Ayri

Ayri village was an old mountain community in northeastern Zintaia--just a few houses tucked away in a lush green valley, flanked by two little mountains, far from any important road. Tall, ancient trees lined the edges of the village. Ayri can’t be found on any map today.

Filla woke up in her bedroom in old Sezhen’s house. She looked out her window--a beautiful fall day, her favorite season. Just above the ridge, sunbeams shone through the gaps of a fluffy white cloud. The leaves on the great oak trees had just started turning the color of sunrise.

She looked on her desk, between scattered old books and scrolls, and there was a note: “Happy Birthday Filla!!” It had a nice border of drawings of her favorite herbs. She flipped the paper over and reached for her inkwell and pen to write a response: “Happy birthday Perra!!!” She drew some crude drawings of his favorite mushrooms. He was the artistic one, though.

It was their twelfth birthday. She got dressed in her thick pants, put her jacket on, and slung her gathering bag over her shoulder. It looked like a perfect day to go look for plants. She went out to the main room of the little house, where Sezhen was grinding up something in her mortar as a pot started to boil over in the fireplace.

“Good morning!” she said.

“Good morning, and happy birthday little ones! Who am I with this fine morning?” said the old Kogai woman, with long white hair and the darkest brown eyes.

“Filla.”

“Should’ve known, I would have heard Perra come in,” she said. “Y’all going out today?”

“Yep. Whatcha makin’?” She came up to investigate.

“A preparation of timeshroom.” She pours the brown powder from her mortar into a bowl and picks up another big brown mushroom cap, shriveled up and dry.

“Ah, a mushroom.”

“You can find a lot of them around here in the fall. When they’re alive they’re a vibrant red, with little white spots. If you or Perra see any on your walk I could use them.”

“What does the potion do?” Filla said.

“It’s used in divinations. Its dreams can summon long forgotten memories from deep within, and let you see the past in vivid detail. Some herbalists believe that a high enough dose will even show you your future. But that’s a risky game, the mushroom is a bit toxic.”

“Do you believe that, aunt Sezhen?”

“No, not really, but I’ve taken the potion before, and visited places long forgotten, that much is true.”

“What good is it to see something that’s already happened?” she said.

“Y’all ain’t got enough years worth of memories to understand. The past is a valuable insight into the self. But it can also be a source of great pain. That sort of divination shouldn’t be taken lightly.”

“Can I try it?”

“When you’re older, little ones, I will teach you how to explore such things. When you understand that some memories are buried for a reason.” She ground up the next cap.

“Oh well, I’m gonna get to the forest and I’ll look for more mushrooms!” She ran for the door.

“Just be back for lunch! I’m baking y’all quite a pie and I’d hate for it to get cold before you got home.”

“We will!”

She shut the door behind her and walked out into the garden. The plants all did so well that year. Sezhen said the secret was the mushrooms she had cultivated there for years and years. She said their tendrils grew all through the soil and helped the plants grow strong.

She walked by the trellis near the gate and admired the starflower vines. Their beautiful blue, red, and yellow flowers bloomed in the fall. Sezhen would collect their seeds for a different divination potion.

She stopped at the big fruit tree, its limbs full of nearly ready fruits--seven different kinds growing on one tree. Sezhen always said it was normal, the way Filla and Perra were, even if they didn’t know any other kids like them. Sezhen’s people told stories about folks like them, multiple people sharing a body. She said it was just like this tree. She had grafted limbs of six other fruit trees onto it over her lifetime. Each one produced a unique fruit, but it was all the same tree--both many, and one, she always said. People could be the same way.

Across the village, she passed by the biggest tree, marking the entrance of her favorite trail up the mountain. It wove back and forth between groves of green cedar trees and deciduous trees turning orange and brown. A lot of mushrooms were growing, she took note of each one and its properties. Most of them looked like they could get bigger, so she would come for them tomorrow.

Sezhen said that these mountains grew such lively crops because of something deep under the land that she called “chaos stones.” She had one on her altar, a deep black crystal that seemed to absorb all light that touched it. They had dangerous magical properties, but if left in the ground, they would harmlessly become part of the mountain’s energy, and life there could thrive. Life, she said, was a thing of chaos.

People from the cities would come sometimes and everyone in Ayri would be talking about chaos stones. A company wanted to mine them from the ground and use them, Sezhen said. But the village refused them every time, they’d rather live here in their home than sell it. Sezhen said Ayri was a haven of people who used to work in mines like that, like her parents did. The survivors didn’t want anything to do with such a thing again.

It took about an hour to get up to the top of the short mountain. A taller peak was just beyond it, but she considered it a mountain in its own right due to the dip in between peaks. There was an overwatch there where she could see the red clay roofs of the village houses. It looked so insignificant, sitting there in the embrace of the land. The people going about looked like little ants running about their commune.

There was a good patch of red clover there she frequented. She went to collect some. While she stuffed little green leaves into her bag, another plant caught her eye. It had long, jagged leaves, light green, and little yellow flowers with six petals--the dawnflower. How lucky to find it in bloom, it only bloomed a few days a year--once in the spring and once in the fall--and only for a few hours after dawn. She remembered something peculiar about it, and looked around closer to the ground.

Just as she hoped, a different plant grew nearby--dark, rounded leaves. Its blossoms had come and gone in the spring. Dreamleaf--Filla once learned that if the leaves of this plant and the petals of the dawnflower were consumed together, they had a unique property--it would put you in a deep sleep, so deep you would be mistaken for dead. She couldn’t remember how risky that was, or how long it lasted. But it was a rare thing to find, and she thought Sezhen would like to have it, she made all kinds of interesting and impractical potions.

“Happy birthday to us from the mountain.” she said. “Wait ‘til Perra sees this.” He loved this kind of morbid thing.

She sat down there to rest and take a drink of water. As she laid back on the soft bed of clover, the silence of the calm mountain air met with a disturbing, low pitched drone. It grew louder until she could feel the ground shaking under her. She sat up as a powerful wind blew from over the next ridge. Something huge flew over the mountains--a colossal metal body with a wooden house hanging from the bottom. She had heard about flying ships, but they never flew out here.

She covered her ears as it passed over her head, leaving a white cloud behind it. It stopped over the valley and hovered there, then descended, slowly, until it couldn’t go any lower without hitting a mountain.

Filla stood up. She was running back down the trail to the village before she could even think about it. She heard gunshots echo through the valley. She saw smoke rising over the trees. And when she came within sight of Ayri, she froze, taking cover behind a tree. She could see her house, in flames, burning brighter every second. She saw people lying in the road, motionless.

And walking about the town there was a person in a long white coat. She couldn’t see their face, a black mask covered it. Then she saw Sezhen, crawling out from the rubble in her yard. The old woman stood up and stood her ground as the masked person approached her. Filla dug her nails into the bark of the tree until it tore off. She held her breath.

This creature of senseless destruction raised its hand up to her. Sezhen let out a scream so loud Filla could hear it over the roar of the flames and the hum of the engine above. Her body caught fire all at once, and she collapsed. The masked being turned its face in her direction, and she remembers nothing after that.

Perra was awake. The first thing he noticed was the smell of smoke. Then he saw the flames--the whole village in flames. He felt very uneasy about the person in the white coat, and he stayed hidden until they walked out of view. Then he crept up to the biggest oak tree and hid there, where he could see more. Nothing remained--every house ablaze.

The nightmarish creature in the black mask walked by each of the people in the street and held its hand over them. If they didn’t move, it passed them by, but the ones that moved at all would catch on fire.

Perra often emerged suddenly in times of danger, but even he was unprepared for such terror. He looked back at the trail up onto the mountain. He could get away up there, but then he looked up at the giant metal ship hovering in the sky. Surely they would see him up on the mountain trail. He crawled on the ground under a bush, and then had a sudden feeling compelling him to look in his bag. He opened it up to see if he carried anything at all that could help.

When his eyes passed over a leaf and a flower he felt a strong pull toward them, and he remembered--the dawnflower and the dreamleaf. He didn’t remember learning this, but he knew it. Maybe if he didn’t move when that monster found him, it would mistake him for dead and pass him by. He didn’t see any other option.

He stuffed the plants in his mouth and swallowed them--they tasted awful. In less than a minute, it all went black.

According to all the records of the state, there never was such a place as Ayri village. In fact, today where it was said to be, there isn’t even a mountain at all.