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This is what got me into my Masters Program...

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Tai Kumo



High in the encapsulating mountaintops of a rugged frontier exists a world reclaimed by wilderness. Caustic, corrosive air keeps humans away from whatever of value may still linger in the lost land. On earth untrodden by others of their flesh and blood, a pack of ghostly children - once inhabitants of the valley-village below - patrol the inhospitable world. Each child has a name that now goes unspoken by their past families; all except for the Unknown Child, the very first to call the mountain home. Children are warned by their families to stay far from the border, or else risk being spirited away like their siblings, cousins, and friends. Adults are not completely safe, either. Upon the slightest glimpse of the spectral pack even the most hardened survivor turns away, hiding from sight of the silent guard and the unknown boy whose voice is said to drive the land's confusion and corruption into the depths of one's soul.


You will see him if you stay here - the Unknown Child - as a lanky young man with shoddy, uncut, snow-white hair that nearly blends with the mountain-peak's unending blizzard. Something flat, rectangular and black is always with him and is either gripped by pasty fingers and tucked underneath a colorless and wasted arm, or is stashed inside of his full-length, long-sleeved white coat. As herald to the pack, the stranger always leads the way. His body glides with gusting swiftness, always before the handful of others half his size who trail in the mysterious youth's intangible footsteps.


The herd of ghostlings rush the blanketed earth on an endless cycle, and move in unvarying formation along the stark line drawn by a recently erupted cavernous cliffside. Their unshod feet pad with ease atop snow twice as deep as any child is high. Their variably pale bodies dodge trees in near pitch-darkness, and their way is seldom lit or sounded by jolts of ravenous thundersnow. Eyes of ruby, rose, and amethyst color their ever-blanching features, and their pupils - were one close enough to see them - are constricted to tiny points perpetually frozen by the slicing, whipping, crippling cold.


Mixed in with old forestland, the carcasses of dead metal pipes thicker than even the oldest of the surrounding trees rest among the drifting snow, rise along cliffs, and lean their weighty girth against groaning tree trunks. A handful of bleeding cables still spark with a vague trickle of life from a heart palpitating somewhere unknown.


For the last eight years snow has fallen. The people clinging to life at the edge of this hostile land are only the hardiest few among the many who have either left, died, or disappeared. The insanity of such a beaten-down place would be easy to ignore or write off as a simple fairytale: if not for the scientists that have been flocking there ever since an event referred to as the World-Shift, and the disappearance of a certain man…


~~~


"You don't believe what all those villagers were saying, do you?" An aged woman sighed. Deep wrinkles cast hard-set shadows over her glaring face as she glanced out the window of the moving bus. Her fingers pricked and poked away at a curved keyboard sitting in her lap even when she wasn't facing the suspended holographic screen in front of her. The woman's raspy, violent voice shook as the rickety machine clunked along. The narrow and uneven path had been abandoned by the locals, but it was through their grumbling might that the expedition could continue on each time a roadblock stood in the way of the Shift-S9 - a vehicle and mobile lab that was painstakingly designed to withstand a variety of environments in a continually changing world. If it were her choice, the woman would have left many of its features out altogether. As someone who lived through the prior age, she couldn't care less if the billions of dollars in equipment both embedded in the machine and toted around inside melted into nonexistence… so long as it took her where she needed to go, and let her do her work in a world where her expertise and experience was beyond value. With every tree and shrub cleared away another could be seen pushing through the soil and speeding through years of growth on the otherwise avoided single road toward the cursed mountain, making it immensely impractical to do anything other than charge ahead.


"But you have to admit it's strange," replied her younger contemporary from across a narrow aisle. A pair of silvertone hair-clips held his unkempt short-cut blonde hair securely out of his observant eyes. The typical crystalline color of the charms sparkled with a molten-rose hue in the light given off by the old woman's computer screen. "Every time the primary team tried to go up, they always ended up back in the village, not remembering how they got there."


"Those kids just weren't paying attention," the old woman laughed as she paused her hasty typing. "Listen here, Alcott, I was a part of the team that planned and cut this road," she scoffed with a hearty kick at the tempered metal floor. "So long as the driver sticks to the map I drew rather than some 'local's' hackneyed chicken-scratchings -"


The bus lurched. The woman's paper-thin keyboard flew from her lap and clattered against boxes and bags of equipment and supplies until it landed on the floor with a snap. The artificial screen disappeared.


"Damn new-age technology… it's not durable enough for real field work!" The senior researcher scrambled for the fallen device, "Whatever happened to the money we sent you people," she cawed at the men sitting idly at the back of the bus. "Because you certainly didn't use it to keep the road clear like we contracted you to do! Thirty years -" the bus jolted and veered to the side and knocked everyone but the driver from their seats.


The younger researcher leapt toward the back of the overloaded bus. His spry body moved with a sense of imperative that few researchers his age commanded. He tried to hold the haphazardly stacked equipment at the back of the bus as steady as possible alongside four otherwise silent locals that only barely agreed to accompany them to the mountain ridge.


"It's Shift-Shock" the young researcher shouted as he glanced out the windows. Labored groans could be heard from him and the village men as the pressure inside the bus swelled, and the pull of gravity intensified. Dusk suddenly surrounded them, but with the sudden appearance of snow all around them the expedition found themselves in the place where the mountainous terrain separated from the surrounding land and formed the border to the largest Shift Zone in the world. After crossing the often-fluctuating border, the unprepared vehicle and its contents slid along the sloping ground buried beneath years of snow. Despite the professed capabilities of the machine, the aim of the research team hadn't been to cross the border.


"You morons! Don't just stand there," the old woman rasped. She leapt to her feet and bolted toward the driver's side. The woman ripped a side panel from the wall and revealed an expansive control panel covered with screens, knobs, colorful buttons of every size, and a keyboard. The immediate strain of passing through such a strong border fried many of the vehicle's outer measuring components, leaving it up to human senses to get the job done. "I told you to stay outside of the Shift Zone," she hissed at the driver as her wrinkled fingers twisted and jabbed the world back to normal.


Strands of hair that had spring loose from her tight-knotted bun streamed behind her as she raced to the back of the bus. The female researcher paid no attention to the fried equipment - the "latest" in technology - and frantic males around her as several large items crashed to the sterile metal floor despite her student and the men struggling to hold the toppling mound in place. She pushed her student aside and dove into the wreckage after a sturdy red case filled with a variety of items which in modern times were considered outdated and useless "old-technology." "You brutes are as useless as this heaping junk - move it, Alcott!"


"Yes, Dr. Oboro," the young researcher replied. Alcott followed the fast-acting woman and flinched each time she kicked a box aside. Unlike his mentor, Alcott still respected and relied on the expensive equipment as extensions of his own senses. The driver struggled to keep the machine's still lurching carcass from toppling in the shifting terrain. Both researchers stumbled as the driver slammed on the brakes and yelled in a language that neither understood.


"Speak English, man!" The woman hissed at the driver as she struggled to keep on her feet. "We are paying you extra to translate, not go off like the rest of these mules!"


"Kigea!" One of the local men shouted. Alcott found the attention of his dark ochre eyes drawn to the back of the bus as his mentor continued to reprimand their struggling guide.


"Kigea…?" the young researcher repeated as the group behind him murmured the same word. He ignored the usual language of the easy-to-anger and oftentimes fervid Doctor Oboro. Unlike her, this young man observed those able to survive in such a harsh land in earnest, regardless of if their stories satisfied the world's last 100 years of brutal skepticism toward anything even remotely unscientific. If something were able to rattle the few brave souls who volunteered to assist the researchers, Luka Alcott wanted to know what that something was. The curious young man directed his trained and calculating gaze toward the iced-over window that the frightened villagers now were frantic to avoid.


Alcott extended a flawless white sleeve-cuff to clear the frosted window. The cold outside permeated the Shift-S9's reinforced shell even with Dr. Oboro's adjustments. His teacher had been correct; readings from afar showed that even the most buffered new-era machines wouldn't keep people safe for long in such an extreme Zone as the one on the mountain ridge.


Beyond the glass already re-frosting with Alcott's every breath a flash of lush greenery drew his eyes deep into the ice-flake saturated snowstorm. When he looked again, Alcott found the form of a barefoot little girl in the flawless wind-swept snow. He couldn't see her very well, but in the moment Alcott had with her clear in his view he was hit by the homemade color and texture of a rough-hewn, light-green dress. The plain article of clothing didn't cover her down to so much as her ankles much less did it coat the length of her plump little arms. The tiny creature appeared barely past her toddler years.


If such a small girl followed them up into the mountain and through the Shift Zone's border, perhaps after her father onboard, her life was in immediate danger.


"Dr. Oboro -"


Sounds of clattering metal and cracking, shattering glass covered all other noise. All the local men had given up their assigned duties and sat once again in their allotted seats. The lot of brawny and dark-skinned valley-men trembled like a forest of aspen, and each set of frozen-coal eyes sealed themselves behind cinched eyelids. Hands made thick and rough through a lifetime of hard labor and tough survival covered over the men's ears and showed no sign of budging.


"What are you doing," the blonde-haired man. Alcott frantically struggled to keep one of the larger parcels from toppling over on one of the seated men. His two arms made up less than the width of one of the hired men's, but he eventually managed to outwit gravity, if not out-muscle it. After a thankless rescue the blonde-haired scientist adjusted the parcel into a stable position. Just as Alcott was about to let out a breath in relief, he heard the sound of clattering metal from the front of the bus.


"Doctor Hibiki!" The old researcher gasped. She lurched forward and clung to the bus' front window even as the learned translator mimicked the rest of the valley men. Doctor Oboro's body heat was enough to clear the window in a small section, and granted her a flawless view of the other world beyond her glass and metal cage.


Alcott sprinted to the side of his mentor. He was excited by the mention of the name of his mentor's teacher, and the man whose face Alcott remembered well from his childhood years: the man who was now attributed as responsible for causing the World-Shift eight years prior and killing billions with its effects.


However, when the student reached his teacher's side…


Standing undaunted in the stark chill of the whipping snowstorm was a boy younger than Alcott, but who was also far older than any other among the group of a dozen children loitering on the unmanaged and snow-coated path. The boy's emaciated body was bleached to the point he all but blended in with the snow beneath his sheet-like, uncut silver hair. Two crimson eyes cut through the opalescent shower of crystal shavings and shimmered with violent color in the otherwise stark environment. Vague lines in the snow-shower traced the flapping sleeves of a dingy white coat designed in a style similar to the standard laboratory gear given to researchers with the Institute. Were it not for the light fall gear that Alcott and Oboro were allowed to wear over their standard dress during their trip up the mountainside, they would have appeared identical to the pale-skinned boy. Tucked underneath his arm and gripped in the lethargic fingers of the fire-eyed young man rested a sleek, metallic black pre-Shift laptop.


The boy's silvertone hair lashed in the raging wind as he walked barefoot through the ever-deepening snow without ever breaking through the smooth white surface. His bloodshot eyes rolled to a huddled group of several children nearest the vehicle's front. The little girl in a disheveled green dress stepped forward along with two other boys whose ages appeared close to her own. Once she was within reach of an outstretched arm, Alcott was able to see her clearer than before. The girl's skin was so pale he could count her pulse by the shuddering of her pink and blue veins. Her dark violet eyes glittered with vitality. She placed her tiny hands on the metal exterior of the vehicle. One of the boys rested on the shoulders of the other and reached to place his hand on the outer pane of the layered glass.


Raging wind and snow suddenly filled the metal cocoon. Alcott gripped the jacket of his mentor as she tumbled from where she had lodged herself against the glass, and he fell with her into the plush ice below. The cold chiseled through their thick layers of clothing and bit into the skin of the two scientists before they reached the snow below. Both Alcott and Oboro struggled to keep their freezing eyes open. Through the glassy solid that coated their freezing pupils they were able to watch the Institute's prized Shift-S9 disappear.


Snow and rampant wind filled the vacated holes where windows once completed the less-than impenetrable walls. The two boys supporting one another vaulted into the metal machine through the space once occupied by the windshield. A second young girl in a white lace nightgown skipped around the metal shell, and placed her hands on the surface in several places before she and the green-dressed child stepped back. A third girl in a sandy-white blouse and tattered brown slacks connected the points made by the second. A dense, pale-gold ponytail streamed behind her as she skittered her fingertips along the outside of the machine. She flipped and twirled through the air at all angles like a skilled acrobat as she jumped from one side of the Shift-S9 to the other. The two children who had gone inside erupted from a side window, and perched themselves in the branches of a needleless evergreen. A boy with black-tipped, murky gray hair passed between the two researchers as he too approached the vehicle. This child was even smaller than the others. He tripped on the too-long cloth of his hole-studded cotton slacks, and his body was on the verge of drowning in his mis-buttoned teal shirt. The small boy wasn't even as tall as one of the bus' tires. He raised his hand, leapt three times his height, and struck the tempered steel with his tiny fist. A booming wave outsounded and broke the pulsating wind, and the pristine metal buckled, snapped, and fell apart in large chunks. Clean-shorn slabs of steel fell sizzling into the snow and the innards of the mechanical beast spilt out into the open. However, there was something Alcott noticed was missing as he watched the dismantling of the grand machine. The village men were nowhere to be seen. His teacher was too preoccupied with the young man standing before her to take notice of the actions of the small children, much less the strange absence of the translator and volunteers. It was possible that they ran away, but both researchers knew that it was a lot harder getting out of a Shift Zone than it was to get in. This was the main reason they didn't want to enter the Zone during this particular trip - there were still too many unknowns. Now that they were stranded inside… the best they could do would be to wait for death in whatever way the Frozen SuperZone had to offer. The woman, not one to wait for anything, broke the silence and spoke to the eldest child.


"Where did you get that," the old woman snapped at the crimson-eyed boy. She lurched forward in a weak attempt at grabbing the machine he held under his arm. Her target leapt beyond her reach with ease. "And Doctor Hibiki's coat -" Her second breath froze in her throat.


The bloodshot-eyed boy knelt down in the snow in front of Dr. Oboro's freezing body as she struggled to keep her body upright. He leaned forward and whispered something into her ear, but through the blinding and deafening snow Alcott couldn't understand a single word. Just as the fragile-looking boy leaned away, Dr. Oboro collapsed. Crimson eyes redirected a curious gaze toward the blonde-haired researcher.


A mob of tiny hands gripped Alcott's nearly frozen body and pulled him toward the red-eyed boy. Alcott's glazed eyes were unable to blind him - there was something about the young man he recognized. He gazed at the black computer as the boy flipped open the sturdy machine and turned it so Alcott could see the blue loading screen. Operations were initiating and running even without commands. Soon enough a picture began forming on the screen. Alcott immediately recognized the pixelated photograph forming from a maze of electric signals.


At the center was a man in a long white coat. He stood with pride before the old Institute headquarters in a lush city that no longer existed. The man's short-cropped black hair was slicked back, and a respectably trimmed beard framed a modest smile. His sleek glasses glinted in the powerful sunlight but couldn't hide the confident dark eyes of Doctor Hibiki - the Institute's founder and most prolific researcher. His hands rested on the scruffy heads of two boys standing beside him.


To his left was a scrawny and similarly bespectacled boy. His golden-blonde hair was held securely out of his eyes using a pair of silver clips made from a rare metal discovered by the Doctor. The youngest person ever admitted to the Institute's head research team - still very much a child - appeared embarrassed, but also proud to stand beside his idol. This boy was a stark contrast from the other child in the photo. A broad, toothy grin was made to look all the more white by the child's black shoulder-length hair. A pair of amber-gold eyes looked up at both the other figures with determination and awe. Although it was far too large for him, he wore a coat identical to his father's, and was never far from his side.


It was then that Alcott remembered why the apparition appeared so familiar to him. Even if his body had changed over the years and his existence had been ignored in the face of his father's disgraceful disappearance, Alcott never forgot his friend. His name was…

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It's so embarrassing to read now, but I can instantly see how much I've grown since I wrote this - 

It was a story that I tried to make sense of after having a really odd dream about this place and its characters. (Did I eat something funny before bed or what?) The name of it - Tai Kumo - was something I remembered seeing (or maybe hearing?) in the dream, so I left it as the title when I submitted it even though it didn't really seem to add much to the story.

Even now I wonder... was it really any good? Did I show promise? Or are the standards for my program just that low? (Something makes me think the latter is the truth, haha)

But here it is, in all its unedited glory - the story that got me into a Creative Writing Masters program after I'd graduated with my English Bachelors and felt like I hadn't gotten what I wanted out of college just yet.

I'm almost done with my degree now and I feel much more satisfied. I may want to go to school again in the future, but for now I'd just like to get some life experience uninterrupted by school. It's amazing to think that out of my 20-odd years of life, 18 of them have been spent in school... *sigh*

I wish you all the best with your own goals and dreams,
-Mana
© 2017 - 2024 BlackManaBurning
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Vivacia18's avatar
I'm impressed you could get a full short story out of a dream - it's hard to pull the pieces together coherently once your awake. Thanks for sharing, even if it's hard for you to read now that you've progressed :XD: