Fiction Friday: A Far-flung Blog Collection

People do not change.

Originally posted 5-20-16 by Rori Wuldor to alexisdonkin.com blog.

I thought I'd seen it all. How could I not? I have the world at my feet. My mother is the most powerful woman in existence and my father is the perfect consort. I have everything and anything.

I've been to places you can only find in dreams – for you it's a big deal to go from one place to another, but for me, it's the speed of thought. Picturing a place is enough to bring me to it – but I've also explored some without ever having seen them - just stepping from one dimension to another.

There were some humans once who tried to figure this out – the spaces between particles and the worlds within worlds. They had complex formulas and huge structures running experiments – or so my mother tells me. But that was long ago - something forgotten in space and time. Now it's just a dream of a dream.

And yet, I have seen the impossible. I do it every day.

And then I met Rowan.

He shouldn't exist.

He shouldn't be. My father agrees.

I only mentioned him to my father because, well, there's no keeping him completely out of my head. I didn't intend to tell him about Rowan, but I couldn't stop my thoughts. I'm working on it, but it's a weakness of mine. Rowan makes it worse.

Once I met Rowan – once he stumbled onto the palace veranda, slurring his words and stinking of crude alcohol – I couldn't help but wonder about him. Talking like that, you'd think he's good for nothing. Maybe he is – that's what I thought.

And then I saw him again – so soon after that, perfectly sober, clean, and normal. Whatever ideas I had turned on their head, and what else could I do? He looked like he belonged in my world. He looked like so many people who filled the palace walls, danced with me at fire festivals, and trained with me at the nemeton. Sure, Rowan's clothing was a little unusual, but, that could have been from spying.

Clothing can change. People can't.

But he's not...normal. If his father and mother are both human, he shouldn't exist. He shouldn't be what he is. But what if he's the beginning of something new? That is possible. Stranger things have happened. On the other hand, someone could have pretended to be human and had sex with Rowan's mother...

Neither is a comforting thought.

I mean, how long can he live? Will he age like us? Will he die like a man? Does he have all the normal abilities of us? Or is he just a stepping stone on the evolutionary tree? Is he more than us?

My distress broadcasted my thoughts loud and clear to anyone who could hear them. The more my father discovered through my thoughts, the more concerned he became. I don't know if my mother was concerned. She didn't say anything to me about it. She didn't tell me to be careful, or to ignore him, or to send Rowan on his way. She didn't tell me to block him from my thoughts.

It was my father who did that.

I couldn't tell anyone official about what was happening, and my father was too concerned about how this might impact things to be a confidant. I couldn't talk to my cousins. I couldn't talk to old family friends because there was too great a chance of it traveling throughout the provinces to every isolated hovel and treehouse. We're too interconnected as a group.

I needed someone I could trust – someone who wanted what was best for everyone involved and could close off his mind from anyone and anything. I needed someone who could meet Rowan and scope him out, without strange sensations getting in the way.

So I called someone who fits in perfectly with humans, and knows everything there is to know about us.

I called Bodhi Khan.

****

Rori is a character from the work-in-progress novel, THE CHANGELING TREE.