September 1 - Scrape

Scrape, scrape, scrape. Clank.  Small puffs of dust kick up with Nahi’s every dragging step, and each one makes her wobbly oddly under my guiding hand. The fluid in her suspension leaked away long ago, lost to the dust and the sands, and I haven’t been able to scavenge a replacement. Every fourth step makes a loud clunking sound, which is worrying. It was a good scavenging run, and my packs are full of spare parts, but I’ll probably need to do a full leg overhaul and I don’t have the tools with me. It’ll have to wait until I get back to the workshop, I just hope the old mule holds together that long.

At last, through the beige veil of the perpetual dust storms that blanket my home region, I see the rocky outcrop that is the first landmark leading to my workshop. The dust is annoying, getting into cracks and crannies that I never imagined could exist, in my machines and in me. However, it does an admirable job of keeping my home from prying eyes, and I have more reason than most to be wary of intruders. It’s unfortunate, but bandits abound, and they don’t discriminate those they steal from. I would make a more valuable catch than most, and more than one roving band has attempted to kidnap me and force me to make war machines for them.

After the outcrop, I follow a long glassy furrow, no doubt from some huge weapon. I never really bothered to find out, and anyway, it’s exceeding unlikely that anyone with that kind of knowledge would still be alive. After the furrow ends there are a couple twists and turns through the rising ravine walls, and in a crevice is the opening to the workshop. I lead Nahi through the opening, and peel off my headscarf and goggles, pressing the button to open the outer door as I pass. I take an airjet and blow the dust off of Nahi, trying to get as much out of the cracks as I can. The packs go in a bin to be sorted later, and my sand gear goes in a separate one. I unlatch Nahi’s side and plug in her charge cable, before walking around to get a good look at her. Basically, she’s a four legged barrel. She has a flat top to strap bulky or myself to and rails along her sides for tying smaller packs. She has a large ring at one end for when I need her to pull something, and four sturdy hydraulic legs. I call her a mule as a flight of fancy, since she bears some passing resemblance to a quadrupedal beast of burden from many years ago.

I strap a sling around her belly, and winch her into the air before decoupling the rattling leg. I built her about five years ago, and since then have had to do countless repairs and tweaks, so this shouldn’t take long. Something likely snapped when I had her shifting the golem carapace so I could get at the core. I carry the leg over to my workbench and set it down with a clatter that doesn’t quite mask another sound, something out of place. I turn to find the point of a long shiv hovering in front of my left eye.

“Welcome home, maker.”

August 31 - Golem

Kirsten shivered. The purple robe she wore was thick and hot, but the stones of the corridor were cold to her bare feet. It was more than just the cold that made her tremble, however, for she was being led to the most difficult and important trial that she had ever faced, one she had been preparing for ever since her eighth birthday. Today her golem would go to war.

 She had been a child the first time she saw the great machines. The ones she had seen were half again as tall as a man, and twice as wide. Constructed out of shining steel and supple leather, with gold inlays upon their armoured shoulders. Upon their backs were the black swords of her fair nation’s flag. As she watched them march away, each glittering in the sun and perfectly timed with all the rest, she knew that she had found her life’s work.

 She studied smithing and smelting, learning the secrets of hammer and crucible. She took copper and iron as lovers and learned their every whim and desire. She learned how to mould them, direct them, and, if need be, how to break them. Her arms grew strong and her mind stronger, as she studied stresses, substances, and mathematics. And because her golem would not be an engine of peace, she also devoted herself to combat, armed and otherwise, and the history and tactics of war. Her very first creation, made at the age of seventeen, was in the image of a hound. When she infused it with life it rose. Wobbling and leaky, but it rose all the same. It was then that she began preparations for her life’s greatest effort.

 Kirsten spent five years designing it. She had designs for every component, from the heavy armoured vambrace to one of the thousands of fluid valves in its right leg. Her sketches fills books, and they in turn filled shelf upon shelf of her workshop, as each part she meticulously built, tested, and refined. She drove herself relentlessly, for her golem must not merely be functional, but efficient. Not merely strong, but a fortress. Not merely fast, but graceful as well. She would accept nothing less than perfection.

Then it was time to begin construction. She had many parts already made, but would not accept them, for at some point, whether it in the smelting or mining, they had been touched by others’ hands and thus could not be guaranteed to be perfect. She joined the miners in their dark pits, swinging the heavy pickaxe with the same facility she had shown with hammer and sword. She refined her ores in a crucible of her own making, with materials she herself had gathered. When she shaped them, it was with tools of her own creation, in a workshop built by her hands alone. Slowly, ever so slowly, her golem took shape beneath her hands. Its legs were long, but solid, and ended in a broad foot. The chest was pointed, like the prow of a ship, large plates cascaded down each shoulder. The left forearm was shaped into a wide vambrace, big enough to be a shield. Obsidian eyes glittered impassively in the huge head, behind a smooth faceplate. She set the core low in the torso, almost in the belly, not high up or in the head like she had seen others do. At last, it was finished. Beautiful in its simplicity, and through the perfection of its utility. It was time.

 So she walked, shivering, in a scratchy robe, towards her golem, and its final activation. She stepped into her workshop, once cluttered beyond reason with tools and books and other paraphernalia, now stripped bare of all except the necessities, her pride and joy, and her. She stepped forward and opened the great chestplate and the layers beneath, alternating and interlocking for maximum protection, to reveal the crystal that lay at its core. With that, she took up a fine charcoal stick and began the ritual, inscribing the runes on the inner surface of her golem’s chest. Gul’yane, Haelvenoch, Hahaweh, Piretsu, Shekik, Folgadur… The list went on, the lines of each character meshing with those that came before, growing ever larger and ever more complex, forming a perfect geometry. Sweat coursed down her face, but her hand held steady, for each line must be placed with the utmost precision. At last, after hours of work, the design was done. Black lines covered every plane and curve of her beloved creation, sharp against the sheen of the metal. Kirsten drew a shaking breath, and began the final part. She took a long spike of crystal, exact in colour to the one that lay at the heart of her creation, upon which she rapped it sharply. Both cried out in unison, and in perfect harmony. With trembling hands she took the vibrating crystal and raised it behind her head. With a sudden, explosive, exhalation, she stabbed it through the base of her skull and buried it deep in her brain.

She collapsed on the floor, hot blood pouring down her neck. The crystal vibrated still, and it seemed as if it would split her head in two. The pain was excruciation, her throat was soon scraped raw from her screams. Her fingertips became cold, and then numb, and an icy fire raced over her body. When it reached her head, her vision went dark, and she knew no more.

 Silver hands twitched. They clenched, and wood squeaked in complaint as the huge steel body sat up on the workshop bench. Flat obsidian eyes looked around, taking in the shelves, the tools, the lifeless corpse on the floor. Delicately, the golem closed the layers of armour around its core, then took up a rag and wiped the charcoal from its body. It took some care with the body on the floor, arranging it neatly and then mopping up the blood on the floor. It didn’t wobble as it walked, and it didn’t leak. It stepped lightly, and with hardly a sound, and each movement was smooth. The golem opened the workshop door and strode outside.

Clad in shining steel, and with a crystal as her heart, Kirsten marched to war.

August 30 - Rainy Afternoon

It’s raining. I can see the rain splashing down my window, forming a curtain of water that blurs the shape of the street outside. The road seems to pour sinuously down the hill, and each of the streetlights casts its own warm halo. The sky outside is an unrelieved gray, lit from behind by the flickering of lightning. Thunder rumbles near continuously. Occasionally, a cold wind batters at my window, shaking the panes and squeezing through every small gap with a high pitched whine. My skin breaks out in bumps wherever the gust touches me, and I shiver until it dies again.

 I see a little boy outside, splashing puddles in oversized yellow gumboots. Before long he is scooped up by a long limbed woman clutching a tiny umbrella in one hand, and is carried cackling home, no doubt to big fluffy towels and hot chocolate in front of the fire. A young woman splashes hurriedly past, soaked to the skin and holding a sad and sodden newspaper ineffectually over her head. I see cars go by as well, but they are not as interesting as the people, safe perhaps for the magnitude of their splashes. But though many pass by my window, they are only of passing interest. One face in particular I watch for, one particular way of walking. I’m waiting for you.

When I first see you I will rush to the bathroom to check my face in the mirror and snag a towel off the shelf. Then I’ll run to the front door and throw it wide, stepping out onto the veranda. I’ll wait until I know you’re looking, and then give the biggest smile I can muster, just for you. When you pass through the gate I will sing to you in greeting, and when you reach my door I will throw both the towel and my arms around you. I’ll take your hand and we’ll shut the door on the rain outside. You’ll sit down at the head of the table and I’ll feed you hot chocolate and biscuits. We’ll talk for ages, about lots of things, and about nothing. After that we’ll put on our aprons and start preparing dinner. You’re good at cutting up things, so I’ll let you do that while I fetch things to and from the fridge and stir all the pots and pans. We make a pretty good team. 

After dinner you’ll have a cup of tea, and I’ll have some warm milk because tea tends to keep me up. Then we’ll probably play a board game, just to pass the time. You’ll probably be the one to start yawning first, but regardless we’ll both floss and brush in front of the bathroom mirror. Sometimes you make me laugh so hard I get toothpaste up my nose. We’ll read for a while, because we always do. Then you’ll tuck the blankets in nice and snug around me, and give me a kiss right between the eyes. You’ll tell me to sleep well, and that you love me a lot, and I’ll tell you that I love you too.

August 29 - A Letter

When I first met you, you took my breath away. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. One of the first things I noticed about you was your eyes, so large and bright and of the purest blue I’ve ever seen. You looked at me, and it was as if you looked into my very soul. Then you smiled at me, and I felt as if my heart, pounding away in my chest, would simply burst. I’m surprised you didn’t laugh, because I’m sure I had the stupidest grin on my face. You reached out your hand, and I felt the warmth of your fingers as they grasped mine. I fell in love right then and there.

We spent a lot of time together after that first meeting. I just couldn’t see enough of you. It made my day brighter just seeing your face. I got to know you a lot better, what you liked and didn’t like, what you thought was fun and what put you to sleep. I know I made you fall asleep on more than one occasion. I noticed after a while that you’d started doing things that I did. It was amazing how much we learned from and influenced each other. You taught me patience, and calm, and how to have fun. You showed me how to appreciate the small things. Having you in my life changed it irrevocably.

I was so desperately afraid to lose you. It seemed like anything at all could snatch you away from me, and I knew that if you were gone it would break me. Sometimes I would stay awake all night just worrying about it. Time went on, and you grew out your hair and wore different clothes, and you still stuck around. So after a while I wasn’t quite so scared. Not quite.

Things didn’t always go smoothly between us, and I’ll be the first to admit that. You shouted at me quite a bit, and I’m ashamed to say that I shouted right back. Sometimes you were stubborn beyond all reason, and other times you just plain baffled me. Sometimes it was really hard to understand you, and so a whole day went by with everyone being grumpy. One time you even bit me. Ouch

Still, we always worked it out in the end. I could never stay angry at you for long, and though sometimes I would get fed up with you and need some time on my own, it was never very long before I started missing you. I loved you, and you loved me, and we were inseparable. I was so happy.

Things are a bit different now. You had study, and work, and friends, and everything else that comes with having your own life. You didn’t have much time to spend on me anymore. But I loved you, and you seemed happy, so what could I do but encourage you, even if my heart was slowly breaking. Suddenly you moved away, and despite my best efforts, contact just… stopped. I haven’t heard from you in years.

I hope you’re doing well, and I hope you’re happy, whatever you’re doing now.  I don’t know if you’ll get this, and I don’t know that you’ll read it if you do. But I wanted you to know that even now, anything I can give you I would do so happily, and no matter what happens I will always, always love you.

My darling baby Bella-bear, my one and only doozy of a daughter.

August 28 - Eerie

It’s the sound that wakes me up. A quiet scratching, like when you’ve just cut your fingernails and a stray edge catches and scrapes across cloth. I can’t really tell where it’s coming from, and I don’t really want to move around. It’s cold outside my warm quilts and blankets, and if I move all the cold air will rush in and it’ll take ages to get comfortable as well. I try to ignore the sound and go back to sleep. No luck. I think it’s getting louder, which must mean the thing is getting closer to me. I open my eyes, but of course I can’t see anything. I drew all the curtains before I went to bed. If I want to find this thing, I’ll have to stick my arm out and turn on the lamp. Ugh. No way. I close my eyes again.

The sound is even closer now, scraping around my sheets near my head. There’s something else too, very faint. A sort of hissing, it makes me think of the sound an angry rhinoceros beetle makes. That’s it. I am not having any bugs in my bed. I sit up and flick the light on. Except I don’t. I can’t. My eyes opened when I told them to, but nothing else responded. I can feel everything; my arms, legs, chest and head; but I can’t move. I try to move my arm, nothing. My legs won’t move either. No matter how much I want it to, nothing will move. I try to scream for help, but nothing comes from my lips, not even a whimper. I feel trapped inside my own unmoving body, as if it’s all so much meat. The sound is very close now, somewhere behind my head, and I can’t turn my head at all, can’t move. Then it touches me.

I can feel it on my neck, cold and prickly, like a bouquet of pins. More and more pinpricks appear, as the thing claws its way up onto my skin. My flesh crawls underneath it as it crawls on me. I want to slap it away, to jerk my head, to jump out of bed and run screaming out of bed, but I can’t. I wish my senses were as dead as my body seems to be, at least then I wouldn’t feel this thing clambering up my neck. The scratching sound, obviously its claws on my sheets, is gone and I can hear it hissing at me. Every step it takes irritates my skin and makes it itch, a long line of itches I can’t scratch, all the way up to my ear. Oh god. No. Oh please no. Its foreclaws touch my earlobe.

In my mind I am screaming, jumping, crushing, anything. In reality I lie completely still as this cold spiky thing pulls itself onto my ear, teeters on the edge and then falls into my ear. Its barbed legs flail around as it tries to right itself, its squeals of anger harsh and shrill in my ear. Blazing pain as a forefoot touches my eardrum, building to a wave of white blinding agony as it hooks in and tears it open. The thunder in my ear is gone, but I can hardly think for the pain. I feel nauseous. It’s inside my head. I want to open my eyes. This has to be a dream, it has to be. 

The pain stops. My ear doesn’t hurt any more. In fact I can’t feel it at all. I don’t feel warm, or cold. I don’t feel anything from my body. I can’t smell anything, can’t hear anything at all. I know what’s happening. That thing is in my head, crawling around, tearing and breaking, and I’m damaged. Soon enough it will hit something important and I won’t be able to breathe, or else it will hit something else and I won’t be able to think anymo

August 27 – Signals

My hands lie still on the keys in front of me. I only notice this because, in staring at empty space, my vision of them has doubled. My eyelids feel dry and ponderous, like the pages of an ancient and ridiculously oversized tome. One of those grumpy tomes that always tries to snap shut at entirely the wrong moment, such as when you have your nose buried in it. I rub my eyes, and they even feel papery. I think I have been working too long. Unfortunately, I can’t leave just yet. For my country I must be vigilant, and monitor the various signals sent out by our great nation’s enemies, and even her allies. For the lines between the two are blurred at best. At worst, the line has long ago gotten fed up with being pushed around and walked all over, and has packed its bags and skedaddled for a nice quiet cabin in the woods. I hear a ping from my equipment, so I drag my bookish eyes to the display screen. Encrypted, of course, but sometimes the codes the use are so weak they may as well just be speaking in pig-Latin. Ix-nay on-ay e-thay omb-bay. It’s laughable, really. Laughable, in that when I read them I laugh out loud, which often startles Mandy.

Mandy is the resident linguist, fluent in at least five languages. She sits at the table across from me, and usually has notebooks piled up around her. Sometimes, when she’s concentrating, she doodles daisies in the margins. Sometimes, in our breaks, she’ll teach me words in Russian, or Japanese, or Spanish. She’s very encouraging, even when I get things wrong, and she says I have a good ear for the pronunciation. I think it would make more sense to say I have a good tongue for it, but somehow I never get around to saying it to her. She always smiles when I laugh, even when it startles her. She says it’s nice. I like her smile, it’s big and toothy, and makes her look radiant. Somehow I can never say that to her either. She’s looking at me, with a question on her face. Not literally, of course, because her face is quite well formed and not at all reminiscent of a question mark. I realise that I’ve been staring at her for the past minute, and I think I go very red in the face. I also look away, but that doesn’t seem to make the situation any better. When I look back she’s still smiling.

At half past one we both stand and stretch, in a method quite unlike the way cats do it, and head to the cafeteria. Mandy says it’s my turn to teach her something, so I tell her I’ll teach her a new language. She picks it up very quickly, and we are soon spouting all sorts of nonsense Latin at each other. Her name becomes Andy-May, which could very well be the name of a gentleman, and when I tell her this she says that my name in pig-Latin is Ris-Kay, and is terribly amused. I tell her that if I was truly like my namesake, I would tell her how beautiful she is, especially when she smiles, and I would sweep her off her feet to dinner and dance the night away with her, and henceforth never let her go, because I think there is no-one else I would ever want to see across the table from me, at work or at home or anywhere.

And once I’ve caught my breath, she takes my hand, and asks me what I’m waiting for.

August 26 – Parasite

I’ve got an infection. I don’t know where I picked it up. I wash my hands all the time, and I never leave food out. I don’t eat anywhere unless I’ve seen that the kitchen is clean and well kept, and I keep a bottle of hand sanitiser with me at all times. I avoid sick people on the train, and if someone in the office is sick I have a drawer full of facemasks. If it gets really bad, I work from home. I clean the house thoroughly every week, and bleach everything every fortnight. I alternate between the toilet and the kitchen each day. I make sure to eat well and get the right amount of exercise to keep healthy. I take probiotics, and vitamin C, and other immune strengthening supplements. Yet despite all the care I take to keep my immune system up and running. Something got me.

 I can feel it, it’s growing inside me. Sometimes my skin feels hot and flushed, as if I have a fever, and other times cold and clammy. I feel lethargic nearly all the time, and not a day goes by without a bout of nausea. I can feel it growing inside of me. Not a bacteria, according to the doctor, nor a fungus, nor a virus, not even an amoeba. What I have is a parasite. Something that has invaded my body and attached itself, sucking nutrients from my blood and replacing them with its own wastes. The doctor says that there’s not much to do about it. It can be removed by surgery, but they don’t usually like to do that because it comes out on its own after a while. Such a long time to wait, though.

 It’s gotten bigger, I can feel it. I can see the swelling when I look in the mirror. Even other people have started to notice it, and I can see them looking at me, judging. Some look surprised, others smug, yet others disgusted. They’re not the worst, though. The worst are the ones who seem to take an unholy glee in my suffering, who poke at my inflamed body with crazed grins on their faces. It’s so bad I’m starting to avoid going outside. I can’t run any more, and it’s even getting hard to walk. I can’t stand to wear most of my clothes anyway, as they just irritate my skin. My muscles ache constantly. I’m seriously starting to consider the surgery.

 It’s gotten worse. I can hardly move at all because of how big this thing has gotten. The most horrifying thing, though, is that I can feel it move. I can press down on my skin and feel it squirming around inside me. I have to go to the toilet all the time, and I can hardly eat anything. The doctor says that it’s because the thing growing inside me has gotten so large that it’s pressing on my organs. The doctor says it shouldn’t be long until I can finally get this thing out of my body.

 The doctor says it’s a boy.