When the first Illyrian ships landed on this planet, our kind went before you to check that everything was safe. Our mechanical limbs clanked and whirred, working to the steady rhythm that you programmed into us.
Beyond the ship was a dream.
It was a dream of white, cold and sparkling, like whispering diamonds. The white blanketed the ground in sheets of soft mush, it drifted in the sky while we watched, and it fell on us in little cold drops that pattered against our metal and made us wet.
You loved the white, Muriel, especially when it fell from the sky. They were called snowflakes, you told me. Tiny, intricate patterns of ice that lasted but for a moment in this world. Every single one is different, you told me.
This bothered me. Why were they all made to be different? Why not have a perfect pattern, and make them all that way? The way they fell, it was disorderly. Inefficient.
They are all different, you clarified, but each flake was equally beautiful.
Your assertion confounded me. How could they all be correct? Different and still the same?
You did not tell me how. You found my confusion endearing.
Your people were beautiful too, Muriel. Much more so than the humans. They were intricate. They were mesmerising. Then they were gone.
I never knew what ailed them in the end. Something on this planet made them sick. It did not affect the humans, but your kind fell to the ground, unmoving and cold.
Broken snowflakes.
That's what they were.
YOU ARE READING
Broken Snowflakes (A Witch Doctors Inc Legend)
Science Fiction[A short story set in the Witch Doctors Inc universe] * Featured on @ShortStory and @The_Writers_Nook * *** He writes to her. She is long gone. She is everything. She is perfect. She is eternal. She is lost. He builds a nightmare in her image. ***
