A collection of flash fiction created during the weekly Livestream event on Butterflies from B's on YouTube.
Every week I select a prompt and we exercise our brains by writing a brand new story that can start a new story or even generate ideas for y...
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We wear these shrouds to hide our faces, not because showing them will bring us harm, but to maintain the secrecy of our order. We are everyone and we are no one.
Mine is hot and itchy today, the fine silk that is supposed to be a cool comfort against my skin ripped off this morning, exposing my face and shoulders to the elaborate polyester lace. Even though I'm grateful to be inside where large palms and happy cacti cool the room, it is not enough to quell the infernal itch.
Makrinon Tessin's quarters are spacious enough to contain a bubbling fountain running on a makeshift battery, and the curtains to the private section billow inward in the slight breeze teasing a peek into the life she keeps hidden.
In this peaceful setting, I should feel more at ease except for the fact that I'd been summoned to the Makrinon House, where all the Makrinons carried out their business, whatever that was.
"Hygli?"
I turn to face a man whose frame had bowed with age. His dreadlocked beard was gathered in circular bundles with gold circlets that shone with an ethereal light. You can tell when it is his hair started turning grey.
"I'm Hygli," I say, though there is no one else in the room.
He beckons me to follow and I watch him shuffle, stiff limbs making his progress slow. I wonder how I didn't hear him come into the room. Then I remember, this is Ghonem where nothing is as you see it. This stooped figure could be hundreds of years old, or a teenager being punished for rebelling against the Order's instructions. He could be a pregnant woman, with the right type of magic and the right type of strength. Here you cannot trust only five senses to understand what was true.
Makrinon Tessin sits behind a large desk strewn with piles of paper, containers with the barks of trees and a shocking yellow parrot perched on the largest one. The room is musty, smelling of earth and the aftermath of a forest fire. A hiss behind me forces me to look, finding the large flat head of a speckled verdant serpent.
Tessin gestures to the wood box at the end of the mess, the place of reprimand.
What can I say? I did it. It wasn't my first time and this wasn't my first warning or promise of punishment. That is why she'd had the old man to come and get me, so I could see what happens to those who disobey and act out of their own selfishness.
I'm a person with complicated emotions that get me into trouble, and this trouble was going to cost me a day of good work.
"You know why you're here?" Tessin says, her eyes filled with as much disapproval as she can muster.
"I saved another one." How could I not? People don't form themselves. They don't get to pick and choose what their bodies will look like, which unfortunate hole they will need to crawl out of, or which parents will give them life. They don't choose. So I don't choose.
