Be Careful What You Wish For
Feb. 6th, 2010 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonyphoenixTitle: Be Careful What You Wish For
Fandom: None; my own universe, characters, etc.
Rating: PG
Concrit: Please, in comments
The flower of immortality blooms one day each year in a garden at the bottom of the sea. On that day and only on that day, two of the merfolk may enter the Garden.
The Changer swam up from the Garden carrying the Opponent's corpse, which she laid down on the altar. She hadn't stayed to watch the ritual, that declared her victory, for generations. The leaders didn't really care whether she won or not and besides she had more important business. She swam back to harvest as many of the flower as she could. Her control over it's blossoms was only one of the many ways she used to maintain her power over her servants but it was an important one.
Behind the altar the leaders of the mer continued the ritual, speaking of change and the maintenance of their society as their servants wielded the knife, doing what the leaders, whose sleek serpentine bodies had no arms, couldn't do. They cut up the Opponent's corpse, distributing pieces to the leaders, in token that they shared in the powers that belonged only to the Changer.
Dozens of their fastest swimmers, whose crocodile-like bodies with both legs and tails marked them as belonging to the worker caste, spread out with word of the Changer's victory. “The Changer remains,” they called out to let the mer know the old Changer had remained victorious. If she had lost, they would have cried out that the Opponent was now the Changer since, once a mer entered the garden, his or her name was never spoken again.
“I told you the old one would win. She's been the Changer since forever,” a scion, one of the worker-children of the mer, crowed to a group of hangers on. It was already evident that he was likely to become one of the leader caste when they were called to the Change. Since the language of the mer sounds like a series of high-pitched squeals to human ears, let him be Derek and let his opponent be Bobby.
“I said that.” Bobby spoke quietly. “It was obvious the Opponent couldn't win; he knew nothing of fighting.” A few of Bobby's friends gave him sympathetic glances but nobody else noticed that he'd spoken.
“That's what happens when you reach for more than you can have,” one of Bobby's friends said. While Bobby had been correct in his assessment, his friend was working under a mistaken assumption. The Opponent had not volunteered for that chance to grab at immortality. He'd been the victim of infighting within the leadership caste and his property had been divided up by the victors even before he'd stepped into the Garden. Whether he won or lost, his old position would have been forever barred to him.
“You can't want to be a worker forever?” Bobby asked.
His friends shrugged. “Not like it'll be our call,” one of them mumbled. They'd already accepted their fate.
“Me, I think I'll be a warrior. I've seen some of the guardsmen eying me,” another added proudly.
Bobby, not wanting to risk losing his friends, said nothing but he knew he wouldn't be able to stand life as a mere worker. He'd been told once, years before, that he had a very active brain and he'd taken that to heart, seeing it as a promise he'd be made a leader if only he proved himself. He was always looking for solutions to problems so he'd stand out to their supervisors.
About two weeks later, he had a chance to prove his worth as a thinker. While still scions, before they were separated into their castes at the Change, all of the children of the mer had bodies similar to those of the worker caste and so they were assigned to do the work of that caste. The team that Bobby and Derek were on had been assigned to salvage a metal gate that had fallen out of a ship as it had sank to the ocean's floor but the gate had been wedged under a shard of the ship. Since it was too heavy to lift, Derek had proposed telling their supervisor that they couldn't move it. Bobby, recalling a large metal bar he'd seen a few days earlier, had called to some friends to help him fetch it. While Derek and the rest of their crew watched, they used the bar as a lever to move the shard off the gate.
“Good work, Derek,” the supervisor said. “Getting your crew to come up with ideas is a sure sign of a leader.” Everyone knew what that meant. The supervisor must believe that Derek would join the leader caste. It was the only reason a supervisor would compliment a scion.
“That was a good thought,” Derek told Bobby in mock friendliness. “When I set up the worker crews for my own household, I'll keep you in mind.” Bobby's friends held him back as Derek laughed and swam away.
“Be sensible, Bobby. You don't want to make an enemy of Derek.”
The words were like a slash to his heart. “Since he's going to made a leader and I'm not?” Bobby accused. When his friends wouldn't catch his eye, Bobby turned and swam off.
Knowing he couldn't stand to become a worker, especially after Derek's last comment, Bobby thought through his options. The supervisors must have already have made their choices. There was nothing more he could do to convince them, which left him one chance. Not even the leaders directly petitioned the Changer. Bobby kept telling himself that it wasn't forbidden as he swam to the Changer's gate.
Two of the Changer's warriors answered his call. It took all of Bobby's courage not to flee before them. The Changer's warriors were deadlier and faster than those she created for the leaders even if it was unthinkable that anyone would attack her outside the Garden. All of the Changer's servants were fiercely loyal to her, knowing that they would only live while she did.
The cavern was a maze and, for the first time in his life, Bobby felt lost by the time they'd reached it's center. The warriors had him swim between two sets of servants, a dozen on each side. At the Change, they'd been given a touch of psychic ability, enough to read those who came within a short range. One of the psychics passed their report to a warrior who then spoke with the Changer.
She combined the forms of many of the mer, having the serpentine body of the leaders but also the arms and sharp teeth of a warrior. The Changer was outside the caste system and above it. Without the plants she gathered in the Garden, there would be no Change and all of the mer would be worker caste.
“What is it child?” she asked, turning from the only other mer who was unique among their kind. Bobby gaped at it. The Prophet was solitary, only ever seeing those who came to the Changer's cavern and only allowed to speak through her. It's fins were tiny, more decorative ripples than anything that would allow it to move and it's serpentine body was round from years without exercise. It's eyes, however, were the scariest thing Bobby had ever seen. Unlike the rounded eyes of the mer, these were pure white with dark slits at the center. They seemed to stare right through Bobby.
At the Changer's call, the Prophet's drudge, a worker caste assigned to care only for the Prophet, shoved it off to the side, brutally as if it didn't mind hurting it's charge but Bobby couldn't believe that. The current Prophet was ancient but kept alive by the Changer because it couldn't be replaced until someone volunteered. But who would? It was a position that benefited the mer as a whole, certainly, but it was an isolated existence, worse even than that of a worker where at least one had friends.
The Changer motioned one of her psychics over to Bobby. “Think on your problem,” she said and Bobby did. His mind went over his desire to be a leader, on how crushing his humiliation would be if Derek became one and he didn't. He thought that he'd literally let himself be crushed in that case, swim the long way to one of the crevices that sank below the ocean floor and let himself drift down until the depths crushed his body.
“And what about the others? Would no one miss you?” the Changer asked.
“I suppose my friends would,” he shrugged. “But, after the Change, if we're in different castes, it's not like we'd stay friends anyway.”
“Foolish,” the Changer told him. “You have friends. Know what that means? You'd never survive as a leader. They have allies. They don't care who lives or dies but just divide up the spoils whenever they can. Your supervisors were right to keep you as a worker. Go back. Be happy in the life that has been chosen for you.”
“No.”
The Changer hid a smile. It had been generations since she'd felt real happiness but she was pleased with Bobby's reaction. It was one that would serve her needs.
“You think you know better than your supervisors? You would choose for yourself?”
“I'll be a leader or nothing,” Bobby replied. The Prophet laughed, a high-pitched shriek that should have warned Bobby away. In his determination, he ignored the misgivings he felt at the sound.
“And if I do help you?”
“Then I'll be in your debt,” Bobby replied. The Changer smiled.
On the day of the Change, the names of each scion was called out, starting with those selected to become leaders. When Derek's name was called, he swam forward, with a slight swagger, until the Changer called out, “Wait.”
Derek paused, uncertain what to do. There was a murmur from the crowd.
“There has been a petition,” the Changer announced. The murmurs grew louder as conjecture and gossip ran through the crowd. Only a few realized what it could mean.
When the Changer called out Bobby's name, he swam forward, confidently, towards the scions chosen to become leaders, assuming that the Changer was switching his and Derek's places. The Changer called out again. “To me.”
Bobby faltered, uncertain, before swimming to the Changer. As she fed him the plant, Bobby forced himself to feel certainty. To be singled out so, must be an honor. It must mean that he was destined to become important, perhaps first among the leaders.
The Change didn't take long. There were gasps from the crowd when they saw what his eyes had become, pure white with dark slits in the center, but Bobby, lost in a vision, didn't notice. He saw the current Prophet and it's drudge. He saw the hatred between them as if it were a living thing, stronger than the both of them. The Prophet lived to demean it's drudge. The drudge let herself live only so she could abuse the Prophet and so, when the time came, she would be there to kill it herself.
When Bobby came back to himself, he already knew what the Changer had done to him. He didn't need to see his serpentine body or his lack of arms. He didn't need to try, and fail, to swim. She'd made him the new Prophet.
“This is my gift to you,” the Changer whispered before calling to Derek. As the scion swam over, the new Prophet could feel it's fear. When the Change was complete, the muddy eyes of a worker, of a drudge, glared out at the Prophet he would serve for the rest of his life.
Over the years, the Changer had found that hatred for each other made her servants more loyal to her.
Fandom: None; my own universe, characters, etc.
Rating: PG
Concrit: Please, in comments
The flower of immortality blooms one day each year in a garden at the bottom of the sea. On that day and only on that day, two of the merfolk may enter the Garden.
The Changer swam up from the Garden carrying the Opponent's corpse, which she laid down on the altar. She hadn't stayed to watch the ritual, that declared her victory, for generations. The leaders didn't really care whether she won or not and besides she had more important business. She swam back to harvest as many of the flower as she could. Her control over it's blossoms was only one of the many ways she used to maintain her power over her servants but it was an important one.
Behind the altar the leaders of the mer continued the ritual, speaking of change and the maintenance of their society as their servants wielded the knife, doing what the leaders, whose sleek serpentine bodies had no arms, couldn't do. They cut up the Opponent's corpse, distributing pieces to the leaders, in token that they shared in the powers that belonged only to the Changer.
Dozens of their fastest swimmers, whose crocodile-like bodies with both legs and tails marked them as belonging to the worker caste, spread out with word of the Changer's victory. “The Changer remains,” they called out to let the mer know the old Changer had remained victorious. If she had lost, they would have cried out that the Opponent was now the Changer since, once a mer entered the garden, his or her name was never spoken again.
“I told you the old one would win. She's been the Changer since forever,” a scion, one of the worker-children of the mer, crowed to a group of hangers on. It was already evident that he was likely to become one of the leader caste when they were called to the Change. Since the language of the mer sounds like a series of high-pitched squeals to human ears, let him be Derek and let his opponent be Bobby.
“I said that.” Bobby spoke quietly. “It was obvious the Opponent couldn't win; he knew nothing of fighting.” A few of Bobby's friends gave him sympathetic glances but nobody else noticed that he'd spoken.
“That's what happens when you reach for more than you can have,” one of Bobby's friends said. While Bobby had been correct in his assessment, his friend was working under a mistaken assumption. The Opponent had not volunteered for that chance to grab at immortality. He'd been the victim of infighting within the leadership caste and his property had been divided up by the victors even before he'd stepped into the Garden. Whether he won or lost, his old position would have been forever barred to him.
“You can't want to be a worker forever?” Bobby asked.
His friends shrugged. “Not like it'll be our call,” one of them mumbled. They'd already accepted their fate.
“Me, I think I'll be a warrior. I've seen some of the guardsmen eying me,” another added proudly.
Bobby, not wanting to risk losing his friends, said nothing but he knew he wouldn't be able to stand life as a mere worker. He'd been told once, years before, that he had a very active brain and he'd taken that to heart, seeing it as a promise he'd be made a leader if only he proved himself. He was always looking for solutions to problems so he'd stand out to their supervisors.
About two weeks later, he had a chance to prove his worth as a thinker. While still scions, before they were separated into their castes at the Change, all of the children of the mer had bodies similar to those of the worker caste and so they were assigned to do the work of that caste. The team that Bobby and Derek were on had been assigned to salvage a metal gate that had fallen out of a ship as it had sank to the ocean's floor but the gate had been wedged under a shard of the ship. Since it was too heavy to lift, Derek had proposed telling their supervisor that they couldn't move it. Bobby, recalling a large metal bar he'd seen a few days earlier, had called to some friends to help him fetch it. While Derek and the rest of their crew watched, they used the bar as a lever to move the shard off the gate.
“Good work, Derek,” the supervisor said. “Getting your crew to come up with ideas is a sure sign of a leader.” Everyone knew what that meant. The supervisor must believe that Derek would join the leader caste. It was the only reason a supervisor would compliment a scion.
“That was a good thought,” Derek told Bobby in mock friendliness. “When I set up the worker crews for my own household, I'll keep you in mind.” Bobby's friends held him back as Derek laughed and swam away.
“Be sensible, Bobby. You don't want to make an enemy of Derek.”
The words were like a slash to his heart. “Since he's going to made a leader and I'm not?” Bobby accused. When his friends wouldn't catch his eye, Bobby turned and swam off.
Knowing he couldn't stand to become a worker, especially after Derek's last comment, Bobby thought through his options. The supervisors must have already have made their choices. There was nothing more he could do to convince them, which left him one chance. Not even the leaders directly petitioned the Changer. Bobby kept telling himself that it wasn't forbidden as he swam to the Changer's gate.
Two of the Changer's warriors answered his call. It took all of Bobby's courage not to flee before them. The Changer's warriors were deadlier and faster than those she created for the leaders even if it was unthinkable that anyone would attack her outside the Garden. All of the Changer's servants were fiercely loyal to her, knowing that they would only live while she did.
The cavern was a maze and, for the first time in his life, Bobby felt lost by the time they'd reached it's center. The warriors had him swim between two sets of servants, a dozen on each side. At the Change, they'd been given a touch of psychic ability, enough to read those who came within a short range. One of the psychics passed their report to a warrior who then spoke with the Changer.
She combined the forms of many of the mer, having the serpentine body of the leaders but also the arms and sharp teeth of a warrior. The Changer was outside the caste system and above it. Without the plants she gathered in the Garden, there would be no Change and all of the mer would be worker caste.
“What is it child?” she asked, turning from the only other mer who was unique among their kind. Bobby gaped at it. The Prophet was solitary, only ever seeing those who came to the Changer's cavern and only allowed to speak through her. It's fins were tiny, more decorative ripples than anything that would allow it to move and it's serpentine body was round from years without exercise. It's eyes, however, were the scariest thing Bobby had ever seen. Unlike the rounded eyes of the mer, these were pure white with dark slits at the center. They seemed to stare right through Bobby.
At the Changer's call, the Prophet's drudge, a worker caste assigned to care only for the Prophet, shoved it off to the side, brutally as if it didn't mind hurting it's charge but Bobby couldn't believe that. The current Prophet was ancient but kept alive by the Changer because it couldn't be replaced until someone volunteered. But who would? It was a position that benefited the mer as a whole, certainly, but it was an isolated existence, worse even than that of a worker where at least one had friends.
The Changer motioned one of her psychics over to Bobby. “Think on your problem,” she said and Bobby did. His mind went over his desire to be a leader, on how crushing his humiliation would be if Derek became one and he didn't. He thought that he'd literally let himself be crushed in that case, swim the long way to one of the crevices that sank below the ocean floor and let himself drift down until the depths crushed his body.
“And what about the others? Would no one miss you?” the Changer asked.
“I suppose my friends would,” he shrugged. “But, after the Change, if we're in different castes, it's not like we'd stay friends anyway.”
“Foolish,” the Changer told him. “You have friends. Know what that means? You'd never survive as a leader. They have allies. They don't care who lives or dies but just divide up the spoils whenever they can. Your supervisors were right to keep you as a worker. Go back. Be happy in the life that has been chosen for you.”
“No.”
The Changer hid a smile. It had been generations since she'd felt real happiness but she was pleased with Bobby's reaction. It was one that would serve her needs.
“You think you know better than your supervisors? You would choose for yourself?”
“I'll be a leader or nothing,” Bobby replied. The Prophet laughed, a high-pitched shriek that should have warned Bobby away. In his determination, he ignored the misgivings he felt at the sound.
“And if I do help you?”
“Then I'll be in your debt,” Bobby replied. The Changer smiled.
On the day of the Change, the names of each scion was called out, starting with those selected to become leaders. When Derek's name was called, he swam forward, with a slight swagger, until the Changer called out, “Wait.”
Derek paused, uncertain what to do. There was a murmur from the crowd.
“There has been a petition,” the Changer announced. The murmurs grew louder as conjecture and gossip ran through the crowd. Only a few realized what it could mean.
When the Changer called out Bobby's name, he swam forward, confidently, towards the scions chosen to become leaders, assuming that the Changer was switching his and Derek's places. The Changer called out again. “To me.”
Bobby faltered, uncertain, before swimming to the Changer. As she fed him the plant, Bobby forced himself to feel certainty. To be singled out so, must be an honor. It must mean that he was destined to become important, perhaps first among the leaders.
The Change didn't take long. There were gasps from the crowd when they saw what his eyes had become, pure white with dark slits in the center, but Bobby, lost in a vision, didn't notice. He saw the current Prophet and it's drudge. He saw the hatred between them as if it were a living thing, stronger than the both of them. The Prophet lived to demean it's drudge. The drudge let herself live only so she could abuse the Prophet and so, when the time came, she would be there to kill it herself.
When Bobby came back to himself, he already knew what the Changer had done to him. He didn't need to see his serpentine body or his lack of arms. He didn't need to try, and fail, to swim. She'd made him the new Prophet.
“This is my gift to you,” the Changer whispered before calling to Derek. As the scion swam over, the new Prophet could feel it's fear. When the Change was complete, the muddy eyes of a worker, of a drudge, glared out at the Prophet he would serve for the rest of his life.
Over the years, the Changer had found that hatred for each other made her servants more loyal to her.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-13 12:17 am (UTC)