Tevun-Krus #31 - Dying Earth

Until Our Wildest Fantasies Come True - A Short Story by @originalthinker26

The lithe pipe, as he cradled it, provided a blustery atmosphere to the little room in which he sat. Around him, the sunlight of a cool but waning spring was distilled through the windows of the room. To be above ground was different from the network of burrows which he had typically found comfortable because of his heritage in such a community, but it still remained satisfying to him. This, especially, since this dome-shaped domicile was the abode that would reveal the truth to him... directly after he finished with his pipe. Along the walls were pasted parchments of some primordial language; primordial in the sense that it existed well in advance to the world he knew. A few turquoise eggs sat in the bowl from where he had gathered them in the trees nearby. This place was so nourished because of its rich soil. Theoretically, it had been such because of how it had been revealed after its burial by towns. Once the towns had been removed by times, the concrete deteriorating, the trees sprouted up from where the soil had not been utilized.

He blew a smoke ring. Stretching out his hand, he twirled his finger, rerouting the puff back towards his hand. As the smoke ring drew intimately near, it condensed, landing around his fourth finger from the left. It became gold, fashioned out of the dancing air. A waste product became a cherished and coveted trinket. Of course, he could not keep it. It reminded him too much of her. So, by the same magic that had formed it, he reduced it back into smoke, and it faded off into the air, parting into a thousand different directions. He had felt sorry to see it leave his finger. But it was all the same. The end was coming, anyway.

With a thrush of his hand, the pages leapt from the wall and sat themselves gingerly along the table. The man that had written these was a convex of it all, the first to break into the depths of matter. From this had spouted all that had come out of it. Suitably, then, the man had been the first to see the end. Because of what he'd done, he had managed to reveal to himself the consequences, down to the precise date.

All the same, soon he expected a rap at his door. He would be coming for him. He would be of service, no doubt.

The language written on the paper was not one in which he was educated, but there was a way, in the deeper, underlying mysticism of it, that the sight of the word also represented the feeling of the writer, and so to him, the words were translated. Three days. From this extraction on the paper, the old man saw through the words into the mind of that first of his kind. His kind was of such importance, especially with this coming time.

"Mister Foeber!" said a voice that sounded strained, an effort in order to penetrate the old man's trance.

"Hmm!" he whipped around to see the young man. "Aha!" he choked in his excitement. "You must be him! You must forgive me, my hearing has somewhat faded while my extrasensory remains."

"They told me to ask for proof of your identity."

"Indubitably." Foeber turned to a pot of soil. He reached for a seed that sat on the table, and, lifting it to be sure it was seen, planted it in the pot. Holding his hand softly above the pot, Foeber stood with his face to the opened door all while the plant sprouted and grew at his command. "You are from the island country, correct?"
"Yes, Unach."
"An amazing dominion. The manmade, metal islands. The last time I was there, I left the order to send someone on this very date. And they pulled threw for me. Now," said Foeber looking earnestly at the young man, "you have been trained?"
"Oh, yes. Rather well, I think."

"Good. As a Replacement, that is quite important."
"Those rocks out in those mountains," said the young accomplice, "they are quite celestial to me. What are they?"

"This cottage is the last remaining connection anyone has to that man that started it all, oh, so many years ago. He hid out here, after he made that horrid mistake. What we, these days, call magic, they knew as science. They saw what some of us can manage with ease to be uncontrollable. But, when the First tried to wrangle control over it with an attempt at what he called 'telekinesis', he could not control what he strove for. He could not sustain his power, thinking he could move the moon in its natural rotation. You only know the moon as being some articulate of lore, but it was very real. Before the First unintentionally shattered it."