kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"TheSeed.0"

words

Jonathon stood in front of his apartment. It was a crisp Saturday afternoon at the beginning of autumn, and he was enjoying the sensation of the sun beaming down on his eight-year-old neck and the breeze washing away that self-same warmth. The breeze picked up a bit and the leaves began to rustle, breaking him out of his semi-conscious reverie.

Jonathon looked up to see a tiny miracle. There were dozens of them in the air, spinning about and finally landing on the cement at his feet. The tiny propellers were being shaken off of the tree by the wind, but they had nowhere to go. The seeds would lie on that barren surface until they had rotted, or would be washed away into the sewers to be processed with all the other waste the city created. One landed at his feet.

He looked at it with reverence. That tiny little thing had made the towering tree before him, and the towering tree before him created that delicate little thing. His dad had told him that if you split one of the propellers in half you’d get two clips -- each half of the seed could be split again, partially, revealing a gummy substance. He laughed, picturing his dad with funny little propeller halves sticking off of his ears and his nose. He picked up the seed to examine it.

He studied it closely, sizing up his prey. With its stem it formed the spokes of a triangle. The stem was thin and brown, about an inch and a half long, thick at the point where it had attached to the tree. The seeds were like grasshopper wings only less translucent, and their heads were tucked together where the stem joined them. The wings were a deep green, fading to a yellowish brown near the more solid substance of the heads.

With his thumbnail he popped the stem off from the rest of the tree-critter. Something slapped him in the back of his neck, a sharp pinprick as if he’d been stung. He swatted around the back of his neck but couldn’t find the culprit. He looked all around. Nothing. He shrugged, and snapped the seed in half.

A shock forced itself up and down his spine and he almost lost his balance in the pain. He let out a slight yelp, and was immediately echoed by a Jackdaw. The Jackdaw preened itself and looked up at him. Again it let out its peculiar caw, and cocked its head to the side.

“Strange bird,” he stated to the world. He cautiously bent down and picked up another propeller. It felt warm in his hand. He flexed the seed and a tingling warmth of warning slowly spread up his spine. The Jackdaw fluttered its wings.

“The first star of the night, a lost eyelash, dandelions… and propellers?” he mumbled to himself, entranced by the concept. He cupped the seed in his hands, closed his eyes, wished a secret wish, and blew it into the air. It failed remarkably to do any sort of floating through the wind the way eyelashes and dandelion seeds would. It blew a few inches up and nearly a foot away, and then stood still for the shortest of moments. Its weight bore it downwards again, and its odd shape drove it to spin dizzily all whole while.

He heard a fluttering of wings and opened his eyes to see the Jackdaw catch the stem of his seed in its beak and fly high up into the air. He started to chase after it, but it simply flew off over his apartment building. There was no way for him to go through-he’d have to go around the block, and by then the bird would be long gone. Dissatisfied, he went inside.

* * *

“Mom?”

“Yes, dear?” Her voice drifted in from the living room over her favorite game show. He followed.

He very nearly blurted out the wish he’d made but held his squirming tongue until it agreed to behave. If he told his wish, it definitely wouldn’t come true. As quickly as he could he replaced that torrent with something else. “What kind of tree is that outside?”

“What tree?”

“The propeller tree, you know, right outside. In front of the door.”

“Propeller tree?” She got up and stretched. Shaking her head, she walked over to the window and looked outside. “Oh, that. That’s a maple.” She smiled.

“Thanks, mom.” He wandered into his room, barely noticing the call for dinner hours later.

* * *

He was flying. It was dark out, cold, lonely, and there was the oddest sense of being watched. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up almost painfully, only… he didn’t have hairs on his neck. He was spinning around and around, being dropped and picked up by the wind, but not getting dizzy in the slightest. In fact, he couldn’t see a thing; he wasn’t sure how he knew it was dark out, but he did. He was on some great adventure-something that would define the rest of his life. He was very thirsty, and very cold, and scared.