The Whisper in the Pines

The Whisper Beneath the Pine 

 

The living room was warm that night, the kind of golden, cozy glow that makes shadows dance along the walls. Outside, the rain had started again, tapping gently at the windows. Kimberly was in the kitchen, half-listening, half-drying dishes, while the boys, Ackley, nine; Gatlin, eight; and little Boone, only three, gathered around Nana’s chair with their blankets and cocoa.

“Tell us a real story, Nana,” Ackley begged. His blue eyes were wide and bright. “Not a made-up one. A true one. The scariest thing that ever happened to you.”

Gatlin grinned. “Yeah, something spooky.”

Kimberly glanced over her shoulder. “Nothing too scary, Nana. I don’t want Boone up all night again.”

Nana chuckled softly, ruffling Boone’s blond hair. “Oh, I promise,” she said. “This one’s just the right amount of scary. You’ll see.”

Boone climbed into her lap, clutching his little stuffed fox, his hair sticking up in soft golden tufts. “Is it about a ghost?” he asked, half-whisper, half-hopeful.

Nana smiled. “Maybe,” she said. “You’ll have to decide for yourself.”

The fire popped, and everyone leaned in closer.

“It was 1973,” Nana began, her voice lowering just a touch. “I was eleven years old, living in a big old house at the very end of a quiet court in Walnut Creek, California. The house was always loud, full of voices and footsteps. But at night, when everyone went to bed, that house… it changed. It got quiet. And sometimes, if you listened closely, you could hear things you couldn’t explain.”

Ackley’s eyes widened. “Like what?”

“Oh,” Nana said, folding her hands, “like the squirrels in the attic, little feet scampering over the ceiling. Or the way the heater vents carried voices from one room to another. You could eavesdrop if you sat real close. I used to do that all the time.”

Boone’s mouth made a perfect “O.” “Did the house talk, Nana?”

She smiled. “It did one time, sweetheart. Just once.”

She took a slow breath, remembering.

Her voice softened, and the boys could almost see it, that house, sitting low beneath the street, hidden by trees.

“It was a strange old place,” Nana said. “The kind that seemed to be watching you. A creek ran right behind it, and my room faced the front yard where a tall pine tree grew so close to the window I could touch the bark if I leaned out far enough. People said the man who built the house had survived the big San Francisco earthquake in 1906. They said he moved there to escape the city’s shaking ground, and when he died, he was buried right in the unfinished basement.”

Boone gasped softly. “He lived under your house?”

“Some folks thought so,” Nana said. “And sometimes, when the wind blew just right, it did sound like someone down there was moving.”

Gatlin shivered. “Did you ever go in the basement?”

“Sometimes, but never alone,” Nana said with a wink. “None of us kids ever went down there by ourselves.”

“One night,” she went on, “I was lying in bed reading a book. Everyone else was upstairs or already asleep. The only light in the room came from my lamp, it was a heavy brass one with a cream-colored shade. Outside, the pine tree swayed against the window, and I could hear the creek murmuring in the dark.

Then, just as clear as you and I talking right now, I heard a voice through the heater vent by my bed. A man’s voice. Soft but serious. He said, Get out of the house.”

Gatlin sat up straighter. “No way.”

“I’m telling you,” Nana said. “At first, I thought it was one of my brothers, playing a trick. They were good at that. So I rolled my eyes and said, ‘Very funny!’ But then, a few seconds later, the voice came again. Louder this time. Get out of the house.”

Boone squeezed her hand. “Did you run, Nana?”

“Not yet. I leaned over the vent and yelled, ‘Knock it off!’ But then it said, and I’ll never forget the way it sounded, Get out of the house Now.” She emphasized the word Now, pinching Gatlin’s arm to make him squirm.

The boys went still. The only sound was the rain pattering outside.

“That’s when I got goosebumps all over. I jumped up, ran out of my room, and opened the front door, and just as I did, the earth began to shake.”

Kimberly stopped drying dishes. “You mean…”

“Yep,” Nana said, nodding. “An earthquake. A real one. The ground rolled like waves on the ocean. I had to grab the railing to stay on my feet. The big pine tree outside my window swayed so hard I thought it would fall right on the house. I could hear my family yelling from upstairs, dishes crashing, windows rattling.

And then…”

She paused. “It stopped. Just like that.”

“Afterwards,” Nana continued, “we checked for damage. Everyone was fine, just a few cracks, a few broken plates. But when I went back to my room…”

She let the words hang in the air.

“My lamp… that big heavy brass lamp, had fallen from the nightstand. The bulb was shattered. The base had landed right on my pillow, right where my head had been when I was reading.”

Ackley whispered, “Whoa.”

Boone looked horrified. “It almost bonked you!”

“It did, sweetheart,” Nana said softly. “It would have hurt me bad if I hadn’t left the room.”

“So the ghost saved you,” Gatlin said, half-whispering, half-grinning.

Nana smiled thoughtfully. “Maybe. I like to think so.”

“The next day, my stepdad went down to the basement to check for cracks. He found one thin line right through the dirt floor, and he filled it with cement that afternoon. I stood on the stairs watching him work. When he smoothed the last bit of cement, the air got very still, and I swear… I heard the faintest sigh drift up through the vent.

After that, the house never whispered again.”

She leaned back in her chair, the firelight flickering across her face. “And that’s the truth. I don’t know who or what spoke to me that night, but something, or someone, made sure I got out before that quake hit.”

The boys were quiet for a long moment.

Then Boone, still clutching his fox, looked up. “Did the ghost stay in the basement forever?”

Nana kissed the top of his head. “Maybe not forever,” she said gently. “Maybe, once he knew we were safe, he moved on. Maybe he just needed someone to listen.”

Ackley’s voice was hushed. “If I hear a whisper, I’ll listen, Nana.”

Nana smiled and tugged him close. “Good boy. Just don’t forget to use your good sense too.”

From the kitchen, Kimberly called, “Well, Nana, I hope you’re proud of yourself… I’ve got three boys who’ll be checking the heater vents tonight!”

Nana chuckled softly, gathering the boys closer. “That’s all right. Sometimes a little fright just helps us remember that the world still has mysteries, and maybe even a few friendly ghosts watching over us.”

Outside, the wind sighed through the trees, and Boone whispered into his stuffed fox’s ear, “Goodnight, ghost.”

The Heir of the Storm - Part 3 - Aetherion

Heir of the Storm

 

Tess stood at the edge of the lagoon, barefoot, arms raised to a sky that no longer responded to her whim. The air was hot and dry, the clouds thin, non-responsive. She closed her eyes, calling for the current that used to race through her veins like wildfire. She had been creating storms with nothing more than desire for decades; rain had always answered her hunger. Now, there was only silence.

The water lapped against her ankles, calm and unbroken. She let her arms fall, heart heavy with frustration. The world she and Marcus created felt fragile beneath her feet. Where once palm trees bent in the breeze, gardens thriving with green growth, now the air was calm, the garden all but played out. All of it had sprung from the storms she and Marcus conjured together when their passion could split the sky. But the years had worn them thin. Their love remained, fierce as ever, but the power that once terrified Aetherion had dulled to embers.

It began with a lab accident that fused her thoughts to the atmosphere. She recalled the wild abandon that had led to her exile, as well as her recklessness afterwards, which had almost consumed and destroyed her. 

Marcus, unwilling to live without her, had risked the same experiment, becoming Stormborne as well, and had forfeited his life in Aetherion to find her in the wasteland. Their love had been tempest, oasis, home.

But now, their storms were fading.

She stared across the lagoon, jaw clenched, chest heavy. What would remain of this fragile paradise when their power was gone? Would it wither back to sand, leaving only memory behind?

An unexpected resonance pierced her rumination. It came like the ringing of a bell, pulling her senses away from the oasis, out into the wastelands, searching for what she did not know. Vision came: a family staggering through the dunes, gaunt and desperate, a man and woman, a daughter, she guessed, another man close behind. Above them, Aetherion security drones circled like vultures.

She sent her thoughts outward, searching for a signal, or a spark. She found it glowing faintly in the girl’s hands, a porcelain saucer awake with tessellated patterns of resonance. Tess grasped it with her will, amplifying the field until light fractured like crystal charges and the drones screamed, circuits bursting, black machines falling into sand.

The resonance collapsed, leaving Tess gasping at the water’s edge, heart pounding. Yet the vision lingered. The family was real. The girl was real.

And through her, through the resonance field of the porcelain saucer, the storm had spoken again.

 

Tess and Marcus found them, the family staggereing across the dunes, broken shapes under the burning sky. Derik in front, his skin cracked from sun, dragging Lina by the arm. She stumbled with every step, her lips bloodless, her breath a rasp. Jonas lagged behind, bent under the weight of a pack that rattled emptily. 

Mae walked between them. She was sixteen. Tall for her age, though gaunt from thirst. Her eyes were violet, fever-bright, hands locked tight around the porcelain saucer. She carried it as though it were a living heart, unwilling to let it go even as she stumbled in the sand.

Tess felt resonance still clinging to the saucer, faint but insistent, whispering to her senses.

Marcus strode ahead, kneeling in the sand with a skin of water. “Drink,” he urged. His voice was steady, calm, the same voice he had once used to steady Tess when lightning tore uncontrolled from her body.

Derik grabbed the water skin, but forced himself to give it first to Lina, then to Mae, his throat working as he held back his own need. Only after they drank did he tip it back, swallowing with shaking hands, before handed it off to Jonas.

“Why are out here, in the wastelands?” Marcus asked.

Derik’s eyes burned with exhaustion and anger. “We were looking for you. Mae was flagged,” he rasped, jerking his chin toward his daughter. “Scanned on her sixteenth birthday. Category C deviation. Dissonance.” His voice broke on the word. “We fled before they could erase her.”

Lina covered her face, sobbing quietly. Jonas said nothing, his mouth set in a grim line.

Mae did not cry. She stroked the porcelain rim with trembling fingers, as though the saucer spoke to her.

Tess knelt before the girl, meeting her gaze. Mae’s eyes were violet-shadowed, like her own had been when the storm first marked her. “You used it,” Tess said softly.

Mae nodded, her throat dry. “I don’t know how. I just… felt it. I heard you.”

Tess’s chest tightened. Aetherion had called Tess dangerous for the same reason, for resonance they could not contain. Yet here, in this girl, Tess felt not ruin but possibility.

Aetherion had branded her deviation. But Tess knew better.

Mae was storm-touched.

And perhaps, Tess thought with a shiver of hope and fear, she was the key to keeping the oasis alive when Tess and Marcus were gone.

*_*

Later, in the hush of the night, Marcus drew Tess down beside him, into the bed they had shared for so many years. His mouth was familiar fire against hers, his hands coaxing a storm that still came, but no longer with wild abandon. The air thickened, a breeze stirring the palms, lightning flickered faintly in the clouds above. Their bodies moved with the old rhythm, slower now, but no less true.

Afterward, tangled together, sweat cooling on her skin, Tess whispered, “I don’t want that life for her. She deserves more than the burden we carried.”

Marcus pressed his forehead to hers, his breath hot against her lips. “Why do you call it burden, Tess, when it gave us love, and life, and this?” He gestured toward the oasis around them, glowing faintly in the night. “Look at this, Tess. This isn’t exile. It’s excellence.”

Mae’s training began the next morning, despite her parents' objections.

“We didn’t flee the dome so you could turn our daughter into something unnatural,” Lina said. “She deserves a normal life.”

Derik’s jaw was set, eyes burning with the same fear Tess had once seen in the Harmonists of Aetherion. “We risked everything to escape the dome. And now you would make her into a weapon? No. We won’t allow it.”

“She’s not a weapon, but neither is she ordinary,” Tess said, her voice low but steady. “She never was. The dome knew it, that’s why she flagged. And now the saucer knows it. The storms already listen to her.”

Lina’s hands clenched in her skirts, her eyes glistening. “She’s just a girl.”

Tess closed her eyes, remembering. “So was I.” Her voice broke, but she forced herself on. “The dome would have destroyed me for it. Instead, I… We made this.” She swept her hand toward the oasis, the palms, the pools, the gardens. “We made life where there was none. Mae has the power to do the same.”

Derik’s mouth thinned. “And when it consumes her, what then?”

Tess faltered. She remembered the ruin of her first storms, the hunger that nearly devoured her, the exile. Fear twisted in her chest. But then she thought of Marcus beside her, of their nights when their passion lit up the sky, of the love that had sustained them. The storms were never a curse. “It won’t.”

*_*

The saucer was waiting for her.

Mae felt it every time she touched its smooth porcelain face, traced the faint tessellated seams with her fingertips. It hummed like a heartbeat, steady and sure, and in its resonance she found something she’d never felt in Aetherion: freedom. Not the endless pressure of conformity. Freedom.

Her parents didn’t understand.

Her mother’s eyes shone with desperation. “Please, Mae. We want you to find peace.”

Peace. Mae almost laughed. Peace had branded her dissonant, an error to be corrected or erased. The saucer had been her first taste of truth. Tess’s voice had come through it, thunderous and alive, and Mae had understood: she wasn’t broken. She was chosen.

Now Tess and Marcus stood on either side, silent but steady. Tess’s violet eyes glimmered with determination and pride; Marcus’s dark gaze burned with conviction. They weren’t forcing her. They were teaching her to find her voice.

Mae lifted the saucer. Its porcelain warmed in her hands, the hum rising as if in answer. “This doesn’t bind me. It frees me,” she told her parents. “The storm listens. And I…” She swallowed, her voice steady. “It hears what I say.”

That evening, clouds gathered faint and thin above the horizon. Tess lifted her arms, Marcus joining her, their bodies shimmering with old fire. But the storm didn’t answer. Their power faltered, fragile as candlelight in wind.

Mae stepped forward.

Her parents shouted at once, panic sharp in her father’s voice, breaking in her mother’s, but Tess raised a hand to quiet them.

Mae raised the saucer high.

It thrummed through her bones, rising like a second heartbeat. She breathed in, steady, remembering Tess’s words: Not yours to own. Yours to protect. She did not demand the sky. She did not force it. She listened.

The clouds thickened. A breeze rippled across the lagoon. Villagers lifted their heads, their voices softening to murmurs as rain began to fall, gentle, even, soaking into the soil without tearing it apart. The palms drank deeply. The pools swelled.

Mae lowered the saucer, arms trembling, her chest full of fierce certainty. She belonged. Not as a fugitive. Not as a mistake. But as heir to the storm.

Her parents stood frozen. Lina’s hand covered her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks. Derik’s fists were clenched, his jaw locked tight. He looked at her as though he no longer recognized the child he had helped escape into the desert, but something larger, luminous, untouchable.

Mae stepped closer, holding the saucer to her chest. “I don’t want a normal life,” she said quietly. “I want this. Not for power. For belonging. For the chance to never be helpless again. The storm chose me. And I choose it back.”

Her father’s shoulders sagged, trembling as his anger broke into silence. Her mother reached for her, pulling her close, tears warm against Mae’s cheek.

Tess approached, her hand light on Mae’s shoulder, her voice soft as rain. “The storm is not yours to wield. It is yours to protect.”

Marcus’s gaze met hers, fierce and proud. “Through you, the oasis will endure.”

Mae tilted her face to the sky, rain slicking her hair, sliding down her skin like silver threads. She whispered into the air, into the hum that lived in her chest: “I will not let it die. Not while I breathe.”

And the storm, certain and clear, whispered back.

The Fracture Line - Part 2 Aetherion

Prompt 8: What does it mean? Word count: 1500 words exactly Deadline: 13 August 2025

The Fracture Line

Aetherion’s surveillance hub was a vast, sterile chamber of white walls and glass windows, a hive of electronic eyes and humming processors. 

 

Derik Chase sat at its heart, six curved monitors lighting his face in ghostly blue hues, each showing different sectors of the city he’d sworn to protect. They bathed his features in a perpetual twilight glow, a ceaseless ballet of data streams and drone feeds.

 

Hs thoughts kept wandering back to Mae’s flagged scan, picking at the memory like a splinter he couldn’t remove. 

It wasn’t the first time a flag had appeared on his monitor, but this one had his daughter’s name attached to it. Category C deviation. Dissonance. Questioning. He’d erased the record before the system could respond. It had been the only thing standing between his daughter and a reconditioning center.

Ever since then, Lina had grown distant. Not the silence he’d grown accustomed to in their marriage, but something deeper. Something had fractured between them, unseen yet palpable.

And then Jonas Veylan had appeared at their door, smiling, charismatic, effortlessly slipping into their lives as though he’d never left. Lina welcomed him warmly; Mae laughed freely at his stories, things Derik could never understand. He'd felt displaced, a stranger in his own home. Though Derik had once trusted Jonas implicitly, now he wondered darkly: Why had Jonas returned precisely when Mae’s scan had flagged?

Dark, jealous thoughts crept into Derik’s mind: Was Lina having an affair? Had Jonas returned to take what belonged to him?

A sharp beep interrupted his thoughts. One of the monitors in the Iron Sector flashed a red perimeter overlay.

ALERT: Unauthorized Entry - Utility Access Tunnel 9-C
Tunnel Status: Inactive / No Scheduled Maintenance

Derik pulled up the camera feed. The tunnel was dim, running on low-power mode. He keyed in a command to sharpen the image.

At first he didn’t recognize them. They moved in tight formation, coats heavy, bags slung tightly against their bodies. Derik’s chest tightened. His pulse quickened as he zoomed in, the image growing sharper until it felt like ice filled his veins.

Then anger surged within him, twisting sharp and bitter. 

Hands trembling, Derik opened a secure call to his wife’s comm unit, zooming the tunnel’s remote camera to focus on her face. Emergency lights cast pale red across her cheeks.

“Lina, what the hell are you doing?” he hissed, voice raw. “Is this what it’s come to? You’re abandoning everything I’ve worked to protect?”

“You saw the scan,” she said, pushing Mae gently ahead. “They’ll take her. You know what happens next.”

 

“I erased it.”

 

“You delayed it,” she said. “Mae won’t survive here. You know that.”

 

“Do I?” Derik’s voice cracked, hurt spilling into anger. “You think life out there with Jonas is going to be any better? You trust him more than me?”

“It’s not like that!” Lina’s eyes filled with anguish. “I asked you to come…”

“When did you ask?”  he snapped sharply, voice trembling. “You just assumed I wouldn’t leave my post, the society I helped build for us.”

“Derik…”

“No,” he spat bitterly. “If you think Jonas offers something better, then go! I won’t stop you.”

Lina’s mouth trembled. “Come with us. Please, don’t make me leave you.”

“I can’t,” he growled. “I won’t betray everything I’ve stood for.”

“But you’ll betray your family instead?”

The pain in Lina’s eyes nearly shattered him, but Derik forced himself to sever the connection. He leaned back, heart pounding, body trembling with raw emotion. Could he really let them go?

A sudden alert flashed violently on another screen, forcing his attention. Director Halden appeared abruptly, face grim and commanding. “Chase. You seeing this breach at 9-C?”

 

Derik didn’t answer immediately. His throat burned.

 

“Three unauthorized contacts,” Halden continued. “They're using a maintenance tunnel where no work’s been scheduled. Could be desertion.”

 

Derik’s mouth moved before he thought. “I’ve got it under control.”

 

“Good. Stop them. We can’t have people leaving the dome.” Halden terminated the feed.

On the monitor Derik watched Jonas guiding his wife and daughter through the tunnel, nearing the access chamber. Bitterness stabbed him again, fresh and brutal.

As he tracked their movements, Derik’s hands trembled over the controls. Should he stop them? Could he let them escape, leave his world behind?

 He accessed drone control, sending a security bot to track their movement without alerting the main system. Mae tripped slightly, Lina grabbing her, urging her forward. His heart clenched painfully. They were terrified, desperate.

Halden’s face appeared onscreen again, his voice sharper this time. “Chase, what the fuck? Why are you still at your post?”

 “I need another minute to identify the targets.” Derik said.

Halden paused suspiciously, narrowing his eyes. “You already have visual. Zoom in. Who are these people?”

In Derik’s hesitation, Halden remotely commandeered the feed, the screen resolution sharpening instantly.

“My God,” Halden murmured, stunned recognition crossing his face. “Your family?”

Derik remained silent, feeling trapped.

“Stop them, now,” Halden demanded, voice low and dangerous. “Or I’ll do it myself.”

Derik shut off Halden’s feed, hands trembling as he keyed commands, throwing false signals toward Sector Blue, confusing targeting systems. He opened an emergency maintenance corridor ahead of Lina and Mae, overriding security locks with frantic taps.

On the private feed, Lina’s face was pale. “Derik, what are you doing? If you’re going to stop us, just…”

“I’m not stopping you,” he said quickly. “I’m giving you a chance.”

“Then come!” Lina cried, desperation raw. “You don’t need to stay behind.”

He hesitated, the truth burning bitterly. “Someone has to hold the system back. They’ll never let us all go. If I stay, I can blind their eyes long enough for you to escape.”

“No,” Lina gasped. “Please…”

The reality of the situation pierced him with devastating clarity.

Fingers flying, he sent more false alerts to other sectors, rerouted security patrols, overriding command sequences. Alarms erupted throughout the hub, a cascade of red warning lights.

Halden’s voice came through his ear piece. “You’ve lost your mind, Chase. I’ll have you erased for this!”

“I know,” Derik said softly, swiping his personal device from its cradle. He enabled mobile command mode and ran, the door sealing shut behind him.

He raced through sterile white corridors toward Gate 17, lights flashing overhead. Drone feeds filled his mobile device: security units rapidly converging. He redirected them furiously, but the system was waking, fighting back, breaking through his overrides faster than he could keep pace.

His earpiece crackled. Halden’s cold voice rang in his ear. “Stop, Chase. This is your last warning. You’re sacrificing everything.”

Derik kept running. What does it mean to keep them safe if I lose myself in the process?

He burst into the corridor near Gate 17, seeing Lina and Mae’s panicked eyes as they turned at the sound of his footsteps. Jonas instinctively shielded them.

“Derik, don’t…” Lina’s voice was raw.

“You have to trust me!” Derik shouted, signaling Jonas to keep moving. “Go!”

Lina hesitated. Mae stared, eyes wide, torn between parents.

“Trust me,” Derik pleaded again, softer this time, desperate.

Something in Lina’s expression shifted, softened. “Come with us.”

“I’m trying,” Derik whispered urgently, once again  rerouting security bots. “I just need another second.”

But it was too late.

Behind him, mechanical footsteps echoed, the security bots were closing in. Halden’s angry voice echoed from their speakers. “Guardian Derik Chase, you are under arrest. Stop now or you will all be terminated.”

Mae clung to Lina, terrified. Jonas stepped protectively between them and the bots.

Derik felt the crushing weight of defeat.

At that moment, his device pulsed softly: “Gate override successful.”

The gate shuddered open for the first time in Derik’s life, a cold gust of outside air surging in.

“Go now!” he screamed.

The bots lunged, Derik could hear the high pitch of their weapons powering up. Derik stood in their path, arms spread wide. He braced for impact, certain he’d be cut down, but they halted abruptly, confused by conflicting commands.

Halden’s voice barked furiously through their speakers, distorted now. “You’ll never survive out there!”

Derik turned toward Lina and Mae, the open gate behind them. They stared back, frozen, uncertain.

“Derik, come on!” Lina called, reaching toward him.

He bolted toward them, passing through the gate and sealing it closed as he went, blocking the bots behind an impregnable barrier of metal and glass.

For a long moment, everything was silent. The wind smelled raw and alien, but oddly invigorating.

Mae gripped his hand tightly. “You came with us.”

Derik squeezed her hand gently, feeling something within him break open. “I couldn’t let you go without me.”

He looked toward Lina, who stood quietly, her eyes gleaming with something he hadn’t seen in years, hope, raw and fragile. “I was more afraid of losing everything I’d ever known.”

Behind them, Aetherion’s alarms wailed uselessly, an empty noise against walls that no longer contained them. Ahead, beyond their narrow beam of light, stretched uncertainty, vast, terrifying, and breathtakingly free.

The Geisha

Ballad of the Lantern and Flame

In secret grove where shadows creep,

Where winds forget and lanterns swing,

A teahouse rotted slow in sleep,

And whispered tales of everything.

She danced within its crumbling walls,

A geisha born of grace and fire.

She turned from vows and duty’s calls,

And danced to burn the old desire.

Her sleeves like smoke, her eyes unshod,

She twirled beneath the paper beams.

No gods to watch, no priest, no god

Just falling dust and orphaned dreams.

But sparks will chase what does not flee,

And fire climbed fast through ancient wood.

Still she danced, rebelliously,

Unbending, wild, misunderstood.

A samurai with quiet tread

Had followed through the forest bare.

Not to return her, but instead

To find her safe, if she’d still care.

He found her as the lanterns broke,

Her form aglow, her breath grown thin.

The teahouse writhed in fire and smoke

And still, she would not let him in.

But he stepped through the falling flame,

No scorn or pride within his eye.

He called her not by duty’s name,

But simply said, “We cannot die.”

He bore her through the burning ash,

Beyond the reach of ruin’s breath.

She fought him once, but not the flash

Of knowing he had spared her death.

They wandered where the prayer flags moaned,

The wind shrine torn by time and gust.

He spoke no vow, she cast no stone

But something in her learned to trust.

In silence by a blossom tree,

They lit a lantern, watched it rise.

It floated slow and breathlessly

Into the soft and wounded skies.

They crossed a bridge of ghost and song,

Where koi beneath them glimmered pale.

The temple welcomed all who’d wronged

But only those who’d learned to fail.

And when at last the mists withdrew,

The village waited, old and kind.

The roofs were bowed, the gates askew

But home is not what’s left behind.

He turned to leave, his duty done,

The sword now quiet at his side.

But she stepped forward with no run

No shout, no tear, no need to hide.

“I thought I fled to find my way,”

She whispered low, her fingers bare.

“But love,” she said, “does not obey

It waits to find who’ll truly care.”

They climbed the hill above the land,

A final lantern in their hold.

No vow was sworn, no ring, no band

Just silent hands, and sky, and gold.

It rose into the night like breath,

Released with calm and tender grace.

No need to race, no fear of death

Just light, and time, and love’s true face.

The Vetting - Part 1 Aetherion

The Vetting

by Peggy Rockey

The artificial sun never set in Dome 14.

It hovered in a perpetual mid-afternoon glow over manicured sand, wave-generating turbines, and a carefully diverse crowd of families who had all passed their annual scans.

Derik Chase sat stiffly on a synthetic driftwood bench, back rigid, eyes constantly shifting. His hands, clenched in his lap, left sweat-marks on his khakis.

A sharp pop of a drink can opening behind him made him flinch hard enough to draw a few stares. Derik nearly jumped out of his skin.

“It’s just me,” Lina said gently, returning with two chilled bottles of lemonwater.

 “You okay?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah. Sorry. I thought…” He trailed off, scanning the path behind her, the crowd, the dome’s edge. “Where’s Mae?”

Lina sat beside him, setting the drinks down with a clink. “By the shoreline sim, with that tall boy and the girl with the purple streaks. They’re laughing.”

He didn't respond. His gaze drifted to the security towers nestled into the faux cliffs, their matte-black panels bristling with hidden optics. Above them, a glint in the air caught his eye, one of the surveillance drones, floating too low, scanning too long.

Lina followed his gaze.

“You’re spiraling,” she murmured.

He took a sip. “Mae flagged on her scan last week. Category C deviation. Patterns tied to dissonant phrases: freedom, grief, watching, illusion.”

Lina blinked. “You didn’t report it?”

“I deleted the scan. Masked the log under a diagnostics error. Scrubbed the backup.”

She stared at him, horror blooming in her expression. “Derik…”

“She was confused. That’s all. A thought spiral, not rebellion. She doesn’t even realize she’s thinking it.”

Lina dropped her voice. “And if Central finds the deletion? You’ll be charged with interference, maybe treason. They could erase you. Or lock you up in one of those blanked zones where you forget your name.”

“I covered it,” he said quickly. “It’s clean.”

“For now.”

They sat in silence. A gull projection dove overhead, looping like it had been programmed to. The ocean crashed rhythmically against sculpted shorelines designed for balanced sound distribution.

Lina’s voice cracked. “What if she flags again next year?”

Derik watched Mae from across the synthetic tide, now looping her arm around a tall boy and laughing at something he whispered. Derik rubbed the back of his neck. “Then we fix it before it gets that far.”

Lina turned slowly to look at him. “Fix it how?”

He finally met her eyes. “She trusts us. We talk. Guide her thoughts. Help her steer away from unsafe patterns.”

 “You mean teach her to suppress her instincts. Reframe her mind.”

He hesitated. “We’d be doing it with love.”

Lina’s mouth tightened. “That’s what they say in the institutes.”

“This is different.”

“How? Because we wouldn’t be using sedation?” she asked. “No immersive recalibration chamber? Just the same erasure, but with bedtime stories and herbal tea.”

Mae jogged toward them just then, cheeks flushed, eyes bright. “Can I get a stimshake from the kiosk? Theo’s buying.”

“A small one,” Lina said.

“Make it weak,” Derik agreed.

“Okay,” said Mae, darting off quickly, in case they changed their mind.

They watched her disappear into the color-coded crowd.

“She’s curious and bright,” Derik said quietly. “But she lives in a world that doesn’t reward curiosity. It punishes it.”

Lina crossed her arms. “You don’t see the irony, do you?”

He frowned.

“They would erase who she is. You’re just doing it yourself. Gently. Quietly. With fatherly affection.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off.

“She gets it from me, you know. The questions. The way she thinks sideways.”

Derik blinked. “You?”

“I used to write essays. Back before the scans went mandatory. Before I was vetted for childbearing. I questioned things. The watching. The ranking. I just got good at hiding it.”

A flicker of surprise crossed his face. “You never told me.”

Lina looked toward the shoreline, where Mae now stood, half-lit in the artificial sunlight, laughing with her friends, her hair caught in the controlled breeze.

“I don’t want to lose her either,” she said.

Derik’s throat tightened. “Then help me. Please.”

She didn’t answer for a long moment.

Finally, she reached down for the lemonwater, and took a sip. “One thought at a time,” she said. “And we let her keep as much of herself as we can.”

“Agreed,” Derik said, relieved.

But neither of them noticed the pale drone hovering just above the shade tree—silent, small, its lens glinting.

Recording.