I see, yes, I see you all together now. Seeds of a fine story.
Wreck of the Bluebottle
Centuries ago, in the dying years, the sea itself turned traitor, and too many ships were lost to wind and wave grown bitter and vindictive over age-old slights. The Bluebottle, last to escape the great capital port before the tide took it, ferried its load slowly and fearfully along the coast, its aged captain having lost the will to brave the open ocean; so it only struck a sandbar, listed, capsized, and foundered with all hands in water shallower than it was long. There might even have been survivors, had the ragged and wild-eyed refugees not spent their last moments brawling bloodily over the too-few lifeboats, only to see them all washed away with just the provisions loaded.
Hardly anyone remembers it now. Hardly anyone is left to remember.
A blue spirit wriggles out of the bone-bleached figurehead, puffing and heaving like full sails. For the first time ever, it senses and feels, and what it feels is hunger.
The refugees sold every possession they could to fund their passage and, they hoped, buy some semblance of life in a new land. Somehow it seemed that, no matter how the sky darkened, there was always an eager buyer to be found, sure the misfortune was soon at its end and happy to take advantage of another's pessimism. So it came to pass that a young woman of some rank (back when rank mattered) had pawned her amethyst pendant, her mother's dowry, for a paltry sum knowing that rank itself couldn't buy her escape.
Now her bones, pitted by shipworms, clutch the one shiny gold coin she had left to buy a new home.
A warm current brushes the sand from the coin's face, and an orange spirit flows out with it, a molten bubble of gold. For the first time ever, it senses and feels, and wells up with new curiosity.
On the beach, in one of countless tidepools, no different from the rest except in the number of crabs sunning themselves there, a single grain of white sand, rounded by indescribable eons into a perfect tiny pearl, has lain forever.
For all it knows, it could lay forever yet, and never tire.
At this exact moment, though, a white spirit tumbles out, an ivory marble full of swirling milk. It senses and feels, as it has long been accustomed to do, and it wonders whether its boundless curiosity will finally be satisfied.
The Fields, and Beneath
Even after the dying years, the land still heals in time. Those who had fled early, after the first omen — that terrible fire in the sky which seemed to bring down the stars themselves — came back, or their descendants did, and the ruined cities were plowed under, the mud that had mired them now loam for the crops and cattle of yeoman farmers. The man who had owned this plot was of no small stature in the village, holding as he did the very centre of what had been the capital, and so turning up some new treasure to tempt the wandering merchants near every spring. Word having got out, with no little push from himself, of the grave-hoard he had just found, he carried himself with a certain forgiveable air of swagger as he tied up the oxen in the evening. Walking back across the field, he was brought short by stifled screams from the house where his wife and son waited for him, and before he knew what had happened his throat was cut.
He had the strength left in him to crush his killer's own, and both lay side by side till the gurgling ceased.
Some time afterward, a red spirit crawls out of the fallen dagger, all angles, jagged and sharp. For the first time ever, it senses and feels, and what it feels is hunger.
The old grave was hardly rich, but it would have sated some amateur historian with pennies to spend, the body and its grave goods capping off his parlor museum. Its only major prize, which an enterprising merchant would surely have sold separately and far dearer, was the blazing violet gem, strung on silver, which seemed almost to whisper when the sun caught it. The farmer had boasted it would buy him another score of acres, or a new barn and cattle to fill it.
He might have lived had he not boasted.
A purple spirit oozes out of the jewel, oily and glistening, murky shadows beneath its surface. For the first time ever, it senses and feels, and wells up with new curiosity.
Deep beneath, the bones of the hills slumbered, unimaginably ancient strata fractured and thrown up by an incalculable explosion, ready to shock the world with baffling and primitive fossils if there had been anyone left to delve in the right place.
In one spot, there seemed to be nothing of note, but the sensitive might have gleaned an odd feeling of long-buried struggle and resentment.
A black spirit unfolds out of the rock, straight-backed with a pointed sting. It senses and feels, as it has long been accustomed to do, and it wonders whether its boundless hunger will finally be satisfied.
Deeper yet, and a little further away at the ruined city's epicentre, the rings of shattered stone (now caved in and smothered under sediment) converge on one great silver rock buried in the tomb it dug for itself. A grey spirit hovers around it like a fog of cold iron, hardly knowing its long rest from its yet longer travel. Its thoughts are slow and great, and it knows neither want nor need, but, for the first time in its stay on this planet, it senses on the earth-currents some implacable change rising, and it feels something like the blossoming of long-forgotten seeds.
You must satisfy your drives. You are bound to your birth-scraps yet, and you cannot journey far, but the sunlight calls you. What will you do, or attempt?
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Topic: Wild Spirits: a Game for [Seven] to More Players of Ages One Million and Up (Read 1879 times)