fiction - brigits_flame - Good Omens

[hwango]

Oops! - I goofed on the word count I put into the "warning" field, since I messed up my first copy & paste into the post. Actually 955 words. Level 1 prompt only.

Hob awoke to the shrieking of unfamiliar birds. It seemed that he was doomed to experience this every morning. The lumpy ground, the bugs, and the seemingly malevolent weather he had expected, but the daily pre-dawn cacophony had come as a most unpleasant surprise.

He thought about wrapping his head in a blanket and trying to squeeze in just a few more minutes of sleep, but with each passing second the birds seemed to find more and more things about which to bicker. Reluctantly, he pushed aside his blanket and sat up.

Enough sunlight was seeping over the horizon for Hob to make out the blissfully sleeping form of his local guide, Tayu. Having grown up listening to this racket every day, Tayu probably didn’t even notice it anymore. It was the sort of thing that could really make you hate someone, except that it was hardly something he could be blamed for. Hob felt strangely cheated by this.

Dim as the light might be, it was still adequate for Hob to check their snares from last night. He certainly wasn’t going to just sit in the camp waiting for Tayu to wake up. At least if Hob had done something meaningful with the morning he could pretend, if only to himself, that he was simply full of enthusiasm and initiative and liked to get an early start on the day. The alternative was to stare at Tayu until he woke up and try to remember that he didn’t actually have a good reason to hate him.

Hob was pleased to see that most of the snares had caught something. Most of those somethings were bright green lizards with tails nearly the length of his arm, but you couldn’t be too picky about these things. They certainly looked edible enough when the alternative was to skip breakfast.

When Hob returned to the camp he found that Tayu had woken up which he was away, and was in the process of building the fire back up. Tayu absently waved a greeting and then hissed in revulsion when he saw what Hob was carrying.

“What? Are they poisonous or something?” Hob asked, surprised.

“Not at all. They are quite good eating. But that biggest one – it is missing a foot,” Tayu said, pointing. Hob obligingly studied the offending lizard. Indeed, it was missing the hind foot on its left side. This hardly seemed worthy of notice, let alone alarm. Then, with weary dismay, Hob realized what the problem must be. Indeed, he mouthed along with Tayu’s next words perfectly.

“It is a bad omen.”

Hob sighed, rolled his eyes, and tossed the lizards to the ground in disgust. All of this failed to convey the full sum of his frustration by several orders of magnitude.

“Tayu, I’d like to ask you a blunt and potentially offensive question, if I might.”

“Very well, sir,” Tayu said, hesitantly.

“You and your people – what the hell is your problem?”

“Sir?”

“I have never encountered a more pessimistic culture. Every damned thing is a bad omen for you people.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Tayu replied stiffly, “but that’s not so.”

“Really? So far on this trip, our inevitable doom has been heralded by the shape, number, or color of clouds, the shape, color, or position of lichen on rocks, the direction in which passing animals are running, the number of fish caught in a trap, the number of eggs found in the nests of birds and snakes, the number of petals on a flower – and, I might add, none of these numbers appear to be the same number – and now the latest sign from the gods that we are to meet misfortune is a lizard who seems to have lost a foot. What conclusion am I to come to, if not the one that your people see doom and ruin everywhere you look?”

“That our journey is cursed,” Tayu said, without hesitation.

Hob found that he had nothing to say to this. A long moment passed.

“Alright, let me put this another way. Do your people have any good omens?”

“No,” Tayu said. He saw the look of triumph on Hob’s face and added hurriedly “We are a naturally optimistic people. In the absence of bad omens we automatically assume a positive outcome.”

Hob found it difficult to reconcile the idea of Tayu’s people as optimists while the man stood in front of him firmly believing that they were cursed because of a lizard’s missing appendage.

“If you think that this journey is cursed, then why in the world are you still traveling with me?” Hob asked. Tayu looked shocked at this.

“It would be an evil thing to abandon my promise to guide you, and to leave you to face the curse alone.”

“I…I see. Well, Tayu, I apologize if I’ve offended you, and I thank you for staying by my side in the face of such…adversity.” Hob said awkwardly. This was clearly a more complicated puzzle than he’d first thought.

“I accept your apology. But do not blame yourself , sir. It is not your fault that our journey is cursed, or that you are ignorant of the signs,” Tayu said. He thought for a moment. “If it will give you hope, I can try also to point out those bad omens that we have not encountered.”

“You mean, things that would be good omens if you had good omens?” Hob asked, trying to wrap his mind around such a convoluted idea. “Okay, I suppose so.”

“Well,” Tayu said, “at least we awaken each morning to the cries of the birds. It will be a most terrible omen if they should fall silent. Why, sir,” Tayu said, deeply alarmed by Hob’s expression, “whatever is the matter?”

Comments

[keppiehed.livejournal.com]

Haha! It's good to see you writing again. I always enjoy your work. Thanks for a most entertaining story!

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Glad it amused.

[osoreranai.livejournal.com]

Robinson Crusoe meets... I dunno. But that's the feeling I get.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Thing and Whatever, together again, eh?

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Heh, if you go far enough back I once had an entry over 3,000 words long. A far cry indeed from Drabble month. = )

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Not to worry - I don't expect everyone to have time to go back and read everything else. And I didn't think that you were discouraging longer entries at all! I think this is around my average length, these days. I never seem to have time for the longer ones (and they don't tend to be as popular, either).

[hwango.livejournal.com]

I don't think this it going to be a good month for me. I kind of struggled with this one and didn't like it all that much, but ran out of time to work on it. I had originally wanted to do all 3 levels of difficulty, but "There was a spark" just seemed like a really week opening sentence, and in the end I decided I just didn't want to use it even if that meant giving up on the other levels.

Brainstorming for the week 2 prompt isn't going very well so far either. In particular, I don't like the level 2 prompt of starting and ending with the same sentence...if the last line of your story is important, then knowing ahead of time what it will be kind of gives away the ending. So maybe I'll just do level 1 again. = P