[4 - Bravo] Zovo v. Jor

[Kaez]

750-word limit Flash Fiction

The Auspicious Constellation

[ASGetty ((Zovo))]

Missing

[Deleted]

Lessons from the Dung Beetle

Come sit, my son. Come sit, Lodin, and hear the story of our people's punishment, so that you may recognize why this storm is upon us...

In the ancient days, the old died alone and cold, the orphan and the widow scrabbled in the streets of the Grand City over scraps of bread, while everyone, even the Qohendagol, the High Priest, the Servant of Servants, grew fat and languid in his negligence. Women killed their children as they slept, rather than watch them waste away or be stolen and thrown in another family's cooking pot. The mouths and souls of our people screamed out for justice, and yet justice did not come.

Men and women were profligate in their wickedness, throwing themselves into orgiastic frenzies of sensuality, gluttony, and violence. Boys were ushered into the arena, in order to bring glory to the Demons from Beyond the Aether, and girls were forced into their pleasure houses, for in the distant lands, to use a woman in such a way is considered a service and a bountiful source of good fortune.

It was in those days of darkness that Helel hung pregnant in the sky, glowing brightly down on our ancestors, as if a beacon calling them back to sense. The Almighty had sent the signs to our people, in the forms of stars and in the forms of men, and yet we remained audacious in our impetulence.

They came, just as the others had before, through the dark ether, their ships glistening like the stars themselves, outshining even the great Helel. He had arrived.

Yes, Sakkuth emerged from the great æther and punished our people for our wickedness. Our people had rotted from within, and the Almighty used even a filthy off-world conqueror like Sakkuth to cleanse us, so good are the ways of our Guardian. The man Sakkuth smashed the pleasure-houses, conscripted the arena fighters. The rich were laid low, loaded into the sky-barges of the great Nergal Empire, and when they arrived on the plantations, had to humble themselves before the poor, who had learned, in their meagreness, how to scrounge and scrimp and live off of roots and the water of boiled bones.

For centuries, our people lived and loved and died in the Nerglish mines, until the great and anointed Lord Curu conquered the descendents of Sakkuth and returned our people home once more.

Why, son, do I tell you this? For that time has come once more. As the dung beetle teaches us, what must come will come, and what will come shall come once more. The Mo'ar have arrived to punish us for our weakness and our shamefulness. But I do not believe we will languish long this time. Just as Sakkuth was laid low by Curu, so to will the Mo'ar and their false god be destroyed, by the Wanderer. I send you forth to him. Seek him. Aid him. Protect him. This is your singular purpose. Guardian be with you.

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Zovo:

Well this was a change of pace. Your last story was so grounded, it was interesting to return to a more mystical perspective. And as a flash story, that perspective really worked well. Less is more and all that; the vagueness served the format and didn't have time to become overbearing.

I'm still not entirely sure what to make of your setting. My suspicion is that it's meant to be worldbuilding by way of, as I intimated, a different, more mystical perspective. The world itself is fundamentally mundane, it could very easily be our own world, but by depicting it through the lens of another culture (and an isolated culture at that) you're able to create the effect of a fantastical setting. The Mauwale story drove this home to me, being as how it shows that your constructed "world" is itself just one society surrounded by very earthlike neighbours. Mauwale, being an outsider, isn't privy to the beliefs that give the setting its mystical bent, and so those stories are much more ordinary.

Anyway, if that's what you're doing, good on ya, man! It's cool. If not, then I'm sorry that I've completely misinterpreted your work.


Jordoom:

This is another symptom of the fact that I don't feel like I have a great handle on your setting's voice. There was definitely some stuff here that felt on mark, particularly the whole antediluvian, Sodom & Gomorrah feel of the wicked (profligate is such a great word), but I feel like your setting should have one of the clearest thrusts of any in the competition, and instead it feels a little hacked together. I caught some of the biblical namedrop references, and they all felt appropriate, but reading this is sort of mirroring the reasons why I dropped out of the competition myself. Working on the basis of updating a preexisting canon to sci-fi, I started running into the problem of whether I was really thinking about it in-depth to create a rounded adaptation, or whether I was just checking off boxes on Classical Mythology Bingo.

Your first story started strong with things like the space station/Star of Bethlehem comparison. That was a really natural progression, and it was cool. I don't think anything since that has been quite as good.


Winner Zovo