The Small Taming

Microfiction tale emerging from a randomizing experiment

They were born in a dark place. They lived in gloom, far away from your lights and laughter. They were children of the dark, offspring of the unseen.

One day they had enough of the dark outside. They spread out then to wander the lands seen by the sun. They came to your town, wandering the streets to disturb your dreams.

Some see them, some don’t.

You see them. You fear that these shadowed children are really your own children.

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All others on the farm having died or gone away, the old man remained the solitary tiller of the soil. He grew shrivelled potatoes and from the trees picked wasp-tunnelled apples. It was enough.

Every day he went to the well, marvelling at the water level:  no matter how much you draw out, the well always fills back up. The gift of it.

The day before, he had driven away outsiders, children of the dark. They spoke in their language but he could recognize a curse when he heard it.

Today, of course, the well was dry as a bone.

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The old man knew the end had come. Dry well, cracked soil, shadow children overrunning his ancestral land. He settled to meet his end in the shade of the well’s brick wall laid in a circle which he’d built himself as a youngster under his stern father’s chastising stick.

Squatting, head against the cool brick rim, he felt a stillness. Strangely, this end that had come wasn’t filled with the expected bitterness. He sat now with his stiffened legs spread, and slept in the well’s shade.

Now his sons came to him. They urged him to dig deeper but he told them he was weary. So they dug down in the well for their father. At length a spring appeared and bubbled up, overspilling the well, washing him in clear water. The land greened and flourished.

“How strange the old man died smiling like that,” said the elder son to the younger when they found him. “Let’s leave him there.”

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Thunder rumbled over the hills. Heavy rain fell on the bonedry skeleton on the cracked ground next to the exhausted well.

Soon everything was different, but the skeleton, though washed by rainwater, was just the same. It held constant in the rain.

The rains rained for days and days. It was the rainy season. The ground was mud and the sky was rain. The well filled again, then emptied.

At last it stopped. It was now no longer the rainy season. The sun came out. A single primrose sprouted out through the skull and spread its petals in the eyesocket.

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NOTE - As before, these grew from microfictions generated from I Ching prompts and then pasted together by theme and tone.