I was.
As I raced to the spot where the doll sat, I thought I caught sight of something impossible. I wouldn't let myself be distracted though. I took her into my hands, and I tried to walk away. But that was impossible. My mind knew what it saw, and I couldn't let it see more.
Two bodies, mangled, tossed about by the carriage's fate. A man and a woman. Desperately grasping for a life that had left them before the carriage had been tossed. Poisoned.
Who had poisoned them? How?
Pressure inside my head fought the exploration of that thought. My breath caught. I swear I felt a tooth crack. I had to run. There was nothing for me there.
I clutched the doll to my chest, blinking, scared, crying, still bleeding. The world was not there as I moved. Getting away. Getting safe. Those were the only things to be done. Run. Find something.
The sun faded as I ran. Not with time but with something else. Shelter? I was backed into a corner, a prison of darkness and rock. But it was safe. I was safe. I had to be safe.
A light blinked and blinded the cave beasts I'd joined, prompting them to skitter and scatter, running from the great bear who had come with the light. Why was a bear holding a cold-flame lamp?
She wasn't a bear. Some manner of gorilla?
A woman. A human wall near filling the entire cave. Not shelter, but gallows. She would know about the man and woman. This was the end. There was nowhere to —
"Calm, little prawn mouse," her voice was soft and resonant, almost friendly. "I've not come to harm you."
What could that possibly mean? She towered above me like some manner of terrifying executioner. What else could she have come for?
"You're safe, dear one," she didn't move closer. Her lamp's soft pink cold-flame shone on her filthy greased up hands. "The only thing I put my hands to is hammer and anvil." She pulled at her collar revealing a tattoo. The smith's hammer shape was familiar.
"Iron?" Why had I said that?
"Kovar." She smiled. "Our reputation precedes us, then."
The tension in my chest relaxed. I took my first full breath. But the sobs overtook me.
"From screaming to crying in a breath," Kovar said, her face softening into something like maternal care. Had I been screaming? "You've had a rough sun, woman."
Slowly, smoothly, Kovar closed the space between us. It was fluid enough I didn't realise until I was lifted from the ground. She didn't need both hands, but she used them anyway, somehow managing her lamp, me, and the doll.
"Dasara," it escaped my mouth as I reached for the doll, almost squirming out of Kovar's grip. She gently reshuffled everything until the doll was safely wrapped up in my arms.
"Fine name for a dolly," Kovar smiled, not looking at me as she began walking out of the cave. "Though, if I'm honest, I'd far prefer the name of the doll's woman. Not too often we find grown women still clinging so tightly."
"Hmm?" I choked the sound out around every other emotion that tried desperately to grip me. Then was struck, horrified when I realised. "Oh no. I'm covering you in blood."
"It's fine." Kovar looked down, took in my whole figure and laughed softly. "Blood washes out. My sister proved that point a hundred times before she ran away with that husband of hers."
"Iron?" Why did I keep saying that.
"Yes indeed. I'm a sister of Iron," she said it reverently. "But I'm the only true sister. The rest are strays and runaways I'm left to take care of."
"Hmm." It wasn't much, but it kept Kovar talking. Her voice vibrated every part of me, and it seemed to be lulling me to rest.
"Indeed. About two hundred at this point. When Iron left, there were a mere fifty. They followed her phobward and set up before she married and retired from the game." Kovar seemed lost in thought, but she somehow managed to dodge tree branches, rocks on the ground, holes, and much more as she walked. When had I come anywhere near trees? "But as I said, our reputation truly precedes us, and I take in who I can."
"I'm sorry," I started. I wasn't trying to be a burden really.
"Oh it's nothing. We have the resources. And with a hundred fifty hands in town and fifty scattered to the wind, there's plenty of funding." She laughed again. What was so funny?
"No, I mean, I'm sorry to be another —"
"And I said it's nothing, little prawn mouse," she smiled broadly as she interrupted me. "You are no more a burden than your inability to contribute. And everyone can contribute something. We'll find you a place. We'll just be needing your name and your interests."
"Oh."
Everything froze. Nothing. No life. No history. No story at all. There was nothing before the sun. There was only fear. Fear and the pain that worked its way back as I tried, desperately reaching for something, anything.
"I don't," I began the words as a deep shiver gripped me, a shudder of loss and pain that didn't know who was lost or what was hurt. "I've never. I just."
"Shh, dear one," Kovar cooed at me. "It's alright. Take another of those deep breaths. Don't let the darkness take you back. You're here, and Kovar will take care of you. What don't you?"
"I don't know. Anything," I admitted between gasps. "There's grass and trees and bears and gorillas. Flowers and sun and rocks and caves. There's you and this doll and the carriage."
"Carriage?"
"It's gone now. Flipped. Destroyed." I closed my eyes against the blinding truth.
I had nothing. I was nothing. For all there was, I may as well have been no one.
"That's all well and good. But it's nought to worry over things that aren't. Simply things that are." Kovar continued her smooth approach to what seemed a city. Guards waved her through like she mattered. She was important. "It doesn't even need to be real. I just need a name for you. Only way to balance the ledger, prawn mouse."
A deep breath. Then another. "I don't know. I don't have a name to give. It's all," I waved one hand about weakly in a strangely practised gesture, "gone."
"No name, woman? Very well. Can't simply call you girl or woman or lamb." Kovar tapped her chin and set her other hand to her hip. "Ingot? Hearth? That's not right. Spark?" She looked me up and down, her face turning soft, then fierce. "Flux," she muttered. I saw the impression of her tongue behind her lips, tasting the feel of the name on her teeth. "Flux. I like it."
And since that sun, that is who I have been. Flux. I might not know what it means, but it has kept me warm to know someone thinks of me.