Category: Text

Photo by Winggo Tse on Unsplash

Chapter One

Rufus panted as he finished pushing the wagon to the crest of the hill. After lifting and resettling his straw hat against the high noon sun, he nodded to his eldest two children who helped pushed, silently thanking them for a job well done, even if the most important contribution to the task at ages eight and six respectively was not being added weight on the wagon. As a group, they walked to the front where his pregnant wife held the reins to the donkey pair and kept the recovering two-year-old under control with equal skill. Girly, the four-year-old, passed from the bad water they got during the second week out and Leo, the youngest, was still suffering the impact of losing his best buddy and vomiting up his body weight for longer than Rufus or Wifey cared to think.

“Dangnabit, they weren’t kidding, that is a big rock.” He stated, looking down the other side of the hill into the strangely shaped valley.

As far as the eye could comfortably see, a slight curving hill surrounded a mostly flat valley. The weird hill had been slowly rising for a while, but the final curve at top had been steep, more than the donkeys had been comfortable with. The route down off the hill was much more steep than the approach, except for the final bit they had just surmounted, and was littered with boulders, but he could see a switchback path had been carved into the side about a quarter mile to the north and a path followed the top of the circle-ish hill to that point, growing less green and more dirt the closer one got to the path down.

But the big rock was what drew the eye. On a raised piece of land in the center of the valley was a huge boulder gleaming in the sun, made of a dark, yet shiny, stone he had never seen before. Some shrubs grew on the hill where the boulder sat, but he had no perspective to guess its true size. Grass and shrubs, scrubbed land and rocks, pretty much made up everything.

“Once we get down, the land looks as flat as promised for easy travel,” wifey commented. “Didn’t the folks say go there, line up with the sun in the morning and continue forward and we should be in Bad Springs in three days?”

“That they did. That they did. After that another four months and we will be passed from the Open Territories and into the Fiefdom.” He smiled up at his dark-haired beauty. “If that is still what you want.”

“Just room to breathe, and place for children to run.” She smiled down. “The Industry Port Republic didn’t have none of that. Ruffy and Sissy, get on up and we will be going.”

“I’ll pick out the route.” Rufus announced as he pulled his walking stick from out of the footwell then started walking ahead, making sure the ground was firm and the path would catch the wheels.

The switchback, for the middle of nowhere, was surprisingly well maintained. The walk to the big rock took the rest of the mid-summer day. The colorful night sky, with Smoke and Ash sparkling across the center in a swirl of yellows, blues, reds, and pinks, lit the last two hours of travel, the cracked moons wouldn’t peak over the horizon until well past midnight and the silent sister was hiding all but the smallest silver of her face. Over half a day, must have been at least six or maybe eight miles from the top of the hill to stopping for the night at the bottom of the hillock lifting the big rock.

Dried horse dung, left by previous travelers, provided a good fuel to boil the water and soften the beef jerky. They didn’t have any idea which shrubs, grass, or berries were safe, especially not after dark, so they dug out one of the blue-roots for the youngins and the last of the greens they picked two days ago when they recognized a brace of lace-leaf. The youngins barely finished chewing before falling asleep on the blankets under the wagon. None of them were doing good even two months after the bad water.

“How big do you think that rock is?” Rufus whisper-talked to his wife as they lay on their blanket.

Contemplating the boulder’s size, she rubbed her huge belly, wincing as the skin shivered from a kick. “Bigger than the weaving factory where I worked.” She moaned and puffed, pressing hard on one side of her belly. “Three, maybe four stories tall and about as wide, and who knows how much of it is buried here.”

“Could be. Could be.” Kissing the side of her cheek, he wrapped a hand around the hand pressing her skin. “Tomorrow, we will line up and get moving. We’ll stop in Bad Springs until the baby’s born. I know it will be a long month there, and then we will be running up against winter if another wagon wheel breaks, but I don’t want to be too far out from everything. We are still city-folk underneath all—”

Rufus thoughts broke as his wife squeezed his hand. He had only felt her grip his hand that tight four times.

Dawn found the first citizen born in Big Rock. Rufus named him Granite.

 

Chapter Two

Rufus the Fourth looked dissatisfied. He often looked that way, the lines etched into his face, so even though he was mayor, no one would have been too worried even if anyone was up here but him and his oldest. From his viewpoint, at the top of Big Rock hill, he could see his entire domain. Unlike many of the Free Territories towns, his did not have a wooden palisade protecting it from the Fifedom incursions, not that the town needed a spike fence this far from the lakes. But the town didn’t even have a tower on the top of the Circle Hill to see anyone approaching, though Gallus’ widow had set up a house beside the north switchback and Marus and his wife had set up a water station on the east switchback, with Marus’ brother, Vius paying both of them to send him signals of how big a caravan was heading into town so he could set up things beside the travelers’ pond where his stable and food store had been built.

It wasn’t strong. It wasn’t impressive. And a town of nearly fifty voting men should be more impressive. Ten streets crossed below him, only a small walking path coming up the side to Big Rock. He wanted more for his town. He wanted more for him.

Something impressive.

A legacy.

Rufus the original had settled Big Rock, opening the first inn for people passing through the landmark. Rufus the Second set up the system of ponds to collect rain and store safe drinking water. Rufus the Third dug out portions of the Circular Hill and laid brickwork for each of paths merchants used to get into town, sealing Big Rock as the perfect wagon stop for trade.

Now it was his turn and it needed to be a big one. His beloved Wifey only gave him girls. Nine in all before she died, so Rufus of the original line would end when he died. He needed to do something memorable. Something more memorable than coming up with two new designations for the female birth order, since none of his girls had the decency to die or marry before the twins were born and free up the standard seven designations for females before marriage.

Rufus leaned against the rock that soared a hundred feet above him. The dark stone that remained cool in summer and warm in winter, unflaking, unchanging, shiny at a distance and yet the shiny stone didn’t reflect sound and was as quiet as shadows when you were close up. Around them, the grassy ledge went out nearly four hundred feet to the north and south. It was a little narrower east to west since Big Rock was mashed a bit instead of being true sphere. East to west it was nearly a hundred fifty feet but north to south just a hundred. If turned on its side, Big Rock would look like two flatish-bowls placed edge-to-edge with the bulges going out, assuming the curved surface continued beneath the hill.

Maybe he could dig down and find out where Big Rock ended, but if it tipped over, what would be left of the only thing that brought visitors to his town other than being a convenient bump in the road between dozens of free towns?

“Da, time to head back.” Sissy, his oldest, said behind him where she had been waiting patiently until the first of the oranges touched the edge of the horizon.

Sissy, not a Wifey, he grunted, dissatisfied. At eighteen, she had already turned down two suitors. Not that he wanted to run her off. Sissy kept him sane by keeping the house in order, getting the youngins their needs, and helping him about the office. But, still, Girly had married off fine last year and Silent had several males sniffing around her skirts.

“If you were mayor, what would you do to make Big Rock a place where people would come, not just pass through,” he asked her, not expecting much of an answer.

“Well, first, make it safe to have more people. Bad Springs has set up an emergency group to handle fires after the fire burned half the town last year. Second, do better at getting trash out of here and maybe move the dyes outside the circle. Yeah, it will mean further for Reds and Blues Wifeys to travel, but the dye pond colors and smell are creeping into the washer and second street ponds. Third, make a better way for people to walk up here than that damned rope bridge and ladder. People want to see Big Rock up close, let’s let them. Safe to visit, no bad smells, people can look at the rock, oh, and maybe a place to play music.”

The girl had added the last like it only had occurred to her, trying to be sly. Not like she hadn’t been agitating for the last month to have a place to play music and dance, maybe even present plays, since the last caravan had a six-member band traveling from Greener Grass to Port-of-Trade.

“Hmm. A stage like the Industry Republics has in all of its big cities. Maybe not now, we don’t have the people, but we are near a lot of fair-sized towns which don’t have anything like that and with the new motorized cart catching on, travel times are dropping. A man from Big Spring came through the other day having left home after that morning’s breakfast and stopped here for lunch.”

“We will need a better sleeping space for visitors than the traveler’s meadow.”

Nodding, Rufus walked toward the rope ladder. “Big Rock, a destination place, like Aaron’s Spa, only plays.”

“And music.” Sissy added.

 

Chapter Three

“See I told you the view from up here is amazing.”

Fias snuggled in the crook of Marius shoulder like she was shaped just for him. “Are you sure we won’t get into trouble?” The rumble of his voice still shocked him. The last time his voice cracked was last month during the presentation on how Big Rock’s first female mayor redefined the women in politics, at least in the Free-Ts, including getting the right to vote after they turned twenty-one, same as men. He hoped it was the absolute last time.

“Sure silly. I got the key and codes from being a tour guide all summer, and besides Mom’s mayor.”

“That won’t get you out of everything,” he informed her, as they both stared up to the cracked moons crossing the streaks of the Smoke and Ash shining from the center of their galaxy. The view from the platform the city had built at the very top of the Big Rock could only hold six people at a time and the one hundred and fifty steps leading to it was no joke to climb, but the city stretching from one radii of the Circular Hill to the other was beautiful to behold and they were high enough between the Big Rock Hill and Big Rock itself that Smoke and Ash actually was visible despite the light pollution.

“Maybe not, but a little teen high-jinks when we don’t break anything will be fine.” Fias stated with the full confidence of the Rufusson line of unbroken mayors since the founding of the city two hundred years ago. “And, besides, we graduate in a month. This is the last chance to do a little mayhem before we take the apprentice-citizen oath. It’s the last chance to do a lot of things.” Her hand drifted downwards, crossing the belt-line of his pants.

He grabbed the wandering hand and moved it up to his midchest and held it there. After several slow breaths, holding the hand firmly in spite of two small jerks on her part, he said, “You know I love you.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I want to marry you.”

Fias paused before saying. “We can have sex before marriage.” Her words had a strange tension to them.

One he knew well after dating her for four years. She wanted something and was playing him. And he knew what it was. She wanted sex. Fias delighted in it. Ever since they figured out kissing could be very interesting the lower you went, she tried to make sure they had enough privacy so he would kiss her lower until she screamed. Fias was very interested in seeing what sex would be like with all the parts matching up in a more traditional way. Sex was what she wanted. And he would have been cool with that, except…

She also wasn’t going to get married. Ever.

More than sex, she wanted to be the next mayor after her mom and she had sworn by the silent sister of the cracked moons when they had been just friends in sixth form she would never give up any of her rights, including handing off her right to vote to a husband. Her mom had three kids without getting married, she didn’t need to do so either.

And Marius didn’t want to play second fiddle to her ambitions and leave his own alone like a pathetic designated unnamed male. Being the third son was bad enough. Maybe a hundred years ago, when families had a half dozen or more children, being a third son would have been fine, especially when the Free-Ts were still the Free Territories and had territory to spread out away from two brothers who were already full oath citizens, happily married, and had respectable jobs. But under the present cap of three children, being the youngest was a sentence of obscurity.

He wanted more. He wanted her. Was even willing to stand at her side as the husband of the mayor, but he would be cracked from pole to pole before he was designated as her sidepiece instead of named husband.

Marius hoped to wear her down, futile though he knew it was, keeping the last step of sex out of their relationship. “No we can’t.” He had explained no to full sex as avoidance of an unwanted pregnancy before apprentice-citizenship; she didn’t need to know his other reasons. The no-children before taking the apprentice oath was just common sense if you want to raise your own children, which both of them did. Once they were five months out from graduation, and guaranteed to have any child conceived being born after the oath, she started wearing him down asking for full sex. He wasn’t giving up on this battle of wills; he loved her too much, and also loved himself too much. At the same time, he didn’t want to weaponize their physical connection too far. “How about this,” he counteroffered, “I can eat you out under the stars if you want.”

Her screams might echo all the way to thirty-second street and the cops would find them, but that would be worth it.

He also liked sex, even if he was quieter about it.

“Oh, alright.” Fias started shimming out of her jeans.

The shimmy rocked the whole platform and tilted his girlfriend sideways. Marius grabbed her before she rolled over the side, then grabbed hard to one of the handrails.

The platform wasn’t shaking. The Big Rock was shaking. A crack appeared along the flawless surface, emitting light.

Echoing without sound came the words: System.repairs.complete.

(word count 2,790; first published 10/5/2025)

Carlsbad Cavern – 23317928 @ Alexey Stiop | Dreamstime.com

The cave system blew moist air in my face as it rushed past me as I entered the room, but the simple rotating door acted as an airlock, letting in only one small slice of outside air in per passthrough, protecting the fragile environment from the elevator airshaft and preventing dry desert air of the high plane nearly a thousand feet overhead from drying out our planet’s most precious resource. Bright lights illuminated the small manmade room carved out of stone, a few soda straws dripping from the limestone ceiling, working their way up to a stalagmite in about a hundred years. A Haydian Guide stood up from a small computer station as I walked his way, placing himself between me and the entrance to the underground pools.

I nod at him, not staring at the map of scars covering his face and arms. I had gotten better at that over the past week.

Dropping my small duffle bag on a bench along the wall, I sat down beside it to remove my shoes. They were good lonzo-leather. I just finished breaking them in last month. Running a finger along the butter soft side, I remember how long I saved to get them. Most of the things I’ve owned in my life have been near-plastics, created out of plant fibers. Hayden-Home dinosaur era developed the microbes to process plant and animal matter much earlier than the human homeworld, and the wonderful coal and oil that humans expected to find with a fully developed biosphere were not under this planet’s skin. All of carbon matter got processed back to nutrients instead of layered into sedimentary stone for resource drilling. Instead something very different developed and survived under Hayden-Home.

My socks followed the shoes, then shirt, pants, underwear were added to a neat pile on top of the small duffle, filled with a few items that represented me. My hopes, my dreams.

My life.

My parent recommended it. I don’t know if it will mean anything later, but right now, it is my tombstone asking, begging, that I won’t be forgotten.

I stood naked before the guide, the cold stone beneath my feet sending shivers up and down my back. A drop from one of the soda straws landed on my nose.

“Last chance to walk away,” he said.

I snorted. “Would you even let me?”

He dropped his eyes to the side. Likely my file was still open on his computer, sent down ahead of me with the final updates I had given before entering the elevator. I’m twelfth generation on the planet, nearly three hundred years of adjustments to this biosphere. My line has the best success rate, and Hayden-Home needed successes.

Last week, my number came up. Five days ago, my physical compatibility was confirmed. Two days ago, my mental compatibility was approved. Only one in twenty make it through the testing and a third still fail, even with all the modern assessments available.

The pretense of this being voluntary was just a pretense. He knew it. I knew it.

“Thought so.”

He placed his hand on the door sensor, stepping aside as a soft click filled the air and the lights in the small room dimmed to a low red. “They want you to go to the Carlson pools, just follow the signs. And good luck.”

I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, then stepped into the hollow mountain.

The Hayden-Home had no oil, but it did have plenty of limestone pressed from billions of sea creatures. The flat plains where humans first landed their colony ships above covered an ancient seabed, carved and hollowed out over millions of years into a cave system which stretched for hundreds of miles. Two teenage brothers chased this planet’s version of bats one night, sixteen years after landing, thinking themselves invincible as only a generation born on-world can. A world their parents spent a decade and a half doing their best to make safe…and never quite succeeding.

The Carlsons discovered the caves and showed their friends.

I followed the signs pointing to the Carlson cave, going past The Mourners, a pair of stalagmites soaring nearly twenty feet over my head, leaning toward each other, water slowly coursing down their sides as though they were covered in tears. Listed on a plaque before them was the first generation who died in the horrors of the caves.

There are not many on the list, just nine human names, though both of the Carlson boys were listed among them. Swimming in underground pools with no equipment, again, was something only teenagers would think sane.

Two among the friendship circle, Jones Silvers and my ancestor, Gorgie Santiago, lived to tell the tale. Kind-of.

I entered the Silvers Cave following my signs. Bubbly rocks looking like puff-blooms either side of the entrance disappear from my interest as I turn the curve around a massive fallen column and see the deep cavern lit with low red-lights turning the pools into pits of blood. A narrow bridge, covered in wet drips but no slime, hopped between the pools in a spiral further down. My bare feet gripped the shimmering glass-kind planks better than my leather shoes would have been able to. Still I held the handrail tight I was descended, walking on the slippery surface.

Carlson isn’t the lowest of the caves, that honors is the Lower Caves found a hundred years after first-fall, but it laid nearly another four hundred feet below where the elevator stopped. I walk a long time, passing wonders barely lit, the lights brightening as I approach and fading as I leave. I saw only two humans the entire time, clothed like guides, not like a naked sacrifice to Hayden-Home’s horrors.

Our greatest treasure and worse nightmare.

Did I consider turning around a dozen times? Or course. I may be dutiful, raised and indoctrinated in the needs of my world, but I am not without self-preservation.

I wouldn’t have made it past the mental tests if I didn’t value my own life.

Some of the pools in the Truist and the White caverns, where I could see something moving in the waters, had me frozen in place until I could get my feet to move again, but I never turned around even once. I hope whoever comes after will appreciate that.

An hour travel—maybe more, maybe less, hard to tell in the endless dark—ended the journey at chamber entrance where a guide sat in a small carved chair. His face blossomed red beyond just the red lights, the scars vivid and new, puffy and bruised, a testament of survival, if not success.

I wonder if I should take the survival as hope. Maybe this won’t work.

“Brother Mikeal Santiago, welcome.” The guide’s voice was raw, still recovering from the screaming was my guess.

“Thank you,” I said, not meaning it but what are you going to say, likely to the last person who made it this far. “What’s next?”

“This way. The Uncles would like you to try the butterfly pool first.”

I winced. Those that lived within the butterfly pool were among the oldest and largest, few chose humans at this point, and when they did, the risk was great to both ends of the merger. But the choice wasn’t unexpected; my biological father had entered the pool and walked out an Uncle.

Even under the low red lights, the butterfly pool shimmered in colors. Below long twisted things turned, like ancient earth tapeworms, waiting for a host.

There was never a chance to walk away, I reminded myself. Then sat on the bank of the pool and eased into the water.

(words 1,281; first published 8/17/2025)