A Farmer's Tale

Temmy was once a simple farm boy in the village of the Raven Tribe, but that was ages ago. Before he became the village elder in charge of agriculture, before tribe hunters ambushed O.T. (Overlord Taskforce) jeeps and brought huge cases of Elysium into town, before the crops became... weird.

A picturesque dirt path stretched as far as the eye can see. From the mountain edge to the sun on the horizon. Fruit, nut and lumber trees of all kinds made meticulous lines of forest on either side of the trail. Two long rows of vines and bushes wound their way neatly around tediously cared for fence posts.

Tomato plants outgrew the clean cages that held them up. Blackberries outgrew normal apples and the apples stayed red through all of the seasons. Even what passed for winter out here in the otherwise desolate desert. Temmy was so proud of his work that he would often boast, 'My garden pushes back the desert air and the nuclear rain!'

Most laughed at the idea, but he was right. Hardy trees were always grown on the edge of the forest formation to protect their brethren with thick canopies and hardy trunks. A windbreak unlike any the 'civilized' world could manage. It was by far the most plentiful land to the north of the Thunderbird Mountains, the land known as the 'True Wastelands'.

It 'was' the most plentiful land, but not anymore. Not in any useful way.

Now the plants had fallen into the care of minds warped by Elysium. Minds that thought the shimmering concoction that came in metal and glass vials was good for fertilizer. In a strange way, there was logic to it. The drug did make people powerful and gifted with unbelievable magic.

The pumpkins and squash that line the dirt trail at Temmy's feet were purple and soft. Green vines cover all of the berry bushes. Not a lively and vegetative green, but a pulsating neon green. Temmy sat for days watching the vines grow over the fruit.

He delighted in the way it overtook the bushes. The way it sucked the life out through glowing bubbles into the new vine. After a long day of sitting particularly still and watching one bubble as it made its path through the entire length of vine, from bush into the ground, Temmy stood. From the shear amount of cracking bones you would have assumed something was broken, but the carefree farmer didn't even notice.

"Town time!!" he yelled in a surprisingly childish voice full of energy.

Temmy skipped merrily down the dusty roads made even dustier with each passing wagon. The Elysium had brought so much joy and progress to the village clearing between mountains. Everyday laborers who've taken one dose of Elysium were strong enough to perform the duties of four owl-bulls (oxen with the head of a black, horny-eared owl and wings to boot). Some people had morphed entirely into gaseous or liquid forms allowing them to do things humans never could. Such as ride the afore mentioned owl-bulls despite the mass of horns protruding from their backs.

Some of the liquid formed persons could water the entire village's personal plants simply by going for a stroll. The gaseous could power scavenged steam tech or flit about the village with messages as if walls didn't exist.

Temmy passed by an alley-way full of people who hadn't taken well to the drug.

Liquidized arms spilling acid into the streets, a person whose facial tissue bulged out past the skin around his cheek and eye, a human face was suspended in a brass-fitted glass tank with heating tubes into someone's home. The face was in immense pain as the toxic gasses that remained of its body were pulled through a cleansing and heating cycle. Temmy snapped from the sight at the sound of a voice that he always cared to hear, "Hey Temmy! You missed the festival this season, no one got to hear any of your stories!"

A young Venessa sat in a different ally, out of site of the undesirables, with dirt-stained black hair. She wore an outfit that all but yelled 'adventurer to be'. Yarn, probably stolen from an alley cat, tying together pouches made from the blacksmith's scraps. Of all the things that she possessed, the most surprising was a dirty notebook and an ancient looking pencil.

"Where in the world did you get that?"

"Um... Nowhere."

"Owl-shit! You've been exploring dungeons again, haven't you? You know it's not safe for a little girl to be crawling around in collapsible caves full of spirits know what!"

"I don't ever get seen and I'm careful where I put my foot. Besides, I wouldn't run off if you let me help you in the garden."

"You don't need to be seen, some of the things in those ruins can smell and sometimes things like wurms just know where you are," he let out an exasperated sigh at the troublemaking orphan, "fine, I'll tell you a story. A story about the golden dragon of the far north."

"Dragons aren't real!"

"The dragon would beg to differ, and I saw him with my own eyes."

"Nu-uh, did it breathe fire? Why doesn't anybody talk about it?"

"You must not ask the right people, and I'm not going to just tell you if it breaths fire before the story," she crossed her arms and hopped once in her seat in the poutiest gesture Temmy had ever seen, "So, winter was passing, and the thunderbirds were migrating north again. This is never much of a problem anymore, but the Village Elders sent far too many hunters out that year leaving the town unprotected. The giant birds swooped down and snatched up our children. Lightning struck any brave enough to grab a bow and when we were all safely locked away in our houses, they tore the roofs off with their sharp beaks.

"All hope seemed lost, but I thought that maybe if I killed one the rest would scatter. So, I grabbed a spear and stepped outside my home. I threw my spear as hard as I could at a bird the size of the house it was digging its talons into. I nearly missed when I glimpsed it's magnificent white and blue striped wings. It was pierced right in the neck, and it tumbled off of the roof. Nothing flails quite as wildly as a bird falling, it's like a fish that forgets how to swim. Then it turned on me with those flailing claws.

"Lightning gathered in its wings and forked out at the ground between us. The hair on my head stood up and I thought I was going to jump out of my skin. Then a wave of fire cascaded off of my house and engulfed everything before me. Lightning shot out from a half dozen of the birds towards the cause of the flames. It was at that moment the corner of my house buckled under the weight of a massive pillar of scales. That leg alone stood three times the size of me, and its golden sheen was blinding in the sun and lightning. Its gargantuan maw snapped shut around the charred remains of the thunderbird and crunched its bones. Booming thunder and streaks of lightning escaped the gaps in its teeth and then he reared back his long neck and swallowed it whole; even the spear!"

"Even the spear!?"

"Yep, even the spear. Dragon stomachs are every bit as formidable as the dragon."

"What happened next?"

"It made short work of two more birds. One was bitten and pulled in closer to his claws while it impaled another with the spike of its tail. The rest flew off while the King of the sky ate. It looked at me with one of its golden yellow eyes and I swear I heard it laugh before it took off."

"Laugh? What does a dragon laugh sound like?"

"Like a human laugh... I think."

"What's the moral of the story?"

"What?"

"The moral. Your stories always have morals."

"Hmmm... There's always something bigger?"

"Ha! That's an arete moral."

"You and your fancy words." With his last bit of clarity clashing against the insanity consuming the rest of the village Temmy said, "you know, you won't be a little Crow forever. Do you want to hear a story without any morals?"

"Woah, you mean like a scary story?"

"Well, yes, but scary stories often have morals the others can't hope to match.

"So, Farmer Woodpecker Jameson was sitting on a wood crate on the back porch chopping potatoes. Rain coats his dirty arms as he works with his knife. He is so focused on sliding the tool through without cutting the spuds growing tall to try and take root that he doesn't notice when the first one goes missing. But the second potato to disappear does so by standing up on its sprouts and leaping from his open hand. It scurries across the ageing oak floor and crawls behind a stack of scrap wood. Woodpecker turns to see the state of his remaining potatoes. One is making a web to escape down the side of the porch. Another jumps around in the rafters hissing like a mad cat. A third stands perfectly still and screams a high-pitched noise that can only be described as the sound a potato makes. All of the other potatoes scatter for safety from the farmer and the rain.

"Woodpecker flips his potato cutting knife by one half turn in his hand and throws it like only the three-year logging games champ can. It pins the screaming potato to the floorboard muffling its scream a wee bit. And farmer Jameson plucks his knife from the ground and takes a large bite out of his last juicy potato. Some say if you put your ear to the farmer's tummy you can still hear it screaming."

"Huh, wouldn't the moral be, 'don't eat off of the ground'?"

"Nonsense, the best things to eat come from the ground."