Red Twilight the Weaver chapter 7

Chapter 7:

Eden 1.1

Corn takes to the bushes hearing the oddest sounding of voices up ahead. Near every utterance of the forest quits so to listen to the lone out of place sound. Corn spots walking around a fellow kobolt. He seems strange: his face is rounder then hers, as are his ears, his nose is flat at the tip not sharp as Corn's and her kids, on his cheeks are ruffles of fur that stick out a bit. He lacks a strip on his neck as his fur is a hard orange-red all around. To make himself even more strange looking he is dressed in lairs, starting with a top hat that adds an extra third to his height, then a white blouse, covered by a black vest, a green cloak, and a checkered scarf, a belt is run around his waist and his shoulders with a knife strapped to his arm and an ax to his lag, and on his other hip is a bag carved from animal skin.

As the funny looking mouse walk he sings to himself "Love is so Red, Red- er than any flower, O-love how I miss you, my cruel mistress. For you, I was born, and now for you, I must die, Love, love, so red. O- you are my beginning, and you are my End, O-love, My love, why do I need you so? Love, love, so Red…"

The evil black birds of Kari gaze down at the little snack prancing about; the sky pales with the black feathered beast in the air. Corn looks up and cringes, with one hand she squeezes her wounded leg and snarls holding down a yelp. Corn jumps from the bushes pushing over the strange mouse heaving him into the overgrowth on the opposing side of the trail. She grips him by the lapels as she sets herself on his lap shoving him hard into the dirt.

"Itiz' this a robbery?" the boy asks.

Corn grips him by the nose to silence him "what kind of a singing fool are you? This is Kari's land. You can't sing here."

"I beg to differ." He proclaims "there is nothing at all that is preventing me from singing to my heart's content." He removes her hand from his snout.

"Kari will eat you."

"but that is only causality, that cannot stop my song, only offer me incentives, as a man of grace and wisdom I can still choose to sing, even if choosing to do so comes at a cost. Now if you do not mind madam. I am not accustomed to lying on my back."

Corn crawls backward off of him "sorry."

"There is nothing to be sorry for. Life is what you want it to be, and we surround ourselves with that which we believe defines us, we are but an experience, and that is what I seek: Life, love, and wine, in every township from Nebbinbog to Queens that is the experience I wish for."

"Forgive me, but dead mice drink very little wine."

The bardic mouse takes off his hat and tucks it under his arm "well then thank you for your concern. What is Kari? And why doesn't it like ones singing?"

Corn scoots up to his side and pushes his head slightly down so they can see past the bushes, she points "up there." She fingers the birds in the trees "eyes of Kari. They have a powerful presence here."

The adventurous boy looks to her "those are nothing but common black-jays. Quite harmless to anything but flees."

"I know what a blackbird is and I know what Kari is, that is the latter. Those birds are Vampires."

"What happened to your lag?"

"I've been bitten." Corn turns away walking with her body tightly to the tree, "fallow me," she whispers "I can lead us away from them."

"Kari is a vampire?"

"Kari is our goddess. The vampires serve as her top emissary."

"I think you chose your gods poorly."

"We didn't choose Kari choose us."

"I bit on the vain side, don't you think." He rolls his eye up a moment thinking "but maybe I have no grounds to stand on, in Tear'lord we worship Dragons, and dragons don't make genital gods more-so. The faulty of being at the bottom of the food-chain I think."

"STOP TALKING! You silly furling."

Corn crawls on all fours till they reach tall grass and the tree line thins, her reluctant partner close enough behind that she can feel his breath on her tail. She, at last, sits up and breathe a sigh of relief, her partner sits up as well and dust himself off "crawling has never been my bag, I'm much more a jogger. You smell quite sweet; you know that don't you? And thank you again for the escort."

Corn blushes "thank you. You're welcome. Now stay out of trouble." Corn goes running ahead

"My name is Rodney. The Great and Powerful Rodney, are you in need of the services of a wizard?"

Corn looks back in disbelief "you are a wizard?"

"Indeed I am." Rodney reaches into his cape and presents a stalk of lemongrass. "a nibble, my girl?" Corn giggles and takes the grass from him. Rodney turns his hand slightly and calls forth a small stick; he pulls his hands apart spinning the stick freely in the air it would seem.

Corn cheers him on "Amazing! Do another!" Rodney takes his twig between both hands and pushes the corners compressing the stick to half its size making a playful click sound as he does. Corn bounces up and down clapping "More, More!"

"Another time." He takes a bow, Corn protest. "OK, one more." Rodney pulls a length of cloth from his shirt and throws it into the air, followed by waves more. He dances about catching the cloths as they fly throwing them up again in a rainbow display. He swoops one arm out in an arc grabbing them all up in one swing after a time, and they vanish as he twists in a spin throwing his arms out laughing at his trick.

"Yes, yes I do need a wizard." Corn explains bouncing in exhilaration.

"So, then what is the plan!" The mouse wizard rubs his hand together

"we are going to Mount Elec in search of a magic stone." She points across the valley to a lonely spire reaching nearly into the clouds. The mountain looks like glass from a distance, smooth and cylindrical, by far the tallest point on the island.

"That's not so hard. We will be there in two days walking at a fair pace. What is standing in our way?" Rodney asks

"The ghost of the accent races, Memories of dead worlds, which is the path to heaven the wolves took, and where the last Huma died. That's what Jessica thinks anyway."

"You look like her."

"Jessica?"

"The Weaver." He nods "the Red Flower lies ahead?" with his head held high Rodney jump up and down once and start to walk, corn scampers in only a few steps behind.

** *

Jessica pulls her claw from the water and smiles "Eden lies ahead." She remembers

** *

I worked once to make the world a better place. We had a dream, we had the money, we had the technology, we wished to cure all sickness, and we thought we knew the way. Most all bacteria acts the same way but move differently. So we made a cold to fight off the sickness, and it was perfect! It seemed to do everything we wanted. But it was slow and costly; it took years for "Harbinger" to offer a single man complete immunity to sickness as we planned.

So new men were brought on board to help, and that's when it started. Our language began to differ, and so did the ideas we seemed to work towards. Sickness became Imperfection, the Cure became the path of Peace, Death was soon called Weakness, and as for my fellow doctors, we became slaves.

Our Harbinger elixir stopped being used to cure sickness, but to make monsters by the same name. New versions needed to be made with a special ingredient "They" called "Protein 77.7". This was not for such complex organisms as men or as simple as bacteria; this one would be a puzzle piece for something far different. Soon we were creating our animals within the labs; they were subservient in every way. Not reacting to sound, movement, or doing anything until they were ordered to.

The director was pleased with what she saw and asked if the same process would work on plants. But it wasn't a question, one that could be answered yes or no, the answer needed to be "when do we start."

My god, what am I doing? This is no longer science, not by any accepted definition. We thought we had become masters of creation, and what can that lead to but destruction.

A new protocol is now underway. We live in our labs now, leaving only to attend daily conferences, wherein, we present our progress to the director. In return are afforded some comforts: soups and tea to some, cigarettes and bread to others.

A new building is under construction around us, but we cannot see it, for we are now denied the pleasure of light itself. It is just as well thou, for I am now the father of a living machine. To what purpose, I am not privileged.

Flowers the size of a room, its petals are six feet wide with vines that swing and dance in the air. I watch, as slowly my creation infects the very building in which we live; vines growing into walls and emerging out pipes.

With terror in my heart, I hear outside of my office voices, at last revealing what we have become.

"The Harbinger virus is now an arousal" the first voice claims.

"And Eden is almost ready to rise."

"Imperfection can be cured?"

"I am the sword and cross of humanity, and I shall save them even if I need to send them all to hell to do it!"

"Why are we not flying already?"

"Eden needs a brain to operate it first. Then we can rain down the cure, the cure to war, the cure to hate, the cure to weakness, and the cure to race."

Can that all be what it sounds like, is that what I've been building? The cure for life, is death, the last great medicine left? As for a brain, what can that be? But then it comes to me.

Can that be why we were engineering living organisms, to feed this carnivorous plant of mine, to give it divinity?

"Koji's plant is our Adam, and now we need to find him an Eve. After that is done, I shall cut down the tree of wisdom to ensure we do not fail again." Koji?, that's me.

"Must individuality be erased to cure sin?"

"I see no other way. Do you director Wright?"

"No, Miss Van Richton."

No! This is not science; this cannot be what it sounds like! Surgically or chemically removing the soul as a sacrifice to... to... what, to a long life! To God! What must I do to stop this?! Is my own life high enough a price to end the madness? So much evil looms in the air like a noxious gas. One of the women we built will be chained to my flower. Wrapped snugly in its grip, vines burrowed into whatever cavity its wishes, then, at last, releasing its soul-eating seeds onto the earth below?

Who could have guessed so much evil can be born from the will to do good? I search my lab for a solution to these enigmas, and my eyes turn only to, to the chemical vault to my left. Poison, yes! I'll poison the damned thing. I go to the vault and search, nothing but isolated DNA strands. Nothing that would kill it on its own, But what if... I drowned it in the very compounds that brought it to life?

Yes, the plant is not "real". It's fused together from hundreds of other plants and rose in an incubator. It has no immune system, like a real organic creature would, so. if I over feed it, maybe it will.... self-destruct.